Stomachs on legs are proud to present

By now, many of us have heard of Harumi Kurihara: Japan's own 'naked-shufu' and multi-franchised answer to Jamie Oliver crossed with Martha Stewart. Got to give her kudos for her monthly magazine with its hundreds of stylish apron patterns and easy-to-make dishes like tofu with gorgonzola and pesto.

But in my opinion, the most reliable English language authority on Japanese cookery is Hiroko Shimbo. This NYC-based author & consultant doesn't have her own line of crockery. She's pretty obscure compared to Harumi - I suppose she's unknown in Japan. But her book, The Japanese Kitchen, contains 250 well-curated recipes that would be an asset to any home. If you were going to have just one Japanese cookbook, this one would be it.

Erik & I have given this book a few years of heavy usage, and we still come across recipes we never noticed before: classics like quick salt-pickled cabbage with shiso & umeboshi, bamboo shoots tossed with sansho leaves, Senbei crackers, or wobbly black squares of sesame Goma-dofu. (Making senbei sounds like a challenge...I'm quite sure my results would be as bad as if I made a cake in a rice cooker. but Hiroko's never let me down, so maybe I'll give it a shot).

There're plenty of drawings demonstrating how to prepare sole (butterflied to fry and serve with ponzu sauce) or slice sashimi, and the book contains instructions for many varieties of comfort food, from spicy carrot&fennel itame, to fisherman's mackerel soup, eel burger or Nihon-style ratatouille (with miso). Hiroko even tells you how to make Satsuma-age fish cakes: very useful for all kinds of simmered dishes or cut up in stir fries (try them with kimchi, garlic chives, konnyaku slivers, sesame oil, sake, shoyu and pork mince). This book is truly indispensable, especially if you do not have ready access to packaged versions of favourites like the aforementioned Goma-dofu.

If you've ever been to Japan, y'all know what I'm talking about.

Today I'm posting Hiroko's pumpkin soup recipe. Pumpkin soup in its western incarnations is usually thick enough for a spoon to stand up in. Hiroko's bright orange kabocha-miso soup is different, swirling and delicate with nutmeg, chives, cinnamon and a dash of milk.

This soup takes me back to lunchtimes in Meguro, where we used to frequent a place called News Café by the station that had checkered tablecloths and a big blackboard with chalked-on specials. We'd spoon up bright coloured liquids - tomato, pumpkin, corn - quickly from ladylike white soup tureens, while the secretary from our firm blinked a lot and hummed disbelieving noises at her food.


かぼちゃの味噌しる

11 ounces kabocha or butternut, seeded not peeled
One 4-inch square kelp soaked in 3 cups of water for an hour (or powdered kelp stock in 3 cups water)
One leek or naganegi, white part only, sliced
Cinnamon
Fresh ground nutmeg
2-3 tablespoons Saikyo miso (sweet white miso)
1/2 cup unflavoured soy (or cow) milk
1 tbsp minced chives

Have a bamboo or metal steamer with plenty of water at high steam production. Steam squash until soft, circa 20 min. With a soup spoon, discard any stringy bits or remaining seeds, then scoop out all the flesh and reserve.

In a medium pot, combine kombu stock and leek. Bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce to low and cook until soft.
Blend the pumpkin with leek & stock to a smooth puree.

Before serving, warm the soup base over medium heat. Add a little ground cinnamon and nutmeg. When heated through, add the miso and stir til it dissolves. Add the milk and heat without boiling (to avoid curdling).
Serve in bowls, garnished with chives.

(4 servings)

Whilst browsing the book exhibition at the recent anthropology conference on in Auckland I found four new food books I wouldn't mind having for light reading.

Bite Me



Synopsis
Food is not only something we eat, it is something we use to define ourselves. Ingestion and incorporation are central to our connection with the world outside our bodies. Food's powerful social, economic, political and symbolic roles cannot be ignored - what we eat is a marker of power, cultural capital, class, ethnic and racial identity. "Bite Me" considers the ways in which popular culture reveals our relationship with food and our own bodies and how these have become an arena for political and ideological battles. Drawing on an extraordinary range of material - films, books, comics, songs, music videos, websites, slang, performances, advertising and mass-produced objects - "Bite Me" invites the reader to take a fresh look at today's products and practices to see how much food shapes our lives, perceptions and identities.


Food: The Key Concepts



Synopsis
This book offers an exciting, coherent and interdisciplinary introduction to the study of food studies for the beginning reader. Food choices, the author argues, are the result of a complex negotiation among three competing considerations: the consumers' identity; matters of convenience, including price; and an awareness of the consequences of what is consumed. The book concludes with an examination of two very different future scenarios for feeding the world's population; the technological fix, which looks to science to provide the solution to our future food needs, and the anthropological fix, which hopes to change our expectations and behaviors. As a whole this book provides an essential overview to this increasingly critical field of enquiry.



Food and Globalisation


Synopsis
Food has a special significance in the expanding field of global history. Food markets were the first to become globally integrated, linking distant cultures of the world, and in no other area have the interactions between global exchange and local cultural practices been as pronounced as in changing food cultures.

In this wide-ranging and fascinating book, the authors provide an historical overview of the relationship between food and globalization in the modern world. Together, the chapters of this book provide a fresh perspective on both global history and food studies. As such, this book will be of interest to a wide range of students and scholars of history, food studies, sociology, anthropology and globalization.


Culinary Art and Anthropology



Synopsis
Culinary Art and Anthropology is an anthropological study of food. It focuses on taste and flavour using an original interpretation of Alfred Gell's theory of the 'art nexus'. Grounded in ethnography, it explores the notion of cooking as an embodied skill and artistic practice. The integral role and concept of 'flavour' in everyday life is examined among cottage industry barbacoa makers in Milpa Alta, an outer district of Mexico City. Women's work and local festive occasions are examined against a background of material on professional chefs who reproduce 'traditional' Mexican cooking in restaurant settings.

Including recipes to allow readers to practise the art of Mexican cooking, Culinary Art and Anthropology offers a sensual, theoretically sophisticated model for understanding food anthropologically. It will appeal to social scientists, food lovers, and those interested in the growing fields of food studies and the anthropology of the senses.


Oh and an ice caddy with lid for whisky drinking purposes, a jewellery box, new handbag, and a nice arm chair please Santa

Working for three years in Cambodia can leave you feeling a little detached from the outside world.

When it comes to your own growth as a professional chef I can’t stress enough how important the inspiration that you receive from your fellow peers is.

Simple things that you might take for granted when living in a more developed country did not exist for me in Cambodia when I worked there. Taking the time to visit suppliers (local markets were awesome in their own right but I am talking more about the more modern food movement) or reading food magazines were pretty much out for me. Parcels from my folks via the Khmer mailing system would take months to arrive, so a glossy magazine with pretty pictures of food were out too. You could pretty much forget about attending food expos and dining at others restaurants. Let alone the simple pleasure of meeting up with like minded cooks at a local bar after a difficult days service and drinking the night away while discussing the differences in an egg cooked at 63°C versus one cooked at 64.5°C. All very exciting and important stuff but an after work conversation was more likely to be on the lines of “Hey Pascal where the fuck can I get some butter? You got any butter? Don’t lie to me now, Sophea said you had some”

Luckily I was surrounded by a few (read two other chefs) and I was lucky enough to work with one of them . The French national "Jo". (check out his second cook book here his first is only available in French)




Sure we created some cool stuff, that we are both still proud of.


That both didn't stop us at the time from wanting to know how did that crazy little fucking Spanish chef do that?

While valium, xanax, heroin and mangosteens were readily available to us, Iota, xanthan or methocellulose was not.

My only real contact with the international cooking scene was through a very slow slow and unreliable internet connection (Think $300 USD a month for a service barely faster than dial up).

That’s when I came across Ideas in Food.

Thankfully because of Aki’s and Alex’s generous sharing of ideas via their blog from early ‘05 until now it has allowed me to feel as though I might be able have a small understanding of the latest techniques floating around the culinary world.

So whilst in NYC, why not take the F train from Manhattan and spend a day catching up on some new techniques?

So it came to pass that when Maytel and I decided to go to New York for a holiday I would take a day off from eating oysters, hamburgers and the likes and spend the day in Queens.

So like a true fanboy, I found myself mid morning inside the cutest little house on the sweetest little street about million miles away from the complete normaility of life in Bangkok, the city that I currently call home. I spent an amazing, eye-opening six hours with two extremely lovely and passionate people.



When I arrived we chatted over donuts and coffee about this and that, then Alex plated up an incredibly pure tasting artichoke dish that he had been working on, this set the tune for what really was an amazing day.



From this tiny, but crazily-equipped, kitchen we ran through the topics that I really wanted to become more familair with.









Some whipped products. No, those are not egg whites.





To some fruit glueing.











Like all good chefs they offered the perfect lunch.



Then we ended the day with some other variations on pectin.



What I loved about watching Alex work was other than the fact that he was mad excitable, he also couldn't help but let his true chefiness slip out. Although we both tried to be on our best behaviour as this was the first time we had met face to face Alex was swearing like a trooper towards the end of our session. I have worked in four different countries and all chefs seem to behave the same way if not for swearing then maybe a good dick joke, why is that?

Alex and Aki were right. After the days class was through my way of thinking about food would be different. They could not have been more right.

The days experimenting wasn't perfect mind you.

After not allowing the above pectin bath to cool properly the little sauce orbs didn't come out the way they should have. "Don't do that, wait for the bath to cool" was Alex's advice.

"Do you make many mistakes or have many failures?" I asked.

"I fuck up all the time" he replied.

I personally hope to be fucking up over the next two months and have high hopes for next year too.

Here is the shopping list that I am currently working on.

Activa YG
Liquid Nitrogen local supply?
Liquid Nitrogen Dewar small shallow dish
Liquid Nitrogen Dewar holding 25 - 30 ltrs
Pacojet coup Blade set
New and larger chamber vacuum machine
Plastic acetate strips
Pectin LM
Pectin LMA
Fruit powders
Methocel A15C
Methocel F50 
Maltrin M100 Maltodextrin
Calcium Lactate
Locust Bean Gum
Calcium Glunconate
Calcium Lactate
Carrageenan (Iota)
Carrageenan (Kappa)
Konjac
Kelcogel Gellan Lt-100 (elastic)
Kelcogel Gellan F (Firm)

We ended our ten day stay in NYC, by attending an intimate chat with Ferran Adrià. A perfect end to a great food focused week including a day spent experimenting with Alex and Aki and a dinner stuffing our faces at WD-50 (more to come on both of those experiences).

So It was so very sweet of Maytel and Ms Q to indulge me in a nearly two hour inspirational talk held at the New York Public Library in honour of Ferran and his new book. I had said if it was boring that we could just slip out and head for eats earlier than planned.

No slipping needed.

Both Maytel and Ms Q loved it and were both left truly inspired, for me I know a lot about this this man and had heard much of what he had spoken of before from the Joël Robuchon story, and that he and a few others (see chefs statement or Manifesto under Heston Blumenthal) were willing to except the term Molecular gastronomy but not Molecular Cooking.

Maytel loved the comments he made about bread, that bread is just as scientific as cooking with liquid nitrogen but no one calls it "scientific bread". Ferran continued to push the point that El Bulli is a kitchen and not a laboratory as is often believed and one myth that clearly the moderator (slow food guy) wanted to maintain. He stressed that there are no scientists in the kitchen, just passionate chefs that are dedicated to their discipline. I also loved that what Ferran emphasised is the importance of cross-disciplinary dialogue, between not only chemists but architects and engineers. Nonetheless while people ahhh and ohhh over smashed fruit pulled from liquid nitrogen and other equally cool techniques. I was personally inspired or reassured that he was just a chef. A chef who has run with every opportunity that has crossed his path.

I loved that he was nervous to start and then the passion of what he does just over took him. Ignoring stupid questions from fellow panellist (except those of course from Super Nerd Harold McGee -he could have held his own talk by the way). Ferran quietly spoke of his interests and seemed to glow like a proud Dad when pictures of his latest creations emerged upon the large screen, and that most importantly he likes Katz's pastrami sandwiches just like me.





In a few days with any luck there should be an audio or hopefully a video cast available here (unfortunately I don't think you can rss this page) but checking back here in the next few weeks should allow you to find a wealth of interesting food discussions during the Restaurant Month at the NYCPL. With talks from Grant Achatz and possibly my favourite topic for a talk ever "A Farewell to Quenelles".

There's been a small discussion over at the Last Appetite about the dearth of good food writing in the mainstream media, from which this excellent quote emerged

Steingarten in Vogue reminds me a little of running “quality” articles in Playboy magazine.

Phil Lees, 2008

Serious talk of food seems now to be relegated to a seemingly endless list of single commodity food analyses which Nalika once described as "crude"

Their basic premise is to illustrate wider economic, social, political and environmental issues through analysing one type of food. And it seems increasingly to be the stock and trade of many an academic these days seeking to escape their dusty old offices to seek fame and fortune on book signing tours for serious "foodies"

I began a list of these a while ago, and I'm sure that the list is incomplete, but here are some (are there anymore that you can think of?)

- the banana book “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World”

- the oyster book “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell"

- the cod book “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World”

- the sushi book “The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy”

- the coffee book ” The coffee paradox: Global markets, commodity trade and the elusive promise of development ”

- the rice book “Rice and Man”

- the potato book "The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World"

- The salt book "Salt: A World History"

- The spice book "Spice: The History of a Temptation"

- the chocolate book "The True History of Chocolate"

- the corn book "Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance"

- the vanilla book "Vanilla : The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance"

- and a forthcoming is a book on the matsutake mushroom


As I said in the comments page of Last Appetite, it sometimes makes me want to yell “argghhhh…we get it food is symbolic of wider economic, political, social and environmental issues”. But the point is that food writing varies from the sublimely silly and superfluous to the deeply analytical and enlightening. Personally I like a bit of sugar with my fibre, junk food for my brain if you will.

But now comes a new type of food book, in line with Patel's Stuffed and Starved these new food books do not focus on one type of food and the limited insight that they may afford of a vastly complex system, they are not seeking to make you feel more enlightened about your everyday commodities but rather explain to you why we're all fucked.

The book ,The End of Food by Paul Roberts explains that while industrial food may be in crisis, its still making the best out of a bad situation.

A reviewer says

Reading through the recent food-politics bookshelf, it's too easy to take away an "industrial food bad, local food good" attitude. But how many modern-day locavores would readily embrace the life of, say, a 19th-century prairie farmer, tending to livestock, grain crops, and a vegetable patch without electricity or machine power? Shopping at farmers markets and joining CSAs -- activities I wholeheartedly support -- present a necessary challenge to a global food system gone mad, but are unlikely to prove sufficient for transforming it. To mount a real challenge, we'll need a clear-eyed grounding in the history and economics of food production, in addition to locavore zeal. And that's were Roberts makes an important contribution.....Robert's historical frame drives home a key point that his predecessors didn't quite nail down: In many ways, modern food production is an attractive response to centuries of chronic food insecurity. Who wants to spend nearly all of one's income on food, and rely on sugared tea as a key source of calories, as did the 19th-century British working class? Who wants to spend hours a day preparing food as peasant women did, not by choice but for survival? By the dawn of the 20th century, people quite understandably longed for food security and freedom from drudgery. The modern food system -- for all of the new problems it created -- largely met those desires, at least in the United States and Europe. The locavore movement will eventually have to confront them head on.

Yes, who indeed wants to live like a peasant? (aside from you Phil and Hock who's apparent dream is to spend all of their waking hours cold smoking meats and makin bacon)

Basically, the point is that yes modern food is deeply problematic but if we get rid of it human kind will undoubtedly face starvation....the end of food, and all those mindlessly indulgent food writers and bloggers and the equally useless academics that go along with it.

Above: one of the slightly less narcissistic photos of Ani Phyo.

Here's a confession: the experience at Zerwirk in the post below was not my first encounter with raw food.

There's something entertaining about eating food like 'ketchup' that comes in inverted commas, although I'm not such a fan of the crazy letters, used to label items like Mylk or Cheeze.

As far as I know there's no scientific basis for any of this stuff - studies I've seen on for instance the healthfulness of garlic referring to its use in traditional diets cite its effectiveness both cooked and raw.
Still, I'm of the opinion that any recipes that help me to consume more vegetables are probably good (especially thinking back on that Guardian article about how fruits are almost devoid of nutrition).
And desserts that are made from nuts, seeds and fruit are probably a good distraction from unhealthier stuff too. No matter how much I might try to deny it to myself, I do like to snack on sweetish things every now & then.

I don't like to buy into a hippy lifestyle though, which is why it was nice to see the weird world of rawfood presented along with designer chairs and German coolness at Zerwirk/Saf -

But in most instances you'll find this oeuvre is more likely to packaged a la the slightly insane hyper-hippie narcissistic Portland version in the cookbook 'Ani's Rawfood Kitchen' which I bought in Toronto out of curiosity and to expand my salad repertoire.

The book is filled with pictures of Ani on the beach, wearing sunglasses, drinking from Thai baby coconuts etc.

So far I've tried a few things from this cookbook: the raw Asian greens salad is excellent (bok choi is really nice & juicy, and good with the sesame seeds, avocado, basil leaves etc). The raw pumpkin pie was...interesting... and made a good & strangely salty/crunchy sweet snack for quite a few days from its safe haven in the fridge. The raw 'ketchup' made from pureed sun dried tomatoes & a fresh tomato, a few dates, garlic and lots of olive oil was very good too, again nothing like ketchup, but excellent with grilled chicken (oops...bending the rules a bit there..!)

Sometimes recently at home, if Erik is making rice, I'll make 'rice' instead: made from processed pieces of raw butternut squash, pounded walnuts, coriander & cumin powder, seasalt and dried cranberries. This obviously doesn't taste anything like rice but makes a tasty, crunchy, soapy-tasting vehicle for moist foods like a miso-vege saute or a japanese curry.

The only failure has been these coconut 'breakfast cakes' made from ground flax seeds and coconut oil, served with 'butter' made from coconut oil and white miso..... this combo - although the saltiness and richness was interesting and the 'butter' was sort of buttery at least upon every second mouthful - the rich saltinesss made my stomach curdle a bit and it was too crumbly to give an illusion of anything close to a pancake.

I was surprised to read at the link here that Ani is not a 100% raw fanatic, and will dabble in soup or tofu (shock!). But this increased my respect for her, since in the cookbook she sure does some across as a fanatic. For example Ani's poor ridgeback dog named Kanga is fed only on pureed seeds and was taught to bite down on tomatoes, though i'd bet she probably catches and eats rats and small cats when Ani is not looking.




Here is Ani demonstrating (in a Keanu-tinged accent) how to make 'American apple pie': the most 'deliciousest' pie for, like, moms and children! As you'll see, she represents a pretty different face to raw food than the more sophisticated techno-endorsed Chad at Zerwirk. Still, in the end, most of her recipes are actually tasty, and always interesting to try out.



Here is an easy recipe for 'lemon pudding' from Ani, which I make quite often as a high-fat but low-guilt dessert. I add a lot more lemon juice than she suggests.

Lemon Pudding
Adapted from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen
Serves one.

Half cup of almonds (ideally soaked overnight to activate enzymes, then rinsed thoroughly and refridgerated until needed)
1/2 cup water
Juice of one lemon
3-4 fresh dates chopped
Optional: 1/2 tbsp psyllium powder (I've never used this thickening fibre powder but it could be a good addition)

Blend until smooth. (You may need to double the recipe or add a touch more water to blend properly without it all going up the sides of the container).

Serve on its own or with chopped fresh or dehydrated fruit. (apparently dehydrated still equates to raw...go figure)

I just had some with preserved organic sour cherries from a jar, and a sprinkling of dehydrated germinated golden spelt (dinkel) which added a nice crunch.

I know...........I'm a creep.

First up the more easily digested:

'A Short History of the American Stomach' by Frederick Kaufman

"A Short History of the American Stomach" is a history of extremes. In Kaufman's version, there isn't a lot of middle ground. When we're not furiously trying to shed pounds, we're gorging ourselves. In one of his more amusing sections, he looks at the phenomenon of extreme eating. "Professional gurgitators," those champion hot-dog eaters you read about every summer, come from a fine, if bloated, lineage; extreme eating is a classic American folk tradition. This voraciousness, frowned on in polite company, symbolizes the bounty of fish, flesh and fowl that the settlers consumed as they settled America. Kaufman evokes those colorful backwoods characters "who devoured alligators and rattlesnakes and blood." The American appetite is perhaps key to our westward expansion, "for America was a vast digestive force that understood the entire continent -- if not the world -- as its manifest dinner."

Main Course of extremely stodgy text to chew on:

'The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security' by Geoff Tansey and Tasmin Rajotte

This book is the first wide-ranging guide to the key issues of intellectual property and ownership, genetics, biodiversity and food security. Proceeding from an introduction and overview of the issues, comprehensive chapters cover negotiations and instruments in the World Trade Organization, Convention on Biological Diversity, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants and various other international bodies. The final part discusses the responses of civil society groups to the changing global rules, how these changes affect the direction of research and development, the nature of global negotiation processes and various alternative futures.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of a cookbook slut. And the River Cafe cookbooks are amongst my favourites. They're written nicely, the recipes are very cleverly selected - curated, if you will - from Italy's wealth of offerings, and they do not rely on cream and butter but more often artfully employ red chillies, lemon, anchovies, herbs or judicious applications of heat. However, though I'm usually turned off by cream, I must say their fennel-parmesan gratin is fine, and their calorifically splendid Penne con Sugo di Salsiccie alla Cloe is a staple of ours by now. (It must be the latent German in me that enjoys those dishes).
Other staples include cucumber, fresh chilli, mint, lemon and mascarpone; a way of serving potatoes half-mashed with tonnes of parsely, and grassy-tasting olive oil; various pasta or polenta techniques; and zucchini trifolati with tomato, which is insanely good.

Sage is one of my favourite herbs, and it's Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers who've shown me the best ways to deploy it in the kitchen.

Dishes I still need to try from their cookbooks include a soup of broccoli with red wine, roast duck with purple figs, Vignole (fresh peas, broad beans, mint, prosciutto etc), Ossobuco in Bianco (veal shin with anchovies, white wine, lemon, parsley etc), and Maiale al Latte (pork cooked with milk, sage and lemon).

So anyways, to visit their restaurant, which has sat at its far flung outpost in the West of London beside a gray-ish section of the River Thames since 1987, has long been a goal of mine. (Although it has nothing to do with my desire to go there, the place has held a Michelin star since 1998).

I was happy to achieve this goal shortly before Christmas with some friends who had booked a lunch there unbeknownst to me.

Atmosphere: very pleasant. I think I had expected the place to be a bit more cosy (with a name like River Cafe), but the most rustic thing there was the customers (see photo at top). The restaurant itself had a vibe somewhere between school teacher's canteen, (with the floor to ceiling windows casting gray London light on one side), and a vaguely chic early '90s bar (with the long stainless steel counter, and a glimpse of the wood-burning oven at the far end).



Service: excellent. A large team of wait staff performed their duties swiftly and skillfully. Some were attractive beanpoles of Russian or East African descent, all seemed contented: a well-looked after and efficient team. The Maitre-D was very friendly and made a big fuss over our not-so-impressive camera; the female Sommelier was down to earth but very knowledgeable, it was easy to imagine her as a peer or friend e.g. part of the old Verona crew in Auckland. They all sat down to a staff meal shortly after ours was served, which seemed familial. I've always found it absurd when restaurants banned one from eating in front of the customers. Like, god forbid the customers should think that the staff need to breathe or drink water, either.



Food: the highlight for all of us I think was the two pasta dishes: tortellini of roast pork belly with sage leaves and butter, just a handful of soft expertly made pasta....mmm....and farfalle with cavalo nero and new season's olive oil from Fèlsina.
Herbacious, savoury, just delicious. Happily I found the recipe for the farfalle in The River Cafe Cookbook so I'll share it at the bottom of this post later tonight.



My main was probably the most disappointing, but only because (for the second time) I forgot that I don't like monkfish. If a rubber eraser mated with a squid, this would be the dense and chewy offspring. However the Fritto Misto - with artichoke and sage and lots of lemon squeezed on top - were yummy.



The lamb with rosemary branch and puy lentils, and the snapper/sea bream with roast pumpkin, borlotti beans and pesto, were very fine.





The cost was not insane for the size of the portions (note: when I say 'not insane', I mean 'not insane if you are thinking in terms of euros or British pounds') and considering that it included a very nice bottle of white, Soave la Rocca, & a glass each of prosecco with clementine orange juice and Campari as a pre-Christmas tipple. Beautiful! I recommend this drink very highly, in fact I might have one right now.



Thames Wharf Studio/Rainville Rd
Hammersmith
London
W6 9HA
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7386 4200
(easiest to get a cab from District Line or Hammersmith tube stations)

Does the above picture turn you on?

Healthy food seems to have a bad rap amongst serious eaters. The best restaurants are geared towards decadance and escapism; the most popular cookbooks tend to revolve around 'comfort food' presented with 'honest' English wit and oodles of butter and pastry. We like to eat fatty food in front of a fire, like, yeah, but what's so clever or new about that?

If it isn't trying to imitate full-fat/refined-carb dishes (I did recently try to make a wholegrain Roman-style carbonara - it wasn't good), food that is created with thoughts of health and environmental impact in mind can also be beautiful to look at and delicious.

Although my tastes were developed through working in cafes and restaurants as a teenager (delicious versions of classic kiwi tucker at Eva Dixon's Cafe, Italian food at Mondo Cucina, and then several different Japanese restaurants), my first ever cookbook was from the Moosewood restaurant series, so I guess I was indoctrinated early. Some of their dishes remain among my favourites, like black eyed peas sauted with garlic and balsamic and spinach. There is something very rewarding about triumphing over the nastier excesses of industrial food production, about choosing to vary your diet with meals based around non-meat protein sources, about working with unrefined grains: it makes you feel closer to the earth and less wasteful since you are eating more of the plant. And healthy food is, like, healthier for you ay.

Really good healthy cuisine (not sure what else to call it) - which shouldn't always be but tends to be vegan or vegetarian - makes simple flavourings like lemon and ginger do olympic feats of taste. It makes vegetables seem like precious and delightful creations (no small feat in itself) and it often involves a bit more preparation and marination. I guess that sense of care and connection to the kitchen and to the produce is what the slow-food movement is trying to trademark.

It's easy to write it off as a need to feel virtuous through food choices, but I actually think, in the same way that following a traditional Japanese recipe can bring a tactile and aesthetic enjoyment - and a sort of spiritual connection to the tradition of that meal - so too can the deployment of healthy recipes in a tradition going back to those early Californian hippies. Is it really a bad thing to get more of a buzz from making zucchini-date-honey muffins than from baking a sticky steamed pudding with flour rubbed in suet, where the buzz is derived from its being 'so English' and the taste so rich and decadent?

I would rather be pseudo-virtuous than an outright glutton.

And in the end, I'm left wondering, why do I feel like I have to justify myself for wanting to eat delicious food that's actually good for me? Why is being healthy so uncool?

I was very happy the other day when a box of books arrived which we posted back from Toronto. It contained two different editions of the signature cookbook of a Toronto chain of salad/juice/ rice-bowl restaurants named Fresh by Juice for Life.

The three branches of this restaurant are quite a phenomenon. The newer edition of the cookbook bears a recommendation on the cover from Jeffrey Steingarten-approved Toronto chef Susur Lee (something twee along the lines of "Feeds the mind body and soul. It's the future."). And, rather like the celebrity-named sandwiches at your local deli, Susur created a signature juice there. Something to do with beets and raspberries.

Like so many good spots in Toronto, it is done out in an easy-to-wash, pleasant but generic cafe style with plastic washable cups that doesn't exactly scream serious restaurant, and being voted Best Vegetarian Restaurant in Toronto numerous times wouldn't necessarily seem like a huge recommendation either. But along with the plastic cups they have smart wait staff and table service, and it's quite fascinating to see all three branches of a place that goes beyond basic fare like juices and vege burgers, to spicy Sri Lankan noodles and Peruvian-maca/sprouted-flax/hemp-seed shakes, so packed every single day, not just with yoga mums but suits and the occasional group of indie rock teens.

I guess the key factors in the success of Fresh are: the food really gets your taste buds tingling, it's stomach filling, and it's pretty affordable. And presented nicely, too.

The way the cookbook is written doesn't do much to mitigate the cliched image of vegetarians as narcissistic health-freaks: why does every such cookbook have a thousand photos of the chef in question grinning in an unnerving manner as if to say "read my healthiness in the glow of my teeth....aren't I puuuuuuurrty"? (I'm reminded of a raw food cookbook I once saw which had photos of this long-haired blonde guy jumping around in the surf)

And neurotic sounding paragraphs like this are rather amusing/unnerving, too:

"Whereas in the first book I managed to maintain healthy eating habits through the entire writing process, this time I munched on potato chips, sweets and chocolate soy ice cream and drank gallons of ginger ale and hot chocolate...I did however manage to resist the temptation to fuel my writing with caffeine for fear of causing irreparable harm to my marriage!"
Like, wow!

However I must say that every single recipe in the two Fresh cookbooks have been a complete success so far, from a mango-tofu-peanut salad to a spicy citrus-infused Cuban chickpea soup. Our recent purchase of a nice Kitchen Aid blender allows us to replicate some of Fresh's great smoothies, like a coconut-chai thing and a warm date & oat infusion which really does have the promised calming effect.

And somewhat endearingly, there is a dish called Wrapper's Delight,
"named after Jennifer's favourite song from the 1970s", and a drink named after Iron Maiden.

The best thing about books like these is how dramatically you increase your salad repertoire, but the recipes for sweet potato pie, dosas and strawberry-lavendar muffins don't go astray either.

Here's an excellent light, creamy, garlicky dressing that's best served with salad leaves, roasted vegetables and a scoop of hummus.

CREAMY SUNFLOWER DRESSING
from ReFresh by Ruth Tal & Jennifer Hudson

2/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup grapefruit juice
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup filtered water

Combine ingredients in a blender or food processor. Process until thick, frothy and smooth.
(This dressing should be good for 4 - 6 salads, and keeps well in the fridge for 4 or 5 days)

I really wish there was a branch of Fresh in Cologne. Right next door to the gourmet burger joint and yakitori bar which don't exist either. Once again, thank god for recipe books.

PS: the spinach in the picture below looks wilted because it was briefly blanched in hot water. Yessir.

By by Raj Patel, Portobello

Book Website


Review By Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian

"Unless you are a corporate food executive, the food system isn't working for you. If you are one of the world's rural poor dependent on agriculture for your livelihood - and roughly half the global population of 6 billion fall into this category - you are likely to be one of the starved. If you are an urban consumer, whether an affluent metropolitan or slum-dwelling industrial labourer, you are likely to be one of the stuffed, suffering from obesity or other diet-related ills.

When we go out to the Kushitei izakaya in Duesseldorf, I always get a nantoka-itame (something-or-other stirfry) from the special menu. They usually have a really yummy one made from veges and pork with chopped spicy 'zasai' pickles, which are the slightly milder but still hot Japanese version of Sichuanese zha cai, crunchy pickled mustard stem.

Itameru is the Japanese verb, which the Japanese wikipedia page likens to sautéing. However, the origins of '炒め物' (stir-fried dishes) in Japan, are obviously Chinese, and according to oh-so reliable wikipedia on their Japanese cuisine page, these "mock-Chinese stirfries" (?) have been a staple in Japanese homes and canteens since the '50s.

Somehow when I think of the western version of the Chinese stirfry, I think of a very hot, very energetic frying method with plenty of oil. Clearly in China there are many different ways to fry and braise food in a pan, and the Japanese itameru method derives from the slower end of that scale, which might be why the web page compares it to sautéing.

However apparently elements of a good French sauté are that the food is not crowded into the pan, without absorbing the fat or stewing in its own juices, and at no cost must moisture steam or stew the food.
On the other hand making itamemono usually does involve a big mess of food and flavours, and although the end result is usually not mushy, it is quite common to pour a little stock or sweetened soy sauce in at the end to braise/coat the food, and to jumble/marinate the flavours together a little more.

When I think of a nice itameta dish I think of a casual, homey dish, at least 2 ingredients cut up in in small pieces, still a bit crunchy and not too oily, flavoursome with an ingredient like garlic chives or small pieces of pork, or sesame seeds, or sugar and soy. And of course, perfect with rice.

The following dish is quite mild so I recommend to serve it with some really good kimchi cabbage and crunchy kimchi cucumbers. To really get your pan-asian (con)fusion going on.

肉にら炒め
Nikunira-Itame (meat & chinese chives stirfry)
(adapted from the cookbook '15分ラクうまおかず by Shufunotomo (housewife's friend) press)

150 g thinly sliced pork (as you would use for shabushabu or such)
One packet of Nira (chinese garlic chives) (about 30g?), cut into 4 cm lengths (substitute with bärlauch if unavailable)
Half a smallish bag of moyashi/bean sprouts
25 g carrot, peeled and cut into 4 cm long, 3 mm thin juliennes

A [salt, pepper, 2 tsp flour, 1 tsp olive oil]
2 tbsp sesame oil
1/3 tsp organic vege stock powder or kombu kelp stock powder
1 tsp oyster sauce
2 tsp soy sauce

Roughly chop the pork into 4-5 cm lengths and mix it with A using your hands.



Heat the frying pan, warm the sesame oil and stir fry the pork at a high heat. When it begins to colour, add the carrots. You might like to move the pork to one side of the pan and move that side of the pan off the heat, so that the carrots can absorb the juices and cook, but the pork doesn't get overcooked. When the carrots begin to soften add the beansprouts and nira/chinese garlic chives and stir fry it all about.

When it all seems pretty much cooked to your preference, add the soup stock, oyster sauce and soy, turn off the heat and mix it all about until well coated, then add salt & pepper to taste. Serve with hot rice and plenty of funky kimchi.

If you are in Sydney you may be interested in attending this:

Distinguished Lecture Series #2
“Global Sushi: Soft Power and Hard Realities”

Theodore C. Bestor
Professor of Social Anthropology and Japanese Studies Chair, Department of Anthropology Harvard University Visiting
Academic to the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne

Venue: Building 10; level 6; Training Room 1. (enter through Jones St but use lifts at Wattle St end of building)
See Map
Time/Date: 6-7pm Monday 16 July 2007
Contact: Michael.Prince@uts.edu.au

For the past eighteen years, Ted Bestor has been visiting fish markets, fishing ports, tuna ranches, and sushi bars in the
Asia Pacific and North American and European Atlantic regions to track the spread of “Global Sushi,” as Japanese cuisine
has been transformed from exotic ethnic specialization into an icon of Japan’s “gross national cool,” an aspect of Japan’s
projection of “soft power” into the arenas of global popular culture. But Global Sushi is not just slick cosmopolitan
consumption; it is an industry of off-shore production and distribution, created by complex joint ventures and
technology transfers, environmentally controversial aquaculture projects, illegal fishing and international attempts to
regulate global common property regimes. Global Sushi depends upon complex arrangements of production and
distribution, and an extensive and only partially transparent international trade in seafood.

For those of you that don't read boing boing

Here is a link that they recommend checking out, follow it to a most excellent slide show of photos taken by Peter Menzel. Collaborating with Faith D'Aluisio to which they wrote Hungry Planet: What the world eats looks like a good read.

I miss good bread. Bread makers in Thailand follow the general conception that the whiter, sweeter and spongier the better. I call it Japanese-style bread. Cambodian bread is marginally better, it has a crust at least. Overall I've noticed that in keeping with the southeast asian general perception that anything dark is bad and anything white and fair is good, one almost never sees a well baked loaf of rye bread. My step-mother has taken the asian browned bread phobia to a whole new level. As she believes that anything slightly burnt contains cancer causing carcinogens, after toasting her bread in the morning she then proceeds to pick off any pieces that fall above the hue of honey coloured. It is a painful sight to see

I miss vogels and crusty loaves of ciabatta.

NPR sums it up
Introducing cookings biggest NERD