olive juice.

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green olives, argan oil, lemon, spices.

4 cups large green unpitted olives
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 pinch cracked coriander seed
1 pinch cumin seed
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp fennel seeds, toasted and ground

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pizza gold.

Back to La Perla after a long absence, and again: super undisappointing. In fact if there's a problem with La Perla (besides their overpriced bar drinks), it's that the Calabrese di Spilinga is a fantastic pizza, so good that even the other truly great pizzas on the menu suffer in comparison.

And thus even though you can end up with a "win-win" situation like my finocchiona/calabrese split above, you're still kind of wishing it was all 'nduja. If you're there with Mara and KK and Nick and Minnie, however, your difficult situation can be mitigated somewhat by the ordering of a sixth pizza that bats the opposite of cleanup and sends everyone scattering into the night with their needs for spicy sausage pretty much completely met.

UPDATE: Went back two days later, same thing.

smelt, learnt.

This is Smell and Learn, Episode IV: Fresh Pasta. We took our pasta maker, some roasted squash and some fresh sage down south to Olympiaplein for the first S & L in many a year. It worked out even better than we imagined, many hands made light work and DJ Arnold provided an incongruous primer on the history of dubstep. We ended up with spinach/ricotta and pumpkin/parmesan as the ravioli choices, both great.

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half of my leg is still my calf.

We generally don't like to get all mushy around here, but tonight was one of those nights when there couldn't be anything better than hanging out in the kitchen cooking and monkeying around with your monkey while listening to your shared musical history on shuffle.

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This was one of the more casual results, not the slice of cheesecake it looks like, but a piece of turkey breast. If I ran a women's magazine I would place this recipe in my "Fast 'N' Breezy Weeknight Dinners in 30 Minutes" thingie (right before I slit my own throat! hahahaha). Would be even more appetizing if "turkey" wasn't such an ugly word. Maybe Italian will help.























tacchino con salvia, senape, e mandorle con olio di semi di zucca.

turkey breast
dried sage
Dijon mustard
salt
pepper
raw almonds, chopped
roasted pumpkinseed oil
possibly fig or raspberry preserves or another fruity option for garnish/drizzle (grizzle?)

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fungo setting.

When we have some sort of organized dinner for more than a few people, I tend to play the role of "outside guy" (shopping), mostly because I'm not very good at any of the "inside guy" tasks, such as making the house presentable. I just don't see things that need cleaning.

So I'm shopping today, with a list that Mara gave me, mostly baking stuff. As you may know, I don't bake, pretty much ever, so when for example I see "almonds" on the list, I don't know if they should be blanched, or toasted, or shaved, or any of the other things you can do to almonds.

And that is why I came home from shopping today and said to Mara, "Man, I couldn't find vanilla. I went three places, and I found one bottle at the Maroc, but I didn't buy it because I knew you needed six."

And Mara's all "What are you talking about."
I say something like "I couldn't find six bottles of vanilla."
Mara: "What are you talking about six bottles."
Me: "It's on the list!"
Mara: "Um, no it's not. Six bottles?"
Me: "It says right here (handing her the list) '6x'"
Mara: "(reading the list) Aahahaha, etc."

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porkpuller.

Above: you may remember me complaining about my mess of equipment onstage a couple weeks ago. I have nothing to complain about: this is what my comrade Raphael brought to a solo gig at the Muziekgebouw last week, along with eight (8) amplifiers.

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Below: We are having a party. Our first party in a long, long time (ok, thirteen months). And so, as you might expect, we're cooking. Yesterday I tried our Georgia pulled pork recipe for the first time in here in Amsterdam and....it worked pretty well. Some notable things.

1) the piece of pork I bought was a "schouder rollade" (allow me to translate for you: a "shoulder roulade"), and it was much much leaner than the the pork shoulders we buy in Georgia. So lean that even though I got the core temperature up to 90C, this pork was pretty impossible to shred. Too lean. So I chopped it. Crisis averted. 

2) it was impossible to find a shoulder as big as the ones we're used to in Georgia, the biggest one I found was roughly half the size, so, utilizing my formidable math skills, I was able to determine that we needed to buy two of them. 

3) We froze the results so we could reheat them the day of the party, and our research revealed that the best technique is to sauce the cooked and pulled pork, then freeze in roughly 1kg portions. 

That's pretty much it for now. 

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pop-up pork buns.

First things first: I had some beers this weekend. It was the eve of my five-week sobriety mark, and I must say, it wasn't entirely unplanned. I'm actually quite glad I did it this weekend instead of waiting til next weekend. It was, in a word, disappointing.

The most positive aspect was getting to taste an IJ Zatte, which was delicious as usual. Everything else about the drinking was pretty shitty: it fucked with my sleep, brought my jiggling leg back, and generally lessened my feelings of well-being, whatever that means.

So: I'm back off the sauce until further notice. I can imagine having a drink or two next weekend, but I also wonder why I would do that if I'm not enjoying it. We'll see.

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Elsewhere, other experiments were afoot. BaoProject had a Pop-up Pork Bun event at Formocha Premium Tea Shop on Saturday.

Four types of buns, three euros each.

Of course I had to order one of each, this is the chicken:

This is the crispy pork.





















The buns themselves were perfect pillows of fluffy warmth. As far as fillings went, and if you love pork as much as I do, there wasn't much reason to taste anything other than the pork: the tofu was the tiniest bit on the unassuming side and the chicken could've been slightly less ponzu-dominant, more rounder. Both pork options were great, though, and how could they not be. Next time it happens, go. But go early: they ran out at 3:30pm this time.

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cellophane.

One of the best Thai things we've made in a long time, and super easy.

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glass noodle shrimp hotpot.

1 pinkie-sized piece of fresh turmeric, peeled and minced fine, or 2 tsp ground turmeric
1 and 1/2 cups coconut milk
2 tbsp Thai red curry paste
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp palm sugar
1/2 pound or 1 cup shrimp, peeled, deveined
1 small red bell pepper, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 handful sugar snap peas or snow peas
1 handful fresh spinach, chopped

100gr cellophane noodles

1 cup basil leaves, chopped
cilantro, chopped

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i'm a walking disaster.

Above: me onstage Saturday night. My shit was complex.

Below: the most non-disappointing takeout Thai in Amsterdam, from Som Tam: duck with shiitakes and basil, som tam (green papaya salad, awesome), tom kha goong (the gross looking thing with its cover still on).

This is still totally fucking grand, you should make it if you haven't yet. Do use old, big carrots.

Oh yeah, and I went to the Worst restaurant tonight (really endless joke possiblities). Remind me to tell you about it in a few days.

march in mokum.

In an uncharacteristic fit of motivation/desperation, we accomplished 66% of the items on our Museumkaart Targets list yesterday. As well as some other things.

We ended up back in the neighborhood where we used to live and work when we had our record shop, a neighborhood which we will probably forever associate with whiplashy ups and downs ("Hooray we found a cheap new location for our record shop because people like us and want to support us!!! Holy Mother of Unfortunate Fucking God, some low, low, low, demonic piece(s) of shit junkie motherfucker actually broke in and robbed us the night of our opening party!!! Commence fetal position").

After giving it some serious thought just now, I don't think there's actually an expletive potent enough to convey the incredible and pretty final disillusionment of having what was once your labor of love violated via forced entry/burglary....but that's another story.

Back when the shop was on the Jodenbreestraat, lunch often arrived in the form of overpriced but generally pretty good soup from Soup & Zo a few doors down (above). Overpriced, but, yeah, once you've lost tens of thousands of dollars in your first couple years of being open, what's an extra few bucks for lunch? Ahahahahahahahahahahah. But that's another story.

Yesterday we grabbed a peanut soup and a spinach/coconut thing and ate them on the not-obviously-relaxing-but-somehow-kind-of-OK Mr. Visserplein. Then we went to the Jewish Historical Museum.

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And then: we hadn't had enough of the al fresco/traffic combination, so we went to Cafe Panini on the Vijzelgracht for a coffee and a, duh, a panino that was a little pricey but very authentically Italian: surprisingly good tomatoes, good basil, good mozzarella.

And the reason that we were even near the Vijzelgracht was that we were going to FOAM for that thing I was talking about. Which was lame. But there was a nice exhibit of New York Times photojournalism. And a coot next to a boat.

musea.

I have a Museumkaart, and I am terrrrrrrrible about using it. Terrible. It has been used much more often by out-of-town guests posing as me than it has actually been used by me myself.

And yet I still have one. So, I am going to use it. My major motivation is of the "get busy livin' or get busy dyin'" variety, but also, it's hard to tell how many of our museums are going to survive the culture cuts. I guess I should also go to the Concertgebouw and see some symphonic music since that's not going to survive either, but...yeah, were it a bit more affordable I might do that, which, yes, says something critically important about the sustainability of the whole Concertgebouw enterprise, I realize that.

Etc.

Back to my point, museums. This month it would be wise to try and see:

• Paul Klee at Cobra. I've always liked the primitive playfulness of his approach, so seeing his actual childhood drawings should be informative. Maybe nice to combine with a wandel through the Amsterdamse Bos and a stop at Toko Madjoe. 
• Else Berg and Mommie Schwarz at JHM. A German/Dutch couple who were members of the Bergen School, and significant in the Amsterdam avant-garde scene of the early 1900s, both of them refused to wear Jewish stars during the German occupation and were sent to Auschwitz in 1942.  
• This at FOAM. 

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one month, no weeks, and no days.

Yes, that is a schoolgirl being torn apart by a seagull.

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For the first time I can remember, I'm actually having the thought "Why would you go back to drinking?" It's just been too many perky-feeling mornings in a row. I feel like most of my mental capacity is available and ready to be accessed if necessary. I understand that I love beer, and often enjoy a good red wine, but right now it's still very easy to put myself back in my February state of mind, and it's just a dehydrated, foggy, deluded, powerless, unhappy mess, and I seriously can't imagine what kind of drinking would have been enjoyable enough to justify that.

So I think I'm making a radical decision here: I think I will henceforth switch my default social setting to "not drinking", with occasional, perhaps monthly, perhaps less, perhaps more, bouts of "drinking". And we will see how sustainable this is. Maybe it's not. But as plans go, this would seem to be better for me than having a default setting of "drinking".

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So what happened since we last talked?

Hm. We watched The Birds (annoying and kind of brilliant sometimes, more on this later), Rushmore (finally...it was OK, better than expected, I'll call it Wes's third best), and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (pretty riveting, not as grueling as I expected); I bought an expensive fuzzbox; KK shut her shit down; my gig was fine, albeit without any interaction with the guitar hero in question, which was actually totally fine; we got some totally un-disappointing takeout from Som Tam Thai; we made a very American Sunday dinner that pressed good and necessary buttons but was highly unphotographable (left), yes, just like My Funny Valentine ha ha, except that if you crop it right, your mind kind of imagines a better-looking dish than it actually was.

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When a friend and fellow blogger stops blogging, yes, I imagine one tends to examine one's own blogging habits/needs/rewards/motivations/etc (just like when a friend quits drinking I imagine, ha). And, yes, I think that as much as I know and understand why she stopped, I know and understand why I don't stop...

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sweet potatoes with spiced butter.

2 sweet potatoes

3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp dark molasses
tiny pinch cinnamon
slightly larger pinch cloves
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (bigger than either of the two previous pinch fractions)

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caramelized fennel with orange.

2 bulbs fennel, roughly julienned
2 or 3 tbsp butter
1/8 cup orange juice
zest of an orange
pinch o' thyme
salt
pepper

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rashid is homo.

Can I say that I made the Korte Vrijstellingstoets my bitch? Can I?

Then I will. Welkom in Nederland Markie.

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my other blog is a ______.

Above: third-hand homemade sambal, a friend of Tom's gave it to Tom, who gave it to Hilly, who gave it to me. Finally cracked it open today, and as HBF intuited, it's good. Spicy.

Below: not a urine sample, but kaffir lime/curry oil. Also good.

Everywhere else: I have a feeling I'm mostly going to be over here this week, in case anyone's looking for me.

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female trouble.

Above: an American dessert classic from the spoon of M to the T. Below: Wilbert, Onno, Jasper at Hipster Central.

eleven.

Feel like doing some out-of-the-ordinary cooking...weather is gray and cold, and for the next couple days most of my to-dos are low-pressure around the house stuff. Thees ees a goood time too cooook, no?

Used to read about Eleven Madison Park a bit back in the eGullet days, it always sounded good and just inside the border of Pretensionland. Dude has a new cookbook out, let's poach some ideas yo, haha that's culinary humor.

This post contains something that I would never ever cook in its entirety, but the ingredient list seems like it could make for a dreamy adaptation, see bottom of this post.

This also sounds like an incredible ingredient list in search of an easy recipe, though I'm kind of wary of the cardamom/tarragon pairing. Smells Like Dissonant Florals.

Strawberry Gazpacho could work in warmer weather. It's also a nice name for a Mexican stripper.

I'm going to try this with kohlrabi, maybe this afternoon.

And this. This is on the verge of comedy, the longest cauliflower recipe in the history of the worl' (scroll down once you're there). I kind of want to try the doable parts just to see what happens.

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poached shrimp, avocado, green apple, tarragon salad.

shrimp
orange juice and zest
white wine
fennel
celery
leek
garlic
black pepper
fennel and coriander seed
star anise and salt

diced green apple
avocado
greek yogurt
mayo
tarragon

Poach prawns in the implied court-bouillon for 5 minutes and let cool in the poaching liquid. Assemble the rest.

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wachtkamer.

One of the very best things about not drinking is: waking up the morning after a six-hour dinner party thing and feeling perfectly fine. It's a state of affairs that's pretty much totally unfamiliar to me, and today, this morning, (not to be totally lame but) I'm finding it downright inspirational.

Doomsday Rehab Recap:

Alcohol: It's been 25 days now, which doesn't sound like a lot to me: 3.5 weeks sounds like longer b/c it implies 3 weekends, which tend to be the hardest parts. But really, everything feels like pretty smooth sailing right now.

Diet/exercise: mwah. Diet OK, a little more sugar, dairy and meat than I would like. Still no gluten, and I remain skeptical about what if any effect this is having on my system. I mean, I feel great, but that could be attributed to several things.

Sleep: OK, not great. 5 or 6 hours a night. But it's non-alcohol sleep and thus more like real sleep, so it's a manageable situation.

Exercise: happening, but not with the brainless, mechanized regularity that it should. Call this an "area for improvement". Smoking? Could be better, but I'm only smoking every three or four days or so. That's good, right?

So, overall? I give myself a 7. Time to recalibrate and hunker down, etc.

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Still reluctant to talk/specualte about The Exam, so we'll just move on to my Obsession-in-Waiting: I was invited to be part of an ad hoc band that will open for one of my biggest post-highschool guitar heroes-slash-influences, Number 34 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time (but I mean Eric Clapton is #2 so it's pretty much bullshit, I don't care what EvH has to say about him).

That's in a week or so, and thus my next 9 days will involve convincing myself to "be the ball" and working very hard to transport myself into the headspace of Ron Asheton rather than hiding behind my more usual Robert Fripp demeanor.

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party fowl.

Above/below: Amsterdam's Portugese marzipan barnyard animal community suffered some devastating losses tonight.

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crash/burn.

Pleasure button needs pushing. We tried some things last night: 90s-style stuffed chicken breast, Häagen-Dazs, History Of The World Part One, etc. Semi-ironically, the button resisted depression.

Tonight we have the first Smell 'n' Learn in many years, b/c Brodie is back in town, and it's hard to be consumed by unpleasant thoughts when Brodie is around, and all of that is good. Our contributions to the menu for tonight are tentatively beer-braised chicken and the salad below.

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radicchio, oranges, olives.

3 oranges
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
1/3 cup EVOO
2 cups veldsla/mâche
1 large head of radicchio, halved, torn into pieces (about 5 cups loosely packed)
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup black olives, pitted, halved
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

To be edited: Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over small bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments. Squeeze membranes to release juice. Combine 1/4 cup orange juice and vinegar in small bowl (reserve remaining juice for another use). Whisk in olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Toss mâche, frisée, and radicchio in large bowl. Add orange segments, sliced red onion, and Kalamata olives. Drizzle orange dressing over salad and toss well to coat. Sprinkle with crumbled feta cheese and serve.

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_______.

Oooooo, not to be a bummer or anything but my exam today was many times harder than expected, I can't tell if I passed or not, it's going to be close. I won't know for at least a week. Not the outcome I was hoping for. Hopefully the disappointment will pass soon and the repercussions won't be too catastrophic, and then I'll blog about something fun.

I obviously need to post about something else so this post won't keep coming up when I open my browser. Hold on.

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