white on white.

To further illustrate how far blogging has fallen on my list of priorities: I've been waiting to accept a certain dinner invitation for two years or so, and yet on Tuesday when it finally happened I somehow managed to not bring my camera. Luckily, the cook is an excellent photographer herself. As well as being an excellent cook.

And me? I'm reduced to posting pictures of my cat. This is a current look at the reclusive Jo3n Kitty.

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downtime: fried.

The title of this post just keeps getting more relevant. Last night's 40th birthday party (not mine) has left this duck with a case of the Sleepies. Luckily my plans today can all be accomplished while laying down.

In other news: I just found out that I'm an INFP, which according to Wikipedia is something that only 1% of people are (or maybe as high as 4.5%...less notable). Regardless, I'm special. I'm...so very special.

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Made a great piece of salmon for the first time in forever last night, coated liberally with Mara's homemade saag paneer curry powder from yesteryear, pan-fried in walnut oil, and topped with a salad/relish/salsa of cucumbers, tomato, raw onion, and lime with optional fresh basil (the photo above is from a subsequent version with different accoutrements).

UPDATE: I've made it twice thrice now and it's Thoroughly Repeatable, recipe to come as soon as we can remember how we made the curry powder.

There's not really a recipe for the salmon: pan-fry it for 3-4 minutes per side. After liberally coating it with this here homemade curry powder and a bit of salt:
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coriander-centric curry rub for steak and salmon

2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp whole cloves
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp cardamom seeds
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
1 tbsp turmeric

Toast everything but the turmeric, grind, then add turmeric. Store covered for a month or two.

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steak break.

Yes. As we know, not much cooking going on, but tonight I treated my lonely-ass hermit-like self to a steak, and I did something to it I've wanted to do for a while, which is experiment with Mark Miller's Beef + Smoked Oysters thing.

It was perfect for what I wanted, supergood and in fact also perfect for the next truly manly dinner I want to cook. The gist of my simplified version is: take a steak or two, crust them with cumin seed and black pepper (no salt was necessary in my case, but it could be in yours), pan-fry for 4 minutes a side, then throw 6-8 smoked oysters (yes, from a tin) in the pan for 30 seconds or so, spill the whole thing out on a plate and scatter minced chives or scallions across the top and serve with cilantro-rich pico de gallo.

Really good. Mr. Miller adds thyme and wraps his steaks in bacon and does several other time-consuming fancy things in the process, but really this quick and dirty version was plenty good enough for this mufka.

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all natural.

It's official: I'm having some kind of food apathy crisis, nothing sounds good except pizza.

Although I'm not actually eating any pizza. I wisely stocked the fridge full of vegetables earlier this week and am now forced to make my way through them: yesterday I roasted this fennel in a Sicilian way with olive oil, orange, lemon, saffron, almonds, and raisins and threw it on toasted bread for Mara with fresh basil and mayo, that was pretty good.

Maybe I'm just busy. But what's my excuse for somehow not noticing that Wendy and Lisa were gay?

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in the cradle.

I am currently working on Double Headphones Project II,  a side effect of which is that I have a fully-functioning recording studio in my bed (a very small portion of which is pictured here), complete with an easily-startled, computer-fan-blocking calico sister. 

Actually the nicest thing so far about DHP II is that it only involves one set of headphones, thanks to the device in the foreground. Yay technology! And yay me for finally buying some that increases my efficiency instead of vicey versy. 

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summer breeze.

Etc.

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Summer is here, or at least spring is here, or at least the 6-month block of non-winter weather from April to September has begun. Or, to sum: I'm wearing shorts and everybody in Amsterdam is in a much much better mood all of the sudden, though probably not because of the shorts.

Every year, the transformation of the city at the beginning of April is sudden, dramatic, and somehow always exceeds my expectations. Is it the mythical Hollands licht that's responsible? Could be. Or is it just the regular-ol' sun, finally nudging temperatures over the 60°F/15°C mark, thus allowing me to bare my calves without appearing thoroughly insane (Dutch people still think this is relatively insane, or at least in poor taste, but their scorn is delivered in a generally non-hostile "Oh, look at the silly American" kind of way).

I will readily admit that I am on the bleeding edge of short pant technology adoption. The first day of my own personal shorts-wearing season finds me generally alone in this regard unless I go into the center of town and see a couple of brave/foolish tourists. And yes, sometimes it feels a bit early: it was just Sunday night on the roof of the OT301 that found me shivering a tiny bit after the sun went down.

What I don't understand is why no one else seems to understand my eagerness to dress for summer. Shorts mean sun, sand, terraces, extended vacations, road trips, white beaches, cactus-y deserts, refreshing breezes, azure skies and azure swimming pools, tiki bars, tan lines, late sunsets, crashing waves, all-day barbecues, fancy cocktails with lime and/or mint, ice-cold (or not) six-packs of unfancy beer, scantily-clad womens, coconut-scented suntan lotion, frisbee chasing, pigskin chucking, and 75 other Good Things that signify festivity (a loaded word these days but yes that's what I mean), renewal, and/or relaxation. You cannot blame a brother for trying to make this part of the year last as long as possible.

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on pause.

I'm going to go ahead and put this thing on pause for a while...I'm barely cooking at all, other than making these green beans once every couple of days (I like them with a few gratings of Parmesan or pecorino, and don't leave out the anchovy, it's critical!).

Other than that I'm frying tempeh, eating smoked salmon and other various non-thrilling things*, and for a change I don't feel much like babbling on glibly about the rest of my activities, so...let's all go find something more entertaining to do with ourselves for awhile. If you're really hard-up for action you can watch whatever tiny friction occurs when I bad-mouth someone and they show up to complain about it. O, the perils of fame.

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* Not including the pozole de pato (duck!) that I made on Wednesday, that was/is totally thrilling. Unfortunately it was the last of the poSole, so my quantities were limited...there wasn't enough to freeze and Mara and I are both eyeing the sole remaining serving very protectively.

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i take the zero.

Well, that sucked. I've injured my eye before, but never quite like this: I couldn't sleep because every time my eyes started to do that REM twitchy thing, my left eye felt like someone was using it as an ashtray. By now, Day 4, I'm just about OK.

face damage.

After my gig (above) Wednesday I sustained a non-life-threatening corneal abrasion and can't keep my eye(s) open for very long at the moment. Hopefully this will pass soon, as I've got reading and writing to do.

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it's a wonderful life.

Had a shit experience at perennial fave De Zotte yesterday, don't know if they were caught off-guard by a packed Tuesday night or if economics are making them cut corners....but whatever happened, it was made worse by the fact that we had somewhere to be (pictured above) and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

The biggest complaint? Portions were small, expensive, and didn't taste like anything special. Boo. The only small consolation is that the show that we were made late for kind of sucked. Is that a consolation? Oh, and the beer was good.

Also got faux-berated by a new reader for getting a non-hot, limp bara at Toko Hangalampoe. Guess I need to stop in for a little quality control check whatever thingie.

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beet conducta.

When I said I'd never heard of beets and bacon together, I wasn't thinking of salads. 

This swarm of Bs I've made before: beets, bacon, Bibb, blauwekaas, bieslook, balsamic....and some other non-B things.

Sometime next week I'll hopefully get to the recipe that started all of this: bietjes met speklapjes.

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Not much blogging going on lately, maybe you've noticed. Nothing wrong, just not spending much time in the kitchen, which is for me sometimes good. The most interesting thing I cooked last week was sopropo or bitter melon, which I may write about one day. 

I did come to the conclusion that there's no way to prepare this vegetable that un-bitters it: if you've tried to make it before and found it too bitter, well then you're just S.O.L. It's bitter. I myself tried to duplicate the Surinamese treatment I encountered at the Ten Katemarkt (tomato, butter, trassi, garlic, Madame Jeanette) and generally succeeded.

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the tiniest vacation.

belgian roulette.

Pictured above: the last truffle shavings over eggs and shrimp.

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I'm conducting an interesting/stupid experiment tonight. Mostly stupid, but I guess possibly interesting for being so.

I bought a couple of kilos of mussels at the Dirk yesterday, as I've been doing every couple weeks this winter. For the first time ever, there was a rather terrible smell when I opened the package, something like a wet dog corpse probably.

Out of morbid curiosity and a not-insignificant sense of frugality, I dumped the mussels in the sink, discarded any half-shells or broken mussels, and soaked the remainder in cold, cold tap water for 5 minutes. Just to see what would happen. After draining them, they didn't stink at all.

Here's my experiment: they always say that one bad mussel can make you dreadfully ill. Of course I believe them, because I've been made dreadfully, apocalyptically ill by shellfish before. But I guess that was a long time ago, because I'm ready to chance it again: if I've removed the most suspicious suspects, and all of my remaining mussels appear healthy before cooking, am I still in danger?

Let's find out. For lunch today I cooked all of them and ate 5 of them. The rest I removed from their shells and put in the fridge just in case I don't die. Stay tuned!

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AND? I lived. And then I ate half of the remaining mussels the next day and survived again. Lesson learned? Yes...mussels are not especially enjoyable when you're really suspicious about their toxicity.

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truffletime.

Like Klary, someone gave me a truffle the other day. Actually they gave it to me at Klary's house, though it didn't come from the same source as Klary's truffle. And the kind, kind giver was just about one of the last people you'd expect to hand you a truffle and say "No, really...take this," and I don't mean that in a bad way at all.

And also like Klary, mine was not the Most Potent Fungi Ever. It's taste approximated a very strong mushroom, but I think in a blindfolded smell test, I wouldn't have said "truffle" as one of my first two guesses. And that's not really what truffles are known for, being aromatically coy.

So, after using about half of it on some eggs (which didn't suck), I decided to stick the remainder in some olive oil for a couple of days to see if I could at least get some trufflish oil out of the deal...hence the chocolatey gloss on the slice pictured above.

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she's a celeriac, celeriac, on the floor.

Yo. Gig Month is Over. Now a few weeks off so I can finish my taxes and go to the gym every day like a non-musician and generally behave in an upright and sober manner. Sounds like fun, don't it?

Saturday night was a birthday party that I managed to make it to the second half of, so I didn't taste all of the wonderful food but I did get some of the fantastic chicken + bread dish, musakhan, and the dessert was also totally ka-blam. And I got to take home leftovers. Happy Birthday indeed!

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Oh and I should make this Fennel-Celeriac Salad this week since I have both in my fridge at the moment.

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pozole de camarón.

the continuing cornathon.

This corn kernel reminds me of Calvin on school picture day. 

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I didn't really dwell on this when it happened, but my Christmas Eve pozole didn't really turn out very well, and of course I made enough of it to fill a VW bug. Here's a picture of it. 

I mean, it was edible, but not addictive: I could never really seem to get it to taste like anything (despite copious applications of salt, cumin, chiles, etc), the accompaniments were the only thing that gave it any life. And the texture of the corn itself was a bit too firm and chewy, although I cooked the living daylights out of it, like 6 or 8 hours' worth. Maybe even twice that. 

So since it was my first time cooking with hominy, I didn't really have any idea what I did wrong. And of course it sucks to have a compact car full of mediocre stew sitting around over the holidays, so I just kind of swept it under the rug, figuratively speaking.

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Tonight, though, was the Me. vs. Pozole rematch, and I was trying a very different strategy. In December, I used prepared nixtamal from the refrigerated foods section in a Mexican grocery store. It seemed like the authentic thing to do at the time.

Ah, how wrong we can be sometimes. Based on tonight's results, it seems that this quest for authenticity was the fatal flaw with which I shot myself in the foot. Y'see, son, it seems that there are different styles of hominy: Rancho Gordo's dried posole, which is apparently prepared Native American-style instead of Mexican-style, has a really enjoyable toothiness and a very corny flavor, and that's what I used tonight for a pozole de camarón, shrimp pozole with red chiles. 

The recipe is from Stephan Pyles, who got it from Diana Kennedy, who picked it up from a Señora Rafaela Villaseñor in Guerrero, who used to make this pozole during Lent. My variations on the recipe were to leave out dried shrimp and to substitute a small quantity of butter for a small quantity of olive oil (3 tbsp), because, well....shrimp, corn, and chiles? They prefer butter. 

It came out very very good, recipe and pictures to follow. 

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utrechtse eend.

This set of photos brought to you by Tuesday's gig in Utrecht.

1) Engrish? No, this is the backstage bathroom, a rare example of poorly-translated Dutch to English.

2) and 3) After sound check, Ivo and I spent a few hours playing pool at De Bastard, probably the only poolroom in Utrecht with a pretty gorgeous tile mosaic underfoot.

4) Church? No, the pretty gorgeous post office in Utrecht.

5) Our table of awesomeness waiting to be deployed.

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breaking it down.

That's right, it's....what I ate on Saturday. Not shown: productivity trending downward.

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are we rolling bob?

Pictured above: yesterday's recording session @ Outline in Amsterdam. Eaten: burnt toast; a few tortilla chips; beer; half an English fry-up for dinner (but not half of the whole thing: just the baked beans, mushrooms, and ham). This morning: steamed broccoli and dochujang, plus as much caffeine as it takes to trick my brain into being productive.

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