Experience food at the kitchen

Another night of delights!

2011-05-31T05:46:00.000-07:00

Great food and great fun lead to memorable evenings...and here at the kitchen we like nothing better than welcoming a group of friends and colleagues for an honest good time. This was the case last week with a great bunch from all over europe coming for one of Wiegers exceptional evenings..a healthy mix of portuguese, french, dutch & spanish enjoyed making a great menu; white asparagus followed by a lamb fillet with a mouselline of potatoes & peas and a carrot cake with mascarpone cream...

Hard at work

What a masterpiece!

...Thats pride!

Creativity at its best..

come out so easily...looking more like a carrot souffle

....delicious

Sante ! Prost ! Cheers !

The passion for food + twitter = an amazing dinner in London

2011-04-09T13:12:00.001-07:00

Twitter has always been something a bit more difficult to get, but somehow always felt more powerful (or at least interesting) than facebook. Basically, its not about collecting friends, but about interacting (on the topic of food for example) with strangers, professionals, bloggers, amateurs and even celebrities. Everything seems more accessible.

Most of the good chefs in the UK have a twitter account and are used to sharing about their service in the restaurant, their good and bad times, but also about their ideas.

One day, Mat Follas, the winner of masterchef UK 2 years ago, a chef originally from NZ, starts tweeting with a fellow blogger, here's what their conversation looked like:

D: You doing anything for NZ Earthquake ?
M: Running an auction for dinner/overnight, not sure what else to do
D: Popup restaurant ?
M: Too far from London and not enough time to handle as much as I want to, keep asking if anyone is so I can help out
D: I run events for a living (or did), how about it? We could do a 30 cover dinner with our contacts alone
M: Why not? I'll ask twitter and see what feedback I get

This is how this KaiWeCare (http://kaiwecare.weebly.com/) event started.

Only 5 weeks, and thousands of tweets later, a brochette of award winning chefs gathered to prepare this amazing charity dinner.

How did we get there?

Well again, the power of twitter. Mat asked around what people would be ready to give for an auction happening after that dinner. Having a circle of chefs and foodies, everyone started to offer private dinners, great bottles of wine, signed cooking books or utensils.

So we thought why not ... it's not big of a deal, and if it can help somehow, let's just add in a session for 2 at the kitchen.

To be honest, when I tweeted this, I really didn't expect any return (well, not exactly comparable to a dinner cooked by Matthew Fort & Tom Parker-Bowles), but hey, let's see.

But, a few days letter, this thing got more and more serious, receiving emails asking us for details, checking the website and seeing our name in the list of the auction prizes (http://kaiwecare.weebly.com/auction-prizes.html), they actually were interested by our little non famous contribution!

Long story short .. next question was "where shall we send the package" , and skipping some other episodes, we finally decided to go to what promised to be a top dinner, and bring the package ourselves!

What the heck, it's still work, right ?

And it was!

A next table neighbor took beautiful pictures of every dish the chefs prepared.

Each course was served with matching wine (from New Zealand).

Tasting of beetroot textures with elderflower curd

Rare breed pork scotch egg, warm tartare sauce, pea shoots with and english quail and summer truffle pie with buttered kohlrabi

Saffron poached tiger prawns with piquillo pepper salsa, sherry reduction, olive oil foam

Slow cooked New Zealand lamb, broccoli, puree, smoked garlic, Olde Yorke cheese with almonds and wild garlic jus

Coconut white, carrot yolk, carrot juice toast

Dark chocolate delice, lavender ice cream, burnt orange syrup

Goat's cheese pannacotta and artisan cheese

Just missing the final with petits fours, macarons with a glass of Champagne.

Pictures speak for themselves, it was delicious!

As after dinner entertainment before the auction, we were treated to a traditional Maori show with hakas and poi, rounding off a fantastic evening.

Congratulations to all the chefs for a real feast, a great dinner for a great cause.

Oh, and whilst we were there we were lucky enough to arrange a culinary adventure in the heart of the UK to be done later this year....more to come....Thanks Mat!

So ... what's the story?

2011-04-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is a question we get all the time .. our bad, we decided not to introduce ourselves on our website (how rude), but focus the attention on our great chefs and the delicious food you make!

But this question inevitably comes at any food related event where we introduce ourselves as the kitchen (the introduction as what you do and not who you are:-), or after dinner around the table, when guests start getting curious.

So here is our story ...

We met years ago, in our previous lives, whilst working in the big corporate world. Marta in Paris, Richard in Amsterdam, meeting every weekend to share the best food that could be found in both cities.
After a few years of commuting, decision had to come and Amsterdam won.
A year off the laptop, coffee machine chats, useless meetings and hundreds of emails per day were spent traveling all over the world.

And here came the love of cooking...love of food was there already, but the cooking aspect was quite new! During our travels, we enjoyed cooking lessons in the heart of mexico, or in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Every time a lot of fun ... but never perfect.

Look at a typical party .. .where is the best ambiance ..? In the kitchen !
That's where all the best end of the night chats happen, where the best (or worse) ideas come up ...

Once back on european soil, we looked for more cooking experiences in Amsterdam. But the reality came .. if you don't speak dutch, or you don't have 11 friends to convince ... it's going to be hard!

Well I want a place I can pop in any day, join a cooking session, and keep it fun and easy ...

A few months working on a business plan (just for fun at this time), playing with concepts, and a few months looking for potential locations, and the Prinsenstraat 10 arrived on the market.

That's when we thought... let's just do it !

A sunny day at the windmill sourcing the best flour

2011-03-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

Some of the good sides of this food adventure is that we get to go around to try out delicious food, discover new suppliers and talk about food (almost) all the time!

Last week, in our quest for the best ingredients, we decided to look for a good flour supplier. Buying at the wholesalers makes it convenient as everything is at the same place; but isnt a very nice experience (or maybe we've done it too much!)

Few weeks ago, I met the weekendbakery, a great initiative run by a couple trying to create the best possible bread (trust me, their bread is amazing!). Bread is their passion, they havent decided to make a living out of it yet. But every weekend, they bake all sorts of bread until they find the best recipe. They make a point of using the best possible ingredients (all organic, biological and seasonal)

They recommended us the windmill from Zandhaas for all our flour requirements.

We got to visit the entire windmill (4 very steep floors) and got the explanation on how it works (was a good education)

Its a small family run company, with very enthusiastic people happy to talk about their flour and all the side produce they make.

So we decided to give it a try and bring back a "small" bag of 25 kg.

Looking forward to all the baking we'll be doing

Introduction to this blog

2011-03-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the kitchen's blog!
The idea here is to share with you a little bit more than we can on facebook or on our website.
There are many things happening everyday, great recipes, souffles rising, souffles not rising, fun stories with chefs, suppliers,..

We will obviously be talking about food, but also about the adventures we have on the side developing the kitchen.

So enjoy and please don't hesitate to comment!