ten fat seconds.

The Filipino-style Chinese donut, or shtekeleh, is the great contribution of the District of Sitka to the food lovers of the world. In its present form, it cannot be found in the Phillippines. No Chinese trencherman would recognize it as the fruit of his native fry kettles. Like the storm god Yahweh of Sumeria, the shtekeleh was not invented by the Jews, but the world would sport neither God nor the shtekeleh without Jews and their desires. A panatela of fried dough not quite sweet, not quite salty, rolled in sugar, crisp-skinned, tender inside, and honeycombed with air pockets. You sink it in your paper cup of milky tea and close your eyes, and for ten fat seconds, you seem to glimpse the possibility of finer things.

Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union

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We had some folks over for a semi-impromptu dinner the other night, and I decided that, rather than continue to borrow Andy's Korean cookbook every couple of months and then forget I had it, I would return the cookbook once and for all, and commemorate the occasion by actually cooking some things out of it. And invite him over to eat it, since he's actually spent some time in Korea and would have some idea about accuracy.

So, I decided to try bibimbap (eG thread here) for the first time, since it seems to be one of those dishes that people get hooked on, and you know me, I can't help but enjoy getting hooked on all manner of things. When I told Klary that I was making bibimbap, she told me to "be careful, this could turn into a very healthy dinner," and I quickly realized she was absolutely correct. So we added donuts to the menu (hoddeok).

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The bibimbap was fun to make, essentially very easy, and yes...healthy. It also provided a useful cooking lesson, in that the cooked vegetables were prepared with almost exclusively sesame oil, salt and garlic, with no soy sauce at all. I didn't realize that this was an option: it's actually way more multi-dimensional on the tongue than using soy sauce as the salty element, and more effectively highlights the natural flavors of the vegetables themselves, and in more distinctive ways. Me likey.

We used carrots, zucchini, gai lan, pak soi (each cooked separately and then separately dressed with sesame oil, salt, and garlic), mung bean sprouts (same dressing plus a little rice vinegar and a surprising amount of sugar) and bulgogi. We served it over our standard, completely non-traditional bulgur recipe: a little butter and a little soy sauce, sprinkled with furikake. We almost never make white rice anymore, it just seems to lose on every front in a direct comparison with bulgur: taste, texture, nutrition.

We also did pa jeon, scallion pancakes with minced shellfish (we used crayfish/rivierkreeften). These were good, I think they could've been better with more shellfish. And the dipping sauce recipe I used failed a last minute taste test and had to be scrapped in favor of a diluted soy sauce and sesame oil thing with a dash of black vinegar. Anyway, I'd like to try them again.

And then Mara, in addition to actually cooking the bulgur and pa jeon, decided to go nuts and bust out some hoddoek. I love it when she does this: I dive into an ambitious cooking project and she jumps right after me into the dessert end of the pool.

Hoddeok are donuts, like Chabon's shtekeleh above, that are not overly sweet, and sometimes rolled in sugar after they're fried. The molten center can contain a variety of fillings: ours contained either brown sugar and cinnamon, or honey and peanuts.

You know this, but I'll say it anyway: there's nothing like a hot donut. These were excellent, and yes, dipping them in a hot breakfast liquid the next day yielded shtekeleh-esque results.































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the final porkdown.

Yesterday I bade pork farewell with my pen; today I did it with my lips, as well as the rest of my mouth. I didn't mean to, I thought we'd already said our goodbyes (see yesterday's post), but as fate would have it, Mara and I cycled past a very American-looking place (in a good way) called The Taco Shop, and as we glided past, she said over her shoulder, "It's supposed to be really good."

I was like, "Then why don't I know about it?" I pulled over and looked at the menu posted outside: tacos, burritos, chimichangas, guac...interesting, interesting. The thing that sold me on its potential authenticity more than the menu or anything else was the paint job and the general look of the place, total California surf shack. Hmm.

But Mark, it was just yesterday that you said you were through with the stuff, wasn't it dude? C'mon, man...lay off the pig. C'mon.

I am through with it, ok? Look, I've got a bag full of tofu and tempeh and fresh turmeric and leafy Chinese greens right here to prove it. I even have rice flour, for God's sake, and I have no idea how to work with the stuff. You c'mon. I'm serious about going vegetarian, really I am. I just need one last moment alone, just the two of us. Me, and pork. It won't take a second.

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I'm totally grossing myself out. Bottom line: this is a real burrito. Amsterdam's only real burrito. I kinda knew it would be when I went in and was greeted by an American behind the kitchen counter. In English. Kind of a funny twist on the "they don't speak any English here, it must be the real thing" phenomenon we're used to in the States.

And it's above-average, as burritos go. Not my absolute favorite style: I'm a whole-bean man myself (these are refried), I prefer fresh green chiles to canned, and I like a little cilantro in my burrito if there's not going to be much in the salsa, etc. But I bet they'd be happy to put anything in there that they had on hand if you wanted.

The contents of their salsa verde burrito included: pork in a mild green chile sauce; fresh tomatoes; a mild white cheese that I forgot to try and identify by itself (there could even have been two kinds of cheese, I was blinded by hunger at this point); canned jalapenos; lettuce; and refried beans. Their smooth (vs. chunky-style) red salsa that came with it was completely serviceable, authentically Tex-Mex. Again, light on the heat and the herbs, but I understand why. The pork itself was done nicely.

IMPORTANT: This can be Amsterdam's only real burrito if you order carefully. I only tried the non-"smothered" green chile burrito with no bells or whistles. Mara was unfortunate enough to go without me and was somehow talked into "smothering" her burrito, which means extra cheese and a ranchero sauce. Needless to say, this changes the burrito rather dramatically, and not for the better. The photos you see here are of my merely "threatened" burrito...I just poured the salsa that came with it over top of it, so the burrito could get a feel for what could happen if I got pissed off and decided to smother the damn thing. To sum: don't smother your burrito and you'll be alright.




ALSO IMPORTANT: This isn't Mexican food, it's Tex-Mex mostly, influenced by direct contact with Mexican-American food but not generated by Mexicans. And there are some oddities: they use ground beef in their beef quesadillas and burrtios, and this I've never seen before and don't really want to, sorry guys.

Somehow The Taco Shop has been here 2 years without my burrito detector going off: must be time to change the batteries (but aren't they supposed to make some sort of sound to let you know the batteries are dead?)...anyway, this place is good news for everyone in Amsterdam except me.

Enjoy. I've got to go marinate some tofu.

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here's to health and happiness.

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Here's to good friends,
Tonight is kind of special.
the beer we'll pour
must say something more, somehow.
So tonight (tonight),
Tonight,
Let it be Lowenbrau (let it be Lowenbrau).
It's been so long.
Hey, I'm glad to see ya.
Raise your glass.
Here's to health and happiness.
So tonight (tonight),
Let it be all the best.

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Ah, the good old days. Cheesy imported beer jingles. Sunny summers. Massive pork consumption by me.

Those days are all....gone. Goodbye, cheesy beer jingles. Goodbye massive pork consumption. I'll see you both in heaven.

Yes, it's that time of year here at Vegetarian Duck where we pause for reflection and glance back none-too-carefully over the year's "accomplishments", and...as we do so this year, it becomes apparent that there may well be a sort of confession to be made. What I'm saying is that, well: objectives are not being met (note the use of passive voice to avoid responsibility).

I don't know know if any of you recall, but the original purpose of this blog was to document healthy eating habits.

If you've only tuned in recently, this may surprise you. It was certainly a surprise to me as I found myself browsing the archives the other day for some reason. "Hmmm.....interesting. Yesss....but: wait just a cotton-picking minute here...hold up, hold up. You mean to tell me? This here is health food this man's going on about. Brrrgh (shudders). There's no call for that here at all, mister. None. Now pass me that ribcage. Naw, just the one."

Even as recently as two months ago!!!!! (exclamation points courtesy Barrel Fever)

So it is with a heavy heart, sloped shoulders, sagging gut and a generally sober, chastized demeanor that I return to...massive pork consumption! No...I mean, healthy eating. For real, people...for real (cue Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", indicating that it's a moment of deep spiritual reckoning for our protagonist)...

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Just so that we all understand what this means from an excitement perspective, behold my throbbingly sexy breakfast:





































That's right, All-Bran cereal with oat milk, papaya and banana. Can you say "Old Man food?" I'm teasing. This was actually totally delicious, which means that I am now 100% certifiably an Old Man.

For real, now: ripe papaya is something that I have never loved, the taste is too close to the edge of an overripe floral note that reminds me of stagnant vase water or ineffective underarm deodorant or something (mmm!). But I started getting ready to give it another chance when eGulleter johnnyd raved about its restorative properties in his fantastic eG foodblog about Portland, Maine a couple weeks back, and then I read a couple other things about papaya being a legendary contractor in the liver repair business.

So I threw some on my All-Bran, and hoo-boy, that's good eatin'! You kind of already have to like All-Bran, which, being an Old Man, I do. But the papaya is actually a good match, significantly more interesting than the normal cereal fruit suspects (blueberries, strawberries, bananas).

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OK, this post was supposed to be about how I'm supposed to be eating orange foods. Maybe the next post will be about that.

...and reminiscing.

Yes I mean what you think I mean. What a foul turd of a song. I dropped this black satanic plum during my iPod DJ set in Bergen (everyone gets 5 songs) and it just stunk up the room for about 8 minutes. I thought it would be funny, and it was just barely amusing for all of 30 seconds. The albatross and the whales were not my brothers that evening, let me tell you.

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But the reminiscing I'm talking about here is of a very different sort, possibly the best sort: pork. Lately I find myself thinking, "Hey, it's great that you've documented so much of your summer on your silly little food obsession journal that you call a blog," and then I come out here, and there's nothing.

And that's because it's all on eGullet. So here is the first in a series of attempts to at least get the pictures from this summer's adventures up here for non-eGulleters to marvel and wonder at.

We begin with the Kwakoe Festival. I went both 1 week before it ended, and then again on the last day. There were marked differences in everything but the smell of pork, that was the same.

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jamie remover.

So there I was in front of the sink today, holding a shiny clean butter knife in each hand. I turned around to face the kitchen island bar thingie, which I knew was the next thing I’d wanted to do, but once facing the island I was at a bit of a loss as to why I had not one but two butter knives, since I was the only one there. I looked down and saw the two pieces of fresh toast I'd just toasted. Ah, right, of course: one knife for buttering each piece of toast.

Welcome to temazepam. Luckily Thursday night’s dose was my last, and hopefully by tomorrow I will begin to return to Logic Land. And being able to type all of the letters in a word in the right order.

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So I bet you’re wondering what that has to do with the hellish carnage pictured above, aren’t you? Nothing. But I’ll give you five whole U.S. dollars (equivalent to approximately 1 euro these days if I'm not mistaken) if you can tell me what book that photo is from (with a prerequisite being that you don’t already own the book).

Give up? Good, I can't spare the cash. It’s a photo from Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, which is actually………pretty good. Entertaining, beautifully laid out and interestingly photographed, and pretty honestly Italian (for example, they're using the kid's plastic wading pool to catch the draining bloody entrails of a freshly killed animal...we saw that all the time in Italy). I’m borrowing somebody’s copy, and the reason I am is because when we were in Bergen last month:

















Kenny made some very very good Sicilian polpette di tonno (tuna meatballs to me and you) based on a recipe from the book. He didn’t have the book with him in Bergen (which says several good things about Kenny), and couldn’t remember all of the ingredients because he was so fucking wasted (not really, he's a dad now), but what he did do was both attractive (though this picture does it no justice):

















And really really fresh and delicious. Actually I think he did end up remembering all of the ingredients now that I've got the recipe in front of me: tuna, pine nuts, cinnamon, oregano, parsley, breadcrumbs, parmigiano-reggiano, eggs, and a lemon.

I’ve wanted to make polpette di tonno for a long time, I don’t know why I never got around to it. Sicilian food would probably have become my current cooking focus if I hadn’t gotten all goo-goo eyed over Surinamese food. I think it’s actually ga-ga eyed that I mean. Can it be either. Both? Is there a Dutch equivalent he wonders.

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Anyway, my point was, Jamie Oliver, new cookbook, not bad…but for the love of baby jesus up in heaven, does Mr. Oliver have to be in so many of the pictures. Aaaaaaahh! Every other page, his faux-surfer mug is all proudly and goofily offending most of my sensibilities. Usually: I can stand a picture of the chef on the inside flap, plus one or two “action shots” either in the kitchen or “at the market” picking up something and pretending to smell it--that usually does the trick for me. Unless it's Tom Colicchio, then, well...the more photos the better, baby.

I may just need a Jamie Remover if I'm to look at this book any more. Or maybe someone give me another Crazy Drug an I just go all Hollywood psycho and slowly cut that bitch out of every picture in the book with my favorite childhood scissors, rocking back and forth and crying/mumbling (or mubling, as I just typed) all the while. Hmm, yes. But I think maybe I should wait until I buy my own copy of the book. Muble.

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Hey, know how you can tell you’re a kick-ass cook? When you can make a rockin’, reasonably authentic-tastin’ (are pep-feignin', informality-indicatin' apostrophes another side effect of the medication, perchance?) tomato pasta sauce when your kitchen contains: no olive oil, no tomatoes, and no usable onions.

But you do have: canned mushrooms; canned black olives; tomato paste (not sounding very promising yet is it); dried oregano and rosemary; a lot of garlic; a nice jar of anchovies packed in oil; lots of fresh basil and celery leaf (ok there you go); and a substantial wedge of pecorino-romano cheese. And fresh ground black pepper and red pepper flakes.

OK, maybe not so impressive after all….but I thought it was a pretty tough challenge texturally. The sauce came out remarkably edible: I used an immersion blender to brutally impose a ragu state. And a long simmer mellowed the tomato paste-only problem. And I only used the oil from the anchovies. And I only re-bit my swollen lip once while eating it.

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By the way, there's a point to Jamie's grisly-ness, and probly a valid one too...I was just "taking the piss," as those hooligans off to the immediate west like to say.


polpetti di tonno.

400g/14oz high-quality tuna
olive oil
55g/2oz pinenuts
1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
a handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
100g/3½oz stale breadcrumbs
55g/2oz freshly grated Parmesan
2 eggs
zest and juice of 1 lemon

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relaxin' at camarillo.

New trivia: the wonderful Bottle Rocket's opening "ca-caw!" scene was actually filmed at Camarillo. Poor Owen.

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Tonight was my first time back at the stove in a while, and I tried a spin on an old favorite substituting Surinamese ingredients for the original Southern stuff. Afterwards, General Consensus said, "These results are pretty goddamn tasty, PFC Morse: what the fuck did you do here, soldier?"

Well, sir, I: marinated my cod in Javaanse sambal (hopefully a recipe for this to follow), soy sauce, and sesame oil; substituted pink-skinned sweet bataat for reg'lar ol' taters, which meant I didn't have to use as much butter as I usually might...in fact barely any at all.

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Sidebar: Ipomoea batatas, also known as boniato, Margarita, or kumara, is the version of the white-fleshed sweet potato that's used in Caribbean and South American cooking. But it's not actually a potato...they're apparently much healthier than potatoes).

One of my least favorite pastimes of late is the detective work necessary to figure out culturally-specific names for the same ingredient. Here's at least one helpful veggie-oriented resource for Asian/tropical ingredients.

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Back to dinner: I also used palm sugar and butter in my corn; and sprinkled a touch of seroendeng and a tiny grate of nutmeg over the top when serving. In general a much healthier version of this dish. Garnished with celery leaves, basil, and chives...because my contract here requires me to sprinkle chopped green herbs over every dish I serve.

It really sounds like a fusion nightmare, but (mostly due to sudden energy wipeout) I seasoned with a lighter hand than usual, and the end result was suprisingly subtle and comforting. So subtle, in fact, that our Elizabethan collar-wearing Mačka kitty was able to enjoy many hand-fed morsels.

She is...a pitiful mess at the moment (it's been a run of rather dismal health for Apt. 100-M this month, hasn't it)...she's run into every piece of furniture in the house, can't eat or drink, and as a result has decided to just give up and lay there. Purring, though. We'll see what she decides to do at night to entertain herself (and Jo3n).

send lawyers, guns and money.

All doped up on (doctor-prescribed and appropriately self-administered) Temazepam this morning, and yet still awake, my thoughts eventually turned to food, as they usually can be counted on to do in times of psychic contortion.

In an effort to eat with a modicum of healthfulness, and to include my somehow-still-increasing (.....mmm, let's not say obsession, per se...let's call it:) interest in Surinamese food, I came up with this sandwich:

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broodje temazepam.

1 zuur haring filet (pickled herring) , patted dry
1 gezouten birambie, sliced lengthwise (a salted, pickled cultivar of the carambola fruit)
2 slices brown bread, toasted
1 scant tablespoon mayonnaise

Assemble, and eat over the sink because it's juicy.

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OK, now what are the chances that a rather obscure tropical fruit that I happened to have in my refrigerator would have actual known drug interactions with the benzodiazepine that I am currently taking? Anyone? If the title of an abstract called "Inhibition of human cytochrome P450 by star fruit juice" revs your engine, you can read about it here.

Suffice to say, no more pickled birambie for this unfortunate fucker. But it was nice while it lasted. And I think there are other Surinamese pickles that would be just as lovely...you know, made with other, less-fucking-deadly tropical fruits.

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august haiku.

couldn't we just talk
to each other in the dark
forever, maybe?

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whew.

I probably should've mentioned this sooner, but: this week I've been semi-liveblogging my food-related activities over at eGullet.com. Totally fucking exhausting but a great exercise and ultimately pretty fun. Pictured above is my maiden voyage aboard the Good Ship Pom.

I'll need some time to recover, I'm eating nothing but oatmeal, yoghurt, and salad until further notice. And no pictures, please.

jen and ken and martha.

"bali burgers".

Many years ago, well around 1996 or so, some very good friends had a dinner party. More of a cookout kind of thing involving a charcoal grill. The male component of these friends is a creative, brilliant man, my favorite nearly-unknown poet in the world. He has a love of complexity, and can get lost in its nooks and crannies for, well, let's say a lifetime. Add to this a certain dreamy scatterbrainedness (which I myself share), and what you end up with is a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen.

His meals tend to be improbably ambitious in scope and uniquely intriguing in concept, but their execution occurs in its own specialized segment of space and time, a hilariously disorganized and utterly chaotic lab staffed by dog run's worth of surrealist chefs.

But on the night in question, we were all blown away by something he made that he called Bali Burgers. Our boy has an ongoing fascination/love with Indonesian culture, see...and a deep relationship with the New York Times. So when the NYT published an Indonesian travelogue along with some recipes, he was all over it.

Like a lot of Asian food, Indonesian recipes can be very time-consuming if you're making everything from scratch. I have no idea how much prep time had been invested before we showed up, definitely hours, maybe days. And, to add to the degree of difficulty, he would be grilling fish, which requires an attentive eye. I don't precisely remember what went wrong during the grilling process...it was about 11pm by this point, but what I thought I remembered was that he took the fish fillets that had completely flaked apart and disintegrated on the grill, and formed balls/patties out of them. And served them with some sort of sambal thingie on top. And they were one of the best things I'd eaten up to that point in my life.

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This meal was filed away under "vaguely recollectable good times" and had gradually become a bit legendary because the fish was truly superlative. So I recently set off on a grand quest for the NYT article. Which ended approximately 8 seconds later when Google Desktop found it in my email archives from 1998. Handy, that.

Having tracked down the source article, our situation becomes a bit more like an episode of CSI: Atlanta, but without Marg Hellenberger's Botoxed lips cracking wise...trying to piece together exactly what may have occurred at the grill station. There are several fish recipes in the article, and the Bali Burger recipe itself doesn't involve a grill. D'oh. It looks like what he actually made was lilit satay.

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TSS' NYT "bali burgers" seafood marinade.

10 large red Thai chilies, seeded and chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
15 shallots, peeled and chopped
1 4-inch piece fresh turmeric, peeled and chopped, or 1 1/2 teaspoons ground turmeric
1 medium tomato, skinned and seeded
1 4-inch piece ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
10 candlenuts
1 teaspoon dried shrimp paste
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 stalks lemongrass, peeled and bruised
1 teaspoon palm sugar
2 tablespoons tamarind paste
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1. In a food processor, combine the chilies, garlic, shallots, turmeric, tomato, ginger, coriander, candlenuts and shrimp paste. Process until the ingredients are well ground but not pureed.

2. In a medium-size saute pan, heat the oil over medium heat and add the chili mixture, lemongrass and palm sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature. Remove the lemongrass stalks and stir in the tamarind paste and salt. Use as a marinade for seafood and as a condiment. Store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.

Yield: 2 1/4 cups.

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lilit satay.

1 10-ounce sea bass fillet or other firm-fleshed white fish, skin removed
12 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 cup desiccated, unsweetened coconut flakes
1/2 cup sambal mentah (see recipe)
5 lime leaves, sliced very fine
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons salt
5 small green-bird chilies, very finely chopped
2 tablespoons brown sugar
16 6-inch lengths lemongrass, or 16 bamboo skewers immersed in water for 30 minutes.

1. In a food processor, combine the fish and shrimp and process until finely minced. Transfer to a bowl, add the remaining ingredients, except the lemongrass, and mix well.

2. Prepare a charcoal grill or preheat a broiler. Mound a heaping tablespoon of the seafood mixture over one end of the lemongrass, forming a somewhat flattened cylinder. Or for the skewers, mound 1 tablespoon of the mixture around each one. Grill or broil, turning once, until the fish is lightly browned and just cooked through, about 6 minutes. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

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sambal mentah.

15 shallots, peeled, halved and very finely sliced
4 garlic cloves, halved and very finely sliced
15 small green-bird chilies, seeded and finely chopped
5 lemon or lime leaves, very finely sliced
4 stalks lemongrass, very finely sliced
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.

Combine all the ingredients in a deep bowl and stir with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes. Use as a condiment and as an ingredient in seafood dishes. Store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.

Yield: 2 1/4 cups.

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practicing, take-out.

Since it's been a weekend of rehearsal, set-up, performance, break-down, set-up, performance, there was no time to cook. Take-out was the obvious solution, but we couldn't agree on what. So, we ended up with Thai appetizers from Top Thai, previously mentioned below, and something from Long Chie, a Chinese-Surinamese restaurant across the street. There's never anyone in there so I was a bit wary, but their Ma-Po Tofu (pictured above) is definitely at least OK...and their fried rice:

















passed the rather strict technical requirements of our in-house specialist (mt).

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titties and beer.

Andy's birthday was last Sunday, and this year 's festive congress was held at Da Damiano, a very attractive Italian on the Jan Pieter Heijestraat opposite OT301. The guests came b(e)aring all sorts of gifts; the kitchen came bearing a lovely antipasti platter of thinly sliced salumi and a great vitello tonnato, and then I ordered the fregola con vongole:

















Which was perfectly toothsome and clammy (here's an eGullet thread about Sardinian cooking that touches on fregola). Another good if not amazing Italian, very slow service but the wholly pleasant scenery and decent house wine makes you not mind so very darn much.

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ageist.

I am now offically old: I really truly like prunes more all the time. This morning I made "real" (as in not instant) oatmeal with maple syrup, pistachios, cinnamon, a little nutmeg, and yes, prunes. And the prunes were my favorite part. After Thursday's gig, I'll include pictures, charts, graphs, etc. to follow, documenting every aspect of my ancientness.

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LYSN: 12 July, 21:30, OT301

A concert of psychedelic drone music influenced by Angelo Badalamenti, Cluster, Gil Evans, Electric Wizard, Matmos, George Russell, Public Image Limited, Slug, Spacemen 3, Velvet Underground. LYSN is a band with a continuously changing line up started by Hilary Jeffery. The musicians play a wide range of acoustic, hybrid and electronic instruments, improvising and interpreting graphical scores to create powerful new music.

Eric Boeren - trumpet
Alfredo Genovesi - guitar + electronics
Franz Hautzinger - trumpet
Ulrike Helmholz - voice + electronics
Gerri Jager - drums
Hilary Jeffery - trombone / tromboscillator
David Kweksilber - bass saxophone + clarinet
Ralf Meinz - electronics
Mark Morse - guitar + sampler

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brutti ma buoni.

Two words: chilequiles rojo. Torn down and reconstructed, expat-style.

1. Make some perfect "basic black beans" (lots of cumin and garlic, also bay leaves, oregano, epazote, a couple of toasted and seeded whole guajillo chiles, tiny pinches of allspice, cinnamon, and clove. Cook for an hour or more until beans are almost done, then add chopped canned tomatoes, remove guajillos, puree them, and add back into beans, cook for 30 more minutes or until done, salt to taste).
2. Make a thin mole rojo (I did mine with pecan as the nut, ancho as the chile, and a shot of maple syrup instead of plantain as the sweetener). Recipe to follow.
3. Lightly crunch up a bag of tortilla chips (meaning don't pulverize it) and soak the pieces in the mole for 10 minutes or so.
4. Line a baking dish with the mole-soaked chips. Grate a thin layer of medium-young goat cheese over this.
5. Then spread a thick layer of the black beans on top of the rest.
6. Chop a sweet onion fine and add a layer of this.
7. Add a thin layer of mole if you've got some left.
8. Then grate some more goat cheese on top, or use another mild white cheese like haloumi.
9. Bake for 20 minutes, broiling the top if'n you want.
10. While it's baking, throw together a pico di gallo, let it sit for 15 minutes or so, strain, and toss/sprinkle this over the top when it comes out, and serve.

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ETA: In my haste to congratulate myself last night, I may have oversimplified the "recipe" above. And I should re-emphasize that this is chilequiles in name and ingredients only: the presentation is 100% dense potluck casserole, I guess Cooking Light would call it Quik 'n Eazy Barely Cheezy Chilequiles Pie or something. But, if you're a careful layerer it can look pretty when cut. I myself am not such a careful layerer.

I made this for a dinner party last night whose guest of honor was a roasted kid (goat, that is). This was supposed to be a side dish or vegetarian main. It is almost as dense as it looks (pictured above is a cold and therefore denser-looking leftover piece), but it's still very healthy-feeling, there's almost no fat in it except for the cheese. And the tortilla chips.

Anyway, there are some fine tweaks that make a big difference: a little mint and a fresh clove of garlic in your pico de gallo, and straining the pico after it sits for a bit; a couple of guajillo chiles in your beans, etc. The biggest question we had over here was: how would the tortilla chips work texturally? I was hoping that they would disintegrate into the mole and end up something like a tamale crust and that's pretty much what happened.

Here's the mole recipe, designed to emulate the flavors of a real, day-long mole by using cheats on top of cheats. The sesame oil actually works, if you add it at the beginning. There are so many shortcuts in here that (colorful hyperbolic statement goes here). Note: watch your salt on this, because the the tortilla chips are salty themselves.

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quick 'n lazy mole rojo.

3 ancho chiles, toasted for 1 minute per side in a sautepan
1 guajillo chile, toasted for 1 minute per side in a sautepan
1-2 cups vegetable broth, boiling hot
8 cloves garlic, pressed
3/4 cup pecans, toasted

1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp ground cumin
1-2 tbsp roasted sesame oil or walnut oil if you don't believe me about the sesame oil

1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pimenton
1 tsp allspice
1 tbsp good Dutch cocoa powder
1 tbsp maple syrup or a bit more if you're like me
salt to taste

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OK! Pour the boiling vegetable broth over the chiles to cover and hope that your chiles don't generate bitter chile water. Let them sit for 15-20 minutes in the broth, then remove them (reserving the broth) and puree them with the garlic and pecans, adding broth to facilitate if necessary.

In a wok or similar, toast the oregano and cumin for 30-60 seconds until just fragrant. Add sesame oil, stir to incorporate toasted spices, then add garlic-chile puree and saute everything for a minute or so until the garlic gives you "that smell" (but not That Smell).

Stir the reserved broth into the chile puree mixture, then add the cinnamon and remaining ingredients. Salt to taste, and simmer for 30 minutes or so. The main goal here is to mellow the garlic and reduce the sauce slightly. You're going for a consistency that is barely thinner than a standard tomato sauce. This recipe should make a cup or two of faux-mole.

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kweekvlees, or: yes, i fucking ate this.

I've just about recovered from the dish pictured above, and the picture really only tells half the story. This was the first "controversial appetizer" served at the Voedsel, Kunst, and Wetenschap symposium at Utrecht's Centraal Museum Friday night. The thrust of the evening's programme was to examine the issues surrounding stem cell-derived cultivated meat, or kweekvlees, and to serve some artful and, yes, controversial preparations of "kweekvlees-inspired dishes". Since I couldn't stay for the whole symposium, I missed the explanation of what was actually in these dishes, from a flesh perspective. I approached them from the perspective that they were lab meat, which was much somehow more challenging than the truth.

The first one was actually controversial, in that I experienced a personal controversy over how much of it I could actually eat. It's a marrow bone, but something about the presentation of this dish led to a deceleration of my enthusiasm, perhaps it was the clear, em..."juice" oozing onto my hand as I held it. But I could've carried through I think if there'd been enough salt to enhance the fattiness of the gooey contents, but as it was...(I'm trying to be kind here)....sigh. Let's just call it controversial.

















The second bite of the evening was completely and thankfully enjoyably edible: bloedworst with a sweet apple vinaigrette. Nice. And then...I had to leave to get back to OT301. Good thing I'd had a bite to eat beforehand with Ed and NICOLE (whose name will be typed in capital letters until I can be sure that I'll never ever forget it again) at Pronto Pronto: duck rilettes and a bruschetta sampler with seared tuna and tapenade, taleggio, and a few cured meat combos. Very tasty, and substantial enough to where I wasn't even sitting there all starving on my way back to Amsterdam. Ultimately, however, it proved to not be enough of a belly ballast for the evening's beer consumption...morning came early the next day.

















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P.S. If, like me, you've been trying to figure out if Sonic Youth is still trying hard enough to age gracefully, here's your answer.

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vlees-less.

It seems that the end of the music season has generated a sudden thunderclap of social activity...everyone has apparently been pretty busy for the last couple of months, and is now ready to blow off some steam. Unfortunately the weather has been generating some (ha HA!) thunderclaps of its own lately, so obvious summertime venues such as the Westerpark or our rooftop remain impractical at the moment. Hopefully (I think...maybe a little less hot than last year would be nice) that will change soon.

What this means immediately for me is that it's time to create another one of my semi-annual lists of vegetarian dishes that I will probably never actually cook. In order to fail less substantially, I'll only list something that I'm planning on "cooking" for a dinner on Tuesday. I got this recipe from somewhere embarrassing, but the reviews of it were unanimously excellent.

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summer fruit and fire-roasted peppers with chimichurri.

fruit
1/4 cup diced pineapple
1/4 cup diced watermelon
1/4 cup seedless green grapes, halved
1/4 cup diced cantaloupe
1/4 cup diced roasted red peppers

chimichurri
1 tablespoon red chili flakes
1/4 cup EV olive oil
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 teaspoon chopped shallot
1 cup chopped fresh mint leaves

Combine fruit and red peppers with chimichurri sauce to taste. Mix well to coat all fruit. Cover and set aside to allow to marinate for 10-30 minutes.

Optionally, serve over spinach:

2 cups chopped spinach
3 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup shredded young Goudse cheese

In a large bowl, combine spinach, olive oil and lemon juice. Toss gently to combine. Divide spinach between plates. Arrange fruit mixture on top of spinach and garnish with cheese.

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File under Barely Relevant: my ever-more-occasional work venue OT301 has been awarded the 2007 Amsterdam Cultuurprijs, whatever that means (the opening moments of our June 16th AUXXX night are pictured above). Congratulations to all! Here's a pretty old YouTube compilation of OT301 events from 2005, back when I spent a lot of time there.

UPDATE: I certainly shouldn't have been so "whatever" about the Cultuurprijs. It's apparently 35,000 euro. Pardon my skepticism.

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