A few years ago, when I had only just started blogging, I was invited to a food bloggers event about tomatoes. We had a nice afternoon, during which we got a tour of the greenhouses, an explanation of the different tomato varieties they cultivated, and of course we could taste some delicious dishes made with their tomatoes. Even though this was quite some time ago, there is one thing that I tasted that afternoon, that I can still remember like it was just yesterday: an “Asian” tomato salad with cilantro and spring onion, and the most amazing dressing with umami flavors. It was just simply amazing.
– This post is sponsored by Stompetoren. They sell loads of amazing Dutch cheeses. For this recipe I used their 18+ month old ‘Grand Cru’ cheese, but it is also great on a sandwich, as part of a cheese board, or crumbled in a salad –
I imagine you might look at the pictures of this post, and be like ‘hmmmm, pretzels and cheese dip…. That’s not really THK approved… right?’ Wrong! This dip actually has loads of cauliflower in it! And that doesn’t make it gross, or yum for delicious food, but just yum. I bet that if you would make this for friends, and just told them it is a cheese dip, they would not even notice the cauliflower in there. I promise you, it is non detectable if you don’t know it’s there! Lately I’ve been really loving cauliflower, and its versatility. It is great to use as a rice alternative, or in this dip of course!
Is falafel a comfort food for you? Yeah, me too! *raises hand* It always surprises me how delicious such a little ball of humble ingredients can taste so good. I love chickpeas in hummus, but other than that I’m often disappointed by chickpea dishes. But then again, perhaps hummus is the king/queen of chickpea products and I’m just expecting too much? Well, I can happily say that these falafels are pretty delicious too. Dare I say even better than some specific kinds of hummus?! (Ever had beet hummus? I’m personally not a fan haha).
If you’ve been following me on Instagram since before my blog hiatus, you probably know that I love shakshuka. It is a really simple and easy breakfast/lunch/dinner meal, and it ticks all the boxes for what makes a meal healthy in my opinion: lots of veggies, plenty of fiber, and a good source of protein too. However, it isn’t a very pretty dish. It is in fact so ugly, that I avoided posting my recipe on the blog for literally years. That changed when I saw the first few episodes of Ugly Delicious by Dave Chang (of Momofuku) on Netflix last week. In one of his episodes, Dave says “I just reached a point where I’m okay making really ugly food. […] I think it is a mixture of age and me coming into my own a little bit.” That really resonated with me, and I would never claim to be on the same cooking level as him, but it did inspire me to finally post this delicious (but ugly) dish.
My love for ramen started with the famously unhealthy instant noodles that you can get for €0.50 a package in most (Asian) supermarkets. Yummy but soooo incredibly unhealthy! It contains loads of salt, and also a lot of saturated and trans fats. Did you know that the noodles in those packages are fried, and not dried to preserve them?! I used to have no idea, and enjoyed a simple noodle soup once a week or so as an easy and tasty snack, until I found out. Well, no more instant noodles for me!
If you are not a conventional beetroot lover, this recipe is for you! A few weeks ago, I realized I had a jar of beets in my cupboard that was about to go bad. I normally don’t love the extremely earthy taste of red beets, but I also hate wasting food, so I decided I had to make something with them anyway. I first made a pizza (with a delicious crispy crust 😍) topped with beets, goats cheese, caramelized red onion, thyme and pine nuts. Delicious for sure, but I could still very much taste the earthy flavor of the beets. So, with the other beets, I decided to make something else: a curried beet soup! With this, you can barely taste the beets at all, since the curry spices are such a dominant flavor.
In the last year and a half, and even before that, I have experimented with pizza. Loads of pizza. I made pizza’s with a thick crust, a crispy crust, simple margarita versions, and pizza’s loaded with 749202924 toppings. I even made sweet potato pizza once, which is tasty, but it isn’t a classic pizza.
