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
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debra at 14:13 | Comments (6) | post to del.icio.us
Eat while you can, in a few minutes it will be Yom Kippur, the chaotic humanistic Day of Atonement
October 12, 2005
And on Yom Kippur, you fast by eating and drinking absolutely *bubkis. In my search for all things concerning fasting, I came upon this article by the Chabad Folks, titled
Laws and Lore: Eating Before Yom Kippur. Apparently,
It is a **mitzvah to eat and drink heartily on Erev Yom Kippur…
…Do we fast on the ninth? We fast only on the tenth! [How then is this verse to be understood?] It comes to teach us that all who eat and drink on the ninth, and fast on the tenth, are considered by Scripture as if they had fasted on both the ninth and the tenth.
And there you have it, Jewish attitude in a nutshell. This article is permeated with a Curb Your Enthusiasm tone that makes me want to read out loud, scrunch my eyes, shrug my shoulders and wave my hands around saying. “Do we fast on the ninth? No! We fast only on the 10th! (meaning the 10th of Tishrei). Written discussions of Jewish scripture always sound to me like trying to wheedle out of something. It seems to me that the learned gents before us, were always trying to find a way to reward themselves for doing something half-assed. I realise that this characteristic is not unique to Judaism, but it is this half-assism to which I am especially tuned.
(Please read more… )
debra at 14:11 | Comments (6) | post to del.icio.us
Ramadan
October 11, 2005
The Dutch text on this poster inivtes non-muslims to join in a post-sunset dinner with their muslim neighbours during the month of Ramadan. Someone was absolutely using their noggin and Amsterdam is now host to this wonderful initiative called the Ramadan Festival. Muslim families have generously opened their homes for each evening’s break-the-fast Iftar meal in order to allow greater understanding of Islamic culture and faith during the holiday month. There is a slew of activities; lectures, debates (gotta have those lectures and debates!) on the subject of citizenship, culture, emancipation and the role of religion in secular society.
The Ramadan Festival website is informative including prayer times and the hour of each day’s sunset so that you know when you can resume tucking into the goodness! Via the website you can also sign up to receive break-the-fast alerts via text message on your celphone and register for the Iftar dinners. I of course signed up, and am eagerly waiting to hear from the organisation!
This year, Ramadan lasts until the 3rd of November. Get fasting!
http://www.ramadanfestival.nl/
technorati tags: Ramadan, Amsterdam, fasting
debra at 20:20 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
