Our Man in the Provinces Pulled a Jonnie Boer
He ate out several times a week, always on the lookout for the tastiest herring, most fun wine, juiciest hamburger or best meat thermometer. But six months ago, journalist Marcel Langedijk swapped Amsterdam for the Provinces. Is it at all bearable there for someone who loves good food and drink? Absolutely. Especially when Jonnie Boer takes care of the food.
The idea behind Cook Like A Chef is as brilliant as it is simple. Every ten weeks, a different Michelin-starred chef prepares a four-course menu. That menu is packed into a box and delivered to foodies across the country, who then only have to add the finishing touch. Cost: €69.50 per person. Optionally supplemented with reasonably priced wines, if desired a different one for each course. That’s money, yes, and together you could also eat out five times at the local pizzeria or your favourite wok palace. But then you’d be missing out. Not only on four fantastic courses by—in my case—Jonnie ‘Librije’ Boer, but also on the feeling that you can actually do something in the kitchen—even if you can’t. What’s more, you spend two hours with your husband or wife or child or aunt (kind of) preparing, plating and eating. Quite refreshing for a change instead of an evening of Netflix.
A Substantial Box
And there he was, the burly delivery man. Exactly at the agreed time—they call half an hour in advance. In his hands, a substantial box with a white ribbon around it. And wishing me lots of enjoyment. Inside the box: a bottle of Malbec for the main course, four paper bags and a warning: put the ‘cinnamon sticks’ and vanilla parfait from bag 4 in the freezer. I had already received a document by email with instructions and photos of the ingredients and dishes, so all in all it was idiot proof. The nice people at Cook Like A Chef didn’t say so, of course, but everything told me that I’d have to be quite the stew if I managed to mess this up. And if I did still end up in blind panic, a real phone team was ready between 5 and 9 p.m. to guide me through the dishes step by step—I would sooner purée and drink all the ingredients than call that team, for reasons of male pride, but that’s beside the point.
The Wine First
The bottle of wine was opened first. Intended for the main course, but Jonnie and Thérèse weren’t watching and our daughter was asleep, so pop. Due to a lack of pans and because that was probably the intention anyway, we decided to calmly build each dish, eat it, wash everything up and so on until the four bags were empty and our stomachs were full.
All the ingredients come in plastic containers and are self-explanatory, but when in doubt you can always refer back to the emailed photos—which saved us from a blunder once; I had almost used the lamb jus as a glaze and vice versa, which would have royally ruined the main course. Lesson one during Cook Like A Chef cooking: read the recipe. And lesson two: read the recipe again. Other than that, it mainly comes down to reheating and, in the case of the intermediate and main courses, searing or gently cooking in the oven.
Dollops Are Harder Than You Think
After that, it comes down to plating. In other words: arranging the plate so that Jonnie and Thérèse can be proud of you and everything is Instagram-worthy. And let me tell you: that’s not easy. It always seems so simple on cooking shows and even easier when you watch a top chef do it, but draping dots, lines and dollops across a plate so that it doesn’t look like a kindergarten drawing or the result of a sneeze is quite difficult. Thank God the sauces and squirts come in generous quantities, so I could redo the first plate. And thank God my wife—who otherwise absolutely cannot and does not want to cook—harbours a magnificent plate arranger, so by the end of the evening we could look back on plates that were as delicious as they were beautiful, featuring, in succession, raw marinated salmon trout, monkfish, lamb neck and ‘blown-apart’ apple pie.
Jonnie could be proud of us.
And the fact that we prepared and ate everything in our jogging bottoms and could then digest on the sofa with the latest episode of Peaky Blinders made this one of the most relaxed Michelin-starred restaurant experiences ever.
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