I'm Bored of Cooking...

Every once in awhile I get bored of cooking.

Last week on top of every day cooking I cooked a bunch of massive meals. Steaks, pepper sauce, Oreo cheesecake, buttermilk pancakes, fried porkchops breaded with brioche crumbs and peanut crumbs, marscapone and wasabi whipped potatoes, and then for my neighbour's birthday on Saturday alone I made 3 kilos of galbi, kimchees, mini-paejons, and lots of other assorted Korean side dishes. I made enough extra that I didn't have to cook all day Sunday or Monday, but now I'm sick of Korean food (for a few days anyways) and have to make a decent dinner after having had a bowl of Golden Grahams for lunch (and a banana).

It's rare I'm not inspired to cook. Even when I'm not inspired to do much else I can always think of a delicious meal that will challenge my culinary skills and make my tummy happy.

Usually when I can't thinking of something I want to cook I look at food blogs, but one sure thing is always to look at the Food Network's website.

Now the weather is cold. I thought about lasagna, but I would have to make sauce, so that's took much work for me at the moment. I'd like something spicy though.

What I'd really like is a nice plate of buffalo chicken wings. It's something I miss from time to time. I ate them at least once a week in my college days, usually followed by a massive square pizza with loads of toppings.

So that's what I'm going to cook tonight. Good ol' fashioned American Hooters fare, except I'm going to have to get creative. Blue cheese is readily found in France, but blue cheese dressing isn't. I'll have to make my own. I'll also have to make my own hot sauce and I'll be lucky if I find Tabasco sauce.

Here's tonight's menu...

Starter

Buffalo chicken wings w/celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing

Mains

Beef and sausage meatloaf w/ pomegranate molasses and homemade tomato ketchup glaze, Southern style baked macaroni and cheese, and green beans with bacon.

Dessert

?

The buffalo wings with bleu cheese dressing and a smidge of celery.



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A List of ALL the Cooking I Did Today...

1. Peeled and boiled potatoes.
2. Fried a portion of chopped up bacon.
3. Made dressing.
4. Rinsed and drained potatoes, leaving them to soak in cool water for about 20 minutes (a secret of good potato salad).
5. Made frivoli pasta (my new obsession).
6. Diced fennel.
7. Mixed up potato salad ingredients. Seasoned. Put in fridge to let get cool.
8. Cut up tomatoes, cucumbers, and defrosted frozen peas.
9. Made dressing for pasta salad.
10. Fried another portion of chopped up bacon.
11. Hard-boiled four eggs.
12. Melted coccoa and butter in double boiler for cookies.
13. Made cookie dough.
14. Baked cookies.
15. Prepared from scratch BBQ sauce because have remembered how fattening fried chicken is.
16. Prepared the grill for the chicken.
17. Basted and pre-baked chicken for the grill.
18. Grilled chicken.
19. Made fried onions for green bean article.
20. Prepared green beans and then photographed them doing best to make them look tasty and professional.

In the end, I suppose it would have been even more work to make fried chicken (and like x 10 on the calories), but then I look at this photo and I know Fried Chicken Sundays don't need to be given up completely. Right?

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Books, Tea, Time, and The Droste Effect in Amsterdam

Day two in Amsterdam was recovery day. I did a little grocery shopping at the Albert Heijn, made sandwiches, and did a lot of napping. I blogged about finding a copy of The Olympia Reader and the famous scandal surrounding Lolita. Day three however after enough rest this wicked girl was ready to hit the town a little bit.

So I headed to Centraal Bibliotheek. It's located between Centraal Station and the NEMO Science Center in front of the massive floating Chinese pagoda restaurant. You can't miss it. It is afterall the biggest library in Europe.

Inside I managed to discreetly snap photos for the purpose of this blog. See the world's best reading/writing chairs are inside the Amsterdam central library. I tried to find online who designed them and how to get my hands on one, but so far nothing has turned up. Here are some pictures, if you know who made them or where to buy them I would be most thankful for the tip.

I headed up another level to take a look at some of the books in the Centraal Bibliotheek's "Amsterdam" collection and ended up finding a book (in Dutch, English, German, and French no less) about the pews of the Oudekerk (The Old Church, Red Light District) and learned a new word in the process.

miserichord: (sometimes named mercy seat, like the Biblical object) is a small wooden shelf on the underside of a folding seat in a church, installed to provide a degree of comfort for a person who has to stand during long periods of prayer.

I also had a seat to enjoy the view, another reason besides books to visit the Centraal Bibliotheek.

One last snap of possibly Satanist magazines in the religious magazine section, and I was back out on the street.

I wandered around and fell upon this creepy, creepy thing I had made a note in my notebook to try and pass by again for the purposes of getting a photo for my blog. Isn't it horrible and yet quite amazing in it's own way? It's in the window of a Dutch restaurant on Zeedijk.

Another random Amsterdam window, this time instead of taxidermy there's a tiny world beyond the glass.

I had lunch again at Thaise Snackbar (Zeedijk) and it was as delicious yet again. I will eventually eat at another restaurant and possibly one day vacation in a different city. Until then, the pad thai was too good for words.

The plan was to first go to the Waterlooplein market to find an old Droste Dutch coccoa tin. I saw about seven the other day and could barely find one when I went back specifically to find the damn thing. I finally found one and a cute little milk jug and sugar bowl set. Total for everything was 5,00 euros.

I wandered back up towards Nieuwmarkt towards a secondhand bookstore called The Book Exchange because I wanted to browse for some books, but I found the passage of books again (on the same street at TBE, but before Ruusland street) and bought some there first. Then I went to The Book Exchange and bought some there too.

The new plan was to find an art store and buy the supplies necessary to make my Tardis themed notebook while having tea and Dutch brownies. I planned to make from scratch meatballs and spaghetti sauce for dinner. I found the supplies (less than 30,00 euros and will probably be enough materials to make several Tardis themed notebooks) and then it started to rain so I popped into The Bushdoctor Coffeeshop to have a smoke and wait it out.

Once home I did have tea and brownies and homemade spaghetti and meatballs with foccacia bread and I did watch Monty Python and The Holy Grail, but didn't get to the Tardis notebooks. Tonight I suppose will be leftovers and Tardis. Will have to watch some old episodes of my favourite Doctor (I guess it's probably David Tennant).

Enjoy some random A'dam photos:

Swans and bicycles on a bridge near Waterlooplein.

Near this bridge. (See above.)

Postcard I personalised for a friend.

My moleskin pages from yesterday with my spirograph.

Another postcard (Nirvana) to send to my neighbour's son.

This might be a bad translation, but "Bread has a point"? Please help if you speak Dutch!

From under my umbrella...

Yes Pizarro, what have you done??

Odd car.

Books bought. A few Tardis supplies.

Tea, books, Droste tin, tea set, Tardis supplies.

Yummy.

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Today's Daily Yumology - Terriyaki Chicken and Broccoli Rice Bowls

It has been a long standing FB tradition of mine to post what I'm cooking to torture my friends. Often times the torture gets so bad that they come by to have some of my grub. It is sort of the point.

Now truth be told I am not a fan of recipes. I'm sort of a maverick (Is it okay to use this word yet or did Sarah Palin and John McCain kill it completely and forever?). I throw things together and keep a lot of spices handy. I have cooked certain dishes so many times that a recipe isn't needed or I don't need the actually recipe I just need to check to see if I have all the ingredients.

But I don't go all out every day. For example yesterday I made gourmet meatloaf (it really was amazing) in single serving terrines with Creole style fried potatoes and a simple salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn with a mild balsamic vinaigrette dressing. It was delicious, but exhausted from my efforts I went decidedly simpler today.

Tonight's Yummy is terriyaki chicken with broccoli and rice. See? Nothing fancy.

I made the terriyaki chicken with whole thighs I deboned and then pan-fried until the skin was a bit blackened and crisp. The terriyaki sauce was a mix of crushed garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame seed oil, and 2 T of sugar. I marinated the chicken about 1 hour before frying it and let it set on a pan to ooze out its juice before slicing it into strips (in the vein of magret de canard). Once sliced I quickly sauteed the chicken with pre-steamed broccoli (leave it a bit crisp). Once done I plated the chicken mixed with the broccoli and after adding 2T of water, boiled down the remaining marinade until it was thick enough to coat a wooden spoon.

I garnished my terriyaki chicken and broccoli with fresh green onions, the remaining marinade (containing all the deliciously fried up garlic and ginger that came off the chicken during frying), and sesame seeds.

Served with steaming hot cups of green tea and steamed perfumed rice, it's a quick and tasty meal.

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