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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bdoodje tempeh.

This was buried in another post, but now it's graduated to the big leagues. Pictured above is a pretty A+ broodje tempeh from Warung Mini in Den Haag last week (yes, it's being eaten in a car). Their broodje kouseband was also way above average, but the tempeh was just about perfect. Thus there will soon be an attempt at recreation, based on this.

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perry's.

Slowly, very slowly, I've been eating my way through the sandwich menu at Perry's. I started about a year ago, and by now I think I've tried about 8 of the 19 options. Favorites so far: tempeh (€2.50, not pictured) lamb meatballs (€2.50, not pictured) and shrimp with long beans (€4, pictured at bottom). Their pom is good, their bakkeljauw is good....it's all been at least good, most of it is great. This one right here is the artificially red fa chong, Chinese chicken sausage (€3).

yassa.

Above: De Ceuvel. Below: America, O'Neill's basement last night.

The recipe: good the first night, wayyyy better the second day, this would fit right in with any kind of Caribbean menu. Super good if one is a fan of the habanero and the mustard being together what language is this.

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yassa (senegalese chicken in lemon, mustard, and scotch bonnet). 

marinade
3 boneless chicken breasts, cut lengthwise into strips
2 red scotch bonnet peppers, seeded and veined
juice of a lemon
8 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tsp smoked salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper or black peppercorns
2 tbsp olive oil

sauce
1 large or 2 small onions, finely chopped (about 2 cups)
1 cup coarse-grained mustard
1/4 olive oil
juice of a lemon
3 bay leaves
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
salt and pepper to taste
handful of cilantro, chopped

tenderpoke.

This was something I made while the O'Neills were here, it worked out very comfortingly with a mango-lime salsa, roasted garlic mash and those runner beans. It looks/sounds a little bit fusion-y but I think at least the pork is very close to an actual Surinamese recipe, though the Dijon may be pushing it a little bit. This would also work pleasantly on seafood as well.

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pork tenderloin with soy, mustard, ginger, habanero.

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup Dijon mustard
1/8 cup soy sauce
1 medium scallion, chopped fine
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 to 2 tsp Surinamese piccalilly
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
salt and pepper to taste

4 small pork tenderloins

Combine everything except pork in a saucepan and gently heat until sugar is melted. Pour over pork and marinate for at least 4 hours, or possibly overnight. At dinner time, pour marinade into a saucepan and gently simmer for at least 10 minutes while pork cooks. Bake/broil pork for 10-15 minutes and let rest for 5-10.

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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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met mate.

Mussels are on sale at the Dirk. €3 for 2kg (that's 4.5 pounds people). Bargain shellfish, you say? Mmmmmm.

Well, I mean, they are homegrown, it's not like we're in Kansas or anything, they're just coming from 100km away in Zeeland. And mussel season officially starts in a couple of weeks, right? So maybe these are just early. In any case, at that price I don't even have to get buy-in from any possible dining companion: I'm having mussels tonight.

Anyway, here's what's happening to them. Hopefully I'll still be here to report back.

AND AFTERWARDS: It's a real shame that this was such a blazingly improvised recipe, b/c these are the best mussels I've had in a long time. Let's hope they were "ok". Here's what I think went in the pot.

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mosselen a la paramaribo.

3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp peanut oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp finely grated peeled fresh ginger

1 tsp thyme
1 tsp allspice
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
2 cups boiling water
1/3 of a chicken bouillon cube
1 cup scallions, chopped
1 habanero chile, halved
1 tbsp Surinamese mango chutney (for anyone who's never tasted this, it's very tart and peppery, more like a lime pickle than the gloppy sweet Major Grey stuff)
NO SALT

2 kg mussels, well scrubbed

1 cup chopped fresh cilantro

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poppy.

Above: Shokomonk's white chocolate with poppyseeds. Below: last night's besan-battered Moorish catfish (Spanish + Creole ideas), plus black beans, plus the last dollop of Surinamese hot sambal. It might not look like much, but for me it was a perfect plate of food, with the added bonus that finishing the last of the Surinamese sambal means it's time to try a new one.

rotterdam tripe vendors.

The street from Rotterdam Centraal to the studio is nothing but tokos, Chinese/Surinamese restaurants, jewelry stores, Turkish bakeries and snackbar/kebab shacks. It's a food street. On Saturday there were three Surinamese beef tripe vendors within three blocks of each other, all selling bloedworst (blood sausage), bere (stomach), and fladder (intestine)...I don't even think Amsterdam is allowed to have mobile street vendors. Had I not had a show to do that night, would I have eaten street tripe? Probably, yes. The last time I had it was great, under even less sanitary conditions most likely.

you complete me.

If, like me, you have a blog that has been going for a while, maybe you forget some things you've already blogged about and then blog about them again. I mean not the stuff about estranged friends dying, or general social incompetence, or veiled references to recurring problems...you tend to remember that stuff.

Nope I'm talkin' bout runner bean recipes. I make awesome runner beans (snijbonen in Dutch), in an Atlanta-meets-Paramaribo stylee. Soft and spicy is what I'd call them if that didn't sound completely gross. But they're great, and I never use a recipe, and for some reason I often completely forget that they're in my arsenal, or holster, or wherever I keep things to cook.

Here's the definitive reminder.

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mark's really good runner beans. 

400gr runner beans, cut attractively
1 can of whole or chopped unseasoned tomatoes
1/2 cube of good, unspiced chicken or vegetable boullion
1/2 cup of water, or more, maybe a cup, enough for the beans to be submerged
1 healthy tbsp of surinamese sambal (javanese also works well, probably any sambal would work well)
1 tbsp butter

Combine all of this in a pot, cook until the beans are the consistency of, say, tagliatelle and the sauce is reduced, this took almost 90 minutes last time, but maybe I could've stopped after an hour.

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sambal tempeh.

From the department of Things People Searched For To Find My Blog: "fucking a nectarine". Mara and I proceeded to argue about which sex would be doing the nectarine fucking and who would end up in the emergency room first.

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The toko across the street has been making this homemade thing lately that they call "sambal tempeh": small pieces of fried tempeh that are buried under an inch of fire-engine-red scotch bonnet oil, with pieces of onion and garlic floating around in there as well.

It's great. But it's very very hot, and also very very oily. So I was wondering if I could come up with a healthier version. I kind of failed, but I did come up with this, which is based on a recipe titled "sambal tempeh" but doesn't look or taste anything at all like our toko's version, but it does taste like standard "broodje tempeh" tempeh, so...yis. It was nice with a tamarind chutney that was kicking around in the fridge.

sambal tempeh.

400gr tempeh, diced
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 tbsp peanut oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 small red onion, chopped fine
1 red scotch bonnet, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tsp laos powder (galangal)
1 tsp trassi
2 tbsp tamarind concentrate

1/8 cup apple juice

Basically: combine everything except the apple juice in a small saucepan and heat until well combined, trassi is dissolved, etc. Then, in a roasting pan, lay the tempeh cubes flat in a single layer and pour the remaining liquid over top. Bake at 175C for 20 minutes, flipping everything around after 10 minutes. After the first 20 minutes, add the apple juice and stir things around again. Bake another 10-15 minutes, checking kind of often to make sure the sugar in the apple juice isn't burning.

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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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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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more_recon.

Above: Tjon's stall at the Dappermarkt, selling their standard stuff.

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Could one do a vegetarian version of this that would rock? I think so. Some kind of eggplant or chickpea filling?

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My first Surinamese venture this week will be a slightly weird one: sjoerkoro, a Surinamization of the Dutch word zuurkool, which is, yes, what we Americanos know as sauerkraut. I'm doing this because the weather here has been decidedly unsummery, and also I'm, as always, trying to do one healthy thing here or there.

I've never made this before b/c it just sounds wrong: the primary ingredients are sauerkraut, tomato, habanero, and salted beef. OK, maybe I can imagine it being OK. I report back later.

REPORTING BACK LATER: Totally good. I did a vegetarian version that was basically like this:

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sjoerkoro.

500 gr sauerkraut, drained and rinsed
50gr butter
1 onion, chopped
2 canned tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup water
1 madame jeanette/habanero, whole
black pepper

Yes, saute onion in butter, add everything else, stir, cover, simmer for 20 minutes. There are slightly fancier recipes out there, but this was mindless and a nicely different way to eat sauerkraut. Don't really understand how leaving the chile whole works, but...it does. Poke a couple holes in it with a pin if you want more heat.

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summer's kiss.

Procrastination afoot. And thus, blogging afoot. But we are fighting valiantly against our baser instincts, mostly b/c we really do have things to be doing.

So, may I present some efficiently-delivered brief notes from the last week of eating:

1) Went to La Perla again, ordered the same food, it was just as good as the first time, kind of unsurprisingly, which was, yes, a surprise.

2) Went to the beach for the first time this year: it was pretty good except for the sunburn, a beach tradition in which I do not normally participate.

3) Surinamese food makes me so consistently happy that I'm forced to wonder why I don't make it more often. It's so reliable in terms of dopamine delivery.

The latest reminder was: a full take-out meal from Riaz on Bilderdijkstraat for the first time in years, and it was...above average. We didn't order a ton of food, but what we did order was interesting and distinctive. Service was friendly if a bit slow and exhausted-seeming, and the prices were pretty reasonable.

Pictured below is my herheri with bakkeljauw, herheri being a mild stew of ripe and unripe plantains, sweet potato, and cassava, enlivened by the presence of spicy salt cod, homemade pickles, and a sambal or two. Unique flavors, and the whole thing felt more healthy than not. We also tried the jarabaka, a kind of dryish catfish masala with rice (jarabaka = pangasius), also good if carefully straddling the too-salty line. Baras were fine but not as good as Hangalampoe, IMHO.

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de geheimen van kam yin.

I haven't done this in a while, but I just did: look at a menu and order what you're hungry for, even if it flies in the face of what you think a restaurant might be good at.

After an afternoon of "brainstorming" near the Zeedijk (pictured above) with some (well, go ahead) "colleagues", I ended up at Kam Yin on the Warmoestraat.

I know it's not supposed to be awesome or anything, but listen: there had been some beers involved in the brainstorming; I was hungry; I didn't have much money; and Kam Yin was packed with clientele that looked 100% Chinese and/or Surinamese.

Actually, backtrack: the real problem was, I had very much wanted to go to Nam Kee for their dry Sichuan chicken thingie that I'd had a couple of years ago. I'd been thinking about it on my way over to the Zeedijk, and by the time our meeting was over I was pretty sure I could almost taste it.

Trouble, continued: Nam Kee was closed for renovations. Yes, I'm sure I could've gone next door to New King and probably gotten the same or better, but there was a long line snaking out their door onto the garbage-strewn sidewalk (apparently/hopefully it was garbage night on the Zeedijk).

So, I gave up and headed home. And then I walked past Kam Yin. Which was packed, but there was no line. And then, faced with the choice of a 20-minute walk home without Chinese food or a 20-minute walk home with a head reeling from some numbingly spicy-ass Sichuan peppercorns, I went inside.

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Once seated, out of a menu of 814 items, I ordered one of 5 Sichuan dishes, the Sichuan chicken (8 euro). I'm sure you know where this is going.

Rather than say anything bad about Kam Yin, I'll blame myself for this one. It was edible, sure, but what was on my plate had nothing to do with Sichuan food. It was 100% pre-made goopy Chinese food that can only be satisfying after several beers and the application of various chili sauces.

And this is my fault, for sure. The best smells coming out of the kitchen were 100% Suriname food. The sign outside says "Surinamese/Chinese food". What I did was the equivalent of ordering a roti at Nam Kee, and why would I do that? I wouldn't.

At Kam Yin, the service was lightning-fast and friendly. The prices were right. Lots of people seemed to be enjoying their Surinamese food. If there's a next time, I ignore the stomach, respect the head, do what makes sense, etc etc etc.

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got a brain, got a brain, like a peanut on a plate.

OK, the secret is out: I'm a bit hungover today after yesterday's afternoon show at the BIMHuis stretched into a bit of a pub crawl.

Luckily my helper picked up a roti from Toko Hangalampoe. It's not the most photogenic thing around: that's potatoes, long beans, an egg, and three pieces of chicken in a curry broth with hot Madame Jeanette sambal and flaky roti bread (for me, the highlight) to wrap everything in.

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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dit is wat je niet mag doen.

Mara found this lying in a puddle on the street and was compelled to rescue it due to its awesome sad weirdness. At the top it says "Dit is wat je niet mag doen", or "This is what you mustn't do". And then there's the illustration of this thing that must not be done, which is mysterious in the extreme. Obviously a family, but where are they? In a tent? And what could possibly be inadvisable about their supplicating posture? I'd love to hear any ideas.

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Below, top: last night's unphotogenic but excellent bibimbap by Mara. Middle: current inhabitants of the kitchen island, also by Mara. Bottom: Surinamese snijbonen by me, easy and good.