Rose Cantine

Every year on 9 September (09-09), the “Negen Straatjes” (Nine Streets) in the center of Amsterdam celebrate a neighborhood festival that includes a street fashion show and outdoor dinner. This year, on Saturday 09-09, the gorgeous summer weather brought out all the neighbors and shop owners.

The outdoor dinner, five courses from the best restaurants in the Nine Streets district, was a smashing success. We ate too much and drank too much.

Check out my Flickr photos.

I don’t know what inspired me to bake today. It’s very warm here in Amsterdam and working in the kitchen is not the most logical thing to do. But I just felt like baking!

I used Granny Smith apples, although you can use Bramley apples as well (they’re even better). Use fine crystal sugar (also known as caster sugar) for the cake and for sprinkling on top before it goes in the oven, use dark muscovado sugar.

Before you do anything, pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (fan oven) or 180 degrees centrigrade (gas oven). Get a springform cake pan and either line it with wax paper or grease it with butter and lightly sprinkle the sides and the bottom with flour. This will keep the cake from sticking. Now get to work.

Ingredients:

225g butter
450g Granny Smith or Bramley apples
Juice of 1 lemon and finely grated lemon zest
225g fine crystal sugar
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
25g ground almonds
1 tablespoon dark muscovado sugar

Procedure:

1. Peel, core and cut the apples into 1 centimeter pieces. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over them and mix well. Set aside.

2. Using an electric hand whisk, cream together the fine crystal sugar, butter and lemon zest in a bowl until they are mixed very well and the mixture is soft. Slowly beat in the eggs, one at a time and add some flour after each egg. Mix well.

3. Sift the remaining flour and the baking powder into the butter-sugar-egg mixture and mix well. Fold in the almonds.

4. Drain the apple pieces well. You don’t want the cake to be too moist. Fold the apple pieces into the batter and mix well.

5. Spoon the batter into the cake pan and sprinkle the muscovado sugar on top before putting it into the oven. Bake for 1 hour.

6. To ensure the cake is done, insert a toothpick or skewer into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean, then the cake is ready to come out of the oven.

7. Let it cool for 10 minutes. Serve with either vanilla ice cream or creme fraiche on the side. Sprinkle cinnamon powder over the ice cream and cake right before serving.

Travelpost.com has the most comprehensive guide to free and paid wireless access in US airports. To see the guide, click here (link from Glenn Fleishman).

Airport Wi-Fi access is one of my pet peeves. Last week in San Francisco, I logged onto my T-Mobile Wi-Fi service, but when I got to Logan Airport, surely one of the world’s worst airports and one I will never fly through again unless I really have to, has no T-Mobile, instead you have to sign up with Boingo or the local airport provider. I tried the latter and after typing in my details, a screen kept coming up saying, “Timed Out”.

All these different airports with different paid subscription services - Wayport, Boingo, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and so on. So if you are traveling around for days, you will have a credit card bill containing a long list of charges from different providers, no doubt, you have used one or more of them for only an hour or less.

This is where free access comes in. Airports don’t charge me extra for use of the restrooms so please, provide free Wi-Fi access so we don’t have to keep typing in credit card numbers, coming across frustrating screens that don’t work and ending up with having paid too much money for 20 minutes.

I have always loved Pedro Almodovar’s movies - the complex characters, the dialogue, the twists of plot. His latest film, Volver (in English, Coming Home or Coming Back), is about the relationships among six women, especially between mothers and daughters: the main character, Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), her teenage daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), her sister Soledad (Lola Dueñas), her Aunt Augustina (Blanca Portillo), Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave) and her late mother Irene (Carmen Maura). The drama begins with the death of Raimunda’s lazy, creepy husband (I won’t say more about how he died or I will give away the story). Penelope Cruz puts in a very strong performance as does Yohana Cobo, whose sullen portrayal of a confused teenager is close to perfect.

I recommend this movie, which is one of the best this season. It is currently showing in Amsterdam. Read the film review in the Guardian.

Coming this week: Zwartboek (The Black Book), a new film by Paul Verhoeven (view trailer here). The film is a follow-up to “Soldier of Orange” (Soldaat van Oranje), a film he made in 1977. Verhoeven revisits certain themes from the Second World War, but instead of a drama filled with heroes and villains (black and white) as portrayed in Soldaat van Oranje, he focuses on the gray area: how those who survived are in some way accomplices and traitors. I will be seeing it at the end of the week so check back for my review.

I am back in Amsterdam and to mark my arrival (after a month-long absence), here is a beautiful song called Amsterdam by Coldplay from their album “Rush of Blood to the Head”. Apparently Chris Martin wrote this song in Amsterdam.

To listen to the original version, click here. And to see the video taken from one of their concerts where they perform this song, click here (WMV format).

Amsterdam

Come on, my star is fading
And I swerve out of control
If i, if I’d only waited
I’d not be stuck here in this hole
Come here my star is fading
And I swerve out of control
And I swear I waited and waited
I’ve got to get out of this hole

But time is on your side
Its on your side now
Not pushing you down and all around
It’s no cause for concern

Come on, oh my star is fading
And I see no chance of release
And I know I’m dead on the surface
But I am screaming underneath

And time is on your side
Its on your side now
Not pushing you down
And all around, no
It’s no cause for concern

Stuck on the end of this ball and chain
And I’m on my way back down again
Stood on a bridge, tied to the noose
Sick to the stomach
You can say what you mean
But it won’t change a thing
I’m sick of the secrets
Stood on the edge, tied to a noose
You came along and you cut me loose
You came along and you cut me loose
You came along and you cut me loose.

On my last evening in San Francisco, Carol and I went to Maverick on 17th at Mission Street. The San Francisco Chronicle reviewed Maverick and liked the food, but found the place unbearably loud (it got the “bomb” designation under noise levels). When we went for an early dinner it was quiet so we had no trouble carrying on a conversation.

What we had: the grilled sweet corn salad with baby spinach, pickled red onion, cilantro, cherry tomatoes, tomato vinaigrette, and cornmeal crisps was extremely delicious, as were the main courses - Muscovy duck confit with gigande beans, red pearl onions, red bell pepper and Nueske bacon; and grilled wild salmon with potato gnocchi, ronde de nice squash, lemon cucumber. The double chocolate bread pudding with crème caramel ice cream, port and dried cherry sauce was outstanding. The wine - Barbera Easton Shenandoah Valley 2001 - was also very good.

The scene: trendy Mission types in grunge designer outfits

Maverick
3316 17th Street (at Mission)
San Francisco
Phone: (415) 863-3061

There’s nothing better than Shakespeare in the Park, in this case, a fabulous production of The Tempest at the Presidio in San Francisco. Who cannot love Shakespeare?

One of Prospero’s soliloquies from The Tempest:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

And the final soliloquy:

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Go to the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.

Here we are - me and Susan Stuart (my brilliant director/screenwriter friend) - at Shakespeare in the Park: