eating in amsterdam, duck-style (part 1).

PRE-2009 CAVEAT UPDATE: It's now 2012, and the below now-terribly-out-of-date post has kind of been superseded/supplanted by this one.

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2009 CAVEAT: This post is now 3 years old, and some things have changed, as they do. Toko Ikan Mas is not as reliable as it used to be, I don't think Abyssinia is the best Ethiopian in town anymore (it's still as good as it used to be, but I think Fenan Klein Afrika is better, and totally worth an evening of your time), etc.

Some things haven't changed: my favorite pom in town is still De Tokoman. I still really like the sopropo at Surima Tropische Markt (Kinkerstraat 184) but could never remember the name of the place so it never made the list. Etc.

ALSO: I think my eGullet foodblog is good complementary reading for this list. It also has some additional pictures.

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Inspired by a recent visit to eGullet, and an especially relevant topic called "The Foodlover's Guide to Amsterdam" which you can check out here, I decided to finally unfurl a perpetually-postponed post about my absolute don't-miss eats in our fair city.

At least that was the idea, but it's turned into a more personal list than that...these are things that I would really pine for if we were somehow separated, Amsterdam and I. It's almost all "street food", primarily because since we've been here we've experienced a serious dip in our enthusiasm for restaurant meals, probably attributable to many factors which are mostly beyond the scope of this mfkn list.

There are also a couple of esoteric things here that are great memories for me, but might be like "so what" to anyone else, or might not even be experienceable by anyone else because they were really one of a kind moments. This is the kind of thing you can include on your top 20 or 30 list when not many people read your blog.

Provenance aside, I say it's still good eatin' any way you slice it. I'm going to furnish the entire list first (for those who are coming to Amsterdam imminently and need some tips for cheap eats) and den fill in the details as I has time. BTW, should you be unfamiliar with any of the terrain, Mappy is a stupendous way to get directions to these places. OK, in the order I thought of them in:

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1a) Broodje Pom at De Tokoman, Waterlooplein 327.

Above: a broodje pom, not from De Tokoman.

As you probably know if you've eaten in Amsterdam before, a broodje is a sandwich. As you may not know, pom is a glorious Surinamese sort of casserole. I think its full name might be pom tajer nanga fouroe. It's a slowly baked, kind of Thanksgiving-y seeming dish with pomtajer (malanga), chicken legs, orange juice, a sort of bacon (zoutvlees), and nutmeg, with a bit of of room for embellishment and variations. As soon as I can find an English recipe, I'll post it, and if I can't...well then I'm just going to have to fire up my Translation Engine (which is sitting on blocks in the back yard right now).

When you order a Broodje Pom at De Tokoman, one of the invariably pleasant ladies behind the counter will ask if you want "zuur and peper" on it, and you definitely do: in this case zuur is a yellow cabbage/carrot/onion relish called atjar tampoer. Peper is fiery madame jeanette (scotch bonnet relative) pepper sauce or paste.

Anyway, what we have here: the creamy comfort of the pom combined with the tart relish and the (usually) gentle smoky heat, all on a crispy baguette...you get the picture. Totally dreamy. The Hete Kip broodje (spicy chicken) is also nice and perky (but can be a tad dry if you go later in the day), as are many of their other sandwiches--I just never really got over those first two I had there. They also have some nice vegetarian choices if you're so inclined. Buy a cold coconut water or tamarind drink to cool off with. ALERT: all pom broodjes are not created equal. I've had some rather gross ones at other places in my quest for More Pom. So don't improvise on this one: go to the Tokoman. ALSO ALERT: They run out of pom at about 4pm every day, sometimes earlier. So this is probably best done as a lunchtime thang.


1b) Broodje Chili Kip at De Hapjeshoek, Metrostation Waterlooplein 6.

Another Surinamese/Indonesian sandwich place, across the street from the Tokoman. This one's down in the subway station underneath the opera house (Stopera) and Waterloomarkt. Same general setup, but I find his pom to be less appealing. Instead, order a broodje Chili Kip (also 2,50 i think, maybe 3,00). It's "just" sauteed chicken with both mild and hot peppers and onions on freshly baked bread, but done perfectly and spicy as heck. Same drill, when he asks if you want peper and zuur, say yes...he makes his own zuur, which in this case are pink-tinged homemade cucumber pickles (compared to the Tokoman bright yellow, off-the-Albert Heijn-shelf atjar...both work well). Another great sandwich here is the Kip Ketjap, a dark sweet Indonesian chicken with ketjap manis, but like the Tokoman almost everything here is pretty swell.

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2) Lamahcun/Turkse Pizza at Mercan Patisserie, Rozengracht 148.

Pictured above: Turkish pizza, not from Mercan.

They have great boreks and baklava here as well, probably because they're primarily an actual bakery (as opposed to a bakery storefront, where everything is made offsite) and they make everything themselves. But, they also do a fine, fine version of the ubiquitous lamahcun (called Turkse pizza on Amsterdam menus), which is an oven-blistered flatbread coated with ground lamb, pomegranate syrup, garlic, tomato, and spices. When you order, they'll ask you if you want everything on it (they might say, "Alles erop?") and you say yes. A handful of chopped onions, lettuce, and red cabbage are placed on top of the flatbread, and then you get a squirt of a garlic-yogurt sauce and a squirt of spicy red sambal sauce on top. It's then rolled tight like a burrito, and you walk out as happy as anyone else in the city for the next 5 minutes.

This is totally not the only place to get a great Turkse pizza, but this is one of the few I've had that is truly excellent and reliable in the center of town, and where I can heartily recommend the rest of their roster as well, especially the pastries. Actually everything. Another very reliable lamahcun source is Kismet (Kinkerstraat 350), but they're a bit further off to the west (the rest of their Turkish food is also nice, if the tiniest bit bland, mostly stuffed vegetables, more of a sit-down lunch place but without table service). Kismet also has an Albert Cuypmarkt location, but last time I visited they didn't have a pizza oven at that location, which meant they also had no Turkse pizzas.

And having said all that: like the "bad pizza/bad sex" joke/truism, a "bad" Turkse pizza is still really not that bad. And if you don't like it, you're usually only out 2 euro or so, just like with sex. What I'm saying is, at least have a lamahcun somewhere if you can't get to Mercan or Kismet. The Albert Cuypmarkt and surrounding streets offer an especially good chance for your hits to outnumber your misses (I'm thinking specifically of the southern corner of Van Woustraat and Albert Cuyp).

















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3) Kibbeling , Gebakken Mosselen, Krabsalade at Volendammer Vishandel 't Centrum, Haarlemmerdijk 4.

Well, I've listed three of my favorites above (fried cod, fried mussels, and crab salad), but every single thing I've ever eaten here has been sterling, which explains the constant line out the door (I say out the door, but it's a small place. The line's never longer than 10 people), I guess. So, in order to not have to stand in line more than once: if I were you, I'd definitely get 1) something fried, 2) a sandwich, and 3) some herring. At least. Their smoked salmon is also pretty terrific. Let's tackle these in order.

When you hear the words "something fried", don't think of generic cheapie-style fried seafood, 3 parts breading to 1 part marine life. This is just the barest coating of thin batter, and the other 90% or so is fish. Cod, or kabeljauw, is the most common choice, but their fried mussels are perfect as well. So, to order, you want a bakje (a little plastic tray) of kibbeling or mussels, this is typically 150 grams or so (6 ounces?). Or you can order by the gram. The extremely Dutch girl behind the counter might tell you that it's only lukewarm and do you want to wait for a fresh batch. I wouldn't, it's still great lukewarm. She'll ask if you want sauce, and your choices are the Viswinkel Holy Trinity of ravigotte/tartar, knoflook/garlic, and cocktail/whisky. Cost: I think it's 2 euro per 100 grams, so 150 grams is..............3 euro.

















Sandwiches? They make their own fish salads: smoked mackerel, herring and beet, paling (smoked eel), tuna, etc., and you can get all of these on a sandwich. They're all good, but I'm a sucker for the "crab salad", which is really surimi (sucka), but it's in an amazing dressing of mayo and oranges, just perfect on a hot day. So in this case you'd want a broodje krabsalade, or broodje makreel, etc. There's a menu on the counter.

And then herring. I'm not truly a convert to non-pickled herring yet. As in, I like zure haring in a jar a lot, but if it's the fresher stuff (Hollandse Nieuwe, which is only very lightly salted), I still have to be in the mood for it, like oysters. When I am though (beer is usually involved), I ask for it with uitjes (onions) and zuur (pickles). Some would say that's wrong (Amsterdammers can be criticized for adulterating the haring with accoutrements when it should really just be dangled and swallowed), but I'm just not ready for the sea lion approach yet.

Pay, and then squeeze your way out the door and walk across the street to the little bridge where there are some benches upon which you might sit and eat your catch.


4) Okonomiyaki at Japanese Pancake World, Tweede Egelantiersdwarsstraat 24A (link).

Considering the voluminousness of my original post about the Osaka-style food love called okonomiyaki, I think I could probably just refer you to that post, but that's mostly about the food. I should mention that this "pizza joint" may have been the best restaurant experience I've had in Amsterdam.

It was a dark and stormy spring day just like any other in our fair city, except that three days before, on Queen's Day, I'd had the luck to amble past JPW while cruising for cheap vinyl. The JPW crew had a stand outside where they were nonchalantly griddling these incredible-looking discs of unidentifiable origin, kind of like ring-molded hash browns, and then suddenly executing a startling series of ninja-like (ed. note: racist) moves to squirt and spackle and baste it with all manner of viscous substance. Finally, the cook reaches into a tupperware bin and with a flourish coats the top of the cake with live butterflies.

I wasn't even high. I'd just never seen katsuobushi in action before. The shavings are so thin that when they come in contact with anything hot, they flutter and move, making your dish look very eerily alive. I swear I was not on any drugs. Look, I'm not alone. Does this man sound like he's on drugs?

Anyway, aside from the amazingly complex taste of such a simple dish, and the fact that JPW is a charmingly cool little space to eat in, another reason to go is that the chef (Frank, I think) could not be more inviting. I came in totally rain-drenched on the Tuesday after Queen's Day, and flopped down at a table near the front door. He came over and asked if I wanted to come upstairs to the teppan bar and watch him cook my food. Turns out I did, with him explaining everything he was doing and passing me the odd tidbit to taste. Very educational. BTW, I ordered plain Osaka style and plain Hiroshima style and preferred the Osaka by a nose.


5) Roti Canai at Nyonya Malaysia Express, Kloveniersburgwal 38.

The interior of NME is quite possibly the mathematical opposite of JPW above. Just imagine a well-architected, gezellig, candlelit two-level dining room with subtle modern touches, quiet bossa nova on the stereo and a good shade of red on the walls....then reverse everything about it and you've got NME. I've never eaten there, I don't even wait for my takeout food there, I pretend to have an errand to run so I can order, leave, and come back. And come back I do, bitches...for the Roti Canai, y'all (sound of muffled, somehow severely injured beatboxing fades in...).

(...and out, just like on NPR) If you've never had Malaysian roti, it's quite different from the Indian version after which it's named. The ghee-rich bread seems flatter, thinner, and more stratified than the Indian ones I've had, which is great because the more layers there are, the longer it lasts. And instead of dipping your bread into dal or chickpea curry, you dip it into head-lollingly rich and spicy coconut chicken curry broth. It's the kind of thing you hate to stop eating because it's doing everything right. But I'm sure it's a gazillion calories as well, so maybe it's best that they only have an appetizer portion on the menu. I think it's 2,50 euro for a 1-person serving. Get two, you won't want to share.

Everything else we've had there has ranged from good to excellent...I had the Malaysian equivalent of an ikan boemboe bali (Indonesian fish curry with candlenuts) and it totally rocked. Girlfriend is addicted to the Nyonya Fried Rice, which seems expensive for 10 euro until you realize that it's really just chock full of chicken and whole shrimp, more like a biriyani than Chinese fried rice.

They're very sweet there. But geez guys...can we dim the lights a little? Or turn down one of the TVs? And exactly how many simultaneously screaming kids is too many? No matter. Take your grub 50 feet away to a bench on the Kloveniersburgwal canal and prepare to receive inner beauty.

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Yet to be elaborated upon (where are 6-10? about to be posted):

11) Falafel at Maoz, Leidsestraat 85 (also Muntplein 1, others). (link)
12) Frites/Patatje Oorlog at Vleminckx, Voetboogstraat 31.
13) Beer at The Movies, Haarlemmerdijk 161. (link)
14) Smoked Anything from Frank's Smoke House, Wittenburgergracht 303. (link)
15) Tofu-Kerrie Broodje at Bakkerij Paul Annee, Runstraat 25.
16) Uitsmijter at Kat in de Wijngaert (Lindengracht 160) or Daalder Cafe, Lindengracht 90. (link)
17) Fresh Oysters at De Engelbewaarder, Kloveniersburgwal 59. (Fridays only, and not every Friday either. And not all night either. It's a bit of a secret. I'll explain.)
18) Thyme or Lemongrass Chocolates at Puccini Bomboni, Staalstraat 17. (link)
19) Appeltaart at Latei, Zeedijk 143. (link)
20) Silsi at Abyssinia, Jan Pieter Heijestraat 190hs.

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kitty melt.

This is basically a picture of my apartment, except that instead of clocks draped over everything in a state of gooey uselessness, I've got cats. The kitties have been too hot to do anything all week, so they just sleep in hilarious positions until that gets boring then they see if maybe now there's some interesting food in the bowl, which there still isn't, and then they meow once at me to complain about how frigging boring it is around here and then they go off in search of the next nap.

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I'm been on a bit of a cooking tear since recovering from Nickelsdorf, and most of it has been Middle Eastern in some way. This shows no sign of abating, so in acknowledgement of the events of the past two weeks, I think I'll be making a "Why Can't We All Just Get Along" dinner for Sunday night, featuring Borani-e Bademjan from Iran (a garlicky eggplant and yogurt dip with mint); Muhammara from Syria (walnut and pomegranate relish/dip); Libyan fish couscous; Fattoush from Lebanon (salad with tomatoes, cukes, and a sumac-flavored dressing); and something else Levantine, haven't figured it out yet. It sounds like a lot of food, but I'll only make 3 tbsp of each dish, it'll be fine (this is mostly sarcastic, but not completely).

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r(es)ea(r)ch the beach.

This summer's Wave of Infernal Hotness has provided the perfect incentive to deploy my oft-postponed, veiled-in-secrecy Beach Sampler project (because in this weather, the veil just makes sense), wherein I visit as many recommended beaches in The Netherlands as my moderate tanning profile allows.

Yesterday's target was Zandvoort. I'd have to say that the reality of Zandvoort is somewhere between the two. More peaceful than a roundhouse kick*, but not quite as idyllic and undisturbed as the rustling dunes would have us believe. I spent my initial efforts trying to get to the south side of the Zandvoort beach, the "quiet" side I was told many times, where apparently there is almost no one except for the inhabitants of a nice quiet nude beach. I've never done the ol' commando sunbathe before, but it's been so hot I thought I could be persuaded. However, to everyone's dismay and chagrin, I got a late start out of A'dam so I had to abort my Journey to Self-Nudity in order to come home and start cooking for a BBQ that eve. And really, how often can you say that about your Friday?

I actually didn't even mean to go to Zandvoort...my intended destination was IJMuiderstrand again, which I enjoyed a whole dang bunch last week. But I forgot that despite what the Connexxion website implies, the IJMuiderstrand buses (583 and 83) don't stop at the Marnixstraat/Rozengracht stop where I was.

Last week in this same spot when I flagged down the 83 and got on, I told the driver where I wanted to go, and he said, "This bus doesn't go there". Easily believing that I'd made a mistake, I turned around to de-bus, but the doors suddenly closed and the bus sped off. Trapped! I turned to him with a confused "But..." on my lips (ha! say that out loud), half-expecting to see him rubbing his hands together with psychotic glee and bared fangs, maniacally and unnecessarily turning the windshield wipers on and off...(?)...

But he only said, "You want to go to the beach, right?", and I said um, yeah, but this bus doesn't go there, right? And he said, "No, it doesn't. Next time you take the 583." And so I sat down, not sure if I was about be taken somewhere else as an annoying punishment for not knowing the bus routes, or if I would in fact end up at the beach.

I ended up at the beach, IJMuiderstand. Not much to report really, it was a very non-touristy hang along a nice sandy walking beach (not too many rocks or broken clamshells to wince about), the water actually looked inviting, the shoreline not as development-free as Castricum for instance, but most of the ugliness was concentrated in a single clot that was back from the water a bit, so you didn't really see it unless you looked for it or your head was just swiveling around willy-nilly.

Anyway, that was last Thursday. Yesterday, I tried a repeat and ended up with no psychotic IJMuiderstand busses stopping at my stop. So after about an hour of alternately waiting and ducking into a shoarma place for cold water (the buses only come every 30 minutes), I broke down (crying*) and got on a Zandvoort bus, because one would swing by every 15 minutes and it was hot hot hot outside and my beach afternoon was melting away into a beachless pile of busstop sweltering nothingness.

* not really.

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It's interesting to eat in these small beach towns, or any small town, because while on one hand there can be less variety because of the reduced number of suppliers that care about servicing less-central, smaller markets...this same remoteness means that there are almost always local/regional food oddities that never make it to your nearest bustling metropolis.

Thankfully, this was exactly the situation in Zandvoort: every fish cart/truck guy looked like he bought his catch from the same place...I mean everything looked exactly the same from stand to stand. On the upside, there were some liberties being taken with the standard Amsterdam viswinkel offerings of kibbeling and lekkerbekjes.

For example: deep-fried surimi flakes. I didn't have a camera with me, and searching Google and Flickr leads me to believe this is rather rare, so I guess I'll have to go back and take a picture. These seaside fish trucks seem to treat their fried fish like belgian frites: fry them once early in the day to get the actual cooking done, and then throughout the day briefly fry them again to order.

The surimiflakes. You may already know this, but to distinguish between these and the silo-shaped cylinders you usually see: surimiflakes are roughly the same size, but are cut roughly and asymmetrically so that they appear more natural and less like they came out of a tube:


(surimi photo removed out of respect to people who love taking awful photos of surimi).

The deep-fried version were dipped in a very thin, very light batter, just like most fried Dutch fish...the coating is barely there. They're then sprinkled with viskruiden (fish seasoning), which I haven't fully researched yet, but it seems like it's usually a mix of dill, thyme, paprika, coriander, bay leaves, and juniper berries. Pretty sure it usually has E621/MSG in it, though...it's got that taste, which I don't necessarily mean in a bad way at all. Anyway, these crabby fries are served with your choice of sauce: ravigotte, (tartar sauce), knoflook (creamy garlic), or cocktail (also called whiskysaus, something like Thousand Island, but mmm not really). These sauces are kind of worth a post in their own right, not because they're delicious, but because as Vincent Vega said, "They fucking drown 'em in that shit" over here like they do with mayonnaise, and they're everywhere. I went with cocktail.

The results: well....I like surimi, as I've mentioned. And I liked this: something happens to the already semi-alien texture during the frying process and it becomes almost glutinous, retaining the slight chew of unfried surimi, but with an extra softness that is something like luxurious, plus an extra-crispy outside. There's also a serious note of cognitive dissonance, as with deep-fried ice cream maybe...you're just not used to eating this substance warm. But it was, overall, totally interesting and close to great. They also had some other status quo-challenging items which I'll hopefully have pictures of very soon. By the way, the vendor of these wacky snacks is Boudewjn's Visservice, and this is actually what it looks like at the fish stand:


(broken link)

It's going to take some getting used to, this European casual nudity.

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* I know this is not a roundhouse kick. I just don't know the names of any other kicks.

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injured.

Yesterday (Tuesday?) at about 7am outside a German gas station, I said, "This is the most tired I have ever been in my entire life," and not only was I not exaggerating in the least, but that feeling was immediately seconded and very probably thirded, which I probably dozed off during.

Should it take 30 sleepless hours to get from Nickelsdorf, Austria, to Amsterdam, The Netherlands? The easy answer is: it should not take 30 sleepless hours to get anywhere, a formula whose potency is increased exponentially by the number of preceding days (4) that were very nearly sleepless as well. It doesn't matter how wonderful the people you are trapped in a large yellow van with are (How's my English?), 30 hours is about twice too long.

All I really have to add at this point is... no matter how much you love and trust the driver, not only as a driver but as a human in general, no matter what his reputation for indestructibility, no matter how many times he has managed to put diesel gas in his diesel gas tank (rather than non-diesel petrol, which apparently makes the van stop working after awhile) with the correct amount of sleeplessness, he too can fail.

Quit your crying, O'neill would say. He's right. It was an excellent (4-, no, 5-day) weekend that was so exhaustingly bittersweet that the whole thing literally seems like an dream, emotionally vivid, visually hazy, and resonantly powerful in ways that somehow real life is usually amazingly not.

Really? Maybe that's a bit much. But the reality is so little less true than the above that it's not worth the effort to re-write it. Good eating (a post on wiener schnitzel and goulash is forthcoming), good wine, and of course, no sleep. And good people, 100% Jumbo-Style All Night Long People, the best. Is there a point to all this? Yes. I won't be posting until I've recovered somewhat. See you in a bit.

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expiring, mine.

I think my cooking might be getting better, I don't remember this ever being as good as it just was. Plus, the way I did it tonight was simpler and easier than the Bayona recipe. Secrets: longer cooking times for onions and kraut (20 minutes?), lots of black pepper, beer instead of wine, and the only spices involved are generous amounts of thyme, juniper, and caraway. Salmon sauteed in butter then placed on already-caramelized onions and beer-soaked kraut. Skillet into the oven for 10 minutes.

Or...maybe it wasn't the recipe changes. My sauerkraut expired a month ago. Which raises the question exactly when does "expired" sauerkraut become inedible or dangerous.

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haarlemmerstraat new food fair.

Hmm, this looks interesting, but maybe because I'm remembering how it's done on the Zeedijk: totally without pretension. Worrisome is the proclamation that the Haarlemmerstraat/dijk is the "best street for eating in Amsterdam".

This may actually be true, but the fact that they're marketing it that way makes me think that prices will begin to reflect that self-assessment. Maybe not.

Is it in fact the best eating street in the city? Who are the other contenders:

1) Zeedijk
2) Albert Cuypstraat
3) Dappermarkt
4) Kinkerstraat/Jan Pieter Heijestraat/Ten Katemarkt
5) Utrechtsestraat
6) Nine Streets

What does the Haarlemmerstraat offer that these others don't? Other than authentic Spanish and Portugese food. There are two average cheese shops. Three pretty good bakeries (a high concentration for an Amsterdam street). One really excellent fishmonger place. No Indonesian or Surinamese takeaways. Three chocolatiers. Not a lot of "real" dinner restaurants that aren't Indian or pizza.

Is it strange that most of these streets have their own website? Do most streets have their own websites these days?

muy bonito: part deux.

So, on my way down the Haarlemmerstraat to the gym today (good boy!), I was walking past Meeuwig & Zn., and I had some sort of xtra-sensory twitch that told me that they stocked one of Mr. Rosengarten's top-shelf tunas. Actually I knew this because I'd been in there on Thursday buying stuff for that dinner party, and when I saw the Great Tuna Taste-Off (which this post assumes you've examined), I knew one of the brand names rang a little mental ding-a-ling but couldn't 'member whichie one.

Turns out it was Ortiz, who came in 4th place in the Ventresca tasting, and 1st place in Rosengarten's olive oil tasting (Google reveals that Ortiz also took first, second, and third place in a Cook's Illustrated tuna tasting). Meeuwig & Zn. had 7 different Ortiz products, and I marshalled every functioning brain cell I had in an attempt to remember which product he'd tasted.

As Eddie the Dane would've said, turns out I was half-smart: I got the right Ventresca, but I got the wrong Atun Claro...this one's not actually bonito del norte (light), it's albacore (white). Here's a rather half-assed breakdown of tuna varieties from the Palm Beach Daily News.

Anyway, I'm going to try not to further geek out with excessive, florid tasting notes or anything, but I will try to pinpoint what's so different about this stuff. First of all, they both strike a crushing deathblow to my Dani Bonito del Norte that I was so in love with yesterday. I'm still so in love with it, actually, because it's half the price of the Ortiz Atun Claro stuff, and one-fifth the price of the Ortiz Ventresca. And I can get it right downstairs at the Turkish place.

Right. The first thing I opened was not actually either of these, it was a tin of sardines in olive oil made by a man named Lou Ferrigno. Why would I trust the deaf, bodybuilding, former Incredible Hulk to deliver a superior sardine? In retrospect, good question. It was the one (of a possible three) the sales guy suggested. In his defense, he said he'd never tried it but that it was "popular". Not in this house it wasn't. I expected a cleaner, fresher aroma and taste from a top-shelf sardine (3 euro per tin), but the best thing about the scent here was that it smelled like good extra-virgin olive oil.

Good olive oil in which three very average-smelling sardines sat. The Moroccan brand I normally buy, Tagine, is far superior, definitely in scent, but even more so in texture...the Ferrignade were worryingly soft. Me no like. Into the trash. This made me a bit nervous about my own imminent personal Tuna Taste-Off. Had I just spent 13 euro on mushy, fishy filth muck?

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I had zero to worry about. The Atun Claro was first, and...it just looks good. Mara has the camera with her, so I'm left with only a scanner to document this...and while it worked fine with the packaging, I'm just sure that putting the actual tuna in the scanner would've caused problems. I'm no techie, though, so what do I know: send me your tuna/scanner stories in the comments.

So, Atun Claro. It was as much better than the Dani bonito (I just said this out loud. You try it. Dani bonito.) as the Dani bonito was better than the regular ol' grocery store tuna (UPDATE: after re-tasting the Dani against the Ortiz, I have to scale this back a little bit. Where the Ortiz really beats it is: in elegance [you would immediately guess that the Dani stuff is not freshly cooked tuna, good as it is]; texture [the Dani is a little too firm], and complexity [the Ortiz is ready to serve, whereas you'll want to do something to the Dani because it still seems like tinned tuna]).

Even more so than the Dani product, there's nothing canned-tasting or generically "fishy" about it at all. The cats didn't even come snooping around after I popped the top, and that never happens with grocery store tuna. The Atun Claro tastes like a fully-cooked fresh tuna steak, but with none of the unpleasantness that that connotes: board-stiff, bone-dry, chewing forever, a challenging swallow, etc. The olive oil is so fundamentally integrated with the fish that, while it's still very firm, it's completely juicy and full of olive-oily goodness. And it's salted perfectly, on the aggressive side of moderate. Great stuff.

OK. I thought, how much different can the Ventresca be? The good news is, it doesn't proportionally extend the Atun Claro: Dani Bonito: BumbleBee trend. This is good news because I can't afford to buy it very often. It is, however, even more refined and more like a finished dish than the Atun Claro. Most of this has to do with its startling appearance (not my photo, totally stolen):










So it's these long, thin strips of firm, white tuna belly...perfect for artfully fanning across a plate for an appetizer. The above photo is of course not what they look like when they come out of the can, this is a picture of an Argentinian recipe: ventresca on a sandwich with red peppers, olives, garlic, and vinegar...sounds devastating. But I just ate them out of the can, unadorned, and it's like Rosengarten says, it's not really like anything else. The texture is much more like salmon than any tuna I know, firm and silky (Penthouse Forum?) without really flaking at all, and the taste is sweet and mild, with just the tiniest tang of what you think of when you hear the words "fully-cooked tuna steak".

Whew, that was hard work. I'm no food writer, obvs. I just had to follow this Dani Bonito thing to its logical conclusion. Which I think I've done. I'll probably end up renting Romancing the Stone, or Get Shorty, or something else he was in, and then trying some more fancy tuna brands at some point and documenting their supple breasts and heaving thighs, so don't be surprised if we see a Chapter Three, hookas.

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THE USUAL HEAVILY PARENTHESIZED UPDATE: I had the rest of the Atun Claro for breakfast, and in this non-gourmet context (coming out of the refrigerator), to my tastes, it was every bit as enjoyable as the ventresca (although I couldn't do a direct comparison because the ventresca was, well...gone), although the ventresca is definitely prettier to look at. I'm sure that the oil had...emulsified? is that what olive oil does is the fridge? In any case, I think that this actually had a weirdly positive effect on the texture. It was kind of...luscious. Call El Bulli. Do they serve refrigerated oil dishes yet? Anyway, I had some of this by itself, and then with my new BFF, toasted blanched almonds, golden raisins, and mint leaves. Simply great. Pitts (code name for dear Mother): buy some now.

SOURCES: It would be remiss of me to mention Meeuwig & Zn., where I very rarely shop, and not mention Hollandaluz, which is right across the street from Meeuwig, and where I shop at least once a week, three times a week if I'm lucky. In fact, I don't know why I haven't tried any of Hollandaluz's tunas...I guess I never get any farther than the refrigerator full of home-made albondigas, aioli, gazpacho, and paella. Or the warmer full of empanadas, croquetas, morcillo (um...blood sausage), and (Spanish) tortillas. Or the counter where they sell (among others) a perfect bocadillo of membrillo (quince paste) and manchego on crusty, freshly baked bread. OK, so tht's why.

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Prices:

Ortiz Ventresca de Bonito del Norte €7,50 for 110 grams.
Ortiz Atun Claro €5,50 for 250 grams.
Dani Bonito del Norte €1,50 for 110 grams.

for comparison's sake:

John West (the StarKist/Bumblebee of Holland) €1,17 for 200 grams.

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recipe lab: imagine...a blueberry.

Imagine...a blueberry.
Now....imagine it some more.
I never did like you.

-Terrill Soules.


File this post under work-in-progress. Aren't they all. Had one of my infrequent duck-eating experiences last night. The preparation was simple (briefly saute 1 cm-thick duck breast slices in a very hot pan to get some browning; add chicken or ideally duck stock, a couple splashes red wine vinegar, and a little cassis; reduce for 10 minutes or so, add chopped mint and whole blueberries, I believe), while the results were nearly amazing, definitely in a way that other birds never are for me. But I don't really want to start eating duck, do I? My little duck friends at the park would look at me differently, and they way they currently look at me is so cute that I don't think I'm ready to change our relationship. So I thought maybe I'd consider a non-duck version of a savory blueberry dish. By the way, here's a nice Slate article on the magic of a warm blueberry.

After poking about on Epicurious and Foodtv for non-dessert blueberry recipes, I entered all of the ingredient lists into the massively malfunctioning computer that is my brain, and threw out the obvious bonehead plays. While it's nothing at all like last night's duck (couldn't really find a featured player), here's one possible outcome. This might be hard to fully recreate since I can't remember if you can readily find ginger syrup in America. I imagine not, but reg'l'r ol' sugar'll do right fine.

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field greens with green apple, gingered almonds, feta, and blueberries.

two big healthy handfuls of young leafy greens
1/2 to 1 granny smith apple, chopped
1/2 to 1 red onion, thinly sliced
up to a cup of blanched almonds, lightly toasted and salted
you could also sub pecans for some or all of the almonds
1 to 2 tbsp ginger syrup (gemberstroop), or some darker sugar (palm, cane, etc.)

3/4 cup mild feta, chopped in 1cm cubes
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

1/8 cup walnut oil
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/8 cup maple syrup

1 to 2 tbsp fresh mint, chopped fine
salt and pepper

Put the greens in a bowl. Toss with the onion and apple. Take the feta cubes and roll them in the thyme leaves to sparsley coat. You can also buy feta that already comes this way, that might be smarter/easier but the pre-herbed stuff always seems harsher. Add the feta to the bowl with the greens.

Make dressing: whisk together the walnut oil, vinegar, and maple syrup. Set aside.

Heat a dry saute pan on medium-low. Add the almonds/pecans and the ginger syrup or sugar, stirring constantly until the syrup or sugar dissolves and the nuts are caramelized and lightly crunchy. Add the nuts to the salad bowl. Sprinkle mint on top. Mix everything around a little and add dressing. Serves 2-4.

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This could also have gone the direction of a blueberry chutney (onions, thyme, balsamic, pecans, maple syrup) over a nice soft goat cheese and greens. Which is still a salad, really, isn't it. A bacon-eating person could probably add a little chipotle and a little bacon to this, replace the balsamic with cider vinegar, and have them a real nice carnivorous moment.

muy bonito! part one.

I'm talking about fish, see? I now understand seafood in cans.

I've been eating a lot of seafood in cans lately, mostly tuna and sardines, and here I wanted to try and just verify that I'm buying the very best I can afford, because it's just great already.

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Instead of doing my own taste-test research, I found out that David Rosengarten conducted "The Great Tuna Taste-Off" after being sucked into the same vortex of wonderfulness in which I found myself after eating European tinned tuna. I'll quote a little bit here:

"...I must confess: it took me a while to put canned tuna on my personal hoo-hah list. That's because the supermarket tuna I grew up with-the main ingredient in my beloved tuna-salad sandwiches-was doing the job perfectly well for me. Bumble Bee solid white in oil, some mayo, coupla slices of white bread-who needed something better in 1977? This stuff wouldn't have won any prizes in gastronomic competitions, but it did its job extremely well.Then came the Great Supermarket Tuna Quality Decline. I'm not sure when it began, exactly, and why. It may have had something to do with the passion for water-packed tuna that transformed the industry about 15 years ago....Apparently, there are a lot of Americans these days willing to buy tuna cans at the supermarket that contain muddy, gritty, falling-apart bits of fishy fish, tuna that I think would be hard to distinguish from cat food in a blind tasting. Firm-textured, mild-and-buttery hunks of tuna in supermarket cans are nothing but pure nostalgia now."

Right, that's the tuna I grew up with, the post-1977 tuna. I never thought anything was wrong with it until I lived in Italy and had "tuna salads" that redefined the name.

So, Rosengarten tests 200 tins/jars of tuna and concludes:

"Did I find tuna that replaces my beloved Bumble Bee of old for the preparation of tuna salad? Yes I did, to be sure. What I've found, in fact, in that style, is even better than Bumble Bee ever was. But there's more. The most important thing is that I found canned tuna out there that goes beyond, that I would never, ever use in tuna salad-canned tuna so good that you'd be crazy to do much to it at all, other than take it out of the can."

I haven't really had any of the latter category yet...but my Dani Bonito del Norte (Spanish, packed in olive oil, at 1 euro 50 per tin) is a huge step in the right direction. I can't stop eating it. Here's the salad that I've been eating at least twice a day lately:

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bonito del norte with sweet onions and mint

1 135g tin of bonito del norte, drained (not rinsed)
1/2 large sweet onion, coarsley chopped
1/2 cup toasted almonds, pistachios, or hazelnuts
1/2 cup currants or golden raisins
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
as much fresh mint as you'd like, I like about 2 tbsp.

Mix everything together. Serves 1.

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It's just horn-tootingly addictive. And, it's less than 300 calories, full of heart-healthy nuts, olive oil, you get it. I made two rather complicated things for a dinner party last night, and I really really should've just made this and saved myself a few hours in the kitchen.

By the way, what is bonito del norte? Far as I can tell it's maybe a breed of tuna that swims near the shore off northern Spain? As far as I know, they're line-caught, dolphin-safe, etc. They may be overfished, in which case the world has my apologies. I'm also not eating very locally, am I. My shame almost outweighs my desire for another bite of this salad. C'mon, I'll do other things right, I promise.

Part Two (fingers crossed): Building a Better Sardine.

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disillusionment lite.

Don't you hate that moment when someone you think you sort of like, at least from initial or casual impressions, says or does something that you not only kind of disagree with, but more importantly upon digging a little deeper, you find their justifications for their position to be rather unconsidered, selfish, or generally dismissive, and you kind of slump your shoulders and move on with your life because you know that if you were passionate about this issue, that any discussion with them about it would lead to an argument that they wouldn't be willing to lose?

Luckily I'm not a passionate vegetarian. Or even actually a vegetarian. In weather news: the citizens of Amsterdam are melting. It was 93F here yesterday and while that's nothing like Phoenix or Atlanta summer weather...we doan got A/C mang. And in a 4th-floor apartment, ooooh-weee! It was too hot to eat. Except for the Maoz Salad Box that I had before seeing United 93 (which I did because I couldn't think of anywhere colder than a movie theatre). Is it me, or is their quality slipping a little bit? Maybe it was the heat (no A/C in Maoz either), but their salads/toppings seemed less perky than usual. Well, everything all over the whole city was less perky than usual. And no I'm not even talking about that. It was too hot to look, that's how hot it was.

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al falfa.

Hoo-wee, that's a good one. It was either that or a Little Rascals reference, and I never really understood the appeal of those fuckers frankly.

From time to time I like to ask myself a question in the form of a post. And then, eventually, I get around to answering it. It would be nice if someone else answered the questions for me, but that means that someone other than my mother would have to be reading this blog. Which reminds me: why doesn't she ever comment? I hope she's OK. I should probably call. Maybe she's done taking care of me. Maybe she's moved on, found some other young boy to answer blog questions in the form of a post for.

OK. For now, my question is: why do we eat alfalfa sprouts? And, for extra credit, why don't we eat grown-up alfalfa?

I have an inkling of why we eat the sprouts. They're good for you. But the taste is still very...healthy. As in something you'd never be served at say The French Laundry. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this. The taste reminds me personally of what that fake easter basket grass looks like it tastes like.

I've also got an idea of why we don't eat adult alfalfa. If the kids don't taste good, the parents probably taste worse. At least that's what my life experience tells me. OK, research to follow, eventually. Or some kind soul (this includes you Mom) could pony up and answer it for me. Some healthy person, I bet.

UPDATE: My dear, sweet, wonderful mother has put her undervalued 2 cents in, without even having seen the bait-concentrated version of this post:

"Your Mama usually only knows the medical detail of most things. Alfalfa is an ancient treatment for the ill and poorly nutritoned because it stimulates appetite and it aids in digestion. It also can be used topically to heal wounds and for menses discomfort. Oh, also the ashes of alfalfa are 99% calcium. Adult spouts are way too potent, you may become a new super hero strain."

"Menses?" I'm kidding, she's a nurse. In all seriousness, thanks, Barbie.

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recipe testing: socca/farinata.

I've posted about besan, or chickpea flour, or kikkererwtenmeel, before, but not in any useful detail. I've been going through periods where I cook with it quite a bit and then give up on it because it takes too much attention to detail (or so I thought...keep reading), and well...I'm la-zy.

In my defense, there are a couple of issues with it: it doesn't really operate much like flour during the cooking process, for starters. It acts like mashed beans. That means it behaves badly in the pan, falls apart during flipping, it crusts up on the outside while remaining uncooked on the inside, it doesn't do its homework, stays out late without calling, etc.

Secondly, it needs to be browned perfectly in order for things to taste right. If you don't brown it, it tastes like you ground up uncooked chickpeas and added water to them, and that tastes even worse than it sounds.

If you're going to be trying crepes or anything that doesn't involve really high cooking temperatures, in order to bypass the potential uncooked grossness you might want to consider toasting the chickpea flour before you even add water to it. And as you know, toasting things requires a close eye on the stove so you don't f*ck it up, and I am bad at the close eye on the stove bit.

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Why are we even cooking with it again? Because it's a very nutritious flour-like medium that tastes very nice when prepared carefully, which makes it appropriate for breading things you're frying, so you end up with a crunchy bhaji- or pakora-type device (why are all of the best-looking besan recipes coming from NZ and Australia?), or you can make kofta with it which are also tasty and nutritionally valorous. It's basically a good wheat flour substitute: better nutrition profile and more interesting taste.

Here's an Australian article that talks about how making socca (French/Italian chickpea flour pizzas. Well, socca in France, but farinata in Italy, and they're called something else in Tuscany which escapes me now, something to do with ceci...anyone?) is "foolproof." This makes me the perfect test subject.

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socca.

1 cup besan/chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
lots of freshly cracked black pepper, at least 1 tsp, up to 2 tsp
1 cup lukewarm water
5-6 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large onion, chopped, optional
1 tsp, up to 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced, optional

Preheat oven to 230C. Put a non-stick pizza pan in the oven. Put chickpea flour in bowl, add salt and pepper, then slowly add 1 cup lukewarm water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Stir in 2 tbsp of the olive oil. Cover, and let sit while oven heats, or as long as 12 hours. Batter should be about the consistency of cream. If using onion and rosemary, stir them into batter. Pour 2 tbsp oil into the heated pan, and swirl to cover pan evenly. Pour in batter, and bake 12 to 15 minutes, or until firm and edges set. Heat broiler, and brush top of socca with 1 or 2 tbsp oil if it looks dry. Set socca just below broiler, just long enough to brown it in spots. Cut into wedges and serve hot, or at least warm.


UPDATE: I'm making it for breakfast the next day it turns out, as I do not have any other appropriate food in the house. I even went to the grocery store yesterday. Anyway, I'll let you know what happens. I forgot to highlight the article author's big tips: 1) use lots of freshly ground pepper. And 2) sift your chickpea flour. I did do number 1...50 grinds. I did not do number 2 (titter).

AND: Foolproof and awesome is the verdict. Make sure you add lots of pepper. Make sure you get it as brown as possible. And lots of olive oil. And salt. And turn up your oven as high as it will go (well, unless you've got a serious oven. mine only goes to 260C), the browner the better, think falafel brown. Really tasty. Yay! For those of you counting these things, chickpea flour has about 390 kcal per 100g, which is a little more than a cup. The problem in this recipe would be the olive oil, which is 120kcal per tbsp and I used 5. Which makes this socca 1000kcal, which means I should not eat the whole thing.

LASTLY: Tasty Bites, which is new to me, has a very nice socca post (or three) that links to socca recipes on four of my regular reads, TSOGB, Beyond Salmon, Traveler's Lunchbox, and In Praise of Sardines....I'll just let you follow her links to the socca posts.

ADDENDUM: Buy a non-stick pizza pan if you don't have one. My cheapo one has not been cutting it in the "successfully getting the socca off the pan" department.

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ouch.

"When I buy cookies I eat just four and throw the rest away. But first I spray them with Raid so I won't dig them out of the garbage later. Be careful, though, because that Raid really doesn't taste that bad (Janette Barber)."

I'm sorry to say that I'm in touch with this emotion. I stole the quote from Erin Eats, who has a nice gyoza recipe here, which is how I found her.

okonomiyaki.

You are looking at my number-one food discovery of 2006. Maybe even 2005. I just sat here for 90 seconds trying to describe what influences it combines, but it's thoroughly bizarre in composition and execution and totally fantastic on the ol' tongue. You'll usually see it referred to as "Japanese pizza", but it's nothing like that at all, except in how it fits in to people's eating habits: it's a street food, or at least extremely casual dining. It's really just a big-ass savory pancake. With mayonnaise and seaweed. Do NOT let those words deter you.

You can see how to make the one pictured above for now...and hopefully I'll add my scintillating tale of how I came to meet this thing eventually.

But until then...I'll send you directly to Amsterdam's only okonomiyaki restaurant, Japanese Pancake World, where the so so nice chefs will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about it, including the secret of the double-spatula flip, and the mushroom press. Really! The coolest thing was coming home from JPW and trying to make my own the next day, and it was 8/10ths as good as theirs. So they're not so tough to make. Nonetheless, go there, now....they're great people. It's in the Jordaan. I'm not kidding! Go!

UPDATE: Well, in co-enthusing with VikingChild about okonomiyaki (recipe here), the question of their provenance came up, and I thought I had the answer, but it turns out that it's nestled right in the Japanese Pancake World website. I'll quote for you here:

Sometime in Taisho-era (1912 - 1926), a wave of Westernisation finally reached the kitchen of the Japanese general public. Worcester sauce came into Japan around this time, and was embraced by the Japanese. Thick pancakes from Meiji-era were touched-up with worcester sauce to give them a Western flair. Garnished with a generous portion of scallion, people fondly referred to this new style of pancake as Issen Yoshoku (one-pence Western food) or Negi-yaki.
In the late 40's, Japan was still recovering from the aftermath of World War II. Food was scarce and people turned to Negi-yaki, a snack, to fill their empty stomachs. Particularly in Hiroshima, destroyed by the atomic bomb, life was harsh. Food distributed via rations was never enough to save the people from hunger. Kitchen appliances had been long confiscated by the government for manufacturing weapons. Hiroshima citizens picked up metallic sheets from the ruins and baked these wafer-thin pancakes to survive. In an effort to ease their hunger, people stuffed their pancakes with as much chopped cabbage as their make-shift-back-yard-farm permitted. And thus was born the first "Hiroshima-yaki."

And then, people in different regions started making them however they wanted to. "Okonomi" means "as you like", so then you get okonomi-yaki, or "cook as you like". OK, when do we eat?

ANOTHER UPDATE: One thing that the JPW had that I didn't was real okonomiyaki sauce, specifically made for it. I'd read that you can use ton-katsu sauce, I myself had used oyster sauce with a little worcestershire to thin....but apparently these Fujii characters make the real thing. I'm sure they're not alone, but I'm almost sure this is the brand the JPW chef used. So I'm on the lookout.

FINAL FRIGGING UPDATE: Found it. That didn't take long at all...walking to the gym I stopped in the hideously expensive Tampopo, and they had Bulldog brand okonomiyaki sauce. For 8 euro. Jesus, people, I've had a retail shop in Amsterdam, I know it's hard to make it work selling low-margin stuff, especially imports (my low-margin import item was CDs...do you know how many Nurse With Wound and AMM CDs you have to sell every day to pay your rent? you don't want to know. long live the MP3), but their prices are a good 50% higher than those of the mighty and excellent in every way Toko Dun Yong from my old 'hood.

Yes, I'm sure that Tampopo's rent is a good 50% higher than Toko Dun Yong's as well, but that's their own fault for buying into the Haarlemmerstraat foodie/babyville hype. I'm not trying to be mean, because they seem like nice people, but prices in this city are high enough without another flashy new store selling artificially expensive things you can already get somewhere else for cheaper. I get annoyed every time I walk by Tampopo. Is that wrong? Probably, but they're emblematic of a larger problem. Anyway, I didn't buy it, I'll make my own. Recipe forthcoming. (UPDATE: Tampopo went out of business in 2010, I never did really stop having very conflicting but mostly negative feelings about it, sorry!!!).

JEEZUS: I am so done with this post. I won't be posting a recipe for okonomiyaki sauce, because every recipe for it that I've found looks terribly boring: essentially ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, mirin, and soy sauce. Probably better off with my oyster and Worcestershire mix or ton-katsu sauce. Case closed. Please.

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flora, fauna, whatnot.

I know my limits. Or I thought I did. I'm a really open-minded eater and taster, and there are very few foods which I absolutely will not eat. In fact, I can't think of one. I even almost enjoy durian, although every time is like the first time...it's touch and go. But I mostly enjoy it.

Oooh, I just thought of something I can't eat...my Nan's liver + onions, rest her soul, is something that is talked about to this day in my family for the waves of disorientation and hallucinogenic revulsion that overtook us all that fateful day she set it before us at the table.

I can still smell it, it's...it's...like a combination of that ruining-a-pan-by-continuing-to-boil-it-after-the-water's-gone smell + someone with extremely bad breath flossing for the first time in a long time + a very hot, nearly melting rubber garbage can. Maybe she just left a spatula in an empty saucepan on a burner. I don't know.

Anyway, I don't think I'd eat that these days. I also can't eat natto or any seriously fucked-up fermented Asian trickery. I'm making a distinction here between "edible" fermented Asian products (I eat miso often and happily; fermented black soybeans, rinsed and used in sauces, definitely; fermented shrimp pastes like gkapbi, trassie, belachan...yes please) , which I can eat and often do with great relish, and "gross" fermented Asian products.

I can only name one gross fermented Asian product, and that's natto. I don't think I can say anything about natto that hasn't been said better by Steve over at The Sneeze. For example:

"I dared to lift the lid, which made me regret that I needed to breathe. The natto was coated in some kind of sick slime and had the complex yet playful aroma of a dumpster in July. Actually, the little pile inside looked kinda like baked beans. It also smelled kinda like baked beans. If they were baked in the filthy heat of Satan's asshole."

Right. So go there if you're "hungry" for more.

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So, the gross Asian products I cannot name are relatively numerous, and for many years I seemed to buy one about once a month or so. I cook a lot of Asian food, and when I would go to my local Asian grocer, which is often, I would almost always grab one or two things I'd never tried before. While I did find plenty of great things like furikake, basil seed and grass jelly drinks, sweet peanut congee, bubble tea (before it was called bubble tea)...I also found stuff that made us leave the house after I opened the package.

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Where is this entry going? Why am I endlessly boasting about the resilience of my palate? I'll tell you. Zuurkoolsap. Sauerkraut juice. I've been drinking it. Why? Let me let Reuters Health tell you:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Fermented cabbage--otherwise known as sauerkraut--could be even healthier to eat than raw or cooked cabbage, Finnish researchers report.
The investigators found that fermenting cabbage produced a number of different compounds, known as isothiocyanates, which have been shown in test tube and animal studies to prevent the growth of cancer, especially in the breast, colon, lung and liver. Isothiocyanates are found in many foods, including cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and brussels sprouts, and wasabi, a pungent Japanese condiment.
Whether isothiocyanates have similar effects in humans, however, is not clear.
In the current study in the October 23rd issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers analyzed compounds in white cabbage that had been fermented to sauerkraut. Raw cabbage is rich in glucosinolates, another class of cancer-fighting compounds.
According to their experiment, the fermentation process breaks glucosinolate down into isothiocynates and other compounds that may fight cancer. Previous studies have found that isothiocyanates encourage precancerous cells in the digestive system to self-destruct, a process known as apoptosis.
"Our study implies that fermented cabbage can be a good source of plant-derived bioactive compounds such as breakdown products of glucosinolates," Dr. Eeva-Liisa Ryhanen, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.
"Some of these compounds have shown anticarcinogenic effects in vivo in animal models. To show the anticarcinogenic effects of sauerkraut in humans, clinical studies (in humans) are required," added Ryhanen, from MTT Agrifood Research Finland in Jokioinen.
She said the research team is now investigating ways to optimize the fermentation process so that sauerkraut could be even healthier.

Sounds good, right? This camper needs all the anti-cancer help he can git. So, I bought some zuurkoolsap and (thankfully) refrigerated it before trying it. The taste...how to describe the taste. It's kind of like drinking the juice from a can of sauerkraut. Would anyone really do that? I like sauerkraut, but I never really imagined it without the cabbage. Anyway, I'd kind of compare it, not in taste, but in effect, to...grinding a cut lemon into your eye? Licking a poisonous tree frog? Downing a large shot of warm gin?

I know this sounds like a negative review. But as I was finishing that last sentence I was honestly just thinking about having another little glass of it.

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use your imagination.

Well, it's been 6 months and I think I'm ready to try it again. Yep, I'm finally going to finish that ijskruid post.

Not really. I am going to start posting regularly here. I stopped for a lot of reasons, and just lately I've been writing about food again, but with lots of detail about boring things like nutrition and calories, as I am officially...on a diet. As in keeping track of what I eat.

And...I'm amazed. I always thought I had a pretty good idea of how many calories I was consuming and how well I was eating, but now that I'm being hardcore about it, I realize that I was snacking a whole bunch. Like constantly, hoor (that's Dutch for, among other things, "y'know"). Not on truly evil foods, but you know, calories are calories. And, I'm a terrible, terrible night eater. Incorrigible. Well, hopefully not. But Mara's parents call me Ratboy, as in, "looks like we've got rats or something, honey...all the leftovers are gone."

So...I'm not going to thrill you with my calorie counts here. In fact, I'm not going to thrill you with anything just yet...I was just looking at my food journal and I have just been eating like a complete moron. It's because Mara is away in Scotland for two months...so I have no one to cook for, so I'm not cooking. I'm opening cans and poking shrink wrap. Again, pretty healthy food (smoked salmon, mackerel, the usual fishy suspects; avocado; nuts; bulgur; spinach; tofu; sauerkraut juice [seriously...i'll explain], and veggie burgers pretty much sums it up), but jeez, dude...artless.

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zeekraal & ijskruid.

Since, as far as I can tell, this site is solely for my personal documentation/research (and occasional communication with my dear mother), one liberty I like to take here is the posting of entries before they're complete. Should the former condition change, I'll do something about the latter. But until then...we have entries like the following.

To wit: I'm dismayed by my continuing surprise over the number of things that I haven't expected since I've moved here. What I'm saying is that I should at least be used to being surprised. For example, why am I surprised that there are completely foreign edible plants sold in supermarkets here? Not "foreign" as in "not domestic", "foreign" as in "alien and unfamiliar". I mean, some cities you'd expect it: Penang, sure--strange fruit, so to speak. Bogota? Yes. Huge, mutant bananas. Amsterdam? Not unless you mean alien tubers.

But lo: this summer I peeped for the first time (more than peeped, actually...I bit them, repeatedly and without mercy) two alluring "water vegetables" that have been eaten here for ages. The first, listed in my neighborhood organic winkel as ijskruid, is proving difficult to research, in terms of its edible history. Indeed, when I bought it, I asked the girl behind the counter how you normally prepare it (if i can find a picture of it, you'll see why it wasn't immediately obvious), and she said she'd never eaten it or (rather necessarily) cooked it, and asked her bosslady to weigh in on the matter. She told me "you can eat it as a salad item or lightly saute it."

I, being me, did neither. What I did do was interesting, quite nearly good, and I will one day reveal what transpired in the kitchen that day if I ever come back to finish this post. We took pictures of it before it was dismantled and et: it looks vaguely like something Scotty would put in the Enterprise's engine to make it run. I say this as a "non-Trekkie".

I know I always say this: part two to follow. What I don't always say is: right now, bitch!!! Take that. I'm kidding. Part two is a myth.

returnimator ii: ha kao soup.

2005-06 holidays are proving tenacious, I can't seem to return to action. Mostly, I'se just been real biddy. And since the parentals left after xmas, I haven't really done too much crafty cooking, it's mostly been serious comfort food: Roughly 86% of January dinners have involved soup, and 75% (not statistically accurate) of those have revolved around an initially improvised and totally inauthentic and non-vegetarian ha kauw soup (ha kauw being a european spelling of ha kao I imagine, which are chinese shrimp dumplings): saute equal measures finely chopped leeks, scallions, red bell pepper, onion, and perhaps a fresh green bean or two in a tbsp or two of light sesame oil for a couple minutes until nicely browned, and then add equal parts chicken broth and clam broth (maybe a half-cup or so of each) until you've got enough broth to cover your sauteed vegetables plus eight shrimp dumplings (ha kauw). Bring to a simmer, add dumplings and a handful of bean sprouts. Let simmer while you mince as many fresh chives as you can stand, a good handful is where our tolerance is. When the dumplings are cooked through, 7-10 minutes, add the minced chives and serve. I've made it five times in the last two weeks. I'm certain you could add chiles, garlic, and/or ginger to spice it up, but we've been enjoying this version's simple, straightforward mellowness very much, a bit like an additive-free won ton soup minus the pork element. Plus shrimp dumplings! It's also good with a drop of truffle oil on top (for extra mystery!), TOTALLY turning this into a wanky fusion recipe, but....what can I say.

Anyway, since we're "moving house" over the next couple weeks, new posts will be few and far betwixt, but I'll see what I can do.

we take requests.

This is Andy's photo above.

These morbid little menus had quite an unsettling effect on me (and they also led me to someone who is obviously less disturbed by it than I am). As someone who enjoys a love-love relationship with food, it didn't really take much effort at all to imagine the annihilating poignancy/horror of planning your own last meal. Or being someone with the words "Death Row Head Chef" on your bidness card.

Consider:

1) Karl Hinze LaGrand. Two Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato sandwiches on white bread; mayonnaise; 4 fried eggs, over-easy; medium portion of hash-brown potatoes; 2 breakfast rolls; small portion of strawberry jelly. One half pint of pineapple sherbet ice cream, one 22 ounce of hot coffee, black, one medium slice of German chocolate cake with coconut-caramel icing, one 12 ounce cup of cold milk.

(note: his brother was executed 3 days later and also requested pineapple sherbet)

2) Baltazar, John. Cool Whip and cherries.

3) John George Brewer. Grilled Pork Chops with gravy; 1/4 lb. Bacon; 6 Fried breaded Shrimp; Beef Rice-a-Roni; 2-3 slices French Bread with butter; Applesauce; 2 cans Canada Dry Ginger Ale with ice; 1 slice Coconut Cream Pie; 1 pint orange juice; 1 can Chicken Noodle Soup with Crackers; 1 can Pear halves with syrup; Maxwell House Coffee with cream and sugar.

4) Chappell, William. Same meal that is served to all other offenders in the main dining room.


I could go on: the guys who requested only a pot of coffee, or water, or tea; the guy who requested 4 Rolaids (along with his meal...not just 4 Rolaids). The Arizona prisoners all requesting chile peppers. The "chewy" bacon. The "real" butter. All that fucking butter pecan ice cream.

The twist of the knife: these are just requests. They're not always granted. Oh, the humanity.

planting seeds of defilement.

According to some, that's what the (new) name of this site is doing. Not purposely or maliciously (Dear Mother, if you're reading, you know I would never willfully plant seeds of defilement, you raised me better than that), at least not that I'm aware of.

No, I just thought the phrase "vegetarian duck" was pleasantly stupid-sounding and also represented one of my veganism obstacles and so that's why I rechristened this site thusly. Regardless, I'm here to tell you that I'm increasingly finding myself to be a true convert of these centuries-old but now politically-incorrectly-monikered Asian vleesvervangers. And believe you me it's not just the savvy marketing/eye-catching packaging!!!

In fact it's almost completely a quesiton of texture variation, because their primary taste characteristic is that "they don't taste fucked up", like so many meat substitutes. Today I sauteed my frozen duck substitute with onions, ginger, shao hsing, sesame oil, hoi sin, peanuts, spinach, and scallions, and the result was tastebud transportation...to somewhere with rude service, flourescent lights, and sticky plastic menus. Basically anywhere on the Zeedijk.

Actually that's a total Amsterdam Tourist Book Food Writer Myth. I've never had anything but lovely, reassuring customer service experiences on the Zeedijk (you know, involving food...I score my crack rock at the CS and do my karaoke at home). I've never understood that whole "expect surly service" cliche that goes with our Chinatown, but maybe it's because I rarely eat at Nam Kee or New King. I do kinda really want to smack or pinch this cashier at Oriental Commodities who just oozes contempt and misery and consistently throws my receipt on the floor instead of handing it to me. Not sure how the smack/pinch would help things, but...my point is, at places like AFusion, Bird, Toko Dun Yong, Toko Joyce, Wellcome, Nyonya, Kam Yin, Hoi Tin, etc...everyone's been real sweet, much more so than your average non-Asian Amsterdam restaurant.

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Back to my mock duck. I've had a much higher proportion of positive experiences with the frozen variations vs. the canned kind, but this is maybe not surprising, as almost any canned food is inferior to the frozen version (exceptions: tuna, sardines, uh, uh...anyone? silkworm pupas?).










If you have no idea what I'm talking about with this whole Satan Duck thing, check here, or here. But don't buy the canned stuff if you can get the frozen stuff.

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no, seriously, steve...don't eat it.

Jealous of Radosh:

"...at the Fairfield, Connecticut Borders Books next week: on December 10th, come meet Sandra Lee, author of Semi-Homemade Cooking. In the words of one Amazon reviewer, 'Lee basically takes overprocessed, ridiculously expensive premade foods and arranges them into new combinations, adding the odd badly made homemade garnish or ingredient to her typical hopeless mishmash of precooked overprocessed chemical-laden garbage. She presents this as some kind of new method of cooking, when in fact it's just a combination of mental laziness and indifference to real flavour and nutrition.'"

So that's a negative review, right? Not nearly as negative as my review of this would be (my sincere apologies to you in advance...I'm sorry you had to see this):

Steve, Don't Eat It! - Silkworm Pupas.

Here's hoping for an imminent return to talking about edible food around here....

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mara's nuts.

Wintry Sunday. We're having a "Dutch study day", basically spending all day reading about two pages worth of the newspaper (this is my speed, not mara's)...and after that, you need some serious sustenance. Reading a pair of interesting articles, though, about the successes + disillusionments of Dutch-Surinamers returning to Surinam to make a new life/find their roots/try to make a difference there. Good stuff.

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salmon a la mara. 

salmon filets
grated pecorino-romano
olive oil
pine nuts
spinach
roasted red pepper

serve with: caramelized leeks with apple cider + balsamic; zucchini with almond pesto.

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bayona's salmon 'n' sauerkraut.

UPDATE: The below recipe is, mmm....flawed. So don't make it yet, I'll redo it Winter 2010.

I've been making this to great success lately, but I can never seem to find the recipe when I go looking for it. Bayona is a restaurant in New Orleans that I almost ate at back in my expense account days. I tried to get there last time I was in N.O. (1997?) but failed. Anyway, this is apparently a signature dish of theirs, and this is my modification of it:

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salmon with sauerkraut.

4 tablespoons walnut oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 carrot, peeled and julienned (I don't normally include this, but would like to)
1 bag of fresh sauerkraut (about 500 grams?), rinsed well under cold water, then drained
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup fish or vegetable stock
1/4 teaspoon juniper berries, crushed (I have yet to actually include these)
1 tbsp or more fresh thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
4 125-gram pieces salmon filet
1 teaspoon butter
1 cup additional dry white wine (for sauce)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. In a sauté pan, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and add onion and carrot slices. Toss and cook over medium heat until just wilted. Stir in sauerkraut, wine and herbs, spices and broth. Bring to a simmer, cook 5 minutes, and remove to a baking pan or casserole. Add the other 2 tablespoons olive oil to sauté pan and sear salmon pieces, serving side down, until light brown. Turn and sear the other side for 30 seconds. Remove salmon and place on top of sauerkraut in casserole. Bake in oven for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, add wine and vinegar to skillet and reduce to 1/4 of original volume; then add butter, piece by piece, whisking until sauce is creamy. Season with salt and pepper and keep warm.

To serve, divide choucroute mixture among 4 dinner plates. Top each with a salmon filet and pour sauce over. Accompany with small new potatoes sprinkled with chopped parsley.

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starting over again.

Well, it's back to the drawing board for me. I was doing so well. But what started as a short-term lapse has stretched into a few weeks of not-so-great eating. Needless to say, the team and its supporters are all a bit disappointed...but all there is to do is to start over again, right? Your condolences are appreciated.

skin and bones.

Making decipherable gang signs is harder than it looks without the benefit of muscles, tendons, skin, and all of those other little "helping parts" we take for granted every day.

That's me on the right, and that is my rather awesome homemade scythe (made by Mara, not me) that appears to be sticking out of my man's fontanelle. Potentially more detail about this pic here.

In nutritionland...well, nothing very good to report. Cholesterol retest has been postponed by me for two weeks now. Healthy, spartan, ascetic eating/exercising regimen recommences today. It's like someone who I can't quite put my finger on at the moment once said: You haven't failed until you've quit trying. Sounds good.

it's not easy being green...

...greener than a Kuih Cara with envy over not being Malaysian, in Malaysia for Ramadan. Check this out. Not just this post, but the whole blog is full of great pictures of fantastic-looking Malay exotica.

Now, on the plus side of being here, other than a better-than-average opportunity (in Europe) to sample Malaysian food (a new Malaysian place opened up literally around the corner on the Kloveniersburgwal...haven't eaten there yet), October weather has been ridiculously pleasant. 60F and sunny today, and it's been that way pretty much all month. I don't even know where my raincoat is. And it's October. Huh.

Food-wise, what've I been up to? Sardines. Maybe I had to endure Herring Boot Camp in order to appreciate these guys, but I must say I'm totally impressed. Recipes and further geeky analysis to follow.

o, veganismo.

Consider:

"...Don't' consider the bird head and feet as ornaments, No sir, pop them in your mouth beak and all. Yes, the eyeballs too. It's not boney or weird like you might think, it's just more crispy, flavorful entrée."

or

Every dish was offal, except for the dessert, which was bloody offal.

(both via Yummy Chow).

The excellent photos taken by the witty, extremely carnivorous bunnies over at Yummy Chow made me realize that I think I might actually be "off meat" (as in me not eating it vs. me not tasting good). Still happily putting my tooth all over those poor ocean-dwellers, though...I guess I'd find strict vegetarianism or and especially veganism tons more practical for me if I had a squadron of deployable vegan recipes that I could serve to guests without feeling like I was "feeding the band"...you know, veggie chili, couscous, bulgur, beans, etc. Stuff you serve with a ladle. I'm obviously not making this up: one of my original inspirations toward more careful cooking is Stephen Pyles (aka Steamin' Pile around here), and in his newish book Southwestern Vegetarian, Mr. Pile is becoming part of the problem: "Eschewing the usual recipe categories, Pyles divides his cookbook into chapters by gratins, casseroles, stuffed vegetables, tortas, sandwiches, and pizzas."

Now, as the Rossington-Collins Band used to like to say, don't misunderstand me...I loves all that stuff and have cooked up a ton of it. But I'm also a total sucker for artfully presented food that has layers and layers of flavors...like if you could find an ingenious, edible way to present a perfectly-constructed Maoz falafel on a dinner plate...crispy, spicy-ass falafel balls; soft, supergarlicky cumin carrots with plenty of cilantro; the double cuke attack of traditional dill pickles and cucumbers with fresh dill and lemon juice; crinkle-cut beets with mint and olive oil; the sinus-clearing red chile sauce; the tart, fresh green sauce...drizzled with a light tahini sauce...(falls face-first onto the keyboard)...

OK, so you probably could find an ingenious way to plate this. But it would still just be a falafel on a big plate. So, I guess I'm looking for vegan entrees with complex flavors that come from somewhere other than the snack/street food, Indian cuisine, and one-pot dinner categories. Fire away with suggestions, o vast ocean of faithful readers...here's what I've found thus far.

IMBB #19, coincidentally enough, was "I Can't Believe I Ate Vegan". The entries for this IMBB kind of highlight what I'm talking about...lots of creative stuff, but 75% of them are served in a bowl. Some of the examples that are more like what I'd like to cook:

• Portobello Steak with Butternut Squash Risotto (via Restaurant Widow).
• Banh Xeo and Fresh Basil Rolls (via A Blithe Palate).
• Sesame-Crusted Oyster Mushroom Calamari with Toasted Sesame Carrot Salad (via Brownie Points).
• Socca Crèpes filled with Ratatouille (via In Praise of Sardines).
  

And Meathenge's effort falls into the "band food" category, but it looks like a fantastic recipe (with the exception of vegan sausage, which no one should ever use for anything...I'd substitute Quorn or the Tivali "ground tofu" thingie and add some smoked paprika for emulating sausage-y goodness): Chili and Cornbread.

Speaking of Quorn, they've just released a new product, Steak au Poivre, which is, well...freaky as shit. It's close, so close to being right...but just far enough away to make you think of Soylent Green or some Stephen King story where food sent through a time machine/transporter thingie doesn't taste the same when it comes back. Or is that The Fly I'm thinking of?

hyphenated cuisine.

Well, not too much fascinating cooking going on here at the moment, mostly trying to pull up out of my remoulade nosedive. My excuse: I've been extremely busy for the past couple weeks, and to be perfectly frank, relentless asceticism is not what you're looking for after 16 hours in front of the computer. At least I wasn't. So, back to cleaning up the old act this week, back to the hardcore no-dairy bit, etc.

A smidgen of link roundup, then (not sure where my English phrasing is coming from). Stuart sent me this rather interesting NYT article about hyphenated Chinese food, kind of in the same vein as my Indo-Surinamese-Chinese-Dutch explorations a while back. I'll hopefully elaborate on the old post at some point, and I'll also maybe address European-Mexican hybrids (which, according to at least one close friend, I am obsessive about).

While I was reading the first NYT article, I found another mildly heartbreaking article by Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune in NY. I was first struck by her writing a few years ago in an issue of Food & Wine...she has quite a distinctive tone, simultaneously self-assured and self-deprecating. Anyway, the story is about a moderately blind man coming in for an interview and not admitting that he has a problem seeing. Very sad.

Finally, good ol' Clotilde over at Chocolate & Zucchini seconds my enthusiasm for smoked pimiento. Well, in truth, she just reveals her own fondness for this double secret ingredient without referring to my post at all...unsurprisingly, since Clotilde is not my mom, and my mom is my only regular reader. Regardless, it's a bittersweet moment for me, kind of like when your favorite band gets too popular and you know their next CD is going to be ruined by "better" production, or clumsily opaque lyrics, or calculated poppiness, or any of 1000 things that can go wrong with the music you love. Although these things are unlikely to happen to smoked pimiento...I'm just bummed that it's lost its double-secret status.

call me irresponsible.

Oh dear. It's been, well...six weeks since my last post here, which usually means I've either fallen off the no-cholesterol wagon, or I've been spending too much time with my other site.

Happily, it's the latter this time around, although I did have a dangerous fling with dairy this week, mostly out of necessity. A friend who came back from America with a pile of fresh corn tortillas needed help getting rid of them, so we engineered a "show up and cook" kind of thing in which I made some pretty amazing chicken mole enchiladas (I made the red chile and mole sauces at home and brought them with). They may have been the best enchiladas I've ever had...not too cheesy, not too heavy, lightly sauced, really good if I do say so myself.

And yesterday Mara needed pasta, so i tasted some of her tortelloni di noci with garlic, creme fraiche, and pecorino...which is really just a bowl of heavenly, creamy, creamy heaven. And one big huge no-no for me. My understanding of the recipe (an appetizer portion for two):

mara's tortell(i/o)ni di noci with garlic, creme fraiche, and pecorino.

12 tortelloni or 24 tortellini of your choice (she uses tortelloni di noci, filled with walnuts and pecorino)
1/2 cup creme fraiche or sour cream
1 large clove (or 2 if you can stand it) of good fresh garlic, crushed
1/2 finely grated pecorino romano

Put some pasta-boiling water on the stove and salt it lightly. While waiting for it to boil, stir together the creme fraiche, pecorino, and garlic in a saucepan (without heat). You should have something resembling creamy, garlicky heaven. When the pasta water boils, throw your pasta in and cook according to the directions on the box/bag. When cooked, strain in a colander and add to saucepan with creme fraiche mixture. That's it. Serve with more pecorino and crusty bread, and then don't aim your mouth at anyone until the next day.

Serves 2 as an appetizer.

now we know.

why America loves ranch dressing so much...

(courtesy Slate again)

breathmangler.

This has not a bit to do with the German seafood cock-up pictured a few posts ago. I would photograph my own food but, a) I don't want any German foodbloggers mocking the warm, appetizing colors and non-gore-invoking presentations I tend toward, and b) I'm usually way too hungry.

EDITOR'S NOTE: if you're new here, I should at this point emphasize that I am in no way anti-German or anti-German food...I'm just anti-this one book I had for awhile (see previous post). It was gross. And I don't mean "big".

I crashed all these ingredients into each other because Mara left a pile of nice tomatoes behind before she went on vacation, and come lunchtime I was mutha-hungry with only smoked salmon in sight. The end result was fugly but nice. My breath, on the other hand, is now somewhere between ruined and chloroform.

[Illustration used without permission from Slate.]

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smoked salmon salad.

200g smoked salmon
2 medium cornichons, chopped
1 small red onion, chopped
2 tbsp capers
2 ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
freshly cracked pepper to taste

I just assembled everything except the salmon and put slices of salmon on a plate with the salad over top of it. I would've eaten all of it over arugula if I'd had any or the strength to go find some. Other additions that would've been nice (maybe not all together): horseradish, roasted red pepper, walnuts, walnut oil, dill. Chickpeas? Du Puy lentils? The way it is, it would've been perfecto on a nice crusty pistolet, but there's that bread vacation that I'm on to consider.

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broodje ikan bali, a.u.b.

Do they sell software that generates interesting titles for blog entries without you having to be involved?

Posting frequency has fallen off around here because I overcooked myself in May and June. Cooked out is what I am. So I've mostly been eating extremely simply, broiled fish or gyoza 60% of the time. Oh I know what else we were eating the other 40% of the time: sandwiches. Indonesian sandwiches. Primarily fish. Let me explain, hurriedly and with little regard for the creative turn of phrase (I'll revise later).

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What I would ideally do here is investigate the evolution of immigrant cooking here in The Netherlands, specifically the cuisines of the former colonies, Indonesia and Suriname. As far as I can tell there's no page on the web that explains this in English. Here's a Dutch version, and here's a more professionally researched version that focuses more specifically on the Chinese side of things. Until I have time to write something with more detail, I'll try to summarize via a massive simplification (i just watched Adaptation again yesterday and am currently imagining myself compressing eons of history into mere seconds worth of typing).

Let's start with Indonesia: after the second World War, Indonesia was granted its independence from Holland after having been a Dutch colony since the 17th century. 250,000 Indonesians came to Holland to repatriate themselves. Well, rewind a bit: by this point the Dutch were already vaguely familiar with Asian cuisine because, around 1918, small Chinese communities began to emerge in the port cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, mostly stokers who worked on the large steam ships of that time.

This population got a boost after 1919, when Great Britain amended the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914, and Chinese seamen were no longer entirely welcome on British soil, so they ended up in Dutch ports (their numbers growing to almost 3000 Chinese before shrinking again during the Second World War). Eventually Chinese teahouses and restaurants emerged, thus introducing the Dutch to the first truly foreign cuisine they'd encountered on their own soil.

So, back to the 250,000 Indonesians (some of whom were Indonesian Chinese, to further confuse the issue). Well, the Dutch Indonesians came, brought their culinary culture with them, and eventually opened up restaurants and shops. It didn't hurt that thousands of Dutch soldiers had been stationed in Indonesia and grew very fond of the food there. The returning Dutch soliders took their friends and families to eat at these restaurants. This happened so long ago, and so early on in the evolution of "eating out" in Holland, that by 2005 Indonesian food is not even really considered foreign here.

The point of all this is that, as in many ex-colonial relationships, the Dutchified Indonesian kitchen has evolved to accommodate some long-standing preferences of the Nederbelly. Some of these adaptations are to be expected (bigger portions, fewer chiles), but some are a bit unusual (Belgian frites with Indonesian peanut sauce and mayonnaise is a popular way to eat fries...not really so unusual in concept--think gado gado--but it's surprising at first to see people carrying cones of fries with an unrecognizable brown goo on them).

Which at last, almost brings me to Indonesian-Surinamese sandwiches. In Java or Bali the common accompaniements to fish, meat, and soy dishes are either nasi or bami (rice or noodles), right? Well, sandwich culture has had significant mindshare here for a long long time (I'll explain the boterham in another post). And so, one of the ways you can eat your Indo-Chinese fish/meat/veg dish is on a sandwich instead of with rice or noodles.

OK. Part 2 to follow (maybe). You know, the part where I maybe actually talk about the sandwiches.

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bánh cú cái...how would one make this?

One of the nicest things about our local super-toko, Dun Yong (or Young Dong if you're feeling frisky) is that they stock different items in their freezer section from month to month. I'm sure this is more of a necessity than a conscious decision, but as bi-weekly shoppers we think it's a definite positive.

So, last month, amongst the gyoza and other dim sum oddities, I found these things pictured above. Apparently they're a popular dim sum item, and I've had things like them, but I've never come across this spin: it's a radish cake with shrimp and scallions. It somehow gives an impression of having coconut in it, but it doesn't. The texture is that of rice sticks--IOW, made from rice flour instead of actual rice. It's the texture that I love, and that miss mara thinks is revolting: it's soft and jiggly and glisteny and is pretty revolting-sounding indeed now that I'm writing about it. But it's a dream under the tooth.

Anyway, the point of this post is: I can't find a recipe for bánh cú cái anywhere. The ingredients are: shrimp, radish, peanuts, taro, rice powder, onion, garlic, and seasonings. But how to put them together? Google reveals nothing. In English, I mean. Anyone?