Ashes to ashes, plastic to jelly

I don’t know how you celebrated the farewell to Michael Jackson today. If you’re like me you’re probably tired of the whole circus and wish it would all go away but some folk in the UK marked the occasion by gobbling down some jelly. Today, Bompas and Parr, bespoke jelly makers, launched their funeral jelly service with a tribute to Michael Jackson, King of Pop, in the Bistrotheque dining room.
In the past, moulded cakes depicting skulls, hearts, roses and suchlike would be distributed following the internment of the corpse. The jelly is a revival and reinterpretation of this long-neglected element of the traditional funeral ceremony.
In the restaurant they were serving pyramidal jellies of black cherry and champagne set with 24 carat gold, and in the bar observing a strict MJ music policy.
"The funeral jelly, both sombre and celebratory, reminds us of our food heritage traditions and is a fitting tribute to the King of Pop and his lifetime of incredible music."
Our condolences

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I don't like Mondays

I don’t like Mondays. I have another week of blogs to do and all the reasonably sensible musings I have in my head which have bobbed around backwards and forwards over the weekend weaving their way through several glasses of red wine and occasional bouts of dozing off in the armchair are suddenly sent flying in all directions like skittles dispersed by one of the Fat Ladies skidding down an indoor bowling alley on her backside with skirts clutched between her legs. You just can’t ignore what the international press have come up with to take some attention away from Wimbledon.
Chefs in Japan have created yet another World’s Biggest Hamburger. The hamburger, which was made for a promotional event for the Phoenix Seagaia Resort, weighed it at 136.2 kilograms (300 pounds), beating the previous world record burger, which weighed a measly 84 kilograms (185 pounds) – who cares? Why do people continue to do silly things like this? Why not build the World’s Biggest Toilet? The World’s Biggest Jar of Raspberry Jam? The World’s Biggest Mothball? Who gives a sh*t? Who is impressed by this type of nonsense? And by the way is it just me or did they take so long to cook the burger that they burnt the roll?
Meanwhile Michelin starred executive chef Luke Tipping of Simpson’s in Birmingham, UK, has teamed up with British Curry Award-winner Aktar Islam to create some baby food for junior diners – I mean the stuff that comes as a puree in little jars. "We want to encourage children into restaurants as much as possible. It really does start at that level, it's grass roots stuff, you have got try and get children interested in food because they are the future of restaurants." Dishes served up by the chefs include warm vermicelli pudding, scented with cinnamon and green cardamom, sprinkled with crush pistachio and rusk croutons; and dill-seasoned cheddar cheese fish pie accompanied with fresh broccoli and sweetcorn. I’m at a loss for words, roll on Tuesday.

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

The Ab Fab French and Saunders have a go at His Gordoness and the Frankenstein of Foam in this week's clip. FeedBlitz subscribers will as usual have to visit the site to view.

I'm reading: Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Dilly Diner of the Week

If you fancy an arresting food experience then maybe this week's Dilly Diner is for you. Diners can eat at the restuarant inside the prison in Sutton, Surrey, for just £6 for a two-course meal. While the food is cooked up from the freshest ingredients, much from the prison’s own garden, and to the highest standards, diners have to make do with plastic cutlery for security reasons.The chefs, waiters and kitchen porters are all inmates - who could be behind bars for murder or grevious bodily harm.

The Clink is the brainchild of Alberto Crisci, a former chef at Mirabelle, a French restaurant in Mayfair, London, which used to be owned by Marco Pierre White.
Crisci, who moved on to become High Down’s catering manager, said the idea was to rehabilitate prisoners and give them the skills to obtain jobs on release. He stressed discipline was tougher than anything seen on a show like Hell’s Kitchen.

“Prisoners only have to step out of line once and they are out. This is a real restaurant. I expect them to do exactly what I ask them to do.”

Wine is served – but strictly controlled for fear it goes missing – while Crisci said prison staff had to be very careful about yeast, as it could be smuggled out into the cells to be used to brew alcohol. Although the food is very cheap there is one small catch for diners, however: they must book well in advance and obtain Home Office approval and security clearance

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That Was The Week That Was

So another week and another high flying Cape Town restaurant closes it’s doors. Nova, the gastronomic palace overseen by South Africa’s very own molecular chef, Richard Carstens, is calling it a day. At first glance it seems that the recession has claimed another victim, that there just aren’t enough well heeled punters around to sustain a restaurant where your bill can come in at R 400 before you have a chance to wet your lips. I think that there aren’t enough punters in Cape Town’s fickle restaurant going jet set who want to pay that sort of money for self indulgent ent chemical experiments. The dishes may have been technically very clever but in this economy the name of the game is recognizable food at value for money prices, that’s why Bruce Robertson is serving Bunny Chows and not foams and essence of lettuce.



Also this week poor old Gordo was also feeling the pinch a little as profits collapsed by over 80% creating his own kitchen nightmare. The man who is so fond of telling other people how to run their restaurants has come face to face with his own F word – Finance! According to Ramsay's latest business accounts for 2007-2008, published yesterday, the Scots business mogul, who has closed several of his restaurants, has seen profits for Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) fall from £3.05m to £383,325. Ramsay's business model was also damaged by the closure of key London restaurants. The Savoy Grill was shut because of refurbishment at its host hotel, while the Connaught lease expired, which accounted for a £9.5m reduction in revenues. A statement from the firm said that after a restructuring it was confident the group had "successfully undergone change for the better" and was now "well-placed to grow its operation with a more stable capital base and a more manageable overall structure". Since December 2007, Ramsay has closed four of his capital city restaurants, including Petrus and La Noisette. The other closures were The Connaught and the Savoy Grill. Thank heavens for TV eh?



But it’s not all bad news for restaurants in these troubled times. People are turning to chocolate to make things feel a little better and in New York a new restaurant, themed on chocolate, announced it’s opening. Who doesn't love chocolate? Max Brenner certainly does and he is behind a new all-chocolate restaurant opening up next week on Walnut Street called "Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man." Menu items obviously include the best hot chocolate in town along with a chocolate pizza. The restaurant has been described as an adults' Willa Wonka factory, but you can get food too, so you can feel sensible.

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Time to leave the playpen

All little boys grow up eventually and put away their childish things and it seems that Heston Blumenthal is no exception. He has signed up to open a new restaurant in London at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge and he has decided emphatically (or perhaps his new bosses have decided for him) that it is not going to be another Fat Duck. Blumenthal has spoken out about the style of food at his new restaurant and says that while there may be versions of dishes from the Fat Duck on the menu, it will not be a larger copy of his Bray restaurant.
He said that food for the new restaurant, due to open in autumn 2010, will be 'challenging, research-driven and inspired by historic British dishes'. Blumenthal dismissed suggestions that would be a larger Fat Duck. “It’s absolutely not another Fat Duck. I’m never going to do another Fat Duck ever. It would break me,” he said. "I’d like to do some gueridon service, maybe some ice cream made at the table with dry ice. There will be an element of theatre, especially if it links in with the historic aspect of the restaurant," he added. With 140 bums to find every night instead of 30 Heston is going in the right direction and anyway he's probably concerned about spending so much time ingesting all those bloody chemicals.

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A glance in the mirror

Sometimes it's not such a good idea to glance in the mirror, you might end up seeing something that you really don't want to see. Oh I'm not referring to bulging waistlines or craggy good looks which are slightly weatherbeaten, I learnt to ignore all that nonsense years ago. No, I'm thinking on a more philosophical level here rather than physical.You see I was reading the other day about some new lifestyle trends which were emerging and skimming through these types of futuristic articles is a bit like reading the horoscope columns, you tend to agree with everything that fits in with your view of things and dismiss as utter rubbish anything which you find unsettling. I nodded sagely at the paragrapgh on sensory branding, where the more we try to cut out pop up, in your face, advertising, the experts are seeking out ways to appeal to all the senses like highly designed luxurious hand items such as phones and ladies compacts which seem to open and close effortlessly, smoothly and silently.
Then I got to the bit about Extreme Connoisseurs and it started to read like my horoscope on a great day. Apparently as men find themselves connecting more and more with the kitchen they are becoming Extreme Connoisseurs, viewing food connoisseurship as an indicator of virility, believing that cooking involves concepts such as science, technology, chemistry, rhythm and design. It seems they will smoke their own trout and venison in their own homemade smoke-house, or make sausages from scratch They will bake bread, make artisanal ice cream and seek out specialised food shops that sell smoked chillis, whole grain stone ground flours and complete sausage making kits. Jeez, suddenly I'm a lifestyle trend and there was me just thinking that it was all a bit of a lark !

I'm reading: A glance in the mirror