by Ellen Bannink -

Chinese Pulled Pork

I had a dream.

Well, not actually a dream, it was more like a day dream. I was day dreaming of a soft steamed Chinese bun filled with tender pulled pork.

I had the dream about this delicious meal after having lunch at Take A Bao in the Century City Mall. I had a bao with hoisin pork and it was good! After my bao lunch I went to see the Jennifer Aniston movie We’re the Millers, the lens of my camera was ‘kaput’ so I decided to take a day off. And I knew P didn’t need to see that movie so if I wanted to see it I had to go alone. And I could do that during the day!

chinese pulled pork

I liked the movie, I was laughing my ass off but all I could think of was baozi and Chinese pulled pork.

by Ellen Bannink -

Bali meatballs

– Click here to read this recipe in Dutch -> Oma’s Baliballetjes –

This recipe is a winner. You will make friends with it.

This recipe is one of my grandma’s recipes to start with.
My grandma is 81 years old and she is a tough cookie. She lives with my 82-years old grandpa in an apartment building with really nice neighbors. They like living there and that makes me happy.

Bali balletjes

At their birthday parties in the Summer we sit on the balcony. But the balcony is small so we expand easily to the corridor.
The neighbors don’t mind 🙂

by Ellen Bannink -

Dutch egg cakes

– Click here for this recipe in Dutch -> Heerlijke luchtiger eierkoeken –

Those egg cakes (“eierkoeken“) are very popular in the Netherlands. Especially since a famous weight loss guru prescribed them in her menu’s. This woman is also known as Sonja Bakker, she is blond and always smiling (of course, she has to sell her diet!) and she is from West-Friesland, an area North of Amsterdam known for its huge greenhouses. So she also has an accent which I find very annoying.

Egg cakes p2

I’ve never followed her diet, I mean… it is a crash diet! I don’t believe in that! Sonja wrote books with weekly menus and she sold a lot of those books. For some reason these Dutch egg cakes where part of the diet.

by Ellen Bannink -

Bean and prosciutto salad

Last week I went to Downtown to meet Christine of Feed My Sole. I met her at the dinner at Hinoki & The Bird a few weeks ago, Christine is the organizor of the Meetup group for Los Angeles Food Bloggers.

deviled eggs
Christine made some deviled eggs, they where great! The recipe will be on her blog soon, make sure to check it out!

Christine lives in an amazing loft appartment Downtown. I loved it, it has brick walls and her kitchen is great – it has a concrete counter. Beautiful! Especially for taking pictures 😉

Also that part of DTLA looked great, with hip eateries and boutiques. I have to come back for sure!

It was a great day: we cooked, made photos, ate, talked and had a nice time. All my favorites in one day!

The results of a day full of food blog cooking

I decided to make a salad with beans and prosciutto.

by Ellen Bannink -

Dutch Potato Salad – Huzarensalade

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on the balcony, with my laptop working on a blogpost. Suddenly I heard somebody calling:
“Hello!”

“Hello!”

“Heeelllooooohooo!”

I sat still and looked around. There was nobody I could see from where I sat. So it sure wasn’t for me. I wasn’t expecting visitors and nobody could see me from down the street because we have an enclosed balcony.
So I ignored it.

But then, a week later it was the same voice:

“Hello!”

“Helloooohooo!”

“You, on the balcony!”

From where I sat I couldn’t see any other neighbors on their balconies, so maybe this person wás calling me after all? But how could he see me? Strange!

Huzarensalade P

 

So I got up and looked down.

by Ellen Bannink -

Stuffed Zucchini

I never really liked vegetables. Growing up I remember I always picked out those tiny bits of onion in the pasta sauce. And vegetables always had to come with some kind of sauce for me to like them. Well ‘like’ them… I mean to eat them.

I also remember trying zucchini as a child. A friend of my mom had homegrown them so she gave some to us.
I didn’t like it. Well in fact I didn’t like them at all. I think they tasted like nothing and the texture was way to ‘snotty’.

Stuffed Zucchini p

 

Oh my, I shouldn’t be telling this to you.

by Ellen Bannink -

Kale salad with mushrooms

As you could read I had dinner at Hinoki & The Bird two weeks ago with three other foodbloggers from LA. I already raved about the great food so I won’t start over again.

Instead I got inspired by this great kale salad that I HAD to make a kale salad myself. Normally in the Netherlands kale is eaten as a ‘stamppot’: you boil potatos and let the kale steam on top of it. Then you mash it together until it looks like this. I don’t like this ‘boerenkool stamppot’ that much, but it turns out I do like raw kale!

Kale salad p

 

Hinoki & The Bird served a very delicate kale salad,

by Ellen Bannink -

Coconut fudge popsicles

You can barely call this a recipe. It’s so simple, just 3 ingredients in popsicle molds and a few hours in the freezer. I always liked chocolate but weird enough I don’t like chocolate ice cream, chocolate pudding or chocolate sauce.

No, give me a box of quality bonbons or a cup with hot cacao on a cold winter day and I’m a happy girl 🙂 But nobody is giving me a box of chocolates nor is it winter at the moment. Even better! It’s summer and I’m enjoying it. So I grabbed my bike and bought dairy-free fudge popsicles at Wholefoods. They were only 80 calories (yep, I started counting those again) but they also screamed ‘ASPARTAME’ all over them. Yuk!

Popsicles p

by Ellen Bannink -

Zucchini Cake with Coconut Cream

Last week my Dutch blog (inmyredkitchen.nl) had a special post. Although I started blogging in May last year, on July 13 I was ready to share my recipes with the world. I still remember sitting in my living room while my sister was visiting. She encouraged me to post a message on my facebook wall to announce that I had started blogging. I was so nervous to post a message about it, but I also felt kind of proud of my ‘baby’.

taartklaarplaatje-jpgversie

So to celebrate this ‘Blogoversary’ I teamed up with Corona, a talented illustrator and also an old friend of mine. I baked a zucchini cake with coconut cream and she made this beautiful illustrated recipe.

by Ellen Bannink -

Corn chili skillet

One of the great things of living in California are jalapeños. Spicy, green, fresh and fiery jalapeños.

Believe it or not but it is impossible to find fresh jalapeños in the Netherlands. Unless you grown them yourself of course. I was about to start a jalapeño project this year, but then P found a job in Los Angeles so we moved.

Corn chili skillet P

 

And I bought a jalapeño plant in LA! So I’m harvesting like crazy now, and we have to eat a lot of spicy Mexican food.