the long way home.

A recipe I've been trying to try for years, finally done, and yes it's a good healthy chocolate ice cream substitute. Below that, a documentation of our attempt to duplicate the family recipe for marinated artichoke hearts.

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frozen black bananas and cocoa powder.

1 large extremely ripe banana, frozen and peeled
1 tbsp cocoa powder
2 dates, pitted
date syrup

Process everything in a food processor. Serve drizzled with date syrup, maple syrup, and/or cold coconut milk.

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marinated artichoke hearts.

1 can artichoke hearts, drained and hearts quartered
juice of a lemon
1 tbsp neutral oil
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste

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oldventure.

I cooked a lot today, for the first time in weeks. Above is Ottolenghi's Black Pepper Tofu, Momofuku's Quick Salt Pickles, and Saveur's Perfect Brown Rice. And VDuck's kind of Indian/Indonesian runner beans with toasted coconut.

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slow-cooked coconut runner beans.

3/4 cup dried coconut, recently toasted

2 tbsp coconut oil
400g runner beans, cut prettily
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 onion, sliced thin
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 tsp ground turmeric
smoked salt to taste

Melt coconut oil in wok, saute onion for 10 minutes, stirring often. Mix in mustard seeds and saute for a minute, until they begin to pop. Add remaining ingredients and simmer uncovered for an hour,  checking to make sure there's enough liquid to keep it going.

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by any other name.

Ok, this experiment has been brewing for a few weeks now. Today I find myself mildly hungover and have thus limited my goals for the day to 1) shower 2) grocery shopping and 3) making dinner for Moop since she's continuing her crusade to douche the upstairs (NOTE: my mother has pointed out that "douche" is not a generally understood term in this context, where it means "to clean thoroughly but with a coarse, hurried technique, as if you run a meth lab and you've been tipped that the cops are on their way").

Here is the aforementioned experimental amuse. Turns out that if you accidentally overpuree a batch of the fritter mixture it also doubles as a very mysteriously lifelike veggie burger substitute after you add a little brown rice or bulgur for texture.

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kamaboko + black-eye pea fritters with grapefruit-avocado salsa and/or garlic mayo. 

100g surimi (or possibly reversed proportions, 200g surimi and onc cup of peas)
2 cups cooked black-eyed peas, unsalted if possible
possbly an egg for binder
1 canned chipotle chile
1 whole scallion minus wiggly roots
2 tbsp cilantro
2 tbsp fresh mint
juice of one blood orange
1/2 tsp smoked salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp smoked paprika, or to taste

1 tomato, chopped fine
1 grapefruit, supremed
1 avocado, chopped
1 small red onion, chopped fine
1 tbsp cilantro, chopped, torn, whatever
juice of 1 lime

1/2 cup mayo
1 clove garlic

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tjappings.

Above: socca experiments continue, this one sports smoked paprika and lots of black pepper in the batter, and on top it's caramelized tomatoes and red onions, plus harissa-and olive-marinated mozzarella. And sriracha, and fresh basil. I know it looks a little blackened in the northwest sector but the blacker parts are good. The whole thing was good. Both of them were good (I made two for us to share b/c they were only like six inches across).

Totally unrelatedly, it's been a long while since I've been so pleased to discover an Amsterdam food blog, but Tjappings is just great.

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rollende keukens 2013.

I have officially lost 2kg since I started this whole medication biznuss. Take that, internet!!! Now, am I doing this in the absolute most healthy way possible? Not always: by dinnertime on Thursday I'd only consumed 350 net calories because I knew I'd be having beers with KK/DD that night. Then, as planned, I consumed a couple of beers with KK/DD, and then, less planned, I consumed a couple more beers with KK/DD, and then wobbled home and somehow didn't eat everything in the house, I think I had two eggs maybe, and then went to sleep, or as an unfriendlier person might say, "passed out". And woke up lighter!

On the up side: most days/nights are not like that.

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Thursday night was my first night at something called Rollende Keukens (Rolling Kitchens), just around the corner in the Westerpark. Until I finish the big version of this post, here's the little version: go there. It's so much better than it was the last time I went (maybe three years ago?) the food is better, more exciting/creative, and (crucially) less expensive as well. Here's a much nicer post than this one about last year's.

But go before 6pm, the crowds on Thursday night were completely unmanageable if you hadn't reserved a sit-down meal somewhere. The pictures are all from Friday at 1:30pm, there was no one there. Also: hit an ATM before you get anywhere near Westerpark, there was seriously a 20-person line at my normal fun dispenser and the AH across the street was not allowing you to pin for extra cash either.

Tasting notes: my first bite of the day was an American-style pulled pork sandwich from Smokey Goodness. Pork-wise, totally solid: tender and smoky, properly seasoned, could've used a tad more sauce for my tastes but that's me. However, can you see any problems with the sandwich concept:

That's right: BBQ don't belong on no ciabatta: too dry, too crusty, too distracting, especially for such subtly-done pork. Apparently the folks at Smokey Goodness have been working on the bun question for a while, but sadly I'm not sure this is the answer. Still, pretty good stuff in terms of sandwich contents.

These next guys didn't have a name or anything I don't think:



But they were turning out a very well-executed Asian-style pulled pork bun:

They did something very smart with the steamed buns: tossed them into a very hot wok for a minute or two before serving to give them a lightly charred exterior, we're stealing that idea.

Then I thought I was leaving...on my way out I saw The Most Morbid Auto Ever:

And then lo, behold, etc. I saw an all-duck menu, so well I kind of had to go in for a closer look didn't I.

I was pulled in by the crispy duck, but when I tried to get me some it "wasn't ready yet", so I settled for the masala doksa (kind of a Surinamese duck curry), which wasn't exactly bad, more like very average, but as it was competing with the porky offerings above it ended up in last place for the day.

Think I'm going back tomorrow to try banh mi, takoyaki poffertjes and the three or four BBQ stands that weren't open for lunch Friday.

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form factor.

Above: trying to use our Cineville cards properly, here we are at Kriterion for The Place Beyond the Pines.

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Chickpea flour surplus reduction effort underway here. Messing around with socca again, hampered a bit by the fact we never really did get our oven fixed (I mean, it works, but now if it gets too hot [around 450F] it stops working and the only fix is to push the Reset button, conveniently located on the rear of the oven, that's right, the side FACING THE FUCKING WALL).

So 2013's socca technique is all about stovetop-style crepe-ishness. And while it's not really as good texturally as the ovenblasting method, it's still pretty good. That is, after the first three fucked-up looking ones. Is it impossible when making pancake-esque things to just wait until the pan is the right temperature? Signs point to yes (context for non-elderly/non-Americans).

Anyway, I keep seeing all these people putting things on their socca, and I think that I too want to be one of these "all these people". But what for toppings to use? I find myself asking in a Peter Lorre kind of voice. Right before drifting off to sleep last night I envisioned something like: torn harissa-marinated mozzarella; half-dried tomatoes, chopped basil leaves and a drizzle of balsamic or lemon-date syrup. Seems like any flavors you'd normally pair with chickpeas would be good (thus Spanish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Indian primarily), but the challenge would be the addition of complementary textures to end up with something possibly pizza-achtige.

So maybe some kind of play on romesco sauce plus arugula and manchego? Something with spinach, pine nuts and raisins plus pecorino? Something based on a potatoless pav bhaji (mostly cauliflower and carrot then I guess) with coriander and....whatever cheese goes with Indian food? Please continue without me: I'll be at the stove trying to gauge socca flipworthiness.

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day 27.

Above: actually there are about ten funny pages and they're not all that funny, it's almost all lazy hipster irony. It was a hand-me-down.

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Last night I dreamed a dream about Kirsten Dunst (who, just for the record, does nothing to float my boat if you know what I mean by "float" and "boat") and I invented a new device that's a combination PedEgg and wireless mouse, two things I've had on my hypothetical Wish List for a very long time (the PedEgg and the wireless mouse, just to be clear).

My dreams have been, as they say, vivid as fuck. Realllly complicated, and so far not unpleasant at all. It seems like every other night I'm immersed in some impossibly labyrinthine scavenger hunt-like environment. And the nights in-between I'm inventing plausible and convenient hygiene/computing aids. 

So: wildly creative while asleep. Irritability while awake receding a bit I think except just before lights out and just after opening eyes in the AM: I remain kind of bastardy then. Not really feeling emotions totally "normally" I notice, but perhaps this is the point of the whole thing: I am finding myself able to consider profoundly unpleasant sequences of events or emotional situations in a less-disabling way, a way that I can totally appreciate the potential benefits of. Yes, I am officially "more detached". It's hard to say what will happen when let's say I want to be "less detached", but so far Robot Boy is proving to be one of the more productive (side?) effects/personas: I'm tackling shitty things on my todo list that I've been avoiding for weeks and weeks. And I'm liking them.

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give it up grand dad.

I think I suddenly went elderly. This is my new favorite place to hang out. A bench. It's not totally new, I've been visiting for a year or so, it's just a minute's walk past our Dirk. It's one of those places that all winter long is colder than everywhere else b/c of the wind, but now, as summer begins to think about showing up and temperatures approach 70F for the first time....suddenly my obscure and breezy bench is a great place to do old people activities like read or look at birds.

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El Carote Negro is taking a break from meat, so I'll be cooking out of Ottolenghi's Plenty for the next little while. We're also entering a period of serious financial crackdown so yes, there's a weekly grocery budget and I'm even going to try and stick to it this time.

Tonight's first adventure features two items that were on sale at Dirk last week: witlof (Belgian endive) and Gouda, subbing for Gruyere (I'd actually have used taleggio or raclette if either of them had been on sale anywhere).

The second adventure is this.

REVIEW: This could really only happen in this country because Gouda is the default cost-cutting cheese around here: substituting it into this caramelized endive recipe made the results taste pretty much exactly like cheap Amsterdam snackbar pizza (with a finishing note of just-bitter endive), not a totally bad thing.

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