That Was The Week That Was

Bad food reviews this week for Lady Gaga. The pop star's parents opened Italian eaterie Joanne in New York on Wednesday. Gaga has backed mum Cynthia and dad Joe's business, which bears her middle name and that of her late aunt. Press were barred on the first night but food critic Steve Cuozzo got in and slated it in his New York Post review entitled You'll Gag on the Food at Gaga's. He wrote: "Acrid-smelling burnt vinegar wafted intermittently through the raucous dining room." He went on to blast the menu of family recipes. After a 50-minute wait for starters, Cuozzo said the calamari was "like leather", his salad "unseasoned" and his pasta "flaccid". He also moaned about the price: "Unspeakably fatty veal osso bucco was $38 (£24)." Seems she should stick to singing! More culinary family commotions as Gordo shelled out about R 26 million not to get into business with his father in law but to get him out! They settled their dispute out of court on Wednesday, with the London Evening Standard reporting Hutcheson was believed to have received £2 million (AUD$2.95 million) for his 30 per cent share of Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH). A spokesman said "The terms of the settlement are confidential, but we can confirm that Chris Hutcheson is no longer a director or shareholder of Gordon Ramsay Holdings and all civil litigation and employment tribunal claims brought by each of the two parties and other family members have been withdrawn."The settlement ended a dispute that started in October 2010 when Ramsay sacked Hutcheson as chief executive of his company. Meanwhile it looks like old Potty Mouth has finally abandoned the UK as he splashed out a further $6.75 million buying a posh mansion in the highly prestigious (and therefore, exclusive) guard-gated compound of Bel Air Crest, Los Angeles. Ramsay's new digs measure 7,413 square feet and include peaceful views of the canyon, city and ocean, which will hopefully serve to calm the notoriously hotheaded chef. Inside the pad there's five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and of course, a state-of-the-art luxury kitchen where Ramsay can hone his cooking skills and rev up for the coming seasons of MasterChef and his new show, Hotel Hell, which just began shooting at New York's Cambridge Hotel. Not only does Ramsay's show MasterChef shoot in L.A., but he's also launching a new restaurant, Gordon Ramsay Steak, in Las Vegas shortly.

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Sous Vide Sous Pressure

You could be forgiven for not knowing who Fernand Sire is but this fiery little politician has opened up a can of snails in France. Boeuf bourgignon, veal blanquette, duck a l'orange and gratin dauphinois -- all mainstays of French cuisine, and a familiar sight on the menus of bistros and brasseries across the country. However these delights have been mass produced, vacuum-sealed in congealed 2-kg packs and sold wholesale to restaurants from an icy warehouse, with microwave re-heating instructions stuck on the side. Restaurants are the only place where you really don't know what you're eating, claims deputy Fernand Sire of the ruling UMP party, the man behind a proposal for a new law that will oblige eateries to indicate whether or not their food is freshly cooked or ready-made. The million dollar question is though just how strict the law will be? Should a chef really be obliged to tell customers if he's used frozen raspberries in a homemade patisserie, or frozen cepes in a mushroom sauce made from otherwise fresh ingredients?

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Carrots with attitude

Now I don't know what led them down this track but fashionable coloured carrots are now available in my local fruit and veg shop in a palette of totally unexpected colours including yellow, dark orange, bright red and even purple.The flashy colours of these carrots will dress up any dull meal but of course more than that is required to justify that these Frankenfarm creations have a place in our daily diets and so the official spiel is that the yellow carrots promote good eye health, the red ones claim to guard against heart attacks and some cancers, if you want something to shake up the free radicals in your system then check out the purple carrots and as for the dark orange, well the dark orange are really pretty aren't they? Pretty stupid if you ask me! Every health promoting pigment artificially introduced into these carrots is readily available in other vegetables such as tomatoes and beetroots. If I want 75% more beta carotene in my diet then I'll eat more normal carrots. I'm actually quite happy with normal carrots - I can see them in the dark by candlelight in romantic restaurants. I can tell even when it's pulverised into a puree or foam or emulsion that if it's burgundy then it's got to be beetroot and anyway if we're going to colour code our carrots will blue ones signify that they've been lying around the kitchen for a while and are freezing cold? My other thought is exactly what is the consumer looking for in a coloured carrot? There is no source of reference so should the purple one's be sweet and mild or more strongly flavoured? How about the deep red? - carroty or more tomatoey? It seems we have the technology, we can make them taste of lobster if you want! Of course,like everything else in the food world,there is nothing new in fashion carrots. Purple and yellow carrots were eaten more than 1,000 years ago in Afghanistan and more or less fell out of favour but now they have been revived and intensively cultivated for a jaded market constantly seeking out the next big taste sensation, the new kiwi fruit or new pepperdew, the culinary cliche waiting to adorn restaurant plates across the nation and the new darling of food editors and food stylists everywhere.

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Chef Rules OK!

If you root around amongst those irksome fridge magnets you find in any suburban kitchen you'll inevitably come up with some silly mantra along the lines of "This kitchen is closed - I'm sick of cooking" or Mom's Kitchen Rules. If you go into the average commercial kitchen you don't have to root around - they won't have fridge magnets of course,but prominently displayed,usually outside the Chef's Office or on his door, you'll find something along the lines of "Rules of the Kitchen". Rule No 1 - Chef is always right. Rule No 2 - Refer to rule No 1.This is not a joke! Chef's don't laugh at themselves otherwise why on earth would they wear such ridiculous tall hats? They are deadly serious and it all started I suppose with that little fellow from Nice, Auguste Escoffier, who more than anyone is responsible for the hierarchy in today's commercial kitchen and perhaps judging from his own diminutive stature was the one who really pushed for the tall hats. Kitchens are organised on a brigade system and there are numerous examples with army overtones, battles won and lost and camp followers - that's camp followers not camp.....followers. The problem with this "Chef rules OK!" mentality is that every so often it produces an idiot like Gordon Ramsay who fervently believes in Rule No 1 and the whole scene can have an adverse effect on creativity by stifling it totally in young chefs. That's why His Gordoness may "make for good television" but very few professional chefs take him too seriously despite his Michelin stars and undisputed cooking skills.

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Wot? No plastic toy?

Normally restaurants don’t encourage you to eat the Kiddies meals if you are an adult and not surprisingly not many adults want to eat the kid’s meals anyway. But Jester’s Diner in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk lives up to it’s name by actively promoting the Kidz Breakfast to grown ups! It’s a bit expensive at 15 quid but it is FREE if customers finish it. However this Kidz Breakfast is not for kiddies and not for the fainthearted —in fact it is so named as it weighs as much as a BABY. The 9lbs, 6,000-calorie fry-up includes 12 bacon rashers, 12 sausages, four slices of black pudding and an eight-egg cheese and potato omelette. There’s also six fried eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, sauté potatoes and don’t forget four slices each of bread and butter, toast and fried bread! Hardly surprising not one person has yet managed to finish one in the six months it has been on the menu. Cafe owner Martin Smith, 42, said: "Some people ask why we don't serve tea or coffee with it, but we chose not to include them in the deal — caffeine is very bad for you."

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in a funny sketch inspired by that French painter chap - A Tahitian Kitchen. It's in terrible taste of course but no matter. You'll have to wait about 30 seconds before it gets to the right place. FeedBlitz subscribers should of course visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

This week's Dilly Diner is more of a Bozo Boozer but pretty unusual none the less. From the outside it's just like a thousand other red brick British pubs but when you go inside, this unassuming West Midlands local, has a quirky interior which has attracted the attention of newspapers, radio stations and TV crews from all over the world. Somerset House in Stourbridge hit the headlines as the pub where you can park your pint, unsupported, on the wall. You literally place your full pint of beer up against the wall and it will stick there, unsupported, until you retrieve it. Naturally the locals in the pub see this as less than a party trick but actually a very useful marketing tool since they can simply park their pint against the wall while they toddle off to relieve themselves of some of the beer which they have just rented. Sceptics, media people and scientists of course just can't accept things as they are and so they have spent hours and hours trying to figure out this phenomenon.Not content with the regular's perfectly logical explanation that the walls are magic and the pub is spooked, scientists have come up with the weird explanation that the wallpaper glue was responsible. They say that the glue combined with old tobacco smoke and grime was sufficient to suspend the pint of beer unaided. I'm not so sure,after all how come it's only pints of beer sticking to the wall and not drunken locals caught like flies in a trap?

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That Was The Week That Was

Good news week for bacon it appears. We’ve known forever that bacon freshly grilled and served up in a soft buttered roll is the number one cure for last night’s alcohol overdose but new research released this week suggests that the cured meat has medical applications that have nothing to do with the head and stomach. It seems that bacon -- used in a very unusual way – is one of the best cures out there for a bloody nose. No it’s not got to do with that delicious aroma wafting through the kitchen, it’s a bit more basic - you actually have to stick a piece of bacon up the bloody nostril. It turns out raw "cured salt pork" is as effective a nasal tampon as we have. It works especially well for treating certain conditions that lead to chronic nosebleeds. Of course if you still prefer your bacon cooked and in your mouth instead of up your nostril then maybe the new Smoked Bacon and Cheddar Double Angus burger introduced this week by Burger King will catch your fancy. However it must be pointed out that Burger King was blasted by healthy eating crusaders yesterday for unleashing a real whopper — the biggest and most FATTENING on the high street, packing a belt-busting 966 calories — twice as much as a Big Mac from rivals McDonald's. But with a huge fat content of 58g, the monster munch left diet experts appalled yesterday. The £5.50 flame-grilled treat boasts TWO burgers crammed into a bun with bacon and cheddar — and smothered in "steakhouse sauce". On top of that it contains lettuce, tomato, onion and mayonnaise. Almost half the fat content is saturated fat — meaning a woman gorging on one will consume practically her entire recommended daily allowance of 20g. Meanwhile McDonald’s still could count on the loyalty of 17 year old chicken nugget fan Stacey Irvine. Stacey has eaten practically nothing else since the age of TWO. Horrified doctors learned of the teenager's chronic 15-year addiction after she collapsed and was rushed to hospital struggling to breathe this week. Factory worker Stacey, who has never touched greens or fruit, was found to have anaemia and swollen veins in her tongue. Yesterday she was recovering at home after being put on an urgent course of vitamins — which started in hospital with injections. But despite medics begging her to change her diet she STILL cannot get enough of chicken nuggets. "McDonald's chicken nuggets are my favourite. I share 20 with my boyfriend with chips”.

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