surimi fasolatedo.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Ha. So this morning I get a message from Blogger saying that a nine-year-old post of mine has been taken down for copyright infringement. My first thought is naturally WTF, but then quickly...well yes ok it's true I borrowed a few images back in those first weeks of blogging, but I thought I'd eventually mostly given appropriate foto credits.

So then I go look at what post they're talking about and it's the below, a total rant about gross food photography, which, really, is a case where giving a photo credit would've been more ugly and mean-spirited than actually allowing it to remain anonymous.

The photo in question truly is educationally nauseating if you consider its ostensible original purpose, I can only describe it in terms of sick excreted material and bloated viscera. Thus, though I can't figure out why you'd want to claim it as your own...yes it's gone now. But I hope Mars and I are going to both try and draw it by hand later for entertainment purposes and post our results.

Lastly, if you know Mars at all you know that the above photo did not need to be specially taken for this editorial moment, this was snapped last week at the central office with the O'Neill family.)

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MOSTLY ORIGINAL POST (AUGUST 2005): I mean this in the nicest way, but...this photo could really only be European, couldn't it? Specifically...yes, German!!!

In other words, the above is not something I'm responsible for having cooked.

We had this fantastic, ghastly book in America called German Home Cooking, or Modern German Cooking, or something of equally nebulously promise, but all of the pictures in it are at least this puke-inducing, both in the presentation and physical consistency of the foods and the morgue/autopsy lighting and styling to which they were subjected. Except that additionally, most of the dishes include things that are actually far grosser than surimi and, uh..."salmon pate" (is what we'll call that puddle of muck) in the photo above. I'm talking about, yes...brains, organs, feet, ears, you name it ("eet ees how you say, vat zee leetle cow seenks viz.")

It was a gift, that book. In that it was given to us. Never did cook out of it much for some reason.

Anyway, before I get to the second spine-tingling installment of Indonesian sandwiches, I have a brief imitation-food-related interruption: what exactly is surimi, and why do I like it. I probably eat it because it reminds me of crab salad, which reminds me of mayonnaise, which who doesn't like to be reminded of. I guess the good news is that it's not too bad for you aside from 4000 artificial flavorings and colorings.

OK so crab salad. Surimi fasolatido? Think solfege, baby...just like you always do.

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sauce boy, part xviii.

Trying this lavash "pizza" idea from way back again tomorrow, toppings as yet undecided.

Well shit, all of my lavash suppliers are on vacation all of the sudden. Wtf people.

OK, we cool, that little corner Turk near Van Hallstraat sorted a brother out. Now what we gone do? Wellllll, I'm thinking like this:

1) Pizza marinara. I'm making the sauce now.
2) Something with parmigiano, artichokes, kale, lemon, and almonds (and mozzarella). I've been fixated on this since I made that rice the other day.
3) Maybe this, mushrooms, garlic, rosemary, taleggio, etc.
4) I bought an assload of endive (witlof) at the Avondmarkt because it was on sale. I should do something with that. I also bought some fresh figs b/c I'm stupid and they were like 20 cents each. Maybe roasted fig, a little gorgonzola, sauteed endive, mascarpone?

5) I really want to make this and put it on a pizza. And then eat it. And then nap for a long time.

Here are the baking times for the lavash. 

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I've got a new ingredient crush: pul biber.

It's not really "sambal poeder", although I can see what they're trying to say: it's dried red chile, fire-roasted and actually not ground into powder, but kind of coarsely crushed into flakes. There aren't many seeds at all, so the chile flavor is really pronounced instead of the heat. Sambal-ish poeder.

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2011 starts now.

It's time to reign in the excesses of Holiday Season 2010, especially since it's almost February 2011. So, yeah, no more sausage for a while. We will be doing our yearly vegetarian/vegan experiment very soon I believe.

Here's something that looks educational about replacing dairy with coconut.

Maybe we'll try to make tempeh.

Maybe as a way to ease into healthiness we'll make this not-too-healthy salad: celeriac, fennel, pecans, bacon, greens, all with a caramelized apple vinaigrette.

And yesterday Mara made something actually healthy which was really good but just a tiny bit strange. Like an unhealthy ingredient was missing from the recipe that would have made it totally make sense.

But the vinaigrette is healthy and delicious, we'll definitely make it again but we need to see if we can solve the riddle of what it really wants to be paired with, other than the obvious, which is pork. My guess is cheese.

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raisin vinaigrette.

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
1/2 cup raisins
1 tbsp water
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

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almond joy.

We toasted a lot of almonds tonight.

I went on a bit of a shopping spree today. I guess I finally cracked due to lack of sugar and alcohol. That's the bad news. The good news is that my cracking didn't involve either sugar or alcohol. And several people have asked me what I'm doing to myself because I look healthy-ish.

Maybe I even believe them. I'll believe "healthy but tired". I'm not really sleeping enough. Luckily I cancelled my Sept 1st OT301 solo gig, so I have zero brainpower-requiring things to accomplish this month, what a smart man I seem to be when allowed to cancel things in an unfettered manner.

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So today I bought, among other things: a frozen duck; miso; sake; mint; 500 almonds; lots of fresh dates; and a bag of chestnut flour from the Maroc because it was surprisingly cheap.

But what the fuck am I going to do with chestnut flour. Castagnaccio (recipe here)? I didn't love it when we lived in Siena, and believe me I tried because in autumn it was everywhere. But I am a bit desperate for a bread-like substance at the moment, so a small batch may be attempted.

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Oh right. Here's a very informative article/interview about flaxseed.

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and the girls all go freekeh freekeh.

So, as I mentioned, I found the smoked green wheat called firik/freekeh/farik on Monday, after like a two-year casual search. "Casual search" meaning that any time I would see a vaguely Middle Eastern grocer I would check for it, and, as so often happens, it was right under my nose at Interfood, a large halal butcher/grocer on the Groen van Prinstererstraat kind of near De Avondmarkt. They have fresh lamb heads, brains, and hearts in their display case, to give you an idea of their street cred.

And, although firik (this is what the bag I bought calls it, so that's what we'll call it) is not on my diet, you can imagine that I sort of had to make a small batch this morning for tasting purposes. Good news: it's great. Slightly more chewy/toothy than bulgur, but not as much so as spelt, plus? It's smoked. I added salt, a tiny bit of EVOO, and 4 molecules of cinnamon and it was totally good...a perfect addition to the vegetarian/vegan cooking arsenal, and yes, worth the wait.

EDIT: Maybe it will go on my diet after all...here's an article about freekeh's astounding nutritive content.

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freekeh.

1/2 cup firik/freekeh/farik

1 1/2 cups water

pinch salt

four molecules cinnamon

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Boil water, and wash/rinse freekeh while you wait. Add boiling water, salt, cinnamon, and freekeh to saucepan, cover, and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Turn off heat and let sit for 10 min. Stir in olive oil, eat. Serves 2.

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stolen moments.

Seems wrong to go back to light and fluffy kitchen notes after all of the angsty Deep Thoughts of the past few days, but as we say around here, it can't always be magic.

I made Klary's red cabbage and tahini slaw for dinner, and yep, she's right, you should totally make this. I'll probably make it again tomorrow. I made a couple of small alterations based on my current diet (no creme fraiche) and my personal taste (raw onion), so I'm just jotting down my proportions here (it's still your recipe Klarykins!)

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red cabbage and tahini slaw.

2 cups finely shredded red cabbage

1/2 cup sweet white onion, sliced very thinly

3 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water (or less, or more, depending on your tahini)
salt

1 tbsp cilantro, chopped fine

1 tbsp dill, chopped fine

and if you're not on my diet, a little sriracha to taste

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Semi-inspiring challenge to work with ingredients you don't normally use. Kiwi. Grapefruit. Research reveals unexpected flavor partners for these two: kiwi and anise seems to be popular (a cold kiwi and anijsmelk smoothie?), and I've also found a couple of Korean recipes with kiwi subbing for apple or Asian pear. Maybe this means an experimental steak-free bibimbap later this week. Pistachio, lime, cilantro, and avocado also show up as friends of the kiwi, which sounds like a salsa verde of some sort to me.

For grapefruit, most of the focus seems to be contrasting the bitterness with sweetness or with fresh herbs like basil and mint. Champagne and butter also seem popular, but are not within the specs of this program. Allspice and ginger each make appearances, and here's an interesting salad that could work maybe subbing in smoked salmon for the soppressata?

Unrelatedly, I have got to get me some kelp noodles. Anyone seen these in Amsterdam?

OK, commence recipes-in-progress.

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salmon with grapefruit and miso .

I made a version of this that was extremely simple just to see how the flavors worked, and they do. Still thinking about who else to invite to the party.

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salmon, grapefruit, tarragon, champagne vinegar, lemon zest, olive oil, apple. mustard?

No progress here yet other than confirming the grapefruit-tarragon thing.

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salsa verde with kiwi, pistachio, avocado, and lime.

1/2 cup shelled pistachios, kind of crushed

2 kiwi, peeled and cubed small

1/2 avocado, pitted and cubed small

juice of one lime, maybe more maybe less

I'm not sure what you'd do with this, I just ate it by the spoonful. Maybe shrimp? A ceviche kind of thing would probably be nice.

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and someday maybe this.

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upgrade.

Over the last X number of years, I've been forced to slowly come to grips with the fact that Amsterdam is not one of the culinary epicenters of Europe. Even London, a city not historically known for being a food town, seems leagues ahead in terms of gastronomic availability, sophistication, interest, etc.

But. One thing I cannot get used to here, one thing I will not get used to...

...is the crappy garlic. It's never been good, but mainstream garlic in Amsterdam actually seems to be getting worse. Based on what's available in Albert Heijn and Dirk van den Broek, the only explanation is that most local people here just don't have any idea what garlic is supposed to taste like.

Most of the time, what I've ended up buying is not even close to being fresh, by the time you take it out of the shopping bag, it's already smelling like something long-lost you've accidentally discovered at the bottom of your vegetable drawer/cupboard/etc.

Two slightly more reliable options are 1) to buy from a toko or a Turkish market, but this quality seems to go up and down as well. Or 2) if you buy bio/eko, you usually get something a little better than the standard but still not awesome. And still it's not always better.



Thus, a bit of good news: some kind of relief seems to have arrived, however temporarily, in the form of what I believe are maybe young garlic bulbs?

It's true, I know nothing about garlic other than what it's supposed to taste and smell like, so I could be totally wrong about what this is. But Dirk van den Broek has them these days, and once you get them home and into your Whodge, you can smell the difference immediately. There's no whiff of musty, moldy, shriveled, boring age when you crack these things open.

The bulbs aren't split into individual cloves, so you just cut the bulb into clove-sized pieces and get on down the road.


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basher.

Hmm. What sort of foodstuff would have necessitated the use of this hammer and chisel to render it useful?

I'll give you a hint:

This is the delicious and purportedly extremely healthful substance that comes out of the victim after you drill holes through its eyes (and no it's not Ash or Bishop).

That drill bit might sound harsh, but the next step is to throw a towel over its eyeless head and bash it with a hammer a few times until said head cracks open. I wish you could have seen Mara's face while she was doing the bashing. SO HAPPY!!!

Unfortunately, the next step is way, way, way less fun. With a sharp knife, or, if you've recently cut yourself quite badly and are having self-trust issues, a vegetable peeler, separate all of the white coconut meat from the brown skin. More on this in a bit.

behind the wall of sleep.

For all my insomniac brothers and sistas out there: among other things I discovered this past week, I hit upon a (at least temporarily) successful new "natural" sedative mix that really seems to get at one of the, ahem, roots of the problem (some kind of anxiety loop) instead of just knocking a brother out like OTC shit like Unisom (and often making him crabby as shit the next day). And the star of the show is now: ze passion flower.

When I was in Berlin in September I began taking valerian root again, at a slightly higher dosage than I'd ever tried before, and while it was definitely helping me sleep, it was fucking with my stomach as well. So when I stumbled across a semi-forgotten bottle of passion flower last week I decided to see if I could work it into my sleep melange instead of ODing on valerian.

Now I'm back down to recommended doses of melatonin, valerian, and passion flower, and it's really working like the proverbial champ so far, which is always a revelation: 3 or 4 nights in a row of relatively normal-feeling sleep does wonders for one's outlook. And at nighttime I can actually feel the precise moment the passion flower shuts off my mental looper, and I'm asleep 10 minutes later. I am recommend.

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eddoe.

This is mostly just to move things down the page, but the bara sambal was really perfect and should make many more appearances in our lives.

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bara + sambal.

300ml warm water

1 tsp dry yeast

300gr flour

100gr besan

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp masala

1 tsp celery salt

salt to taste

1 large tomato

1 small onion

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

juice from 1/2 a lemon

1 tsp x-hot habanero sauce

Yes.

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healthy power time.

Department of the Interior is pleased to report that both Temperament and General Health Quotient are trending dramatically upward today, and frankly this period of Healthy Power Time showed up without a moment to spare.

Viewed through the Vegetarian Duck field glasses, Healthy Power Time over here usually means Asian food, and yes well this time it's no different. I followed up yesterday's pretty good but significantly flawed (my vegetable doneness was all over the place, I was distracted) bibimbap with an unscheduled but typically delightful stop at Toko Dun Yong this morning before hitting the gym for a punishing session of cardio and reality TV.

I really think that when I get to Heaven*, it will basically just be a slightly bigger version of Dun Yong that I can roam around in for Eternity**. Oh and it will have a big dark wooden bar with lots and lots of dark, bitter beer. And of course one Squawking Mooperbird.

Right, so today I xcaped from Heaven for less than 12 euros by focusing primarily on the cheap canned preserves that I enjoy so much. I will soon fill this very space where these words currently are with elaborate pictures and mouth-altering descriptions of what my 12 euros got me. Until then, we'll all just have to make do with another slowly growing installation of Things I May or May Not Cook.

These Taiwanese pork meatballs would sound delicious if I were eating pork. It contains one of the things I bought, hua gua, which is apparently very good for you.

* You know what I mean.

** Also.

fast buck.

The compound eye of this cute little guy is my segue into the unlikelihood of discovering a new food during a fast. 

Wha? Ja, I guess the fast part of the fast hasn't really started yet: I'm still eating. Today I bought some honey at the Natuurwinkel because we haven't had any honey here in weeks/months, and it sounded good at the time, like to put into my tea or whatever.

Anyway, because I'm a big, big geek, I generally buy monofloral honey. The Natuurwinkel has a huge selection of these, and today I sort of randomly plucked a jar of buckwheat honey. And I get the thing home, and yeah, it barely even tastes like honey...it's malty, caramelized kind of like molasses...good, but strange. It actually reminds me of, um...sex, for reasons I haven't quite put my finger on yet. 

Regardless, I mixed some with a bit of eye-poppingly serious Zaanse mustard and put it on a tomato. And then on an apple (minus the mustard). I have a feeling these are not the best uses for it. Suggestions? 

Apparently it's also quite healthy. According to honey salesmen at least.  

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friday night tomato tasting.

This post was a draft from 2006 or 2008 or something. I'm finally publishing it because it documents the beginnings of what I've come to think of as "my red sauce", even though it's totally Clare's red sauce.

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Last week Clare called and asked where would I get tomatoes if I were making a tomato-crayfish soup for a dinner and the tomatoes needed to be righteous. And I, only knowing what I read on eGullet, said "Well, I'd use canned instead of fresh, and I'd go to Caulils and get some San Marzanos." And after some further dicking about we hung up.

Afterwards, I started thinking that hmm I bet those San Marzanos are pretty expensive. And it's not like the tomatoes I normally use are bad, in fact I think they're pretty good, I get them from the Turkish guys. And even the Italian ones from the Dirk aren't bad. And then I started feeling bad that I sent her off to buy these luxury tomatoes when Dirk would've done. And THEN I started thinking what do I really know about tomatoes anyway.

This is all just to give you the hypothetical reader an insight into the nitty-gritty of my vast, nearly inhuman intellect. THEN, this week we were talking and I asked Clare how the San Marzanos had worked out and she said they had a "great depth of flavor", but her vast, nearly inhuman intellect had been wondering how much better they really were than the other Italian brand at Caulils for half the price, or for that matter: how much better were they than the priced-to-sell Italian tomatoes at our local budget grocery store? Hmm...great minds do think alike.

So Clare suggested that a tasting was in order, and this is one of the many reasons to love Clare. Her plan was to use the simplest possible tomato sauce recipe, something she referred to as pasta napoli (more on this eventually), from which we'd make 3 versions of the sauce, each with a different brand of tomatoes. The contestants: Agrigenus San Marzano (2.50/can); Mutti (1.20/can); and the Dirk van der Broek's brand called:


















Yes. And Mara costs 0.19 cents per can. Let the jokes begin.

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Although I wish we'd had more standardized cooking equipment to test with, or just the tiniest bit of experience with the scientific method in general, I think we came to some conclusions that are based at least partially in fact. All sorts of details will follow when I get to them, but the upshot is: a 2.50 euro can of tomatoes is very different from a 0.19 cent can of tomatoes, but you don't need to spend 2.50 euro on a can of tomatoes.



































easy red sauce. 

So for each can of tomatoes you use, you add to the pan: 1 small glug of red wine, 1 clove of garlic, 1 bay leaf, 1 glug of olive oil, 1 grind of black pepper and 1 pinch of salt or smoked salt. And maybe 1 pinch of smoked paprika if you feel spicy. Oh and 1 tsp of sugar towards the end. So just do this for every can of tomatoes, I usually do 2 or 4. Here's 2.

2 cans cheap canned whole tomatoes
2 glugs of decent red wine
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 small bay leaves
2 glugs good olive oil
2 tsp unrefined sugar

Put everything except the sugar in a saucepan on the lowest heat possible. Let it cook until the tomatoes fall apart, this usually takes 60-90 minutes for the Dirk's tomatoes. After 45 minutes add the sugar, and after 15 more minutes start tasting for salt and sugar levels.

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...as well as my nuts (repost).

This is going to be a reposting of a rather old bit (April 2005) that deals unironically with Nut Health. I'm going to re-tweak the writing and generally trick it out with photos from our 2001 Sicilian vacation during Carnevale. Right now the writing is still 2005-style.

A word about the chickens. We went to Sicily in 2001 immediately after Mara's life-changing run-in with the exotic and deadly Guillain-Barré Syndrome. It seemed that some relaxing islandy sun might be a good antidote for sleepless weeks in the hospital, plasmapheresis, and nerve conduction studies (where basically they electrocute you "just a little" to see if your nerves are still working).

When we arrived, we (duh) found out it was Carnevale, which meant parades, costumes, and general drunken revelry. 2001 was also the year that "mad cow disease" was dominating the media, and in response to this a certain faction of the Taormina celebrants had dressed up as chickens, in drag of course. On several floats, there were crossdressing chickens cooking actual chicken and throwing it into the crowd:

















It was yet another example of that wonderful Italian tendency toward serving tasty food where you least expect it: bus stations, hospitals, and yes, parades.

Throughout the cooking process, the chefs had been taking long pulls from a suspicious-looking bottle of what must have been Boogie Juice, because it wasn't long before the chickens began boogeying down unstoppably. They also had their eye on Mara, and soon she was in their clutches. And me with no chicken repellent.

































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Riiiiight, time for a Nut Roundup. During my most successful "weight management interludes", nuts have been my primary dessert substitute and snack. Turns out, though, that not all nuts are equally beneficial to the rest of your body. There are some well-known standouts from a health perspective, the point of this post was to look at my faves and see how good or bad they are.

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ALMONDS. Good news! In 2003, the FDA added almonds to the list of "tree nuts that may help reduce the risk of heart disease." I'll quote from the link above, from Western Farm Press:

"A clinical trial conducted at the University of Toronto found that women and men who ate about one ounce (a handful) of almonds each day lowered their LDL cholesterol by 4.4 percent from baseline. The study showed an even greater decrease of 9.4 percent in LDL cholesterol in those who ate about two handfuls of almonds a day, indicating that almonds' effect increases with increased consumption."

Great news. One ounce of almonds = 24 almonds = 164 calories. Time to bust out the ricciarelli. They don't even look that bad for you.


PINE NUTS. You'd think that this study/statement above from the FDA would include pine nuts. Well, when the FDA mentioned tree nuts, they added that they were disqualifying four kinds of nuts ‑ Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, cashew nuts and some varieties of pine nuts because they exceed healthy saturated fat levels.

Thus, an occasional treat. And that should render this slice of pure uncut dopamine even more occasional.


















PISTACHIOS. Ah, Sicily. In Taormina (pictured above), after stumbling down the nearly vertical hill from our hotel into the center of town, I was wandering around comparing bakeries, and finally settled on one with an array of nut-bombarded cookies in the window. Pistachio, pignoli, and almond, studded with tooth-defying amounts of sugared nuts...we went back for seconds within the hour.

Well, this is coming from the California Pistachio Commission, but in light of everything we've already uncovered, we can assume that the word "nuts" in the text can apply to "pistachio" as well (they thought we wouldn't notice that they don't actually use the word pistachio?). Verdict: as healthy as almonds, and one of the lowest-oil-content nuts.1 oz. pistachios = 47 kernels = 158 cal.

HAZELNUTS. A very European nut, one that I liked in America when I came across it (mostly in Frangelico or European chocolate), but I didn't begin truly jonesing for filberts until we lived in Italy and they were everywhere. My most indelible hazelnut experience came from a street vendor in Bologna who was selling warm, fresh hazelnut brittle. When i say fresh, I mean that not only was the brittle fresh--you couldn't hold it upright because it would ooze/droop over--but the hazelnuts were extremely fresh as well, not these gnarled, dry things you sometimes come across. Totally perfetto.
Also: here's a nice little paper from Univ. of Arizona with some cholesterol-lowering tips.
So hazelnuts...they're as good for you as almonds are. Here's the Hazelnut Commission's promotional info. Not that this is the info that I'm basing my results on...the hazelnut details are already covered in the FDA links for almonds and pistachios.
1 oz. hazelnuts = 178 calories. pretty high in fat.
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CONCLUSION. Good: walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios. Baddish: pine, macadamia, cashew, Brazil. Neither: The peanut. As far as I can tell, there's no non-partisan document that says that peanuts lower anything beyond what any monounsaturated fat would do. They're just extra fat. So, if you feel like a nut, it'd be wiser to go with something that actually does you some good.
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kool thing.

It never ceases to amaze me how thick I can be linguistically. I mean I'm OK with English, but I am just dumb as toast when it comes to dealing with more than one language, or recognizing cross-language similarities. Sad, really, considering where I hang my hat.

For example today I was sitting around, taking a break from trying to avoid doing my taxes, and my mind wandered itself all the way over to the U-nited States: I started thinking about cole slaw (also referred to as cabbage salad in some places, but the two can also be very different things). After a few moments appreciating the technical points of putting together a good cole slaw, I turned my gigantic, supercomputer-like mind towards deriving the provenance of the term cole slaw. I looked out at the grey Amsterdam skies, put my feet up on the arm of the couch, and let the ruminating begin. Who was this Cole character? A wealthy cabbage baron from Savannah? A Confederate general. Or a BBQ pitmaster. Someone's mother. We don't know.

Well, I didn't know. So I checked the Google Wire, and...let me just say for you non-Dutch speakers out there that the word for cabbage in Dutch is kool (pronounced like "coal", or, well..."cole") and the word for salad is sla. Duh.

The cole slaw reverie resulted in a dinner that sounded great but was let down by some really insipid salmon: kind of pale and watery and tasteless...is this what farm-raised salmon is tasting like these days? Blecch. Also, my cole slaw didn't have time to soften up. Anyway, BBQ salmon plus corn w/chipotle butter and underage buttermilk cole slaw was what it was. Kool sla.

So, also, we now know that, in the video, one of Kim Gordon's go-go dancers is wearing a belt that says "cabbage".

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persian purgin'.

Bit of a bait and switch afoot here. Though that was a convenient title for this post, I'm afraid that this next lurking fridge troll is not Persian at all, it's biber salçase. Literally, eh..."pepper paste". Turkish.

What we use this for? I mean, I read the Wikipedia entry, but I need recipes. In English, por favor.

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Well, this is not a bad place to start.
This is also very informative.

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star blecch.

Well that was fun.

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The above is a picture of our friend Felipe from December's legendary Down With Hip-Hop Rally (here are the rest of the new photos, not my work, and probably NSFW), which I'll stop talking about any minute now.

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Lil' K-Pon back at the helm here, plotting a course for the planet Persia. It's time to clean out the refrigerator again, and this time the country with the most underutilized condiments is...Iran!

Our first contestant is something that's pretty delicious, but you can really only consume it in small quantities, which it doesn't mind since it's a condiment. It's a member of the torshi family, which is the general term for pickled things in Middle Eastern cooking. If you've been to an Iranian or Turkish grocer, you've noticed the rows and rows of pickled things: obvious choices like whole tiny cukes, garlic cloves, small eggplants, turnips, carrots, cauliflower...and less obvious ones like unripe fruit and nuts. Anyway, I think these are all classified as torshi.

In addition to "whole object pickles" (yep, freshly coined), there are all kinds of relishes and chutney kind of options. And this brings us to the contestant in question, ladies and gentlemen: pickled bandari!

































I thought bandari meant eggplant. It doesn't. It's what this relish is called. So this is sort of an Iranian pickle relish, but with eggplant as the primary ingredient. It's extremely sour, but not overly salty or one-dimensional. Here are the rest of the ingredients (it also looks like there are some kalonji/nigella seeds in there):

















Practical uses? Well, that's what this post is all about. It's been sitting unused in my fridge because I hadn't thought of anything good to do with it.

Today was its maiden voyage. I sauteed some merguez sausages and meanwhile stirred together a new futuristic condiment that was half Heinz ketchup and half pickled bandari. Excellent idea. We followed up with a mayo/bandari hybrid that was equally excellent.
















Either of these would be gorgeous on a burger, hot dog, Turkse pizza (lahmacun), or, well...merguez sausage. And the bandari/mayo idea would also be an awesome coleslaw dressing, were you in a mind for such a thing. In fact, toss the coleslaw with the mayobandari, serve merguez on top of it with ketchupbandari drizzled on top and finish everything with a sprinkling of raw sweet onions and cilantro....score!

OK. More Persian explorations soon, as the fridgepurge continues.....

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More research is as usual proving that I might not know what I'm talking about. Here is a recipe for a Persian torshi that sounds very much like what is pictured above.

flower pepper.

thyme saver.

"But--I thought you said she had her jaw worked on??? AAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"...etc, etc. etc.

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I'm self-diagnosing myself as having bronchitis brought on by the flu. But Mark....isn't that absolutely terrible timing??? Yes, thank you for asking, this is bad timing as Mara's parents arrived this morning and last night we had to get through 7 hours of pillow-muffled coughing by me that counted as "sleep".

Since over-the-counter antihistamines aren't good for bronchitis sufferers, I've been exploring other options for re-opening my breathing ports, and one that has worked fantastically is thyme.

Take a big pot, put a couple inches of water in it and 3 or 4 branches of thyme. Bring it to a boil, take it off the stove, drape a towel over the back of your head, and stick your head in the pot. Being careful not to burn your little self, of course. Breathe carefully but as deeply as possible for as long as you can stand it.

Now, would this work just as well with any other aromatic herb? Don't know, haven't tested yet, and hopefully I won't have too many more days left when conditions would be right. But good ol' Wikipedia seems to think that thyme is an especially medicinal herb:

The essential oil of common thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is made up of 20-55% thymol. Thymol, an antiseptic, is the main active ingredient in Listerine mouthwash. Before the advent of modern antibiotics, it was used to medicate bandages. It has also been shown to be effective against the fungus that commonly infects toenails.

A tea made by infusing the herb in water can be used for cough and bronchitis. Medicinally thyme is used for respiratory infections in the form of a tincture, tisane, salve, syrup or by steam inhalation. Because it is antiseptic, thyme boiled in water and cooled is very effective against inflammation of the throat when gargled 3 times a day.

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So you can gargle with your vaporizer water when it cools, huh? Sometimes Wikipedia sounds like a doddering old aunt that nobody believes anymore.

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The rest of this post used to contain a scratchpad for figuring out where we would be eating with Mara's parents, but that has been relocated for reprocessing. Really.

abused substances.

As a person matures, they will often go through what psychologists term an "experimental phase", where they ingest an array of dubious foreign substances and see if anything interesting happens.

Do psychologists really even think about this stuff anymore? Probably not, and if they do, they surely don't call it an "experimental phase", that's hardly technical-sounding enough. Who knows. Regardless, we here at Vegetarian Duck have been through several of these phases ourselves, and trust me: they can go either way, depending on the substances involved. This time, we're hitting the hard stuff. That's right, processed vegetarian entrees.

Tonight's dose? Cutting edge lab shit, baby...street name: Q.

You thought I kicked that shit? I thought so too. Mostly we had ourselves a scarcity problem...availability dried up, no one was holding, not Albert H., not nobody. Tonight, though, I got my hands on some Quorn Cordon Bleu, but it was weak. It was like the time when you were 13 and you bought that "weed" from a friend's older brother. When you smoked it? Not much happened. You know why? It wasn't weed. It was oregano or catnip or carpet fibers or whatever that bastard of a friend's older brother (correctly) thought he could get away with selling you.

This was kind of like that. Not much happened. It wasn't much like food: no juiciness, not much taste other than salt, not much notable texture other than a dry crumby exterior and a tasteless gooey cheese simulation inside.

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Speaking of weed, my month in Arizona reminded me that perhaps marijuana is best enjoyed as a more occasional recreation. Compared to, say, using it to meet the FDA's recommended daily consumption of "leafy greens".

This previous sentence, by the way, illustrates a grammatical point that has been bothering me for some time now without my getting to the bottom of it.

Until now, that is! Basically, I was wondering exactly when and how I became confused about what to do with periods and quotation marks. I'm sure it's not obvious from my writing, but at some point I did know quite a bit about the English language and how to write it properly.

The problem boils down to the logical placement of punctuation marks within or outside of quotation marks. After some research, I'm happy to report that there's a good reason I've been unsure: Americans and Brits do it differently (one helpful explanation here).

Apparently it works like this: everyone agrees that if you're not using a period at the end of a sentence, then the placement of the punctuation mark should reflect the intent of the sentence.

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He said to me, "Did you call me a knob shiner?"
I thought to myself: only because MF Doom showed me how to rhyme it with "Rob Reiner"!

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If you are using a period at the end of a sentence, then according to the Americans, the period goes inside the quotation marks, regardless of the meaning of the sentence.

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Sweating nervously, I decided that my only course of action was to press the little red button labeled "Destroy."

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See? The little red button doesn't actually have a period on it, but that's what this sentence implies. The Brits, on the other hand, would put the period outside the quotes, because, well, that's what is actually on the the little red button: "Destroy".

And since this makes more sense to my tiny tiny mind, I started doing it without realizing it. That is, until I found myself stymied at the ends of sentences wondering why I wasn't sure where the period went. I assumed it was just my daily intake of leafy greens that was fucking me up, but no, it's just the Brits again.

Lastly, in annotating the excerpted lyrics below, I came across a term that I hadn't heard for describing a phenomenon that I find simultaneously depressing and fascinating: pseudo-anglicism (though the example I was annotating was actually an example of pseudo-Spanish).

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V. Vaughn, the traveling Vaudeville Villain
Who don't give a flying fuck who ain't not feeling him
Watch what ya' dealing him: ace, king, death card
Strong-arm the wrong man, pardon the left guard

Get money and earn it, then everything you touch turns shit
Got much to learn kid, light it up, burn shit
Light it up like a Dutch when the hash melt
Only time they see him is when they need him with the cash belt

Ay carumba, now that's my number
One dry summer, as far as I remember
Burnt out, but gaining every edgy penny
Then he hit him straight to the head like Reggie Denny
Call him back when you need some more 'gnac, Horshack
Doing 80 down the Van Wyck on horseback
Yr man's sick but he wreck tracks, puto
Get back too bro', exactamundo

Viktor the director flip a script like Rob Reiner
The way a lotta dudes rhyme their name should be "knob shiner"
For a buck, they'd likely dance a jig or do the Hucklebuck
To Vik it's no big deal, they're just a buncha knuckle-fucks.

-MF Doom as Viktor Vaughn, "Vaudeville Villain"



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