sunday_driver's Xanga

Monday, December 25, 2006

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 05:51:22 GMT

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:05:05 GMT

DIY pizzas

this is going to be one long post by the time i post up the recipes etc, and right now i don't really have the time to do that what with being stuck up to the neck in work. so i'll let the pics speak for themselves first, and fill in the words later.

"the classic"
tomato + cured black olives + pesto + mozzarella & parmesan

"the truffle hunter"
parma ham + black truffles + arugula

"the swiss"
raclette cheese + thin sliced ratte potatoes + cornichons

(also known as "the eaten" because it was mobbed before i could stick the camera in edgewise. damn peasants @#%$)

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 15:29:49 GMT

chasing the vibe

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:38:13 GMT

SPRINGTIME IN ~~PARIS~~ TOKYO

le table du robuchon

beige

les creations de narisawa

benoit

pierre gagnaire tokyo

This, a short list of Tokyo restaurants, is for my friend Yvonne, who will be spending a glorious slice of summer in the city next week. It may seem somewhat of a travesty to be recommending nothing but French eateries in Japan, and in that regard I plead guilty to being, first in line, the biggest Francophile in all matters culinary. But it really makes perfect sense to eat French in Tokyo - if anyone, it is the Japanese - meticulous, perfectionistic, obsessive aesthetes that they are - who are true kindred spirits of the French. With a bit of forethought and planning*, one can dine in the capital of Japan like a true Parisien princess with her own permanent table at le Grand Vefour (or better still, on air-kissing terms with Yannick Alleno ) And at a fraction of Paris prices!

* OK, it pretty much amounted to military planning on my part, plus the extraordinary ability of the conciergerie at the Park Hyatt to score the unscorable.

The five restaurants I went to and would recommend are, purely subjectively in order of my preference, as follows :

La Table du Robuchon
La Table is the lunch room in the Chateau Robuchon fantasy castle set in the grounds of Yebisu Garden Place in Ebisu. The initial attack of kitsch melts into believability once those wonderful pain l'ancienne baguettes turn up and the perfectly executed amuse arrive. The more chi chi Chateau Restaurant is upstairs, and the bakery is in the basement. Whoever brings me fougasse from there will immediately be my friend

Prix fixe lunches are incredible value at 2800 or 3700 yen. Wines aplenty by the glass, and cheaper than HK too.
Their website is here

Beige
I headed to Beige with some reservations - first, with the Ghost of Spoons Past lurking in the shadows and second, asssuming that the restaurant, ostensibly the canteen for the Chanel crowd, would be pretty much the local hangout for the ladies-who-lunch-but-who-don't-really-eat-much-because-they-have-to-fit-a-size-2. I was right on the latter - I don't think anyone in that room weighed over 90 pounds. But slow metabolisms need not worry - Beige's food is light as air, all touched with nothing but the most angelic vegetable and stock jus but wondrously flavourful. Stupendous cooking, and it was nice to see Monsieur Jerome Lecressonniere at the helm in the kitchen. Monsieur Lecressioniere came to Tokyo from Paris via a stint as the French Consul's chef in Hong Kong; it was good to see someone from Hong Kong doing well in higher places.

Prix fixe lunches at 6,000 8,000 and 11,000 yen. Website and menu.

Les Creations de Narisawa
Very competent french cuisine in a small but meticulously run restaurant by Japanese chef Yoshihiro Narisawa and his lovely wife. We had a delightful spring lunch there - a melting slab of salmon poached in just barely warm olive oil, a splendid bouillabaise (in response to my query Mme Narisawa said yes there was indeed rascasse in Japan!), tender but flavourfully vinegared beef brisket hiding under the choicest baby greens... and delightful desserts! Be sure to drop in the Sony Computer Entertainment centre next door and check out all the kids coming at 3.30 pm to do their "homework" - all-you-can-play playstation!

Prix fixe lunches at 4,500 7,000 and 12,000 yen. Website

Benoit Tokyo
My virgin Ducasse experience was at the old location on the ave. Poincare and (as with other kinds of first-time experiences *nudge nudge wink wink*) subsequent visits to the Plaza Athenee never really matched up. Spoon in HK left a bad taste in the mouth, so again it was a pleasant surprise with Benoit. Lovely mediterranean flavours from the kitchen headed by the chef Massimo Pasquarelli who hails from Montepulciano. There's a Pierre Herme downstairs too! (oh, and anyone who brings me a macaron truffe blanche gets a free massage )

Prix fixe lunches at 4,000 5,000 and 6,000 yen. Website and menu.

Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo
I'm including PG Tokyo, but with a caveat - our dinner there was disappointing but friends who had lunch there sang its praises. I think the restaurant is still in its teething stages. Dinner was a scattergun mish mash of dishes with trite/cliched Japanese touches that added nothing to the flavour (random bits of nori and dried soba noodles that begged not to be eaten ). I really really really hope they get their act together - Monsieur Gagnaire is a genius and it would be a terrible shame if the kitchen doesn't live up to his name. We had a lovely chat with a lady from the Mandarin Oriental who was spending some time at PG Tokyo in preparation for Gagnaire Hong Kong and I am still looking forward to their Hong Kong restaurant with great anticipation. Ganbatte!

Dinner was 17,450 and 26,880 yen. Lunches are 7,350 yen. Website

Other eats to think about :

Tapas Molecular Bar at the new Mandarin Oriental in Ginza. The Tokyo version of El Bulli. I'm still hitting myself over giving up our reservation for this in favour of PG Tokyo. Oh well. There's always an excuse to go back then hahahahaha

Then there's the always entertaining and reliable Chanto group of restaurants - Ken's Chanto, daidaiya etc

Tokyo eating tip # 1 : the Japanese say that soju will never result in a hangover. They are lying.
Tokyo eating tip # 2 : hangover sushi at Tsukiji is quite effective.
And always - when in doubt, order what the next table is eating.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:49:22 GMT

MISO YUMMY

Miso and prune juice sounds like a recipe for diarrhea, but actually makes a VERY good and VERY easy steak sauce. Miso's rich umami tones are perfect for steak (ever tried steak with a blue cheese sauce? Miso gives you the same tones, albeit not as sharp), and the tartness of prune juice livens things up just fine. This is another one of them let's-throw-together-anything-I-can-find-in-the-fridge dishes of mine, only that it turned out so well I'm going to pretend it's a real recipe

Every fridge should have some miso. It's the ultimate healthy fast comfort food - great for a 3 minute soup after a long day; and even better for a sauce for your steak. There are probably a thousand kinds and brands of miso out there, but they generally come in brown and the slightly sweeter white versions. I use the brown for steak. This sauce is basically made out of the brown bits from your steak + a dab of miso + a little prune juice and brandy. The tartness of the prune juice helps a) to thicken the sauce, and b) to balance out the oil, particularly if you're grilling or frying a fattier cut of meat. Throw in a couple of brandy soaked raisins, garlic and shallots, and you have your very own "MisoYummy Meat"

Ingredients

meat for steaks
buncha raisins
cheap cooking brandy, couple of tablespoons
prune juice, around a quarter cup
brown miso, around a tablespoon
shallots and garlic, diced
tablespoon of butter
salt & pepper

optional - dash of balsamic vinegar & sugar to taste

Soak raisins in the brandy. Finely dice garlic and shallots.
Fry steak. I could go on and on about time temperature and techniques for checking done-ness and pressing on the ball of one's palm and all that, but there's an Alain Ducasse article that sums everything up pretty neatly here. (it's a cached version of a NY Times article ages ago. Catch it before it disappears!)
During the last 2 minutes of frying, add the butter and toss in the garlic and shallots to flavour the beef.
Take out the beef and let rest.
Turn heat down and toss in the raisins, brandy and prune juice and the miso; press down on the miso paste to dissolve.
Add a little water if necessary and scrape all the brown bits together (fancy word for this is de-glaze). Turn heat up to thicken the sauce.
Add salt with a judicious hand (the miso is already quite salty so go easy on the sodium). Add pepper, and a little sugar & balsamic vinegar to taste if necessary.
Reduce until desired consistency. Pour over steak and serve !

Wine notes - I'm thinking a big, indecently bold aussie shiraz.

Steak supplier shoutout - TC Deli in Hang Hau Village is now my main meat man. They're so good they're worth the drive from the southside to Tseung Kwan O. They stock a vast range of good quality US and Australian beef, plus NZ lamb, pork, and an assortment of frozen Aussie seafoods and cheeses, at prices around 30 to 50% lower than the so called gourmet supermarkets in town. Their Australian Angus MB2* tenderloin is the perfect steak - just the right amount of marbling for flavour and a melt-in-the-mouth texture without the icky oil-slick-in-the-mouth one sometimes gets from wagyu beef.

   TC Deli
   Address: G/F, 10B Chap Fuk Road, Hang Hau Village
   Sai Kung, New Territories
   Phone: (852) 2358 0273

* The Aussies have their own marbling grade - click here for the paraphernalia.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Wed, 31 May 2006 15:44:54 GMT

THE NICE VICE DEN

Ever since the Mandarin closed its doors for renovations, us mid-afternoon snakes needed a new den.

Red Chamber is tucked away on the mezzanine floor (fancy word for a cockloft) of Pedder Building, smack in the middle of Central but a wonderfully obscure (solicitor-free) zone. It's also one of the very few places in town where one can light up a good fug without dirty looks from the other clientele AND order in a very decent Hainan chicken rice. I'm all for the smoking ban in restaurants and bars, secondhand smoke being very irritating when you're on the receiving end. But when I feel like producing a good cuban fire of my own, why head to a restaurant that tolerates smoking, when you can have a secret den of sin that permits eating ?

Yesterday I was lucky enough to a) have my camera with me and b) catch their master roller on the premises And he was very nice in demonstrating and explaining the process. Aren't you lot a bunch of lucky xanga readers

Here's what I learnt - from L to R :

1. & 2. Filler leaves are bunched together and wrapped with a binder leaf. The choice of filler leaf determines the strength of the cigar, with leaves from the middle of the plant producing most of the flavour. These are bunched together, then rolled within the binder.

3. & 4. The edge is then trimmed, first with the cutter, then with the chaveta, a small half moon shaped blade. The master roller constantly checks the cigar for consistent pressure.

5.& 6. The thin, elastic wrapper leaf is the main source of flavour for the cigar, and it is kept under moist towels to keep it supple. It's a beautiful thing watching a master roller size and roll the wrapper, so precise and delicate

7.& 8. The cap is cut from another wrapper leaf, shaped and gently but firmly put into place and secured with a dab of tree resin. Then a final trim on the cutter and with the chaveta.

1 to 8. And no, they are not rolled on the thighs of young Latin American virgins.

is that a 70 ring gauge monster or are you just happy to see me

Love the decor - high chinoiserie meets lots of red lacquer. Small bar, but they've got a very pleasant bottle of The Peat Monster. Lunch takeaway available from The China Tee Club upstairs.

smoke of the day : Trinidad Reyes
notes : smooth but slightly on the young & peppery side. Great size for a mid-afternoon quickie

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Wed, 31 May 2006 15:33:22 GMT

I LIKE CHINESE III

Sleep or eat? That was the 'dilemma' last Wednesday evening. Written closing submissions were due Thursday morning - closing submissions alone usually translates to a late night, and written ones would be an all-nighter. And then there was an invitation to dinner at Lei Garden from one of my gourmet aunties. Hence the quotation marks around the word 'dilemma' above. There really wasn't much of a choice

Dinner, predictably, was excellent. Lei Garden is known first, for its seafood (at any given time you'll find strange exotics like giant abalone and sea eels in the tanks in the main dining hall) and second, for their inventive cooking. You'll find the usual steamed-fish-with-spring-onion here, if that's what you want. But there's far more interesting things available, as you'll see from the menu below. And if you're truly adventurous, do go for their slow braised alligator claw . It is, all instinctive revulsion to the contrary, delicious

We started off with 2 appetizers of crispy roasted pork and a soft, almost translucent veggie filled chiuchow dumpling. Soup was birds' nest with crab roe (unforunately I was too frantically digging in and forgot to take pictures ).

Their signature dish came next - lobster 2 ways, tail meat steamed with Shiaoxing rice wine on a bed of egg white, and lobster stir fried with pinenuts and celery in a crispy nest. This was followed by thin sliced geoduck quickly dunked in a seafood broth with the surprisingly effective accompaniment of bits of 'yau tsar gwai' (the deep fried dough usually served with congee).

Highlight of the meal was a sizzling platter of the head of a giant grouper in a rich brown stock. Piping hot, loads of what the cantonese call 'wild flavour'

Rice dish was fun - rice crispies tossed into the same seafood stock used for dunking the geoduck, resulting in a LOT of hissing and crackling. Much more fun than the old standby of fried rice or noodles

Roasted rice-fed ducklings came next - everyone was pretty full by then but we ended up cleaning the plate of very tender, sweet but almost fat free meat.

Dessert - yin yang soup - almond and black sesame cream.

All in all, scrumptious. One thing though - if you're msg-sensitive, tell them beforehand and they'll make suitable adjustments for you.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Mon, 22 May 2006 10:23:27 GMT

I LIKE CHINESE II

le menu & le salon

chrispycrunch from toronto asked a very interesting question in I Like Chinese I below :

Where in the world is this food? Is chinese food in HK (?) better than anywhere else like..say...toronto canada?

The natural progression from this question would be - where in the world can you find the best Chinese food and restaurants ? And the answer, duh, is, I can't say, because I havn't tried them all

But I will say this : I'd rank the top three in this order, for Canto cuisine - Hong Kong, Vancouver, Sydney (havn't been to Melbourne but have heard raves about the chow there too). Tokyo gets an honourable mention.

HK may not have the benefit of an abundant and fresh seafood supply, but you can't beat it for the execution - the chefs at places like Yan Toh Heen or One Harbour Road are pretty much the cream of China and the rest of the world if you look at the level of the cooking. The cooking in these places is all subtle - this is where you will find steamed fish that is perfectly timed (flesh delicate, yielding and melting), or brown abalone stock beautifully balanced with texture and flavour that'll leave the harmonics on your tongue singing well after the meal.

Vancouver and Sydney are great value given the plentiful sources of seafood at their doorstep. Dining in Oz was like a foray into an aquarium of mutant giant seabugs - everything is ginormous... huge fresh abalone the size of your face, massive snow crabs bursting with tomalley, rudely oversized geoduck...

Vancouver has great fish, oysters, BC crabs - for cheap and cheery I would put Vancouver as my top choice. You can't go wrong popping into any halfway decent Chinese resto and ordering chili garlic crabs and a steamed tilapia. In Toronto, lobster is the way to go . I guess it's the old adage about eating what's fresh and available.

High end Canto food in Tokyo can be amazing (not talking about the cheap and generally dreary fill-your-gut dumps on the low end of the scene) - they are as good, or better than very good HK restaurants. I remember the Canto restaurant in the Brighton hotel in Kyoto coming up with a matsutake & abalone degustation menu that would blow away any meal at Ah Yat Abalone in HK...

I've left out China beause I simply havn't had enough canto food experiences in Southern China. Which is a shame because it's probably as good as the food in Shanghai and Beijing and Sichuan and all over. One of the most memorable meals I had was at the Tanjiacai restaurant in the Beijing hotel, not strictly canto I guess. It's geriatric food - a lot of long-stewed and braised dried seafood in their signature gelatinous collagen-rich stock. Great stuff for the skin.

the sunday driver over-generalized and
totally incomplete list of fave canto joints around the world :

Hong Kong - (high end stuff) One Harbour Road, Yan Toh Heen,
Victoria City seafood (the Wanchai branch), Lei Garden (Wanchai branch),
T'ang Court
( low end stuff deserves its own post i think )

Vancouver - Kirrin, Sea Harbour, small mom & pop joints in Richmond

London -Royal China (huadiao steamed crab rocks); NOT hakkasan

Paris - NOT Dav?nbsp; (for decent rice head to the new China/Vietnam town in the east)

The photos, btw, are of a more formal banquet dinner at O.H.R. earlier this year. Menu notes are on flickr

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Thu, 18 May 2006 16:04:30 GMT

I LIKE CHINESE I

The world today seems absolutely crackers,
With nuclear bombs to blow us all sky high.
There's fools and idiots sitting on the trigger.
It's depressing and it's senseless, and that's why...
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees,
Yet they're always friendly, and they're ready to please.

I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
There's nine hundred million of them in the world today.
You'd better learn to like them; that's what I say.

I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They come from a long way overseas,
But they're cute and they're cuddly, and they're ready to please.
I like Chinese food.
The waiters never are rude.
Think of the many things they've done to impress.
There's Maoism, Taoism, I Ching, and Chess.

So I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
I like their tiny little trees,
Their Zen, their ping-pong, their yin, and yang-ese.

I like Chinese thought,
The wisdom that Confucious taught.
If Darwin is anything to shout about,
The Chinese will survive us all without any doubt.

So, I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees,
Yet they're wise and they're witty, and they're ready to please.

All together.

[verse in Chinese]
Wo ai zhongguo ren. (I like Chinese.)
Wo ai zhongguo ren. (I like Chinese.)
Wo ai zhongguo ren. (I like Chinese.)
Ni hao ma; ni hao ma; ni hao ma; zaijien! (How are you; how are you; how are you; goodbye!)

I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
Their food is guaranteed to please,
A fourteen, a seven, a nine, and lychees.

I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
I like their tiny little trees,
Their Zen, their ping-pong, their yin, and yang-ese.

I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees...

(song courtesy of Monty Python.

as for the food, it's here on flickr)

p.s. props to djcaptainzowie for spotting the food -
it is from the chinese resto at the grand hyatt.
as if i could cook like that!
and no, the song isn't american cheese. it's english cheese,
like a wensleydale.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Mon, 15 May 2006 15:54:09 GMT

chop-chop thai salad

Kowloon City on a sunday afternoon - if you steer clear of the traffic-logged streets surrounding the wet market and head two streets further down in the direction of Kai Tak airport, you'll find (a) ample parking and (b) Thai food heaven - this is where the Thai provisions and produce stores are. You can smell a Thai market a mile off - that sourish evilly sugared pong of exotic fruit and fermented godknowswhat The piles of intensely sweet and perfurmed jackfruit, snakefruit and mangoes share the sidewalk with crackingly fresh basil, lemongrass, a myriad of eggplants and those innocuous-looking but totally lethal bird chilis. Everything was fresh, cheap and good. For me it was like hitting the 100 yen store for the first time, only better

So I just grabbed whatever looked interesting. Three kinds of basil, kaffir limes & leaves, galangal ginger, lemongrass (there's going to be tom yum goong later in the week), baby eggplants, some weird veggies I'm told is great for frying pork with. And an interesting bag of bean sheets - basically rice noodles in sheet form. The bag I got had cute little bits of seaweed in the sheets. Soak for 2 minutes then boil for 3, drain and toss under cold water. They'll curl up into cool slithery rolls of chewiness. Perfect for summer

Chop-chop Salad is the result of the indiscrimate spree - takes only a couple of minutes to throw everything together. Granted, you'll have to head down to the thai food street for the ingredients, but this pretty good *bows modestly* refreshing summer salad is worth the trek. And it's always fun to play tourist in your own town

Ingredients

big handful of bean sheets, soaked, boiled and cooled
bunch of thai basil leaves
half a cucumber, diced
couple of pearl eggplants, diced
spring onion. diced
juice of half a lime

Plonk everything into a big bowl, toss.

Dressing - I used bottled shabu sauce (basically sesame paste + rice vinegar), but feel free to improvise.

If you don't have shabu sauce, peanut butter thinned with a little lemon/lime juice, soy sauce + sesame oil and a dash of sugar thrown in is equally good. Or do a quickie honey ginger dressing - sesame oil, raw ginger juice, lemon/lime juice, lotsa honey, soy sauce, fish sauce for extra oomph. Raw chilis too if you want really extra oomph.

Toss everything, top with a generous dollop of sauce and eat, preferably swinging on your hammock under the sun, even more preferably with Nigel Slater for company

Driving directions -
those Thai food stores are located two or
three streets dow from the wet market. It's
either Lung Kong or Southwall Road.