markemorse

OK, right now: the pom is in the oven; Mara's all codeined up; we're watching House, and I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what this is: +++

Exactly my point! Chufi?

We haven't seen the grownup cat pictures you promised! ← Oh, Jo3n would kill me for posting this if she knew... +++

OK. I think that catches us up from yesterday. Oh, except for dessert, which was sauteed bananas in a palm sugar caramel over H-D vanilla ice cream. Photos are currently AWOL, I feel like my mom. I would call me for tech support if I could, but I'm too busy. +++ Today's breakfast: a bara with peper and a homebrewed gemberbier (ginger beer) for me; coffee and a chocolate chip cookie for the victim. Post-op lunch: mashed potatoes and pepper gravy, something I've not cooked very often, but boy was it good. No pictures 'cos the color scheme was...a bit absent. +++ Just to give you an idea of what is hopefully coming up: Tonight: I will hopefully be making pom and other soft foods for the baby bird. If my pom sucks, I'll go get Chinese from Long Chie. Or maybe Indonesian. For me, I mean, not her. Friday: I have kind of a busy day that's getting busier by the minute, running around town for meetings and things, but I'm going to try to visit our little Chinatown. I was going to do dim sum, but I think I'll maybe do a rijsttafel instead, and talk about how Indonesian and Dutch food have influenced each other. Note to self: BIRTHDAY PRESENT. Saturday: A friend is having a birthday picnic in the Westerpark, and then there's the Amsterdam Gay Pride canal parade. We usually end up canalside or somewhere relevant for this fun and often hilarious event. I haven't figured out how to foodblog it yet though. I also wanted to do a day of Turkish and Moroccan food, so this will probably be it. Sunday: Kwakoe festival with a motley crew of carnivores. Anything I'm missing? +++

But I didn't buy any cheese. I was here for dessert, which I did get. I was also keeping an eye out for freaky flavors of snacks that I might share with you. The Doritos weren't quite odd enough: but I did want a palate destroyer for the pre-dessert course, so I picked up the one thing that screamed "only in Amsterdam" the loudest: These were, eh...Pringles with a bit of green chile zing. Or lab zing, whatever. But it's hard to figure out the name of this flavor: the chips aren't orange, like you might expect. And though orange is the historic national colour of the Netherlands, (from Dutch founding father William of Orange), the powdered peppers on the ingredient list are jalapeños, probably not grown here, I don't think I've ever seen fresh jalapeños here. Oranje is the nickname of the Dutch soccer team, but the dude pictured on the Pringles can is just loafing around on something called a Fatboy. I don't know.

Another highlight is their cheese section. The top shelf here is all blue cheeses: And they are pretty good about regularly adding new cheeses...here's the "this just in" sign: You can maybe figure most of this out...here are some photos of some of the new releases: A blue goat cheese: Left: cow's milk cheese from the Vendée, and on the right, a raw cow's milk farmer's cheese, ripened 6 to 12 months: And a handmade goat cheese from Spain:

We had some nice-looking green beans that we almost cooked, but some unseen person flipped the switch on the underachievement generator again and we just kinda looked at each other and at the green beans and said "meh". +++ Since we'd planned on dining out, we had zero dessert fixins in the house, so I skipped downstairs, out the door, across a canal: to De Avondmarkt: De Avondmarkt is easily one of the best things about our new neighborhood, it's a late-opening independent supermarket run by people with taste. I didn't take too many pictures because there's a rather detailed photo tour on their website (linked above), and it just kinda felt weird as well...I go here almost every day and didn't want to freak anyone out. Anyway, their best features, other than being right around the corner and open every single day until midnight (such a rarity in Europe, as you probably know) are their beer and wine sections: This is just the beer and refrigerated wines, there's a whole 'nother wine department in the back.

Unsurprisingly, I roasted the caulifower in what has become known as the eGullet style: And Mara decided to use the rest of Monday's bag of frozen shrimp by making a variation of gambas al pil pil, which is apparently a classic Spanish beach tapa. We've eaten a lot of gambas in olive oil since we've lived in Amsterdam, but this twist came via an eetcafe named Castell in Zaandam (Mara also said she had an awesome steak there). We've been playing with variations on this over the last couple months...it's possible to take it in a very Spanish direction by using olive oil and adding a bay leaf and a pinch of saffron, but we've been experimenting with something a bit simpler: Mara's normal recipe is something like this. gambas al pilli pilli. 1/4 cup neutral oil, we used sunflower today 2 tbsp butter 6 to 8 pilli-pilli chiles (these might be AKA guindilla chiles? anyone?) 1/2 large onion, chopped, this is optional 1 roasted or fresh red pepper, cut into fat julienne (we actually subbed a tomato today) salt and pepper 12 shrimp, halved lengthwise 2 tbsp butter 3-6 cloves garlic, minced 1/4 cup celery leaves or parsley, chopped Add oil and butter to wok, saute the little pilli pilli chiles for 5 minutes or so to infuse the liquid with a little heat. Then add onion and pepper (and/or tomato if using) and saute until tender or however you like your onions. Bring the sauce to taste via salt and pepper. Remove the sauce from the pan and reserve. Heat the wok to high, melt the 2 tbsp of butter and then add the shrimpies. Saute for a minute or two, until they're almost done, then add the reserved sauce and the garlic, and heck, a bit more butter if you feel lucky. Leave on heat for another minute or two until everything's warmed through, then serve in an earthenware bowl with lots of good bread for dipping. You could remove the chiles first if you were serving guests who are chile-sensitive: these are hot. Garnish with the herbs if you want. Serves 2.

Last night we'd planned on doing something "fun", so we calculated the proper trajectory and fueled up via some Grimbergen blondes: but the launch was eventually cancelled due to risk management concerns....we decided not to risk putting the pots and pans in strange hands last night, and just cooked some things we've been enjoying lately. +++ We started by finishing a very fresh marinated goat cheese purchased by Jen, Ken, and Martha at the Saturday organic market that Chufi blogged about. It was extremely delicious, but not very appetizing looking at this late stage in its life. We spread it on the remainders of Monday's Turkish baguette while we assembled the tools for the next phase: The rest after Nurse Morse does his rounds. +++

OK, off to the hospital. Last night's pics go up when I get back, but here's a teaser: This can sported the War and Peace of ingredient lists.

Hey racheld....since "we're" ("we" meaning: there are 15 private or business occupants of the building....moving in [after a long interview process] means that you're part of a committee that manages the building) the legal occupants at this point (and have been for a couple decades), it's just normal utilities stuff...we're treated the same as any other structure in the city that needs water, sewage, electricity, internet....

Right...that's exactly the effect I was going for in that photo, mealworms and sawdust (in fact I used that setting on my camera!). I hope that, if nothing else, this blog has made it absolutely clear that there is only one blogging eG food photographer worth any amount of salt in Amsterdam, and her name? Klary Koopmans (to be delivered in the toothpick-mouthed voice of Eddie Murphy during the redneck bar scene in 48hrs). Y'all be cool, y'hear?

Thanks, Kouign, yeah, it sucked but we were very very lucky due to completely unlikely swift diagnosis and treatment in Siena, Tuscany...they were great. Bananas did get made, kind of in that vein, pictures later today (which is still tomorrow for many of you)...

There were plenty of places to sit down and eat if you felt like getting out of the sun: But what I was really looking for was The Place With The Big Long Line in Front of It. You know what I mean. Since I had a limited amount of eating I could do, and didn't know anything about any of the vendors, this was the only indication I would have of what was really good. And this place had the longest line, which was not painfully long b/c of the time of day I assume: What did I end up with? Welll, one interesting result of Suriname's proximity to French colonial outposts is a tradition of French-style sausages like bloedworst (blood sausage). I've had Surinamese bloedworst before, so I decided to try the non-blood-filled varkensworst, or pork sausage. These were waiting for me in a large simmering cauldron, and when serving it the very helpful young man (young like 12, maybe?) behind the counter asked if I wanted peper and zuur. Note: you always want peper (typically sambal or a chile relish) and zuur (pickles of various types). This is what he handed me: A soft, andouillette-style coarsely ground sausage, topped with a habanero/adjoema piccalilly that was just barely mustardy, and finished with a spoonful of vinegary allspice-spiked broth. Much better than it looks, nicely spiced, very tasty. But I'm not sold on the whole boiled sausage thing, especially when there's a hot grill 3 feet away. Must be the American in me.

Hey Ashiana! I was really hoping that you would show up here on this foodblog...I don't know anyone else on eG who has any actual ties with Suriname (at least I don't think I do: please remind/excuse me if I'm wrong about this). My schedule is still a bit up in the air this weekend, but let's PM about a potential get-together (BTW, I'm a bit behind on answering PMs, so: very sorry if any of you haven't heard back from me, it's only a matter of time before you do)... +++ Speaking of my schedule and this weekend, remember I mentioned upthread that there were fun and unique things going on. One of them is the Kwakoe Festival that kaneel referenced. The link explains it all, and I'll say more about it when I make another visit to it this Sunday, but in brief it's a huge multicultural festival that happens every summer on 6 to 8 weekends in southern Amsterdam. In the past the festival was aimed specifically at celebrating Suriname, Antillean and African cultures, but the organizers' focus is apparently widening a bit (according to their PR). I made a trial visit this past Saturday because I'd never been to Kwakoe before, and let me say: wowee zowee, it was like being on vacation. A totally relaxed and friendly vibe with tons of interesting food. The only downside was that I couldn't really eat very much because I was there in the afternoon, and I was having dinner at Marius mere hours later with Chufi. This weekend? I will leave no stone unturned, especially if it's a stone made out of barbecued pork. As a teaser, let me show you some pics from last weekend: +++ I'd never been there before, but as I entered the Bijlmerpark there were indications that I was in the right place: This picture doesn't convey either the smell of grilling pork and chicken or the 31 different simultaneous reggae/reggaeton/dancehall tracks I could hear echoing over the trees. Once you're inside, it's just stall after stall of Surinamese food. Like 100 stalls. I wasn't even there at a peak time, this was 3pm. There were stalls specializing in BBQ: lots of grill stations: an almost equal number of Hindustani/Javan stands selling plain and stuffed bara and rotis: Here's someone pressing out bara dough to be fried in the vat next to him: There were quite a few fruit and veg stands selling Surinamese staples: On the left, tajerblad, the leaf of the pomtajer plant, used in calalloo-like dishes (kaneel, any idea what the other greens are?):

OK, OK...here it is, the mystery ingredient, revealed: In the version we see here in the Netherlands, commercially made seroendeng is typically a mix of something like 60% toasted coconut, 25% roasted peanuts, brown sugar, ground coriander, salt, galanga root, ground cumin, onion, garlic, bay leaf, and rosemary. As I said, it's very common to find it even in normal, unexciting grocery stores. It's traditionally designed to be sprinkled on rice, but here we also see it in restaurants on top of Indonesian salads like gado-gado or sprinkled on satays. To me, along with sambal oelek and nasi goreng spice mixes, its sheer ubiquity says a lot about how deeply integrated Indonesian concepts are with Dutch eating patterns. And...it tastes really good. I'm a sucker for coriander seed. I used 2 tbsp of seroendeng in Monday night's shrimp "escabeche". It's like Shrimp Helper (as if shrimp needed help). +++ Tonight, an early cocktail hour that was designed to catapult us outside into the evening sunshine and some terrace dining instead left us kind of...eh...wanting to just hang out here and nibble some comforting food. If I don't get the pics up tonight, I'll do it in the morning...we'll see! Thanks for staying tuned....

Nobody knows the mystery ingredient? I would say that I'd send some to the first person who guessed it, but if you can guess it, you probably already have access to it and therefore wouldn't be too too excited about receiving some from me. It's a bit of a dilemma.

Goodness me, that all sounds great. I'm this close (finger and thumb pressed together) to making the chicken tonight with some boobs that need using (!), but I've also got these vegetables sitting around whose time is nigh...we just can't decide what we're doing tonight. Mara has requested "a dessert with bananas". That's all we have to go on.

Thanks for the sweet offer...I'll be talking about BBQ eventually/hopefully this week, at which point we can dust off our soapboxes and determine exactly what should be in my (and my mom's) refrigerators...cool? ← Here's my soapbox: If Coke can sue Coke Zero for "taste infringement," can we sue Rich Davis for "defamation of character"? ← Nice one Sandy...KC Masterpiece is truly barely even BBQ sauce at this point. Regarding HFCS: Taste issues aside, I am now an annoyingly unstoppable (as in, I wish I could just not do it) label reader since back in 2001 the historically perfectly healthy Mara had a couple of very unpleasant diseases in a row (both totally unrelated to current flukish tooth root trouble: Guillain-Barré and hypothyroidism) and we got very serious about our diets. That has thankfully passed, and last year finally marked a full return to an hypothetically unrestricted diet, but food and nutrition became so much of a necessary obsession that I think we'll never eat as carefree-ly as we used to again, as tragic as that is. I had a Coke this year, my first in a long time. And I had a Pepsi last month because I didn't feel like spending 4 bucks on flat Heineken at the Slint reunion show. And sometimes we just have to taste the newest Pringle or Dorito flavor to see what the labs have come up with...I'd love to know how large the focus groups are that they test some of these ideas with...maybe we'll look at some European Doritos flavors tonight.

Hey Kent, thanks for asking about our motivations for being here...if it's OK, I think I'll answer this tomorrow after Mara has her tooth root thingie (apicoectomy, but we're referring to it as "tooth root thingie" b/c it sounds less scary)...hopefully she'll be enjoying a drug-induced convalescent sleep and I"ll use that time to concentrate on some of the more explanatory pieces of this week's content. About the traditional Chinese....I had so much planned for this week! As part of my "tracing the development of the Indische kitchen" I was going to start in Chinatown at the oldest Chinese restaurant in town, where the first Chinese immigrants set up shop.... ...but pesky ol' reality has intervened in a couple different ways, and fkn ImageGullet, man...it's just wicked cumbersome. So, I've scaled back my plans a bit. I will try very hard to get over to Chinatown and the Zeedijk and get some grub on. Yes, you can find dim sum quite easily, don't know if I'll have time for that though... +++ So, right. Tonight is Mara's last night of solid food for a week or so, so we're trying to make sure she gets to eat something niiiice. It's SUCH bad timing for prescribed bed rest, though, because all manner of unique and fun things are going on this weekend and the weather is supposed to be gorgeous. Let's hope that the aftermath is not totally debilitating...it would really suck to be inside all weekend. For her, I mean. I'll be out doing fun and unique things, enjoying the blazing summer sun... ...unless of course Nurse Morse is needed at home.

Speaking of last night's shrimpies, I used one other top secret killer ingredient in there: Anyone know what this is? You could sprinkle this over rocks and people would ask for seconds, it's that good. Hint: it's got an Indonesian name and you can find it in 98% of regular old grocery stores here in Amsterdam.

Hey Doddie, the vinegar was outrageously great with the shrimp last night. But what do you normally do with it?

The "3" is indeed silent, unless she's been a bad kitty and you're looking for her so she can explain her actions...as in, "J-o-3-n? Where are you, bad kitty?" Sorry about the post-visit blog timing...at least you'll have a to-do list for next time!

Thanks a bunch, Chufi...in fact, that thread is so thorough that I'm going to let it do the explaining for me.

These are mandu, Korean dumplings. We used to eat these...not constantly, but far too often when we lived near Chinatown...and consequently we burned ourselves out on them a little bit. These are our first ones in probably 3 months. They're vegetarian, the ingredients are wheat flour, tofu, vermicelli, leek, cabbage, soy protein, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, salt, ginger, and pepper. They're really delicious, and you'd never in a million years think they were vegetarian (if you've got friends or relatives who are suspicious of this kind of thing). We steam them and serve them in what might be a pretty un-Korean style I think, more like Japanese gyoza, with furikake and togarashi sprinkled on top and soy sauce for dipping: