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.”
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.
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
