Je vous remerci pour notre pain quotidienne: springbok steaks & cresson veloute

The mind boggles just thinking about how far our food travels. For a few pieces of meat to come from South Africa to London and then end up on a dinner table in Amsterdam, we must be forever grateful for being able to enjoy such luxury.

Knowing that Floyd would hardly have juniper berries in his cupboard, I brought those from London too. They are the best to make sauce for probably any kind of game meat.

The cresson veloute is my homage to the wonderful family of French soups so rarelyy cooked outside La Belle France (from my experience an

Billingsgate Market: London's freshest

o say that I am crap in the morning is to say nothing. All too oft, it takes about two hours for a huge mug of coffee, a handful of Chinese herbal pills, a round of Kundalini breathing exercises, an invigorating contrast shower and upbeat music throughout the commute to yank me out of lethargy into some semblance of functioning humanity.

It sure takes a promise of something really special to get me up at 3AM and drag my vehemently uncooperative body across dark and cold London. This time it was the perspective of a sightseeing session that worked the miracle. My group mate Tom used to work for an Italian restaurant and Billingsgate Market is where they used to buy fresh pesci spada and gambas and he promised us a tour. Nice.

Being the wholesale fish and seafood market of the capital of the country that has only recently started shedding its ichthyophobia, Billingsgate is sure not Tokyo's Tsukiji Market. A lot of the produce that will later be featured on the menus as "fresh catch of the day" is in fact hauled in refrigerator trucks. Well, how else then would you ship anything fresh from the tropical expanses of the Indian Ocean to a cloudy island in the North Sea?

At any rate, the choice is incomparably larger than the pathetic hike and pollock of my childhood's fish shops. The high turnover makes sure that the gifts of the sea are affordable to the gluttonous masses in the Big Smoke.

Speaking of prices, they are not that much lower than at my Brixton Market fishmongers, so a couple of quid difference is definitely not worth the tribulations of an hour-and-half night bus trip.

A lot can be said by the food cooked in the market. Grilled seafood in Barcelona's La Boqueria Market was superlative. The only ocean-derived item we found in Billingsgate Market's café was this grilled scallop bagel with bacon and cheese. It tasted just the way it looked.

Ottomanic fiasco: Bazar @ Amsterdam

aaw, I should have known the moment I entered the place: the dim lights, the exotic crockery, the "world cuisines" menu, and a sure giveaway: packed to the rafters with under-35 Dutch yuppies. The daily dining out lifestyle is making quick in-roads into the Dutch psyche, particularly catching on among the above mentioned demographics. A dinner out does not need a special excuse any more, it is just a matter of convenience as well as enjoyment.

But what is there to be enjoyed remains to be agreed upon. In Amsterdam it seems to be candles and cosy interiors over the food served every time. The dim lighting masques the content of the plates and the designer furniture makes the restaurant a sort of extension of your living room perfect for pursuing the Dutch national ideal of gezelligheid (conviviality in a warm,cosy and preferably dimly lit milieu).

Bazar on Albert Cuypstraat got it all covered: there is just enough light to read the menu, the plates and cutlery are exuberantly picturesque and candles are sticking out of all imaginable places.

Although it claims to be a wereldeethuis - a restaurant of world cuisines, the food is mostly Turkish, on the level of your average dinner in Turkey - never bad enough to be sent back to the kitchen, but always making you long for the moment when you finally got it over with your dinner. Like I wrote earlier, I have had much better Turkish food outside Turkey than in the country itself.
These icecream-like balls are Irfan’s starter (€10.50):

• zaalouk, -the best of the bunch, a kind of cold Moroccan ratatouille;
• humuz - aka hommous, flat as a used condom;
• haydari, aka suzme - plain strained yoghurt without a whiff of herbs;
• sarma - aka dolma, stuffed grape leaves, as forgettable as they always are;
• peynir ezme - a spicy-ish feta-cheese spread that acquires its pungent taste and lively light orange colour from the biber salçası pepper paste - served in one big blob, it just was too rich to have allure;
• sigara böregi - filo pastry stuffed with cheese, a good solid B;
• pide - very underwhelming, considered that the only people that could possible beat Turks to making bread are the French. You can get better in any Turkish bakery in Amsterdam any day, and aren't reataurants supposed to be better and more special than our daily home-made meals?

The attractively served on a huge colourful bowl Bizar Bazar (€29) was a meat platter consisting of a mixed grill kebab, that had apparently never been in the vicinity of either charcoal nor grill, most likely just hot plates:

• very chewy pieces of mutton disguised as lamb, ingenuously spiced up with salt;
• pieces of dry and bland chicken breast,
• pieces of even dryer and blander turkey breast,
• pieces of rather passable spicy chicken sausage
• interspersed with pieces of onions, bell peppers and aubergines

as well as

• lamb stew with almonds (and SALT!) à la Persienne - way too conspicuously cooked well in advance;
• fried chicken, tasting suspiciously like frozen "spicy chicken wings" from your local discount supermarket (I once did go through that traumatic experience!)
• two long and raw green bell peppers;
• a mound of rather nice rice;
• a bowl of semi-retired tabbouleh, chopped parsley with bulgur and tomato bits;
• a bowl of bizarrely tough pickles, think slices of wood,softened by immersing in vinegar;
• and a handful of soft and anaemic French fries.

Big beers were in fact half-pints, the service - friendly, yet very unhurried. We were relieved when the dinner was over and we could go home. Wouldn't any comment be superfluous?

Pro's: Beautiful plates and wall tiles.
Con's: Utterly bland uninspiring food. Snail-speed service.
In a nutshell: Bleh. You won't see us again.

Juniper sauce: on top of the game

There is nothing like the resiny bouquet of juniper sauce to complement the rich flavour of game. When served on top of reindeer steaks, it reminds me of my childhood in Arctic Russia where we had both reindeer and juniper, but no one was sophisticated enough to combine the two in one dish.

That does not stop me from enjoying this lovely combination now. It sounds fancy but in fact is very easy to whip up.

Once you've fried your game steaks or what you have (I use clarified butter for that), leave the juices on the pan, add a tablespoonful of juniper berries, a liberal dash of freshly ground black pepper and half a glass of red wine. Reduce it on low fire until trickly. Serve your game meat with the sauce on top and two sides: one starchy (e.g. baked potatoes) and one crunchy (e.g., steamed haricot beans). A green salad with a simple Italian dressing can be good but this time I served a veloute with grilled parmigiano bread.