pindasoep.

This is the soup that we should've made an extra 8 liters of. One Italian guy tried it, then immediately came back and ordered another cup, and then proceeded to order everything else on the menu over the next hour. Not braggin', just sayin'. That was one of the nicest compliments of the day because it's what I would've done.

So this is pretty classic Dutchified pindasoep I think, it tastes very much like the one I've eaten the most of, from Soep en Zo in Amsterdam (come to think of it, I may have eaten there more than any other Amsterdam restaurant...can that be true?). This recipe is something I can take very little credit for, it was all Nelson's doing except for the hearts of palm and the seroendeng. If it's not dark enough for you, I'd add a shot of ketjap manis.

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surinamese peanut soup. 

1 onion, diced
1 tomato, diced

1 plantain, more green than brown, diced
1 cup palm hearts, diced
5 allspice berries
1 bay leaf
1 or 1.5 liter water
2 vegetable bouillon cubes
1 madame jeanette/habanero chile, whole
300ml natural, smooth peanut butter


1/2 cucumber, julienned
1 cup dark celery leaves (selderij), minced
seroendeng (an Indonesian condiment that's in every grocery store of any size here, basically toasted coconut, roasted peanuts, salt, sugar, ground coriander and probably a few other things)

Apparently you can just throw everything except the peanut butter in a pot for 45 minutes, turn it off, add the peanut butter, make sure it melts/dissolves, remove the madame jeanette, and serve with the accouterments.

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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.

"too dangerous to go outside".

That's what city officials are saying today. We're having a windstorm, 75mph winds, two people one person killed by trees (falling trees) already this morning, etc. So we're all staying inside. It's not like we need an excuse to stay inside, but it's actually kind of nice to have one.

I did manage to dash across the street to the Dirk b/c we're out of eggs (obvs worth risking your life for), and I picked up a cute little "sale pumpkin" (€1.29 each), so I'll probably be roasting that in bit. Which reminds me, Saturday night we were changing the "couch cover", an arduous two-person job that never seems like it's going to work until it just suddenly does, and suddenly there was an obvious commotion outside involving a lot of people.

I went to the window while Moop grunted and swore at the couch. "Is it Halloween?" I asked. Mara said "maybe, why". And, all Hollywood-like, I said, "if it's not, we've got a real problem on our hands". The street was full of zombies. Hundreds of them, men, women, dripping, oozing, doing the stereotypical lurching and stumbling forward, lit from behind by some semi-massive light source. And then the house music started. Zombie parade. It went on for 15 minutes or so, frankly the most horrifying thing about it being their choice of music, totally brain dead fwwaaahahahahha.

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napa cabbage and shiitake mushroom soup.

1 head napa cabbage
200g fresh shiitake mushrooms
1 2-inch piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
4 cloves garlic
2 cups leftover chicken broth
crushed red pepper
freshly cracked black pepper

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with authority.

I should really get a real Surinamese cookbook someday. I had one, but though it was really great-looking inside, or probably because it was really great-looking inside, it fell apart almost immediately, and now I don't know where all of it is. I have two others but they're kind of non-comprehensive and/or super-casual to a fault.

Some Googling has suggested that people make some things like this (callaloo for instance), but I have a feeling it's just one of those homemade improv things that happen b/c you just want something with all these ingredients in it. I also wish I had some lime leaves but I just used them in last week's soto ayam, which is still a really good recipe, actually better than this one, you should try making it next time you want chicken soup. Still, the below was not shabby (and way better the next day, I just never used to trust a shellfish stew the second day, it's a new thing but seems to be working out ok ).

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caribbean fish stew.

1 can coconut milk
1 big piece of ginger, peeled and zhoomed (not as big as pictured above, like 2 inches)
2 shallots, zhoomed
6 cloves of garlic, zhoomed
6 allspice berries
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp lemongrass powder
couple grates of nutmeg
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 scotch bonnet or more ideally 1 tbsp of some kind of habanero/shrimp sambal, or sambal trassi
some amount of water, at least 1.5 liters
salt to taste

400g or some healthy yet manageable amount of kale, chopped fine
some amount of fish or seafood, I used 250g wild salmon and 200 grams bag o' death

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cellophane.

One of the best Thai things we've made in a long time, and super easy.

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glass noodle shrimp hotpot.

1 pinkie-sized piece of fresh turmeric, peeled and minced fine, or 2 tsp ground turmeric
1 and 1/2 cups coconut milk
2 tbsp Thai red curry paste
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp palm sugar
1/2 pound or 1 cup shrimp, peeled, deveined
1 small red bell pepper, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 handful sugar snap peas or snow peas
1 handful fresh spinach, chopped

100gr cellophane noodles

1 cup basil leaves, chopped
cilantro, chopped

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soto ayam.

Tried to take a picture but no camera would cooperate, and plus it's just a bright yellow chicken soup, you can imagine that just fine I think. It's really good, a totally soothing yet spicy and exotic chicken soup.

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soto ayam (indonesian/surinamese chicken soup with turmeric).

4 chicken legs (not drumsticks, the whole leg) or 1.2 to 1.5kg equivalent whole chicken with bones.
400gr carrots, cut for soup
1 onion, in large dice
2 liters water
8 kaffir lime leaves
one 2-inch-long piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
1 tsp coarse salt, less if it's not coarse
1 habanero, Scotch Bonnet, or Madame Jeanette pepper, whole
12 allspice/pimiento berries, whole

1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds

the turmeric from earlier, plus more if you like
4 cloves garlic
one 2-inch-long section of ginger, peeled
one 2-inch-long section of galangal, peeled
5 candlenuts
one or two tbsp water to make processing possible

1 to 2 tbsp coconut oil for frying spice paste

for serving:
fresh coriander leaves
cut limes
hard-boiled eggs if you want

Basically, combine the first group of ingredients and cook for 45 minutes. Remove the chicken, let it cool, and then get the meat off those dang legs and shred it. Also get that chile pepper out of the soup and discard.

While they're cooling, take the pepper, coriander, and cumin, and grind them to a fine powder in a food processor. Add the next set of ingredients plus the turmeric from the first step and process to a paste, adding water if necessary. Fry the paste over LOW heat for 10 minutes, it should bubble but not burn or get crispy .

Add the spice paste and the chicken back to the broth and cook for 10-15 minutes. It should be done now, but mine didn't taste awesome until the next day, when you should really skim the fat off, reheat and serve with garnishes. You could remove the allspice berries and kaffir lime leaves if you wanted. Also, soto ayam traditionally has noodles, you could do cellophane noodles if you wanted, I just didn't want.

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aminal.

My cousin Jewy (short for Juliana) made this drawing for me b/c I wasn't at dinner the other night in Atlanta. It's Animal, or Aminal, but you knew that. It's an appropriate reference for her, her demeanor is generally slightly less restrained than Animal's.

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I said I wouldn't be making anything noteworthy over the next couple of days, and that's true, and because that's true I'm making something noteworthy tonight: soto ayam. I'm still trying to find stimulating ways to inject more turmeric into my life, and it's hard to imagine one better suited for me than this.

As much of an Indonesian soup as this is, it's also been completely adopted by the Surinamese kitchen, though their version leaves out several critical things, among them the turmeric. So I'm doing kind of a hybrid of a hybrid. Recipe eventually.

UPDATE: It's a very unusual soup. You make a chicken broth that smells totally kick-ass (yes I said that, it's 1987) via kaffir lime leaves and turmeric and chicken (I added 400gr carrots and an onion), and when it's finished you make a strangely ground-spice-centric (cumin, coriander, black pepper) spice paste (+ ginger, garlic, galangal, turmeric) which you fry and then add to the soup and cook for 10 more minutes to blend flavors.

So you're putting this potentially grainy paste into a cooked soup...I can't think of another soup recipe that does that. By the end, it tastes pretty great, but the texture is a bit....yeah, unexpected. It's a bit like mulligatawny soup, which I've never made, I wonder if the prep is similar. I think I like it. We'll see how it is tomorrow. It sure is yellow.

FURTHER UPDATE: It just needed some time to sit, it's great now.

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space invadors.

In progress, based on this but the below proportions/ratios seem to work OK.

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niu rou mian (sichuan beef/noodle soup).

1/8 cup peanut oil
a 2 1/2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled, cut into 1/3-inch-thick rounds, each smashed with flat side of knife
3 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 cups chopped onions
2 1/2 tbsp chili bean paste (Sichuan hot bean paste; dou ban jiang)
3 whole green onions, trimmed, plus 2 cups chopped green onions (for garnish)

1/2 cup (or more) soy sauce (do not use low-sodium)
3-4 whole star anise
2 tbsp raw sugar
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
1 pound eggless Chinese wheat noodles (Shandong la mian)
2 to 3 cups bok choy, sliced
Chopped fresh cilantro (for garnish)

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time out.

I'm in love with my bed. This is awesome.
Unrelatedly, I'm finally taking 4 months' worth of cellphone pics off my phone. Let's catch up, shall we?

Here's the truffled egg salad/beef burger from Burgermeester:

Here's me about ready to go all Office Space on this FAX machine that WOULD NOT FAX my Italian bureaucracy back in October.

Here's a sunny afternoon at Stork.

Here's a very foggy night about two weeks ago, it was great.

Here's the tosti maker from the Grand in Groningen. One morning when the kitchen staff came in it was missing and there was near hysteria. It is everyone's favorite appliance.

Here's Mara testing the skeleton/Tele rig.

The next four pictures are one night. Mara and I started at De Prael, which was very pleasant until we got kicked out for crashing a private party. So we went to In De Wildeman, where we planned our attack on the Burger Bar.

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This recipe exists elsewhere on this site, but this is the updated version so yeah.

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carrot-ginger soup with creme fraiche.

1 medium onion
5 large carrots
2 inches of ginger, grated
4 cloves garlic
1 granny smith apple
1 red apple
1 can mandarin oranges with liquid
2 tsp cumin seed, ground
1 T ground coriander seed
1 tsp cayenne
2 cups vegetable broth

Chop ingredients where necessary, saute a bit, add liquid, then simmer until tender. Blend with hand
blender or alternatively, a food processor until smooth. Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Garnish with cilantro, croutons and creme fraiche/sour cream.

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soothness please.

OK, really, I'm done now.

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This is my diet for the week: chicken phở. Mara made it as an attempt to heal a brother on Sunday, and I don't know if it totally did that, but it was very good and I think we're going to make it again tonight.

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enstrangement.

Not an English word, but it should be, describing the process of beginning to feel strange. More on this later.

For now, somehow I forgot to document the best pho recipe I've ever made. It's right here, and I'll post my modifications to it eventually. But it was perfect.

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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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what the phở.

Goddamn, I had no idea that the phrase "faux phở" had swept the internets this year. 12 million hits. Not that it matters, I'm just surprised I missed it, being the faux foodie that I am.

Why are we talking about it? Because I made some this morning and was getting ready to wittily title this post you-know-what and then Googled it, and yes. I guess basically everything you need to know about it is here at Viet World Kitchen, my go-to source for all things faux-Vietnamese.

So this is definitely not phở (daikon and carrots are present, and no beef), it's some kind of "phở-spiced vegetable soup", but I HATE recipes called things like that. This, whatever the @*&^$ (how fun! I never pretend to swear!) it was, thrown together out of things that needed to be used up and various almost-right condiments, wasn't bad at all.

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faux phở.

daikon
carrots
onion
ginger
3 liters water?
1 tbsp goose fat (only fat I had)
1/2 tsp hoisin sauce (to replace the star anise i didn't have)
1/4 tsp ground cloves (sub for the whole cloves i didn't have)
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (etc)
4 tbsp fish sauce
salt to taste

mint
scallions
coriander
limes
sriracha

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pumpoaf.

It is I, returneth from the swampdom of Work, hereforth and thencewith, etc. etc. etc.

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Currently roasting bargain pumpkins and enjoying the feeling of not having a looming deadline for a while. Had a wonderful post-gig meal last night of crusty bread, cheese, and charcuterie from De Avondmarkt...felt like a well-deserved treat. Now back to vegetables and fish.

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smoked pumpkin soup with rosemary and gruyere.

pumpkin
smoke
rosemary
broth
habanero
onion
salt
pepper
possibly butter
pumpkin seeds
gruyere

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as big as my arm.

This looks pretty unassuming. But it's something I'm going to keep making until I get tired of it or I can't find daikon anymore. This sounds familiar, I know.

I guess you'd call it chicken and daikon soup/stew. Basically chicken soup with carrot and daikon as the featured vegetables. But you dress it like pho, so: scallions, cilantro, mint, and a squeeze of lime if you want, followed by the appropriate amount of sriracha. You almost don't miss pho anymore.

Now we're making Elana's pumpkin bars. Nice to be cooking with the squawker again.

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UPDATE: By popular demand, more deets on the soup. I didn't include a recipe b/c this was basically an inefficient kind of improv thing.

What I did: I made a neutral but delicious chicken soup, with 4 liters of water, a whole chicken, onions, celery, and carrots, seasoned only with salt and black pepper. Maybe there was a clove of garlic. Oh and there were definitely 4 or 5 uncut chiles in there, the ones I think of as "Szechuan chiles", about the size of your pinky, dark red, not scarily hot. When the soup was done, I took the chicken out, ate half of it, shredded the rest and put it back in the soup.

That was Day 1. Day 2, I ate it as regular chicken soup.

Day 3, I had this big fucking daikon that needed using, so I cut half of it into cubes (I pickled the rest via Momofuku's recipe), probably 3 cups' worth, and added a little water to the leftover soup and simmered this new version of the soup for about 45 minutes, until the daikon was totally soft. Oh yeah, I added four more little carrots as well.

To bring this new version up to taste I used soy sauce instead of salt, maybe 2 tbsp, you could probably use fish sauce as another interesting variation. At this point, it's ready to go, served with plenty of chopped scallions, mint, and coriander. And the sriracha bottle.

Next time I try it I'll probably add some whole aromatics to the initial broth and remove them afterwards, I'm thinking lemongrass, ginger, turmeric, or galangal would all be welcome additions.

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kitchengimp.

Spent the afternoon hobbling and wincing and whining, but also playing vicious Scrabulous games against and making semi-complicated soups with El Carote Negro. Plus I made a nice red onion chutney (above) that was really good with a stinky Swiss cheese that H-Poes brought over (Appelfelder? Alpenfunker? Alfenpunkle?).

The carrot soup...yeah. It's really one-dimensional without good garnishes, and even under the best circumstances I can enjoy a couple of cups of it and then I don't need to see it for a couple of months.

In any case, I really think it needs the toasted/fried seeds, or a nut of your choice instead. And fresh cilantro/coriander.

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white bean soup with caramelized leek, spinach, and brown butter.

3 or 4 cups white beans, cooked, preferably from scratch so that you've got some of the cooking liquid

1 or 2 cups vegetable broth, depending on how much liquid the beans already have
a little rosemary
6 cloves garlic, minced

1 bag of washed, sliced leeks (400gr?)
a little butter

6 fresh sage leaves
6 tbsp butter

2 handfuls of spinach
Parmesan, for grating
freshly ground black pepper
freshly ground nutmeg

salt to taste (mine was undersalted, the beans require a good bit)

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carrot soup with ginger, apple, pumpkin seeds, and Surinamese piccalilly.

1 medium onion
5 large carrots
2 inches of ginger
4 cloves garlic
1 granny smith apple
1 red apple
1 can mandarin oranges with liquid
2 tsp cumin seed, ground
1 tbsp ground coriander seed
2 tsp cayenne
2 cups vegetable broth

1 tsp to 1 tbsp Surinamese piccalilly (or maybe substitute 1 tsp habanero hot sauce and 1 tsp prepared mustard)

salt to taste

1 cup pumpkin seeds or a mix of pumpkin and sunflower seeds, lightly fried and salted

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

Saute. Boil. Puree. Adjust seasoning. Garnish. Serve.

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red onion and blackcurrant chutney.

2 tbsp walnut oil
3 medium red onions, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1 inch ginger, peeled and grated

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1 tsp mustard seeds
tiny pinch ground cloves
even tinier pinch ground cumin
3 or 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 or 4 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tbsp raw cane sugar
2 or 3 tbsp cassis, blackcurrant, or blackberry preserves
1 tsp tomato purée
75ml water

salt and pepper to taste

Saute onions til soft. Add garlic and ginger for a few minutes. Add everything else, simmer for an hour, adding water as necessary (or possibly a little vinegar if needed). By the end everything should be nicely reduced, deeply purple, and you should be out of liquid. Adjust seasoning if necessary. Cool to room temperature and serve with stinky cheese.

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silenzio.

On the one hand, it's nice to get a full night's sleep. On the other hand, I think I can safely nominate "Witness Protection Program" as one of the Least Relaxing Dreams Ever. Someone poured a fifth of bourbon into my laptop keyboard through my broken windshield while riding on the hood of my car during a high-speed chase. And of course, while wrestling the assassin's rifle barrel away from my face, all I'm thinking is, "when was my last backup?".

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That you? Yeah, that me. Hopefully exiting a bit of a silent period, not just in these esteemed pages, but in general. Maybe when it got real cold a few weeks ago, my bear-like personal dimensions thrust me into a sort of automatic hibernation. If you look at it that way (which makes perfect sense, no?), then it wasn't really such a long time, was it.

Here's what I wanted to make for lunch today. Below is the compromise.

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vegetarian garbure (i'm kidding! it's just cabbage soup).

3 onions, chopped into bite-size pieces

3 carrots, diced

1 sprig of thyme or 1/2 tsp dried

1 clove

1/2 tsp celery salt

freshly cracked black pepper

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 head of green cabbage, core removed and chopped into bite-size pieces

4 cups vegetable broth

3 or 4 drops liquid smoke

salt to taste

Gouda, Emmenthaler, or Gruyere, for grating

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boo, hiss, slurp.

I'm sick. Hopefully not with Mara's 3-week-long head cold. Time for some homeopathic sinus deblockificationizer and een beetje bed rest.

Plus a quick and desperate kimchi jigae.

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kimchi jigae.

1 cup kimchi, cut into manageable bites
3 tbsp mirin
1 fa chong
1/2 cup scallion whites
1/2 cup scallion greens
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1 cup tofu, cubed
2 cups dashi

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sunday my shrimps will come.

Let's see. Maybe you're realizing, as am I, that this particular road trip is not going to be about food. Or like, "just chilling out". Frankly, it's mostly been about jetlag and malware (Cole and Dylan are now almost as obsessed as I am with "the hackers" and what they're doing to my computer). And now it's starting to be the tiniest bit about Travis picking, out of dire necessity.

Here's half a recipe for a soup I made today, which I did because we bought an assload of poblano peppers a couple of days ago. I wanted to make a "healthy" corn chowder, and....I don't know if that's even a reasonable concept. This one definitely needs a little more something bad. Could be cheese, or cream. Or, less bad, possibly shrimp. Or scallops.

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roasted poblano and corn chowder with bacon and chives.

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1 large sweet onion

115 grams butter

a few sprigs of thyme or like a tsp dried

4 poblano chiles, less if they're really hot

1 potato, peeled

8 slices bacon, cooked (4 for eating while cooking)

2 cups corn

4 cups chicken broth

2 tbsp maple syrup

salt and pepper

dash of chipotle adobo

big handful of shredded sharp cheddar

as many chopped chives as it takes to achieve chiveheid, in my case it was maybe half a cup, basically lots

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you are(n't) getting very sleepy.

Not relevant at this very moment, but by the time it is, it'll be too late to ask you: does anyone out there among the three of you A) go to sleep listening to podcasts, and if so B) can you recommend some? Lately when I can't sleep this is working OK for me.

To clarify: I'm not really looking for something completely enjoyable. I'm looking for something to put me to sleep. It has to be smart enough so as not to offend my critical sensibilities, long enough to where it won't end just as I'm falling asleep, aurally low-key enough so as not to startle (so, no monotone voices cutting to squally or squeally transitional music), and it must avoid the subjects of money, eternity, politics, religion, love, and family. Any suggestions? I'm all ears.

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On Sunday I made this Surinamese chicken soup again, with a couple of modifications: no lemongrass and no galangal, and green plantains instead of the potatoes. Then, the next day, I added two tablespoons of chunky peanut butter and the same amount of roasted coconut water and reheated it. A thoroughly good variation, approaching the taste of authentic pindasoep.

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