Dutch bitterballen using microwavebaked bread crumbs For the noms

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0:00 Intro • 0:30 Mustard • 2:21 Bread crumbs • 3:58 Ragu • 6:38 Shaping • 7:29 Frying • (Veggie? See below) • Mustard: • 100 gr mustard seed • 20 ml vinegar • 90ml white wine • 90ml water • 1 clove garlic • half tsp xanthan gum • half tsp turmeric powder • 15g salt (~ 5% of the total ingredients weight above) • Make a pickling brine with the liquid ingredients, garlic and salt and let cool. • Blend it with ground mustard. Thicken as needed with xanthan gum and optionally colour with turmeric (very commonly used to colour mustard). Pass mustard through a sieve and let mellow for a few days to reduce the bitterness. (Heston Blumenthal writes in his Fat Duck book that salt helps reduce bitterness). • Bread crumbs: • My base recipe uses strong bread flour, 75% its weight in water (=75% hydration as baker's percentage), then 1% of the total weight in salt and yeast, respectively. • E.g. • 200g flour • 75% of that=150g water • total: 350g flour • 1% of that in salt (3.5 grams) - 1% typically results in a well seasoned dish. • and also 3.5 grams of yeast. • This bread is a great start for new bakers.It only takes minor tweaks to turn it into naan or pizza dough. • I didn't bloom the yeast, nor did I use lukewarm water. Even a bit of heat can kill yeast but I've never had my yeast die on me since I started keeping it in the fridge so in the end I just stopped blooming it. • Spraying the dough with water stops it trying out, just like a damp towel (but I usually stick a lid on my bowl). The spray bottle also comes in handy to create steam in the oven. • Microwaving bread?! This is inspired by panko (those fancy Japanese bread crumbs!) where the bread is cooked by passing electricity through it, cooking and steaming it from the inside out which is what a microwave does, too. The texture isn't exactly the same as that of panko but this method has consistently given me pretty good breadcrumbs. • Some Dutch people suggest beschuit for the coating of bitterballen? Current-day beschuit are Dutch crisp bakes , but they just turn into dust when crumbled and don't result in the right texture. But then technically the word beschuit derives from bis cotta , meaning twice cooked - first baked (or nuked!) and then dried out in the oven nicely fits that description. • Ragu: • My go-to recipe calls for: 300 grams beef, cooked; • 200ml beef stock (ideally home made) - so I put one and one together here. • 4 branches of parsley - typically curly but flat-leaf has more flavour • 3 tablespoons butter - Puzzling, so I used 75 grams • 3 tablespoons flour - seemed a bit much • 1 egg yolk (only needed for bitterballen) • salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste • It's fairly forgiving, I used some more beef. The main thing is to keep the moisture content low as this built-up steam can burst the balls. The above go to recipe seems to perform reasonably well in that regard. Limit your stock to 200ml if you have more. A bit less is fine and unless it's way off, don't bother topping it up. • The ragu is normally started with a roux, but as that stops the meat from browning. Browning helps the flavour so I sifted over the flour over the ground, browned beef instead of adding it to the butter. • Moisture content at that point is low so the flour doesn't get much of a chance to clump, but we'd be blending it anyway. Starch helps thickening but also mutes the flavours of a dish. • The carrot in the stock wasn't in my base recipe but Dutch cuisine is fairly heavily influenced by French - a mirepoix (onion, carrot and celery) wouldn't be entirely out of place though celery would be a bit odd here. • So, • Make a roux with butter and flour • Add the beef and the stock • Season • Job done. • Veggie beef stock: 1 mug water (~300ml) + 1 big tsp marmite + 1/2 tsp garlic powder + 1 bay leaf (remove after cooking) + 1 tbsp light soy sauce + 1/4 tsp ground anise + 1 tsp sugar + 1 (oxo) veg stock cube. To turn into ragout: Make a roux with 3 tbsp butter and 3tbsp flour, leave to brown for a bit, then slowly work in the stock. Season with pepper, nutmeg and a good handful of finely chopped parsley. Add a few spoons of finely grated carrot. You're looking for a ragout that, in its hot state, is a sauce so thick that it doesn't easily flow. • Egg yolk is suggested to stop the balls from bursting. • Another suggested addition is gelatin - or you can just get • a particularly gelatinous cut of beef such as oxtail to make your stock. • I find it useful to think of the various cuisines in terms of flavour palettes - not only in terms of what goes in but also in what doesn't . Fried rice with olive oil? Mango in a Sunday roast? It's not that it wouldn't be tasty, but it's not traditional. Yeast extract (marmite) in a Dutch bitterbal? If I hadn't told you, you wouldn't know. • Now did I mess up that one bitterbal by accident or on purpose... • Music: • Festival - Topher Mohr and Alex Elena • Heavy - Huma-huma • Hope is not lost - Jim Hall • Eviction - Silent Partner • The Marian Circle Drum Brigade - Kitchen

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