Last weekend I got  "A Propos Bistro" by Stephane Reynaud. A book with 299 mouth watering recipes, great pictures, great recipes, and a bit of humor. It is one of the best cookbooks that I've laid my hands on recently. Although I have not yet prepared any of the recipes they look straightforward and very standard. Very inspiring!

This years Christmas I decided to live up to the Duck Dogma ("Whenever you see Duck, eat it!") and made Confit de Canard.

Confit is a means of preparation where one starts with salting  the meat and then cook it gently, drowned in fat. 

Duck has the property to turn dry when prepared, you can prevent that by making sure the meat does not boil.

When roasting the meat that can be prevented by roasting it on a high temperature so that it is sealed by its own crust, and then leaving it on a relatively low fire until its done. 

The alternative way of preparing is to seal the meat in fat and slowly let it simmer. I have been told that can prepare beef at about 40 degrees Centigrade as long as you keep it at that temperature for a few hours, never tried it though.

I prepared the confit for 9 persons, so I bought myself 18 legs and 5 cans of goose fat.

I rubbed the legs with salt, crushed pepper and pimento. This is something that I intend to improve on the next time I prepare this. Then I plan to salting the legs by marinade them in a salt solution for a day or so.

Arrange the legs in a casserole and cover with goose fat. Use sufficient fat to make sure the legs are covered when the fat is melted. It took me exactly 5 pots of 0.5 liter.

 For taste add a few cloves of garlic, a few onions and a few leaves of laurel. 

Put this in your oven, temperature around 100 degrees centigrade so that the meat itself is at about 90 degrees. Leave this simmer for about 3 to 4 hours. That is all, real easy, cannot fail. 

By the way, a pot of goose fat of 0.5 liter costs about 4 Euro, I've never spend so much money on grease. But fortunately its great fat to prepare potatoes in.

 

 

 

 

 I just stumbled upon a Wikipedia lemma on opencola. The recipy contains a fair amount of Gum Arabic. That reminded me of a book by  Dorrit van Dalen that recently appeared at Bert Bakker publishers that is high on my wishlist. What is below I read in review.

Apperantly Gum Arabic is one of those substances that is imposible to synthesize and that can only be retrieved from damaged barks of certain spiecies of the Accasia tree. In dutch the phenomena is called "Tranen der Accasias" (Accassia tears) which happens to be the title of one of the first novels by Willem Frederik Hermans. The circumstances under which the gum is produced is hardly known so that the production is hardly cultivated.

The name Gum Arabic stems from the fact that the Accasia species  can only be found in the subsahara regions. If I recall well the main production used to be in West Africa but has moved to East African Sudan.  Traditionally the traders in Gum Arabic are powerful men. It is one of the markets that has always been dominated by the traders. The first major buyers of the product were textile printers and they had no choice than to deal with the traders. Those traders needed to protect the sources for their product and therefore these became a pretty secretive bunch.

 The book argues that the Bin Laden familly (Osama in particular) has a large stake as one of the Sudanese gum traders. Sudanese gum was one of the products that was kept out of economic embargos because it is one of the main substances for Coca Cola (and other food and drink). Wikipedia dismisses this as an urban legend. Which makes me want to read the book even more.

 

Also see the Wikipedia Gum Arabic lemma, that is also where I found the explanation why arabic gum is used in cola: Gum arabic reduces the surface tension of liquids, which leads to increased fizzing in carbonated beverages.

 

I have not had a lot of time for bogging lately. But even two weeks into the new year I feel like writing about the joys of December: the food.

Christmas has never been my favorite kind of festivity. I am not one of those fine folk that think that the prophet born that day was our saviour and Christmas was never an exciting party at my parents. It was the obligatory trip to my grandmothers.

Since I met my wife things have improved. Her birthday is the 25th which means we have a reason to celebrate and everybody gets to come to our place. And since the shops are packed with ingredients and advertisements are inspiring to get to the stove and cook I do just that. Cook, for the family.

I have made the mistake of trying to prepare meals that takes 4 to 5 hours to prepare and need to be prepared the same day. This year I decided to relax a bit and choose for the Italian kitchen for inspiration.

For 'Antipasti' we decided on a Carpacio. I always thought carpacio was simply served with some parmasan and an olive-oil based dressing but coincidentally my wife got "DeDikkeVanDam" for her birth day. DikkeVanDam is a 736page, 2kg instant classic by a Dutch food critic. Its first edition was sold out within a week. The second edition never made it to the shelves of the stores, it was sold out before printed. The book contains small essays about various kinds of food and food related topics. Occasionally it includes a recipe with a lemma. I immediately looked up Carpacio and was thought that it is to be served with a sauce based on Mayonnaise, cream and Worshester. And so was done.

For these occasions one should make Mayonnaise oneself. Its easy as long as you remember one simple rule: Room temperature. You take two egg jokes, mix them with a little salt and pepper and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice. Blend these ingredients. Then start adding, drop for drop, very slowly, while whisking, your oil. For this recipe I used part olive and part sunflower oil. I did not want the olive taste to dominate.

The "Primi" was a pasta with pesto. I never knew pesto was so easy to make. A bunch of basil, a cup of olive oil, clove or two of garlic, hand full of pine nuts and a chunk of parmasan cheese, in the blender... done.

Now for the "secundi". Veil, Parma ham, sage and Marsalla... there you have it: Saltimbocca alla Romana. This is also a very simple and effective dish (much simpler than the Beef Wellington I did a couple of Christmases ago). I am not sure how Italians prepare this meat but I prepared it in clarified butter. In my opinion clarified butter is one of the best fats to prepare your meats in. It has a soft neutral taste, not like margarine, and it can reach fairly high temperatures without turning bitter. The proteins that burn at high temperature and that give a bitter taste have been removed. I clarify butter by letting it simmer on a very low fire for about 10 minutes, don't let it boil. With a small spoon I dispose of the foam that starts floating on top. After the foam has been removed. I slowly poor the fat into a container, carefully leaving the protein/water blob in the original pan. Clarified butter can be kept for 2 weeks. So while you're at it better clarify 2 or 3 packs. (A pack of butter is 250 gram in this part of the world.)

As 'dulce' we went for Tiramissu. It was raw-eggs day anyway. There is only one secret one needs to remember, do not soak the biscuits and prepare one day in advance.

After Christmas its time for New Year. In the Netherlands the traditional treat are oliebollen, Dutch donuts as I've seen them called. I love them. They should be filled with apple, raisins and current. In my recipe (Haags Kookboek an edition from the 60's) '<>sukade' (candied lemon peel) is included. Unfortunately not all consumers of my oliebollen like this ingredient.

1 kg white flower, 7.5 dl milk, 50gram fresh yeast, 15 grams of salt, 5 eggs 6 apples, 500 grams of currents and raisins will get you 60 balls. Fry them in a large quantity of oil. The oil should be hot enough for the balls to quickly be done. The trick is to control the temperature. To cold will mean result in greasy balls, to hot will result in dark balls that are not yet done in their interior. Oh by the way, the balls are not supposed to be round. If you want that you should buy them.

Many people drink champagne on special occassions. Actually they drink champagne, or a Méthode champenoise, exclusively on special occassions.

"Any occassion is good enough to drink Champagne"

And then there is the Duck Dogma:

"Whenever you see Duck, eat it"

(I am pretty sure there is a quote that states almost the same as my Champagne principle but I could not find it not even here)

This here is "Hemelse Modder", "Heavenly Mud". Its the signature dish of one of my favorite Amsterdam restaurant bearing name: Hemelse Modder.

This restaurant has been in existence for over a decade and serve this dish on a daily basis. Lets assume they are open for 300days per year, serve 40 portions per day and a portion is about 250 gram. That means they have served 30 000 kg of chocolate mousse during their existence, isn't that equivalent to a small swimming pool.? (Mousse fetish anybody?).

If you like food, like to be attended by informal staff that enjoys food too and knows what the job is about this is the place to be. We are planning for Saturday...

I first posted about last weeks restaurant experience to the IETF mailing list.

That message could actually have some impact: try to google for "Restaurant Le Ternes Pereire".

Yesterday was my last day in Paris. I regret having spoiled a few evenings. One evening I was to tired to go out and had a sandwich in my hotel room (Fresh tomato and roquefort, so not a complete waste) and one evening I got sucked into a IETF working group chair beer event in a English style micro brewery.

But yesterday evening I was with good friends and I've managed to convince them to go to Bar Zinc.

The first time I was at Bar Zinc was about a year ago when I was in Paris for a training course and my colleague and me stumbled upon the place en were both plesantly surprised. So when I returned about 2 months later, with my wife, we went to the same place and were plesantly surprised again. Yesterday, again a plesant surprise.

As a starter I had a cucumber-Cheddar tartar, Magrait de Canard as a main course, a cheese plate to relax and finally a lovely little desert with the most delicious white chocolate mouse I have ever tasted. It wasn;t quite a mouse more thick butterlike cream, but very tasty indeed. The three of us started the meal with a Champaign, accompanied our meal with a bottle and a pichet of 2001 Medoc AOC and had more Champaign, Cognac and coffee after the meal. Total price per head, a very fair 85 Euro.

Three times cannot be coincedence. This place offers quality. Bar Zinc is a relaxed bistrot. The guests were elderly women, business people, couples, tatood and pierced youngsters and even while its August it seemed that we were the only 3 tourists. The walls showed an exposition of a local artist, this time photos whith an erotic twist. If I recall well they had other types of art on display the first 2 times.

The neighbourhood is vibrant and Bar Zinc is probably not the only restaurant where you can find fine food for a fair price. But the next time I'm in Paris... I'll give it a try again.

The address:
Bar Zinc, 9, rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris (Tel: 01 48 05 05 95). It is a block north of La Bastille.

Yesterday I had a very nice salad in this slightly overpriced restaurant down the road from the IETF venue. Its a Brasserie specialized in Fruit de Mere.

I ordered Salade Italienne. Very nice indeed, until I hit a bug, covered in olive oil, that was enjoying the salad too. I am not a specialist in insects but I know cockroaches come in many different shapes and forms. The small animal covered in oil could have been a baby cockroach.

I signaled the waiter and after several "Oh-la-la's" he offered me a new salad. I lost my appetite so I refused. So far nothing to complain about. But then came the bill. I was charged. Then I specifically asked if something could be done about that. And to be honest I'd settled for anything symbolic, free wine, free desert, espresso, anything. But the waiter could not be convinced.

Hence my recommendation. Do not go to:
Le Ternes Pereire
84, Avenue de Ternes
75017 Paris

Actually pass by, look at the menu, and if the waiter tries to convince you to come in just mention the cockroach in the salad.

After last weeks debacle with the Saint Émilion Grand Cru we decided to open yet another 1996 wine this weekend. This week's "Craves" (Château Lagupeau) was fortunatelly not spoiled and although we cooked a normal dinner we did enjoy it.

Its not that often that I drank spoiled wine. I do not have the best means to store wine for longer than a few months. Besides, I normally buy wines that are ready to be drank. So last weeks spoiled wine was something of a new experience. The taste is just so different from a young wine that spoiled. Young wine will turn into vinigar after a couple of days. A spoiled old wine just has no taste, its flat, watery and has this brown rusty color.

Last week I had a couple of nice beers with Henrik, Geoff and Thomas. When Geoff had left we talked food. I recomended Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" which I own in the Dutch translation. When I came home and opened the "Graves" I noticed crystals on the cork. Also something that I do not see that often, being used to the younger varieties. My mediocre wine book did not describe this phenomena but McGee does refer to the cristals (mostly salt, but also apple and wine accids).

The same chapter describes that Louis Pasteur, we owe fresh milk to that bloke, was a researcher that actually studied why wine went bad. That is something I did not know. He scientifically demonstrated (with one vacuum and one open tube) that wine exposed to air will go bad. The picture shows the pigments separate and fall to the bottom to the tube.

Although the beers that I drank in the Stockholm brewery that Henrik took us to ---the name of the place has slipped but they served Heaven and Hell --- were absolutely fabulous I think I would choose for wine if I had choose what to drink for the rest of my life.

Finally, when talking food we also spoke about Jeffrey Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything" which is also a very nice book about food and eating.

(the B/W picture is Pasteur's and came from the above mentioned McGee Book)

Saint Émilion Gran Cru 1996. Bought a couple of years ago kept carefully opened two days ago. Turned out to be over its top but still went pretty well with the French Fries yesterday

Hmmm... tasty

I am in Japan, in a conference hall, and when I look around I see... chairs, walls, blinded windows. If there would have been people the differences would have been more distinct. But now I could have been anywhere. Fortunatelly I did have a change to leave the conference center and I am getting introduced to the Japanes Kitchen.

I consider myself a foody, but not a 'natural one'. I have not been educated as such and a lot of things that I appreciate nowadays I have tought myself to eat when I was in my late 20s. I have been concentrating on the European kitchen mostly. I am familiar with the French and Italian kitchen. I even pretend to be able to cook. But all this pompus pretention asside I have never been properly introduced to the Japanese kitchen. Mainly because I am not so much of a fish eater. But here I am getting over it. The food is so amazingly well prepared that one just has to taste.

We went to a restaurant two days ago where we had a "surprise" dinner (only 2500 Yen), a wide variety of fish, poultry, veggies and... beef. The best beef I had in years... maybe even the best beef in my life. It came with sesame seeds and a red sauce that might have had some tomato in it but also could have been soy based. Let me not forget to mention the Duck, which appearantly is judged at proper value here too.

I hope I'm abble to find more places with surprises like this.... jummy.