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Elise Kaak 🥐

@easyculi

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The story behind this page 👋🏼 I’m a Dutch private chef, recipe developer, food photographer & videographer and I’m currently writing my first cookbook. If there’s food involved: count me in. I’m learning, discovering and always hungry for new people, ingredients, suggestions, places, traditions, must-do or must-eats and much more. Let’s connect. 💌

#valencia #privatechef #photographer taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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25 days ago

I’m going to write a cookbook. 📚🌞🍇🍜🦪🍅🐟 Pinch me!!!!!

Life has a funny way of bringing things back around. Ten years ago, I started studying to become a Dutch teacher because I liked writing. I’ve always been drawn to storytelling, language, photography, creating things from nothing. During that time, I started sharing recipes and stories online as a creative outlet. Just because I loved it.  Somehow, that tiny side quest became my entire life. I built this world from the ground up, spent endless hours teaching myself new skills, worked alongside incredibly talented creatives and had the privilege of learning from the very best in the industry. What started as a creative outlet slowly became a world that challenged me, pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to grow not only creatively, but personally too.   The story wrote itself and now comes back to where it started: writing. Capturing my vision and work in my own physical BOOK where my three personalities will come together: writer (or now author omg), photographer and chef. With over 60 unique recipes and pages filled with my own food photography and stories, this project feels like the biggest love letter to everything I’ve built over the past decade. It’s the crown on 10 years of building, creating and dreaming. Maybe the most beautiful part of all is that this project is proof that passion, consistency and an almost delusional belief in your own vision can actually take you somewhere extraordinary.

I’m incredibly grateful to @nijgh_cuisine_atelier_vitalite and @miriambrunsveld. Thank you for the trust, the excitement and the opportunity to create something truly special together. I already know this process is going to be one of the most exciting chapters of my life.

June 2027 in (Dutch) stores!!!!! Let’s write, baby. ✨

#valencia #nijmegen #kookboek taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands by @easyculi

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5 months ago

First edition of the cookbook tasting night with my friends because being my friend means being fed. It’s in the unwritten terms and conditions. 💌  In return for a rooftop dinner, I asked for one thing: honest, sharp feedback. No “mmm everything’s lovely.” Tell me what’s too salty, what’s too much, what you’d skip. 
Nothing beats cooking for people who love you enough to tell you the truth with their mouth full. Gezellig doesn’t even translate, but you know the feeling. 
#privatechef #valencia #cookbook taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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2 days ago

if food is art, does that make me an artist? 🎨

#valencia #privatechef taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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4 days ago

My very last ode to summer. 💌 The weather is turning, I am craving comfort food and my slightly obsessieve jacket and jeans collection made it’s way back from my attic to my closet. What a season it was. Already missing you.

#valencia taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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7 days ago

last week’s diary 💌.

#valencia #ibiza taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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9 days ago

What do I do in my free time when I don’t cook or shoot? I cook and shoot for my friends. Groundbreaking, isn’t it. What even is a weekend when my idea of relaxing is doing the exact thing that pays my bills. Blessed. 🌝 Also currently on the hunt for new winter hobbys. Lauren is teaching me crochet. If you have more suggestions: I’m all ears.

#valencia #privatechef #photographer taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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10 days ago

Caramelized onion gnocchi with thyme. ✨ The kind of dinner that looks like it took all day and actually took twenty minutes, most of which is just you stirring onions and feeling very accomplished about it.

groceries for 2 🛒 1 large white onion 15 gr unsalted butter + 1 tbsp 200 gr gnocchi (homemade recipe on my website, or grab fresh gnocchi from the supermarket) salt & pepper fresh thyme parmesan

Clean the onion, halve it, slice into thin rings. Melt half the butter in a pan and add the onion. Fry on high heat briefly, then turn it down low so it can properly simmer. Stir regularly.

After about 10 minutes the onion will start to colour. Add the rest of the butter and keep cooking until it’s beautifully caramelized.

Meanwhile, boil the gnocchi in salted water. It’s done once it floats to the top.

Heat a tablespoon of butter in a pan, add the gnocchi, and fry a few minutes until golden all over. Add the onions and some fresh thyme, season with salt and pepper, and toss together for another minute.

Divide over plates and finish with a generous amount of parmesan and a little extra thyme.

#gnocchi #carmalizedonions #comfortfood taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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11 days ago

A list of what I’ve been eating and loving lately. Here are my faves, and if you play close attention you’ll spot the pattern hiding in at least half of this list. Bonus points if you guess my fave ingredient.🐟

1 Bonito curado at @barbaric.ptx  2 Sea bream tiradito at @rebel.kitchen.bar
3 First pan con tomate after weeks of traveling at @lamasbonitavlc
4 Tostada atún at @venenoconcept
5 Forever fave huevos rotos con atún @bartrinchera
6 Mollejas fritas picantes with extra hot sauce to test our white girl spicy levels (we passed) @cocleque
7 anything at @bernal.a.costa
8 Great açaí with an even greater amount of peanut butter at @nasai___
9 Best Margherita alla Napoletana at @raices_valencia
10 Caponata siciliana con ventresca de atún at @arroceria.afuegolento

#valencia #restaurants #tips taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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12 days ago

Warm pan granola in 5 min. Oven-free granola with only four ingredients for the impatient who wants the payoff without waiting. Done faster than your coffee.

groceries for 1 🛒
1 banana
50 gr oats
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
olive oil for in the pan

Mash the banana in a bowl, add the oats, cinnamon and salt, mix together with a fork.

Heat a little olive oil in a pan and add the mixture, pressing it down like you’re making a pancake. Let it sit, then scramble it up. Keep cooking, pressing and scrambling until every little piece is golden brown.

Serve in your yoghurt bowl with your favorite fruit and almond butter.

#breakfast #granola #banana taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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13 days ago

last week’s diary 💌.

#valencia taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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18 days ago

Exactly 2 years ago today, my Renault Clio crossed the French-Spanish border with everything I owned in the back. What didn’t fit in the car I had to build from scratch instead: a language, a network of friends and clients and an entire understanding of what food actually means in a country that takes it more seriously than anywhere I’ve ever lived.

I like learning by doing. Cooked with people who’d been doing this for decades. Photographed Spanish kitchens I had no business being in yet. Got humbled five million times (and still counting). Learned from so many people I met along the way. Locals, expats, professionals, neighbors and new friends who genuinely feel like family.

A few highlights so far: brought people together with my food in Pasaje94, Kukla and The Westin. Cooked over 30 private dinners and shot thousands of pics. My friends got on planes for me, some more than once, and I traveled all over Europe for pleasure and work. The people I meet confirm something I keep relearning: life isn’t measured in things, but in people and places.

To everyone who fed me, taught me, translated for me, hired me, sat at my table or let me sit at theirs: you rock.

Two years into moving countries has taught me something I don’t think you can learn any other way: fear and excitement feel exactly the same in the body. The only difference is what you decide to call it. So if there’s a country, a course, a career or an activity you’ve googled more times than you’d like to admit: that’s not research anymore. That’s a decision you’re circling. On the other side of fear there’s magic, baby. You have only one life. What are you waiting for.

X Eli

#privatechef #valencia #movingcountries #spain taken in Valencia by @easyculi

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20 days ago