Tonight for dessert Marco, Roger and I had this:
Spekkoek (a multi-layed Indonesian cake) with chocolate ice cream, coconut milk ice cream, whipped cream and coconut shavings on top of the cake. What makes this dessert notable is that you cook each layer separately, one at a time. Hours to bake but minutes to eat!
I visited Plasman last week. It’s a bakery/lunch cafe in the Statenkwaartier neighborhood of The Hague. A lot of international companies and expats can be found there.
Of course since it is almost time for Sinterklaas they make their own fancy versions of chocolate letters. Each child receives a chocolate letter depicting the first letter of their name. So I have seen my fair share of chocolate N’s over the last few years.
They also have cakes:
A look at another case:
And a close-up of the macaroons, a small circular cake that comes in many different forms based on the country of origin:
Quite colorful!
On Saturday, Marco, Roger and I cooked one of the recipes from Marco Pierre White‘s book “White heat”. He is a renowned chef from England. This post’s title comes from the fact that he is a drill sergeant in the kitchen and likes to repeat his statements at a rapid fire pace (cook faster, cook faster, cook faster!) and the only accepted answer is “Yes, Marco; Yes, Marco; Yes, Marco”. You can imagine how my husband (Marco) loves to use this to his advantage.
We cooked Escalope of salmon with basil. It is as you might expect a salmon dish with a basil sauce:
The sauce is made from shallots, vermouth (a wine also known as Noilly Prat), fresh basil, fish stock, cream and butter. Yum.
I’ve added a few more podcasts to the Dutch podcasts page. They are:
Achter het verhaal (“Behind the story”) – This podcast interviews journalists to get the ‘story behind the story’ for an article published in the print or online newspaper. It’s from ‘Dagblad van het Noorden’, or ‘Daily paper from the north’ as a rough translation. When in doubt, pick the newspaper stories that interest you the most to listen to.
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1 minuut / Plots – 1 minuut is a podcast with stories that last about 1 minute each. A great way to learn the language. My only criticism is that you need to have a podcast player that can automatically play the next episode, but that is nothing against the podcast itself. On the other side you have ‘Plots’, true stories told over about 45 minutes. Both are by VPRO, as is Toendra above.
VPRO also has podcasts ‘1 minuutjes jeugd’ and ‘1 minuutjes kleuters’, both of which are more appropriate for children to listen to.
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Of course I also have my favorite podcasts in English. I’d prefer to listen to similarly quality Dutch podcasts to kill two birds with one stone (enjoy myself and hear more Dutch) but you cannot have it all. Some of the English language podcasts I listen to could be best categorized as docudrama’s or serialized fiction – stories broken up and told week by week or month by month.
The Black Tapes podcast – inspired by Serial (a non-fiction podcast following the case of someone imprisoned for his girlfriend’s murder), The Black Tapes is described as “a serialized docudrama about one journalist’s search for truth, her enigmatic subject’s mysterious past and the literal and figurative ghosts that haunt them both”. Season one just finished.
Limetown – “Ten years ago, over three hundred men, women and children disappear from a small town in Tennessee, never to be heard from again. In this seven-part podcast, American Public Radio host Lia Haddock asks the question once more “What happened to the people of Limetown?” (But be warned – there’s only a few episodes ready and there seems to be a small delay publishing more.)
What are some of your favorite podcasts?
Marco and I went to Marks and Spencer for coffee and noticed along the way that the Christmas items were out. It’s not November yet, but I am sure Christmas items have been out by American stores for at least a few weeks. Halloween and Thanksgiving be damned, of course.
I have to admit that the Christmas tree cookie by the coffee was a nice, cute touch:
And the Christmas section included ornaments, Christmas cards and wrapping paper and snow globes and…
I didn’t buy anything. But I do like looking. Marco, the good husband that he is, rolled his eyes politely but came along.
I am sure a lot of you know the painting ‘Girl with a pearl earring’ in The Hague, painted by Vermeer.
But do you know what painting is next to it in the room?
It’s a head scratcher.
‘Mother combing her child’s hair’. Not too noteworthy, right?
Except she is not holding a comb.
The sub title is ‘Hunting for Lice’.
Yep.
I wonder if that was deliberate to keep the line moving after you study the Girl with a pearl earring. Though the painting is beautiful in its own right.
Marco made his special jalapeno hot sauce again this weekend (to accompany tonight’s dinner of soft-shelled tacos). I especially liked the label he made:
Death to the drinker. Well, not really, but it looks cool!
However I think the skull and swords would be more apt for the ghost pepper hot sauce, but unfortunately we don’t have the ingredients to make that at home (but we do have two store-bought versions).
Maybe next time he will take it up a notch and make habanero sauce!
Some time ago I was walking past the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. As you might be able to guess from the name, it’s an art museum. I’ve only been inside once so far, to see a Delfts blauw exhibit. That is blue and white pottery made in the Delft area since the 16th century.
Pretty, huh?
The weather is turning colder this week. About 50 degrees Fahrenheit, when it should be closer to 60 for this time of year. It’s hard to believe it will be Christmas in a few months!
Marco noticed this advertisement when we got off the tram a few days ago. I figured I had to take a picture for my mom, since Spiderman is played by a papillon (the breed our last two dogs were). Papillon translates to “butterfly”, referencing the butterfly shape of their ears.
It’s actually an advertisements for guide dogs. The text translates to “You can recognize the real superhero by their outfit”. The campaign is run by KNGF Geleidehonden.
The other photo we took was of the uurnet card dispenser machine – €3.50 for a 1 hour card. A bit expensive, but that’s the point – they prefer that you have an OV-chip card instead. You can find these machines on the randstad rail trams (2, 3, and 4). The other tram types require you to buy a ticket from the driver at the front of the tram.
Of course, the joke is that the machines on the randstad rail trams are almost always out of order. As it is in this photo. It’s a bit hard to read but the main text says “Apparaat buiten dienst”, or Machine out of order, with the line translated into various languages below that.
A few days ago I was at Albert Heijn. I thought this would be a fun topic for the blog:
I did not post the picture to show how tall the shelves are/how short I am. I already know that! Usually Marco is around when I need something from a tall shelf so it works out, thankfully.
The photo is actually of a cleaner called “Mr. Proper”. If you’re American you’ll probably more easily recognize it as “Mr. Clean”. But like most things, names are translated into local languages. And that doesn’t stop at everyday purchases – for example Hermione in the Harry Potter books is named Hermelien in Dutch. Hmm.
I read the Wikipedia article for “Mr. Clean” before writing this blog post. My favorite random fact was the following: “make mrproper is a command in the Linux kernel build system, used to “clean up” all files from past builds and restore the build directory to its original clean state.” And of course proper was used in place from clean because the creator of Linux was from Europe.
Finally, I am also amused by the simplest thing: the pronunciation of “Mr. Proper”. Mr. is actually an abbreviation for Meneer (which still translates to Mister). You would pronounce it something like: Meh-neer Pro-per, with emphasis on “pro”. The syllable splitting of proper gets me; in Dutch if you have one consonant it always attaches itself to the second syllable, not the first. Prop-er would be incorrect in Dutch. (If you have two consonants one goes with the first syllable and the other with the second syllable: kap-per.)
And thus ends our random Dutch supermarket lesson.
Life in the Hague 