The week I spent with my daughter in Amsterdam was unlike our previous travel adventures. Celia took the lead in planning and guiding, having visited the city on two other occasions. This year her short animated film, Baby Bros, was in competition at the city's annual Kaboom Animation Festival. Roughly 200 young people from 58 countries gathered to view as many of the 165 animated and VF films as possible. The films were grouped in 9 categories, all of them focused on the this year’s theme: provocation. Screenings bore titles like “Your Yuck is My Yumm” and “Punk it Louder”. Baby Bros was among 13 short films titled “Bonkers Shorts”. You get the idea. 

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The festival was held in the stunning, white Eye Filmmuseum located on the northern shore of the IJ River directly across from Amsterdam’s Centraal Station and easily accessible on a free ferry. The museum and the adjacent 22-story Shell tower represent the new face of the city. After Shell moved its headquarters to the United Kingdom in 1999, this 19 square mile borough consisting of open land and waterways known as Amsterdam-Noord has seen the growth of high-rise developments that accommodate Amsterdam’s growing population. What was formerly the Shell tower has become a focus of the city’s music culture. It houses the audio-themed hotel where we stayed, a music school, the offices of Sony, a revolving restaurant, rooftop bar and an observation deck fitted with swings that offer a commanding view of the Dutch landscape. 

When we were not asleep or watching animated films, Celia and I explored the intact and carefully updated Amsterdam of the 17th century on the south side of the river.  Here were the picturesque rows of narrow buildings with large curtain-less windows overlooking canals strung like concentric rows of beads from the IJ River, all of them with boats moored along the banks. There may be more cars than boats in Amsterdam, but there are almost four times as many bicycles as cars. A highly integrated system of trains, buses and a metro make the museums and markets scattered around the city very accessible. The reduced noise and air pollution gives gives the city a calm, museum quality except for the times when it becomes a playground for European students on holiday. Amsterdam is renown for its red light district and coffee houses where cannabis and other soft drugs are sold. Celia and I were careful to limit our experimentation to rijsttafel meals from Tibet, Nepal, the Punjab and Indonesia, Dutch beer and stroopwaffles.

Visitors that walk through Amsterdam-Noord are rewarded with a sense of creative energy in the mix of new construction with repurposed industrial icons. The city is committed to constructing 52,500 homes by the end of this year with the focus on social housing and medium-priced rentals. It's present population is over 108,000. slightly less than 10% of city's total. The goal of Amsterdam's Comprehensive Vision is to integrate greenery, housing, employment, sustainability in support of a comfortable quality of life by 2050.

The kitchen is an inspiring place for a cook to time travel.  There are more discoveries than those leftovers in the back of the refrigerator. One good example is in the saltshaker on the counter.  

Recovering salt crystals from briny salt flats and chiseling it from veins in rock was one of man’s first occupations. The oldest salt operation on record in Añana Spain is still active after 7000 years, but who’s counting?  Far from being a relic, Añana’s artisanal salt attracts Michelin chefs from San Sebastian who own their own salt ‘era’ there. (Our Basque Tour will visit for a tasting in September.) 

Massive amounts of salt were once needed to preserve perishable foods by coating them to dry or ferment.  When dried food was later soaked to remove salt, the salt that remained was more than we would consider healthful today.  It is thought the daily diet in the Middle Ages contained as much as 40 grams of salt. Today’s recommended consumption is 2.5 grams.  

This dependance on salt lives on in the form of the condiments found in most kitchen.  The Chinese were producing soy sauce 2000 years ago.  About that time the Romans were making garum by allowing salted anchovies to rot in the sun and straining off the juices. Vietnamese nuoc mam, a fermented fish sauce, is a modern version of garum and a staple in southeast Asia. 

Why do we continue to be dependant on salt?  A Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikedi, found the answer in 1908 when he searched for the reason why his daily bowl of dashi was so satisfying.  He discovered a flavor that he named, umami, in the seaweed used to make dashi. Umami translates as ‘deliciousness’ and is now considered the ‘fifth flavor’ after salty, sour, bitter and sweet. Umami contains the amino acid, glutamate, for which we have receptors on our tongue and that rapidly registers as pleasure in our brain 

It then comes as a surprise glutamate salt is absent from American kitchens, including my own. This salt, MSG (Monosodium glutamate), entered the marketplace the year following the discovery of umami, and rapidly became a staple ingredient in Asian cuisines, but western countries have been slow to accept it during the last century. It is still regarded with suspicion in the States and must be listed as an ingredient on all processed food labels no matter the amount involved. Rest assured, there are also many foods that contain glutamate as part of their natural chemistry. They include mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, broccoli, peas, aged cheese and eggs. 

I recently prepared Vietnamese Chicken and Ginger following a recipe that appeared in Le Monde. It is ready in 30 minutes and deliverers a delightful umami experience.