Ottolenghi Crazy

We are experiencing a bit of an Ottolenghi obsession in this house at the moment.  I don't consider this to be a bad thing.  If you aren't familiar with Yottam Ottolenghi's cookbooks, his column in the Guardian (on which Plenty is based), or his London restaurants, I highly suggest poking around various websites and getting to know his food.  It's with a tinge of regret that I didn't call enough in advance for reservations at his restaurant the last time we were in London.

The recipes seem to be filling a need for our general food cravings: lots of pulses (chickpeas, lentils, and beans), aromatic spices, and complementary layers of simple ingredients.  Listen to me, sounding as if I ever in my life used the word pulses to refer to beans--must be the Ottolenghi wearing off on me.  Maybe it's because we've been in that no man's land of fresh ingredients, otherwise known as early spring.  The beginning of asparagus season this month has signalled a turning point, but the month preceding it was hard for us.  We've drawn a lot of inspiration from the cookbooks.

Our favorite recipe so far has got to be the Quinoa Salad with Dried Iranian Lime.  Alas, no dried limes to find here in Amsterdam--we're substituting lime juice and lime zest.  If you're in L.A. and you want to know where to get them, I've got a few addresses for you.  I lived in The Valley (the San Fernando Valley to you non-Southland people) for a few years, and the gigantic Persian market in Van Nuys was probably one of the greatest redeeming values of living "so far" from all of my friends.  This recipe has appeared twice on our menu in the last week-and-a-half, despite the extra effort of going to the super-chic supermarket for the orange sweet potatoes, honestly really worth the extra step. Besides, the youngest member of our family has really gotten into sweet potatoes.  As you can see, the eggplant from the soba noodle salad has also been a hit with the younger crowd.

 Lots of changes going on in the house at the moment.  A growing baby, making some travel plans, making some choices about a career move.  It's all been a little overwhelming, but when doesn't life seem to be really full.  I will say that it feels like with the arrival of spring, life (and cooking) has become more manageable.  Maybe I just needed some more sunlight.  Well, I've got my wish; the sun rises here a little after 6:00 a.m. and sets well after 8:00 p.m.  This is good for me but not so great for a baby, who hates to go to sleep.  We finally broke down and ordered a massive black-out shade for our bedroom window.  Whatever keeps us rested and sane, right?

Now go make some Ottolenghi recipes.  You can thank me later.

Corned Beef, or not

You know, every year I think I'm going to write this amazing post about St. Patrick's Day.  It would involve me finding delicious corned beef somewhere within the city limits of Amsterdam.  To a Dutchman, corned beef looks like this:

I'm not even sure what that product is made out of, but it is certainly not what I expect corned beef to look like.  Niek even enjoyed eating it on his sandwiches until I took him to a Jewish deli in Indianapolis and forever after made him sad that we live so far away from things like rye chips and kosher pickles.  [As an aside, I found a Jewish deli in Amsterdam and am planning a trip soon.] Corned beef and cabbage is not a dish I have often eaten, but my mom made it a handful of times for St. Patrick's day when I was a kid.  Every year I figure, why not celebrate a completely historically inaccurate, over-the-top holiday with a little meat and cabbage?  Why not, indeed.
I've taken slight issue with the holiday ever since I wrote my first history paper in college on the biography of St. Patrick.  Up until that point I had no idea that the real St. Patrick went by the name Patricius and considered himself a Roman on the fringes of the Empire.  All that driving the snakes out of Ireland lore had to wait for the hagiographers High Middle Ages.  That suddenly sounds like a cool job to me, a hagiographer.  I'm just imagining some monk closeted away in a monastery trying to figure out how he could make the lives of the saints more interesting.  Creative writing is a challenge no matter what century you live in.  Anyway, I'm really fine with the evolution of a saint's day becoming the day people wear green, get three sheets to the wind and regret their hangovers the next day.
However, looking into this corned beef and cabbage tradition has added a new element to the whole American interpretation of St. Patty's Day.  Maybe it's also the reason I can't find corned beef here.  It is apparently not considered an Irish dish at all.  Maybe Continental Europeans have no use for the stuff, either.  I'm ashamed to admit I didn't know what the "corned" in the beef actually meant until I looked it up for this post.  Can we all breathe a sigh of relief that I own a copy of McGee on Food & Cooking?  Whew, now I know that the "corn" refers to the large grains of salt used during the preservation process.  I also had no idea that corned beef was an important export product from Ireland during the early-modern period (shame on me, the Early-Modernist for not knowing that), although it was the English colonists in Ireland calling the shots at the time.  Raising beef for export meant less space to grow crops for the colonized inhabitants.  I think we can all agree it's the Irish did not feel like they were getting a fair shake from the ruling English.  So, yeah, corned beef not as Irish as this American girl seemed to think that it was.  
St. Patrick's Day was not acknowledged anywhere I could see.  It was just another Saturday in Amsterdam, although I was horribly disappointed to miss a sour beer festival on Saturday night.  That would have been awesome, but you know, babies tend to be cared for.  Time enough next year for the sour beer festival.  And, no, I didn't find any corned beef.  Sad, I know.  I took a Slate article's advice and made potato leek soup instead.  Potatoes we have in abundance.  Thanks, New World, for giving Ireland the potato and in a really roundabout way making me feel like I celebrated the life of a Roman missionary.

Proximity

This past weekend we had friends stay with us for a visit.  We know them from Los Angeles, but they are currently in Paris for work.  I e-mailed an open invitation to stay with us if they had time to get away, and before I knew it they on our doorstep.  Weekends like this are one of the reasons I am forever grateful that we have a spare bedroom (a luxury for Amsterdam).  What our flat lacks in ambiance--no views of 17th century canals here--it more than makes up for in square footage.

We had a great time together, and even Johanna got a bit of socializing in. Babies discovering the existence of other babies is an entertaining site:

We had some very simple dinners, since no one was up for big cooking projects with babies in need of a lot of attention.  Can I add that I got to have an almond croissant on Saturday for my breakfast thanks to our incredibly generous friends?  We managed to get everyone out of the house while coordinating the needs of two small beings operating on different schedules.  That is no mean feat, I assure you.  On Sunday, there was even enough warmth and sunshine to enjoy the first spring beer outside. 

More importantly, check out the special treat our friends brought for us:

Yes, yes, macaroons are hot right now.  Have they surpassed the cupcake yet as the dessert du jour?  I've had macaroons here, and they've generally fallen flat.  They're either too gooey or too damn sweet.  These, however, from the macaroon store in Paris were heavenly.  Ladurée keeps the standard flavors around but also is not afraid to get a little more experimental and creative.  The macaroons on the left were chestnut and pear, apparently a new flavor.  My favorite was the violet, but the cherry, rosewater, cassis, and salted caramel were all also amazing. 

Paris is about a five-hour drive from here (unless you have a baby that needs to be fed/changed/comforted), which is relatively close.  Parisian treats, however, are a world away. 

"proud to be an American..."

I suppose I should never complain again about not being able to find root beer here. I wonder if anyone ever buys this.

With a name like Stars and Stripes I bet you can just taste the flag.

Pea Soup

image from Unox

It's pretty impossible to live in the Netherlands and not take notice of what can be considered a national dish.  I think there is a soft spot in the collective Dutch soul for pea soup (erwtensoep or snert in Dutch).  It's inevitable, every winter  up go the ads for Unox (a brand falling under that behemoth known as Unilever) pea soup.  Unox also produces the most popular brand of rookworst (sausage) in the Netherlands.  As you can see in the ad above, Unox marries the two products quite well to one another.  While its quite evident that pea soup is beloved here, it's not entirely clear to me why it's this soup in particular that can be thought of as Dutch. 
While digging around the internet, this site explained that pea soup was used during lent in the Netherlands as a substitute for meat-based stews and bouillons.  I'm no food historian, so I can't say whether that was the case in other parts of Europe, but it would certainly make sense to create a nutrient dense and plant-based food during that all important season of abstention.  It makes me think of the Starkbiere festival in Bavaria, historically created to add extra calories to diets lacking in meat during a time of year when there was very little in the way of non-animal foodstuffs.  Why don't Americans have fun late winter traditions like this?  Who wouldn't want to get crazy drunk with a bunch of friends while wearing Lederhosen and listening to polka music?  Too many Protestants?  I'm digressing, and besides, the Netherlands has had plenty of somber Calvinists who don't pay attention to Lent.  Furthermore, do you see the amount of pork in that bowl of soup?  Nothing meat free about it.  While some form of the dish may have had its roots in days of yore, the current variation is heavy on the pig.
I love this drawing from an internment camp in Indonesia during WWII.  In it women are serving, among other things, pea soup to the camp inhabitants.  That such a heavy, winter dish had its place in what was most likely a hot and humid camp.  Then again, I think they took what they could get and most certainly would not have been dissatisfied.

image from Het Geheugen van Nederland

I'm actually surprised at myself for not making pea soup sooner.  When I was a kid, I remember my mom making it.  I don't remember why, but one time we had a ham bone at home, and she used that to make the soup.  Here, too, traditional recipes call for a ham bone or pigs feet.  If I knew a good butcher, I might have made the effort to find the pigs feet, but I honestly didn't want to go to the trouble.  Instead, I went the vegetarian route.  Thanks, 101 Cookbooks blog. 

Besides, pea soup is typically served with a very dense rye bread and a fatty cut of cured pork known as katenspek.  It's a great accompaniment to the somewhat sweet flavor of the peas.  I can't imagine having the meat on the side plus worst in the soup.  I'm Episcopalian, after all--the vegetarian soup with a side of meat feels like a good compromise for Lent.

Any excuse to use my ramekins

Although my pasta in cream sauce last week was a bust, the creamy chicken pot pies I made did not disappoint.  My brother-in-law and his girlfriend came over for dinner last week, so I felt like we needed to make something other than pasta or frozen pizzas (both insanely popular choices for us two sleep-deprived souls).  I keep checking the weather every morning, and in case you're wondering, yes it's still cold outside.  Cold weather means my go-to entertaining recipes require the use of the crock-pot or the oven.  Chicken pot pies, I thought, would be a good choice, and they're "easy." 

The chicken pot pies of my youth came frozen in single serving boxes.  Usually my mom would heat one up for me on nights they were going out.  I loved them even though I almost always burned my tongue in my impatience, probably because they were mini.  While I could make this recipe in a large casserole dish, it would really take something away from the novelty of an individual serving.  That is why I truly love my ramekins.  I bought the ramekins not even knowing what I would make in them, but I just couldn't resist their cuteness.  Someday I'll make crème brûlée, someday.  Until then, there's chicken pot pie to be baked...

It still surprises me when I make meal so deeply ingrained in my American cultural context, and it seems foreign to those around me.  A chicken pot pie, everyone knows what that is, right?  Of course, this one is slightly different from the Swanson pies we kept in the deep freeze.  The Dutch make all sorts of baked dinners, ovenschotels as they are categorized.  A stewed oven dish is something they've seen hundreds of times, but I think it's the biscuit topping that throws them for a loop.  Even though they love their buttermilk--have I mentioned before that my drink choices at Dutch history conferences usually consist of milk or buttermilk?--they don't seem to cook or bake with it at all.  Maybe it's because they also don't really use baking powder or baking soda?  For whatever reason, biscuity things are a novelty to our guests.

So glad they were a success.  Staring at that picture makes me want to make them again, and that might yet happen.  We've still got plenty of chilly days left on the calendar.

Day in the Life

Laura over at Navigating the Mothership likes to do "day in the life" posts quarterly and invites others to join in.  I've always thought it would be fun but was never sure if it fit into the theme of my blog.  Since my blog seems to be fairly theme-less at the moment, I thought why not.  There's not much going on here at the moment: pretty much same ol' thing, which became painfully clear to me after spending Thursday "documenting" myself.  Oy, I need to do more!

Lest the above freezing temperatures would have us forget, the utter darkness at 7:15 reminds me that it's still winter out there.  Better than in December, though, when I swear the sun rises at 9:00.

Dirty pan I left to soak overnight.  Our sink is small, so I could only soak half.  What's that I hear?  A baby?  No time for tea!

Niek doesn't have to leave for work quite yet, so he gets Johanna washed up and dressed while I make his Dutch lunch of four sandwiches and have some breakfast.

 Niek leaves for the day, and I putter around the house, folding laundry and kissing a baby.

Inevitably, Johanna poops.  So, you know, off to the changing table.

Some friends of ours just had a baby, and I do the proper Dutch thing: I send a card.  I don't really know what to write, so I browse back through our cards and google a bunch of sentences to make sure it's all spelled correctly.  My spelling in Dutch is really atrocious.
After that, we pack up and walk to the post office.  I miss being able to leave outgoing mail in my mailbox, but the Dutch just don't do that.  I shouldn't complain; we live a stone's throw away from a post office.

Five minutes later we're home, and Johanna is ready for her 10:00 nap.  She sleeps.  I try to get some work done.   When she wakes up, there's a diaper change involved somewhere along the way and I'm ready for lunch: grilled cheese and a tangerine.

While she plays, I answer some e-mails, eat some chocolate and make the bed.

1:00 time for another little nap for her and time to read blogs and to do a little more work.
1:45 the baby is up and we head out to run errands.  On this particular day, I have to go to a store west of Amsterdam, so I catch the tram near our house.

Ugh, I don't know why, but Osdorp depresses me.  I think it's all the low-cost housing from the 70s and 80s.  I feel like I've entered another universe.

The weather is holding, and I'm only a few miles from home.  I decide to walk back instead of taking the tram.  Johanna sleeps in the carrier, and I get to enjoy some fresh air.  Because she's sleeping so well, I stop at the drugstore to get her some baby nasal spray for stuffy nose.  Why is there a creepy worm on the packaging?

Also, this sign amuses me.  English is quite prevalent here but not always appropriately employed.  "Street corner work," really?  I'm not sure they really thought that through.

We're home by 4:00.  There's another diaper to be changed.

Playtime on the ground and an attempt to read the paper.

After a bit of a struggle, Johanna conks out for her last nap around 5:30.  I head to the kitchen to make dinner.

Just pasta with veggies in a cream sauce.  I think it would have been better had I run to the store for actual cream instead of just using the milk I had on hand.  Still, it wasn't bad.
6:15 Niek comes home and the baby is awake.  Just in time for our family meal.
Around 7:00, we put the munchkin in her pajamas and settle down for a few stories.  Of course, Johanna wants to get in one more meltdown before bedtime.

Johanna is asleep at 8:00 but woke up a few times.  No time for adult conversations.  By 9:30 she is down for good (I hope), and we do the geriatric thing by going to bed.  You know, I believe that someday I will feel well rested again.

Finding New Ways to Eat Winter Veggies

As I said earlier this week, I felt a moment of inspiration last weekend while menu planning.  Where it came from, I have no idea, but something just clicked and Niek and I actually felt excited about our eating plans for the week.  Winter veggies--which ones to choose and what on earth do you do to them to make them delicious?  Summer vegetables are easy: chop them up, throw them in a bowl with some dressing, and call it a salad.  Voila, dinner.  Last time I checked, eating raw cabbage at every meal isn't that appetizing (although I have a fabulous read cabbage slaw taco recipe that is truly amazing).

But, we did it.  We found a recipe that incorporates the best of Dutch winter vegetables, and no, it's not stampot.  We settled on the un-Dutch recipe for minestrone, and oh wow was it good.  As always, epicurious.com came in handy with a great rendition of winter minestrone.  There were the usual kinds of substitutions since Dutch grocery stores aren't exactly brimming with produce choices, and I'm just too stinkin' tired to lug myself and the baby halfway across Amsterdam in search of every, last ingredient.  Those days have been put on hold until...I don't know when I'll feel like doing that ever again...maybe when the little munchkin no longer needs to nurse and I could in theory blissfully leave her with Niek for days without worrying about her nutrition.  In the meantime, cubed bacon went in for the pancetta, the escarole was nixed altogether, and kale stood in as second-best for chard.  Why do the Dutch hate chard?  I would assume they do, because it is very difficult to track down.  Niek doesn't even know the Dutch word for it (snijbiet, in case you're wondering). It was sad not to use it, but the kale proved to be an adequate substitute.

Although the Dutch supermarkets fail to have a large variety of produce, they do have a surprising number of cabbage varieties.  I counted five last time we were there.  There was no savoy cabbage this time, so I picked up this little number, a head of spitskool.

I love this picture, because it looks like the head of cabbage is leaning into the shot as if to say, "Hello, I'm a spitskool."

And there you have it.  It was probably one of the best winter soups I have ever made, and it was even better the second day.  I just felt so full of goodness (re: fiber), so now I can make it through the rest of the winter without constantly despairing over the lack of greens in my diet or daydreaming about a flight back to California.

Gourmet = Fun Winter Dining

That's it.  I reached the point of winter this weekend when going to the supermarket irritates me.  Cold weather people--basically anyone who reads this blog outside of California, and right now I'm jealous of my friends on the West Coast--you must know what I'm talking about.  The fruit choices have dwindled down to apples, bananas, and oranges.  I get some mangoes and berries thrown in for good measure here, but they're ridiculously expensive and sometimes don't even really taste like anything.  And vegetables...you know I just really love good root vegetables, but I'm pretty sick of looking at parsnips and beets.  After weeks of feeling uninspired in the kitchen, I think I finally broke through with some good recipes for the week.  Hint, I'll be using lots of cabbage and kale.

However, that isn't what I really wanted to talk about today.  What I really wanted to share was my amazing experience with Gourmet (not pronounced gor-may, no it's gur-met, as in, "I met up with some people last night and had a really good time with good food and conversation and cute kitties and smiling babies."  Like that.  That's how you pronounce it.)  Wikipedia's entry on it only gives me the activity, "gourmetten," so technically I guess we were gourmett-ing.  I think some people here also call it a raclette. Any way you slice it,  you enter into the fondue/Korean gogigui /Japanese teppanyaki territory.  You sit down at the table laden with raw ingredients and go to town cooking on the stone cook-top or in the little pans underneath.  This is the second time I've done it, and I just love it.  It is, to be honest, slightly more difficult with a squirming baby, but it's still manageable.

The ingredients don't have to be too terribly exciting, and let's be straight here, in January in the Netherlands there aren't too many exciting ingredients to find at your local supermarket.  But that is why Gourmet is so awesome.  It's the whole experience of cooking all your own little dishes while you sit around and talk that makes for such a nice evening.  My favorites to make were omelets and rösti in the pans.  Our host told us that his family always did this on New Year's Eve when he was growing up to fill up a lot of time for the long evening leading up to midnight.  Niek's family did this on Second Christmas Day with his grandparents.  If you want to try this, and I say do, I recommend the following:
1) Plan this with people you actually like talking to.  The food does take some time to cook, so there is a big chunk of time you have to fill with something other than eating.
2) Have a good ventilation system in your home.  While the meat and veggies on the cook-top smell amazing, they let off a lot of steam and grease. 
3) Following #2, don't wear anything that needs to be dry-cleaned.  No matter what, you will leave smelling a bit like the fryer at a fast food restaurant.  If you know this ahead of time and just embrace it, it becomes a non-issue.

Very confused kitty.  "What?  People come in mini-size?"  Note the diaper bag in the car seat to keep the cat from thinking it was a new bed for him.

Nothing like a nice evening of tabletop grilling to lift me out of my funk.  And the sun is shining today, and there are no gale force winds at the moment.  What nice ways to break up the winter blues.

Fish and little time to cook...

Ah, welcome mid-winter.  With your short days, cloudy skies, you make it that much more difficult to rebound from the gaiety of the Holidays.  Do you know what solves the feelings of malaise?  Hot and filling casseroles that bubble up delicious aromas while cooking in my oven.  Last week it was time for a little bit of fish pie.  If it hadn't been for Tessa Kiros' beautiful description of this dish that she had inherited from a Finnish family friend, I'm not sure I would ever have given it a go.  After all, I grew up in the Midwest where pie is synonymous with dessert and does not denote any sort of meal laden with fish and mashed potatoes.

I'll spare you the pictures.  They didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, and I don't want to turn anyone off attempting fish pie in the future.  But it was delicious as the mashed potatoes mixed with the sauce, veggies, and pieces of fish.  I did make it with pollack instead of cod, and I cut out the shrimp.

Ever since I saw a special late one night on PBS about aquaculture (yeah, PBS is where it's at when you need a grad school study break), I haven't been able to bring myself to buy most shrimp found in the supermarket.  I'm also the kind of person who carries a list of sustainable fish around in her wallet.  It makes shopping for seafood kind of depressing and quite exhausting.  I've been trying to strike a balance between buying food raised/caught/grown in a more sustainable way and not feeling horribly guilty if some of the things we eat are part of the...what is that they call it?...the industrial-agricultural system.  It's been kind of exhausting lately.  Probably because I don't sleep all that well with a four-month-old, and I would like my food to take less time to prepare.  I think I am starting to fully understand why pre-packaged foods are so popular.

Still, as Johanna continues to grow (and hopefully sleep more at night) I hope buying and preparing foods will once again become really enjoyable.  I loved eating the fish pie, I just didn't enjoy juggling and crying baby and a pot of boiling potatoes.