A nut cheese nut case
June 25, 2006
On the left, homemade pine nut paté with borage flowers. One the right, walnut paté with raw cocoa nibs. Normally this sort of food preparation is reserved for vegans, hippies and raw foodists. I am none of the above, a red-blooded porkatarian, I am. One of my readers disclosed that she thought that I was a man until a friend told her differently!
Anywho, this year I became an enthousiast of slightly fermented nuts, and I know, that’s just plain faggy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! The nut flavours are delicate and would certainly go well with dairy cheeses. Note how I didn’t say, ‘real’ cheese?
(The leaves at plate’s edge are rose and mirin pickled shiso or perilla.)
To make these cheeses, follow the recipe for cashew cheese here, and substitute pine nuts or walnuts for cashews. Do not omit the sea salt, but do leave out the kimchi juice. Kimchi juice will make the cheese really cheesy - and these cheeses deserve to be a little sweeter than that. Instead, add a few glugs of maple syrup or a slab of honeycomb whilst blending.
debra at 12:06 | No comments | post to del.icio.us
Catchy, but not contagious
June 23, 2006
It was recently revealed in an offical report out of the Kimchi Nation that there are exactlly one zillion sorts of kimchi. Kimchi is a falsely generic term for the Korean national pickle and katchi is the mustard green variety pictured here.
Catchy Tofu
recipe described vertically, from bottom to top:
a puddle of saffron oil
stray scallions, strewn about
a block of fresh tofu
a stack of katchi
a drizzle of nama shoyu
Stack the ingredients voluptuously. Leak a few drizzles of nama shoyu over the lot until it starts to pool at the base of the tofu.
Serve.
- culiblog reports on the kimchi air conditioner
- culiblog recipe for kimchi comfort food
- culiblog recipe for kimchi monkfish en papillot
debra at 3:12 | No comments | post to del.icio.us
A midsummer garden dinner at Marlein’s
June 20, 2006
Marlein’s tuinhuis rhymes with town house but means garden house or cottage
On an island between the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal and the IJ inland shipping lands, sandwiched between harbours, dubious car re-painting garages and tucked under a freeway flyover, there is a hidden paradise that I was totally unaware existed until last Saturday, when Marlein invited me to dinner at her garden house. It hadn’t occured to me that in the midst of all this bustle and crud that there could be a place of such lush beauty and serenity, a place where nature takes over and you can’t imagine or even glimpse anything but the burgeoning surrounds that envelop you.
View from inside the indoor-outdoor kitchen to the front garden
Marlein, Joost and I lazily drank mint tea with saffron sugar crystals, chitchatting, enjoying the evening light. Magically Marlein produced dinner and we supped on greens and succulent things, sort of lowish on the food chain.
Silken tofu with spring onions and drizzled with nama shoyu is an elegant start to our dinner
It stays light until almost eleven!
When the water insects arrived, we sucked them inside out.
And when it got too dark and a little bit chilly, we retired to the great indoors for a dessert of elder flower tempura dusted with powdered sugar, chocolate, dates and Pakistani burfi.
This sort of garden house is typical of the Dutch style allotments, although usually these locations have long socialist histories and are highly regulated, Marlein’s garden is in a non-sanctioned area, and unfortunately one that will be devoured by a land development project starting in 2008. Pick your battles, there two full summers to enjoy before Marlein and her garden neighbours find the next fabulous and secret place.
Lady Marlein
debra at 13:24 | No comments | post to del.icio.us
