Naomi visited me last week marking the, ashamedly, first time I have gone to the Rotterdam market since moving to the Netherlands. On market days (Tues, Thurs, Sat), the giant square at Rotterdam Blaak is filled with hundreds of stands. There we acquired fish and several second hand granny sweaters each.
Today, I went to the Rotterdam market again together with Inga, and some others. We bought some mussels for dinner.
A Mussel Recipe (from Inga's mom)
mussels for 3-4 persons (~2kg)
4-6 cloves finely chopped garlic
2 shallots finely chopped
2 sliced tomatoes
1 bunch chopped coriander
2 cups creme fraiche
1 chopped leek
1. Sautee shallots in olive oil with garlic
2. Add the mussels with ~1/2 liter of water (?)
3. Steam the mussels
4. Remove the mussels onto a serving plate
5. From the left over water, add the creme fraiche, leek and tomatoes
6. Heat and reduce
7. Add coriander and serve on top of mussels
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Naomi eating haring
Hollandse Nieuwe Haring (herring) is the Dutch version of sushi. Most foreigners (and many Dutch people) dislike haring, due to the raw and pungent flavor of the fish, but I always make a point to eat one first thing on any given brack (hungover) Saturday. Knowing this, I warned Naomi of the fish and made the two of us have lunch before we ventured to the haring stand.
The following is why I love Naomi:
naomi: I can only foresee one problem
me: what?
naomi: I could really see myself becoming addicted to this..it is very creamy.
naomi: I bet it goes really well with soy sauce
The following is why I love Naomi:
naomi: I can only foresee one problem
me: what?
naomi: I could really see myself becoming addicted to this..it is very creamy.
naomi: I bet it goes really well with soy sauce
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Lasagna and other cooking adventures
This previous week has been the week of lasagnas. I went from a sometimes almost never eater of lasagna to the "chef" or "sous-chef" of three different lasagnas. In general I find oven dishes mysterious, maybe due to my stir-fry Chinese food background. Also, I never had the ambition to try to learn any oven dishes in particular, liking my relatively 1:1 ratio of action time to cook time. Lasagnas belonged in the realm of Lynn, who I associate with lasagnas.
The first lasagna happened because Floris felt like eating "healthy." We made an oven full of lasagna out of ground beef, carrots, onions, and spinach. The result was simple but delicious. We cleared off the whole lasagna amongst the four of us and packed down some dessert as well. I felt inspired to make lasagna again in the future. It was much easier than I had anticipated or imagined.
The second lasagna was made for 11 people at JVB 15 on a Sunday. I needed to feed my sister who was visiting with her friend Emily, so I volunteered to cook with Joost for all the hungry Sunday bums. We made veggie lasagna out of tons of vegetables. I didn't like the result that much as it was less a lasagna than a oven fantasie (don't ask) with lasagna leafs and béchamel on top.
The third and final lasagna came about when Vaniek, who was present for the first lasagna, wanted to eat another one when I happened to be making dinner for a friend and had no idea what to make. I think that this is by far the most successful of my creations so far and I will post it here. This is a recipe I modified from an Epicurious recipe for Wild Mushroom Lasagna, by substituting porcini mushrooms for portabella mushrooms and adding spinach. From this recipe I also learned how to make béchamel sauce from scratch (which is surprisingly easy!)
Lasagna Recipe (for 4)
béchamel sauce from scratch or from a box
mushroom tomato sauce
2 cups chopped portabella mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 (14- to 15-oz) cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
lasagna noodles
parmesan cheese, grated
Instructions
1. Make the mushroom sauce by cooking the onions first in oil, and then adding the mushrooms. Add the tomato sauce plus the basil and garlic after awhile. Simmer.
2. Boil the lasagna noodles for 3min until soft and run under cold water.
3. Preheat oven
4. Spread 1 cup béchamel over buttered/greased lasagna dish saving some for the top layer. Arrange lasagna noodles over first layer. Spread mushroom tomato sauce layer and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat layering and on the last layer spread the remaining béchamel on top and sprinkle cheese.
In the future I will not be so hesitant to make oven dishes, but this is definitely the first of many small steps. I will still always think of Lynn when I eat/make lasagna, which is definitely a good thing.
Other cooking related things:
I made a successful chocolate mousse for meisje's avond last week after one failed attempt. My wrists still remember stiffening countless egg whites. Daniel and Jorn both thought I would fail, but helped me tons :D
I bought some Dutch cookbooks in the second hand shop today including: Wijn Etiquette (no translation needed), Fish, Crustaceans, and Shellfish from the French Kitchen, Soup as a Meal, and My First Cookbook for less than 3 euros! Now I can learn and practice the most important parts of Dutch...
Now I am happily looking forward to Christmas dinner at JVB 15 and Easter morning with Naomi who is visiting starting Friday!
The first lasagna happened because Floris felt like eating "healthy." We made an oven full of lasagna out of ground beef, carrots, onions, and spinach. The result was simple but delicious. We cleared off the whole lasagna amongst the four of us and packed down some dessert as well. I felt inspired to make lasagna again in the future. It was much easier than I had anticipated or imagined.
The second lasagna was made for 11 people at JVB 15 on a Sunday. I needed to feed my sister who was visiting with her friend Emily, so I volunteered to cook with Joost for all the hungry Sunday bums. We made veggie lasagna out of tons of vegetables. I didn't like the result that much as it was less a lasagna than a oven fantasie (don't ask) with lasagna leafs and béchamel on top.
The third and final lasagna came about when Vaniek, who was present for the first lasagna, wanted to eat another one when I happened to be making dinner for a friend and had no idea what to make. I think that this is by far the most successful of my creations so far and I will post it here. This is a recipe I modified from an Epicurious recipe for Wild Mushroom Lasagna, by substituting porcini mushrooms for portabella mushrooms and adding spinach. From this recipe I also learned how to make béchamel sauce from scratch (which is surprisingly easy!)
Lasagna Recipe (for 4)
béchamel sauce from scratch or from a box
mushroom tomato sauce
2 cups chopped portabella mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 (14- to 15-oz) cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
lasagna noodles
parmesan cheese, grated
Instructions
1. Make the mushroom sauce by cooking the onions first in oil, and then adding the mushrooms. Add the tomato sauce plus the basil and garlic after awhile. Simmer.
2. Boil the lasagna noodles for 3min until soft and run under cold water.
3. Preheat oven
4. Spread 1 cup béchamel over buttered/greased lasagna dish saving some for the top layer. Arrange lasagna noodles over first layer. Spread mushroom tomato sauce layer and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat layering and on the last layer spread the remaining béchamel on top and sprinkle cheese.
In the future I will not be so hesitant to make oven dishes, but this is definitely the first of many small steps. I will still always think of Lynn when I eat/make lasagna, which is definitely a good thing.
Other cooking related things:
I made a successful chocolate mousse for meisje's avond last week after one failed attempt. My wrists still remember stiffening countless egg whites. Daniel and Jorn both thought I would fail, but helped me tons :D
I bought some Dutch cookbooks in the second hand shop today including: Wijn Etiquette (no translation needed), Fish, Crustaceans, and Shellfish from the French Kitchen, Soup as a Meal, and My First Cookbook for less than 3 euros! Now I can learn and practice the most important parts of Dutch...
Now I am happily looking forward to Christmas dinner at JVB 15 and Easter morning with Naomi who is visiting starting Friday!
Friday, March 14, 2008
Mooi Weer
It is such a pretty day outside! I woke up to a perfect blue sky peeking out of my curtains and the sound of children screaming on the playground.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Work and Theo Janssen
Over the last two weeks I have been freelancing at NorthernLight, which is also one of the companies I may graduate with eventually. Yesterday evening around 7pm, I finally finished the last of my drawings and rushed home (walk really fast for 30 min, get on a ferry, get on a train, switch in Den Haag CS, bike home = 1hr, 45min). The competition deadline was today, so I hope everything got turned in on time and in good order. I rewarded myself by going to some (crappy) jazz event in the Speakers with Inga and Jorn. When we got tired of being the pathway for jazz lovers, we moved ourselves to the Locus Publicus and had a La Trapp Quadrupel (on tap!).
For those who are interested, I will explain a little about what I have been doing at NorthernLight. NorthernLight is a exhibition design company (introduced to me via Inga), which designs exhibitions for mostly science museums, i.e. the Nemo. When I approached the company two weeks ago looking for a graduation project, they asked me to do some freelance work for them. They were bidding for two galleries in the new Macao Science Center, the Space and the Earth Sciences (Disaster!) Galleries, respectively. It was really amazing to witness and participate in the design and execution of the design proposal, especially the acceleration of the the project from start to finish (0-60 in 2 seconds). The project went from 3 people, to more the 30 at different sides of the globe, to done in the space of two weeks.
I spent my first two days there collecting possible relevant exhibitions to our project from a gigantic list of other science centers and museums. We also had a couple of meetings thinking about a unifying concept for the spaces regarding content and architecture of the building. I was working with only two others and the director of the company, so I felt like my ideas really contributed to the process. Suddenly, on the third day a content manager appeared and mysterious phone calls were being placed to 3D modeling companies to model the spaces. Then a couple of days later people in the office who were working on other projects suddenly started also working on the Macao project. On the last two days before the deadline, the original three became 99% of the office. I left early to catch dinner while most were still in the office working working in mysterious Word documents.
After the initial concept making meetings that could last hours, I finally received some individual work to make drawings for exhibits. We had to deliver 70% of our proposed exhibits in drawings and text. Here are some types of images I made:
The first I made by collaging models from the sketchup warehouse to set the type of scene I wanted and then I exported it into Illustrator and Photoshop. It is a picture of a rock lab.
I can't upload another example right now, so I will do it later. Anyways, now I have an appointment with them for next week to talk about a graduation project again, so I am back to where I started.
On another note, today I went to a lecture by Theo Janssen at the faculty of architecture. The room the lecture was in reminded me nostalgically of a small version of 26-100 (I had to ask Ellen to remember the name of this lecture hall. Has it been so long that I was at MIT??). His lecture was basically and extended version of all the other talks I have seen of him online. It was very inspiring though, evolutionary design which reminds me of my goal to learn more about cellular automata and generative design in general. I should start reading a New Kind of Science, which I stole from Jorn but haven't started reading yet.
Now I am busy with framing my graduation project proposal. This means way too much emailing and other boring things.
Upcoming events (in my boring life):
- Tonight! meisje's avond, invented by me and getting bigger and bigger.
- Lanna and friend visit Sat - Tues, dropping off a camera for me since my old one broke.
- Go to Monitor Sculptures curated by Linda who is going to Madrid soon (forever?).
- Christmas dinner/Naomi visits the following Sat for a week (!!!).
For those who are interested, I will explain a little about what I have been doing at NorthernLight. NorthernLight is a exhibition design company (introduced to me via Inga), which designs exhibitions for mostly science museums, i.e. the Nemo. When I approached the company two weeks ago looking for a graduation project, they asked me to do some freelance work for them. They were bidding for two galleries in the new Macao Science Center, the Space and the Earth Sciences (Disaster!) Galleries, respectively. It was really amazing to witness and participate in the design and execution of the design proposal, especially the acceleration of the the project from start to finish (0-60 in 2 seconds). The project went from 3 people, to more the 30 at different sides of the globe, to done in the space of two weeks.
I spent my first two days there collecting possible relevant exhibitions to our project from a gigantic list of other science centers and museums. We also had a couple of meetings thinking about a unifying concept for the spaces regarding content and architecture of the building. I was working with only two others and the director of the company, so I felt like my ideas really contributed to the process. Suddenly, on the third day a content manager appeared and mysterious phone calls were being placed to 3D modeling companies to model the spaces. Then a couple of days later people in the office who were working on other projects suddenly started also working on the Macao project. On the last two days before the deadline, the original three became 99% of the office. I left early to catch dinner while most were still in the office working working in mysterious Word documents.
After the initial concept making meetings that could last hours, I finally received some individual work to make drawings for exhibits. We had to deliver 70% of our proposed exhibits in drawings and text. Here are some types of images I made:
The first I made by collaging models from the sketchup warehouse to set the type of scene I wanted and then I exported it into Illustrator and Photoshop. It is a picture of a rock lab.I can't upload another example right now, so I will do it later. Anyways, now I have an appointment with them for next week to talk about a graduation project again, so I am back to where I started.
On another note, today I went to a lecture by Theo Janssen at the faculty of architecture. The room the lecture was in reminded me nostalgically of a small version of 26-100 (I had to ask Ellen to remember the name of this lecture hall. Has it been so long that I was at MIT??). His lecture was basically and extended version of all the other talks I have seen of him online. It was very inspiring though, evolutionary design which reminds me of my goal to learn more about cellular automata and generative design in general. I should start reading a New Kind of Science, which I stole from Jorn but haven't started reading yet.
Now I am busy with framing my graduation project proposal. This means way too much emailing and other boring things.
Upcoming events (in my boring life):
- Tonight! meisje's avond, invented by me and getting bigger and bigger.
- Lanna and friend visit Sat - Tues, dropping off a camera for me since my old one broke.
- Go to Monitor Sculptures curated by Linda who is going to Madrid soon (forever?).
- Christmas dinner/Naomi visits the following Sat for a week (!!!).
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Icelandic Collapsed Volcano
Wow, I was searching for volcano pictures on the web today (to design an abstracted floor for this science center) when I stumbled upon this awesome picture.
More awesome volcano pictures here
More awesome volcano pictures here
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