That Was The Week That Was

Bad news week for local celeb chef Conrad Gallagher as he was declared bankrupt and faced by a mountain of debt and prosecutions for everything ranging from non payment of accounts to breaking basic labour laws.The Department of Labour has been investigating the high flying Irish chef since June but authorities may find it difficult to proceed with their case after reports from staff members that Gallagher had left the country. Once a star of his own television show, Gallagher has also left a trail of unhappy staff and debtors across Cape Town since he arrived in South Africa six years ago. In at least two of those cases, Gallagher has been sued. A senior manager at catering equipment company Mac Brothers confirmed that the company had taken him to court for debt of almost R400 000. Another creditor, Chester Finance, last year applied for Gallagher's consulting business to be liquidated, claiming that he owed it close to R2 million. The word on the street amongst local chefs was that it couldn't’t happen to a nicer fella!



Meanwhile in the midst of all this litigation in Cape Town the bold Conrad was lining up his next sucker in Dublin. Discussions were at an advanced stage regarding him taking over the kitchen at La Stampa restaurant in Dawson Street Dublin. According to owner Louis Murray, Gallagher failed to mention these issues in darkest Africa when discussing the idea of his taking over the kitchen at Balzac/La Stampa. He is understandably annoyed. It’s a safe bet that Conrad is not welcome in Dublin either which was the scene of a previous bankruptcy.



Another failed celeb chef, Anthony Worral Thompson still reeling from his business failures hit out this week at two contemporaries whom he claimed to be totally overrated. In an interview with Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine Worrall Thompson – whom Ramsay had previously described as a 'squashed Bee Gee' – hit back at his celebrated rivals. He said Ramsay was a "one trick pony", while Blumenthal's restaurant the Fat Duck, this year voted the second best in the world, was "a gimmick". He said Ramsay, one of only three people in Britain to hold three Michelin stars alongside Blumenthal, did not have "any depth". "He's a one trick pony. If it hasn't got an F in it, it doesn't feature in his show." Wozza also took a swipe at Blumenthal. "Heston loves his food, don't get me wrong, but some of those egg-and-bacon ice creams, beetroot jellies where it's coloured orange. . . it's a gimmick. It's theatrics. "Everyone will look back in ten years' time and be horrified – even Heston to some extent." Now, now, children, play nicely.

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Greasy burgers and blue nuns

Former President Bill Clinton and North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Il sat down across the dinner table this week to diplomatically discuss the successful release of two U.S. journalists held by North Korea since 17 th March. What did they talk about? Who cares? The foodie world is more obsessed by what they ate!
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Sovereign Prince of Beneventum, more commonly known simply as Talleyrand was one of the most successful diplomats the world has ever known. A great conversationalist, gourmet, and wine connoisseur, he employed the renowned French chef Carême, one of the first celebrity chefs known as the "chef of kings and king of chefs " to ensure that things went smoothly at his dinner table.
I’m not sure that old Kim is in the same league but Fat Boy Clinton is no slouch when the dinner bell rings. In fact just a day or two before making an appearance as one of the featured speakers at the inaugural “Weight of the Nation” conference in Washington, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control to focus on obesity prevention and control, Bill was spotted waiting in line on Saturday night at Z Burger in Washington’s Tenleytown neighborhood, posing for photos and signing autographs as his take-out order was readied - double burger (hold the mayo), onion rings, French fries, and an apple-pie milkshake. Kim also is very partial to a hamburger, in fact he likes them so much that as he opened the country’s first hamburger joint (belonging to him), he told the North Korean people that he had invented them. So now that we know what they probably ate, just what wine did they choose so that it didn’t f*ck up the flavour of their burgers. My, normally very amiable, dinner host last evening would probably be fairly adamant that it was Blue Nun!

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One flew over the cuckoo's nest

I’ve been to a few functions where one of our local winemakers is called to the stage to demonstrate his party piece. They normally are very self effacing giving you the impression that whilst they are going to attempt to slice the top of a bottle of champagne with a glinting sabre, they also have got this lurking doubt in the back of their minds that it may not be quite as successful as the audience expects. I’ve also been to lots of braais where one of the company approaches the task with a lot more boisterous energy but it so often concludes with what their audience expects – failure!
The art of opening a bottle of bubbly with a sabre is an old French parlour trick, originally a signature skill of Napoleon’s officers. The French Cavalary would ride into battle with a bottle of Champagne to be enjoyed before the battle as a form of "Dutch" courage. The Cavalryman would draw his sword and with a deft flick of the wrist cut the neck of the bottle clean open. First you find the bottle’s vertical seam. The thick, green glass is less even along this line, so there is a weak point where the seam meets the lip. If you hit this point with enough force, the glass will break cleanly and the pressure inside the bottle will make the top shoot off. Holding the bottle in one hand and placing the blade on the seam at a 45° angle you must stroke the sabre along the seam a few times in preparation and then sweep it all the way to the lip, keeping the angle constant. It rarely succeeds first time but after a couple of warm up strokes the top of the bottle will dramatically fly off. Now not many households have the requisite sabre nowadays but a heavy cook’s knife will do the trick and even less homes in these recessionary times have enough bottles of champers lying around to provide ammunition but good old local sparkling wine will be enough to impress your dinner guests that you are a skilled sabreur. Who knows, they may even drink it afterwards!

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Pseudo foodo markets

It seems that recently a rash ( I’m not sure if that’s the right collective noun) of food markets have sprung up around Cape Town which on the surface would appear to be great news. Unfortunately there is precious little food in these voyeur’s dens. Well, precious little fresh food anyway. I’m not sure how many jars of peach chutney and bottles of Oom Piet’s Chilli Sauce you have to endure before you want to scream out “Enough! “ There is a barometer of the heat of chillis measured in Scoville units ranging from relatively mild to insanely painful at about 16,000,000 Scoville units. I reckon most of these pseudo food markets clock in close to the insanely painful level on the boredom barometer.
Put all the prepacked, homogenized, bland jars of gunge on one side and you’re hard pressed to find the real deal in local food in one of these markets. Where are the farmers and growers interacting with the local community? Where is the wholesome produce picked at the peak of flavour, preserving the nutritional content, and since locally-grown produce does not travel as far to get to your table, saving on food miles, carbon footprint and all those other good things? Oh, there’s always a stall of tired, overpriced, over rated organic vegetables and a few loaves of bread ( is ciabatta the only artisan bread that anyone can bake or spell?) but then when you have a look at the meat stall there’s some sad looking character lurking behind it with even sadder looking meat products preportioned in stryrofoam black trays wrapped in clingfilm, hardly the first image that springs into my mind when thinking of fresh farmer’s meat. Where is the range of homecured amd smoked proscuitto, the exciting cheeses, the half lambs from the Karoo ready to be expertly butchered before your eyes and to your express instructions before being deftly wrapped in some voluminous sheets of white butcher’s paper, deftly tucked in at the ends with an ease that comes from years of experience. No, I’m sorry, these food markets are staffed by stall keepers not food enthusiasts and populated by people who have half an hour to kill and who are not serious food foragers.

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Great Chieftain o' the puddin race

They say the British Isles are composed of four races of man
. . . the Scottish, who keep the sabbath--and everything else they can get their hands on.
. . . the Welsh, who pray on their knees--and on their neighbours.
. . . the Irish, who don't know what they want, but are willing to fight anyone for it anyway.
. . . and the English, who consider themselves a race of self-made men, thereby relieving the almighty of a terrible burden

Well it seems that one of the things the Scottish got their hands on was the venerable haggis. For centuries it has been a symbol of Scotland alongside tartan, bagpipes and whisky. But haggis is actually an English creation, a food historian has discovered. Food historian Catherine Brown has found mentions of haggis in an English cooking guide, 'The English Hus-wife', by Gervase Markham. from 1615, which proves it was being eaten south of the border some 171 years before Robert Burns wrote his Address to the Haggis.

Miss Brown said the earliest reference to a Scottish haggis she could find was from 1747 - pointing to the likelihood that the recipe had been copied from English sources. By the late 18th century haggis was firmly a Scottish dish. Miss Brown believes nationalists claimed it as a symbol of Scotland after the country lost its own monarchy and parliament in the 1706 Treaty of Union. Not surprisingly, her claims have been dismissed by Scots. Mind you the other great icon also not invented by the Scots was the kilt. The kilt was given to the Scots by the Irish and they haven’t seen the joke yet!

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Rowan Atkinson brilliantly demonstrates the difficulties of dealing with drunken customers after the big game in this sketch from his one man show. FeedBlitz subscribers will have to visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

If you're fed up with that incessant background muzak in so many restaurants then you may be interested in this week's Dilly Diner.At the Sounds of Silence experience you can dine under the canopy of the desert night, while your very own storyteller shares tales as told in the stars. Entered into the Australian Tourism Hall of Fame, Sounds of Silence near Ayers Rock offers an evening of dining under the sparkling outback sky.

Your journey begins on a lone sand dune. A path takes you to an uninterrupted, three hundred and sixty degree view of the vast landscape. In front of you is the fabled Uluru; behind you are the domes of Kata Tjuta and, possibly the most spectacular sunset you have ever seen. Here you enjoy sparkling wine and a selection of delectable canapés. As the sun sets, you feast on a BBQ buffet of authentic Australian delicacies examples include barramundi, kangaroo, emu and crocodile, bush salads and classic desserts, complemented by Australian wines.

Attention then turns to some of the world's best stargazing, as a startalker takes you on a tour of the spectacular southern night sky. As you wind down after dinner, you are offered a choice of tea, coffee or port. No cellphones please!

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