Would you like some cheddar?

Location: specialty cheese shop in Amsterdam

Me: Hello, do you have some Wensleydale by any chance?

The young shop assistant (YSA) looks lost.

“Huh? When what…?

Me: “Wensleydale. An English cheese.”

YSA pretends to look on shelves.

“Wensley….?”

Me: “Wens. ley. dale.”

YSA: “English? We have cheddar.”

Me: “No thank you, I’m looking for Wensleydale.”

YSA: “You should taste our cheddar.”

Me: “No thank you, I know what cheddars taste like. It’s the Gouda of England. Not what I need right now.”

Plus there’s a chunk of cheddar in my fridge.

YSA: “Really, you should taste this farm cheddar. It’s very good…”

Me: “I am not looking to buy cheddar at this point.”

YSA: “Oh. Sorry.”

So am I.

This wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t had the exact same conversation about Cheshire cheese in another Amsterdam cheese shop not too long ago.

Christopher Walken: ‘I used to deliver cakes’

Chef and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich and her mother, Erminia Motika interviewed by Christopher Walken about their shared roots in Astoria, Queens. Lidia and Erminia used to work in Walken’s father’s bakery. Listen to revel in Walken’s idea for a cooking show in three acts: “Buy the chicken. Cook the chicken. Eat the chicken.”

You may remember Walken has a thing for chickens.

Watch “Man cooking chicken and pears”

Cool refreshing Thai Sapphire



Thai Sapphire – Inamo Restaurant, originally uploaded by Caroline.

This has been my favourite cocktail the last two years. It’s called a Thai Sapphire and I first had it at Inamo restaurant in London. Because I love you long time, I’m sharing the recipe with you.

2 measures of vodka
1 measure of lychee liqueur
1 measure of apricot liqueur
the juice of half a lime
a dash of pomegranite juice
a quarter of an apple, finely diced

optional: some slices of apple, or one or two lychees

Muddle the apple in a shaker. ( = crush it with a spoon or pestle) Add the rest of the ingredients and shake with some ice cubes. Pour over crushed ice. Top off with the pomegranite juice. Decorate with apple or lychee.

The original recipe calls for (Dutch) Ketel vodka, but I’ve been using Smirnoff Black, or plain old Absolut. The best lychee liqueur I’ve found is Bols. Don’t get the cheap stuff from your Chinese supermarket, it’s pretty vile.

Enjoy!

Sil Jeh Fan – Nam Tin

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Caroline

For me and a lot of my Asian friends or relatives, having Chinese food is both comforting and celebratory. We’re a little unadventurous in what we order. We always say ‘next time’ we’ll choose something we haven’t tried yet, but Cha Siu, Peking Duck and For Nam are just so. damn. good. we almost always order it.

Sil Jeh Fan is a great option when you are really greedy AND don’t want to spend too much. It’s rice with a bit of all the three dishes I mentioned. Triple WIN, although you need some luck to get the better bits of the duck. Some restaurants serve chicken instead of the duck, which is a bit of a let down.

If we have starters it’s usually steamed tao si oysters or scallops and sometimes I order razor clams. If it’s an occasion, we get side orders of various greens with oyster sauce or garlic.

One day I will order the stewed stomach. One day.

Le Petit Latin

My colleagues and I went for dinner at a small restaurant here in Amsterdam last night. You wouldn’t find it if you didn’t know about it, as it’s not in an obvious location. We’d originally planned to eat elsewhere, but that place was fully booked. Our CEO recommended Le Petit Latin.

The decor was ‘French’ in a string-of-onions-round-the-neck-‘allo-‘allo kind of way, but it proved quite effective, I no longer felt I was in Amsterdam.

The menu was chalked on a black board on the wall. It was mostly self-explanatory (if you read French), but the jovial French owner dropped by to explain it all anyway, in lovely Dutch and Franglish even for our mixed company.

A quick glance told me I was never going to find anything on it that would fit my current calorie-limited diet, so to hell with it for once.
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