The right thing

I'm going to fucking need the ambulance – I want to pick up the phone and shout into the receiver. I'm having a crushing, no – squeezing, no – stabbing, no – burning sensation somewhere there, an inch deep under the ribcage, on the left of the sternum. I take a breath and it gets worse, a sharp pain shoots up my neck and into my shoulders, so I try not to breathe that much. As I wipe my cheeks dry there is a black residue on my fingertips, the mascara. I can't see, but I'm sure I must look like shit right now. Please fucking help me, I want to say.

That's stupid, so stupid to have wound up like this. I was going to unlock my bike, but I need a moment. I pull my bag off the shoulder, put it down on the pavement and place myself next to it. I pick my phone from the bottom of the bag and look at the black screen like it's a mirror. I do look like shit: the eyelids thicker than usual, especially the lower ones, puffy cheeks under the eyes, the mascara leaks. I search my bag for a napkin—the keys, wallet, lipstick, yes, a bruised ripe peach, a crumpled post-it with a grocery list (three exclamation marks next to 'cherries'), but there is no damn napkin today. I swipe the phone screen and dial Anthony. I tell him I'm sitting on the pavement, tell him about the chest pains. Take a deep breath, he says—but it feels there is a sharp fish bone stuck in my throat, I say back.
 
You are changing jobs, he says, with a very calm voice, and it's a lot of emotions, coping, accepting, and releasing, but you did the right thing. But did I? I ask.  

It's been a long while, Anya, seven whole years. Of course you did, of course. You needed to leave, to go and learn a new thing, you know it.

I baked and shaped my last breads there today, you know, I say and pull out of my bag an oval loaf of sourdough bread -- a batard -- I took from work. It smells sour and creamy, the time-old and visceral smell of good bread, and that's so very reassuring at the moment. The smell of these breads has always reminded me of my grandmother's well-used wooden salt-box (designed as Baba Yaga, the forest-dwelling deformed witch from Slavic folklore; this one was with a mortar, that's where the salt went). It had often been a centerpiece on my grandmother's dining table. I've got a baguette for you as well, your all-time favorite, I say with a stress on 'your'.

That's nice, thank you. But do something nice for yourself too today.

Something nice. I've been meaning to make a cherry clafoutis for a while now, maybe I should do that, I only need to pick up fresh cherries for it, yes, I'll do that. I'll get a kilo of fresh fat near-black staining cherries for a clafoutis. Only I won't make it. I'll eat the full kilo, berry by berry. Because fresh cherries are great like that. They make me very happy.

OK, I guess I'll get going, I say, wipe my cheeks dry again and get off the phone. I peel myself off the pavement, bump into a tourist with a camera a few steps away from my bike. Pardon me. Deep in my skull a headache is unfolding, the dull type. I take a deeper breath, still no better, it only pushes more salt out of my eyes. I put my sunglasses on, so no one sees the tears, unlock the bike to ride off.
 
Quick Flapjack Cherry Granola  
Adapted from Stirring Slowly, by Georgina Hayden

Serves 4

Since I don't trust myself around fresh cherries, I don't bother anymore to try and cook with them, at least for this summer. Dried cherries, however, are no problem, I can manage that. 

Why are you making a pancake granola? Anthony raised his eyebrows on a recent morning. Before I also didn't know that there is such a thing as a British flapjack and that it's not a thick pancake. The British understand flapjack as a chewy oatmeal cookie bar, and that's what the recipe in question refers to – good, chewy, toasty, crispy oats.

I tinkered a little bit with the recipe and came up with a formula (not that much different from the original) I'm particularly fond of. No cinnamon, but lemon zest; no vanilla extract but fresh vanilla bean seeds; runny honey with a neutral taste -- acacia honey works best here. The result is a pure, mild, well-rounded oatmeal flavour, a little savory, not undone by sweet dried fruit, with a few fresh and singing flavours (lemon zest and cherries) in between. 

 
1 Tablespoon flavourless oil
¼ teaspoon fresh vanilla bean seeds (from about half a vanilla bean)
125 grams rolled oats
grated zest of a small lemon (about ½ teaspoon)
50 grams dried cherries
50 grams dried figs
2 Tablespoons mixed seeds (pumpkin, sesame, poppy, sunflower) 
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, such as fleur de sel
3 Tablespoon light neutral runny honey, such as acacia honey

Combine the oil, vanilla seends and lemon zest together in a medium-size non-stick pan with a good splash of water (4-5 Tablespoons) and place it on a medium heat. Scatter in the oats and stir it all together. Put the matching lid on and leave the oats to cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. While the oats are cooking, roughly chop the dried cherries and cut the figs into similar-size pieces.

When the oats have softened, remove the lid and add the seeds to the pan. Turn the heat up a little and toasts the oats and seeds for 2 minutes. Sprinkle in the salt and add the chopped dried fruit. Toss everything together and drizzle over the honey. Mix well and cook for 2-3 minutes until you have a golden chewy granola.

Leave in the pan for a few minutes to cool, then spoon over fresh berries and yogurt or leave to cool completely, and store in an airtight container until needed. It will surely keep well for up to 3 days, this much I can tell, maybe even longer, but it never lasts with me that long.

Variation

For a much brighter, sharper taste, use 1 Tablespoon pomegranate molasses to 2 Tablespoons runny honey instead of lemon zest. I must say I can't quite decide which version I like better. Depends on the day, I guess.

I'm sold already

What have we got here? Let's see...First on the list: brownies (oh priorities!).

A mistake, as we all know it, is something that one hasn't done correctly. Nearly all mistakes don't serve a kitchen’s interests, mistakes like, you know, burnt meat, unrisen cakes, curdled creams, and other improbable things. Luckily, though, there remains that scarce percentage of things done to food incorrectly that elevate the final result to greatness, or, modesty forbidding, close to it. Case in point: the resident brownies at Gebroeders Niemeijer, they would not have seen the light of the day and thronged the local hungry if an error hadn't crept in -- and stayed.

A couple years ago I was put in charge of improving a brownie recipe that would warrant a sweet that, upon the first bite, would have to do nothing lesser than turn haters (of brownies) into lovers (of brownies), or, at the very least, be something to write home about. Now, we live in the world full of brownies. There are the ones that squarely sit in the well-behaved, composed cake department, and others that find themselves on the opposite end of the trail, in the fudge field, and yet some others that tie the two worlds together and are at once like a moist cake and a luscious chocolate pudding or a mousse. I fancied our brownie to be that bridge, and so I set about figuring out what measures to take to this end. The only catch was that the recipe I'd been given to tweak -- it was trying to make brownies more cake-y than anything -- already called for the whole pound of premium dark chocolate (a must in any case), engulfed in a good amount of butter and eggs, which made me feel that simply upping the numbers wouldn't really meet the goal.

You know what did? A memory lapse. Re-trying the recipe over a few days led me to think I'd remembered the correct quantities alright, and so I gave myself a permission to make it by heart one fine morning. I melted this much butter and blended it with that much chocolate; whisked this many eggs with that much sugar; and sieved that much flour. All mentioned parties were combined and assigned to the oven, having later produced thin melt-in-your-mouth brownies, rich and creamy, holding their luxurious selves together just so, just barely enough. Many a taster was impressed -- and so was I. But my amusement was also stemming from the fact that I didn't have a clue what I'd done differently this time. Only hours further down the road, my brains going in reverse trying to re-live the past day, it finally dawned on me...the flour. I unknowingly decreased its amount from three digits to two, thus having used four times less flour than usual! Reader, I've never before relayed all this to anybody at work, except for my ex-colleague, a French guy, Arnaud, whom this cheeky brownie converted into a ferocious brownie eater, which, as he said, he didn't expect of himself, I normally don't like browniez. So I let him in on the mystery. Other than that, until now nobody knew of the little mistake/trick.

Unfortunately, I can't post the said recipe here. I'm contractually bound to keep my lips zipped, you see. But!  All that hullabaloo is not at all for no reason. Which is that I recently came across a very, very similar recipe in Alice Medrich's Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. This woman and her New Bittersweet Brownies (such is the name), they are after my own heart. It transpires to be a norm now, in comparison to the decades of the past, to use more chocolate and less flour, as Medrich reveals. Holy egg, I incidentally tapped into some modern cosmic brownie spirit! I didn't expect that of myself.

In other developments, tomorrow I'm flying to Russia for two weeks to visit my family. I haven't seen them -- weekly Skype sessions don't count -- for two and a half years. First the dishwasher and then the apprentice wages, all served to delay my trip for, well, a long while. But not just that. Having completed my Master's, I stumbled in some sort of after-graduation depression. My studies were giving me cover from all these worrying questions parents are sometimes so prone to throw at you, such as What's now?, When are you going to look for a real job?, What, do you want to write? What does that mean?, and so forth. So naturally once I was done with my thesis I felt very unprotected. And so I got to eat my discomfort. Which made me put on weight. Which made me want to avoid letting my parents see me. A vicious circle good and proper. But I'm doing better now. I'm looking forward to finally seeing my parents in person again. I'm ready to face their questions; they mean no harm. I'm also looking forward to sitting down at my grandmother's kitchen table and enjoying her stew of river fish with onions, potatoes and tomatoes, chatting the time away.

I may not have all the answers yet, but I might make it up for that with these brownies, not too greasy, not too sweet, cake-y around the edges, with a glossy thin-paper crust and a heart of a soufflé. I'm sold already.

New Bittersweet Brownies
Source: Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies, by Alice Medrich
Yield: 16 smaller or 12 larger brownies

225 g (8 ounces) premium bittersweet chocolate (70 % cacao), coarsely chopped

90 g (3 ounces) butter, cut into several pieces

3 eggs

200 g (7 ounces) sugar

Scant 1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

50 g (1.75 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1       1. Place a rack in the lower third of the oven and pre-heat the oven to 175 C (350 F). Line a 20-cm (8-inch) square baking pan across the bottom and all the way up two opposite sides with parchment paper.

2       2. Put the chocolate and butter in a medium heatproof bowl position directly in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until the mixture is melted; it should be smooth and quite warm. Set aside. In a separate medium bowl, with an electric mixer on high speed, beat the eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla until the eggs and thick and light colored, about 2 minutes. Whisk the warm chocolate into the egg mixture. With a spatula, carefully fold in the flour.

3      3. Scrape the batter into the lined pan and spread evenly. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out free of raw mixture stuck to it. If you want these brownies really gooey, bake them for 20 minutes instead. Leave to cool in the pan on a rack for at least an hour. Lift the edges of the parchment liner and remove to a cutting board. Use a long sharp knife to cut into 16 squares. Keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days. 

It makes me overwhelmed

A while ago I chanced upon a blog post in which its author gave an inspirational account of her stay in Amsterdam. Seeing that I live in Amsterdam, I didn’t intend to seek out travel stories about Amsterdam, just so you know, but as I saw the title – There was Amsterdam – I thought it would be ignorant of me to pass it up, especially if posted on a food blog as delicious as Sweet Amandine. So I dived into the story curious to learn about what my adopted city showed to Jess (the Sweet Amandine’s creator) and her husband, Eli, during their stay in Amsterdam this past August. I don’t think it makes any sense for me to retell the whole story here. Please read the original, it’s a treat. For our purposes, what I want to tell now is that there was a moment in the story that gripped me quite tight. Right there, in the spot between the eighth and the thirteenth paragraphs my heart came to a screeching halt, did some crazy summersault, and tumbled on with excitement all the way towards the final full stop of There was Amsterdam. And all that is because Jess talks about the bakery. My bakery! As I was re-reading the post in question, I couldn’t help but repeat to myself how bizarre this felt to hear somebody else tell their story about the bakery. Usually I talk. Now I listened.

Since I read Jess’s post, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own story – but not about the bakery. I’ve been thinking about my story in the bakery. About how I started off – and what I am gradually becoming. It wouldn’t be honest to say that it was my initial goal to work in the bakery. I considered myself a loyal customer, the type that wouldn’t mind to cycle forty minutes one way in the rain just to get, say, a loaf of fresh baguette. I admired Issa and Marco, the two brothers Niemeijer, for making that excellent food that like a magnet would attract me no matter what; for creating and running a place that instantly becomes everybody’s favourite haunt. I enjoyed the role of an observer, I guess I could say that, coming in a few times a week to say hello and offer my thanks in my deconstructed Dutch (and then to giggle awkwardly when they replied back in fluent Dutch). I weaved my social life around that place: I brought my then dates and a couple of good friends for lunch there, all at respective times, should you ask. I didn’t intend to apply for a job there, though. Until I found myself, as a then student, in need for a part-time job – badly.

The circumstances conspired in such a way that there was a vacancy in the bakery back then. I took the job. I started off as a dish-washer. It was a touch more than a year ago. Although doing the dishes was my priority, I couldn’t help but poking my nose into the bakery’s activities. I was open with Issa, a baker, and Marco, a chef, about my plans to be a professional food-writer, the one with a hands-on approach, as I reasoned. As a starting point -- and I already touched upon it here -- I was shown how to make tartlets. I had to learn to beat the bejesus out of the tartlet dough (pate sucre) to soften it; to remember the steps of rolling it out with the

dough sheeter; and finally, to get the trick of molding the rounds of the cut-out dough into tartlet shells fast -- very fast. If I’d take my time to do that, the dough would then become sticky, very difficult to handle. At the beginning it felt like a military camp, somewhat. Instead of doing push-ups and sit-downs, I’d make tartlets with a timer counting away precious minutes beside me. One day, I remember, it was suggested I make approximately sixty to eighty tartlets in no longer than fifteen minutes. I think I did the “tartlets boot camp” well. To make tartlets fast is no problem anymore. To make them swiftly is relaxing now.

After I’d made myself comfortable around tartlets, I moved on to learn the making of a tarte Tatin. The most challenging part was to arrange thin apple slices in a way so that they, still standing on their curved ends, would overlap each other neatly.

To be clear: it’s not that difficult of a task. But there is a catch. If you don’t use enough apple slices, once baked they will shrink and reveal the dough underneath, the way the hair on the head can thin out and show the skin (ouch!). Conclusion: it’s important to use a good amount of apple slices, say, three apples’ worth per pie, to make sure that a Tatin looks as close to immaculate as possible. Warning: tucking in the apple slices next to, and in between, each other in a careful fashion requires some time, from five to seven minutes, I found. This is a potential material for trouble, because it’s a general policy here that you shouldn’t spend too much time on one thing, otherwise you create sort of a jam in your own work flow.

After about six months in the dish-washing job, getting a hands-on approach only occasionally depending how many dishes I had to do at a given moment, I thought I should carve out some time that I would spend solely on working in the bakery. Could I possibly get an apprenticeship, I asked. This past February I became a baker’s apprentice.

The writing of this post doesn’t come easy to me. For one, because there are so many things I want to tell. It makes me overwhelmed. It feels like my brains are a pot of boiling water, thoughts being the bubbles. Should I mention how I learnt to make that crème au citron that requires the non-stop ten-minute whisking? How could I not mention croissants and the challenge that comes with making them? On days when we are fast enough as to not let the butter start melting into the dough (a tall order when working next to the piping-hot ovens) before baking, the croissants puff up so beautifully in the oven that all those layers of dough, being risen by the steams from the melting butter (that’s why the butter should not melt any time earlier) make you want to stand by the oven, ignoring all the hiatus that may be all around, clasp your hands and murmur, wow, they can rise that high! If it so happens that you absolutely have to bite into such a wonder, you incidentally drop one on the floor. In this event, it can’t be served to customers. The floor is clean, so you knew what you were doing – you got yourself admittedly the best croissant Amsterdam can offer.

In September it came time for me to get myself acquainted with the bread dough. The order in which the ingredients are added can vary depending on the bread, but normally you mix flour with water and sourdough, let the mixture rest, then add salt, mix it all again, and, equally divided on the scales, put it in plastic boxes for a rise. Nothing incomprehensible or undoable. Except that the dough is heavy. Very heavy. Miss Paola – my fellow woman baker, my friend! -- metaphorically compared the process of taking the dough out from the mixing machines to the “pulling an overweight kid, who strapped themselves in velcro just to make sure you can't move them from the playground”.

Reader, I would go on like this for hours, hopping from one thing to tell to another. But generally speaking, as I think about the way I made it in the bakery starting, basically, from scratch, I feel proud. It’s not oh-look-what-I-can-do kind of pride; it’s pride that silently sits in the corners of my mind waiting to be called in every now and then to remind me not to be so harsh on myself on the occasions when, for example, a bowl of chocolate ganache incidentally slips from my hands and lands on the floor, chocolate ricocheting in all directions and covering pretty much everything in the radius of three meters, including that dough sheeter that Issa has to use for the rolling out the croissant dough, like, now; and my face, in such a way that I look like a Moulin Rouge girl, what with the artificial moles around my lips and on my cheeks.

Of course all my achievements, past and present, come with a price. Working in the bakery five days a week now, starting earlier than the sunrise, is exhausting-- just as much as it is rewarding. Daily baking/preparations programme is intense, with no wing room, so to speak. So it is no exaggeration to say that the only moment of rest we have during the day is a fifteen-minute lunch break, which is almost always punctuated by the oven’s beeping, which means it is time, right now in the middle of a recess, to take whatever was baking out of the oven. As you can imagine, this way a so much needed break flies past us unnoticeably.

Yet, that exhaustion also comes with an incentive. It is the realization that the bread and pastries we make in the bakery can be a source of happiness for many. It fills you with contentment and makes you “hit the floor with your ass”, as Charlie, one of our bakers, says, meaning that it makes you happy. Only being French, Charlie has a difficulty pronouncing the initial “h”, making it sound like “eat the floor with your ass”! Either way, it sounds very appropriate, I find!

This is how it works

This is how it works: as a student, here is a student accommodation for you. Finished your studies? Congratulations! Now go and find another place to live then, oh yes, and good luck!

In other words, my two-year rental agreement for a shared student apartment expired last week, by which time I had to find myself a new home in Amsterdam. And so July 15th was moving day for me. Actually, that’s not true, because it was moving day for me – and Anthony.

I think it’s now an appropriate moment to mention that Anthony and I, well, we are buddies. I mean, we are together. Our story, it didn’t begin with fireworks. We both agree that the day we met was not exactly a memorable experience, except that we had quite a spectacular cloud-like sardine mousse on rye bread as a starter at dinner in a restaurant where we went. Later, we started hanging out regularly enough for me to make Anthony feel sick at the sight of toasted buckwheat grains (when I get to know somebody unfamiliar with Russian cuisine, I stuff them with buckwheat porridge a fair amount!). We became close friends. And I wanted to keep it that way, no relationship drama for me, thank you. And so it was -- until I went to Russia for a month. It’s probably a cliché to say, but distance does help to filter through the mental trash and see what’s important. It appeared to me then that I want to stick by Anthony’s side. Now I tell him every night to unplug all the electrical devices before going to bed because I believe that the electricity field all those gadgets create messes up with my sleep and he tells me to go and see a psychiatrist because I seem to have a plugged-in device phobia. I let him know he is an idiot; he informs me about my being stupid. We are buddies.

So we moved in to a new place. It’s small, but it has an oven, a Jacuzzi bath, and a DVD-player. And a tailless cat, Flash. We can stay here until the owner has come back from her travels, which will be sometime in late fall. And what’s also great is that I’m now only ten-minute bike ride from the bakery, as opposed to an hour one before. There is a café below us, and a spacious attic up a few stairs where the cat can chill out when she is stressed.

Today I was going to not only tell you all that. I was also going to make a six-minute chocolate cake for you, to give us all a treat. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned.

I, a baker’s apprentice, kept the cake in the oven for too long which gave it a taste of, in Anthony’s words, “burnt toast with chocolate flavor”. And if that wasn’t upsetting enough, I accidentally knocked the stuff off the kitchen counter. Golly gee whiz and a bucket of hog wash!

I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.

I behave accordingly

Dear Reader, I have a bit of news to share!

Those of you who’ve been hanging around here for quite a while (oh lovelies!) must know that since last August

I’ve been working at Gebroeders Niemeijer as a dishwasher, assisting occasionally in tasks like the tartlets-forming or the tartlet dough-making.

I don’t think I told you but for the last few months of 2009, I even used to start my working Sundays in the bakery at 6:30 in the morning. I was meant to help a young French baker Arnaud with early-morning routines until the service in the adjacent breakfast/lunch room would start, after which I’d proceed with the dishes until 6 in the evening. It was a magnificent experience to be in the warmth of the bakery under the veil of pre-dawn winter darkness creating something yeasty and buttery while the rest of the world was still sound asleep. It is indeed a fulfilling feeling to see the results of your labour, almost always backbreaking, on people’s plates.

So the news is that since early February I am known not only as a dishwasher who helps the bakers, but also as a baker’s apprentice. Issa, our master baker, is teaching me the art of pastry making.

At this point I’m in the process of mastering crème au citron (lemon curd), among a few other things. In particular, I’m learning the ways how to feverishly whisk it ten minutes straight and NOT to scream from the numb pain in my right arm.

Let me just repeat: I am a baker’s apprentice. Respect.

That said, were I now writing about another dessert, I’m sure you’d consider a smack in my face. Who am I kidding, another story – what, sixth in a row? -- about something sweet and I, too, would happily slap myself. To avoid any self-abuse, I was thus going to tell you about kale gratin today. I thought it would make for a juicy story. Namely, about how an American guy named Anthony (thirty of age) knew zilch about a vegetable called kale until I invited myself to his kitchen the other day bringing along a pound of stemmed and chopped curly kale to make an eponymous gratin dish. Three out of the four eaters at the table loved it, except myself. Which made me infuriated to the eleventh power. To make me like the stuff, the idea emerged to sub kale for spinach and cut down somewhat on cream and butter. Anthony did as he was told, except that he charred the lot. What exited the oven were the kale ashes. And so the story of kale gratin was buried. Aw shucks! My gumption plummeted, I went back home starving.

In my makeshift pantry (originally, a cupboard) that can barely accommodate three cans of Kusmi Tea, two bags of flour, six small glass jars with various grains and a few more other items, there is always a room for a jumbo jar of creamy peanut butter. (Dutch are ardent peanut butter eaters. I joined the ranks.) Starving, I was tempted to have mouthfuls of the stuff for dinner. But I’m almost twenty-six, so I expect from myself to behave accordingly. I chopped up and browned some onions and garlic, along with fresh ginger; added diced carrots and vegetable stock; brought it all to a boil and then simmered all that until the carrots were soft; and finally stirred in some peanut butter before pureeing the pot's contents.

Yes, I made carrot and peanut butter soup.

Did you know how lovable these two are together?? L.O.V.E.A.B.L.E.

Broad shoulders of peanut butter and a wasp-like waistline of carrots…This velvety bright soup has its own yin and yang of flavours – assertive and delicate, savoury and sweet, earthy and warm. It’s soothing. It’s relaxing. It’s a perfect fare to even out, say, sugar level imbalances that might still be ailing you after I so blatantly subjected you to one dessert after another for months in a row. But there is more to come, you know. So never shall it be said I am stuffing you with sweets without offering you something nourishing in between!

Carrot and Peanut Butter Soup
Serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
Cayenne pepper
Salt
6 cups vegetable stock or water
4 cups diced carrots
2 laurel leaves
5 sprigs fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley (for cooking you will only need finely chopped stems; save the leaves for garnishing)
1/4 cup peanut butter

1. In a large pot, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium fire. Add the onions and cook until browned, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger. Throw in a pinch of salt and cayenne each. Cook for another minute.

2. Dump in the carrots and pour in the stock or water. Add the laurel leaves and the cilantro stems. Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and cook until the carrots are soft, about 20 mins. Remove from the heat. Discard the laurel leaves.

3. Stir in the peanut butter. Mix well.

4. Using a blender, puree the soup. Hot liquids expand in volume, so work in batches, 2 or 3 cups at a time. If the soup is too thick, thin it out with more veg stock or water (start with 1/4 cup).

5. Taste and add more cayenne or salt, if needed.

6. Garnish with fresh cilantro or parsley leaves. Serve hot.

Contradictions, or maybe not

Dear Reader, hello!

I’ve got lots to tell you, and to show too, so please pull up an armchair, yes, the one you see in the corner next to a crackling fireplace -- it gets chillier by the day over here, you know – help yourself to a chocolate tartlet, or a scone, or a brioche – don’t be shy, take as much as you want – and let’s chat. Or better yet, I’ll talk and you enjoy the buttery pastries, while a scratched gramophone that in my grandmother’s youth was bubbling up with life is now rasping Edit Piaf’s La Vie en Rose.

All right, where shall I start? Ah yes, in Song of Himself, Walt Whitman wrote: ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes)’. Clearly, he and I we didn’t know each other, but if we did, Walt Whitman would certainly say as much about me, because I always contradict myself. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, contradictory or not, here is what I do as of lately: I am doing my Master’s programme in English Metaphor with a selective course in Visual Arts and The American Poet, aim to become a professional food-writer, and work part-time in one of my beloved French bakeries in Amsterdam, Gebroeders Niemeijer, as a dishwasher. The last part requires a detailed explanation, I feel, so here goes…

There was a fleeting moment when I thought I wanted to study hospitality (although I had already discovered my enormous love for food by then, my desire to write about food and to study English to write about food better was not yet pronounced.) So after completing my Bachelor degree in linguistics I applied to a hotel school in the Netherlands. Entrance requirements were tough, but I got admitted --with one condition though. I had to gain some working experience in hospitality industry before the studies would begin. I had six months, from August 2007 to January 2008, to accomplish the mission. That is how I found myself working as a server in a restaurant of a well-known five-star hotel in Moscow (I spent a year in Moscow before finally moving to Amsterdam). I only lasted for three months, which nonetheless seemed like ten centuries to me.

The restaurant was high-end, yet I liked nothing about the place. To begin with, I disliked the atmosphere in the kitchen. Expensive food was cooked by people who for the most part seemed to be completely indifferent about what they were doing. It was cold in the kitchen, despite inferno temperatures emanating from the stoves and ovens. In the dining area, the mood was as chilly. Servers competed against one another for tips alone (unlike me, a few people wanted to work for food) and diners were all too snobbish. I felt disappointed; the place had discouraging vibes. As I got back home after exhausting early morning or late night shifts, my feet swollen and aching, I cried. I cried not because of tiredness, but because of poignant frustration about the whole experience. It was a vanity fair. It was soulless.

Eventually I quit, both my gig as a server and my registration in the hotel school. (The admission costs were increased to a level I couldn’t afford, which, as I think now, was only for the better since I am much happier hitting the books in metaphor, visual arts, etc, and aspiring to make food-writing my profession.)

In other words, I vowed I would never want to work in a restaurant kitchen again -- once bitten, twice shy. Since mid-August 2009 I’m in the professional food industry again, this time as a dish-washer. (Do I really contradict myself? Yes, I really do contradict myself, but what the heck.)

Gebroeders (‘Brothers’) Niemeijer is an artisan French bakery with an adjacent breakfast-/lunchroom. It was my first discovery soon after I arrived in Amsterdam a year ago.
Simple, homely, nourishing food, be it a steaming plate of savoury potato soup with Roquefort cheese; or a fresh, breathing with warmth baguette enrobing sweet, dripping with juices rings of chorizo, young green salad leaves and pickled something and sitting on a worn, slightly dented plate with tiny flowers around the rim seemed to tell me about the heartfelt warmth and passion of people who prepared it.

I didn’t know the cooks in person, yet through the food I was enjoying, I felt taken care of. I fell for the place, its food and people including. Hell, on one of my visits I even found myself thinking that if need be I would love to work here, helping out in the bakery, doing the dishes, whatever. The need presented itself in the form of a thinning wallet of mine – we students always seem to be on a cash diet , -- so I wrote the two brothers an e-mail in which I said as much (not about my wallet, but about my infatuation with the their place). A few days later I got an e-mail from Marco, one of the siblings, in which he asked me to come over for a chat. The rest you already know. Like I said, I’ve taken on a stint of a dish washer. I work from Friday to Sunday which means my weekends are my workdays, but I don’t mind. I do tons of dishes, and by the end of the day my feet feel woolen, my back rigid, my pale-pink nail polish crumbled, yet I don’t half mind that either. I think I feel so non-perplexed about the physical inconveniences because of my moments in the bakery. Last Sunday, for example, I pounded on a thick piece of pate sucree (sweetened short pastry) right from the fridge to soften it before rolling it out in an automatic dough sheeter, after which I was shown how to form tartlets. Simply put, you cut circles out of the dough, which you then garnish into oiled tartlet moulds. All this should be done at a lightning speed, because when warm, pate sucree is a royal pain to work -- it gets sticky and too brittle. I, of course, work at a snail pace. I take my time to form a perfect tartlet. Issa, the baking brother, says I should be doing this much faster. So I’m now learning by practice how to make flawless tartlets in no time which, well, takes time. As I said, by the end of the day, my back hurts, but my hands smell of butter, and vanilla, and lemon zest. I feel elated.

The fact that I get to snack on pistachio, mocca, walnut and chocolate macarons, and on financiers with deeply caramelized tops does help as well to combat bodily exertion. Moreover, after the bakery’s closing time I can take as much pastry or bread left unsold as I please.



And please myself I do – I bring boxes of fresh pastries back home. Once in solitude, I unpack the goodness, smell and grin at it, hedonistic smile on my face and a fiery glow (glow can be fiery, I like to imagine) in my eyes. Finally, I eat up the stuff. Moderation? Not lately. Not when a couple of puffy brioches seductively provoke in my mind visions of soft, grassy butter and fruit jam atop each piece.



But note this, Dear Reader: I may sin throughout the day, what with the rich, flaky croissants and all, but come next morning, and I am a virtuous individual again. I have granola for breakfast. And I’ll tell you what, this granola, drowned, if you are a top hedonist, in silky Greek yoghurt, or in milk, if you are a hedonist in moderation, is in fact no less luxurious than all those French pastries altogether. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but still you should believe me it’s very, very good. Actually, this one is the best granola I’ve ever had so far. Luke, this curry man, can attest to this testimony of mine since he ate the first batch I’d made in his kitchen faster than it would take a jet set to fly from, say, Amsterdam to Amsterdam South, which is a fraction of a couple seconds I believe . Deliciousness in question is Granola with Maple Syrup and Olive Oil by Nekisia Davis of Early Bird Foods.

True, the olive oil is somewhat unorthodox in the realm of breakfast cereals, yet it’s fully legitimate here. It lends the granola this savoury strut which, along with sweet flair of maple syrup, wakes up the whole mix and elevates it to a new taste level. Also, this granola doesn’t get lumpy: the oat and coconut flakes, as well as the nuts, are toasted to golden-brown perfection without being glued to each other. And when you push your hand through the cooled down mix and let it sift through your fingers, as you would a handful of silver dollars, it makes this soft rustling sound, like a whisper. In order to have such euphoria for breakfast, just make sure, say, in the evening before, to mix old-fashioned oats, raw pumpkin and sunflower seeds, coconut chips, pecans and a modicum of salt, and combine it all with olive oil, maple syrup and sugar. Into the preheated oven the whole mixture then goes where it sits for about 45 minutes or so, until it’s fragrant and toasted. If I were asked to compare granolas to clothes (what turn of mind somebody should be in to want me to do that, I don’t know), I would say it’s tasteful, elegant and sophisticated (must be the combination of savoury full-bodied olive oil with maple syrup), just like a small classic black dress that every woman should have in her possession. As is the latter, this granola is a must to have too. Later into the day, it is obligatory for us all to enjoy the tartlets imbued with silky chocolate ganache or crowded with toasted gems of buttery walnuts.

(I now think I’m not actually that contradictory. All I do – braving English linguistic science, studying poetry and visual arts, rounding off my internship in the Time Out Amsterdam magazine, and working as a dish-washer – is in fact to become a better food-writer.)

Finally... Granola with Olive Oil and Maple Syrup

Adapted from Nekisia Davis of Early Bird Foods, via Martha Stewart

Yields approximately 7 cups

The recipe has you use 1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar, but I find that amount makes things all too sweet. Not that I mind too sweet, no, except when in granola. Which is why I intend to go with 1/4 cup of sugar next time, or even 1/8.

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup raw pumpkin seeds, hulled
1 cup raw sunflower seeds, hulled
1 cup coconut chips, or coconut flakes
1 1/4 cup raw pecans, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup fragrant extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
Coarse salt

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degress C).

2. In a large bowl, combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut, pecans, syrup, olive oil, sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt. Spread the mixture in an even layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Transfer to the oven and bake, stirring every 10 mins to ensure even browning, until granola is toasted, about 45 minutes. Doneness can be tested by breaking an oat flake (just be sure not to burn your fingers): if it breaks easily with a subtle crisp sound, the granola is done, even when it still may feel a bit soft; the mix will crisp as it cools.

3. Remove granola from the oven and season with more salt to taste (I think this step can be optional). Let cool. The granola can be stored in an airtight container for up to 1 month (although I can hardly imagine somebody may have that ferrous willpower).