Filed under: Print
Oscar Wilde is da bomb. Phrases & Philosophies for the use of the young.
I bought Heston Blumenthal’s humonongous confoundingus cookbook a few months back, when it first came out before I went home to SG for a bit. I was with some friends and we just happened to be in Chef’s Warehouse when I saw it, opened to a page with something amazing looking. I flip and flip and everything’s amazing. So I had to have it. So I did. I swear I don’t hang out at Chef’s Warehouse.
Anyway, I dunno why I haven’t mentioned the book yet. It’s awesome. I think mostly, it’s because I haven’t finished reading the entire thing yet. It’s an amazing insight into the world of one of the the planet’s most celebrated chefs. You get to see his thinking and methodology, his childish playfulness and penchant for the wacky. At the heart of his cooking, is fun.
You get the mad scientist and you think, oh it’s just a show, an act, or hype or whatever. But seriously, he’s the real deal. This guy is insane when you talk about details. He will go to the ends of the earth, beyond the point of dimishing returns simply to do what he thinks is perfect.
The food’s awesomely inspiring too and just a touch bewildering/daunting. Most home cooks will never be able to approach this. It’s way too massive anyway, physically speaking, to have on your coffee table. This is a book for mad foodies or chefs. The information is split into roughly 3 sections. The first regards Blumenthal’s history and the method behind the madness. The second goes into the recipes proper, sometimes only offering anecdotes or a story rather than ingredient lists and instructions. The final chapter is the science and equipment, which is pretty detailed as well.
The photography is awesome, as is the food styling. The book really gives a magic atmosphere and whimsically English feel to things. All the famous dishes are here. Snail Porridge, Bacon & Egg Ice Cream… But I particularly love a few dishes.
Eel “Nichi” from 2007 is based on a 1967 comedy, Barefoot In The Park by Neil Simon. In there, is a scene where a dish of Nichi is brought to the table and the guests are told to wait a half minute before eating and that they need to pop it in the mouth and consume within 5 minutes or it turns bitter. Blumenthal’s version uses methylcellulose to make a gel that melts and really releases quinine in 5 minutes. This he uses as part of the eel “skin” which also composed of olives. To achieve a satisfactory aesthetic appeal, the skin also makes use of titanium dioxide and edible silver paint to emulate a real eel. This is all plated with some fried shirasu, poached eel, a black olive puree, a leek gel, dried olives and a myoga, udo & leek julienne. In case someone really waits 5 minutes before eating, a salty lapsang souchong infusion is also sent out to save the day.
Salmon Poached In Liquorice Gel from 2003 also looks amazing. It’s a shiny black coated piece of fish that comes with a balsamic reduction, vanilla mayo, asparagus and grapefruit. This one came about through a touch of molecular analysis, realising that asparagus and liquorice had a similar compound, asparagine. 2 interesting ingredients were in search of other components to make a dish. A combination of situation and novelty led to the two being used in a fish dish, with salmon’s meaty oiliness tempering the typically sweet, medicinal quality that liquorice tends to have.
You can see there’s a lot of depth behind the cooking just from my cursory explanations. Inside the mind of the great chef is someone who is curious and looking for wonderment. All that awaits me is a seat at one of his tables.
In my quest for food related films, I stumbled upon a rather interesting magazine with covers that look pretty stunning. Gastronomica is based in Massachussetts in the US and dabbles in anything related to food, from writing to recipes to restaurants etc. It also has a good long list of films related to food. I have managed to watch a smidgen but that I managed at all was thanks to that same list.
The title for this post is basically what’s been the biggest deal in the world of fine dining for the past decade or so. Coined by Herve This and Nicolas Kurti, it represents the pair’s ideas with regards to their method of tackling the gastronomic endeavours. It also happens to be the title of a book by the former, a Frenchman who is a fully fledged celebrity in his home country. This very book is what I’d call the new gastronomic bible for tech enabled foodies.
The book itself is divided into several different chapters, which basically explore food and eating using a scientific approach to things. Actually hypothesizing, then experimenting and coming to conclusions legitimately. Which is completely different from the old school idea of chefs and cooking as some sort of mystical haven of acceptable wizards that concoct recipes from the twisting nether. Truth be told, old school trad cooks probably clutch onto that for the fact that they depend on it and it is all they know. Which is why they salt the water and say that it helps preserve the color of beans. It doesn’t and This (tees) goes somewhat in depth to tell you why in his book. That little debunking and much more like it is sort of the kitchen version of mythbusters. Yet, he also goes further, particularly in the final chapter, where he challenges the ideas of traditional cooking and proposes a few logical methods for creating new dishes and simple ways to look at a recipe or a dish. What he proposes is that chefs should cook with more knowledge endowed to them. And why not, for we live in the 21st century but remain entranced by this unmovable need to boil the crap out of stuff in a large pot.
At times, I must profess that I was completely lost with what This was talking about. So many terms are constantly being bandied around, from chapter to chapter that simply fly over my head and I find myself constantly re-reading things. Chemical names for sugars, the names of flavor compounds, the methods of extraction of said compounds. I had to really dig out all the stuff I studied when I was 14. Thank god I had a simple understanding of physics and chemistry or I’d have boiled the book to bits in a large pot.
Its not all lipidic acids and hydrocarbonyxl3 sulfochlorohydrate16 monodioxypham in there though. There’s a good bit of Frenchie swag and humor doing the rounds as well. It actually feels light hearted and sincere in its narration. I get this idea in my head of a madcap professor in a white labcoat prancing around a kitchen / lab excitedly telling you about one discovery and then the next. He rattles off the names of his colleagues at a variety of French institutions so much so that INRA became so familiar to me. What I didn’t enjoy was how some bits were left hanging and incomplete. What I loved was how he gets to the root of the issue, either trumping the myths and old wive’s tales or actually supporting why it works.
Some people say this book can be considered as the modern day’s The Physiology of Taste. I’d hasten to agree, even if I haven’t read every single book out there on modern gastronomy. The book nonetheless is hugely thought provoking and really opened my eyes and mind to a whole host of new ideas. It restructured the way I think about food and cooking entirely and really did wonders to demystifying my own misconceptions. There surely can’t be too many other books that reach this close to Brillat Savarin’s masterwork and at the very least, it shares a resemblance in how its sort of messily structured and loose yet wholly inviting and agreeable.
*x-post from CookBlog.
Franz Kafka’s The Trial is the story of a man, Josef K., who wakes up one morning to find two dudes in his room who put him under arrest. Only, he is never told what his crime is and he maintains his innocence whilst he fights against a court that is nigh unreachable. He starts losing grip on his former life as a successful banker and everything descends into a downward spiral from thereon.
Its bleak and depressing, much like the multiple vignettes of the smoke shrouded city Kafka writes about in the book. There seems to be no respite, no pause, only endless questioning and never really getting anywhere. Corridors and airless passageways. Choked stairwells and dark gravel streets. Tasteless, black and white. At one point, I did wonder, what was the point. Why this perpetual, relentless race against an unknown. Then, I found myself fighting against the same such at work and it all seemed to click.
I not really whinging as such and I don’t think the book itself means to say that life’s a bitch necessarily. Still, the intensity of the atmosphere, the caricature of the bureaucracy, the many side characters that seem so removed from K., it almost sickening at times. Its intriguing. Like watching something fall off the edge of a cliff, it moves and accelerates and at one point seems almost endless but you just know its going to hit the bottom hard. Yet, we still persist, we watch, we act, we live. Why? Why not? Some of us actually feel just like K. and wonder. Some of us don’t. Does it matter? Probably not but we still do anyway. For some, it is enough to simply exist and never need to know. For others, it is a fly chasing you in the heat of an Australian summer. That last bit is a little whinge in case you were wondering.
I read from wikipedia, that the book is actually unfinished and that Kafka asked his mate to burn the manuscript. Thankfully, his clever mate acted against that interest and edited into what he thinks is a novel. Some bright sparks consider that The Trial might perhaps be based on Crime & Punishment. Hmm… I wonder what I’m going to read next?
Ferran Adria’s first ever book in English has finally been released to some fanfare here in Sydney, when the man himself came down to give a bit of a talk. I couldn’t go, due to situation and hesitation, two good friends of mine, along with procrastination.
A fat, balding, Spanish waiter with some fat, balding, Jap tourist.
Anyway, the book is entitled: A Day At elBulli, and it really follows the master through a single day of operations at the restaurant itself. From the moment he walks into work till the moment the guests arrive and until the place finally closes, you get to see everything that happens. Throughout the pages, there are heaps of full colour, super detailed photographs which really go a long way to assisting the reader in understanding what is being conveyed.
The book itself is pretty massive and hefty, both in terms of size and in content. Whilst it is just one day of operations in the best restaurant in the world, the book goes rather in depth into accounting for each situation, at times casting side glances to Adria’s history or the methodology of the cooking or the “stages” that elBulli conducts to bring in young chefs from around the world.
Lauded by Bocuse, fawned over by Time and causing the normally caustic and chatty Bourdain to be reduced into a stumbling and awestruck mess, Adria is the man. The man who changed the way the game is being played and the man who has completely changed the gastronomic landscape across the world. The amount of detail in explaining ideas, idea generation, experimentation and actually making it reality is incredible. It is a feast for the mind. Trust Phaidon to do an amazing job. A Day At elBulli is a fitting tribute, a textbook and an inspirational piece of food history about a legend of the art of gastronomy.
For whatever money, this book is a must for any foodie, chef, intellectual or creative person looking for pure inspiration. At $80, I thought it was a steal considering how much a volume of works from the restaurant normally goes for. This is about as close I can get at the moment to getting just a whiff or a glance or an inkling of something amazing that is happening right now, in my lifetime.
For me, to simply see the kitchen itself, or the workshop in Barcelona, both in fact, would be rather high up on my bucket list. To eat there, would be second. To work there, right on top. Costa Brava, here I come.
I have not posted someone else’s blog here before but this one deserves it. Dessert First (a notion I can easily concur with) is Pastrygirl’s blog about everything sweet. Great writing combines well with some awesome photography as well as some seriously tasty lookin’ treats. Some of the stuff she does herself, as exemplified below.
Black Sesame Panna Cotta with Five Spice Peanut Brittle
I bought the book before watching the series but I have to say now, that I enjoy both. In search of perfection, is Heston Blumenthal’s show on the telly where he looks at a classic, commonly loved dish and shoots for the perfect rendition of it. Obviously, he would be biased towards his tastes but I’d probably not argue too much with a celebrated 3 Michelin star chef whose restaurant, The Fat Duck is rated at #2 in the world. (Ferran Adria pips him to #1.)
Anyway, the guy fits the mad scientist role pretty well. He’s big and a touch gruff looking but he’s also got these signature glasses custom made by Michel Guillon. His thought processes and style of presentation also makes the show quite enjoyable to watch. Instead of being a recipe show like how most cooking shows are, Blumenthal looks at cooking much like an architect or a designer. He looks at the core problem, researches past information and then tries to solve everything, looking at every detail possible.
You can check out some of his recipes on the beeb.
One of my greatest regrets was not getting the point about and hence not taking lit classes back in secondary school. When I was 14, I pretty much hated whatever we had to read, which included My Fair Lady. I liked Animal Farm though but I struggled to come to terms with the subject in school in general. Which means, I got shit grades and defiantly opted for geography and history instead, which I realized were cakewalks since you just needed a good memory for those. Literature was a different beast which required a lot more opinion, which then required validation, which thus seemed far too troublesome. At the time at least.
I bring this up because, on my Melbourne trip and on a whim as it were, I chanced across some old lady selling books. I bought the one above because a.)I wanted to read something new, b.)The cover looked cool and the book old, c.) the lady in question was Russian, which somehow compelled me to pick up the book.
I didn’t even really bother to read what it was, neither did I have any inkling beforehand, through hearsay or otherwise, that the book was good. Ok, the lady told me it was good, but hey she’s selling it. I duly popped up my $9 and had reading material for a while.
I say a while because its not that easy to grasp. I find myself re-reading lines over and over at times because of the language and the manner of the book/s itself. I’ve only recently completed the first, Notes From Underground, which has a seriously nihilistic dude go on about how he is aside from society. He’s pretty relentless in presenting himself, defending the fact that he isn’t defending himself and painting himself as horrid and lofty at the same time. He’s harsh, critical, petty, quite loony and also a complete loser. At times, I feel like I can relate and at times, I feel utter contempt. Apparently, this character is the first anti-hero ever. I have to say, I find him far more bearable than Houlden Caulfield though.
The language is a little naggy, quite irritating and sort of tiresome in parts. I don’t mean to say the book is crap. Its just how the guy speaks. Peppering his sentences continually with “gentlemen” as he refers to his imaginary audience in a bid to reassure himself that he has one, not that he cares. He does constantly chide his audience for laughing at him. I can’t say I ever bawled out at anything he did. I was more filled with dread. He was like a concentrated hodgepodge of the nerdiest losers ever. You’re probably supposed to be filled with a certain disdain for this character, who is again perhaps a commentary on humanity itself. He doesn’t exist. He can’t logically speaking. I don’t see anyone capable of being quite so nihilistic or is that my optimism speaking? Yea, I suppose I don’t really like the guy or maybe I hope I never become him at least.
I do a double take now if I ever see the word underground being linked to some supposedly next level cool trend that I am not worthy of. I have also learned an underground, supposedly next level cool word with which I can call myself. An Obscurantist.
Ha-ha! {stupid poncey tone}
