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Dutch Tacos

I know this is a strange name for a taco recipe, especially since tacos are obviously not from the Netherlands (and they’re not from the United States either, get over yourself, “Americans”). But, because the first time I cooked this recipe I was in Leiden, Netherlands and I have a hard time coming up with cool/funny names (you should see my lame video game usernames) then it’s only fitting that I name this recipe “Dutch Tacos”.

With that being said, I hope you have a good time cooking this recipe and if in the end no one likes your tacos, well, first of all don’t blame me. And second, practice makes perfect so relax, and keep trying!

One more thing, the quantities described here are perfect for a 5 person meal.

Ingredients:

2 Onions.

1 full Garlic

Olive oil.

Protein of choice

1/2kg of Shrimp (I usually measure 5 shrimps per taco, but it depends on the size of the shrimp and the size of the tortilla)

Soy sauce.

2 Tomatoes (only for the sauce)

Pepper (spicy)

Lettuce or Spinach (at least 1.5kg of spinach)

1 Zucchini (2 if they’re small)

1 Eggplant (2 if they’re small)

1 box of Mushrooms

Salt & Pepper

Grated or shredded cheese

20 Whole wheat tortillas (¡Ay, caramba!)

Instructions:

I. Preparing the sauce.

1. Slice 2 tomatoes in big pieces, for example you can cut each tomato into 4 smaller pieces.

2. Slice an onion in four.

3. Peel and detach 3 garlic cloves.

4. Heat a pan and add olive oil.

5. Cut the stem off the pepper. The amount of peppers you use will depend on the pungency (new word for me) you want your sauce to achieve. Advice: Taste the pepper first, so you know how spicy it is before adding it to the sauce.

6. Sauté the tomatoes, the onion, the garlic cloves and the spicy pepper until the onion is well cooked and the tomatoes are soft and watery.

7. Add all the ingredients prepared in the previous stepts into a blender.

8. Blend the ingredients for about 10 to 15 seconds, until you see a homogeneous mixture. The thickness of the sauce depends on you, but I prefer it thick.

9. Add olive oil if you want to thin the sauce and blend again.

10. Taste the sauce, add another pepper if you’re looking to increase its pungency, and add salt and black pepper according to your taste. Blend again if you added another pepper or simply mix with a spoon if you only added salt and pepper.

11. Try the sauce one more time and correct it again if needed.     

Your spicy sauce is ready, now you should set it aside and continue with the rest of the preparations.

I recommend eating the sauce warm (hence the sautéed vegetables), but if it cools down before you start eating then you can always use the microwave to reheat it. 

II. Preparing the vegetables.

1. Rinse the vegetables you’re going to use (Zucchini, Eggplant, Asparagus, Mushrooms, etc.)

2. Chop the vegetables into small pieces, not too big or you will have a hard time fitting everything inside the tortilla.

3. Chop two garlic cloves and a little bit of onion.

4. Add olive oil to a hot pan and add the chopped garlic cloves and onion. Let the onion and garlic cloves cook before adding anything else.

5. Add the chopped vegetables to the pan with cooked garlic cloves and onion.

6. While cooking the vegetables, add some soy sauce along with black pepper. Make sure to taste your vegetables once in a while to make sure you added the right amount of seasoning and also to check their texture. 

7. Cook for at least 10 minutes, until the vegetables reach the tenderness you desire. 

Your vegetables are now ready, you can lower the heat to the minimum and leave them in the pan, or if you need the pan to cook the mushrooms then you can put the vegetables in a pot and cover the pot.

III. Cooking your protein (in this case, shrimp)

1. Chop one or two garlic cloves and a little bit of onion.

2. Heat a pan, then add olive oil and spread it.

3. Add the chopped garlic cloves and the onion.

4. Add the shrimp (it’s better if you defrost it first, but if you didn’t do it, there’s no need to worry, it will just take longer to cook).

5. Season the shrimp with salt and black pepper.

6. Let the shrimp cook, I like them well cooked (hopefully with some crust around it). Make sure to taste one once in a while to check on them.

Your protein is ready, now all you need to do is set up the table and call everyone for dinner.

IV. Setting up the table

I usually place the food in the middle of the table so that everyone can build their taco the way they like it.

- Place the tortillas in a plate (heat them if you want, 1 minute in the microwave is enough for 10 tortillas).

- Place lettuce or spinach in a bowl (you can also sautée the spinach with oil or butter in a pan to add more flavor to it, or if you’re more of a lettuce person then I recommend adding lime and salt to it).

- Place the vegetables in bowl.

- Place the shrimp in a bowl as well.

- Reheat the sauce if needed and use a bowl to place it on the table. Make sure to warn everyone that the sauce is spicy, or don’t, I leave that up to you.

- Bring either a bag or container with grated/shredded cheese.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of Dutch Tacos to attach here. But because of that I now have a perfect excuse to cook them again.

As soon as I do that, I’ll make another post about it.   

Buh-bye!

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2 days in Ghent, Belgium

Despite having visited highly famous sites like Amsterdam and Munich only a few weeks earlier, Ghent became one of my favorite European cities almost as soon as I stepped out of the train. Even though it took us nearly 40 minutes to walk from the train station to the city centre (we got off at Sint-Peters train station instead of Dampoort... rookie mistake) there was something about the city that I was immediately drawn to.

You might be wondering what and where is this “Ghent” (pronounced with a flat ‘G’ as in Ghandi).

Well, before visiting Ghent I hardly knew anything about it either. All I knew was the name of 3 football players who had previously played for K.A.A Gent, and that there was a bar in the city centre where you had to give the barman your shoe (and 11 euros) in exchange for a tall shoe-shaped glass of beer, because of course, every city has to have a landmark related to beer.

We actually ended our first day in Ghent in that bar, but instead of ordering the shoe-shaped glasses of beer, we ordered a smaller sized Delirium Tremens. I highly recommend that beer if you’re feeling generous and thirsty. 

By the way, in case you were wondering, the name of the bar is Dulle Griet.

Anyway, as I was saying, there was something about Ghent that hooked me right away, and that was the vibe around the city. If you see pictures of Ghent you can see that it’s an old city, full of historic buildings and one huge castle from the 12th century (the Gravensteen). But what the pictures fail to show is that Ghent is also a pretty big city, with a very important university, a big avenue full of expensive shops and a highly popular football club. I don’t know about the financial and corporate side of town, but I’m guessing it must be just as impressive as the rest. 

When you google which cities you must visit in Belgium, there are 2 that will always be on the top of every list: Brugge and Brussels. Brugge is a beautiful, historic and petite city with romantic and picturesque spots and canals everywhere you look, but, as I said it’s a petite city. Whereas Brussels is a huge, cosmopolitan city with a few old and really fancy (and I mean broidered-with-gold fancy) buildings.

And Ghent, luckily, is a well balanced combination of both those cities. It has the traditional and picturesque scenes of Brugge and the big-city vibe of Brussels.

The old district is full of beautiful, enormous buildings. I highly recommend visiting St. Bavo’s Cathedral and reading about the Mystic Lamb.

The canals in Gent are a very important factor in the beauty of this city. You will almost always be able to see the beautiful Belgian buildings reflected on the calm water. 

I also recommend the audio tour inside the Gravensteen castle. It’s highly entertaining for both kids and adults. We tried the tour in both English and Spanish, and both recorded voices are easy to understand and extremely funny.

My advice for whoever is reading this is, if you’re traveling around Belgium or you’re thinking about which countries and cities you want to visit in Europe, you should definitely consider Ghent. Take it from someone who fell in love with the city during winter, and who can’t wait to go back and see how the city lives its summer days.

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.“

- Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit.

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My manifesto

Because this is my first post, I’ll explain why I created this blog and what I’ll be writing about.

By the way, I googled the definition for the word ‘Manifesto’ and I know I’m not using 100% correctly, but it feels like it’s the right word to express myself. 

First, the main reason is that I can be very shy and insecure when it comes to writing/posting content for social media. I tend to overthink what I want to write, although my head is usually swarmed with decent ideas.

Therefore, I hope that here I can write and post whatever I want without my fear of being judged.

That would be the ‘why’ behind this blog.

Next, in this blog I’m going to start writing about the cities that I’ve had the pleasure to visit around the globe. My list, at the moment, is not very long but I feel I’m starting to forget my thoughts and feelings towards some of those cities, along with some good stories that happened. 

Hopefully, I’ll move past my social media phobia and I’ll post some good content on the way. 

Also, some secondary goals would be to improve my writing skills and to let my creativity out of its cage once in a while.

P.S: I’ll be updating this manifesto every time I think of a new rule, goal, reason or challenge for myself through this blog.

Appendix A:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/manifesto