Israeli Food in Amsterdam

In Amsterdam we tried a small Israeli restaurant, staffed by two guys only. According to the one that served us (and cooked for us), the focus was on the food and not and the service. The food was indeed extremely impressive! Pictured above is the cauliflower dish he made for us.



It was actually the second dish he served, the first being eggplant with pomegranate (no picture). The third dish was hummus with mushrooms...



... followed by a tasty Palestinian salad...



... and finally this fennel dish. We decided to stop right there and not to overeat too much, even though all the food was extremely tasty! For a fun experience and some great food, go try restaurant Mana Mana in Amsterdam. It is located at Hemonystraat 66hs.

Karnıyarık

 

Maybe not F's favorite food, but delicious all the same...

Pasta and Eggplant

On two separate days, that is. Yesterday the evergreen pasta with fennel and arugula, thanks to Ellen for the recipe, and the day before...



... karnıyarık, the taste of which I really love, but the looks of which gives me a split belly --- it is so hard to make a decent picture of this eggplant.

Moussaka

I don't mean to brag... or what the hell, I'll brag: best moussaka ever!

Karnıyarık

A rather awful picture of this great Turkish dish.

Another Week, Another Turkish Dish

We really rediscovered Classic Turkish Cooking by Ghillie Başan! The recipes take some time to prepare, but are so worth it!

Icicles and Eggplant

After quite a nice walk in the forests in the neighborhood, we made Chinese food.



More care was used in preparing the food, than in photographing it --- it tasted quite good.

Karnıyarık and Zeytinyağlı Pırasa

The photo really does not do the karnıyarık justice: the flavors of this deep fried eggplant, stuffed with minced lamb, pine nuts and herbs and spices was incredibly good! An absolute instant favorite!



We served the eggplant with zeytinyağlı pırasa: leeks cooked olive oil and lemon juice, with lots of garlic of course. Wow!

Time for Another Random Restaurant

We felt lazy, and just wanted to have some food whilst biking back to the hotel. This restaurant looked nice from the outside.



We enjoyed many small dishes: some salad with fish...



... some barbecued peppers and meatz...



...shiitake on a stick...



...almost raw chicken liver...



...eggplant two ways...



...chicken (I think)...



...and tsukune (according to a Flickr commenter).

Afghan Foodz

Being in a larger city means the choice of a wide variety cuisines. We opted for Afghan food for dinner. We had three kinds of appetizers, one of them pictured above, and then shared three different entrees:



one dish with pumpkin, which was extraordinarily good, one with eggplant which was just good...



... and one with lamb, cinnamon, raisins and carrots which was outstanding.



A big city certainly has its advantages.

China Road Syracuse

We went back to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Syracuse yesterday, and we're a little surprised that their food is really as good as we remembered (or maybe even better?).



They we're out of 梅菜扣肉, the pork belly with preserved vegetables that we always ordered there, so instead we had the pork 紅燒五花肉 pictured above.

We could not resist trying this restaurant's version of 鱼香茄子, and had to conclude that there is still plenty of room for F to improve.



We have always loved the tea smoked duck, or 樟茶鴨.



Mission Chinese food successful!

Fleischwolf!

We were feeling a little adventurous this weekend, so we got out the brand spanking new Fleischwolf to make some serious Chinese food. We made lion's head meatballs, which turned out to be a little firmer and heavier than what we we remembered, but the taste was divine.



We also made something we did not have before, stuffed eggplant.



Chinese food is awesome!

This Week's Food

We had another week of great foodz. First of all: Blanquette de Veau.



We put a few too many fava beans in this otherwise not too bad pasta.



Extremely simple and tasty: pasta diavola.



Blackeyed peas and sucuk from one of the Turkish store in Saarbrücken.



And here are two of our favorite Chinese dishes (that we can make ourselves) again: five spice pork and yu xiang qiezi.

More Pictures of Chinese Food in Amsterdam

For our penultimate lunch in Amsterdam we were joined by Ellen and Christiaan, who wanted Asian food that they can't get in Hilvarenbeek. We first sat down in Nam Kee, but their menu seem to consist mainly of Dutch-Chinese food. So we went back to Sichuan on the Warmoesstraat. It was even better than the week before.



These spicy dumplings are awesome.



The fire fish was great.



I was not too fond of their yu xiang qiezi. We also had the same pork as last time, which was again really good.

In case this blog post has you longing for more pictures of Chinese food in Amsterdam, you are in luck, as Ellen just blogged about this as well!

Eggplant

I like frying deeply.

Aromatic and Delicious

No false advertising by the cookbook:

"Note: This dish has the five basic flavours (sweet, sour, bitter, hot, and salty), as well as two additional flavours: aromatic and delicious."

Bavarian Foodz in Berlin

Another recommendation of Fodor's, and this one was spot on: we shared a plate of great appetizers, sonderfully crisp Krustenbraten with Knödel, and great Goulash with Spätzle in Restaurant Engelbecken.

Foodz in Qatar

As promised some pictures of the foodz we had in Qatar. Basically it was an extension of the food at Ellen's birthday party. The first day we ate Moroccan at Tajine in the Souq Waqif. We had appetizers (pictured above), baby chicken tajine with stuffed dates:



... and baby camel:



Baby camel meat turns out to be very fatty, more fatty than either of us liked.

We were then taken out to dinner two days in a row, where I did not want to embarrass A by taking pictures. Therefore sadly no pictures of the really good Lebanese food we had (in great quantities) the second day.

The fourth day we were on our own again, and went for more Middle Eastern foodz. We ended up in Al Majalis with pretty good food (not as good as the amazing food we had the second day, but still very good --- especially the red hummus-like thing pictured below, which contained a lot of harissa).