Stomachs on legs are proud to present

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.

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

What happens when two of Siem Reap's sexiest and hospitable French expats join forces to open a restaurant and bar?

Owners and very good friends of ours, Renaud Fichet (front of house) and Pascal Schmit (chef) are famous in our books for their great wine, excellent food (especially the foie gras), and great service. Most locals and tourists agree.

Menu


Well priced French wines


Amuse Chilled Potato Soup with Salmon Caviar


Foie Gras


My Fresh Sea Bass with vegetable risotto and spinach


yup Siem Reap has come a long way from the days when you couldn't even get fresh cream

Hock's extremely large t-bone steak

note: not all portions are this big Pascal was trying to show off

Le Cheque


After dinner wander over to the garden bar, say hello to Oscar the friendly dog/wolf and have a drink at the bar. Hang around long enough and you'll usually get lots of inside temple tips, generous pours and maybe even a good night kiss.

Abacus
Garden Restaurant and Bar
BP 93108, Route 6 to the Airport
1st Turn after Angkor Hotel (near western union sign)
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Phone 012644 286
cafeabacus.com

So I'm at another anthropology talk fest. Auckland University this time. There's not a lot in the conference program that interests me. It's mainly a lot of academics bleating on about cultural heritage and "identity". Issues that never cease to bore me senseless. I'm presenting tomorrow in a "development" politics panel, but am aiming to try and get to the panel entitled "Appropriating Rurals" and although I should probably be sitting in a lecture theatre on gender or LAND.

IF I'm feeling flippant I might try and get to the talk by Adrian Peace from the University of Adelaide called: "Barossa Dreaming: food, fetsivals and fetishism in rural Australia"

Abstract

It is difficult to imagine a rural region of Australia more thoroughly integrated into the world economy than the Barossa Valley in South Australia. Dominated by a handful of transnational corporations, the wine industry is as thoroughly incorporated into the hegemonic system of global commodity flows as any other part of the country. It is therefore somewhat paradoxical to find that images and representations of heritage, tradition and the authentic community figure pervasively in the intense commodification of the Barossa. In this paper, I detail the representational and discursive processes by which food and festivals are fetishized to constitute the Barossa Valley as a site of nostalgic dreaming. I argue that the advent of the Slow Food movement is the latest addition to these processes. But it is equally important to recognize what is strategically omitted from view.

If I get to go I might ask him some annoying questions on why the words "global" and "hegemonic" are so often conjured in food systems "discourses" and other annoyingly nitpicky academic questions of no particular consequence.

I'm pretty keen on the whole recent anthropolgists schtick of unpicking rural food tourism in general though

I'd also like to see what this presenter has to say...perhaps I'll treat myself

Gifting the Self: the metro-rural idyll and ideal reflexive individuality

Abstract

'I think I'll treat myself.' 'Go ahead, treat yourself.' 'This holiday is a treat to myself.'

These are familiar refrains that may be overheard in the cafés, craft shops, and vineyards of Martinborough - a popular weekend tourism destination for the new middle-classes of nearby Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. These narratives emphasis - personally and socially - notions of gifting the self (Howland 2008) and thus give insight into the calculated reflexive individuality of Martinborough's tourists. Specifically they highlight a reflexive awareness of the self as an object that may be subjected to self-assembly and development regimes. They also underscore an attentiveness to multiple, context-specific selves as evidenced by notions of reward or compensation of the 'working self' to the 'leisured self'. In addition, tourists routinely cast Martinborough as metro-rural idyll - an enchanted, performative setting of leisured consumption that draws upon pervasive notions of the vernacular rural idyll to provide a moral foundation for their urbane consumption activities, social distinction negotiations, and pursuit of ideal reflexive individuality.

Anthropological analysis of kinship-orientated societies often situates reciprocal gifting as the principal mode of economic exchange and vital to social integration and cohesion (Mauss 1972). By contrast, analysis of post-industrial societies often casts commodity, market-based exchange as primary and socially alienating (Carrier 1994). However, gifting the self clearly articulates the hegemonic ideologies and practices of ideal reflexive individuality and as such contributes to the reproduction of the dominant social structure of the 'second modern' (Beck 2002) - namely the institutionalisation of individualism

Peter Howland (Victoria University, Wellington)

Above is El Porró: the Catalan wine glass/jug. Sergi reckons his grandmother can pour it into her mouth with her arm extended straight in a salute as the wine cascades in an arc of half a meter. Don't pass his grannie the mic. And don't pass me the Porró 'cause I'm wearing a white shirt.

It was National Day of Catalonia on Thursday. Instead of celebrating by burning the Spanish flag like some people around here, we went to Set de Born xarcuteria and ate 'esqueixada': it's a salad of tomato, onion, vinaigrette, olives and soaked salt cod or 'bacalao'. Bacalao is also popular in Italy and Portugal: Mayuko tells me that in Lisbon, the signs advertising bacalao are strung up with flashing fluorescent lights that put the red light district to shame.
I really get that. Bacalao is awesome.



Catalan 'farm-produced' goats cheeses like Nevat goats cheese (acid), Sant Mateu (strong & tender) and Mutanyola (soft & tasty)



According to wikipedia, Catalunya has an official population of 7,210,508 from which immigrants represent an estimated 12.3% of the total population.

The name Catalunya either derives from 'Land of the Castles', or Gothia, "Land of the Goths" since the Spanish March was one of the places known as Gothia, whence Gothland and Gothlandia theoretically derived, though critics usually consider it rather simplistic.

Source: New York Times

I remember, growing up in New Zealand, that most parents who were into wine would have a box of chardonnay or savvie handy in the fridge. For some reason my nurse aunt and doctor uncle spring to mind. Feathered bleach blonde hair. Noisy afternoon drinking on an outside deck made of greying timber. The ladies had those silver metal & elastic arm adornments for holding up their shirt sleeves in a fashionable scrunch. On special days they'd do your hair in a french braid. We would blow up the plastic innersleeve bladders from the boxed wine and use them as floaties when we went swimming.
No, not really.
But people weren't shy of cask wine in the '80s. Oh, those halcyon days.

Article in New York Times:

"ITALY’S Agriculture Ministry announced this month that some wines that receive the government’s quality assurance label may now be sold in boxes. That’s right, Italian wine is going green, and for some connoisseurs, the sky might as well be falling.

But the sky isn’t falling. Wine in a box makes sense environmentally and economically. Indeed, vintners in the United States would be wise to embrace the trend that is slowly gaining acceptance worldwide.

Wine in a box has been around for more than 30 years — though with varying quality. The Australians were among the first to popularize it. And hardly a fridge in the south of France, especially this time of year, is complete without a box of rosé."

From Wikipedia:

"The wine cask (or wine box) was invented by Tom Angove of Angove's, a winemaker from Renmark, South Australia, and patented by the company on April 20, 1965.

In 1967 C.H. Malpas and Penfolds Wines patented a plastic, air-tight tap welded into a metallised bladder, making storage much more convenient for consumers. All modern wine casks now utilise some sort of plastic tap, which is exposed by tearing away a perforated panel on the box.
The chief advantage to bag-in-a-box packaging is that it prevents oxidation of the wine during dispensing. After opening, wine in a bottle is oxidized by air in the bottle which has displaced the wine poured; wine in a bag is not touched by air and thus not subject to oxidation until it is dispensed. Cask wine is not subject to cork taint or spoilage due to slow consumption after opening.
After the wine is drunk and the bag is empty, the bag may be removed from the box and blown up through the tap valve like a balloon. The inflated bag makes a convenient pillow.
However, the bag is not hermetically sealed and has an unopened shelf life shorter than bottled wine. Most casks will have a best-before date stamped. [2] As a result, it is not intended for cellaring and should be drunk within the prescribed period.
Bag in a box packaging is also preferred by producers of more economical wines because it is less expensive than glass bottles. Unlike bag-in-box packaging of other liquids, wine is not under pressure so it is perfectly safe to remove the bladder from the box. A bag of wine, once removed from the box, will float on water; this allows quick cooling of a white wine by immersion in an ice bath."





Who wrote this! "The inflated bag makes a convenient pillow." Very cute, Wikipedia, very cute. Spoken like a true drunkard.

http://view.break.com/487616 - Watch more free videos

It was a lovely warm easter weekend in New Zealand, and out in West Auckland an informal home made pasta lesson took place. "It's easy" said Hock in the kind of way that Jaimie Oliver says things are easy and really they are time consuming and difficult.



With Hock over seeing, G&G rolled it and folded it and rolled it again, and when at first they failed...they tried again



First homemade pasta dish of the weekend involved our dead easter bunny....Hock and Ginny took charge of this. First they pan fried the loin and the kidneys, then they made a stew of rabbit, bacon and tuber veges with a light white wine and sage sauce. They served it with fresh "beginners home made pasta" parpadelle





And we drunk it with some damn good NZ wine.




Later that weekend the lesson continued and G&G graduated onto the ever tricky ravioli, stuffed with chicken. Hock pronounced, as resident chef, that the "ravioli must be sealed properly with no air bubbles otherwise it would split and we'll end up with a gruesome bowl of boiling water with bits of broken up pasta and poached mince meat."...He said and everyone looked horrified and set about double checking the ravioli for air bubbles and broken seals.

"Ravioli is difficult, that's why in the 1990s there was that time when everyone made one big ravioli, because making small ones is annoying and often disasterous".



But of course, it's not exactly rocket science either


We put basil, roasted tomato, mozzerlla and parmasan on top, well they did...I watched and drunk wine and complained about being hungry. Then they heated it in the oven, just enough for the cheese to go gooey.


Someone set the table


And we treated ourselves to another damn good bottle of NZ wine, a well earned bottle of Mt Difficulty. I love my sister and her wine cellar.



Papadelle hanging out to dry

For some reason, I hear this a lot: "I don't know anything about wine." This is a silly thing to say. Frankly, there is nothing to know. People may try to convince you that wine is somehow like skilled labor or a subject in school, two categories full of things to know, but wine is not like that. You can learn about how wine is made, about the regions and the traditions, but none of this is necessary when actually using wine. I don't know anything about how books are printed and bound, but this does not keep me from reading. You see? The doing has nothing necessarily to do with the knowing.

From Matthew Latkiewicz' Stained Teeth.

I like good wine, I dislike bad wine and that's about the sum of it. Despite the fact that I am a food blogger the link between my taste buds and that part of my brain that controls verbal description seems to be broken

Food, wine, beer is, in my books, either yummy, or not. I'm not one to start waxing lyrically about vanilla undertones or blackberry flavours, to me it all tastes like fermented grapes. Not to say that there are not good bottles and bad bottles of fermented grapes and that I can't tell the difference. I'm just not going to bore anyone with the petty details of my tongue

it's a sensual wine????? a naughty wine????? a charming wine????

Mushrooms are not actors and wine isn't a young woman.....it's wine.

So I'm so glad that someone else has been incensed with this insufferable snobbery and food fetishism and called a spade a spade

Introducting, the Anti-Wine Guide

AFP - US-born film director Jonathan Nossiter, maker of Mondovino, has released his first book - an ''anti wine guide'' which like his 2004 documentary slams overly influential critics and outrageous prices.

Launched in Bordeaux recently, Nossiter said the book, Le Gout et le Pouvoir (Taste and Power), aimed to demystify wine and make it more democratic.

In a veiled attack on powerful critics such as American Robert Parker, whose arithmetical ratings of Bordeaux wines influence sales and prices, Nossiter says it is treason to taste 300 wines and then issue mathematical calculations.

''If there were 40 people in the room tasting we would have 40 different experiences,'' Nossiter said.

''This book is an anti-guide,'' he said, not aimed at imposing one person's tastes but instead at championing the taste of the individual over that of well known critics.

The book, which will be available in English late next year, ``is a call to find another way to talk about wine, to find words that include people, not exclude them,'' he said.

It follows hot on the heels of another recently launched book that also criticises Parker, accusing him of croneyism and lack of independence.

Aside from slamming wine buffs and their snobby talk, Nossiter also takes on outrageously priced restaurants as a barrier to enjoying wines.

Describing a visit to one trendy Paris restaurant which aims to bring good foods to a wide audience, Nossiter said the wine prices were ''punishing'' with a simple white burgundy at 17 euros ($A27) a glass.

''Scandalous,'' he says for a wine that could have been priced at
1.50 euros ($A2.38).

''More than 1,000 per cent mark up, when the norm is between 250 and 300 per cent,'' the book says.

Another wine, selling at 13 euros ($A20.50) a glass, normally costs 6 euros ($A9.50) a bottle, he says, a 1,300 per cent mark-up.

When the restaurant's sommelier is asked if the wines by the glass come from bottles opened that day or the day before - as wines change taste and lose freshness when opened for too long - the sommelier says he doesn't know and that it doesn't matter.

''That is like saying to a film maker, you can screen your film on the pavement instead of the screen, no difference,'' writes Nossiter.

Asked at the launch about fears that both critics and supermarkets will eventually impose standardised wine tastes, Nossiter said: ''Despite mafia-like efforts to standardise our tastes, I think intelligent people will not accept this, and they will become more and more sceptical about wine and other things.''

Nossiter, who chose to wrote his book in French, made waves at the Cannes filmfest in 2004 with Mondovino, a documentary about the good, the bad and the ugly in world wine.

It portrayed a troubled world, one of big business taking over the vineyards of the world. Nossiter travelled three continents to recount the family sagas of billionaire Napa Valley growers, the rivalry between two aristocratic Florentine dynasties and the efforts of three generations of a Burgundy family to preserve their vines.

''Wine is a kind of guardian of Western civilisation,'' he said at the time.