Rampsterdamned
May 12, 2008
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Culiblog author caught plucking and nibbling in an abundant field of ramps in Amsterdam
I’m a bad to the bone, flower plucking, fruit stealing, mushroom picking, herb snatcher that simply cannot walk by food growing in the public space without tucking in and filling my basket. And I wish that more people were like me and that more public space was used to grow food. It changes the way you feel about a place when you can also find your food there.
Inspired by Saturday’s opening on the ramble, amble, saunter and stroll down at Marres in Maastricht, JB and I decided to test the notion on bike and headed out into the nearby nature with no particular plan in mind. Under the verdant canopy of the Amsterdamse Bos we encountered enormous patches of ramps, also known as wood leek, wild garlic, ail des bois and ail sauvage. The ramps were in bloom and I swear If I were a dog I would have rolled over on my back and done that doggy thing that dogs do in the grass.
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The leaves were tender and garlicky all right, and the flowers were dripping with nectar (!) a combination of green onion and fragrant honey aroma. I love it when the ramp leaves and flowers have different flavours. It was a demure forage-fest, but I’m going back for more today. Tomorrow when the composer comes home, I thought it would be fun to welcome him by dining on a picnic of locally stolen food.
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Partner in crime, JB nibbles a ramp while perched on a spongiform log
- Ramsons: Scientific Name: Allium ursinum
Other names: Bear’s Garlic, Broadleaved Garlic, Buckrams, Ramson, Wild Garlic, Wood Garlic
Family: AlliaceaeWest Virgina ramp-lovers’ website
Google ramp page - with links to images
Traditional ramp recipe and great photos of rampalicious food
Recipes for ramp kimchi and ramp confit from No Recipes dot com
Ramp Kimchi
1/3 C Red Chili pepper powder
1/3 C Myeolchi Aegjeot (Korean anchovy sauce)
1/3 C onion juice
1/4 C shredded daikon or carrots
5 scallions chopped
2 Tbs sesame seeds
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs corn syrup
1 tsp ginger powderlots of ramps leaves separated and cleaned
Mix all the ingredients except the ramps in a bowl to combine. If you can’t find the Korean anchovy sauce, you can substitute 3 Tbs Thai fish sauce + 1 Tbs soy sauce. If you want to make this vegan, just replace the fish sauce with soy sauce.Lay down a layer of ramp leaves then paint a layer of the spice mixture on top. Repeat until your out of ramps.
Cover and refrigerate for about a week to fully pickle. These get better as they begin to ferment, so you can eat them for several weeks. When they start getting tart, this is the perfect time to turn it into Kimchi Jigae (kimchi stew).
another excellent ramp recipe:
lots of whole ramps cleaned
lots of EVOO (?????)
fresh ground black pepper
sea saltPre-heat oven to 350°F/190°c.
Lay the ramps in a baking dish sprinkling a bit of salt and pepper between each layer. Douse the whole thing with an ample amount of olive oil (you don’t want it swimming, but you want it to be covered in oil).
Roast for 15-20 minutes or until the ramps are completely wilted and any liquid that has come out has evaporated.
Eat on a crusty baguette, on a pizza or in a tart. These are also delicious blended into a vegetable soup (ramp and corn chowder anyone?).
Wonderful website about foraging for food
Eat yer ramps according the US Dept of Agriculture
West Virginia’s dedicated ramp (and forest foraging) website. Cultural heritage abounds!
Peggy Tolleson’s excellent cookbook, Wild Garlic, an interesting read!
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debra at 13:42 | Comments (12) | post to del.icio.us
Butterflies in my stomach
May 8, 2008
The date and milk-based cocktail ‘representing’ the Afrikaanderwijk is not pictured here because although scrumptious, it was not photogenic. That’s always a problem with dates.
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Kruiskade Blossom Cocktail
- chrystanthemum tea drinks in tetrapak
- organic chysanthemum flowers
- sour cherry fruit leather cut into butterflies
- ice, or ice made from frozen chrysanthemum tea. Avoid dilution!
- OPTIONAL - a shot of plum wine
The night before: Make ice cubes out of chrysanthemum tea. Keep the chrysanthemum tea tetrapacks as cold as possible without freezing.
Mise en place: Cut the fruit leather into butterflies and stick a cherry butterfly onto each glass so that collectively it appears to be a swarm of butterflies.
Gently separate the chrystanthemum petals from the stem-thingie and place a few in each glass.
à la minute: Place the ice cubes into the glasses and pour the chrysanthemum tea over the lot. Serve immediately. You can add the optional shots of plum wine (or brandy) while serving. Without alcohol, this drink is perfect for children that are allowed to have sugar. In the Netherlands, this is still allowed.
- Links are to Dutch language pages unless otherwise specified.
The Urban Game Show was an initiative of Freehouse/Skill City aka Vakmanstad.
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The marvelous Thirza and the marvelous Eric serve up the drinks.
debra at 6:10 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us
Fredie Beckmans’ interior life
May 7, 2008
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Dear Fredie,
On Queen’s Day, we had a party in your house. We overruled Katja, to whom you have been so kind, letting a relative stranger stay in your home while you’re away in Berlin. She just wanted a traditional Queen’s Day, one in which you simply get drunk and slut it up on the streets. I’ll take the blame for the in-house partying. My visiting Californish parents and I forced the door and demanded tea and cakes. Good cakes!
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Phallic wallpaper chez Fredie Beckmans
I had always thought you to be some sort of boer. Perhaps it was the fact that at an art fart cooking event back in the 90’s you made polenta in the shape of breasts (and I don’t really like polenta) with raisins as the nipples. COME ON NOW! Or that you let folks use the term food artist when describing you instead of conceptual artist. Maybe it’s just that I happened upon a weaker work, all artists have stronger and weaker works, some flacid shock-value visual joke. Or maybe I saw this work out of context. Probably that.
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Is that Chinese viagra on your kitchen wall?
But you were away for some residency in Berlin, and there we were in your home, and Katja serving us tea with a most endearing tea service…
‘Katj, did you bring these with you so that you’d feel at home staying at Fredie B.’s?’
‘Nope. Amazing isn’t it? These are Fredie’s.’
‘These are Fredie Beckmans’ darling tea cups and saucers?’
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Fredie Beckman’s worst tatoo, image used entirely without permission
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Fredie Beckmans, former world’s worst artist
With your sausage tattoos and sausage fat dribbling down your chin… that was just for show. Fredie, I was all wrong about you.
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Intrigued by the cups and saucers, I proceeded to open up every single cupboard and cabinet in your kitchen and inspect the contents. Not the bedroom, not the bathroom, just the kitchen. What I encountered was rich, loamy… food (!), food-related imagery, paraphernalia, food-related poetry, paintings and drawings, other people’s paintings and drawings of all the foods you had researched in your works.
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And hidden everywhere, but also out in the open, were many varieties of potatoes. All sprouting. Pink, purple, brown, black, plain and special weird ones. Like jewels they were cached away in the cupboards, potatoes, potatoes everywhere and not a drop to drink! You even have a pear (Guillaume) that has lived so long next to potatoes that it has also started to look like a potato!
Seriously, years ago you were all about phallic mushrooms and 2 years ago it was all about phallic sausages. You were the effing worst artist in the world. Now it’s all about potatoes. But elevated potatoes, eroticised potatoes and sometimes just naturalised potatoes, sometimes naturalised to the point of becoming a coral reef. And never have I seen stashed hidden treasure potatoes look so exuberant as they did in your interior - and I mean that with all the love in the world and as a woman who eschews carbohydrates (at least in their solid form).
As more and more guests trickled in, and with the kitchen filled to brimming, the tea and cakes turned into organic prosecco and jointjes (sorry for smoking in your house) and the dancing folk spilled out into the library where we rifled through your bookshelves and music collection. And how we danced our asses off, 3 generations worth, one still in the womb. (By the time you read this, it is likely that he will have been born.) We danced with the ones who taught me how to dance, and in between the dancing we looked at your wonderful collection of books.
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Ex libris Fredie Beckmans
What an impressive library you have, dear Fredie, the above composition in no way representative. The well thumbed selection of books on food, philosophy and the philosophy of the senses and sensing is nothing short of jealous-making. You should offer house tours, or at least publish the subject-based bibliographies as a performance in this potato period. Yours is a much more evocative portrait of you and your work than say, my home…
I had misjudged you all these years and I’m sorry for this. Also sorry for going through your stuff, it was just so interesting that I couldn’t stop and I’m truly thankful for the peek.
Good luck with your potato show in Berlin. Please send me the link. All I’ve got is your worst.
Warm regards,
Debra
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debra at 19:16 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
