super saloon.

Finally got a scale today. Thus, we have a new MFSDxiv recipe.

I haven't mentioned it here yet b/c I wanted to see how things went, but now it seems like I'm going to be taking this for a while, so it's worth talking about The Big Side Effect: weight gain. If you Google (when can we stop capitalizing that) "mirtazapine and weight gain" you'll find pages and pages of stories about people who gained like 25-50% of their body weight after starting this. It's unclear how much of it has to do with physiological changes and how much is a result of this medication's secondary classification as an appetite stimulant.

For me personally: let me just say that the last several years of dieting while using marijuana combined with generally being cooking-obsessed has all been awesome training for mirtazapine. Now that the first week of colossal cravings has passed, it's just kind of back to low-level munchies with regular fake low blood sugar hunger spikes. I'm so used to ignoring these brain messages during daylight hours that it's really no effort at all to eat correctly.

Also interesting: pre-medication my normal bad eating times would be between say 10pm and 6am. Not being awake during those hours has made a big difference. But also, I mean, really, after you (or I) take this stuff, within 20 minutes you are not capable of snacking or anything else.

But I do feel really bad for people who aren't ready for it in terms of craving resistance and good nutrition habits, they're most likely fucked.

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sardines with lemon and tarragon.

1 can of good sardines in oil, drained (my go-to brand is Tagine, available at your local Turk/Moroccan)
juice of 1/2 lemon
zest of one lemon (I know, inconvenient...maybe a whole lemon's juice would also be ok)
1 tbsp fresh tarragon, or more, chopped
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp capers, chopped
1/2 sweet or red onion, chopped, or if you're worried about your breath/digestion, 1 stalk of celery, chopped

Just combine everything. Good for 3 days in the fridge.

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on the beat.

When planning last month's beach trip, I ended up using TripAdvisor for a lot of things. Just now I ended up out there again and realized I'd hadn't really used it to research Amsterdam restaurants in a while.

Some surprising results for "Best-Ranked Restaurant in Amsterdam" included #1 (out of 1,528 restaurants) Zaza's, which I'd just never heard of. Situated in De Pijp, it looks like an affordable, semi-interesting American brasserie menu, though the owner is Irish. If they have seats at a bar, this might be worth looking at.

Also #2 Vlaming, which is right down the street. Mara's suggested this a few times and I've always talked her out of it because I'd never heard anything good about it and the menu looked pretty boring. It's possible I suck though. Plus the owners seem very interested in making sure people have good experiences there. How strange (UPDATE: Mara and KK went last week and had a great time, so yes I suck)

Others: we've been looking for places with decent wine lately, #157 Graves has been a due for a revisit for a while now (I don't remember my last visit's food at all, which as you can imagine is super unusual), but also #66 Cote Ouest just popped up on the radar now too, a real and affordable French place with galettes and cidre and duck and all my other favorite things, plus this looks like a good mussels/frites spot for the wintertime.

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CRON going OK. But I need some salads that can be mostly pre-made and ready to go. And they should have some protein. For example: all of these ideas are based on the lunch menu from a Chicago restaurant called Moderno.

• egg, cucumber, pumpernickel crumbs, blue cheese, tarragon
• fried catfish, peanuts, field greens, creme fraiche/ginger dressing
• arugula, crispy ham, pine nuts, pickled red onion, hirtenkase
• beets, raspberries, pistachio, mascarpone, red wine vinegar
• tuna, chopped romaine, rosemary, dried tomatoes, grilled radicchio, olives, creamy parmesan
• spinach, hard-boiled egg, pickled onion, pecorino, mushroom, black pepper vinaigrette
• smoked chicken, red apple, red pepper, mayo, pistachio, basil
• sardine, preserved lemon, fennel

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return of the living dead.

Or, just me, which is horrifying enough. Happy that my time in sick bay was limited to two days on the couch and that my nose is once again useful as a breathing apparatus.

During my convalescence, I ate nothing but incendiary, flat-out spicy-ass Asian food, hoping to chile pepper my sinuses into submission. Starting with that kimchi jigae, the next step was ma po tofu, and somewhere in there some leftover Surinamese thing which I'll elaborate on in a minute. All of this punctuated by short bursts from my sriracha gun...sriracha on toast with butter, etc. It was the only thing that made me feel any better. Ah, endorphins...

The Surinamese thing. Pictured above, it doesn't look like much, but it's something I've talked about before, basically a can of Morjon sardines plus some other stuff and some green beans, simmered for 30 minutes and served over bulgur or rice or quinoa. It's different every time I make it, but it's always been surprisingly great (and cheap!). Truss me.

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mark's surinamese sardine + green bean thing.

200 gr green beans, trimmed

1 big oval can Morjon sardines in tomato sauce

1 healthy tbsp Javanese sambal (a shortcut for adding shrimp paste, palm sugar, and habanero)

1 onion, chopped

2 tbsp fresh ginger, grated or processed

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

1 cup bulgur

2 cup water

1 tsp sambal, possibly the same sambal you used above, possibly not

1 tbsp ketjap manis

2 tbsp butter or equivalent

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brewing alternatives.

One of the results of my luxuriously long vacation last month was the realization that we (I) spend "a lot of money" on food.

This whole self-awareness thing is something that can happen after a long absence from home, right? You see your "normal daily life" from a slightly dollied-back perspective, which maybe allows you to see some opportunities for directorial tweaks here and there, etc.

The tweak I've got in mind is a frankly fucking awful-sounding little experiment: a Weekly Grocery Budget. I need to do some experimentation to figure out exactly what that means, number-wise. It won't include meals eaten outside the house, b/c that doesn't need any further discouraging.

But yeah. What got me re-thinking about a budget was the sardines I made today. After a few bites, I was all "You know? I could eat sardines every day," and then I was like "Boy would that save a bunch of money on groceries." And then I was all like etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

And then (ha) I saw this Chowhound post: Eating Like a Chowhound on $3 a Day. They're talking about a budget of $3 a day, per person, so roughly $100/month per person. There are weekly recipe plans and all kinds of useful ideas out there.

Now, the comments on this Chowhound thread make this budget sound like an amazing sacrifice. I'm thinking 3 euros a day still sounds kind of high. That's 6 euros a day for both of us, and I could be waaaay off, but I think--my constant pointless impulse purchases aside (wild turkey leg confit?)--we're probably not too too far off from that right now. I mean really, Mara only eats eggs, butter, tomatoes, cheese, bread and tuna, and I pretty much just eat catfish, tempeh, and prunes at this point. How hard can it be???!?!!??!???

UPDATE: eh...perhaps I misestimated some things. A preliminary budget reveals that in order to keep eating non-junk food (no refined flour or sugar, no partially-hydrogenated this or that), it will cost us more than 3 euros a day. I think we can maybe squeak by on 4 euros a day. Budget and grocery list forthcoming.

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Ye always wonder if you're buying the best sardines available in yr little 'hood. If only there was some sort of sardine taste-off to help determine the best brands...click. My favorites to date are still the Moroccan brand Tagine, but the Suriname cookbook mentioned a couple of posts ago singled out Brunswick and Morjon...so I bought a can of each today.

Sardines in tomato sauce get a bad bad rap in most taste tests, because of the tomato sauce itself. Which is understandable, I think the most that canned tomato sauces can really hope for is a top rating of "Edible".

The Morjon 'dines weren't bad at all, though I didn't taste them right out of the can. But once prepared in the Surinaamse stylie, I was completely hooked. The mint and ketjap asin are my customizations, totally not authentic.

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sardines in tomato sauce with rice, kinda suriname-style.

1 tin Morjon sardines in tomato sauce (79 cents!)
1 tbsp butter
1 onion, chopped
0.5 to 1 madame jeanette pepper, minced
2 tbsp celery leaves, minced
1 tbsp mint leaves, minced
1 to 2 tbsp ketjap asin (the salty version of ketjap manis. ketjap manis would probably be fine too)

Make rice (or bulgur, in my case). In a wok or something, fry onion and pepper in 1 tbsp butter for 5 minutes or so. Add contents of sardine tin and celery leaves to onion/pepper, and simmer the whole thing for 10 minutes. Before serving, stir in mint leaves and ketjap. Serve over rice.

Serves 2.

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cupboard's bare.

You really start eating differently after your at-home inventory dips below a certain level. Due to a busy pre-Easter week we kind of forgot to do grocery shopping before the holiday weekend. This is not a huge deal, since we live 30 seconds away from the one grocery store in town you know will be open.

But we also just didn't feel like going to the store. We were working on complicated things, it was snowing, etc. So after a few days of this, there's no fresh food in the house (especially with the size of our refrigerators...think college dorm) and you begin rummaging through cupboards.

And turning up things like spicy Moroccan sardines, which I just put on a piece of toasted bread with butter, fresh mint, and a little lemon, these are great. I know that sardines are a divisive foodstuff, and frankly I've had some sardines that just about ended my relationship with them. But if you can find a brand you like and trust, they can be some dang good eatin'.

Why just look at this tasty specimen here. This is what you get when you open a tin of Tagine sardines and dump it into a cute little plate.
















Yes, those are chile peppers and mandolined carrots and onions in there as well. Then you toast some bread, toss the fishies onto it, tear off a couple of fresh mint leaves and add them, squeeze a little lemon on there, and if you're not planning on leaving the house, add some raw onion. And then bite the heck out of it.

















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I also found some chickpea flour when I was rummaging around. With which you make socca/farinata (pictured at the top of this post) like we did last night. Recipe from the VDuck archives here, and guess what: I still need a new pizza pan.

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muy bonito: part deux.

So, on my way down the Haarlemmerstraat to the gym today (good boy!), I was walking past Meeuwig & Zn., and I had some sort of xtra-sensory twitch that told me that they stocked one of Mr. Rosengarten's top-shelf tunas. Actually I knew this because I'd been in there on Thursday buying stuff for that dinner party, and when I saw the Great Tuna Taste-Off (which this post assumes you've examined), I knew one of the brand names rang a little mental ding-a-ling but couldn't 'member whichie one.

Turns out it was Ortiz, who came in 4th place in the Ventresca tasting, and 1st place in Rosengarten's olive oil tasting (Google reveals that Ortiz also took first, second, and third place in a Cook's Illustrated tuna tasting). Meeuwig & Zn. had 7 different Ortiz products, and I marshalled every functioning brain cell I had in an attempt to remember which product he'd tasted.

As Eddie the Dane would've said, turns out I was half-smart: I got the right Ventresca, but I got the wrong Atun Claro...this one's not actually bonito del norte (light), it's albacore (white). Here's a rather half-assed breakdown of tuna varieties from the Palm Beach Daily News.

Anyway, I'm going to try not to further geek out with excessive, florid tasting notes or anything, but I will try to pinpoint what's so different about this stuff. First of all, they both strike a crushing deathblow to my Dani Bonito del Norte that I was so in love with yesterday. I'm still so in love with it, actually, because it's half the price of the Ortiz Atun Claro stuff, and one-fifth the price of the Ortiz Ventresca. And I can get it right downstairs at the Turkish place.

Right. The first thing I opened was not actually either of these, it was a tin of sardines in olive oil made by a man named Lou Ferrigno. Why would I trust the deaf, bodybuilding, former Incredible Hulk to deliver a superior sardine? In retrospect, good question. It was the one (of a possible three) the sales guy suggested. In his defense, he said he'd never tried it but that it was "popular". Not in this house it wasn't. I expected a cleaner, fresher aroma and taste from a top-shelf sardine (3 euro per tin), but the best thing about the scent here was that it smelled like good extra-virgin olive oil.

Good olive oil in which three very average-smelling sardines sat. The Moroccan brand I normally buy, Tagine, is far superior, definitely in scent, but even more so in texture...the Ferrignade were worryingly soft. Me no like. Into the trash. This made me a bit nervous about my own imminent personal Tuna Taste-Off. Had I just spent 13 euro on mushy, fishy filth muck?

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I had zero to worry about. The Atun Claro was first, and...it just looks good. Mara has the camera with her, so I'm left with only a scanner to document this...and while it worked fine with the packaging, I'm just sure that putting the actual tuna in the scanner would've caused problems. I'm no techie, though, so what do I know: send me your tuna/scanner stories in the comments.

So, Atun Claro. It was as much better than the Dani bonito (I just said this out loud. You try it. Dani bonito.) as the Dani bonito was better than the regular ol' grocery store tuna (UPDATE: after re-tasting the Dani against the Ortiz, I have to scale this back a little bit. Where the Ortiz really beats it is: in elegance [you would immediately guess that the Dani stuff is not freshly cooked tuna, good as it is]; texture [the Dani is a little too firm], and complexity [the Ortiz is ready to serve, whereas you'll want to do something to the Dani because it still seems like tinned tuna]).

Even more so than the Dani product, there's nothing canned-tasting or generically "fishy" about it at all. The cats didn't even come snooping around after I popped the top, and that never happens with grocery store tuna. The Atun Claro tastes like a fully-cooked fresh tuna steak, but with none of the unpleasantness that that connotes: board-stiff, bone-dry, chewing forever, a challenging swallow, etc. The olive oil is so fundamentally integrated with the fish that, while it's still very firm, it's completely juicy and full of olive-oily goodness. And it's salted perfectly, on the aggressive side of moderate. Great stuff.

OK. I thought, how much different can the Ventresca be? The good news is, it doesn't proportionally extend the Atun Claro: Dani Bonito: BumbleBee trend. This is good news because I can't afford to buy it very often. It is, however, even more refined and more like a finished dish than the Atun Claro. Most of this has to do with its startling appearance (not my photo, totally stolen):










So it's these long, thin strips of firm, white tuna belly...perfect for artfully fanning across a plate for an appetizer. The above photo is of course not what they look like when they come out of the can, this is a picture of an Argentinian recipe: ventresca on a sandwich with red peppers, olives, garlic, and vinegar...sounds devastating. But I just ate them out of the can, unadorned, and it's like Rosengarten says, it's not really like anything else. The texture is much more like salmon than any tuna I know, firm and silky (Penthouse Forum?) without really flaking at all, and the taste is sweet and mild, with just the tiniest tang of what you think of when you hear the words "fully-cooked tuna steak".

Whew, that was hard work. I'm no food writer, obvs. I just had to follow this Dani Bonito thing to its logical conclusion. Which I think I've done. I'll probably end up renting Romancing the Stone, or Get Shorty, or something else he was in, and then trying some more fancy tuna brands at some point and documenting their supple breasts and heaving thighs, so don't be surprised if we see a Chapter Three, hookas.

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THE USUAL HEAVILY PARENTHESIZED UPDATE: I had the rest of the Atun Claro for breakfast, and in this non-gourmet context (coming out of the refrigerator), to my tastes, it was every bit as enjoyable as the ventresca (although I couldn't do a direct comparison because the ventresca was, well...gone), although the ventresca is definitely prettier to look at. I'm sure that the oil had...emulsified? is that what olive oil does is the fridge? In any case, I think that this actually had a weirdly positive effect on the texture. It was kind of...luscious. Call El Bulli. Do they serve refrigerated oil dishes yet? Anyway, I had some of this by itself, and then with my new BFF, toasted blanched almonds, golden raisins, and mint leaves. Simply great. Pitts (code name for dear Mother): buy some now.

SOURCES: It would be remiss of me to mention Meeuwig & Zn., where I very rarely shop, and not mention Hollandaluz, which is right across the street from Meeuwig, and where I shop at least once a week, three times a week if I'm lucky. In fact, I don't know why I haven't tried any of Hollandaluz's tunas...I guess I never get any farther than the refrigerator full of home-made albondigas, aioli, gazpacho, and paella. Or the warmer full of empanadas, croquetas, morcillo (um...blood sausage), and (Spanish) tortillas. Or the counter where they sell (among others) a perfect bocadillo of membrillo (quince paste) and manchego on crusty, freshly baked bread. OK, so tht's why.

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Prices:

Ortiz Ventresca de Bonito del Norte €7,50 for 110 grams.
Ortiz Atun Claro €5,50 for 250 grams.
Dani Bonito del Norte €1,50 for 110 grams.

for comparison's sake:

John West (the StarKist/Bumblebee of Holland) €1,17 for 200 grams.

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