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i was so happy to notice the grlz had the same fascinations as i do; we don’t just go and visit a country for the beautiful beaches and all of the touristically appropriate locations… they, like me, see the normal side of a country too…
so with some help of them, here are some of the people we saw in Egypt…
whenever i like something…
i long to be able to do it myself; passion.
simple as that. i love pictures, so years ago, i started making them myself, studying styles and techniques.
i have been crazy about music since… well… ever, so once i had taught myself to play guitar and bassguitar, i wanted to be able to write music. i taught myself to play keyboards and started to write my own songs. now, of course in the beginning, they were not very good, but gradually other people started to appreciate them. so now i made some cd’s with my own music and some people across the world have them…
food? same thing all over again. a while ago, i grew into sushi (i believe you really have to grow into it…). consequently, i wanted to be able to prepare it myself.
the funny thing is, these things all start from the heart. i started doing sushi workshops for my network Societé d’Artagnan as we try to combine our passions, work and food in this case… however, David van der Kooij missed this session and called me a couple of weeks ago with the question whether i could make that up to him 
. he was doing a teambuilding workshop for CleanLease Fortex and was looking for something special at night. so that the managementteam wasn’t sitting around the table, but was being more interactive and having more fun as well…
however, where was i going to do something like this? in a bar or something was not quite the option classy enough for this type of thing. and all of a sudden it hit me: at Vincent’s store! a store? yes, because Vincent has one of the most classy, fancy, beautiful stores and he provides the best wooden floors i have ever seen. and his store is a reflection of that. and as Vincent is an entrepreneur with the most positive attitude (takes one to know one I guess…) he immediately said yes! however, small glitch, there was going to be a ladies night in the building where his store is… some ladies even might walk into the store (and how is that a problem?)…
take a look at the pics:
so last wednesday, after having installed all of the stuff, preparing the most amazing table, with sushi-sets for everyone and recipe-sheets with pictures, sake and sapporo-beer for everyone to go around, the guys arrived…
the atmosphere was great! everyone was ready for great food and great drinks in a relaxed setting…
after everyone had a drink, and after the introductions, i started by showing how to make five different types of sushi, futomaki, uramaki, gunkan-maki, nigiri and temaki. and as everyone was getting hungry, when one was prepared it went around to taste…
i was very impressed how afterwards, all the guys immediately and without hesitation started preparing the sushi. and not just the easy ones, especially the uramaki was a big challenge! must be symbolic for this company to do and act and that was very inspiring to see!
and all the while, outside of the store an enormous amount of ladies walked up and down the stairs seeing about twelve guys preparing the most amazing food!!! they must have thought this was the main temptation of the ladies night!
a couple of the guys brought this into practice exchanging sushi for pink goodiebags or white wine with those ladies outside… aaah, they get the idea (;-) , although: how to explain that pink little bag?) !
seriously, the evening was amazing! after having prepared the sushi, we sat down, had some more drinks and everyone enjoyed their production, 4 complete serving dishes full!
the guys were picked up by their taxi and after Vincent, Martine, Gijs and i cleaned up, we had some well-deserved drinks…
so this is how they did:
I used to be extremely sportive.
between 8 and 18, i used to do at least 2 sports at the same time, accumulating to about 4 when i was 16/17 years old…
and then i went to 010 to study at erasmus university. and no, not for obvious reasons (although, maybe also for obvious reasons), sports became of a lesser priority. hm. bad facilities at the university in combination with our course schedule, my unwillingness to choose between going home to play football or staying in 010 to play, in short: i switched from doing sports 4/5 times a week to… uh… none. if not for the skiing in the winter, i would not do any sports at all…
this was pretty much the case, until i realised: “somehing’s gotta give, damn!”. the details are pretty embarassing, but they had to do with tying shoelaces…
so a little over a year ago, i started working out in the gym and running outside. and where i was always pretty aversive towards running, i have become to realise how it not only upgrades you physique, but also you spirit. something i had never figured…
but working on your body and mind is one thing; challenges are another. i don’t like to just keep one running till the end of days without any goals (other than the ones previously mentioned), i like some goals as well. so with a couple of friends, some more experienced than others, we decided to start training a little for some races. in the beginning of january we had wanted to enter the quarter marathon of Egmond, but we had kind of a heavy winter… so after the first announcement that the route of the race had been altered, the second announcement was that it was cancelled alltogether. damn. one of the guys lives in The Hague at the beach, so we decided to have our own quarter marathon through dunes and beach…
but with the cancellation of the quarter marathon of Egmond aan Zee, the first race we were going to run was the 10 of Alphen (yes, a home-match!) last week. a beautiful day to ran your first race I have to say. the weather was amazing, a little chilly, but nice to warm up in… and it was fantastic! after having run about 8 10 km trainingraces, i had in mind to run about 55 minutes, but we were motivated very much by the weather, people and spectators that my time was 49.18 min… i was proud of myself. which is the point. i mean, the fastest guys in Alphen ran the 10 in 32 min and the 20 in 58! i will not be touching that, i am sure…
now Chris, with whom i have run so far had asked me whether i would like to run the City-Pier-City run in the Hague. “So how far is that?” i asked to which he replied: “a half marathon…”. and being my usual impulsive self, i said sure… so yesterday the shit was going to hit the fan. because indeed, i had been training just for the 10 km in Alphen, in fact i hadn’t run any more than 10 km… but my reasoning was that the worst that could happen, was that you would die at about 15-20 km. well…
the first 10 km went amazing! Chris even slowed me down (which in hindsight was a good thing, otherwise i would have died much earlier). 5 km in 25 min, 10 in 53 min, 15 in 118 min and then around 17 km, my legs refused… i negotiated with them, tried to bribe them, kicked their asses, but they just refused! and although i knew beforehand it would probably happen, it still surprised me very much. so i had to slow down, but got to the finishline anyway… now for the next run, i know where the traps are, but i just ran a half marathon, BABY!
you gotta eat, right?!
so better make it interesting every once in a while. and as friends know you well, mine spoiled me with a dinner at Smaak! where else?
and as you know your friends well, you take them with you. simple.
so we were at Smaak yet once again and you’d almost say we’d get a little tired of it. i think we would.
if Ronald wasn’t such an amazing cook, who loves what he does and if Debbie wasn’t such an amazing host, who loves to make her guests have an amazing time, we would. but now, we can’t get tired of it, even if we’d try… which we don’t. try, i mean…
so we were with 9 ‘nj0ying people and we had a blast. as they have a grand tastery of appetizers and a grand tastery of desserts and as we saw the most amazing main courses, we asked for a tastery of those as well. and again, it doesn’t matter how, but they go crazy in the kitchen and prepare a fantastic combination of courses!
now, i like wines, but my friend Marco is crazy about them and picked a fantastic Pasaje de Barrancas from Argentina, a deep, firm wine amazing with the various pieces of great meat we ‘njoyed… last time i was there, Debbie surprised me with a lovely dessert wine and she served this one on the house, just for us! u gotta love her…
and look at this: what better way to re-celebrate your birthday?!
i promised.
i did…
to put these things in a post.
so here it is.
the sushi-post…
let me describe what i use, but remember, experiment as much as possible to find different things and tastes. i like my sushi, like i like my jazz: fused and funky. i like to make something new, imagine tastes and most importantly, try stuff. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. but the sushi always gets better in the end!
so you asked me to put the stuff on here, i made a post with ingredients, some descriptions and end-results of course, as ultimately food is only as good as it tastes!
apart from this, i like to use cream cheese. mayonnaise is used for some types of sushi, but as i love the freshness and lightness of the sushi, i don’t like mayonnaise so much, as it makes the sushi too fatty to my taste. that’s why i use plain cream cheese…
in my opinion there’s nothing to making sushi. it’s all about the ingredients and the rice…
the best and freshest ingredients is the trick… so i love to buy the stuff before at the market (fishies and veggies) and in some great toko’s or
oriental supermarkets (usually in 010)… and when you have the ingredients, start with the rice (obviously ;-/ ).
you have to wash the rice as thoroughly as possible, until no starch comes from the rice anymore or when your hands turn blue from the water, one or the other…
seriously, when you stir the rice, the water should remain completely clean and transparent. loose the water and take new water in 1,5 to 1 division to the rice, so about 750 ml to 500 gr of rice.
then, i leave the rice for about 30 minutes in the cold water and after that, i put it to boil. when it boils, i turn down the fire almost completely and leave it to cook slowely for about 10 minutes until all of the water is gone. turn the fire off and leave the rice for about 10 minutes with the lid on the pan.
while cooking the rice i prepare the mixture that makes the rice so typically sushi-fresh afterwards with 175 ml of rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a little salt. heat the mixture until all of the sugar is absorbed by the vinegar… put the rice in a big shallow bowl to cool down, pour the mixture over the rice evenly and leave it to cool off with a towel over it for example. now, the rice should be really cooled down, before you use it for the sushi, as the nori will turn soft when it is too hot…
now we’re gonna cut and mix some stuff. first of all, i always love to buy salmon with the skin. cut the skin off, including that little whitish fatty layer. two reasons for this: you keep the leanest part of the salmon for the maki or nigiri and you use the skin to fry. this will become amazingly crunchy, which i love for the temaki’s (handrolls).
second, we’re gonna make a lovely mix for tuna tataki (tartare) to use in an uramaki (inside out roll) and to make some tuna tataki pyramids. cut the tuna (not all of it; we also love to use some for a lovely spicy tuna futo maki!), really small and mix it with some roasted sesame seeds, some cream cheese, a little salt and some wasabi paste… this is an amazingly fresh/spicy combination!
for the nigiri mainly, but i also love to use it as strips in a futomaki, i make tamago (omelet). mix 2 teaspoons of mirin or sake with 50 gr sugar, 2 teaspoons of light soy sauce with 4 eggs. take a (preferably) square frying pan, heat some vegetable oil and pour a first thin layer of the mixture in the pan on a low fire. when this layer is cooked at the bottom, take a spatula and fold the omelet to a third. pour more of the mixture in the pan and repeat the procedure until the mixture is gone and you have a thick brick-shaped omelet.
so now that the rice and the extras are done, we’re ready for the creative stuff!
let’s first make some futomaki (thick roll), a roll with nori on the outside and a thick layer of rice and filling of choice. first, put down a layer of nori on the sushi bamboo mat. then, wet your hands and grab some rice and spread it out over the nori not making the layer thicker than about 5 mm (to my taste), leaving about 1,5 cm open at the top of the nori. now put the filling you like at about 1/3 rd of the nori at the bottom (feel free to experiment with putting parts of the filling at different parts of the nori, this gives a great visual effect!)… in this case i used a strip of tamago, salmon and avocado and some sesame seeds over it… but i love tuna with cucumber, some cream cheese and tabasco, mmmmm… roll the maki from the bottom to a nice roll. finally, cut the roll in 8 pieces.
second, let’s make an uramaki (inside out roll), a roll with nori on the inside and rice on the outside. before you start, rip a piece of plastic wrap, big enough for covering the nori, which we’ll use later. put the rice on a sheet of nori like above, but don’t leave any space open. now put a line of fisheggs, sesame seeds (i used wasabi flavoured ones here) or any combination of them on the rice. then put the plastic wrap over the rice, put one hand on it and put one hand under the bamboo mat and turn it around. put the bamboo mat under the plastic wrap so that the nori is upwards facing. put the filling you want on the nori. i love the tuna tataki for this… then roll the maki, while making sure the plastic wrap is pulled out of the roll. again cut the roll in 8 pieces.
next are the hot rolls. this is a kind of different type. take two sheets of filo dough and put them on the bamboo mat. just put the filling of your choice on the dough. use fatty types of fish as this roll will be fried in vegetable oil and a leaner type will loose it’s flavour. i love red gurnard or salmon with crabsticks, cream cheese and cucumber (in this case). roll the dough and cut them into 8 pieces. then heat a big amount of vegetable oil in a wok and deep fry the pieces until they’re golden brown.
for the nigiri and the gunkan-maki (battleship roll) you make a layer of rice on a cutting board, for the former of about 1 cm thick in a rectangular shape, for the latter also about 1 cm thick in a small (<2,5 cm in diameter) oval shape. for the nigiri, put a piece of tamago or (my favourite) unagi (smoked eel) on it. cut a strip of nori of about 1 cm to wrap around the piece. for the gunkan-maki fold a piece of nori around the oval shape creating a kind of cup. in the cup you can put the ingredients you like; i used some cream cheese, put some mahi mahi on it, a small strip of anchovy paste, crabstick and some salmon eggs on top…
lastly, i made the temaki (handroll). for this, cut the nori in half (or 2/3 rd if you want a bigger temaki). put some rice only on the top half of the nori. then put the ingredients from the left top corner diagonally to the right bottom corner of the rice. i absolutely adore the temaki with fried crispy salmon skin, some cream cheese, cucumber and tabasco, finishing it with a tempura shrimp on top, hmmmmmm… the tempura shrimp by the way, is made with a special tempura paste and fried in vegetable oil…
so this is what the final product looks like:
i love to simulate. or to be simulated, so to speak… (well, also with a t, but that will be a different post )
as i try to make my trainings as practical as possible in the ever so popular Confucius tradition (‘i do and understand’, usually anyway), i love to be on the other side of those simulations or cases. and last tuesday i could!
Eagles Flight Benelux is a company that provides these simulation games one of which is the Jungle Fire. with a team of 5 people (in our case) we had to go through a jungle with all of its perils to take home as many diamonds as possible. for this you need medikits, snackpacks, rope and gasoline; not only to go through the jungle, but also to ‘bribe’ the monkeys and anacondas, among others…
the goal obviously is not the diamonds, but decisionmaking, teamwork, risk analysis, etcetera… how do you decide and perform having very limited time and means. we were also triggered to determine the value of information in relation to risk. first determine the goal and then link the goal to the amount of information you need… risk free, limited risk or maximum risk leads to different maximum results. but most importantly as it is reflected in all of the goals of the game, within the team the goal is to have everyone perform as effectively as possible.
all in all i loved the game. we captured the lessons as we didn’t fulfill all of them compliments to Eagle’s Flight Benelux!
now getting back to the looney-bin, i decided to bring the grlz back some Mikey D. as it had gotten pretty late with all the talking and analysing afterwards… driving thru, we ordered, but after having payed and being at the pick-up window, i realized i had forgotten some items. and as i was already thinking about having to drive thru again or going up the restaurant to get the rest, i decided to just ask the boy at the pick-up window. i told him i had forgotten two things and even before i had a chance to ask him whether i could get and pay with him, he already asked what i needed and put the food in the bag after i payed him the extra money!
now, i don’t know whether he had been in one of those simulation games as well with his team, but i can almost say he really doesn’t need it anymore. customer service and personal initiative! damn. compliments to Mikey D’s!
yeah, I know, it’s almost christmas again, i’m a little late, but i just didn’t take the time to put the visuals of our family christmas dinner on here…
it is always great to be together with my family. and that may sound a little pretentious, but it is a fact. mainly, because in my family nothing is obligatory, everything’s allowed. be yourself, enjoy, talk, share, drink and most importantly, eat. sometimes i think somewhere in my family there must be some mediterranean or latin blood. it really doesn’t matter when you drop in, the remark usually is: “i don’t have too much in the fridge, but i will whip up something” and the result is usually an amazing dinner, where you are “full all day” (to quote ms Jill Scott – Experience 826)…
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so even though the house of my parents is anything but small, we always sit at the dinner table on about 20 m2 and the grlz have the freedom to do anything they want with regards to playing, drawing, painting and other manual crafts… the dinner table is the playing ground of the older people and usually the loveliest, heaviest, political, spiritual discussions are dealt with, especially as we all like to talk. basically.
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so at christmas time no one goes home, stays over and thus is loose.
our hostess and me did the cooking and it was so much fun again! this was the menu:
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obviously, it took us a while to recover from this feast. but with some more espressi and great cognac, whiskey and 43 we managed.
at around 4:30 in the morning. at the kitchen table.
so go figure…
booking this beautiful, yet simple hotel for it’s locational characteristics already was a smart move. Hotel-chalet La Balme is an amazing little hotel with fantastically friendly people and a great atmosphere, but again, to be honest, rooms are simple and small. however, now we have figured out what the second basic asset is about this hotel, the restaurant. from all around the region, people come to the restaurant to enjoy some sophisticated cuisine! and rightfully so!
where we didn’t think the restaurants were all that bad (go to L’Avalanche for example), they generally have traditional regional cooking; which is perfect if you plan on going hiking for 6 days straight without any hot food and you want to hoard in advance! but la balme has an amazing cuisine, where we both had the salmon tartare (in the mountains, I know! but so fresh!), bro had the entrecote and I had the risotto the Saint-Jacques au Beaufort des Arves (amazing risotto with scallops)… bro took the chocolate and I the souffle au genepi (a kind of parfait type dessert with fruits)… we had a blast!
and the best thing obviously, is that you don’t have to drive home!!! )
4th day, sun again! it is almost starting to become annoying, but not just yet! on sundaynight we go back to L’Avalanche restaurant and have something small. monday, our last day, as expected it is clouded with snow,
which is not a luxury, as some parts are becoming pretty icy. we go up the mountains and have a blast on the off-slopes, where the snow is A-MA-ZING! I also particularly like the view from up above, when you look at those blankets of clouds…
getting back to the hotel at the end of the day, we grab our things, get some final things and regretfully move back home, as I have to get back to work on tuesday again (having landed a major project just before we left!!!)… we have a great trip and drive back in about 9,5 hours…
We’ll probably get back next year, but bring everyone then… until next time…
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we did try to go into Saint-Sorlin and find a nice restaurant, but we ended up taking some pizza away and eating it at the hotel room…
and needless to say after 1,5 hours of sleep and 9 hours of amazing skiing in 38 hours! we loved it…
so we got up early friday and really understood the amazing location of our hotel Chalet La Balme; I mean, it is not fancy, room is definitely not big and Ingvar is enjoying the queensize bed, as I sleep on the quickly made-up sleeping couch (“ah, vous etes freres et il n’est pas madame Hendriks?!”, Sophie La Balme is a funny girl…) with about 30 cm’s of walking space in between them and the window. the fridge (the balcony) is pretty big though, which we enjoy when Ingvar smokes first-hand and me second-hand… but the location! Oh baby, the location! we walk down the stairs into the skicellar, put on our skiing shoes, take our skis and ski. simple as 1-2-3. and in the afternoon, the only thing we have to keep track of is the time of the last telesiege up the mountain, as we take that one to just ski down into the same cellar (be sure to type in the code 1969A (funny coincidence hm?), some french people try to ski into it. big mistake). anyway…
we again went absolutely crazy the second day (yesterday). i will spare you the details, but we are getting pretty close to having ski’d all of the slopes in the area. it is a funny area. the previous years we went to La Plagne and that is a much bigger area than Les Sybelles. but as these are almost all old villages they have tried to connect through skilifts and slopes, it is a very vast area, so you cover enormous distances to get from one area to the next. so the connections are wide and long paths and when you get to the individual villages, there are a great number of amazing slopes… and what Ingvar and I like very much is to really ski until the frontier of the area. “Thou shalt go no further…”
skiing actually is kind of like our civil servant job. being on the slopes in 2 seconds, we have a 9 to 5 skiing experience. we are the bureaucrats of skiing, so to speak. but all that skiing makes for hungry Hendriks hunks, so last night we really checked out the town, which indeed is very cute and in between the neon-type restaurants there are also (apparently, because we found it) some traditional Savoyarde (name of the region) restaurants. they serve this amazing mountain food that makes you ready and able to walk the sheep and goats through the mountains for the next week, DAMN!
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One entree of amazing melted goat cheese with Saint-Sorlin honey and after that we had the Reblochonnade! Reblochon is an amazingly tasty and soft cheese, particularly suited for melting (try it wrapped in alu-foil in the oven and it it with boiled potatoes and sausage!)… this restaurant had a wood-oven and some coal from the oven was put in a very clever thingy, put on the table and we were served with slices of reblochon, charcuterie (sausage, smoked and boiled ham and cornichons (those small very sour pickles)) and of course boiled potatoes montagnarde style… and we went ballistic. you are supposed to put the cheese in a small pan under the coal to melt it and then you pour it over anything you want to pour it over… we only ate half of the dish. so sue us! apparently, our skiing doesn’t begin to compare with guiding your sheep through the mountain for a week….
coincidentally, our hostess last night was our telesiege-official this morning; i guess they really have to kick it during season, right?!
and even though today is the (for ski-fanatics) famous third day, we had a blast once again. did some off-piste, went to a new town once again, tried our sports-tracking software (check this out: first and second run), indicating that we apparently reach speeds until 120 km/hour and are now settling down after a hot shower, reading a little, writing a post and look forward to our dinner in the hotel tonight…
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