smelly stuff

this is what we call "smally Tofu"
they sell it in the streets of Hong-Kong
it's just about the worst smelling thing that has ever seen the sun.
You can smell it from so far off; a mixture of vomit and decaying fish...

it's preserved tofu
i have no idea of how it's prepared, or how it's cooked, or even how it's kept

all i know is that is is amazingly delicious... A savoury smokey taste, with a delicate of aura of fermentation.

It's served in a paper bag, you add on the sauce you want (in this case a mixture of plum sauce and chili), but it has an amazing taste of it's own.

you just have to around the smell...

breakfast

it's winter
it's cold
forget your muesli
forget your bacon and eggs
forget your steaming porridge...

THIS IS IT

THE breakfast

congee
rice that's just cooked in a light broth for as long as possible.
Add in whatever, from preserved veg & eggs to shredded pork, to a simple boiled egg, soya sauce...

one bowl

one meal

perfect for winter

the easiest best dish in the world

this is so fail proof.
you need some chinese dried fish
i know it's smelly, but it's worth it

Rinse the piece of fish
cover the piece with water in a pan and bring to a boil and let the whole lot simmer for 10 minutes.

Your kitchen should be really smelly now!

let it cool

use his broth to cook rice with.
put the head in the rice pan, cover and cook and then eat.

no extras

logs

yes, it's Christmas soon.
time to get fat again
time to raid shops for presents
time for afternoons chasing the cat in the christmas tree
time to hope for snow
time for rat pack christmas carols
time for mulled wine and cinnamon cakes
time for card making
time to think and imagine crazy orgiastic meals
time for the yearly gastronomic extravagance

time for DESERT !
and here it is :
MY BUCHE DE NOËL !

yes completely fugazi from top to bottom
spent a whole afternoon preparing it (after having spent a whole morning cleaning the kitchen up)
i made a kilo of bloody ganache that for some reason went wrong and tasted more of cream than chocolate
the biscuit didn't cook despite having forgotten it for a whole 15 minutes too many in the oven
the so called syrup was tasteless...
and it all ended up in the bin

don't like buche
never liked buche
will never like buche

if you come for Christmas for lunch or dinner don't count on buche
if you want buche
get you fucking own

I wonder

Is there even a soupçon of real coffee in a Nespresso capsule ?

Disgrace

I have a Nespresso machine... that alone is a warning sign to overspending.
I needed capsules.
I visit the Champs Élysées branch.
As usual, and like every Nespresso branch, it is PACKED.
Fuck!
Saturday afternoon
Obviously.
But nevermind, the glass is at least always half full, and i have Time, and so i decide to make use of the customary Nespresso custumer service and sit at the bar and order an Expresso.
"Sir, unlike other Nespresso branches, we charge coffees here."
Silly me answers "no prob."

4 fucking euros

Ok, there's the little chocolate on it's little support, the glass of mineral water...

Fuck off


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

At last

Had my first oysters last week
It's the season
Hooray !!

Don't ban the ban

they couldn't ban tuna fishing in the mediteranean
so WE must boycott tuna ...


... for a while at least

Hero

A true Afgan inspiration...
Lived LIFE to the very fullest.

fast food

The mighty kebab...
here it lies in front of me, inviting all of my senses to take it's highroad to satisfaction.
This (Turkish version), i must admit is the light version compared to the one that's sold with greasy chips, which i must add is the lighter version of the 'true afgan' English (Greek) version that is not sold with chips, but still comes with it's equivalent in grease...
...brilliant stuff need i add.
So this extra light version of the kebab is really pretty good in terms of a varried dish. You have your proteins, your meats, a little fat, a little sugar, fiber... so i would comfortably recommend this mediteranean fare.
All of that to say that fast food is good food. Perhaps not for one's health, but Damn it can taste as good as it looks bad.
I truely think that many people Reject (yes an R cap an bold for maximum effect) fast food purely because they were told it was bad for them. These psycho segregationists are really missing out on something. I mean fair enough it isn't the healhtiest food you can get your teeth into, but then bœuf bourguignon every day is another challenge alltogether for your digestive system.
These rejectioners are snobs.
I have no other word.
more on the theme soon...

at last

it was a long time in coming but we finally got our lunch at Paul Bocuse. We were greeted by the man himself. old shaky tired record breaker. we left 7 courses, 3 bottles of wine and about 4 hours later... happy The only example i have ever witnessed so far of Classical Excellence. French cuisine at it's best. It will never get better because these dishes, He has worked over the years so that they become the representation of France of the highest order when it comes to food. He sits there, alone, on the opposite side of Ferran Adria of the gastronomic spectrum. Their common points? the best products available. other common points? the quest for excellence on the table, around the table, and well after the table.

amazing, quite vetiginous how just a few dishes have maintained his supreme position as a world leader. Nothing fancy about the "volaille de Bresse en vessie" with side vegetable a part from it's most incrdible taste and texture. Never has poultry tatsed like that.
Never will it ever taste like that either.

unique

pizza

wow! first post in many moons !
just can't get into it very much... actually, the main excuse being the shitty quality of the iPgones camera. Anyway, read one of the funniest pieces of journalism in a long time about pizzas.
So easy to make, yet so easy to fuck up. I often find that the easier the recipe, the easier it is to screw up. Example : how many people get a soft boild egg right ? how many people screw up pasta? how many times has your meat been overcooked ?
Read on...

flake / Mars

Pardon the quality of the picture, but Mac really have to improve the iPhone's camera greatly.
Mars have come up with a pseudo substitute for the Flake bar. The chocolate bar that has NO cocoa in it at all. This pseudo flake is fantastic with an expresso. Amazing ! it brings all the coffe flavour out ! once in a while it's damn worth it.

simple

first, i must apologise for the quality of the photo.
The camera on the iPhone is no way as good as the one on the Eriksson...
what the hell.
Christmas, or any BIG meal must be kept as simple as possible whilst all at the same time looking for maximum effect.
This, i stole from the "Waitrose" magazine.
200g grated parmasan
150 g flour
150 g butter
throw eveything into a blender until you get a "crumble" pastry add water if need be.
roll your pastry into a sausauge.
Roll it into a beaten egg, then roll it on some spice. Wasabe sesame seeds aren't bad. Pure wasabe might be better. Wrap your spiced sausage in some cellophane and chill for at least half an hour.
You slice the sausage up and cook your biscuits in a hot oven for 1/4 hour.
easy

black diamond

Why is the black truffle so cherrished ? so special ? so unique ? so glamourised ?
i thought for so long that the fungi above was idealised only because or it's rarity. After all, it's earthy taste was not was hardly recognisable, and so very often undetected.
Was it also just because it was part of the magnificient white truffle's family that made it such a star ?
after all, it wasn't because i didn't try !
i must have sampled the mushroom in so many different ways that it was impossible not to give an objective point of view...
... until now that is...
it's a secret, but well worth sharing because it is one of the most delicate products i've used, and one gets addicted to it very quickly. The margin of error is enormous so there is little chance of failiure...
the simple secret is to use it raw. Be it on on pasta, scrambled eggs, risotto, mashed potato, soup... whatever... ALWAYS grate the mushroom on your dish just before serving, and the heat of the dish will bring all the scents and flavours out.
My favorite is risotto. I will have a chapter on that very soon...

autumn

autumn is here, well it's more like winter, but it's such a great period to be stuck in the kitchen. One of my favorite kicks is the apple tart. It's so easy, so fast and so damn good. I usually slice the apples with their skin. I actually leave the skin on more and more fruit and veg that i cook. It gives out so much taste. You just have to think about cleaning the fruit or veg thoroughly to get as much of the chemicals off as possible... back to the tart. Roll out some pastry... ready made stuff is really good. Place the slices and sprinkle sugar on top. I like to add a few thin slices of butter on top. Pop your tart in a hot oven adn dcook for about half an hour. Enjoy hot, warm or cold.
Hot with a big dollop of vanilla ice cream, and a glass of calvados. Enjoy.

help

What do you call this particular type of pumpkin ?
if anybody knows, please tell me !!

of molecular cooking

Just a few things come to mind following a short portrait of Ferran Adria
Having had the "privilege" of dining at El Bulli a couple of years back, i must admit that it may well have have been the best meal of my life. If it wasn't, then it certainly was the most incredible dining experience.
Adria and his co-deconstructers have certainly achieved one thing : to propulse and establish gastronomy to the same artistic heights as painting, music...
They have certainly "intellectualised" food by decomposing and recomposing the physical aspects of the products, and yet keeping the taste of the product intact as our reference; why should carrot soup be orange and siped from a spoon ? when it could be frothed and just melt in the mouth... why not inhale something before eating something else just to enhance the taste of it ?
The effect is a little similar to cubism i find. Deconstruct to rebuild after.
He brings emotion out of our senses. What's crazier than eating frozen parmasan froth accompanied by red berry muesli ? the savoury coolness and softness of the froth, the crunchiness, aspect mixed with the sweet and sour of the berries... awesome
Having said that, one can't help wondering if such a meal was good or not, as the only reference we have are our taste buds, and most of the (35 in my case) dishes can be eaten almost anywhere. But the deconstruction of the products destabalises the eater to such an extent that he really needs the have the tastes in his gustative memory to appreciate what he is eating.
So one question pops to mind: does one need a gustative education before even thinking of entering such a place ? is this just become a new playgroung for the intellectual elite to distance itself a little more from the "people" ? it this also a new playground for the rich who can affor tanks of liquid nitrogen to cook their gambas at precisely -257 °F ?
It seems weird that molecular cuisine has reached into such scientific detail that one could imagine robots preparing the dishes in the very near future... that would be a great way to mass produce this excellence the the "people" !

MARXISM IS GOOD FOR YOU

Thierry Marx is one hell of a chef. One of the co-founders of molecular gastronomy, he is to me, one of the few chefs that has really managed to impose the far eastern relationship with food into our european way of thinking. I spent the morning with him during a prensentation of different dishes, and during those 3 hours he showed, explained and defended the whole concept of "molecular cooking".
Despite all the bla blas and hooraahs or booings about deconstructive gastronomy, one MUST remember that these chefs know their food like nobody else. Mr. Marx has travelled the world, especially in the far east to get to "know" his food, and the foundation of his cooking lies in a few simple dogmas, that comme straight out of common sense; respect of the product, freshness of the product, and never (or nearly never) exposing his food to high temperatures. Most of his dishes are cooked a low tempreatures to keep them tender.

Well hidden is his philantropic side that is so predictable when you hear him talk, and yet so discreet as he never imposes this facet. He works intensly on creating different diets in assisting cancer relief programms. He also has many dicovery workshops aimed to help parents and children have a more stable and varied diet.

Why can't all my mornings be as great as this ?

let's talk about spice

This is my 3 spice powder.
composed of : rock salt, Sitchuan pepper and Star aniseed.
Pan roast every thing for a few seconds, or until you get the fragrances all over the room, then crush them all together.
Easy.
Quick.
And it keeps for along time.
As for the proportions, as usual play by nose and tongue.
You can use it for so many things; rub it on raw duck/pork then either roast or grill or even steam the meats.
Then you can dip the cooked slices into the mix as you're eating. Changes from soya sace or what ever !
enjoy.