prolific.org

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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My recipe at Open Source Food.

Steamed cod, pepper, fleur de sel, lemon juice, knob of butter.
Crushed new potatoes with olive oil, crema di balsamico, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese.

Took less than 15 minutes to prepare (I nuke the spuds in the microwave). Tasted like heaven.

What’s your favourite simple meal?

Anyone speak Chinese? I’ve checked tons of dim sum menus online, but I cannot find out what ‘Hoi Tjie Fan Dai’ means. That’s what this pork (?) dish was called on the Dutch/Chinese menu.

Tjie = Jee / Gee = Pork

A-Fusion is a really nice place stuck between the mostly grisly looking shops and restaurants on Zeedijk. Once you’re inside it’s kind of hip and trendy in a cool Asian way. I tried their bubble tea, they’ve got tons of different flavours, but I have to say I thought the coffee flavoured one I tried was a little bland. I prefer the Indonesian version of this type of drink, called ‘cendol‘.

I also tried their ‘thigh’ meat (deep fried battered chicken) and siu long bao. I’m not an expert, but I think the siu long bao was too dry. Descriptions of the dish always warn for the hot broth that spills from the dumplings once you bite them.

Service was a little hapless, though I noticed they were a lot more attentive to their regulars.

I bought a bamboo steam basket and a couple of trays of (frozen) dim sum from Toko Dun Yong on Gelderse Kade.

Sieu Kaui, Ha Kau, Won Ton and Char Siu Pao.

I’ll pretend it’s healthy.

What beautiful days we’re having. Long walks by the Amstel, sushi in Zuid, crazy voicemails (’Vy aren’t you picking up ze phone? VY?’) and an (almost) announcement. Things are shaping up nicely this summer.

I was unwell for most of the day, but once I recovered (having obtained my life saving Maxalt tablets from the chemist) I legged it into town for a trip to the chinese toko. Not because I needed anything. Just by way of entertainment. I bought fish balls and frozen scampi, and chinese greens as well as a couple of those extremely tempting red bean mochi.

A hearty soup is what I needed so I decided to make a fish ball soup, mixing japanese and chinese ingredients and. Here’s what I did.

I made stock (3/4 liter) from dashi powder, bonito flakes, a slice of ginger root, some crushed garlic. Then I added 4 scampis, 4 fish balls, a sliced carrot, 4 shi-take musrooms to the boiling broth, as well as portion of udon. I should have prepared the udon separately, but I was lazy so I just cooked them in the broth.

Topped it off with a few stalks of yau choy sum (one of the many types of ‘chinese seasonal greens’) and deep fried japanese tofu. Didn’t have any spring onions, which should have gone on top. The last thing I added was a raw egg, which slowly cooked amidst the noodles.

Tasty! The comfort food of my childhood. Next time, I’ll try to remember to take a picture before I eat it all.

Guess what I had for dinner? Pork pie. With a dab of brown sauce on the side. Guess what’s in the fridge? Blackpudding and Kerrygold Irish butter.

No, I didn’t fly to London or Dublin today after work. I jumped on my bike to pick up something from the Hardware.nl shop on Ceintuurbaan. And on my way back, my eye caught something interesting.

There on Sarphatipark, not 5 minutes from my door, was a sign that read "Thomas Green’s, the best of British.’ It looked very small, but I hit my brakes, got off my bike and went to investigate.

Inside I found a British grocery store. Fully stocked. Frozen products, a range of instant Indian meals as well as ingredients, cheese (Cheddar, natch, but Wensleydale too.), rashers, various kinds of sausages, double cream, clotted cream, beverages, crumpets, crisps (salt & vinegar!), a large rains of teas and enough biscuits and sweets and chocolate bars to give the entire nation diabetes. Bottled ales, cider.  Etc. etc. And they deliver too.

How long had they been there? 18 months. How could I have missed them before? Local regulations prescribe they’re not allowed to advertise in the street. They’re looking for another location.

‘Don’t move too far out of this neighbourhood,’ I said.

www.thomasgreen.nl

PS. Aussies, they’ve got tim tams and vegemite too! 

My friends told me they went to Moshi Moshi, our new favourite sushi restaurant, yesterday and staff asked: ‘Where’s your friend?’

Bwah! The chefs at Zushi, a sushi bar I frequent on weekends, usually say ‘See you next Sunday’.

I wonder if I can get a discount if I increase the frequency of my visits.

I’ve just booked a flight to New York for my trip Oct 6-12. It’s funny how they can turn a 350 euro ticket into one that costs 535.

So… New Yorkers… where’s the cheap sushi in your town?

Hungry before going into the Stade de France in Paris, I stopped at one
of the many, many food stands outside the stadium. They all looked the
same and served the same food, none of it very healthy: French bread
with assorted sausages and chips.

You couldn’t just get a bag of chips, it only came as extra with the
sausage. I marvelled at the ludicrous idea of having french bread with
chips (’le chip butty’) and tried to decide what sausage I wanted.

The merguez (moroccan, spicy) looked great, but I wanted something
bigger so I pointed at the large ones on the hot plate. Looking at the
menu, I guessed they were ‘andouilettes’. That rang a bell. When the
woman scooped one disintegrated sausage into a baguette for me, I
remembered. Andouille… Tripe. Chitterlings. Offal.

I smiled, having made the age old unsuspecting-tourist-in-france
mistake. But I pride myself on a strong stomach and palate. I’m not
squeamish about food (as long as it’s not insects) gladly slip live
shell food down my throat and wax poetically about black pudding. A
little pigs’ offal wasn’t going to put me off.

I tucked into my baguette with great relish. Texturally, it was fine.
That thick white rubbery bit must have been a vein or stomach lining.
The pale grey brownish filling was like minced meat. It was the smell
of it that did me in. It was minging, sickly and sweet, much or exactly
like the food I used to cook for my pet.

Half of my baguette andouillette ended up in a bin. A bottle of Evian
took care of the taste and smell. Once inside the stadium, I stilled my
hunger with a plain old hot dog.

Top chef Richard Corrigan (in between the ubiquitous swearing):

‘C’mon, out some olive oil on it, yeh? They look as dry as a hoor’s heart.’

‘This is wild (rabbit) meat. It’s… happy! Until somebody takes it…’