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.

This beautiful place is directly behind our host’s home — it is working agricultural land and a nature preserve with public hiking trails. More on polders in this cool wikipedia entry — scroll down to learn polders’ role in democracy in the Netherlands.

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.

Where the Herengracht meets the Amstel: a view of the new Hermitage museum. It has been one of those rigorous museum-going days. Fun and tiring. Too beat to elaborate tonight. For now, this picture.

Today, Giethoorn is visited by many travelers, but we were lucky, and in the drizzle we had the walkways and cafe practically to ourselves. Here are a few of our pictures from a rainy-day stroll in Geithoorn.

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.