Ice scream You scream

Howdy Cebolla,
Well well that has been a week of eating out for you.
I understand that at the moment you are walking the streets of London.
Did you behave... I mean no burgers fish and chips etc.
My guess is that you ate at least 1 time, some nice chinees food.

I promised to tell you about the homemade icecream. Mr Chilipepper bought this machine a couple of months ago and of course we had to try out different flavours.
The first one he made was chocolade icecream with chunks of chocolate. That one is definitely worth 10 chilipeppers!! My goodness it is delicious

Another flavour was hazelnut which is also very nice. A bit difficult to rate because the whole family loved it but I don't really like hazelnuts. I would say the family would rate it with 9 peppers.
Other very nice flavours were coconut (8 peppers) this one was lovely too but next time a little less sugar makes it perfect.
Mango/coconut looooooooovely , rate 8 and the cherrie icecream that was great too I would also rate this one with 10 peppers.
The yoghurt icecream, 8 peppers. We do need to work on a nice cinnamon flavour because the one we made was not so good.

The Lemon icecream served with a shot of rum is mmmmmm. I would serve this more as a drink then a desert. Something yoy like to drink on a warm night before you go to bed.

As you can read lots of icecream and lots of you scream ... you beeing the scale afterwards....

Curious to hear what you ate in London..

Safe trip home
love Berenjena

the weekend of food

As you may have read in the plans of last post, last weekend we went out to dinner at Harvest, a Dim sum restaurant, or rather, an eatery, as calling it a restaurant is like saying MacDonalds is a restaurant or the FEBO with a set of tables and chairs is one. In my book that is totally ridiculous. Technically it is not wrong to call it that, but for me, a restaurant must have a certain cachet to be called one.

Still, it can be handy to think of joints like KFC en the Mac as restaurants as you can take unsuspecting folk out to restaurant dinner and treat them to a cheap burger with fries or a bucket of fried chicken. Others will be impressed at your generosity. Your dinner pals I'm sure, will not be contacting you again any time soon.

But on with Harvest. We've been to this eatery qite a few times and we have never been disappointed with their food. Besides full fledged chinese dishes, there are all sorts of dim sums to be ordered, fried, steamed, roasted etc. and the taste and quality are very good. This time we were in a bit of a rush because we had tickets for the cinema and had just 45 min. to gobble the food down. That meant we could not order loads of dims and take all evening to eat them.
We had steamed crab in seaweed, mixed fried dims (wonton, springrolls, triangles) steamed strips of sole stuffed with chicken.
We had not ordered this one before and we were more than pleasantly surprised. The strips of fish are wrapped around chicken meat and are placed in a steaming basket. When it is done, the dish is served with a chinese wine and ginger sauce. Excellent!
Further we had stuffed green peppers with pork and fried cassava cakes with dried prawns.

For desert we had deep fried sesame balls stuffed with stewed prunes.

Each dish has 3 dims, so that's more than enough for 2. 3 people could have happily eaten that and not left feeling hungry.
But, since it was just the 2 of us, we were glad there is such a thing as doggy bags.
The price is stunning. 31 euro for the lot. Endless pots of chinese tea are free.
I give it 7.8 chilipeppers as a restaurant and 8 as an eatery

The movie, Megane, which in Japanese means eye glasses, is certainly worth seeing if you are not addicted to action packed movies or soppy romances. There is no romance, no sex, no intrigues, no killing or fast cars tearing up the streets. It's a beautiful movie packed with humor that relaxes, makes you laugh and realise that life means taking the time to absorb what is around you, appreciating what is there, here and now.

On saturday we went to Rotterdam for an Italian meal in a restaurant, Napoli. This restaurant has been there for a very long time and always has a steady stream of customers. If you do not reserve a table, no way you can have dinner there in the weekends and quite often, this is the case during weekdays too.

In Den Haag, there is an Italian restauarnt called Imperio Romano, which like Napoli, is run by Italians. This is important, as many so called "italian" restaurants are italian only because they serve the pizza and pasta that everyone knows and are unable to come up with anything else. Why? Because the owners and cooks are in reality Turks or Moroccans. That does not mean the food is bad, but it is terribly limited.

But back to Napoli. In comparison to Imperio, Napoli is average. It does not have the finesse the other one has. But if you want a good Vitello Tonnato, arranci ( little deep fried balls of rissoto filled with cheese and/or ham) and a wide variety of pizzas and pastas, that is the place for you!
I must say, I was surprised to see arranci on the menu, as very few Italian restaurants have it. I expect the owner or the chef must come from Rome, as it is a typically Roman snack or starter, so I have been told.
In any case, We had arranci, miniestrone, pizza 4 stagioni and pizza bruscetta and grilled swordfish in lemon and white wine sauce.
The 4 stagioni was fine, as was the swordfish, but take my advice: NEVER EVER order a pizza bruscetta! It is a soppy pizza with an overpowering taste of oregano. Brrrrrr!
The reason I ordered it was that I'd not seen this one before. Now I know why. As far as I'm concerned, they can take it off the menu presto pronto!
Desert was gellato avocatti con espresso, which means: a ball of vanilla ice cream with a likeur of choice drowned in espresso. Actually very good indeed.
Napoli gets a 7

50%

Hey berenjena,



How's life out there in the heat? I'll bet you and your family are lying flat out on the tiles in the house, next to your cats. Out here, the weather is so unstable, I don't know whether to wear a life jacket or a sun hat. Well, that's summer for you, over here that is.



Glad you agree on the 10 peppers Boss! :-)
And thanks for your generosity on the 50% profit! WoW!!!!


Look, us pepper lovers are just that. We've got a cast-iron stomach and our tastebuds are in great shape. Not like those whimps who need a tablespoon of sugar every time they come near a teaspoon of Tabasco... Not mentioning names. Ahem...



But I agree, I was a little too enthoustic with addin the hots in the dish. Still, it turned out pretty well. Not that it will have a repeat, since I noticed you AB-SO-LU-TE-LY did not want the recipe.



Señor Chilipepper: "I'd like the recipe"

Berenjena "Uuh... let's leave that for special occasions, like .... only when she's here"



And this was repeated 3 times. LOL

Don't worry, no more pepper chicken at your house. hahahaha



That nasi sounds good, but then, señor chilipeper is a pretty good cook. I'll bet he could give Billy Bob a run for his money.



That's what you get with them spanish french fries. wobbly and floppy. Yuck. Hopefully that does not reflect their male family jewel.... Oh well, stick a hot jalapeño where the sun don't shine and all's well. Or better yet, I'll serve em my undiluted pepper chicken dish! Beats vaigra, I'll bet!

Hmmm The quality of this conversation is going downhill. Exuse moi.



What's for dinner:
I know you're gonna think we lead a decadent life, and maybe we do in a way, but this evening we are going out to dinner again. Then we'll go see a movie. It's an arthouse movie called Megane. That's Japanese for Chill! or so I've read. So let's see how this person starts and enjoys a holiday.

For a bite to eat we'll pop down to Harvest, our favourite dim sum dive. Tell you what we picked later.

Tomorrow... yup, out to dinner AGAIN..... But this time it's for free as Peter, our Buddy, is gonna treat us to dinner at Napoli, Rotterdam. You can bet I'm gonna pick the most expensive dish on the menu and drink myself silly!



Hasta la pasta and enjoy your dinner.

10 little chilipeppers

Hello Onion,

Well it has to be said, one of us needs to be the boss. But since I'm such a nice boss I'll give you 50 % of the shares and any profit we will make on our Berenjena & Cebolla's fabulous world of food cookbook!!

I totally agree with the chilipepper rating. So I have to change my rating of Billi Bob's dinner as well. That will be a 7,5 then. My own pasta frito will be a minus 10!!

Sounds you had a couple of great meals in the restarants you visited.

I stayed at home this week and must say mr. Chilipepper made some lovely dinners.

He made a really nice nasi with peanutsauce. Not to spicy so everybody could eat it. It was also a 7.5

I like it better when it is not to spicy so you can add sambal or other spicy stuff yourself.

Last year we had a cook in our kitchen (won't mention names but its yellowish and has layers.....) she decided to make some spicy chicken........I thought why not join the cook in the kitchen and keep her company. So we chatted away while she was grinding the chilipeppers. It only took me 2 seconds to sniff the pepper and start coughing for an hour or 2. She tried the chicken just to see how spicy it was. Well let me tell you it was the first time I saw a sweating onion. My goodness it was hot like hell!!

The cook and mr chilipepper had no problem eating this spicy but she had to add some stuff to make it eatable for the rest of us.

Yesterday we did go out for lunch and had some Tapas at a typical local spanish restaurant.

I had a ensalada russa and a pincho the gambas. It was ok. The pincho I would say is a 6 because they added chips and they were not ok. Like always soft greasy brrrrrrrrr.

The ensalada was ok as well I would say a 6 as well.

Mind you it is not a fancy restaurant. The atmosphere is always nice and typical spanisch ..with a loud tv.

That's it for now . Don't know what I'll have for dinner tonight you?

Next time I'll will write something about teh lovely icecreams mr. Chilipepper makes mmmmm

hasta la pasta Berenjena

chilipeppers

First of all, may I compliment berenjena on het wonderful photo of us for this blog. It's very nice indeed.
As the followers can see, berenjena is the boss, as she's bigger than li'l ole me. If I flap a skin wrong, berenjena will see to it that I become tomorrow's onion soup! LOL

I heard that señor Chilipeper thought I was was a bit mean with my rating of La Viña.

Well, you must understand that I am an old fuddy-duddy, so I tend to forget stuff like how many of him make a good score and how many don't. I thought the max score was 3 but it seems it's more. Was it 5? More? Less? I cannot remember. This is what old age does. Either old age or Korsakovs. I don't know which I'd prefer....

If 3 was not the norm, then Señor Chilipepper is right. I was too mean, but it's unintentional and I'll correct it right away.

So let's make it clear for all that 10 peppers is the max. score. To get a 10, that restaurant or cook will have to be so good, Michelin 4 star-ratings will hide in a corner out of pure shame.
10 gives room for nuance.

I hope Boss Berenjena will agree, otherwise she can tell me what she thinks is fair.

But okay if 10 is the norm, then La Viña scores 7 and Les Ombrelles 8.5.

Hopefully his meets with Señor Jalapeño not-on-a-stick's approval? LOL

By the way, I got a 10 today for my vegetarian lasagna but Miek was the one who gave me that and she's terribly biased I'm afraid, so I'll not invite Michel Roux to dine with us at home.

La Viña

Yesterday was the 51st birthday of my dearest sweetness and delight so what better gift to give her, (she who has everything already - especially moi ) than a restaurant treat?
Exactly!

A dinner treat it was. I did not want to go too far out of our way, so I picked a nearby restaurant. The chip- and krokettenshop Bram Ladage is just that bit too far away, so I chose La Viña.

This restaurant serves mainly as a watering hole for ministry staff and their visitors, mostly. During week days you see hordes of suites and skirts after work, holding their drinks, blah-blahing away about the state of world affairs (all happening in the broom cupboard of their department) and you hear gossip treats about who got dissed by whom at the meeting with the minister or ambassador of whatever-wherever. True intellectual metier naturellement.

The cuisine is European/Mediterranean, although I don't know what's so European about a sashimi of tuna with tempura prawn for starters.

In any case, now you know what I had for starters. Miek did not want any starter, bless her (cheaper for me).
Again there was an amuse de bouche. This time it was cold cucumber soup with Dutch North Sea shrimp. Very nice.

We also drank a glass of very good prosecco as an apperative. Prosecco is, of course, THE summer drink for anyone who wants to appear adult, hip and 'with it' these days. It is the rosé of last year. As I said, it was very good indeed.

My starter was really excellent. I loved every euro-japanese morsel of it!

The main dish was grilled grouper on a bed of risotto with green asparagus for Miek and a steak with mushroom and chorizo saus for me. This was accompanied by French/Belgian fries.

Both dishes were quite good but the fries were too dark and dry. Not the way to treat fries at all. The Belgians and French would have shot the chef at dawn had they tasted it.

Nevertheless, the fish was grilled well, the rissotto was nice and creamy, as it should be and the presentation was tidy. My steak and sauce was nice too, but there were practically no other vegetables than those dark brown fries accompanying it. That is a pity.
Also, they did not ask me how I would have liked the steak: rare/medium/well done. Tsk-tsk.
Lucky for them I like mine medium, because that is how it was prepared. The mushroom and chorizo were cut very finely and added to the sauce. They went well with the steak.

Dessert was cheese board for Miek and vanilla ice cream with a soup of fresh, red summer fruit. Quite good.
Coffee and cognac finished it off.

In comparison to Les Ombrelles, this restaurant is not outstanding, but it does well enough.
I expect many a business lunch is enjoyed here as are dinners. The talk and the deal are what matters most. The food is secondary, but has still to be good enough to impress the average businessman or -woman.

The service at Les Ombrelles was excellent. La Viña was not bad either, I mean who would not smile at being served by an Allison Moyet look-alike with a gap-tooth down the center?
But again, compared to Les Ombrelles, service trailed a bit.

I give it 1.5 peppers.

Les Ombrelles

Looks like you had yourself great meal at Billy Bob's & Betty Sue's. Those 2 sure are great prairie cooks.
You are a lucky li'll so-and-so to have a great live-in cook like mister chilipepper.
So uh... Tell me.... Did he come by his name 'cause his mama thought it suited his temper or was it 'cause he has a pointy head/chin or 'cause he loooves chili?
Ah will not be surprised if you say it's all three honey. LOL

Went out fer a nice cat fish dinner yesterday 'cause it was special. Me and mah darlin wife, Minnie Mouse, have been married 8 years! Zoooooweeeee!!!! How's that fer staying power huh? :-)

Well, we went to this place called Les Ombrelles, that seems to be French for umbrella or parasol. I didn't see no parasols or anythin cause we was sitting under the shade of a tree beside the water, watchin them water chickens swim by.

This is some fancy place. Home baked bread rolls, tapenade and somthin to amuse yer mouth before you git yer main meal. Well my mouth was amused allright. It was a small glass of crab soup, with a foam of sometin or other. Looked real purty and stated just as good too.

They did not have catfish on that there menu, thatwas soe disappointment, but I had dressed crab with toast for starters. I had expected this crab to come dressed in a french costume or so and was hoping maybe it woud do the can-can dance, but the crab was deadas a doornail. Apparently they meant that the crabmeat was put in a sauce and then back in the shell. It came complete with a set of pliers so's I could attack the claws. Well, it was really good, but messy to eat. Still, it's fun to have to work for your food. Stops me from shovin it off my plate straight into my stomach in one shot. The dressing had a bit too much lemon in it for my taste though.
Minnie had a sashimi of mackerel with a few thin slices of sweet and sour raw cucumber

Next was fried red mullet (rode poon) with summer vegetables and fried polenta slices. Minnie Mouse had Sea bass on a bed of puy lentils and caramelised chickory (witlof).
Both were excellent! The fish was done just right. Not over- or underdone. The vegetables were nicely arranged on the plate.

Then they came with another amusing yer mouth thing. A small glass of pureed watermelon with port and a foam of vanilla/orange on top.Mmmmmmm.

For desert minnie had wild peach poached in a cinnamon likeur and vanilla ice cream and I had the cheese board. Very good again. Half way we switched so's we could taste each other's desert.

Finished off with coffee and armagnac. No cigars!

After that we put on our aprons and started the evening shift washing up. It was that or go to jail.They can be sooooooo picky! I mean, what's wrong with Monopoly money, huh?
We got home at 3 in the morning! Jeez, I had no idea it could get so busy. And they didn't even pay a taxi ride! we had to walk home on our sore footsies!
You know, restaurants should use paper plates.

Next time, I'll choose jail. At least you get free breakfast!

But hey, it was worth it and I give it 3 peppers. I recommend it to all who visit The Hague.

BUT REMEMBER: they don't take no monopoly money.

dinner at Billy Bobs House

Howdy Cebolla,

Muchas gracias, for your reaction. Well I told you I was invited over at Billi Bob's and Betty Sue's house to have dinner last Sunday. The dinner was delicious!.

After an nice shandy (never drank it before it is different..) and a tinto dinner was served.

chunky chili patatoes, pincho de pollo (without the pincho) and thin sliced tomatoes with mozzarella and yoghurtmintsauce.

The patatoes, like BB already said he didn't put enough chili on the chunks which was fine by me because to much always means that you don't taste the rest and you 'enjoy' the chili again the next day.

They were tasty though, the chicken was nicely spiced and in combination with a mint yoghurt sauce even better. And you cannot go wrong with tomatoes and mozzarella.

The big question of course is how many chili's is this worth. I would say 2 1/2 chilipepper for this meal.

I forgot to tell you that the other night mr Chilipepper (who lives in this house) made a lovely dinner as well. Grilled thin sliced chickenbreast, a spicy warm tomatosauce, rice, green beans in a coconuttomato sauce and a nice salade. The spicy tom. sauce is a secret sauce, absolutely delicous. But we cannot get the recipe for out book. Next time I'll give mr Chilipepper a bit more wine while cooking so I can discover what's in the sauce.

This meal was in my opinion also worth 2 1/2 chilipepper.

Curious to know what you had on your plate this week. Did you eat out?

And still waiting for the boyorecipe with illustration without chesthair.......

berenjena

Howdy cebolla,

Well no sign of the lowlife varmint and definitily no sign of a dee-tec-ive. I guess she is on holiday or still at the hospital in Tennessee....

I do have a primo suspect but no can tell on this public site.

Told you that we were going out for a meal at a friends house. We had a lovely JJJsoup

that is their names added with Jamie Oliver. They made this lovely soup, but to tell you the thruth it looked pretty disgusting. Like a big bowl of dark brown whatever. But the taste was great.

It contained, spinach (you now I hate it but this way it tasted good) , chorizo, garbanzobeans tomatoes, spices, onions and serrano ham and chopped hard boiled egg.

I think we should hand out chilipeppers I would say 5 is the max. and 5 chilis make a B&C star (which is of course similar as the michelin star!!)

I would rate this soup : 2 chilipeppers

Last night I ate a minus 5 chilipepper diner. Didn't really feel like eating and shared some pasta with tomato frito with my son. Just pasta with tomato frito well what can I say I added some salade to pimp it up but.......

By the way I think the boyo desert is a good one for our recipe book what do you think?

What was on you plate mrs C?

hello cebolla,

Are you interested in Billy Bob's famous Lentil soup.

Mind you after eating no open fire!

Girl, that's somethin. Eatin them beans round an open fire and whammo! you got yourself a BBQ-ed rump steak, medium rare!

Buns are there too, so what more d'you want huh?

BBQ sauce that's what!

Get lots of parsely,garlic, onions, olive oil, salt and lots lemon juice or vinegar.

Chop parsely, onions and garlic very finely, put in a jar with oil, salt and vinegar or lemon juice up to the tp of the chopped stuff. Add some peppercorns and leave to marinate for a day or 2. Of course the longer you leave it, the better it'll taste. Spread the stuff over your rump steak and you'll think your on the Argentine pampa.

Need more steak? feed an unspecting dude a portion of Billy Bob's beans/lentils by the camp fire and Bobo's your uncle!

Hello Cebolla,

Had a very nice dinner last night. When you are here in August we will make the same dinner for you.

It was very simple . Fried boquerones. Just sprinkle the Boquerones with flour, fry them in olive oil and ready! Sprinkle a bit of lemon juice on top. Nice to eat with bread and a fresh tomato/cucumber salade.

declicious!

And what did you have on your plate yesterday??

--------

howdy berenjena,

today we had a friend for dinner... No, we are not cannibals, at lest not yet. She wouldn't fit on a plate anyway.

We had her over to dinner.

What we had were glass noodles with stir-fry mixed veggies and prawns. I got the feeling that there were too many veggies in there for her. Ah well, can't please everyone.

Chopped up broccolli, bell peppers, bean sprouts an all. marinated the prawns in garlic, ginger, terriyaki sauce. You know, maybe I should have served rice with that instead of glass noodles. Might have been better.

Desert was boyo. No, it ain't fried boys. It's a kinda sticky cake made with grated coconut, grated cassava, sweet pineapple chunks and raisins. mix it together to form a thick consistency with some milk. Not too much. and put it in the oven for about 20 -30 min. Mmmmmm Great wih a good cup of coffee.

I heard that some low-down thievin varmint took off with your bee hives. Can't trust them locals, is what I say... Or praps it weren't locals and it was some manic depressive gal with a bee in her bonnet. You know, them bees with red butts. Deadly they are.

So you sign some dee-tec-tive? Ah heard you had one down in the village called pakki or somethin like that. She any good that you know? If she is let her loose on the case.

You got any primo suspects?

How was your day?