season's closing.

As the two regular readers of this blog are already aware, the building in which we live contains a restaurant, bar, art gallery, and performance spaces (among other things). The cooks and music programmers take the months of July and August off (as do most live music venues in town), so this week is the last of the season, and it always serves to remind us how easy it is to take the whole thing for granted. So, this week not only did I go to Tuesday night jazz/improv like I usually do (pictured: Oscar-Jan Hoogland, Ig Henneman, and Alan "Gunga" Purves, one of the most reliably outstanding drummers in town and a fantastic comedian as well):






















But I also went to the vegetarian Wednesday night meal (3 courses for 4.60). Unfortunately, I didn't reserve, so I got the "backup food" instead of the real menu. But if it was the same cooks behind all of it I think I get the picture. Let's just say I got my money's worth. Still, a very convivial atmosphere and good music on the stereo makes for a nice social Wednesday's grubtime, followed by an evening of music from the Corrie van Binsbergen crew.

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pom rising.

Image stolen from Wikipedia.

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I've been putting off an in-depth pom post for gee almost two years now because I just know it has the potential to be a time-consuming suckhole, but apparently it's Go Time because Surinamese food is somehow enjoying a bit of a surge in press coverage, more than just the annual Kwakoe reminders. Pom is everywheres all of the sudden. I could just spit.

I would say that maybe it's that the widespread explosion of food writing on the internet is just finally reaching us here, and many foodies in our little neck of the woods are interested in our local version of Caribbean food...but, there are two new Surinamese/Indische cookbooks out this year, just about doubling the number of readily available Suriname cookbooks on the market. So what I'm saying is...it's not just 'net writing.

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I was pushed (and kicked, frankly) into starting this post last week when, while flipping channels during an idle moment of waiting for Mara's pain medicine to kick in, I bumbled across a Pom Cook-Off in Amsterdam on AT5 that I knew nothing about (it was on a cooking program called etenmetbianca, there should be a video from that episode up soon). That's seriously stupid, since pom is where my interest in Surinamese food began. It's as if someone dreamed up an ideal food event just for me and then didn't tell me about it.

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Let's backtrack for the uninitiated or previously uninterested. As detailed here in earlier posts, pom is a well-known oven casserole party dish from Suriname (formerly Dutch Guyana), made from chicken parts, citrus juices, and a root vegetable called pomtajer in Dutch, or malanga or new cocoyam in English. It has its roots in the cooking of slaves on Jewish sugar plantations in Suriname. According to at least Debra from Culiblog (and who knows where she stole this information from)(i'm totally kidding), Pom is "reminiscent of an Ashkenazic potato kugel". The slaves, not having access to their own potatoes, grew tubers on the sly, most successfully when it was a tuber their owners had no interest in, such as....the pomtajer.

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The most remarkable thing about the overall sensation of eating pom is that, for such a simple homestyle dish, it has a complex flavor that doesn't really remind you of any one thing. The first impression is an intriguing mixture of sour/tart citrus with a rich, sweet buttery note from the, well, butter...combined with a bit of earthy smokiness from the zoutvlees or spek. And the pomtajer itself is terrific, with a texture kind of something like soft polenta and a taste that's hard to pin down. When I first had it, it was on a toasted baguette with pickles and a swipe of scotch bonnet sambal...the much-maligned broodje pom. Anyway, I was smitten from the first bite.

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When I first became a pom stalker, I scoured the internet for information, and folks let me tell you it was slim pickins. Maybe 10 pages total. That was back in 2003 or so. Cut to veritable pom press explosion in progress: Culiblog's post on pom was the first time I realized that there was "new pom work" afoot. Which led me to Karin Vaneker's Pom op het menu. Which led me to Pom in Nederland. Which is leading me to all kinds of other places. Eventually, though, I hope that all of this will lead me down to the Bijlmer during my eGullet foodblog week, where I can visit Imagine IC and the Pom op het menu exhibition in person.

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top thai.

Top Thai, the takeout/delivery restaurant across the street from me, just served me the best Thai food I've had in maybe 5 years: every bite I thought would be my last wasn't. The secret was careful prep and excellent wok technique: each vegetable was cut and cooked nearly perfectly, mushrooms bursting with...whatever would be inside mushrooms (water?), red peppers and green beans still proudly crisp, and my favorite little bitter green eggplants in there doin' they thing as well. The kaffir, basil, and cilantro were fresh, the fish sauce was very strong in all the right places, and the fresh red chiles were thrown in by the tiny Asian fistful. Top Thai's always been good, but tonight was like a different kitchen altogether. Yay me.

UPDATE: We've now eaten there twice more since this post, and...it appears that this night was a fluke. It's been fine every time, but more like the same level of quality it's always been, with none of the subtlety of this first night.

mmmmmmm.

Lazy sonofabitch though I am, somehow I'd never made this mistake before: mashed potatoes using an immersion blender. I really had no idea not to do this, I guess mostly because I've made mashed potatoes start-to-finish about 5 times in my entire life...usually I let someone else do the mashing.

Last night, I was very pleased to be making some lovely roasted garlic mash for the Elephant Moop since she hasn't eaten much hot food lately, and well I just thought I'd save some time with the old Braun stick blender. The resulting food item was very interesting and possessed many unexpected qualities but ultimately, eating it could not really be considered "time well spent".

This handy article from the BBC explains what happened. And actually, the BBC Food section has quite a few nifty and helpful resources: for example, here's what's in season right now.

sonik tooth.

What a weekend. Mara developed an abscessed tooth on Friday night, just in time for it to be impossible for us to find anyone who could/would treat her for it: oral surgeons don't work on weekends in Nederland, or if they do they're real secretive about it. Finally we saw somebody yesterday (Monday, yes, that's 48 hours' worth of severe dental pain later) who could do something about it, but the swelling is still (actually even more) gigantic and my little mooperbird looks like she's been cruelly Photoshopped into the Elephant Moop.

Dus, there has been no eating of anything other than yoghurt, mashed potatoes, and pindasoep (Surinamese peanut soup) for the past couple of days. I'm trying to get more creative with it now that the crushing stress has been lessened.

UPDATE: There is one bit of food-related news here: the only thing that helped Mara's pain on Sunday was the blisteringly extra-super hot Surinaamse sambal mentioned here. She would soak a Q-Tip in the oil on top of the sambal and then rub the Q-Tip on her tooth/gum area. Good ol' capsaicin to the rescue. We were obviously totally desperate for relief, but it did actually help a bit, plus it was the best-smelling dental treatment ever.

up on the rooftop.

Click, click, click? One fewer click and you've got yourself a Wu-Tang puzzler, featuring the immortal verse:

These are the bones, bones from the grave of Houdini
G-Dini, Ronzoni noodles sprinkled on your embry'
Climb like the deficit, profits, death threats to Israel
slid through Bethlehem bong on one wheel
Syringes, rubber bands, needles, the 60's
Grandaddy Caddy was coppin 6 Gs
Be-gosh all that Osh Kosh jumpers
Pink Champale, brown paper bags, wall-to-wall bumpers

Thank you, Ghostface Killah.

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We had a barbecue on the roof last night, really our first since we've lived here. Sure, we've eaten on the roof before, but we've never actually cooked on the roof before...Mara bought me a little Weber grill for our anniversary, and I broke it in this week. Unfortunately no pictures of the food, things got out of control at the last minute and I was lucky to get the fish off the grill in one piece (I had sticking trouble...I'm out of practice!).

We had a beautiful piece of salmon (thank you mister fish), cut into portions and rubbed with lots of ground coriander seed, brown sugar, a little garlic powder and salt and pepper. Super good, and no time at all to prepare. The only thing you have to remember is that coriander has to be cooked at very high heat to mellow and caramelize it, at least that's what I've been told.

il cibo dell'impossibilità.

Klary has a nice post today about the frequent impossibility of recreating on a whim ephemeral taste experiences from your past. And, unlikelihood of unlikelihoods, she illustrates this with (among other things) a quesadilla I made for her last month or so, and the process of trying to (on a whim) recreate that quesadilla. And by reminding me of that first quesadilla with her second quesadilla, her post reminded me of a third quesadilla from my own past that I myself cannot currently recreate.

Flashback to Miami, 5 months ago. In our little beach apartment we ate quesadillas for breakfast every morning (pictured above) for two weeks, because we could: the tiny, packed-to-the-gills Cuban grocery store around the corner had very fresh corn tortillas and excellent queso fresco. In the pan with a little butter, add to that a squirt of lime and a dollop of salsa verde and that's all you needed. No spices, no caramelization, no duck....no nothing, save for quesa and dilla (actually, the quesadilla pictured above also contains some leftover Argentinian steak from Big Pink, a one-time-only modification...).

And yes, it's impossible for me to make it this morning: no queso fresco, my corn tortillas are frozen and a bit old, etc. And plus, this negro ain't even supposed to be digging on cheese seeing as we're on some serious health food shit these days (sorry, Pulp Fiction was on TV last week [unsurprisingly uncensored, yay Nederland], reminding me just how much more acceptable it became for white people to adopt non-rap-derived African-American speech patterns after Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega hit the screen. Or at least it became more acceptable for this particular white person). So, instead, here's the recipe for the not-so-impossible duck confit quesadillas.

Komijnekaas is young Gouda with lots of whole cumin seeds in it. It's a great shortcut for Mexican cooking in general, except that you don't get to toast the cumin seeds like you would if you were using them separately.

Also, this recipe probably makes more onions than you'll use, but you'll find a use for the leftovers, trust me. An omelet with chorizo is a good place to start.

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Photo by Klary:





















duck confit quesadilla with caramelized onions, komijnekaas, and salsa verde.

onions
2 sweet onions, diced
1-2 tbsp butter
1 tsp. maple syrup
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground cinnamon
pinch salt
1-2 tsp adobo from a can of chipotles

duck filling
100 gr duck confit meat (no skin), shredded
pinch pimenton
pinch ground cinnamon
half-pinch ground allspice
half-pinch ground cumin

corn tortillas
sliced or grated komijnekaas
walnut oil for frying (hazelnut oil also does nicely here, but yes they both smoke a bit. duck fat also works if you don't give a shit about cholesterol...butter for once doesn't really work with this quesadilla...too rich.)
ground cinnamon
mild chile powder

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Caramelize the onions: melt butter in sautepan, add onions, adobo, and maple syrup, stir to coat, add spices, stir again, turn pan as low as possible and cook for 20-40 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so, until onions are dark but not burned. Salt to taste and set aside.

Make duck filling: turn a sautepan on high, when hot add duck and spices. Saute for 5-10 minutes until duck is crisped and browned to your liking.

Assemble quesadillas: put a splash of walnut oil in the pan, then a tortilla, spread a thin layer of onions across it, then some cheese, then some duck (all thinnish layers so that your quesadilla is still rather light and flippable) and close. After my tortilla is closed, I like to sprinkle the outside with a very light dusting of cinnamon and chile powder. I'm not sure if this significantly contributes to the taste of the finished product, but this step definitely fills the kitchen with a most excellent scent-waft.

Serve with your favorite homemade salsa, or whatever reasonable store-bought salsa you were able to locate in Amsterdam. I tend to like green salsa with this for some extra acidity, but Mara prefers red, and it's worth trying both.

Another great variation on this is to use goat cheese instead of komijnekaas. I don't mean the soft stuff: they sell sliced goat cheese here that is perfect for this.

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And finally: all of the above reminded me of one of the fundamental reasons why this webpage even exists: to try and capture the ephemera of cooking and eating, and to facilitate future nostalgia over meals past (and not just the food component). I said to Klary after her post that it reminded me of why we like being cooked for, and one of the reasons travel can generate such powerfully nostalgic memories: because in many ways the whole experience is impossible to recreate, and that's what makes us nostalgic for it. Thank you, I'll be signing autographs after I get done punching my own pompous-yet-barely-coherent lights out.

x x x

happy anniversary baby, etc.

Though Miss Mara and I'se been friends for, um...25 years or so, Thursday was officially our official 10-year anniversary. Luckily, not 200m away from our front door, someone was throwing a party with free food and drinks and we were invited!

Above: cucumber and lobster shooters, serrano ham/pine nut/pesto and smoked salmon/caper crostini. Below: Hollandse Nieuwe (the first herring of the season)...this was in fact the second day of the season, and these were just really perfect at the moment...I am now at last finally a convert to Hollandse Nieuwe...I guess it was only a matter of time, really.

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Above: ice-cold korenwijn. Below: the face it makes you make when you taste it for the first time. It's a version of jenever that has a higher-than-usual percentage of malt wine added to it. Speaking of jenever, this subject contains one of my favorite Dutch colloquialisms: a jenever with a beer chaser is called a kopstoot, or headbutt. Without a beer chaser it's just called another one of my favorite (fake) colloquialisms, harsh realm:

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Then, after she stopped making this face, we came home and had a petite steak and garlic mashed potatoes. Cool! And I have been on the wagon for 16 days now. Woot.

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ok, we start now.

So, for real, healthy eating has started again this week. No recipes or pictures, but tonight was salmon with a crust of pistachio and cornmeal, tamarind-raisin chutney, yoghurt, and zucchini with lemon and mint. In a word, eh...boring, but it's my fault...I was in a hurry and didn't have much time to sexify things as I went. And I was trying to err on the side of extreme healthiness. We'll try this again.

smell and learn.

Foto: stolen from here.

There's an eGullet thread about trying to cook your way through a single cookbook front to back.

Part of what I like about cooking in general is that it's a very immediate way to be spontaneously creative which other people can enjoy very tangibly. A further part of the allure is that it seems like there are very few rules about what's possible...you're only limited by imagination, skill, time, and cost. OK, and the human palate. OK, so that's a lot of limitations actually.

My point: the idea of cooking solely, monogamously from a single cookbook goes against the perceived freewheelingness of improvisational cooking and surely threatens to suck the joy out of the creative process faster than you can say "introductory paragraph closing witticism/hook", right?

Sorta, but after thinking about it a wee bit, I decided that I might like to try it as a way of escaping from my recently acquired bad habit of looking for new things to cook on the ol' Web. Now yes, I do realize that the internet is designed for this kind of research, but there comes a point where one's "research time" begins supplanting one's "actual life", and this is probably not what the internet was designed for. And if it was, well...that's just plain mean.

So I've decided to do this one-book thing, and the one I'm doing is last year's book from José Andrés, Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America. I cooked through a lot of it (for me, anyway) last summer, inspired by this eGullet thread, and I found it to be (as Early Cuyler would say) outstandiner n' hell. Mostly very healthy, simple recipes, but I learned much from the sheriff's formless ramblings (as Early Cuyler would say), and turned out some bangin' summer grub as a result.

I'd like to just start at the beginning and go, but the chapters are organized along the lines of "Cheese and Eggs", "Potatoes", "Mushrooms", et cetera, and I don't think that either I or my dining companions can sit through 8 egg dishes in a row. So, I'll be jumping around. Today's entry will be either Escarola con sanguina, queso de cabra, almendras y vinagreta de ajo tostado (endive with oranges, goat cheese, almonds, and toasted garlic vinaigrette), or Pisto Manchego (zucchini with peppers, eggplant, and tomato). Or both.

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Last year back when Head and Body were still living in Amstrodam, we had a series of dinners together with Andy and other assorted special guests very loosely based on an extremely fictional cooking show called Smell and Learn. For example, there was a risotto episode, a pot roast episode, etc. I cooked the Spanish episode, mostly out of the Tapas book above. Here's what I put together:

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Arbequina olives.
bread with Garcia olive oil and membrillo.
chorizo al sidra.
tortilla route 11 with brava sauce.
marinated sheep's cheese ("We say 'you can taste the farmer in this cheese'" is what the Spanish girl who sold it to me said)

Asturian-style salmon with apples, Cabrales, and chives.
mushrooms in escabeche with serrano ham.
Catalan-style spinach with apples and pine nuts.
garlic shrimp with aioli and romesco.

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90% of this was great, the rest was at least good. Another shrimp letdown, not enough garlic. But everything else on this list has become A-list material, and hopefully the whole-book approach will add to this list. It's very careful cooking, because the recipes are so simple...your goal is to extract maximum flavor from each element blah blah blah without letting your maximal tendencies complicate things, a good lesson to smell and learn.

UPDATE: Soon after this post was completed, I realized that there is no fucking way my attention span will support this endeavor. It was nice while it lasted though, wasn't it.

crash and broil.

Apparently my system wasn't quite ready for that health kick idea thing that I mentioned a few posts back. My pesky substance abuse issues came out of almost nowhere to rear their knobby little ugly unpleasant heads again, and this time the lucky winning substance was.........

It seems I'd fallen victim to a wicked pork jones. I dug the uncooked pork shoulder out of the freezer (leftover from last month's jerk-a-thon), I braised that baby and finished with a hoisin glaze...dug in, and.....uh...nothing. It was fine, but I was left unsatisfied. I still felt the heavy hand of a pork jones resting uncomfortably on my own (uncooked) shoulder. WTF.

I eventually turned to the internets for distraction, but matters were not improved by photos like these (good and accurate quote from the Comments section on this page: "You could make a plate of shit look appetizing."), and before I had any idea what happened I was in the tenacious grip of a nascent Hot Dog Binge. Fuck! It wasn't a pork jones at all, it was a total barnyard slaughter refuse meat sausage jones!

LOL (and I mean that in a tone of voice you cannot hear, but I assure you that it is completely, crushingly ironic and emotionless, possibly the utter opposite of laughter). I have not had a hot dog or any sausage in some time, excluding the, ahem, France trip, so this started out as a "treat". But the hotdogs I was using here were very small, about the size of my index finger. So a "binge" on these babies was kind of like a binge on, I don't know, say....falafel balls. They're 50 calories each (the index finger hotdogs)!

Anyway, my point is, the other reason that this turned nutritionally ugly and grim was that, while nothing fancy, they were really great hot dogs: yeasty bun, ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions. And thankfully, just in time really, they just about matched my crazed wiener junkie mind's hot dog...but you know, about 1/6th the size (yes, I just talked about the diminuitive size of my wiener, and called myself a wiener junkie, LOL again)...

I'd waited for my man. And he turned out to be made of chicken separator meat, among other things.

Number eaten in past two days? 10.

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UPDATE: I just realized that all this trauma could've been brought on by the Lemmy Kilminster arrangement I've shaved my lush facial hair growth into:

























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blankfilling upcatcher.

What you see here are leftover pics from the France trip, foisted upon you semi-indiscriminately. Directly above and below is the kitchen area at the gig in Nancy. This place was a bit disorienting, as you can see.

haphazard defined.

It's as if I plated this during an evacuation of some sort. And yet I still had time to add my signature garnish of carelessly trimmed chives. It tasted a'ight: duck confit over wilted red cabbage and pistachios with a honey-mustard-tarragon vinaigrette.

Man, does that sound, um....fancy. It's not my fault. I'd planned on trying to recreate this amazing duck salad I had at Brasserie Le Coze in Atlanta 10 years ago, but by the time I got around to making dinner today, I'd lost the eye of the tiger and just kind of nudged this into formation.

UPDATE: Leftovers were better, probably due to the addition of duck bacon drizzled with maple syrup. C'mon, cabbage is good for you! And duck fat is healthy!

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And then these bitches showed up: from left, tarragon-sea salt, cassis, and cardamom bonbons.

cod piece time capsule: 1997.

Yesterday our fishladies were having a big ol' sale on kabeljauw (cod), 500gr for 7 euro. Usually I try to avoid budget seafood, for hopefully obvious reasons, but these dames are trustworthy, and I found myself leaving with a kilo of good shit.

I showed Mara my booty, and after she recovered the brown one said (perhaps due to subliminal suggestion) that she had a hankering for something that tasted "nice and round" for dinner, and referred specifically to a dish that we shared early on in our official dating era at a restaurant in Atlanta called Van Gogh's (many chefs and concept refreshings ago).

I myself have been jonesing for some New Orleans-style cookin' for a good spell, and so I leveraged the compatibility of my design goals across the broad spectrum of cough cough hack. The result was the following suprisingly delicious kabeljauw dish, presented in the protein-on-top-of-starch style of 1997.

We started with something like chorizo-spiced caramelized apple + goat cheese quesadillas, because you know me I'm always looking for interesting vegetarian shit:


















...and we finished with some bonbons from Unlimited Delicious: rosemary sea salt; tamarind-chile-sambal; and kiwi mustardseed.


















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roasted cod
crayfish, calvados, cream, fresh corn salsa, roasted garlic mash

500 gr cod filet
2 tbsp cajun seasoning
4 tbsp walnut oil

350gr potatoes, cubed
1/2 cup cream or milk
1/2 tsp. roasted garlic stock paste
1 tsp. duck fat
1 tsp serious Dijon mustard, Zaanse Schans is perfect

1 ear of corn, de-corned
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, diced small
1 tbsp butter

1 cup scallion greens, chopped

1 cup shrimp or lobster or clam stock
1 tbsp cajun seasoning or to taste
1/4 cup calvados, brandy, or cognac
1/2 cup cream
100 gr crayfish, shelled and cooked


Put on some water for the potatoes. Preheat oven to 200C.

While these things are happening, combine stock, calvados, and seasoning. Reduce for 10-15 minutes, or until you have about 1/8 cup left. Add cream and remove from heat.

Combine corn and 1/4 cup water, boil for three minutes or until water is evaporated. Turn off heat, add butter, red pepper, and 1/2 of the scallion greens.

Rub the fish with the cajun seasoning and oil, and place on the middle rack in a 200C oven for 15 minutes. Brown the top if it's not already.

Boil the potatoes until done. Mash them and add the other ingredients, using the cream to modulate consistency. Salt and pepper to taste, and cover.

Reheat cream sauce, add crayfish, and simmer over medium-low heat for 3-5 minutes or until crayfish are warmed through. Add remaining scallions at last minute.

Plate potatoes, fish on top, corn salsa over that, top with the sauce. 1997!

Serves more than 2, probably 3.

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pizza, pizza, bad, bad.

In a convulsion of vegetarian desperation, I bought a package of
Demeter Pizza-Pizza Tofu Filets the other day. They smelled a lot like day-old Dominos Pizza, which is not a thoroughly bad thing. However, they tasted like what I imagine Red Light District-purchased pizza tastes like: dried herbs and cheese plastic that has been melted and re-melted a number of times. On the plus side, the tofu taste was almost nonexistent.

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the weight is over.

Foto: Isabelle Vigier

BTW, the hypothetical casual reader may jauntily skip past this entry as it is decidedly unentertaining and exists solely for my possibly eventual personal reference.

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If it ever stops raining again, it'll be beach weather soon, and this ugly-ass motherfucker has not really successfully found his seat on the fitness train yet in 2007. I've been eating like a 'tard for weeks now, if not months. So, unfortunately, it's crackdown time beeyatch.

The thing is, I can't even think of what I might want to eat that doesn't involve cheese, pork, bread, or pasta. So here are some things I should probably try to cook over the next couple of weeks to see if I can add any non-tuna recipes to my extremely small list of healthy morsels that I make regularly. All the members of this first batch are coming from Epicurious because I've been using their recipes for a very long time and kind of know what to expect. This was very difficult, none of these look remotely appetizing to me at the moment.

1. SPINACH SALAD WITH STRAWBERRY CHAMPAGNE VINAIGRETTE
2. BULGUR RISOTTO WITH PEAS AND ASPARAGUS
3. QUINOA WITH MANGO AND CURRIED YOGURT
4. TOFU- AND WALNUT-STUFFED MUSHROOMS
5. STIR-FRIED TOFU AND SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS IN SPICY BLACK BEAN SAUCE
6. FARINATA WITH SAGE, OLIVES, AND ONION
7. VARKENSHAAS (Ha...OK, I realize that this is a pork recipe)
8. BAKED BANANAS
9. ROASTED BEETS WITH CUMIN AND MINT
10. STIR-FRIED TOFU AND VINE-RIPENED TOMATOES (I know this sounds hideous, but the recipe looks interesting.)

And here are a couple useful ideas from eGullet:

1. Su-miso (Japanese Vinegar and Miso Dressing)
2. Makloubeh (Palestinian national dish...this is not quick or healthy, but it looks great.)
3. Pare Tumis (Stir Fried Bitter Gourd)
4. From-scratch Green Bean Casserole (Um, not healthy. But it'd be interesting to try a version without cream)
5. Duck Biscuits with Cilantro Jelly (OK, not healthy at all, but holy fuck!)
6. Lebanese Spicy Fish with Tahini Sauce (Samke Harra)
7. Macchi Fry Koliwada
8. Nobu style black cod without the 3 day marinade
9. Brinjal and Chickpea Gojju (Kathirikkai-kadalakka gojju)
10. Grace's Corn & Blueberry Relish (this would be nice with duck...)

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OK, so my list of healthy recipes contained roughly 75% healthy recipes. This bodes poorly, as making lists is normally the easy part of dieting.

Let's change the subject: I also need some new salads. We are actually pretty great salad makers, but they generally follow a now-familiar pattern: greens; dressing with acidic, barely sweet, and pungent flavors; cheese; nuts; maybe a dried fruit if I can sneak one past the mooperbird. All good when executedly carefully, but also a really overdone salad concept. So, here are some newish salad ideas/reminders:

1. Chicory, Caramelized Apple, Salted Pecan and Beenleigh Blue Salad with Mustard and Honey dressing (Um, yeah...that's the same salad as always.)
2. Radish, Cucumber and Apple Salad
3. Roasted Pineapple and Avocado Salad
4. Watermelon- Feta Salad
5. Tomato, Fennel and Watercress Salad with Fennel-Tarragon Vinaigrette
6. Pear, Arugula, and Pancetta Salad (Not really a new salad, is it.)
7. Honey-Roasted Pear Salad with Thyme Verjus Dressing
8. Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Pistachios (Totally not a new salad.)
9. Arugula Salad with Manchego, Apples, and Caramelized Walnuts (OK, just stop...you've made all of these before.)
10. Goat Cheese Salad with Pancetta, Dried Cherry and Port Dressing (etc.)

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Some targets from an old Lebanese cookbook I stole from Andy (borrowed! I mean):

1. Kallaje: (grilled haloumi sandwich with garlic, lemon, and marjoram)
2. Courgette with walnuts and allspice
3. Honeydew with cardamom, yoghurt, honey, and lemon
4. Beet salad with cumin, mint, and ricotta
5. Avocado bi tahini

And, a mixed bag from FoodTV:

1. Arugula Salad with Grilled Tamarind Shrimp and Chile-Lime Vinaigrette
2. Duck Confit on Corn and Baby Butterbean Succotash with Smoked Tomato Ketchup
3. Marlin with Ginger Bbq Sauce
4. Tarragon-Dijon Tuna Salad on Mustard Rolls
5. Miso-Ginger Marinated Grilled Salmon

Some as-healthy-as-Louisiana-cooking-gets recipes from Louisianan John Folse:

1. Skewered Rosemary Shrimp with Louisiana Pesto
2. Crawfish Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms
3. Pickled Mirliton Sticks
4. Crawfish and Green Onion Sausage Cabbage Rolls
5. South Louisiana Shrimp Rémoulade

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inauguration of the pleasure dome.

Goodness, I think I'm falling for Leoš Janáček's Glagolitic Mass. And I am generally no fan of big clunky choirs in orchestral pieces.

Speaking of people falling for things, this is an interesting piece of scholarship on Hollywood's appropriation of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as TV series signal music (telling you when it's time to be sad, happy, etc.).

Slate has a half-interesting piece this week on a failure to define what makes American food American.

Off the Broiler has a post about South City Kitchen, one of our favorite old Atlanta "dining-at-the-bar" hangouts.

And Holy Jesus, what gratuitous food porn over at Chuck Taggart from Looka!'s Flickr account.

post-jerk.

God, it sucks when a reliable old recipe lets you down, or when you let down a reliable old recipe. One of these two things happened during Tuesday's "World of Exotic (to a Dutch person) Flavors" dinner: this BBQ shrimp recipe that is usually quite great was really just...not good. I blame over-confidence...I think we just thought it was the "easy recipe" of the evening and didn't pay enough attention to it. Ah well, I guess it's better to start out with something lame-tasting and increase the goodness than the other way around, right? Menu was:
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Mangoritas (tequila, blue curacao, lime, and mango puree)

Tequila-marinated shrimp + rosemary mayo
Duck confit quesadillas + tomatillo salsa

Jerked pork shoulder
Platanos fritos
Aruban black beans in coconut milk
Hearts of palm salad with mint and lime
Cornbread

Ginger-lime crème brulée



Klary's photo:

















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jerk-marinated pork shoulder in the oven.

marinade:
3kg boneless pork shoulder, in one piece
6 big scallions, chopped
1 large sweet onion, peeled
1 head of garlic, peeled
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1 tbsp dried thyme
2 tbsp allspice, ground
2 tbsp freshly-ground black pepper
2 tsp cinnamon, ground
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 inch of fresh ginger, peeled
6 adjoema chiles, fire-roasted, seeds removed
1 cup fresh-squeezed OJ
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
juice of 1 lime

sauce:
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons brown sugar or more
2 tablespoons cider vinegar or more


Blend all marinade ingredients to a paste in a food processor or blender. With a sharp knife, score the thick fat on the pork shoulder in a diamond pattern. You might want to use gloves for this: pour 2/3 of the marinade over the pork and massage a thick coating of the marinade into the pork. Place in a roasting pan and cover with a lid or foil. Refrigerate to marinate at least 24 hours or up to two days.

Place the remaining 1/3 of the marinade in a saucepan and add water, sugar, and vinegar. I boiled this down for about 20 minutes until the raw ingredients weren't raw and the flavor was nice and round. This sauce goes over the pieces of pork when you serve it.

When ready to cook, let pork sit at room temperature at least one hour, then preheat oven to 450F/Gas 8. Roast for 30 minutes at this high heat, then lower temperature to 300F/Gas 2. Bake an additional 2.5 hours. I then uncovered it and blasted it at 450F again to try and crisp up the crust. Let roast rest at least 30 minutes before carving. Cut into caveman/cavewoman hunks and slather with reheated jerk sauce. Serves 6-8.

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Since we know nothing at all about white wine, this article was very helpful in steering us towards a 2005 Alsatian Gewurztraminer from Antoine Heinrich, and a 2005 Riesling from Rudolf Müller to drink with dinner, and they were actually especially nice.

jerk.

Sarkozy. When we were in France, lots of people we spoke to at shows were seriously freaked out about the possibility of a Sarkozy presidency. A few were determined to leave the country if he won. Where would you go, we asked. "Belgium" was almost always the answer, which makes pretty good sense considering the absence of Christian Democrats in their recent political history. Anyway, it's depressing to see people continuing to sacrifice themselves like this, feeling like they have no political or social choice but to not be there anymore, an emotion I'm rather in touch with.

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Participation in Klary's newest eG foodblog has precipitated an evening of Caribbean cooking on Tuesday, with some unprecedented attempts at Aruban recipes featuring prominently on the menu. It's a style of cooking that I've been attracted to for years, but my actual cooking experience has historically been limited by access to authentic ingredients (beyond Jamaican jerk). This is a problem that we no longer have, as Amsterdam is crammed full of tokos that carry all of the exotic greenery, tubers, and grains required, so it'll be interesting to finally dig in, and specifically into the Antillean side of things for a change.

Another obstacle: it's very hard to find good English versions of the recipes that feature the ingredients that we have access to here. The following black bean variation is adapted and translated (by me) from the Rotterdams Kookboek by Linda Roodenburg. I just made this last week for the first time, and the recipe called for cubing the bacon and leaving it in there...I just found that a little too fatty when combined with the coconut milk. So now I'm treating the smoked pork element more like a ham hock: cook it in the pot but don't serve it. In fact a ham hock might work better than the bacon.
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aruban stewed black beans.
500 gr dried black beans
100 gr salt pork or bacon, in one piece
2 large onions, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup coconut milk
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
4 tbsp fresh celery leaves (selderij), chopped
4 cloves
2 tsp adobo seasoning
1 madame jeanet or adjoema pepper, whole
1 tom yam bouillion cube or 1 tbsp tom yam or even tom kha soup paste
freshly ground black pepper

Soak the beans overnight, if desired. Rinse the beans, put them in fresh water to cover by an inch or so. In a frying pan, add a tbsp of olive oil and saute the bacon with the onion for 5-7 minutes until browned nicely, add the garlic, and saute for a minute or two. Add this mixture to the beans, along with the rest of the ingredients. Cover and cook until beans are tender, checking every 30 minutes or so to make sure you've got enough liquid. When beans are done, remove the bacon and pepper and serve.

tequila snipers, okonomiyaki, etc.

This was my first Queen's Day where I was actually selling something instead of walking around all day buying things I didn't need, and you know what? It felt wicked smart.

This was also the most decadent Queen's Day in some time, which feels considerably less smart after the fact. We actually partied like it was 1999, or earlier: 7am shooters and seriously skinned knees; 9am space cookies; 10am red wine; 12noon okonomiyaki and beer; 1pm long-distance tequila shots administered via water rifle (BTW, the body-art advert was my idea, a completely, um..."site-specific" concept, IOW, that's a great back provided by Keren); 2pm many tiny beers; 3pm excellent broodje warme beenham (sauteed ham with mustard and mayo, no photos, I was too hungry); 4pm twice as many tiny beers; rinse and repeat.

I have to say that we're incredibly fortunate that Sniper Mike was not terribly accurate with the tequila rifle (excepting the photo below, that was a good shot): most of it went in your eye instead of your mouth. I was happy to have (literally) limped home by 9pm and picked up some takeout from Top Thai which was even fresher-seeming than their normally pretty decent standards.

Best of all, I was given a plastic horsehead puppet early in the morning. Second best of all: the surprising number of outlandishly outfitted women who would stop to admire the free jazz stylings of a trombone/melodica/bicycle horn/dumbek quartet.