on the road, day 8: bourges to limoges.

This is a photo of something I would never in a million years do. A bee landed on Terrie's finger while we were having coffee after our quite awful lunch in Bourges. Actually, the bee landed on his arm first and walked its way up to his finger with Terrie coaxing it along. I myself would've been halfway down the street after the bee landed on me...I have a well-documented anti-stinging insect policy.

It turns out that Terrie's bar for insect tolerance was set extremely high during the year he spent driving around Africa in 1995 or so. He and Emma toook a Land Rover to the Sahara and basically drove around for a year, also hitting the Congo, Chad, and plenty of other places where no one does this. Some of the roads they went on hadn't seen a vehicle in 6 years according to locals. I'll get to that in a minute.

But when Colin and I cringed over the fact that Terrie was letting this bee have its way with him, he said: "Bah...when we were in the Sahara, hoor, that was heavy. Some days you really had to run for your life. Because the insects were so thirsty, hoor, if a bee or wasp found out that you had something like a tomato with you or in your car, they would go back and tell all of the other bees or wasps, and in 10 minutes, they would all show up for the tomatoes and start stinging you without being provoked, because they needed the tomatoes. and you just had to run (maniacal laughter)."

"They also had these little bees called sweat bees that wouldn't sting you, but they wanted your sweat. And as soon as they found you, your face would be black with them, crawling up your nose, under your eyelids...you just had to wipe them off like shaving cream, hoor (maniacal laughter). It was crazy! Some days we had to stay in the car all day and only come out after dark because they were so bad."

"But the most aggressive insects were the termites....Emma and I were sleeping on these foam mats and one night we heard this tack tack tack tack tack (mimes large mandibles chomping) and we looked down and they'd eaten half the mattress (maniacal laughter)."

He then went on to talk about how you couldn't leave oranges in your car because the elephants would tear your car apart looking for them....and not to get between a hippopotamus and the water. But anyway that's why Terrie's not bothered by bees.

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Terrie is bothered by undercooked pasta and bland cream sauces, however. As are the rest of us to varying degrees. The most damning piece of evidence with regard to how bad the food was in Bourges is that Kat said it was "smaakloos", tasteless. And as Andy said: "if Kat complains that something is tasteless, then that's really saying something".

It had started promisingly with a good-sounding recommendation from the desk clerk at Kat's hotel, French home cooking with local ingredients. But we couldn't find it. And then someone who shall remain nameless spotted a place that advertised "fresh pasta" and went in. What followed was a splendid illustration of why it's worth spending a little time planning a lunch spot when on tour.

This was just 100% form over content. There were glass jars of artfully arranged dried pasta everywhere, wine bottles galore, Tuscan yellow on the walls and tablecloths, but wow what an absence of love in the food. They first brought out some bruschetta mozzarella that really just screamed Pizza Hut in every way: industrial, mass-produced, probably frozen and reheated. Then the pasta came out, accompanied by Parmesan granules (not grated parmigiano reggiano, but "Parmesan")...and everyone's pasta was uniformly undercooked, dry, and completely, weirdly tasteless. I myself had veal Marsala, which was OK once I salted and peppered it. But in general this was the worst restaurant meal I've had in a long time.

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Then it was off to Limoges. The venue was cute and downright petite, part of the university...it was a 10 year anniversary party, so the atmosphere was festive. More exciting than this was the fact that the opening band sounded like they might not totally suck. Dinner was better than average, brought in by a cook who was very proud of his work: a tomato-less ratatouille, a strongly herbal and spicy couscous, pork in a mustard sauce, and a nice green salad. The gig was fine, the PA was a little small, about the size of my home stereo, so the sound didn't really fill the space so well. Also, this was the smokiest night of the tour, and after this I would finally succumb to lung duress...I've been coughing and sneezing ever since. The opening act was in fact good and they was some nice people too.

on the road, day 7: montpellier to bourges.

So. this might not look like much, but this is the creature that came between me and a promising night of much-needed sleep. It's, against all odds, really...a rooster, just outside my fucking window. Doesn't this seem like a flagrant, obvious conflict, the rooster vs. the sleeping person? And this rooster taught me an important rooster fact that I was unaware of: they do not just do their "cock-a-doodle-do" thing at dawn, although they certainly do it then. No, they pretty much do it all fucking morning, or until somebody climbs out of their hotel window, walks the 20m to where they are crowing, and chokes the life out of them.

Which...I did not do, unfortunately. But the Montpellier Chicken Alarm Clock put a damper on my day. We had a long drive today, so we met at 10:30 and hit the road. I'm having a hard time remembering what I ate on the road this day. This could've been rubbery petrol fish day. I'll finish this post when it comes back to me.














































































Tonight was the only other night on the tour where love was really in the air. After Vanessa took off her dress and threw it on the ground in front of the merch stand, the pheromones must have started some sort of chain reaction in the air...we got out of there just in time.

Our rooms for the night were in a sort of dorm apartment thing...nice beds, but two to a room. I got Andy, who suffered through a night of my sinus breakdown in progress.

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Breakfast looked like this:

on the road, day 6: grenoble to montpellier.

on the road, day 5: genéve to grenoble, france.

Whew. Finally an internet connection AND more than 15 minutes to use it. We are in stunningly beautiful Grenoble at the moment, playing in a rather unbeautiful venue that looks like it should be hosting a high school talent show. Everyone is quite beat up as the result of a very late night in Geneva and so it will be interesting to see how the evening progresses.

We seem to be playing two kinds of places on this tour: the fun shows have been homey squats with very little support personnel, just two to three people working very very hard, also featuring home-cooked meals (fresh-baked brioche this morning!); the less fun shows have been at newish, sterile concrete boxes with more sound, tech, and hospitality people than there are musicians onstage. More on this when I get to post about the first few shows.

Anyway, today, thus far it seems to be the latter. On the positive side: I got to try andouillette today. Um...brace yourself, this is challenging food. In fact, if you're feeling queasy at all, I'd quit reading and come back when you feel stronger.

The thing is, in my initial France research, I'd read one sentence about it and knew that it sounded like something I'd end up eating...but the truth is, I probably should've read a little further. Here's Wikipedia's definition (edited):

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Traditional andouillette is made from the colon and the stomach of pig. In modern times, contents vary and normally contain intestines of pig, cow and/or calf. It is not to be confused with andouille sausage, which is much spicier, but more mild in animal-derived smells.

French andouillette...is an acquired taste and can be an interesting challenge even for adventurous eaters. It is sometimes eaten cold, as in picnic baskets. Served cold and sliced thinly, the smell, taste, and texture may be mistaken for an andouille, but on closer inspection the texture is considerably more rubbery and the meat has a more animal-like flavor.

Many French eateries serve andouillette as a hot dish, and foreigners have been disgusted by the aroma, to the point where they find it inedible (see external links). While some find that hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig's colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors.

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Here's the best part: I ate it at a gas station...their plat du jour was andouillette au poivre avec ratatouille. Ah, France.
The photo above is not mine, but that's what it looked like: very very coarse-grained sausage, chopped instead of ground. The smell? Not great. When we walked in to the grill area of the restaurant you smelled it immediately...you knew it was an awfully, offally familiar smell. I was hoping that the smell I was smelling was not the eating I was going to be eating for lunch. It was.

And the taste? OK. Edible. I could maybe see ordering another one for comparison's sake, but...let's just say I probably won't be making my own andouillette at home. I'm very glad I tasted it though.

UPDATE: My apologies to everyone at the venue, it was the best show yet: 450 enthusiastic people from from teens to grandmas having a great time (and buying plenty of merch). The crew was really friendly and totally competent, and the band was on fi-yaaaaaaaaaaaa (to be pronounced in David Lee Roth's devil falsetto). A very sweet couple who had been buying CDs on and off throughout the night (and who helped me recover from a drunk person's red-wine spill into one of the CD boxes) approached us after the show and said that they owned an Italian restaurant, and would we like to come for lunch the next day. Yes, we would! Report to follow.

on the road, day 4: genéve, switzerland.

on the road, day 3: bern, switzerland.

on the road, days 1-2: belgian breakdown.

I don't have a lot of time to write at the moment, so i'll instead do that thing where the picture speaks for the thousand words, etc. These first two images really crystallize what the tour has been about so far. First, from Neufchateau, Belgium:

















and, in Nancy, France:

















Yes, that's right, the van died (for good) in Neufchatel. On the upside, being stranded in Neufchatel looks like this:


































That is, until you have to unload your van onto the side of the highway, and then it looks more like this:

















That is, until an amazing rescue team swoops down upon you from three hours away, packs you into their van, and then hurtles back across Luxembourg at death-defying speeds to land you at the gig just before you're supposed to go on. The second picture is from the next morning when the rescue van itself wouldn't start due to a misconnected brand-new battery...

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But everything worked out fine. Except for the yellow van being declared "a catastrophe" by the Belgian Volkswagen mechanic. There will definitely be more detail to come as soon as I have access to an internet connection for more than 30 minutes.

More relevantly for this page, on the eating front: I knew we wouldn't have much time in each city, but there has really been no time to do anything other than drive, break down, call for help, wait, get rescued, drive, load in, do the thing, pack up, find the hotel, find out that there aren't enough beds for all of you, toss coins to see who sleeps together, lose the coin toss, and then fidget until dawn.

What I'm saying is: it's been all petrol stations and backstage food. Add to that the fact we've only been in France for a few daylight hours so far, mostly Belgium and Switzerland.

But France is where the eating highlights of the trip thus far have occurred. It has illustrated that cliche of French cuisine "getting the simple things right": I had the best croissant I've had in a long long time at the hotel in Nancy, lightly toasted and crispy on the outside, chewy, airy, and lightly buttery on the inside. And the eating highlight of my trip so far has been an amazing grilled ham and cheese sandwich at gas station outside Nancy:

















It might not look like much, but what appears to be an innocent ham sandwich is actually a perfectly crispy baguette that's been grilled like a bruschetta, given a good once-over with real butter, and filled with good ham and better Gruyere. It's like a dream version of a ham sandwich. (to give Belgium some props, I had a perfect braadworst in Antwerp the size of my arm, with sauteed bacon and onions, mustard, and ketchup...a manly breakfast indeed).

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Other food notes: Let's see....in Opwijk I think a girl tried to hit on me by giving me a very tasty caramel (nice one) and then sitting on the CDs I was trying to sell (mmm...less good). It was hard to tell exactly what her intentions were because she was, I think, very drunk...after her first two sentences ("Would you like a caramel?" and "Parlez-vous Francais?") she became completely speechless (most probably because I don't parlez-vous Francais). But there is nothing quite like watching someone try to communicate while being doubly incapacitated by alcohol and a language barrier. Worrying and endearing at the same time, she was...I'm pretty sure she eventually found another target for her caramels of desire.

Speaking of incapacitation via language barrier, I will soon find myself in semi-rural France with not much French to work with. More on this in a bit. Til then, here's a picture of the rescue van hurtling through the Swiss Alps.

sidebar: breakfast rooms.

The hotel breakfast room in Europe: if you've never been to Yurp, you don't really know what I'm talking about, although the concept is familiar: your hotel room comes with a "free breakfast". In America, this means you go down to the lobby and have some cereal or toast and shitty coffee while you watch CNN or whatever pap is on the TV down there and simultaneously "read" USA Today. It can be a loud, semi-bustling environment (depending on what time you wake up of course).

In Europe, hotel breakfast rooms are deathly still and quiet, unless there are Americans there complaining about the lack of CNN, USA Today, and toast. Ideally you would never spend any time at all in one of these rooms....you would walk out the door, turn left or right, and within 50 meters you'd find a dreamy patisserie or cafe where you could sit outside with real people and enjoy a sublime croissant or pastry and a double espresso or two.

However, sometimes your hotel is not located in a city center. In fact, sometimes, your hotel is located in a very American-seeming highway offramp kind of situation, and if you're up before anyone else and hungry....the hotel breakfast room is your only option.

















The above picture was taken in the hotel breakfast room in Dendemonde, Belgium. I was up early and hungry, and OK although this time we were actually in a city center, I was interested in what a Belgian hotel breakfast was like, and didn't really feel like facing the outside world yet.

It was...modest but OK. Above you see a ham sandwich with Emmenthaler, oude kaas, and honey; a honingkoek (honey cake); and a couple of speculoos cookies. And a cup of tea. With honey. Lots of bees in Belgium apparently.

fantasyplan.

I have about 20 drafts of posts sitting around, the Blogger equivalent of Post-it Notes, reminding me of things I want to cook. This is a constant process pretty much, thinking of things to cook...which I thought sounded pretty fucked-up for awhile until I realized that for me it's a way of constantly "creating", and it can give you immediate, tangible results whenever you actually make time to stop by the stove and cook any of these brain visions.

The thing with leaving these posts as drafts is....I never look at them after I save them, so it's about as helpful as jotting down something on a Post-it Note and then throwing it out the window.

Which is why VDuck will probably contain more posts like this in the future. The point of this one in particular is to remind me to a) eat at Zinc Bistro the next time I'm in Phoenix (which will hopefully be May/June 2007), and b) steal some recipe and presentation ideas from Matt Carter (there's even a combination of tuna and socca, two of my faves with no (to me) obvious affinity).

Here's the eGullet thread that caught my roving eye.

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Also, I had a perfect no-time-for-prep vegetarian dinner planned for Tuesday, but the venue has been moved. For future reference, it was: Marcella Hazan's Ligurian Vegetable Soup; ricotta-zucchini-spinach raviolis (from Pasta Panini on the Rozengracht) with tomato-butter sauce; stoofperen.

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st. packrat's day.

We've been engaged in an unprecedented undertaking for the past few days: an actual Spring Cleaning. It's so obviously been a critical need for some time now, it seems impossible that we hadn't done it yet.

Maybe it's this: for the last few years springtime has found us either relocating our business across town (boo!) or moving house (yay!), and...while we one way or another got rid of truckloads of stuff each move...our newest living quarters are more modest, maybe even small: one room the size of (to paraphrase Terrill Soules) one room.

Into this one room we have crammed not only the semi-average-sized belongings of two mid-30s packrat nostalgists, but the flotsam and jetsam of our defunkt CD shop (including the entire inventory and fixtures), as well as a currently functioning CD/LP distribution business. And two sweet kitties.

Thus: after a truly impressive effort to get rid of every unnecessary thing in our apartment this week, we decided to commemorate the occasion with an uncharacteristic dinner: some kind o' meaty stew. I've made beef stew about twice in my life, but I've been reading Julia Child's The French Chef Cookbook, and wanting to cook something out of it for a few weeks now. Turns out however that after digging around in there a bit, her stews were just the tiniest bit more fussy than what I had time to cook tonight: and if I'm going to cook out of her book, there's no point in not following the recipes.

So we agreed on some essential components, basically: beef, red wine, thyme, carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes....stewed. And that's what we had (what follows here is easily one of my worst efforts to date in trying to express a recipe):

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beef stew with bay leaves and thyme.

500 gr riblappen (boneless beef chuck), cut into 2-3 cm cubes
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 large sweet onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced (you could even double this if you were in the mood)
1 cup red wine (Shiraz, Zinfandel, big wine)
2 tbsp. flour
1 cup chicken or beef stock
2 bay leaves
leaves from 3 sprigs fresh thyme

150-200 gr potatoes, cut into 2 cm cubes
3 medium carrots, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 small leek, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 tbsp parsley or selderij (celery leaves), minced


Heat large soup kettle/crockpot to high, brown the beef on all sides in the olive oil. Remove and set aside. Add onion to kettle, sauté 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, sauté 30 seconds then add flour. Cook 2 minutes or so until incorporated and browning. Add wine, stirring to incorporate and scraping bottom of kettle to get any crusty bits. Add broth, bay leaves, and thyme, bring to simmer. Add browned meat to kettle. After a simmer, turn heat as low as possible, cover, and simmer for 2 hours or so.

After two hours, add potatoes, carrots, and leek, along with some more wine or broth if things are drying up. After another hour, things should be tasting and looking good. Adjust taste via salt and pepper, add parsley. Let sit for 5 minutes and serve with a salad, fresh baguettes and butter.

Serves 2 proud mooperbirds.

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atlanta: keepin' it sleazy.

Some friends are headed to the ATL for one night only and wanted some entertainment tips. It was tough, due to the diverse, idiosyncratic, budget minded nature of this group of friends, so I just approached it as if it was me stranded on a Monday night in Brookhaven without a car.

Well, as if it were a budget-minded version of me. This is tough, as little gives me more reliably perverse pleasure than spitting on my own budget's grave; my first ATL inclinations would be to go to Sala or Tierra, or somewhere similar where I could seriously deplete my cash/credit reserves while seriously treating my giant hungry tooth to good eats...and then go do some of the other shit listed below.

Travel is another moneysucker: one of many negatives about the urban (and suburban) sprawl of Atlanta is that you must have a car to be truly mobile. Or a lot of money for cab fares: they pile up quick if you're carless and you don't have all night to try and get somewhere useful via MARTA.

For the options outlined below, the most cost-effective way to get to options B and C would probably be to take MARTA from Brookhaven/Oglethorpe Station to either Midtown Station, North Ave. Station, or Five Points Station, then take a bus or cab to any of the destinations below (specifics follow).

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OK, so now...the list. Keep in mind that this is a budget-minded version of me who's apparently trying to re-live his mid-20s.

So. I'd probably do one of these (in ascending order of adventurousness):







OPTION A: CHAMBODIA.

Take a moderately expensive cab (or hopefully hotel courtesy van) to Hae Woon Dae. The point of this option would be to experience a real Chamblee strip mall, an evening of real Korean BBQ, and plenty of real unusual (but pleasantly so) atmosphere, followed by a relatively early bedtime. To dramatically increase the adventurousness of this option, you could visit one of the next-door strip clubs for some concerned frowns, intimidating stares, assuredly ethnic booty, and maybe even some exciting gunplay.

This option has collapsed under the impossibility of its own logistics. There's just no reasonable way to get a larger group of people out there from Brookhaven without a car service, and I'm not sure that's in the budget. My suggestion of cabbing it to Buford Highway was met with tremendous skepticism by locals still living in the ATL.


OPTION B1, VIRGINIA-HIGHLAND

Take MARTA from Brookhaven Station to Midtown Station. Take the #45 bus (Virginia-Highland) and get off at the intersection of Virginia and Highland. Or take a cab from North Ave. Station to the intersection of Virginia and Highland.

Your destination is: my old watering hole in Virginia-Highland, the Highland Tap, for deadly deadly martinis, icy-cold Sierra Nevadas, and a superb burger or steak, possibly followed by either: Taco Mac across the street for their legendary beer selection (and hey Monday is trivia night, giving you the equilibrium-testing challenge of using your brain while simultaneously reducing its usefulness).

Other dining options in the Virginia-Highland area will appear here shortly.

Note: Should you feel invincible-livered, Option B1 puts you in an excellent position to combine Options B and C, but the degree of difficulty is high here. Read on for details.

If you're just looking to extend Option B1, you could enjoy a pleasant 15-minute postprandial stroll south down N. Highland to Option C below. It's a pleasant walk even if you decide to forego Option C but just want some exercise and a nightcap: The Righteous Room is where I'd go, and then call a cab from there.

Or you could take a cab to Heavy Metal Karaoke (with live band!) at 10 High Club (under the Dark Horse Tavern). Mara said it rocked.

Remember MARTA only runs til midnight, so...if things get out of hand, cabbing it back to Brookhaven will probably punch a $30 hole in your wallet.


OPTION B2, LITTLE FIVE POINTS
Take MARTA from Brookhaven Station to Five Points Station, then take the #3 bus (Auburn Ave / MLK Drive) east to Euclid Ave and get off in front of the Variety Playhouse. Or take a cab directly to the Variety Playhouse.

Your destination is: my old watering hole in Little Five Points, the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, for a pulled BBQ pork sandwich, good beers, and entertaining camaraderie. There's a few more blocks' worth to investigate here, but really...it's hard to consider L5P a nighttime destination in itself these days without a show to go see there. During the day....maybe, for CD/LP shopping, but still...not a terribly rich seam to mine 'less you just wanna drank.

Pictorially, About.com hits some highlights of Little Five with this pictorial, but geez, here are some more nostalgic pictures from pre-digital times, 1998!


OPTION C, URBAN BLOAT
Take MARTA from Brookhaven Station to North Ave Station, then either take the #2 bus (Ponce de Leon) to Highland & Ponce de Leon, or take a cab directly to the Clermont.

Your destination is: the Clermont Lounge. To quote Wikipedia: "The Clermont is perhaps best-known for featuring dancers who do not meet the traditional physical standards for strippers, the most famous of which is Blondie, notable for her ability to completely flatten empty beer cans between her breasts." To say that the Clermont strippers do not meet traditional standards is...accurate. The only downside here is the shitty canned beer selection, but...you're slumming.

The Clermont should be followed or preceded by a greasy pie at Fellini's Pizza, or a decent Cuban sandwich at La Fonda Latina (I wouldn't order anything other than this or the paella here). Don't expect greatness at either of these places, you're there for the patio and because I used to go there. There's also the Majestic, which really only makes sense when taken in tandem with the Clermont or similar debauchery.

Safety Note: you will probably snap this relatively quickly, but just in case: this is not really an area of town to randomly explore on foot unless you're up for "real adventure". Stick to Ponce de Leon Ave, walk tall, and don't talk to anybody on the street unless you're trying to score some drugs. And if you are, don't follow anyone anywhere to get them. Unless you really need them. And then, well...take it sleazy, bro.

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And speaking of scoring...you should also at some point try to score a HOT Krispy Kreme donut if you haven't had one. But don't bother looking for one if you're not prepared to wait for the HOT NOW sign in the window to light up, cos otherwise....it's just a donut.

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tour de france.

Ha. I am suddenly going to France for 11 days. Well, not just France, but frankly, wherever the van takes me. Here's where it will hopefully be taking me:

29-03 Opwijk (BEL)
30-03 Nancy (FRA)
31-03 Bern (SWI)
01-04 Genève (SWI)
02-04 Grenoble (FRA)
03-04 Montpellier (FRA)
04-04 Bourges (FRA)
05-04 Limoges (FRA)
06-04 Brest (FRA)
07-04 St. Malo (FRA)

I desperately need chomping tips for this tour, since: a) it's my first trip to France, period, and b) I don't know anything about anywhere we're going. Our schedule is tight, as in, we won't have much time for getting lost looking for good food, so I need reliable info....any ideas?

For my own reference, some notes:

We start out in Opwijk, which is a tiny Belgian suburb of 12,000 people outside of Bruxelles. I'm not sure what the deal is on this gig, or how late in the day we'll leave to get there.

5 hours away is Nancy (tourist info), in the Lorraine region, the Northeast of France. The more I look at it, the better it looks, it's full of Art Nouveau (L'Ecole de Nancy), which I know nothing about. Described more than once as "the artistic and intellectual heart of modern Lorraine". Plagiarism, or generally accepted fact? Here's the venue.

Then it's 4.5 hours to Bern (tourist info), which Wikipedia describes as "rich of cultural offerings for every taste" (sic). Right. We're playing at the Reithalle, which used to be "the old riding school of Bern, now a meeting place for the alternative scene, with concerts, parties, flea market and much more". Hmm.

Then, yay, a 2 hour drive to Geneva (tourist info). Here is eGullet's Geneva thread, not so helpful at the moment, but maybe it will chug into life soon. Here is where we're headed.

2 hours away, Grenoble (tourist info) is in the Alps, and is not only full of Italians, but is walnut country apparently, so I should try to find some nocino (or vin de noix, walnut liqueur); tourtons, pasta squares stuffed with cheese, spinach or prunes (amongst others) then fried. Restaurant listings here (apparently stolen directly from the Rough Guide).

A nice short (3-hour) drive to Montpellier (tourist info) is next. Montpellier is supposed to be notoriously difficult to eat well in (and drive in). Cellier-Morel (Maison de la Lozere) has received a bunch of recommendations, but it's Michelin level dining. Mosaïque (21 rue Vallat) is supposed to be good and simple.

Then, a 7-hour drive to Bourges (tourist info) in the Loire region. Someone recommended the pâtisserie Aux Trois Flûtes, on the corner of rues Joyeuse and Bourbonnoux; for chocolates and the local sweet speciality of fourrées au praliné, Maison Forestines on place Cujas. In general, fruit and veg are the shit in this region. Another recommendation just popped up for Le Jardin Gourmand. Which looks good, but I seriously doubt we'll have time for it that day.

3 hours to Limoges (tourist info). Limoges is part of Limousin, here are some eating links. Can this be considered prime foie gras country?

Ook. A tough day, 9 hours to Brest. Brest is in Brittany, sounds like it's not much to look at (bombed heavily in WWII). But this is the time to start looking out for crêpes and galettes. And seafood. La Carene is somewhat near the water.

3 hours away, Saint-Malo (tourist info) is in Brittany too, and looks awesome. Too bad the venue isn't closer to the water. Here's an eGullet post on Breton pastries, including Kouign Amann. And someone has said that the Le Petit Moulin du Rouvre restaurant just south of St Malo and west of Mont St. Michel is good eating.

Then.....11 hours back to Amsterdam, hopefully nowhere near as destroyed as the last time I tried this. Actually, maybe I'll hang out in St. Malo for a few days if the weather's nice, then take a train back.

dollyflower.

It feels like we're the last to know about how to make cauliflower taste good. I learned about it this summer from a Jean-Georges Vongerichten recipe, but further research revealed that the topic has been gaining critical mass for some time.

The concept is simple: cut the cauliflower into 1/4-inch slices. This thickness seems to allow the stems to cook at about the same rate as the florets. And then cover the whole mess with the best olive oil you've got. Roast it in the oven for 40 minutes at 200C, keeping an eye on it to make sure that it doesn't overbrown. You could also just turn it over every 10 minutes or so if you don't mind hanging out by the stove.

What you end up with is something that is nutty and sweet that most people would never guess was cauliflower. The extra good news is that the recipe readily accepts elaborations: using butter instead of olive oil; adding cumin or rosemary; pine nuts and capers, etc.

Below is my adaptation of the initial recipe that got me hooked on this preparation method, but it's also great without the caper-raisin sauce.

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roasted cauliflower with capers and raisins.

1/3 cup capers, drained + 1 tbsp of their liquid
1/3 cup raisins, preferably golden
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp. butter
nutmeg for grating
ground black pepper
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

1 head's worth of cauliflower florets, stems cut longways into 1/4-inch slices
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil or walnut oil

Place cauliflower in a roasting pan and coat with olive oil. Place in a 200C oven for 40 minutes, checking every 10 minutes or so to prevent overbrowning. Meanwhile, combine capers, raisins, butter, and water in a small saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes. Let it cool and then zshoom it up in a food processor.

Reheat the sauce, then add the nutmeg, vinegar, pepper and salt if needed. Serve cauliflower with a dollop of the sauce onto 4 plates. Finish with a tiny grating of nutmeg.

UPDATE: Apparently I've incorrectly transcribed one or more improvisatory elements of this recipe...tried it according to this recipe last night and it had lost something. Will try to fix soon.

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let it FLO.

One of the most popular questions from our readers here is: "Why don't your photos have anything to do with your posts? Huh? Why not?"

And the answer is: get off my back, man. I finally managed to get over to Brasserie FLO and have a bite to eat (sorry Klary, I didn't mean to go without you guys, I just ended up over there unexpectedly around dinner time). This can't be considered an actual review, since I just sat at the bar and had a salad and a couple of beers, but I learned a couple of things about the place, enough to know whether or not I'll be back.

And: I will. The food was good. I had the "salad with rillettes of duck, smoked duck breast, sausage, bacon and croutons". Very tasty, lightly dressed, totally edible and something I wouldn't make at home.

The only real negative for me is that the lighting was a bit brighter than the Mole Family prefers. But this isn't really a realistic complaint, because the ideal dining lighting for us is near-total darkness. The service was young and unprofessional, but pleasant and they seemed to be trying to do a good job. And the prices were reasonable. All in all, initial indications suggest that it's a fine place for a drink and a bite. I can imagine that service problems multiply if you actually sit at a table or order an entree, but that's pure speculation. I'll let you know when I go back this weekend.

painting the town red.

Apparently many other people in Europe enjoyed the lunar eclipse last night. I myself did not, because during the fun part (pictured above), la luna became obscured by clouds.

Or maybe it went out for a glass of red. It seems that I'm not the only person in town who is wondering where the hell I can find a nice glass of red wine in a dark cozy environment. Free local rag nl20 has an article this month about wine bars in Amsterdam, saying that with the growing appreciation for wine in Holland and the proliferation of wine bars around town, Amsterdam is "finally beginning to act like an international city" (insert cynical dog poop joke here).

Maybe I shouldn't be skeptical. Maybe we haven't heard this before. Actually, we have. Back in 2002 or so, several similar articles popped up around the introduction of several winebars to the city's landscape. As far as I can tell, only one of those is still around, Boelen & Boelen. Back when those articles came out, I went by a couple of these places (whose names escape me at the moment), and...they just seemed soul-less and designed to attract the eye in a way I associate with flash-in-the-pan desperation. Understandably: opening a restaurant of any sort is a terribly risky proposition that usually fails expensively, at least that's what my dad told me when he talked me out of opening a restaurant back in the 90s.

So, back in the early days of the winebar rush, Boelen & Boelen seemed more physically approachable than the others, but mostly I just remember being knocked out by their high prices. Of course, now that Euro-inflation is an accepted fact and the U.S. dollar's implosion has made everything expensive for us expatriates, Boelen & Boelen's prices are looking downright average.

Bubbles & Wines, which is already on my list of places to check out, still looks interesting and not quite as self-congratulatory as some of the others. I think it helps that, in the photos I see of B & W, the people behind the bar seem to be friendly-faced, with welcoming, open smiles. I'm such a sucker for crafty marketing!

The other names mentioned in the article are:

1. Vyne. Good name. Really cute website that doesn't play vapid smooth lounge-jazz beats when it starts up. Huge points for that. Unfortch, the photos on the website make the place look a bit like a museum shop. It's definitely not a relaxed, comfortable-looking bar, it looks like a place to go out and fetishize something. The IENS reviews are rather terrible and suggest that this place suffers from the now unsurprising Amsterdam problem of unqualified, disinterested, perhaps even rude waitstaff. O, it's laughable, up to a point, isn't it.
   
   I'm just about beyond that point...I've been really reluctant to reach this conclusion, but I think that this inability to really understand the concept of "customer service" might well say something significant about the culture here (across the Internet, a chorus of unpleasant, whiny voices cries out in unison, "oh, ya think???"). I definitely don't want the robotic Stepford Waiters or the fawning/bratty customer-is-always-right relationships of the U.S. to take root over here, but...fuck. Just try a little.
   
   Which reminds me: our friend Andy, who is not a needy person while dining, finally ate at this Dos place off the Marnixstraat (maybe an offshoot of Duende?), and said that while the food was good, there was a woman working there who was the most unpleasant person he's been served by in a long time. It would've been a total bust if he hadn't struck up a rapport with the chef, after which everything was smooth sailing and generally very good. So...there you go. Avoid the blonde woman at Dos. IENS reviews suggest that she's either new or a fill-in.
   
   
2. Rosarium. Looks like a beautifully designed place, but the website is not too forthcoming about the food or drink options. The IENS reviews are uniformly excellent, which is unusual and more than likely indicative of something out of the ordinary, exactly what I'm not sure. A negative point: it's out in Oost Bumblefuck.
   
   
3. Silex. It's not immediately obvious what this restaurant is doing in an article about winebars, based on their website menus. Their 2 red by-the-glass choices are uninspired, while the bottles are very heavily weighted towards French and Italian standards. The menu is very "European". Looks expensive and disappointing...but: the IENS reviews are very positive. Not that that means anything. Maybe worth seeing what the bar area is like. I need a scout. Or an intern.
   

So....more places to check out. Too bad I'm on the wagon for a few weeks as part of my new "month-on/oh shit: another month-on/thank god, finally a few weeks off" drinking regimen.

southern cookin'.

This could have been one of those post titles that every newspaper slash magazine hack has used to death: you know, talking about the southwestern Asian/eastern Mediterranean country Georgia but using coy little references to the southeastern U.S. state Georgia. I'm not even going to give an example of it here, you know what I'm talking about. This post is just a reminder to start cooking some Georgian food, because it looks like a fantastic way to take advantage of the lovely Moroccan/Turkish goods at Bario Market downstairs (quite possibly the friendliest men in Amsterdam).

On the web, About Georgia has some nice entry points into Georgian cuisine. Here's the eGullet post that got me a-salivatin', and this cookbook from Darra Goldstein (or this one from Paula Wolfert, or both) will probably end up in our comparatively modest (45 or so) cookbook pile/stack.

let it snow.

I'm only writing instead of working because I got 8 minutes of sleep last night (see previous entry), and because it's actually snowing outside, only hours after I idly wished it would. That almost never happens. These are hardly conditions under which a man can be expected to get anything done.

Except maybe cook (and clean, fuck!). I have suddenly contracted a fi-yuuurious craving for Chinese food, specifically something from the Szechwan side of da house--my head needs blown off, badly. I want my lips to fly around the room screaming (assuming that's still possible when they're not connected to the rest of me).

But I ain't gwine to do takeout, you know...see, all my homies (New King, Nam Kee) live on the other side of town now, so I gots to do it my own self.

One of the better resources I've seen for making this stuff at home is on eGullet, innocently titled Chinese Food Pictorials. They're done by a guy called hzrt8w (uh, real name W.K. Leung), and they're thorough as all get-out.

If you're not already familiar with the degree of obsessiveness with which eGulleters can track a topic, the Szechuan Peppercorn thread is a good place to get a taste. Lots of additional photodocumentation of homestyle Chinese cooking can be found on the Chinese Cooking at Home thread.

There's also another thread that has piqued my interest these days: Korean Home Cooking. One of the ringleaders here, ChryZ, has a blog where most of the pictorials also show up. Here are the front runners on my to-cook list:

1. Dwenjang Jjiigae (pork stew)
   
2. Haemul Pajeon (seafood/scallion pancake with spicy dip)
3. Buldak (korean fire chicken with mozzarella)
   
4. Soondooboo Jjigae (shrimp/kimchi stew with tofu)
   
5. Jajang Myung (noodles with black bean sauce)
   

Jajang Myung is last because it's the only one of these I've actually tasted before. It looks like a can of motor oil poured over a bowl of linguini, but it's good eatin'. There was a good bulgogi restaurant in Atlanta whose bulgogi was so good that it kept me from branching out too much. I don't think it was My Dong. The restaurant.

Actually My Dong might have been Vietnamese. The restaurant. Here's eGullet's Vietnamese Home Cooking thread as well.

And....I also found Andrea Nguyen's Vietworldkitchen to be a valuable storehouse of great writing and recipes from the Vietnamese kitchen. The question is: will I get around to cooking any of these recipes, or will I get distracted by some other piece of exotic fluff that will generate yet another pointless post and no actual food?

brainstorming.

Unfortunately I find myself awake and sleepless after a very disturbing dream about an ex-girlfriend. And there wasn't even any sex.

I was sitting at a table in a modern Italian restaurant (a la...Babbo, let's say, but not Babbo) before it had opened for dinner, say 4pm, in a tuxedo, waiting for something, all the lights were off inside but there was still enough light outside so that you could see everything fine. A menu was on the table. A wedding party noisily exited of one of the back rooms, just having done some post-wedding thing, post-wedding because the bride was in white, and...lo, the bride was my ex.

We were surprised to run into each other there, but not like, "Wow, haven't seen you in forever," more like people who see each other regularly and are just surprised to run into each other somewhere unusual. I said something like hey, that's three years in a row we've seen each other here at this place. She sits down next to me but facing me, it was one of those banquette thingies, and starts talking about something. When she turned to her right, toward the rest of the restaurant, to look around, I could see that she was wearing a lot of makeup, as brides tend to do...but there was something really garishly wrong about the part around the temple side of her left eye.

Not wrong like, this is the part where she's actually dead or anything...it was just unfinished, strangely white and shiny. So while she was talking, I blended it in with my thumb and it looked better.

And, sadly....that's all i remember. The bad part was Lynchian in it's level of scary evilness but the specifics elude me. Well, a little girl's body was pulled limp from an ocean harbor by a crane, but then the sun shone on it and it was alive and waved to the crowd; also, I'd hidden a Christmas present for someone (R. Scott Hanson I believe) somewhere and couldn't find it. I knew it was in a high place, somewhere that I had to stand on tiptoe to reach. But while I was looking for it, I was also embarrassed about the gift because it seemed cheap and lame, it was some kind of old "classic" piece of literature in it's original paperback version, with notes scribbled on the cover. I think Scott's parents were getting dressed to go out during this.

None of this was scary, just menacing...the bad part was happening simultaneously, though, and it had something vaguely to do with my ex, and with me being part of a group of 6 very bad people who received instructions about what specific bad things to do via an intricate system of cubicles and P.O. boxes. There were toilets involved as well. Ominous, no?

And so you see, I am awake, with only a couple of hours of sleep under my belt. Leaving me to ponder things like "what will I do with the thawed salmon in the fridge?" I also have some merguez I bought yesterday, mm-hmm, yes...now watch as I attempt to deploy some maple syrup as the bridge ingredient here, and a dab of orange marmalade as well, for a kind of Seattle brunch vibe:

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marmalade-glazed salmon with merguez sausage and maple sweet potatoes?

1/4 cup orange marmalade
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 garlic clove, pressed
250gr salmon filet

4 merguez sausages

2 sweet potatoes
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp butter
grated nutmeg

toasted pine nuts, minced chives and minced cilantro for garnish


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We'll see...

party time, part 6127.

As so often happens 'round these parts, we've decided that it's "time for a party".

At our last apartment, well...we used to have a lot of parties. Or more accurately: we had a good number of small "dinner parties", several medium-sized "get-togethers", and a few rather large and memorable bashes, including that rare bird (pictured above), the Successful New Year's Party. You know the one where, although alarming things happen: someone you don't know does a serious swandive off a kitchen counter, faceplanting into the corner of the stovetop; someone else is allegedly "pushed" down during Nieuwmarkt midnight fireworks and returns with an ugly bloody gash on her calf; the cats disappear and the party has to be "paused" for 10 minutes to make sure they're inside because they've never been outside before in their lives...

Although all of that happens, the oven diver is carried upstairs and put to bed (asked if she needed anything, she replied "vodka" and then fell asleep), the leg gash is swabbed and gauzed, the cats are found...

...and the food is exotic and excellent because you are fortunate enough to have friends that can really cook; just a few too many people bring unexpected numbers of people so that it seems ever-so-slightly overcrowded for an hour or two; random and not-so-random DJs step up to the task masterfully and everybody dances, you manage to properly gauge your own alcohol intake, and you go to bed at 9am feeling good about the world and your place in it.

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We've lived in our current apartment almost exactly 1 year, and we have not yet had a party party. Yes, there are good reasons: my primary co-partier was away in the Arctic north for almost 5 months. Upon her return, I was absolutely mired in work goop, nose to the grindstone like the proverbial paperhanger until the holiday parties set upon us like a pack of hungry Duran Duran wolves. And then her parents came to party visit, and then we went on vacation, etc. etc. etc.

So, sure. There are reasons. But what I'm saying is...in the words of King Geedorah and Mr. Fantastik:

it's on nigga
on and crackin'
like Dig'em
lips be smackin'.

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Obviously, after the guest list (unfortunately, the supercomputer-like calculations required to properly calibrate the ideal mix of people who will be interested in each other or can at least all have fun together are beyond the scope of this page), the first consideration is the food. Actually, for me that comes before the guest list.

This highlights one of the very few things that my co-partier and I disagree on. One of them is dub music, which is not very relevant in terms of food. The other is (sniff) cilantro. She is a "cilantro/soap" gene person (I realize that this enzyme/gene thing is still under debate, but I'm hoping that that's the explanation), and I am currently in the mood for something cilantro-heavy. I'm aware that cilantro can be served in a bowl on the side. In fact, one might say that that's a better way to do it for a party anyway since apparently something like 25% of people might have this soap gene (Source: Wikipedia).

I'm just saying: we don't disagree about much: but this "party food" thing brings up the one thing we may never see eye to eye on (there's still a chance for dub, I think), this cilantro issue, and it's just not fair...because, dammit...OK, Andy puts a bunch of cilantro in his party food and it's great. And I should be able to, too. Because otherwise he has an unfair advantage. There, I said it. It's out.

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Up next: More procrastination in the guise of Menu Planning!

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P.S. I wish it would snow.

UPDATE: Six hours later, it is snowing.

team trivia and hot wings.

Well, after a buttload of traveling, Team Duck is now back in Amsterdam battling jet lag and a weird, Affliction-like toothache. So if you ask me something and I bark "It's my goddamned TOOTH, I can't take it anymore!" and then throw you over a lunch counter, or douse you with gasoline and set you aflame....that's what's up.

In other "towering achievements" news, we thoroughly spanked the rest of Churchill's Pub in East Cobb during an evening of Team Trivia...actually, it was an upset win, down to the last question, which had something to do with Fargo and the AFI's list of 100 Greatest American Movies Of All Time. I can't quite remember the details...what was I even drinking? Oh right, Jaegermeister.

Before the freezing brown liquid gunked up my circuitry, though, I somehow correctly identified some lines of poetry as being Robert Browning's. Actually "brown" was a bit of a theme that evening (oh, isn't it always when you hang out with MT). We chose "Brown" as our team name (we're usually sporting the witty moniker The Libya Miners); there was a question about a Browning automatic, and, um....well, I think that's it. The only other question I can remember had something to do with the Arctic Ocean.

Whatever. Ever wonder about the whole deer/crucifix thing?