Kookles Roundup

After our initial success, we have continued the kookles/cooking lessons as part of our homeschooling.

Sophia learned to make a soffrito, chopping the onion, pancetta, carrots and celery by hand and sauteeing it slowly in butter and oil. This one ended up in a bolognese sauce.

In the second week we all made tuna pasta salad, because Sebastian had seen it for sale in several delis and was always wanting me to get it for him and I’d say “That’s an outrageous price. I can make you that practically for free.” So we did. And it was kind of a boring dish. At least he’s not asking me to buy it for him anymore.

Next we made a trip out to Meidi-Ya, a Japanese grocery store that has locations in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and ….Amsterdam. There we got ingredients for okinomiyaki, or, as I call it, Japanakoeken. Sophia made the okinomiyaki for us using a Cooking with Dog video. Student-led kookles!

The okinomiyaki was a huge success. It was a first for everyone in the family, and we all loved it.

Sebastian’s project was inari, those little fried tofu pockets that are always sitting, dully in the cold case beside the pre-made sushi. It doesn’t make any sense to me, as a fish lover, but these are Sebastian’s favourite sushi. And since okonimiyaki is a bit out of his depth, inari was the perfect project for him. Just cook sushi rice, flavour it (they sell rice flavouring at Meidi-ya so you don’t even have to add salt and sugar) and stuff the little pockets with rice. As far as inari go, these were the most delicious I’ve ever had. And Sebastian was proud of himself, which is the main thing we want from our kookles.

Last week, while I was out for a run, Tobias took the kids out for pintxos. These are tiny tapas on toast. Sebastian thinks they’re called “pinch toasts” because you pinch your fingers to hold the little toasts. No need to disabuse him of this. (In fact, pintxo means spear and they’re called this because they are often held together with toothpicks). Sebastian is also excited because the best place in the world to get pintxos is San Sebastian. Maybe we will go there in the wintertime…

Anyway, the next day, we bought all sorts of pintxos ingredients: anchovies, Manchego cheese, ham, garlic aioli, baguette, capers, olives and a tuna pate. Oh and liverwurst. Because I can’t help myself. Then, as a sort of free-form kookles, we did make-your-own-pintxos for dinner. Sebastian would smash copious amounts of tuna pate onto a slice of baguette, then poke capers and olives into the pate. He even poured caper and olive juice onto the pintxo afterwards. My favourite was aioli with anchovy.

Finally, today we tried two things. Sophia and I made mango-ginger lassis, using the Philips multi-purpose mixer/blender thing that came with our apartment. Back home we have a food processor and a blender, but not one of these fancy hand-held jobbies. It’s quite fun to use!

Here’s Sof’s photo of the result.

Then, after cleaning up the kitchen Sof was done with kitchen work for the day and Sebastian and I continued with chocolate-chip cookies. Making these was easy but gathering the ingredients was tricky. Our local grocery store has a teeeeeeny baking section. I read on an expat  forum that baking is a specialized hobby here, so it’s not as easy to find stuff you would need to do it. And chocolate chips are non-existent. So Tobias brought me some back from his trip to San Francisco a few weeks ago.

Baking powder and baking soda: I thought they would be easy to find but the baking powder (“rijsmiddelen”) was only available in little envelopes, rather than in a big tub. And the baking soda I never did find, though it occurs to me now that maybe I should have looked near the cleaning supplies. Brown sugar was another tricky one. We found something called “Basterd suiker” that seemed to have the right consistency. And there were photos of cookies (“koekjes”) on the bag so it seemed right. But why bastard?

So we tried the cookies with self-rising (“zelfrijzend”) flour (“bakmeel”) and basterd zuiker. Worked okay. Here they are before they went in the oven.

Taking the time to teach the kids cooking techniques and principles is something that always seems to fall between the cracks back home. We are all motivated to do it, but there’s no time. So it’s nice to be able to do it during our sabbatical year, even if I don’t have all the tools and ingredients I would have back home.