And the answer is... community supported agriculture

November 30, 2005

image courtesy of the Real Dirt on Farmer John website

Well, at least that is one of the most positive answers to the questions that came to my mind after watching Erwin Wagenhofer’s We Feed the World (Austria 2005) Saturday night at the IDFA. Although reviews and film descriptions already abound, here's culiblog's quick take on the films The Real Dirt on Farmer John, We Feed the World and Bullshit.

Context is everything, although this hadn't occurred to me weeks ago when I reserved my tickets for the IDFA and Shadow Festivals. It was pure coincidence that I chose Taggert Siegel’s The Real Dirt on Farmer John (US 2005) instead of We Feed the World as my first IDFA film. But the documentary about John Peterson (I heart him) is such a poignant portrayal of his pursuit of agricultural viability on a very personal level, that the film armed me with an outlook positive enough to take on the eloquent doom and gloom of the other documentaries. I wish my fellow audience members had been so lucky, because their anger and disillusionment about the realities sketched in Wagenhofer's, We Feed the World and even Holmquist's Bullshit was palpable.

Posted by debra at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

The Hunger Artist

November 24, 2005

Here's one for the archives: Google (images) 'Hunger Artist'

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.

Please read more... "The Hunger Artist"

Posted by debra at 08:04 AM | Comments (0)

Food-related film, art, design and culture in Amsterdam

November 17, 2005

Starting next week culiblog is feeding itself with food-related films from the Shadow and IDFA documentary film festivals. Themes such as the family farm, food distribution, foodstore owners, olive trees, Japanese home cooking and of course globalisation, feature prominently in my selection.

The Netherlands has two film seasons each year. In November and December it's documentary season with the Shadow Film Festival and the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). In January it's the International Film Festival Rotterdam. I have known couples that, when they broke up, had to decide who would get to go to which film festival. Seriously. Big stars like artist Allan Sekula, who presented his documentary Fish Story at the Shadow Festival in 2002, show up for these events in our dark but cosy Polar Circle villages.

The culiblog programme of food-related documentary film (Nov 25-Dec 03, 2005, Amsterdam NL)

Friday 25.11
12.30h Film Museum: Meat Vegetables and Dessert
14.45h City 7: My Dear Olive Tree
18.30h Calypso: The Real Dirt on Farmer John
20.20h Cinerama 1: Profils Paysans (Profiles of Farmers: Daily Life)

Saturday 26.11
12.00h City 1: Bullshit
21.00h City 1: We Feed the World
22:00h Uitkijk: Autumn

Sunday 27.11
16.00h Melkweg: Taimagura Grandma

Monday 28.11
11.00h Cinerama 1: The Real Dirt on Farmer John
14.30h City 7: Het is een Schone Dag Geweest (It's been a lovely day)
21.45h Cinerama 1: Our Daily Bread
22.00h Uitkijk: Alimentation Generale

Tuesday 29.11
20.00h City 5: Bullshit
21.30 City 1: We Feed the World

Wednesday 30.11
19.00h City 1: Our Daily Bread

Thursday 01.12
10.45 City 7: My Dear Olive Tree

Friday 02.12
20.15 City 3: Meat Vegetables and Dessert

Saturday 03.12
12.45h Calypso 1: We Feed the World
14.15h Film Museum: Profils Paysans
17.30h City 2: Our Daily Bread
19.00h City 3: Bullshit
19.15h City 7: Het is een schone dag geweest

The Shadow Film Festival
IDFA

For IDFA reservations:
IDFA +31 (0)20 4277452 (open from 12-17h)
http://www.idfa.nl/

For Shadow Festival reservations, contact the locations:
de Melkweg +31 (0)20 53 18181
Lijnbaansgracht 234/A

de Uitkijk +31 (0)20 6237 460
Prinsengracht 452

Posted by debra at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

Food Subculture Club visits a raw food (un)cooking workshop

November 13, 2005

Images r to l: raw food workshop organogram, guruji Juliano, raw sushi in process

When cooking with meat or dairy, it's always easy to create foods that are delicious, rich and complex in flavour. By combining processed grain flours with an oven, or brown rice and a rice maker, it's simple enough to make comfort food. But I have always been curious as to whether a diet of raw food could fulfill the very normal culinary hunkerings for diversity and satisfaction. By this I mean, the potential nutritional benefits of eating a raw food diet aside, is it possible to make an interesting raw food repetoire that is well-suited to the Northern European winter?

On my cookbook shelves there are two cookbooks about raw food cuisine; Roxanne Klein & Charlie Trotter's R A W, and Juliano Brotman's Raw, the UNcookbook. I had tried several recipes from R A W, but found that I always had to 'pump up the volume' to make them palatable. I found it difficult to incorporate these recipes into a dinner in which the other dishes required cooking. Some dear friends of mine had given me Juliano's Uncookbook, but I had never used it for anything other than looking up soaking times for nuts. The amount of ingredients for any given recipe just seemed too long to be feasible. When I heard that raw food chefs Juliano Brotman and Ariel from Santa Monica's Planet Raw were coming to give a week of workshops I was most enthuasiastic to be able to participate.
Just from a culinary prespective...

The workshop, held in an anti-squat in exceedingly picturesque Broek in Waterland just north of Amsterdam, ended up having a lot in common with one of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, except that I'm nowhere near as charming as Louis is/was and the workshop was in the middle of the week. During the introductions I inadvertently started things off on the wrong foot by not giving the correct answer to the question, 'how raw are you?' My answer, 'Pretty dang raw, but I'm not a vegetarian' caused more than a few of the other participants to gasp audibly. I could have known that by trying to explain my omnivorous culinary bend that I would become the pisspole of raw food guru-ji Juliano.

Personal affinities aside, it is only fair to mention that I found all of the food that we prepared in the workshop to be 'rock my world' delicious and most of my prejudices with regard to this subculture's cuisine were quickly dispelled. The food wasn't all wet and cold, it didn't taste like 'health food', it didn't taste like vegan food, it was neither bland nor monotonous. In fact, at the end of the workshop, I really started getting cravings for something SIMPLE, like a piece of undressed lettuce. Juliano prepares foods like a parfumier makes a scent. He composes flavours and textures out of his ingredients. His knowledge of the flavour characteristics and textures of the ingredients he uses is impressive. Were it not for this fact, I would have been so out of there, having very little tolerance for statements like 'cooked food is pure poison', and 'I know someone that has been raw for six hundred years'. There was an unspeakable culture clash, but boy can this guy (un)cook.

One of the things I appreciated most about the workshop is that due to Juliano's conviction that everyone in the entire world should become 'raw' immediately, he was eager to explain a feasible methodology for running a raw food kitchen and/or household. I had reported earlier that raw cuisine is labour intensive, and compared to throwing ingredients into a rice maker or grilling up some flesh, it is, but Juliano explained how to make some basic ingredients that could be worked into meals over a period of a week that made the idea of raw food meal preparation less daunting.

Please click 'please read more' to see an interview that I conducted with Juliano and Ariel that will probably answer some of your burning (sorry) raw food questions.

Posted by debra at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

Chef Thor, Croqueta d'Amor, Medaille d'Or, Cultural Sectór!

November 04, 2005

images l to r: the chef formerly known as Thor, Croqueta d'Amor in process, Chef Croquette works on a Croquette Japonais

At a top secret location in Amsterdam's PostCS cultural hub, Chef Croquette and the Croquette Family get to work on the hundreds of croquettes ordered for a weekend filled with cultural events. It's as if the PostCS (home to the Stedelijk Museum, Mediamatic, Club 11, numerous artists' initiatives and one of the thirty-eight locations for the 6th annual Museum Night) suddenly needs it's very own croquette chef. Of course croquette commissioners from the cultural sector are the most demanding of all. To posh up their menus this weekend they unanimously chose two of the newest creations from the chef formerly known as Chef Thor; the Croqueta d'Amor ('No More War!' '7 Sabors!') and the Croquette Japonais.

Just like Willy Wonka's Magic Chewing Gum, each bite of the Croqueta d'Amor and the Croquette Japonais yields a different taste explosion, seven flavours in all. In the film as well as the book by Roald Dahl, the magic chewing gum is still in beta when bitchy Violet Beauregard (chewing gum expert and glutton) snatches a piece of the gum to give it a chew and to sell the recipe to a rival candymaker. Due to the side-effects caused by the experimental nature of the gum, Violet blows up into a giant blueberry and has to be juiced forthwith!

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Chef Croquette joked to me, 'er zijn kapers op de kust' , which is a charming Dutch way of saying, 'many is the chef that would pirate this recipe.' Indeed, as we prepared the croquettes in a location deep under the earth's crust, at least five chefs happened to 'pop in for a little chat'. I think they could sense that Chef C. had perfected the technique of creating an entire meal in ten cubic centimetres of croquette with no ill side-effects. That or the fact that the location was also a central storage place for beer. Either way, the concept of Open Source is not alive and well in the culinary world.

Posted by debra at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

Chef Thor, Croqueta d'Amor, Medaille d'Or, Cultural Sectór!

images l to r: the chef formerly known as Thor, Croqueta d'Amor in process, Chef Croquette works on a Croquette Japonais

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Posted by debra at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

A belly full of raw food facility, reviewing a conceptual restaurant

November 02, 2005

images l to r: smart babies bring their own food to a restaurant opening, the Food Facility staff (aka Mediamatic and Marti Guixé) giddy and a'blur

It's probably fair to assert that last Saturday was an all-time first in Amsterdam: two interesting culinary events in one day. I made sure to attend both Juliano Brotman's Raw Food UnCooking workshop as well as the restaurant launch of Marti Guixé & Mediamatic's Food Facility at the Post CS. Yoga and raw food in the afternoon, black clothing, pearl-swinging, wine drinking, cigarette smoking, take-away food in the evening. Time in between to change costumes I mean outfits, and I had the fixings for a well-balanced day.

Just like normal people, raw food chefs can run a little late, and we were still busy with the results of the uncooking workshop two hours after it's scheduled end. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, assuming that raw food could in no way be complex or filling, but I was mistaken. At 19.00h when I arrived at the Food Facility, I had no desire to eat. Luck would have it that my belly full of raw would turn out to be a blessing.

Luck wouldn't have it that my erstwhile best-friend-with-a-deadline would call to say that she couldn't show up for dinner that evening. GASP, alone at a restaurant opening with a big fat reservation for two! The ever-on-the-ball Mediamatic nouvelles maîtres Arne en Jans, arranged a dinner date for me on the spot (and a delightful one). That, dear reader, is what I call excellent service!

images l to r: graphic designers guesting Food Facility catching the early bird special, Guixé designed chairs, Katarina eating spada on rosemary sticks well within three hours of ordering

The restaurant was glowing with all manner of mixed spot and flourescent lighting, bright white, with HTML blue, black and green columns in the centre. Draped on the walls were large print-outs of the results of a Google search; 'food', 'food facility', 'Marti Guixé' and 'Mediamatic'. Of course this search yields lots of culiblog entries, and I have to say, there's nothing like seeing the name of your blog plastered all over an interior to warm your heart and coax out a favourable review. Designers, do like Marti does.

In the centre of the room Guixé placed a food island, where the delivery boys on scooters brought in the orders and from where the restaurant staff would bring the dish to it's rightful owner. The tables were laid with damaste (not real damaste), with large tumbler glasses, generous cutlery, and large cloth napkins (not real cloth). All of the guests were pregnant with expectation, and some were actually pregnant. Marti G. described the evening thusly, 'It was like attending my own wedding...'

My dining buddy Katarina and I ordered from a well-designed menu based upon the takeout menus from twelve different restaurants in Amsterdam. By 'based upon' I mean photo copied and by twelve I mean nine. We were having an excellent time, drinking and talking, waiting and drinking and talking, smoking and drinking and drinking and smoking and talking and waiting and drinking. Talking all the while, the friends were dropping by for a chit chat, we were being visited by extremely attentive maîtres and wait staff. Waiters are for waiting.

And then we did some more of that waiting. Which was fine. I still wasn't the least bit hungry with my belly full of raw, but some guests were starting to get peckish, and by peckish, I mean uppity. Certain tables began to organise exuberant betting pools as to who would get their food first.

images l to r: the bride and bridegroom Guixé giggling at all the betting going on, the arrival of the first delivery boy with one baggie of takeout food, the paparazzi can't contain themselves

And then the first delivery boy entered the restaurant. Helmet on, a little white baggy filled with Chinese takeaway in his hand, and the entire facility went berserk. Cameras were flashing, guests were laughing and many stood up to applaud and 'whoop whoop'. All this for one little white bag of grits. This scenario repeated itself as each delivery boy entered the Food Facility until the very end of the evening. That, dear reader, is good restaurant interface design.

My sashimi arrived, well within one and a half hours. An hour, two glasses of wine and one and a half cigarettes later my green papaya salad arrived. You can see by my menu choices that I was doing my dangdest to keep the raw thing going. Ordinarily this amount of wait would be unacceptable, a good reason to do some non-positive wing-flapping. But this particular evening, I would have to categorise this as perfect timing. Perfect amount of drama and excitement, entertaining guests entertaining themselves just fine, excellent conversation (one of my waitresses turned out to be a sufi), food for thought and merriment abounding. Guaranteeing an excellent experience is also a part of restaurant design, and it's silly to go to a restaurant opening with the actual intention of getting fed.

Guixé and Mediamatic's Food Facility is open Fridays and Saturdays until December 11, 2005 and I highly recommend at least one visit. I have chosen Food Facility as the location to celebrate the one year birthday party of culiblog.org during Saturday's Museum Night. It was one year ago (Museum Night 2004 at Mediamtic) that culiblog launched it's domain. We're going to fill up on nibbles beforehand at my house.

Food Facility open Friday and Saturday from 18.00h - 22.00h
November 4 - December 11, 2005 at Post CS, Amsterdam.
Read Mediamatic's announcement here or call +31 (0)6 3376 8810 for reservations.

Posted by debra at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

Papabubble is pure sugar finger lickin'

October 18, 2005

Loyal culiblog readers know that I'm not a big fan of sweets, but sometimes sugar is coaxed by masterful hands into shapes and colours so beautiful, and with flavours so delicious, that it's all I can do to keep from hauling off and giving it a good lickin'. At the moment of writing, I'm popping acid drops, one after another into my mouth and sucking them so violently, that I shall surely be giving myself a blister.

Which brings me to papabubble, the source of these acid drops that are doing all the damage to the roof of my mouth. When I returned to Amsterdam this Autumn, a new shop had occupied Harlemmerdijk 70, and I became a fan of their candy straight away. Inside the contemporary interior, a noble candy is being produced right before your very eyes. You feel like a child oggling the sculpturally shaped sugar. The concept belongs to Australian papabubble originators, Tommy Tang and Christopher King, who opened the first shop in Barcelona in June 2003, but it was Marieken van den Brink, who studied artisanal candy-making with them, that brought the concept to the Netherlands in 2004. For this she won a Marie Claire Starters Award in 2004, turning her dream and her lolly import business (Lulu Loves Lollies) into papbubble Amsterdam. Nice one. Here's some money, now go and make some candy.

But it's not just candy. It's a very pure, playful and artisanal product that she and her partner, Dominik Otto, and his sister Marie Otto, are making in the Amsterdam shop. It's all very old-fashioned and sweet. They live upstairs above the shop, and just like in a fairy tale, afternoons the place is a'swarm with children and single women, straight from school and yoga class, that have come in to watch the candy making process and get offered tastes of free candy by the smiling sugar pullers.

What I most love about what is going on at papabubble (aside from the high level of craftsmanship and amazing flavours of sour) was that the molten sugar is truly played with by the candy makers, Dominik and Marie (brother and sister). They don't throw away the candy ends but turn them into blobbous sculptures and sell them in that form. These blobs of sugar will make a beautiful centrepiece (did I just use the word centrepiece?) at my next dinner party as a communal after-dinner sugar-lick.

More conventionally (but not really) are the hard candy rings, which of course make a right mess if you wear them, but if you're a child, or if you're in love and in the mood, they'll be just the ticket.

'Hon, lick my finger?'

papabubble
Haarlemmerdijk 70
1013 JE Amsterdam
tel +31 (0)20 6262662
fax +31 (0)20 6267654
www.papabubble.nl

images l to r: Candymaker Marie Otto cuts rolls of hardened sugar into pineapple hard candy, closeup of pineapple candy, a blob of sugar that will feature at my next dinner

Posted by debra at 02:13 PM | Comments (1)

Papabubble is pure sugar finger lickin'

'Hon, lick my finger?'

papabubble
Haarlemmerdijk 70
1013 JE Amsterdam
tel +31 (0)20 6262662
fax +31 (0)20 6267654
www.papabubble.nl

images l to r: Candymaker Marie Otto cuts rolls of hardened sugar into pineapple hard candy, closeup of pineapple candy, a blob of sugar that will feature at my next dinner

Posted by debra at 02:13 PM | Comments (1)

All I really really want is locative food

October 01, 2005

That is, food that tells me where I am and where it's from by it's very name and nature (without the use of an RFID tag). And all I really really want is to have one major train station and one major airport in one country that sells food that is not created by food product designers but by local people from local ingredients and reflecting the diverse local food culture already present.

Imagine Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport... Could the experience of Schiphol be enriched if you knew that this was the only airport in the world where you could exclusively buy locally grown and produced Dutch food and regional specialities? Was it already one and a half years ago that Doors of Perception and Urban Unlimited organised a cultural experts meeting for the city of Breda, a new node on the line of the High Speed Train. If I recall correctly, we recommended just this very thing.

The images above were taken within a period of 4 minutes. Friday afternoon, chip eaters abound at Amsterdam Centraal Station. Just imagine the possible effect on the environment and the state of agriculture and upon the local economy if these chips were made from a diverse range of local potatoes, fried in oil grown and produced locally. Imagine if you could order chips from a menu sporting 8 different kinds of potato! Imagine if the product of the finger fried potato embraced diversity.

And then there's the mayo...
And the knowledge economy that could sprout up from bringing the local boutique producer's products to the transportation hubs of the world...

Frites eaters: images of people eating chips taken on Friday September 30, 2005 from 16:23-27 at Amsterdam CS and on the train to Rotterdam.

Posted by debra at 09:53 AM | Comments (2)

Oh to utter the words, food design...

September 28, 2005

Well it's about bloody time! Coinciding with all manner of design events going on right now in Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum hosted a symposium titled Food Design at the ubiquitous Club 11, featuring three speakers and three completely different interpretations.

Marije Vogelzang (Proef) is doing some very interesting work from her studio slash catering laboratory and counts the stars of Dutch design (such as the Ladies Hella Jongerius, Marlies Dekkers and Li Edelkoort) amongst her clients. After a stunning portfolio presentation, I can't wait to visit Vogelzang's restaurant in Rotterdam Proef and get down to the business of tasting and nibbling. (Proef means 'taste' or 'taste it', in Dutch.) Vogelzang's work is all about engaging the eater in the underlying concept of the food and its presentation. I loved her daring in a recent catering project in which she used WWII ration ingredients to invoke memories about this bleak period. She elegantly walks the fine line between being thought provoking and utterly disarming when she stated, 'It's design that someone puts in their mouth, and absorbs into their body. It's all very intimate'. That's what I call a laudable attitude!

Although it wasn't the most pleasant message to hear, I can't stop thinking about the corporate presentation by Hans van Trijp from Unilever. Food design according to the multinational means designing the market context in which a food product exists, and has very little to do with actual food. Van Trijp described Honig's SpongeBob pasta as the perfect marriage of food design and marketing. Predictably, I found van Trijp's take and food and food design extremely disturbing, but I am so very eager to get in touch with him to hear more of what he has to say about how multinationals, even when we wouldn't dream of buying their products, influence our every day life right down to the iggly niggly bit of designing a country's infrastructure. This means that while Marije Vogelzang is designing a lunch using 'forgotten vegetables', Unilever, by the very virtue of it's market share, is determining which races of grains farmers will be growing and how food will be manufactured and distributed in decades to come. I just can't help but think it's a wise idea to keep in close contact with the suits. I'm just as much a stakeholder as the next Lady, right?

Ex-designer and unwitting stand-up comedian Marti Guixé as per usual wowwed the audience with a portfolio presentation of more than a decade's worth of food-related projects. He is the well-known Catalunian ex-designer that has worked extensively with shoe brand Camper, and ultimately designed their flagship restaurant, Foodball, in Barcelona. Balls are something of a leitmotif in Marti G's gastro-design as you can see from this author's review. It might have been just the unfortunate lighting, but while presenting images of his 'corporate sponsored food', (in this case an omelette with a sauce-stamped Calvin Klein logo), Guixé claims to have noticed van Trijp's lip twitch.

Although I'm not willing to spill the beans just yet, I am looking forward to Guixé's collaboration with Mediamatic in just a few week's time. Guixé and Mediamatic will be opening up a temporary restaurant in the basement of the former TPG builiding where you'll... read about it in culiblog.

images from l to r: Vogelzang's salad course of city leafy greens (served with grilled pigeon breast), hanging etagères made of 2nd hand plates designed by Vogelzang for Dutch fabric producer de Ploeg, Gin and Tonic Fog Party by Marti Guixé (artificial indoor fog made of gin and tonic at Casco, Utrecht). The above images are from the (ex-)designers' websites, © and hopefully also courtesy of Vogelzang and Guixé.

Posted by debra at 09:03 AM | Comments (6)

Salad Song

August 26, 2005

By now we are all well aware of the profound relationship between the citizens of Bejing and Montpellier. Therefore it should come as no surprise when the Occitanian cultural powers that be deem it high time for an 'international biennial' of Chinese contemporary art in their fair city. And why the heq not, if every other city can have one why shouldn't Montpellier? Of particular interest to me was Song Dong's (Beijing, PRC) leafy greens installation at the entrance of the Pavillon du Musée Fabre. The work is titled, 'Art after Da Zhai' and I have done my best translating the programme description thusly:
Song Dong uses one of Maoist China's most important political catchphrases, "Agriculture takes example from DaZhai." In the Sixties, the peasants of this village of Shanxi multiplied their grain production by seven and Mao Zedong presented Da Zhai with the 'red banner'. The mountains carved in terraces by the farmers became a political emblem.

Please read more... "Salad Song"

Posted by debra at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

Lolly Lab

June 28, 2005

Imagine my delight last Sunday when the very first work I see at Arnhem's exam show is Bas Kools' Lolly Lab. Kools is a freshly graduated designer with fine prospects for the future. He'll attend the RCA in London next year.

What I loved most about Kools' setup was that he put the prototypes into a playful context. He seemed to have thought of everything; the playful array of lolly sticks, sugar melting copper pans, ceramic pots and recepticals, the vessels containing the flavours and colours, palet dishes, a working lab unit with gas burners (water?), air blowers, lolly holders in metal and rubber, bottle stops, display, etc... Kools has an interest in finding ways to make 'design' 'accessible'. But some of the sexier shapes of the lolly holders and the rubber slings reminded me immediately of the details hidden (and thus showcased) in a Matthew Barney work. Not bad.

And this leads me to my wee critique of the work. Kools designed a lolly laboratory, a perfect context for his range, so where are the experimental lollies? It is a pity that in this instance, Bas used standard flavours, colours and non-designed shapes for the lollies themselves. It would be worthwhile investigating working with a chef or someone with a developed and outspoken culinary aesthetic to create flavours, colours, textures and shapes as alluring and expressive as the other parts of this lab and installation. The well-designed utensils, if they are meant to be accessible, should serve and even contribute to the experimentation that is going on in the lab. There is still plenty of space for this to happen in the future. I certainly would be willing to give it a go; the Lolly Lab gave me itchy fingers.

Please read more... "Lolly Lab"

Posted by debra at 10:21 AM | Comments (4)

I would have been satisfied with less

June 27, 2005

Café Dudok in Arnhem prepared a special menu in honour of the Arnhem Fashion Biennale. Dutch Art Institute student, MuXue and I were visiting Arnhem for other reasons entirely but we did manage to end the day with an hors d'oeuvre and dessert at said café. The starter, a smoked turkey avocado and edible flower 'wrap', was printed in a floral pattern with cherry red pigment. It was most unfortunate that the pigment had no additional flavour because it would've been great if the pattern was made out of salsa picante for example, with an overlay of patterned guacamole and maybe cutout smoked turkey in pretty tailored shapes. Bring on les ruches!

Also the California-Dutch in me always feels inclined to let folks know that 'wraps' (let's just call them white flour tortillas from now on) really should be served warmed up to arouse the subtle flavours of the nutritional void that is white flour.

The dessert of this fashion menu was presented rather simply and therefore I reacted to the lack of pretension with less venom. Visually it reminded me of Allsorts licorice candy. It was a dessert of blocks and a worthwhile array of textures, had some of the flavours not come from directly out of standard bottled essences. MuXue and I felt we were served far too much food, but that's something that seems to be inescapable these days. The service was great by the way, and this is a rarity in a café in the Netherlands.

Squares from top left and top to bottom: walnut fudge brownie, bitter almond pannacotta, raspberry bavarois, dark chocolate-raisin fudge, cake au mousse au chocolat, coconut snowball. The finger pokes in the mousse and in the raspberry bavarois are the author's own.

Posted by debra at 06:46 AM | Comments (4)

Art is, art was fluid last Sunday

June 08, 2005

Due to the good company and delightfully engaged audience, artist initiative Artis in Den Bosch showed this Sunday (05.06.2005) that they really know how to throw a happening. Margriet Kemper opened the salon with a presentation of her book, Speak, Image! (unfortunately only in Dutch) in which she talks about how the image is actually a performer. Kemper cited Allan Kaprow, the Daddy of the Happening, explaining to us the choice of the title of the event, Art Fluid.

A.K.: 'I want the line between art and life to be as fluid as possible'.

A presentation of culiblog was next on the menu followed by a breathtaking poetry reading by Robert Gray (AU) and the Dutch translator of Gray's work, Maarten Elzinga. Wafts of rosey caramel in-the-make were the only distraction as both Gray and Elzinga read for the better part of 42 minutes to a rapt audience.

Now there's only so much reflection and interior thought that an audience can take, and just when we thought we would forever be living inside of our heads, the shy noise band, SPASM performed invisibly from the guts of the cavernous gallery. It was just the lightness that the moment needed and everyone started to beam with smiles so broad they barely fit on their faces. Everyone except the young children who ran around annoyed with fingers in their ears.

What could be a better follow-up to a poetry reading and a concert of noise than a cookery presentation! Together with my fabulous assistants, Stefano and Kaj, I rejoiced in showing other Dutch people how to make the traditional Dutch 'hang-op'. The hang-op had been dripping whey all the livelong day in linen bags hanging from pink string, defining the space of the kitchen. Stefano removed the linen bags from meathooks and helped Kaj scrape out the 'hung' yogurt from within. Kaj then proceeded to beat to a satiny smooth consistency, the yogurt with rose flavoured whipped cream. I know, it was very, very sexy.

While the audience enjoyed a film by Annika Ström and a presentation of Jan van Toorn's (re)releases from the oldies but goodies of avant-garde sound-art, Kaj and Stefano prepared the banquet table with rose petals, rosey caramel, organic local strawberries and little bowls of hang-op.

Aan tafel, I sort of whispered into the microphone.

Posted by debra at 09:57 AM | Comments (4)

Restaurant for anorexics

May 05, 2005

Sehnsucht, (means longing in German) is the name of a Berlin restaurant for anorexics. Owner Katja Eichbaum, formely anorexic, started this project with private funding (only her father would lend her money) as a therapy for her own condition. The chef is anorexic as are several members of staff. Sehnsucht's menu items have names that don't include words for food to avoid confronting anorexics with the fact that they are about to eat. 'Hallo' (lobster bisque), 'Pirate's Eye' (2 fishfingers and a fried egg), and 'Heissehunger' (ravenous hunger = rack of lamb) are all dishes that non-anorexics might order in 'normal' restaurants. But one item on the menu consists simply of a fork, knife, and an empty plate. It is titled 'Thieves Platter' and facilitates the anorexic diner to steal (or share) from those dining with her.

As expected the restaurant has received a huge amount of international publicity. And although I have not yet eaten at there, relying solely on restaurant reviews to inform myself, if Sehnsucht is an attempt to create a location for anorexia patients in the guise of a regular restaurant for the people that love them, it is also a wasted opportunity.

Why not revel in anorexia? Why not serve food items so refined and 'stretched' like anorexics themselves create on the spot each night at the family dinner table? Anorexics are master chefs and food stylists when placed in the harsh context of the family; hardboiled eggs with the yolks surgically removed, crackers deconstructed so that their total surface area has been increased twenty-fold, slices of bread with each visible grain extracted and displayed on the edge of the plate, utterly dissected broccoli. I say this without having seen Sehnsucht's menu but hope sincerely that it is not just another do-gooder resto in which the real food on the menu functions only to lure the paying and eating guests.

Posted by debra at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

Restaurant for anorexics

Posted by debra at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

Fish and Chips, Surinam Style

January 30, 2005

Telo is my favourite dish from Surinam. Delicious shredded salt cod piled upon deep fried casava with Madame Jeanette salsa fresca dumped in the corner of a plastic container. A completely inadequate coloured fork features prominently in the visual but serves no other purpose.

Typically I drink the only softdrink that I like, young coconut drink, flecks of coconut flesh floating around in the can and clogging up the straw. In my opinion the best telo in the Netherlands can be found at Cong's Corner in Rotterdam and every single time that I go to Rotterdam I look forward to eating at this completely unglamourous snackbar on the corner of one of the most museum-filled street on Earth. I'm here for the Rirkriit Tiravanija retrospective at the Boijmans van Beuningen where I also enjoyed the Anri Sala films. My friends Quirine Racké and Helena Muskens' film Celebration is in premier at the Lantaren Venster.

Posted by debra at 10:47 PM | Comments (2)

Brain Food

January 20, 2005

This terribly sad but well written book by Mark Kurlansky is a gripping history from the perspective of the cod. Kurlansky tells how fishing for this gadiform has deeply affected the wealth and development of many nations and technologies. I'm thinking the Flounder by Gunther Grass that I read back in the day but even more I'm thinking Fish Story, the mega-artwork by Allan Sekula, about the 'sweatshop called the Pacific'. (Sekula's visual history Fish Story was part of the the last Documenta XI in Kassel. One photograph in particular gave me goosebumps. You see a ship painter giving the Exxon Valdez a new name...fishy stuff.)

It turns out that cod in the form of stokvis (wind dried cod) turned out to be some good thinking-man's protein for the Norsemen. That extra portable brain-power enabled them to encounter New Foundland in 1000, where they also encountered the Beothuk People who had already discovered it and were not enamoured with the idea of sharing their space with the pink and hairy people from across the puddle.

Basques added salt to the stokvis recipe to make salt cod increasing the quality of the preservation and enabling Basque fishermen to to travel even farther - to the mouth of the St. Lawrence river. When explorer Jacques Cartier got there raring to claim his 'discovery' he encountered almost a thousand Basque fishing vessels. And a bunch of angry native Beothuk people getting pissy about the incessant attention.

Cod is inextricably tied to land (to dry it) and salt (to preserve it) and Salt is in fact the title of another one of Kurlansky's wonderful books.

Posted by debra at 08:54 PM | Comments (3)

Juicing, but not frothing, and you?

January 06, 2005

So far this juice fast has yielded quite a number of discoveries, the usefullness of oat milk being one of them. In my opinion grain and nut milks qualify for a juice fast because they are simply the wrung out water in which grain or nut meal has been soaking. These 'milks' don't give the gut flora anything more to do than a glass of apple juice does but they are useful in making things taste 'creamy'.

Other discoveries concern how to make 'comfort food' for the fast yet maintain its nutritional value. Roxanne Klein (and all raw foodies) feel that valuable enzymes in vegetables and fruits are destroyed when heated above 50°c. For this fast I've kept to this parameter while still being able to serve up some warm soup on these cold Occitanian days.

Here are a list of some of the liquids that my ruthless jury has deemed delicious enough to sip even when not on a juice fast: (This is not a menu.)

Cucumber Kiwi Juice
Kiwi Zucchini Juice
Pineapple Juice (fresh squeezed is entirely different from the storebought stuff)
Carrot Grapefruit Juice
Celery Juice

Avocado Zucchini Soup
Celeriac Oat Milk Soup
Green Curry and Carrot Soup
Broccoli Stalk, Zucchini Soup with Guacamole Dumplings
Red Pepper Tomoato Miso Flower Broth

Date and Pear Sorbet (pictured above)
Banana Chai Ice Cream (pictured above)
Pear Sorbet

The juicer that I am borrowing from Fred and Kristine for the duration of the fast is a real Cadillac (Magimix Le Duo). Only crit about this machine is that it doesn't produce foamy froth - like my Braun back in the Heimatt. I think that some of the recipes could be improved with new texture additions. At home I use the foam from the juicer.

Posted by debra at 10:46 PM | Comments (2)

Milk tasting, and you?

January 05, 2005

As I said, not eating solid foods affords you a chance to try new things. Tonight we did a little experimental milk tasting. Because we're on a juice fast and generally behaving as self-righteously as we can we decided to bypass the locally produced cow, sheep and goat varieties and test the locally imported almond, rice and oat milks.

Oat milk was the clear winner in the category; Tastes Like Something I Might Drink Even When Debra Isn't Forcing Me.

Posted by debra at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

Re-enact creaming

December 13, 2004

Mediamatic and CASCO's performance night titled Re-enact was rife with food related performance art. My absolute favourite performer was Nezaket Ekici who oh so diva-liciously turned cream into butter with her bare right hand. It took 24 minutes or thereabouts. Everyone was aswoon!

Please read more... "Re-enact creaming"

Posted by debra at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

Adam is the genuine article...

November 23, 2004

The very attentive Adam Kuban raced over on his, his, (whatever sort of motorcycle he's riding) to assure me that his weblog Slice is purely about offering the best possible pizza fieldguide and not about I-Pod applications, 'not that there's anything wrong with that...'

One lengthy browsie-browse later and I can't argue with him. Kuban has done his homework, meticulously logging it all onto his I-Pod (and generously sharing it with the world). I'd trust him to find me a slice. Take a peak at Slice or read an interview from the Gothamist about Adam. I have other questions that I prefer to ask in private first. ; )

Adam's Gothamist interview

Posted by debra at 12:10 AM | Comments (3)

Sunday Tea, Fruit Boom

November 14, 2004

We can all use a bit more para so a visit to the Witte de With Paraeducation Department was the order of the day, this Sunday. The salon-format programme titled Facts of Chance (authored by artists Anne Schiffer, Marcel van den Berg, and Frank Koolen) was satisfying, like when the cookie tin stays open; an interesting collection of videos, slideshow, film and included a performance by Koolen. Pictured above is an inadvertent recipe featured in the slideshow titled Fruit Boom or in English, Fruit Tree. Now is that fruit + balance or fruit + skewer + time?

(image courtesy of Frank Koolen)

Posted by debra at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)

Fade to Beige

November 06, 2004

What, you don't like my spork? It is designed by Pandora Design in Italy and is called Moscardino.

Please read more... "Fade to Beige"

Posted by debra at 08:26 AM

Taking Cashew Cheese Seriously This Time

November 04, 2004

In my October 6th entry I report on buying R A W and how it made me nostalgic for the vegetarian classic, Laurel's Kitchen. I said I was going to take cashew cheese seriously these time and I am a woman of my word. Roxanne Klein's recipe calls for 'fermented bean water' but I just used kim chi (pickled cabbage) juice to sour the nut mash - worked great.

It's not called cheese because it tastes or feels anything like cheese - but it's really delicious, delicious enough to eat frequently. It will suffice for comfort food in these grim days.

Posted by debra at 09:28 AM | Comments (2)

Learning through your Ass: The Return of Laurel's Kitchen

October 08, 2004

When I became a vegetarian at the tender age of 13, my parents, fearing that I would stunt my own growth gave me what was considered at the time to be a good introduction to vegetarian nutrition, amino acid chains and global food politics. It was my first cookbook ever and its pictureless recipes for soy-milk, cashew cheese and other 'technically advanced' foodstuffs threw me completely for a loop.

It was California in the 70's but my Mom wasn't about to go foodshopping in a store filled with goat-knitting long-hairs smelling like garbanzo farts, and I didn't know that you could simply go to an Asian supermarket and BUY a ready-made block of tempeh. So when one of Laurel's recipes called for say, soy milk and said, (see recipe page 138) I would actually make the soy milk - often with unsavoury results.

Due to a series of 'intrusive kitchen disasters' my mother decided that I could only do the big preparations for the week's food on Sunday. (Not the fresh things, just the... legume-rich things.) Considering that I had turned the family kitchen into a soybean laboratory it wasn't entirely the cruel thing to do. I would prepare my vegetarian food for the week ahead and microwave it warm each day. For an experienced cook, preparing food in advance wouldn't have posed much of a problem but I had very little PRACTICAL cooking experience. I couldn't tell beforehand if a recipe was difficult and mistakes I made on Sunday were the grits on the table the livelong week. This educational technique is known in some cultures as 'learning through your ass'.

I was cooking outside the repetoire of my family and Laurel wasn't helping. Laurel's Kitchen, although an amazing source of 1970's California anthropology was absolutely a crap book for an inexperienced cook.

But yesterday when I brought home Roxanne Klein and Charlie Trotter's R A W, the first thing I did was pull Laurel from my shelf for one more read.

Posted by debra at 01:09 AM | Comments (6)

Learning through your Ass: The Return of Laurel's Kitchen

But yesterday when I brought home Roxanne Klein and Charlie Trotter's R A W, the first thing I did was pull Laurel from my shelf for one more read.

Posted by debra at 01:09 AM | Comments (6)

Ik lust je R A W

October 07, 2004

Wing flapping all around! Today I indulged myself and bought a cookbook that I have wanted to own for quite some time. R A W by Roxanne Klein (a culinary approach to vegan and raw food cooking) with Charlie Trotter, one of the US's most innovative chefs. Regular readers know that porkatarians like me can't also be vegans but I am still so very excited by this pairing of the minds.

A browsiebrowse through and so far there are lots of recipes that look like watermelon spit-up (maybe she took Trotter's 'froth thing' a little bit too literally) and I think that bit about preserving the enzymes is a load of halookie. If you put a blended something in a dehydrator for 5 hrs I doubt very seriously that there will be any 'living' quality left in the foodstuff. TEST: Put yourself in a sauna for 5 hrs and see how you feel. Now imagine yourself to be a carrot!

B U T

The book is brimming with beauty, love of a rich variety of ingredients and new techniques (new since *Laurel's Kitchen) and I swear I'm going to take cashew cheese seriously this time.

* You're going to have to wait until tomorrow's entry about Laurel's Kitchen, written in 1976 it was THE quintessential bible of Californian hardcore vegetarianism.

Posted by debra at 05:52 PM | Comments (2)

Ik lust je R A W

B U T

The book is brimming with beauty, love of a rich variety of ingredients and new techniques (new since *Laurel's Kitchen) and I swear I'm going to take cashew cheese seriously this time.

* You're going to have to wait until tomorrow's entry about Laurel's Kitchen, written in 1976 it was THE quintessential bible of Californian hardcore vegetarianism.

Posted by debra at 05:52 PM | Comments (2)

Google Recipe Finder

October 02, 2004

The fabulous R.vT. came up with this Google Recipe Search link.
http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/recipe.html

Forget typing in turkey, or wild boar. It's just a search engine, go crazy and try tofurkey + lemon curd or monkey + banana + camenbert! Suddenly nothing seems wierd anymore. (Does this mean that I miss China?) Anyway, it's Sukkah, a Jewish harvest holiday conveniently scheduled each Autumn when 'God wants you to try eating something new'. Yeah.

Which reminds me, my brother Aaron made up a game when we were little in which the sole aim was to make the other person barf. The rule was that you had to concoct a mixture of edible substances (no poison allowed) and dish it up to your sibling � and they had to eat or drink it. Yes. Try it sometime, it's much harder than it sounds.

In this game we discovered that toothpaste is surprisingly versatile as an ingredient. Aaron came up with a toothpaste-orange juice and tabasco sauce smoothie that was fairly effective in getting me to gag and I came up with a peanutbutter and toothpaste sandwich which was impossible to swallow. Toothpaste, who would've thunk it?

R.vT. offered to shop for me since my ankle was sprained Wednesday in a bike accident. It's difficult for me to accept graciously because I am able to stand and walk. Even so, he was a right sweetie today and helped me do my shopping at the hippy market. This is what it's going to be like being an old lady. Carrying a shopping bag with the aid of a friend.

(Respect also to the super lief MM, who cooked and shopped and was a rock of gezelligheid when I couldn't walk, as well as neighbours GS and BK who brought packs of frozen beans to discourage swelling.)

Posted by debra at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)

Taiwanese Bean Beverage

July 01, 2004

Yesterday Dan said that Latvians are lucky.
But today is another day and for breakfast I decided to serve up this Taiwanese Bean Beverage to my Latvian guest *Emils. Just a little good morning experiment. Emils remained cheerful throughout the tasting although shortly after fulfilling his task as guinea pig he dashed out of the house supposedly to buy a shirt - but I think he hauled off and got a bagel.

Discorea Mixed Congee ingredients: water, sugar, adlay(?), discorea rhizome (?), chickpeas, glutinous rice, red beans, kidney beans, millet, oatmeal, oats.

* Emils Rode is a Latvian artist currently participating in the show BREAKTHROUGH in Den Haag. This exhibition in the Grote Kerk spotlights artists from the new European member states. http://www.grotekerkdenhaag.nl

Posted by debra at 02:41 PM | Comments (3)

Smart Taiwanese Packaging (because you never know when you're going to want to tuck into that Discorea Mixed Congee snack that you've been stowing away in your purse for special occasions)

The spoons that come with the Taiwanese bean beverages that I bought yesterday snapped neatly into the lid. Unfold and click and you're ready to suck up all the goodness.

Posted by debra at 02:04 PM | Comments (2)

About 10,000 EURO worth of ham

June 10, 2004

An image of the ham fridge at one of Barcelona's bistros. This is clearly the ideal way to store the serrano hams until the neat shavings land on a plate near your bread.

Posted by debra at 05:51 AM | Comments (2)

Camper's Flagship Restaurant

June 07, 2004

The wall mural menu at 'Foodball'. These last days in Barcelona I had the opportunity to meet up with designer Marti Guixé to talk about our food-related projects. He showed me the newly opened Camper flagship restaurant that he designed.