August 2009 Archives

Top London restaurant, L'Anima is to use the power of social networking to help select wines for it's wine list.

According to Decanter.com, L'Anima will be using Twitter to put its wine list to the public vote, in what is thought to be a world-first

The initial juding will take place with a panel of six experts, who will taste the wines. The wines that split the panel will be thrown open to the public to decide. The most popular three wines will then win a place on the restaurant's list.

The tasting takes place today and voting will be open on Tuesday and Wednesday on the restaurant's website.

You can keep up to date with the wine challenge by following @zoharwine on Twitter.

Rick Stein's latest collection of recipes has taken him from sleepy Cornwall to the bustling streets, markets and waterways of Asia.

As usual, it's the companion volume to a major new BBC series featuring the usually fish-focused chef.

And, as ever, Auntie's high production values are plain to see, with the book's 150 recipes lavishly illustrated by mouthwatering and evocative accompanying images.

How his publishers missed the opportunity to entitle the book "From Padstow to Pad Thai" remains a mystery. Then again, "odyssey" neatly sums up Stein's approach to his work.

Whether he's traversing France by barge, touring the Med's culinary hot spots or travelling the highways and byways of his own country in search of Britain's food heroes, Stein embodies Tom Waits's belief that "the obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending".

It's all very well knowing how to approximate the hot, sharp intensity of a laksa at home, but how much more satisfying is it to learn how to do so in a Georgetown laksa restaurant on Penang island?

Stein's latest epic voyage took him to "anywhere where outrageously spicy food was the norm", for which read South-east Asia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Unlike more scholarly works on the regions, like David Thompson's Thai Food and Sri Owen's Indonesian Food, Stein's book doesn't require you to arrange for pallets of unpronounceable ingredients to be FedEx-ed to your kitchen door from the wet markets of Saigon and Bangkok.

Nevertheless, Stein has compiled an authentic and representative cross-section of Asian dishes, encompassing all levels of eating, from snacking to feasting.

Asian food lovers will find much to enjoy here. Regional classics like fish head curry, Hainanese chicken rice, Thai mussaman curry and beef Rendang all merit inclusion. As do street-food staples like satay, Indonesian gado-gado, Thai crispy mussel pancakes with bean sprouts and Balinese nasi kuning, or fragrant yellow rice.

Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey
Rick Stein
BBC Books £25
ISBN 978-1-846-07716-6

Buy the book on Amazon here >>

Review by Mark Lewis

One man's quest to ensure his four-year-old finished his lunch took him to creative extremes with his funky-looking food.

When young Oscar repeatedly took an age to eat his grub, Mark Northeast began trying to make his sandwiches more appealing with attractive designs.

They quickly moved on from sandwiches cut into the shape of a rocket with vegetable boosters.

After he posted a photo of his debut deisgn on Facebook, friends were keen to see what Mark was going to do next.

"I got more and more engrossed in what I could do with sandwiches," he told the Metro. 

"I wanted to be able to open the fridge and say 'what can I do with this?' - cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and bread."

No doubt these sarnies appeal to all ages - who wouldn't want to chomp on a cute lion sandwich (before it chomps you!)?

It would be interesting to see adult variations with a broader array of ingredients. Attractive food need not just be drizzles, smears and foams after all.

Mark, a West Sussex web designer, hopes his novel approach to the humble sandwich will garner a book deal, but for now best of the rest can be found on his website Funky Lunch.

With National School Meals Week fast approaching (9-13 November), does anyone have any other successful approaches to encouraging healthy eating in children? Share them on Table Talk.

In his first book, the youngest Michelin-starred chef-patron in Scotland, Tom Kitchin, shows us his background, influences, voice and individual approach to seasonal cooking.

After training with the likes of Pierre Koffmann, Guy Savoy and Alain Ducasse, at the Kitchin he has found his own individual style which combines simplicity, freshness and seasonality, with more than a nod to his classical French training.

It's not just the recipes that are intriguing about this book. His intro, "sharing my world", may not be as graphic as Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, but it's a simple and compelling story for any aspiring chef to read.

Including anecdotes from throughout his career, Kitchin recalls his time at La Tante Claire to incidents when his mentor, and now friend, Koffmann, became the pot wash at his own Edinburgh restaurant for a night.

There's an endearing smattering of personal details thrown in, too, complete with pictures, including his wedding day to Michaela and Koffmann holding Kitchin's two-week-old son Kasper.

But back to the recipes. After introductions to each season, Kitchin proffers up a range of dishes from the simple and classic, such as gazpacho and globe artichokes with a vinaigrette dressing, to his "signature dish" of boned and rolled pig's head with langoustines and a crispy ear salad, stuffed squid with razor clams and pickled cucumber.

His passion for the seasons and Scottish produce leaps off the pages, with extra sections dedicated to key ingredients such as grouse, Orkney seafood, pork, girolles and asparagus.

Like his restaurant, very much a collaboration between Kitchin and his wife Michaela, this book certainly has a personal tone and it shines through. Kitchin's versions of classic French/European dishes all nestle alongside Michaela's scrambled eggs - something the family has at home on their day off.

There are tips aplenty, too, with Kitchin's closeness to his suppliers and extensive culinary knowledge leaving the reader with nuggets of advice on everything from hanging venison to which cuts of meat to use, possible substitutes for ingredients and how to freeze gnocchi.

The Kitchin, Edinburgh 

From Nature to Plate
Tom Kitchin
Weidenfeld & Nicolson £30
ISBN 978-0-297-85593-4

I always enjoy reading anything about David Everitt-Matthias, his restaurant and his food because it's always worth reading! He has created a restaurant which is well in tune with his character and soul - both of which are individual. So too is his cooking. It is no surprise then to thumb through Dessert and find a multitude of recipes and ideas both original and inspiring.

Everitt-Matthias's obsession with all things wild has given his savoury cooking a particularly feral overtone and his desserts follow a similar idiom. His marrying of unusual combinations of flavours, or unusual ingredients, is not a display of novelty style fare but more a result of progressive cooking with a natural interest and appreciation of wild ingredients.

The book is simply laid out. There is guidance on how to get the best out of it and notes on key and particular ingredients. There is a very useful section on suppliers and given the nature of his cooking, an all-important glossary at the back.

The recipes are in six categories, chocolate and nuts; fruits; vegetables; roots, pods, seeds and bark; wild and petit fours. All recipes are broken down into constituent parts to enable the user to reduce the workload or leave out or add components with ease. Each recipe has an introduction stating the origin of the dish or the idea behind it, some useful guidance on its execution and possibilities for trying other ingredients or flavours.

Following the recipes will give rise to desserts such as "Salted chicory parfait with vanilla rice pudding and bitter chocolate sorbet", "Star anise and Muscovado parfait with bergamot cream and parkin purée" or "Swiss chard and confit melon tart". These are desserts with complex yet harmonious flavours that require careful hands to ensure successful results. Everitt-Matthias enjoys not only unusual flavours but strong flavours too and these recipes require a level of focus and understanding to produce pleasing and satisfying results.

These desserts are special occasion masterpieces that have quite rightly played a part in earning him a reputation as one of the finest cooks in this country.

Reviewed by Phil Howard, The Square, London
Dessert
David Everitt-Matthias
Sauvage £25
ISBN 978-1-906650-03-2