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.

creole seasoning.

Made a bunch of it b/c Brigtsen's Jalapeño Shrimp Cornbread (below) called for it, recipes for both to follow. With a dollop (yes Vicky) of Creole butter (and/or ancho-maple butter? Frank's Hot Sauce + peach salsa? it would benefit from some optional tangy/sweet liquid-y element) and a side of Brunswick stew or really good chili, this would be completely brutal. As it is, it was a great way to get a tamale fix without all the work of real tamales.

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creole seasoning. 

2 tsp onion powder (I found it at the Dirk)
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp dried basil or marjoram
1 tsp celery salt (found it at Albert Cuyp)
5 tsp sweet (also known as "regular") paprika

This version is a special Amsterdam blend, just the tiniest bit on the salty side b/c celery seed is harder to find than celery salt, at least it was for me. I haven't A/B tested this against the "Cajun" spice you see in grocery stores here, I imagine that that one adds sugar and MSG/e621.

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jalapeño shrimp cornbread.

6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted,
plus more for greasing and serving

4 scallions, finely chopped
1 jalapeño chile, or failing that, 2 green Holland chiles,
stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

400g raw medium shrimp, finely chopped
1 tsp Creole seasoning (recipe above)

1/3 cup whole-wheat flour
or possibly almond flour,
but we have to test the latter

2/3 cup yellow corn meal
2 tbsp raw/turbinado sugar

pinch salt
(be careful if your Creole seasoning is salty
like ours was)
1½ tsp baking powder
1½ tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
healthy couple grindz of freshly ground black pepper, to taste

extra large ramekins

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night(s) of the hunter.

The Calico Assassin has been handed her first assignment: we seem to have a mouse in the house. Maybe because Andy and Valentina are on vacation (thus no new mouse food showing up at their place) and that's the mice's normal cat-free hangout.

Who knows why he/she/they are here, but the situation is upsetting the delicate ecosystem of 100M. Mačka aka Calico Death has barely slept for the past three days, she is 100% committed to finding this dang mouse while being at the same time 0% closer to actually catching any dang mice. Among the things she has been successful at is demolishing the dang lower levels of the dang bookshelf behind which she is certain the dang mouse is hiding. Basically she just leaves a trail of (dang) destruction everywhere she thinks the mouse might be.

I wish I could say that her detecting/stalking skills are somehow improving but frankly she shows no real aptitude for any aspect of the whole thing. It took her about an afternoon to figure out how to move a stack of DVDs six inches out of the way, and as I write this she has wedged herself half-upside-down into an impractically small space for some kind of retarded immobile stakeout.

This bull-in-a-china-shop routine is kind of cute, now, in the daylight of afternoon, but when/if the perp appears and any action actually goes down, which it probably won't until we're in bed if ever, I'm certain Calico Death will shoot out of her hiding place like a badly-designed rocket and crash directly and loudly into whatever happens to be nearby, which will scare the shit out of all the apartment's occupants, including Calico Death.

On a more serene note, tonight's foodstuff  is Fancy Hotdogs (real German bratwurst!) with sauteed onions, chipotle crema, mustard, ketchup, pickled fennel, American processed cheese food, pineapple salsa, and basically whatever the fuck else we feel like putting on or near the brats in question. Plus hand-cut artisanal homemade etc fries. Film of the day: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, somehow we hadn't seen it before. Kind of a Piece of Poop.

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pickled fennel.

1 fennel bulb, mandolined
1 tsp fennel seed, toasted
1 tsp coriander seed, toasted
vinegar
salt
sugar
water

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marvin lee aday.

This would be more Google Maps Street View, Antarctica this time. It's like the worst video game ever. You can't even interact with the penguins when you eventually find one (and there is one just to the left of that clot of three researchers or penguin preservers or whatever they are in red at roughly the 3 o'clock position above).

Here's Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago. The red flags in the distance show where the "street" is.

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In my non-globetrotting hours yesterday, I made meat loaf for the first time (I typed meta loaf first, something else entirely). I was having this weird persistent craving for it, and Mara was all yeah yeah do it so I did it. It was the slowest, most careful meat loaf in history I think, because meat loaf is not known for being something you linger over in the kitchen, and yeah man I lingered.

I lingered b/c me, being me, never having made it, and me, having the humongous and still awesome Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe as my guide, wanted to make sure I was doing it right. I mean why bother using such an exceedingly anal-retentive cookbook if you're not going to do exactly wtf it says.

The most awesome and humongous thing I learned is that meat loaf is not at anywhere near its best when it comes out of the oven. It needs time to contract or something and I guess just relax for a while. The absolute best bite I had of it yesterday was at 11pm, five hours after it came out of the oven, and I don't think that's (just) the post-mirtazapine munchies talking, because this morning's bite at 6:30am was even better (and the bite I just had for lunch was even better, etc, it's really good now). I just don't think it should be any warmer than room temperature.

My adaptation of the recipe is gluten-free, with almond flour as the filler, and I think I didn't do much else different except bumping up some of the seasoning and omitting the, eh, bacon. And substituting arugula for the parsley b/c I didn't have any and don't ever reallly love it anyway.

Oh yis, the other awesome thing I learned was to not use a, eh, "loaf pan". This is what Cook's Illustrated is good for, they're the Mythbusters of the kitchen: turns out that if you follow conventional wisdom and use a loaf pan (can't stop saying it, loaf pan, loaf pan) for your loaf, the, ulp, "juices" will bubble up around the sides about halfway through the cooking time and ruin the sides of your glaze, which was actually the most critical component, the glaze was, so its non-ruination and general maximalization is an absolutely stellar thing to focus on. Ze recipe below will double ze glaze amounts and add a shot or two of Frank's to it for zest and zing.

And if we don't do that recipe again, we should do this one.

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rosa.

So, returning from a long-seeming night of beer drinking, I arrive home to wonder what there might be in the kitchen to sate myself with, and it turns out to be: one egg, one slice of American cheese, a pile of raw red onion, a bit of truffle mayo, and some ketchup. Is that wrong? It didn't taste wrong.

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