Pickled Chipollini

Yesterday, I found my favorite vegetable in our neighborhood Javastraat shopping street! Mini Onions, I call them 'Chipollini' because an Onion is 'Chipola' in Italian and simply adding 'lini' means something small.

I saw them the first time in Italy when I was working on an organic farm. Someone roasted them after marinating in Umesu (Japanese pickled plum vinegar) and olive oil for an appertizer. That simple dish changed my whole view of onions. I realised onions could be the main flavour of the dish not just as a hidden addtional ingredient, chopped and melted in soups or sauces! They are so sweet, fruity, flavourful and can melt in your mouth.

I felt like I found a treasure in a hidden courner of a super market when I saw them. They were packed in a mixed  bag of shiny purple and yellow ones, and they were only 98 cents a bag.

I know I have a big hands and hard to tell if they are actually mini or not from this photo, but trust me they were! I've never spent such a long time just pealing onions. They were tiny.

I decided to simply pickle them because I had just had really tasty pickled chipollini at the restaurant De Kas the other day and Rowan had been craving them ever since. Yes, it's just pretty much copying the restaurant, but since I didn't know the receipe and had to guess it, I claim this as my own. 

Pickled Chipollini 

Ingredients

• two hands full of chipollini (mini onions, you can just use cut spring onions too)
• 2   tbs good olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 300 ml vinegar (I like japanese rice vinegar, tastes a little milder than wine vinegar)
• 150 ml water
• 1 bay leaf / laurier (fresh one is better if you can find it)
• 10 all spice peppercorns (or 1 tbs of mustard seeds)

From the left top:  Sterilizing a jar - boiling pickling juice - blanching chipollini

Method

1. Sterilize a jar
2. Peel chipollini and blanch them for 3 min
3. Combine vinegar, water, salt and all spice and boil
4. put a bay leaf in the sterilized jar, pour in olive oil, drop all the blanched chipollini in, then pour liquid until they are submerged.
5. Close the lid while hot and let it cool, store in a fridge.
6.  It's ready to eat from the next day.

This should last up to 2 weeks in a fridge if you use clean utensils to scoop them out. In our case, I'm more than sure that Rowan's going to finish them up in the next 3 days...He's a pickle monster who can eat a whole jar of pickled cornichons in a day!

Feb 3.Setsu-bun

節分 Setsu-bun is one of the traditional Japanese seasonal festivals. It's usually around February 3rd, the same day as Chinese new year. This is a celebration of the (early) beginning of Spring, adapted from China in the eighth century according to wiki.

The only thing I remember about this celebration is that it's the day when you throw beans at an 鬼 'Oni' (a Japanese folklore demon) to get rid of bad luck and call for more 福 'Fuku' good luck. Kids usually throw the beans at someone dressed as an oni, chanting "demon out, good luck in."

(As a kid, I threw peanuts and individually wrapped chocolates at my parents house. Afterwards you get  to pick them up and then eat them after.)

As same as any other 'holiday' in japan, marketers thought it was a great opportunity to sell some more stuff and so they promoted setsubun as the day to also eat sushi rolls for some reason.  You are supposed to eat sushi rolls with seven things rolled in it (the number refers to the 7 traditional Japanese gods and goddess). We ate sushi rolls, but since I'm in Netherlands, and can not find all those ingredients, I decided to just eat our favorite: avocado roll with mayonnaise. Close enough. And oh, this year we were supposed to eat this sushi facing south-southeast. Don't ask me why, something about Chinese numeral system and yin-yang.

The weeks before setsubun, lots of Candies, bean products and sushi rolls at super markets in Japan come with paper masks of demons. I remember how much fun it was to collect all the different kinds from different stores when I was a kid. I tried to remember how they looked like and we drew one ourselves.

The Japanese ones pretty much looked like  a red or blue face with cute pink cheek and  horns. This is how our turned out.  It looks more realistic (even though it isn't a real one) due to Rowan's awesome drawing skill.

It was really hard to find individually wrapped candies in here, so these are our Dutch style setsubun beans: Hema yogurt coated raisins, Easter egg chocolates and Mini kitkats.

you throw them at an Oni (Rowan)

Then you are supposed to eat the same number of beans as your age after throwing them. Here we ate the same number of yogurt coated raisons...(they were way tooo sweet).


With easter egg chocolates, it's kind of like an awesome combination of Easter, and Halloween (scary Oni) and throwing things at people which is always fun. You have to then look around the room and find all the candy that you threw, like an easter egg hunt. 


The only problem with using easter egg chocolates instead of peanuts or dried soybeans is that it hurts when you get them thrown at you (as Rowan confirmed).

Atty cocktail

One of my favorite cocktails is the Atty (first had it at the The Diamond, made by Josh Pape). The Atty is very dry, refreshing, just lightly sweetened with a bit of anis from absinthe. The violet colour is simply beautiful, I think. I like wiping the rim of the glass with lemon and adding a tiny drop of lemon juice, so it makes a colour gradient from purple to lighter at the bottom.

ATTY from the savoy cocktail book (1930)

45 ml Dry Gin

23 ml Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth

3 Dashes (½ tsp) Le Fée Parisienne (68%) absinthe

3 Dashes (½ tsp) Crème de Violette

Stir in a half ice-filled mixing-glass until chilled, pour into pre-chilled cocktail glass and squeeze lemon peel over a glass and float it on top. mmm fancy!

I could not find Creme de Violette in Amsterdam so just used local Bols Perfait Amour instead.

B BROOD

I have discovered what I think is the best loaf of multigrain bread in Amsterdam. It's from a bakery called B Brood although they also sell at the fancy supermarket marqt.

Crispy on the outside but ridiculously moist inside. However, because it's so moist and fresh, it generally doesn't last more than 3 days.

Their loafs are all sourdough and you can choose several darkness of grain mix.

My favorite is this 'meergranen brood' means simply 'more grain bread'. (I already figured out that dutch,  ha!)  It has rye, oat, spelt, sunflower seed and probably more.

They have a couple stores. All the stores are clean and bright, very organized and easy to just point at the display to order. You will probably find a small queue in front of the stores. They also have freshly baked pastries like 'appel flap' which is pretty much like a 'chausson aus pommes' of french pastry and yummy.

Most of their pastries are around 1.5 euro, but a loaf of bread is 3.25 euro and half a loaf was 1.55 euro. I recommend you to only buy a half a loaf if it's only for you or for 2 people since their breads are so fresh and don't last long, better to go back and get a fresh one when you want more (which I'm sure you will!).