Chufi

yes, I like them and trust them. When I have to choose between some unknown brand or LKK, I choose LKK! No! you're getting warmer... Yes, I have tried that, though not with duck. Hmm.. gives me something to think about... You know, I only learned about sriracha, and various other sauces through eGullet. 4 years ago the door of my fridge just held a jar of Indonesian sambal, lots of mustard and mayonaise! And ChryZ, it was your picture of jajangmyon that sent me on a quest to find that Korean black bean paste!! That's what I love about eGullet - it has taught me so much!

So, amapola guessed my identity, I should have remembered that there are actually Amsterdam residents on this site. Welcome to my foodblog! When snowangel asked me, I hesitated at first. I’ve done 2 blogs and have shown you many of my favorite foods and favorite places in Amsterdam. Will I have anything new to tell and show you? I hope the ‘new adventures’ part of the title is going to provide some entertainment. I’m going to try to eat/buy/cook something competely new and unfamiliar every day, or go someplace I’ve never been. Besides that, here are a few things that are scheduled for this week: Tomorrow we’re having dinner with 4 people, 3 of them I’ve never met, the other one only once. Is that adventurous or what? Can anyone guess who they might be? Thursday is a very special day, because it’s our wedding-anniversary. I’ll be making Dennis a special dinner, with a couple of items that I don’t like, have never cooked, but that he loves. I won’t tell you what they are because he’ll be reading along and it has to be a surprise! Sunday we have some friends coming for dinner, one of my old friends from University and his girlfriend who is pregnant. I still have to find out about her food dislikes and what she will/won’t eat at the moment. Adventures aside, I am very much a creature of habit and that won't change during this blog. I’ll still take you to some places that have featured in previous blogs, and I will eat some things I love and eat often. Like rhubarb... I promised snowangel there’d be rhubarb! I made this compote yesterday and this was breakfast: yoghurt, granola, rhubarb. I adore rhubarb and eat a lot of it while it is in season. Here's what the rhubarb looked like in march, when it first came to the market: and here's what it looked like yesterday: darker, thicker, and coarser in texture and flavor. But still wonderful I love the bright tangyness first thing in the morning. Dennis had a bowl of buttermilk and granola, which is what he has had for breakfast almost every day for the past 14 years, so I won't mention that again this week I'll leave you while I go on a couple of errands. Questions, assignments and suggestions very welcome! To keep you entertained, here are the fridge-shots (I've done 2 blogs but never showed you the fridge )

I love parsley salad. But I love a mixed herb salad even more - maybe 3 parts parsley and 1 part each of coriander, dill and mint. With all those fragrant flavor going on it doesn't need much more than a simple lemon juice/olive oil vinaigrette. With just parsley, I like some very thinly sliced red onion. parsley and chickpea is also a great combination. edited to add: see here for parsley topic (with some salad ideas)

My favorite very quick appetizer is leaves of belgian endive with a little spoonfull of eggsalad or tunasalad. Just chopped boiled eggs with mayo and chives.. or canned tuna with a bit of mayo and capers. Much lighter than having something on bread or toast.

I did one tour, with 20 year old trainees of the company, who were not necessarily interested in food, which was in a way a good experience. They were not from Amsterdam so everything was new to them. My tour next week will actually be the first 'real' one . The people booking things with Like a Local are mainly tourists, not expats. So the tours are about experience, not so much knowledge that they will use for shopping/cooking etc. in Amsterdam. I'm still looking into the expat thing... I might do something together with a litle cooking studio/ cookbookstore, organize tours and maybe a Dutch Cooking class. But, like I said, I'm slooooow... and usually have more ideas and plans than will ever be executed. But that's one of the reasons I started this thread, to stay inspired to keep working on this There is no guarantee whatsoever about how many bookings I'll get. We'll see!

I finally got my copy! Received it this week as a belated birthday present. I made the coffee and cardamom marble cake today: definitely a cake for grown-ups with the faint bitterness of the coffee and the fragrant cardamom. Lovely! I've read through the book and there are tons of things I want to make. I also really love the pictures. 2 tiny quibbles.. yes, as a European baker, I would have preferred weights.. and.. it's too heavy to take to bed for some late night reading!

Update! Before setting up my own business, which might take a while simply because I'm slow, I thought I'd join a local business that deals in tours for tourists Like a Local. To my surprise, they did not have any culinary activities yet, and were enthusiastic about my ideas. Sofar, I've done one tour (see my profile here ) and have another one booked next week. I'll have to see how this goes (I have no idea in advance who I'll be dealing with, reservations go through the central office) but for now, this is a nice way to see if this is actually something I'd like to do more often.

Turns out I had everything for Melanzana alla parmigiana (I knew there was a reason I bought that bunch of basil yesterday! ) so that's what I made today. Cheesy greasy goodness! I always wonder what this dish is supposed to be. Primo? Contorno? We just had it for dinner with a salad. It's very rich, but deliciously so.

Ah, it's still open! Just wanted to add that you inspired me to cook this dinner yesterday. My husband loves Japanese food so he was very happy I had forgotten how much I love the taste of miso!

Inspired by Hiroyuki's fantastic blog, I made this dinner. I'm not claiming authenticity here, because I've only cooked about 5 Japanese dishes in my entire life, but it tasted great! Takikomi gohan, rice cooked with hijiki seaweed, carots, shiitake mushrooms and abura-age (fried tofu). See this thread in the Japan forum for more info about this dish! Back to front: stirfried oyster mushrooms with ginger and soysauce, boiled zucchini with sesame dressing, and mackerel & leeks simmered in red miso.

Thank you so much for this blog. It has been an education and inspiration. I agree with MizDucky about the picture of your kids catching the trout. I actually thought at first that the trout catching was just a fun game, until I saw the fish in your toaster oven for dinner that night! I wish you and your family health and happiness, and hope to read many more of your wonderful posts on eGullet!

I made cupcakes for the first time yesterday and they were a big hit at my birthdayparty! bananacupcakes with peanutbuttercups and milk chocolate ganache, and orange ginger cupcakes with orange creamcheese frosting. They were so easy to make and looked very pretty. These won't be my last cupcakes!

I never go into the city center on Queensday but pretty much stay in my own neighborhood (south of Vondelpark), and there we never had any problems finding a place for dinner, so I guess the farther you are willing to go from the center, the easier it is. YamYam update: I had dinner there about a month ago and ofcourse ordered my favorite pizza with the mascarpone truffle sauce. When it came, we ate, looked at eachother, and said: something's not right. It was still good pizza, but really not the very special pizza that it used to be. The main reason was that there was almost no truffled mascarpone on it, so it was basically a ham and cheese pizza with a bit of arugula on top. I spoke about it to one of the waiters, who has been there forever, and he said 'no it's the same pizza'. But then he came back later and said, yes, we have a new pizzabaker, maybe he does it differently. Then later they comped our afterdinner drinks but I'm not sure if that was because they did not want us to leave un happy, or because they actually thought I was right. Anyway, I have no idea if my favorite pizzaplace still serves my favorite pizza the way I like it! I guess I need to go back soon, but I'm scared

Final birthday party last night, dinner for 18: started with tuna salad in belgian endive gougere cheese puffs (made ahead and reheated, which is why they were slightly deflated) dips: lentil/red pepper and hummus Dinner: herbsalad (dill, coriander, mint, parsley, wild arugula, and a bit of radicchio) tomatosalad with herb-marinated sheeps cheese (recipe from Paula Wolferts Cooking of the Eastern Meditteranean) Bazerghan, bulgur salad with pomegranate syrup, walnuts and spices, from the same book On the plate with börek, pastries with lamb and eggplant (a Kurdish recipe, can be found here, except this time I added some pinenuts and allspice to the filing. Cupcakes: banana/peanutbutter with milk chocolate ganache, and orange/ginger with orange creamcheese frosting. The cute little peanutbutter cups are unavailable here but were sent to me a couple of months ago by a kind eGulleter! It was a great party but I think now I'm done with my birthday... at least for this year

I agree! I was always reading about Pocky on eGullet. When we were in Seattle last year I HAD to buy some. Tasty, I admit, but it did not live up to my expectations. A small sweet for a big price, that's what I thought! (I'm stingy too ) I hate drinking straight from the can. From now on I'll know what to say when someone serves me a drink like that! No rappa nomi for me! The glass looks almost frosted, do you keep them in the freezer?

MiFi, that duck with pomegranate looks so good. Thank you, everybody, for your kind birthdaywishes. I have good news for you: Another birthdayparty (my last, at least for this year, I promise) is coming up tomorrow Pontormo I could use some of that birthday compote tomorrow for breakfast! Pan, the flowers on the cake are violets which are edible I think, but we did not eat them. dvs, the gougeres are really simple, just a basic choux pastry with a load of grated cheese stirred into it. No reason why it would not work with blue cheese though I've never tried! this recipe looks very much like the one I use.

Hi, Queensday will indeed be very busy, however most partying is actually done the evening before Queensday. On Queensday itself, around 4 in the afternoon the excitement sort of dwindles down. Bars and restaurants are actually pretty empty then! But expect a HUGE mess all over the city. As for lunch: after your visit to the Anne Frank house you could wander around the area known as the 9 straatjes (9 little streets): Reestraat, Berenstraat, Runstraat, Huidenstraat, Wolvenstraat and the rest I can't remember , you'll easily find them on your map). A couple of nice places in that area for casual lunch (sandwiches, soup, omelets): Hein, Berenstraat 20 Buffet van Odette, Herengracht 309 A lot fancier is Zuid Zeeland, Herengracht 413. Had my last dinner there 6 years ago though so no recent experiences.

Made brownies today.. When I have to make a big batch, I always use Nigella Lawson's recipe from How to be a domestic goddess, because the amounts are just right for my very big pan. I use the basic recipe and add whatever I feel like.. sometimes dried cranberries or cherries, various nuts.. this time I added almonds and chopped white chocolate. They came out great!

I ended up using Abra's recipe on top of a mixture of chicken, fennel and bacon, in a creamy mustardy sauce. The batter was a bit runny, and I think that may have been my fault, as I was chatting with my mom as I was mixing and adjusting the measurements Anyway, the endresult did not look very cobbly, but the batter did bake up nicely - fluffy and light and with a lovely nutty flavor from the cornmeal. I did not get a good picture of it, but you can see it here in the Dinner!thread.

here's my first birthdaydinner (I try to have at least 3 with every birthday ) from last weekend. started with various nibbles and homemade gougeres (cheese puffs), no pictures. Salads: green beans, potatoes, cucumber and dill pastasalad with tomatoes, courgettes, pine nuts,mozzarella & basil My favorite moment of any dinner: everybody digging in! In the foreground, roast tomatoes and belgian endive. Behind that, chicken cobbler. I didn't get a good pic of the cobbler but it was delicious.. chicken, fennel and bacon in a creamy sauce with a cornmeal topping. Strawberry almond cake with lemon icing

Peter, this is just fantastic. Your writing, the pictures! Thanks for taking the time to do this and let us, eGulleters around the globe, join you on your amazing vacation.

I looked that up on a currency converter and see that we pay about the same price here. Mind you, we don't drink 2 litres of that per day! Small cups on special occasions. My husband has 20 different types of tea in his special tea cupboard, in all price ranges

That breakfast looks good enough to be dinner! I'm almost ashamed to admit that I eat granola for breakfast every day.. I really could not face making an elaborate breakfast like that first thing in the morning. We drank a cup of Gyokuro green tea last night in honour of your blog.

I will be following this blog with great interest! I've never been to Japan but have an inexplicable fascination with the culture and the food. I look forward to a slice of true Japanese life. Also, you're brave to take on blogging at a time which is obviously stressfull and difficult. I hope that maybe, blogging will take your mind off other stuff, and that our questions and comments will inspire you the way they inspired me when I was blogging!

Suzy, you mean like these in the upper right of the pic? Those are (were) Nutella jars as well.. A couple of years ago Nutella came in these 'kikker'(frog) glasses. Kikker is a character from Dutch children's books, invented by artist Max Velthuijs. I love those books and I had to have those glasses.. a new one came out every month or so.. I bought them all and i don't even eat that much Nutella... But they are so cute!