Stomachs on legs are proud to present

What white people like: farmers markets

2012-01-20T05:22:00.002Z

Whiteness and Farmers Markets: Performances, Perpetuations … Contestations?

Alison Hope Alkon1, Christie Grace McCullen

Academics and activists highlight the potential for alternative agrifood movements to contribute to the evolving coalescence of justice and sustainability. This potential, however, is constrained by what scholars have identified as the prevalent whiteness of such movements. This paper uses ethnographic research at two northern California farmers markets to investigate how whiteness is performed and perpetuated through the movements’ discourses and practices. We found that many managers, vendors and customers hold notions of what farmers and community members should be that both reflect and inform an affluent, liberal habitus of whiteness. Although whiteness pervades these spaces, we have also witnessed individual discourses and acts of solidarity and anti-racism, as well as fledgling institutional efforts to contest white cultural dominance. We conclude by discussing the potential of farmers markets to create an anti-racist politics of food.

available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00818.x/abstract

Fat Politics

2012-01-20T03:27:00.000Z

This paper explores the everyday politics and lived experiences of young people who identify as fat, obese or overweight. Situated within the emerging interdisciplinary fields of fat studies, critical weight studies and critical geographies of body size, this paper gives voice to young people who are often marginalised and frequently stigmatised. I draw attention to the embodied relationalities and intersectionalities evident with the young people's narratives of body size as well as the structures of constraint that operate to reinforce the marginalisation they feel. I conclude by outlining the challenges that exist in transforming the everyday politics of fat.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00962.x/abstract

Oh Christmas Broccoli

2011-12-22T04:12:00.001Z

Happy post Halloween

2011-11-13T23:12:00.009Z

They look more like slime to me than pumpkins.

Black slime.

Hello Kitty's universal appeal is impressive.

Measuring Chickens' Emotional Wellbeing

2011-11-05T02:17:00.004Z

Abstract

Happiness is an elusive concept, it brings about ideas of ecstasy, contentment, delight but also health and strength, pouvoir and puissance ... a state of mind and body that is precarious and contingent. How to give form and substance to an idea that is otherwise difficult to conceive? What is happiness for a chicken? What is it like to be a chicken today? Free-range certification offers a powerful interpretation of animals' happiness in the context of farming, and it does so by providing a particular translation of the `natural' in the domesticated environment of farming. But it also offers a specific definition of materiality, in the form of the body of the animal, presented as an expression of her/his quality of life in the juiciness and other organoleptic qualities of her/his flesh or eggs. In this paper, I present the results of an on-farm assessment of the welfare of free-range chickens in the UK, carried out by adopting the Welfare Quality protocol. This is a new evaluation of the on-farm welfare of animals that encompasses many aspects of animals' lives, including animals' negative and positive emotions. It suggests that animals' `happiness' can be measured and can become part of an overall score of welfare, but it also addresses the complexities of the interpretation of the emotional states of animals. I propose that this case contributes to the debate on `material politics' and the invention of animals' happiness can be seen as a political technique that affects human ^ non-human
animal relations.

Miele M, 2011, "The taste of happiness: free-range chicken" Environment and Planning A 43(9) 2076 – 2090

It reminds me of the Posh Nosh episode. I can't help but feel that we've gotten our priorities all wrong.

In Swenglish

2011-10-06T14:05:00.001Z

Iron Chef of Iron Chefs

2011-08-21T13:55:00.007Z

"we should try one michelin star place while we are here" I said unpacking my suitcase in our tiny hotel room in Paris

Hock proceeds to rattle of a litany of choices and possibilities together with a description of the chef's culinary style as well as stating the impossibility of getting a booking at almost all but Joel Rubuchon's which does not take bookings.

"Ok well what is the number of the first one?" Arpege?" He quotes the number telling me there is no way we will get a table for lunch at the last minute.

I call. They have a table. Tomorrow 1 pm. Hock goes into a quiet stupor. His eye lids flutter while the reality settles. He blushes.

Quote of the Day

2011-08-14T14:15:00.001Z

"I've taken the liberty of ordering us some tofu, some mushrooms and some duck tongues," said the western woman sitting across from me. "Do you trust me to keep ordering, or is there anything in particular you might like?" I looked at her thinking, "You whore!"

From David Sedaris's recent trip to China

Link

Food Song of the Day

2011-08-03T08:07:00.003Z

R. Stevie Moore - Popeye Song (live 2010) from robert moore on Vimeo.

Saw this erratic hero of lo-fi perform last night at the King Georg pub. The Pop Eye song was probably the highlight, but unfortunately this bad quality video doesn't include the bit where he whispered menacingly "olive oil (VIRGIN...) on spinach, tastes so great (FROZEN...)"

How To Cook

2011-07-23T08:49:00.002Z

Talented young Montreal beatmaker Lunice Fermin Pierre II is a ball of fun on stage, mixing up hyphy and club bangers with cuts and spicy b-boy pantomimes.

In this clip he teaches the crowd how to do the Cooking Dance with some loose-jointed soup & burger techniques. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Dream Sponge

2011-06-10T08:42:00.003Z

I've already documented my devotion to heavenly Japanese sponge cakes. I didn't think it could get any better - but it just did.

We had colleagues (or should I say 'alcoholleagues') visit from Japan, and they brought with them a bottle of sake and this wonderful alcohol-infused sponge as souvenirs. How could the sponge retain that dense, yet very fine and soft melt-in-your-mouth texture while stored indefinitely in foil, stewing in its own tipsy juices?

The taste was, like any good castella: lovely, light and a little eggy, with only a yeasty hint of methylated spirits from the booze.
(Note: I think the soaking alcohol may have been shochu, but would love if Nalika can provide insight here).

Each square of this palm-sized cake really packed a punch. I wish there was a way to mail-order it from Japan.

Zero gravity breakfast.

2011-05-19T06:43:00.000Z

BSS | Breakfast Interrupted from Bruton Stroube Studios on Vimeo.

Measuring Everything

2011-04-29T06:00:00.002Z

And that's just the environment....what about the social....so the question here is gotta be, how can and should a label symbolise a guarantee of complex environmental and social systems?

I'm not so sure it can or should?

David Lynch Signature Cup Coffee

2011-04-29T02:30:00.003Z

David Lynch Signature Cup Coffee from David Lynch on Vimeo.

Via Thus Bakes Zarathustra

A Dramatic Reading of "My Father's Daughter" by Gwyneth Paltrow

2011-04-16T01:25:00.000Z

Suntory commercials

2011-04-14T21:29:00.008Z

... in response to the recent disaster in Japan.

Kudos for Suntory for having put such cute things together in a very short amount of time, without even mentioning their beverage products.

Ue wo muite arukou (or better known as Sukiyaki song outside Japan) ver.D 60 secs
http://www.suntory.co.jp/enjoy/movie/d_s/900545459001.html

Miagete goran yoru no hoshi wo ver. B 60 secs
http://www.suntory.co.jp/enjoy/movie/d_s/901998713001.html

Pedal to the Mett, ill.

2011-04-10T01:00:00.001Z

The German chapter of Sneaker Freaker magazine got together with our local burger joint Beef Brothers recently to make this sneaker-shaped mett cake.

With a greater than usual array of garnishes, this particular hunk of raw pork mince actually looks kind of kicking.

Quotes of the Day - "Panini-themed edge"

2011-04-09T07:14:00.003Z

For a man like me that really likes his meat, there are few things better than pig for breakfast.

This is particularly true when the pig is roasted pork shoulder, pressed in a Panini with chipotle sauce and coriander and toasted to perfection, otherwise known as the Cuban from Lonsdale Street Roasters.

link

There is an extensive range of panini here, spelled out on a charming blackboard with magnetic letters and a specials board to the side. ...Roasters also do dessert and a few other small and interesting things (muesli among them). And well there’s the main feature: the coffee. Served in those stylish old school brown cups, it’s rich, the milk isn’t overdone, and it’s sublime perfection really - so rare in this town. It’s got to be the best in the city. Or among the best. Harvest and Tonic are excellent too. But I’m going to say Roasters has an edge. A panini-themed edge at that

Link

I've been quiet on the blog front. Hock's been leaving the commentary to others while he focuses on improving the overall sandwich situation of Canberra in his first business venture.

Nice bites

2011-02-05T09:06:00.019Z

Time to pay tribute to some of the everyday quick bites that are available in this neck of the woods.

Above is the livid pink meat loaf known as 'leberkäse' (literally 'livercheese'). They make the best version of it in southern Germany and Austria. If you can find a bakery or truckstop who'll serve a warm crusty slice of it on a wholegrain bun (ideally with hot mustard instead of the sweet stuff), you'll be in junkfood heaven.

Sauerkraut comes into its own as a side-dish, obviously. But at 25 cents per 100g from the biomarkt delicatessen counter, it could be the healthiest and best value snack ever. And it's good on american-style hotdogs, a worthy late-night indulgence (see photo below).
Yes, I was scared of canned hotdogs in the beginning too.

Sauerkraut has other uses. Like this sourdough bread (from a recipe in Backen Was Allen Schmeckt), which I could eat all day. It's a crunchy-crusted, densely crumbed and moist bread with lots of tang and toastiness. Ingredients include ground caraway and sauerkraut juice, which you can buy bottled at the biomarkt.

A kiwi friend tipped me off to this wasabi-sharp beetroot, sunflower seed and horseradish spread. Apparently it's good on pretzels.

I'm a fan of most foods that come in crazy colours. I also like this spread's red hat logo (the brand name is Zwergenwiese, or 'Dwarf meadows').

'Stuff on bread' is the proverbial German snack. Here is one of my favourite 'stuff on bread' combos. The paté-type spread known as leberwurst, beloved by children, together with electric violet french mustard, with fruity notes of bottom-of-the-wine-bottle-sediment. Sooo good.
This leberwurst is 'Baron Beitzelsche's house-slaughtered' variety, from Manufactum handmade goods emporium.

Revenge of the Mettigel

2011-01-29T09:28:00.005Z

Our workmate Elke celebrated her birthday last week. As a treat for all the omnivores at the office, she created an iconic 70s German party centrepiece - the 'mettigel', a hedehog made of raw minced pork.

The mettigel is something of an urban legend, and most of my workmates claimed never to have seen one "in the flesh". But here it was, in front of our eyes, all pink and glistening and terrifying.

If I had ever encountered one of these as a kid, I'm sure I would have had recurring nightmares. It's easy to imagine that thing creeping up the stairs and chasing children from their beds, leaving a slimy trail on the banister, shedding pretzel sticks in the thick shag carpet.

If you have the stomach for it, the TV skit below shows unemployed Herbert serving a mettigel as appetiser, main course and dessert to Uta the vegetarian and Klaus the architect.
"If she has a weak stomach, she should have said so. Then I would have used the fresh eggs."

Mettigel - MyVideo

Portlandia

2011-01-28T23:05:00.002Z

Following in the footsteps of Posh Nosh....Colin was raised nearby

Sad Food Songs of the Day

2011-01-22T17:50:00.003Z

In honour of Broadcast's incandescent Trish Keenan, here are two almost-food-related songs: Lunch Hour Pops (above) and Before We Begin (below), in which she advises throwing salt over your shoulder.
RIP Trish.

The Tyranny of Christmas

2011-01-15T13:35:00.001Z

DOUBLE BARBECUE!!!!

2011-01-15T13:20:00.004Z

Courtesy of Hock at Xmas NZ '10 after one very worthwhile trip to Portland, Oregon and Podnah's Pit...Thanks Andy for helping to make our Xmas even yummier

Potato Salad Expressionism

2011-01-15T12:15:00.005Z

Potato salad to Germans is a blank canvas to project their identity on. There are regional varieties, but every household has their own favourite recipe, and home-made potato salad is as a rule more delicious than the stuff you'll find at restaurants here.

The potatoes are almost always cut into slices - not the parboiled chunks that seem to characterise potato salad in english-speaking countries.
Some regions of Germany favour the use of mayonnaise. Similar to Japanese potato salad, or the Spanish 'ensaladilla rusa', it's more of a mélange, so it's often hard to tell where the potato ends and the mayo begins. I prefer the vinegar-based recipes, which really show off the savory waxy yellow German potato.

Though naming this stuff 'salad' is a bit misleading ('cold starch dish' might be more honest), potato salad can be a refreshing counterpart to meat or cheese dishes. Our workmate Wulf does an excellent vinegary potato salad with cucumber slices, to accompany his Käsespätzle, baked cheese noodles. The salad and the noodles are both specialties of the Swabia region.

But my favourite potato salad might just be our friend Andreas' spin on a potato salad recipe from Baden-Württemberg (pictured). He made it for a party at an art curator's office on New Year's eve in Berlin, and it was a great way to start the year, after viewing chaotic fireworks from a rooftop above a McDonalds on Alexanderplatz.

Little fat-free bacon specks add a toasty flavour to the mellow acidity of the vinegar-dressed potatoes, dill adds its herbal punch, and Andreas' addition of gherkin adds a little extra crunch & acidity. It really is a work of art.

(Adapt this recipe according to taste...e.g. vary the herbs, the vinegar, leave out the bacon or the gherkin, etc).

1 kg waxy potatoes
6 tbsp wine vinegar
1/8 litre of hot beef broth (from a stock cube)
1 red onion
125g finely chopped bacon without the rind/fat
Salt & Pepper
Pinch sugar
1/2 bunch of parsley dill & chives (Andreas just used dill)
A few gherkins.

Scrub potatoes and add to covered pot of boiling water. cook 30 min. Drain, rinse under cold water and peel off the skins. Cut into slices while still warm, add to a bowl and put the bowl in a warm water bath. Mix with the vinegar and stock/broth.
Finely dice the onion and add to the bowl.
Finely dice the bacon, heat the oil in a pan and sauté the bacon until golden. Season with salt, pepper and sugar. Pour this over the potatoes and mix carefully.
Let the salad bowl sit in a hot water bath for 20 minutes. (Andreas skipped this step)

Wash your herbs, dry them and finely chop along with the pickled gherkins. Add to the salad and serve.

Serve with smoke machine, flashing lights, gin, Britney Spears 'Toxic' and Prince 'U got the look' (optional).

Ichi Roku Taruto

2011-01-13T09:47:00.007Z

Inspired by kinakoJam's entry, a little googling of 一六タルト (Ichi[1] Roku[6] Taruto) has brought me some wonders...

Apparently, it has become one of the "yuru chara" ('loose' mascot character) of Ehime prefecture in Shikoku region.

Like castella, it it supposedly inspired by the Portuguese upon their arrival to Nagasaki port in the 17th century.

The name taruto comes from torta/tarte, and it has been localized by adding red bean jam with a hint of yuzu, famous citrus from Shikoku.

It goes out on the street...

And it even goes to take HIV exam with other yuru chara's.

Amazing Japan.

Itami Juzo used to appear on the TV commercial series - he went to high school in Matsuyama, where this cake is famous.

Kakizome & 一六タルト

2011-01-12T20:39:00.010Z

I enjoy learning kanji, in a masochistic kind of way, but lately I am starting to wonder if I'll ever graduate from, say, reading the ingredients on the back of instant egg soup packets. There are just so many kanji to learn, and so few spare hours in the day. No surprise, then, that I botched my New Year's calligraphy attempt at Mamecha café in Berlin last week.
Maybe it's just a challenge that I'm not meant to overcome in this lifetime.

I feel similarly about sponge cake.
Particularly castella, the very soft yet densely-crumbed Japanese sponge derived from a Spanish or Portuguese recipe in Nagasaki quite a few centuries ago. There are many recipes I'm willing to attack in the name of creative reconstruction, but castella is not one of them. There just wouldn't be any point in creating a cake that was anything less than pristine and box-fresh.

I've been doing Japanese night classes lately, and tonight our teacher served up pieces of an Ichi Roku Taruto cake that she'd bought when visiting her parents over new years. The rolled sponge was like a next level castella.
Flavoured with yuzu citrus and rolled with azuki bean paste, its unearthly uniform perfection was like a fleeting dream: the essence of everything beautiful that we will never quite find the time for.

yummy Japan

2011-01-11T11:31:00.005Z

I can't help getting sucked into Muji on my few but every visit to Tokyo.

And can't stop worshiping bouncy udon with the just-right garnish and dipping sauce.

It's a texture-pleasure.

I am not sure why sanuki-style udon is not winning the world recognition, yet, like sushi. I gobbled sushi too but didn't dare taking pictures when I was sat at the counter facing the serious sushi man. If I had blond hair, maybe I would have felt foreign enough to do so...

Where is marinated herring?

2011-01-11T01:18:00.006Z

Take away lessons include:

1. Don't forget the herring.
2. Bass drum = partytime.

Digestive Songs of the Day

2011-01-03T09:50:00.002Z

Afternoon tea: The Kinks from Brian Jones on Vimeo.

"Sore was I from the crack of an enemy's hose,
And the horrible sound of tomato

Ketchup
Soup and puree
Don't get left behind ...

So I stood with a knot in my stomach,
And I gazed at that terrible sight
Of two youngsters concealed in a barrel,
Sucking monkberry moon delight"

Hardcore pastry cheffing

2010-12-23T23:11:00.003Z

US Army Ranger Master Sgt. Mark Morgan: six tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq; ranked number three in the world as pastry chef. From the Peninsula Warrior:

“I’m not as good as I used to be – it’s been 10 years,” the Bronze Star recipient said, referring to the past decade that he served in the 75th Ranger Regiment. He deployed twice to Iraq and four times to Afghanistan in support of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom.

But it can be said that he must have left quite the lasting impression among those in the culinary circuits, because he previously competed in the WACS Culinary World Cup in 1998, 2000 and 2004 as a member of the Army’s culinary arts team. Morgan continues to remain in touch with ACF coaches and managers.

“Networking (is) probably the reason for the ‘name drop,’” he said.

His peanut butter ganache earned him third place among 55 pastry chefs. Morgan also prepared four desserts, which together, were called “Pumpkin and Spice”. They included a spiced pumpkin custard; walnut cake inside a coconut blossom; red currant compote; and a cinnamon beignet on poached pumpkin petals, a trio of cranberry, and honey, yogurt and pumpkin sorbet with a pumpkin-thyme essence.

Ich bin Gans voll: the Christmas work party

2010-12-22T14:08:00.021Z

The pleasures and calorific terrors of Christmas eating here in Germany are truly hard to resist (I was encouraged at my Iyengar class yesterday to see that even the most dedicated of yogis had developed seasonal paunches).

As usual, December has been a month of heavy eating for me, but our work Christmas party two days ago was the cherry on the cake. Three colleagues arrived from Munich with a whole sack full of pretzels from cult bakery Hofpfisterei and boiled up a pot of Bavarian weisswurst with sweet mustard.

Then, a couple hours later, we all set off from the office by foot, through the snow, for an evening at a local organic cooking school which holds classes throughout the festive season. The classes are more of an exercise in group bonding & eating than anything, though they do give you some pointers on chopping red cabbage. For minimum stress, they take care of putting the goose in the oven a couple of hours before your group arrives, so you can concentrate mostly on getting drunk.

Knocking out out comfort food classics with workmates was a good time, even though we usually have very different tastes: some people watch their diet, others eat cake every day, some love putrid french cheese, others can't stand any cheese apart from the stuff on pizza, & one is an orange food phobic except when it comes to Fanta. German comfort food brings everyone together.

We were fitted with aprons, served wine or rosewater bubbly and a toasted coconut and lentil soup as a starter, then set to work peeling parsnips, chopping a massive pot full of red cabbage, and mixing ground almonds with rosewater & honey for chocolate-coated marzipan bonbons, at three different workstations (one for salad, and seitan for the vegetarians, one for hot side dishes, and one for dessert).

Within a short space of time, fingers stained purple from the cabbage, we were feasting on the goose with psychedelic-hued 'rotkohl' in a buttery-textured apple juice and spice reduction, potato-parsnip-horseradish mash topped with crunchy candied pumpkin seeds, and a warm 'chutney' made of chopped chestnuts with rosemary and organic store-bought marmalade. Followed by the dark chocolate marzipan bon bons and a frozen parfait that our dessert team had made just a couple of hours earlier from whipped soya cream and crumbled spicy 'lebkuchen' gingerbread pieces.

To me, it seemed the soya cream didn't leave the same sour, sick sensation in the stomach that large amounts of regular cream tend to. So I felt it was my duty to indulge in multiple servings, each one doused with a spicy warm plum compote.
I'm sure I've never eaten so many ostensibly wholesome calories at one sitting.
But you know what they say. Gluttony only comes once a year.

Denis sorting 'postelein' leaves for the salad.

Erik the chestnut-preppin' weapon.

'Bonbonbaklat', said Jens.

Yannick's brother Sven has 3 michelin stars. Yannick doesn't eat a lot, but he's pretty good at cutting cabbage.

Genesis of rotkohl.

Christmas is coming, the Goose is getting fat (me too).

Lebkuchen parfait penitence.

So hungry!

2010-11-20T03:56:00.004Z

Seriously. That's the name of the song, "ចង់ស្រក់ទឹកមាត់."

Dancer in the dark ages: Good wholesome German fun

2010-11-01T13:24:00.005Z

A medieval festival at a schoolyard in Bonn

Parents who long to save their children from the perils of computer gaming, bad German rap and supermarket curry-ketchup can do worse than to visit regional Medieval festivals, where wholesome activities abound: from carving wooden daggers to weaving and paper making.

Food-wise, naturally there are the German staples of cake and currywurst, but there's also 'flammkuchen' roasted alsace flatbread with onions and bacon, and roasted wild boar - authentically unsalted, served from a dirty plank - and an activity of making campfire bread wrapped on sticks, which isn't typically medieval but keeps your little dragon-slayers silent and morose for 20 minutes or so.

Parents can enjoy wearing dead animals strapped to their belts, smoking fags next to the fake gallows and reminiscing about the days when German criminals were tortured with methods that resembled food preparation: hot oil, boiling and roasting. When gothic fonts were totally de rigeur, and sin was something to be wallowed in. What could be more wholesome than that?

The Week the Oven Stood Still

2010-10-30T14:42:00.001Z

A stodgy rendition of chestnut rice

Saturday
Boom - in between a batch of sweet potato oven fries and a soup, our oven went kaput. Ironically, it's the only appliance in the kitchen wired up by a qualified electrician. Yes, an electrician who works in the warehouse of a music distribution company and moonlights as a hip hop promoter, but totally qualified, he assured us...
We sometimes get electric shocks off our dishwasher too, so maybe it's time to get a professional electrician over. Thank god I have house shoes with rubber soles.
I'm sad that we may have to part with the brown 70s AEG porcelain-top oven that we got for 60 euros on ebay.

Maybe it's cold cuts and cheeses with bread for dinner the next 2 weeks - how very German.

Sunday

I turn the house upside down looking for the Singaporean cookbook that came with our Panasonic rice cooker, but can't find it. I'm sure it's possible to cook a whole fish in that thing.
I do find the user-manual, which has basic instructions for using the rice cooker to steam food or bake cakes. I'm thinking a Mexican pineapple upside down cake cooked in a rice cooker could be elegant.
We have some frozen Korean dumplings. Fill the rice cooker with luke warm water, put dumplings in on plastic steamer insert, and set the steam function for ten minutes. A few minutes later and there's no sign or sound of the water heating.
We boil the jug and add boiling water to the ricecooker, and steam starts coming through the vent. And continues long enough to cook the dumplings. Success!

Monday

A simple spread with tomatoes from our colleague Wulf's balcony, and good Manufactum sourdough. Nothing beats the enchanting slimy stringiness of buffalo mozzarella.

Tuesday

Seems like a good idea to test drive the rice cooker with other grains, so it's time to try a wholegrain barley pilaf. The word 'pilaf' brings to mind '80s cooking magazines - and wholegrain barley is probably considered pig food in many parts of the world - but this dish was a very refined sort of pig food. Hearty, speckled with pine nuts and sprinkled with pecorino, complimented by a side of grilled eggplant done on the George Foreman grill.

If you close the lid in between adding ingredients to trap heat, you can definitely get a gentle simmer on and sauté ingredients to build up the flavour in your rice-cooker stew. You don't need much oil since the heat is low and the moisture is trapped. Of course, it helps if the recipe contains lots of umami components like red wine, mushrooms and a touch of curry powder... Although the rice cooker couldn't achieve a high enough heat to 'toast' the grains beforehand, it didn't affect the quality of the dish.

Note: there are some rice cooker recipes on the net for browning whole legs of lamb (presumably in big-ass industrial sized cookers), but it's very dubious that you could get the heat high enough to do so. The rice cooker is better for slow simmering and flavoursome hodge-podges.

Wednesday

I contemplate the eggs in the fridge and wonder if there's a way to microwave them. Better instead to cook some veg on our beat-up old George Foreman grill...hmmm, or maybe not. The George Foreman grill gave us a few good years of service, but chose to kark it tonight. Extraneous electrical appliances are all destined for the dust heap in the end...I'm all about manual egg-beaters and bicycle-powered dishwasher from now on.

Extraneous or not, it's now a choice between microwave and rice cooker if we want to have a hot meal. We choose the latter, and adapt a pumpkin curry recipe from Mira Mehta's 'Hajimete No Ryoori: Healthy Way to Indian Cooking'. It works really well in the rice cooker if you close the lid and let stew for 5 minutes when the recipe asks for stir frying, or cooking gently for that matter. It's one of those dishes which creates a magical chemistry between seemingly simple ingredients: the whole house is filled with a tantalising pumpkin-cinnamon scent from the vapours escaping the rice cooker vent. Highly recommended.

Mira Mehta's Pumpkin Curry - serves 4
1 kg butternut peeled & cut into bite size chunks
1 large tomato chopped
1 green chilli finely chopped
1 dried red chilli
3 cm cinnamon stick
3/4 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp coriander powder, 1 tsp cumin powder, 1/2 tsp chilli powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
coriander leaves for garnish

1. add oil to pan or rice cooker, when hot add red chilli & cinnamon stick - as soon as they become fragrant, add the tomato & cook gently for a minute or two. Add the green chilli, turmeric, coriander powder, cumin and chili powder and stirfry 2-3 min.
3. Add pumpkin, stir, marinate for a minute or so then add salt & 2 cups water.
4. Cover or close lid, turn heat to low. Cook circa 20 min (or one white-rice-setting cycle) until pumpkin is tender. Serve & garnish with coriander (or not..).

Thursday
Hiroko Shimbo's book The Japanese Kitchen has a lot of great rice cooker recipes: rice with oysters, rice with beef, burdock and porcini, etc. We decide to go for the classic chestnut rice - but it doesn't turn out perfectly, even though I spend what feels like 30min washing the short grain rice beforehand. Maybe the brand of rice was sub par, maybe the fancy canned french chestnuts weren't strong enough in flavour. Next time we'll try the dish with brown rice (for its sturdy flavour and sturdily shaped grains) and roast some of the fresh chestnuts that have just come into season.

Friday
Carbs galore. Craving a more hearty sort of rice dish, we try out the brown rice & tea porridge (genmai chagayu) from the website Just Hungry. Cooked in roasted bancha tea using the rice cooker's 'slow cook/porridge' setting, dotted with tasty lentils, dusted with furikake flavour sprinkles, and accompanied with salad and a soft-boiled egg, it is a satisfyingly simple brothy autumn dish, but due to brown rice being a little TOO impervious to mushiness, it doesn't really achieve the proper gloopy okayu texture until it's reheated the next morning.

Saturday

Our new ebay stovetop and oven arrive, but oops - we somehow manage to smash the door of the oven into a million tiny pieces...Apparently you are not supposed to lift it up by the handle on the front.
Sandwiches for dinner, anyone?

Food Songs of the Day: Lemon Drops

2010-10-30T09:05:00.000Z

Above, Lemon Candy (Chara's j-pop is no doubt an acquired taste). Below, an arguably more tasteful song, ostensibly about Lemon Yoghourt.

The author of the below song, Caribou aka Manitoba, played at Barcelona's Sonar festival earlier this year. He is a trained mathematician and looked a treat in salmon coloured socks. We took him & his band to dinner after the show, and his charming Silverlake-based flexitarian bass-player had no choice but to dig into an endless round of ham shavings and rare beef slivers. We wondered if the restaurant would serve blood ice cream for dessert. Barcelona might be my favourite place on earth.

Most disturbing quote of the day ever

2010-09-27T12:47:00.002Z

Many people think your brain controls your fat. We promote the idea that your fat controls your brain.

From the Huffington Post "Your Fat Cells Control Your Brain" ------ arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Does this mean my fat actually wrote my doctorate? Should I just get the University registrar to hand the degree directly over to my ass?

Yakitori Song

2010-09-25T08:30:00.011Z

Move over Sukiyaki Song. Nuff respect to Jetdaisuke for combining two of my favourite things, yakitori and electro, with his ode to liver on a stick.

Jetdaisuke's youtube channel includes reviews of yoghurt, icepacks, pink cherry blossom-flavoured curries and diary-style snippets of drinking temple beer or barbecuing tuna eyes.
But his real strength lies in his synthesiser reviews. Highlights include his filmed first impressions of the Otomatone and the Microkorg XL, on which the above Yakitori song was composed.
Personally I find his curry reviews a little too out-of-the-box, using the familiar "oishii!" money shot formula, as seen on TV. Whereas his passion for wacky presets and assorted elecronic nerd gear is much less, shall we say, filtered.

"Is he eating an apple?":

Review of kanji/animal toys with gum inside:

Kelp curry: "You can discern a slight kombu/kelp colour, can't you."

Tuna eyes on the grill:

At Laaassttt...Meat a benign extravagance

2010-09-11T23:20:00.001Z

"...daft assumptions underlie the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's famous claim that livestock are responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a higher proportion than transport. Fairlie shows that it made a number of basic mistakes. It attributes all deforestation that culminates in cattle ranching in the Amazon to cattle: in reality it is mostly driven by land speculation and logging. It muddles up one-off emissions from deforestation with ongoing pollution. It makes similar boobs in its nitrous oxide and methane accounts, confusing gross and net production. (Conversely, the organisation greatly underestimates fossil fuel consumption by intensive farming: its report seems to have been informed by a powerful bias against extensive livestock keeping.)

Overall, Fairlie estimates that farmed animals produce about 10% of the world's emissions: still too much, but a good deal less than transport. He also shows that many vegetable oils have a bigger footprint than animal fats, and reminds us that even vegan farming necessitates the large-scale killing or ecological exclusion of animals: in this case pests. On the other hand, he slaughters the claims made by some livestock farmers about the soil carbon they can lock away."

Food Wars

2010-09-07T02:47:00.003Z

Just a little something to help you sleep better at night......I just read this on the New Agriculturalist site....

To meet growing demand, FAO estimates that food production will have to increase 70 per cent by 2050....demand for food is rising two per cent per year - a combination of continuing population growth and increasing demand by growing middle class appetites for livestock products - while food production lags at one per cent per annum. However, with expanding megacities and industries demanding much increased share of water, with oil production past its peak, and cities and leisure facilities expanding over fertile land, farmers are faced with producing more with less. The promise of further scientific advances through genetic modification have yet to be fulfilled, and will have to offer (and quickly) plants that grow with less water, on less fertile soils, and cope with rising temperatures that compromise seed-setting in rice and other cereals.

Then I stumbled upon this gallery of world war two posters.....which seemed to aptly fit with the whole doomy mood of my internets readings today

Cuts of Pork - bring the noise

2010-08-24T12:02:00.002Z

Kook to Cook

Food Envy

2010-08-17T08:47:00.007Z

So we have been living in Auckland since March when our plans to move back to Asia crumbled along side Thailand's aspirations towards democracy.

We are still working on "Plan B".

It's not so bad. The winter here is very mild. I go jogging around Mission Bay on sunny days and think that life is on the whole pretty good.

However, I am experiencing extreme, cross-Tasman national level food envy.

Let me explain. You know how when you go to a restaurant and order the wrong thing and wished you had ordered what your friend ordered and spend the rest of the evening eyeing up their plate? Well it's like that but on a national level.

I once thought that Canberra was at the ass end of all agro-food supply chains. How wrong I was. I've decided that New Zealand now takes that dubious title. Being an major agro-exporter to the world and extremely proud of its local food culture, I know that any New Zealander would argue that I am wrong until they are blue in the face. To which I would respond with a big fat "whateva". Yes we export a whole lotta milk powder...ngeah!

And I can say that because I am a bourgeois female – vanguard of the 21st century – the new working class male (Make way for a whole new type of chauvanism people!!! Possibly involving unbleached tampons) . I also think that most notable food critics and chefs agree with me. I've noticed in the local food press that journalists love to ask visiting food dignitaries such as Rick Stein and others what they think of New Zealand food. The overwhelming response that I have noticed is a slightly uncomfortable shifting in one's seat followed by the very diplomatic comment "it has come a long way from where it was before".

Which isn't really that far. Quite frankly I think the food here, the quality and the variety can be pretty second rate. Given the very small size of the local population, their limited spending power and generally unadventurous palates, top quality, interesting produce does not make much of a showing on most supermarket shelves or farmer's market tables (back in April, I was outraged on a fishing trip to Leigh that the local fishery there does not do any public sales and exports all of its catch directly overseas).

In the meantime, I have been endlessly taunted by Australian cooking shows. MasterChef Australia, SBS's Luke Nguyen's Vietnam and Food Safari have been goading me on cable tv. I have a serious case of Australian food envy. Sitting here in the living room eating yet more kumera, broccoli and chicken, I'm amazed to learn that the Maltese community of Australia is large enough that they make their own Gbejniet. Luke casually mentions that you can buy most varieties of mango and Vietnamese herbs in Australia now and I grimace (not in NZ tho). And to add insult to injury, histrionic Masterchef contestants get to cook with massive pieces of truffles (I asked for a truffle for my birthday but the NZ truffle crop rotted in the floods this season and of course no one imports them because NZer are just too poor to buy them, meanwhile Canberra had a bumper crop).

I love New Zealand, it will always be home. It will always be my birth place. But an unfortunate part of being a New Zealander is feeling like the poor and envious sibling of Australia. To bring it back to the intimate scale of a dining table. It's like always going out to dinner with the same friend who is richer, luckier, more worldly, interesting and louder than you and always gets the better meal...every single time.

"..just when you thought cheesecake couldn't get any better..."

2010-08-17T07:35:00.002Z

Quote of the Day

2010-08-16T23:04:00.002Z

Miller (1995) views consumption rather than production as the new vanguard of history and as a key site through which political options must be articulated. He suggests that it is the bourgeois female rather than the working-class male who will become the progressive force in the twenty-first century

LESLIE, D. & REIMER, S. (1999) Spatializing Commodity Chain. Progress in Human Geography, 23, 401-420.

Is Alice Waters the vanguard of history?

Photo of the Day

2010-08-14T10:19:00.002Z

Courtesy of my one-time boss in Tokyo, Jun Inoue, via Facebook. Jun more often posts pics of glistening meaty noodle soups and bacon-draped cabbage, but below is the slightly more wholesome proposition of 118 aji and 2 saba fish.

Quote of the Day

2010-08-14T09:30:00.003Z

There is no wine appropriate for salad.

Joël Robuchon goes on to say that chocolate is also hard to match with wine. He suggests a better choice is flat water, fortified wine "with chocolate accents", or perhaps coffee.

In his Complete Robuchon, the yoda-like Frenchman also suggests taking eggs out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before you plan to boil them.

Move Over Mr Coffee

2010-08-09T21:32:00.005Z

"My father's a farmer from birth. My auntie, great auntie, they're all farmers."
So says Rohan Marley, son of Bob, and co-founder of Marley coffee, which is grown to Ital certified standards. Marley Coffee plans to expand its market from the US to the UK by end of year, and says their aim is improve the lives of farmers while promoting organic farming. The promo vids (above/below) inform about the loss of top soil in Jamaica and the teachings of rastafari, alongside footage of assorted cute kids with bright white teeth who describe their dreams of becoming pediatricians.

In what XLR8R calls "a hip hop first," LA coffee purveyors Intelligentsia (home to at least one award-winning barista) have launched a limited-run blend named after Stones Throw producer Madlib aka the mad kid. They describe the blend as "syrupy and sweet," but they might just as well have described it as "sticky icky" in reference to another west coast hip hop legend.

What's next - artisan Black Milk cocoa powder?
Peanut Butter Wolf's homemade grape jelly?
or MF Doom's yard bird pizza and beer combi packs.

Lyrics: MF Doom - One Beer
"She asked him to autograph her derriere, it read
To wide load, this yard bird tastes like fried toad.

Study how to eat, to dine by the pizza guy
No, he's not too fly to skeet in a skezzer eye

A whole string of jobs like we're on tour
Every night on the score, we're coming to your corner store"

Side effects of food

2010-08-08T19:16:00.003Z

Word on the street is that comedian Louis CK was the best act so far at this year's Edinburgh Festival. So here are some food-related gags from him.

Cake on Floor

2010-08-06T10:40:00.009Z

Sadly, despite my deepest intentions & dearest wishes, I forgot to organise a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this month. Blast!

Back in the day I was a comedy groupie, and one of my fave comedians was Ross Noble, who made a few return trips to NZ to do psychedelic stream of consciousness rants that stood in stark relief next to the rehearsed routines of the other comedians.

Why just be funny when you can also incite civic unrest? (See sausage roll clips below)

Another tasty option for live buffoonery is the Glasgow Comedy Festival each April – some day I want to go there, and partake of the infamous Glasgow deep fried vegetarian haggis. Speaking of comedy.

Advanced wine blending techniques

2010-07-19T07:28:00.002Z

Comedian Zach Galifianakis drinks from his wine helmet. From the blog of photographer, Terry Richardson

ឆាវខ្វៃ and moto parts for sale!

2010-07-14T11:31:00.020Z

One of my favorite Chinese contributions to Khmer food is cha kvai (ឆាវខ្វៃ). Cha kvai are fried dough sticks, more like crullers than churros. They are sold in pairs, for dipping in or adding to your noodle soup. I got hooked on them in Phnom Penh. But I would bet that they, like the Teochew people, may be found throughout Southeast Asia. In Cambodia, they are most commonly found on restaurant tables alongside the condiments in the morning, and any given restaurant's supply is usually all eaten up by noon. Initially, I had assumed that each restaurant made their own. But after long hours of observation (lots of mornings sitting eating my soup and taking my coffee), I realized that they seemed to be produced elsewhere and either delivered to restaurants in the mornings by courier or picked up by restaurant employees. I stumbled upon one of these cha kvai production facilities one morning near Psah Kandaal.

During business hours, it is just an unassuming moto parts shop.

But early in the early morning, it is a bustling hub of fried dough production!

If you want to make your own: http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/2007/05/yau-char-kway-ii.html

Quote of the Day

2010-07-12T07:17:00.003Z

The 1969-70 "Menu" B-52 bombings of Cambodia's border areas, which American commanders labelled Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Dinner, Desert and Snack, aimed to destroy the mobile headquarters of the South Vietnamese "Vietcong" and the North Vietnamese Army (VC/NVA) in the Cambodian jungle. However, these and later bombardments forced the Vietnamese communists further west and deeper into Cambodia, and ultimately radicalized Cambodian local people against Lon Nol's regime.

Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen on the similarities between the current war with Afghanistan and the past bombing of Cambodia

Cracking the Code

2010-07-10T23:59:00.005Z

A couple of years ago, my hometown paper published a story which caught my eye...

They told the story of the reverse engineering of KFC's secret fried chicken recipe by Ron Douglas (pictured above, and below on YouTube). Committed to cracking the KFC code and re-creating his favorite chain restaurant dishes in his home, Douglas had quit his job as a finance manager on Wall Street in order to devote all of his energy to his quest. He now runs a website for folks who do the same thing and sells cookbooks full of recipes so you can join in the fun.

This is interesting. I both self-identify as, and follow food media targeted at, the sort who appreciates DIY and some reified notion of authenticity. Generally, I eschew chain restaurants preferring instead independently-owned businesses. And here is a whole community (check out the forum) devoted to folks who are doing the same thing (DIY, authenticity) but with an eye towards franchises. Neat!

For another fun take on franchise food, check out the food stylings of Fancy Fast Food too!

Michael Phillips wins World Barista Championships

2010-07-09T16:15:00.007Z

Image: gratuitous yellow grinder, via Village Voice

Giorgio Milos wrote as an aside on The Atlantic website yesterday that Intelligentsia barista Michael Phillips won this year's World Barista Championship at the end of June. On the official championship website you can link to a streamed video of the competition.

Other finalists were: Raul Rodas (Guatemala), Scottie Callaghan (Australia), Colin Harmon (Ireland), Soren Stiller Markussen (Denmark), and Stefanos Domatiotis (Greece).

Although no kiwis placed in the finals, several New Zealanders are on the judging panel, including newly certified Wellingtonian Jessica Godfrey, who has her espresso machine plumbed in at her house to get proper water pressure. I guess everyone in Wellington does. Don't you?

Check out a recent post here on Gut Feelings for pictures of the LA workplace of the winning barista – where they play early Nas records, allow cute mongrel dogs inside, and make good joe. As a friend wrote recently on twitter about Intelligentsia, "It's the little things".

Chinese word-play

2010-07-09T11:00:00.006Z

The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog recently had a couple of neat posts on the multiple meanings of plant names in Chinese. They addressed pak choy...

...Chinese characters for pak choy, or Chinese cabbage (白菜), can also be pronounced to mean “100 types of prosperity and luck.” Which explains why this vegetable is a favourite of Chinese jade carvers...

and peanuts...

...the peanut (huasheng 花生) is an auspicious symbol because its second character (sheng 生) means “to give birth.”

Shu Flies has more on the jade pak choy pictured above (from the National Palace Museum in Taiwan) and on carved jade cabbage, in general. Additionally, on a note unrelated to cabbages and peanuts, she touches on the most brilliant bit of stone carving I have ever seen. Check out the picture here. Seriously.

When the smell's all gone-- follow-up

2010-07-02T10:49:00.003Z

Last night, I posted a link to a song by Sapoun Midada in which he drowns the pain of romantic loss in coffee at a roadside stand. However, others experience the drowning of emotions in coffee quite differently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvg8_0NKFQI

When the smell's all gone...

2010-07-02T05:29:00.003Z

Sad coffee music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi0W2c-RIcM

Mr Potato Head

2010-06-25T18:25:00.004Z

Satirical German magazine Titanic this week lampoons presidential candidate Christian Wulff by comparing him to a knödel dumpling. The headline reads: "Merkel's Recipe for a Crisis: Now a Knödel will become president."

The magazine has a history of food-related gags - publishing caricatures of former chancellor Kohl's head as a pear in the '80s. They spoofed East German's obsession with bananas following the fall of the wall, with the cover depicting an Easterner holding her "first banana" which is in fact a cucumber.

City of Angels

2010-06-25T10:24:00.005Z

On the way back from New Zealand I stopped off to visit a friend who recently moved to Venice, LA. It seemed like an idyllic place to live, with broad deserted back streets for cycling on, hot sun, happy-looking hounds, oranges hanging on trees, good-tasting cerviche and a surfeit of free condiments in the take-out burrito shops: like free pickled radish and jalapenos, and free tortilla chips.

The only thing that comes free back home in Cologne, is ironically cheap men's cologne (from a big bottle on the counter at a Turkish take-out in Mülheim).

Another cool thing about Venice, apart from the breaded deep fried Jalapeno poppers filled with yellow string-cheese, is a coffee shop called Intelligentsia on Abbot-Kinney. They do single-origin espresso from a 1972 La Marzocco, as well as selling chic beverage apparatus like chemex coffee makers, tulip-shaped heat-retentive glasses, aqua-glazed Japanese tea cups, & painted children's mugs from Denmark.

Intelligentsia
1331 Abbot Kinney Blvd | Venice, CA 90291

An Intelligentsia tea-ologist at work, note how he is concentrating on his stop watch:

Delicious flat white from Intelligentsia.

Sakura-mochi and Sea-flavoured Jelly at Kura

2010-05-30T12:12:00.006Z

Pictured: two of my favourite things to eat in the entire world, black sesame ice cream and sakura mochi, at Kura in Auckland. (The sakura mochi, a sign of spring half a hemisphere away, was served warm).

When we turned up, my friend David said "I'm interested to see what you think this time," which didn't exactly raise my expectations. The quality at decent restaurants tends to go down over time, and on a visit a year ago Kura seemed to have, at best, hit a plateau.
But instead I was pleased to find their delicious braised tongue was back on the menu, and the presentation of the specials had a bit more tender loving care, like the plate below (from the daily specials menu), with a yummy bite-sized square of cold seafood consommé en gelée with little nameko mushrooms in it, andh other treats like genmai-zushi topped with shredded shiso.

That plate only cost 14 dollars, which felt like a bargain compared to food of a similar quality in Europe. And bargain is not a word you say often in NZ these days when it comes to food.

The World's Longest Vegetarian Bratwurst

2010-05-11T07:26:00.006Z

My dear workmate Niklas went to Düsseldorf on Saturday to join the festivities for the world's longest vegetarian bratwurst (101 meters) held by Metzgerei Schnitzel e.V.

Niklas kindly shared these pics with Gut Feelings, writing: "I am still somewhat dazzled by yesterday's events, but I am sure the photos give a first impression of the Wurst-Stimmung (vibe). Sadly I do not have any shots of Rüdiger Shaw (you couldn't make that up), the english-accented official of the Guiness Book Of Records who kept parading around, wearing a strict face and a big badge....

The best thing about the evening was that it was exactly like you would wish a "strassenfest" to be, what with the marching band, kids collecting empty bottles for sweets-money, and the general good natured spirit of things. i should go to düsseldorf more, really."

The rest of the photos below show the entire event from start to finish. Personally I find it very charming to see all these people coming together around a really long sausage.

The sausage was cooked on the disposable foil BBQ trays you can buy at every supermarket.

London in the Rain

2010-04-24T09:52:00.012Z

London is a city that's hard to unravel via the internet. For every reliable price estimation on the Squaremeal website, there's a hundred conflicting comments and reviews to weigh up, and top Time Out accolades can be meaningless (especially when it comes to Lebanese food. trust me on that).

So today I'm throwing up a few culinary highlights of our 6-week work stint in London: spots that came recommended by locals or researched by friends. A reliable way to seek out delicious grub in the capital.

FISH N CHIPS

'Wile Out' crackhouse producer DJ Zinc took us to the Butler's Wharf
Chop House on the south side of the Thames - see phone-cam picture at top. The Chop House serves what's probably the best chish & fips I've ever had, with jars of tartar sauce and mushy peas, fish unfurled from a sleeve of grease proof paper, and fat rectangular chips that were not crispy at all but so yummy and potatoey when sprinkled with malt vinegar.
DJ Zinc wisely ordered sides of baby carrots and steamed spinach ("hold the butter and garlic please").
The restaurant is near the Design museum, right on the edge of the river, and we never had trouble getting a table, which is pleasing in a city where diners love to queue. Fish n chips was the cheapest main at around 16 quid.

Butlers Wharf Chop House
36e Shad Thames, London SE1 2YE

PAKISTANI FOOD

Portuguese producer J-Wow took us to his fave London restaurant, the award-winning Tayyabs. The queue is LONG (literally takes an hour) but it is really worth it. The mixed grill is essential and the naan, chana (chickpea) masala and saag were also dope. It's BYO, and open from midday to 11.30pm. Definitely take beers to drink while you queue. Cheap! And goood.

Tayyabs
83 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1JU

BRICK LANE
Another one of our colleagues, James Pants, is a well known curry aficionado, and he tested out many Indian restaurants in London. He took us to his favourite on Brick Lane, Shampan. It was most notable for not having curry hustlers outside (the ones who tell you if you come inside you get a free drink, and then the staff inside later claim no knowledge of this mysterious drink deal). I had a xacuti curry with tamarind and toasted cumin that was pretty good, but some of the thali plates looked a bit lackluster.

Shampan
79 Brick Lane
London E1 6QL

CHINATOWN & SURROUNDS
London's Chinatown is the kind of place, late at night, where you might see a drunk brit spraying air freshener on their socks in an an alleyway. But there's also quite a few decent Chinese supermarkets and a stall selling dragon's beard candy, and another stall outside a hairdresser selling really good baozi/steamed buns (it's opposite Baozi Inn on Newport Court).

Being fans of Sichuan food and also of the writing of Fuschia Dunlop, we tried out all three restaurants at which she is a consultant: Bar Shu, Ba Shan and Baozi Inn.
To be honest, they're all much of a muchness. The fanciest and most expensive one, Bar Shu, has slightly fancier furniture and the staff wear earpiece headset things, but the atmosphere is not really posh despite the prices. My advice if you eat there is to go all the way and get a whole fish or crab, because the smaller plates (though yummy) are like really, really good home cooking. It's hard to feel they warrant the price tag.

Ba Shan (photos above and below) was just slightly better value and still tasty, though the Mapo-dofu (photo below) was a bit gluggy - we prefer the one at our local in Cologne which has tons of chillies in it. The chinese cabbage in broth with goji berries was comforting. I expect Antipodeans would find the prices quite hard to stomach.

My favourite was Baozi Inn, the cheapest restaurant of the trio: despite the uncomfortable wooden stools and the waitress making us take valuables out of our coat pockets before she hung them up. The baozi were sold out, but some reviewers say they're not the best offering there. The handmade dumplings in a slick of chilli oil were yummy, as was the flower tofu with peanuts and homemade tofu hiding under more chilli oil and ground sichuan pepper, and I really loved my red-braised pork - with its stodgy, slightly overcooked white rice.. it was good for a rainy winter evening.

Baozi Inn
25 Newport Court, London WC2H 7JS

Another decent spot in Chinatown is Haozhan, where you can get a decent meal including a couple of beers for 20 -30 quid. In the couple of years since it's opened (during which time the ex-Hakkasan chef moved on), it's become more shabby than sleek. For someone who doesn't get to eat pan-asian food often though, the singapore noodles, salt & pepper squid, small bowl of egg-fried rice, and softshell crab with curry leaves will wash down very well with your Asahi beer.

Haozhan
8 Gerrard Street, London W1D 5PJ

COFFEE
If you have a bit of time up your sleeve - say two weeks - you can do as our American coffee-loving colleague Todd Osborn did, and get up early to walk to a different coffee spot on the East side of London as research. Thanks to him we know a world champion barista at Prufrock and his Swedish colleague claim to have invented the flat white, and churn them out of a clothing store which is in turn disguised as a cigarette shop in Shoreditch.

Prufrock
140 Shoreditch High St

Other notable mentions: Tina, We Salute You in Dalston, The Whitecross Coffee Cart, Monmouth Coffee at Borough Market (they don't do soy milk), Climpson & Sons, Caravan.

Coffee with breakfast:
My London-based kiwi friends Alice & John are into serious brunching, and my favourite of their haunts is The Modern Pantry in Farringdon, with its omelette with sugar-cured prawns and smoked sambal, or poached tamarillos & yoghurt w manuka honey. They also do a caramelly version of hokey pokey ice cream that's so delicious I've been known to eat it for breakfast.

JERK CHICKEN or PATTY
For a city so famous for its nightlife, a lot of the clubs in London close quite early (they often stop serving alcohol at 2am), and good post-clubbing snacks are thin on the ground. Judy's Divine in Brixton is open til 1 or 2am, and they serve a patty between two fat slices of white bread if there's no buns. It's also just down the road from a club called Plan B, which has a Funktion 1 soundsystem and some good artist line-ups.

Judy's Divine
423 Coldharbour Lane
Brixton, London SW9 8LH

BISTRO FOOD and DUCKFAT FRIES

Last but not least, Comptoir Gascon in Farringdon has really delicious meats (pork belly with parsnip puree! and little raviolis swimming in a yummy sauce that tastes like posh mushroom soup). YUM.

Comptoir Gascon
63 Charterhouse St
Ec1, EC1M 6

The Kumara Has Spoken

2010-04-22T08:43:00.007Z

These vids are part of a NZonAir-funded website called Rattle Ya Dags, where besides kumara (sweet potato) adages, you can also see food TV host Peta Matthias speaking about how determination will help you to write books (duh) and admonishing that eating cheese and wine is better than fast food, which will "turn you into trash" - well I do declare. And Hugh Sundae gives a ginger-chicken crockpot recipe.

Below Oliver Driver speaks about the guy at the dairy.

Tasty Buddha

2010-04-12T10:52:00.008Z

The good people over at Shift have published an interview with Koshi Kawachi to promote his current exhibition Tasty Buddha - The Snack Age.

The title THE SNACK AGE represents as it means, and reflects how I felt: "this age is fribble, flimsy, and unhealthy, just like snacks are." Then, you can also read "AGE" as "a-ge", which I infused a meaning for audience to uplift their feelings.

Gutfeelings member Nalika comments that this refers to the verb ageru 上げる　- to uplift, as he put it. The recent colloquial Japanese speech has expression 'agaru' (feel uplifted) and 'age age' (uplifting).

An umaibo is a deep fried snack, so ageru 揚げる(deep frying) could work as a double pun.

Embalming Potato Chip:
Cracked pieces of a potato chip are "embalmed" to be restored by a traditional technique, kintsugi.

More pictures + interview.

Tasty Buddha - The Snack Age exhibition
April 1st - 16th, 2010
pARa:siTe Gallery
Ne 24-1 Matudera-cho, Kanazawa

Dieter Rams: How to make your toast go Braun

2010-04-08T07:04:00.004Z

White bread, black bread or even rye bread? Ask your friends and neighbours and they will tell you that toast is a first-class delicacy. It tastes good and has never been the cause of anyone losing their drivers' license. It keeps you fit and your body needs it.

While in London recently, I visited one of the UK's first major Dieter Rams retrospectives at the London Design Museum close to Tower Bridge.

The stylishly be-spectacled Dieter Rams was director of design for Braun for nearly three decades.
Attractive archaic Rams pieces include the cucumber slicer in the video below and the pretty drip coffee machines.

The Braun toaster, which was selected for inclusion at the New York Museum of Modern Art, is another fine Rams creation: but it's a design innovation which may have been lost on Rams' compatriots.

Germans are not big on toast, and most people I know would not dream of toasting brown or black bread. The only bread deemed worthy of toasting in Germany is '50s-esque miniature white bread squares for toasted sandwiches, packets of which are actually labeled specifically as 'toast'.

Dieter Rams: toast visionary?

Vegemite Pizza

2010-03-28T20:52:00.006Z

Personally I hate vegemite. I would have used Marmite. But to Nickos credit he does use ifuckup 2.0 or better known as Vegemite Cheesybite. Oh and mild cheese and a pre made base adds to Nickos pizza which is most likey to get VPN status any day now.

Obituary: Saroun Lach, Master Pie Maker

2010-03-22T20:01:00.004Z

From last weekend's edition of the Dominion Post here in Wellington, NZ:

In 1987, Saroun Lach was one of 50 or so Cambodian refugees on a plane from Thailand, headed for New Zealand.
Mr Lach became New Zealand's champion pie maker, several times over. The walls of his Wellington Elite Cafe and Bakery in Victoria St provide a gallery for 30 framed awards, stretching back to 2000, the year he became a pie maker.

As a boy, he had been a top scholar. In New Zealand, he became first a wool sorter and later a taxi driver. Mr Lach had a fondness for a daily pie, but was very critical of many he ate, comparing one with another, and thinking that the best were few and far between.

When a bakery shop came up for sale in Alicetown, at the urging of his mother-in-law he bought it. He won Bakel's Supreme Piemaker of New Zealand, a title he would win again, along with many others. His steak, mince and cheese pies became a rapid urban legend.

He loved music, movies and his family.

He was considered a role model of industry and good citizenship in the Buddhist community. Paying tribute to him, his brother-in-law said his love would be "the roof above our heads to shelter us from storms to come".

In other words, Mr Lach will be tending that big crimped and fluted pie top in the sky.

Femivorism.

2010-03-15T04:00:00.002Z

Generally, if you try and pull this sort of shit, they label you a survivalist - but I guess femivore is a little more genteel. The NY Times invents a new word:

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

You're only one bug out bag short of a Unabomber.

living on kitchenette-cooked food

2010-03-13T06:53:00.011Z

It has been two months since I landed in the frozenland.

After having lived on compromised choices of food for several days, such as:

Absolutely horrible mapo tofu at an American Chinese place, and

a tacos plate that does not taste as good as it looks...

I have started cooking in the limited kitchenette shared with several others:

No full stove.
Just two induction cooktops that use magnetic heat.
There was only one right after I arrived, and I insisted to the landlord that we need one or two more.

One of the first things I cooked was chana masala:

I get the MDH spice mix at an Indian/Latin American grocery store.

Pretty soon I started attacking the bulk section of the Whole Foods Market and a European style bakery that has French and German style bread.

Tomato-based chick pea soup with German rye bread:

Tabbouleh with green lentils:

Chana masala again, with carrots/green lentils/raisins salad:

No picture, but I have also been cooking green split pea soup, 16-bean soup, red lentil dhal, and tofu dishes.

I am having a lot of fun with beans and peas, yes.

Bananas

2010-03-08T07:53:00.002Z

Of Rice, Eggs and Cucumber Skewers

2010-02-21T14:51:00.005Z

Erik & me are currently in London working on the latest edition of the Red Bull Music Academy. This means endless cups of tea (Twinings lapsang souchon or various kinds that the English have stashed around), late nights raiding the studio kitchen (bags of crisps, toasted sandwiches, bowls of dodgy egg salad), and of course, after the night has been well and truly burnt at both ends, post-club missions to Chinatown (or for the brave, a grimy spot down the road called Chicken Sizzler - nothing to do with the reggae artist). At least, it has a nicer name than the dubious-sounding chain called Chicken Cottage.

On Thursday, DJ Mayuri (organiser of Japan's Metamorphose festival) stopped by for an unofficial visit. She didn't remember me, but I rented a room in her house for a few days, about eight years ago, on my first trip to Tokyo. I had gone to Japan with next to no money, and spent a week hanging out at Mayuri's Shibuya FM show (Ed DMX was the guest), walking all over Tokyo, eating nothing but white rice with furikake and boiled eggs. This kind of experience is the flipside to the late night feasts of the nominally music-involved. Those days when you're down to small change, so you hang out in internet cafes in order to drink the free melon soda. But in exchange for a permanent state of uncertainty, you get to have all kinds of crazy experiences.

I was just checking the website for Mayuri's festival yesterday, and found these nice pictures. These days, my life is lived much less nutritionally on the edge, but the late night snacks prevail: and 4am iced cucumber skewers and traditional festival food like roasted corn and grilled fish would be a sight for sore eyes. Literally, as I've come down with a heinous cold from the London clublife.

Coco is ko-real (Part III)

2010-01-24T14:46:00.006Z

In Korean street-food of the week, I am feeling the wintery sweet vs savoury bomb that is Hoddeok. Basically it is a dumpling, flattened to a crunchy pancake but the star if its show is the cinnamon sugar centre. You can get 3 for 2000 WON (NZ $2). They are dangerously delicious. Here is a great recipe c/o Last Appetite

Hoddeok

Ingredients – Makes 5

1 1/4 cups plain flour
6 tbsp milk
Pinch of salt

To start the yeast:
1/4 tsp dry yeast
1/4 tsp white sugar
2 tbsp water

Stuffing
1/4 tsp cinnamon
5 tbsp brown sugar

Mix the yeast, white sugar and water and leave in a warm place to ferment for 15 minutes. Sieve the flour into a bowl, add the salt, milk and yeasty water. Mix well, cover and leave to rise for two hours. Go see a movie or something.

Mix the cinnamon and brown sugar together for stuffing. Oil up your hands (if not sufficiently oiled from movie popcorn) and take about 1/5 of the dough, flatten into a thick disk and place a tablespoon of stuffing inside. Seal like a dumpling.

Add oil to frypan and heat. Place your sugar filled dumpling into the oil. When brown, turn over and flatten the dumpling into a disk with a spatula. Cook until browned.

In other news I am obsessed with Chilsing Cider, cider here means lemonade. This is the boring english side of the can, how colonial of me.

Here is my cute kid of the week Alan.
He wears this tae kwon doe outfit 24-7 and whenever he is in trouble can charm me out of it in 5 seconds. Sitting under his desk to meditate during a test searching for answers was a definite highlight. This whole class is adorable and showers me in candy for some reason, thats a culinary post for another time.

and one more.....

2010-01-24T02:20:00.001Z

sorry....

More Gratuitous Photos of New Zealand and Food

2010-01-24T01:58:00.002Z

my sister at the bow of the boat

waiheke fish haul

and flesh

austin bush's south american inspired ceviche

Hock's english inspired fish and chips (using heston blumenthal's thrice-cooked chip recipe)

Hock's Thai-inspired deep fried snapper with mango salad

cooking paella, drinking epic

Weber grill up

my sister's garden

and produce

Post-Holiday Blues

2010-01-23T04:09:00.003Z

We just arrived back in Canberra after the most wonderful holiday in New Zealand

Canberra is a 38 degree dust bowl, with no people, and nothing to do. It's all just bogans and bad food round here.

Although Australians tend to think themselves more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than New Zealand, when its a comparison between Auckland and Canberra, I'll take Auckland thanks.

Here are some photos that substantiate my overall sentiments right now.

cheap new zealand mussels and pipis around NZD 4 a kilogram

Plentiful fresh snapper which we caught ourselves in the snapper spawning grounds that are Auckland harbours

such as here

and here

Just check out those beautiful pink gills

Home-smoked kahawai

and kahawhai sashimi

and landing on deserted beaches

and cooking on our own beach

Food Songs of the Day

2010-01-18T18:52:00.003Z

A song by Lawrence Arabia. There are quite a lot of dead skinned bunnies (and other game) at supermarkets in Cologne. One of these days I'll try cooking one with "Stuffed roast marrow and carrot", and will sing this song as I do it.

On a less bloodthirsty tip, here's one for all the brussel sprout-spurning fruitarians out there (song by NZ band Phoenix Foundation):

Ingredients of Love

2010-01-17T12:20:00.007Z

Our correspondent in Korea, Coco Solid (see blogpost below) also runs an agony cousin advice blog, philosoflygirl.blogspot.com,
where she drops gems like this on the regular: "I treat office politics like a dancefloor, sometimes I wanna shine - sometimes I'm cool sitting against the wall having a drink and saving my energy."

Here's an excerpt from a recent post, after a chef-dating Auckland waitress wrote in for advice.

Love on the boil

Hi Philosoflygirl,
We had a big family function the other week, lots of people came and my boyfriend's parents stayed with me & my boyfriend.

I went to bed while he and his parents continued talks late into the night.
I woke up and could hear them talking - and my boyfriends mother was telling him that she thought he was happiest when he was going out and working with his last girlfriend...See, his last girlfriend was a chef, and he is too, they were in a big restaurant making lots of money. Since he left her and has been with me, he is about to start his own business and things are financially hard, and I work in a cafe in town so its not like I make much, so together we aren't as rich as what he was with his last girlfriend and can't afford as many luxuries... but I know I support him in his dream, so we can work together one day in our own restaurant that we can own someday...

This has been upsetting me, cause I work hard and help him in his dream to be a chef on his own, and it hurts to hear people think he's better off working back in the hotels. I haven't told him what I heard, but its hard to speak out against someones mum...

Do I tell him what I heard?
Thanks Philosoflygirl...I hope you can help me...
Mere
Freemans Bay, AK.

Whut up girl.
That can easily sound like a tough one.
The good news is its not. I'm about to lay it on you girl so listen up.

Think of it like a 3 layered cake... well a gâteau really. There is your boyfriends completely new direction which is meeting inevitable resistance. Then there is his mothers opinion. The base (and the most important layer) is you. You secretly know you are bringing something less conventional but potentially amazing into his life, it just aint cooked yet. (Booya I get to abuse my food analogy licence, thanks Mere).

We have a saying in my family c/o of our good friend Jodhi Hoani.
"Even Maui had haters". This is especially poignant because it was Maui's own brothers who doubted his fishing abilities. Then he fished up Aotearoa. SHAME.

If the over-heard conversation is upsetting you (and I'm thinking its actually the comparison to his trusty ex that made you insecure) you can definitely tell him. Just be sure to tell him in a way that reinforces the commitment you have for his grand vision. Its pointless to be defensive, critical or lashing out at his mother or his ex. What will that prove? Keep it positive and be the hype-man.

I think you should simply take the classy zen ground and remind him why he chose you to ride shotgun for his slightly edgier future. He aint with his ex anymore so own it. Be as open and supportive as you want him to be when you share what has been bothering you.

And peace out on his Mum. The doubters will eat their words AND your mans incredible food when you dish it up to them yourself in a brand new restaurant. "How do you like them lightly sautéed apples!"

Love
Coco

Coco is ko-real (Part II)

2010-01-16T14:44:00.007Z

Greeting from the slob of the century with a day off! You should see my apartment - cookie boxes I cant read and empty bottles of milkis and orange juice everywhere. Im in a scruffy not working zen, Legally Blonde just came on cable with voice-overs.

For those who don't know I am living in Ulsan, just outside of Busan - basically I now live in the coastal hippier mellow regions of South Korea and in Feb will be doing alot of pop-cultural travel between here and Seoul. I am also 2 hours away from Fukuoka Japan by boat (FYI Fukuoka is my hometown Manukau's sister city and when I was 12, the Manukau City Council had me represent South Auckland as a 'promising youth' kicking off my love for Asia. They definitely didn't have a crystal ball adolescence-wise but hey, thanks!) I really like the vibe here. There is a huge river at the back of my apartments and the local skyscrapers are all casually pushed up against mountains which I really like, its like a thrifty Asian Monaco.

So i thought I'd drop another culinary bomb on you.

Have been watching Korean food television, utter kitchen pornography OBSESSED.
Mellow old ladies (ajuma) run circles around their hotter younger spikier co-hosts who are only put in there to sex the shows up a bit (totally uncalled for when you see the amazing shit these doddery mums are making). Cuisine here is all about creating a selection, creating it quickly and it has to be HOT. I loved spicey food before, but once you go spicey here, i dont know if you can ever really go back. i better have a spicey friend or 2 when i get to Berlin just sayin. On these cooking shows they make it look like all you need is a deadly knife and a pot, they make everything look delicious but so easy. Korea has a respect for soup that I didnt get previously but now am totally tuning into.

Tonight i went out and grabbed a standard $5 meal which when I weigh up the experience with the price, is always enough to seduce me for life. Included was a super spicey beef soup, and dumplings that we made ourselves (fresh cabbage, onions, bean sprouts and lots of Gochujang ie. the Korean hot sauce slathered with almost everything. Warning: it is addictive, raises your metabolism and is not for the faint-hearted). Naturally all meals are served with banchan, the experience of what feels like thousands of tiny side-dishes. Restaurants will bring out cold pickled radish of every colour, shape and cut (these often help cool down the gochujang and robust kimchi) seaweed, potatoes, sprouts in sesame oil and seafood infiltrates these side-dishes subtly, sometimes with a thinly stewed squid on the side or anchovies being tucked into the kimchi paste.

At my Hagwon (english school) there is the mind-blowing aspect of everyone being able to order food anytime while we teach. Everyone eats constantly as it is a huge sharing and feasting society (no one needs to teach Korean kids how to share, their luch times are generous touching moments that'd make a Hallmark card or Anne Geddes puke).

Delivery is not just a sloppy burger or pizza slice (although admittedly alot of kumara/sweet potatoe + sour cream pizza does get ordered). This is anything. I order dolsot bibimbap a bit, dolsot means stone pot and bibimbap is a signature Korean dish. It is rice, vegetables and meat with a raw egg that fries itself when one stirs it in against the hot stone. On top of that, the sesame oil which lines the bowl will cook the rice until it is crunchy and golden. (We leave these dishes in a metal suitcase for the mysterious delivery men to collect later, its like 'The Saint').

In junk food news, I saw a hot dog stand and froze the other night while shopping, both metaphorically and literally. I swore this hot dog (stick format) had croutons fused to it. I stepped closer in my bundled-up glory to see, and while local hipsters and old men were eating the standard skewers or shu-cream fish (a dessert of crunchy waffles shaped like fish with custard inside sold only in sets of 3) I had to taste it for myself. What I got was a vertical chip butty. The outside was cubed hot chips, the batter was infact a toasted slice of bread all encasing the sausage which was of the high-end wurst variety.

When it comes to the language not so much, but when it comes to the food - this country understands me. Heres a photo of one of my favourite students Billy as a touching closer.

Love Coco

Quote of the Day

2010-01-12T02:34:00.002Z

IMAGINE THAT AS a young and desperately poor Mexican man, you had made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields with other migrants. There, you performed stoop labor, picking lettuce and bell peppers and table grapes; what made such an existence bearable was the dream of a better life. You met a woman and had a child with her, and because that child was born in the U.S., he was made a citizen of this great country. He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce...

...and so goes a brilliant and satisfyingly scathing critique of Alice Waters and her forays into school canteens and gardens.

Cultivating Failure, The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2010

Knödel Dumpling Attack

2010-01-09T11:02:00.006Z

Tis the season for snow, flight delays and eurostar trains getting stuck in the chunnel due to blizzard convection currents.
The time of year when it's comforting to eat warm and stodgy fare; when you feel you have a valid excuse to pad yourself with porridge for breakfast (rice or oat) and dumplings for dinner.

There are quite a few German dumpling variations: from plum-sized klöse, made from potato (a nice side next to roasted meats) - through to dampfnudeln desserts, which are similar to a Bao Zi steamed bun, but with a fruit compote or warm vanilla custard on the side.

Knödel are large savoury boiled dumplings, made from potato or bread, and if you have leftovers, they can be served in grilled slices. Golden chanterelle mushrooms make an especially delicious sauce with which to augment a fat Knödel.

I admit that snow or shine, sober or drunk, I'm partial to any sort of dumpling. It's possible that in place of a heart, I have a round, damp, chewy lump of dough.
If you have similar dumpling sentiments, you might like to try this easy-to-make recipe for Bavarian-style bread-based dumplings.

Spinach & Cheese Semmel-Knödel (adapted from a recipe in Landlust magazine)
Serves 4

400g bread (we used a mix of white and a light rye. it should be a reasonably delicious and medium-dense sort of bread: no tip top, and no gritty multigrain)
1 onion & 1 clove garlic (finely chopped)
300 g blanched spinach (drained & roughly chopped)
200 ml milk
200g gouda & 100g Emmental (or a mix of your preference), grated
4 eggs
Salt & pepper
olive oil
100 g parmesan (optional)

Cut the bread in thin slices and put into a bowl.
Sauté the onion & garlic in a little olive oil until transparent. Add the spinach & sauté one more minute.
Add the milk and heat to luke warm.
Beat the eggs with this mixture and add to the bread. Let rest 15 min.
Add grated cheese + salt & pepper.
Mix with your hands to combine.
Form 12 dumplings of a similar size.
Add to boiling salted water then reduce heat & simmer for about 20 minutes. Drain and if you like, sprinkle with grated parmesan.

Serve with salad, or any kind of spicy stew.
Cheese and spinach can be reduced, or omitted completely for a traditional accompaniment to roasted or braised meat (you'll want to have some kind of gravy or sauce in play).

We ate them in a manner that Erik said was highly unorthodox: with leftover Mexican Chicken Veracruz (baked with tomatoes, cinnamon and jalapeno pickles), and steamed broccoli. Definitely not healthfood - but, served with veg and spiciness, they weren't as rich and heavy as you might expect.

In need of a lake trout re-up.

2010-01-06T13:19:00.002Z

There is no angle on TV show The Wire left to be mined. What does lake trout signify? Saptarshi Ray, for the Guardian writes:

Bunk, at his most unsavoury, it pains me to say, compares Jimmy to a recurring Baltimore speciality – lake trout – when he tries to clean up his act and settle down with Beadie. "They take something and give it a name to make it sound better, but it's still just a trash fish."

Lake trout makes many appearances throughout the programme, understandably, being a Maryland staple. When Marlo agrees to meet the honey-trap girl from the Barksdales it's at the Lake Trout restaurant. Randy likes a lake trout sub with cherry soda while on the campaign trail for Carcetti. In fact, lake trout is such a signifier of project life that when Brianna drops off some spicy fish of a different variety from a downtown restaurant for D and the boys, Wallace has no idea where it's from or what the big deal is. "If it ain't in the west side, I don't know it, yo."

Also, and not entirely unrelated, Snoop meets Anthony Bourdain; Bourdain eats lake trout.

MerceDeath Food Trends of 2009

2010-01-01T13:35:00.010Z

Curious about the convenience foods, cooking gadgets and/or health kicks that popped up in Nihon in 2009?

Ex-pat Tokyo webzine Metropolis put together their year's round up of food trends, citing a standard-sounding Swiss menu as their best meal in 09 - not too inspiring.

For a different perspective, I asked Tokyo yuba-guru, interactive designer and musician MerceDeath (pictured above) to throw down the food items that tickled his taste buds last year. From healthy hotpot (with ethereally pale steamed sausage) to fried chicken in a brioche from the convenience store, I can see myself getting down with these treats.

Did you notice any new food trends in 2009?

"Mushi Nabe (steamed nabe hotpot instead of boiled). Functionally, this is same as a steamer, but you can cook on your table.
You can add some vegetable or meat or fish whatever..
This method reduces oil from foods, but retains vitamins and looks fresh!
Finally, the hot water from the bottom of the device gets steeped with so much Dashi(flavor).
Then, you can eat Udon or Ramen with the soup that's made by the hot water.
That's Yummmmy!"

Did you start any new cooking habit at home last year?

"Hot plate Yuba (Tofu skin)
We bought a hot plate for making big Yuba by ourselves (of course we do some BBQ on the hotplate too)
Basic information of Yuba here.
*I didn't know it's called Tofu skin in English!

The way to cook Yuba with a hot plate:
1. Pour some soy milk to a hot plate.
2. Keep temperature 80C.
3. Just wait a few minutes.
4. Eat with soy sauce with wasabi or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzu! I prefer ponzu.

That's super simple, super healthy and Yummy!"

what were your top three new things to eat or drink in 2009? (at restaurants, Konbini, take-out, or vending machines)?

"1. Bottled ginger masala chai
That sounds weird, but it's actually good!

2. L-chiki buns (Buns for Lawson Chickin)
Basically, Japanese convenience store Lawson sells "L-chiki (fried chicken)".
L-chiki buns are for making L-chiki even richer! But you just need to pay 50 more yen.
I love the idea.

3. Big American dog
This is a very old style, but Seven Eleven just started selling them in 2009.
And I had this often!"

What's the best after-gig snack?

"Yoshi soba -
It's better than Fuji Soba : )
And of course much better than pizza or Kebabu late at night!"

Drying Chimayo

2009-12-31T09:46:00.002Z

The chimayo variety of chile grows a very convenient natural hook (which can be augmented with the twisty tie things from bread bags).

Our guajillo chiles (not pictured) are smaller - they only grew to the size of a lipstick.
I guess the harvest of one window sill plant will be about enough for four bowls of tortilla soup.
Luckily, the local Asian import supermarket began to stock a wide range of dried chiles in steroid-fueled sizes: ancho, pasilla, arbol, you name it.

Next year's home-growing project : fingernail-sized tomatillos?

At Home With...

2009-12-30T09:02:00.005Z

My friend Y's brother is one of Germany's top michelin-starred chefs, and Y took these pics of their dinner together last week. I can't mention either of them by name, because the man has a PR department who might come and murder me in my sleep – so you'll just have to take my word for it, natch.

On the menu: wagyu steaks with poached egg, truffle, spinach puree, capsicum-bratkartoffeln and champagne. Plus salmon with caviar and creme fraiche from France, doled out on a nice gingham tablecloth.
The dining table (not pictured) featured sparkly foil scattered around & bottles of vintage champagne (more booze than food, Y said).

Newsflash: Coco is Ko-Real

2009-12-29T19:04:00.005Z

I'm posting this on behalf of Gut Feelings contributor Coco Solid (pictured) who's just jetted off from the land of the long white cloud: read below and watch this space for further culinary updates from NZ's first lady of rap in South Korea!

Oh god the 'gut feelings' element of Korea is making the whole administrative horror to get here totally worthwhile. The food! Good god. The pop junk food expert gangsta in me is as appeased as the intrepid culinary thespian. Lotteria prawn burgers (my fuckin FAV), kimchi in every radishy soaked cabbage form and familymarts corner-stores for days. Last night I went to a raw fish restaurant where I had every single seafood in every single way ever. Jellyfish noodles, frozen tuna cakes and eel dessert were the only thing I went wae gook over and declined, but otherwise my Korean workmates met their very Maori match. There were caviar rice balls served like scoops of ice cream in a sushi seaweed cone shape, big sardines with a crunchy shell, sashimi of every pale shade, mussels with mustard and pumpkin served in honey.... everything here tastes great. A bowl of noodles the other night had me thinking "oh well you can't win em all" but then after adding sesame oil and a bunch of spicey and pickled condiments I found out you could. When could noodles be juicy?

I have yet to bomb the sprawling and steaming skewer stand downstairs from my work, but I am coming for you my pretty. Even the crummy airplane food served a better Bulgogi than I've had in some decent joints back home and a club sandwich I had at the bus station took me to a whole new place - don't you love non-western interpretations done better? Eggs, mustard, bacon and pickle are now gonna be in every toastie I make half-drunk. No more faux-camping laziness. I feel like I'm just getting started, so lets keep those scales exclusively for the kaimoana I swill, I'm off to eat some sesame bean-sprouts and Pocari Sweat lol - Asia I'm back!

This is how I roll.

2009-12-27T23:20:00.002Z

4.2 kilos of turkey on the rotisserie for 3 hours at 150oC. I probably should have trussed the thighs.

A Few of My Favourite Things pt2

2009-12-27T13:32:00.011Z

This Taai Popje traveled all around the world in order to have me bite its head off. My sister bought it in a Dutch store in NZ and sent it to me in Germany. The chewy, not-too-sweet coriander-infused Dutch gingerbread is quite different to the more biscuit-like German lebkuchen (also delicious). It melts to a pleasantly sticky-gluggy consistency in your mouth.

There aren't many traditional German dishes that can make me seriously salivate just by looking at a (crap phone-cam) photo of them. Maybe it's my cheese-loving Dutch blood, but our boxing day meal of Swabian Kässpätzle (with vinegary potato-cucumber salad for added carbs) inspired absolute devotion in me. It's a treat I'd definitely recommend to anyone who's skeptical of German cuisine.

Our workmate Wulf comes from the Swabian-speaking area of Baden-Württemberg, where this is a traditional dish. He and his girlfriend Dagmar made the noodle dough and chopped it freestyle off a board in thin strips into the boiling water. Then they baked it in a glass casserole dish coated in a not-too-greasy mix of emmentaler and aged british cheddar cheese, topped with very thin strips of toasted onion.

If angels in heaven eat mac 'n' cheese, I am sure it tastes exactly like this.
Here is a recipe - just swap in your favourite type of cheese.

For dessert Wulf served us delectable baked apples stuffed with real marzipan (different to the stiff white stuff on wedding cakes), topped with whipped cream and a drizzle of rum.
If I was in the market for a heart attack, I'd eat this menu for a month. It could be a nice way to go.

I am a kitsch-hound and a christmas aficionado, but I do have standards. There's only one Christmas market in the world for me, and it's the Market of Angels on Neumarkt square.

The market by the cathedral is too fake and touristy. The market on Rudolfplatz is too trashy (they sell mobile phones and young hoodlums ride a carousel that includes a motorbike and a police car). The market at Stadtgarten is polite and bourgeois, a haunt of Cologne's liberal elite, where everyone seems to wear brown.
But the market on Neumarkt is just right.

I can't imagine going to these places to buy souvenirs - but to drink two hot mulled glühwein under twinkling star lanterns in the trees is something I actually look forward to all year.

Importantly, the christmas market on Neumarkt also has yummy things to eat. For example, egg-spiked potato pancakes with applesauce. Or the stall selling crispy skinned flame-grilled salmon (nailed to boards over a fire), which drips its grease into soft white rolls smeared with creme fraiche and a lettuce leaf (see pictures above and below).
Our pescatarian friend Celia, visiting from Australia with her winking Irish boyfriend Dave, was quite a fan of these.

Another treat from the Neumarkt christmas market is the Flammkuchen (everything delicious here seems to be born of the flames).

From the Alsace region, similar to a pizza, the brownish sourdough base comes hot from the oven – topped with creme fraiche, little specks of bacon (check the pun: speck means bacon in German) and thin strips of onion. You can alternatively choose a less traditional, but still satisfying, mix of vegetables and salty grilled cheese. This is a market that (unusually) caters well to vegetarians.

It is always tragic when the Christmas markets close for the season, leaving behind a quiet grey snow slush in the absence of twinkles. The stone angels are chained up on trucks on Christmas eve, with a poignant smell of aniseed candies floating on the air. life is all about goodbyes and new beginnings. In this case, a new beginning of me not eating deep fried 'reibekuchen' potato pancakes with apple sauce every other day (until next christmas of course)

A Few of My Favorito Things pt1

2009-12-27T12:06:00.004Z

Is it that our olive oil reserves get depleted in the six months following Barcelona's Sónar festival in June? Whatever the reason, me & Erik seem to have established a tradition of eating Spanish food at Christmas. All thanks to Anya von Bremzen's cookbook 'The New Spanish Table', which, with a little exploration, yields many bangers (don't be put off by a few clangers - like the cloying almond soup and the too-bready tuna empanada).

Above is the Pollo con Frutos Y Frutas Secas from a recipe she cites by Ferran Adrià (excerpted from his Cooking at Home book). Roast a free range chicken (or use rotisserie if you like). Then cut into pieces and warm with a reduced sauce made of sautéed dried fruits (including sour cherries), citrus peel, pine nuts, cinnamon & tawny port. So delicious!

Cinnamon-infused meats are my main carnivorous buzz right now - from Lebanese or Syrian kibbeh to Mexican baked chicken a la Veracruzana
. Adrià's chicken should definitely be in the cinnamon hall of fame.

Roasted squash soup with saffron ice cream & crispy basil leaf

On Christmas eve me & Erik watched the Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock, while chowing down on salty Canary Island-style boiled potatoes with a cumin-chile-paprika-parsley-garlic mojo sauce, tofu salad, and the zorongollo 'salad' above.
It's made by roasting red pepper (roast a green one too if you have it), and marinating with grated tomato (winter supermarket tomato worked fine), thinly sliced white onion, aged sherry vinegar, salt and olive oil. Sprinkled with finely chopped garlic when serving.
Adding a sneaky can of smoked mackerel to your zorongollo comes highly recommended.

Serve with haunting pan flutes, girls in cultish white frocks, and sinister rock formations.

Sausages & Snow

2009-12-24T12:03:00.009Z

As a seasonal post, I'm throwing up some photos from a visit to our Munich office last week. Sausages and snow have a certain charm.

Below, a poster for an exhibition in Munich over the holiday period.

My bosses' weber grill languishing in the snow: you can tell there is a general reverence for meat around here

A hot plate on which Many simmers lamb stew to go with his famous crispy persian rice. Just offscreen, a carton of Hornig Bio Pfefferminztee teabags - the best mint tea I've tasted. Buy it if you can.

Ubiquitous Red Bull fridge. There are also at least two crates of apple juice at all times.

Nearby: Lonely but polite dog waiting outside the organic supermarket.

Maybe he is hoping for some kind stranger to gift him 'leberkäse' (literally 'liver cheese'), that very southern (Bavarian & Austrian) snack. A soft spam-pink meat loaf with an inviting crust, eaten sliced & warm, I like it best with hot mustard on a whole grain roll. On this trip I sampled a tasty rendition from the little shop that also sells the best pretzels, for one euro twenty cents.

Seven Seals: The Can has been Opened

2009-12-13T11:19:00.006Z

Spokane karaoke-killing DJ/psyche-boogie frontman/producer James Pants has just released his new cult-inspired LP 'Seven Seals' on Stones Throw. It's definitely one of my albums of the year, packed with new wave despondency, Pharrell-like synth shards and old-fashioned broken disco. Two of my fave tunes on the album have a slight food twist: titled 'I Live Inside An Egg', and 'A Chip In The Hand'. Mystic Pizza should've sounded like this.

Pants' mom supposedly made him the cultish cupcakes above - but judging from the instructional James Pants curry video below, I have a sneakish suspicion of who really baketh the spiderweb cakes around thither.

Quote of the Day

2009-12-10T05:59:00.003Z

Within popular agro-food debates, agro-food products are either maligned as artificial, large-scale, industrial, exploitative, environmentally destructive and bad for one’s health, or celebrated as natural and organic, local, artisanal, socially and environmentally responsible and seasonal. Likewise trade structures for agro-products suffer blatant oversimplification. Conventional trade is deemed global, hegemonic, disembedding, and fraught with commodity fetishism that conceals true social relations of production and trade, while alternative trade or local trade is conflated with quality, safety, equality, fairness, provenance and de-commoditisation. The degree to which most people in their everyday lives are confronted with such sharply opposing choices is questionable, as Gudeman (2001: 12) points out, most of us use different modes within an economy daily, buying some products from a supermarket and others from local traders or farmers, and further still growing some produce ourselves or receiving products through networks of reciprocity and gifts. Although this is not to discount the experiences of those living at the extreme ends of agro-food systems – the purported food deserts of industrial suburbia or autarchic farming communities eking out a living in remote hinterlands - it is perhaps mainly for arguments sake that the tyranny of these extremes are presented to emphasise specific ideological positions within agro-industrialisation debates. For the majority, however multiplicity and ‘impurity is the rule’ in procuring daily sustenance (Callon in Morgan et al, 2006: 18)

Who? Moi!! Submission date coming soon!!

TK!'s gay stalker.

2009-12-05T06:17:00.004Z

Sitting in my inbox today an email from a dearest friend who joined me at this lunch a ways back.

Subject: TK!

I will send you photos of Thanksgiving, let me zip them up in a file. We brined the turkey for about 48 hours, including a bottle of white wine. It was the most moist and flavorful turkey we have had. Great!

Guess what??!! I flew from Indiana to San Francisco today and I am with John and Art now. I had to change plans in Chicago and get on the 777 to SF. While waiting to board the plane I saw this guy and knew right away who it was:

Thomas Keller! I was ready to go up and say hello and then they started boarding the plane and he was gone. Got to SF and met John and pointed out Thomas to him. He was looking for his driver but they guy was not there so he went to Starbucks to get something. We went to baggage claim and there was the driver with a sign for Thomas Keller. We told the driver where he was at Starbucks. Cool! I like him.

Bye,

M

Hock's Cider Success

2009-12-03T06:30:00.004Z

Hock made his very own cider from cheap-ass Aldi pear and apple juice and fresh pear and apple juice. It's F&%king YUMMY!!

If you come and visit us in January you can have some.

There's also an excellent pale ale (half Asian zested), a crisp larger and some stout (currently being brewed)

Drunken summer here we come

Rotating Kitchen

2009-12-03T02:48:00.001Z

Via Boing Boing

Tactical Nuclear Penguin

2009-11-30T23:07:00.003Z

Brew Dog Beer

Manaqish Fusion

2009-11-28T15:28:00.006Z

I caught the train to Paris last weekend to visit friends, and was struck again by the decadent approach Parisians have to food. We visited the Saturday morning market on the Avenue de President Wilson in Paris (next to the Palais de Tokyo gallery), where produce was laid out in Bacchanalian abundance. Cheeses, gleaming charcuterie, and piles of wild mushrooms, lobsters and sea urchins.
Avenue de President Wilson, by the way, sounds like the title of a Serge Gainsbourg song.
But Paris has more to offer than traditional fatty cheeses and rabbit terrine.

The most appealing thing to eat on that chilly morning was something labeled as "galette traditionelle Libanaise": the Lebanese breakfast flatbread, manaqish, a cousin of the Australian delight known as meat pizza.

I enjoyed my "galette" smeared with za'atar (mix of wild thyme, sesame and olive oil) - the flavour was breath-fresheningly good. But the winner was my friend's gruyere cheese manaqish - a perfect blend of indulgent Paris luxury and Lebanese flatbread science.

Core Principles of the Archimedes Turkey Theory

2009-11-27T05:16:00.002Z

Thanks to Andy for this.

Quote of the Day

2009-11-26T09:34:00.000Z

I ran feasibility tests on chickens....Concept: cook the bird from the inside-out. Bone the bird, replace the leg bones with aluminum tubes, stuff the carcass with aluminum foil (heats quickly, maintains structure), and pump hot oil through the tubes to cook the inside of the thigh quickly.

The French Culinary Institute blog

Found and circulated by Hock to his nearest and dearest

teeth cracking fish

2009-11-24T18:45:00.005Z

I am in distress, because I was eating this crispy deep-fried dried fish in the mountain... the white thing in the middle...

... and my premolar split in half. Ouch!

I hurried down the mountain and made an appointment with a dentist.

I am cursing myself for having brought the evil dried fish to my mountain host family myself.

I bought these at Aor Tor Kor Farmers Market in Bangkok.

... and it was deep fried crispy with the rice bran oil I brought.

Now I will have to pay for the dentist bill. Aaaagghhh.

Earlier this year I also cracked my molar while eating sticky rice in the mountain.

My life is pretty much about cracking my teeth while traveling.

German bread did it too, twice.

Miss Piggy

2009-11-22T13:12:00.006Z

Pork products are big in Germany - all the way from iconic pork-snout-gelatine-infused gummy bears (and mango monkeys), to 'knackig' (snappable) wieners preserved in glass jars, down to the rendered fat infused with roasted onion that is lovingly smeared on good fresh bread.

For our part, we have found frequent use lately for pork fat in a range of Mexican recipes (e.g. mixed with black beans to spread on crispy tostadas) or in our home-made sichuan hotpots.

This brand is non-organic, so we shouldn't buy it, ...but who can resist the cute piggy image on the package?

Pictorial evidence of our last pigfat-kissed Tostada feast: fried corn tortillas topped with crispy tofu, avocado, coriander, beans, parmesan, and raw bok choi chopped &dressed with light creme fraiche whipped with two tablespoons of green habanero hot sauce. To avoid a big mess, consume in dainty unpiggylike nibbles.