When my brother and I were growing up in the Prins Clausplein tower, we didn't really have a nice place to play indoors. There were vases everywhere and fragile items that were valuable to my mother.

So we often went outside and pretended to be adults. We were 12 and thought adults apparently made fires, so we did too. That was fun, but we wanted more: to eat something from our little fire adventure.

The next time, we brought my mother's cast iron pan, some utensils, and even some salt. We put the pan on the fire and fried strips of beef that we had secretly prepared in the small kitchen of our apartment. A little oil, just like our mother always did, and then the meat went in. After a few minutes of exciting flipping, it was done. We divided it with a stick and our hands, because we didn't dare to take a knife from the house. The meat was perfectly medium rare. I still don't know how that happened, but it was incredible. Probably the best piece of meat I've ever eaten. Because we had made it ourselves.