vegetarian duck: an amsterdam food blog.

terrific, pacific.

2012-01-30T20:12:00.006+01:00

We need more vegetables. Back in our former lives, we vaguely remember making a couple of broccoli things that we used to eat all the time, but I can only seem to find this one, from an oft-used and now dilapidated and barely-usable pan-Asian cookbook called Terrific Pacific by Anya von Bremzen.

You can see that this was a well-loved cookbook, despite the mid-90s graphic design nightmare that is the cover. That is the whole book really. As a physical object, this thing is quaintly misguided, dated, and, um, shoddy (! damn, grrl, wtf? It uses Curlz MT, OK?).

But the content! I'd kind of forgotten about it until this week, but looking at it again, it's one of the most useful cookbooks we own, almost every sidebar is informative in one way or another, and the recipes are well-selected and authentic.

Since it's only $0.01 from Amazon I should buy another one, because as you can see, this one has fallen apart into 10 or 11 sections. Not so useful for actually finding anything, but kind of nice as a random-access nostalgia generator: for example, the "Cooking Squid" page sticking out of the top reminds me of one of my earliest bachelor gourmet cooking attempts, where I actually did that thing that cookbooks always fucking tell you to do. "Go see your local Asian fishmonger for the freshest (and cheapest!) fish around."

I went to Buford Highway to one of the "International Farmers Markets" (really just a big Asian grocery store), and as the only non-Asian person there, I must have provided a few minutes of good entertainment trying to pantomime "squid" and "dead, please" to the non-English-speaking guy with the dirty apron and the big knife.

But when I got it home, it was in fact squid and thankfully dead. And I did cook it the way Terrific Pacific told me to (3 minutes, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, basil, lime, sugar, cilantro, mint, basil). And while I was doing so, a repairman came to fix something, probably something one of our friends had pissed on or threw up on or otherwise destroyed, and he said: "Man, what the hell you cooking? Are you a chef or something? It smells like a damn restaurant in here...I got to get me some lunch after this".

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broccoli with miso sauce.

2 tbsp shiro miso
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 and 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp raw sugar
2/3 cup chicken or vegetable broth
2 tsp sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste

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pock pock.

2012-01-30T18:07:00.002+01:00

When the hangover strikes: strike back with ma po tofu and a frozen pizza.

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ma po tofu.

500g tofu
90g ground beef or pork
1/2 cup scallion whites, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

1 tbsp Chinese chili bean sauce
1 tbsp Chinese black bean sauce
1/2 tsp shirichi togarashi

1 tsp chilli oil
3/4 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp dry sherry
1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil
1.5 tbsp cornstarch mixed with 1.5 tbsp cold water
1 tsp szechuan peppercorn, toasted, ground, and well-sifted
Boiled white rice to serve

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evil twin.

2012-01-30T14:36:00.004+01:00

Two new beer places finally visited last night: Beer Temple and Cafe De Spuyt.

Well neither place is really "new": Beer Temple's probably been there a year or two and de Spuyt has supposedly been there for 50 years.

I wish I'd gone to de Spuyt much much sooner, it's my kind of room: dark wood and red walls, seats at an actual bar, and 100 interesting beers. It's been on my list of recommendations for a long time, so it was good to verify that it's totally worth recommending.

Beer Temple is quite different, run by the Arendsnest people and focusing on American microbrewed ales. The ambience is fine, a bit sterile but at least it's nice and dark. Prices are a little expensive, but most of these beers can't be found anywhere else in this neck of the woods, so it's all about priorities. One extra nice thing about Beer Temple is that for snacks they offer unusual trappist cheeses and some bootykicking chorizo from Frank's Smoke House.

It was all, yes, you guessed it: nice.

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pud'nhed.

2012-01-28T22:57:00.013+01:00

I've seriously been living like a lazy retired person for the last month (versus an industrious retired person), and I really can't remember the last time I've enjoyed doing so little so much.

There's almost no guilt at all: I just kind of wake up whenever, usually around 11. I have one or two cups of coffee and shoot the shit with Mara, at which point there's often the first discussion of the day regarding what's for dinner.

Then I fuck around online for a bit looking for recipes and/or stretch some work-related task that should take 10 minutes into something like 2 hours. Throughout we will typically engage in some sort of advanced kung fu dancing or hallway battle or general horseplay to liven things up.

I usually threaten to work out at this point but never end up doing it. Sometimes I take a shower regardless.

Then about 50% of the time we've been taking a nap around 3 or 4. After which we get up and possibly play Scrabble and I go to the store and then we make dinner or we make dinner and watch a movie or some other combination of those activities.

Around 7pm I sometimes like to watch Eggheads or one of TLC's makeover shows (during which I am actually saying to my TV screen things like "Oh you're not going to put her in that, are you)?. Then we either eat or watch a movie or fuck around on the internet for a bit or whatever leisure activity we didn't do before dinner. Then we go to bed and read for a while.

It's about to end, but while it lasted it was AWESOME.

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When I was little, I wasn't really the foodie I am today. I was a celiac kid, so I didn't eat the same way most other children ate until I "grew out of" my illness/allergy (more on this soon, I'm considering returning to a gluten-free diet for a while). I tended to fixate on sweet things more than savory. One of my absolute favorite things was either Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes with blueberries and/or bananas, I've been fantasizing about it lately (when I say fantasize, I mean in a wholesome way, like imagining a version of Momofuku's "cereal milk" with blueberries and bananas).

I also loooved lemon, just about more than anything except maybe chocolate. At some point in my adult life, lemon kind of faded away or receded into the background of my favorite tastes, but at some point over the past few years it's come back.

Tonight after a diverting won ton soup experiment and some Dun Yong gyoza, Mara whipped up a perfect lemon pudding topped with blueberries and we ate it. That's the whole story. Supersatisfying.

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lemon pudding.

2/3 cup raw sugar
1/8 cup cornstarch
1 cup milk
2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
2 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
Pinch salt
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

This will all happen superfast, so watch it. Whisk the sugar and the cornstarch together in a medium saucepan. Add the milk and whisk until smooth. Add the egg yolks, zest, and salt and cook, stirring frequently at first and constantly towards the end, over medium heat until thickened enough to thickly coat the back of a spoon.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and butter. Pour through a strainer into a large serving bowl or 2 individual serving dishes.

Let cool to room temperature. Chill, loosely covered, for at least 2 hours and up to 3 days, or until set and thoroughly chilled. Serve chilled.

sloppy quo.

2012-01-27T13:03:00.005+01:00

EDIT 2012: How is it possible that Mara and I are the only people in the history of the internet to have uttered the phrase "sloppy quo"? We are toying with the idea of making them again, inspired by this.

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Original post, May 1, 2005: Fucking Wikipedia, man. So impressive sometimes. This post shall be completed at a later date, but the gist of it is: Mara and I had serious nostalgic cravings for a Sloppy Joe the other day (the normal American version, not that Jersey abomination, which should be called the "Cuban Reuben"), only problem being that we're not eating meat these days.

Turning to our cadre of meat substitutes, I tapped Quorn Fijngehakt as the lucky cadet. And frankly I thought the results came out perfect...you know, as perfect as vegetarian Sloppy Joes can. If I can ever find the recipe I scribbled down on some piece of paper that I'm sure has something else even more important on the other side, I'll post it here (2012 EDIT: the paper was never found).

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rarebit.

2012-01-27T12:41:00.001+01:00

Yeah, not even sure what I'm writing about yet, makes it hard to title a post.

One thing: I think we're headed back down to normal food budget levels, after enjoying a month or so of eating like some other family, one with money. It was nice while it lasted.

Also, it's been a looooong, long time since there's been any kind of dietary moderation happening here, like sustained moderation in the form of what many would call a "diet". Which, as I understand it, when combined with a program of daily exercise, can result in personal size diminishment.

One challenge is that after a year of pretty much eating whatever I felt like eating, I have kind of fallen in love with crusty bread again. And soft cheese. And dark chocolate. You know, the Good Things. Also, I have renewed my love for eating whenever I feel like eating, which tends to be later in the evening. Like after midnight. They don't call me Ratboy for nothing.

This is just kind of turning into a complaint, isn't it, albeit one that I hope will serve as a mopey manifesto for Winter 2012 Cooking and Eating.

It's too cold for raw vegetables. Bah.
I don't love soup.
I just want sandwiches.
And hot gooey things. I feel like I could easily eat pizza every day for a few weeks. Maybe I'm pregnant? High?

Maybe I'll just try and exercise constantly so I can spend my all of my non-exercising time eating pizza.

There's a post in here somewheres.

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this is how we clean the pantry.

2012-01-26T11:50:00.006+01:00

This was highly edible, almost really super good. I'd had dried black-eyed peas sitting around for a long time so I made a very harissa- and garlic-centric hummus out of them last night. Today I tried an Israeli-style hummus-crusted fish with it, then served it with a pile of cilantro and the leftover ruby kraut from the tempeh thing.

Drizzled with sriracha, it was a totally gourmet lunch, but would've been even better with a drizzle of a tahini cream sauce and some quick beet or cucumber pickles. I must warn you, this makes a lot of hummus.

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black-eyed pea hummus with harissa.

3 cups cooked black-eyed peas
2 garlic cloves, minced
6 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1-2 tbsp harissa
2 tbsp EV olive oil
1 or 2 tsp ground cumin
3 or 4 tbsp tahini
salt to taste
possibly water for thinning, or more olive oil

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this is how we clean the fridge.

2012-01-24T14:50:00.006+01:00

I think I'm going to try two computerless days a week. I've been considering it for a couple of days, but haven't had the balls to start.

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We've made this recipe a few times without ever writing it down or really talking about it other than here. And it's because there's something just a little not quite right about it (IMHO). There's too much going on in its original configuration, which reminds me a little bit of a certain style of vegan cooking that desperately throws things into a dish willy-nilly in order to make it taste like something.

But: the combo of textures and flavors here is really promising (why ginger and rosemary go together always mystifies me a bit, but they continue to do so). The quickest and easiest solution to the overcomplicatedness of the original was to eliminate the sourdough bread that it is supposed to be served on. So now it's just tempeh, gravy, slaw, potatoes, spinach.

EDIT: HBF/tc showed up in the Comments section to emphasize the gravy. And she's totally right: when I started putting this dish back together to figure out what parts went great together, the tempeh and the gravy were indisputably chompable. I didn't post the gravy recipe b/c ours wasn't vegan, but I will re-amend this post eventually with the real thing.

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de-sandwich-ized open faced tempeh sandwich with herbed mushroom gravy, garlic-rosemary mashed potatoes, fresh spinach, and ruby kraut.

tempeh
400gr tempeh
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup apple cider
1/4 cup tamari
1/4 cup brown rice vinegar

Bake uncovered in a single layer for 35 minutes at 350F.

ruby kraut
almost a head of red cabbage
2 cloves garlic
1-2 tbsp ginger syrup
2 tbsp oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped
salt and pepa to taste

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sunday potluck.

2012-01-24T13:39:00.001+01:00

Salpicon. Courgette in agrodulce, kind of based on these flavors. Manicotti with spinach and artichokes. Those brownies.

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buñuelos.

2012-01-21T18:19:00.001+01:00

buñuelos de bagre con srirachaioli.

500gr panga/catfish filet
3 medium potatoes
3 eggs
3 cloves garlic, pressed
pinch saffron
1 onion, minced
1/2 cup celery leaves, minced
3 tbsp white port
1 to 2 tbsp smoked paprika
salt
pepper.
oil for frying

sriracha
mayonnaise

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the final countdown.

2012-01-21T00:21:00.007+01:00

Maybe the reason I always like arriving in Rotterdam is because it seems like I always end up walking through Chinatown and having a sandwich at Kiem Foei (two below), their bread is excellent and everything I've ever had there has been nice and spicy. Mei Sum (one below) is a bakery that I keep meaning to try. Electricity (bottom) is, yeah, pretty much just that.

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the cruelest month.

2012-01-18T23:39:00.005+01:00

Oooh. Seriously nasty winter weather. Above photo taken from ferry, which crashed into the dock earlier in the day, with little Mara on it, injuring six people, bleeding head wounds, etc. It was in the news and everything.

Below photo taken from Stork, where we had post-run debrief and weather escapement accompanied by little expensive fried things: good shrimp croquettes and really really good bacalao fritters, I'm going to try and recreate them tonight.

Bottom: three things from Le Sud, a new vegetarian Mediterranean/Middle Eastern deli on the Haarlemmerstraat that has been getting great reviews. Everything was pretty good if a little undersalted.

time machine.

2012-01-15T13:09:00.014+01:00

The photo is from November 2011 after a WAFTUG rehearsal in Groningen. The recipe below is from our past (and our present I guess, we made it last night), it's one of the first delicious things we cooked together back in 1997 or so. It sounds boring and retro, but man is it a complementary and comforting mix of flavors and textures that almost justifies the term fusion. I feel like I've posted about it before but I can't find it if I did.

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salmon a la 1997 (maple-soy-ginger glazed salmon with mustard mashed potatoes and sesame spinach).

1 cup pure maple syrup
2 tbsp finely grated peeled fresh ginger
4 tbsp fresh lemon juice
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 pressed garlic clove
500gr salmon
1 bunch scallions, whole but with roots cut off

Basically combine first five ingredients and reduce over very low heat for 10-20 minutes to make a thickish glaze, salting to taste. Preheat oven to 175C. Coat salmon pieces with reduced glaze and lay on bed of scallions. Bake for 20 minutes, checking halfway through to reglaze if necessary. Serve each piece of salmon on a bed of 3 or 4 scallions on top of a pile of mustard mashed potatoes with some sesame-sauteed spinach on the side, none of which really requires any further explaining, does they?

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feelin' froggy.

2012-01-12T22:50:00.001+01:00

Blogging like the wind I am. This will probably turn into a discussion of one of the following: our new refrigerators; what to do with current leftovers; or Moroccan bread.

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basbousa.

2012-01-12T18:39:00.012+01:00

Wow, I just had a blip of a flashback/fantasy where I wrote a piece of code that went out to the online TV Guide, looked at the three to seven Hollywood films that are on the major Dutch networks every night, then went out to Metacritic and found out their metascores and averaged them, so I could have like a daily Cultural Apocalypse Quotient just handed to me.

Tonight's is a good one: we have Demolition Man (34/100), The Saint (50/100), Night at the Museum 2 (42/100), A Cinderella Story (25/100), and Intolerable Cruelty, which gets a 71 out of 100, BUT unfortunately stars Catherine Zeta-Jones, for whom Mara and I harbor such an irrational hatred that we are unable to watch any movie featuring her except High Fidelity (79/100), so there would be some automatic adjustment code happening for special cases like this.

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Ummm....right. A few days ago I sent Mara an article from Serious Eats about 10 great winter desserts featuring oranges or something, oh wait here it is. I sent it to her because she really likes winter oranges and because I really like it when someone makes dessert for me.

Her choice from that list was the Orange Semolina Cake, which sounded great and was an interesting recipe (you puree two oranges whole, skins and all, for example): little did I know that it was essentially a recipe for one of my favorite desserts of, if not all time, then of the last 5 years or so: basbousa. Anyway, it turned out really really authentic-tasting, and if you want some, come by, 'cause there's lots.

Speaking of which, this recipe: it makes an imposingly dense cake that you will want to share with other people. We tripled the amount of syrup in the original recipe because that's the only way it really seemed like the basbousa that I know.

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orange semolina cake (aka basbousa, revani).

syrup
2 cups sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
3 tsp orange blossom water
2 and 1/4 cup water

cake
2 almost softball-sized navel oranges, scrubbed
3/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup sugar
5 large eggs
2 cups semolina
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup almond flour
1 cup untoasted almonds with skins, chopped

Fill a medium pot halfway with water. Add oranges and boil until softened, about 45-60 minutes, you might have to add more water. Drain and let cool. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9 1/2 inch cake pan.

In a small saucepan, combine sugar, lemon juice, orange blossom water, and water. Bring heat to medium and cook, stirring constantly, until sugar dissolves. Let mixture come to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 6 minutes. Let cool.

Quarter oranges and remove the seeds but not the skin. Place oranges in a food processor and pulse until you have a smooth pulp. In a large bowl, combine orange pulp, oil, sugar, and eggs. Beat with an electric mixer until smooth. In a small bowl, whisk together semolina, baking powder, and almond flour. Stir dry ingredients into orange mixture.

Pour batter into pan and garnish top with chopped almonds. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes, but keep an eye on the almonds on top, ours browned really fast and we had to cover the top with foil. Cool cake for ten minutes then pour syrup over the top.

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space invadors.

2012-01-11T14:09:00.006+01:00

In progress, based on this but the below proportions/ratios seem to work OK.

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niu rou mian (sichuan beef/noodle soup).

1/8 cup peanut oil
a 2 1/2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled, cut into 1/3-inch-thick rounds, each smashed with flat side of knife
3 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 cups chopped onions
2 1/2 tbsp chili bean paste (Sichuan hot bean paste; dou ban jiang)
3 whole green onions, trimmed, plus 2 cups chopped green onions (for garnish)

1/2 cup (or more) soy sauce (do not use low-sodium)
3-4 whole star anise
2 tbsp raw sugar
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
1 pound eggless Chinese wheat noodles (Shandong la mian)
2 to 3 cups bok choy, sliced
Chopped fresh cilantro (for garnish)

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x=2012.

2012-01-11T09:11:00.009+01:00

This entry is in-progress. I could just save it as a draft, but I never finish anything I save as a draft, and I would like to finish this.

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I really thought I was going to write some kind of year-end wrapup for 2011. I had all that time and everything, from, say, 21 December til, say, now, and then, yeah, nothing happened. Excessive punctuation happened.

OK, useful things too. Reorganizing the apartment happened. Going out like normal people happened.

I read something about introverts a while back that seemed familiar enough to where I kind of adopted it as an explanation for why I do things. It basically said something like "extroverts thrive on social contact and are energized by it, whereas introverts are worn down by it and need time to process their experiences and recharge before continuing to be social", or something along these lines.

And basically for me, 2011 was a year of downright historical amounts of social contact, so it would make sense that the quiet aftermath would involve a proportional amount of processing time. I think at some point around October it was almost like I couldn't handle any new social/experiential input b/c I had this backlog of recent input shit that needed dealt with.

I mean yes, also, perspective: it wasn't like any of this just "happened" to me. I did it all to myself. But yeah, the two big new things I did this year, I did them at the same time: one work-related and planned, one personal and totally unplanned, and together they just tore my unprepared ass up.

What's the opposite of a phoenix? At a certain point I just devolved into this frustrated, selfish, burned-out, more-unhealthy-than-usual version of myself because it seemed like I was constantly failing at everything, including the existing personal life I'd enjoyed pre-2011.

Lessons Were Learned. Personal Growth Occurred. Etc. But: if you were engaged with me in some humanoid form throughout the March 2011-December 2011 timeframe, I'd like to simply offer you a brief but heartfelt apology and say: I think I'm better now.

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a-fusion + onze eigen willy.

2012-01-07T20:54:00.009+01:00

This is a record-breaking number of evenings out for me and Dr. Moop. Tonight's adventure started with a beer at Brouwerij De Prael, and then we relocated a couple of streets over to A*Fusion for some little various nibbles. A couple of Singhas, some sushi, a garishly marinated octopus salad (sorry guys), an unusually syrupy but somehow good hot & sour soup, Peking duck pancakes, and cha siu buns, all tasting relatively homemade and not too chock full o' preservativos.

I've always liked A*Fusion. It's a good place to go when you know you want something Asian and can't make up your mind exactly what. Plus it's a way for me to get some Peking duck for under 10 euros. And they have my favorite daikon cakes. And the staff has always been very friendly and ready to laugh. I don't know: the sushi is fresh, everything else seems pretty well-done, you could do a lot worse in Chinatown.

Then a walk through the red light district (maybe I'm getting old, but I had no idea that fisting had become mainstream enough to warrant its own dildo variant, below, on the wall, above the giant penis dildo) to In de Wildeman for a nightcap (Rogue Double Dead Guy and Rodenbach Grand Cru). Well done.

my birthday dinner.

2012-01-07T14:17:00.002+01:00

These were actually the best bitterballen I've ever had. And not just because I was rabidly hungry. Our movie at Kriterion (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) started 20 minutes late and then had the gall to last 127 more minutes. Which meant that by the time we got to Cafe Maxwell (above) to taste their supposedly delicious 14-euro burger, the kitchen was closed.

But the deep fryer was open and my blood sugar was dangerously low, so we ordered some bitterballen, which we kind of expected to be the most pathetic and bad birthday dinner ever, but they were actually way more edible than your average bitterbal. There was a hint of curry to them and, I don't know, they were just pretty much delicious. Then we had a couple more beers, then we came home and ate a bag of BBQ Baked Lays (which have somehow only just arrived in Holland) with sour cream.

vegetize me.

2012-01-04T14:15:00.004+01:00

Above, an irrelevant but delicious taleggio/sundried tomato/basil/chive/black pepper knackepizza.

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Just a note: spinach salad with hard-boiled eggs, candied pecans, red onions, a tiny bit of gorgonzola and warm bacon dressing is a great great thing. How could we do a vegetarian version of this?

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fireworks and car alarms.

2011-12-31T20:17:00.000+01:00

knäckepizza.

2011-12-29T23:19:00.004+01:00

One thing we bought at Ikea was some frozen tunnbröd. If you bake them in a hot oven for 3 or 4 minutes, they firm up, at which point you can top them with delicious things and throw them back in for a few more minutes. Every one I made was very satisfying, we'll do these again soon. This one is Västerbotten cheese, red onion, chive, and black pepper.

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hey i've got an ikea.

2011-12-29T16:49:00.006+01:00

Holy fucking shit I went to Ikea today, for the first time ever.

It was for a good cause, I swear. There's a problem we're trying to fix:

Ikea was...not as bad as I expected. I compensated myself for enduring real-live consumerism by hypocritically purchasing a handful of my favorite Swedish food items. Hypocrisy can be delicious.

~~This recipe isn't ready to be used yet~~. I thought this was exactly what I was looking for, but then we didn't end up using most of the dressing, so maybe it still needs a tweak or two. But if you're looking for something that tastes exactly like a store-bought honey dill mustard thing, this is it.

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mustard-dill sauce for salmon.

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup sweetish mustard
1 tbsp honey
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 cup-1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh dill

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chkn.

2011-12-27T18:27:00.003+01:00

Above: oliebollen and Crash, a possible first in the history of humanity.

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Well, 100M has fallen prey to yet another 2011 head cold, so we are trading out one comfort food plan (duck confit, sauerkraut, and that horseradish/butter/parsnip mash thing) for another: phở.

Bought some chicken to go into this thing, and with some of the non-necessary bits I'm doing two things: wings; and some kind of lettuce-wraps.

But I'm wondering, why did I not document the cooking process for the superamazing wings I made for Mara's birthday last year? I also don't think I documented the cooking process for this amazing phở I made this summer that involved toasted ginger. Why??? WHAT'S WRONG WITH MEEEEEEEEE??????

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UPDATE: Everything worked out fine. Turns out that you just cook the wings for like 20 minutes at 350, 20 minutes at 400, and then blast them at 450 til they're the right color. Or slower if you have time. For wings that you're coating in sauce, you can't really dry them out.

For the rest, below: chicken phở with all accompaniments; red dragon chicken/lettuce wraps, kind of a Momofuku thing, not bad; wings.

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pan pan.

2011-12-26T11:27:00.005+01:00

Above: low-lit butterscotch pudding. Very very good warm.

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Something I've never not improvised is a pan sauce for a freshly-cooked steak. Like: you take your steaks, slap 'em up with salt and pepper, toss them in a hot skillet for 2-5 minutes per side, then take them out and let them rest for 10 minutes.

While yr meat is resting, you make a pan sauce. This can go really well or you can end up with something blackly inedible, but somehow I never really considered why my bad ones ended up bad, I just remade them and they'd be OK.

Then I just read something somewhere the other night that said "after your steaks are out of the skillet and resting, let the pan cool off for a minute and then start making your sauce." DUH. And indeed this is why my sauces sometimes fucked up: too-hot skillet vaporizing my liquid instead of reducing it usefully. And by the time I fucked up the first try and started a second one, the pan was much cooler. DUH DUH DUH.

So here what was in last night's sauce, which was great, ALTHOUGH....it's more about the technique and not obliterating your sauce with an overheated slab of cast-iron.

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pan-fried steak with red wine sauce.

2 petite steaks
plenty of salt
plenty of pepper

3/4 cup to 1 cup red wine
1 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1-2 tbsp butter, depending

Follow instructions hinted at above, basically after steaks are resting, turn off heat and let skillet cool for a minute or a bit less. Throw everything in the pan on medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes, keeping an eye on it so nobody burns up. Serves 2 or so.

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review: fraîche, amsterdam.

2011-12-25T13:07:00.024+01:00

You know we don't really do restaurant reviews here in the traditional sense, but if we think there's somewhere worth going, we try to mention it in a findable way. Based on last night's experience, Fraîche is somewhere worth going.

We had a really really nice evening, so I don't want to linger too much on the less-compelling aspects of the operation, but yeah ok: bad news first. Gripe #1 and I guess really my only serious complaint is that their beer selection was severely, depressingly anemic (Brand, Amstel, and Heineken, WTF? none of those are even beer).

And because there was no beer worth drinking, I was forced to interact with the wine list, something you know I would normally never complain about (I would just shut up and drink good beer instead), but: the red wine options were weirdly unidimensionally Italianate/Sangiovese, and our time in Italy cured me of ever purposely, excitedly ordering Sangiovese, so I didn't find much joy there either.

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OK, now the good news: booze gripes aside, everything else was thoroughly cozy, efficient, and fun. For an Amsterdam restaurant, if you give me a completely charming and friendly waitstaff (check), plus good-to-great music on the stereo (check), you're halfway there. You almost don't even need to be able to cook: the food just needs to show up in a reasonable timeframe and be edible. If your music playlist includes 20 minutes' worth of Bitches Brew, you get ~~double~~ ~~quadruple~~ one zillion extra points.

The food itself: really carefully done and tasty. Not exactly mind-expanding or anything, but definitely complex, professionally cooked, well-seasoned, and most of all: careful. As in made with care, which is something we don't see a lot of around here.

Our starters were: thin slices of wild boar with cranberry jam and finely diced red cabbage; and I had confit scallop with Israeli couscous and citrus vinaigrette. The scallop was barely cooked (or had the texture of being barely cooked, not sure how a shellfish confit comes into being), the couscous was perfectly done, the citrus-y peppers and shoots on top added a nice mix of textures, and the whole thing was delicate in a way my cooking never is...I liked it very much.

Next up I had "ricotta gnocchi with pickled pumpkin, winter mushrooms, foie gras, smoked pine nuts, cheddar sauce"; ze Mara had "herb-crusted cod with Jerusalem artichoke, parsley root, baby radish, pink grapefruit, tarragon, brown butter." Both were, again, totally enjoyable if not breathtaking...I wish that the non-gnocchi components of my dish had been more assertive (pickled pumpkin + smoked pine nuts, I'm looking at you), and Mara's dish really required every component in every bite in order to really come alive...and almost everything we were served (except my scallop) seemed to benefit from a tiny tiny pinch of the coarse salt that was provided in a little dish before the meal even began, I guess maybe they're undersalting on purpose. In any event: we pretty much licked our plates clean.

Three courses were €35 per person (dessert was a nice white chocolate/mandarin mousse and a petite cheese plate), which is a very very typical price point for three courses in Amsterdam, and this is the important part: I know we've never ever had a meal anywhere else in town with such sophisticated and pretty faultless (and, again, careful) cooking at these prices. I know we'll be back very soon. A brief chat with one of the friendly American chefs revealed a couple of things: 1) that they have all kinds of very exciting plans for new venues over the next few years, and 2) you shouldn't doubt the Duck when it comes to geek knowledge like who's playing soprano on Bitches Brew (it is Wayne).

+++

Oh yeah: Xmas dinner. We're hibernating, as you know. Dinner and a movie for two is the plan. The dinner is: steak with some kind of port/Stilton sauce I haven't decided on; some kind of roasted beet and maybe cranberry relish I haven't decided on yet; garlic mashed taters; roasted parsnips with butter and horseradish maybe; some kind of salad with walnut oil I haven't decided on yet; etc. And something for dessert. That I haven't decided on yet.

Movie: The Godfather.

+++

that's all you had to say.

2011-12-22T17:58:00.005+01:00

Dutch racial insensitivity is in the news quite a bit these days, thought we'd celebrate the occasion with a pack of Negroes. Cookies, I mean.

+++

That's it. We're done with "doing stuff" for the year, as in things that involve responsibility. And it is supernice, I must say....my heart goes out to you (metaphorically) if you're not in this kind of luxurious position.

OK I mean sure there are little things to do, like sending mailorder packages, making web pages, updating spreadsheets, and oh yeah trying to get our really expensive accountants to actually finish our taxes. Fuckers.

But mostly the plan is to sit inside and play Scrabble and catch up on unwatched movies and yes, of course, cook. But otherwise nothing. Sleep. It's been a fucking ridiculous year, you have no idea. Or, yes, some of you have some idea, but the point is: this duck needs to get in the Scimulator for a while and redetermine what everything's all about.

+++

hepburn to greenspan to firestone.

2011-12-20T12:52:00.005+01:00

Above: peel-and-eat shrimp going into the oven (they're under the lemons, butter, and celery). Below: beet and goat cheese salad with a pomegranate-cumin vinaigrette and pine nuts; then the recipe for and a picture of THE BEST brownies I've had in recent memory. And I looooove brownies. These are Hilly's version of Dorie's version of Katharine Hepburn's brownies and they're perfect. Hilly's modifications were to sub pistachios for the walnuts or pecans, cut back on the cinnamon a little, and serve it with a totally lekker cardamom cream.

caesar salad deviled eggs.

2011-12-13T00:54:00.005+01:00

Above: Swami Peter at the Wildeman. +++

Tomorrow we clean the house and reward ourselves with these.

+++

Wednesday the Mara heads off to Scotland for a few days (and will hopefully be blogging about her trip on this very page!) and that evening I think I'm cooking Japanese. I mean, I'm definitely cooking dinner, I think it will be Japanese. I'm kind of in the zone with it, and since my rehearsal for tomorrow canceled, I have a little extra time to do geeky prep things like make my own okonomiyaki sauce. Here are things I'm thinking about doing:

Mini okonomiyaki (okonomiyakini?) or nasu dengaku.
Sake-rubbed roasted chicken (something I made up) with ginger-scallion, octo vinaigrette, and red dragon sauces (all Momofuku).
Quick salt pickles (Momofuku).
Furikake rice (something else that I made up but probably already exists).

Dessert? Maybe green tea ice cream?

+++

on the beet.

2011-12-12T13:30:00.013+01:00

Just made something really pretty great that I should make a note about, because I've basically been making variations of it for three days now and they're good every time. It's kind of Momofuku-based, but meatless. Bonus: it was nice with a side of hash browns.

+++

butter-browned tofu and mushrooms with ginger-scallion sauce and quick-pickled beets and cucumbers.

1/2 block firm tofu, cubed
1 cup some kind of mushroom, sliced
an onion of some sort, chopped
1 or 2 tbsp butter
2 tsp gochujang (or sriracha for a different heat)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 or 2 tsp raw sugar
salt
black pepper
1/2 cup scallions, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

from Momofuku:
2 tbsp ginger-scallion sauce
kimchi puree (optional)
quick pickled cucumbers
quick pickled beets

Saute mushrooms in dry pan until nicely browned. Remove. Add butter, tofu, and onion, saute on low heat until tofu is nicely browned. Return mushrooms and add everything else except kimchee puree and pickles. Saute for a few more minutes, adjust seasoning, serve with kimchi puree and pickles as garnish.

+++

round town.

2011-12-12T01:57:00.023+01:00

Tonight we got a wild hair and went to four places, count 'em FOUR PLACES for drinks. Brief notes follow.

Bridges is in the space where the old Cafe Roux used to be. When we were at In de Wildeman on Friday, we asked a chef friend of ours if he had any recent eating tips and he told us that Bridges seemed nice and that they hadn't blinked at his shabby attire when he dropped in (though in retrospect it was unclear if he'd actually eaten there or just had drinks), so we decided to check it out tonight since we were kind of in the hood.

The decor (pictured, kind of, above) seemed cold and modern at first but actually kind of grew on me as we sat there. It was not our preferred crowd really, maybe it's that wines by the glass were (by my standards) extremely expensive for Europe, up to 16/glass for reds. I did a flight of Pinot Noir (15 euro), because I am FUCKING SOPHISTICATED (and because it made me feel like my glasses of wine cost 5 each), and it was interesting but I didn't fall in love.

The gratis bar snacks were poorly chosen enough to make me not want to order any other food there: twenty roasted cashews (plus two rogue almonds); four huge green olives; and several sticks of julienned courgette, carrot, and daikon served with a curry aioli, which was just totally ill-conceived and called into question the soundness of the entire menu's Asian fusion-y leanings, especially at these prices (most of the apps were above 20 euro, including a 26 euro miso soup). So we finished our drinks and left.

We went down the street to Van Kerkwijk, which used to be a favorite back when we lived nearby a few years ago. We sat at the bar, and immediately realized that things had changed somehow. They only had Brand and Amstelbok for beer and only merlot by the glass (the horror!, i know, but still), the music was shitty, the bartender half-heartedly tried to wipe off the bar when we sat down, but there was this hardened piece of goat cheese stuck on there and she just mushed it around a little and then kind of shrugged and left the crusty part there. Some limp and boring-looking salads sat at the pass the entire time we were there. I don't know, something was wrong, nothing about it filled us with confidence, so we finished our drinks and left.

By this time we were actually getting hungry, so I suggested that we just find something comparatively cheap and greasy like Pasodoble in the Jordaan. So that's where we went. But on the way there we passed De Zagerij (strangely outdated website, no?), which I thought looked kind of promising, so we went in. The menu looked OK, almost really good, and it was a welcoming room, the music was good (old Elvis [Presley]), but yeah, the bartender was giving off this strangely disinterested vibe (imagine that, in Amsterdam). And the menu wasn't sealing the deal, although the smells from the kitchen were pretty yummy. So we finished our drinks and left.

Our high spirits were somehow undiminished by the time we got to Pasodoble (I think our expectations have been permanently lowered, yay!!!). And if you go there, your expectations should be low, something like "well-seasoned, garlicky, decently-fried food in a friendly setting", and then you won't be disappointed. I don't think you could call the food here anything better than OK, but it made us quite happy at the time, way more than any 26 euro plate of scallops and foie gras would have, IMHFO.

I mean, yes, I'm pretty sure their calamari and patatas bravas come out of a bag from the freezer. But I would SO MUCH rather do this than be disappointed by some sloppy, overcomplicated yet careless, mis-seasoned train wreck for twice the price. And there are some nice things here, one especially delicious homemade-seeming thing we had was a chef's special croqueta di jamon with goat cheese, and their gambas pil-pil were good as always. The wine was surprisingly drinkable, the service was friendly and competent as usual, and so yes overall, mission very much accomplished. And then we finished our drinks and left.

+++

steak ssäm.

2011-12-10T22:36:00.009+01:00

It's what we made tonight. Steak. Ginger-scallion sauce. Kimchi puree. Also a buttermilk-sriracha dressing. Also quick-pickled beets and cucumbers. Just look here.

Why did we make all this fun stuffs? We was hung over b/c the Winter of Death made us drink. For those of you not here: it's coooold. And windy. And there's like 3 hours of daylight.

OK more like 6. And it's not even really cold yet. My point is, we went to In de Wildeman with Klary and Zora and Swami Peter and stayed for several hours and now we're hung over so we're inside cooking Momofuku food.

It's weather that's made for being inside. And in this apartment, being inside means not only cooking but also watching movies. We tend to accumulate DVDs in spurts, one side effect of which is that we don't always have time/inclination to watch everything when it shows up at our door. One side effect of which is that we have some pretty great movies just sitting around waiting for us to look at them.

I just went out to Metacritic and looked at their Highest Scores of All Time (which, yes, I realize is not the same as Greatest Movies of All Time, but), and from that list the things we have at home that I've yet to watch is: Fanny and Alexander; Pan's Labyrinth; 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days; Beau Travail; The Lives of Others; Eyes Without a Face; Tarnation; Songs From the Second Floor. Not a bad place to start, and that's just things that have either been released or re-released since 1995 or so.

+++

i reach out from the inside.

2011-12-08T10:24:00.009+01:00

If you know me at all, you probably know I don't like telephones.

Illustrative anecdote: It's 10am, I just came in from a long hot shower (our shower is out in the hallway). From upstairs I heard the sound of the white noise generator aka Taifun aka loud-as-hell antique-looking black metal (!) fan, so I assumed the Mara was still asleep.

Suddenly the house phone rings (vs. one of our mobiles), a semi-shocking, impolite, and unmodifiable sound. Roughly five people on earth have this phone number, and at this hour it can/should not be anyone we know unless they've just been shot or stabbed or otherwise intruded upon, but the idea of someone calling us as an emergency measure is pretty tragically misguided.

It rings again, jolting me out of my "who could this possibly be" thoughts. Instead of continuing to think, I immediately execute my default pre-noon phone-ringing behavior, which is to deftly remove the phone cable from the phone, thus returning The Pod to its preferred state in one swift antisocial motion.

A beat of silence, and then from upstairs I hear, "You dipshit, it's me."

This would be an artifact of days gone by, when our house used to be of a size/shape where the person just waking up in the upstairs bedroom would call the already-awoken person downstairs in the kitchen to request delivery of one or more breakfast items (or tiems, as I just typed).

So: pleeeeease. Don't feel bad if you call and I don't answer. It's so not personal.

+++

snert, inburgering, vertrutting, enz.

2011-12-07T11:32:00.004+01:00

For a table that consisted of four Americans and one Nederlander, we sure did spend a lot of time talking about all things Dutch last night. And yes, the tone may have been bordering on critical (bordering? critical? one of these words is not quite right), but maybe it's like that situation where, for example, a high school English teacher singles out one student in her classroom to always be Hamlet, or Macbeth, or whatever character has the most lines in whatever play the class is reading aloud, so that he'll (the student) have to stay awake and possibly even learn something about the play. Because she (the teacher) sees amazing potential in him that he is squandering away by enacting all kinds of petty, control-freak laws about where people can drink and smoke, what time of day they an do it, and whether or not they an sit or stand during the act. Etc.

+++

Pre-coffee mixed-metaphor experiments aside, last night's meal was pretty much the best Dutch meal ever, seriously. Plus we got to complain about all kinds of things you're not supposed to be able to complain about, like children and immigrants. Good times.

Above: Hollandse garnalen (tiny Dutch shrimp) with cream and chives in Belgian endive. Below: Goudse kaasbolletjes (Gouda cheese puffs), ambachtelijk osseworst (artisanally smoked beef sausage?), cornichons, and mustard; smoked eel on grilled toast (possibly my favorite bite of the evening); superlatively pork-y split pea soup; a delicious dessert pile-up of stoofperen, boterkoek with ginger, homemade advocaat, and whipped cream. Plus lots of beer and jenever. And wine? Jesus. But I really do feel totally fine today.

P.S: If you've ever wondered what the opposite of sympathy is, it's "fuck you".

+++

burger bar, belated.

2011-12-02T13:29:00.006+01:00

Discovering my Prael/Wildeman/BurgerBar pics on my phone made me realize that I never made an original post about the night itself.

Mid-October, the moop and I grabbed the bull by his proverbial horns and had a night out together. A brief but diverting evening of beer ended with burgers at Burger Bar.

I had a vague recollection of having eaten there a year or so ago, but beer was probably also involved then and the details had become extra fuzzy. If pressed, I would say that it wasn't good enough to go out of my way for, and the primary disappointers were the the bun and the condiments.

Having found ourselves at In De Wildeman, and hungry, this seemed an opportune moment to try again. Here's the previously-published picture of us planning our Burgers:

At Burger Bar, you get a choice of four different kinds of beef, and there's possibly one vegetarian option these days, can't 'member. You can also choose four different burger sizes. Here's an old menu, b/c their website is currently unusable.

We went for one Black Angus with blue cheese and bacon and one Irish beef with cheddar and bacon. Here's what they looked like when we got them home:

Note the array of condiments. This is b/c mustard is not on the list of default condiments (WTF). Instead you get something along the lines of a "special sauce" which is kind of like Thousand Island but not really. If you are not doing carefully-composed burgers like Burgermeester, and you are serving nothing but beef burgers and located in the tourist center of a city, I can imagine that you have now had people request ketchup and mustard on their burgers roughly 300,000 times. You should learn something from this: everyone will be happier if you just put it on the menu.

The burgers themselves. Beef fine, cooked nicely medium. Bun? Not quite right, too big, a bit plush and tasteless. Overall, a fine late-night post-beer burger for a city that has very few real burger options, but frankly Burgermeester kicks this burger in the ass, hard, in terms of inspired combinations and general deliciousness. Also? these fries were a waste of time and calories, not crisp enough.

+++

barely manilow.

2011-12-01T13:06:00.012+01:00

~~One of the best things about having a blog that no one reads is that you can start a post with a picture of a chocolate mousse swastika.~~

Turns out you can't, our in-house censors nixed that shit. The presentation in question was the most conventionally tasteless moment (initialize segue!) of Tuesday's dinner at Johnny and Mila's: the food itself was extremely and surprisingly (sorry Johnny) tasty: habanero-y steak burritos with excellent guac, a roasted tomato/chipotle salsa made by us, and prefect black beans. Really good.

And then came dessert, tasteless presentations, and a Final Tastelessness so gruesome that I can neither say what happened nor show you the one picture I took of it. Way worse than the swastika. It probably suffices to say that if you know Johnny D. then you can imagine how/where things went.

time out.

2011-11-28T12:20:00.005+01:00

I'm in love with my bed. This is awesome.
Unrelatedly, I'm finally taking 4 months' worth of cellphone pics off my phone. Let's catch up, shall we?

Here's the truffled egg salad/beef burger from Burgermeester:

Here's me about ready to go all Office Space on this FAX machine that WOULD NOT FAX my Italian bureaucracy back in October.

Here's a sunny afternoon at Stork.

Here's a very foggy night about two weeks ago, it was great.

Here's the tosti maker from the Grand in Groningen. One morning when the kitchen staff came in it was missing and there was near hysteria. It is everyone's favorite appliance.

Here's Mara testing the skeleton/Tele rig.

The next four pictures are one night. Mara and I started at De Prael, which was very pleasant until we got kicked out for crashing a private party. So we went to In De Wildeman, where we planned our attack on the Burger Bar.

+++

This recipe exists elsewhere on this site, but this is the updated version so yeah.

+++

carrot-ginger soup with creme fraiche.

1 medium onion
5 large carrots
2 inches of ginger, grated
4 cloves garlic
1 granny smith apple
1 red apple
1 can mandarin oranges with liquid
2 tsp cumin seed, ground
1 T ground coriander seed
1 tsp cayenne
2 cups vegetable broth

Chop ingredients where necessary, saute a bit, add liquid, then simmer until tender. Blend with hand
blender or alternatively, a food processor until smooth. Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Garnish with cilantro, croutons and creme fraiche/sour cream.

+++

satellite kitchen.

2011-11-27T14:52:00.015+01:00

Above: real productivity in the studio. Coming soon to this post: documentation of Prod Ass's stellar cooking efforts during our tenure in Groningen. The Scimulon was really on her game, this was all pretty perfect home cooking, just not done at home.

OK, but then she just saw this below list of things she made at the Grand, and said "it looks like I can't cook. Look at how simple all that stuff is." Yes, but you're cooking for 4 to 6 people every night, one vegetarian, and the idea is to make something that is delicious without being incapacitating, interesting without being scary or weird, nutritious without being boring, and inexpensive enough not to break the budget. I thought these were all great solutions to the problem.

Middle: Fennel, Celery, and Citrus salad. Bottom: a Prod Ass product that ended up on the cutting room floor.

+++

Tuesday
Thyme-crusted warm goat cheese salad with blueberries and candied walnuts in a honey-mustard vinaigrette.
Carrot and coriander soup with creme fraiche and homemade croutons.

Wednesday
Polpetti di tonno with red sauce and tagliatelle.

Thursday
Salmon salad with chile-lemon dressing.
Smoked trout and corn chowder.

Sunday
Fennel, celery and citrus salad with apple cider-balsamic reduction.
Mango caprese with basil vinaigrette.
Pasta puttanesca and fettucini alfredo.
French apple cake.

Monday
Shrimp, sage, and saffron risotto.
Caesar salad.

+++

coming up from under.

2011-11-27T12:42:00.003+01:00

Where to begin?

Maybe here: I just went to the grocery store to buy "everything" because we had "nothing". No crackers, no bread, no vegetables, no fruit, no fish, no nothing. Our refrigerators contained only condiments, butter, and milk. And old cheese.

Or we could maybe begin with some Lessons Learned. One is that sick people don't make awesome pallbearers. Over the past few days, Anat and I were experiencing varying degrees of physical malfunction, and when you're carrying a "dead" body on your shoulders, you can immediately feel any weakness in your fellow carriers b/c suddenly you're doing more work. And if there are only two of you and you're both a bit unsteady on your feet...it's exciting stuff.

But we managed to escape our four Amsterdam performances with only one minor meltdown: the night after the premiere (apparently well-known for being a night of potential trouble) I was kind of in a limbo of true sickness and untested cough medicine that rendered me incapable of walking properly, planning ahead, or dealing with anything unexpected on stage. So of course this is the night we paid someone 600 euro to come film the thing.

I'd struggled through the first 40 minutes of the performance, but when it came time for my funeral, my guitar was suddenly distressingly out of tune, and it just got worse as the song went on. By the time the song was supposed to be building to its climax, the chords coming out of my guitar were neither predictable nor really recognizable as traditional elements of pop music. Apparently the amount of frustrated this made me was visible to the audience and received many positive comments afterwards ("It was so nice to see real anger onstage!"), but as a musical performance I think "disaster" comes pretty close to summing it up.

Hopefully there's a happy ending: the person who was filming came back the next night (last night) and I'd say our performance was roughly 6000% better, wobbly pallbearers notwithstanding. Fingers crossed for an unblemished photo/video/audio registration.

+++

refuel.

2011-11-18T18:52:00.002+01:00

pinned back.

2011-11-12T09:49:00.001+01:00

Above: the same picture I always take of Groningen. Below: Vera, right around the corner, and below that, Pinback on stage at Vera in what turned out to be a surprisingly awesome show.

+++

like ships.

2011-11-10T07:35:00.002+01:00

Still experimenting with light. Don't worry, I'm only showing things here that have been discarded already. .

+++

prod ass.

2011-11-09T09:11:00.000+01:00

Prod Ass (aka production assistant aka Mara) cooked her first dinner at the Grand last night: warm goat cheese salad with blueberries and candied pecans + a lovely carrot and coriander soup with creme fraiche, cilantro, and homemade croutons. Meanwhile, I just took a (dirt) nap downstairs.

+++

light reading.

2011-11-07T18:38:00.000+01:00

In Groningen, playing with light.

+++

status.

2011-11-06T07:26:00.000+01:00

Light at end of tunnel. Let's hope it's not the proverbial train. Off to Groningen for 10 days of hard work and a hopefully proportional amount of fun.

Above: my first (and probably last) frietje kapsalon. An unintegrated and kind of pointless mashup.

+++

korte pauze.

2011-10-23T15:14:00.003+02:00

Oof, what's happening? Just coming up for air after living at the studio for a couple weeks (I just checked, actually it's only been one week, which is just crazy). Looking for pictures to illustrate what I've been up to, I realized that I need to be taking more of them. Here's what I've got: above, the Tele; below, post-run debrief; below, a very delicious lasagna with pesto and potatoes from the Milan airport, not something I would usually order, but all the Italians were ordering it, and they obviously knew what they were doing cause it was super.

parma & co. / osteria dei poeti.

2011-10-13T12:23:00.006+02:00

The most important thing to know here is that there's a picture of strozzapretti with 'nduja below. And I ate all of it.

+++

darkroom.

2011-10-13T00:53:00.000+02:00

Here's how we spent our Saturday night in Milan...and someone finally took some photos of us (ok, well of HBF) that seem to reflect something of the piece's spirit: these lovely shots are by Valentina Bianchi. I mean, yes, you can't quite tell that the iteration shooting herself in the face above (with booze, OK?) is a pregnant majorette, so you miss a layer or two, but the images themselves are buonissimi.

domenica.

2011-10-12T04:17:00.004+02:00

After our show Saturday night, which found us drinking enormous beers and less-so glasses of grappa in the not-so-cool TV room of our hotel while a terrrrrrible-looking Samuel L. Jackson movie (dubbed into Italian of course) played nearly silently in front of us, we decided that we'd meet for lunch on Sunday in the heart of Milan. Since HBF had a master class to teach at 10:30am (snicker snicker), the deal was that Floriaan and I would research a good vegetarian-friendly place that was open on Sunday and she'd meet us there after her class.

Frankly, Floriaan and I ended up delivering a master class of our own, a master class in how not to research your lunch destination. We showed up with a couple of addresses and hoped they'd be open. They were not open, in fact every street that didn't lead directly to the Duomo looked like this:

Clock ticking, we just followed our manly instincts and ended up at what must have been one of the best possible places near the Duomo, called Pizzeria Al 50-Da Geggio. The place was full of Italians, the waiters were friendly, the prices were reasonable, my pappardelle with a ragu of San Daniele prosciutto was perfect, and the finocchiona/parmesan plate beforehand was also super.

+++

airport.

2011-10-11T13:35:00.000+02:00

I love Italy. I love Italians. I love Italian. I've re-realized all of this this weekend. I've also realized that one of the smartest things I've ever done was to not move to Italy.

If last week's bureaucratic runaround didn't convince me, my visit to the post office just did. 37 minutes to mail a postcard. There were 6 people in line. Nothing is easy at an Italian post office. When I finally got to the counter, the guy was all like "where's the stamp, I can't mail this without a stamp, etc". I'm like why the fuck do you think I've been standing in line for 37 minutes? I don't have a stamp. etc.

I'm totally not complaining. I'm hurrahing myself for not ruining another thing I love by becoming over-familiar with it, which is what moving to Italy as planned would've been. I've had a great time over the past few days, despite almost zero sleep.

mi piacerebbe un gelato.

2011-10-06T12:01:00.002+02:00

Off to Milano tomorrow, hopefully. It's been a long long week of furious work and even more furious Italian bureaucracy...we'll know if we had any success with either this afternoon.

+++

masterburger.

2011-10-02T10:37:00.002+02:00

Cellphone pic of a mini trio from Burgermeester, whose burgers have gotten really good, at least at the Plantage Kerklaan location. This is salmon/asparagus/creme fraiche/chives, Spanish lamb + chorizo + jalapenos, and beef/pancetta/truffled egg salad.

+++

de kat.

2011-09-26T20:51:00.003+02:00

More photos by Jenny. Lunch at De Kat in de Wijngaert. Tosti with salami, chorizo, and cheese; uitsmijter with two eggs, mushrooms and ham (and cheese); tuna melt (with cheese). All properly cheesy, in the best way.

around the bend.

2011-09-25T22:47:00.006+02:00

Photos by Jenny.

+++

Note to self: next time you don't feel like cooking, this is a smarter option than most. Terang Boelan's bami rames was interestingly spiced (we had beef rendang, chicken curry, and sayur lodeh), and their lemper was the best I've ever had. And there was a line out the door, making me think that the 22 items I didn't taste might also be good. Thinking about doing it again tonight.

albert cuyp and spui.

2011-09-25T00:59:00.005+02:00

Maoz: still my favorite falafel in Amsterdam by a large margin. Scarves. Monkfish faces. Palm tattoo. Small fries at Vleminckx. Me Gorgeous! Photos mostly by Jen.

down in the south.

2011-09-24T10:11:00.003+02:00

Our long-time friend Jenny-jen is in town for the weekend and so we're eating, drinking, and smoking like tourists. Yesterday was kind of a ramp-up day, you know, just easing into it. We went to Langedijk (because Brouwerij 't IJ was having a private party) for beer and frites; then we sat for a spell at the Magere Brug in the sun. Then home for salmon + chile salad and Jen-made fresh berry mascarpone tart with a speculoos crust. Nice.

Today: Maoz and mussels. And Albert Cuyp.

+++

die.

2011-09-20T12:33:00.011+02:00

I think in order for ranting to really be done properly, one needs to be both appropriately inspired (the easy part), and then have the time to carefully hone one's pointy pointy thoughts into some kind of venomous perfection.

Today, I, sadly, only have the former, and what is it over, you may ask, if your English has been destroyed by living in Europe like mine has: it is over music stores.

Yes. I'll be sad if/when the last physical bookstore closes and we then buy all of our reading material online. And I'll seriously lament the shuttering of the last record shop or adventurous film/DVD seller (FUCK: since writing this, I learn that it has in fact already happened).

But music stores, the places where you go to interrupt bored, jaded employees from whatever it is they're doing besides knowing anything about their products or whether their mysterious products are even in their store at any given moment....these stores I will happily watch slide into the bog/sea of pre-Internet yesteryear or whatever.

How bad could they be? you might ask if you've never been to one. Forget for a moment the ever-present teenage guitarists stumbling their way through Stairway or Sabbath (still? still these same songs?). It's not just that you have to ask for someone's help once you're there (unlike a bookstore or record store). It's that 99.38% of the time, that person upon whom you depend in order to continue shopping is profoundly uninterested in helping you do anything except feel like an intruder. Actual conversation from this morning on my way out the door of Dijkman.:

2nd Employee I've Talked To So Far: can i help you with anything?
Me: yeah, I was looking for the Alesis Micron, but your colleague said you didn't have one.
2EITTSF: Oh, sure we do, it's in a box.
Me: Wow, great. I'm trying to compare it against that microKORG over there that I just listened to, I need to buy one of the two very soon.
2EITTSF: Ah, OK.

(silence and head nodding for a bit)

Me: So, is there any chance I can listen to the Micron?
2EITTSF: Yeah, well...it's still in the box.
Me: Yeah. Yeah. It's just that....I kind of need to play it before I buy it.
2EITTSF: Mmm.
Me: I mean, I could just buy it online...for less money, without leaving my house, while having an experience that is in every way less defeating than this one...I could do that, if only I didn't need to actually hear this piece of equipment before giving you 400 euros for it. Because it's a musical instrument. And that's the one reason your store still exists, because this is where I can come hear it.
2EITTSF: Mmm.

OK, that's a bit of an embellishment. What actually happened is that 2EITTSF said "Mmm, yes, hold on a minute please", and then went and answered a phone call and started looking for something for whoever was on the phone and forgot all about me.

Before the above conversation, I'd asked if I could see something else and:

Employee 1 said, "Ah, yes, sorry, we're sold out of that."
I say, "Ah, your web site said you have it in stock."
"Ah, yes, we don't."
Me, looking around for 3 seconds and spotting one on the shelf: "IT'S RIGHT FUCKING THERE, YOU LAZY FUCKING DOUCHE."

Actually what I said was,
"Ehhh.....isn't that one right there?"
He says: "Oh! Yes, you're right."
Me: "Could I possibly fucking look at it you lazy fucking douche? AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE killkillkillkilllkillkillkilllkilllkillkill..."
Him: "Mmm".

Actually what I said was...

ETC
ETC
ETC

+++

cruel to be kind.

2011-09-17T05:34:00.003+02:00

Above: Jacopo and cake, photographer unknown, possibly me.

+++

Sleep rhythms have entered interesting pattern, there's typically 90 minutes of being awake between 4 and 7, but then sleep returns and the net result is kind of like actually having slept. In the absence of utterly undisturbed rest, this will do just fine.

Still there's the question of what to do with this 90 minutes that won't stimulate the brain in the wrong direction. Usually it ends with musings over cooking, one of the still-relaxing things I sometimes do. And so, here we are, with a brief list of things that are on the Upcoming Meal Radar.

Chickpeas with Sage and Brown Butter.

Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Red Onion, Lemon and Pecorino

Warm Red and Black Quinoa Salad with Roasted Kale and Beets

Steak Teriyaki with Pickled Pear

+++

okonomiyaki red.

2011-09-05T23:26:00.006+02:00

Yeah. Okonomiyaki are still great. Today's were even made with almond flour and red cabbage, and yes they were still unceaselessly rocking and a-rolling and whatnot. I'm thinking it's one of them infallible-type recipes.

More fallible was our homemade okonomiyaki sauce, but still good enough, recipe to follow. And for dessert may I recommend the banana-cardamom milkshake with a twist of lime.

+++

okonomiyaki sauce.

2 tbsp tomato puree
2 tbsp Heinz ketchup
1/3 cup worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp syrup from the preserved ginger jar
7 tbsp dashi
corn starch slurry for thickening

+++

what to do.

2011-09-02T13:35:00.053+02:00

Above: Flevopark today.

+++

There's a nice new beermaker in town, de 7 deugden, and wanting to tell the hypothetical you about that reminded me that I have a friend coming to visit soon, which reminded me again that I should re-start paying attention to what the good things to do in town are.

Back when we first moved here and all of our friends were still childless so they had time/money/irresponsiblity enough to come and visit us (seriously), and we used to have this document we would give them called "shit close to the shop". It was a semi-comprehensive list of every good address in town we knew, organized by whether or not it was close to our record shop or close to our apartment.

Since my tour guide instinct had been reawakened, I'd been thinking about this document and lamenting its loss, when plotseling I just accidentally found it like 8 minutes ago while I was doing something totally unrelated.

So, here it is, thoroughly in the process of being revamped, since it's mostly 6 years old. My goal is to have it full of "only places I would happily go right now, today".

+++

shit
close
to
the
shop

+++

LEIDSEPLEIN
blauwe theehuis freaky blue spaceship in the park, good in sun

soup en zo, nieuwe spiegelstraat 54 tasty soups, salads to go, a bit $$$

maoz falafel, leidsestraat 85 cheap and wondrous and as spicy as you can take it
cafe de spuyt, korte leidsedwarsstraat 86 newish beer place
a taste of culture, korte ledsedwarsstraat 139, terrible name but supposed to be great chinese food, open late
eijlders, korte leidsedwarsstraat 47 old-school bruin cafe, worth a beer

de zotte, ramstraat 29 great music, better belgian beer selection and good eats
de klos, kerkstraat 41 bar/cafe with good steaks
sumo all you can eat japanese, but supposedly good

+++

RED LIGHT/ZEEDIJK/WATERLOOPLEIN

lastage very well-reviewed french, haven't been yet, expensive

de engelbewaarder the real jazz bar (music on sundays), decent food
brouwerij de prael newish microbrewery with weird but good ambience

sluyswacht old-ass cafe/bar mostly useful for terrace
new king good but comparatively expensive chinese

lokaal ‘t loosje cafe/bar on nieuwmarkt, good peoplewatching

bird above-average thai

greenhouse coffeeshop

vijaya good indian

latei breakfast
staalmeesters not-very-cool cafe with decent food, open holidays
nyonya malaysia express zero atmosphere, good malaysian

de tokoman my favorite broodje pom

+++

DAM/SPUI

het schuim art bar, kind of an odd vibe but i like very much
~~van kerkwijk cafe/restaurant, good people, above average food~~

gollem they have every beer

in de wildeman quiet old great bar with interesting beer
belgique more great beer
de buurvrouw late, usually fun bar
the minds another late bar that ron usually drags us to
nes-cafe seedy as fuck but good beer and weed-friendly, til 03:00 wkends
‘t gasthuis student bar/restaurant, edible food, kind of a last resort
vleminckx best frites in town sold through a hole in the wall
lanskroon real stroopwafels

UTRECHTSESTRAAT

vooges nothing special, but OK for a drink and a bite

JORDAAN

de kat in de wijngaert good bar, good breakfast
de oranjerie evening bar, decent steaks
't arendsnest great local beer
singel 404 nearly legendary sandwiches
de doffer open very late for drinking
sound garden punkish but friendly bar with nice terras in back
patisserie mercan my quintessential turkish pizza
cafe de tuin tweede tuindwarsstraat 13 pleasant dark bar
la perla real italian wood-fired pizza
la oliva interesting and expensive spanish tapas, heard the service is "below average", which for amsterdam is scary as shit
fraiche great, subtle, sophisticated, affordable, relaxed American prix fixe menus
som tam excellent thai takeaway, best thai i've had in town
yam yam pretty good pizza

WESTERPARK
nassau our default bar/meeting place in good weather
westergasterras calm terrace in the park
pont 13 boat eating off in nowhereland
marius my favorite restaurant in amsterdam, u gots to reserve
gouden reael atmospheric little bar near marius, don't know about food

OVERTOOM/WEST
l'affiche sweet little bar with nice terras
fenan klein afrika best eritrean/ethiopian in town

kashmir lounge coffeeshop
tomatillo edible burritos, not cheap
kismet good turkish, no atmosphere but cheap
toko suriya decent surinamese, i like their sopropo
planet rose real jamaican, haven't tried yet
lab 111 i spend a lot of time here b/c of work, stick with apps
gollem proeflokaal good beer/wine/food
in de baars tapas in the BoLo
riaz good surinamese, comparatively pricey but decent ambiance

EAST
brouwerij 't IJ great local beer and terras

cafe kadijk indonesian eetcafe, small, expensive menu but supposedly great
frank's smoke house great little takeaway smokehouse with one table
maxwell cafe all around nice pub, w/quiz on mondays, strangely good bitterballen
comfort caffee italian eetcafe
wilde zwijnen good basic homey cooking
't wethoudertje biological snackbar/patat stand, have heard mixed reviews
delicatessen tiny music venue/gallery
kaiko sushi
the taco shop american people making edible tex-mex burritos, good pork

GETAWAYS
de jufferen lunsingh, westervelde
de kop van 't land, dordrecht

+++

hög tid.

2011-09-01T10:02:00.005+02:00

Mara: "My tracking cookies know exactly what I want. They're the only ones that really love me."
Me: (edits blog entry)

+++

OK, one last Swedish thing I have to mention has to do with the breakfasts there. I don't have time to write that right now (and actually I'm not sure how much I need to add to what Robyn just wrote about it...maybe I would just add that it doesn't seem to be nearly as strict as she suggests...), but I can mention the best sandwich I had in a week full of great sandwiches:

It's a slice of anise-and cinnamon-spiced plommonbröd (sourdough rye bread with plums or prunes), with Västerbotten cheese and a perfect nectarine on top. This bread was AWESOME, but they were sold out when I tried to get a loaf to bring home. I think this bakery's recipe was kind of a cross between trad plommonbröd and limpa bread ('nother recipe here). So good.

+++

gloomlifter.

2011-08-31T13:16:00.009+02:00

This is my last post about Sweden for a while I imagine, just you know, finishing some thoughts.

+++

Culturally, the Swedes were an interesting change of pace. They were gloriously quiet, on the verge of uncomfortably so (especially in restaurants), but mostly it was wonderful. On the bus, in a restaurant, everywhere except a bar, there's a real awareness of how much noise you're emitting, and coming from Amsterdam, not known for its sedate restraint, this was ehhhh.....relaxing.

Also? People were generally superpersonable. I had zero non-friendly interactions with anyone, even in a bar late at night, and without exception everyone in the public/retail/restaurant sector seemed to understand that being friendly and quietly enthusiastic is not a terrible thing. I'm sure that this would change a little bit had I been in bigger cities, but as it was, it left me with the feeling that the Swedes are a placid, helpful, inquisitive, courteous bunch.

+++

On the critical side: there is definitely something bizarre going on here with their relationship to alcohol. I had heard via a Norwegian friend of Mara's named Fred that shit was fucked up, but I just kind of assumed it was just him. It's not.

What Fred said was that, on the weekends, the goal there is to get falling-down drunk, like toppling into a snowbank and not being found til morning drunk. But if you have more than a beer or glass of wine with dinner on Monday, people become very concerned about you. And the idea of a lunch cocktail is nearly criminal. I saw this firsthand.

This all seemed many times more alien after going from Sweden to Berlin, where (as I've said before) everyone who's not at work drinks beer all day long, everywhere. If you go into a corner grocery store and bring a bottle of beer to the cashier, they assume you want it opened right then so you can begin drinking it. And this is not like homeless person behavior...at least in summertime, which is the only time I've ever been there. It's young parents with babies in strollers, old people holding hands, etc. It seemed like a very adult place compared to Sweden.

The strict Swedish drunk-driving laws were a bit discomfiting. I believe that they probably do save lives by intimidating people into not drinking and getting behind the wheel. But as an American (an American who loves beer), the concept of monitoring your drinking Saturday night because you're scared of a breathalyzer roadblock Sunday morning at 10am? File that under This Would Never Fly In America.

Not that I saw enough policemen for this to even matter. Being on the road for roughly 14 hours, I saw two police cars, both interested in something besides my BAC.

They might have been going to put an injured animal out of its misery: in Sweden, if you hit an animal on the road and it escapes into the woods or wherever it came from, you're supposed to pull over, go to the place where you last saw it, and tie a piece of fabric around a convenient fence or tree. Then you call the police and report it. It's illegal to not do this. Then the police come and try to find the animal and rescue it, or failing that, deliver a mercy killing.

+++

deep breath.

2011-08-29T13:26:00.001+02:00

Wow, like three days at home. With no real responsibilities. Just Scrabble, moviewatching (Mike Leigh's Another Year and Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line so far), cooking, viruscleaning, and coughing. Yeah, I caught HBF's cough in Berlin I think and now I sound like a robot version of myself when I talk. My writing sounds about the same though I think.

So I''m drinking an assload of ginger tea (ginger, lemon, honey) and just laying low. We're cooking for Amsterdam's Newest Americans tonight so I imagine there'll be a recipe here eventually even though most of the components are well documented: mung bean gyoza with scallion oil and sriracha soy sauce; fresh basil rolls with shrimp, mango, hoisin, peanuts; noodles in peanut sauce.

+++

counter-clockwise.

2011-08-27T08:46:00.004+02:00

UPDATE: Pushed to the top due to new photos and text.

+++

Once again I find myself writing about a vacation in retrospect, which I guess is good because it means I was so busy vacationizing that I didn't have computer time/access. I mean I'm actually too busy at this very moment to be blogging, but I wrote most of this post in the Stockholm airport a few days ago, so I'm just adding photos now. Chronology out of joint, yo.

Retrospectivizing: on the other hand, as I think I've said, writing in retrospect be's difficult because your fresh and vital first impressions are not nearly as fresh and vital ten days later, and so every missed day's post is coming from the same, quickly solidifying post-vacation perspective, etc etc etc.

But yeah, what can we do about that now, nothing, I guess we forge ahead.

+++

The post-vacation me wants to talk about Sweden first. This being my worst-researched vacation ever, I really didn't know what to expect, physically (in terms of the landscape), culturally, etc.

It's nothing like Italy, which you've seen in books and movies and travel shows for so long that when you finally go there you're barely surprised by anything except how much "more so" everything is than what it was depicted as.

And I guess that's why my primary impression of Sweden is one of quiet surprise: it's a completely beautiful country full of seemingly endless forests and lakes and hilly farmland, and very few people. And the light. Light like this makes anything/everything look better.

If there's anything bad to say here, it's that it's kind of monotonously beautiful, although I covered only a tiny portion of the northeastern coast, and you could probably say the same thing about many northeastern coasts around the world. But as I was driving this weekend, I tried to imagine the whole thing covered in a foot or two of snow for six months at a time and, yeah, I can't say that the abnormally high Swedish suicide rate didn't cross my mind.

+++

My quiet surprise completely extended to the food. I ate much, much better here than during my two-week-long wander through France a couple years ago, and nearly as well as we ate in Sardinia last year. I mean, on the page/screen, the food might not radiate excitement, but seriously, everything (with the exception of one cup of gas station coffee and a couple of pastries here and there) was very carefully prepared, perfectly seasoned, and fresh, fresh, fresh.

Admittedly, I was kind of in the palm of their hand: the food here is based on things I like. Fish, game, sausage, and liquor. But to be traveling in a foreign country unresearched and not have a bad meal is definitely noteworthy. Thinking back, some of the credit for this must go to Britt, who made 2 or 3 totally impressive dinners at home, and was constantly (quietly), off-handedly filling the fridge with a stream of preserved fish and fruit.

In kind of an Italian or French way, the quality of the ingredients pushed everything in the direction of absolute goodness. We had herring served a number of ways with potatoes, just herring out of a jar, sounds unpromising, but it's all quite a bit more subtle and complex than the marinated herring we see here in Amsterdam. These dishes were all really simple and unexpectedly delicious, and not nearly as fishy as they sound, especially the ones with caviar, which was mild, cold, refreshing, and difficult to stop eating, my favorite caviar ever.

Below: two of the many herring varieties sold by Abba (not the band); herring in dill cream and herring roe sauce with roasted potatoes; herring in a clove, allspice, and anchovy marinade with red onions, sour cream, and mashed potatoes on knackebrod; bleak roe caviar and butter on knackebrod.

+++

little things.

2011-08-27T08:39:00.002+02:00

Würgeengel (The Exterminating Angel) was one of my favorite Berlin experiences this time around: an excellent cocktail bar with serious bartenders and an extremely "old Berlin" vibe, as if I know what that might mean. And they let us stay there til 4am on a Tuesday.

I think we're going to try and recreate their basil gimlet on Sunday, and of course thinking about that made me think about what kind of food we might want to be putting in our mouths....

+++

I feel like something light and Asian-ish, but I'm kind of bored with most of the Thoroughly Repeatable things in our repertoire, so I started poking around in Viet World Kitchen and came up with some interesting little things:

I thought this Avocado and Mint Chutney sounded possibly nice, basically kind of an Asian/Indian guac.

These sweet potato fries with kimchi sour cream sound good for something, maybe not Sunday though.

Then I saw this tuna hummous in my sidebar, which started me thinking about something else but I can't remember what.

It wasn't the unfortunately-named Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad.

I'm also thinking about doing the magnolia leaf-miso thing again.

+++

timeoff.

2011-08-25T12:31:00.006+02:00

So. Berlin. A good, good city that I would like to revisit soon, when there's time to do things and see friends who live there. I'm very jealous of their opening hours and big citiness, and the fact that the their relationship with alcohol could be described almost the opposite of Sweden's (beer is OK all the time, and it's purchasable and drinkable everywhere).

Our time there was a bit rushed, but it culminated in a performance that is probably one of my favorite things I've ever done onstage, so...not such a terrible tradeoff.

And now, a day of semi-nothingness, which doesn't feel at all right, but my car is out of gas...I need some time parked in the driveway. Or something. Somewhere.

+++

liftoff.

2011-08-22T23:08:00.006+02:00

We finally ate somewhere excellent: Bandol. Just great, service too. Of course Hilly wasn't there, so I have to go back Wednesday with her. Above: the illegible German menu. Below, the very legible English menu. Below that: amuse of nut-crusted goat cheese with apricot couscous maybe? And a tomato-celery soup. It's a fact that tomato soup is one of the few things I don't like, but this was pretty good.

Below that, two shots of the obscenity I ordered, soooo good: "poached egg with veal's head carpaccio, veal tongue salad, radish, and cress". Below that, my scallops with "primal tomato", crazy-tasting cashews (my description), cilantro, eggplant, and smoke. Floriaan's monkfish was good, but his orange potatoes were amazing, I have no idea how they were achieved.

UPDATE: We did go back on Wednesday, and of course it wasn't as good. It was OK, but quite obviously there was a different cook in the kitchen.

bah.

2011-08-21T22:27:00.004+02:00

OK, have been awake for 36 hours or so, and not in a fun way.

Came home at 2am last night from an art/currywurst stroll to find my laptop unresponsive and bearing a forged notice from the polizei against a background of the German flag. My machine would do nothing except show me this.

Yes, a virus. Because I downloaded an Abba CD illegally? Some would call this justice. Abba probably would for sure.

Turns out that this was one nasty fucking virus. Let's say I started troubleshooting at 2:30am. I finished this afternoon at 5:45pm. I'm a software guy, and this was some really good software. It saw that I was the Administrator of my machine and, using my privileges, did all of the meanest things possible to me.

I still haven't managed to remove a bitch, but I did get my music off the machine, so we can rehearse tomorrow, unlike today. I celebrated my half-triumph with a beer on the street and some Syrian food.

half liter of hell.

2011-08-20T08:41:00.008+02:00

Oof. We are working like dogs, and having a hard time finding awesome food, and so this is why you are not hearing from a duck.

For a second there it seemed like things were trending in a more positive direction. After decent Japanese on Tuesday and fucked-up dessert pasta Wednesday night, Thursday night we went to Yam Yam, which in Berlin means Korean food, not Italian.

My bibimbap was solidly good, especially after throwing my seaweed salad and Hilly's kimchee in there. But Hilly's tofu-filled mandu were just a little boring and again, weirdly sweet. The banchan of spinach and seaweed were both nice and fresh-tasting, I'll probably end up back here at some point b/c it's supposedly the best Korean in town, cheap, and right across the street.

+++

Last night after a loooong day of work, we trekked out to Schoneberg to Renger-Patzsch for our nightly dinner/debrief b/c I'd seen nothing but rave reviews from bloggers about their unpretentious comfort food, especially the Alsatian tarte flambées.

And yes, things started very promisingly. This is HBF's summer salad with peaches and a tarte flambée with leeks, walnuts, and bleu d'Avergne to share. It was very tasty, kind of like a lavash pizza, friendly toppings on a superthin crust, you definitely didn't want to stop eating it.

But then: poor Hilly. She's been getting the worst of our disappointing food, I'll chalk it partly up to bad luck and partly up to vegetarianism. There were basically two things she could've ordered on what was a pretty meat-centric menu (calf's head risotto anyone?), and she went for the chanterelles with cheese dumplings. Out of pure gallantry, I took the other one, a pike perch crisp-fried with cabbage and caraway jus.

My fish was pleasant and cooked very nicely but ultimately just kind of plain. Nice technique, not much adventure or imagination. Or caraway. Hilly's dish was....not pleasant. The cheese dumplings were baseball-sized globs of dry, salty nast. Like if you went to the Natuurwinkel and bought one of their generic "veggie burgers" and re-pureed it and then balled it in a fist and then cooked the living shit out of it. Worse, her chanterelles were completely tasteless, even though they'd been showered with fresh thyme.

So, WTF, Berlin!??!?!?!?!!!?!?!. Do we really have to run the carnivorous gauntlet of Rutz after all for a 14-euro salad just so Hilly can eat something decent and Berlin can start to redeem itself? Do we????????? They do have nice wine.

+++

rude solo.

2011-08-18T13:49:00.000+02:00

let's get this party started.

2011-08-18T00:36:00.000+02:00

höböcamp II.

2011-08-17T10:22:00.006+02:00

Brandon turned out to be beautiful, one of my favorite parts of my trip. These pictures were all taken between 6am and 7am. Above: where we slept. Below: me making coffee; dried reindeer meat; tiny boat shed; empty cabins; the beach.

höböcamp I.

2011-08-17T10:08:00.011+02:00

Above: tent, by Anna.

+++

I may have mentioned this: Last weekend I went camping for the first time.

People who know me well would, um, laugh at the idea of me camping. I am known for many things, but practical, survival-type skills are not on that list of things. In fact, I am more known for barely being able to survive from a practical perspective. I can turn on the stove, open the refrigerator, flush the toilet, and that's about where my practical survival skills end. Sometimes I do a load of laundry, but compensate by leaving it in the washer for a couple days.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I accepted Anna's invitation to do some camping. I told her outright: "I just really hope you're not relying on me to do anything. I possess no relevant skills, unless we have to debug a bear or troubleshoot the campfire, etc. Just assume you're going camping with some creature that is nothing but liability and dead weight."

We eased into the whole camping thing by driving an hour or so north to Skellefteå and stopping for a picnic. Britt had told us that the weather up north was going to be "horrible". We kind of found that not to be the case: here is Skellefteå (above).

Our picnic occurred at a large cemetery, where there was a cafe that served these things that were supposed to be "moose poop". We had some. They were.....disappointing? Not because they didn't taste like moose poop ha ha but because they were dry as fuck.

From Skellefteå we went up to see the aforementioned burned-down summer home of Anna's family (below). When we eventually got back to Sikeå I saw some photos of the young Hillboms playing around the lake house when it wasn't burned down and it was all quite sad and nostalgic, but I won't subject you to that.

OK I show you one sad and nostalgic thing: their family's boat was still there, abandoned in a pile of weeds.

+++

So yes, then we spent 4 hours driving in circles looking for a place to camp, a strategy that I cannot really recommend if you want your driver and passenger to remain civil and upbeat. The problem was this: we'd seen tons of campgrounds on our way up the coast, but north of Luleå there was nothing. So we did that thing where you pull off the main highway onto a smaller road in the hope that you'll find what you're looking for. It didn't work.

It was with very empty bellies and our last remaining shreds of civility that we straggled into a campsite at Brandon (pronounced differently than it looks) around 10:00pm and looked for a place to set up the tent.

After an hour or so of determining that the campsite was closed for the season and we were the only people stupid enough to be doing what we were doing in 45F weather, we set up the tent anyway in the interest of eating sausage and going to sleep.

+++

bäten.

2011-08-15T09:41:00.002+02:00

After returning the rental car and gawking at another unreal sunset (above), last night's big decision was whether to stay inside and mope about the end of a vacation or go out to the only bar open on a Sunday night in Umea, a bar which happens to be on a boat, and drink beer. See below for the not-entirely-unexpected outcome of that decision.

2011-08-14T18:58:00.006+02:00

Back at base camp in Sikeå for a few hours of dinner and packing before starting the multi-vehicle/multi-night trip home. Home for less than 24 hours before heading off to Berlin for 10 days.

The past 10 days have felt more than a little fairy-tale like, something that I'm sure will be cured almost immediately upon getting to the airport tomorrow morning. But for now, I'm going to try and enjoy my last few hours of Real Vacation for the forseeable future.

Lots more pics to come, but here's tonight's dinner in the yard: shrimp and bleak roe caviar with hard-boiled eggs and arugula on knackebrod; a surprisingly light reindeer stew with homemade black- and redcurrant gelees, and a lovely salad with peaches and sunflower seeds; homemade blackcurrant sorbet. It's real easy to become real jealous real fast of this house's berry production and the myriad uses thereof.

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luleå.

2011-08-14T16:01:00.001+02:00

Luleå was (again this word) charming and totally empty during the day, but at night it became pretty beautiful, though still totally empty. The sunset was outrageous and uncapturable by my poor camera.

boden.

2011-08-14T15:46:00.001+02:00

I survived camping. This is Day 1, Friday, in Boden to visit the place where Anna's family used to have a summer house until it burned down. These pictures are mostly taken from the car and are unPhotoshopped. That's an elk stand above.

single-bone anderssen.

2011-08-12T12:21:00.008+02:00

Another trip to Umeå, this time to pick up the rental car. Above: the biggest rainbow I've ever seen, you could see the whole thing.

Below: dinner in Umeå here, one of the best things I've eaten in Sweden amidst a week of good eating. The menu said: Knäckepizza med confiterade tomater, västerbottensost, bakad Harr från Vardofjäll och färskostkräm.

It committed several grave culinary sins (seafood + cheese, calling itself "pizza", having carrots on it) but was cooked perfectly by someone who either really knew what they were doing or had a terrific stroke of luck. Basically: great homemade crispbread topped with parmesan-esque cheese, oven-dried tomatoes, red onion, roasted carrots and potatoes, and baked fish, with herbs on top and lemon creme fraiche served alongside in a cute little jar.

Trying to walk dinner off.

We were trying to end up in Umea first thing in the morning. Hanna, a friend of Anna's said "Yeah, you can stay in my room, I'm out of town hiking in the mountains, I have to warn you, it's a little messy."

Hanna's apartment was populated by extremely friendly militant vegan lesbians. Below: piece of art in Hanna's room with a funny text I will translate soon; a cartoon in the bathroom; the kitchen.

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how i love to taste your spicy meatball.

2011-08-11T00:07:00.004+02:00

Above: the toolshed. Below: köttbullar, or Swedish meatballs to you and me. With lingonberries and mashed potatoes.

Below that: last night we biked 2km to what Anna had been referring to as "the sea". I was expecting waves. Instead there was an extremely clear and calm bay. The first picture is taken from the top of a ladder coming from the beach up to an outcropping of rocks where ships used to anchor. The clouds at the top of the frame are actually the reflection of the clouds in the water; the second picture is the view from on top of the rocks.

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planning.

2011-08-10T12:42:00.007+02:00

Above: sunset in Sikeå, photo by Anna.

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This is crazy, but apparently, very true.

We're planning our weekend adventure of driving up north and camping, and we talked about spending one night in civilization so we could have dinner and drinks somewhere, and Anna said, "Yeah, but you can't drink too much or the cops will pull you over." And I said something like, "Yeah, but we're not going to be driving, we're just walking back to the hotel," and she said, "No, the next morning." You can imagine the few minutes of ensuing confusion as I tried to come to grips with the concept of the morning-after roadblock breathalyzer. That's some cruel shit.

As my dad would say, "This would never fly in America."

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bären.

2011-08-10T10:15:00.005+02:00

This is going to be a post about berries.

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classic swedish cinema.

2011-08-10T10:08:00.003+02:00

This post is in progress. Since I've known I was coming here, I had great plans to fill in the gap that is my knowledge of Swedish cinema. It's a gap that's a trifle odd, considering the number of movies I've seen that would be filed in the "Scandinavian" section at Silver Screen...but I guess these were all Danish and Norwegian.

So yesterday, since the weather here has been pretty uniformly autumnal (you probably can't use this word this way, can you), we started in on a mental list of "must-see Swedish films", a list of course tailored to my own tastes, and one that started with En kärlekshistoria (1970), but contained a lot of other things which I am already forgetting, so here is where I am writing them down.

A Swedish Love Story was very good: wistful, wry, and with a fantastically detailed attention to sound...I'd watch it again today.

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Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel).
Songs from the Second Floor (Swedish: Sånger från andra våningen).
My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund).
Everlasting Moments (Maria Larssons Eviga Ögonblick).
The Hunters (Jägarna).
Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander).
Jalla! Jalla!
Kopps (Cops). OK, this I've already seen, but need to see again, it was very funny.
The Simple-Minded Murder (Den Enfaldige Mördaren).
Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål). Seen this too, but am ready to see it again.
The Adventures of Picasso (Picasso's Äventyr).
All Things Fair (Lust och fägring stor).
I Am Curious (Yellow) (Jag är nyfiken – gul).

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diverse.

2011-08-10T09:19:00.002+02:00

Now is the time on Sprockets when we post a disconnected jumblage of images with very little accompanying text, because our number of pictures is beginning to far outstrip our time available to write anything meaningful about them.

But we'll try, because the weather is pretty Amsterdammish again today (55°F and cloudy) and we don't have anything terribly ambitious planned for the day. If it gets any warmer, we'll bike to the sea (3km away), if it doesn't we'll stay here and allow me to strike a few more entries on my list of Classic Swedish Movies.

When we were in charmingly collegiate Umeå a couple days ago, among other things, we went to Konsum, which, aside from all of the interesting groceries and extra commas that this sentence is generating, is pretty fascinating in itself in that many people think of it as the "other" giant Swedish retail chain.

We ran into an acquaintance of Anna's in Umeå outside of Konsum (she lived there for 4 years), and he described the situation as being a tale of two retailers, one good, and one evil. He didn't say which one was which.

When Anna was growing up, all of the products really had this generic packaging. Everything. At some point in the 90s, they rebranded and remarketed everything, but they've now relaunched the old-school socialist packaging as a sort of ironic gesture and it's become quite trendy. Here is a much better picture.

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Cut to some real Northern Sweden shit here. If you were bothered by the pig's blood crackers the other day, you may want to skip ahead here. But this tasted really good and I'm sure you'd enjoy it very much if you didn't know what it was. It's called (insert forgotten Swedish name here), and it's something that's only eaten at Christmas time, only eaten in Northern Sweden, and Anna's the only person in her family who eats it.

So, you take these crackers we bought the other day, and you soak them in warm chicken or beef broth with a little sugar added (or vegetable stock if you're a vegetarian, ahahahahahah), and then you carefully take them out of the pan and put a couple pats of butter on them and serve with a big dollop of lingonberry preserves. If there were Waffle Houses in hell, this is what they'd serve. It was, frankly, delicious.

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efterkälken.

2011-08-09T02:23:00.002+02:00

Above: gado-gado leftovers from last night. Below: 9:30pm in the backyard. Details on everything to follow soon.

lätthet.

2011-08-08T19:56:00.009+02:00

Above: the street where this house is. Below: the view of the same street from the bus stop (you can see the same red house off to the left, and the blue Sikeå sign off to the right). Below that: Umeå today: a boat where we didn't eat; leverpastej (sorry piggy) on the almost unGoogleable tunnpaltbröd (crisp rye cracker made with, eh, pig's blood, sorry again); Swede with böckling; the view from the riverbank. More soon I hope, but it's getting to that point in a vacation where my pictures are outnumbering the non-vacationing minutes I have to write about them.

Umeå:

mörker.

2011-08-08T04:17:00.009+02:00

Introducing the cast of characters. Above: imposing, dramatic raincloud-based scenery 24/7. This is 11pm. Below: Britt, bemused by the fact that she's about to be the first person to ever eat pom in Robertsfors commune, possibly in the whole Västerbotten region; Anna picking berries in the yard; lax waiting for my knife to turn it into breakfast.

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några ljusa gnista.

2011-08-07T09:46:00.007+02:00

This is the wood-burning oven in the kitchen. Made by:

Who I know as motorcycle makers. Don't I?

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Today, we biked 5 km to the big city (Robertsfors, pop. 2500, vs. Sikeå, pop. 400? Anna and Britt guess that there are 250 houses in Sikeå) for groceries. On the way, we saw a marshmallow farm.

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för en nyckel till en dörr som är vidöppen.

2011-08-07T03:57:00.007+02:00

Possibly the best discovery of the trip so far is that Anna's mom Britt can seriously cook. She cooked last night, I'm cooking tonight, and frankly I'm a bit worried. Above: mini Västerbotten pie wih rose peppercorns and baby asparagus (Västerbotten is the name of the region we're in).

Below: baked salmon with boiled potatoes (not pictured are the two critical sauces: one dill cream and one saffron cream) and an especially good rhubarb-oat crumble with Greek yogurt and honey. The rhubarb came from the garden, which I'll talk more about soon.

sätta på den dansande hästar.

2011-08-06T20:32:00.009+02:00

Getting to Stockholm was totally painless. Getting to Sikeå (which is the name of where I am, not Robertsfors as previously thought) was...not totally painless.

My flight got into Stockholm at 8pm, and then I needed to take a bus to Umeå, which left at 9:45pm and arrived in Umeå eight hours later at 6am. After which I needed to take another bus to Sikeå, which left at 8am. Aside from not sleeping at all, the first bus ride wasn't so bad.

There was one point where it almost became much worse, when I awoke from a half-sleep to find a handful of people getting off the bus for what I thought was a gas/food/smoke/pee break, so I followed them off the bus. After ten seconds of standing outside, the bus at my back, just kind of waking up and admiring how in-the-middle-of-nowhere we were, trying to figure out where the gas/food mart was...the bus started to drive away. Was he re-parking the bus? my mind tried to compute. No, he was heading for the exit. Ehhhh.....dude?

So I ran across the parking lot and managed to flag him down, and got back on (we exchanged no words), and from that point on managed to be slightly more thankful to be sitting upright and awake in the almost-dark at 3:30 in the morning surrounded by dozing Swedes.

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Upon arrival in Sikeå, things improved dramatically. I'm staying with Anna and her mom, in their extremely attractive and spacious house that their family has lived in for the last 20 years or so. Of course there was Swedish breakfast, featuring the standard cast of 15 or 20 characters (among them, knäckebröd and caviar in a tube):

And there were some new friends as well: homemade gravad lax, which I was nominated to slice since Anna's brother Gustav was sleeping. I didn't do too badly, but only managed to take a photo of the scraps.

sätta på myggen.

2011-08-06T17:41:00.002+02:00

My laptop's battery is acting all funny, so I have to write quick, which means writing worse than usual.

Some quick impressions. After five minutes of being on the flight to Stockholm, I was confronted with the fact that Svenska, or perhaps more realistically the accumulation of Nordic languages that were being spoken on this flight at this moment, is/are beautiful. As languages go. I mean, I think english is beautiful in its expressiveness, but maybe not in its sonic properties. Swedish, or Norsk, or Dansk, or whatever....just sounds like a song. Before we took off, it sounded like the whole front of the plane was calmly singing 45 or 55 different lullaby-like songs to each other.

And then the stewardess came on the intercom and the illusion was a bit shattered...her highs and lows were shaved off in the interest of businesslikeness, but still...entertaining as far as ununderstandable languages go.

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Part two: my in-flight meal. No pictures this time, I was in an aisle seat, but I'll try to rectify this on the way back. It was probably the best in-flight meal I've ever had, and this has everything to do with my taste. I ordered the "Danish Selection Plate", which was designed to be a DIY smørrebrød. So you got: rye bread; nicely spiced roast beef; a meatball of sorts, some pate; some herring in mustard sauce; a gherkin; butter; and of course a hard-boiled egg. And you made your own bites. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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Part three: Stockholm airport (Arlanda). The most deserted friday night airport I've ever seen. It might be worth mentioning at this point that I used to be a relatively serious flyer. No million miler or anything, but I was definitely some kind of level named after a precious metal (platinum, gold, etc) and I was for sure one of those annoying fucks who got to board before everyone else, and, if the occasion warranted it, I got to, er, demand things, like upgrading me to first class.

Of course, you know me (ha), I never did that, but people to whom I was professionally bound did this all the time and yes I possibly went along with it if we were traveling together (I was young! They were my bosses!). I could rationalize it at the time.

Anyway, it was nice at the time, before I realized what it meant. Those days of flying are probably gone now, I don't know since I don't fly professionally anymore. The point of all this is: I've seen a lot of airports. And this one is deserted as fuck on a Friday. Compared to like Atlanta.

I also feel compelled to mention: this is the only airport I've ever been to with lots and lots of flies. Foreshadowing?

This was my beer. 69 SEK. Tasty. And this is where I finally am now.

More soon.

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skål, yo.

2011-08-05T09:31:00.004+02:00

Above: an actual preview of where I'll actually be based, Robertsfors, 30 minutes north of Umeå on the eastern coast (photo by Anna). This was taken yesterday at 11pm, so apparently it is now starting to get dark for a few hours at night this far "south".

View Larger Map

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Haven't found too many wonderfully comprehensive sites about the cuisine of Sweden, but Carovin, a Stockholm-based foodservice supplier, has a pretty nice overview that doesn't seem too distorted by marketing.

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detour.

2011-08-05T09:02:00.001+02:00

Before we go full-bore Nordic, I need to mention last night's dinner.

This is something that the lovely and talented HBFstone has been making kind of regularly, and when she first told me about it I thought it didn't make any sense at all.

But since I trust the tiny commander's tongue and the taste buds thereon, I remained open-minded. Then she made it for the Mara, who said it was most excellent and certainly bore repeating.

And last night, the Mara made it for the Me. Before I go any further, let me tell you what it is: it's an open-faced tempeh sandwich from a place called Angelica Kitchen in NYC. Their menu describes it as follows: "Slices of sourdough baguette topped with lightly marinated & baked tempeh, napped with savory mushroom gravy. Served on a bed of raw spinach, garnished with ruby kraut. With a scoop of mashed potatoes."

Review to follow.

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kan du visa mig var myggorna är?

2011-08-05T08:48:00.000+02:00

Above: Last August's adventure, featuring Roy Paci's sun-dried tomatoes that A/V brought from Puglia to Sardinia. The best sun-dried tomatoes I've ever tasted.

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Can someone pleeeease remind me why it is front-page news to report what the "average American" thinks about things? Am I missing something here: a media outlet reports the news every day to average Americans, then asks those same average Americans what they think about the news, and then reports that info back to the same average Americans, which helps those same average Americans decide what they think or how they feel about the news. I mean, yes, I understand this from a mind control perspective, but...is that all it is?

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My prediction turned out to be, well, "spot on": I am leaving for The Land Of Invisible Eyebrows in a few hours, and I barely know anything about what I'll be doing for the next ten days. Except for being bitten by mosquitoes. And driving a rental car into the midnight sun. And, eh, visiting a long-abandoned sanatorium that's not open to the public. And...fishing? Camping, possibly? Did I mention the mosquitoes? And finally: Kalles.

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codebreaker 2.

2011-08-03T18:57:00.007+02:00

Unexpected various leftover ingredients in fridge required a bit of Googling (how unusual!) to translate them into something sensible. This was a Nigella recipe that solved for X in a way we barely had to mess with, and it was delicious...nowhere near as sweet as you'd think. Here are the barely-messed-with results.

UPDATE: Downgrading this from Thoroughly Repeatable because...we didn't finish the leftovers. Since when do you not eat a leftover curry? They (the leftovers) just weren't compelling.

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sweet potato and shrimp curry with mango and scallions.

2 tbsp oil
2 scallions, chopped
2 tbsp red Thai curry paste, or a bit more to taste
1 400ml can coconut milk
300ml chicken stock (made from concentrate)
1 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla)
1 large sweet potato, cubed
2 cups/400gr shrimp, deveined
juice of 1 lime
150g mango, diced
3 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped

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codebreaker.

2011-08-03T00:39:00.009+02:00

This dinner is a mystery solved. A trusted food friend brings you foodstuffs back from an exotic location, but you can't read the package. You can't even type the language to Google Translate the shit.

Closer inspection reveals that there are in fact a couple of English words, so you Google them. Eventually you manage to find out that what you are holding is a starter kit for making hoba miso, from Takayama, Japan. Here's Wikipedia Japan's article, Translated.

This is hoba miso with catfish in place of the usual beef and/or mushrooms (I know, it looks like tofu). It was really really good, we were licking the magnolia leaf at the end, but it's quite unphotogenic, no? Apparently it can be made to look better.

Basically: I pan-fried the catfish in butter and sesame oil for 3-4 minutes per side, with a tiny bit of salt and raw sugar added at some point in the cooking process. Then I rigged up a fake hibachi (grill pan with foil on top), slathered the magnolia leaf with miso, placed it on the fauxbachi, added the fish and scallions, and waited 10 minutes or so (over low heat) until the miso was bubbling and starting to caramelize. Serve.

surströmming.

2011-08-02T00:42:00.005+02:00

Above, a sadly typical scene from The Life Of VDuck July 2011. Much-needed detox in progress.

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I leave for Sweden on Friday, which is turning out to be one of the least-planned trips I've ever taken. Part of it is that I need a break I think, so I've got almost zero interest in trying to fill my days with activity. And I'm staying with locals, so I don't have to figure out how to do anything before I get there.

Nope, my goals are pretty simple: I want to go to a nice grocery store and fill my pockets with Swedish kaviar and beyond that I'm not too sure.

I am very lazily keeping an informal list of other things I might want to put in my pockets. Watch this space.

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"A Japanese study has shown that the smell of a newly opened can of surströmming is the most putrid smell of food in the world, beating similar fermented fish dishes such as the Korean Hongeohoe or Japanese Kusaya (Wikipedia)."

The opportunity will present itself by the weekend for sure. The question is: will I or won't I try it?

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soothness please.

2011-08-01T00:32:00.002+02:00

OK, really, I'm done now.

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This is my diet for the week: chicken phở. Mara made it as an attempt to heal a brother on Sunday, and I don't know if it totally did that, but it was very good and I think we're going to make it again tonight.

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comedy.

2011-07-27T10:55:00.012+02:00

Above: party, or rehearsal?

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I've been having an unprecedented run of bad luck with regard to computing, probably beginning with tiny_a's cracked screen back in April, then our business hard drive crashing in May, then tiny_b's screen breaking, the printer/scanner dying, tiny_a's webcam going AWOL, etc etc etc etc etc. Not to mention the continuing problems with our building's network, for which I am very informally the administrator.

Etc. So it was with a sort of not-especially-surprised resignation that I logged into Gmail yesterday to find 7 months of email gone, all the way back to January 2011, which for me means thousands of messages are missing. My first thought was that it was some sort of Gmail glitch that would eventually be fixed, but then I saw a new unread email from my dear mother that said "Did you get my email about your Gmail coming to my computer, 6000 of them?"

Ehh. I'm not the pointiest knife in the drawer, but my Correlation Detector was sharp enough to notice that these two events might be related. I called my mother. She was, as usual, doing some serious multi-tasking with the twins when I called, and then her other line rang, but before she switched over to take the call, she said something like "Oh yeah, these duplicate mails...I'm so proud of myself for deleting everything without reading it...what a good mother I'm being. It's taking forever, though, I'm still only at January or something (clicks over to other line)."

Yes. Correlation Detector blinks frantically. So does this mean that my mother has accidentally logged into my Gmail (b/c I guess I logged in on that machine the last time I was there) and is proudly, sweetly, cutely deleting all of my actual mail off the server because she thinks they're duplicates that have been accidentally downloaded to her machine? Yes. And she's deleting everything so that she won't be tempted to read them at some later date...

Sigh. Of course everything turned out OK, the thousands of deleted emails were in my Trash on the server. But for a moment there, I was all "come on now technology karma, nigga please, WTF."

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helaas pindakaas.

2011-07-26T19:41:00.003+02:00

Above: lentil thingies.

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Lots of cooking coming up this week, some fun new things in the hopper (?), etc. Tonight though was about using up some about-to-expire produce, and so we get Thai beef with nuoc cham and green beans with peanut sauce. I normally do a more elaborate peanut sauce but this quick one was almost as good with zero effort.

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peanut sauce, the easy version.

3 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp hot water
juice of a lime
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp raw sugar
2 tsp sesame oil
2 balls of bakgember (yeah, sorry non-Amsterdammers)
2 tbsp grated coconut
1 tsp red chile flakes
1 tbsp fish sauce

Process, salt to taste.

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double gobble.

2011-07-25T02:49:00.002+02:00

That would be me and the HBF in the studio. She bought me a turkey mask that fits over my entire head, which is, obviously...a great thing.

Those aren't my overalls.

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