Thursday, June 26, 2008

Knives

Does any one out there know where I could get a nice set of knives
I have been recommended these

Victorinox knives

And told this is what a set should be

A set of knives which should include:
1 Knife Case
1 chopping knife - carbon or stainless steel
1 x 6 inch filleting knife - carbon or stainless steel
1 x 4 inch vegetable/fruit knife - stainless steel
1 x boning knife - carbon or stainless steel
1 x 10 inch carving knife - carbon or stainless steel
1 palette knife - carbon or stainless steel
1 carving fork - carbon or stainless steel
1 peeler
1 sharpening steel
Melon Baller
Piping Bag and nozzles

I am also Interested in Japanese knives and am wondering if people know is it good to buy these here and if so where can I get them ???

Glaring lack of nudity


June 26

The last time I went to the opening of a The Pump Energy Food — in an office-building food court in Midtown East — beautiful people wearing, for all practical purposes, nothing but silver body paint were on display. Others, dressed in gym clothes and sprayed with silver glitter, were placed on various pieces of exercise equipment, half-working out and half just looking great. Young men with intimidatingly good bodies in strategically ripped sleeveless t-shirts were pouring frozen Margaritas.
Because, you see, The Pump billed itself as serving “physical fitness cuisine” and bragged about not having added salt, sugar or oil. That marketing technique has proven time and again to be disastrous for sales in restaurants. So often has food that’s supposed to be good for us tasted like it was made by sadists that we’ve learned to shun it. Put one of those heart-healthy symbols by a menu item, and sales of it will likely go down. Really, they will.
Attitudes have changed a bit recently, however, and this current wave of good-for-you menu items looks like it has more staying power than previous ones (remember the McLean Deluxe?).
I think a big reason for that is that the health food itself has changed. A lot of it tastes good now. And the marketing has changed, too — it’s not called health food anymore.
The food at The Pump has actually always been good, which is why it has managed to stay open in New York all these years despite signage that shouts at customers about how its food has no added oil. In fact, The Pump has quite a few devotees in New York — you can tell them by their muscle definition and by your ability to bounce quarters off their butts.
The little chain’s founder, Steve Kapelonis, and his wife Elena recently took on business partners and moved to Tampa. The new management, under CEO Adam Eskin, has decided to re-image the place: Change its décor from haimische to sleek; de-emphasize the low-fat aspect of the food and focus on its energy — a buzzword that sells food, especially if the people buying it are younger than 30.
“Last time there were naked people in body paint,” I complained to Steve, who was at the party with Elena. Because I'm not ashamed to say that I like naked people in body paint.
Steve introduced me to Adam, who introduced me to his consigliere Dan Fogarty (really, Dan’s business card says he’s the chain’s consigliere, and he took the picture that illustrates this blog entry).
Not long ago Dan was the marketing guy for Chipotle, where his title was brand leader and keeper of the faith. No fooling.
Adam looks simultaneously wonkish and like a guy who eats at The Pump. I also met operations manager Danny Lachs. People say he and Adam look like they’re related, but they don’t really. I think they just kind of occupy a similar space.
The guy who designed the new restaurant is Garrett Singer, whom I met back in 2001 when he was designing Tiger Blossom, the brainchild of Chris Cheung, who is now the chef at Monkey Bar.
Tiger Blossom failed to thrive — its opening in the summer of 2001 didn’t help — but the space was cool, with lots of found objects and a desire to combine elegance and an awareness that the restaurant was on the same block as the Hells Angels headquarters. Since then Garrett, who earned his chops working for Larry Bogdanow, has designed Klee and Hill Country as well as the new The Pump Energy Food.
Garret and I chatted about the food scene. We reminisced about Sono, a restaurant he helped design with Bogdanow where Tadashi Ono was chef. It closed right before 9/11 — I remember, because my colleague Paul Frumkin was going to write a little column about how it was too bad it closed, but then the towers fell and you couldn’t write anything about anything else in New York for the next year.
Despite the glaring lack of near-nudity, the party was packed, but it was time for me to go. My friend Kenyon’s band, Unisex Salon, was performing at the Bowery Ballroom.
Kenyon is a good-natured yet dark-humored guy with a gift for conversation and a voice reminiscent of David Bowie’s. Adding to his fan base, I think, is the fact that he looks like Jared Leto and often performs shirtless.
It was a good show, and it reminded me of how bad the sound can be at The Mercury Lounge, where Kenyon also performs from time to time. I think everyone else in the band, except for his drummer, of course, was new. He’d even added another singer. On keyboards was Brian Gumbel, a guy who, as far as I’m concerned, has revolutionized the tuxedo. He was jacketless, but the cummerbund was in place. The collar was open, and the bow-tie was tied instead around his neck, Chippendale-style. Kenyon, who was, in fact, shirtless, called it the“coitus interruptus James Bond look.”
So if that’s how I’m dressed at the next black tie event, you’ll know where I got the idea. But I have a feeling that it really only works if you’re on stage and have the looks of an Italian prince.

Cone, but not forgotten

South of Gamla Stan, across one of the city’s many bridges, lies Stockholm’s vibrant beating heart. Södermalm is achingly, effortlessly and unselfconsciously cool in the way only certain places can be. This is the city’s Soho where artists, musicians and writers pack into small and over-priced flats to compose their masterpieces. The shops are independent and boutique. The restaurants are ethnic and exotic. Cafés line the streets and music pours from open doorways – deep bass lines melding together and converging into a heavy morass that soundtracks your journey.

There is no pretence. There is no agenda. ‘Live and let live’ appears to be the philosophy that exudes from every corner. Closed doors tantalise with their potential secrets – you get the impression that the best nights are to be had in basements that do not advertise their wares. This is the sort of place where you have to be resident to truly appreciate it and we were merely visitors. And hungry ones at that.

Our desire to be as ‘free-range’ as possible when we travel cuts down our need to rely on guidebooks but sometimes it is impossible to ignore the lure of the Lonely Planet and that is exactly how we found ourselves in a Thai restaurant in the middle of Sweden’s capital.

Kho Phangan manages to skirt so very close to the realm of kitsch that it is amazing it doesn’t fall into a vast chasm of tackiness. This heavily decorated restaurant comes complete with a bamboo bar, UV lighting and even a table in a tuk tuk and yet somehow manages to maintain its dignity. It could be that tongue remains firmly in cheek and there is a nod of self-awareness. It might be because it is one of a kind and not part of a highly stylised chain of similar outlets. Or perhaps it is because the food is very, very good.


A half hour wait passed quickly at the well stocked bar which, in addition to three or four Thai beers, served the famous buckets of Mekong whisky and Red Bull, although at over forty pounds each we made do with a lager. As the minutes passed it became increasingly easy to forget that we were still in Scandinavia and not in an Asian beach hut and the level of detail aided this thought – the lighting, the drinks and even the sounds were reminiscent of Thailand and by the time our table was ready we were certainly ready to sample the food.

A complimentary salad, with a zingy lime juice and chilli dressing, served as an excellent appetiser while we perused the menu. One doesn’t go to a Thai restaurant to be surprised and, as expected, all the usual suspects were present including green and red curry and Pad Thai. Feeling as if I had probably consumed enough meat for at least a week (in the form of yet more hot dogs, and a steak the previous night), I went for a vegetable stir-fry with chilli and basil while the birthday girl chose a chicken curry. Both were delicious – capturing classical Thai flavours like lemongrass and ginger and delivering a hefty spice kick, enough to bring a few beads of sweat to the forehead. The vegetables were fabulously fresh and had been cooked for only a short amount of time, retaining a satisfying crunch. Delicately steamed plain white rice accompanied both dishes.

Knowing that a decadently tempting ice cream parlour lay in wait for us on the way back, we declined dessert, paid the bill and blinked our way back into the bright reality of early summer Sweden – the combination of strong Oriental beer, spicy food and UV lighting ensuring a few moments of confusion before we could head on our merry way.

***

I, like many others, have formed an inextricable link between holidays and ice cream. It is a foodstuff that I adore but doesn’t often appear on my radar and consequently makes only rare appearances in the freezer. But holidays provoke some sort of Pavlovian reaction within me and I begin to salivate at the merest thought of the good stuff.

Since day one we had been intrigued by a technique we had seen whereby an entire ice cream, complete with the top half inch of the cone, was dipped into warm, molten chocolate. On contact with the cold ice cream, the chocolate quickly hardened creating a crisp choco layer around the soft vanilla ice cream underneath. If it tasted half as good as it looked, it was bound to be achingly delicious. Coupled with this, the shop we chose made the enormous waffle cones fresh each day: a Heath Robinson style contraption in the window dribbled the mixture onto a hot plate which was then closed shut to cook the waffle. When it was ready and cool enough to handle whilst still being pliable, it was curled into a cone shape ready to be filled with soft vanilla ice cream.


When faced with such delicacies, it would be rude to merely dabble. Rather, the only course of action is to dive in headfirst and think about it later. It was this philosophy that saw me ordering two of the largest ice creams I have ever seen. Each one could easily have satisfied two people. They were dipped into the chocolate which, as expected, formed a dark brown shell around the light, white ice cream within.

We sat outside the shop, perched on the windowsill in front of the waffle maker and tucked into the behemoth frozen treats in our childlike hands. They were as tasty as they looked; soft ice cream with the unmistakeable taste of manufactured vanilla, a crisp cone with a faintly sweet note and a gentle bitterness from the dark chocolate. It was one of the great ice creams, a truly legendary dessert.


My steadfast determination to finish it saw me through to the end leaving me reeling like a child at Easter who has eaten too much chocolate before breakfast. I licked the final smudges of chocolate from my lips, tossed my napkin into the bin and rested a hand on my sore belly while my girlfriend, clutching the final quarter of a cone still filled with ice cream, admitted defeat. Even after all that I considered whether it would be foolhardy to do the gentlemanly thing and finish it for her. An audible groan from my stomach gave me my answer. We binned the remains before I could change my mind and ambled into the quickly cooling evening happy and sated.

Ésto es lo que nos separa, una pared de nubes que se levanta entre tú y yo; tan fácil de atravesar y tan difícil a la vez, no ves lo que hay al otro lado y eso aterra... ¿pero acaso no somos criaturas celestiales que no temen a las alturas? ¿Acaso no siempre hablas de la grandilocuencia y levedad de nuestros cuerpos, de lo enormes que podemos llegar a ser?

Una pared de nubes que es como una niebla incómoda, fascinante y delicada, aterradoramente brutal y onírica; la puerta oficial hacia Avalon, que nos llama en la distancia del sueño... ¿Acaso no recuerdas que estuvimos juntos allí, sin sorpresas, sólo iluminados por las estrellas?

Algo tan efímero como una pared de nubes puede parecer un abismo... pero siempre me gustaron los retos y caminos difíciles, siempre me gusto cavar con mis manos sobre la piedra desnuda abrasada por el sol.

Bobo

June 25

My boss, Pam Parseghian, calls stupid people “bobo,” and that’s not the only reason I think it’s a silly word. It also means “bourgeois bohemian,” which to me translates as an overeducated self-important idiot who likes to pretend to slum but wouldn’t know real grime if he fell in it. And I should know, since as a middle class guy who writes, I am a bourgeois bohemian. There’s no getting around it.
And of course the West Village is the land of the over-privileged artist. The cradle of the gay rights movement, former crucible of many artists of all stripes, and now a neighborhood of the pampered rich.
Morningwood bassist Peter Yanowitz lives there, and he told me his neighbors hate him because he plays loud music. But why do people choose to live in the Village if they don’t want to bask in the glory of artists? Don’t you want your neighbors to be musicians? Isn’t that the whole point?
It’s like all those haters on the community board in the East Village who don’t want to give anyone a liquor license. Shouldn’t they just move to Great Neck?
And Bobo is also a restaurant in the West Village— the exclusive kind without a sign, so you just have to know where it is (181 W. 10th St., just West of Seventh Avenue, on the north side of the street, down the stairs). And publicist Katherine Bryant, my friend from back when she worked at Restaurant Business, wanted to have dinner with me there. So I went there with her last night.
I’m a food writer, so I don’t know about space, but it’s a cool space, or rather three, or really four, cool spaces — dark, stylish bar, cute ramshackle-apartment-like dining room, charming garden, and, um, stools by the walk-in.
I’ve never seen that design feature before: a glass-enclosed walk-in refrigerator jutting out into public space, with a bar and stools so people can eat while looking at it.
It’s certainly motivation to keep the fridge clean.
Actually, there might be a fifth dining area somewhere, hidden, where they put their ugly diners, because I didn’t see any of them last night.
I didn’t get a chance to meet the chef, Jared Stafford-Hill, who’s been there since January, because it was dinnertime and he was cooking, which you’ve gotta respect. But the restaurant’s owner, BR Guest veteran Carlos Suarez, was sitting at the bar, manning the turntable.
What we ate:

diver scallop crudo, with beets and wild asparagus
asparagus and morel risotto
white salmon with spicy fennel, pistachio and blood orange
lamb saddle with roasted asparagus and smoked paprika
a side of buttered garden peas
a sort of rhubarb crumble for dessert, along with citrus segments and lemon curd ice cream