search for pleasure dome 2.

I can't tell what's going on, but this is another kind of home run.

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salmon burger with hoisin mayo, miso butter, roasted sweet potato, cucumber pickles, jalapeno, peanut.

salmon

2 tsp hoisin
2 tbsp mayo
1 tbsp miso
2 tbsp butter
1 sweet potato, sliced like potato chip thin
grapeseed oil

cucumber pickles
pickled jalapenos
peanuts, chopped

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inspirrring?

In an effort to increase my dopamine levels, I'm looking at burger porn. Well that's not the whole story, I plan to be eating more protein and yeah just wandered off into the dangerous part of the internet where they have pictures of protein between two pieces of bread.

Well OK, it's just that after so much goddamn experimenting with trying to make a truly delicious veggie burger that felt decadent, I look at this list and I see one thing that compels me to make a note. Well two things. OK three: 1) cheese, 2) sauce, 3) onions.

Here's the list, good luck. And remind me to steal some ideas from Block 16. And Mott Street. After looking at this i just grabbed whatever and made a curry-rubbed steak burger with hoisin-aoili, pickled jalapeno, galangal creamed spinach.....just go mess with your forgotten Asian condiments.

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burger test #2.

The quest continues. Burger components, and believe me I know it sounds like a mess conceptually: KRISTY! Turner's "BBQ bacon burger" (whatever, it's beet, brown rice and red lentils); her tempeh "bacon"; my barely lemon version of her cashew ricotta; a splooge of Jack Daniel's BBQ sauce; some tomato marinated in fresh garlic, salt, and truffle oil; a swath of homemade mayo; a ploop of a kind of weak red slaw (sugar, vinegar, red cabbage).

The eating part: more satisfying/less gloomy than the pure, ascetic healthfulness of Contestant #1, which probably has everything to do with the accouterments, which never looks spelled right does it. Maybe it's not. 

Anyway we really need a new bun. The patty itself was initially Nelson's "least favorite burger" so far structurally, any exposed rice became a bit crunchy in the oven like the bottom of a Korean stone-pot dish (the second round today was almost zero amount of crunchy and overall considerably better I thought). 

The tempeh "bacon" is a nice concept, ruined a bit by 1) calling it by a name it can never ever possibly live up to and 2) requiring me to use the dregs of my 2-year-old bottle of Liquid Smoke. Cough, cough.

The keeper components were a) duh, the tomato on the burger, b) less duh, the lemon cashew ricotta, I may try to make a scallion/jalapeno version of this to see if that kicks up the 4d3d3d. Oh and maybe c) slaw, but not this one.

I think Contestant #3 will be either a black bean burger (maybe look here for tips), or maybe Serious Eats' extravagant vegan effort from The Food Lab or we go back to Anna's quinoa burger plus all of the exciting ideas from Ottolenghi's exorbitantly non-vegan quinoa burger (scallions, green chile, and romesco sauce).

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burger test #1.

This one, Anna Jones' chickpea and quinoa burger, gets a 7/10. Not bad in any way, but not juicy or spicy or generally decadent enough, needs something like the vermouth/jalapeno/pickle mayo hinted at here to sex it up. On the burger this time was an anemic version of her tomato/onion relish bolstered by Heinz ketchup, spinach leaves, and a quick cucumber pickle. Just not as exciting as the last time we made it, which I think is because last time I made a lot of tomato relish and threw some butter in it, maybe even some chili peppers.....that's why we test recipes I guess isn't it.

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dr. reubensteinburger.

Very weird. The apartment smells like I just made hamburgers. I feel like I just had a hamburger. And yet: what really happened was that I stumbled into some food porn last night and got a hankering for, well, p-p-p-p-protein, and one thing led to another, until.....

Well, no, not quite like that. But true, food porn last night. And today, there I was, I'm cleaning out the fridge. And I thought yeahhh there was some sauerkraut in there wasn't there, so I wondered, heyyy is there any way to combine the zhoug I made last night with sauerkraut. I meannn (ok, what is happeningggg), they both have caraway. And that made me think of the ol' tempeh reubens. So I googled the components of each in a big long search string, and one thing led to another, until.....
.......

Ok ok long story short (really?) I'm giving "all this backstory" b/c I think, well: I think I may have accidentally invented a meatless meat that doesn't taste horrible and is full of real ingredients.

Basically: make one batch of zhoug, and one batch of tempeh for tempeh reubens, in fact you prrrobably don't even need all the seasoning from the reubens I don't think, just 2 tbsp of prepared mustard and 1/4 cup of soy sauce and mwah some amount of black pepper. Then combine in a food processor to some still barely-textured mass.

Form into whatever shape you like, and fry up. Adorn with condiments, definitely Heinz ketchup, no they're not a sponsor but they sure fkn should bbeeeeee; some kind of pickle, those are homemade quick pickles. Some kind of creaminess, and wellll avocado really is an ok mayonnaise substitute in some situations. And then the red onion I just didn't have and couldn't be arsed to go get. Oh and it turns out the sauerkraut? Was moldy. I mean...yeah. Anyway: "More later."

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by any other name.

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

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

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

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

1 egg

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

1/2 cup mayo
1 clove garlic

bottled tomatillo sauce for a-drizzlin'

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Don't process the cakes too much. You could actually pulse the surimi and herbs a couple times first then add the beans and egg last, pulse it again, and fry from there.

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that's the joint.

Residence permit scare seemingly conquered (thank you Nina), we stopped off on the way home from our immigration lawyer's office for a brief celebration involving Trashy Blondes, Brother Ruiten, Real Customer Service (the bar staff brought us logo-ed umbrellas when it started raining outside), Burger Bar (it continues to get better, the buns and condiments especially), and Mel Brooks. And then up jumped the boogie via Chic, Cameo, and Sugar Hill Records.

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days of thunder.

Thursday: a perfect dinner at home. Gratuitously-peppered steaks (organic, but still, yes, sorry), oven-roasted rosemary potatoes, a flawless caesar salad, and a very nice bottle of Spanish red wine. Why is this so got-damt satisfying? It felt like absolutely nothing else needed to happen that evening in order to go to bed happy. And yet we still watched Sideways (still funny) and had an improdessert of Scottish shortbread, lemon curd, vanilla ice cream, fresh raspberries, and a drizzle of date syrup. Really good.

Friday: I saw two of my favorite bitches (three if you include the moop) and ate at La Perla twice. The first time at 3:30pm for a lovely plate of ravioli (aubergine-filled with a bolognese ragu) which was a tiny bit expensive but I'd order it again. And then again at 9pm, splitting a pizza. It was a good and recommendable idea, especially the afternoon ravioli.

Today: two vegetarian things that really successfully satisfy non-vegetarian AMERICAN FOOD cravings: a tempeh burger and a buffalo chicken + blue cheese salad minus the chicken (Valess schniztel instead).

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tempeh burger.

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 large shallot, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp dried thyme
400gr tempeh, cut into 6 equal squares
6 slices cheddar cheese
6 hamburger buns, toasted
Lettuce leaves, tomato slices, pickle slices, mayonnaise, mustard, and/or ketchup as desired

Make marinade, marinate, cook covered in a single layer at 185C for 30 minutes or until all marinade has been absorbed.

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burger bar, belated.

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.

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inception.

Finally went to see Inception yesterday at Studio K in the Oost, and I must recommend the entire experience. I think it was the loudest yet best-sounding movie I've ever seen, and looked amazing too. Go to Studio K.

But don't order any food before the movie unless you're there really really really early. We ordered a piece of cheese with a red onion compote, and within a half hour it still hadn't shown up so we left without it.

After the movie instead of not eating a piece of cheese with red onion compote, we went to Langendijk for a hamburger that our own Klary Koopmans had recommended as being "not bad at all".

We had some beers and split the burger: totally delicious, we wished we'd each had our own instead of splitting one. As a caveat, they were not exactly like your standard American cheeseburger: bun was crusty instead of soft, meat was highly seasoned, there was a garlic mayo on the side, mature Gouda under the patty, no ketchup bottle on the table, etc. But very good nonetheless. Next time we should really combine it with a trip to their next door neighbor:

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My last post was cryptic to the point where I got a couple of emails about shit not making sense, so I shall elaborate:

1) Gig recordings: I had a gig Monday, a pretty good one we all agreed, considering we'd never played together or talked much about what we were going to do. I think what cursed us was when O.J. came up to me after and said "sounds like you guys got a nice demo now". Mere hours later, the guy who did the recording had his bag stolen on the train to Den Haag, recorder inside, recordings still on it.

2) Sgrafitto Putti and Spider Ptomaine were aliases that Mara and I used for a few years after the Stein Club Orthographic Meet (spelling bee) in 1996 or 1997.

3) Mara is also The Brown One (although sometimes I am referred to as The Brown Man). She is most probably going on tour with The Ex as their Merch Monkey for a few weeks in England, Scotland, Wales, and France. Aside from the wonderful bonding experiences that can develop on long van rides through Europe, this also means cash flow, and...we poor, so fingers crossed.

east ham pani puri.

Pictured above: our East Ham pani puri, really different from anything we've previously put in our mouths.

View VDuck in London in a larger map

Below: our extremely sweet pani puri vendor, located on Gladstone Ave, just around the corner from Thattukada.

The pani puri were 4 for £1, but he gave us one extra puri and a cup of hot halwa, which was pretty incredible. I usually don't love halwa, but this reminded me of pureed gulab jamun, a dream substance.

Below: this is bhel from the vendor across the street from Thattukada (£1.50). She was considerably less outgoing than the Gladstone guy, but her bhel was very good, best I've had in London, though still not topping my possibly idealized version from Indian Delights in Decatur, GA.

This food was all amazingly inexpensive for London: however, the 45-minute tube journey from Crouch End was £2.40 per person, so it's worth factoring that in. Still, I think we'd go back in a second if schedules permitted.

Above: East Ham. We both felt strangely comfortable here, everyone was exceedingly personable. I think if we had an East Ham in Amsterdam I'd be there all the time. Below: mango lassi from Chennai Dosa, where everything looked and smelled awesome, but sadly we'd just eaten.

Above: Houses of Parliament as seen from Victoria Tower Gardens. It was a very good idea to get off the tube at Westminster and walk down to the Tate Britain from there.

Above: Pimm's Cup @ Morpeth Arms after seeing the very nice Henry Moore exhibit at the Tate Britain. The inside of Morpeth Arms was loud and soulless, but the sidewalk would've been a very pleasant place for a summer drink if 100 less people had been there.

Above: splitting a burger at Cask Pub & Kitchen. The burger was very much like something you'd be served in an American back yard: soft bun, well-done but juicy patty, plenty of condiments. Fries/chips nothing to write home about. Beer and music very good. Below: the bar at Cask.

Above: Pimlico by night. One of the more downcast neighborhoods we've seen in terms of the populace; a good number of lost, bedraggled-looking locals limping around, quite a contrast to the impressive Regency architecture (don't worry, I just learned that term).

Down In The Tube Station at, well, 10PM, thankfully. This was a pretty good day.

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like sardines.

Due to problems with uploading images in Blogger, I'm quite far behind in the ol' photodocumentation business. I'll just make some notes here that I can fill in with images and, you know, real text when I get a chance.

Last night we went to see Phosphorescent at the London ICA, which I can't say anything about yet b/c I want their Amsterdam performance to be a surprise for some. This photo above isn't them, it's Forest Fire, the opener.

Before ICA, we shared a burger at the Golden Lion in St. James. This is quite obviously a terrible photo, somehow my flash got turned back on, plus Blogger has added some crazy color distortion, but this is the only photo that displays both of the notable things about this burger: the cornichon garnish on top (speared with a toothpick), and that thing that looks like a misplaced home fry between the top bun and the bacon portion of the burger. It's not a potato at all, it's about 100 grams of Stilton.

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IN OTHER NEWS: We're talking about conducting a Navy SEAL-like mission to East Ham to check out the Real Deal WRT South Indian street food, read about it here.

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meesterschap, etc.

I'm spending a week in Berlin starting tomorrow, but today Amsterdam might as well have been begging me to stay. The weather was gorgeous, 72, sunny, and breezy. To better enjoy the bountiful bounty, we went for a big-ass walk through the Jordaan to take care of some pre-Berlin errands (batteries, strings) and to hunt for some secondhand cabinet fixtures (the kitchen is undergoing a no-budget makeover).

Since we were in the hood, right across the street actually, we stopped at Burgermeester (pictured above). Mara had been before, and had liked it (with caveats) but this was my first time.

Because we were keeping it light, we stuck to the Mini Trio, which are basically sliders. Our personal selection featured (left to right): the Meester Biefburger (with grilled zucchini and eggplant plus a surprisingly appropriate tarragon mayo), the Spaanse Lamburger (lamb from Texel plus chorizo and jalapenos), and the Tonijnburger (tuna plus a not-so-discernable fennel salad and a chervil mayo). They were all good, the lamb was extra good, I could have had two more of them.

A couple things must be said. There is almost nothing about this place that has anything to do with my favorite American burgers. No beer. Sure, I've had burgers without beer before, but it's not my preference. No fries? Come on, that's just perverse. I'm not even the biggest fry fan in the world (I'm an onion ring man), but I was tinily annoyed at the near-iconoclasm of this gesture. No specifying how well you'd like your burger cooked? At this point your competition is Burger King.

The good news is, Burgermeester is a good bit better than Burger King. And yes, I'll probably go back, but only because my expectations are now properly set: this is a European burger, and though it's well-crafted, it truly only satisfies about half of my burger craving.

social event #18.

I wish I had enough time to describe this peach to you, but I really can't even say how long it would take. #3117 was a good peach. I had to eat it standing over the sink for a number of reasons.






















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I like the look of this grocery receipt. There's a certain amount of foreshadowing there.













Your advanced deductive reasoning will no doubt already have determined that we had a family barbecue last evening. Burgers, brats, a pretty good baked beans recipe, that corn salad thing, homemade pickles, lots of tomatoes, etc. etc. etc. And then, just to be safe, lots of billiards and a little tequila.

In the above photo, the light-skinned dogs are your traditional pork bratwursts, the darkest dogs are beef brats, and the mocha-colored ones are Tofurky kielbasa. As followers of this blog may remember, we have a certain fascination with "flesh substitutes", and when we were looking for vegetarian things to grill, the Tofurky things were the only viable option at our local Publix.

Our review? They were...inedible. as if you'd filled the inside of an empty toilet paper roll with unsalted bread and thrown it on the grill. I really can't believe these things didn't just burn up like kindling. So dry. And virtually tasteless. And of course they were more expensive than the beef or pork brats. I would not be at all surprised to discover that the beef industry was actually behind Tofurky, as a sort of sabotage, a way to push possible vegetarians back into Camp Carnivore.













And today a little snuggling.

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time machine.

I recently posted about a bar where I spent most of my twenties. I forgot about the bar where I spent the other half of my twenties. This would be the Highland Tap. Primary attractions? Subterranean windowlessness; sleazy crimson gentlemen's club decor; frosty-cold Sierra Nevada; even-colder martinis with big gorgeous olives; excellent burgers. You really can't tell how big this blue cheese burger is from this photo b/c the onion rings are also humongous, there's no way to get a sense of scale. Trust me, it was big: Mara and I split this.

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everything in moderation...

...but some things not at all. Non-destructive compulsions, however, may be indulged in moderately. Contradiction in terms, "moderately compulsive"? Probably.

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I love adverbs. And I enjoy their copious use, at least when I'm doing the writing. I guess you could say I use them copiously (sure you could, if you wanted to be a sarcastic dick). But the way I understand it, as long as this is the case, I am doomed to be an amateurish writer. And yet, a couple of Google hits later in our Search Results, we find this intriguingly (that's an adverb) amateurish adverb smackdown, written by a "professional freelance writer". And exactly how surprising is it that it's amateurish, really? Let's just silently (adverb) marvel at the variety and relative complexity of human expression and call it even.

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Did anyone really believe that the VDuck had been vanquished?

Turns out that this blog is a good way to, like, document your travels? And since I'm in America right now, here are some photographic moments that have occurred inside my camera over the past few weeks.

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So I arrived here in unusually grey-skied Atlanta about a month ago, and hung out on Mara's parents' porch (which used to be our porch, how 'bout that) for a few days...

















well, they let me come inside at night ha ha, and at that point I had a bite of strawberry pie just like Shoney's used to make (maybe they still do):

















Then I went over to Steve's to do a whole bunch of audio archival work (750GB worth), after which we got the old, old gang together and did some successful recording and just plain comic frolicking...






















That's my guitar/percussion station above (!), there are some pretty embarrassing items strewn about if you know what to look for (I'll give you the first one: violin bow).

Our carefully orchestrated recording sessions (not only musically orchestrated, but also from a chemical perspective...as the sober person, I was responsible for gauging when everyone else's intoxication curves met at just the right intersection of creativity and eh, impairment...then I would say, "Quickly...into the studio! 5cc of adrenaline for Steve, 50cc more Scotch for Soules, Stu? Where's Stu? etc.") were punctuated by bouts of equally successful hanging out on Steve's back porch...

















and in a stroke of good fortune, Steve's oven broke at the very beginning of my 10-day stay, so we did ALL of our cooking on the amazingly precise Ducane man-grill pictured above. We cooked everything from cauliflower (40 minutes wrapped in foil) to couscous (6 minutes) on this thing, plus the more obvious victims: pork tenderloin (25 minutes over indirect heat), lamb kebabs (4 minutes per side), eggplant (3 minutes per side), and these awesome hamburgers (5 minutes per side) topped with real Vidalia onions, from this Dominican recipe (minus the sauce). It was all immensely satisfying.

















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Now since I was officially not blogging during this vacation, there were many excellent food explosions that I did not capture with my soul stealer of a camera. Memorial Day's cookout this past weekend, for example, was homemade BBQ: pulled pork shoulder with baked beans, cole slaw, and 17 other things, and it was done right. In fact Jeanie has been on an absolutely scary tear in the kitchen (warm blueberry cobbler yesterday)...it makes me even more proud than usual to be an honorary Tomanek.

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Mmm, yes: Lastly, I should emphasize that this post does not indicate a return to regular blogging. I will be extending a tentative tentacle of Blogness every so often to catch up on shit, but don't be wasting your precious time checking for daily updates or anything, 'cause you'll be disappointed, and we don't want that. Please refer to the title of this post. Comprende?

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My own Exercise in Advanced Cliché above reminded me of a fabulous short story I listened to during our tornado-related power outage last week at Steve's. There's really not too much to do in a big suburban house at night during a tornado-related power outage (you can't really go outside) except either 1) talk to each other (ewww!) or 2) huddle in a corner and wait for your laptop battery to die. Or maybe 3) drink, which I didn't do.

So while I did number 2 (!) for one of the five hours during which we had no power, I listened to some MP3s of some short stories I downloaded from the New Yorker. The nice twist to these recordings is that the stories are selected and read by other New Yorker fiction contributors. By far the best newish story I listened to was "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff. It's only 4 pages (PDF), or 10 minutes long (MP3), the MP3 is read by T. Coraghessan Boyle (he also discusses the story before and after he reads it), so you should check it out. It takes such an unexpected turn in such a short span of time that you're left with an emotion that's an unusual mix of nostalgia and surprise. Plus it's not very amateurish at all.

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