The Elegant Sufficiency

Recipe Scout 13

Some great recipes to keep you busy while my head goes crazy with too many ideas and not enough time to put even one of them into action. Can someone tell me how to find some focus (and clear a sinus infection)?

1. A pumpkin and chickpea salad on Mostly Eating.
2. Chez Pim's cold sesame noodles.
3. Polenta and mushrooms — and a love story on Tea & Cookies.
4. Jane and Jeremy Strode's Broccoli, Anchovy and Chilli Linguini on Cuisine.com.
5. Super-Moist Apple Cake on the lyrical FoodChair.
6. Mark Bittman's "Fancy Egg Salad That a Mother Would Love" on Bitten.
7. The luscious FXCuisine's "Asparagus Like Green Peas".
8. Carrot Cake from the Silver Palate Cookbook on Leite's Culinaria.
9. Saveur's Salmon with Spring Vegetables (those shivering in the southern hemisphere can hope Spring is just around the corner)
10. Gingersnaps from Chez Panisse on David Lebovitz.

Soba Noodles with Ocean Trout

Since the trip last month I’ve had Japanese food on my mind, tofu has become a staple, I’ve massacred my hands on my lethal new knife (from the centuries-old Aritsugu knife shop in Kyoto’s Nishiki market, engraved with my initials), I’m making Japanese tea (probably poorly) several times a day and I’ve travelled over the bridge twice to Tokyo Mart (Shop 27 Northbridge Plaza, 79 -113 Sailors Bay Rd, Northbridge, 9958 6860) for essentials.

I picked up what looked like their last bag of Sukoyaka Genmai (Easy Cooking Wholegrain Brown Rice, product of the USA), which has overcome all my previous antipathy towards brown rice. (To follow this post, soon I hope, an exposition on our Tokyo hotel breakfasts, which every day featured a bowl of porridge made with genmai; and also a brilliant, simple suggestion for an immaculately healthy one-pot genmai rice dinner). I’m alarmed at how fast the packet is disappearing and praying that Tokyo Mart has stocked up for me.
Meanwhile, my bedtime reading has been a book that I stumbled on accidentally at the Aoyama Book Centre in Roppongi on my first day in Tokyo — Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji. Even though the weight it added to my baggage was crippling, it goes straight to the top of my Favourite Cookbooks of All Time list.

I’ve collected a few Japanese cookbooks over the years and all have failed me in one way or another. Mr Tsuji is my hero (How could I have missed the existence of his life’s work?) MFK Fisher provides the introduction and Ruth Reichl the foreword in a book devoid of photographs (but for one section of unnecessary pics of dishes) but rich with detail, cultural information, instructions, diagrams. The fine typography captures the purity, elegance and serenity of good Japanese food.
So far, I’ve reverently followed Mr Tsuji’s instructions for a primary dashi stock, but I’m preparing to follow his word on many other dishes with the religious fervour of a hundred thousand or more World Youth Day pilgrims. (Nothing like a bit of mass hysteria in your neighborhood…) Sea bream and rice (Tai Meshi), Chicken-‘n-Egg on Rice (Oyako Donburi), Potatoes Simmered in Miso (Jaga-imo Miso-ni), Spicy Eggplant (Nasu Itame-ni), Grilled Mushrooms with Ponzu Sauce (Yaki-Shiitake Ponzu-Ae) and Noodles with Chicken and Green Onions (Tori Nanba Udon) will, I hope, all grace my table in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, a soba noodle dish with ocean trout is something that has become a staple: I cooked it for my brother and his family a couple of weeks back and he called me today from the supermarket to ask for an ingredients list. (He hasn’t called back to ask for the method: hate to think what’s happening in that Bondi kitchen right now … My hunch is, it was hijacked by a two-and-a-half-year-old.)

Soba Noodles with Terikyaki Ocean Trout
Serves 4
(Adapted from a recipe in Old Food, by Jill Dupleix, Allen & Unwin, 1998; and with the dashi broth recipe from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2006, Kodansha International)

400g soba noodles
2cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and grated finely
4 small fillets of ocean trout, skinned (or salmon)
1 bunch of spinach, washed and stemmed
4 green onions sliced diagonally
Teriyaki sauce:
2tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp peanut oil
Dashi broth:
1 litre cold water
30g giant kelp (konbu)
30g dried bonito flakes (hana-katsuo)

To make teriyaki sauce: Combine soy, sake, mirin, sugar and oil in a microwave-safe dish and heat for short bursts until sugar has dissolved. (30-40 seconds.) Set aside.
To make dashi: Fill a pot with 1 litre of water and put in the kelp. Heat, uncovered, so as to reach boiling point in about 10 minutes. (Kelp emits a strong odour if it is boiled, so remove konbu just before water reaches the boil.) Insert your thumbnail into the fleshiest part of the kelp. If it is soft, sufficient flavour has been obtained. If tough, return it to the pot for one or two minutes. Keep from boiling by adding about ¼ cup cold water.
After removing the konbu, bring the stock to the boil. Add ¼ cup cold water to bring the temperature down quickly and add the bonito flakes. Don’t stir. Bring to a full boil and remove from the heat at once. (If bonito flakes boil more than a few seconds, the stock becomes too strong, a bit bitter and is not suitable for use in clear soups.) Allow the flakes to start to settle to the bottom of the pot (30 seconds to one minute). Remove foam, then filter through a sieve. Stir ginger through the broth.
To prepare fish: Brush ocean trout with teriyaki sauce and grill quickly on an oiled grill, leaving the inside slightly pink. Meanwhile cook noodles in boiling salted water until al dente (follow the instructions on the packet). Drain and rinse in cold water.
To assemble: Bring broth to just below the boil. Add noodles for 30 seconds to heat through, then divide noodles between four warmed bowls. Dip spinach leaves briefly into the broth to wilt them, and divide among bowls.
Ladle hot broth into each bowl and top noodles with grilled ocean trout. Scatter green onions on top.

Deep-fried Fabulousness

Deadlines largely past for now, Japan stories... they'll come, sporadically:
Two tempura meals during our Tokyo-Kyoto trip — one more than I might have chosen, but travelling companion mother is a fan, and far less interested in the eel and uni and sashimi that I would have pursued single-mindedly — and she's a woman better kept happy. First tempura supper was at the very luxe Yamanoue restaurant in the year-old temple of consumption, that shopping-mall-from heaven, Tokyo Midtown, in the Roppongi district. (At Midtown, get, at all costs, to Nagae porcelain, where you'll find the divinest, finest porcelain, and to Sfera for design finery. And, can I just say, it nearly killed me parting with the Sfera maple-wood board and knife I bought for my gorgeous sister-in-law.)
Oh... Yamanoue ... it could be that my mother is a philistine, because she didn't at all appreciate the chilled sake. While I gushed over the rather lovely sake jug and glass, she was imagining, I imagine, a glass of single malt whisky. (A whisky drinker since the womb, she is.)

She warmed up a bit as the food started to arrive. Pinkly supine prawn heads, three of them, swathed, delicately, in exquisite sesame oil (that, apparently, is what differentiates Yamanoue from other tempura operators), and Japanese ginger.

 
Extraordinary how intense and disciplined Japanese chefs are ... perhaps it's the open kitchen that does it, but there's none of the ribbing or ribaldry of an Australian kitchen.

I'm SO relaxed by now. I can't find anything about this meal in my notebook. I guess that must mean I was relaxed? There were more bits of deliciousness: a vegetable that a drunk might have mistaken for asparagus, but I wasn't fooled. Pity I can't remember what the waiter told me it was. And then, finally, a miso soup with the most delicate clams. (The camera angle on the miso soup might suggest inebriation, but I swear, I wasn't.) Divine miso, just divine.

And then, tea. You've got to love that teacup. (This was a blackish tea, but I've been drinking sencha ever since my return, in obsessive volumes.)

Half an hour into our taxi journey back to hotel in Tokyo's Meguro district (the Claska — one of my favourite hotels ever) after dinner, we discovered we had no business card for our hotel and the taxi driver spoke no English, and we had no idea where exactly in Meguro the Claska was and, well, if you know Tokyo, you know that's a challenging situation. But that's a story for another day. We're on a tempura flight right now. Be patient.
Next tempura restaurant was on the recommendation of the lovely Matthew Crabbe, executive chef of the Hyatt Regency Kyoto (my second favourite hotel on the trip). Matthew suggested we try his favourite Kyoto tempura place, Tenyu Tempura Restaurant (tel: 075-212-7778).

No doubt, Tenyu was superior to Yamanoue, at a considerably more affordable price — about AUD$110 for the two of us to twice that at Yamanoue. First, an appetiser: a little white scalloped bowl holding seared green chillies layered with pepper leaves and julienned tofu skin. The waitress, and the tempura chef, smilingly directed us: to accompany the tempura you get a bowl of soy, another of minced daikon (white radish) and a third of white salt, aromatic sansho salt and a lemon segment. You swish the daikon through the soy and then choose to dip your tempura in either the soy-daikon OR the salts and lemon. Not both. More prawn heads start things.

Lots of friendliness here in this lovely intimate restaurant. Plus tempura of asparagus, white fish (with, I think a tempura-d fish backbone), sections of onion, lotus root, the chef frequently changing the white paper on the plate in front of us where he places the tempura. And, finally, when my mother is in a food-induced stupor, he passes us a tempura corn fritter with a bowl of rice, plus some pickles and miso soup with clams. Oh. I forgot to tell you about the grapefruit segments and grape slices in a fragrant jelly. Brilliant.

Fried Rice and Deadlines

Have been a bit bloody busy with deadlines and the like; finally writing a piece for Travel & Leisure's September Asian edition about last year's Yunnan trip (filed the Tokyo story they wanted last week) and, in my Googling for some information, came upon this very funny clip. Bit alarmed by the tablespoon or more of white powder that he tosses into the wok.

A Disgrace to Women?

Thanks to Australian film reviewer Lynden Barber at Eyes Wired Open for a link to this wonderful YouTube review of Sex and the City, the movie. I haven't seen it yet. Should I? Reviewers here are Lorenzo and Marcia, two 80-year-old-plus film industry veteran who are lovable and scathing in equal measures. They puzzle over how Sex has become such a cultural phenomenon, slam the self-involvement of the four characters, "women who make you ashamed to be a woman," says Marcia, shaking her head in disappointment. "You would hope that young women would admire people who do things and ... these women don't do anything except for being able to get laid ... that's not a big deal; you open your legs."
(See also my link at right to the New Yorker's review, which expresses similar sentiments.)

Kyoto Colours and Textures

Fiddling around with some of my photos from the trip, feeling wistful and wishing I was back there.

The Postal Clerk and His Wife

How fabulous is this? (Thanks to The Art Life for the tip-off):

Otways Treasures

From George Biron's Sunnybrae restaurant and cooking school blog:

"The first truffles grown in the Otways are here, such excitement ... 3kg so far, the largest harvest in Victoria as far as I know..."

From John Lethlean's Age Epicure Espresso column:

"In true French tradition, the Rides have trained their pig — Mademoiselle — to sniff out the truffles."

From George Biron in Epicure:

"This is a love story — no investment prospectus, no projected yields, no promises of a tax break — just passion, hard work and a love of the garden and the table."

From chef Sean Connolly at Astral:

Truffle sandwiches on brown bread. Brilliant.

Beef to the Ankles

"Beef to the ankles," my mother/travelling companion laments, looking at her body in a mirror in our rather fancy-schmancy Tokyo hotel room/suite. (Am only here thanks to work...I can't afford five-star!...) I suggested she not look in the mirror, which is what I have been attempting to do for some days now. Oh how we have eaten. Oh the kilos. (It's OK, isn't it, to eat like a glutton when you're on holidays? ... If you could have seen the multi-course breakfast I had at the buffet this morning.) Haven't shared the food stuff yet cos I need to spend more time than I've had available explaining, describing etc. But this was the intense young man who helped to prepare our tempura lunch this week:

Kyoto Welcome

The Hyatt Regency Kyoto's swish welcome for us. Grapes like plums, size and flavour-wise. A silver dish I'd like to steal like the soap. (But of course I wouldn't.)

The Streets of Tokyo

Azabu Juban, Tokyo, June 2008. Women in kimonos. A political rally, a politican in white gloves. Clipped poodles. A perfect little shop, Blue and White — blue and white textiles, fabrics, clothing, ceramics, cards, jewellery. Food posts to follow.

 

Cheesemaking Class

How much fun does this sound: Get to know your curds and whey at the Australian Museum in Sydney with a Feta and Fromage Frais Cheesemaking course. Choose cows' or goats' milk and follow cheese maker Karen Borg's instructions to create your own cheese. Saturday, August 9, 10am-4pm. Australian Museum Terrace (entry via William Street). Members $160, non-members $190. Includes: ingredients, milk, cheese forms, recipes, the result of your effort and lunch with wine.

Words of Note 5

My extracts du jour — more good stuff found online:

“If you ever wanted proof of the commercial juggernaut that is called dieting — this is it. Kraft Foods is rolling out a vending machine stocked with South Beach Diet branded food. Apparently the machines are already in service in Florida. The machines are only stocked with foods that are compliant with Arthur Agatston's South Beach Diet.”
The Diet Blog barely contains its horror at the wickedness of the diet industry.

“There was polenta topped with chunks of meat, grilled white asparagus and a lot of melted butter. There was crespelle, a kind of crepe, with a mascarpone, ricotta and herb filling. There was the creamiest risotto made with more white asparagus, which was at its peak when we visited. I was starting to think that I might have eaten enough when the main course came: thin slices of roast pork from the farm with sautéed potatoes and salad. Oh, and with each course there were earnest offers of seconds.”
Rosa Jackson tours the Veneto.

“Honke Owariya, like a lot of other folks in Kyoto, is very, very particular about the water that they use. They won’t open a restaurant in Tokyo because the same dashi cannot be made with Tokyo water. When they opened their Shijo Teramachi branch which is in a department store, one of their terms was that they would drill their own well for water.”
Ahead of my departure for Japan next week, I'm checking in frequently with the Kyoto Foodie.

“The landscape of American fast food is looking up. Dotted across the country at roadside exits and on bustling city street corners, the classic grub-on-the-go is getting a mighty makeover. Here are a few drive-thrus we’re digging …”
Rachel Cole on Mighty Foods, a blog about "the who, what, why and how of natural foods".

“Since then, whenever I see cabbage salad on a menu, I just have to order it. There’s been the gorgeous shaved red cabbage salad with gorgonzola, walnuts and raisins at my current fav Italian joint, a tavola. And then there was the white cabbage and mint salad with shaved grana padano and a fresh zesty lemon dressing at Love Supreme. On the home front I’ve dabbled with Karen Martini’s version with fresh mint and caraway seeds as a side to rich roast pork belly.”
More inspiration from Jules at Stone Soup.

“Fiddleheads are the young, tightly coiled leaves of the Ostrich fern. The springtime delicacy was eaten by Maliseet Indians, who lived in what is now known as New Brunswick, and is believed to have been introduced into the colonial diet in the 1700s. Today commercial fiddleheaders harvest the leaves in parts of coastal Canada and the northeastern United States.”
Syrie, from Taste Buddies, writing from Vancouver.

“I had a recommendation from a local and before he could say ‘ouvre la bouche’ I had devoured a damn tasty sandwich from Sporeboys's mushroom stall prepared using their magnificent looking wild mushrooms in a small fry pan and extreme wind conditions.”
Scrambling Eggs at the Broadway Market in Hackney, London.

“A highlight was definitely the donkey salami.”
Helen at Food Stories visits The Real Food Festival in London.

"Over the course of three days last week I ate, I would wager, as much lechon baboy (spit-roasted pig) as most Filipinos eat in a year. Thanks to 72 hours of intensive training, I now know a good one from a bad one, and could probably rate any lechon on a loosely calibrated scale of, say, one to five. Hardened arteries be damned."
The wonderful Robyn at Eating Asia after a visit to the Philippines.

“It’s exactly eight years since we closed the restaurant, and tonight we embark on the first round of prep to get up and ready to open again. Stock has always been at the base of all our cooking and I wrote the piece below for The Australian in 2000 with a deep melancholy that only now has begun to thaw, so what better way to begin a new era than starting the first foundation stock?”
George Biron prepares to reopen his restaurant in country Victoria, Sunnybrae.

A Fix in New York

When did the coffee epidemic hit Australia? How did it happen that, in 2008, on the streets of our cities, every second person clutches a takeaway cup of coffee? I think the subject is worth exploring in an academic thesis…
And, while we’re on the subject, can someone explain to me why it is that, in the US, so many people consider a “good coffee” to be a weak, filter-style, drippy brew, rather than a punchy espresso-shot-based beverage in the Italian style — “Small and black and poisonous, like a thimble of boiling tar,'' as Smilla Jaspersen described it in Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. 
Laura Brierley Newton, the daughter of my friend and colleague John Newton, has clearly been clutching takeaway coffees since she was a toddler. In this post, Laura is prepared for coffee deprivation during a trip to the US, but in New York at least, gets the fix she wanted.

Words and photographs: Laura Brierley Newton

When I announced that I was planning on spending four months in America I was met with shakes of heads followed by “well, you won’t have a good cup of coffee over there”.
I was never a big coffee drinker growing up. Sometimes as a kid I would enjoy ordering a coffee with my mum just to feel all grown up and cool. We’d sit in the café sipping away, sophisticated and refined. I had no idea what a good latte was then, what it really meant.
A year out of high school working for a post-production company in Sydney, I soon found out. Creating a good cup of coffee was not only essential for keeping my job, it was considered essential for life itself. Fortunately Sydney has some extremely good coffee joints; my favourite is Espresso Mano in Glebe.
My stomach sank at the thought of going to New York for four months and drinking drip coffee for what would feel like an eternity.
I hit New York and, for the first week it was an interesting new experience: go to a diner, eat pancakes/waffles/bagels and have a cup of coffee, with free refills, and so cheap! But a week later the fun had worn off and I felt sick from the processed food and craved a good espresso coffee.
But was such a thing possible in this otherwise fantastic city? That was when Jim, the owner of Mano came to my rescue. He emailed me his “when-in-New-York-and-need-a-real-cup-of-coffee-go-here” list. And so I discovered the truth. New York does have good coffee.
The first proof of this was a place called Joe, The Art of Coffee, near Washington Square Park. I entered the store as a deprived coffee lover who had not had a hit in over a week. I was near the point of no return, gnashing my teeth.
I ordered a latte and cautiously sat down to enjoy it. It was fantastic. Amazing. There was a party going on in my mouth — if a comet had come down and landed on me I would have died a happy human. The milk was creamy, the coffee was the perfect mixture of bitterness and sweetness and the texture was just right, not one air bubble to be seen. When I took my Aussie friend, he chose the drip coffee, proclaiming it excellent with far more coffee taste than most New York drip coffees. I tried an espresso. This was not as successful as the other coffees, the crema being fairly average and the taste bitter.
Next, Café Grumpy. Entering, you need to shed your jacket. It’s warm and cosy and the service is delightful. I ordered a latte takeaway as all the tables were occupied. The latte was delicious, creamy, as good as Joe’s. And so New York garnered two points for coffee. Onto the next.
Everyman Espresso, right near Café Grumpy, all of which are in the vicinity of Union Square (for those catching the subway). This cafe is situated in the front of a small theatre, so at first you wonder if you have the right place — you do. Everyman’s latte was, once again, a perfect mix of milk and coffee, creamy and just sweet enough so that no sugar was necessary. The atmosphere isn’t as great as Joe’s or Grumpy’s, but you get to watch some interesting characters as they come in from the theatre.
Head East past Tompkins Square Park and you’ll find Ninth Street Espresso (right near Alphabet City for any Rent fans). This cosy little café serves up an excellent latte in a large cup for $4, defiantly the most expensive latte so far but well worth the walk and the cost.
Here you can sit down and scan the Village Voice or New York Times or just watch the street pass by. My friend ordered a cappuccino and was highly impressed, both of us agreeing that once again we had discovered a great place to grab a coffee.
You can find a Ninth Street Espresso stall in the Chelsea Markets. Depending on how busy the stall, the coffee quality can vary, but it’s definitely worth a visit, especially as it enables you to see the Chelsea Markets, renowned for their fantastic fresh produce.
If you do want the true diner experience with its drip coffee and free refills, I would recommend The Midnight Express on the Upper East Side. The food is good diner food, prices are affordable, the service is excellent, it’s open day and night and their drip coffee is excellent — for drip coffee.
Conclusion: Whatever you may have been told, when you come to New York don’t think your morning latte has jumped out the window and plunged to its doom. Americans love their coffee, although many of them are quite happy with a drip coffee.

• Joe, The Art of Coffee near Washington Square Park – 141 Waverly Place. Also at 9 E 13th St, 130 Green St./Prince St. and, as of late March, at 405 West 23rd St, btwn 9th and 10th Avenue.
• Café Grumpy 224 W.20th St, btwn 7th & 8th.
• Everyman Espresso 126 E.13th St, btwn 3rd & 4th.
• Ninth Street Espresso 700 E 9th St, btwn Ave C & Ave D, and Chelsea Markets, 75 9th Avenue, btwn 15th & 16th.
• The Midnight Express 1715 2nd Ave, btwn 88th & 89th.

Editing. Again

In light of stuff I've said here previously about editing, thought some of you might be happy to see me, over time and to a degree, eating my words — thanks to some frustrating discussions in the office about an online presence for our magazine, and thanks to US media commentator Jeff Jarvis, whose thoughts on his Buzz Machine blog are always thought-provoking and penetrating and forward-thinking. "Editing's a drag," he says in a recent post. Rupert Murdoch, he says, has complained about "8.3 editors touching the average story in the Wall Street Journal". He goes on to say:

"When I taped a segment for CBS News once, I counted 12 people who touched it before it was even edited for air. At Time Inc., the were famous for editing and re-editing every story until it was churned into butter. At The Times, there are three editors for every reporter. But when I consulted at About.com, it had about eight writers for every editor (that ratio has since changed). About.com, like blogs, is a publish-first, edit-later operation. On this blog, you could say that I have no editors — or you could say that I have 100,000 of you."

Michael Pollan at the Writers Festival

I’ll be honest… I haven’t read Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) so what he had to say last Saturday at the Sydney Writers' Festival was fascinating, if not surprising.
On his request, moderator Caroline Baum had taken Pollan to the Sydney Fish Markets, and to an Australian supermarket. He showed the audience Exhibit A, Yoplait Smackers, and Exhibit B, an Omega 3-enhanced bread that “promises healthy brain development”. Among the bread’s ingredients was “tuna oil”. “This is a tuna sandwich even before you open the can of tuna,” he joked, before going on to say that adding Omega-3 to processed food is a very "reductive" approach to nutrition. He continued this theme on ABC's 7.30 Report on Tuesday night (transcript and video here) when he told Kerry O’Brien (who was hugely amused by the concept of the "soul of a carrot"):

“We know carrots are good for you, right? People have been eating them for a long time and the assumption was that what was good in cancer preventing in the carrot was the beta carotene. What makes it orange. So we extracted that and we made these supplement pills and we gave them to people and low and behold in certain populations like people who drink a lot would get sicker, were more likely to get cancer on beta carotene and the scientists kind of scratched their head. There is a couple of explanations. We don't know. But one may be that the beta carotene is not the key ingredient. You know there are 50 other carotenes in carrots. Food is incredibly complex. It's a wilderness, you know, we don't know what's going on deep in the soul of a carrot. And we shouldn't kid ourselves to think we can reduce it to these chemicals.”

My notes below on other themes he touched on at the Writers' Festival:

• In California’s Central Valley, vineyards are being ripped up to make way for almond crops, which are now one of the most profitable crops in the US. But almond trees only bloom for 10-14 days in February so there aren’t enough bees to do the pollination job. So now, every February, 60% of America’s honey bees are shipped across the country — others are brought in from Australia. With bees from all over the world mingling, it becomes, he says, “a great bee brothel”, trading viruses and parasites. The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) has been implicated in colony collapse disorder in honey bees. Bee owners get $140 a box for the process. The bees are fed high-fructose corn syrup to get them in shape. Industrial agriculture is stressing bees and monoculture is the “original sin of agriculture”; nature doesn’t work that way. It may be an efficient method of production, but it’s not a resilient one.
• Caroline Baum asked Pollan how we can get people to care about food. Pollan responded by saying that when you can tell stories that link what’s on someone’s plate to what’s happening in the wider world, when you can tell people a narrative, a story, that’s when people will start to care. (This to me, is the most interesting sort of food writing.)
• He talked about the carbon and moral footprint of eating meat and predicted that we won’t be eating the way we do now in the future.
• He was asked about the crazy portion sizes in the States. Apparently they got bigger in the Seventies, when the price of raw materials was negligible. Companies such as McDonald’s were faced with two options: reduce prices, a bad move in business, or increase portions. The latter option won out. He drew gasps from the audience when he said it was possible to get a 64 ounce portion of soda in the US — half a gallon. That’s about eight cups, 1.9 litres, 4 pints. With food prices skyrocketing, it remains to be seen whether the super-sizing will continue.
• In one of the most interesting things he had to say, Pollan said that eating ethically in the 21st century is a complex decision-making process that depends on your values. What is your priority: your concern for your health? For the environment? For animals? Because those values might conflict. Organic rules, for example, “were invented before climate change was an issue”, and organics can have a very high carbon footprint. Work out what you value, Pollan said. “The key thing is to introduce values, not just value to your shopping decision.” As a result, we should be trying to get as much information as we can about what we buy. Transparency is what matters. 
• The refrain he has repeated time and again: “Don’t eat things your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

Pollan can also be heard on Radio National’s Life Matters program here.

20 Questions, 1 Light Dish, Number 3

"20 Questions, 1 Light Dish" is an (occasional) Elegant Sufficiency feature in which I ask the people who really understand flavour – chefs – to share a brilliant, light, guilt-free recipe for everyday eating.
Last chef to share his thoughts was Greg Malouf, who offered up a wonderful 18-Minute Chicken Tagine.
This time round, I’ve asked Maurice Esposito, chef/owner of Esposito at Toofey’s in Carlton, Melbourne, for a contribution. Maurice draws on his Italian heritage and his love of seafood to create fine, contemporary food. His brilliant recipe below — Red Emperor, Carrot Puree, White Asparagus, Carrot and Ginger Reduction — relies on a great piece of fish and the intense, concentrated flavours of a slow-cooked baked vegetable and reduced juices.

 

MAURICE ESPOSITO

1. Molecular gastronomy: yes or no?
Yes — it’s an evolution in cooking and it’s always important to push boundaries.
2. Chef you’d most like to meet?
Alain Ducasse. I believe in Ducasse’s philosophy – that all wonderful cuisine starts with wonderful product. In one of his books he states, “haute cuisine is 60% product, 40% technique”.
3. Restaurant you¹d most like to visit?
The Fat Duck – Heston Blumenthal really intrigues me. He’s challenging palates and I think his restaurant would be inspiring for any chef. I saw him on a science documentary on the Discovery Channel – you don’t see chefs in that context everyday. He challenges people’s perception of food and that’s the good part of molecular gastronomy for me. We need to go forward.
4. Most stained cookbook?
Grand Livre de Cuisine by Alain Ducasse – it’s also the biggest book I have. Ducasse is strongly influenced by the Mediterranean and so (it features) olive oil, olives, zucchini flowers – not heavy reductions. He brings traditional French into the realms of modern cooking – he is relevant to today.
5. Most memorable meal?
The French Laundry – 16 incredible courses, no duds. Aspects of dishes stay in my memory like a slab of candied smoked bacon – sweet, salty unctuousness; foie gras parfait with popcorn – a signature dish of Thomas Keller’s — with a glass of Sauternes. It was so bloody good.
6. Favourite dish your Mum cooked?
Braised rabbit with artichokes on pappardelle.
7. Desert island ingredients?
Rye sourdough from Baker D.Chirico and good salty butter like Mauri butter from Piemonte in Italy.
8. Favourite holiday destination?
Spain, anywhere in Spain.
9. Favourite kitchen utensil?
Hand-held Bamix. I use it to emulsify sauces – I like to use it for some dishes just before I plate up – if I introduce milk or citrus at the last minute the air lightens what could otherwise be a heavy sauce.
10. Favourite food store?
Mediterranean Wholesalers, Brunswick: I stock up on tinned tomatoes, unfiltered olive oil, pastas, olives – the standard pantry stuff.
11. Last food-related purchase?
I bought a restaurant in Carlton, that’s a food-related purchase isn’t it?
12. Biggest kitchen disaster?
The opening night when I was at Otto restaurant in Sydney. It was a new development in an old building and the sprinkler sensors obviously hadn’t been checked. As we opened the combi-oven to organise the first course, the steam that poured out of it set the sprinklers off. It was literally flooding in the kitchen and there were 100 people in the restaurant. They spent the rest of the evening being fed cold canapés and plenty of Bollinger and all left very happy (must have been the never-ending Bolly!).
13. Average breakfast?
Café latte with two sugars.
14. Guilty pleasure?
Valrhona chocolate semifreddo — a dessert at work I can't take off the menu.
15. What would you never give up?
Red wine – at the moment it’s Chestnut Hill Pinot Noir from Mount Burnett in Victoria.
16. Do you like a drink?
Hell yes!
17. Best snack for someone watching their weight?
A handful of nuts – almonds in particular.
18. Exercise regime?
I’m always at work, but I do like to go for a run once a week – if I’m lucky.
19. Hot weight-loss tip?
All things in moderation (including moderation).
20. Why this dish?
It’s seasonal, it’s healthy, you can eat this dish everyday – it’s not heavy, the flavours and textures are so simple but full of flavour.



Red Emperor, Carrot Puree, White Asparagus, Carrot and Ginger Reduction
Serves 2

2x 200g fillet red emperor
Carrot puree and reduction:
1 bunch dutch carrots
¼ teaspoon coriander seeds
500ml orange juice (5-6 six oranges)
½ teaspoon tarragon leaves
½ clove garlic, crushed
2 whole star anise
sea salt
Asparagus salad:
12 spears white asparagus
1 sprig tarragon leaves
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste

Carrot puree and reduction: Preheat oven to 220C. Peel carrots. Place coriander seeds in a flameproof baking dish and toast in the oven for two minutes. Add remaining ingredients, cover and seal with foil and bake in the oven for about 50 minutes until carrots are tender. (This sounds like a long time but you want  carrots to be very soft, full of the flavour of the cooking liquid.)
Asparagus salad: Trim the asparagus and blanch in boiling water for three minutes. Refresh immediately in cold water. Drain. Pick the tarragon leaves, chop roughly and sprinkle over the asparagus. Drizzle the asparagus and tarragon with the olive oil and season to taste. Set aside.
When carrots are cooked, cool carrots in the cooking liquid. Remove carrots from liquid and strain the liquid into a small saucepan. Blend the carrots in a blender, using a little of the juice, until they form a puree. Set aside.
Return the liquid to a medium heat, and reduce until it has the consistency of a syrup.
To cook the fish: Heat a frying pan that can go in the oven. Season the skin side of the fillets with salt and pepper and brush with a little olive oil. Place skin-side down for three minutes, turn the fillet and cook for one more minute. Depending on the thickness of the fillet, you may need to finish it in the oven for a few minutes.
To serve: Reheat the carrot puree, then spoon on to a plate. Place the fish on the puree, then dress the dish with the asparagus salad. Finish the dish with the remaining syrup and, if desired, fried shallots.

Spain ... On the Road Again

Loving the look of this new food series, Spain on the Road Again — "The Road Trip of a Lifetime". Gwyneth Paltrow eats churros, barbecues, interviews Frank Gehry and spins around in a Mercedes convertible, New York mega-chef Mario Batali kids around with The New York Times's Mark Bittman, tri-lingual Spanish actress (and NIDA graduate) Claudia Bassols doesn't do much except look pretty, REM's Michael Stipe makes an appearance, and Willie Nelson delivers the theme song. Lots of fun, and I reckon we'll be seeing a lot more of the orange-clog-wearing Batali, a seriously funny man.

A New Week + Recipe Scout 12

A ghastly week behind me; a new (brighter...) one ahead in which my father’s health improves (please…) and his doctor considers releasing him from hospital, and in which I write a rather fine, rather clever 2500-word profile on the rather appealing, rather clever Sydney actor-writer Brendan Cowell, get to the gym and take a healthy packed lunch to work every day, let nothing pass my lips stronger than a Single Origin Roasters skim latte, and count the varieties of food I’m eating.
Have followed with interest Limes & Lycopene blogger Kathryn Elliott’s charting of the varieties of food she eats. “If you try to eat a greater variety of foods, you will be healthier for it,” writes Kathryn, who tallies between 30 and 35 different foods a day in her own diet. (And, I warn you, no cheating by counting the Brie de Meaux and the Parmigiano-Reggiano as two foods! That’s one and it’s called dairy!)
But Kathryn, I have questions:

• If I have miso soup at work — made from a packet mix but one without MSG — can I count the spring onions and wakame and tofu that rehydrate with the addition of boiling water as three varieties of food? And what about the miso sauce that they provide for you to mix in?
• And do pizza toppings count? And, if they do, is there a statute of limitations on how many days old the pizza can be before those toppings have lost their food value?
• Do freshly ground black pepper and Murray River salt flakes have any credentials here?
• What about a clove of garlic crushed in a lazy pasta dish and the chopped parsley from my sad balcony herb pot that I might consider using too? And hey, how about the olive oil?
• If I have muesli, do I count everything I put in it, even if I might only end up having an eighth of a teaspoon or less of the ingredient?
• What about raspberry jam, eaten with a croissant on a Sunday morning?
• And how about the store-bought spinach dip I’m hoeing into right now (and the pinenuts it claims to have)? Is that two ingredients, three if you count the rice crackers?

In the meantime, while I anxiously wait for answers, here are the latest recipes I’m adding to my Recipe Scout Index:

1. Salmon Rillettes on the David Lebovitz blog.
2. Rick Stein’s Fillet of Turbot with Clams and Chardonnay on BBC Food.
3. Chickpea, Almond and Sesame Spread on A Life (Time) of Cooking.
4. Gourmet Traveller's fine-looking Lasagne. 
5. "Salmon Noodle Soup for What Ails You" on Cook & Eat.
6. Algarve Buzz's Portuguese Codfish Cakes (Pasteis de Bacalhau).
7. Indian Squid Curry on Rasa Malaysia.
8. Bake until Bubbly Macaroni Cheese on Bay Area Bites.
9. Saveur's Spinach with Pinenuts and Raisins.
10. Strawberry Panzanella on 101 Cookbooks.

Links Wrap-Up

Alas, I’m well overdue in sharing some links, and they do pile up. Might end up being a two, or a three-parter… some good stuff though, despite older vintage of some. You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I start with this (from the website of European weekly magazine, Der Spiegel) — the Guolizhuang Restaurant in Beijing, covered by the BBC previously. Indeed, my colleague John Lethlean, a noted offal connoisseur, has written about this restaurant before. I wonder, though, if he’s seen Der Spiegel's photographs.
If you’re still with me, you’ll have the stomach to handle this in The Sydney Morning Herald, American artist Victoria Reynolds’ carnivorous art. As the story notes: “Indeed, meat has an uncanny hold for some in the artworld. Meatpaper is a quarterly magazine of art and ideas about meat.”
And then on to some great pieces about chefs and restaurants and meals I’d like to eat:

• Something else for John: The New York Times reports on the Montreal dining scene where “there has been a surge in quirky restaurants that are extensions of their chefs’ personal tastes and dedication to Montreal’s regional ingredients. At these restaurants, no part of the pig escapes the kitchen knife, whether it’s the ears (sliced and fried in a salad with frisée) or feet (braised, stuffed and roasted). And foie gras abounds, never far from marrowbones, sweetbreads and steaks so big they’d make a cowboy blush.”
• I've linked before to a story about Noma, a Copenhagen restaurant that set me thinking it was time I set off to explore my Danish ancestry. I’m thinking even more seriously about it thanks to Sunday's New York Times piece on Copenhagen Nordic cuisine — Noma again, plus Alberto K and Geranium (where they apparently smoke salmon at the table in front of you). A great slideshow here.
• The New York magazine covers, in almost interminable length, Alain Ducasse’s so-far unsuccessful attempts to conquer the city. “It could be that Ducasse, like a man trying to woo a distant lover, was simply trying too hard,” writer Alex Morris speculates.
• In an Independent newspaper blog, Australia’s own Terry Durack calls for a shake-up of the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards (2008: El Bulli, 1, The Fat Duck, 2,Pierre Gagnaire, 3, Tetsuya’s, 9, Noma, 10, Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, 18).
• And The New York Times again on restaurants in Bordeaux, where “where a cadre of experimental chefs have pulled Bordeaux into the 21st century”.
• In Slate, writer Lisa Abend asks of Spanish avant-garde cuisine — “isn’t anyone tired of this stuff by now?” She’s referring to “dishes” including “a fine plate of fish blood”, and chef such as “the Roca boys (who) painted swabs of truffle, hare, and dirt across a plate and called it "Winter." In Barcelona, Angel León used algae to clarify soup, Ramón Freixa turned liquid-nitrogenized pineapple into dessert, and Martin Berasategui talked about something called "synergetic elaboration."
• And finally for now, an "expose" on Iron Chef America. In The Village Voice, Robert Sietsema writes: “Iron Chef America is more bogus than even I had imagined.”

There, that’ll keep you busy … have a great weekend.