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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life, lemons, etc.

Combine some of this homemade lemonade with an equal amount of ice-cold seltzer water/club soda/fizzy water of choice and you might even forget you're not drinking alcohol. It's that good!!! (INSERT INFINITE LOOP OF SMILEY EMOTICONS HERE).

OK but it really is really good. Especially on a mthrfkin hot-ass day in the middle of September. We went to see the Henry Moore shit at the Rijksmuseum b/c it's free and we've been meaning to see it and we almost forgot about it. We were going to go to Boca's after but then lemonade started sounding really really good, and we kind of became fixated on it, like nothing was going to satisfy us except lemonade. And there was no way we could afford to pay anyone else in this city to make us the amount of real-lemon, real-sugar, ice-cold lemonade we would need.

So we rode back home to Ali Baba (formerly Interfood) and bought a bunch of cheap lemons and other bargain vegetables, and rendered those vegetable bitches into slight variations on the ol' Fish Taco Condiment Array, including a real slaw with mayo. Plus yes we made lemonade, and it was goooooooooooood.

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lemonade.

1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup raw sugar

2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice (5 or 6 lemons? maybe more)
3 or 4 cups water

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habanero guacamole.

3 ripe avocados
1/2 large red onion, chopped
Juice of 2 limes
0.5 to 1 entire habanero pepper, seeded, deveined and minced
3 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tomato, cut into chunks

salt to taste!!!

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napa slaw.

2 cups shredded Napa cabbage (or spitskool)
2 tbsp good European mayonnaise, sorry it's elitist but it's totally true
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
2 scallions, minced fine
2 tbsp cilantro, minced
salt and pepper to taste

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lìfè ốf thè mìnd.

In tribute to the heat, I watched Barton Fink last night, good stuff.

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Mara and I both have our chompers dialed in for Vietnamese food, so that's what we're going to cook for a day or two, though I'm not sure exactly what that means: at the moment I only know about five or so Vietnamese things: phở; gỏi cuốn (basil rolls); caramel catfish; bánh mì, and chả giò (fried spring rolls). And of course nước chấm, or "anything sauce" because it's good on anything. Six. And bánh xèo. Seven.

Still, it's not much. So we turn to mister Internet for some inspiration. 

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LATER: Shit, man...home run for me. If you've ever liked som tam, this is essentially it but easier. My adaptation is based on this. I also made Caramel Ginger Chicken, based on this, also very good but the below slaw is exactly what I was in the mood for. I think you could even add some properly-fried tofu to this and by the next day it would be quite good if breath-mauling picnic food.

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goi bap cai (spicy cabbage salad).

1 or 2 green or red Holland chiles, or serrano chiles, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tbsp sugar
1 pinch salt
2 to 3 tbsp Thai fish sauce
5 to 6 tbsp rice vinegar

5 or 6 cups shredded Napa or Chinese cabbage (spitskool will do nicely)
1 large carrot, peeled and finely shredded (I bought mine pre-shredded cause I'm a little bitch)
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped fresh cilantro and/or mint leaves
1/2 cup roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

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return of celiac boy.

I've written about it before here, but in case you don't hang on my every word: when I was little I had celiac disease. At some point it "went away" and I was able to eat like a "normal person".

Fast forward to now: after a year or twenty of unhealthy living, I am starting to notice that I don't feel 100% awesome. There are many obvious reasons for this.

But last year was more toxic than most, and right now I feel the need to tweak some of my inputs to see what if any difference they have on my output. And for a number of reasons, I'm a trifle suspicious that my body isn't handling gluten all that well any more. 

So, I'm trying some time without it. At least a month. This means, among other things, no beer, which is simultaneously tragic and awesome, more on this additional challenge later.

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Unsurprisingly, I will need some fun things to cook. In this space will be some suggestions from ze gluten-free community. Soonish.

Honey-Roasted Cinnamon-Walnut Butter.
Slaw.
Kale with Sausage and White Beans.
Sichuan Cucumber Salad.

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fridgecleaner.

I've made this recipe a few times without ever writing it down or really talking about it, a lack of commitment that probably exists because there's something just a little not quite right about it in me opinion. There's too much going on in its original configuration, reminiscent of a certain style of  vegan cooking that throws things into a dish all willy-nilly in a desperate effort to make it taste like something.

But here the combo of textures and flavors is really promising (why ginger and rosemary go together always mystifies me a bit, but they continue to do so). The quickest and easiest solution to the overcomplicatedness of the original was to eliminate the sourdough bread that it is supposed to be served on. So now it's just tempeh, gravy, slaw, potatoes, spinach.

EDIT: HBF/tc showed up in the Comments section to emphasize the gravy. And she's totally right: when I started putting this dish back together to figure out what parts went great together, the tempeh and the gravy were indisputably chompable. I didn't post the gravy recipe b/c mine wasn't vegan, but I will maybe re-amend this post eventually with the real thing.

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de-sandwich-ized open faced tempeh sandwich with herbed mushroom gravy, garlic-rosemary mashed potatoes, fresh spinach, and ruby kraut.

tempeh
400gr tempeh
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup apple cider
1/4 cup tamari
1/4 cup brown rice vinegar

Cut tempeh crosswise into 0.5 cm thick slices. Combine rest of ingredients and marinate tempeh in this for a couple of hours. Bake uncovered in a single layer for 35 minutes at 350F.

ruby kraut
almost a head of red cabbage, sliced as thinly as you have patience for
2 cloves garlic, minced fine
2 tbsp ginger syrup
2 tbsp light olive oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped
salt and pepa to taste

Combine.

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your purple slaw.

Above: less computer-centric days at Restaurant Stork last month.

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Good god. I probably mentioned our big computer crash from May, wherein we lost approximately two months' worth of accounting data for our bidness. You can imagine how one might procrastinate for as long as possible around the rebuilding of this data, until finally there comes a time when one can procrastinate no longer, and that time is unfortunately.....last night.

So that's what we're doing, staring at our laptops, shouting out invoice and PO numbers and payment amounts while clutching calculators and reams of paper to our chests and alternately swearing and cheering as the worm turns.

We're also making lentil thingies tonight, with all of the accoutrements, plus a new version of the red cabbage slaw, slightly tweaked so that it doesn't overlap with other flavors.

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red cabbage slaw with buttermilk, harissa, scallions, and cumin.

half a red cabbage, chopped in a food processor
1/2 cup or more apple cider vinegar, to taste
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1 tbsp harissa
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
almost a cup of chopped scallions

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el taco del fish.

We, the last people in the civilized world to do so, finally have our very own wireless at home so we can stop trying to steal the neighbors'. Welcome to Scimmieland.

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It's a fish taco repeat tonight (in combination with The Wire Season 5). This slaw we're making is really aces.

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chipotle slaw.

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1/2 head red cabbage (2 cups or so?)

1 onion, quartered

1 plump chipotle in adobo

3/4 cup mayonnaise, possibly less

juice of 2 limes

salt to taste

We've been shzooming up the cabbage and onion together until they're chopped fine. Take them out of the processor and put them in a mixing bowl. Add the chipotle, the mayo, and the lime juice to the processor, and blend until chipotle is integrated completely. Add this to the bowl with the cabbage and onion, stir to combine.

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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