Nettles in Amsterdam

I nibbled on these nettles in Amsterdam, a week ago. Nettle-picking tip: pick the leaf, grasping only its outside and fold into a parcel, stings safely within. The top leaves were not stingy at all.

Appropriately, this was Be Nice to Nettles week (14-25 May), which aims to change our perception of nettles from an inconvenient weed to the healing nutritious herb it is.

What a strange world we live in, where nettles are not valued and other weeds with beneficial effects also get a bad press.

The nettles in question faced Vondle Park’s bandstand. You can glimpse its reflection in the picture above. (Don’t you just love an empty bandstand? Although abandonned, it promises spectacle).

Next to the bandstand is the Blue Treehouse, a cafe serving dishes such as fish pasta salad. Spaceship-like, it’s on two circular levels, surrounded by the leafy trees of May. A dj played grooves until it got dark.

We snacked a lot in Amsterdam, grazing from foodie delicatessens, or fuelling up with falafel or chips with mayonnaise, after dancing at the Bourbon Street jazz club or Cafe de Hortjes.

Twice we had an Indonesian rijsttafel, a Dutch-colonial rice feast with many dishes and most fiery.

Restaurant Kantjil & de Tijger (Spuistraat 291) was the one for me (see left below). I loved the use of tofu in the vegetarian variety. My big discovery was seroendeng, finely-shredded toasted coconut, a condiment I must have – now.

We travelled by rail and sail with Stenaline. Amazingly reasonable, it was £150 for two, including Liverpool Street-Amsterdam trains and a dinky cabin for one North Sea crossing.

We stayed on the Amstel Botel, moored excitingly right next to the Greenpeace boat (see below). This is on redeveloped docks with a free municipal ferry (carrying city-folk and their bikes) to the train station.

To paraphrase Eloise, oooooh I absolutely love Amsterdam.

Life is a beach – then you die

This baby porpoise was washed up on the beach at Westward Ho! on Friday.

One by one, people gathered, in consternation.

It was a rare sight, and, unusually early for baby porpoises (let alone dead ones).

The female passers-by were especially concerned, touched by the infant’s fate. I had a feeling of (unspoken) support passing from woman-to-woman: it is ok to feel concerned and want to do something about it.

So one of the women rung the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the police, to report the sighting. Then she gently pulled the porpoise to the dry rocks.

I could not help wondering if you could eat it.

Everyone wandered off and a lad in chef’s trousers appeared and crouched beside the porpoise. It was like a dream – the very person I needed to discuss the eating-merits of the beach-version of road-kill.

The young chef did not think it right to eat it but he did say (when I asked him) that porpoise might taste like tuna.

(He also said it was the third dead baby porpoise he’d seen this week, which was unusual and worrying. He thought they’d been caught in the huge nets beyond Lundy island, and discarded back to the sea, victims of unsustainable fishing.)

When the woman who had rung the RSPCA and the police returned, I tried to share my excitement of having a cheffy conversation just when I needed one.

She was shocked by my talk of eating the poor creature.

I felt I’d lost any compassion-points I’d previously gained. (Me and my big mouth. Literally.).

I had intended my foodie-interest in a respectful ceremonial hunter-gatherer sort-of-way. In my ignorance, if not my defence, I thought it was a fish. Now I know a porpoise is a mammal.

Plus, the unusually-early porpoise sighting had triggered apocalyptic-angst: what will we eat when the oil runs out?

I felt the baby porpoise needed honouring so suggested encircling it with stones. This would both give it protection until the police arrived, and a kind of ritual.

A pair of female walkers had now joined us, and one of them gave me confidence to carry out this concept.

“Good idea,” she said. “Do it!”

(I believe women sometimes need extra support to do female-centric acts in a world designed by men).

Thus encouraged, I set to work collecting stones. The other women, including the one whom I’d inadvertently shocked, joined in.

Mike then wrote in the sand: “Please do not touch. Police notified.”

(I observed he did not need to negotiate but just did it).

But the message interrupted the stones. Under my breath, I said: “I want to close the circle.”

The female walker overheard me. Again she encouraged me to follow my intuition. “Yes, close the circle,” she said.

When it was finished, I said: “Good team work.”

As she left, the woman who’d rung the RSPCA and the police called over her shoulder at me:

“Don’t eat it!”

Soup with Fishworks fish

We bought fish at the Fishworks stall at the Real food festival to cook at my friend S’s that evening.

We asked for a piece of monkfish (from our shores) and nine wild prawns (from Australia). The Fishworks stall was piled high with fresh fish and shellfish (see lobsters in the pic at the end of this blog) looking fabulously fresh and real.

Back at S’s, we slithered the prawns’ coats from them, putting their shells in a pot with water to cover and some tastes like salt, parsley and the feathery bits of a fennel.

We simmered it for half-an-hour to make a speedy fish stock, which we strained through a sieve.

We discarded the shells (after a discussion about whether we could compost them).

Meanwhile I sliced fennel and leeks with my small sharp magic knife also from the Real food festival. An impulse buy I won’t regret. It cost £10 and has ergonomic holes making it cut most efficiently.

We sweated the veg in olive oil and added it to the strained fish stock.

Then we plopped in the monkfish cut in fat chunks (which performs well under pressure and doesn’t go all flaky) followed by the naked prawns. We also wilted spinach bought at the wondrous Green Lanes which has shops (even a barber) open at night, just like I like my shops.

We served the soup with organic sourdough bread from Judges Bakery (also forraged from the Real food festival).

In half-an-hour we had produced a soup to make S go mnnnn. I was so happy to cook for my dear friend and say thank you for giving us sanctuary in the capital city.