Friends Adrie and Josh are in town from the Netherlands and we thought we’d treat them to some American southern-style home cooking on Friday night. Shellfish and pork are off the table, but I’m stewing up some chicken and dumplings. (I made the dish pictured here on my recent visit to mom’s.) So here’s the menu for Friday. Josh and Adrie, bring your traveling companion and y’all come!

Starters
Fried Green Tomatoes with a Remoulade Slaw

Main
Chicken and Dumplings
Broccolini Vinaigrette
Roasted Beet and Onion Salad
Green Peas

Dessert
Lemon Marmalade Tart with Fresh Whipped Cream

Champagne, Abita Beer, Iced Tea, Coffee and Chicory

PS: This was the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been looking for an excuse to get my stand mixer for years — and making the Lemon Marmalade Tart gave me all the justification i need! The longed-for machine arrives today. Buon Cinquantesimo to me!

Tanti Auguri, Mark Matassa

cocktails
crostini misto
peperoni ripieni
bombay sapphire

antipasti
insalata fruitti di mare
oranges in harissa
crostino with manchego and tomato
crémant de bourgogne

primo piatto
risotto parmigiano with roasted bison marrow bones
brunello di montalcino

sorbet

secondo piatto
swordfish steak with a sauce of sweet pea greens
fried purple potatoes with cayenne aioli
broccolini vinaigrette
portalupi bianco

formaggio
pecorino and honey
absinthe

dolce
lemon marmalade tart with fresh whipped cream
coffee

Last week here in the Netherlands, Val and I went to the terrific Kröller-Müller Museum — a small but wonderful museum with a powerful collection and a famous sculpture garden situated in a national park. (more about that soon) It is near the little town of Otterlo, which like all little towns near national parks, caters to visitors with lodging and souvenirs and eateries.

On the way in, we spotted a large seafood-vending truck and on the way out we stopped to let Val sample the new herring, which by all accounts, is especially good this year — fat and delicious.

Val perused the case. It had all kinds of fish, shellfish and langoustines, some to be taken away, others to be prepared on the spot. He ordered one piece of herring, which came with diced white onions on a little silvered-paper plate.

He downed it country-style: grasping the tail, tilting his head back and dropping it into his mouth for a big bite. This won him an approving smile from the locals, who had watched with a mild curiosity to see how the buitenlanders would manage the local delicacy. (In Amsterdam, they serve herring cut into pieces, with toothpicks)

The review: Val is already back in the states, but he e-mailed me this description of his herring experience.

The vendor had skinned and boned the herring — the head was off, the spine removed and the two filets held together only by the tail and a small piece of backbone. The fish was slippery — it’s very fatty — so it took a couple of tries and a firm grip to hold it by the tail and raise it into the air. The white onions provided just the right sharp counterpoint to the smooth, fatty, salty, fishy flavor of the raw fish. One bite and I had about half of it — the meat was soft, with a nice texture. A couple of chews, then the other half. Great snack (but left my fingers smelling of fish), all that was missing was a cold beer! I wish we could get these at home.

Here’s a little video in English about this year’s new herring from Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Watch it to learn more about the fish, how it is cured, how it became a national delicacy, how it is prepared and eaten.

But not this time. Finding, sadly, that the restaurants we enjoyed in our visits 10 and 20 years ago were no more, we opted for one recommended by New York Times food critic and PBS food show host Mark Bittman. I’d watched and read the cranky Bittman often — he seemed to know his stuff, has eaten and written about food and ingredients from all over the world, and I figured that I would not go wrong with his advice. But I did.

The restaurant he recommended — Tempo Doeloe — fell absolutely flat. The meats were bland and tough, tasting for the most part as if they had been boiled in one big vat of broth and then placed in ramekins with some thin, particularly unspectacular sauces spooned over them. The meal was not served in stages, but was brought out all at once. There were frozen vegetables and canned shrimp, tasteless soggy tomatoes. Too many dishes smelled and tasted the same as others. There wasn’t one thing that surprised or delighted me, not one thing that was any better than takeout I could get in Long Beach. I suspect that Tempo Doeloe was aimed smack at the American family seated at the table next to us who asked for a rice table of all mild dishes and especially no goat meat, but it was a total miss for us. And as this was the splurge meal of the trip — and because I have tasted what a real rijstaffel can be — it was a real let down.

It did provide us with a great excuse to walk around old Amsterdam at sunset and that was the highlight of the evening.

Earlier this week, we had a foodie hit when we had some really good Belgian-style fried potatoes with traditional mayonnaise sauce. In the densely touristed shopping area off the Helligeweg at Voetboogstraat 13 is Vleminckx Sausmeesters, a Beglian Frittes stand that claims to have been in business since 1887 and at this location since 1958. There’s always a line for these perfectly-cooked-crisp-on-the-outside-tender-on-the-inside potatoes that are fried in quickly-consumed batches and served in paper cones with a generous helping of one of a dozen or more sauces — from traditional mayo, to ketchup, satay and sambal. We picked up a couple of small orders and were not disappointed. (In fact it was our second visit to the stand — Josh brought us there on our first day in.) A worth-the-wait cone of street food perfection.

Our sweet hosts are off on vacation — leaving us with paid transit passes and coupons for museum entrance (!) — and we took a quiet day to enjoy our peaceful Amstelveen digs and plan our sightseeing. Today we went to the market to pick up some local meats and cheese and Val prepared a take on a Dutch ploughman’s lunch. He paired dark brown fries roggebrood (pumpernickel) with Dutch butter and aged Gouda cheese, and a grainy wheat bread with zonnepit (sunflowers seeds) with mild goat cheese, Cobergham and Ossenworst.

Cobergham is a mild smoked ham of this region of Europe. We got it in glassy thin slices.

Ossenworst is a sausage originating in Amsterdam in the 17th century — when as the world’s powerhouse trading center, it had spices and steers in abundance. Traditionally, aged steer meat — coarse-ground and mixed with pepper mace and nutmeg — was smoked so slowly and gently, it created a sausage which is essentially still raw. Our still-tasty, but mass-produced, supermarket version was made of lean beef and was probably not aged. Later this week, are going to try to find one of the Amsterdam butchers who still make the sausage the old fashioned way.

Also on the menu: cucumber and butter sandwich, olives, a doughnut peach, a small cherry tart and Cotes du Rhone.

Later we walked through the polder (more on this tomorrow) with its profusion of wildflowers and birds, sheep and calves. And of course, there was an afternoon nap. And, a roasted chicken for dinner. Tomorrow, more countryside exploration.

Gieterse soes met advocaat.

Friend Janice wrote this morning to say she’s been following my ongoing DinnerTonight tweets and likes the look of our roast chicken. How do we get such golden brown tender roasty goodness? Here’s the technique:

Preheat the oven to 500° Using cooking shears, cut out the backbone of the chicken and lay it out flat, skin side up, on a baking sheet. Tuck the wings under the body. Sprinkle the skin liberally with coarse salt — no oil. The salt helps the skin crisp, so don’t be skimpy. Roast the chicken at 500° for 15 to 20 minutes, until the skin is crisp and golden. Pull the chicken out of the oven and turn down the heat to 425°. Surround the chicken with thick-sliced red onion and other vegetables (or fruit — grapes or pears are great) and return it to the oven for 30 to 45 minutes until the leg pulls easily away from the body.

Enjoy!

Much to my surprise, I got a great reaction to my entry in the Superbowl Chili Cookoff we had at work on Friday. I entered in the Salsa category (the others being Chili, obviously, and Guacamole) with a Yemenite recipe called schoog* that my Mom used to make — Yemeni Jews brought it to Israel, where it’s quite popular with falafel. I tied with another entrant in the popular vote; she won the judges’ vote (the organizer quipped that they went for the American salsa. Heh.) But people kept saying good things about it, and several asked me for the recipe, so here it is:

* pronunciation: the ch in schoog is a voiceless velar fricative or, informally, a hard ch, like in loch, Bach or Channukah. In other words, it sounds like ‘K’ ;-)

Over 23 years, we’ve done the holidays every which way. Boisterous parties, dinners for twelve, warm family gatherings, once with South Park on in the background and plates set aside for the newspaper late-shifters, once in a black velvet cocktail dress. This year we were in pajamas. Just Val and me in snuggly holiday bliss. It was a quiet and modest celebration, in keeping with the serious and sort anxious season the world — and so we — are in right now.

We spent the day cooking and playing Little Big Planet — this year’s selection for the Cohen Holiday Gaming Season — and at sunset we served up our Thanksgiving roast duck with acorn squash and figs, oyster dressing, Chinese broccoli sauteed with anchovies, sweet potato puree with labne and ginger. We broke out a bottle of the good stuff and gave great thanks for all the goodness in our lives.

NightNote readers, friends, family, wandering strangers, you are on our list! We are thankful for you and hope that your far-flung celebrations were as warm, wonderful and reassuring as our own. Happy Thanksgiving!