Dilly Diner of the Week

Trans Force is a most unusual restaurant in a most unusual location so it's hardly surprising that it attracts most unusual people. You see Trans Force is a restaurant that thinks it's a spaceship and it's located on the outskirts of St Petersburg in Russia. Even more mysterious is the fact that it is owned and operated by the marine technology giant, Transas, which perhaps goes some way to explaining the menu.
Trans Force is the worst kind of theme restaurant, one that takes itself too seriously. It's a virtual reality experience rather than a dining experience and should appeal to geeks the world over because it's a bit like eating inside a computer game. Load your plastic card with credits on the way in and head off down a dark metallic tunnel into the core of the vessel.
Soon you'll find yourself on the set of the Starship Enterprise with computer generated landscapes perpetually whizzing towards and away from you and after choosing your table to sit at you can start playing with the control console which allows you to choose your food by photograph and place your own order without ever speaking to anyone. Unfortunately that's where the fun stops because the food is human generated and can bring you back to earth with a bang. In spite of having Americanised names like Cold War ( Salads ) Firing Line ( Soups/ Main Courses ) Fuel ( Drinks ) and Reactive Fuel ( Alcoholic Drinks ) the food is kinda Russian - you know solid and stoic.
But hell, it's a bit naive going to a restaurant expecting edible food so rather just play with your computer console where you can obtain information on the main ship including all types of weapons, select video communication mode to establish communication with other mess-room tables or shuttle crews, video monitor the outside of the vessel or let's get down to why we're really here in the first place and set off on a military mission and nuke the hell out of the enemy from the comfort of your own dining pod whilst sipping on a full strength vodka.
Perhaps the most unusual thing of all about this restaurant is that it aims to cater for kids - very big kids, that is and the danger is that if it is successful there may be one landing near you soon.

Why the Krauts love Sauerkraut

There had to be a reason. Some crazy explanation why an entire nation of outwardly sensible, hardworking, efficient human beings would get hooked on such a disgusting food item. I mean it's simply not good enough logic to me to say ...well that's what they were brought up with, after all the Japanese were brought up with sushi and now they're addicted to McDonalds for some bizarre reason. It can't be because they grow a lot of cabbage in Germany, they grow a lot of maize in South Africa and we're not all addicted to popcorn. No there had to be a deeper reason and now scientists at the German Institute for Food Research in Potsdam think they have come up with the key to the mystery. Perhaps Brillat Savarin was right when he said " Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are !" because these boffins reckon it's all down to genes.
The taste gene concerned is hTAS2R38 which they have found occuring commonly in most of the German population. This little gene makes most people extraordinarily sensitive to the bitter substances, Phenylthiocarbamide ( PTC) and Propylthiouracil ( PROP ) present in large quantities in cabbage and hence the love for sauerkraut. I'm prepared to accept that. I believe it's perfectly possible that they don't have any control over their urge to shovel down large quantities of the vile substance along with deep fried pigs feet but I am at the same time very concerned. You see I love a good conspiracy theory and I think the days of dropping nuclear bombs and even gas warfare are long over. But if a few of the Fuhrer's boys from Brazil got their hands on a sufficient quantity of hTAS2R38 they could easily infiltrate our dietary defences via other foods and the next thing you know they would not only have conquered our hearts and minds but our stomaches also. So purely in the interests of gastronomic independance may I suggest you jot down that little number because you never know when it will pop up on the side of a box of pretzels or a jar of black cherries. If we sit out the next total onslaught down here in Africa it may well be on our toilet seats. The other great mystery the scientists are still battling with is what it is that makes thev Germans so miserable - maybe it's the realisation that they are genitically resigned to eating sauerkraut for the rest of their lives.

The Holy Trinity

I'm not sure that I would class chefs as being any more religiously minded than any other profession but I do find it very interesting how often the concept of mixing three ingredients together takes on an almost mystical signigficance and is reverentially referred to as the Holy Trinity of ingredients. Cajun cooks and particularily, the Godfather of contemporary Cajun cuisine, Paul Prudhomme, constantly refer to the Holy Trinity, found in almost every Cajun dish, of chopped green peppers, onions and celery, but I don't think they can claim sole rights to this phenonomen which pops up in cuisines all over the world.
They say that French Haute cuisine is built on the Holy Trinity of cream, eggs and butter and nutritionists everywhere would tend to agree but there is another very special trio of ingredients which also stamps it's mark on French cuisine and that is the bouquet garni, the bundle of herbs which we find in every slow cooked and braised dish, the trinity of bayleaf, parsley and thyme. The bouquet garni is certainly indispensible in a further Holy Trinity, the Holy Trinity of Cassoulets - there's the Father, from Castelnaudary, featuring pork and goose, the Son from Carcassone with mutton and partridge and the Holy Ghost from Toulouse with sausage, mutton and duck. And before leaving the French perhaps it's worth quoting the thoughts of the monk Rabelais (1483-1553) " The Holy Trinity - bread, wine and cheese "
The concept of three ingredients blending together to form a strong foundation taste is in fact common to many cuisines. In Thailand it's garlic, ginger and chilli whilst neighbouring Asian cuisines favour garlic, ginger and onions. In Mexico the trinity is maize, beans and chillis whilst further south the Bahia cuisine of Brazil builds most of it's dishes on a distinctive platform of coconut milk, palm oil and pepper. I'm not convinced of the magical quality of just 3 ingredients to produce a really great base, I reckon it has more to do with chefs finding it easy to remember just 3 things rather than any mystical trinity.

Send out the funny food

Georg Fuchs hasn’t exactly got the easiest job in the world. He’s beginning to settle down now as Maitre Chef des Cuisines at the Savoy Hotel in London after taking over from Anton Edelman in 2003 but he is carrying the torch for some real heavyweights in the culinary world, not least the guy who opened the Savoy along with Caesar Ritz over 100 years ago, the “ little chef from Nice ” who became a giant amongst chefs.
But most nights of the week those thoughts are furthest from Georg’s mind as he wrestles with more immediate problems such as his list of Special Meal Requirements. You see the Savoy is one of the busiest banqueting hotels in the world and the way banquets work is that large numbers of people all sit down at exactly the same time, eat exactly the same choice of food, move on to the next course at exactly the same moment and try to be as undemanding as possible at least until the dessert has been served – well that’s the theory ! A few years ago the only real threat to this well oiled drill was an inebriated speaker who wanted to hog the microphone and screw up the underdoneness of the lamb and more rarely one or two vegetarians who had somehow slipped in to the function room.
“ Vegetarians…..that’s easy, just lift the meat off the plate and give it a bit of a wipe ” I don’t know what was in the vegetables but suddenly they started to multiply and brought along other friends they had meet at support groups. Before you could say nut allergy it seemed there were lot’s of nuts with allergies. On a good night Georg is feeding over 1000 people in several different banqueting halls and anything up to 10% of these diners are not wanting what’s on the menu. That’s a whopping 100 Special Meal Requests, no meat or eggs, no smoked fish, no wheat, no potatoes, no red meat, no fruit, no root vegetables, no shellfish, oh and no nuts ! No wonder poor old Georg sometimes feels a little stressed.
Well just to make him feel better, it’s no different here in Cape Town except we have one extra common request “ Is this food Halaal ? ” Well work it out for yourself, you’re on licensed premises, everyone around you is drinking alcohol, there’s 2 bottles of wine on the table…..what do you think ? It’s not just Georg who’s got a tough job !

All that glitters is not food

There’s no doubt about it, there seems to be no decline in our fascination with gold. People speculate in it, entire economies are based on it, wealthy females adorn themselves with it and some foolish people even eat it. Oh I don’t mean nuggets of gold interspersed into their muesli or even those famous Golden Arches, I mean the fashion of decorating food and drinks with finely beaten gold leaf, thin as a wisp of air and fluttering enticingly like a delicate golden butterfly atop an otherwise nondescript dessert or glass of bubbly.
Bullshit baffles brains everytime and when you’re at a loss for that “ WOW ” factor then just slap a lightly crumpled sheet of pure gold leaf on top of a mediocre chocolate mousse and you’ll hear the punters oohing and aahing in the next dorp. It just makes them feel so special and it’s quite easily ingested if not digested. It won’t do them too much harm since it’s non toxic and ancient Egyptian alchemists believed that gold represented the perfection of matter, that it’s presence in the body would enliven, rejuvenate, and cure a multitude of disturbances in the life force balance of the body – on the other hand, if it doesn’t ,no sweat, cos’ most of it will pass through the human digestive system anyway. At least I think it will but even if it doesn’t and you tend to eat out often at fancy restaurants, why then you could end up with gold plated intestinal tracts and that would really put you ahead of the Jones’.
It was probably the Egyptians, not French chefs, who set the fashion for incorporating real gold into their foods although a fluttering of gold is often widely used in Indian, Chinese and Japanese cuisines to decorate both hot and cold dishes. Even today, Chinese peasants often cook their rice with a gold coin in the pot believing it will help replenish the gold levels in their bodies.
The Indians were attracted by the colour and ostentation of decorating their festival dishes with gold rather than any belief in medicinal properties which it might possess. They also are very fond of silver leaf but my advice to you is to avoid it because doesn’t have quite the same aura about it and anyway it has a tendency to look like crumpled up tinfoil discarded on top of a dish.

Conveniently mediocre

I must be very old fashioned in my thinking. I reckon electricians are the guys who fix electrical problems, plumbers are the guys who fix water pipes, cooks are the guys who prepare food and shopkeepers are the guys who sell food products to the consumer. You see in my world it's all perfectly simple and in fact in most people's worlds it's all perfectly simple. My neighbour, Barry the plumber, seems to have no problem with this set up and he doesn't do takeaway pizzas with each U bend that he sorts out. The last time I had need of an electrician he didn't arrive with some freshly baked croissants so I can't for the life of me figure out what sort of arrogance these bloody supermarket operators have, that they honestly believe they can move away from the tinned baked beans and start trying to sell me take away sushi ?
It all started innocently enough. They had a quick squiz at what restaurants were serving and decided to expand their food horizons. Early offerings were perfectly disgusting beef and onion stew TV dinners and fish in some sort of wallpaper paste masquerading as a white wine sauce with little bits of cardboard which were in fact mushrooms. Then they started buggering up some of the classics such as Beef Stroganoff and Duck a l 'orange by eliminating the tried and tested ingredients and replacing them with chemical components and E numbers in " new, improved recipes " Still it didn't bother me too much because I felt a certain disdain mixed with pity for those poor souls who were subjected to eating this rubbish and I was secure in the knowledge that not only would these products never darken my doorstep but that no-one would ever have the brass neck to serve them to me at a dinner party.
But now increasingly, the supermarkets, in their quest to attract more of our hard earned cash, are trying to demonstrate their sophistication and " move up market " and flavour of the month is sushi. It's obvious that they have no conception whatsoever of how sushi should be served, at what temperature the rice should be and that they have absolutely no respect for the integrity of the dish. So what can we expect next ? Adria Ferran's range of foams and emulsions served up in aerosol cans like flavoured shaving cream ? Perhaps we could even look forward to the multipurpose frozen steak tartare - defrost it for your foodie friends and serve with a little rocket salad but if the inlaws drop in unexpectedly your can always toss a few on the braai and slather with that genuine Texas barbeque sauce you got a bottle of last Xmas.

Escargots to go

There are many so called gourmet foods which I just can't understand the attraction of. Escargots, helix pomatia or the Burgundian vineyard snail is definitely fairly close to the top of that list. I must be honest though, because I don't think I've ever tasted a snail. I've tasted snails marinaded in all sorts of wine and oil concoctions and I've eaten more garlic butter than I care to remember but I don't think I've ever really tasted a snail so maybe I haven't given these little land molluscs a fair chance. I do know, by simply glancing through diverse menus, that not many other people are that fond of snails either. There was a time when the only fashionable cuisine was French Haute Cuisine, executed in expensive restaurants with silly names and staffed by haughty head waiters with attitude and we were all brainwashed into believing that to be sophisticated we had to chew diligently on elasticated escargots swimming in powerful garlic butter in their little townhouses.
Snails and frog's legs, what a joke.....thank God we discovered garlic mushrooms and buffalo chicken wings. Anyway as the star of Gallic gastronomy went into decline so too did the popularity of the vineyard snail as a highly priced menu item. But some people, somewhere kept eating them for some unknown reason, so much so that snail farms started springing up all over the place to satisfy this bizarre craving for fattened slugs. From Argentina to Peru, China to Korea, Australia to Italy, Spain and of course France suddenly we inundated with heliculturalists all rearing snails of various types. Good luck to them I say, as long as it's not in my backyard but the problem is that it seems it may soon be in my backyard.
Two businessmen from East London have started to promote the farming of helix aspera muller, have announced the building of a massive cannery and also have plans to provide business opportunities for the impoverished and disabled so that they they can farm snails in their backyards. Black Economic Empowerment meets the escargot - why do I feel a scam coming on here ? They have even persuaded the Eastern Cape Development Corporation to seek tenders for a business plan for the intended snail operation. I sincerely hope that someone zonks this plan as quickly as possible before a lot of taxpayers money is gobbled up by slimy creatures, two legged or no legged, and before we start touting local snails on the tourist trap menus right up there beside the crocodile tail and grilled zebra steaks.