I made these this evening. Individual chicken pot pies. You will perhaps note that there was not bottom crust. I think I preferred it this way. I’ll have to try it the other way sometime. I kind of patched together a few different recipes, and the ingredients we were in the mood for (although I forgot to add the peas!). After debating the crust for a while, I decided to go the easiest route and used pre-made puff pastry. Which was a good decision; it was fuckin’ delicious.

Right. I’m proud of my cooking tonight. But originally I wanted to post about reading.

I’ve been reading a number of different books, recently. I finished Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ right after Thanksgiving, which was pretty much a fascinating book (as one might imagine by the title). My sister made the awesome mistake of confusing Pullman with C.S. Lewis, which is mostly funny since Pullman explicitly disliked Lewis.

I also finished Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim quintet, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy; both really good, although I think I liked the former more. (Although Collins really knows how to hold my attention. I think I read each book in less than two days.)

After seeing him speak (poignantly and humorously) about his father’s death at the book fair, I’ve started re-reading Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini, a semi-fictionalized account of his adolescence in his father’s home. Which is as amazing as I remembered it being when I was in seventh grade.

A Chanukah present was a new copy of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, which is every bit as haunting and sculpted as I remembered. I really should read something else of hers, but for the moment I’m happy to explore this again. Every sentence feels like poetry.

At the recommendation of Theresa, from Haverford, I’ve also been reading some actual poetry — Barbara Ras’ Bite Every Sorrow, which is really cool. When I get in the mood for poetry, it’s a great feeling.

On my soon-to-be-picked-up pile: Salman Rushdie’s two YA books (especially Luka and the Fire of Life, the most recent); Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Lucia Perillo’s poetry. And probably the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories.

Last weekend, Ashley and Mateo and I went to San Sebastian. We had a great time, which is to say that it’s a beautiful city and has amazing food. San Sebastian (Donastia) is a city in the north of Spain, in the Basque country–very close to France. It’s known for its food, its beach (La Concha), and not all too much else.

We essentially took San Sebastian as a place to relax. Which is as it should be. We got there on Thursday — I took the train up, and met the two of them on the beach. La Concha, The Shell, the only beach we really frequented, is a gorgeous ring-shape, and the water is pretty warm all things considered–which is to say, considerably warmer than the water off the Oregon coast, but not quite as warm as Miami beach water. (How’s that for a stupidly long sentence?) It was a fun beach to visit, and we spent a lot of time there, as well as walking up and around the city, seeing the fortifications, and so forth.

But I’m going to focus on the part of the trip that’s most worth writing about: eating food. Mostly, we ate tapas, there called pintxos (pronounced, and spelled in the rest of Spain, as pinchos). Pintxos are just small dishes; the way we did it was we went from bar to bar, trying pintxos. In the south, tapas usually come with a drink. Not so here, so it’s not cheap. But that’s okay.

Thursday night we started at a place called La Cuchara de San Telmo, recommended by my friend Ade, where I started out adventurously with pretty excellent foie. I don’t remember exactly how it was prepared, but it was surprisingly tasty. Ashley wasn’t so pleased with her bacalao. Second, we went to Ganbara, an unimpressive bar where I had bacalao, but we also got our first taste of the Basque white wine txakoli, which all three of us really liked. Third, we went to Txepetxa, perhaps one of the better places of the night, essentially a bar that serves anchovies on bread prepared with different toppings — all of them delicious. At the recommendation of the NYTimes article posted on the wall, I tried the one that came with eggs of an erizo de mar. Fourth, we went to Zeruko, a fancier bar that had beautiful pintxos; I had the first morcilla I’ve ever liked, served with a fried quail egg. I’m glad I gave it a chance. Lastly, we went to Restaurante Munto, another rather good bar — at least I was pleased. There, I had a pintxo with goat cheese and caramelized onions on bread — traditional, but always delicious. A good night.

Friday afternoon, we splurged, and went for the Menu de Degustación at Bodegón Alejandro, which I’m so glad we did. Here’s the menu (and here’s a picture of it, in Basque):
0: An amouse bouche of this asparagus-cream drink, with bread crisps. both salty, both tasty.
First course: A chilled marinated anchovy lasagna, with the anchovies laid atop a ratatouille base. It was pretty great; we gave it an A.
Second course: Fried tomato stuffed with chipirones (squid), on a bed of risotto made with the squid ink. I don’t always like squid ink, but it worked well, the cheese sauce was great, and the entire thing was amazing. A+
Third course: Grilled hake (merluza) with mashed potatoes and a sauce of mussel “juice” — not amazing, but buttery and savory. B
Fourth course: Glazed veal cheek on a terrine of bacon and potato slices, with a roasted red pepper sauce. This was very good, although kind of gluttonous. A-/B+
This was the last savory dish. After we finished, they brought us small glasses of a sweet orange wine, which I really liked (but I like sweet fruit wines).
Fifth course: Torrija (Spanish French toast, hah) with a caramelized top and cheese ice cream. This — well, both desserts — was amazing. Mateo thought it too sweet, but I disagree. Both get A/A+ ratings.
Sixth and final course: Slightly spicy peach gnocchi, with coconut ice cream and a vanilla-lemon sauce.
As we finished, they gave us drinks of leche merengada, which was more like egg nog than a milkshake. Also soft almond biscuits. Yeah. Anyway, certainly we were stuffed.

After a few hours at the beach, and a few hours of walking around, we had a bit of dinner:
First, we went to Izazpi, where I got a goat cheese, honey, onion, and pepper pintxo, which was quite good. Second, to A Fuego Negro, which was disappointing — a shrug-inducing cup of shrimp soup. Third, some good but not great risotto at Txondorra. I ended with an anchovia pintxo at Txepetxa again.

I have nothing else to add, nor pictures of the food.

The recipe is pretty simple; I’ve approximated it a few times when I didn’t have the recipe on hand. (One version I wrote down.) The real recipe calls for scallions instead of onions, a bit more peanut butter (total 1/4 cup), and quite a bit more sugar (1/3 cup). It also calls for ginger.

Anyway, I made this recipe on Sunday night, with pasta, steamed broccoli, and fresh cucumber slices. It’s a four-person recipe. Monday night I ate leftovers. Tuesday night, I bought two chicken breasts, chopped and saut&eeacute;ed them, and added the chicken pieces in as well. (I also bought some peanuts, which I hadn’t had.) And then tonight, there was only a small bowlful left. So I bought a zucchini, and saut&eeacute;ed it with salt and pepper. I made a bit more pasta. And then I heated the leftovers and the new pasta together with a bit of coconut milk (I had some leftover in the fridge) and an egg, until it was cooked, and then added in the zucchini. It’s just, wow. I’m not sure I could replicate it easily, but I’ll definitely try sometime: follow the normal peanut sauce recipe, but add an egg and replace some of the water with coconut milk. Also add salty-pepper-y zucchini.

Yumm.

Back to watching Mary Poppins. (Why? Because they played the babysitter song on This American Life. Sometimes I’m suggestible. Also I talked about it with either Emily or Ashley the other day. Or both? Dammit, I must be middle-aged already.)

• Fine dark chocolate with fleur de sel / a touch of sea salt
• Petits Desserts: Crema Catalana (crème brulée)
• Dark chocolate with cherry and chili
• 70% Dark
• 80% Dark
• Fine dark chocolate with chili
• Dark chocolate with fig and caramel
• Petits Desserts: Mousse au Chocolate (White Mousse)
• Petits Desserts: Hazelnut filling
• Mint

I think the mint is the worst one. The best are Hazelnut, Touch of Salt, Creme Catalana, and Fig/Caramel. The chili ones aren’t bad either. Apparently there’s a raspberry one, but I have yet to see it here.

Wow, this entry is inane.

rice (or noodles, I suppose)

Directions
0. Cook rice, if using.
1. Heat the oil, and add the onion. After a minute or two, add the cubes of eggplant. Cook on medium, adding oil as necessary (a few tablespoons may be needed; eggplant loves the stuff), and stirring every few minutes, until eggplant glistens and is done; it may take a while. When it nears done, add the garlic. (Add it earlier if you’re not a garlic fan.)
2. Toss the tofu in some corn starch (a few spoonfuls is fine) and black pepper to coat.
3. In a separate pan, heat a tablespoon of oil on medium or medium-high. When hot, add the tofu. Cook, tossing occasionally, until it crisps and browns. It will take less time than the eggplant.
4. Add the cream, hot sauce, and mushrooms to the eggplant. (If you like, you could also sautee the mushrooms separately as well. It would taste better, but involves three things cooking at once.) Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are hot. Add the coconut. Add the tofu.
5. Serve over rice. Delicious!

Cook the pasta. Saute the mushrooms in hot oil, roughly 3 minutes. Salt and pepper them as they cook. Add the seitan and spices. When it has warmed slightly, add the coconut milk. Heat until everything is warmed. Add to pasta.

Simple, but really good. Maybe in part because it had been a long time since I ate seitan.

Shortly thereafter, Professor O. invited me and the woman into the other room, and demonstrated these glasses that they’re using for an experiment — sunglasses with a camera on the top, hidden, for blind men to wear. I believe — this was all in very fast Spanish. Decidedly, they’re doing a study on attention and motivation (stuff I’ve worked on before!) in the blind, but how exactly the study is going on I’m still unclear on. I think they all already knew, so that was one of the main problems. In any case, there were four men — all professors or academics, at least one an engineer — talking about the study, and we sat with them for a bit. They ended up in a discussion of whether attention and motivation are separate processes or one process with two different names, which I found awesome: both the question, and the fact that I could understand it. (I think it’s quite likely they’re the same process, even if they’re that process working differently. Professor O. thinks the same; the engineer disagreed. I said a word or five, and they listened, but obviously I was slow to speak. I would’ve been even if they were speaking English; they were almost all at least twice my age.)

After the meeting wound down, Professor O. and I met briefly, and he described the plans: he wants me to do some research on the topics of positive and negative emotion as they relate to EEG waves, the two hemispheres of the brain, and picture/word presentation. In some senses, this is very similar to things I’ve done. But it’s kind of exciting, and the eventual plan is to move this study onto looking at depression. I won’t be there for that, but he intends to involve me for the entirety of this study — designing it, analyzing data, writing the paper. I’m not sure why he’s being so helpful, but I guess in some sense he’s gaining me as someone who’s excited to help run a study he wants run, and and that’s a great thing. I’m excited, for my part. If all goes well, we’ll get to publish something. And if we get stymied, I’ll certainly have a lot of great experience. I imagine I may talk more about the research I’m doing, if it’s interesting, on this forum. I’ll warn you.

* It had been a long time since I had thought of the difference between whose and who’s. I had to teach them this week. It’s generally so instinctive. Except when it’s not. I often make the written mistake of they’re versus their. And right vs. write, which is probably my worst mistake. They’re so simple to do, when you’re writing (or typing) quickly. Clearly the mistake has nought to do with not knowing, and much to do with mistaking something.

A note: I made soup with all that chicken stock I made the other day. Today, so a bit later than I thought. I’ll have it for dinner tomorrow, and Thursday, and I’d probably have enough for two more days besides if I weren’t going to Dublin. It’s spicy, and pretty good. I used half an onion flavoured with a red chili (not sure what kind — it wasn’t labeled in the greengrocer’s) and some cumin and turmeric; I added half a green pepper, broccoli, garbanzo beans, tiny pasta like orzo, and eggplant (cooked separately). In that order. Not bad for something just using all of my vegetables in the fridge.

When I was in eighth grade, I think, I started reading a series called The Wheel of Time, written by a man known as Robert Jordan. (That’s a pseudonym, for no good reason that I know of. He just always wrote this series with this pseudonym, and others with different ones.) It’s epic fantasy in the most ridiculous way possible. By which I mean: it’s quite literally epic, in that there are currently 12 books (with two more forthcoming) and over 10,500 paperback pages (thanks, wikipedia). Yeah. By comparison, The Lord of the Rings is three books long. George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire (which I read three books from in high school, and ended up finding surprisingly distasteful) is four books long (although three more are projected). Terry Goodkind’s godawful (the first two were good, and then I got disgusted) Sword of Truth series is eleven books long, I guess. WoT (as it’s often abbreviated) has sold almost twice as many books as the Goodkind series, around 44 million copies. Martin’s series is considerably shorter. The only fantasy series I ever liked as much as WoT was Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (beginning with The Dragonbone Chair and feeling very much like something Lloyd Alexander might’ve written). (To be fair, I didn’t finish the third back in that series until years after I first tried it. But that doesn’t fault the beginning.) There is also some more elf-heavy fiction, which I’ve managed to almost block out of my mind. Like Terry Brook’s Shannara series, which I’m kind of happy to forget.

Anyway, I guess the point is that most fantasy isn’t quite so large-scale as Jordan’s, and clearly I’m not the only one who admires that. Anyway, over break I picked up the series (I started on book two, and ended up just keeping on going), and now I’m reading book eleven. Twelve was released in November, I think, co-written by Brandon Sanderson because Jordan died three years ago, now. Leaving copious notes, and a wish that the books be finished.

I do acknowledge, reading these for my third time, that there are lots of things that bother me. I especially notice the things that maybe only happen twice a book, but happen twice every book. There are things like braid-pulling that happen way too often. Phrases like “his cloak would’ve made a tinker blush” are used every time a certain character appears (he’s supposed to wear a too-colorful cloak). I am frustrated when characters do stupid things. For example, characters who are not only on the same side, but also friends, don’t share important information with each other. Sometimes motivations are weak — I still don’t quite get why many of the villains switched sides not just to a different side but to the evil side. It’s one thing when the villain is, you know, a king who wants to rule the world. It’s another when the ultimate villain is the Dark One, a devil who touches the world and enjoys torture, death, and destruction, and expects his followers to as well. Someone who’s jealous might turn on their friends, but not so far as to embrace sadism. Or maybe once, but not over and over again. Right? Maybe I’m being re-naïve.

In any case, this is tons of fun. I like reading these books. I’m reading the eleventh one for the first time, I’m pretty sure (I didn’t own it, and I don’t remember it), and then I’ll have to switch writing styles and read (well, listen to, on audio book) the twelfth. And then I’ll be dry at least until November.

I’m not even going to try describing the plot. Wikipedia does an okay job, but if you’re at all interested then you should pick up the first book, The Eye of the World. It’s kind of pulp fiction, but well-written and well-thought-out for the most part. The characters have distinct personalities. Occasionally you get lost, but there are websites for looking that sort of thing up. Also a brief glossary in the back of the books.

Actually, there are a ridiculous number of websites dedicated to WoT. Not just wikis, of which there are at least two, but “scholarly” sites where people write up their theories, or think about the roots of Jordan’s ideas, or any such thing. It’s quite fun. And useful, when you’re lost, or want to know whether people think the same thing you do. Unfortunately, the websites DO assume you’ve read everything (obviously), and so sometimes give out spoilers.

In other news:

Today, I went rock climbing! It was quite a lot of fun. I feel a bit more comfortable at the place, although I still don’t really say more than two words to anyone other than the woman working at the desk. Still, it feels good to be exercising more than yoga on occasion, and if I couldn’t do anything difficult and felt tired quickly, then it’s well that I finally bought a ten-visit pass and will be going in ten times over the next three months. At least. I’ll try and use it faster. If I go twice a week, then I’ll buy a monthly membership. That’d be fun!

On Tuesday, despite being exhausted, on a whim I bought a tiny (1.5 kilo) chicken from the butcher’s (that’s a bit more than 3 pounds) for €4. The guy threw in two chicken carcasses for free, too, which was nice. So I roasted the chicken that night, more or less following this recipe. More “more” than less, except that I only left it to rest for an hour and a half or so. Even so, it turned out splendidly. Crispy skin, moist breasts, maybe a tiny bit soggy since the lemon had a lot of juice. I had the chicken and potatoes for dinner that night and last night as well.

I also saved two things: first, the chicken carcass, bad meat, joints, and skin. Second, the oil and drippings left in the pan. The latter I used for tonight’s dinner, which was fantastic: I took the last pieces of chicken, and fried them in a bit of (lemon) chicken fat with green peppers, just to warm them. I made rice with stock. I sautéed mushrooms in butter (Michael Ruhlman has an excellent meditation on how best to cook mushrooms, which I didn’t quite follow, since I used butter, but sort of did). And then I made tacos, just peppers, mushrooms, rice, and chicken. Delicious.

The reason I had stock to make rice in, of course, is that I made it. Two raw chicken carcasses, plus one roasted chicken carcass, plus a €1 selection of celery, leek, and carrots from the supermarket, plus some leftover cilantro and some garlic and an onion. I bought a new, bigger pot today, primarily because we needed one (for €15 — I doubt it’ll last more than a year, but I’ll be gone then), and it sat with water turning into stock for around five hours. (I followed Ruhlam’s book for this one. He knows that stuff back-and-front.) I’ll put the stock in the fridge for the night, and then make soup tomorrow, I think. But for now, it made some very soft, flavorful rice.

Our flour and water and many of the foods we buy already have extra nutrients embedded within them, thanks to laws in the US, and if we’re eating healthful foods, we’re probably getting many of the rest. I don’t know that I’ll warrant that supplements are bad — not until the evidence builds up a bit more — but I do wonder about the usefulness of taking vitamins every day.

In any case, I definitely recommend giving the article a read. The best part about it? I spent the first half of the article thinking to myself, “Huh. It’s interesting that they’re suggesting that so many of these vitamins can affect the body in a possibly negative way, but what about the placebo effect?”, and then the second half is about the placebo effect. The brain is decidedly able to change the body. It can be undermined anyway, though.

Yeah, yeah. Boring post, especially without good photos of most of it. Shrug. I took photos. They just were blurry.

1. One of my favourite recipes: Chocolate-almond biscotti. In Spanish, they call them cantuccini, which is also the word in italian. They burned very slightly (I don’t know why — bad pan?) but they were delicious anyway. I brought them into school and had almost every teacher at my school tell me they were delicious. Although they all thought of them as brownies. Weird.

2. Sandwich: freshly-sliced chorizo iberico, brie, and tomatoes. This is what I’m eating right now. It’s delicious. I kind of got sick of chorizo, but then I realized that the solution was to on occasion buy good chorizo and to avoid the cheaper supermarket-bought stuff. So I went today on my way home from work to the butcher, and got them to slice me some. It’s not cheap, but it’s quite a bit better. Less gross-and-fatty, for one thing. Not as spicy, though — probably I should ask for a spicier version next time. But yes, chorizo goes well with brie.

3. Dulce de leche. I used, as ever, a slight modification of thekitchn.com‘s recipe for dulce de leche. It’s quite good, by my standards. For whatever reasons, it doesn’t come out as well here — not using a good pot, since we only have a bad one, is my main excuse — it just never thickens all the way. Oh, also the fact that I don’t know how much baking soda I’m using, since I don’t have measuring spoons. (Should bring some back from the States with me…) But delicious nonetheless. Tasted right this time.

To redux the recipe (and misuse that word):

• 1 quart of milk
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda (dissolved in 1 Tbsp water)

You bring the milk & sugar to a simmer, add the sodium bicarbonate when the pan’s off the heat, and then simmer for an hour-and-a-half or so until it’s the right color and the right thickness. The baking soda thickens the mixture; the milk slowly browns (Maillard reaction!), and eventually it looks like caramel, and tastes even better. Yep.

4. Ginger snaps. I used a recipe from the Homesick Texan, another foodblog I really like, but honestly wasn’t so impressed. I mean, I like her recipes; I’ve used her quite often actually. But I dunno. I found these kind of boring. Also, mine were ginger snaps even though they weren’t supposed to be. I guess I can blame that on the oven, again. I think I’m going to give Clotilde Dusoulier’s recipe a try this weekend, I think. I even bought candied ginger for that purpose, although I’ve found that it’s fucking delicious on its own, and I want to try making it myself.

5. Finally an perhaps most excitingly, I made the recipe from Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column: Pasta with mushrooms, risotto-style. It’s a really good recipe. I altered it quite a bit, as he suggests; I used oyster mushrooms (because that was what I could find — I’m not actually a big fan of them; they’re too spongy) and no chicken, and added in frozen spinach at the last minute. I was going to use some raisins, too, but decided I didn’t want to. I definitely do recommend using the white wine, though: it makes it smell amazing. Then again, cheap white wine is really cheap here. Anyway, I was a big fan. I had it for dinner for two nights, and for one day’s lunch.

So this weekend was a long weekend here in Spain, because today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I know; I’d never really heard of it either. But apparently it’s a national holiday here. (To be fair, a lot of the kids at my school knew they got the day off but didn’t know what for.) Anyway, I went to Amsterdam to visit my friend Dan, from Haverford, who’s doing a Fulbright research project in a small town called Groningen in the northern Netherlands.

(Netherlands side-note: Nether-land, low-lands — that’s what we call the country today. They call it Nederland, which I assume means the same thing. In French and Spanish, it’s the same idea; Pays Bas, Paises Bajos. Except not really, in Spanish. I mean, they can say that, but they tend to just call it Holanda and call the language there (Dutch, in English) Holandés or even Flamenco (Flemish). Which seems odd to me since neither is really correct — the language is correctly Neerlandés. Then again, we still sometimes say Holland to describe the country, which is not quite correct, since Holland is only part of the country. (The west-and-south.) It includes most of the big cities, though.)

Anyway, yes. Dutch is a weird language — a little like German, which I also don’t speak, but unique nonetheless. Interestingly, I can hear conversations in Dutch and think for a few moments that it’s English — similar intonations, I guess? But it does sound different, of course: consider the name of Dan’s city. It’s not pronounced Grow-nin-gen, not the way we would say it. Dan explained that when he first got here he would ask English-speakers something about it, and they wouldn’t know what he was talking about. The pronunciation can be heard here. The g is a soft-k, maybe, and the r is very slightly rolled. Not really sounds we have in English. Of course, most of the Dutch speak fluent English. I definitely met a number of people in stores and the like who spoke perfect English — most of them with an American accent — that could’ve convinced me they were foreigners except for their speaking Dutch with their co-workers. Even the people with bad English speak it in a way that’s easy to understand, for the most part, I think since the sounds of the languages are quite similar.

Right, so we’re three paragraphs in and I have yet to mention food. Well. I was in Amsterdam for three full days. In that time, I managed to eat some Dutch food, and a lot of Asian food. We also managed to get good Belgian beer (oh man, a fantastic Tripel ale, a Gouden Carolus — at a cool bar called Gollem, Raamsteeg 4), and see several museums: the Van Gogh museum (the gh in Gogh is pronounced with that soft k, again, which I did know), which wasn’t amazing but wasn’t bad; the Rijksmuseum, which was kind of not as impressive as I would’ve liked (it’s been undergoing rennovations for a long while now, although honestly I think I was just expecting some amazing portraiture and some cool landscapes; there were landscapes but I mean, all the good Bosch paintings are elsewhere, and I mean the Brueghel clan are almost unilaterally displayed elsewhere), although it has some nice Rembrandts and a Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring is in the Hague, though); the Tropenmuseum, or Museum of the Tropics, essentially a cultural anthropology museum with collections of things from old Dutch colonies, and a kind of intriguing exhibit about Surinam and the “Maroons” there, which I knew very little about, as well as this modern art exhibition of work by this guy Henri Dono; the Heinekein “museum”, which was essentially a tour of an old Heinekein factory that gave us free beer but honestly wasn’t really worth it; and finally the church — De Neuwe Kerk, which had an exhibition about Oman and was also just a kind of cool no-longer-used-as-a-church. We also walked around a lot, explored most of the interlocking landmasses that make up the center city of Amsterdam. Saw this beautiful old ship-related building, wandered through the Red Light District and saw the Old Church there, walked through two markets.

Which actually brings me finally to the original point: Dan’s not a big Dutch-speaker, but he’s been into exploring Dutch foods, at least to the point that he knew what was going on when we went to the open-air street markets. Now, street markets in Madrid aren’t really food places, and even in Argentina most of the food sold in them was prepared foods, but street markets in the Netherlands seem to be about half food and half other-things. So besides prepared foods, they have vegetable stands, butcher’s stands, poultry stands, fish stands, and so forth. Some have significantly different prices, it seems. We went to two, although the second was almost entirely closed by the time we got there — one was the Albert Cuypmarkt, and the other was the Dappermarkt, both in the South. Things we ate at the markets:

1. Fresh stroopwafel, sort of like the cones of dulce de leche they sell in Argentina, but more like caramel and less sweet.
2. Hollandse Nieuwe, or soused herring, a sandwhich (so technically Broodje Haring) with cold stewed herring, onions, and pickels. Very strange, and with this weird gelatinous texture, but not bad at all.
3. A pastry filled with almond paste, which was possibly called Banketstaaf (according to google, that might be it). Interesting but not wonderful.
4. Apple pastries. No clue what they’re called, although surely the word is appel in dutch. But they were basic, delicious sweet pastries filled with apples and goo.
5. We bought fresh whole mackerel, and fried it in a pan at our hostel, with rice and asparagus on the side, and some store-bought garlic-pepper sauce. It was actually very good. Dan did the mackerel, I did the sides. Weird for me to eat from a whole fish, but still.

All of those things are typical Dutch foods, understand. We also had Dutch pancakes, called Pannekoeken, which honestly are more like a cross between pancakes and crepes than either one. See? Those we got in a restaurant on Sunday afternoon, for lunch — mine came with bacon and apple slices. I was interested by the fact that both the apples here and those in the pastries are cored and then sliced down the center, rather than quartered first — you end up with apple rings, yes?

Anyway, we also ate some good Asian food:

1. Indonesian. On Friday night, we went out to eat at this place called Coffee & Jazz (Utrechtsestraat 113), which our guide book claimed was cheap. It wasn’t, not really, but we ate a full meal that was mighty delicious. There were five tables, and one cook/waiter/owner, who clearly loved the fact that he’s labeled as eccentric (he had print-outs of reviews that called him such, on the table) and made us saté, and then two chicken dishes with veggies and served on quite good rice with toasted coconut. Definitely the best meal we had.
2. Surinamese. Okay, sort of. It was a Surinamese/Chinese/(Indonesian) restaurant (Kam Yin, Warmoestraat in the north of the Red Light District, before it really starts, and it was super-cheap and pretty good — I had Surinamese roti, which I quite liked. I know Surinam isn’t in Asia (it’s next to Guinea), but for whatever reason the food was pretty damn Asian. As it says on wikipedia, “In Suriname roti refers mainly to roti dahlpuri or roti aloopuri. It is most often eaten with chicken curry. Roti can also refer to a dish of stuffed and spiced roti wraps. Due to mass emigration of Surinam Hindustani in the 1970s, roti became a popular take-out dish in The Netherlands. It usually includes chicken curry, potatoes, boiled eggs and various vegetables, most notably the kousenband or yardlong bean. Another variation includes shrimp and aubergine. It is custom to eat the dish by hand.”

Right, so there we go. My trip to Amsterdam, as though it were a food vacation. I need to do some more food-explorations of Madrid. Jeez.

Pollan’s anthem is this: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” By which he essentially says that people should worry less about the [nutritional] contents of the food, and more about what they’re eating. He begins the book with a “how things got to be this way,” talking about what he calls “The Age of Nutritionism.” By nutritionism, he’s talking about reducing food — plants (fruits and vegetables and grains), meat — to the chemicals within them: proteins, fats (well, lipids; he says fats as though they’re synonymous, but he includes fatty acids here), carbohydrates, vitamins, as though this were a meaningful indicator of what we could gain from them. As he points out (with pretty strong evidence, I’d say), this reductionist approach means that we tend to eat based on “low-fat” or “low-cholesterol,” and miss that these chemicals act in concert, generally. In other words, high fat or low fat? So what — how much, with what other foods, and how often are questions that matter a lot more.

He presents evidence (and suggests that much exists suggesting this) that the Good Things in food are ineffective when distilled and added to another food, or when taken in pill form. Instead, he suggests that what’s important is not having high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, but rather eating a diet that includes the foods that contain omega-3s. (Thus, so what if you bread artificially inseminated with omega-3s — eat the foods they’re originally found in.)

A lot of his book talks about what you shouldn’t eat, which ends up being both a lot and not-so-much, depending on how you look at it. Evidence, according to him, points towards not caring about vitamins in tablet form, with the exception of multi-vitamins being perhaps useful for people from middle age on. (Although, he also notes that the type of person who takes supplements is generally healthier — there just isn’t much evidence that these people are healthier because of the supplements, but rather because of the fact that they eat well in general.) Most importantly, he says again and again that processed foods — which he calls “food-based products” sometimes — should be avoided as much as possible. All of the things we do to prolong shelf life, to make things sweeter, to change foods; all of these things, according to Pollan, result in diminishing the benefit of the foods. Polishing rice (turning brown to white)? Bad. Grinding grain further (from whole-wheat to white flour)? Bad. Eating lots of sugar or, worse, lots of corn syrup? Bad. Corn products and soy products (that are not tofu)? Not very good. And so forth.

A lot of these things aren’t surprising, although it’s interesting to hear them put together. Many of them I knew. I still think his book is interesting.

He has some advice as to what to eat: mostly vegetables and fruits (he refers to the leaves instead of seeds of plants; I can only assume he’s grouping fruits and flowers here as leaves?). A variety. When possible, from CSAs or from your own garden or from farmers’ markets — not from monoculture farms that have less-nutritious soil which really diminishes the number of nutrients. He talks a bunch about eating traditional diets, but doesn’t really elaborate on how to start. Or, for that matter, whether people who eat foods from many different cultures — I love cooking Indian food, Chinese food, and Italian food, often all within the same week — can be equally healthy isn’t really addressed, although he suggests the answer is yes. (Hope so.) He focuses, to be fair, on eating food within its original context — eating things the way people in some culture have eaten it for a long time. I don’t quite follow his argument that this must be a good way since these people were healthy — seems faulty logic to me; I can’t imagine that every food in every diet was unilaterally good for you — but I think the underlying logic: don’t have too much sugar or salt, eat a variety of foods in a meal, and cook them according to some recipe that utilizes them best, not using fake substances as substitutes.

Anyway, the point is that this book makes me feel quite good about my diet, and makes me worry less about the fact that I’ve started drinking whole milk more often, or that I don’t eat meat too often. The only thing he criticizes that I do is snacking, and he’s right. Then again, snacks for me tend to be a fourth small meal in the afternoon — not a bag of chips here, a bag of cookies there. He also argues for people eating meals in groups, at tables, without a TV, with conversation — essentially, he’s an advocate of the Slow Food movement (which he mentions). Eat small portions, he says. Have one portion. Eat it slowly. Enjoy it. And then don’t eat more.

I don’t really have a conclusion, other than that I think to the extent that he’s right we should be more conscious of the foods we eat, and worry less about the fats or proteins within them. And I’m curious what people think.

Made dinner for my flatmates tonight: Matar Paneer (Indian peas-and-fresh-cheese in a tomato sauce) and Sambhar (Indian lentil-vegetable stew; I usually use masoor dal, red lentils, because they cook faster and are easier to find). Both were pretty good; neither was perfect. The milk burnt a little while I was making the cheese (because we don’t have a big pot, so I boiled it in the wok — not the best idea), so the cheese was sort of smokey. Which wasn’t bad, but isn’t right. And the sambhar wasn’t as spicy as I like it because my flatmates aren’t big spice fans. But actually quite fun and delicious. I assume there are lots of left overs. Although I didn’t make enough rice. Still: cooking for seven people on your own is difficult.

Last night, I went and saw this ridiculous play with Aitor, in an old bordello. It was called “Por Dinero,” and was actually 13 short plays in 13 different rooms; you picked five of them to see. We got into six through good fortune. It was really fun and the plays were on the whole quite intriguing. Interesting thoughts about prostitution and such.

I’m mostly done with my applications. Working on plunging through the last bunch, yea?

First: I just read a post from the BPS about statistics, which I thought was worth a brief mention: the post is about how even when we study psychology, we tend to ignore the people who developed the techniques — and that it’s important to think of psychology as mathematics and as something fallible, rather than just as something you plug into SPSS. Anyway, the post briefly discusses the ten statisticians some guy thinks are the most important. I knew only two of their names, but I know about the things that seven of them have done, so this post was kind of cool.

More excitingly: I made ketchup today.

Yeah, I know. You’re looking up at the picture at the top of this entry and saying, “Ketchup?” That was my thought. This doesn’t really look like the ketchup we know — it looks more like tomato sauce. But at the same time, this definitely tastes like ketchup. It’s got that tangy sweetness you associate with ketchup. It also reminds me a bit of Smitty’s Sauce*, this orange sweet-and-sour spicy sauce we put on chicken and rice. And honestly, unlike traditional ketchup, I wouldn’t mind putting this on chicken and rice. It would even taste good.

Okay, so I should start off by saying that I didn’t make this up. I got the recipe from The Homesick Texan, who I’ve probably mentioned before, since she’s one of my favorite food bloggers. And what I’ve been saying, and what I’m going to say, is essentially an echo of her post. Like: I never really liked ketchup all too much in the past, but this is wonderful. Like: I could totally eat this ketchup with a spoon. (In fact, I did eat it on a slice of bread while I waited for the burgers to cook.) I should also note that her description is lovely, and moreover that the post title is awesome: “Chipotle Ketchup Changes Everything.” (Chipotles!)

So let me back up. I came across this recipe when she posted it in April, I think, and thought it sounded interesting, so I saved it in my bookmarks. And then I made her refried beans the other day, and remembered the ketchup post. And then I came across this post about ketchup and french fries on another blog, and I decided — well, dammit, time to make ketchup. Since then, I’d been planning it for perhaps two weeks. I finally got molasses, got brown sugar, and got apple (cider?) vinegar, and so today I finally got it together, and bought ground beef and fresh bread (at this Gallician bakery sort of near me that actually has pretty good bread, unlike most bakeries I’ve found).

At around 7:30 I started cooking the onions, got out the ingredients, added the tomatoes and sugar and vinegar and spices (plus some cumin, which I can’t help but use constantly) and chipotles to the pot, brought it to a boil, left it to simmer and so forth. Went in my room for about an hour, stirring occasionally. At ten-’til-nine, I took the pot off the burner to let it cool before putting it in the blender. I mixed the ground beef I had with some chopped garlic, some cumin, some pepper, and some rock salt, and put it in a pan with a bit of oil in the shape of two patties. (I ate both — but that’s the fault of my not having any lettuce for a salad, and also the fact that it was delicious. Also I only bought a small amount of beef†, but it was a big meal.) While the burgers cooked, I blended the ketchup, and then tried it out on a slice of bread. Oh wow, really good. Really, really good.

And then after the burgers were finished, I cut them in halves and ate them on the bread, with dollops of ketchup and nought else. I’d say they were the best burgers I’d had in years (sorry, Jacob — yours are good, but you never made me ketchup), except for Sammy’s, in Provo, Utah, which really did me in this summer with a barbecue-bacon-avocado burger. Or something like that. Still: these were damn-tasty. (And I think garlic should always be necessary in burgers.) I would recommend the ketchup.

Now I’m left with a glass jar filled with ketchup — so I guess I’ll need to make fries sometime soon. And burgers another day next week? The high acidity of the ketchup means it should last a while in the refrigerator.

* Smitty’s Sauce is a sauce my parents make that they learned when they lived in Rochester. It is (or was?) made by a restaurant there called Smitty’s. It’s this deep orange color, made with orange juice and vinegar and hot sauce and mustard (and, the way we make it, pineapple chunks and juice). This recipe sort of is like the one we use. Although it’s not the same.

† I really think you’ve gotta make your own burgers, rather than buying pre-made shaped patties. I mean, it is easier when you’re just cooking for one or two, but I think it’s generally worth it to make the burgers yourself. I wanted to buy freshly-ground beef, but I ended up being cheap and getting the meat from a supermarket, which was probably for the best.

I also had “pancetta” today, but not the Italian way; rather, fried in large chunks, with a vaguely vinegar-like flavored pepper sauce, and balsamic-vinegar-soaked mini-onions. (I don’t know what these are called.) It was. . . well, interesting. A really great flavor, but the texture was, well, way too fatty. Not again, thanks.

Went to the Fundación Juan March today. The exhibition was, well, fine. Nothing special. I loved the building, though.

I’d give a recipe for chai, only I never measure when I’m making it, and I think if I tried to I would fuck it up. So experiment! That’s what I do. Do be aware that you don’t want to over-spice it; it can end up way too strong.

I also made cupcakes yesterday, which was thrilling. I’d been wanting to make them for weeks, now, and this week I found a muffin tin for cheap at a dollar store. So of course I bought it (€2.40!), and brought it home. It only has holes for six muffins/cupcakes, so I think I’ll go and buy a second one so I can make 12 cupcakes at a time. It’s a nearly-worthless tin, but if it lasts me for a few baking rounds, that’s good enough for me.

I wanted to make cupcakes to bring with me to Emily’s, since she was having a few of us over, and I figured it would be nice to have something sweet. So I looked and found a recipe for banana cupcakes, since I had a super-ripe banana. And made it, changing a lot of things to the point where I feel comfortable posting this recipe as my own. And then I made a basic cream cheese frosting, which made it worthwhile. The cupcakes are eggless, but certainly not vegan the way I made them. If you want them to be vegan, use soy milk instead of milk, and make a different frosting.

Banana-Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F (170/180° Celsius). Take out the butter and cream cheese and allow to come to room temperature. Ideally, you’ll do this an hour or more before.
2. Warm the milk slightly in the microwave (just so it’s not cold), and then combine cider and milk in a bowl and set aside. The milk will curdle over the next few minutes.
3. Mash the banana well.
4. Stir together the dry ingredients, including the spices. (That means flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda; also cayenne and coriander.)
5. Add the liquids and stir until smooth.
6. Ladle or pour mixture into a muffin tin lined with cupcake papers. If not using cupcake papers, butter the molds before using.
7. Bake for around 22 minutes. Check to be sure they’re done by using a wooden toothpick. Alternatively, you can make this as a cake; cook in a square pan for around 35 minutes.
8. Let cool, and make the icing.
9. For the icing, stir the butter and cream cheese together. Once mixed, mix further with a whisk or (better) a hand blender.
10. Add the powdered sugar a medium amount at a time, mixing it in after each addition. Taste occasionally. You can get by without adding fully two cups.
11. Spread frosting onto cupcakes. Eat.

I only made six cupcakes, and then had to run to Emily’s; the rest I baked as a small cake. I think the cake was possibly better — more moist — but the cupcakes were pretty damn good.

This is my lunch today. Essentially everything on here is exciting. The goat’s cheese is simple, and ubiquitous, but a really good, strong cheese, not like the plain flavor of the goat’s cheese you get in the States. The hummus is exciting because I made it yesterday; they don’t sell hummus here. It’s actually really good. (Recipe, abbreviated: heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil in a small pan, and add 4-5 chopped garlic cloves; sauté until aromatic but not browned. Meanwhile, puree 16-20 ounces of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) in a blender/food processor with some of the water they came in, 2 Tbsp. Tahini, at least a Tbsp. of lemon juice, some salt and some cumin powder (say, a teaspoon each?). Let the garlic cool, and then add to the rest of the ingredients. Puree until smooth; add water in spoonfulls as necessary to thin.) The hummus and cheese actually shouldn’t go together, but they jive pretty well; two strong flavors playing rather than fighting. I wouldn’t've wanted anything else on my sandwhich.

Today, I took the metro home, but got off a stop earlier, and did some shopping. I found a muffin pan which is a bit small, but may work fine (for €2.40, so no big deal if it doesn’t). And I found a dried fruit and nuts shop, which was exciting. Not because I’d found one — there are tons of ‘em here, all with signs that say Frutos Secos, which really means both dried fruits and nuts — but rather because of how packed this one was. (Thus the link to a streetview image of it.) I went in, bought some dried apricots (not cheap, but not pricey either), and got talked into buying drief figs and walnuts as well — the guy told me you rip open the figs and stuff them with walnuts. Now, I have no clue, but it’s certainly tasty to do that. So I did. Have been doing.

I updated the burritos entry to show a photograph of them. The next morning after making them (or maybe Sunday morning? I’m not sure), I decided to make an American breakfast. So I made bacon, and then fried potatoes with garlic in them, and made eggs. And then ate them with some of the leftover refried beans. It occurred to me, though, that this wasn’t really all too accurate as an American breakfast. I’m not sure what it needed. Toast? No beans? Cream cheese? That’s okay. It was delicious.

Since it first occurred to me on Monday, I spent this week really wanting to make tacos. Burritos, whatever. With flour tortillas filled with rice, beans, a salsa, cheese, lettuce. That sort of thing. Keep it on the simple side, maybe.

Except of course when you cook the sort of thing where there’s so many individual parts, it’s hard to keep it small. So I had two helpers. In terms of the eating, at least. (And they made some guacamole, which was a grand addition.)

The primary thing I made was refried beans, which I’d actually never made before. I used a recipe from a food blog I really like, The Homesick Texan. Now, I usually make this sort of meal with mashed kidney beans, which I guess is technically along the same idea as refried beans, but I figured I’d follow her recipe pretty closely.

I went to the butcher near me and bought something that may or may not have been salted pork. Was it pork? Definitely. Was it salted? Unclear. Anyway, you don’t eat it; you just boil it with the beans. Which I did, after soaking them all day. I also got bacon from my butcher, which was pretty delicious; I need to get thicker slices next time, though. I actually think I bought pancetta, which is more or less raw bacon, for the first thing; I also think the bacon I bought was prepared differently than in the US. But I’d never bought bacon that wasn’t pre-cut; it was strange to have him take a cured hunk of meat and slice it for me.

The best smell of the evening came within the first twenty minutes of cooking the beans, while the pork cooked and the beans began to soften. Delicious. Really, really.

I also softened some red and green pepper slices in a pan, bought cheese and lettuce, made pico de gallo, although without coriander/cilantro (I only found it at the Corte Inglés, for more than it’s worth). And then rice and guacamole. And delicious.

I should add that pico de gallo, which literally means rooster’s beak, is that chunky salsa made with tomatoes, onions, garlic, lime juice, and a jalapeño or two.

Anyway, I think that’s more than enough blathering.

I also went out last night, after dinner, with Mateo; we wandered down to Lavapies and found some interesting bars; we ended up at this place called Bodegas Lo Maximo where some girl saw Mateo’s Tufts shirt and started talking to him, leading to about half an hour of fairly enjoyable conversation with this American girl and her Spanish maybe-boyfriend-maybe-flatmate, and this other Spanish girl they were with. (Elsa, her. Alvaro, him. Marian, the Spanish girl.) I don’t understand how this sort of thing works. I’m quite bad at picking up on things. If I had been Mateo, I either wouldn’t've heard her calling me over, or I would’ve been awkward and said hi and then walked away. Then again, it’s not like it was a thrilling conversation. I guess the point is more that I find the way some people seem to draw these sorts of interactions interesting.

I’ve got to say, it was hard finding all of the ingredients here. For one thing, they don’t do black beans in Spain. They didn’t even pretend to sell them in Carrefour (admittedly, it’s a Carrefour Express near me); I finally found a package of dried black beans (because a can of ‘em would be too easy) at an Eroski supermarket. And of course, they don’t call beans frijoles here, but rather alubias. Actually, finding chipotles wasn’t too hard — I just went to El Corte Inglés and looked in their (fairly large) Latin American section. (They also sell black beans.)

Of course, I don’t know if I’ve ever cooked with dried beans before. I soaked them for like four hours, and then boiled them for half an hour, and they still ended up slightly hard; I looked it up and one would think that this would’ve done the trick. They didn’t taste bad — just not soft like I kind of think you’d want in a chili.

The main problem, however, was the chili peppers. I went into a few grocers’, and finally found one that sold hot peppers. The recipe calls for 1 red pepper, 1 jalapeño, and 1 habanero. Well, I wasn’t seeing habaneros, but I saw those green peppers that sort of look like jalapeños (I realized later — they’re serrano chilis; these are the ones I would buy in bulk from H Mart and use for sauces at school). So I got two of those, and I got two of the chilis the guy at the grocer said were the spiciest, although he didn’t know which they were. Looking at wikipedia, I think they were Thai Peppers, which means they’re actually less spicy than the called-for Habaneros. (Sadly, I left my chart of Scoville Units at home. I’m not kidding.)

Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t using the hottest chilis possible, but I still ended up with a very (very) spicy chili. I shared it with Juliette and her boyfriend, Sylvain, and I think all of us enjoyed it but wished it was less spicy. (Today I ate it with yoghurt, which makes a big difference.) We ate it on a cornbread I made (my flatmates seem to be really impressed by baking — even something as simple as cornbread), which at least turned out exactly as it should, without measuring cups.

I did buy a measuring cup, though, today. Hooray!

Anyway, judge for yourself as to the pepper: