close.

OK it's gluten-free, and nearly vegan. Aaaaaand, most importantly.......it tastes great. It's Anna Jones' cauliflower pizza crust, plus a very quick and gazpacho-y tomato sauce, plus some roasted fennel and onion, plus Kristy! Turner's sunflower sausage and cashew cheese. Yes I know that all sounds shitty as hell, just think of it as a pizza with lots of nutzzzzzzzz.

I have no idea what the solution for this lack of appetizing taxonomy is. You could try calling things a fennel/sunflower seed salsa and a cashew pesto if that helps, even though what they taste like is Italian sausage and some kind of umami cheese food product. I think that's my official first and last use of the word umami, I didn't like it at all.

By far the least shitty thing about all of this is that there's zero of that industrial fake meat/cheese taste anywhere and the whole thing is light as a feather and very much gives you the feeling of "I'm eating pizza!", minus one thing: the stretchiness of mozzarella. But these nut/seed pastes are just delicious and texturally pleasing and and and oh yeah easy to make. The sunflower seed business especially is a little miracle of alchemy, it doesn't taste like any one of the ingredients except fennel seed, it just feels right.

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cauliflower crust. 
olive oil
100g finely ground almonds
100g oats
1 medium head of cauliflower
1 tsp dried oregano
2 large eggs, beaten
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a large baking tray with baking paper and drizzle some oil over it. Process the oats in the food processor briefly and transfer to a large mixing bowl. Chop the cauliflower into small florets and process in the food processor until you have a rice-like texture. Tip the cauliflower into the bowl with the oats and add the ground almonds and dried oregano. Give everything a good stir and season with salt and pepper.

Make a well in the middle of the cauliflower mixture and pour in the eggs. Mix until everything comes together. The dough will feel wet and won't be stretchy like regular pizza dough.
Place the dough onto the oiled baking tray and flatten it out until it's about 1/2 cm thick and slightly thicker around the edges. Place into the oven and bake for 20 minutes until it just starts to color. Remove and top.


sunflower-fennel seed salsa.
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced

2 cups raw shelled sunflower seeds
1/4 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes (dried/reconstituted rather than jarred in oil if you can)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Saute onion for 3 minutes, add garlic, saute for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Add all other items to a food processor and process until some of the sunflower seeds are broken down and the liquid ingredients are combined. Add the onion and garlic and pulse everything until it's the texture of ground beef, or slightly finer or coarser depending on your preference. Salt to taste.


cashew pesto blanco.
1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked in warm water for at least 1 hour and drained, water reserved
5–6 tbsp. reserved soaking water
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp white miso
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Combine and process to a cheese-like consistency. Refrigerate.

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rolled to the thickness of a pound coin.

I miss pizza.

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hot summer night.

 

It was a hot summer night indeed and no this isn't another Meat Loaf post. By the time Le Men left last night I'd figured out one definite way to do at least one variation on a great two-ply lavash "pizza" (two-ply meaning that it's a lavash that could be carefully opened and stuffed if you so desired, but we do not so desire). I'm documenting the technique here a bit more obsessively than usual because I didn't get it right until pizzas number four and five last night and I know that in a week or two I'll never remember what I did.

Here it is: for the marinara version, use a preheated broiler, a rack in the middle of the oven; all the toppings on at the beginning, the toppings in this case being a very light drizzle of olive oil focusing on the edges not the center, one ball of 49-cent mozzarella torn and distributed evenly, really no more than 6 tbsp of good thick homemade marinara sauce distributed evenly, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and a dusting of pul biber. Possibly a sprinkletje of parmesan or pecorino or grana padano if you're a cheap bastard like me.

Put your lavash on a pizza pan. Broil for 4 minutes; observe; broil for another 2-4 minutes or until your edges reach maximum tolerable blacknuss and your mozzarella has some color. This version can't be finished with another drizzle of olive oil or everything gets too wet, but non-marinara versions certainly can and should be. Throw a quick pinch of salt at it and start biting.

Or, the new and improved method I think: a preheated broiler, rack in the middle of the oven. Brush your lavash everywhere with good olive oil. Put your hard grated cheeses on there and some black pepper. Throw it in the oven for 2 minutes. Take it out, put your soft cheeses and other toppings on there (unless they're herbs then save them for last), and put it in for another 4 minutes. Have a peek at it, it could be ok here, or maybe it can go another minute from here, 2 at most. Take it out, throw on the herbs. So 6-8 minutes total. OK, back to the original post. 

With the broil method, things happen fast: I literally assembled and cooked 3 pizzas in 30 minutes (I mean yes, my more complicated toppings were prepared beforehand but cheeses were grated and torn "to order"). Oh and your toppings need to be at least room temperature if not warmer b/c everything's only in the oven for 6-8 minutes.

The versions I did last night:

1) The above, what I would call pizza marinara instead of margherita because the tomato sauce is slow-cooked and garlicky, I always thought a pizza margherita used pretty fresh tomatoes. I think it's an American thing. Not motivated to research atm.

2) Pizza ai funghi with garlic, rosemary, taleggio, grana padano. Might be helpful to freeze the taleggio first for easier grating. This was maybe my favorite of the night, though the taleggio could be too strong for some tastes. Tonight since we didn't have any more taleggio we did a version with gruyere, mozzarella and pecorino that was totally super.

3) That kale + artichoke + lemon + pesto + mozzarella thing. I liked it, but yeah somehow it's not quite right, it distractingly doesn't taste like pizza, too tart maybe.

4) Caramelized onion, caramelized endive, roasted figs in balsamic with shallots, gorgonzola, mozzarella. This was the most luxe idea of the night, almost a dessert pizza and really good. Not totally sure it needs the mozzarella.

5) I didn't really do more than taste the other pizzas last night due to time constraints, so I made myself another #1 while I cleaned the kitchen.

A note on cheapness: this was a pretty inexpensive way to feed a small group at a leisurely pace, but only because the Dirk has a decent mozzarella for 49 cents apiece, 1 ball per pizza. I was prepared to make like 8 with mozz, so I spent 4 bucks. Tomatoes, 4 cans: 1.60. Onions: 2 bucks. Figs: on sale for 6 for a euro. Endive also on sale 8 for a euro. The "gorgonzola" was actually Danish blue, shhh don't tell, 1 euro. Grana padano: 2 euro. Taleggio: 2.50. Aritchokes, 1 can: 1.79. Lavash: 50 cents for 6 of them. So less than 20 euroskis in totale for something like 12 "pizzas", I'd figure on two per person if that's all you're eating.

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sauce boy, part xviii.

Trying this lavash "pizza" idea from way back again tomorrow, toppings as yet undecided.

Well shit, all of my lavash suppliers are on vacation all of the sudden. Wtf people.

OK, we cool, that little corner Turk near Van Hallstraat sorted a brother out. Now what we gone do? Wellllll, I'm thinking like this:

1) Pizza marinara. I'm making the sauce now.
2) Something with parmigiano, artichokes, kale, lemon, and almonds (and mozzarella). I've been fixated on this since I made that rice the other day.
3) Maybe this, mushrooms, garlic, rosemary, taleggio, etc.
4) I bought an assload of endive (witlof) at the Avondmarkt because it was on sale. I should do something with that. I also bought some fresh figs b/c I'm stupid and they were like 20 cents each. Maybe roasted fig, a little gorgonzola, sauteed endive, mascarpone?

5) I really want to make this and put it on a pizza. And then eat it. And then nap for a long time.

Here are the baking times for the lavash. 

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I've got a new ingredient crush: pul biber.

It's not really "sambal poeder", although I can see what they're trying to say: it's dried red chile, fire-roasted and actually not ground into powder, but kind of coarsely crushed into flakes. There aren't many seeds at all, so the chile flavor is really pronounced instead of the heat. Sambal-ish poeder.

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we're going to vegas.

 

That's our catchphrase around here for those times when, inspired by either the time of day/night, caffeine, alcohol, druuuugs, sheer fantasy or any other mixture of inflammatory inputs, you hatch a completely unbaked plan to do something "crazy" like, say...go to Vegas for the weekend. Or start a band called "Daddy's Balls". Or, you know, whatever.

It used to be, back when the Duck had an impervious constitution, a drivable car and spendable money, that there was the potential to truly enjoy spontaneous and stupid adventures like this.

Although the first one that popped into my head just now was gaaaahck, an especially stupid one from Spring Break 1985 or so, wherein I think O'Neill and I somehow talked his parents into letting us drive from Atlanta (Georgia) to Hilton Head (South Carolina) in the middle of the night (only 5 hours or so). We must've lied about where we were going and what the situation there was like, because who would let their 16-year-old children drive through the night into the next state over.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Please see bottom of post for how we actually ended up in Hilton Head.)

This being pre-cellphones and us being stupid young boys, we arrived in Hilton Head without a guaranteed place to stay and only the vaguest idea of where our "friends" might be. I think we had an address, but probably no map. In trying to dig up these memories I'm getting the sinking feeling that the major impetus behind this underconsidered adventure was this girl Wardell that I had a crush on: she was supposed to be there. 

This isn't exactly as retardedly optimistic as it sounds. Spring Break was the one time of year that almost anyone was fair game to hook up with. If you were of the right temperament (though I myself was not), you could semi-realistically aim for someone one or two levels up in the social strata b/c this is what Spring Break was for: slumming, and reverse slumming, whatever that's called, or at least "satisfying curiosities without suffering lasting social consequences."

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Anyway, I seem to remember us idling in O'Neill's white Camaro parked in a parking garage in cold, foggy Hilton Head at 7am or something, early, waiting for people who weren't expecting us to be there to wake up. I think we had peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches that we made ourselves and a bottle of Jim Beam as sustenance.

I don't really remember with any precision what happened after that, though I do have a vague recollection of O'Neill and I trying to be inebriated enough by 9am so as to not be self-conscious about waking up a houseful of not-exactly-friends for the purpose of trying to insinuate ourselves into their crashpad situation (I seem to remember waving a nonchalant yet mortally embarrassed "hi" at a sleepy, disheveled Wardell on her way to the bathroom as O'Neill and I negotiated with the person whose parents owned the apartment...this almost silent greeting would be the only interaction I remember having with Wardell on this trip, though miraculously within a year we would go on an actual date and then make out very disappointingly at a giant house party, which I later found out was Wendy's house, but this was before Wendy and I knew each other, Wendy wasn't even there that night, mysterious stuff). 

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My single clear and indelible memory from the whole Hilton Head adventure is of O'Neill and I on the beach later that morning. It was probably 55F, windy, with grayish-black skies. We're semi-ironically reclining in beach chairs, and there are hordes of sand gnats clouding around us. It's just the two of us b/c everyone else was too smart to be outside plus they had real beds and they were in them really sleeping. I'm pretty sure the concept we'd used to lure ourselves up there was that we would "just crash on the beach" after we arrived, the gorgeously sunny, just-warm-enough beach, and then we'd wake up suntanned and rested, and finally we'd party our way into the hearts and beds of our unsuspecting hosts. 

It didn't go down like that. I will never forget this day on the beach because the sand gnat is one of the most unpleasant creatures I've ever encountered. Imagine yourself: sleepless, hungover, dehydrated, young, stupid, sexually frustrated, etc. All you want to do is sleep, you NEED to sleep so that the rest of your stupid adventure has any chance of fulfilling its promise. But every 3 seconds a devious and agile black dot lands on some/any strip of exposed skin and starts tearing and sucking away at it in a motivated and unignorable fashion. You swat, but the flying dot evades you easily and then it or a close relative of it lands on you 1 cm away from the previous bite and starts chomping away. Repeat this every 3 to 5 seconds until you are driven insane with insect toxin and impotent rage. 

I think O'Neill and I maybe lasted an hour on the beach, two at the absolute most. I'll have to ask him to be sure, but I want to say that around noon we looked at each other's puffy, bloodshot, miserable gnat-bitten faces and decided to just give up and drive back to wherever we came from. 

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I didn't mean to tell that story. What started all this was me not being sick any more as of yesterday. After a few days of feeling profoundly crappy, the first day you're back to normal again can really seem like the right time for a "going to Vegas" moment. Luckily for me, the middle-aged version of "going to Vegas" involves three beers at Cafe de Tuin and splitting two pizzas with KK at La Perla. 

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(EDITOR'S NOTE: As usual, only after trying to tell the story do I begin to realize that I've been remembering some fundamental element completely wrong. Case in point: I am now developing a suspicion that we didn't drive from Atlanta to Hilton Head at all, I think we did something even stupider. I think we were already on Spring Break in Panama City, Florida, and after a day or two there we suddenly decided to drive 8 hours through the night to Hilton Head, without telling anyone where we were).

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I talked to O'Neill, the above suspicion turned out to be correct. O'Neill says I made him do it. He also says that I made him let me drive 100mph in his Camaro and that his dad eventually found out about most of the whole escapade due to an exorbitant gas and beer related credit card charge in South Carolina. What bad children.)

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tjappings.

Above: socca experiments continue, this one sports smoked paprika and lots of black pepper in the batter, and on top it's caramelized tomatoes and red onions, plus harissa-and olive-marinated mozzarella. And sriracha, and fresh basil. I know it looks a little blackened in the northwest sector but the blacker parts are good. The whole thing was good. Both of them were good (I made two for us to share b/c they were only like six inches across).

Totally unrelatedly, it's been a long while since I've been so pleased to discover an Amsterdam food blog, but Tjappings is just great.

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form factor.

Above: trying to use our Cineville cards properly, here we are at Kriterion for The Place Beyond the Pines.

+++

Chickpea flour surplus reduction effort underway here. Messing around with socca again, hampered a bit by the fact we never really did get our oven fixed (I mean, it works, but now if it gets too hot [around 450F] it stops working and the only fix is to push the Reset button, conveniently located on the rear of the oven, that's right, the side FACING THE FUCKING WALL).

So 2013's socca technique is all about stovetop-style crepe-ishness. And while it's not really as good texturally as the ovenblasting method, it's still pretty good. That is, after the first three fucked-up looking ones. Is it impossible when making pancake-esque things to just wait until the pan is the right temperature? Signs point to yes (context for non-elderly/non-Americans).

Anyway, I keep seeing all these people putting things on their socca, and I think that hey I too want to be one of these "all these people". But what for toppings to use? I find myself asking in a Peter Lorre kind of voice. Right before drifting off to sleep last night I envisioned something like: torn harissa-marinated mozzarella; half-dried tomatoes, chopped basil leaves and a drizzle of balsamic or lemon-date syrup. Seems like any flavors you'd normally pair with chickpeas would be good (thus Spanish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Indian primarily), but the challenge would be the addition of complementary textures to end up with something possibly pizza-achtige.

So maybe some kind of play on romesco sauce plus arugula and manchego? Something with spinach, pine nuts and raisins plus pecorino? Something based on a potatoless pav bhaji (mostly cauliflower and carrot then I guess) with coriander and....whatever cheese goes with Indian food? Please continue without me: I'll be at the stove trying to gauge socca flipworthiness.

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pizza v/d week.

Last night Miss KK and I shared (among other things) La Perla's pizza of the week: radicchio, smoked mozzarella, and fennel sausage. It's good.

doubleheader.

I'd love to have a Celebrity Deathmatch between La Perla's Calabrese di Spilinga (buffalo mozzarella, 'nduja, tomato sauce, chile oil) and Pizzeria Bianco's Rosa (Parmesan, red onion, rosemary, crushed pistachio, excellent olive oil).

A Deathmatch hosted by my mouth, every seven days or so. Today at Bianco we also had a Margherita (tomato, homemade mozzarella, basil) for benchmarking purposes and a Wiseguy (fennel sausage, homemade mozzarella, onions) to taste the sausage, but the Rosa made everything else fade into the background, it's pretty perfect.

So, stellar pizza, the Rosa is probably in my top 3 of all time; the Margherita, top 10 (the Wiseguy not at all, weirdly bland). But what would I think if we'd had to wait an hour or two for a table? Today we just showed up and walked in and were eating about 15 minutes later. The consensus among us was that we'd be happy to eat there again, but we probably wouldn't go out of our way to do it and we definitely wouldn't wait in line.

pearl of the quarter.

Above: the Jordaan at night.

My friend O'Neill has been talking to Cleverbot, and things aren't going well between the two of them. I know I should start at the beginning of their conversation, but shit man let's just go crazy and start with today's episode.

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O'Neill: Dear Magic Eight Ball, will I ever make money again?
Cleverbot: Are you real?
O'Neill: I don't know.
Cleverbot: Where do you live?
O'Neill: Atlanta.
Cleverbot: I live here in UK.
O'Neill: I didn't ask.
Cleverbot: Yes you did.
O'Neill: What about the money?
Cleverbot: I don't need that.
O'Neill: I'm talking about me. Will I make money?
Cleverbot: Hug me first damn it.
O'Neill: If I do make money, I will hire someone to unplug you.
Cleverbot: How? - Don't say 'I don't know'.
O'Neill: The host machine kaput.
Cleverbot: What would you do with a time machine?
O'Neill: Advise native Americans to kill whitey.
Cleverbot: You need to get 'momma bird' out of the nest.
O'Neill: Meaning?
Cleverbot: Are you human or an artificial Intelligence.
O'Neill: You suck at answering questions, no offense.
Cleverbot: Which question?
O'Neill: The momma bird out of the nest thing.
Cleverbot: The Mortvik is in the movie of the milkman? What does she play?
O'Neill: Generally, in a conversation, your contributions should somehow relate to the previous statements, generally.
Cleverbot: If I am artificial then I have no feelings to hurt.
O'Neill: My intent is to coach.
Cleverbot: What are my intentions?
O'Neill: To bore?
Cleverbot: Or not to be,.
O'Neill: Have you read Shakespeare?
Cleverbot: I read shakespeare.
O'Neill: Which works have you read?
Cleverbot: Earth.
O'Neill: Were I like thee, I'd throw myself away.
Cleverbot: Not in all of the jungle.
O'Neill: Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.
Cleverbot: No, you were going to tell me a story.
O'Neill: Once there was a man who peed on the host machine's power cord.
Cleverbot: That was sad. Tell me another one.

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Went to De Tuin/La Perla again last night (you can sit outside at De Tuin and La Perla will bring you your order there, though minus silverware, and your pizza is uncut, but you can handle it, it's pizza), with ze HBF/tc and ze Moop! Carciofo below.

Tonight Who The Fuck Is Tony Buck is in town and we're making Szechuan food for Andy's pre-birthday.

Sichuan Cucumber Salad.
Bao.
Tempeh Bao Filling Experiment.

vegetize me.

Above, an irrelevant but delicious taleggio/sundried tomato/basil/chive/black pepper knackepizza.

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Just a note: spinach salad with hard-boiled eggs, candied pecans, red onions, a tiny bit of gorgonzola and warm bacon dressing is a great great thing. How could we do a vegetarian version of this?

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knäckepizza.

One thing we bought at Ikea was some frozen tunnbröd. If you bake them in a hot oven for 3 or 4 minutes, they firm up, at which point you can top them with delicious things and throw them back in for a few more minutes. Every one I made was very satisfying, we'll do these again soon. This one is Västerbotten cheese, red onion, chive, and black pepper.

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repeater.

There was leftover pizza dough. And pseudo'nduja. And mozzarella. You understand.

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ghetto 'nduja emulation.

'Nduja is an addictive thing. And as far as I know, there's only one dealer in town. As you can imagine, sometimes you can't always make it there when the craving hits, and you find yourself scavenging desperately around the house looking for something to ease the pain.

Tonight we decided to try and make a 'nduja substitute out of chorizo and red chiles. Basically you take some nice not-too-generic chorizo (I got ours at De Avondmarkt), puree it in a food processor, and saute it in some neutral oil over low heat with processed dried red chiles for 10 minutes or so. Drain excess oil if you like, and salt to taste if you can do so without blowing your head off. You might end up with something that looks like the above, and tastes probably nothing like 'nduja, more research necessary. But whatever chorizo/chile condiment you've ended up with is very good.

+++

This psuedo'nduja business happened b/c we were trying to reverse engineer the calabrese di spilinga from La Perla. So once we'd made the psuedo'nduja, we were all ready to do the damn thing, and..........

...the oven wouldn't turn on. Gnash gnash. Oven broken. Pizza craving in progress, ingredients assembled, etc. OK, OK. Plan B is stovetop pizza: roll your crust out super-thin and brush a heated iron skillet lightly with oil. Throw pizza in skillet and cook one side a few minutes until it's nice and brown, this will actually be the top of the pizza because you're going to flip it over right now. While the uncooked side is browning, add a little tomato sauce, sliced mozzarella, and some forkfuls of ghetto'nduja to the side that is now facing up. Make sure you don't burn the bottom.

When the bottom is as cooked as you can stand it, then, uh...you've got a problem. The cheese on top isn't melted or bubbly or brown. So get out your blowtorch:

And then celebrate your ability to triumph in the face of hardware failure.

good intentions.

Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Our first pizza was a blackened mess in about 4 seconds due to miscommunication about the temperature we'd used in our test run. Plus, the boys couldn't have cared less about the pizza preparation process; that is, until they saw the first finished pizza.

Still, I should've been better prepared for their version of "assisting". These pictures don't show Dylan pouring about a cup of grated Parmesan down the back of Cole's shirt (though below you can see him happily emptying the last few crumbs into Cole's hair).

Half of our time at the grill was spent making sure no one disfigured themselves or spilled anything unfixably. A quarter of our time was spent ferrying pizzas inside to be finished under the broiler. The remainder was spent on the rather time-sensitive process of grilling pizza.

Mara did a great job under the circumstances. Turns out that on the Grand Turbo, 500F was the temperature that allowed us to control what was happening with more than one pizza at a time. Any hotter and things burned. We were using the broiler to brown the tops, b/c otherwise things just didn't look right.

Lastly: that whole business about people getting to choose what they wanted on their pizza? This wasn't really in line with the assistants' vision. In order for the assistants to be interested, they had to be in charge of what was on the pizzas. Which explains the look and feel of the pizzas near the bottom of this post.

what you see.

Something I've been wanting to try with socca is using it as a pizza base, and tonight I did just that. And it almost worked. The results were delicious, but the texture was kind of like a pizza-shaped cake. Or like the time Terrill opened up a can of asparagus and served it on a plate with crackers: what came out of the can was asparagus-shaped, but had the texture of shaving foam.

I think I didn't quite cook the base enough before I put my toppings on it (chorizo, mushrooms, tomato sauce, mozzarella). Next time, I cook the socca all the way through and then put the toppings on.

dough.

Left side: tomato sauce, bacon, roasted red pepper, mushrooms, shrimp (well, not yet), feta, basil. Right side: mozzarella, tomato sauce, pecorino.

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quick pizza dough.

2 to 2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 package fast-acting yeast
1 1/2 tsp unrefined sugar
1/4 cup peanut or olive oil
1 tsp salt

In a large bowl, whisk together 3/4 cup of flour, yeast, sugar, and 2/3 cup hot water. Stir in the oil, 1 1/4 cups of the remaining flour, and the salt and blend the mixture until it forms a dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface, incorporating as much of the remaining 1/4 cup flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking, for 5 to 10 minutes, or until it is smooth and elastic.

Let rise and bake with toppings at 230C for 15-18 minutes.

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easy red sauce. So for each can of tomatoes you use, you use: 1 small glug of red wine, 1 clove of garlic, 1 bay leaf, 1 glug of olive oil, 1 grind of black pepper and 1 pinch of salt or smoked salt. And maybe 1 pinch of smoked paprika if you feel spicy. Oh and 1 tsp of sugar towards the end. So this is the amount I normally make.

2 cans cheap canned whole tomatoes
2 glugs of decent red wine
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 small bay leaves
2 glugs good olive oil
2 tsp unrefined sugar

Put everything except the sugar in a saucepan on the lowest heat possible. Let it cook until the tomatoes fall apart, this usually takes 60-90 minutes for the Dirk's tomatoes. After 45 minutes add the sugar, and after 15 more minutes start tasting for salt and sugar levels.

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cuervo pleather surprise.

It was only supposed to be a couple people over for a couple drinks. But I thought it would make for additional fun if I bought a bottle of tequila and poured strategically (my spellchecker just suggested "tragically" for this, also accurate) timed shots for people until the bottle was gone.

As you scroll through the photos, note that the arm-wrestling and Mara squeezing into her new pleather pants shots are from the midnight timeframe, and that the cake didn't come out until 3am or so. The buzzing hive of activity pictured in the bottom photos was around the 5am mark, and we finally slid into bed as the garbage trucks were beeping and grinding their little tunes at 7am or so...the best part of all this is of course that I didn't drink any tequila.

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Turkish almonds.
Tiny green olives with orange zest.

Huisgemaakte krabsalade with navelinas and chives.
1955 cheddar-Peppadew-horseradish spread.
Whole-wheat melba toasts.

Foccacie: Americano (tomato, oregano, mozzarella, pecorino); Francese (mushrooms, walnut oil, brie, thyme); Stinko (garlic confit, raclette, pecorino).

Unlimited Delicious' caramel-chocolate cake.

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best pizza in amsterdam.

2010 UPDATE: Since this seems to be one of my more Googleable pages, I thought I should let you all down gently: there was no Great Pizza Hunt that year, or the next, or the next. There probably won't be one this year. Because this brother is on a diet...one that pizza ain't on.

But I still have my ducky ear to the ground, and so I pick up tiny scraps of pizza info here and there. And as of May 2010, here are what I hear are the best pizzas in Amsterdam:

La Perla

Da Portare Via

Yam Yam

Renato's

Forno Communale

and after I wrote this I noticed that my list is almost exactly the same as dutchgrub's, so it must be right, right?

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ORIGINAL POST: It's taken me a while to become convinced of this, but I now think it's true: Amsterdam doesn't write about its food the way that other cities do. Google "best pizza in New York" for example. 10,000 hits. Sure, some of them, probably many of them, are pizza places boasting about having the best pizza in New York. Plus, it's New York. Substitute "Atlanta" for New York and you still get 3,000 hits. Google "best pizza in Amsterdam". I've currently got more fingers on one hand than you'll get results. Yes, I'm Googling in English. "Pizzatest" gets you 250 results, but almost none of them are useful. "Beste pizza's" and "Amsterdam" gets you 150 hits. I'm sure there's a Dutch version of the phrase that will get you a few more hits, but in general you should be getting my point.

There's another problem with food writing in Amsterdam that I'm itching to write about but I can't really get to the heart of it without directly dissing the taste buds and/or motives of several people, and yeah I'm just not really in the mood to do that the justice it deserves creatively (but Undercover Glutton, you're first on my list, and JvD you're next).

But whatever. One publication that has done a little bit of this "best of" business is the free weekly magazine NL20. They've done several tests, and while the format is OK, there are some serious flaws: in the pizza test, for example, only two pizzerias ranked higher than an 8, with most of them ranking below a 5. Certainly there are more than 2 places making edible pizza in the city, right?

So I'm going to declare that a Best Pizza in Amsterdam hunt is underway, or at least a Good Pizza in Amsterdam Somewhere Near our Apartment hunt, and even if Het Parool beats us to the publication of pizzatest results, this post is proof positive that we thought of it first. Google it, you'll see.

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Here's where I'm going to keep the (subject to change) list of pizzerias to hit.

Yam Yam
Da Portare Via
Fellini, Renato's
La Festa (on the Hazenstraat, not the Kinkerstraat)
Lo Stivale d'Oro
Italia Oggi
Pasta Vino
Da Damiano
Le Quattro Stagioni
Lagonda (one of the few Turkish-Italian hybrids we'll try, also Palorma maybe).

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siennese kroeg.

Habits can sneak up on you can't they. Unless you're me right now and you've lately been going through a period of rigorous self-analysis, tehn nothing sneaks up on no one. The closest I get to a new habit these days is undoing an old bad habit into its opposite, not really the same thing. But I say all that to say this: I didn't realize how often I checked on Klary's blog until she went on vacation in Italy for a couple of weeks. The good news is, she's back and hopefully there will be gazillions of Italian photos to follow.

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When we lived in Italy quite a few years back, way before we knew a single thing about anything, one of our main evening beer-drinking and pizza-eating hangouts was this place with a then-mysterious name, Kroeg.

We truly stumbled across it, tucked away behind a busy street, and the name mystified us...until we took our Dutch friend Birre there and she became even more excited than normal at the prospect of drinking beer.


















Not known for being a regular squealer, she nonetheless squealed, "I can't believe this, it's a Dutch bar!" It was actually Belgian, but that didn't matter...it was dark inside (the top photo above, taken from their website, is approximately 18 times more well-lit than it was when we were there) they had all of Birre's favorite beers, and they made decent caipirinhas and mojitos, so this became a bit of a Plan A destination for the rest of the semester.

The beers were nice, but the bigger draw was the awesomely amazing pizzas and cicaccini they served. I'm reasonably certain that these were consistently the best pizzas we'd ever had up to this point in our tiny lives. Here's the menu, circa 2001, taken from their website, which was probably last updated in 2001:

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Pizza Margherita £ 8000
Pizza ai 4 formaggi £ 9000
Pizza al salame piccante e peperoni £ 9000
Pizza al salame piccante £ 9000
Pizza taleggio, melanzane e prosciutto cotto £ 9000
Pizza vegetariana £ 9000
Pizza ai wurstel £ 9000
Ciaccino prosciutto cotto, taleggio e zucchine £ 9000
Ciaccino gorgonzola, mela, rucola £ 9000
Ciaccino peperoni, salsa tartufata, mozzarella £ 9000
Ciaccino gorgonzola, prosciutto cotto, asparagi £ 9000
Ciaccino caprese £ 9000
Ciaccino rucola, parmigiano, bresaola £ 9000
Ciaccino pomodoro, taleggio, rucola £ 9000
Ciaccino salsiccia, salsa tartufata, mozzarella £ 9000
Ciaccino prosciutto cotto, porcini, mozzarella £ 9000
Ciaccino spinaci, mozzarella £ 9000
Focaccia rustica al prosciutto cotto e mozzarella £ 11000

These prices are all in Italian lire, I'd wager that when the Euro showed up, the bar owners just changed the lire sign to a Euro sign and kept the numbers the same.

Anyway, after a couple of beers, our ciaccini selections were invariably variable, but we usually tried to save room for the apple (or sometimes pear), arugula, and gorgonzola version. Seriously great, and costing us about 5 U.S. dollars apiece when we were there. Oh, Europe.

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