markemorse

So, today's eating. Something I've realized as a result of this blog is that...I don't eat normal breakfasts much anymore. Sometimes on weekends, but mostly I end up standing around (I know, bad habit) either eating last night's leftovers (because they're good), or some kind of grain like quinoa or bulgur or oatmeal if it's going to be a long day and I need some stamina to go with my caffeine. This morning, up for no reason at 6am, breakfast was me standing contemplatively at the island, eating leftover fried catfish without the butter sauce, cold, Heinz ketchup was the condiment. I really prefer most leftovers cold, I have no idea what the science or psychology behind this is. It could be that it's almost like a completely different version of the same dish, and my restless tastebuds are relentlessly craving as much diversity as they can find. It could be that we don't have a microwave. I just don't know. No, it's not the microwave thing...I ate like this back when we had a microwave. +++ My second breakfast at around 11am was a couple of fingerswirls of kaya and two cups of coffee, but it happened to overlap with Mara's lunch so I had a taste of that as well... +++ ETA: breakfast chronology adjusted.

I keep forgetting to post a picture of last night's dessert. Does anyone (or everyone) know what this is? I know there was a big eG post about it somewhere but I can't find it at the moment....

The kaya does spread really well, here's some texture shots: Yes, that is a fingerswirlprint in the top photo.

This is what Mara thought too (banana leaves), so I'm guessing that's the case.

So, good morning again. I'll explain why there haven't been many breakfast photos in a moment... +++ This morning when I re-woke up, I had to dash to the post office. This is a pretty daily occurrence for me b/c of our business (which I'll eventually describe). It's normally no trouble at all b/c there's a post office on the next block, but they're closed for renovations this summer. Boo. So I had to bike over to the Haarlemmerstraat again...I snapped some fotos during the ride: The canal at the end of our block, the Singelgracht: The canal behind the Haarlemmerplein: Then back down the Marnixstraat: ETA: Note the conspicuous lack of people in these photographs. Summer vacation, I tell you.

Must....back...away...from the...kaya.... Man, addictive stuff. We're thinking about hiding it (you know, I mean, from ourselves)....

so the fish is simply coated with cornmeal, no egg or anything? and what's the sauce - pecans fried in butter? anything else? please elaborate.. this sounds and looks so good I must make it soon... ← I never use an egg in this recipe, the coating is either 100% cornmeal or cornmeal and some percentage of ground pecans. Last night was 100% cornmeal. if you press the fish firmly into the cornmeal and are careful with it in the pan, the coating stays on. Note the Chef Paul Prudhomme's Blackened Redfish Magic next to the dredging plate: when I'm in a hurry or lazy, this is my seasoning. After the fish are in the pan, I shake a light coat of this over them, it's basically: salt, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cayenne, and maybe a little thyme. Or at least that's what I use when Chef Paul isn't around to help out. The sauce is a cross between a beurre noisette with roasted or toasted pecans and sort of a creamless meuniere sauce, basically browned butter with a squirt of lemon and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Depending on how fresh/tasty the pecans are, sometimes I just sprinkle pecan halves on top....if they're not very interesting by themselves I'll put them in the sauce. Parsley and scallions on top.

So, Sandy: the more I Google this, the more the kecap manis/tomato ketchup lineage is turning out to be one of those oft-cited but thoroughly undocumented pieces of online culinary history. Wikipedia's entry doesn't cite it's sources, and most of the other info I've found is (seemingly) plagiarized from Wikipedia or its undocumented sources. Looks like I'll actually have to crack open a book , but until then...does any other body know something? +++

Well, I think I know what I'm having for breakfast.... Thanks again, Makan King! I've been trying to think about what this kaya would be best on, and, yes...white bread with butter sounds pretty fkn good. +++ BTW, viewer mail has revealed that my newest avatar pic is a tad confusing/frightening, and so let me just assure you: that is not an ironic hipster trucker hat, it's a toddler's rain cap (with pull-down neck protector!). I borrowed it from my friend Martha who visited last week: Quite the little sophisticate, as you can see. Her remarkably refined tastes tend toward pasta with red sauce, freshly sliced pear, and the occasional piece of ham. And saying "bye-bye" an whole bunch...she's become known as The Girl Who Loved to Leave ("bye-bye!"). Easily my favorite toddler ever.

OK, just so I can get on with my life: And due to an amazing bit of overzealous operator error on my part (so, let me get this straight: you delete the photos AFTER you've downloaded them onto your computer...ohhhh, I see...), we have no picture of tonight's final plating with the pecans and sauce, so we must content ourselves with a picture of last week's (slightly less cornmeal-coated) catfish:

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? I'm not a KC Masterpiece fan (or really a fan of Kraft-style BBQ sauce in general) other than for the sheer novelty (and nostalgia!) of tasting liquid smoke and high fructose corn syrup combined in one product...but one bottled sauce that I have tasted and enjoyed recently is Jim Beam....tried it? Comparatively junk-free...but I think I like it especially because it reminds me (accurately or not) of Williamson Bros. BBQ in East Cobb on Hwy 41 in Georgia...which was my local BBQ joint when I was in the ATL burbies. ...but we can jaw about this further after I get my catfish online.

← Woo-hoo, yes it is in fact a non-sense disc of palm sugar. The -sense becomes a little less non- after you see what a package of 5 looks like: Initial forensics tests reveal this outside wrapper to be bamboo, maybe? Our forensics team is total crap, actually. Anyone know what the wooden-ish rind really is, and why it is? I myself do not.

It's not terribly hard to make if you have fresh coconut milk, eggs, sugar and a double boiler--plus a few hours of stirring. There's another, less time-consuming method, whereby you mix up the ingredients, then steam the entire pot, but my mom the expert says that you'll get a lumpy texture that way. You can make pandan and caramel variations. Yours is brown, so it's the latter. ← Great, May...I knew that the Singapore/Malaysia contingent would be all over this. Any chance you've got a full recipe laying about that you can share? For the uninitiated, I'll post some very porny fotos of it tomorrow. G'night...

We use frozen Pangasius filet, or pangafilet as it's frequently called here. The ones we get are Vietnamese as far as I understand.

OK, looks like I'm not going to get my full dinner pics up tonight. Um...nobody told me that this foodblogging was hard work! Did they? I'll put the catfish saga up in the morning, and get to the lingering questions then as well. Thanks to all for your attention and your warm fuzzies.... We hereby bid you nighty-nite...(that's our place directly above the tree) +++

Here's what I brought back from Tampopo...this stuff was not expensive at all, I was out of there for less than 5 bucks I think... Coconut vinegar: Palm sugar: And a delicious new find, the ingredients are coconut milk, eggs, and sugar: It tastes like coconut dulce de leche. Anyone familiar with this gooey goodness? +++ New ingredients in hand, I decided to try a leetle experiment, and it actually came out pretty wonderful: It's a shrimp escabeche in a coconut-palm sugar vinaigrette with basil, scallions, and a peanut, coriander, and toasted coconut sprinkle on top. It was really tasty...it may actually have tasted better than it looks. I'll post the full recipe soon. +++

This sign will be the bane of my existence this week. Basically: "we're closed for vacation". This was my poultry guy, I stopped by to get some smoked duck, duck confit, etc. But I was de-nied. +++ So I headed home, but ran into an Amsterdam traffic jam a block from my apartment: +++

There's also a freezer section that is especially expensive, and I have yet to buy anything out of it: And a nice Japanese section: ...as well as Indian and Thai sections that I don't spend too much time in because other stores do it better. But basically, if you're looking for something, they've probably got it, but they know that, and you'll pay for it. I'll show you my booty in a minute (tee hee!) +++

And I usually pick up something from the drink fridge: I'm in love with the soy cappucino in the middle of the top row.

Once inside, I grab a customized Tampopo shopping basket ($$$) and typically head for either the heavily Lee Kum Kee-weighted Chinese section: top row: oyster sauce; sweet and sour sauce; chili oil; sesame oil; "vegetarian stir fry sauce", whatever that is; chive oil. middle row: black bean garlic sauce; chili sauce; spare rib sauce; char siu sauce...and I think you can read the rest. +++ or the Indonesian section: Yes, these are rows and rows of different varieties of the sambals I had in my fridge. Top row, left to right: orgeade syrup; pangsit sauce; chili sauce; ketjap manis. Sambal row: assem; extra hot badjak; djeroek; gandaria; kemirie; manis; nasi goreng; oelek; peteh. The next row down is Indonesian curry pastes. The row below that is dried shrimp, atjar tjampoer, creamed coconut, and other miscellany. +++ The above photo is obviously worth elaborating on, but I'm a bit behind schedule as it is...I'll see if I can add a dollop of clarity after I catch up a bit. Here's a closeup: +++

Thus, I went next door to Tampopo. I have complex feelings about Tampopo. They are essentially a very comprehensive pan-Asian toko, which is a good thing to be. They are also excruciatingly expensive, which is less good. I try to see their side of it, but having just lived in Chinatown for 3 years, I know that these products don't have to be anywhere near this expensive. And having just closed a retail business here myself, I'm pretty in touch with their other costs. I'm sure they've got a terrifically high rent, this street has recently become rather trendy....but they've indulged in lots of costly branded packaging and fixtures, the costs of which I'm sure have been passed on to me, the shopper. So what I'm saying is I don't shop here very often, but sometimes...when I try to dart quickly past, I can hear the unexplored condiments calling to me in their spicy little irresistable exotic voices...and I yield to temptation, and enter the dragon.

OK, so this afternoon when I woke up I had to go run some errands, as I mentioned. I went out into the back courtyard where we keep our bikes: and to my surprise and pleasure, it was a beautiful day, as I've also mentioned. We've had about 4 beautiful days thus far this summer, so this was good good news. I rode up to our shopping street, the Haarlemmerstraat, it's about 2 minutes away. I didn't have time to take the scenic route, but here's where I parked my bike: First stop was my favorite nearby bakery, a Moroccan place called Mediterranee: but when I popped my head in the door I could see that they were pretty well picked over (it was 4:30pm or so, they close at 6pm). I'll be sure to stop in earlier in the day later this week....I normally get one of two things here: a harcha, a grilled semolina cake that is kind of a cross between cornbread and an English muffin; or a tuna brik, spicy tuna and eggs in pastry. Today I got neither.

Wow, truly remarkable resemblance, but no!!! Note the wooden "crust" on this non-bread....

Well thank you very much chocomoo and Dejah, for clearing up the fo lam business. I'm not 100% sure there was actually any on my sandwich, it seemed like mostly char siu with a little bit of duck. But an echte moksi meti should have fo lam. +++ OK, while I spend some time uploading and resizing images, let's play that foodblog game where I show you a picture and you guess what it is: Go! +++

Now you're talking crazy. Thanks for saying so, though.... +++ I'll return to action here in an hour or so...tonight's dinner was the slowest, most exhausting and inefficient "quick dinner" of all time. I'm not used to taking pictures while cooking, and I just don't know how y'all do it (and cook at the same time). I was a mess...I may have to switch back to takeout for the rest of the week. +++