Sunday, June 8, 2008

BBC NEWS KIMCHI TO CURE BIRD FLU

Well you got to love this story. Kimchi is just powerful stuff.
Here is the link

"Korean dish 'may cure bird flu'



Korean woman make huge batches of kimchi




South Korea's spicy fermented cabbage dish, kimchi, could

help to cure bird flu, according to researchers.

Scientists at Seoul National University say they fed an extract of kimchi to

13 infected chickens - and a week later 11 of them had started recovering.

The researchers said the results were far from scientifically proven

and if kimchi did have the effects they observed, it was unclear why.

South Koreans are reported to be eating more kimchi as a result

of the study.

"I'm eating kimchi these days because I've heard in the

media that it helps prevent bird flu infections," one man said.

Love it or loathe it, once you have eaten it, you will never

forget it. Kimchi is made by fermenting cabbage with red

peppers, radishes and a lot of garlic and ginger.

The idea that it could help poultry to fight off bird flu

sounds like a dubious folk remedy.

But the theory is being floated by some of Korea's

most eminent scientists.

"We found that the chickens recovered from bird flu,

Newcastle disease and bronchitis. The birds' death rate fell,

they were livelier and their stools became normal," said Professor Kang Sa-ouk.

Sars link

There was an increase in kimchi consumption two years ago,

when thousands of people in Asia contracted Sars

(severe acute respiratory syndrome).

Kimchi was reported to have helped to prevent Sars.

The claim was never scientifically proven, but according

to some Koreans, people in other countries followed their example

and started eating kimchi.

"After the Sars outbreak, I went to China and I noticed

that the Korean restaurants there sold most of the kimchi

they'd made that day," a Korean man said.

So one of Korea's national specialities may soon find a much

bigger market. Whether it really is an effective remedy,

only time and more research will tell. "

All that Beef All that Chicken

Bird flu in Korea


Picture from the Korea Times
So For All At home In Ireland who don't know there are going crazy here over American beef.

Here is a round up of whats been going on.

Chronology of major events in S. Korea-U.S. beef talksHere
Costco to sell US Beef Here
Man sets himself on fire in protest read more Here
More Here
Video of the protesters Here
Here
So at present they don't want US beef and the chickens all have the flu which can also be passed to pigs so if you want to be really careful just don't eat meat.
More on Korean bird flu Here
China confirms bird flu in pigs Here
Top 10 Steps to Traveling Safely in Bird Flu Endemic Countries Here

Burger

I read about this one on Kimchi Zen
I have to post it. My birthday is comming hint hint
Its taken from the Korean times


"Who Dares to Eat This Hamburger?



By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter

A five-star hotel is getting away with the current beef issue using a unique solution ― an ultra luxury burger. Regardless of the current struggle sweeping the country, the special market for the select few with strong purchasing power is still active.

With tax and service charge added, one must pay over 180,000 won ($177.2) for a serving of the hamburger in question, named W "X" burger, in W Seoul Walkerhill's restaurant Kitchen.

The state-of-the-art burger is composed of prime Australian Wagyu beef topped with sauteed foie gras, with a whammy of sliced black truffles, on a bed of brioche bun, which is coupled with a piece of Canadian lobster tail.

"This burger made of extra rare ingredients can compare to any high-end gourmet dish," said Ciaran Hickey, chief chef of the hotel. ``I am sure this will offer an opportunity to change the prejudice of hamburgers as cheap food."

Once regarded only for those with colossal wealth, ultra-pricey goods are muscling their way into the territory of more ordinary means of purchase, for example, the home shopping channel.

GS Home Shopping launched Scarlet the Grace, a special prestige catalog, today. The quarterly publication will be sent to 50,000 lucrative customers.

``High-end customers are accounting for more and more of our sales, so we are intensifying VIP marketing plans to cater to the well-off,'' the retailer said.

In the nation's biggest department stores, last year's extraordinary hit items include Japanese mineral water, which costs 6,000 won ($5.9) per 0.5-liter bottle, a 1-million-won ($983.4) necktie and a 40,000-won grape.

This consuming bi polarization is not confined to South Korea with growing size of high-income classes at the turn of the century. Households with over $1 million rose by 7 percent from the previous year, a 2004 Merrill Lynch report says.

In line with the well-being trend, the tendency leads to a shift in an overall consuming pattern as more consumers nowadays adopt a spending strategy of differing choices by looking for either obviously upscale goods, or those with highly reasonable prices from the beginning for their satisfaction, according to the Economist, a renowned British magazine. "



Only last week I watched Gordan Ramsey take his hells kitchen chefs to eat a 90dollar burger and he talked about his 200 dollar pizza. http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=6sfHKo3cwf0

4:20 he talks about his white truffle pizza.


flowers


9 Juni 2008, senin pagi

Kemarin sempet pergi ke tempat temen, Sri san, die n husbandnya usaha bunga2...banyak banget deh bunganya, n bagus2...di sini biar 4 musim, tapi tiap musimnya selalu ada bunga yg bermekaran....bagus banget..kalo ke sana, serasa ke kebun bunga....
apalgi ni temen gw pinter banget ngehias bunga bunga dalam 1 pot, namanya yose ue, jadi cantik banget deh...
jadi pengen belajar juga nih cara 2 ngehias bunganya....
so pulangnya di kasih ole2 brupa bunga.....wah bakalan jadi kerjaan rumah nih...hias dalam pot..

Hari ini pagi abis beres2 n mei da pegi skul, baru sempet ke branda, ambil pot yg kosong, ambil tanah, ambil bunganya...masukin dalam pot gede....diatur2 kok ga bisa secantik bikinan temen gw ya???hehhee..mklumlah pemula...
tapi setelah dihias sini sono, lumyan juga hasilnya.....cumaaannn nama bunganya ga jelas nih...hehehe

Chefs’ Night Out, 2008

June 7

I really wasn’t in the mood for Chefs’ Night Out on Friday. I’m down on the whole celebrity chef thing these days. The hype, the superstarification of them, the fact that their fame no longer seems to stem from their food … A few years ago I thought the celebrity chef phenomenon was good for the industry, but these days I just think it’s all a bit much. As I wrote in a recent column in Nation’s Restaurant News, Gordon Ramsay, who once had a reputation as a great chef, is now best known because he yells at people (although, to be fair, he has long had a reputation for doing that, too).
Still, I feel like it’s important to go to such things, maybe because I’m afraid I’ll miss something good.
Chefs’ Night Out is the traditional pre-Beard Awards Party, thrown by Bon Appétit magazine. It used to be a see-and-be-seen event. Over the past couple of years it’s been relatively low-key (I didn’t even hear about it last year until the night it was happening, and I ended up going to a party at 60 Thompson instead).
But the formal invitations went out this year, and everyone, everyone was invited. I think I might have gotten two invitations, in fact.
I’d had enough of my office by 7:30 p.m. on Friday, and the party didn’t start until 9, so I wandered in the party’s general direction trying to find away to amuse myself for an hour and a half.
I ended up at Grayz, where I thought I’d stop in for a drink and a snack and ended up with a tasting menu that kept me there until after 10, giving me anxiety that I was missing something, even though I wasn’t in the mood for a party with a bunch of celebrity chefs.
But the thing is, I like celebrity chefs, and even more so I like almost-celebrity chefs and sous chefs and chefs with no fame at all and restaurateurs and cooking instructors and my fellow food writers.
And those were the people with whom I spent most of the evening, except for John Besh and Harold Dieterle, who have both been on TV competition shows, so I guess they’re full-blown celebrity chefs
One of the first people I saw was restaurateur Drew Nieporent, who expressed outrage that he hadn’t seen me at the National Restaurant Show Chicago, when his Tribeca Grill was inducted into NRN’s Fine Dining Hall of Fame.
“Was that when you were going to tell me about your new restaurant?” I asked, because you see he gave that scoop to The New York Times.
He didn’t hear me, though. It was that kind of party. Lots of shouting, lots of polite nods, lots of slaps on the back. But as the party ebbed I met a couple of sous chefs named Matt – one at Oceana and the other at The Oak Room, which reopens this fall. Actually I guess Matt from The Oak Room is chef de cuisine. Nice guy, from Philadelphia. Sleeping on the executive chef’s floor for now, but that will work itself out, I’m sure. I also had a good chat with Ben Pollinger and Jansen Chan, chef and pastry chef of Oceana. Jansen said someone had confused him with Pichet Ong earlier in the evening. They are both ethnic Asian pastry chefs who studied architecture, but they look nothing alike.
Pichet was there, too, and he said he might end up working on a project with Andy Yang, the chef-owner of my favorite Thai restaurant, Rhong-Tiam (541 LaGuardia Pl., between Bleecker and W. 3rd). Interesting.
And I met Brian Canlis, scion of the Canlis family, which owns the restaurant of that name in Seattle. He had been in the Air Force, doing sorties over Afghanistan, but he decided to come home and run the family business. He was hanging out with Will Guidara, general manager of Eleven Madison Park, which I guess the in crowd is calling E.M.P. these days. We talked about the Big Apple Barbecue, which happened today. I said I wasn’t going, because it was going to be in the mid-90s today, and the Beard Awards are on Sunday, and I’m leaving for Colorado on Monday, so I wanted some me-time.
Who else? Oh, Andrew Knowlton, Bon Appétit’s restaurant editor (and a bit of a celebrity, since he was a judge on the TV show The Next Iron Chef). It’s been such a long time since I’d spoken with him that I think his voice has gotten deeper since then. Or maybe he had a cold. He pointed to his wife Christina’s ever-so-slightly poochy abdomen. So I complimented Andrew on his virility and he talked about their looking for a bigger place to live.
Mina Neuman’s expecting a baby too. She’s the chef at the Edison Hotel, where the party was held, but she’s been a chef all over New York. I probably hadn’t seen her in five years, though. She looked well. She expressed some sadness that she couldn’t have a drink at the party.
Lee Jones, baby-vegetable and mini-herb supplier to the celebrity chefs, was there in his trademark outfit (literally, he trademarked it) of a white Oxford shirt, red bow-tie and denim overalls. He talked about the cocktail phenomenon, and I suggested that the one I was drinking – a Margarita derivative, with elderflower liqueur – would benefit from some of his micro-shiso.
Finally I chatted with Sean Brock, whom I didn’t recognize because he was clean-shaven and baby-faced last time I saw him, and now he has a beard (although, come to think of it, so do I, and he knew exactly who I was).
Sean was a bit of a pioneer in molecular gastronomy, and he was doing it in Nashville. Now he’s in Charleston and more into farming, although he still finds a place for methylcellulose from time to time.
I have no idea how the food was at the party, because I was all full from Grayz.

What I ate there:
Mini pork-belly sandwich with guacamole and chipotle
Grilled prawn with kaffir lime rémoulade, served on a heated salt block
Sumac-crusted tuna loin with red pepper paste and micro-cilantro
Weisswurst, a pretzel and a cheese spread whose name I didn’t catch
Oyster Rockefeller, salmon tartare and scallop ceviche
Tapioca-crusted lobster on peaky toe crab with chilled honeydew-cucumber gazpacho
Cheese spaetzel, truffled foie gras and a mache and beet salad with hazelnut-truffle vinaigrette and bacon bits
Soft-shell crab in artichoke-tomato broth with saffron-orange emulsion, topped with artichoke heart chips, olives and capers
Thai bouillabaisse in lobster-coconut milk broth
Duck breast with succotash and tamarind glaze
Fruit salad under a little lychee granite, a mini fruit parfait and two chocolate-covered ice cream balls served over dry ice.

Weekly meals

These are the weekly meals at work by Nekane and Ruben's Mother!

- LOMO con PIMIENTOS (Pork Loin with Sweet Peppers)

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- ALBÓNDIGAS (MEAT BALLS)

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- ARROZ CON POLLO (RICE with CHICKEN)

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Thanks both!

BUTTER CHICKEN


Ingredients:

Boneless chicken ..... 1/2 Kg.
Onions ........ 2 small
Tomato puree ......... 1 cup.
Cream....................... 1/4 cup
Butter or ghee ........ 1/4 cup (you can use half oil + half butter too)
Cashewnut powder ... 1/4 cup
Tomato ketchup......... 1-2 tbsp.
Tandoori masala powder.......2 tbsp.
Ginger garlic paste.............. 1 tbsp.
Red colour ......................... a pinch
Salt ....to taste
Red chilli powder ............. 2 tsp.
Garam Masala ..............1 tsp.
Lime juice or vinegar ...... 2 tbsp.
Kasoori methi ...............1 tbsp (roast in a pan or microwave without oil and crush it)

Method:



1. Marinate the chicken with ginger garlic paste, lime juice, tandoori masala, salt, red colour and one tsp.red chilli powder atleast for 5-6 hours.



2. Fry the onions to light colour.


3. Cook with a little water and blend into a paste.
4. Roast the chicken pieces in an oven like tikka. Alternately you may also cook it in a pan till done.
5. In a seperate pan heat the butter and add the cashew powder. Saute for a minute and add the onion paste, tomato puree, tomato ketchup, salt, red chilli powder, garam masala and a pinch of red colour. Simmer for 4-5 minutes.
6. Now add the prepared chicken tikka and stir in the cream and simmer for one minute.
7. Garnish with dry kasoori methi powder and a little cream.
This dish goes well with nans.