Experiment

Since I'll be off for the weekend, I decided to make a little something to strengthen my spirit for the long journey home {it involves a train ride of about 70 minutes, but it's the most boring in human history, I promise}. I personally don't have a lot of cooking books but I grew up among about sixty titles my parents had collected through 18 years of marriage. Most of them had Italian food as its subject which explains my great love for Italian cooking. What I learned first and foremost from these books is that a little experimenting is never wrong. You can be a total cook book purist and do everything according to the recipe, but to be honest, it's a little boring.

Take the recipe I chose to prepare for myself today. It's an oven dish based on leek, and the original recipe involves coffee cream and cheddar.

Now, I do like coffee at certain times, but I know for sure that if I'd buy a bottle of coffee cream I'll never ever finish it. It's typically one of those ingredients you buy to make one dish and then forget to ever take out of your kitchen cabinets ever again (well at least, it is for me). So instead of buying myself a useless gimmick I went with crème fraîche. Great in almost all oven dishes, and also very tasty in combination with homemade rice porridge. Money well spent, I'd say.

Then the cheddar. I absolutely love cheddar but helas, I couldn't get my hands on it. So instead I chose to go with Kernhem.

Kernhem wouldn't be the most obvious choice to use instead of cheddar in a dish like this one. The texture of both cheeses differs greatly. Usually, if you'd have a firmer cheese like cheddar, you would want to replace it by a similar cheese. Gouda would be an option. But then again, I really love Kernhem and experiments, so what the heck...

Kernhem is a so-called 'modern' Dutch cheese: it has no significant history whatsoever. In fact, it was created by an official food research institute. Glamour? Nah. If you forget about its history a few seconds, and just focus on its appearance and taste, Kernhem wins a few points. It's a crusted cheese with a soft yellow colour and a subtle taste with a bit of spice to it. Have a look for yourself: *now look at picture at the top*.

The point of the recipe was to cook the chopped leek in melted butter, some olive oil and wíth some chopped garlic and thime until steaming. Then I put the leek into a bowl, spread the crème fraîche over it and grated some of the Kernhem over it all. It took another 20 minutes in the oven (180 degrees Celcius) for it to be done. The result: *see picture under picture of Kernhem cheese*. Voila!

Of course, you are now super hungry and want to try the recipe for yourself. No problemo. For just me I used:

2 leek

125 ml crème fraîche

some thime

olive oil

butter

about 50 gr of cheese

Now go out into the world and start cooking!