eG Foodblog: Chufi - Birthday Cakes & Royal Celebrations

[MarketStEl]

Oh, before I forget:

Happy Birthday!

You are indeed fortunate that you have the time and inclination to go farther afield than that supermarket for your provisions. That display of tray after tray of chicken breasts for some strange reason brought a Pink Floyd lyric to mind: "...All in all, they're just another brick in the wall."

From your description, their US stores are probably better places to shop than their Dutch ones. (I wouldn't know for sure. There are no Giant stores within the Philadelphia city limits.)

Carry on celebrating...that bedtime snack looked good...

[MissAmy]

Cool blog! And Happy Birthday!

I was in Amsterdam briefly during the summer of 1996, and I can't wait to see more of the city through your blog. Will you be showing us Dutch pancakes, or is that too touristy? What about the museums and coffee houses?

This is so fun! I can't wait to see more.

[Smithy]

Yay, Klary, you're blogging again!

Add my thanks to the others' thanks - I love your posts and photography, complete with recipes over on the Dutch cooking thread. It's neat that you take the trouble to celebrate an entire birthweek. Thanks for sharing it with us!

Nobody has mentioned the waterfronts yet. When I think of Amsterdam I think of the canals and the harbor. Are the canals only near the central part? Are you near there? Some water shots would be nice. I'm fascinated by the old (older than this country) houses along the canals, complete with tilting facades in some cases. I don't know whether you're anywhere near there, though.

At any rate - whatever you choose to show us during this birthweek will be charming. It already is.

[the g-man]

Reading your blog brings back memories of the Netherlands from an exchange term studying international law at Utrecht University a few years back. I remember buying bikes on the street from shady characters whispering something that sounded like "fitzkoppen" - bikes that were destined to be stolen within a few weeks (by probably the same guy who sold them), riding the bike home from the market with a case of Grolsch strapped to the back, going to the movies and buying beer at the concession stand (like Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction), eating rijsttafel at the amazing Indonesian restaurants in Amsterdam, the coffeeshops along the Oudegracht canal, the cheeses, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the bars (is the Melkweg still there?). It was a magical few months. I look forward to reading about the rest of your week.

[racheld]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Everyone is requesting lovely pictures and trips and markets and sites they'd like to see, and I have one request:

I saw your journal (?) lying on the balcony table, and hope you will post a pic of your handwriting---a grocery list, a recipe, anything. We all so enjoyed Bleudavergne's minute-by-minute "to-do" list in her lovely script, and I'd love to see your own. My dear neighbor is a German lady who will be eighty in June. She is just a dear, and I get a lift of the heart whenever I see her lovely European writing on a note or card in the mailbox.

I hope this is the happiest birthday you've ever had.

[Chufi]

Good morning!

Breakfast looks like yesterday, but it's different: a banana, some oatmeal and milk whizzed up with the stickblender.

In the other glass is nothing edible, although it looks a bit like whipped cream in the picture - they are 4 white roses.

[Chufi]

The bag of "Balangoda OP" couldn't help but catch my eye. 

I was unfamiliar with the name but a quick google led me here, where I learned that this is a Ceylon tea that I have yet to try.

The naming convention has me curious though.  Most US tea merchants would label this variety as "Ceylon Balangoda," as it is on the linked site.  Has Orange Pekoe come to denote Ceylon teas in Amsterdam?  Or am I just being misled by one merchant's peculiar way of labelling tea?

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If I remember correctly, in the shop it was labelled: Balangoda Ceylon Orange Pekoe (this was on the label of the big jar he poured it from). There were a number of other Orange Pekoes there.. I must confess I don't know enough about tea to answer your question.. I must also confess I only bought this tea because I liked the word Balangoda...

  Are all of your birthday meals/plans things you will be preparing yourself or do you get to sit back and let somebody else cook for you at some point?

This looks heavenly... what is the filling? Caramel?  Syrup?

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Today, I'm not going to cook!

the stuff inside the stroopwafel: I'm not sure.. we call it stroop.. I'll try to find out.

Nobody has mentioned the waterfronts yet.  When I think of Amsterdam I think of the canals and the harbor.  Are the canals only near the central part?  Are you near there?  Some water shots would be nice.  I'm fascinated by the old (older than this country) houses along the canals, complete with tilting facades in some cases.  I don't know whether you're anywhere near there, though.

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I was toying with the idea of ging to the harbor this afternoon, and you may have convinced me now! That is if it doesn't rain.. it's typical of the Dutch weather that yesterday the girls were in flipflops, and today they bring their umbrella..

I remember buying bikes on the street from shady characters whispering something that sounded like "fitzkoppen" - bikes that were destined to be stolen within a few weeks (by probably the same guy who sold them), riding the bike home from the market with a case of Grolsch strapped to the back, going to the movies and buying beer at the concession stand (like Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction), eating rijsttafel at the amazing Indonesian restaurants in Amsterdam, the coffeeshops along the Oudegracht canal, the cheeses, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the bars (is the Melkweg still there?).  It was a magical few months.  I look forward to reading about the rest of your week.

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Fiets kopen! (wanna buy a bike??)

The Melkweg is still there. Did you also go to Paradiso, just around the corner? It's my favorite venue for rockmusic. It used to be a church and it has great atmosphere.

[Chufi]

It was so very nice to wake up to all these lovely birthday wishes. Thank you all for reading along, following my week, and your encouragement and kind words!

I'll be off in a minute. Plan for the day:

First I'm going somewhere where I can think about, and plan my party. The logistics for this one are tricky... On Friday, I have to work, and Saturday is Queensday, when all the shops will be closed. So my only chance to do the shopping is Thursday. Everything on the bike, remember, so that's numerous shopping trips..

I really have to make lists now and decide what I'm going to make!

These are my plans so far:

appetizers: cheeses, some meats like ham and salami, olives, etc. Some other stuff.. has to be simple.

Pork sandwiches made with the coddled pork from Paula Wolferts Slow Meditteranean, with tarragon mayo

Chickpea rosemary soup

some kind of coleslaw

Homemade potatocrisps

Dessert.. ?? I was going to make 1 or 2 large cakes, but it turns out people won't be arriving, leaving and eating at the same time.

So now I'm thinking of doing individual things for sweets.. cupcakes maybe, or those pistachio macaroons from my new cookbook.. Any other ideas? I do want it to look pretty, and I'm hopeless at cutting things into neat squares, so no brownies or other traybakes

I tend to over complicate things when I give a party.. I always start out thinking I'll keep it simple, but then I'll go on adding dishes even at the last minute.. but I am really trying not to do that this time.

[Ling]

Dessert.. ?? I was going to make 1 or 2 large cakes, but it turns out people won't be arriving, leaving and eating at the same time.

So now I'm thinking of doing individual things for sweets.. cupcakes maybe, or those pistachio macaroons from my new cookbook.. Any other ideas? I do want it to look pretty, and I'm hopeless at cutting things into neat squares, so no brownies or other traybakes 

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You could do cupcakes baked directly in flat-bottomed ice-cream cones, then decorate them with coloured frosting and sprinkles. They look like ice-creams, but you get your birthday cake too! Very cute. You can also add sprinkles and sparkler candles! Here's a photo.

You could also do individual tarts if you're considering something other than a cake. You could do different fillings, like pastry cream and berries, lemon curd and Italian meringue, ganache and salted caramel...

A tray of cream puffs with different fillings would also be very nice! I'm sure you've seen the Pichet Ong thread...that's a great recipe to use for choux pastry.

Or you could also do napoleons! Oh wait...those require slicing...how about meringue nests filled with whipped cream and berries? That would be pretty for spring.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday and I hope all your birthday wishes come true!

[Swisskaese]

Stroop is syrup, like molasses or treacle. The stroop in a stroopwafel is like caramel. It is delicious.

Most of the recipes I have seen make the caramel from corn syrup, like in the recipe below.

Here is a recipe.

Edited April 26, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Swisskaese]

Dessert.. ?? I was going to make 1 or 2 large cakes, but it turns out people won't be arriving, leaving and eating at the same time.

So now I'm thinking of doing individual things for sweets.. cupcakes maybe, or those pistachio macaroons from my new cookbook.. Any other ideas? I do want it to look pretty, and I'm hopeless at cutting things into neat squares, so no brownies or other traybakes 

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I was looking forward to seeing the mille crepe. Oh well. It is a lot of work.

How about chocolate covered weesper moppen?

[prasantrin]

If I remember correctly, in the shop it was labelled: Balangoda Ceylon Orange Pekoe (this was on the label of the big jar he poured it from). There were a number of other Orange Pekoes there.. I must confess I don't know enough about tea to answer your question.. I must also confess I only bought this tea because I liked the word Balangoda... 

It's a great word! I think I'd have bought it, too, for that very reason!

Orange pekoe, by the way, isn't a type (like oolong, pu erh, for example) or flavour of tea, it refers to the quality of the tea--it's usually the leaves at the tips, I think (I can't remember exactly, and I left my Mariage Freres tea book back in Canada)

I, too, am happy to see a blog from you again, Chufi! I have no requests (you've already done the apple cake I requested ages ago, and I still haven't made it, yet!), but one...my birthday is in a couple of weeks...would you care to extend your birthday celebrations by a couple of weeks to include mine? That would be two more weeks for food for you! (and I could live vicariously through your celebrations.)

Happy birthday!

Edited April 26, 2006 by prasantrin (log)

[Swisskaese]

There is a Dutch store here in Israel, I just haven't figured out where yet.

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I found the Dutch store. It is in Tel Aviv.

If anyone from Israel is interested:

Beatrice N.L.

Rechov Rashi 19

Tel Aviv

I will have to show it to you sometime soon.

[Chufi]

A tray of cream puffs with different fillings would also be very nice! I'm sure you've seen the Pichet Ong thread...that's a great recipe to use for choux pastry.

how about meringue nests filled with whipped cream and berries? That would be pretty for spring.

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I knew the Queen of Dessert (now that would make a nice movie, Ling, Queen of the dessert asssuming you've seen Priscilla, queen of the desert... ) would come to the the rescue!

I think meringue nests and choux buns it is!

Michele, Weesper moppen would be great.. but my market doesn't sell the almond paste anymore now that winter is over.. and I'm too lazy to make it myself..

edited to add: see, there I go complicating things again. Why should I make both meringues and puffs? I think I'll just make lots of puffs. Maybe with different fillings though...

Edited April 26, 2006 by Chufi (log)

[ghostrider]

If I remember correctly, in the shop it was labelled: Balangoda Ceylon Orange Pekoe (this was on the label of the big jar he poured it from). There were a number of other Orange Pekoes there.. I must confess I don't know enough about tea to answer your question.. I must also confess I only bought this tea because I liked the word Balangoda... 

It's a great word! I think I'd have bought it, too, for that very reason!

Orange pekoe, by the way, isn't a type (like oolong, pu erh, for example) or flavour of tea, it refers to the quality of the tea--it's usually the leaves at the tips, I think (I can't remember exactly, and I left my Mariage Freres tea book back in Canada)

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Me too.

Actually OP refers only to leaf size - it tells you that you're buying a whole leaf tea. Other abbreviations may be added to OP to characterize a particular lot more precisely. Here is one handy guide to tea grades, courtesy of Upton. (Note that when they say "finer," they are speaking of leaf size, not quality.)

And here is a slightly different take that I found some years ago at a site called LeafTea - it perpetuates the usage of OP on Ceylon teas, though this still seems to vary depending on the merchant - I've seen Ceylon FOP and GFOP, though I don't think I've ever seen a Darjeeling OP:

OP - Orange Pekoe (pronounced pek-oh): The term often used to describe the largest leaf grade for teas from Sri Lanka and occasionally from the South of India. The term Orange was derived from the Dutch house of Orange. Pekoe was derived from a Chinese word meaning white down and refers to the tips of young tea buds' leaves.

FOP - Flowery Orange Pekoe: The term used throughout the rest of India to describe the largest tea leaves.

GFOP - Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: FOP with golden tips which are the delicate yellow tips of the buds' leaves.

TGFOP - Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: FOP with a larger proportion of golden tips than GFOP.

FTGFOP - Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: Very high quality FOP

SFTGFOP - Supreme Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: Very high quality FOP with lots of golden tips. For Darjeeling teas, the "S" indicates Supreme light colored liquor.

BOP - Broken Orange Pekoe: Broken size tea leaves

BOPF - Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings: Tea fibers that are smaller than BOP leaves and are commonly found in tea bags.

I thought the House of Orange reference was particularly appropriate here.

Enough tea pedantry! I forgot to say happy birthday! I am saying it now! Happy birthday!

Edited April 26, 2006 by ghostrider (log)

[Arey]

Happy Birthday. Delighted to be reading another blog by you. Especially since it's getting my mind off Philadelphia,the RTM and DiBrunos, although your cheese plate did cause a flashback.

In your last blog, you showed aged Gouda, which I use in an arugula, walnut and gouda salad. What are some of the other things you can do with it?

[ErinM]

Happy Birthday, Klary! I'm enjoying reading about your life in the Netherlands. I have some questions...

The outdoor market you went to...is that open year round? What is winter like in Amsterdam? What kinds of temperatures are you seeing now?

Do stroopwafels come in any other flavors? Could you get a chocolate one, for instance?

Is Amsterdam a bike friendly city? As the cost of gas rises here, I'm definitely interested in alternative modes of transportation!

Blog on!

[Darcie B]

Happy Birthday, Klary!

What a delightful blog this is already!

I must confess, though, that I wouldn't mind it a bit if your rounds happened to give us a little glimpse of one of those coffeeshops whose herbal offerings go beyond Ceylon tea, if you catch my drift ...   

Happy birthday, and blog on!

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I second this request...

[Chufi]

my birthday is in a couple of weeks...would you care to extend your birthday celebrations by a couple of weeks to include mine?  That would be two more weeks for food for you! (and I could live vicariously through your celebrations.)  

Happy birthday!

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I think 3 weeks of birthday celebrations is too much even for me

Thanks prasantrin and ghostrider for the tea info. I'm passing it on to Dennis (let's hope he's reading this )

I've had a truly wonderful day sofar. Even the weather was cooperative: it started out grey and looking like rain, and right now it's beautifully sunny and warm.

I started the day at the Theehuis again, I won't bother you with another picture of that coffee.

But, as rachel requested, here's my notebook:

as you can see, my handwriting has nothing of the expected European elegance. in fact, nobody can read my handwriting but me.. I'm always getting complaints about it.

On to de Koffiesalon, in the Utrechtsestraat, for coffee and cake with my friend Hannah. They opened recently and one of the nice things about this place is that they serve pastries from patisserie Lanskroon. They are famous for their wafels, an upscale version of the stroopwafels we saw yesterday: some are filled with honey, others with coffeesyrup, and the best one is filled with a figpaste

other good things:

what we had: chocolate cream pastry and raspberry almond cake

After that I went to the city centre. I know lots of nice things have been said about Amsterdam on this thread.. but it's not all good here you know.. so for balance's sake, I just have to show you what I feel is the ugliest street in the city: Damrak

It's lined with snackbars, cheap steakhouses and pizzeria's, lots of ugly advertising boards, and the worst looking streetlights I've ever seen.

You can see Central Station in the background. It's just terrible that strangers arriving in the city have this as their entrance to Amsterdam!

Right in front of Central Station is the lovely old building of Smits koffiehuis, see their website for a much better view of the place (and it comes with an oldfashioned folksong, for those of you with serious Amsterdam yearnings..). It's a great place to get some refreshments after arriving in the city, or to while away the time before your train leaves, much nicer than the restaurant in the trainstation. Too bad it's now almost completely enclosed in the building site of the North-South subway line.

Ok I'm going off-topic here.. but there is something very funny about the billboard with the rendering of the subwaystation they are building here. I was not aware of this myself until I passed it this afternoon, and it's such a funny coincedence that I have to share it with you.. See the circled portion on the billboard.. I blew it up..

Guess what, that's me there in the black sleeveless dress!

( in a previous life I worked for the architectural firm, Benthem Crouwel, that's designing the subwaystations. The guys from graphics were always taking pics of people to use in their renderings. I knew I was on another billboard, but did not know about this one until today..)

Okay back to food..

When you pass through Central Station, and go out the back, it's like you enter a different world. I love it here, it's like the bustle of the city is very far away, the air feels cleaner. See the little square building beneath the arrow? that's where I'm going for lunch. I'm taking the ferry, it's only 5 minutes:

cafe restaurant Wilhelmina dok

Lunch:

Kroketten!

Edited April 26, 2006 by Chufi (log)

[Chufi]

The outdoor market you went to...is that open year round?  What is winter like in Amsterdam?  What kinds of temperatures are you seeing now?

Do stroopwafels come in any other flavors?  Could you get a chocolate one, for instance?

Is Amsterdam a bike friendly city?  As the cost of gas rises here, I'm definitely interested in alternative modes of transportation!

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Hi Erin.. Yes, the Albert Cuyp market is open year round. It does get cold in winter, although never really bad.. we haven't had ice good enough to skate on for years.

Biking is very much the way to transport yourself and all your stuff.. We do have a car, but rarely use it in the city. Only to go out of the city!

Stroopwafels normally only come as the ones I've shown, the factory made ones are also only made with stroop. But see my post above for the patisserie in Amsterdam that makes them with other flavors! (not with chocolate though. Hm.. good idea..)

[alanamoana]

lunch looks fried (and therefore delicious), but what is it?

Klary, funny that you think the street leading away from the main station is ugly when i would love a street like that here in the suburbs where i'm living now...probably 70% of streets in New York City look like that, if not worse AND you're fighting with many more people on a narrower sidewalk. But, i can see how compared with the rest of your beautiful old city, it can be an eyesore. i'm still loving the blog though!

[Megan Blocker]

Oooooh, look at those pastries! I can hear Ling salivating from here!

What's that on the lunch plate, Klary? Looks like an effective hangover cure...

And that is HILARIOUS that you were on that billboard...how funny to be walking along and suddenly see a version of yourself up in the air.

[Kevin72]

All right, my request, building on ErinM's above:

What are some spring traditions in the Netherlands? Is there a crop that everyone waits for? A celebratory dish? (Does this belong in the Dutch Cooking thread instead?)

[Pontormo]

Heaving mound of mayonnaise upon a bed of fries

Apples, speckled, gold, crisp in October, melting between layers of pastry and cream

Pears found only in the Netherlands that turn crimson when cooked

Pasta in white bowls, strands coated with cheese, pancetta and tomato

Your balcony filled with flowers, table set for two

Books open to pictures of gooey desserts and a comfortable chair

Intimidating stalls of seafood conquered out of love

Rats dancing at the sight of peas. Peas!

Teahouse in the middle of the park, buds on trees

Have another, yes, just one more. Well, this one looks a little broken...

Dinner thread ogling

Amsterdam on bicycle, bags filled with greens

Yumm, lekker! What a lovely boterkoek! Taste the ginger…

K syrupy, floating in a bowl of pap

Lists, lists, shopping lists, menus, guests…

Another week of celebrations, a new year of cooking ahead

Roasted, braised, smoked, simmered, blanched, kneaded

Yes!

[Chufi]

What's that on the lunch plate, Klary?  Looks like an effective hangover cure...

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Kroketten. if you've seen bitterballen on the Dutch cooking thread, kroketten are a sausage shaped version of those. See also here for a report about the best kroketten in Amsterdam: Van Dobben kroketten