Author: zora

Out of butter?!

We just had a four-alarm moment down in the kitchen: no butter! Fortunately, I’d already buttered our toast, but Peter was wanting more…

I think this is the best evidence of how I’ve really had to shove everything aside to get this guidebook finished. I can’t think of another time in…my whole life?…that I’ve run out of butter.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a little cooking demo at our CSA. The recipe I did was raw zucchini with basil and brown butter. Natch, the first person to wander by and show any interest in what I was doing was a guy who said, “Boy, that sure is a lot of butter you’re using!” in a disapproving tone. Fortunately, some other bystanders noticed the butter-heckler, and started giving him a hard time. “Butter is good!” said another woman, and others nodded. I let them do the talking, because I just could not think of a polite thing to say.

Here’s the recipe, by the way:

Zucchini with brown butter and basil
(serves 4)

* 3 small zucchini (and/or yellow summer squash)
* 1 handful fresh basil
* 3 tbsp butter
* salt
* lemon (optional)

Trim ends off zucchini. With a knife, mandoline or vegetable peeler, slice zucchini lengthwise into thin ribbons. (Impatient? You can also run the squash through the slicer on a Cuisinart, though the results won’t be so pretty. It’s nicer to have long slices, rather than round ones, as they don’t clump together so much, but it’s really only cosmetic.) Mince basil (or chiffonade, if you know/care what that means–again, cosmetic) and toss with the zucchini in a large bowl.

In a small saucepan on high heat, melt butter. It will first foam with fairly large bubbles. As soon as the large bubbles subside and are replaced with a layer of denser foam, pull the saucepan from the heat. There should be dark-brown (but not burnt) toasted bits in the bottom of the pan. (If the butter smokes, you’ve gone too far–toss it and start over.) Immediately pour the hot butter over the zucchini and basil. Sprinkle with salt (to taste) and toss gently, so as not to break up the zucchini slices. (If you like a bit of acid, squeeze half a lemon over the squash and toss again. The lemon goes nicely with the basil, but it’s perfectly good without it as well.)

Serve pretty much immediately. If this sits more than 10 minutes, the zucchini loses a lot of its crunch (and the butter starts to congeal), though it still tastes good.

FEBO

Even though this web page is one of the most frightening on the whole Internet, I’m still putting FEBO in the guidebook.

That web page may depict FEBO’s shocking catalog of deep-fried morsels, which make me both recoil in horror and gawp in fascination (what is frikadel?!). But FEBO is a Dutch cultural institution! And it has automat windows, which are simply the coolest. Who cares if what they sell might kill you?

Besides, the guy who started FEBO died recently. Turns out FEBO (short for FErdinand BOlstraat, where he had a bakery job–I did not know that) prided itself on providing fresh, not frozen, product to all its franchises. Heartwarming.

Or heart-stopping. You decide–I’m giving addresses, phone numbers, opening times and nearest tram stops.

Status Report

Still working on the Amsterdam book. The good news is that I’m two-thirds done. The bad news is that I’ve used up about 95 percent of my stamina, working seven days a week, about 14 hours a day.

At one point last week, while taking a shower at the end of the night, I realized this is what those mysterious “consultants'” lives are like–you know, all those people in the financial sector. Those people you were friends with in college, and then they took these jobs, and you pretty much never saw them again. Fortunately, I can go to work in the same pair of shorts every day–and no summer subway trauma for me.

One day soon, I may have a social life again. In fact, August 10 I go to Baltimore for the annual crab feast. That is a goal worth working toward.

Dream Omelet

Oh, Onion, stop! I can’t breathe, I’m laughing so hard!

Chef Cooks Dream Omelet seems innocuous enough…until you get more of the details of the dream. The reference to teeth falling out is especially resonant.

Later today I’m doing a little cooking demo for our CSA. I’m very, very tempted to take it in this direction.

Back in NYC

Ha–I was in Amsterdam so long, I’d forgotten that summer was actually supposed to be hot! This is very confusing, this sweating thing.

As if to make up for my death trek over to Amsterdam, the airline gods smiled upon me and I was bumped up to business on my way back. I’d basically despaired of this ever happening to me (well, it did happen once before, but it was on Malev, so that only meant I got a different-color seat and more orange juice), especially now that I know there’s a whole, vast world of people pulling extremely complex maneuvers to get upgraded (see FlyerTalk). My so-called “Premier” status on United gets me just about jack shit.

But yesterday, I think I got upgraded just for being nice. Poor woman at the counter had made a call for volunteers to be bumped. She got swarmed as soon as she said “600 euros in cash.” I put my name in, and then went and sat quietly and politely off to the side, and read my book. The rest of the volunteers stood in front of the desk, slowly inching forward like a group of menacing zombies and trying desperately to catch the woman’s eye. It was creepy to watch, and I wasn’t even in their sight line. Finally, she said I didn’t need to get bumped, but she was putting me in biz class because I’d waited so patiently. Really, that’s all that I wanted, and some of those volunteer zombies probably needed 600 euros more than I did (holy shit, though, that’s a lot of cash! I studiously avoided doing the exchange rate, or even calculating how I might spend it, just to avoid disappointment).

And now…back to work on the Amsterdam book. Last night I had a travel-guide research nightmare: People were telling me about some exceptionally delicious bakery, way off in some distant area. I was adding it to my list and mapping it out about the time I realized I was no longer in Amsterdam and the window for research was closed.

For the record, I did eat at some good bakeries, so I feel like I got that covered. But it was touch and go in the final hours, when I stopped at Puccini for some bonbons, allegedly the best in the city, and I discovered they were utterly disgusting. I can’t even express how gross they were.

They tasted absolutely nothing like rhubarb, raspberry or coffee, respectively. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except for the fact that they were monstrously huge, like the size of a baby’s fist. Vegetarian Duck points out a certain tendency in Dutch cuisine toward both abundance and blandness. Puccini almost fit in there, except they went beyond bland, toward abominable. I took one bite of each, and threw them away. (A guy watched me do this, standing in an alley around the corner from the store. He looked horrified.)

The upshot of all this was terror, on my part: If Puccini sucked so badly, then what if all the other chocolate shops in town that people raved about were also terrible? So, in the name of research, I did a frantic afternoon of biking around town eating chocolates, in the last hour before the shops all closed, the day before I left. I am relieved to report that both Pompadour and Unlimited Delicious are quite good, and I can actually heartily recommend Unlimited Delicious, though the rosemary-salt chocolate does not quite hang together in the way I would like.

See, I take all kinds of bullets for you, my guidebook readers. And I’ve got the proof: My legs and butt might be tastefully toned from daily bicycling, but my gut is flabbier than it’s ever been. I think I even see that bite of rhubarb bonbon poking out there on the left. Bleh.

I live vicariously…

My friend Jim is in Argentina. I imagine I will get to Argentina around the time it ceases completely to be cool. Same goes for Berlin.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying Jim’s blog he’s writing with his boyfriend, Apio y Albahaca, and one post in particular is killing me: Food = Love. “Food = Love” comes, of course, from the late, great Chef Barton Rouse, who had such a wonderful influence on us all in our highly moldable years (thanks to Barton, I have a greater appreciation for chicken feet, orgies and manscaping).

And Barton would be proud that Jim’s writing a paragraph like this one:

When you’re well fed and boozed, life is just better. You become relaxed, gracious, magnanimous. You don’t speak, you enthuse. You don’t get up, you rise. You don’t burp onions, you exhale. And you don’t vomit – you certainly don’t vomit, even after drinking a ginger cocktail and two bottles of Malbec – because the red meat absorbs all the alcohol. You simply glide slowly toward the door, carefully avoiding steps and tables.

Bon voyage, Apio y Albahaca. I live vicariously through your meat-eating.

Amsterdam Wrap-up

Maybe a little premature, since I don’t leave till Friday a.m., but barring disaster (cue ominous music), here’s a handy summary:

Number of days in Amsterdam: 30
Number of days riding bicycle: 30
Number of times I encountered a car blocking the bike path: 3 (in NYC, it’s at least 3X/day)
Number of times I clumsily got on or off my omafiets (granny bike) and then looked around to see if anyone was watching: 876
Number of days when I felt like I’d gotten the hang of getting on my omafiets: 1 (today)
Number of days when I felt like gotten the hang of getting off it: 0
Number of frites stands visited: 5
Number of culinary epiphanies: 6

1) Basil ice cream is good (I’m a little behind the times on this one).
2) Pom–a food I never even knew existed until this trip, but see explanation here.
3) Van Dobben, the famous old-fashioned vendor of kroketten (croquettes), is heartbreakingly wonderful. All this time I thought it was just for drunk people.
4) Bitterballen (basically, little round croquettes) signify a great cultural gap between me and Dutch people. I mean, sure, I like them, but it’s just not the same.
5) Intestines can be good. After my tragic andouillette incident in Lyon, I’ve been leery of the chitlins. But Tjon’s food stand at Kwakoe, the Surinamese fest, did me right.
6) Most important: Frites should be done at 150 C/302 F, then 170 C/338 F. I can’t believe all the American cookbooks I’ve read that say to fry everything at 365 F. (For the record, I was told by the master that croquettes are perfect at 180 F/356 F.)

Number of times I thought, “This place is so beautiful!”: 30–basically, every evening as the sun fades away, my heart just plops out on the street. (By contrast, I’ve had that thought in Queens only about 5 times in 10 years, and 2 of those times were provoked by the steam from the power-plant towers, which hardly counts.)

Essay Section:

High point: Talking to all the people I did “Local Voices” interviews with: a rad tour guide in the red-light district, a cool girl who knows a lot about the theater scene here and had a lot to say on post-Theo van Gogh Amsterdam, a smart woman who taught me a lot about Dutch food and some inspiring bike freaks. Anyone who read my earlier post about this trip knows that I hate talking to strangers. But part of my assignment is to find people with an interesting POV on the city and interview them. When I had to do this for the Cairo job, it caused me no end of stress–and then turned out to be fun. But could I remember that lesson this time around? Of course not. It’s just like how, while I’m drinking, I can never remember that drinking too much is bad for me–but with a positive twist.

Secondary, literally high point: Late Sunday night, I was walking along a street in the center. I was a bit stoned–I’d been doing my coffeeshop research, and entertaining a visiting friend of a friend (if you can call staring at the wallpaper in the coffeeshop and smiling thoughtfully “entertaining”). I’d just dropped him off at the train station, and the air was balmy, and I was enjoying walking in the beautiful night. Until some dude next me said, “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” “Grumble” replied my defensive brain. I smiled wanly and nodded. Dude kept talking, and, whaddya know, he turned out to be nice. He just genuinely wanted to share what a nice night it was with someone. We got to the end of the pedestrian zone and biked our separate ways, and I was smiling thoughtfully again. (The fact that the guy was Moroccan somehow makes sense–I have never gotten that “let’s just share the joy of being on this earth!” kind of human contact in the First World, except from people on drugs, and sometimes at home in Astoria.)

Maybe high/maybe low point: I tried to get frites at the Eiburgh Snackbar, allegedly the best in the city, but people probably say that because it’s in the middle of nowhere by a gas station. Sour grapes? Maybe. Just as I rolled up, a crowd of Dutch rockabilly rednecks swarmed out of their beat-up muscle car, all tattoos, sleeveless shirts and mullets and yelling, “Stop, Elvis!” at their jumpy dog. They ordered about 80 fried snacks each. The counter woman, who was wearing a T-shirt that said “Fuck You!” on it, had to stack all the frozen bricks of kroketten, kaassouffle and frikandel (creepy sausage) on the counter to keep track of them. And the rednecks all kept saying, “…met mayo!” (with mayo) at the end of their orders. I turned around and left because I saw the grease would go cold before my frites got in. I would’ve been grumpier, if it hadn’t been such a culture/food train wreck.

Low point, pretty literally: the day when, due to poor planning and lack of food, I slumped down so far in my cafe seat that the end of my braid fell in my coffee. Sadder still: I didn’t even realize this until hours later, when I noticed my hair was hard and globbed together with milk foam and sugar.

Which, all things considered, is not bad at all.

Erm–now I just have to write the book…