Sushi to die for doll!

"You've really got to try this sushi restaurant" she trilled "It's the absolute best - have you been to @%$##$% well it's much better than there. I've been to almost every sushi restaurant in Cape Town I can tell you and this place is the absolute best. Look here's the menu I kept it for you to look at." So in the interests of appearing remotely interested, I looked. Mmm, I murmured appreciatively although in truth I didn't really know what I was looking at. You see the Japanese have a certain brutal economy of words when it comes to writing menus, most of them in fact read like telephone directories. Now I don't necessarily believe that is a bad thing, in fact far too many occidental restaurants veer off in exactly the opposite direction but what exactly can you tell about a sushi restaurant by looking at the menu? With a concept built around fresh fish it seems to me that the best place to look is the fridge, but it did get me to thinking about how people decide on a favourite sushi place.
Should it have a vibey atmosphere and be constantly full of beautiful people, models, creatives etc or should it be as close as possible to it's lifeblood of fresh fish? Should it have one of those interminable conveyor belts transporting sad little plates in endless orbits, neglected, dejected and rejected or should there be an inscrutable oriental working deftly with fluid knife strokes, constant handwashing and an obsessional clean as you go attitude ? Should there be a treasure trove of ultra fresh local fish or a fridge full of avocado and farmed salmon?
I'm a great believer that the best things come in small packages and my favourite sushi place barely seats 2 dozen people. You'll not find many beautiful people here as it's not exactly in the most fashionable location but every hard core sushi fan has a sushi god and I'm no exception. Alan may not be your idea of a god, he doesn't communicate a lot apart from a curt nod when you enter the restaurant, a few cursory glances throughout the evening as he takes a sip from his green tea and a farewell wave as you exit but his sushi is as impressive as any of the trendy joints and so much more inexpensive. There's nothing fussy about this restaurant and that suits me down to the ground. You can bring your own wine and no-one is in the least perturbed and the ultimate mark of an establishment that is totally secure with itself and it's clientele is when they offer to get a pizza from across the road for that member of your party who isn't quite enamoured with the thought of raw fish. So you'll excuse me Dahling if I give the "absolute best" and @%$##$% a miss because I'm really quite satisfied with my own little comfort zone.

I'm reading: Sushi to die for doll!

79 shopping days to Xmas

It's getting close to Xmas and time to start thinking about what I'd like the family to get me. I reckon I've come up with the perfect gift for myself, apparently every chef should have one - it's an infrared spectrometer nuclear magnetic resonance machine. I've always liked gadgets but my ice cream machine, pasta maker, apple shaver, turbo blender, tortilla press, home smoker, vacuum machine and in fact all the entire cacaphony of essential gadgets which clutter up my kitchen at home all pale into insignificance before this mighty beast. How could I have lived without it for so long?
Obvious questions spring to mind of course, should I go for the Beckman Model G or the Varian A-60 and where would I be likely to find one? I certainly hadn't come across any on my last trip to Makro and even if I had where would I get the 20 ton low loader to transport it? No, it seems however much I deserve one it's just not going to happen and I must console myself that I'm never going to be on the leading edge of culinary development, to boldly grill where no man's grilled before!
So what does this incredible machine do, that I crave one so badly? Well, cutting edge chefs are using them to create unusual and original recipes. They analyse the molecular structure of their ingredients in this sophisticated piece of scientific machinery and look for ingredients with similar molecular structures, a bit like doing a food DNA. The belief is that foods with similar structures pair well together. I can remember the dark ages when we used to rely on our palates to do that type of thing, how unsophisticated we were!
The issue of the Xmas present remains of course, perhaps a thermo-circulator or a liquid nitrogen tank would do the trick, I just wonder what colours they come in, I don't want anything clashing with those new tiles.

I'm reading: 79 shopping days to Xmas

Jelly in their belly...rocks in their head

I have a friend who likes to see things in neat little boxes and enumerated on lists -then they can be controlled. One of his favourite sayings to illustrate how right he is about something, is "You can't be half pregnant you know - it's one or the other, you're either pregnant or you're not!" There's a lot of truth in that style of thought process but unfortunately it becomes a little flawed when you're dealing with vegetarians. You see with people who don't eat oysters or caviar, that's it pure and simple-they don't eat oysters or caviar, no ifs or buts, they are not half pregnant, they simply don't eat oysters or caviar.
But you never know where you are with vegetarians, certainly some are very strict vegans but what about the ones who say "No I'm a vegetarian, I'll just have a little fish" What sort of fish? A spinach fish? Or the others who say "No I'm vegetarian I'll just have a cheese omelette" Cheese omelette? I'm a little confused here, it's okay to steal milk from animals, intended to nourish their offspring and to eat unborn chickens safe in their little shells but whatever you do, don't dare put down a bloody steak in front of me! Bullshit.
Don't even draw them in to the argument about wearing leather belts and shoes, using sticky glue, painting with horsehair brushes, the easiest way to expose them for what they are is to offer them a jelly baby and then you'll soon find out who is half pregnant as they scoff down the black ones. When their belly is full of jelly, lean forwards and whisper in their ear that the jelly babies are in fact not vegetarian since they contain gelatine, a by product of the slaughter process and coincidently that pint of Guinness that they quaffed at lunchtime is also not vegetarian since it was fined with isinglass derived from the swim bladders of fish. It's not easy trying to avoid ending up pregnant you know.

I'm reading: Jelly in their belly...rocks in their head

Eat my dirt

One of the unfortunate aspects of restaurant food is the fact that it is subject to changes in fashion just like many areas of our modern lifestyle and as in all fashions, what starts out as a credible idea gets seized upon by extremists and the next thing you know it’s just plain bloody silly. We’d certainly had enough of the foams, froths and frissions when chefs started talking about sourcing products within the local community, a splendid idea. If it comes from 10 km up the road it’s got to be fresh, environmentally friendly and all those other good things that the tree huggers love and I can take in small doses. Then they became more enlightened locavores and decided that foraging was the way to go, skipping through the forests and along country lanes seeking out ultra fresh ingredients. Up to now I’m still with them although I hope they do thoroughly wash their daily forage. Copenhagen's Noma, the reigning best restaurant in the world, according to the prestigious Restaurant magazine, has been dazzling diners since it opened in 2003 with unorthodox ingredients such as just-picked flowers and wild game. However not content with picking ingredients from the fields and forests some avant garde chefs now want to replicate the bloody source of the food on your plate. Edible dirt is prepared from dried and charred ingredients like root vegetables, dried olives, dried malt and charred onion ash and sprinkled on the plate (see photo above) before arranging colourful items on top. They’ve even got a name for it – geogastronomy! I’ve got a name for it too – a load of bollocks!

I'm reading: Eat my dirt

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

This week David Mitchell jumps up on his soapbox and has a bit of a rant about the Brits attitude towards food. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

I'm reading: Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

Dilly Diner of the Week

Rick's Cafe is this week's Dilly Diner - not the one immortalised in the movie Casablanca featuring Humphrey Bogart but the one opened in Casablanca by American Kathy Kriger. As you make your way down the staircase you'll pick up the haunting tune being tinkled out on the ivories " As time goes by ", not by the " play it again Sam " from the Hollywood blockbuster but by resident pianist Issam - incidently the much misquoted line from the movie was actually " Play it for me Sam " and it was only by the miracle of the movies that Sam, played by Dooley Wilson was able to do so because he couldn't actually play a note on the piano and was really a drummer.
The mythical saloon from the 1942 film "Casablanca" has finally been transformed from celluloid to wood, glass and plaster thanks to the imagination and determination of an American woman enamoured of Morocco, Kathy Kriger.Set in an old courtyard-style mansion built against the walls of the Old Medina of Casablanca, the restaurant - piano bar is filled with architectural and decorative details reminiscent of the film: curved arches, a sculpted bar, balconies, balustrades as well as dramatic beaded and stenciled brass lighting and plants that cast luminous shadows on white walls. Details have been added that go beyond the film set in terms of ambience and comfort - four fireplaces, banquettes and an intimate private dining with view of the fishing port provide the background setting for an international menu specializing in Casablanca's fresh fish, vegetables and fruit. Issam, a pianist from Rabat, provides the soundtrack to the sophisticated elegant surroundings.

I'm reading: Dilly Diner of the Week

That Was The Week That Was

Some idiots announced this week that they were launching a new chocolate bar called Very Peculiar and true to it’s name, very bloody peculiar it is. The ‘Very Peculiar’ milk chocolate bars cost £3 and will be available from Monday in stores, including BHS and Debenhams, and online. The strong-smelling 100g bar is made with 98 per cent milk chocolate and two per cent Marmite flavouring., yes MARMITE! This includes yeast extract, onion powder and garlic powder, not flavours you would normally connect with chocolate and probably for good reason. Chef Rowley Leigh, one of the few top chefs who has successfully avoided the hoo hah of celebritydom and a man whose opinion I particularly value, put it rather succinctly when trying out the new product for the Daily Mail. Needless to say he was not impressed.
‘The thing is, they have so little faith in the product that there is hardly any Marmite in it. Although you can smell it quite strongly, the taste only comes at the finish,’ he said.
“They have tried to make it as mild and sweet and innocuous as they can. It starts out as slightly bland chocolate but, in the background, it is deeply nauseating. If you like Marmite, why would you not just eat Marmite?” Indeed.



Meanwhile the Aussie version of the love-it-or-hate-it yeast extract, Vegemite,
was also receiving a lot of attention this week as Her Oprahness, Duchesse of Winfrey sprang a stunt to take her studio audience to Austaralia on holiday with her. Of course the largesse was courtesy of the Australian Tourist Board eager to target the American market, and not coming out of the Winfrey coffers but she did rather sportingly promise to spread a little Vegemite on her toast. Oprah told Channel Ten in Australia in an exclusive interview that she'd try the spread because she'd 'try anything that wasn't crawling.' She added: 'I'll try Vegemite, I'm game, bring it on. 'Most Aussies love the dark brown spread – but to others it's an acquired taste.


Of course it’s difficult to tell whether Oprah has a real desire to get to grips with the smelly spread or whether someone else is also funding her beano to Australia since in a survey released this week in Oz, Vegemite as a best loved brand has plummeted six places from the number four position to number ten in the latest ratings. Perhaps parent company Kraft is hoping an Oprah endorsement will send it shooting back up the charts?

I'm reading: That Was The Week That Was