Kitsch'n'Zinc

Wot? No plastic toy?

2012-01-30T20:40:00.000+02:00

Normally restaurants don’t encourage you to eat the Kiddies meals if you are an adult and not surprisingly not many adults want to eat the kid’s meals anyway. But Jester’s Diner in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk lives up to it’s name by actively promoting the Kidz Breakfast to grown ups! It’s a bit expensive at 15 quid but it is FREE if customers finish it. However this Kidz Breakfast is not for kiddies and not for the fainthearted —in fact it is so named as it weighs as much as a BABY. The 9lbs, 6,000-calorie fry-up includes 12 bacon rashers, 12 sausages, four slices of black pudding and an eight-egg cheese and potato omelette. There’s also six fried eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, sauté potatoes and don’t forget four slices each of bread and butter, toast and fried bread! Hardly surprising not one person has yet managed to finish one in the six months it has been on the menu. Cafe owner Martin Smith, 42, said: "Some people ask why we don't serve tea or coffee with it, but we chose not to include them in the deal — caffeine is very bad for you."

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2012-01-29T13:29:00.000+02:00

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in a funny sketch inspired by that French painter chap - A Tahitian Kitchen. It's in terrible taste of course but no matter. You'll have to wait about 30 seconds before it gets to the right place. FeedBlitz subscribers should of course visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2012-01-29T13:21:00.005+02:00

This week's Dilly Diner is more of a Bozo Boozer but pretty unusual none the less. From the outside it's just like a thousand other red brick British pubs but when you go inside, this unassuming West Midlands local, has a quirky interior which has attracted the attention of newspapers, radio stations and TV crews from all over the world. Somerset House in Stourbridge hit the headlines as the pub where you can park your pint, unsupported, on the wall. You literally place your full pint of beer up against the wall and it will stick there, unsupported, until you retrieve it. Naturally the locals in the pub see this as less than a party trick but actually a very useful marketing tool since they can simply park their pint against the wall while they toddle off to relieve themselves of some of the beer which they have just rented. Sceptics, media people and scientists of course just can't accept things as they are and so they have spent hours and hours trying to figure out this phenomenon.Not content with the regular's perfectly logical explanation that the walls are magic and the pub is spooked, scientists have come up with the weird explanation that the wallpaper glue was responsible. They say that the glue combined with old tobacco smoke and grime was sufficient to suspend the pint of beer unaided. I'm not so sure,after all how come it's only pints of beer sticking to the wall and not drunken locals caught like flies in a trap?

That Was The Week That Was

2012-01-27T20:19:00.000+02:00

Good news week for bacon it appears. We’ve known forever that bacon freshly grilled and served up in a soft buttered roll is the number one cure for last night’s alcohol overdose but new research released this week suggests that the cured meat has medical applications that have nothing to do with the head and stomach. It seems that bacon -- used in a very unusual way – is one of the best cures out there for a bloody nose. No it’s not got to do with that delicious aroma wafting through the kitchen, it’s a bit more basic - you actually have to stick a piece of bacon up the bloody nostril. It turns out raw "cured salt pork" is as effective a nasal tampon as we have. It works especially well for treating certain conditions that lead to chronic nosebleeds. Of course if you still prefer your bacon cooked and in your mouth instead of up your nostril then maybe the new Smoked Bacon and Cheddar Double Angus burger introduced this week by Burger King will catch your fancy. However it must be pointed out that Burger King was blasted by healthy eating crusaders yesterday for unleashing a real whopper — the biggest and most FATTENING on the high street, packing a belt-busting 966 calories — twice as much as a Big Mac from rivals McDonald's. But with a huge fat content of 58g, the monster munch left diet experts appalled yesterday. The £5.50 flame-grilled treat boasts TWO burgers crammed into a bun with bacon and cheddar — and smothered in "steakhouse sauce". On top of that it contains lettuce, tomato, onion and mayonnaise. Almost half the fat content is saturated fat — meaning a woman gorging on one will consume practically her entire recommended daily allowance of 20g.Meanwhile McDonald’s still could count on the loyalty of 17 year old chicken nugget fan Stacey Irvine. Stacey has eaten practically nothing else since the age of TWO. Horrified doctors learned of the teenager's chronic 15-year addiction after she collapsed and was rushed to hospital struggling to breathe this week. Factory worker Stacey, who has never touched greens or fruit, was found to have anaemia and swollen veins in her tongue. Yesterday she was recovering at home after being put on an urgent course of vitamins — which started in hospital with injections. But despite medics begging her to change her diet she STILL cannot get enough of chicken nuggets. "McDonald's chicken nuggets are my favourite. I share 20 with my boyfriend with chips”.

Sprinkle,sprinkle,little star

2012-01-26T20:41:00.000+02:00

On the subject of oysters Woody Allen once famously commented "I want my food dead, not alive, not wounded, dead" I'm all for that, with one extra request, I want my food to be devoid of any of the culinary debris chefs seem so determined to sprinkle over the top of it. I'm not sure it adds a lot to the dish and often seems to merely be a subtle form of camouflage to detract our attention from possible flaws or imperfections in the culinary execution of the dish. It used to simply be a case of scattering dirty,gritty,poorly washed and poorly chopped parsley over everything that came within the orbit of the chefs fling but then it progressed to sprinkling black dessert plates with icing sugar,white dessert plates with cocoa powder and all other plates with paprika. Plates then became a perfect canvas for waiter's thumbprints and if anything untoward ever happened in the dining room then there was no doubt that it was the butler who did it because there were perfect sets of his dabs everywhere. Of course all things must pass and chefs became a little more subtle with their sprinkles. Cajun seasonings,speciality salts, lemon zested breadcrumbs,dried,pulverised porcini mushrooms or Earl Grey tea are all deftly tossed over our food in the pursuit of a taste sensation to top all taste sensations. Nothing it seems is sacrosanct as chefs everywhere dehydrate proscuitto,tomato skins,fruits,zests and then grind them to a dust to "lift the dishes to another flavour level". Well not for me thanks guys, I'm happy to take my chances with the food just as it comes, if you feel the urge to sprinkle everything in sight then get a job in ice cream, sprinkles make a lot more sense there.

Farewell to squeezers

2012-01-25T20:51:00.000+02:00

Well it looks like the days of the squeezers and thumpers are numbered. You’ve seen them of course in Mr A’s local emporium manhandling the fruit and vegetables without a care in the world. They are totally unconcerned by any threat of retribution as they pick up the fruit piece by piece and concentrating all their strength into one fist, squeeze it as forcefully as they can. Now at this point there are only two possible outcomes,either the fruit is too hard,in which case it is discarded,or it is too soft,in which case it is also discarded as damaged. Having established that there may in fact be some ripe specimens they then continue and apply slightly less force. All this is fine when you catch them in the act of “fruit rage” because you can also skirt around the manhandled items and try to beat them to the good stuff but don’t forget that previous squeezers and thumpers have been at it the whole bloody day and if you have the misfortune of arriving late in the afternoon you run the risk of being enveloped in a swamp of fruit puree. Help however is at hand. A University of Arizona professor has invented a sticker that can tell consumers if a fruit or vegetable is ripe. A marker on the sticker detects a chemical called ethylene gas which is released by fruit or vegetables as they ripen and the sticker turns from white to blue. Bloody marvelous I say, especially since all those nice old men in white jackets who could tell you, in their funny accents, just which avocados were ripe, simply by looking at them, seem to be disappearing. Mr A of course could tell you but you can’t expect him to be everywhere now can you?

Burns Nicht!

2012-01-24T20:02:00.000+02:00

One of the great gastronomic hunts has been taking place at the moment and there's only a day left in the season which must close on 25 Jan. I'm not talking about truffles,black or white,wild salmon,grouse or any type of game, I am of course referring to the annual haggis hunt to provide the wee sleikid beasties which will grace tables of banqueting halls throughout the Highlands and Islands as Scots everywhere gather to celebrate the life and times of their great poet,Rabbie Burns on Burns Night 25 January.Stalking the haggis or "havering" as is the correct technical term,is a very skilled job since it's long hind legs and aerodynamic body make it swift and stealthy animal.Most of the technical terms come from the Gaelic language which is often referred to by it's Lowland name, "Erse",which must be mastered by all haggisers. Often if a haggiser is suspected of having only a very superficial knowledge of his craft he is said not to know his "Erse from his elbow." The Burns Nicht Supper follows a very rigid formula commencing with the Selkirk Grace to open proceedings. "Some hae meat and canna eat,and some wad eat that want it,but we hae meat and we can eat,and sae the Lord be thankit." And then of course the highlight of the evening is when the haggis is piped in by a lone piper, proudly borne by the chef who has lovingly prepared it and often accompanied by the bearer of 2 bottles of whisky held aloft - I'm not sure where he fits in to the scene but I suppose anyone bearing whisky should be made to feel important. The haggis is addressed as follows before being impaled with a dagger and enjoyed by all."Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,Great Chieftan o' the Puddin-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place,Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy of a grace As lang's my arm. I can't imagine we'll spot too many haggii down here at the tip of Africa unfortunately unless of course they're tourists!

The good doctor's pizza

2012-01-23T20:31:00.000+02:00

Here’s a culinary conundrum for you. Most South Africans are fond of pizza, in fact we have numerous Italian sounding restaurants and chains all chasing after our pizza rand. Why do they think that we will be duped into parting with our cash if the menu sounds Italian? After all what do the Italians know about pizza? Well actually it appears that they know very little despite what Jamie would have you believe. The bestselling shop-bought pizza in Italy, and indeed in 33 other countries around the world including Britain, is made by a German-owned food company on an industrial estate just off the M6 in Leyland, Lancashire! For lovers of fresh, non-industrial, locally sourced food – and hopeless romantics who continue to believe that if anyone knows a good pizza when they see one, it should surely be the Italians – this does not, on the face of it, look like good news. But Dr Oetker's thin-crust frozen Ristorante pizzas now account for fully 20% of the Italian ready-made pizza market, with the tuna, four-cheese and mushroom toppings leading sales. I see an opportunity here to introduce the eyeties to black pudding topped pizzas or sliced bratwurst and sauerkraut.Bet that’s pizza-ed you off a bit!

2012-01-22T19:43:00.000+02:00

The brilliant Julie Walters showing the art of serving soup. FoodBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2012-01-21T16:09:00.002+02:00

By 5:30 on any given night, on a gritty neighborhood block of 40th Street in Oakland, hungry patrons queue up at the cozy hipster restaurant Homeroom, this week's Dilly Diner. On the menu? Macaroni and cheese, served 10 different ways. There's the cheddary version with hot dog bits and crushed potato chips; the option with Point Reyes blue cheese and walnuts; and the one made with goat cheese and scallions. Oh, and then you can add mix-ins like bacon, broccoli or a fried egg. Homeroom only serves a single food -- macaroni and cheese."There are pizza restaurants, burger places, ice cream shops — so the question was, 'Why not a mac-and-cheese restaurant?'" says Erin Wade, who along with Allison Arevalo are the owners of Homeroom. "Given that macaroni and cheese is the best food on earth, we couldn't figure out why there weren't entire restaurants already dedicated to it." Well I could answer that one!

That Was The Week That Was

2012-01-20T20:38:00.000+02:00

Well the big news this week for local foodies in SA was the start of season 1 MasterChef USA on our screens. MasterChef Australia was a roaring success so most people were eager to see how the Yanks handled the format. So far not so great! It’s a bit like “Gordon Ramsay on Ice”. There are 2 other judges but of course the camera follows Gordo – maybe it will get better. It’s a taster for our own local attempt at MasterChef SA due to air in March this year. Like him or loathe him one thing is for sure, His Gordoness is a hard act to follow!Meanwhile Jamie must be feeling left out of all this competitive reality cooking. There’s only so much mileage in trying to get people to eat healthy food so this week his production company,Fresh One, put out a call for an extremely extreme reality show they want to shoot called “Cook’s Adventure” and they're currently looking for talent. The show seems to be a sort of culinary Amazing Race: they want you to hustle (their word) from Los Angeles to New York using nothing but your cooking skills. Sound fun? Bet you're going to end up cooking all kinds of roadkill, but go for it. Could you cook to survive?However while Gordo’s restaurant empire continues to decline, Jamie has no such problems. This week saw the announcement of plans for a US restaurant launch of Jamie’s Italian marking the celebrity chef’s first permanent restaurant opening in the US, and building on his increasing television presence which has been established through programmes such as Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Jamie’s Italian – which is based on offering traditional Italian food at high street prices – is by far the most successful of Mr Oliver’s restaurant businesses to date, with 24 sites already opened across the UK in cities from Glasgow in the north to Brighton in the south. Further openings in St Albans and Manchester are scheduled for this Spring. But the US openings would not mark the first international foray for Jamie’s Italian, as the chef already has eateries in operation in Sydney and Dubai.

Time for a trickle?

2012-01-19T20:54:00.000+02:00

I,for one,subscribe to the Trickledown theory. Certain dishes and culinary ideas start life much higher up the pecking order,as it were,and eventually through a series of seemingly unconnected circumstances find their way, almost like baby salmon swimming downstream to the sea,onto our tables in casual restaurants and even at home via the ambitious home cook or more often unfortunately the supermarket chilled foods section. What the hell is he waffling about now you're asking yourself? Well here's a great example.Bearnaise sauce,which of course you all know is,chopped fresh herbs,notably tarragon,shallots,reduced white wine, pepper,egg yolks and butter held in a hot emulsion,takes it's name from the old French province of Bearn,now amalgated into the region Pyrenees Atlantique. The first Bourbon king,Henry IV, was a native of Bearn and was called Le Grand Bearnaise. Now about 1830,at a restaurant at St Germain called Pavillon Henri IV, an unknown chef created this magnificent sauce to go with roast and grilled meats and it seemed natural, considering the connection, to call it after Le Grand Bearnaise. Ok,so back to the trickledown. For many years,this difficult to execute sauce remained in the domain of the grand restaurants and was reserved purely for the pampered palates of the very rich but as public demands changed,Bearnaise became one of the first "crossover artists" which started to appear initially on upmarket Grill and Chop Houses and then eventually the ubiquitous steak house. Now it has trickled down into the supermarket in a bastardised,bottled format and is even available in a shelf stable tetrapack. It would not surprise me in the slightest if it ended up on a Big Mac in the not too distant future.

Neau water is better than no water

2012-01-18T20:07:00.000+02:00

Are you still wandering around with your favourite bottle of designer water carried like a trophy or poking precariously out of your trouser pocket? It's soooooo last year! Maybe you're into waters artificially flavoured with almost every fruit under the sun? Well it's time to get with the programme because the aqua chic are demanding much more in a water than those hackneyed old flavours that have been so popular over the last few years.To attract the beautiful people, today's waters must be enhanced with herbs, chemicals, nutrients, caffeine and even fibre, all promising a host of health benefits not present in good old Eau de Tap. They come with electrolytes, vitamins, or minerals to help you energise, immunise and rejuvenate yourself and even with appetite suppressants to help you lose weight as you rehydrate yourself. They don't even try to keep to the original colour,or lack of it,in the water and so now it is available in a range of colours as well as in a range of flavours.Now this is where I start to get confused. When does it stop being water and assume the identity of a soft drink. How about it you took some water, added artificial colour, artificial flavour, permitted stimulant, put a little gas into it - would you have a New Age water or an Old Age Coke? I really like the product which a Dutch foundation has come up with. It comes in a clear plastic bottle with a simple logo and is called "Neau". There's no water in the bottle but you can fill it from the tap and use it over and over again. It really is water with a purpose because all proceeds are channeled into drinking water projects in countries such as Sudan, Vietnam and Peru. Now that's something worth drinking to!

All that glitters

2012-01-17T20:16:00.000+02:00

The Beverly Hilton was certainly a hotbed of controversy the other evening as it hosted the Golden Globes Awards and for a change not all the attention was on MC Ricky Gervais. Certainly he rattled a few cages, after all that was exactly what he was employed to do, but it was the Executive Chef of the hotel who upset some of the more principled A listers at the Gala Dinner following the awards ceremony. In a time of austerity and recession when many Americans are facing hunger the opulent, gold-garnished menu concocted for guests prompted some observers to choke. Against a backdrop of intensifying food poverty across America, maybe it was a little bit unwise to serve such concerned actors as George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Michael Fassbender a dessert that was literally as difficult to acquire as gold dust. The pudding, decorated with real gold, was described as "a chocolate delice, almond crunch terrine, garnished with acacia honey, caramel and fresh berries" and sprinkled with edible gold flakes at $135 a gram. The dish was devised over six months by pastry chef Thomas Henzi. Whilst there may be a thematic excuse for using gold in the dessert it was considered by many to be a tad insensitive in the current harsh economic climate.

Un-brie-lievable !

2012-01-16T20:04:00.000+02:00

Who says crime doesn’t pay? The ink had hardly dried on his police caution issued for shoplifting before old Antony Worrall Thompson was out there milking his notoriety for all it was worth. Lesser men might have hidden their lights under a bushel for a decent period of time but not Wozza. Apparently there’s no such thing as bad publicity so disgraced TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson was all smiles and raising glasses of champers to happy press snappers only days after being nicked for shoplifting cheese and wine. The TV cook, cautioned for stealing from Tesco, was in Dublin for a chat show. He told Irish viewers on Saturday night he was "very embarrassed, very ashamed". Then he popped back across the Irish Sea to appear on another chat programme last night, ITV1's That Sunday Night Show, where he blamed childhood abuse for his actions. In fact he was so busy being sorry this week-end that he had no time to pop down to Tesco’s.

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2012-01-15T15:20:00.000+02:00

The media have had a field day this week with Ready Steady Crook Antony Worral Thompson so i see no reason why we shouldn't join in. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2012-01-14T15:38:00.002+02:00

This week’s Dilly Diner didn’t last long but perhaps it gives us some idea of what the future holds. Power company Electric Ireland recently debuted a Twitter Cafe at the Dublin Web Summit. The Twitter Cafe used the social media messaging site to process orders of visitors. Hungry guests at the Dublin Web Summit were asked to send a tweet with #tweetcafe along with the menu number of the food or drink they wished to order. The Twitter Cafe used a digital board to inform people, using their Twitter handle naturally, that their order was ready. Although the cafe was just a temporary installation, don’t be surprised if you see this sort of thing popping up all over the place. The day may not be far when you can send in a to-go food order via Twitter. Social media and food service is a tasty combination.

That Was The Week That Was

2012-01-13T20:51:00.000+02:00

It was a bad week for British celeb chefs as their egos were dented and credibility went out the window. First up was Wozza or Antony Worral Thompson to you and I, as he was caught shoplifting from his local Tesco’s and not just once but 5 times over a 16 day period. It was a case of Ready Steady Crook as he helped himself to wine and cheese. Of course we were told it was all due to problems in his childhood but I have heard that he was dropped from the TV show because he was pinching ingredients out of Ainsley’s basket and the poor bugger couldn’t come up with any flash in the pan dishes!The other fella who suffered a credibility crisis was Sir Heston of Fat Duck. Last year he came galloping out of the morning glow on a white charger determined to revamp and revitalise the Little Chef chain of roadside diners with new ideas, new menus and new enthusiasm. Sadly and realistically, as soon as the TV cameras stopped rolling and he moved on to a new crusade, things went back to normal and this week the owners were forced to close down 60 restaurants and retrench the staff. Why do these people think they can change entire company cultures in 6 x 30 minute episodes? Do they really think they are bullet-proof?Back to poor old Wozza cos’ his problems didn’t stop with the shoplifting. He suffered more misery this week when the pub he part-owns went bust. The Lamb in the Oxfordshire village of Satwell went into administration after poor sales over Christmas. But he claims he is not in financial difficulties, despite being hit hard by the recession when his business went into administration in 2009. Worrall Thompson closed four of his restaurants that year and sold his house for £3.2million to moved into rented accommodation in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Chris Smith and Nick Gross took over the running of the Lamb in February 2009, while the celebrity chef retained part-ownership of the premises.But after slow trade during the festive season, Mr Smith has accepted defeat and the village pub will become the third in the prosperous Henley to close in eight weeks.

I'm not sure this is such a great idea

2012-01-12T20:35:00.000+02:00

Some dishes just don't seem to make sense. Well let me restate that, nowadays a hell of a lot of dishes don't make sense and that's no big deal because they'll not be around in 5 or 6 years, possibly not even 5 or 6 months but there are some that are some old favourites that still don't make sense. Take for example Pan Bagnat which of course as you know is a Provencal speciality and very popular as a picnic dish, it's almost like a posh cousin of the Gatsby so beloved by us Capetonians. The Gatsby is a large crispy loaf sliced lengthwise and filled normally with all manner of things including sliced polony and hot deepfried chips and consumed on the hoof.The Pan Bagnat, which is literally translated as "soaked bread", is often filled with all the ingredients you would normally find in a salade nicoise, tomatoes, capers, olives, garlic, basil and anchovies, but there the similarity with the Gatsby fizzles out. You see when you make bread one of the things you try to do is to make it reasonably light, it doesn't have to be like the candyfloss of mass produced white toasting loaves but it should not be dense and doughy. That's why you use yeast in most cases to give the rise and bicarbonate of soda in conjunction with buttermilk in other cases to achieve the same end result. But with the Pan Bagnat, after the baker having successfully achieved the light, airy texture, the next step is to make the bloody thing heavy and doughy again and that's the bit that confuses me. Why don't they just stop at this point - that would be a nice sandwich, but that's too simple.The loaf is split lengthwise, liberally drizzled with olive oil, packed with the afore-mentioned goodies perhaps supplemented by some cheese, ham, pestos or relishes and after the top is restored you then proceed to wrap it in greaseproof or clingfilm and place enormous weights on it to squeeze all the air back out of it. It's left like this for up to 4 hours. It ends up squashed, doughy, not particularily visually appealing and a real mystery to me.I must confess that I've sometimes experienced the same thing with the Gatsby when it's ended up at the bottom of the bag under 3 or 4 cool drinks but never, ever by design - apart from spoiling the integrity of a great Cape delicacy, it's a slap in the face to the baker.

Not a pleasant pucker

2012-01-11T20:42:00.000+02:00

I tend to read more recipes than write them. In fact generally speaking most recipes I write are for other people because when I cook I like to work around the ingredients and not the measurements. But there are times when you’ve just got to bow to conventional wisdom and follow some style of recipe without questioning it too much. Preparing a curry is one of those times.I love the complexity of flavours in a well prepared curry, the overwhelming scents of the spices and the presence of all the taste sensations, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent in one dish. I think I understand the role of most of the ingredients – for heat we use chilli, mustard seed, black pepper, ginger, for aroma , cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, garam masala, turmeric, fenugreek, for sweetness, cassia and coriander and for sourness, cumin, mango powder, asafoetida and tamarind. Now tamarind is the ingredient that fascinates me, why is it there and who took the decision to add it all those years ago. It tastes vile. It’s got to taste vile since tamarind paste can lurk quite happily for years at ambient temperature in your cupboard. If you don’t believe me try a little, it’ll make your mouth pucker – not a pleasant pucker cos’ you’ll think the inside of your cheeks are caught in a corkscrew. It will come as no surprise to learn that a slab of tamarind pulp sprinkled with a little bit of salt makes excellent brass and copper polish.The other thing that interests me about tamarind is that it is the only important spice we can claim to have an African origin and yet it plays no major role in African cookery. It is thought of as an Indian ingredient and even it’s use in Cape Malay cookery owes more to Indonesian links than African. It can apparently be transformed in to a refreshing drink still popular in the Sudan but beware it’s laxative properties.

Better look this one up in the mycology book ...

2012-01-10T20:09:00.000+02:00

So everyone’s into this foraging business. Old Rene Redzepi at Noma has fired up chefs everywhere to get out there with funny clothes, carrying big baskets, to go looking for out of the ordinary foods to titillate the taste tastebuds of discerning diners. I hope to God the chefs in the restaurants I frequent stay in the kitchens and leave the food sourcing to professionals! A restaurant in Canberra, Australia's capital, is closed after two customers died because their meal contained deadly mushrooms. The Sydney Morning Herald says chef Liu Jun accidentally used death cap mushrooms in a private New Year's Eve meal he put together for some customers, who in turn died of liver failure pretty much instantly. Authorities think Liu picked the mushrooms himself, and mistook them for a variety of mushroom that wouldn't make his customers' livers stop working. One friend of the chef summed up the mistake as follows: "Liu Jun, being a chef, he's super into fresh food, and that's part of the problem here ... You really just don't expect that you make one mistake while eating something like that and be dead within 48 hours in the most horrible way." No, you certainly don't expect that!

The King is in the altogether....

2012-01-09T20:57:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out whether someone is taking the piss or whether they are the real thing…bloody idiots! An Espresso machine manufacturer in the UK has just brought out a new piece of equipment which caught my attention. Now I know some people really take coffee seriously, in fact I am one of them. I even go to the extent of sourcing a selection of green beans, home roasting them and making my special blends but there is a line and I reckon Rancilio has crossed it! Believe it or not they have just launched Xcelsius, a temperature profiling system which allows baristas to micro-manage the brew temperature to within 0.1 degrees Celsius. They claim this can have a big effect on the taste of the resulting coffee and will appeal particularly to coffee aficionados – well not this one pal, I think it’s a load of marketing bullshit! Next thing will be coffee cups designed specifically to bring out the best characteristics of single origin coffee beans like that bloody Austrian glass company who claimed the only way to appreciate wine fully was to have different shaped glasses for the different cultivars! It seems to me the world is divided into chancers and gullible halfwits with only a few of us in the middle trying to point out that in fact the King is not actually wearing any “new clothes” at all!

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2012-01-08T16:13:00.000+02:00

This week Janice and Ray get a bit upset with their cold tomato soup.FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2012-01-07T18:30:00.000+02:00

You'll find this week's Dilly Diner, the Sturehof restaurant, right in the centre of town in Stockholm, Sweden, where it has been pleasing diners since 1897. Specialising in seafood, you can enjoy Swedish or Canadian salmon, lobsters, oysters, plaice and prawns and perhaps the major selling point of this well established restaurant is the daily changing selection of genuine Swedish husmanskost or homecooked Swedish specialities. In fact on the evening of 25 July 1924 two Swedish car enthusiasts, Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson, sat down to tuck into a huge platter of husmanskost in this very restaurant and a few hours later the company that would become known to the world as Volvo was born.However, perhaps one of the most notorious specialities of this restaurant, has been banned from being consumed inside the building and if you want to try it, normally in late summer, then you are forced to sit at one of the outside tables due to the lingering, disgusting odour which it gives off. Rivalling South East Asia's durian fruit, Iceland's buried shark or Norway's lutefisk, Korea's kimchee or even Bombay's Bombay Duck, is Sweden's Surstromming, vying for a position in the world rankings as one of the world's most rank foods. This dish of fermented herrings is absolutely vile and it's a mystery why it doesn't kill anyone !Herrings, caught in the Baltic in May, are soaked in a brine and then stacked in barrels in the summer sun to start the fermentation process. They are then canned and only opened when the can begins to dangerously bulge at either end due to a build up of obnoxious gas within. Cans are best opened under water to limit the spray of gas and goo. At this stage some idiots even eat the contents of this festering herring tomb ! They say it is an acquired taste.......those who survive.

That Was The Week That Was

2012-01-06T23:20:00.000+02:00

It was a good week for some happy fishermen at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, Japan, as they sold a record sized tuna for a record price. Bidding was brisk before Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., which operates the Sushi Zanmai restaurants, sealed the deal at the price of about R 25,000 per kg. I know sushi is becoming expensive but that’s just ridiculous. Kiyoshi said the fish would be a gift to the Japanese people for all the hardships they had endured in 2011, not least the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster, as well as the general economic malaise that is affecting the country as he was going to sell the approximately 10,000 slices of sushi at regular prices of between R14 and up to R50 for a cut of the best fatty "otoro" sushi. Better PR than business!Meanwhile as if it wasn’t cold enough in London a pop up sushi bar on top of a building in the centre of the city was attracting a chilled out clientele.The Sake & Sushi Ice Bar is Aqua Kyoto’s new winter terrace offering alfresco dining surrounded by hand-carved ice sculptures.To fight the frigid elements, outdoor heaters and cozy cashmere blankets are available. Hot sake is a must but how about including torched salmon sushi topped with guacamole and sea bass suchi with chili and sesame. Also on offer is an array of warm hand-held bowls including stir-friend winter chestnut udon noodles and steamed king crab leg in miso soup.The Sushi & Sake Ice Bar will be open for business through February 12 on the 5th floor at 240 Regent Street, London.Of course London’s young, urban and hip consumers needn’t lament the demise of the pop up sushi bar because they still have Boxpark, the shopping centre in East London's Shoreditch neighborhood that’s being billed as "the world's first pop-up mall." The concept is simple enough: it’s a small mall, comprising more than 40 retailers, cafes, restaurants and galleries, housed compactly within a stack of shipping containers on a formerly vacant lot. Boxpark occupies a 500,000 square-foot site at the base of a rail station served by London's Overground, the suburban rail extension of the Tube. Although the 2012 Olympic legacy projects and East London’s burgeoning tech and creative industries are expected to accelerate the growth of this area, the firms that jointly control the property don't intend to break ground on a permanent project on the site for another five years so an entrepreneur arranged to lease the land in the interim and set about cultivating a mix of tenants for his experimental project. I wonder if he got the idea from our pop up townships?

Fishy tale

2012-01-05T20:53:00.000+02:00

It’s difficult to raise the culinary profile of an entire nation. You’ve got to dispel the hoary old myths and be serious about ingredients, quality, and delivery. I reckon South Africa has been on a culinary journey since the mid eighties with some measure of success but we still have a long way to go and we need to be taken seriously so I was less than impressed by an article in the Guardian, a newspaper which I thought got it right most of the time, by it’s Johannesburg correspondent, a Mr David Smith, who despite living amongst us, is under the misguided notion that everyone goes around chomping "biltong, bobotie, boerewors (spicy sausage), bunny chow, mopane worms and pap (porridge made from maize meal)." What a tosser! He goes on to state that these favourites are under pressure because South Africans are discovering the joys of the British-style chippy. He further observes that fish and chip shops are spreading fast in South Africa and visibly booming. I’m not sure how long he has been here but every single corner café in the country sells fish and chips in addition to long established fisheries the length and breadth of the country. Misinformed gibberish like this does nothing to encourage the people who are really trying to promote tourism to the country. I can’t remember the last time I popped down to the neighbourhood restaurant for a plate of bobotie or some mopane worms!

Another one bites the dust

2012-01-04T20:53:00.000+02:00

The first major foodie upset of 2012 has got to be the news that Charlie Trotter is closing his Chicago restaurant after 25 years. Short tempered and surly at times, he was the trail blazing chef who didn’t really want to play the media game. He was more content in his kitchen rather than posturing in front of the TV cameras and opening restaurants all over the place trying to extract more money from the public without delivering the goods. Charlie’s name was above the restaurant door and you could be sure that he would be in the kitchen. He was also directly or indirectly responsible for many of the cornerstones of today’s high end restaurants.Trotter was among the first U.S. chefs to popularize degustation menus, better known as tasting menus, just two years after his restaurant opened. He was a whiz with vegetables and offered a totally vegetarian menu. Long before locavore was a word or seasonal menus trendy, Charlie’s menus started each day as a blank sheet of paper. He can also lay claim to the concept of having a Chef’s Table in the kitchen as a permanent feature. Raw food, nose to tail dining, he pioneered them all but now has decided he needs a break. He’s going back to school to study philosophy and political science and travel a bit…..but he hasn’t ruled out the possibility that he may be back!

Organic brooks

2012-01-03T20:39:00.000+02:00

So a brand new year dawns with all it's challenges and none greater I fear than challenging the bullshit of the " jump on the bandwagon and make a quick buck from organic" movement. I'm a firm believer in the principle that you can't be half pregnant - you're either pregnant or you're not, the food is either organic or it's not. You cannot follow 70% organic principles and get certification from some mickey mouse authority with absolutely no way of enforcing their code of practice and then charge the hefty premium that all these products seem to carry - even that in itself I find strange,I mean if you're not using expensive pesticides etc,just relying on good old mother nature as it were,then why the hell is your product so much more costly to the consumer? I reckon the sad reality is that people are suckers for labels - stick a label on it and and the consumer who considers himself to be discerning, concerned and a friend of the earth, will fall for it hook, line and sinker.Take my friend Dave for example. Over lunch today he proudly displayed his brand new pair of underpants. I don't mean he whipped his breeks down and mooned the lunch table but he trotted off to his bedroom and returned with his treasured Xmas present and a proud smirk on his face - ORGANIC UNDERPANTS! How the hell can you have organic underpants I shrieked with laughter but there it was on the ever so important label,made from organic cotton. Now I don't want to cast aspersions but I am rather sceptical about underpants made from organic cotton in India of all places. I'm just not sure how venerable a body the Bengali Soil Association is? And there's one other small point that wasn't covered in the accompanying literature - just how does one wash these organic underpants? Surely they'll lose their authenticity the moment they come in contact with Super Improved,New Formula for this Week,Cleanem in the washing machine. It seems to me that the only way to retain that feeling of superiority over your fellow undewear wearers is to pop over to India and give your smalls a quick dip in the Ganges.

The PC Guide to Eating Out

2012-01-02T20:24:00.000+02:00

So you’re doing your bit to save the world and making it a better place for everyone to live in, good for you! You’re an ethical shopper who buys organic, supports local farmers, avoids over processed foods, enthuses about Fairtrade and of course recycles absolutely everything– aren’t you just the smarmiest git on the block. When you rustle up a meal at home you score top points on your ethical scorecard but what happens when you eat out? The sad truth is that you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes in your favourite trendy restaurant and surely you don’t leave your ethics at home do you when you go out for a meal? Long hours, poor wages, terrible working conditions are only the tip of the iceberg. South African restaurateurs better wake up because a new style of restaurant guide in the States may soon find it’s way here - a new tool to tell the ethical restaurants from the grimy ones, a guide rating restaurants based on tipped worker wages, non-tipped worker wages, paid sick days, and opportunity for advancement—like Zagat for socially-conscious dining. The guide also includes tip cards for restaurant owners and workers that inform them of their rights.The guide covers everywhere from Burger King to five star restaurants, and the results are mostly depressing. That’s hardly surprising. However if a similar guide was produced here in South Africa I don’t think the word would be depressing, more likely frightening or criminal!

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2012-01-01T16:00:00.001+02:00

I hope you're not all ushering in the New Year like the inimitable Rikki Fulton in this sketch. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view. Happy New Year everyone.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-12-31T20:30:00.000+02:00

The quaintly named "Pea Soup Andersen's" in the little town of Buellton. California, just north of Santa Barbara is this week's Dilly Diner. The name says it all in terms of the diner's signature dish - delicious Split Pea Soup, but it's much more than that, for Pea Soup Andersen's has a spirit of wholesome family warmth which draws people again and again through its doors. In a world where many restaurants only survive for 12 months or less, this Dilly Diner is heading for it's centenary.It all began on Friday, June 13th, 1924, when Anton Andersen, born in Denmark purchased a piece of the Golden State, California. Anton, who was trained in exclusive restaurants in Europe and New York, put his tuxedo in mothballs and donned a bib apron, soon to become his personal trademark. He and his charming wife, Juliette, opened a tiny restaurant and named it "Andersen's Electric Cafe," in honor of their prized possession, a new electric stove.Juliette was from the east of France and an expert cook, so she prepared many of the recipes; the most popular with the customers was her split pea soup.With the demand for their split pea soup increasing steadily, the Andersen's soon had to locate large suppliers of peas far from their area. Just three years after the first bowl was served, they were amazed to realize they needed to order ONE TON of peas! When Anton faced the problem of what to do with one ton of peas, he solved it by putting them in the window, proclaiming the restaurant, "The Home of Split Pea Soup," Though a ton of peas seemed a staggering amount then, Andersen's today "splits" many tons of peas every month, transforming them into the famed soup. ..averaging thousands of bowls a day!

That Was The Week That Was

2011-12-30T20:50:00.000+02:00

Lots of turkeys were cooked and lots were crocked this week as families everywhere sat down to a traditional Xmas lunch and of course the culinary pundits were freely dispensing advice on how to cope with the entire experience. Celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott's "failsafe" Christmas dinner recipe was judged the least likely to end in disaster on the big day.The Can't Cook Won't Cook presenter's strategy for a stress-free festive meal was the easiest to follow among those offered by all the big names of the kitchen.His Royal Ramsayness was even demonstrating his recipe over four hours of live TV on Channel 4 on Christmas Day morning so that the nation could cook along with Gordo to ensure success – what a miserable way to spend Xmas, a full four hours of the obnoxious git live on TV? Ramsay's formula would make for "a very classy Christmas lunch" it was agreed but was complex with "loads of ingredients" in common with Blumen Hestonstein’s recipe which had "lots of components to juggle requiring careful planning and a big oven with lots of hobs, plus lots of pans".Jamie of course came up with the most simple recipes but they weren’t judged by food expert Ben McCormack, editor of the Square Meal magazine to be as easy as Ainsley’s. Two Michelin-starred chef John Burton Race, star of French Leave was judged guilty of serving up the most complex guide to cooking Christmas dinner. In the introduction to his 12-stage recipe for turkey and stuffing, Burton Race claims it "allows you to prepare calmly in advance". But Mr McCormack said: "Overall, it's very chefy, and the sort of thing you would go to a restaurant to pay for rather than make yourself.

Food wishes for 2012

2011-12-29T20:16:00.000+02:00

It’s that time of year when crystal balls are dusted off and sometimes educated, sometimes uneducated, predictions are made about what we can expect on the food scene in the upcoming year. Well I have no intention of trying to second guess the culinary peccadillos of our relatively unsophisticated local diners, disinterested restaurateurs and woefully undertrained chefs so I’m going to restrict my comments to my personal wishes for 2012 :I wish the Slow Food Movement would move a bit faster! I totally endorse their ideals of honest, well prepared food treated with respect, with no smoke and mirrors shows and I wish more local restaurants would wake up and smell the coffee.I wish some local chefs would understand that they are cooking for a Cape Town market, not London or Sydney or New York. Embrace local ingredients, give decent sized portions and for chrissake charge reasonable prices. I think most people have some idea of what ingredients cost. R800 per head plus for a poncey meal is a ripoff in anyone’s book!I wish we could look forward to some trends which were actually first predicted in 1980 - stark decor in contrast to the glitz and glitter palaces, emphasis on quality food rather than atmosphere, good but not pretentious service, reaction against trendy, simplistically labelled cuisines such as nouvelle cuisine, California cuisine, eclectic fresh food, the Mediterranean diet - so what's changed ?

Rip roaring time

2011-12-28T20:13:00.000+02:00

So that was it then, Merry Xmas, everybodys having fun....according to Slade. Everyone,that is,except the Friends of the Earth who just can't let up for a day and let us forget about our feelings of guilt. Xmas Day is one of the few days in the year that I really look forward to a traditional roast meal, succulent turkey, honey sweet ham, pork chipolatas, roast potatoes and of course those little green buggers referred to by my son as "cauli balls" - the humble brussels sprout. But these PC bozos in beads and sandals have got the brussels sprout in their sights as Public Enemy No 1.
Eat a lot of sprouts they say and you'll find they have quite a harsh impact on the digestive system. To put it bluntly,they cause terrible gas — and that gas is precisely the sort we're always having a go at cows for emitting: methane. Worse for the planet than C02 and generally not something you want building up in your house,let alone the atmosphere,methane is a killer. And due to their high carbohydrate content, sprouts cause us to produce quite a lot of it. Gimmee a break for one bloody day pleeze! I enjoyed my sprouts at the Xmas lunch,I may have eaten too many of them I suppose, I may have expelled a fart or too also which probably had a greater impact on those around the table than on myself but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. If you're the sort of person to be concerned about a few seasonal farts then I reckon you could very well be one yourself.

Good feast you merry gentlemen

2011-12-27T20:30:00.000+02:00

So you’ve been overdoing it a bit over the last few days have you? Now the feelings of guilt set in and you start feeling a little sorry for yourself - that's it, no more of all this Xmas cheer for me, I'm going to get back on the straight and narrow and next year it's going to be all change, healthy, healthy, healthy. Well don't feel too bad because there's a strong possibility that a lot of what you have been consuming, provided you didn't go totally overboard, actually did you a little bit of good. If you’ve had chocolate, red wine and vegetables then you can perhaps be somewhat smug.
The good news is that chocolate can boost levels of antioxidents in the blood by as much as 20% but the bad news is that this only applies to dark chocolate. Milk chocolate does not have the same heath-giving properties and so you would need to eat twice as much to obtain the same amount of antioxidents - but let's be totally honest here, that's probably the amount you did scoff down.
Drinking red wine can also be beneficial, especially full bodied red wines produced in countries with lots of sunshine such as Chile, Argentina, Australia and of course South Africa. I'm sure you were all flying the flag when it came to your choice of red wine to encourage your antioxidents to fend off heart disease and cancer. Of course they say that should drink no more than 3 glasses per day although thankfully they don't define the size of a glass. In my experience, Yuletide glasses are notoriously bigger.
Salads especially with tomatoes, fresh vegetables with your turkey and fresh fruits and berries with your ice cream will all have contributed to the sense of wellbeing which you should be experiencing . If you aren't experiencing the benefits of healthy indulgence then it can only be due to the fact that too much of a good thing is no good thing.

Its the most blunderful time of the year

2011-12-26T21:00:00.000+02:00

So did you get through the Xmas festivities relatively unscathed. It's strange that at a time when we should be enjoying peace and goodwill towards all men, that bloody turkey dinner claims so many victims. Maybe it's the stress of catering for the extended family and friends, the thought that after the wine has been quaffed Uncle George is going to start insulting someone or the sheer terror that the prospect of washing up so many dishes brings - whatever the reason, it seems that our defences are down and mishaps in the household are at an all year high.
There are the predictable burns and scalds as pots bubble away and the oversized turkey gets stuck between the grids in the oven, refusing to budge, regardless of what you call it. Bandaged fingers bear witness to deadly duels with reluctant carrots and brussel sprouts and red eyes are a clue to the fact that there may be a tad too much onion in the sage and onion stuffing. Young Mary seems to be walking strangely, perhaps not having realised the dangers of breaking the photo copier glass whilst in the act of duplicating one's body parts at the Xmas office party and if father had used a screwdriver instead of a pair of scissors when assembling the kid's toys earlier on this morning then he wouldn't have that tea towel wrapped around a nasty gouge in his thumb. Fortunately he got through the yearly ritual of decorating the tree without falling into it or electrocuting himself whilst testing the lights which seem designed to have a useful life of about 12 days.
Of course the excitement of the occasion and the sheer volume of food placed out on the table tends to cause parents to lose concentration until they are jolted by the sight little Johnny turning blue with a hot chipolata wedged in his windpipe and the already distressed child is unceremoniously turned upside down and whacked on the back - something which he can't understand because normally they insist on him cleaning his plate. The offending chipolata sails through the air escaping the outstretched fingers of Uncle Norman who never did get his first team colours and plops into Aunty Jane's sweet white wine causing her to let out a shriek, jump backwards and fall off the chair. The guy beside her, she never really explained who he was, springs to her assistance whilst knocking over 3 glasses of red wine and the burning candle centrepiece, splattering hot wax in the direction of the ruddy cheeks of a dejected Uncle Norman and setting fire to a few discarded paper hats. And so the mayhem continues as the children start riding their new bikes into walls, adults trip over computer cables, glasses are broken - perhaps the Government's Xmas message shouldn't be Arrive Alive but rather Get Through Xmas Lunch Alive !

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-12-25T18:30:00.000+02:00

You complain in a restaurant at your peril but never, ever, try complaining in a vegetarian restaurant, you just don't know the strength of these people. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-12-24T23:00:00.000+02:00

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

That Was The Week That Was

2011-12-23T20:40:00.000+02:00

It was a bad week for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il – ill no longer, now severely dead. Kim was renowned for his lavish tastes and gluttony and his own personal sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto, escaped and wrote a tell-all book in 2003 about working for the North Korean despot for 10 years.The leader liked to eat his sashimi so fresh that he wanted the mouth of the fish to be still moving when he took his first bite. How Fujimoto cut that, I’m not sure, but he claims to have been able to avoid the vital organs to keep the fish twitching. Fujimoto was enlisted to travel the world to bring Kim the greatest delicacies: fruit from China, Thailand and Malaysia; beer from Czechoslovakia; pork from Denmark; caviar from Iran and Uzbekistan; and seafood from Japan. Kim insisted that his rice be inspected grain by grain so that broken grains would be extracted. In fact, Fujimoto used Kim’s exacting greed to escape. He showed him a Japanese cooking show which featured an uni dish, knowing that Kim would want to have it. Indeed, when Fujimoto was sent to Japan to retrieve the sea urchin, he escaped.But the best of Kim's culinary escapades (that we know about) has to be the one with the giant rabbits. In what was claimed to be a scheme to solve North Korea's crippling, deadly famine, North Korean officials got in touch with a German giant rabbit farmer named Karl Szmolinsky. It seems like a great idea: rabbits breed fast, and giant rabbits, at upwards of 20 pounds each, have a good amount of meat on them. So a posse from the North Korean embassy stops by Szmolinsky's farm and buys up the six biggest rabbits he's got. He even gives them a low price, inspired by the good cause his giant livestock would be going to, and ships them off to Pyongyang a month later.Then, as Szmolinsky later related - A few weeks later a journalist from London called me. He'd just got back from the birthday celebrations of Kim Jong-il and said he'd seen my rabbits, including Robert. They were being eaten by the leader and his guests. It's clear to me now that the whole thing was a big scam. They sent in their ministers and invented a story to trick me, just so they could put on a fancy banquet for their leader. In another tale of strange eating events this week Dutch TV presenters Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno both allegedly underwent surgery to remove small pieces of flesh from their bodies prior to the aptly titled show Proefkonijnen, meaning Guinea Pigs, broadcast in the Netherlands on Wednesday. Storm was filmed having surgery to remove a piece of his bottom whilst Zeno gave up part of his abdomen. The pair were then challenged to eat each other's body part after it had been fried in sunflower oil by a TV chef. In the trailer for the show the duo sit down at a candlelit table to eat the morsels, although the footage does not show the cannibalism occurring. I’m sure Kim Jong-il was turning in his grave at the prospect of missing out on that!

Pop goes the weasels

2011-12-22T20:16:00.000+02:00

So the story goes that small time cool beverage producer goes along to big time retailer, chest puffed out with pride over their unique retro packaged cool drinks with unusual flavours which they feel big time retailer will snap at and everyone will live happily ever after. Who the hell still believes in fairy tales? Big time retailer snaps alright…..snaps the bloody idea, tells the pop producer to piss off and miraculously a few months later the product appears on the shelves. Small time beverage producer jumps up and down in indignation and pops a few corks but why the hell is anyone really surprised? Behind the fancy schmancy warm fuzzy messages, behind the holier than thou eco messages, behind the consumer friendly gobbledegook lies the real beast carefully concealed, a veritable wolf in sheep’s clothing. They don’t give a toss for the consumer, the supplier, the small producer. They squeeze, squeeze and squeeze to inflate the bottom line and line their pockets. They travel the world to steal ideas and replicate them, that is the nature of the beast. Why the hell is anyone surprised? Now a small Indianapolis-based start-up company uFlavor is offering consumers the chance to concoct their own soft drinks. uFlavor’s founders believe they have launched the world’s first user-generated refreshment company. Soon customers will be able to choose from a list of 100 flavours, which they will be able to combine in varying amounts as they create their own unique drink. Beverage creators can also upload an image for a personalized bottle label. For now, all drinks created are available to buy online via the uFlavor marketplace. Soon appearing in your local supermarket………!

Load of balls

2011-12-21T20:30:00.000+02:00

Everyone wants their 15 minutes in the limelight I suppose but it’s really bizarre how some achieve it. Some years ago it was very trendy to dish up deep fried Mars Bars in selected fish and chip shops in Scotland. I believe the practice is dying out along with devotees who are dropping like flies from coronary attacks, a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. However two young chefs (and I use the word advisedly) at one Edinburgh bar are confident their calorie-drenched answer to the deep-fried Mars bar - battered butter balls - will be a real hit with the customers. Already popular in the US, the dessert has been given a Scottish twist by cooking the balls of pure butter in Irn Bru batter. Called Braveheart Butter Bombs, the pudding is accompanied with an Irn Bru ice cream and coulis. One of them said: “We thought we'd add a bit of fun to our menu of Scottish dishes and it's really got people talking.” So there you are, two headbangers and 15 minutes in the sun.

Holy toast!

2011-12-20T20:30:00.000+02:00

I’ve been agonising over what to ask for as a Xmas gift this year. After all you only get one shot per annum at being totally indulgent since you’re kinda expected to be a bit more sensible on your birthday. Birthdays are about clothes and books while Xmas is definitely exotic booze and crazy gadgets. The problem is that I already have as many gadgets, fancy phones, sat navs and computers as any one man deserves so I was at a bit of a loose end until I came across the ultimate Xmas gift – it just jumped out at me from the computer screen as I was idly surfing the net. What every self respecting man irregardless of his religious beliefs really needs is a Jesus toaster! Surely this must be the ultimate Christmas gift - a toaster that burns an image of Jesus into your daily bread? An American company, well it had to be, began selling them 18 months ago and orders are really picking up. Of course the Yanks just don’t know when to stop so there’s also the Virgin Mary toaster, the Peace Sign toaster and the Marijuana Leaf toaster! Even before the existence of the holy toasters, the face of Christ has supposedly popped up the unlikeliest of places appearing on a rocking chair in California, on a toasted sandwich on EBay, on a guitar hanging in the Instrumental Music and Sound store in Michigan and on a tissue at a health centre in Coventry, England. You just can’t keep a good man down can you?

Oodles of noodles

2011-12-19T20:30:00.000+02:00

Just when you get comfortable with doing something in a stress free way with a modicum of success along comes a bloody expert to tell you that you're doing it wrong. Why don't they mind their own bloody business, it works for me, you do whatever the hell you want ! Take instant noodles for example. Now I must confess that I don't eat them on a regular basis, maybe once every two or three years but lots of people must enjoy them because they're everywhere. I always thought that you put the noodles in a pot with some water, threw in the contents of the little sachet of seasoning and let them cook for about 3 minutes to get a delicious bowl of broth and noodles.According to an "expert" I was totally wrong. By doing this, when we actually boil the ingredients in the powder, normally with MSG, it will change the molecular structure of the MSG, causing it to be toxic. The other thing is that the noodles are coated with wax and it will take around four to five days for the body to excrete the wax after you have taken the noodles. It seems we should cook the noodles and then discard the waxy water. Then boil another pot of water and remove from heat. Add noodles back to the pot along with the seasoning to make the noodle soup. Now there are a few things here that raised my interest. How come all those MSG laced sauces in Chinese restaurants are not toxic ? More importantly how come, after all this rigmarole, they still have the bare assed cheek to call them instant noodles ?

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-12-18T16:27:00.000+02:00

Everytime I hear Heinz Tomato Sauce it's music to my ears. Check out this clip and you'll see what I mean. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-12-17T20:30:00.000+02:00

This week's Dilly Diner is for the birds - it's perched on top of a tree in Okinawa, Japan and customers have to access it via an elevator going up through the old tree trunk. It looks pretty spectacular and is a real attention grabber but sadly that's all that's real about it. This is no ordinary tree, it's not even a tree at all, it's simply a concrete structure with real vines planted on it.
The seafood restaurant NAHA HARBOR DINER sits on the top of a big banyan tree near the Naha port. It specialises in using plenty of fresh okinawan ingredients from surrounding farms and the ocean and provides an excellent viewing platform to enjoy the sunset and the twinkling harbour lights.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-12-16T20:30:00.000+02:00

We’re certainly into the silly season as this week’s food stories demonstrate. Firstly in one of the most developed countries in the world there is a butter shortage. In Norway the shortfall has been blamed on a rainy summer that cut into feed production and therefore dairy output, but also the ballooning popularity of a low-carbohydrate, fat-rich diet that has sent demand for butter soaring. "Sales all of a sudden just soared, 20 per cent in October then 30 per cent in November," said Lars Galtung, the head of communications at TINE, Norway's biggest farmer-owned co-operative. Now there is a booming black market in the yellow gold. Online sellers are cashing in on the crisis by offering 500-gram packs for up to €350 (R3500), smugglers are making a fortune with food safety authorities warning people not to buy butter from strangers and ferries from Denmark have found a lucrative new product to offer in their duty free shops.Meanwhile the bureuocrats in the EU have decreed that prunes are not a laxative! Many people have had a long held belief that prunes are good for improving bowel function however the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has ruled this is not the case and producers cannot say that they do. A British Euro MP Sir Graham Watson MEP has now challenged an EU Commissioner to a prune-eating contest after his food safety committee ruled that prunes do not have a laxative effect. I’m afraid this has all the symptoms of a running joke.Of course there are many precedents to these silly EU rulings. Only last month the EU concluded there was no evidence to prove drinking water can prevent dehydration. The conclusions led to a ban on bottled water companies using the claim. At the time, Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large. The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true” Eau dear!

Don't throw the dog a bone

2011-12-15T20:30:00.000+02:00

Some people are really daft about their pets and we've heard of special cooked meals and even restaurants for dogs but now it seems that is not enough.Fussy owners are demanding to know the origin of the food they are consuming but up to now they had no idea what really went into that meal for Fido. Well now they do, at least in Munich, thanks to BeuteFuchs,a store that creates organic, raw-food diets custom-made for canines.BeuteFuchs sources its organic meat from verified organic farms all over Germany. Meat varieties include organic beef, organic lamb, organic chicken and organic turkey, as well as venison, duck and goose in season. The complete menu includes offerings such as organic grain-free muscle meat with a vegetable-fruit mix and high-quality oil. The store’s staff are available to offer advice and feeding plans based on each individual dog’s needs, and food is available freshly prepared or frozen. Within Munich, home delivery is also available. Prices run between 65 and 175 euros per month, benefits, however, reportedly include better health, lower vet bills and less excrement.More than 100 clients are reportedly already convinced. I'm not!(via Springwise)

Menu anxiety

2011-12-14T20:30:00.000+02:00

We live in a wonderful world of creativity where someone,somewhere,is capable of identifying every single obscure condition that the human being could possibly suffer from,real or imagined. A report in the UK claimed that 50% of restaurant customers are baffled by fancy terms on restaurant menus and are totally unaware that caramelised shallot tarte tatin is good old onion pie or that steak tartare does not come well done and is actually raw mince. The name given to this growing condition is "menu anxiety". Don't laugh,20 years ago no-one had a peanut allergy or was lactose intolerant or if they were,we just didn't have a name for it!Apparently,rather than display their ignorance and ask the waiter for a translation or explanation of the ingredients,they will simply order the dish they most easily recognise regardless of what they would like to eat on the evening. Common menu hurdles were foie gras, endive and chevre and researchers found that of two menus offered,one in poetic menu language and the other in plain english,people ordered things like steak and creamy potato bake instead of chateaubriand with gratin potatoes.I don't think there's anything new about this "menu anxiety", I'm sure that I've been suffering from it for many years although with me it tends to manifest itself slightly differently. My "menu anxiety" has nothing to do with an understanding of what is written on the menu,that bit's relatively easy - no,what makes me anxious is,after having read the menu and placed the order,I start thinking to myself "Now what the hell are they going to bring me ?"

Oil on troubled waters

2011-12-13T20:30:00.000+02:00

Last week researchers debunked the myth that sea salt was healthier than table salt and now yet another favourite of the TV chefs is under the microscope. Extra-virgin olive oil is, it seems, the only possible type of oil to use but many of the bottles labeled "extra-virgin olive oil" on supermarket shelves have been adulterated and shouldn't be classified as extra-virgin according to New Yorker contributor Tom Mueller. In his new book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, he chronicles how resellers have added lower-priced, lower-grade oils and artificial colouring to extra-virgin olive oil, before passing the new adulterated substance along the supply chain. (One olive oil producer told Mueller that 50 percent of the olive oil sold in the United States is, in some ways, adulterated.) "The legal definition simply says it has to pass certain chemical tests, and in a sensory way it has to taste and smell vaguely of fresh olives, because it's a fruit, and have no faults," he says "But many of the extra-virgin olive oils on our shelves today in America don't clear [the legal definition]." In fact4 out of 10 bottles that say Italian olive oil are not actually Italian olive oil. A lot of those oils have been packed in Italy or have been transited through Italy just long enough to get the Italian flag on them.

Froupies

2011-12-12T20:30:00.000+02:00

I reckon a lot of people get this whole food scene all wrong. I'm all for the food enthusiasts although I think it's best to keep them at arms length until their motives are perfectly clear, but it's the froupies that really get on my nerves. You know the ones I mean, they've always been to the latest restaurant opening, they demand to see the chef just to impress on him how important they are and that they move in the grandest of restaurant circles, they always have their holidays based around the latest Michelin Guide. They proudly wear labels and never seem to have any kids. If you met them out for their early morning jog you'd be impressed with their matching tracksuits, in fact 20 years ago they would have had their christian names emblazoned on the windscreen of their BMW , Nigel and Dolores.But that's not what it's all about. It's about the enjoyment of the moment, not the bragging about the experience. It's about the tastes, flavours, quality and freshness of the seasonal foods, not the size of the wine glass, the price of the main course or the cute waitresses. It's about sharing your table, the results of your labours, either physical or financial, with people that you really want to be with. It's about conversations long into the night fueled by copious amounts of red wine, it's about appreciating the difference between fueling and breaking bread with friends. God preserve us from bloody froupies.

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-12-11T16:00:00.000+02:00

Here are some cute little people in the kitchen but this clip is not for the faint hearted though. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view

Little Chefs - Click here for more amazing videos

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-12-10T20:00:00.000+02:00

This week's Dilly Diner has been around for along time so they must be doing something right. When you walk into Sean's Bar in Athlone, Ireland, the oldest pub in Europe, and contender for the oldest pub in the world, you join the uncountable number of visitors who have been stopping here for a drink, a chat and maybe a bit of music for more than a thousand years. Sean's Bar is located in the very heart of Ireland, on the banks of the beautiful River Shannon at its intersection with the Esker Riada - the ancient route carved by glaciers that allowed travellers safe passage across the bog for thousands of years. You can find them just next to Athlone Castle, a 12th century Norman Castle whose residents may have frequented the pub!Walking into the pub, you'll know right away you've arrived someplace unique. From the sawdust on the floor to the old-style open turf fireplace and the musicians playing in the corner, some things about Sean's Bar have changed very little over the centuries - just the place for a bit of the craíc. Athlone, translated into Irish is Atha Luain, meaning "the Ford of Luain." Luain was an innkeeper who guided people across the treacherous waters of the ancient ford. Sean's Bar has been researched thoroughly by the Guinness Book of Records and proudly holds the record for "The Oldest Pub in Ireland" with an official dating of 900AD.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-12-09T23:30:00.000+02:00

The celeb chefs have been working round the clock churning out Xmas TV shows and recipes for the great unwashed but Delia Smith took some time off this week to confess that although she’s been happily married for 40 years there is one obvious source of rows in her house – cooking. The chef admits she struggles to bite her lip when her husband Michael Wynn-Jones wears the apron. “He likes to cook and that’s the cause of a lot of arguments,” she says. “If you’ve done something all your life and taught the nation what you know, it’s very hard to watch someone not doing it properly.” Gordon Ramsay’s not passing any comments about his wife Tana’s performance in the kitchen in fact it was revealed this week that on Channel 4,on Xmas Day the festive lunch master class will feature Gordon and his wife Tana – and their children Megan, Jack and Holly – all working together to create the perfect Christmas dinner. Ramsay is going to guide you through the whole process live from his own home although he has told friends by doing the live broadcast, he’s “staking his reputation” on the results, and therefore, is praying it doesn’t all go wrong. Almost makes you sorry we don’t get Channel 4 here…..or does it?Gordo’s arch rival Jamie Oliver will also be in many of the nations living rooms on Xmas Day but more likely wrapped up and reclining under the Xma Tree. It’s an exciting time of year for eager food fans who await their favourite celeb chef’s Christmas release. But one man has climbed to the very top of the fir tree and sits there like a golden-haired angel, Essex-sent and determined to raise the standard of our weeknight nosh: HRH Jamie Oliver. Last year Oliver shifted over a million copies of his festive release, ’30 Minute Meals’ and it went on to become the fastest selling non-fiction work in UK history. ‘Jamie’s Great Britain’, a follow-up to the current TV series of the same name, is hotly tipped to be this year’s Christmas bestseller, despite a relatively slow start. The book has already moved up 15 places from last week’s position in the UK’s official book chart and there may well be a copy somewhere under the tree come Christmas Day. Jamie’s book sales have even outstripped the first lady of British cookery, Delia Smith, for goodness sake!

Salted caramel never tasted so good

2011-12-08T20:30:00.000+02:00

So how’s this for an image of the domestic goddess Nigella? She was invited to be guest editor for an issue of a style magazine in the UK and kindly agreed to adorn the front cover. There’s no doubt that this cover will send sales rocketing but is it a very sexy image or just a nice picture of someone who really likes salted caramel? I know what you’re thinking but in an interview Nigella "dismissed suggestions, however, that this was a sexualised image." So you should put those evil thoughts out of your mind, it’s only a photo of a head covered in oozing salted caramel. She told the Times: "When people say to me 'she does double entendre,' I have never done double entendre in my life. I'm not that kind of person." She continued: "Appetite is seen as hearty in a male and slightly wanton and lascivious in a female, but that’s just about perception. The [magazine] image is simply rapturous joy in caramel." Now look here Nigella, I like you, I’ve always liked you but when you get a sugar rush like this you start talking crap!

I'm completely in the dark here

2011-12-07T20:30:00.000+02:00

Sometimes you've got to read something 2 or 3 times just to let it all sink in and fully comprehend what is going on. You read it and think what's this all about so you read it again by which time you're on track and then you have to read it yet one more time to figure out why anyone would write it in the first place. Some people say most of my blogs are like that. I find it's usually the case when some foodstuff is being investigated by a research team and when the Chinese are involved then you just know you're going to end up scratching your head and saying " What the hell was that all about?"Take for example these Taiwanese researchers from the National Chung Hsing University who have been studying carrots. I presume what happened was that one day as one of these bright sparks was juicing half a kilo of carrots he got to figuring what about all this debris which I normally toss in the dustbin ? Well one thing led to another and before you could say Bugs Bunny they had a whole team working on the subject. What they discovered was that the solid waste from carrot juice production is rich in insoluble fibre. Wow! You and I call it "that bloody gunge" that makes the juicer so difficult to clean but it's actually insoluble fibre. Now like all fibre, eg oatmeal, it has the capacity to reduce cholesterol levels, so putting 2 and 2 together, the leader of the research group, Pang-Kuei Hsu theorised that “As the fiber-rich pomace is available in large quantity in juice production, it is worth exploiting the carrot insoluble fiber-rich fractions (IFRF) as a promising hypocholesterolemic ingredient to fulfill the increasing demand of functional ingredients in developing fiber-rich food products,”You see what I mean. Legions of little people in white coats with clipboards have spent vast amounts of money and time, supplemented the diets of six week old hamsters with varying doses of carrot debris, to come up with some fact that every child in the Western world already knows "Eat your carrots, they're good to you" In fact here's another piece of knowledge for the researchers - you don't have to squeeze out the juice, it's much easier to eat the carrots whole, like nature intended.

Main course for Row 2

2011-12-06T20:23:00.000+02:00

Main course for Row 2Rowley Leigh is normally the kind of chef that I like. He does have Michelin stars but he is really unassuming with no desire to be a celeb on or off the TV screen, quite a refreshing change in these days when everyone with a white jacket is either a “master chef” or a “celeb chef” or heaven forbid both! His style of food is hearty modern British and the only foam you’re likely to find is on top of your cappuccino but sometimes even Rowley goes off the track a bit. His latest venture involves offering film-goers gourmet food while they watch a film in a regular cinema. A new initiative called The Lounge at the Odeon atop the Whiteley's shopping centre in west London tantalises gastrocinenauts with the possibility one day of an evening's movie-going that is both Oscar-nominated and Michelin-starred. Chef Rowley Leigh, from nearby Le Cafe Anglais, is introducing a range of superior at-seat meals including a fillet-steak burger and red mullet risotto. Ordered on arrival, these will be served by waiters "during the trailers". I realise that popcorn has been done to death but I can’t quite get my head around red mullet risotto washed down with a lemongrass ice cream soda whilst watching Nightmare on Elm Street 17. I still like Rowley Leigh though!

What the fugu is going on here?

2011-12-05T20:46:00.000+02:00

My tastes in food are boringly simple, I’m happier with baked beans on toast rather than caviar on blinis. I tend to avoid “controversial” foods like foie gras not for any moral or political reasons but purely because I find over hyped food to be precisely that – overhyped. I have to confess I once ate fugu fish in Japan but in my defence I only learnt afterwards that it was potentially poisonous and anyway it tasted just like fried hake to me. I survived unscathed but a diner at a Michelin two-star restaurant in Tokyo recently wasn’t so lucky. Chef Takeshi Yasuge, who operates Fugu Fukuji in the capital’s upmarket Ginza area has had his special license, required to serve fugu, rescinded by theTokyo metropolitan government and is facing a criminal complaint and possible jail sentence over the hospitalization of a 35 year old woman who was served the toxic liver of a pufferfish after making a specific request for it. She had to be taken to hospital suffering from a headache and numbness in her lips. The health authorities believe the chef was negligent knowing the dangers involved irregardless of the guest making a special request. Michelin said it does not plan to change its rating of the restaurant, which was based on the dishes its inspectors ate, a company spokeswoman said. Obviously they stayed clear of the fugu!

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-12-04T10:47:00.001+02:00

David Mitchell on his Soapbox having a go at chefs. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view

Chef's Special | David Mitchell's Soapbox by DavidMitchellSoapbox

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-12-03T22:23:00.000+02:00

Lucky Cheng's in New York is this week's candidate for Dilly Diner of the Week. If you're looking for a run of the mill Chinese restaurant then you've definitely come to the wrong place because Lucky Cheng's is wild and proudly boasts that it is the drag queen capital of the world. It's a great venue for corporate parties, birthday parties, hen parties and maybe somewhere to take your granny for her 80 th birthday celebration. There's outrageous drag queen cabaret, comedy, karaoke and fun for all with delicious, reasonably priced Pan-Asian cuisine. But behind it all there's a sad story because it wasn't that lucky for poor old Cheng.
I don't know how true it is but the story goes that the restaurant tried many concepts with each one being less successful than the previous driving the owner to drugs and drink. Then along came Cheng who started out as general dogsbody. He wasn't particularily well turned out, he always seemed untidy and unkempt and his English wasn't that great but he was left in charge by default. Cheng did have one attribute, he got along well with people and was very easy going so when one of the barmen started coming to work in drag he wasn't bothered. When extra staff were hired and they also pitched up in drag he didn't mind.He hired a Chinese friend as chef and a legend was born - Chinese food and transvestites ! The place boomed but Cheng wasn't so lucky because the owners sobered up and the next thing was his untimely departure. If it's not true it should be.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-12-02T23:43:00.000+02:00

Bad news this week for oyster lovers in the UK. The Food Standards Agency released a report indicating that three-quarters of the British-grown oysters it tested contained the winter vomiting bug, norovirus. The figures are contained in the first systematic analysis of the virus in UK oyster harvesting areas.The FSA says there is no change in its advice to consumers. It says people should be aware that there is a risk of food poisoning when eating raw shellfish and the food should be avoided by vulnerable groups. Pretty high risk it seems!

Meanwhile if you’re going to pass on the oysters perhaps it’s best that you avoid the chicken liver pate as well. Another body, the Health Protection Agency (HPA), are warning of the high risk of food poisoning from undercooked chicken or duck liver pate. New figures show that more than 90% of outbreaks of Campylobacter - the most common form of bacterial food poisoning - at catering venues in 2011 were linked to people eating the pate. Symptoms of the illness include diarrhoea, stomach pains, cramps, fever, and generally feeling unwell. HPA investigations found that livers used to make the parfait or pate were undercooked, meaning the liver stayed pink in the centre. Unfortunately that’s just the effect that chefs are looking for.

Someone who did apparently suffer from food poisoning this week was airline passenger Othon Cortes eating on an American Airlines flight from Barcelona, Spain to New York. We’ve all had bad airline food at one stage or another but Cortes apparently got sick with severe stomach cramps and sudden thirst shortly after eating an in-flight chicken meal -- basically as soon as the plane landed at JFK International Airport. On the connecting flight to Miami, he got much, much worse: When no one was able to revive him after a cardiac event, the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in Virginia. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. Cortes was pronounced dead on arrival, and his wife and daughter blame the foodborne bacteria Clostridium perfringens, which they say poisoned his meal as a result of American Airlines and Sky Chefs "failing to properly maintain or prepare the food." So maybe that packet of peanuts you got was a blessing in disguise.

Spread the news - sticky situation developing

2011-12-01T20:31:00.000+02:00

Marmite can be a messy condiment! It’s difficult to get it all off the knife onto your toast, it leaves streaks. The top of the jar is always tacky with residual extract, in fact it’s not really a user friendly product so spare a thought for the poor buggers in the South Yorkshire police who had to deal with some spilled Marmite the other day. Police shut a section of the M1 in South Yorkshire at around 10.15pm following an incident, which saw a vehicle crash and and spill its contents onto the carriageway. A tanker overturned after being involved in a collision with a motorcaravan. The tanker was carrying 23.5 tonnes of bulk Marmite. Twenty three and a half tonnes – that’s the equivalent of over 200,000 small jars of the smelly goo! What a bloody mess to clear up? There is no truth in the rumour that thousands of British motorists headed off towards Sheffield armed with loaves of bread and 12 volt plugin camping toasters.

Gather ye rosebuds

2011-11-30T19:11:00.000+02:00

I had a bottle of rosewater at the back of my cupboard and I've no idea how the hell it got there or if I bought it at some time in the far distant past in the expectation of doing something exciting with it. The level of the liquid has gone down a bit but I'm sure that's more due to evaporation than any consumption on my behalf. It's really turning into quite a puzzle as to why I was ever enticed into buying it in the first place - was I planning a special Moroccan or Middle Eastern meal ? Was it the secret ingredient in Hadji Beys Turkish Delight which I vaguely remember tackling once with limited success ?
Sadly I've never been tempted to experiment with the rosewater perhaps since on the odd occasions when I've tidied up the cupboard and sneaked an inquisitory sniff of the colourless liquid it has instantly brought to mind thoughts of cosmetic counters and aromatherapy. So I firmly replaced the top and stuck it away in the dark inner recesses to be revisited another day. But recently rosewater has undergone a little bit of a revival and so my bottle has now got pride of place at the very front of my glass cupboard where it can catch the eye of visitors as they peer at my battery of oils, seasonings, spices and cook's tricks. " Rosewater ? " they query " That's very unusual, what do you use that for ? " I look them straight in the eye and knowledgeably point out that right up until Victorian times rosewater was indispensable in British cookery, that it adds a fragrant element to a pawpaw and dill raita served with curry, that it makes an exquisite creme caramel or panna cotta and that all soft summer fruit compotes benefit from the judicious addition of a little rosewater. And then I turn around a little too quickly and guiltily promise myself that one of these days I will get around to trying some of these recipes.

Chef's secret sauce

2011-11-29T20:11:00.000+02:00

We’re suckers for secrets especially when it comes to food. We all try to figure out what is in the chef’s “secret sauce” when in fact in the interests of the survival of the human race perhaps it should remain a secret. The marketing folk at KFC (don’t mention the ‘fried’ word, they get a bit upset) have been trading on our fascination with 11 secret herbs and spices since the good old Colonel came up with the notion 50 or 60 years ago but recently it’s been wearing a bit thin. How fortunate it is then that one of their employees recently discovered a whole manuscript of secret recipes penned by the Colonel and hidden away for decades in the vaults of KFC – who said that there was no such thing as guardian angels? The recent discovery of the unpublished manuscript written by the founder of KFC shows that while Sanders was helping build Kentucky Fried Chicken into a global brand, he was recording his life and love of food - and recipes - for the world. The half-inch-thick document is chock full of homespun anecdotes and life lessons from Sanders, who struck it rich late in life. It also includes many of his favorite personal recipes. The company is treating the manuscript like its own Holy Grail. The manuscript is tucked inside KFC's electronic safe in a vault at its Louisville headquarters. It sits next to the Colonel's famous handwritten chicken recipe. They say they’re going to share it via the internet with everyone but first, as their spokesman explained "We're in the early stages of testing recipes and are excited about the potential to incorporate some of the newly discovered dishes alongside the Colonel's Original Recipe on menus around the globe,” Here we go again!

Pork by any other name

2011-11-28T20:59:00.000+02:00

It seems that everyone loves a bacon sarmie, even the Chef Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger. Of course Yona is strictly kosher and can’t actually eat pork according to the dietary laws of his religion but “ we can always make a plan my boy”. Yona’s plan is a little bit bizarre though! He has agreed to allow the import of an organic goose grown in Spain which tastes like pork. Now Yona doesn’t actually know what pork tastes like so he’s had to call on the services of three non-Jewish chefs to verify the taste. I’ve no idea how he chose them but I hope they didn’t tell him any porkies when it came to the geese. I’m still figuring out how the hell they got “organic” geese to taste like pork but then they are coming from Spain, the home of Ferran Adria, the culinary alchemist, so I suppose anything is possible.

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-11-27T16:18:00.000+02:00

Janice and Ray aren't too enamoured with french cuisine in today's clip. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-11-26T19:58:00.000+02:00

This week's Dilly Diner is a true Parisian institution. In 1959 Paul Gineste de Saurs purchased an Italian restaurant called Le Relais de Venise (the Venice Inn) in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, near Porte Maillot. A descendant of the Gineste de Saurs family in southern France, he was seeking to establish an assured market for the wines produced by the family's Château de Saurs winery in Lisle-sur-Tarn, 50 kilometres northeast of Toulouse. His daughter Mme. Godillot now owns and runs the restaurant. In place of the previous Italian menu, he decided that the restaurant would offer the traditional French bistrot meal of steak-frites as its only main dish, with no other option. Where most restaurants served steak-frites with herbed butter, Le Relais de Venise instead served the dish with a complex butter-based sauce. A simple salad of lettuce topped with walnuts and a mustard vinaigrette was offered as a starter, and not until the end of the meal did the menu offer some choice, from a dessert list of fruit pastries, profiteroles, and other confections consisting mainly of ice cream, chocolate sauce, meringue, and whipped cream.
Nothing has changed in nearly 50 years, as you go in, you are handed a menu with almost no choices on it, and are asked whether you want your steak cooked rare or some other level of doneness. The beef is brought sliced, on a communal platter, and served with a secret herb-butter sauce along with the very good fries. L'Entrecôte is used as an informal name for the Le Relais de l'Entrecôte restaurants operated by another daughter of Paul Gineste de Saurs, with two locations in Paris and one in Geneva. The oldest of these, in Paris's 6th arrondissement, is widely known as L'Entrecôte Saint-Germain whilst other family members have opened other clones of the restaurant in France and abroad however they all remain faithful to the original menu and recipes of Paul Gineste de Saurs.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-11-25T23:22:00.000+02:00

The big news this week was of course Thanksgiving holiday celebrated mainly in the US. Thanksgiving has its beginnings in 1621, when the early settlers of Plymouth Colony known as the Pilgrims had a three-day feast to celebrate a bountiful harvest. Sarah Joseph Hale is credited with persuading Abraham Lincoln to make the holiday official. (She is also famous for composing the nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." – maybe she couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with turkey!) Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented a live turkey to the President of the U.S. The tradition is for the president to pardon the turkey, who then lives out the rest of his days on a historical farm. Other turkeys are not so lucky with 45 million of them being gobbled down on this day along with of course roasts potatoes, pumpkin and those dreaded Brussel Sprouts.

The Brits of course also look forward to sprouts along with their bird a month or so later and food retailer Marks & Spencer revealed this week that it has come up with a way of increasing the popularity of Brussels sprouts – by turning them red and rebranding them as a health food. The high street chain will start selling red Brussels sprouts in time for Christmas in what it claims will be a first on the UK high street. The red “super sprouts” will contain higher levels of vitamin C than traditional green sprouts, according to Dr Simon Coupe, an agronomist at M&S. Still don’t think that will persuade folks to eat them!

Back in the States, Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas who won the first Nathan's Famous Women's Hot Dog Eating World Championship by consuming 40 hot dogs, on the July 4 holiday at Coney Island, in the Brooklyn borough of New York turned her attention to turkey, sans sprouts, and devoured the competition – literally – in this week’s Wild Turkey 81 Eating World Championship in New York City. The 105-pound Alexandria woman downed almost an entire 10-pound turkey. And she did it in just 10 minutes. That’s more than five pounds of meat, when you discount bones and grizzle. Not too shabby, wonder how she’d do with a plate or two of the red sprouts?

Take it with a pinch of salt

2011-11-24T20:39:00.000+02:00

Let’s get one thing clear here – salt, in whatever bloody form is not good for you! We should be consuming less than 6 gm per person per day. That’s 6 gm total, not 6 gm sprinkled profusely over your chips. And it’s the hidden salt that bumps you over your daily limit so easily, for example that bowl of cornflakes this morning probably had 2 gm of salt in it or 30% of your daily recommended dose. That leaves you with 4 gm for the rest of the day. Next thing to understand is that table salt is 98% sodium chloride (the rest is stuff they put in to stop it attracting moisture and not pouring easily), the so called “natural” salts so beloved by TV chefs can actually contain, as in the case of Maldon Sea Salt, up to 99.5% sodium chloride. Now here’s a surprising fact for you to chew on, sodium chloride tastes like sodium chloride tastes like sodium chloride tastes like sodium chloride so why the hell would anyone in their right mind pay 20 or 30 times more for designer sodium chloride rather than common or garden sodium chloride? Beats me! Of course I have heard it claimed that you can taste the difference, I’ve even been to salt tastings myself where the salt is tasted on it’s own but let’s get real here, no-one eats salt on it’s own! You’ve easily had your daily quota by the time you’re ready for that big fat steak on the braai but let’s assume you’re prepared to risk 2 gm. So here’s the arithmetic – 2 gm designer salt yields max 2% “natural flavours”. Used to season a 250 gm steak these “natural flavours” equate to 20 milligram or zero point zero eight percent (0.08%) of the steak meal – and you think you can taste that? Go figure!

Nuke the buggers

2011-11-23T20:39:00.000+02:00

If you know the right people you'll soon be enjoying one of the Cape's greatest treasures, the Cape Crayfish or spiny lobster, either free or at much more realistic prices than those charged by fishmongers and seafood restaurants. The problem for most people is just how do you go about causing the demise of these feisty fellows in a reasonably humane manner. I must be honest here, it's never been a problem to me, a sharp knife to the jugular or in this case, to the crown of the head and they're dispatched immediately. But there are some more sensitive souls out there who have no qualms about chowing on crustaceans but lack the steely nerve required to murder the beasties. They try all sorts of non confrontational methods such as entombing them in the deepfreeze to make them relax - relax ? at minus 20 C ? Or another favourite is to start them off in cold water and gradually raise the temperature - sort of the pescatorian equivalent of being burnt at the stake !
Well help is at hand. Forget these old wives methods and embrace modern technology, nuke the buggers. A revolutionary new system has been developed which is claimed to be a humane, simple and effective way to stun and kill shellfish prior to cooking - invest in The Crustastun, the world's first Electronic Crustacean Stunner. Simply by applying a stun of 110 v - 2-5 amps, there follows an immediate interruption in the functioning of the nervous system thus rendering it incapable of receiving stimuli and thus by definition it cannot feel any pain or suffer distress. So effectively you just pop them in the box, close the lid and push the button, voila. Of course at some point you will have to remove the now limp bodies and take that sharp kinife to the back of their skull but you'll probably be feeling a lot better about it now.
Of course the question is what to do with your Crustastun during the closed season and those other odd occasions that you're not guzzling on crayfish. We have recently been plagued in our neighbourhood with a series of housebreaking incidents so I reckon I'll invest in a few and place them conveniently near unprotected windows around the house.

This tastes crap

2011-11-22T20:00:00.000+02:00

The world’s most expensive coffee is reputed to be Kopi luwak or civet coffee. It is made from the beans of coffee berries which have been eaten by the Asian Palm Civet and other related civets, then passed through its digestive tract. A civet eats the berries for their fleshy pulp. Passing through a civet's intestines the beans are then defecated, keeping their shape. After gathering, thorough washing, sun drying, light roasting and brewing, these beans yield an aromatic coffee with much less bitterness, widely noted as the most expensive coffee in the world with prices reaching $160 per pound. Not to be outdone in this crap game along came the Filipinos who also had some civets of their own and after dispatching attentive natives on poop scooping duties came up with KapePur a civet coffee which is similar to the Indonesian Kopi Luwak. Now the shit has really hit the fan as Chinese entrepreneur An Yanshi,developed a cunning idea to turning his 'trash into treasure' or crap into cash – Panda Poo Tea! Priced at £22,000 per pound - Tetley tea is around £3 - the tea leaves have been grown on three acres of animal excrement. Mr Yanshi, a university lecturer at Sichuan University, has been busy collecting over 5.5 tonnes of droppings to make his product. So far there have been no takers for the unusual product that comes accompanied by a special panda-shaped tea set and two wildlife paintings. I wonder what Abe Lincoln would have thought about all of this? He once famously said "If this is coffee then please bring me a cup of tea, if it is tea then bring me a cup of coffee!" Wise man.

Little ole wine drinker me

2011-11-21T20:16:00.000+02:00

I like a glass of wine, I like to have the odd sniff to enjoy the nose, occasionally I’ll give it a bit of a swirl to pick up on the colours, I may even risk a slurp or two to chase the elusive pipi du chat or pencil shavings, but in the main I’m a drinker not a thinker and therefore unlikely to wax lyrical about grapes and micro climates, terroir and tannins, vineyards and vintages and all that sort of thing. As far as I am concerned wine is for drinking, it’s not a conversation piece. I’m not really into this wine pairing bullshit either. Of course I accept that certain wines go better with certain foods but if you want to drink red wine and coke because you like it then don’t let any “expert” tell you you’re wrong. I also accept that some glasses are more suited to certain wines although I’ve had champagne out of a pint tumbler and the heavens didn’t cave in! So that was everything you needed to know about me and wine I thought until some psycho-bozos rattled my cage by coming up with a claim that what’s playing on the stereo can also have a bearing on taste. A study in the British Journal of Psychology reveals those who drink wine while listening to music perceive their tipple to have the same characteristics as a particular artist or tune. For instance, for an earthy and full-bodied Merlot experience, drinkers should listen to Tom Jones, the research published. Seems to me it’s a good job those researchers never got as far as the Poffadder Palais on a hot Saturday night to hear Nico Carstens belting out some Sokkie Sokkie – that might have tossed a curved ball into their orderly little study!

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-11-20T16:23:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago we lost Andy Rooney one of the greatest curmudgeons of recent years. Take a look at this clip from 1988 which is as fresh today as it was then. Feedblitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-11-19T21:40:00.000+02:00

Well if a tyre company can produce a restaurant guide why can’t a motorcycle company run a coffee bar? This week’s Dilly Diner contender is the stylish bar / restaurant / coffee shop in Rome, the Ducati Caffé which luxury Italian motorbike brand Ducati has opened located at Via delle Botteghe Oscure 35. The Caffé serves drinks and full meals and is adjacent to a Ducati showroom should you decide to purchase a superbike after dining. Of course, the Caffé serves espresso and Ducati's own Desmorosso wine.The menu showcases Italian specialties (naturally) with an emphasis on regional products and cuisine. A retail boutique on the premises carries a full line of Ducati-branded apparel and merchandise. The décor is sleek and modern, echoing Ducati's motorcycle designs with a red, white and black color scheme and chrome details. And yes, the waitresses are hot.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-11-18T20:36:00.000+02:00

Penguin launched the Jamie Oliver Food Guide this week - a brand new app for the iPhone and iPad - which gives food lovers the definitive guide to finding the best places to eat, shop and visit in Great Britain. Created by Jamie and Penguin, the app features over 1000 celebrated food-related locations recommended by Jamie and his personal choices from the Rough Guide series. Covering a huge range of places - all of which are stylishly displayed on a custom map - the app has information on the very best cafes, restaurants, butchers, cheesemakers, fishmongers, cider presses, bakeries and organic farmers markets from across the country. It seems that Jamie has discovered a new way to get 50 or 60 hours out of every single day, just how does he manage to write all these books, zoom all over the country to all these restaurants, shops and suppliers, run his restaurant empire, churn out 5 or 6 recipe books, TV shows etc and keep his boyish good looks? Or does Jamie Oliver really exist?

He will get some rest from his hectic schedule as his final adverts for Sainsburys are being flighted. He has announced that after 11 years he is standing down as the face of the supermarket chain. What that really means is that they couldn’t afford to pay him an exorbitant fee any longer. They’ve opted instead for a "has been" footballer called David Beckham whose first cinema ads debut this week. But while the TV chef promoted the chain's food, dad-of-four Becks will front its Active Kids campaign and push its sponsorship of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. The 36 year old LA Galaxy star said: "I know the difference leading a healthier and more active life can make to kids and I have been really impressed with the long-term commitment that Sainsbury's has made. That was quite a long sentence for Becks!

Of course that other celeb chef and very good friend of Becks, Mr Gordon Ramsay has a very hectic schedule of his own but he took time out to pop in this week to his wife Tana’s latest business venture. Tana who should have her hands full with four kids to raise in the absence of Gordo, has obviously got bored with writing cookery books which don’t sell and now has opened her very own beauty salon, All About The Girl in Battersea, South West London. I don’t know if she knows any thing about beauty salons, she’s no real looker herself, but I suppose it will be somewhere for herself and Posh to sit and drink tea on a wet afternoon. However it looks like Gordon won't be in the queue for one of the treatments. He said recently: 'Tana’s asked me to have my eyebrows plucked but I refused. I’m sorry but chefs should not have their eyebrows plucked. I’d rather singe them from flambéing a crêpe.' What a macho man!

Waiter there's a fly in my soup

2011-11-17T20:24:00.000+02:00

They say that most accidents can be avoided and if that's true then most complaints in restaurants can also be avoided. South Africans,as a nation,are much too forgiving when it comes to bad food and service,they don't want to upset anyone,they don't want to make a scene,they're quite happy to pay the bill and then spend the next few weeks telling their friends how shocking the experience was. Consumer writers and food critics are constantly exhorting them to complain,to make their true feelings felt,to get to the manager of the restaurant and really let him know how poor the food or service was. As for me I think that's a load of rubbish.
You see I'm a firm believer that in many cases,not all,people allow themselves to become victims. They leave their houses unlocked,they don't read the warning signs, they drive around in dodgy areas with their car windows open and are then shocked and surprised when some opportunist races off with their cellphone or handbag. They pay scant attention to the advice provided by the police about personal protection, about approaching their homes in the hours of darkness,about driving defensively in strange areas. It's no different when it comes to food.
I reckon that a trip to a restaurant nowadays represents a major purchase and can make a big dent in the household budget so therefore the wary consumer should make it his business to be fully informed about whoever he is going to hand over a large sum of money to. What is there to know about this restaurant?....have my friends eaten there previously?....what do the critics say?....has it been open long?....is it really a good idea to book for 8.00 pm on a Saturday night or would 7.15pm be more sensible?...what about the menu, does 200 choices mean that it's good or that half the food will be coming straight out of the deep freeze?......is a steakhouse the right place to order fresh fish or the vegetarian special? There are many pieces of information which you should collect and digest before making your decision, eating defensively is equally as important as driving defensively. It's better that you have no cause for complaint in the first place because it sure as hell makes no sense growling afterwards!

We wish you a Merry Crispmas

2011-11-16T20:34:00.000+02:00

It’s been nicknamed the ‘Crispmas Dinner collection’ and is surely one of the most unusual snack selections ever launched. Tesco in the UK has launched a complete festive meal - made of crisps. It even comes with 'dessert' - the UK’s first ever sweet crisps in the form of Mince Pie flavour, seasoned with dried fruit, spices and buttery pastry. The 'meal' also includes Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese and Cranberry flavour or Winter Spiced Cumberland Gammon crisps for starters, and Roast Turkey and stuffing with onion gravy flavour for mains. Apparently the crisps were inspired by Michelin-starred gourmet chef Hans Van Wolde, who is known as the Dutch Heston Blumenthal and who worked previously with Tesco’s suppliers on creating unique vanilla salt crisps. Although there’s no guarantee that they’ll get the Michelin Seal of Approval they may provide a bit of a laugh over the festive season.

Honey laundering

2011-11-15T20:09:00.000+02:00

There’s a bit of a sticky situation developing in the honey market it seems. According to a report in Food Safety News over 75% of grocery store honey in the United States is not real honey. Now that sounds pretty dramatic but of course the devil is in the detail because the rules state that honey must contain pollen otherwise it’s not honey and some producers are filtering out the pollen. As usual it’s the pesky Chinese behind it all, busy as little bees ultra filtering the honey and removing the pollen. Seems reasonable at first glance, ultra filtered even has quite a nice, hygienic, ring to it – ultra filtered for your convenience, removes 99.9% of all woodland germs but the truth is that the pollen is the DNA if you like, of the honey. The pollen tells you where the honey comes from and the Chinese don’t want you to know where the honey comes from! In South Africa we import about 40% of our honey from our new trading partners, you know who, so the message is simple, read the labels if you must give your cash to Mr A otherwise go for the abundance available from small producers at your local market.

Message in a bottle

2011-11-14T20:17:00.000+02:00

So the Brits reckon they have come up with a great idea – box wine! Well it’s not quite the box wine we all know and love here in the Cape but it’s close enough I think. It’s a standard size wine bottle made from paper or rather papier mache to be more accurate and inside it’s got a plastic bag to stop the wine coming in contact with the paper – a wine box in a different shape. Of course it’s being touted as a Green Bottle, environmentally friendly and with a carbon footprint of just 10% of a glass wine bottle (conveniently forgetting the carbon footprint of producing the wine and getting it to the bottle). The Greenbottle can also biodegrade on a compost heap within weeks. Other advantages of the bottles they say is that they do not break when dropped, and weigh less in a shopping bag. The cardboard shell also helps insulate white wine after it has been chilled in the fridge. Sounds like a load of cobblers to me. Surely refillable wine bottles would be a much more sensible answer and perhaps save a few forests at the same time!

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-11-13T16:11:00.000+02:00

Michael Macintyre at the Apollo pointing out the idiocy of drinking coffee late at night. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-11-12T21:07:00.000+02:00

Weary travellers passing through Gila Bend, Arizona may be a little bemused by this week's contender for Dilly Diner of the Week. They may in fact feel they have strayed into a time warp as they approach the Best Western group's Space Age Lodge with it's adjacent Outer Limits Restaurant featuring a neon lit rooftop OFO, flashing like a beacon to attract temporal and intergalactic hungry travellers alike.
Opened in 1963 just as the USA was about to overtake Russia in the Space Race, this cutting edge hostelry, at the time, offered guests an opportunity to step into the future, as we saw it then, in the days before space shuttles, men walking on the moon, personal computers and the Internet.The 41 unit motel was one of a number of futuristic themed lodges opened by Al Stovall, a friend of President Eisenhower, who was instrumental in opening a number of motels with a Space Age theme, all of which thankfully have long ceased to operate in their original guises.
A quick perusal of the Outer Limits menu reveals that if there is intelligent life out there in the galaxies, then their food of choice is in fact Mexican and heavy on the chillis although the universally-renowned " Duke Burger " is also on offer. The restaurant is open 7 days a week from 5.00 am to 10.00 pm for breakfast, lunch, dinner and intergalactic snacks. Aliens and humans are most welcome.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-11-11T20:29:00.000+02:00

I suppose everyone is entitled to a little fun at Xmas and this week Blumen Hestonstein started his Xmas early as Heston’s Mince Pies went on sale at Waitrose stores.Last year there was chaos at Waitrose checkouts when his Christmas puddings containing a whole candied orange sold out in weeks. Now Heston Blumenthal has come up with another upmarket Christmas gimmick aiming to replicate the pudding’s success: a mince pie that smells of Christmas trees. Of course there is a little bit of work involved, smoke and mirror shows always require a little bit of effort. Each box of mince pies contains a sachet of sugar that has been infused in pine oil. Once the sugar comes into contact with a hot pie, the aroma is released. As well as smelling of Christmas trees, the pies contain apple puree, lemon curd and rose water in addition to the usual mincemeat. I can hardly wait……..

Not quite so much fun in San Francisco this week though I’m afraid. Life in the culinary capital of Northern California is about to get a little less free and easy, after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to require all restaurant patrons to wear clothing while dining out. Those predisposed to bare all must also place something between naked buttocks and public seating under the ordinance, which is up for a final vote next week. The plan to regulate -– rather than flat-out ban -– public nudity brought this famously liberal city international attention and became fodder for late night talk show hosts. If you’re going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair……and a few other things besides.

Meanwhile in New York one guy’s idea of a fun dish was a little too spicy for the other guests at the Four Seasons Hotel. Indian “spice king” Dhiraj Arora went on a bizarre rampage at the famed Midtown hotel, traipsing naked through the workout facility after sucking down tequila and then taunting the police. Arora’s public peep show drew a barrage of guest complaints, but he was spared arrest despite locking himself in his 15th-floor room and forcing cops to drag him to a nearby psych ward. Arora is a multi millionaire spice importer who stocks the shelves of stores like Fairway and Whole Foods.

Moving along the dial

2011-11-10T20:26:00.000+02:00

There's an expression they use in the radio industry that refers to the careers of radio presenters called "moving along the dial" which means that as they get older they transfer to different radio stations catering to different age groups and markets. It appears that old radio presenters never die they just move along the dial and I reckon the same is true of many restaurant dishes. Moving along the dial doesn't mean that the presenters get any better, it just means the market gets what it deserves and it's the same with food.
Caesar salad is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. At one stage Caesar salad was prepared tableside and could only be found in the finest of fine dining rooms but gradually it started to migrate to middle of the road restaurants and once the idea hit critical mass then it could be found everywhere. Today you can get a Caesar everywhere from TGIF to McDonalds and even in some fire stations I'm led to believe and you can of course buy a ready bottled Caesar dressing in the supermarkets,unfortunately bearing no resemblance to the original.
Give the people what they want,they know what they like. If that's the case then I'm sure the next big salad to move along the dial will be the current darling found on many restaurant's menus in numerous guises but usually incorporating goat's cheese, lightly toasted,rocket,beet leaves or other baby leaves,spiced nuts of various persuasions,roasted pears and nut oil or sweet fruity vinegar type dressings. Of course as it migrates it will lose a lot of the original flavour and quality of ingredients but maybe cheddar cheese cubes and peri peri peanuts will work with iceberg lettuce, tinned pear slices and imitation raspberry flavoured malt vinegar. Who am I to argue with what the people like?

The appliance of science

2011-11-09T20:13:00.000+02:00

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the lunatic fringe currently experimenting with liquid nitrogen,encapsulated flavours,gels,gums and all types of laboratory equipment are slightly off track after all! The alchemist in charge of the Fat Duck at Bray has for several years been advocating the appliance of science to the art of cookery and I've always had a little bit of a problem with that - it's just a tad too controlled for my liking. Oh I know that the guys,gals and others in the pastry section are great ones for measuring things out and sticking strictly to oven temperatures and times but us real chefs on the stoves tend to fly a little bit by the seat of our pants,to us food is about touch,feel,smell,taste,passion and if it turns out exactly the same every time then that's a little bit of a bonus.
I have no doubt that if you told 10 different cooks to cut and brown an onion you would end up with 10 different types of cuts and 10 different degrees of doneness but is that necessarily a problem? I don't think so, I think it's more important that at least they're chopping an onion and not merely unwrapping a stock cube or in Heston's case dipping in to his chemistry set. At the risk of sounding decidedly old fashioned I really believe the flavour comes from the food and it's the job of a chef to extract it, not some bloody ponytail, white coat and clipboard. The flavour is there naturally so I can't see any reason to waste time dealing with the large flavour houses seeking out natural flavours to enhance what we've already got. Science has got a major role to play in our kitchens in terms of kitchen equipment and appliances but not when it comes to buggering about with the natural taste, texture, shape, colour and integrity of the food.

No pints of lager and a packet of crisps

2011-11-08T20:53:00.000+02:00

Talk about the pub with no beer.....they’ve just opened a bar called Brink in Liverpool which is the UK’s first “dry” bar, it doesn’t have any booze at all and it’s all deliberate. The bar, which has been open since the end of September, is a social enterprise run by a limited company. "We are self-funded, and invest in helping people with drug and alcohol addictions," said the manager Carlo Alderdice, who has years of experience running bars in Liverpool. While Liverpool has many cafes, "the difference is that we actively say we're a dry bar". Brink's customers are not just those who are in recovery and want an alcohol-free venue, but also many who want to avoid what Alderdice terms the "testosterone, drunk and drug-fuelled club and bar scene". Single women like Brink as they feel safe there due to the lack of alcohol. It is also popular with members of the Muslim community. I believe plans are now afoot for a restaurant with no food for recovery weight watchers and even a hotel with no beds for those suffering from sex addictions. I personally would welcome a world with no idiots but maybe that’s a bit much to expect!

To tip or not to tip

2011-11-07T20:12:00.000+02:00

To tip, or not to tip: that is the question :
Whether tis' nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous waitrons,
Or to take arms against a sea of bozos
And by opposing, end them ?

Apologies to the Bard for tampering with some of his classic prose but that's the end of apologies for today. I'm tired of wrestling with this dilemma of whether to tip or not, whether it makes economic sense, whether it's custom and practice, whether it's socially correct behaviour, whether it makes a blind bit of difference to the service or lack of it, that you get in a restaurant and I reckon that if the restaurateurs and the hospitality industry can't or won't tackle the problem then it should be legislated for and then at least there would be no confusion in anyone's mind when a Government imposed taxable service charge was levied.
Going for a meal in a restaurant is a strange sort of transaction - you are entering into a contract with the restaurant owner. He undertakes to serve you a meal at a predetermined price as indicated on the menu and you undertake to pay that specific price. At some stage in the proceedings, you, the diner, decide to pay more than what is required, effectively giving your money away - it's really quite bizarre ! When was the last time you went into one of Mr A's Emporiums (or should that be Emporia) and when asked by the cashier for R 125 you gaily replied "Just add 10% to that please".
Now I understand the concept of varying degrees of service but with other suppliers it normally works the other way. If I get bad service from the plumber or electrician then I deduct money from the bill - why should a restaurant be any different? Why should I give you money to be nice to me, to bring the food on time, to not spill wine all over me - it doesn't make sense. Why should I reward your little tricks like drawing smiley faces on the bill, touching my arm or back as you pour the wine, telling silly jokes, it's your job for cris'sake!
I'm not interested in the stories that the wages are low or non existent, that the industry can only attract drifters, that tipping encourages better service. The bottom line is that if everyone stopped tipping immediately, the waiters would not work for nothing, the restaurant owners would have to pay salaries, they would increase their prices no doubt but I would have the opportunity to vote with my feet - the businessmen would survive and the bozos go bang!

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-11-06T16:03:00.000+02:00

Hale and Pace trying to order some good old fish and chips in the sketch. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-11-05T20:00:00.000+02:00

This week’s Dilly Diner is in Munich. It’s not a Diner in the traditional sense of the word but it certainly is Dilly. Stephanie Fuchs has opened what she describes as “the world’s first organic butcher shop for dogs” in Munich’s Laim district.At first, “people just laughed,” says Fuchs. No surprise there. Her store, “Beutefuchs,” now has over 100 clients from the greater Munich area. Fuchs says the secret to her success is that from “start to finish,” she demands rigor in what she does: she buys the meat she sells from organic farms, checking first on site that the meat is raised and slaughtered in sustainable and humane conditions. Fuchs creates tailor-made raw food diets for dogs. After examining and weighing a dog, she comes up with a meal plan with the help of a computer program she created herself. “Menus include meat, fruit, salad, vegetables, oils, minerals and herbs,” she says. The food is then either vacuum-packed or put in jars. I’m sure the pooches are now delighted and guilt free.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-11-04T22:43:00.000+02:00

Rick Stein was cock a hoop this week as a beer named after his departed doggie Chalky, scooped the award as World’s Best Pale at the International Beer Awards. Ale The idea for Chalky's Bite came about as a challenge from Rick to Sharp's Brewery Head Brewer Stuart Howe. The task was to create a distinctly English beer with the character, individuality and quality to stand alongside the Belgian greats. The beer created is exceptional with a delicate flavour balance of three different hop varieties and wild Cornish fennel. Chalky's patience whilst attending the many development and sampling sessions at the Brewery is justifiably rewarded in the name.
Rick of course spends a lot of his time in Australia with the new lady in his life and yet another restaurant but a Nielsen report revealed this week that Chalky’s Bite may not be such a big seller there. In fact it appears that a new generation of Aussie blokes are choosing a cold cider over a beer at the pub. And it is Generation-Y men who are driving the trend. The Arkaba Hotel, in Fullarton, has recorded a 300 per cent increase in cider sales in its bottle shop in the past year. Arkaba promotions manager Glen Aikman said cider was no longer considered a girl's drink. "We have blokes who are footballers and guys from other sporting codes through the hotel regularly and they are now all ordering cider," he said. "It's probably been in the last six months that we've really noticed a swing on and off premises to cider." Yeah well we always knew the Aussies were a bunch of big girls!
The one thing we did like about Australia was of course Masterchef Australia, the reality cooking contest which was a truly world class production. Predictably countries around the world hastily jumped on the bandwagon to produce their own version with varying degrees of success. South Africa was no exception and this week was calling for aspiring chefs to be scrutinised in cook offs by culinary judges. We can expect to see the finished version on our screens in the New Year. Let’s hope it can emulate the original and not end up like the slew of locally produced food programmes which are about as interesting as watching the Chinese channel on DSTV!

Hopping mad

2011-11-03T20:22:00.000+02:00

Experts are investigating after a batch of frogs with five legs were found in a Cambridgeshire river. Froggy huggers are reported to be totally baffled with environmental agency Natural England saying specialists were puzzled by the deformity. A spokeswoman told Sky News it was thought to be the first time such frogs had been spotted in the UK."We are not sure what the reason is. A parasite; pollution - they are all possibilities. But we've reached no conclusions." She said research in the US suggested the deformity might be caused by a parasite which attacks frogspawn and disrupts growth patterns.
Well I'm not a betting man by nature, but I would wager two or three rand that it's those bloody Frogs from across the Channel that are responsible. You see I reckon that they have been following with interest the phenomenon of the populations of freshwater crayfish growing to epidemic proportions in Britain's rivers and waterways - it must be something in the water I suppose. The American signal crayfish was first imported to the UK in 1972, to stock farms supplying restaurants. But some escaped and have thrived, while numbers of the UK's only native freshwater crayfish, the 'white-clawed' crayfish, have plummeted. Now consider if you will, the insatiable, almost bizarre, appetite that the Frogs have for frogs legs - 60 to 80 million legless frogs per year at last count - and it becomes strikingly obvious how they could increase supply by 20% at one fell swoop. My theory is that they sneaked across the Channel and introduced a few cloned, five legged, frogs in British freshwater territorial waters in the hope that they would multiply like the crustaceans in a very quick period of time before offering to harvest the offending multi limbed amphibians at no cost to the British taxpayer. I tell you, they are not to be trusted, their eyes are too close together - the Frogs not the frogs !

What grows in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas

2011-11-02T20:19:00.000+02:00

Las Vegas is quite a surreal place with gaudy, extravagant, palaces of impropriety situated right in the middle of nowhere, in a desert. And now it’s going to become even more surreal with the news that in this most unlikely of locations, the dry desert of Nevada, a company called “Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp” has built 44 ponds from recycled shipping containers to grow and harvest shrimp on a 30,000-square-foot shrimp farm. Blue Oasis, plans to sell shrimp to high-end restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip, where Las Vegas chefs are accustomed to working with frozen shrimp. Now customers will be able to purchase the whole live shrimp, including the head and shell. It may sound like a madcap idea until you understand that the plant’s maximum shrimp production is estimated at around a mere 500,000 pounds of shrimp a year whilst Las Vegas consumes a colossal 22 million pounds of shrimp annually. More shrimp than anywhere else in the world. The shrimp is raised for up to 120 days in monitored tanks in a room that’s air-conditioned to ensure a steady temperature of 80 degrees. The shrimp are fed seafood proteins, and their waste is used to fertilize the algae that sustains the salt water system. Water is a primary concern in Las Vegas, but no water is lost from the self-cleaning tanks because Blue Oasis recycles all the water and any water that evaporates is reclaimed through the air system. So there you are, fresh organic shrimp for all those eco warriors waddling from one hotel buffet to another.

Eau happy day

2011-11-01T20:04:00.000+02:00

According to a new market research report compiled by The NPD Group good old tap water is becoming one of the fastest growing beverages ordered at U.S. restaurants. Now I don’t know whether that is a reflection of the economics of the current times or due to the fact that consumers are slowly waking up to the fact that bottled water is one of the most despicable scams ever conceived and frankly I don’t really care. What I do know is that what happens in US restaurants today invariably happens in South African restaurants not too long afterwards. It’s high time that restaurant diners refused to be intimidated by lisping, mincing waitroids looking down their acned, pierced snouts, rolling their eyeballs with disdain when asked for a simple glass of water. “Will that be still or sparkling for Sir?” No! it’ll be bloody tap, with ice, in a dry glass, as quick as you like! Forget about what the waitroid thinks, after all he’s only a bloody plate carrier. Consider instead that for the average bottle of designer water making the bloody plastic bottle requires takes 162g of oil and seven litres of water to produce a 1 litre bottle. To make the 29bn plastic bottles used annually in the US, the world's biggest consumer of bottled water, requires more than 17m barrels of oil a year, enough to fuel more than a million cars for a year. And if that doesn’t convince you then consider that litre for litre designer water is about 1000 times more expensive than municipal water so to hell with the waitroid's snooty attitude just tell him to shift his cute little ass and turn on the tap.

It'll put hairs on your chest

2011-10-31T20:56:00.000+02:00

Some people don't need any excuse to have a cup of coffee. That much I can figure out just by walking up and down the street. There are coffee shops everywhere with people, mainly men, hunched over too small tables with too big cups of coffee in front of them. There is no doubt that the Cape has firmly grasped the culture of Cafe Society and is loving every minute of it. It doesn't do a lot for me since I'm strictly a " one cup a day man " and anyway I''ve still got a full head of hair.
You see I reckon I've figured out what the attraction is for these guys ! It's not, as you may think, the taste or aroma of the coffee, the heady scent of the beans roasting nor is it the need for a caffeine boost to help get them through the day. These people are not frequenting purveyors of fine coffee just to " see and be seen ", they may join in animated conversations but this is more than mere passing the time of day, slandering enemies, gossiping about friends and colleagues or primitive mating rites with chance acquaintances. These are not the comfort zones of Dr Frasier Crane, Jerry Seinfeld or those Friends and their friends. These men are not interested in the java jockey's jive as he shouts out " Two Americano Grande, one cappuccino decaff, three lattes, one mocha and a double espresso", the background buzz of milk frothing, cups, glasses and spoons tinkling or the incessant drone of the coffee grinder like a low geared dentist's drill.
No, I know exactly why these men crowd the coffee houses - look around you, they're baldies. They all have shaved heads, receding hairlines or ill fitting wigs on. They have learnt that caffeine products can stop men from going bald, that the stimulant has the most effect on men whose hair roots were very sensitive to testosterone, one of the causes of hair loss. What they unfortunately don't know of course is that for maximum effect they will really have to love their coffee, noticeable effects would require 60 to 80 cups of coffee per day. That could cause insomnia and then they would spend the whole night in front of the telly worrying about their follicles and tearing their hair out. It's a cruel coffee world out there.

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-10-30T16:36:00.000+02:00

MasterChef has come a long way since that poncy git Lloyd Grossman was the host. FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

2011-10-29T18:14:00.000+02:00

Chefs have never enjoyed a great reputation as being full of good spirit and love towards their fellow men. I'm talking about real chefs here, the kind who have to earn their living in a hot inferno called a commercial kitchen, not the ones who only sweat under the glare of TV lights and whose jackets are always well creased and pristine white. They're a different breed who have to be sugary sweet and jolly with the possible exception of Gordon Ramsay who has made a career out of being a celebrity grump.
This week's Dilly Diner is in Seattle and is run by Takayuki Masumoto, a chef who is a real grouch and is not only proud of it but advertises the fact. His restaurant is called the Grouchy Chef and he plays the part with great gusto. He does produce great food I presume because no-one ever complains, no-one ever dares to complain and it is certainly a task for strong willed individuals to dine under the baleful glare of Takayuki just waiting for someone to be so bold as to pass a comment about his offerings.
Grouchy has a regular, if somewhat subdued, clientele who are prepared to put up with his mood swings purely because he is a terrific, creative cook who sells his food at incredibly low prices. However there is no love lost between him and his customers, one of whom described the looks that he flashed at all his diners as " so acidic that he could bring a Broadway musical finale to an abrupt halt with a single glare "
He's proud enough of his social defect to design his logo around it (tall toque, big frown), put his crotchety motto on his business card ("What you see is what you get!") and trumpet the grouch factor - Masumoto means business, and he's quick to point out that he doesn't need yours. On the outside of the restaurant you'll find handwritten signs plastered on the door. "Toilets are for customers only (potential customers are not included!)." "No Frills! No Substitutions! No Outside Food! No Outside Beverages!" Inside, the barrage of signs continues : "If you don't like my style, please leave NOW. It's better for both you and myself." "I am temperamental, a SERIOUS Japanese and PROUD COOK but not a CLOWN." "If you find the food I made is not good enough for you, please tell me so. I'll give you the money back, and please go somewhere else and ask someone else to make the food for you!" Way to go Grouchy !

That Was The Week That Was

2011-10-28T23:08:00.000+02:00

Secret restaurants entered into new territory this week as a line of people streamed into an unmarked, dimly lighted storefront on Fairfax Avenue Los Angeles as night fell. Before long, a smattering of protesters arrived. In eight months, the sale of foie gras will be banned in California and behind the glass doors, an act of culinary defiance was taking place as three chefs presented an eight-course meal that was nothing short of a glorification of this soon-to-be-outlawed delicacy. There was smoked foie gras, roasted foie gras, steamed foie gras and liquefied foie gras, injected into agnolotti. It was served with veal tongue, yogurt, prosciutto, mustard ice cream and truffles. There was even a foie gras dessert: a brownie sundae with foie gras Chantilly. The dinner was a complete sell out.

Meanwhile it’s no secret that a new menu item introduced this week to diners in Loanhead just outside Edinburgh should also be on the banned list. French chef Bertie Lizeray will be cooking squirrel meat for adventurous diners and introducing a menu featuring the furry rodents, along with horse, frogs legs and springbok – all in the unlikely location of a Midlothian pub. Mr Lizeray, who received training at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, said the move was an attempt to add a “continental twist” to pub food. Also on the menu will be wild boar burgers with honey and thyme. Nuts!

Rather bizarrely on the other side of the Atlantic it’s actually National Squirrel Awareness Month in October, a time for you to spare some thoughts for those rodents which escape Monsieur Lizeray’s pot. If you’re really interested Oct 22 is National Nut Day although not in recognition of Froggie Bertie alas.

Mageirocophobia

2011-10-27T20:39:00.000+02:00

No it's not the 1 st April and I'm not pulling your leg with this one. There really is such a word with it's roots in classical Greek. Phobia is the easy bit, we all know it's a fear of something or other and mageiric has got nothing to do with magic although some people may argue to the contrary. Mageiric is from mageirokos a Greek adjective referring to cooking or describing someone who is skilled in that art and so mageirocophobia, a not so uncommon affliction, is actually a fear of cooking!
People suffering from this phobia have frightening scenes from TV cooking shows running around in their heads, they breathe rapidly, feel nauseous and start to sweat, all the symptoms of having the mother-in-law round for dinner. But the good news is that it can be cured in 3 simple steps :
1. Let go of negative emotions from the past - it's no good feeling anger, hurt and guilt about all those TV dinners you subjected your family to in the past.
2. Let go of limiting decisions - like " But I always buy at Checkers " or " I'm not good enough to pan fry a fish fillet "
3. Create a compelling vision of the future : so you produce the results you want in life.. like serving your family a really tasty pasta meal with an empty bottle of instant arrabiatta sauce hidden behind your back.
Vanquish your fear and anxiety in a fast, painless and totally safe process and recover your confidence, calm and happiness. A gradual dose of TV cooking shows featuring Gordon Ramsay should increase from 30 mins per day to the full 12 or so hours that he performs on our screens daily coupled with bedtime reading of all 20 volumes of the Atkins Diet and before you know it, you'll be as fat as the rest of us.

It just doesn't get any fresher than this!

2011-10-26T20:03:00.000+02:00

Urban Farming has been a hot topic recently, with the rooftops of homes and supermarkets being transformed into fruit and vegetable gardens. Now the London, FARM: shop project in Hackney is converting an empty retail unit into the world’s first farm in a shop.

FARM:shop is the brainchild of Something & Son — a sustainable-living focused design practice — and supported by the local council as part of Hackney’s Art in Empty Spaces project. Their mission is to see how much food they can grow in an urban shop, and to educate and inspire Londoners. They plan to have chicken coops on the roof, fish tanks outside the shopfront, and other live animals inside the shop. By employing a combination of new technologies and traditional methods, they will also grow fruit and vegetables inside the shop. Upstairs, a meeting room will be available for businesses to hire, and downstairs a cafe will serve up dishes using all the produce grown there. The whole space will be available to hire for events and parties, and all profits will go back into their farming outreach programme which teaches people how to grow food. Forty volunteers from the local community have been working to get the shop ready for launch at the end of October, and from then on FARM:shop will be open from Friday to Sunday with daily informative tours.
(via Springwise)

Talk about the blind leading the stupid

2011-10-25T20:42:00.000+02:00

This whole PC, point scoring, eco warrior crap is getting to ridiculous proportions. Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath and accept the fact that we’ve all got a limited shelf life including the bloody planet – that’s the nature of things. Hot off the back of listing calorie counts on menus presumably to make you feel guilty about ordering that bucket of KFC with extra fries the latest idiotic trend is to reveal the size of the restaurant’s carbon footprint. Otarian, an Australian concept that opened a unit in New York City in 2010, is one operation that touts its low-carbon vegetarian fare. Its customers receive “carbon karma credits” for purchases, which are exchangeable for free menu items. The menu also includes calculated carbon savings. For example, the Tex Mex Burger compared to a typical beef burger saves 1.39 kg of carbon dioxide emission. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, meanwhile, Max Burger is breaking new ground in Sweden by posting the carbon footprint of each menu item. It’s also encouraging consumption of more ecofriendly dishes, which steers customers away from its signature beef burgers. What a load of ballocks. Yes we make beef burgers but please don’t eat them! Time was when going out for a meal was a reasonably pleasant affair, now it’s a bloody guilt trip. Call me a cynic if you like but after you’ve saved your 1.39 kg of carbon dioxide emission will you feel content and at peace with the world as you power your 4 wheel drive gas guzzler on the trip home or perhaps you’ll be happy to trade it in for a rickshaw and a pair of sandals?

We're having a partie

2011-10-24T19:24:00.002+02:00

Auguste Escoffier,the Chef of Kings and the King of Chefs,was one of the biggest influences on the commercial kitchen in the last century.Apart from the legacy of a wealth of recipes,he is credited with numerous reforms in the kitchen,centred around improving the working conditions of cooks,many of which are still being practised in kitchens everywhere to this very day.One of his most important innovations was the modern brigade system or partie system where for maximum efficiency he organised the kitchen into a strict hierarchy of authority, responsibility and function.
Escoffier had served in the French army and it is no accident that his system bore all the markings of military precision.After all, for years enormous armies of men constantly on the move had to be fed in an organised manner - an army marches on it's stomach they say.Chefs belonged to Guilds to protect their employment and formalised clothing and working techniques naturally evolved.Now the strange thing is that as much as I understand Escoffier's great system,where common tasks are grouped together in a logical manner,the average punter doesn't and continues to ignorantly believe that each meal is cooked separately by a dedicated chef!
This baffles me.I mean,they've been to a McDonalds haven't they? They've noticed that the people working the counter don't toast the rolls,the people frying the chips don't grill the burgers and when they get a drive through takeaway it isn't the same little face that pops up at each of the windows? So why the hell do they go into a restaurant and think that behind that swinging door there is an army of chefs each cooking one complete dish at a time? Why do they read the well planned menu and then say "I'll have the ......but just ask the chef to......." Which chef? The Executive chef? The grill chef? The veg chef? The sauce chef? Why are they surprised when so often the special request,to their very own dedicated chef,cooking their meal and their meal only,often gets lost in what's happening behind that wall?

Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

2011-10-23T16:40:00.000+02:00

Gordo....subtle as ever.FeedBlitz subscribers should visit site to view.