Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking
June 19, 2008
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Local sk8r boi enjoys the coconut cassava bonbon with newly aromatic herring.
In the past year I’ve been working with community food entrepreneurs; cooking studios, restaurants, small food stores, and local vegetable growers strengthening networks to innovate snacks that could be sold locally. Not big-business food, just extremely yummy and secretly healthy street food snacks made from what’s already going on; a snack-platform, by the folks, for the folks.
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Super-use is everything but the squeal… watermelon juice and pickled watermelon rind; refreshing and we assume rejuvenating.
Together with my partners Imagine IC in Amsterdam Z.O., Kosmopolis Rotterdam, and Vakmanstad/Skill City (Rotterdam), I initiated Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking, a mobile snack platform to research and focus on food culture and identity in the diverse Dutch neighbourhoods. An underlying notion of Fortune Cooking is super-use; super use of the food flows, available expertise, facilities and networks, in order to nurture informal and micro-economies. In just two weeks we’ll launch this dimsumptuously experimental snack brand at the Amsterdam Zuidoost Summer Festival. The images in this entry are from our try-out last weekend at the Rolling Kitchens event in Amsterdam’s Westerpark, but starting July 5th, we’ll have an actual snack wagon - designed by bona fide architects. (More on that in a later entry.)
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Groentoe Akansa is a leafy green masala polenta wrapped in a leaf and served as an offering.
Lucky Mi snacks for this summer are being innovated in collaboration with Mavis Hofwijk from Surinaams Buffet, a catering and cooking studio in Zuidoost. Mavis is something of a gastronomic superstar and is without a doubt the go-to-gal when folks like the Dutch Queen or Amsterdam’s mayor Job Cohen (yes, he’s a bro) get a hunkering for Surinamese cuisine. I am honoured to be able to work with her and her team, which includes her culi-knowledgeable daughter Candice.
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An unrolled groentoe akansa, pronounced grewn too ah kahn sah.
Of course the carbon footprint part of your brain is wondering where all this tropical food is coming from, and I am happy to report that the leafy greens that Mavis uses in the Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking snacks come straight from the farms of Mario Balhari, just a bike ride away in nearby Amstelveen. Tropilocal! Although Mario is one of those cosmopolitan farmers who works with collectives in Cuba and Surinam, he also has his own fields right here in the Heimatt where he grows the delicious am soi, baji, and klaroen leafy greens. Together we’re working on developing a tropilocal salad box for the July 5th opening.
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Buy some coconut cassava bonbon with newly aromatic herring and watermelon pickle, and get a free fork!
Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking is a mobile snack restaurant and culinary embassy. In-situ snack innovation and collective entrepreneurship is the result of the collaboration between myself and brilliant neighbourhood food entrepreneurs from Amsterdam Zuidoost and in Rotterdam’s Afrikaanderbuurt. Lucky Mi is 100% food from the ‘hood and a purely dimsumptuous snackology.
Heads up, our menu-not-so-fixe changes frequently and at our slightest whim! Changes will be posted here and at our soon to be announced website.
- Surinaams Buffet Catering
Bedrijvencentrum Hakfort
Bullewijkpad 21 AMSTERDAM
Tel: 020-6090966
Fax: 020-6970405
e-mail: info at surinaamsbuffet dot nlBijlmerplein 1006 - 1008
1102 ML Amsterdam
tel: 020 489 48 66
fax: 020 489 48 65
e-mail: info at imagineIC dot nl
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A F.A.S.T. food market
May 27, 2008
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Gifted organic olive oil and za’atar from Ein Hud, an unrecognised village in Israel
Sustainability issues aren’t only about green, sometimes they’re even more fundamental than that. Food and food systems are an integral part of that story because food and agricultural policy is commonly used for strategic purposes. Malkit Shoshan is an Israeli architect and the founder/director of F.A.S.T. (Foundation of A Seamless Territory) dedicated to exposing the global abuses of ideological planning, as found in Israel’s unrecognised villages like Ein Hud and in offering alternative solutions.
In June 2004 F.A.S.T. held an international architecture competition for a masterplan for the village of Ein Hud and will be opening it’s cultural centre with festivities this September 2008. Shoshan asked me if I would investigate the possibility of initiating a farmers’ market in Ein Hud and to see about developing some artisanal products to sell in it. The market would ostensibly sell local agricultural products like olive oil, herbs, medicinal herbs, honey and dates, and would give a welcome boost to the local economy. To entice me Malkit gave me a sample of Ein Hud’s raw product line, za’atar (the quintessential Arab condiment mixture of marjoram, sumac, sesame seeds, and salt), fruity olive oil and melouchiya (a dried herb concoction that I’m still figuring out how to use).
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Vernacular packaging of local products from Ein Hud
From F.A.S.T. “The story of Ein Hud represents the history of the State of Israel, as an embodiment of two parallel societies, two parallel planning systems, one building, the other destroying. Ein Hod – Ein Hud is the story of two villages, each representing a different reality and completely opposite living conditions. The story of Ein Hud, south of Haifa, is a typical example of the complex reality of ideological planning in Israel and how such planning contributes to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy.”
- Further reading:
F.A.S.T. (Foundation of A Seamless Territory)Occupied Olive Tree Territories - Culiblog weighs in on the politics of agriculture
A Subjective Atlas of Palestine
Seamless Israel, visualise a country without unrecognised territories
Israelis also sought to forest the bare mountains and hills as quickly as possible. The Jewish National Fund started to plant pine trees because they grow quickly. Unfortunately, the trees were not suited to the climate and started to die after a few decades.
Territoria Magazine - pdf download
One Land Two Systems Newspaper - download the pdf
and recipes or pinings on za’atar:
The Jewish Daily Forward on za’atar. No appropriation here.
Wikipedia is so smart, please add to it.
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On acting-out at dinner
May 20, 2008
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All together now.
Purple tablecloth, purple flowering chives and irises. Entirely too much purple at the dining table and an amuse comprised of an overly precious presentation of tofu, inspired my friends to spontaneously bust out a tongue-in-cheeky, anthroposophical pre-dinner recitation of grace. Holding hands.
Blessings on the blossom, blessings on the fruit, blessings on the leaves and stems, blessings on the root.
We peppered the rest of dinner playing ‘Intentional Community’ in which an exposure to hippy upbringing and culture provided compost for our niche humor. The fact that these particular friends actually do live in a (hippyish) collective made it all the more funny.
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Intentionally crap fake family photography, Ma and Pa had only just met hours before.
A month before that and with another group of friends, we suddenly found ourselves at a Sunday dinner playing ‘Ageing Urban Family’ taking on ill-fitting traditional roles. Downward-facing dogme.
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Interior for family dinner, players requesting anonymity
Interesting phenomena but despite the amplifications, it is sort of sweet & healthy that we’re spending family moments sharing home-cooked meals together.
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Sister, put down the cellphone.
The anthroposophical blessing referred to above was actually this one, recited by the Composer, in the role of Hippy from the Zonnewende Collective. In Dutch and below an English translation:
Aarde droeg het in haar schoot
Zonlicht bracht het rijp en groot
Zon en aarde die ons dit schenken
wij wilen dankbaar aan u denken
Ook de mensen niet vergeten
die bereiden ons het eten.
Loosely translated and with poetic license:
Earth who gives to us this food
Sun who makes it ripe and good
Dear Earth …. Dear Sun
By you we live
Our loving thanks to you we give…..
Also those for us who did prepare
We’re thankful for this Sun and Earthly fare.
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