Valentines Day… (times two) [Part Two]

We left off in the valentines day story on the evening of valentines day after the amazing chocolate soufflés, but that was just the beginning of the soufflé saga.

We also still had to go out to eat.

The day started out with an amazing rendition of Job’s French Toast which in most cases is better than any french toasts I’ve had in restaurants.  I’m hoping that when he does tell his tale, he’ll include directions to make his french toast because it is out of this world.image

 Additionally, he made some bacon and eggs and everything was perfect as it always is with practically all of the things he cooks.image

(We did eat this french toast with maple syrup from AMERICA)

We had slept in and after breakfast, the majority of the day on valentines day part two was spent relaxing at home (we slept until around 11, so there weren’t that many more hours before dinner), me, working on the blog and Job browsing and catching up on the internet.  We also looked into multiple recipes for a lighter soufflé, and watched both some Dutch TV and the olympics.

Around 18:30, I think, we decided that we were starting to get hungry.  The day before, while Job was at work, I had thought to myself, man, I haven’t had sushi in some time… so when presented with the question as to what I wanted to dinner, I moused out, “… sushi?”

Lucky for me, that was the exact thing Job had been thinking, which is great, because, DAMN, I really wanted sushi!

In Amsterdam, there are a bunch of all you can eat sushi places, so we started on our adventure.  

Things we didn’t think about:

  • It was a Saturday night
  • It was dinner time
  • it’s kind of a holiday weekend and maybe others had the same thoughts on valentines day as us
  • maybe making a reservation…? It never crossed our mind.

We threw on our coats and walked to the tram stop which is conveniently located next to Albert Heijn.  We decided we would just quickly stop in and get the ingredients we would need to make our next type of soufflé.

IT WAS SO SUPER WINDY OUT.  At one point we had to use force to actually keep walking into the wind.

We decided a lemon lavender soufflé would be up next on the docket.  We needed to get more milk, eggs, lemons, and lavender oil.

We ended up only getting lemons because we decided we had enough eggs and milk, and didn’t want to carry those to dinner, and we were unsuccessful in finding lavender oil.. or lavender…whatever you would use in food.

At this point, well actually, after not finding anything in Albert Heijn, we actually walked to C1000 (pronounced saydousand; I kept calling it “see-thousand”) which is where we weighed and purchased our lemons, Job started to feel a little ill.  Now as previously posted, I always carry water with me and offered him some of that.  He was feeling light-headed and dizzy.  From C1000, we walked back to our tram stop and Job sat down and we waited for the tram.  I think Job was just a little dehydrated and hungry, and since we had been inside all day where it was warm, the temperature and wind sort of shocked his body.  I also gave him a piece of chewing gum.

The tram arrived about eight minutes later and we went straight to Leidseplein.  As we walked up to the restaurant, it started to rain. (…Typical) We went inside and Job spoke to the host.  He turned back to me and said well they are full.  We walked out and Job profusely apologized for not thinking about needed a reservation and not making one.  Of course I told him there was no need to apologize and that we could go somewhere else. At this point, I was just hungry.  On our way out of the restaurant, I had grabbed their business card.  They’re a chain restaurant and so we called another one in Amsterdam who was also full for the night.  Next we walked to a third one of these types of places to see if we could get in there.  Also fully booked, but the restaurants were so empty.  Oh well.  At this point we were very near to UvA (Universiteit Van Amsterdam, or the University of Amsterdam).  Job told me he knew of a good burger place and would that be okay?  Well you all know of course that was perfectly fine with me.  We made our way to Cafe ‘t Gasthuys.  

We were seated almost immediately.  After all of this, it was probably close to 20:00.  We were hungry.  We ended up ordering bread with garlic butter and arugula or rocket croquettes to start.  We also both ordered the cheese burger.  

It. Was. So. Much. Food.  But it was happily welcomed into both of our mouthes and stomachs.  

The bread with garlic butter was crunch on the outside and so soft on the inside, and the garlic butter just aromatic and tasty.

The croquettes were perfectly fried with a brown crunchiness on the outside and soft hot melty cheesy arugula on the inside.

The burgers were juicy and of course came with whisky sauce which is not something i’ve yet written about, but it’s a thing here for burgers.

We also enjoyed the side salad and fries that came along.  Job of course ate his the dutch way with mayo and I ate mine the american way.. with ketchup.

From there we decided to take a quick stroll through the red light district.  I wish that Ayla, Chauncey, and my sister were there with us.  The nights we took them respectively to the RLD were both rainy, so they didn’t get to see any of the girls or what the RLD is really like… It’s such an oddity to me still.  From there we walked a little further to our bus stop (normally we catch our bus from central station, but since we had eaten a lot, we decided to walk to the next bus stop) and got on and went home.  

By the time we arrived back from our excursion, it was close to 22:00.  We decided that was a bit too late to be cooking soufflés.

We did however end up making them the next night, which I guess would make this Valentines day time two part three, but instead, I’m going with Soufflé Saga, which will be a different story for a different day.

Although we didn’t get sushi like we both wanted, and we didn’t make our second soufflé, and well, we really didn’t do a whole lot, the second day of valentines day was just perfect for me.  It was relaxing, delicious, and I got to spend some quality time with Job.

Additionally, I apologize for the lack of photos in this post, but I didn’t take pictures of dinner.

Valentines Day… (times two!) [Part One]

I really really hate that my birthday is the day before Valentines Day. Like… HATE IT. 

I’m sure this sounds really ridiculous and selfish, but first off I feel bad for Job because he gets really stressed about making every day magical and perfect, which is something he’s naturally talented at, and secondly because sometimes I feel gypped because in past relationships, we either celebrate my birthday or valentines day (okay, somewhat selfish, but hey, it’s how I feel). 

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In Job’s case, he is the exact opposite.  He set up the lovely day for my birthday, and we had such a lovely and fun valentines day….and valentines day part two.

Since he had to work on valentines day, we didn’t have a whole lot to do during the day, but I made him a surprise breakfast while he was in the shower and gave him some gifts (a tamper for the espresso machine and some more Darkhan Nespresso cups), and he some lovely chocolates from Van Soest Choclatier for me.image

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He also pointed out something I had never thought about before, though, from experience I knew. People who don’t necessarily want to go out on valentines day do if they are in a relationship because, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do on this commercial holiday.  So we did the exact opposite.  We stayed in and had some awesome leftovers, and then we prepped for the next day, because Job had the whole day off and we decided we would go out to eat then instead.  Job asked me if I would enjoy a chocolate soufflé… COME ON! WHO WOULDN’T (I know there are some people who don’t like sweets or chocolate, but we’re talking about me) ENJOY A CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉ….ON VALENTINES DAY!

We had all of the ingredients for the chocolate soufflé as Job had stopped at Albert Heijn and Blokker on the way home. Clearly he had this all planned out 🙂

Since neither of us had made a soufflé before, we did a quick bit of research, watching Gordon Ramsay on his tips for making a perfect soufflé and then used the recipe from Chef Steps to start our creation and first attempt at a soufflé. 

Watching both of the videos, we felt pretty confident in making these soufflés.  Gordon made everything seem really easy, and there weren’t too many ingredients involved.image

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The next step was measuring everything.  Lucky for us, everything was in grams… 

Wait, did I say lucky for us…? I mean JUST KIDDING. We have a super retro kitchen scale that measures up to a kilo and counterbalancing weights so that the max weight can be 20 kg on the scale.  Anyways, measuring was a bit complicated.image

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(I cheated here and made a screen shot of the ingredients from the ChefSteps website because I am lazy it looked nicer.)

First we buttered and sugared our ramekins and put them in the fridge to stay cool. image

Next we measured some salt and flour and butter into our lovely measuring cup on the scale to get the correct measurements. image

We put all of that into a bowl and kneaded it together into a doughy texture.

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On the stove we mixed our milk and sugar and cooked on a medium heat until it was starting to boil. from there we added in the doughy mixture and stirred until it was a gummy texture. It looked like pudding.image

We mixed in the chocolate next and then added egg yolks one at a time.  (We removed the mixture from the heat before adding in the egg yolks)image

While I was stirring in the egg yolks, Job was hand beating the egg whites (we don’t have an electric hand mixer or mixer in general, so everything is by hand!)

After all of the yolks had been added, we poured in about a third of the egg white mixture which was now forming stiff peaks.image

We whisked that into the mixture until it was blended.  From there, we added the other two thirds, gently folding in the egg whites so as not to lose the air bubbles we had just made. (That hand mixing is a lot of work you know…) (also just realized that we only used 3 egg’s worth of egg white. The recipe calls for 5)

Fold that meringue in until the mixture is fully brown again.

Now it was ramekin time!

We grabbed them from the fridge (let me first just say that these are not ideal ramekins for making soufflés because they have a handle on the side which makes it impossible to knife off the extra mixture and make them flat.  Anyways, we used Gordon’s cleaning method of cleaning the rim of the cup and made a lip on the inside so the soufflés would rise straight up.

We placed our soufflés on a piece of tin foil in our oven because we don’t have a baking tray. We set the timer to 19 minutes and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen.

The timer rang and we opened the oven door and saw our beautiful soufflés!image

We carefully moved them from the oven to the counter and dusted them with powdered sugar.image

It was time to chow down.  We cracked the surface and dipped our spoons in to find our soufflés were perfectly cooked through.  It was like heaven in my mouth.  Definitely one of the most delicious things I had ever eaten.

We did have a whole lot of extra batter so we made two more in mugs. image

Those probably could have cooked longer and the chocolate was so rich that we ended up with tummy aches as we watched the first episode of the second season of House of Cards on Netflix, but man, so worth the pain.  

It was a perfect valentines day in my book.  

We decided we would make a soufflé again the next day as well as go out for dinner and have a nice time enjoying each other on the 15th of February.