What a load of dough tossers

If there's one thing I find particularly boring it's contrived world records especially those involving food. I really can't see the point of someone claiming to have made the biggest samoosa in the world if in reality it bears no resemblance to a samoosa in texture, taste or construction. It's quite often a con dreamt up by some bloody committee more hungry for publicity than reasonable food. Normally I would ignore any reports of the world's largest thinguminyjig except that when it comes to pizza I have a vested interest - firstly I know how bloody difficult it is to make a good pizza and secondly when the world record pizza was made I was there!
Some little pizza joint in Yeovil, United Kingdom is claiming the Guinness record for the world's largest pizza - bollocks ! All they did was make a few thousand normal pizzas and laid them end to end - impressive eh? Some other little one horse town in Iowa claims to have converted 4,000 pounds of cheese, 700 pounds of sauce and 9,500 sections of crust into a huge pie in the Iowa Falls -Alden High School parking lot - precooked in sections and stuck together - child's play! South Africans on the other hand do it properly.The largest proper pizza ever made was at the Norwood Pick 'n Pay hypermarket in Johannesburg on December 8, 1990, I know, I was there. It was 37.4 meters in diameter and was made using 500 kg of flour, 800 kg of cheese and 900 kg of tomato puree. Raw dough with mixed, rolled, proved on site and placed on a scaffolding frame covered with chicken wire and foil. Tomato sauce was applied from cherry pickers and spread with yard brushes, buckets of grated cheese and herbs were sprinkled over and the whole pie was heated from below using an army of industrial space heaters. I've tasted better but it was a pukka, world record breaking pizza. Now pizza off and leave us alone.

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rhymes with.......

If you can't flog something to the poor suspecting public then the answer is simple, change the name of whatever you're punting and try to sell it to the poor unsuspecting public. Some years ago in South Africa when we only ate kingklip and hake was called stockfish and fed to cats, some clever ponytails came up with the idea of changing the name of hake to make it more appealing. "There's merlu on the menu", was the battle cry and everyone scratched their heads and said what the hell is merlu? Nowadays we can't afford to eat kingklip so we eat stockfish but call it hake. The rather continental name of merlu just didn't catch on and didn't make it onto the new season's marketing budget.
Recently when the marketing experts at Sainsbury's sat down to the task of trying to boost sales of pollack (rhymes with......), they had a brainwave. "Let's give it a new name," they said. Many months and meetings later, the name was chosen - Colin. Now I knew a photographer once called Colin and he did have a bit of a wet kipper handshake but that's another story. A fish called Colin??? Of course it's not just any old Colin, it's Colin (pronounced Col-an) which is what the French, who are rather partial to pollack, call the fish once it has been cooked. It is an interesting choice of name and one which the British shopper may struggle to come to terms with. Why didn't they just use Merlu, no-one else was using it?

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Another scorcher of a day in Cape Town and thoughts turn to the cool relief of some ice cream. However I'm not sure I'd like some of the flavours The Two Ronnies think of in this sketch. Still it just goes to prove that's there's nothing new in food, these two guys were talking about cheese and onion ice cream long before any of the Chemical Ali's even thought of it. FeedBlitz subscribers will as usual have to visit the site.

I'm reading: Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Dilly Diner of the Week

Dilly Diner this week is a bizarre hospital-themed restaurant in Latvia which is serving food resembling body parts with surgical utensils. Decked out in a sterile, modern medical environment and boasting scantily clad nurses, the Hospitalis in Riga serves hearty Latvian dishes and a macabre cake topped with realistic-looking body parts such as fingers, noses and tongues.
Served on gurneys and operating tables, the restaurant provides diners with cutlery such as syringes, tweezers and scalpels to devour their meals. Owned by a group of local doctors, Hospitalis also has a trendy cocktail bar where bartenders in white lab coats mix drinks into beakers and test tubes.
Guests are treated to disturbing dinner entertainment including morbid tunes on violins, while deranged patients are escorted through the restaurant in straightjackets and wheelchairs.

I'm reading: Dilly Diner of the Week

that was the week that was

There may have been angry protestors outside but this week Jamie Oliver cooked up a feast for the G20 leaders inside No 10 Downing Street. Assisted by graduates from his training restaurant Fifteen, he served up the best of British fare to Gordon Brown and President Obama. The politicians and their wives kicked off their meal at Downing Street with a starter of organic Scottish salmon served with samphire and sea kale, and a selection of vegetables from Sussex, Surrey and Kent. For the main course, it was slow-roasted shoulder of lamb from the Elwy Valley in north Wales, with Jersey Royal potatoes, wild mushrooms and mint sauce and dessert was good old fashioned bakewell tart and custard.


Here in Cape Town there was another bash with a few politicians but mostly Hollywood rent a crowd celebrities as Sol Kerzner opened his new Cape Town hotel, The One and Only (what a stupid pretentious name). Featuring food from the restaurant's of the hotel's celebrity chefs, Nobu Matsuhisa's Nobu and Gordon Ramsay's maze, a fine time was had by all. Nobu and Gordo will no doubt hang around for a day or two to make sure that everything is just tickety-boo in their icon culinary outposts.


Meanwhile a research paper released this week by the University of Bath explored why young men may find His Gordoness so irrestible. He may at times come over as a foul-mouthed macho man but Gordon Ramsay's no-nonsense style inspires young men to cook more than any other male celebrity chef, researchers at the university have found. Chefs were rated on a range of 15 characteristics including confidence, masculinity, sophistication, enthusiasm, excitability and social responsibility. They were also rated on their perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise. A Prof Martin suggests there are two reasons why men react so well to Ramsay. He said: "The first factor is the profile of the chef. Ramsay has a strong image as bold, assertive, dominant and masculine. Men appear to like Ramsay's masculine style. The second reason is the importance of television presence. Our research suggests that it is from watching a chef on television that encourages men to cook." The women liked Anthony Worrall Thompson and Jamie Oliver and everyone perceived Heston Blumenthal as wise and sophisticated, yet Ramsay was the clear leader for dominance, determination and perceived masculinity and it is his profile that men appear to respond to best. Strange old world eh?

I'm reading: that was the week that was

Lirpa Loof

Still feeling a bit sheepish about some of those absurd notions you fell for yesterday ? Well don't beat yourself up too much cos you're in good company. Virgin Active announced they were opening gyms for pets, Table Mountain was to be renamed, after 188 years of ink printing The Guardian said they were moving to Twitter because " there were no news stories that couldn't be told in under 140 characters and millions were duped when they read about a new airborne hotel based on a Russian helicopter, a "hotelicopter". The one I enjoyed most was about molecular gastronomy.
Linda at www.playingwithfireandwater.com/ came up with a fantastic April Food story. A group of influential international chefs have sequestered since yesterday at Alicia in Catalunya, Spain. Their mission has been to find a more palatable term for the dreaded "Molecular Gastronomy". The consensus seems to be leaning towards ORGASMIC, an acronym for ORganoleptics, Gastronomy, Art, & Science Meet In Cuisine. A final vote is scheduled for tomorrow morning, followed by the unveiling at a press conference. Love it!

I'm reading: Lirpa Loof

or you can use dry sherry

Ken Hom, one of the vintage TV chefs, always stands out in my thoughts for an expression which he uses time and time again, in fact it seems almost with every recipe which he demonstrates. When he gets to the point where he is going to add some Chinese wine to his stirfry he smiles into the camera and says " or you can use dry sherry if you prefer." It always raised a little giggle and in fact became a catchphrase in our house but thinking it through the other day I came up with a totally different perspective.
Ken was actually encouraging viewers to substitute an ingredient in a recipe and in a cuisine such as Chinese cooking which is not exactly free-form but rather very strictly structured, this was fairly close to heresy. He didn't go so far as to deconstruct the recipes or introduce a host of western ingredients into his stir fry style but he did have the guts to suggest that a perfectly acceptable result could be achieved with non traditional ingredients and really that is what cooking is all about. The recipe is a guideline but is not set in concrete, it is a starting point not a finishing point and if Ken can promote this concept in his own little way well then I'm prepared to excuse his pseudo American accent and terrible dress sense.

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