Platform heels, baby.

What a weekend.

I have some smart friends.  Some of them are clever enough to live in more friendly places, climatologically speaking.  In one friend's case, home is Milan.  And for one perfect weekend, I too was a Milanesa.  (Well, I pretended to be anyway.)

At base, I'm not a shopper, never really have been, but boy, Milan could convert a girl. First of all, there are the innumerable culinary treats.

 Here are two different kinds of beautifully stuffed peppers.

 And of course the porcini--I am definitely a funghi girl.

You look at fresh pieces like this and you immediately want to make risotto.  Or you do if you're a Milanesa. Like me.  This past weekend, I mean.

I cracked when I saw the rhododendron honey.  Never even seen that one before.  But then I thought of the jar, broken en route, honey seeping into the stitching of my brand-new, perfectly fitted, taupe leather gloves (because you have to buy gloves while in Milan, it's the unbreakable rule).  There are really only two specialty shops for the aficionados, one of which is Sermoneta. I resisted buying the jar: gloves combine poorly with honey in a carry-on, even if the honey in question is rhododendron (which would taste like what exactly? Blueness?)

Even in Italy, you can't get away from beautiful French things. I know, don't judge a book by its cover, etc, but I fell a little bit in love with this canister.  It made me dream. 

We also browsed the G. Lorenzi, family-owned cutlery shop, founded in 1929 and a Milanese landmark.  Lorenzi is known not only for every possible permutation of a knife, but also for highly specialized items in bone (an orange peeler anyone?)  I couldn't afford the truffle slicers I admired, although surprisingly there was a whole range possible.  I even saw some lovely shoe horns in bone for as low as 5 euros.

As I don't need a shoe horn or a filigreed pasta knife, I settled for some toothpaste: they had toiletries to go with their leather toiletry cases.  We're not talking Crest, mind you, this was Marvis toothpaste.  One of their most popular flavors is Jasmine mint, but there is also ginger mint, and even licorice.  I chose cinnamon mint (too bad they don't offer chocolate-flavored toothpaste, as they do in Japan).  In Milan, Marvis is a fraction of what it costs beyond Italy's borders. And now, I'll undoubtedly feel that extra touch Italian, just by brushing my teeth.  Right?

What do you think of when you think of Milan, besides risotto and maybe osso buco?  Money.  This is the northerly business epicenter of Italy.  There is money.  Combine Italian men and money, and you seem to get Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris.  Sometimes five red ones, all in a row, as you can see below.

For the men and women who aren't into cars, there is ample choice of design furniture.  Ceccotti furniture stands out in particular for an extreme purity of line, craftsmanship and sensuality, classical with an art collector's twist.  Think I exagerrate?  Go to their site, check out the Manta desk, or the Bean desk, or any of Lazzeroni's dining chairs.  Really, to touch the silken lines of a Ceccotti piece is to gently and irrevocably fall in love. (Below is a dress boy, weirdly lightweight and perfectly formed.)

And of course there is the fashion.  Here are some Pucci scarves adorning the shop entrance.

We spent a lot of time wandering in and out of shops, looking at the latest collections, admiring the fabrics and the exquisite cuts, but when I arrived home, I realized the food images dominated.  Quel surprise. You know by now that my stomach is where my passion lives.  These are marzipan fruits--with brown spots for authenticity.

Of course there was the obligatory gelato stop.

The single most divine dish of the weekend?  Tough call, but most likely a simple bowl of fresh burrata, a kind of creamy mozzarella, combined with cherry tomatoes and good pesto.

We walked off the burrata by strolling deep into the night, as one does when one is from Milan: in heels, laughing, talking and generally carrying on.

City sunday.

Pretend this is my front door.  Open it and come inside.

Take a seat, have a cup of tea. Brush aside the fallen petals from the tulips, try not to think of the encroaching autumn.  Brush aside the last remaining cake crumbs, try not to think of how quickly little boys become big boys. 

Because, yes, my sweet son has had another birthday.  All puffed cheeks and curls, he struggled to blow out all six candles on his Lego cake at once.  I wonder what he wished for.  I myself wished he knew more children his age here, so that I could have thrown him a proper birthday party, the kind that knocks me into next week with tiredness.  

What do you do when you've just moved, and your child doesn't yet have his or her circle of friends?  We decided to go to the movies.  My kids have been to the movies three times before in their lives, so it is a real treat.  The film was at an Amsterdam landmark, the Tuschinski theater, continuously running since 1921, with exception of one recent renovation. 

I could imagine Vincent Price designing a movie theater like this.  To call it lavish is a serious understatement.  Even today, there are still private viewing boxes--and love seats.  (I found another photo on Flickr of the interior, here.)

But the splendid photo of the foyer, below, was not taken by me.  (It was posted, uncredited--boo!-- here.) 

I neglected to take photos of the outside which, if anything, is even more outlandishly Art Deco, in keeping with the stringent demands of the original owner.  Unfortunately, being a Polish Jew by origin, he and his entire family were murdered by the Germans during the war.  

His Tuschinski is still standing, however, perfect where it is, kitty-corner to the flower market, and where all the big-name film premieres are held in Holland. 

The Tuschinski would be decidedly out of place in the planned Ijburg, built upon artificial islands, where the buildings look more like this.  [The 'j' in Ij is silent.]

This is where I found myself this past Sunday, in order to take part in Elle Decoration's annual Inside Design Amsterdam.  There were loads of designers, artists and furniture companies scattered across the airy islands in cool loft spaces in such a way that you sort of wandered from one striking arrangement to another, without ever feeling crowded by others.

I liked these pieces shown by Ilse Crawford, former chief editor of the English edition of Elle Decoration, and now herself a designer under the aegis Studioilse.

 Interesting rough-yet-smooth, ultra simplicity of of these bowls.  What do you think? (Note, I did not say they were practical...)

Look closely at this display of preserved flowers.  Can you think of anything much more exquisitely diaphanous?  I couldn't stop peering at these from different angles.

I also loved the concept and craftsmanship of this low coffee table by a pair of young Dutch twins. Who comes up with an idea to glue together pencils then cut them like a slab of wood--leaving the ends sharpened?  Tweelink, that's who.  They also made a dinner table out of coloring pencils, and the sides had more of a rainbow effect.

 

There were a lot of pieces to admire by both the up and coming and the established, but for sheer monumentality and vision, I'd say the prize goes to Barbara Broekman.  This piece below is 4.2 meters by 3 meters, and is a composite image of "Good" as drawn from the masterworks of Rubens, Veronese, Tiepolo and Caravaggio. 

Essentially, it is a giant collage (with a companion piece, "Evil".)

The piece is made up of inter-connected panels, each measuring sixty centimeters by sixty centimeters.  And that pixielated effect is because it is a Jacquard-woven cloth.

When you finally put your nose up to it, you begin to suspect that this involved an awful lot of work.  I have no idea how she managed the scale and variety of color, but it did involve the skills and machine of the Textile Museum in Tillburg.

If you are reading this from Holland, you can see one of Barbara Broekman's pieces at the Frozen Fountain, a contemporary art and design gallery in Amsterdam well worth visiting. If you love tapestry, explore Broekman's beautiful site to see some of the many works coming out of her atelier--and how she makes them.  And finally, you can also browse a preview of Inside Design Amsterdam in the October issue of (Dutch) Elle Decoration if you want more.  I didn't want to overwhelm you with photos, so I only selected a few.

After all that hard work of strolling and gawking and head-cocking and lusting (my breath was completely stolen by the B2 kitchen concept from Bulthaup--do check it out), I was ready for a cup of coffee in the sun.  Dispensed from a three-wheeled mini-truck. Overlooking the little harbor on Ij-lake.

When I can watch bridges go up for boats on any given day, I know I am in Amsterdam.

There are worse ways to spend a sunday.

Settling in.



KLM's little ceramic houses of Amsterdam, filled with genever (gin). 

This won't be the first time I bite my tongue to keep from ranting about the weather, but the inclement, roiling skies made it that much easier to focus on making our apartment a home. 

Being back in the city means a move away from the countrified ways we'd developed (and enjoyed) over the past three years.  Now we're shifting back into a more familiar city mode.  Sometimes this meant unpacking things that had been in storage for too long.

Other times it meant shopping.  I do not like looking for clothes, but browsing my way through home goods is another enchilada entirely.  This elliptical table below is from Ikea.

I love a bit of blending of styles, too.  Here's an inherited Artifort midcentury classic paired with a French antique find.  I found that carpet a few years ago, the colors are luscious and those soft, firm nubs feel heavenly underfoot.

These fish traveled 1300 kilometers in a Mini.  They were no doubt at least as relieved to be out of the car as we were.  They went from our kitchen in the French Cevennes to our kitchen here in Amsterdam.  The chickens weren't allowed to come...

I indulged myself in the kitchen: when we first moved from Amsterdam to France, I schlepped most of my kitchen supplies down there.  This go-round, they've mostly stayed behind in France.  I am loving the lines and heavy-duty bottom of this pot I got at HEMA, the Dutch version of Target.  (Check out this clever page from their online store.  Give it a second to kick in...)

Here is a tall, asymmetrical wooden pepper grinder I got from, you guessed it, Ikea.  Ten euros--and it grinds like a charm! 

My splurge was this spoon rest.  I needed a spoon rest.  I just didn't need an Alessi spoon rest.  But aren't those curves fine on this new Alessi spoon rest?

Essential in Amsterdam: a coatrack.  Faint echoes of the Dutch Piet Mondrian don't hurt.

We have all started to find our bearings.

And we know what to do when the sun finally decides to make one of its brief appearances.

 First we double-check.  (That's my neighbor's terrace, below.  In sun.)

 Then we make a dash for it.

We do crazy, lovely things like taking off our raincoats.  Even better, we have a picnic in the backyard.  My friend Azumi was the hostess this time.

The spread was absolutely Japanese, and absolutely delicious.  She claimed it was really very basic and simple to make.  That was when I asked for the chicken recipe.  Azumi was right.  But so am I:  this version of the Japanese standard will hit the spot, whether for a casual picnic or a satisfying weeknight dinner.   

Azumi's Picnic Chicken Teriyaki

Serves four.

700g chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces

3 tablespoons shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)
3 tablespoons mirin (a sweet Japanese cooking wine)
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil with lemon flavour, or sesame oil
1 shallot, minced

Combine all the ingredients in a sturdy plastic bag, rubbing the marinade thoroughly into the chicken.  Let chicken rest it in the fridge at least an hour.

Heat the pan with a bit of olive oil.  Pour all the ingredients into the pan. Cook the chicken over high heat, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Lower the heat and continue to cook until it until the sauced chicken is nicely browned.