djangooooooooooo.

I finally got a CineVille pass (€18/month for unlimited films in 19 of the Randstad's most interesting independentish theatres, including our neighborhood stalwart The Movies), so we headed east to see Django Unchained yesterday at Kriterion. Be aware that if you show up for a 5:40 movie, the kitchen is closed (lunch is over at 4:30) and your only food choices are candy bars, chips, and "nachos". In Amsterdam "nachos" means "tortilla chips with 1/4 the amount of salsa you need".

Django: I reeeeally liked the first half, no one else makes movies like that. But it all needed editing and in the second half the entertaining wordiness and cheery surreality kind of dissolved away amidst all the necessary bloodshed, leaving us pretty much with Kill Bill,Vol 4. Spellchecker is trying to tell me amidst is not a word. Amid? Amidst is totally a word.

Coming up: a post on healthyish desserts even I can make. For instance I want to do something with roasted bananas, date syrup, hangop (English please? Strained yogurt or buttermilk, but there must be something that sounds better than that), and toasted hazelnuts. Also an attempt to clean out our "miscellaneous flours/grains" cupboard. Millet? Buckwheat? I'm looking at you.

re(mis)direction.

If you're here for the food, this won't interest you. If you're here for the me: it looks like most of my writing effort is being aimed somewhere else right now, which should not be taken as any kind of death knell for VDuck. VDuck will roar back into action during our December In America adventure I'm sure. But until then, it's thundersticks or bust.

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i can explain.

Serious diet begins tomorrow. Today...I had to say some goodbyes. Pork belly and hoisin? It was great to see you both this morning, thanks for stopping by. Catch you later, guys.
















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subterfuge.

I have been ill for the last few days, but I am now in tip-top shape and ready to return to the world of knocking all of your socks--maybe even more of your clothing and accessories than that, maybe a fob or brooch as well--right the hell off with my witty and urbane observations about eating cheap food.

What the fuck did I do during this mercifully cool and very rainy downtime? I:

Read Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, during which I closed the book several times and just sat there staring at it because I couldn't believe how...bold (yes, that's a typographic pun) it was. Nonchalantly yet staggeringly audacious (is there a font style for that)? It just made me realize how philosophically easy the postmodern ironicism of the Eggers, DFW, Leyner, etc. crew is. New York Trilogy is really the first book I've read in a long time that I just couldn't believe I was reading. And it's 25 years old!

OK, back to the food shortly.

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broodje ikan bali, a.u.b.

Do they sell software that generates interesting titles for blog entries without you having to be involved?

Posting frequency has fallen off around here because I overcooked myself in May and June. Cooked out is what I am. So I've mostly been eating extremely simply, broiled fish or gyoza 60% of the time. Oh I know what else we were eating the other 40% of the time: sandwiches. Indonesian sandwiches. Primarily fish. Let me explain, hurriedly and with little regard for the creative turn of phrase (I'll revise later).

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What I would ideally do here is investigate the evolution of immigrant cooking here in The Netherlands, specifically the cuisines of the former colonies, Indonesia and Suriname. As far as I can tell there's no page on the web that explains this in English. Here's a Dutch version, and here's a more professionally researched version that focuses more specifically on the Chinese side of things. Until I have time to write something with more detail, I'll try to summarize via a massive simplification (i just watched Adaptation again yesterday and am currently imagining myself compressing eons of history into mere seconds worth of typing).

Let's start with Indonesia: after the second World War, Indonesia was granted its independence from Holland after having been a Dutch colony since the 17th century. 250,000 Indonesians came to Holland to repatriate themselves. Well, rewind a bit: by this point the Dutch were already vaguely familiar with Asian cuisine because, around 1918, small Chinese communities began to emerge in the port cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, mostly stokers who worked on the large steam ships of that time.

This population got a boost after 1919, when Great Britain amended the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914, and Chinese seamen were no longer entirely welcome on British soil, so they ended up in Dutch ports (their numbers growing to almost 3000 Chinese before shrinking again during the Second World War). Eventually Chinese teahouses and restaurants emerged, thus introducing the Dutch to the first truly foreign cuisine they'd encountered on their own soil.

So, back to the 250,000 Indonesians (some of whom were Indonesian Chinese, to further confuse the issue). Well, the Dutch Indonesians came, brought their culinary culture with them, and eventually opened up restaurants and shops. It didn't hurt that thousands of Dutch soldiers had been stationed in Indonesia and grew very fond of the food there. The returning Dutch soliders took their friends and families to eat at these restaurants. This happened so long ago, and so early on in the evolution of "eating out" in Holland, that by 2005 Indonesian food is not even really considered foreign here.

The point of all this is that, as in many ex-colonial relationships, the Dutchified Indonesian kitchen has evolved to accommodate some long-standing preferences of the Nederbelly. Some of these adaptations are to be expected (bigger portions, fewer chiles), but some are a bit unusual (Belgian frites with Indonesian peanut sauce and mayonnaise is a popular way to eat fries...not really so unusual in concept--think gado gado--but it's surprising at first to see people carrying cones of fries with an unrecognizable brown goo on them).

Which at last, almost brings me to Indonesian-Surinamese sandwiches. In Java or Bali the common accompaniements to fish, meat, and soy dishes are either nasi or bami (rice or noodles), right? Well, sandwich culture has had significant mindshare here for a long long time (I'll explain the boterham in another post). And so, one of the ways you can eat your Indo-Chinese fish/meat/veg dish is on a sandwich instead of with rice or noodles.

OK. Part 2 to follow (maybe). You know, the part where I maybe actually talk about the sandwiches.

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say do you remember.

One of the hardest things about trying to cook without meat has been achieving some kind of dark, rounded, smoky flavor without using any members of the bacon family (speck, pancetta, fatback, zoutvlees [a dutch/surinamese fatback], francis, etc.).

You can only cook with chipotles so often (I think). Same with roasted red peppers and caramelized onions etc. And caramelization and roasting help, but it's still not quite smoky. Luckily, I scored some pimentón ahumado, (smoked paprika) when I was in the States earlier this year...and yesss this is more like what we're looking for.

An educational moment regarding its manufacture, from Tienda.com (where there's also a good-loooking assortment of authentic Spanish recipes):

They empty the bags onto 8 foot high wooden grids, where for two weeks they are marinated by the smoke of smoldering logs from local oak trees which gives them their unique character. A farmer visits the drying houses each day and gently stirs the drying peppers with a rake. At the right time, about two weeks later, the dried peppers are refilled into the bags by hand, and hauled to the mill to be slowly ground into a deep red powder. Finally they are mixed in various proportions to make sweet, bittersweet or hot pimentón to be used in chorizo sausages, paellas and stews. The only difference in production from hundreds of years ago is that the mule has been replaced by a tractor and electricity powers the millstone.

Here's my adaptation of La Tienda's recipe for romesco sauce, which I think is fantastic with cod/kabeljauw or any white ocean fish. I also like to do a variation with fewer tomatoes, no hazelnuts, and add a cup of chopped green olives and use it as a sort of tapenade on bread. I'll post an official recipe for that next time I make it, sure I will.

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romesco sauce (catalan pepper sauce).

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2 tbsp sweet smoked paprika (as in not hot)
1 small dried chili pepper
3 tomatoes
1 head of garlic
1 dozen almonds, blanched and peeled
2 dozen hazelnuts, skinned
1 sprig of mint, chopped
1 slice of bread, toasted
1 tbsp fresh parsley
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Remove seeds from chili pepper and grind into a powder. Roast the tomatoes and garlic in a hot oven for 15 minutes. Skin the tomatoes, cut them in half, and remove the seeds. Skin the garlic cloves. Put the tomatoes in a food processor with the garlic, pimenton, almonds, hazelnuts, mint, bread, parsley, and part of the olive oil. Process until you have a smooth puree. Beat in the remaining oil, vinegar and pepper. Salt to taste.

More translated/adapted recipes to follow eventually--this post is mostly so my purchasing agent (mom or mom-in-law) can see what she's looking for at the store when I need to replenish my supply.

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day 1: shopping.

Considering that these are the goals:

decrease total dietary fat, especially saturated/verzadigd fat. only use products with good oils: sunflower, safflower, corn, soybean, cottonseed, sesame oils; or monounsaturated fats like canola, olive, peanut oils. Monounsaturated fats are preferred. Here's why:

SATURATED FATS are found primarily in beef and dairy products in the US diet. Diets high in saturated fat tend to raise both total cholesterol and LDL* (the bad) cholesterol levels, which is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Saturated fat should be limited to less than 10% of daily calories.
TRANS FATS are found in processed foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Like saturated fats, trans fats raise the LDL cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease.

POLYUNSATURATED FATS are usually a good source of essential fat, like linoleic and linolenic acids, that are needed by cells, but cannot be made by the body. Polyunsaturated fats in the diet have been shown to lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels, but also lower HDL* (the good) cholesterol. Polyunsaturated fats are found in nuts and vegetable oils, and should make up 10% or less of daily calories.

MONOUNSATURATED FATS, the predominant fat found in pistachios, other nuts and olive oil, have been shown to lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels while maintaining the beneficial HDL cholesterol level associated with lowering the risk of heart disease. Up to 20% of daily calories can come from monounsaturated fat.

decrease dietary cholesterol.
limit sodium intake.
increase consumption of deep-sea fish (in order of goodness: mackerel, salmon, herring, albacore tuna, lake trout) b/c they contain the much-ballyhooed Omega-3 fatty acids, which help to lower blood cholesterol.
increase intake of fiber and complex carbohydrates. Eat 20 to 30 grams of dietary fiber every day. Foods such as legumes, oats, barley, brown rice, apples, strawberries, and carrots are good to eat because they contain soluble fiber, which lowers blood cholesterol.
increase. consumption. of. walnuts.
decrease calories if needed to reach a healthy body weight. uh, yes.
for liver rejuvenation: raw vegetable juices and other cruciferous veggies; avoid: dairy, processed, fried, margarine. look into milk thistle and Schizandra chinensis.
20-30 minutes cardio 4-5 times a week.
no smoking of anything.
drinking red wine in white-knuckled moderation. maybe even white. i need variety!

I did pretty well, 'cept smoked eel is apparently not a good thing to eat, which i didn't know until after i bought it. Also on the list of "avoid" foods: cashews, macadamia, brazilnuts, coconut. Frown.

I spent 40 euro, but that included two bottles of chilean merlot, 2 jars of herring, and 2 frozen thingies of salmon.

Next on my list of things to figure out: finding a good margarine substitute; finding out if rehydrated wheat protein is any good for you; find out exactly what scharrelkippenei-eiwit is (sounds like free-range chicken egg protein, in which case i probably shouldn't be eating it. but it's in my veggie burgers! It totally doesn't sound like a vegetable product, does it? Update: it's not. It's egg protein. What the fuck is it doing in my veggie burger?); Finding a Euro shopper mayo substitute; including garlic and ginger in the list of things to eat a lot of.

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