Darice de Cuba

I haven’t written anything about food lately, not that I haven’t cooked anything new but I just have been slacking on food documenting. So lets try make up for it starting with tonight’s dinner.

Today I went to the city to eat a bread with croquette and mustard at The Hague’s best boucherie, Dungelmann. Afterward I went looking for a good truffle oil with the idea to use on meat sandwiches or with risotto and pasta dishes. I bought a small bottle of Italian black truffle oil at the gourmet department of Bijenkorf.

Funny remark: Since Frasier is on Comedy Central almost every late night I have been watching it without fail, even reruns. There is one episode where Frasier and Niles want to buy Belago caviar which apparently is very expensive. They end up buying it on the black market and off course hilarity ensues. Well while at the gourmet department today I was looking around and they had Belago caviar, talk about expensive; 85 euros for 40 grams of caviar. What a good thing I’m not a fan of caviar, only “caviar” I ever eat are the ones on the California rolls!

Being a foodie can be expensive but luckily I don’t have Frasiers expensive taste, although I’m planning on buying some Pata Negra ham, I thought I wasn’t allowed to eat it, but dry cured meat is safe to eat in contrary to raw meat. Well I still enjoy a plain grilled cheese best!

In any case, for dinner today I mixed some mayonnaise with a few drops of the truffle oil and some crushed fresh garlic. I spread the bread with it, added 3 thin sliced salami and romanian lettuce. With a side of yesterdays left over potato salad. It wasn’t bad at all, only thing was the only mayo I have is Hellmann’s, which has a strong taste on itself. Next time I need to use a more lighter on taste mayo so that the truffle taste will stand out more.

It was a tasteful and filling dinner, also easy and fast to make considering I ate late today. I was planing on making risotto with mushroom, but I’ll make that tomorrow and will be adding a dash of truffle oil to see how the tastes will blend. This can be a success or an utter failure, we’ll see.

My three weeks on Aruba flew by and I’m back in the Netherlands. I did my best to do and eat everything I wanted but once back I realize it’s never enough. But I did enjoy and took photos to remember it all.

I wanted to eat mostly seafood there, because Caribbean seafood is not the same as seafood here in west Europe. Getting a lobster dinner was the real challenge; finding a restaurant where it’s nice to eat and also serves quality food. But lets go through the seafood I enjoyed there.

The first week I went to Driftwood restaurant where I had dorado fish with creole sauce. It was superb as they fish their own fish everyday so they only serve catch of the day. Another day I ate for the first time homemade conch stew. I never ate conch before, although when I dinned at Driftwood I had conch fritters but I thought it was something else. In any case the conch stew was real good, conch has the same texture as squid, so it was quite chewy.

Another night my mom and I went to dine at Peanuts, where they serve local food at very good prices. I had the fish balls platter with creole sauce, fried polenta, and a local bread which is called “pan bati”. Although the sauce wasn’t good the fish balls where very tasty.

My uncle invited me over for dinner and he made pan fried red snapper with creole sauce and polenta. The red snapper was extremely good, there wasn’t any leftovers. It was a simple meal but real good.

And then on my last friday we went to Fishes and More where I finally had my lobster meal. I started with a ceasar salad with was like a meal on itself and then I got my lobster, four medium sized lobster tail, pan fried with garlic and served with melted butter with vegetables. It was real good, so good that I now can live with being allergic to shrimp, because fresh lobster just tastes way much better.

I tried to take photos of my meals but sometimes I was so hungry or just wasn’t thinking about photos that I didn’t take one every time.

The first photo is of a conch stew that I found through Google as I didn’t take a photo. This one resembles the one I had most. The second one is the fish ball platter, the third is the simple but finger licking good red snapper that my uncle made. And last the Lobster tails, the photo says it all.