Herring in Amsterdam

Foodies have to try everything, right?  I’ve been travelling a lot this summer, and have been twice to Amsterdam in a month, so I felt it was finally time to try herring from a street stall.  Let me just note here that I don’t actually like raw fish very much (unless it’s smoked or sliced super thin) and only recently got over my sashimi-phobia, so my review of raw herring will probably be a bit biased.

One fine Sunday afternoon in Amsterdam after Dance Valley, David, Jeremy and I moseyed over to the floating Bloemenmarkt on the Singel canal to check out the flowers.  Surrounded by bright yellow waxed wheels of gouda and bucketfuls of tulip bulbs (fun fact: did you know the Dutch continue to donate 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada each year in thanks for their contribution to the liberation of Canada and sheltering of the Royal Family?), it seemed like a great opportunity to finally try herring.  Is it typically Dutch?  No idea.  Were there a lot of tourists?  Most definitely.

The herring itself was simple to order, and came with the option of having raw onions and/or mustard on top.  It’s sliced into bite-sized chunks and served with a cute Dutch flag, which also served as the eating utensil.  My first bite was alright – a little fishy, but still somewhat tasty.  The onions were a definite bonus and, in hindsight, I should have asked for the mustard as well.  It looked like standard raw fish, though I feel like it could have been more salty.  However, it was the texture that really threw me off.  There seemed to be a bit of a slimy film on the fish skin – I should have expected it, since it’s fish, after all.  It was a bit difficult to finish the whole thing, but I finally got through it.

So the question is – would I ever eat it again?  Probably not raw.  It might also be a good idea to have it in a bun (Broodje Haring) with the mustard; I’d imagine this would be a pretty tasty snack.  The place we went to also had other options; there’s a Broodje Garnalen for the not-so-adventerous…

 

Travel PhooD: Japadog

City: Vancouver, Canada

Location: Burrard and Smithe; Burrard and Pender; 530 Robson St. (coming soon)

Damage: $6.25CAD for one Okonomi hot dog

The Japadog stand is somewhat of a Vancouver institution.  What started out as a creative twist to regular street vendor hot dogs has become so popular in recent years, they’ve actually been able to set up a second location, and are opening a store on Robson street by the Central Library (who’d ever heard of a chain hotdog stand?!).  And it just keeps getting more popular – what recession?

I think I picked the wrong day to come (I'm halfway through the queue)...

Japadogs are essentially normal hot dogs – the kind you would buy from any stand on Robson St./Burrard St./etc. – with Japanese toppings.  In 2005, Noriki Tamura, the owner of Japadog, wanted to open a street food stand.  However, due to archaic Vancouver by-laws, only pre-cooked, ready-to-eat foods are allowed to be sold, which basically means no crêpes, no curry fish balls…heck, I’m not even too sure fries are ok.  Probably not.

So basically…you can sell hot dogs.  But there are so many hot dog stands in Vancouver already (since no one can sell anything else!); how do you attract customers to yours?  The answer – make unique toppings that would appeal to locals and tourists alike.  Throw in a few colourful signs and cute Japanese service (read: lots of quick bowing and ‘お好みです！プリズインジョイー！/Okonomi desu!  Pureesu enjoy!’ – they’re so polite! ♥♥♥) and voilà! – Japadog was born.

I’ve visited quite Japadog a number of times, mostly when I feel adventurous or particularly Vancouver-y.  Japadog is rather popular, so most days, the queue is about 15 minutes long.  On a sunny day, be prepared to wait almost an hour!  If the queue is especially long and you’re starving, drink something while waiting in line – it can be slow torture, because the closer you get, the more the tantalising the smell gets, gently teasing your olfactory senses until you get to the front of the line…

…only to order and go and stand in the pick-up line (cruel, eh?).  But from here, you can see how they make the toppings!  First-timers normally get the Terimayo – a beef sausage dressed in Japanese mayonnaise and teriyaki sauce with shredded nori (dried seaweed).  However, since I’m not the biggest fan of teriyaki sauce, I prefer the Okonomi – pork sausage with fried cabbage, okonomiyaki sauce (just a bit) and Japanese mayo, topped with bonito flakes.  There’s also the Oroshi – a generous scoop of grated radish on top of a pork sausage with green onions and soy sauce – and the Ume – raw red onions on a pork sausage with ume (plum) sauce.  There’s even an Edamame version – Edamame beans packed inside a sliced pork sausage – but I have yet to try it.

Here’s another thing I discovered here – wasabi (deu.: Meerrettich) mayonnaise is fantastic.  Its pleasant light green colour, coupled with its subtle kick of hotness, almost ensures that I will never again be satisfied with regular Japanese mayo.

I have to admit, Japadog is not exactly the cheapest hot dog you’ll ever have, or perhaps even the tastiest.  It is, however, an interesting experience definitely worth checking out!

 

Pfifferlingen + Spaghetti nero

I’ve long been meaning to do a post on pfifferlinge (chanterelles in English), but I don’t usually eat them with anything, so it would’ve been a bit of a boring post.  However, on Saturday, Kookie, Katrin, and I went to Trier and stopped by Strauss Inovation (think gourmet food store with an identity crisis).  Browsing through the pasta section, I found a pack of spaghetti nero – pasta made with squid ink.

I thought, “Hey, that’s a pretty good colour contrast, right?  White plate, black pasta, orange mushrooms?  I’m sold.”

So here we are: pfifferlingen with spaghetti nero.  It’s a pretty good harvest dish, I think – like most mushrooms, pfifferlingen are excellent this time of year (though still rather expensive).  Pfifferlingen are wild mushrooms that have a characteristic light orange colour and real pfifferlingen have the gills running down the stem.  They’re easy to cook, but they need to be washed thoroughly (I rinsed them in cold water), unless you want a little something extra in your food…

The pfifferlingen have a meaty texture, and the classic way to cook them is just to fry them up in butter.  An alternative is to add them to a cream sauce, but I neither want to consume so much cream, or have the patience to make one!  The amounts given below are flexible, of course – the recipe isn’t going  to fail if you double the amount of pfifferlingen and half the amount of pasta =)

Ingredients:

• 100g pfifferlinge
• 150g pasta (depends on how much you want to eat)
• 30g butter
• salt and olive oil to taste

1. Cook the pasta anyway you like – I like to do the “Janet special”: stick the pasta into a pot of water, turn on the burner to max, wait for the water to boil, then turn it off.  I’m pretty sure that’s not the proper way to cook pasta, but it’s so time efficient…

2. Meanwhile, wash the pfifferlingen and put them into a skillet (I have a non-stick, but it doesn’t matter, as you’re going to add butter to it).  Turn on the heat to max.

3. Add the butter to the pan and wait for the mushrooms to start releasing water.  Fry until the water is evaporated and the liquid inside the pan almost turns clear.

4. Drain the pasta and add some olive oil and salt to it.  Top with the pfifferlingen.

Comments

I should have left more of the water in the mushrooms – unfortunately, I stepped away to use MSN, and by the time I came back, all the water was gone =(  Also, when I drained the pasta, it smelled really strange…kind of fishy.  It didn’t taste that way, though, so maybe it was just my imagination.  And the rumours that the squid ink in black pasta will stain your teeth are not true – I checked in the mirror straight away =)

Coming soon: okonomiyaki!  May also get a mini oven like Kookie so I can bake things in my apartment…(American) Thanksgiving is coming up soon…

 

No knowledge of Dutch necessary for this kitchen rule

While using the communal kitchen for the first time, I chanced upon this 13-strong list of kitchen commandments. Most are logical ones, pertaining to organizing kitchenware and ingredients, and proper disposal of trash.

The last one is the strangest….please don’t tell me that this had happened already:

 

Cappuccino with Cream?

I just got off the plane at Hahn airport after a bumpy Ryanair flight. Still feeling woozy, I went to an airport cafe to grab a cup of coffee to help me compose my disoriented self.

I asked for a cappuccino and what I received got me scratching my head.

I received a cappuccino alright. It was a decent cup, nothing to harp about. But what I don’t understand is why I got cream on the side. What purpose does that serve for a cappuccino? Any guesses?

P.S. I apologize for the bad quality of the photo. To be discreet, I took the picture using my 2 1/2 year old Motorola Razr instead of my Canon camera.