Home cooking... the real deal (almost)

Since Amanda has run out of restaurant ideas, we decided we should try to cook dinner for her. She may be going to Malaysia for work soon, so obviously we thought we'd make Indonesian food. First of all because Indonesia is just like Malaysia, and second because for lack of a decent Dutch cuisine, we have appropriated Indonesian cuisine as our heritage.

We spent Sunday trying to buy ingredients. It turns out that it is impossible to find lemongrass, lime leaves, coconut milk, shrimp paste, or even something as mundane as parsley, in Chinese supermarkets. In the end, we realized there was no way we could make Beef Rendang.

Instead, we settled for dadar hati ayam (chicken liver omelette), babi lombok kecap (pork with chillies in soy sauce), chuan chuan (mackerel with chillies and garlic), acar timun (cucumber and carrot pickle) and sambal goreng buncis (green beans with coconut milk -- not easy to make without coconut milk! (also not really that much of a success without coconut milk)).

We got home at 5:45 today and started cooking like crazy. At 7:45 it was done. It was not up to the level Frans achieved in Ithaca (not easy cooking with just two burners that were made for stir frying at high temperatures only), but we were happy nonetheless. We just hope Amanda liked it too...

"We can go for hot pot, dry hot pot, korean BBQ..."

These are the options that come to the mind of a certain Israeli coworker when he thinks about dinner. We, on the other hand, are not huge fans of these: why go to a restaurant where the chef is too lazy or incompetent to cook the meatz to the right tenderness and makes you do it yourself?

Amanda has told us many times that she really enjoys going for hotpot with her friends, especially on a cold winter's day. But she was too intimidated by our not-so-subtle denunciations of the hotpot genre to propose a hotpot restaurant for our dinner together.

However, last Tuesday Amanda told us she had run out of restaurants to take us to. ALREADY!?!?!! After only 6 months of taking us to a different restaurant once or even twice a week???

Anyway, we then had to come up with some restaurants ourselves. Some web searching led us to a highly praised... hotpot restaurant. So, we proposed this to Amanda, she agreed, and -- with outside temperatures reaching the 100s/high 30s (depending on whether you prefer Fahrenheit or Celsius) -- we sat behind two steaming hot pots of boiling liquids.

The service at the restaurant we went to was phenomenal. We did not know such a thing was possible here: the waiters actually LOOKED at the customers to see if they could anticipate their needs.

Although maybe that is not such a good thing... We got offered fresh wet towels about every 3 minutes. When Amanda asked why, the answer was that it was because a certain person was sweating so abundantly.

As to the foodz, they were not so bad. It turns out hotpot is much better when you eat it with people you like. Which, as we discussed over dinner, is not that easy in our case, since we are such misanthropes.



Hmmm, duck blood:


Hmmm, duck intestines:


Hmmm, noodles that are swung into shape by the waiter:

Air (fresh plus conditioned)

It has been crazy hot this week. We don't know if the rest of the summer will be like this, but if so, we don't expect to get much done except for sleeping and feeling grumpy.

Yesterday, we were very happy to get out of the city for a day. We went back to Longqing canyon, this time with a group of hikers rather than colleagues.





There was no huge yellow dragon-with-escalator inside and we had to actually hike up to the big yellow buddha.





Unfortunately, there was no bungee jump to be found anywhere and instead we just hiked for a total of 7 hours. Fortunately, it was cooler than in Beijing (surely not more than 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) or 37 (Celsius)).

It was really beautiful, but we were too exhausted to take many pictures.



Now, we are back in the Jing. We have finally started using our (big and noisy and pink) AC which makes it almost-but-not-quite bearable.

Unposted foodz

Ceci n'est pas un blogue post.

How This Week Looks Our Neighbor's Rubble?

As our previous picture of our neighbor's rubble was not very clear, we now present this week's How This Week Looks Our Neighbor's Rubble:

Monday:





Tuesday:



Thursday:

Anti-HTLGZ

Yet another photo of the view from our back windows. Something seems to missing that was there just this Thursday... (and it is not the dark rain/storm cloud -- we have another one of those (but not as bad)!)

Street food

When we open the windows, we often smell the delicious barbecue smells from the little street restaurants across the street. Today, we finally went to one of them for the first time.
We ordered way too much food, Anke got her picture taken together with the owner, and on the way back Frans made a self-portrait of himself and Anke for the very first time in his life (which made Anke laugh... a lot!).

Oh, the good times we have here!

Fruity breakfast

On an unrelated note: Ellen, of ellenkokkerelle-fame, has posted some pictures of the awesome party we attended in the Netherlands, as well as some more pictures of the meatfest we had on Monday.

Duck!

... and other foodz from our friendly neighborhood restaurant Guo Lin.

The piece of the resistance:

It's so good to be back. Or is it?

We occasionally complained about the weather while visiting the Netherlands. First of all, because we think this makes us look like locals, and second because the weather kept going back and forth between lovely and very shitty.

Now, we are back home. None of this weather-fickleness here! It is just plain terrible. We are not sure what the dark muck in the air is. There was a cloud even INSIDE the airport terminal. It smells a bit smoky, so it can't be just water vapour (although there must be a lot of that too).

Whatever it is, it has reduced visibility to a few meters. Also, it is pitch black, which is not good for our jet lag. It is only 6pm here, and it should still be bright daylight...

For comparison, here is the view from our house on a nice day.

UPDATE: In the past half hour, things have worsened significantly. Here is a photo taken at 6:30pm. (Sunset is supposedly at 7:46pm). We will now go outside to investigate (and eat Peking Duck of course).

Breakfast alla Turca

And coffee:


We miss you Tuncay!

Dinner with Ellen, Christiaan and Pappamamma

We started with the meatz we bought that day (see previous post --- although we did not eat the calf in the last picture, I am talking about the two pictures right above the bovine):

Also note the asparagus. They came out wonderfully, after putting them in cold water, turning up the heat, and taking them of the fire once the water boiled. After 20 minutes they were perfectly done.

These barbecued zucchini with feta, sesame seeds and some mint was really tasty. Ellen already looks happy just photographing it.

Meatballz served with mint apple chutney.

Meatz.