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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search for pleasure dome.

Well, your host is having some kind of pharmaceutical problem again that is only made marginally better by pushing a pleasure button, when he can manage to locate one. Believe you me we will be launching a Nostromo-like salvage mission to go in there and methodically detail the recovery process should there be one and maybe even learn something from it this time, but for now let's just thank our lucky lucky stars, shall we, for in a moment of true inspiration/desperation I have found/developed a super surprising, healthy-ass pleasure button. Check this shit out. I think it's "Southern food". Maybe it would need to be trout or catfish or catfish instead but you feel me.

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blackened salmon with kale and sauerkraut slaw + blue cheese and peanut.

4 x 125g salmon
2 1/2 tbsp paprika
3/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 cups of shredded kale
1 cup fresh sauerkraut
2 scallions, diced
1/2 cucumber, sliced
3 tbsp cider  vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard or piccalilli
1 or 2 tbsp agave syrup
I guesss you should probably put some mayonnaise in here, but we'll try it without

the necessary amount of blue cheese, crumbled
a handful of dry roasted peanuts

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july.

It was "half price all vegetables" at the Maroc on Saturday, so I spent the amount I was planning to spend and bought twice as much stuff. Above: 5-minute sugar snap peas in butter. Below: Ottolenghi's roasted fennel with goat cheese and lemon zest; vadouvan salmon with what should've been Ottolenghi smashed ginger cucumbers and a beet chutney from Nigella; torrential downpour at Paviljoen van de Dame in Paterswolde; Ottolenghi's cauliflower cake; an excellent kaas/worst plankje from Maallust in Veenhuizen; windowsill snails making off with almonds and cat food; something dreadful-looking from the Coastal Maine Cookbook.

lungscraper.

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warm-smoked salmon with daikon noodles.
1/3 of one daikon
one giant piece of peeled ginger
1 tbsp wasabi
1 tbsp agave nectar
juice of two lemons
juice of one blood orange
1 tbsp miso
1 green chile
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 tbsp sesame oil
salt to taste

a couple pieces of warm-smoked salmon

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tang.

This doesn't look like much, but the first version went by so fast I'm thinking about making it again tonight. It's from the rich tradition of Spanish escabeches and salpicóns and all other manner of marinated and pickled fish, served cold or at room temperature. Obvs wild salmon is not a requirement here, just any slightly oily fish that really tastes like something on its own. If you are using wild salmon, Kalamatas were key, I wouldn't substitute another olive.

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wild salmon in olive escabeche.

2 medium carrots, cut into 1/4-inch-wide, 2-inch lengths
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for frying
1 sweet onion, thinly sliced
2 tsp dried thyme
4 to 8 bay leaves (8 if they're good ones)
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 wild salmon filets (about 500g total)
1/2 cup kalamata olives, chopped very fine

This is kind of how you do it, not my instructions yet, they're still the original Food & Wine instructions. You'll be able to tell when they're mine because the words "shimmering" and "dollop" will be gone. Probably also "spooning".

Using a mandoline, cut the carrots into thin strips. In a small skillet, heat 1/4 cup of the olive oil. Add the carrots, shallots, thyme sprigs, bay leaves and garlic and cook over moderate heat until the vegetables are softened, about 6 minutes. Remove from the heat. Stir in the vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Let stand for 10 minutes.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1/4 inch of olive oil until shimmering. Season the mackerel fillets with salt and pepper and add them to the skillet skin-side down. Cook over high heat until the skin is browned and crisp, about 4 minutes. Turn and cook the fillets for 1 minute longer, until almost cooked through. Transfer the fillets to a large, shallow glass or ceramic dish, skin side up. Top with the vegetables and their marinade. Let stand at room temperature for 3 hours, occasionally spooning the marinade over.

Discard the thyme sprigs and bay leaves. Arrange the mackerel on plates and spoon the vegetables and their marinade on top. Dollop with the tapenade and serve.

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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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rumaroma.

Wellllllll....a lot happened in 2013. We laughed. We cried. We took cat tranquilizers and ate cereal in our sleep. Today: a new day dawns, or it did do some hours ago. And mere moments from now, I shall go crashing noisily out into the spent-firework-littered, empty-streeted wilderness of 2014, my brain steely-eyed (?) and my mettle pre-tested (actually my mettle pre-tested out of 2014 and just skipped up to 2015, totally unexpected), and the whole of my being fortified with an impenetrable (?) combination of a mystic's deluded optimism, the gentle cynicism of the elderly, and the near-silence of the socially fatigued.

Oh right, above is an awesome pho from a couple days ago, and below is the (pre-saucing) Christmas Day continuation of our plan to "have a nice meal together": this is warm-smoked salmon with caraway sauerkraut, leftover mashed potatoes, leftover brown butter, and a little dab of strong mustard on the side. It sure didn't taste like leftover anything: this is what we should be doing with salmon and sauerkraut from now on. The only thing missing was a fresh-baked loaf of pumpernickel.

skint.

Spine-tinglingly exciting post forthcoming about this week's Dirk sale on John West canned salmon. Basic gist is that the 100M grocery budget has been downsized again, and this means being open-minded about interfacing with heretofore unexplored protein sources.

My last and only previous experience with canned salmon was impactful enough to where I haven't even considered buying any in at least the last 10 years. The contents of that first and only can were overinclusive, a blasted mix of unappealing skin, bones, and probably some other parts of the salmon that I generally don't put in my mouth.

So this week's Dirk sales flyer had John West Alaskan salmon for roughly €2.60/lb (it's one 418g can), not terribly cheap, but intriguing enough to warrant an experiment. This salmon included skin, yes, but they were whole filets, no bones, and actually smelled good. As utilized below, yes, tasty enough to repeat. Is your spine tingling yet, he asked rhetorically.

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salmon and sweet potato cakes.

1 can good pink Atlantic salmon, drained
1 medium sweet potato, cooked and peeled
1/4 tsp chipotle powder, or possibly even one pureed chipotle pepper
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
3 scallions, chopped
1/3 cup toasted almonds, pulverized
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
salt to taste
squeeze of lemon
1 egg

Combine everything with a fork. Form into patties and fry or bake. Serve with something sweet and spicy, we tried mayo first, not sharp enough. Thai chili sauce was better. Makes way too many servings.

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here's looking at you.

This was designed to be a big healthy breakfast for a busy day of physical and mental activity, or at least what passes for those two things in my life, and it was so tasty and satisfying AND healthy-seeming that I would love to do it on a more frequent basis. Look at how excited I sound.

It does however have a couple semi-luxury items, smoked salmon (€2.99/100g) and watercress (€1.89/100g). Obviously those prices aren't breaking the bank, but breakfast-wise it's more of a budget hit than say an egg and toast. I should start looking into how much cheaper smoked salmon snippets are (these are the non-beautiful offcuts that are a by-product of slicing smoked salmon beautifully). Calorically speaking this was 410 calories as written below minus the shallot.

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soft-boiled eggs with smoked salmon and watercress. 

2 eggs

100g watercress, washed, spin-dried, and chopped rather fine so you don't have to discard the thickest stems. If you were serving this to someone you could separate the leaves from the stems and just finely chop the stems...I didn't care how it looked really, I was just trying to not waste any of my 100g of watercress.

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp potent coarse-grain mustard
1 small shallot, minced, if you don't really have to worry about your breath

100g smoked salmon
2 tbsp chives, minced, if you don't really have to worry about your breath

no salt necessary
cracked pepper possibly, I didn't use any.

I've decided that I like my watercress slightly wilted, so I dressed my salad quite early in the process. Basically, put your eggs in a pot with cold water to cover and bring to a boil. While this is happening, make your dressing by combining the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and shallot. Once the eggs are boiling, set a timer for 3 minutes and put a bowl of cold or icy water in the sink. Dress the watercress with the vinaigrette. When the timer goes off, gently remove the eggs from the pan and put them in the bowl of cold water. Plate the salmon on top of the dressed cress, then peel your eggs, add them to the bowl and do the green scatter on top with the chives.

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fanny.

This is homemade fan-dried warm-smoked salmon with charcoal-grilled corn and greens with apples, walnuts and dried cherries. If I could have this again tonight I would.

UPDATE: Jeepers, it's actually a Booby Flay recipe. It was great.

crontastic.

Tasted a couple more Ottolenghi recipes last night at Alena's party, these pumpkin wedges (great) and some lentil thing I can't find but was also great. I may finally have to break down and buy those books.

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I myself invented two really comforting and healthy dinners this past week that need documenting. Here's one, the fish is based on something Mario Batali did and is almost great.

mustardseed-crusted salmon with salt, black pepper and balsamic.

400gr salmon filet
1/2 cup yellow mustard seeds
1 tbsp black pepper
salt to taste

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Pretty straightforward: coat the salmon with the mustardseeds, salt, and black pepper. Bake at 200C for 12 minutes or so. Pour balsamic vinegar over and serve.

roasted cauliflower and kohlrabi with anchovy, capers, rosemary, parmesan.

1 head cauliflower
1 kohlrabi
2 tbsp olive oil
salt

1 oil-preserved anchovy
1 red onion, chopped
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced
2-4 tbsp capers

1/2 cup greated parmesan
black pepper to taste

Roast the cauliflower and kohlrabi. Saute the red onion and the anchovy together until the anchovy falls apart. Add the rosemary and capers along with the cauliflower and kohlrabi to a wok or something and saute until everything's integrated. Then add parmesan and black pepper to taste.

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Then dinner number two was
Montreal-spiced salmon (which means this)
peppers & onions with garlic, fennel seed, oregano, black pepper, paprika (designed to mimic Italian fennel sausage)
harissa yogurt.

These were both super good and pretty unlike anything I would normally make.

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sun day.

I could eat this every day for breakfast. Smoked salmon, grapefruit, coriander, olive oil, avocado: it just works, yo.

time machine.

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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hey i've got an ikea.

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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satellite kitchen.

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.

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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.

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för en nyckel till en dörr som är vidöppen.

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.

intrepid.

I don't even think she's on a bike, just wearing the helmet for protection.

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OK so I should really be working right now? But I just made something that literally took 5 minutes of effort and left me wondering, "Why don't you just cook like this more often?".

Here's how it went tonight, but I'm sure this could be streamlined: take a bag of Cheap Dirk Fish (mine was Alaskan salmon). For each filet, sprinkle/rub unto/onto it: about a tbsp of Surinamese masala + a tsp of Surinamese X-Hot sambal. Broil for 12-15 minutes (probably 5 minutes too long, but I don't like to undercook Cheap Dirk Fish). Remove from oven and slather/drizzle each filet with 1 tbsp pumpkin chutney from De Avondmarkt and 1 tbsp of ketjap manis (this is why you didn't salt anything earlier). Broil for another 5 minutes without burning the sugars in the ketjap and chutney. Zero effort, big happy mouth time.

A banana-cardamom milkshake would've been the perfect sleeping pill afterwards but there is work to be done.

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There'll be more to this post when procrastination comes a-callin' again, but for now, I don't want to forget that The Girl Who Ate Everything was just on a terribly well-researched trip to Sweden and has lots of good info here on her blog, but also here on Serious Eats.

And, uh....here's this. Don't watch the original until after you see their version, but do watch it to appreciate the effort that went into the tribute. I didn't really laugh until he made the vinaigrette and then I had to watch it again.



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spring can really hang you up the most.

Camembert and honey on toast. A break from the studio, 30 mintues of lunch at Cafe Wilhelmina (my smoked salmon sandwich with wasabi mayo, soy sauce, and scallions was good...Hilly's hummus + roasted veggie sandwich was not good because of superdry homemade hummus and a weirdly pitched spice mix, Anat's carpaccio/truffelmayo was the best of the lot I think). Back in the studio while the sun continues to laugh in our face.

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you. keep. on. eatin' cars.

Ja. Still not blogging, this isn't blogging, this is just pre-coffee typing to document a couple of facts.

1) I have taken something out of the freezer that no one can identify, and I am thinking about eating it. It has many of the characteristics of pumpkin soup, and yet it smells strongly of fish and smoke. No one remembers making this, but it must have been made since December when we cleaned out the freezer. I know I made a smoked pumpkin soup in November, but this can't be that. I mention all of this in case I die from eating this. UPDATE: it seems to be a smoked mackerel and pumpkin soup. I remember talking about trying this, but I remember nothing about making it. It's pretty good, if it doesn't kill me.

2) In the past couple of weeks I've twice made a very good Mexican roasted chicken recipe from Zarela Martinez: basically rub the chicken with a mixture of black pepper, cumin, cloves, oregano, and thyme; stick a couple of cloves of sliced garlic under the skin in strategic places; give the whole thing a splash of apple cider vinegar and and salt liberally. Marinate for more than 1 and less than 6 hours. Roast as you would a regular old chicken. I served with basic black beans and a quick chile sauce from Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz's Book of Latin American Cooking, called salsa de chile ancho y almendra. Really good.

3) Yesterday, Korean food. Every single time we make Korean food I say something like "why don't we make this more often": it's fast, easy, healthy, and great. Last night was "salmon bulgogi" (based on a Rozanne Gold recipe) with a side of kim chi, perfectly good.

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salmon bulgogi.

2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/3 cup scallions, chopped
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
one 3/4-inch cube peeled fresh ginger
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
3/4 tsp dochujang

four 125 gr salmon fillets

Process first eight ingredients in a food processor til smooth, pour over salmon (possibly reserving a little marinade to drizzle over at the end if you don't mind raw garlic), marinate for an hour. Bake salmon in the oven for 15 minutes at 200C. Serve with kim chi on the side maybe, or some kind of other milder pickle.

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forget me not.

Circuits still overloaded here schedule-wise, barely cooking, yet eating healthier, that about sums everything up. If only neighbors would stop delivering enormous slices of awesomely dense chocolate cake at 11pm, things would almost be going according to plan.

There have been some recipes that we've experimented with this week that didn't seem like our kind of thing, and yet: they almost were. This mushroom and daikon soup was very good, just made it tonight for lunch tomorrow. The kind of obviously healthy, satisfyingly brothy thing you sometimes crave but never really know quite what to do about it. Very minimalist: sherry, garlic, and soy sauce being the only real additions.

And Mara made this salmon salad thing for dinner, minus most of the ingredients, and it was good enough to make me completely believe that adding the rest of the ingredients would be pretty super.

But what I really want? Chorizo and chickpeas, with a poached egg on top and a big glass of red zinfandel from Dad's collection on the side. Followed by a huge slice of Valentina's 11pm chocolate cake.

Instead, let's focus on the healthier options from Mark Bittman's farewell post as The Minimalist.

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