Friday, September 12, 2008

The new Daniel

September 12

When Daniel Boulud asks you to lunch, you go, even if you’re the editor-in-chief of Nation’s Restaurant News or Food & Wine.
Daniel’s flagship and eponymous restaurant has reopened after a few weeks of redecoration by Adam Tihany, and the chef has also opened a new db Bistro in Vancouver, and he bought Lumière, too. So he invited some Vancouver chefs to the restaurant and had them cook for us while we checked out the décor.
I don’t know from décor; I’m a food writer. I think Daniel’s dining room was beautiful before. It’s beautiful now.
But it was a fun lunch and I was at a particularly good table, with my bosses, NRN executive food editor Pam Parseghian and editor-in-chief Ellen Koteff, along with Cake Bible author Rose Levy Beranbaum, Food & Wine trend spotter and party animal Kate Krader, and Laurie Woolever of Wine Spectator, an astute overall observer of human nature and reliably excellent dining companion.
But everyone was there.
The last time I said that about an event Regina Schrambling commented that she, in fact, had not been there and wondered if that meant she was nobody, which of course she’s not. My mistake. But she was at lunch today, along with Jay Cheshes of Time Out and other places, Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin, Eater e-in-c Ben Leventhal, Josh Ozersky of Citysearch, the Beard Foundation’s Mitchell Davis and Susan Ungaro, Nilou Motamed of Travel + Leisure and on and on and on. Media from Vancouver was flown in, too, which explains why I didn’t recognize the tall guy with the fauxhawk.
Events like this one are a good way to catch up with people, which I didn’t do much. But they’re also a great way to assess the latest fashion trends and hairstyles.
“A lot of people are in black,” Ellen observed, and indeed they were. Non-New Yorkers might have heard that that’s all we wear here anyway, but in fact it’s not true. Black has been slipping out of style in recent years, but it’s apparently coming back.
And fauxhawks are springing forth from men’s foreheads like Athena out of Zeus.
I wonder if chervil and fauxhawks are on the same cycle.

What we ate and drank:

Sushi by Hidekuzu Tojo of Tojo’s:
Smoked Canadian West Coast sable with Japanese vinaigrette
Spicy West Coast tuna roll with daikon, chile, ginger and scallion
Golden Roll: spot prawn, salmon, dungeness crab and scallop
Northern Light Roll: shrimp, avocado, cucumber, mango and butternut squash
Tropical Roll: Dungeness crab, avocado and pineapple
Champagne Pommery Brut NV

By Pino Posteraro of Cioppino’s:
Medallions of Canadian lobster with cauliflower agrodolce, maple syrup-lemon vinaigrette and green lime marmalade
Mission Hill 2006 Select Lot Collection Sauvignong Blanc (Okanagan Valley, British Columbia)

By Daniel Boulud and his team:
King salmon baked in clay with figs, fennel and balsamic vinaigrette
Mission Hill 2005 Quatrain (Okanagan Valley, BC)

by Vikram Vij of Vij's:
Wine-marinated lamb popsicle (so-named, he said, so we white people wouldn’t be afraid to eat it with our hands), with fenugreek cream curry and fingerling potato
Million Hill 2005 Oculus (Okanagan Valley, obviously)

by Daniel's pastry chef Dominique Ansel:
Cinnamon sugared plums with maple biscuit, prune compote and Pinot Gris-mirabelle sorbet
(served to half of the luncheoners)

by Lumière pastry chef Wendy Boys:
Ras el hanout poached peach with Muscavado wafer, roasted white chocolate foam and peach sorbet
(served to the other half)

And for everyone, by Thomas Haas, formerly of Daniel but now of Thomas Haas Fine Pastries and Desserts Ltd.:
Black forest cake with crispy chocolate wafers, kirsch chantilly and marinated cherries
Mission Hill 2006 Reserve Riesling ice-wine

And of course mignardises and Daniel's famous madeleines

Le Bec-Fin

September 12

The legendary Georges Perrier of Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia was cooking at the Beard House last night, I think mostly to introduce his protégé and chef de cuisine Chris Scarduzio.
I’m not sure what to say about the evening. It was a nice evening. Here’s what we had for dinner:

Hors d’oeuvre:
Stuffed Baby Squid with Sauce Américaine
Wild Mushroom Cappuccino
Oyster Tartare
Quail Galantine
Champagne Moët & Chandon White Star NV

Sautéed Diver Sea Scallop with Sicilian Tomato Salad, Royal Osetra Caviar Vinaigrette, and Micro-Celery
Pieropan Calvarino Soave Classico 2005

Gnocchette with Braised Rabbit, White Asparagus–Fava Bean Ragoût and lemon zest
Pio Cesare Piodilei Chardonnay 2005

Potato-Crusted East Coast Halibut with Jersey Corn Succotash and Périgueux Sauce
Montirius Gigondas 2004

Roasted Squab Breast and Squab Leg Confit with Chanterelle Fricassee, Artichoke Purée, and Juniper Berry Sauce
Cain Vineyard & Winery Cain Cuvée 2005

Caramel Apple > Caramelized Apples, Milk Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Hazelnut Dacquoise
Domaine de la Bergerie Quarts de Chaume 2001

Death & Elderflower

September 11

The brothers Trummer helped popularize elderflower in cocktails here in New York, but I thought they were using St. Germain, an elderflower liqueur, to do it.
Not so. They were using elderflower syrups and cordials, according to Rob Cooper, who invented St. Germain and doesn’t even know the Trummers.
Rob, whose grandfather makes cordials, spent six years developing St. Germain — three years finding a source for the flowers, which he finally did in France’s Haute-Savoie region — and three years making it taste good.
The flowers bloom in late May and early June. Rob’s people harvest them and he macerates them in alcohol, adding sugar about mid-way through the process.
Rob says his first batch tasted terrible, and so he had to wait until next year to harvest new flowers and try again, which he did.
It tasted terrible.
But he was happy with his third try, and that is what is sweeping those New York bars that take cocktails seriously.
Rob and I met in Death & Company, which is just such a bar. It’s an intense place with intense bartenders (call them mixologists or cocktailians if you must; I’ll call them bartenders).
Shaking last night were Brian Miller and Alex Day, who grimly — shirt sleeves rolled up to their biceps — made half a dozen drinks for us to try.
Rob and I drank them with gusto while exchanging tales of derring do and discussing the downfall of Lehman Brothers.
Into the middle of all this stepped an institutional investor for AIG, who lived in the neighborhood and decided it was time to check the place out.
As Rob stepped outside to make a phone call or have a cigarette or something, the investor told the bartenders he liked vodka, which he drank neat.
I said something to the effect of: “Dude,” explaining that this was a macho bar of serious, grown-up cocktails.
Brian, being a good host, objected strenuously. He wouldn’t call the place macho, and he said that people should drink what they like.
Although, Alex chimed in, they only had one kind of vodka. He pulled it from under the bar. It was an unlabeled bottle, about two-thirds full, presumably used for making various infusions that would benefit from a neutral-tasting spirit.
The two bartenders consulted and one of them went off to start mixing. I thought the need for consultation was funny, since if I’d said I wanted something that was a riff on a Margarita but more bitter and maybe with some interesting aromatics I’m sure either one of them would have tossed something delicious together for me, no sweat.
Actually, come to think of it, one of the elderflower drinks Alex made for me was just that.
Rob came back at some point and Mr. Institutional Investor told him he liked vodka because it was a pure spirit.
Rob kind of let him have it, and lectured him about different spirits in detail that you don’t need to hear.
I wondered about the desirability of consuming pure things. If your beverage of choice is odorless, flavorless vodka, would that mean that for dessert you’d have a spoonful of sugar? Would dinner be undifferentiated albumin (like egg whites) sprinkled with three parts potassium-chloride to two parts sodium-chloride and topped off with a little ascorbic acid? It seemed to me that the impurities were what made it all so much fun.
The bartenders brought him a classic Martini from the olden days, when it was equal parts gin and vermouth.
He said he loved it, and he did seem to be enjoying it, but what else was he going to say?

And New York’s fall restaurant opening season begins

September 10 (yes 10, I'm catching up)

“I’ve never had a chicken nugget.”
That’s what a high-maintenance travel and food writer told me at the first restaurant opening party of what looks to be a very busy fall season here in New York City.
The party, on Tuesday, was for Bloomingdale Road, the latest in a bunch of neighborhood restaurants on the Upper West Side by the same people who own Nonna, Firehouse, Campo etc. Bloomingdale Road’s kind of different from those other restaurants, though. It’s larger, and it has a fairly big-name chef, Ed Witt, whom you might remember from Varietal, a restaurant that failed to thrive and closed in June of 2007.
He was serving chicken nugget “pops,” which is to say they were on sticks. He also served smoked deviled eggs (once the eggs were stuffed, he stuck them in a cold smoker) and other gussied-up bar food. He set up a mac ’n’ cheese bar, too. At the actual bar, the one with drinks, there were, among other things, pisco sour brûlées. They were topped with a sweetened meringue, and then high-proof rum flavored with bitters was lit on fire as it was sprayed out of a canister to brown them.
“Have you ever had a chicken nugget?” I asked the person who came with the high-maintenance travel and food writer.
“I have a nine-year-old,” she said. So, yes.
I think this was the first party I attended that was thrown by KB/Hall, the new PR company formed by the merger of KB Network News (a PR firm despite the name) and The Hall Company.
Those two companies used to handle openings quite differently. Hall would throw great big parties with interesting crowds and plenty of booze. They were a lot of fun, but they didn’t tend to serve much food. KB didn’t generally throw parties but instead invited all of the media, each with one guest, into the restaurant for dinner over the course of two or three nights.
This party was kind of a combination of those two approaches. It was a party with booze, but also with food, but not really the eclectic and interesting crowd that often would be found at Hall openings.
So after about an hour I was done with that and hopped on the #1 train to the West Village, where Benvenuti PR was handling the opening of De Santos, an Italian restaurant owned in part by Alex González, drummer of the Mexican rock band Maná.
It apparently is a very important rock band; Benvenuti said it was “comparable to the U2 of Latin America.” Obviously, publicists do occasionally engage in puffery, but Latino media, including paparazzi, were there in force.
Maria Benvenuti introduced me to Alex González (“Hey man, thanks so much for coming”) and then ushered me downstairs to the kitchen where she grabbed a plate, filled it with canapés (Italian cold cuts, something with melted cheese, seared tuna with a ginger sauce) and handed it to me. So I snacked, drank red wine and wandered back upstairs to check out the crowd.
They seemed to be cool-looking Latin scenesters, although Jim Farber, a Daily News music critic, was there, too, and a couple of the nice people from Grub Street.
I also met the chef, Aldo Alo, who’s Italian, although he was born in Luxembourg. So I guess he’s also Luxembourgish (that’s what you call then; I asked the Luxembourg consulate).
My sense is that De Santos is intended more as a venue for music than for food, but we’ll see.

10 most favorite food (my 10 that is)

Do you have favorite food?

why am i asking question? as if there is anyone reading this blog.

hik

Anyway, favorite food is just food that you consciously ordered regularly. Or, your favorite dish can also be most popular dish that you subconsciously ordered or eaten regularly 3-4 months, recall and list them and the most ordered is your favorite. ( i somehow are overusing the word conscious, and unconscious, consciously too much didnt i?)

Or... a favorite food can also be something that you like so much and you know you like it. And when you ate it you feel nice and happy. When you have it somewhere else and if it does not taste right you get all uptight and frustrated. It it fits all these description, than that is your favorite food. You always know how it should taste like, look like and feel like without realizing it you become the expert on that particular dish.

Favorite food should not be expensive. It should be simple comfort food that within reach every time you long for it. You might have favorite restaurant, but the restaurant might not even serve your favorite dish. We love a restaurant for a very different reason.

We will talk about that later.

So what is your favorite food? I sat thinking about it yesterday, as if I have no other things to think about and as if I have too much time to do something else and guess what.

I have come out with my list of ….

Jeng jeng jeng






10 MOST FAVORITE FOODS


How ingenious! Bravo.


So here goes: this is the 10 most favorite dishes listed from the less to the most favorite.


At no 10 is, Yong Tau foo



I love both versions of the yong tau foo, fried dry one with red bean chilly sauce and also the soupy version soaked in fish or chicken broth. A secret of a good young tau foo is from the red bean sauce, the soup and the fish they used to make the filling. Meaning to say, we can have all good wantan, tauhu and fishball but if you don’t have a good broth or good sauce it will be wasted. The broth must be very thin and not oily with strong smell chicken stock. The sauce must be consistently not too thick and goey or to thin and runny, and must have the right combination of sweet, salty and sour taste to it.

The most popular restaurant in KL serving yong tau foo is of course the Ampang Yong Tau Foo. There is also a few shop in Uptown Damansara which serve good yong taufoo, but most importantly you can get good yong taufoo from pasar malam too.

But a good yong tau foo must have a perfect wantan, fresh smell fish, and all those colourful vegetables.



At no 9 is,



MEE HAILAM





Mee Hailam should not be complicated. It should be kept as simple as possible with black soy sauce, garlic and chicken stock thicken with whatever powder. I hate it when the cook tries to be creative and mix in everything under the sun with all those unwanted spices to the broth and end up tasting funny. I hate funny taste hailam mee. The condiment also should be minimal. I remember eating mee hailam when I was very little and the mee hailam was the best ever and it only have noodles and soy sauce and some meet, without all those vegetables funky condiment.

I really hate ordering mee Hailam from gerai kelantan/gerai siam, it is just plain lousy and it is not mee hailam, it just noodles with lots of oil and soy sauce and it taste yucky.



At no 8 is, AYAM MASAK KICAP



Yup, of all thing, why ayam masak kicap! Hik, provided the chicken are perfectly cook not to dry so that when it is mix with the very simple soy sauce it will absorb all the richness of the say sauce and caramelised perfectly. And it will be more perfect if it is served with potatoes and chunky onion.

Oh heaven.

The sos kicap sould be as simple as possible and can be spiced up with black ground peppers only. I really hate it when they put in the cinnomin stick, and other strong spices such as star anise or cordamon. It just makes the dish blend


At no 7 is, SUSHI



I love sushi, everyone love sushi. Its tasteless but its just plain and simply beautiful. And when eating it we don't feel the sushi or the rice or the uncooked fish or the salty tasteless seaweed, but we taste the initiative and hardwork of the chef. Thus we appreciate it even more.

Sushi is just not a food, its a work of art.


At no 6 is, SOUP

I love warm comforting soup. Nothing beats the warm soup especially when it is raining and when you feel lonely and when you are alone and feel lonely i suggest you heat up the pan and cook any soup, and then eat it. You will feel really good afterword.

I love soup so much i don't know which one i like. In fact if it is soup, i will like it no matter what.

Sup kepala ikan merah


Sup Ekor


Soup should be eaten while it is hot or warm It cannot be consumed cold. I love any type of soup, as long as its soupy, of course. Be it clear chicken soup, spicy beef soup or stew, cream soup, sweet corn soup, sweet sour and hot sezchuan soup and everything seangkatan dengannya, i love.

At no 5 is, NASI KERABU


Nasi Kerabu is a popular Kelantanese delight consisting of rice and a selection of finely chop herbs and fresh and raw vegetables, top with two particular sauce which is the Budu and the spicy sauce, then served with dessicated coconut with fish meat or serunding daging. It is a very simple meal but very fulfilling. One can choose to have fried fish, bbq chicken or daging bakar to go with the nasi kerabu, but those does not constitute a nasik kerabu. Nasik kerabu is just plain rice, which can sometime be blue in colour top with shredded veges, serunding and very pungent sauce.


The best way to eat nasik kerabu is to have little of everything and mix everything with your hands. This is to ensure that with every bite you can taste the veges, the serunding and also the sauce.

No two nasik kerabu taste alike. Different cook have different specialties and the way they prepare the serunding, the concoction of veges and the amount of sauce differs, thus giving it personality. Yes, the rice have personality.

But, the rule of thumb that must be abide is the serunding cannot be too dried, and the vegetables must be very fresh and not mushy.


At no 4 is, LAMB CHOP





Oh i just love lamb chop because i like lamb so much. The smell and acquired taste of the lamb grilled over open fire with the fat around the rib meat of the lamb melted and turn translucent is just excellent. Especially when it is properly done, and when you suck the meat it fall of the bone easily into your mouth, down your larynx and into your esofugus without any effort, complete with a perfect black pepper sauce and mint is just fantastic. Its better than having sex.

A good lamb chop must be succulent and not dry, so it has to be cooked perfectly where the meat is very tender and at the same time its still moist. So you don't want to overcooked or undercooked the meat.


At no 3 is, MEE KARI



Not everyone can cook mee kari. It cannot be too spicy, or not spicy enough. In preparing the gravy, the coconut milk cannot be too thick or too thin, and when cooking it we must always ensure that the milk is not curdled or separated. Nothing is more yucky than and oily mee kari.

The combination of the curry paste and the coconut must invoke the sweet taste of the gravy, and it must not hurt your lung. Both cannot over powered each other.

Again, preparing mee kari is not like preparing any other curry, so a good mee curry should not be overpowered by those powerful and pungent spices. Those spices are there just to help to give it a beautiful aroma and not for taste.


At no 2 is, Nasik Ayam


Nasik ayam is a chinese food, and only the chinese can prepare the best nasik ayam. So if you want to eat or cook nasi ayam, have it like what the chinese are having it. There are so many version of nasik ayam nowadays and they are so hideaous.

I hate nasik ayam with :
Butter - some people they mix in butter to the hot rice to make it moist (hate it so much)
Serai - i don't where does anyone come with the idea of puting in lemongrass in a nasik ayam
Raisin - Might as well you put in the fruit cocktail and call it chicken cocktail rice.
Cardoman and Cinnomon - For heaven sake, its chicken rice not, nasik minyak.

I love nasik ayam with :
- Very moist but not lumpy rice with very mild taste of the chicken broth.
- Succulent, tender and juicy chicken, be it fried, roast or steam showered with nice soy sauce for taste.
- Lemony chilly sause for that extra zing.
- Nice warm soup to complement the rice.

I love nasik ayam served in

- Hainanese Chicken Rice, Jalan Bukit Bintang

- Hailam Chicken Rice - Damansara Utama Uptown

- The chicken rice shop

- My sisters chicken rice (no it is not a restaurant, she is my sister!)



and last but not least.....

jeng jeng jeng


At no 1 is, Non other than


SAMBAL TEMPOYAK

Hik, very der kampung one kan.



Sambal tempoyak is particularly Negeri's specialities. You can never find it in any other state or not cooked by a negeri's. Sambal tempoyak is infact not a sambal at all. When we think of sambal what crossed our mind is sambal as food cooked with chilly boh or grounded red chilly and very oily and red.

Sambal tempoyak is just bunch of selected aromatic vegetables such as pucuk ubi, pucuk labu, pucuk di cita ulam mendatang, and so on so forth. This aromatic veges are then chop very finely and cooked with a very thick coconut milk couple with a handful of bird eyes chilly or chilly api. It is cooked slowly and left to simmer in the wok for quite sometimes until all the sliced vegetables is unrecognisable and the coconut is reduced.



And the best part is, we put in tempoyak or smelly durian paste in it, a lot of it. The tempoyak is the one giving it the unusual taste. Usually we will put in prawn or anchovies (ikan bilis) to give is some taste.

Sambal tempoyak is supposed to be very very hot. It is not for the faint hearted. It can be eaten with rice or bread and, its get better when it is reheated.

And Sambal tempoyak ladies and gentleman, especially made by my mother is my most favorite food of all food, and mind you i like food so much.

Yes, i am kampung, but i am very proud of it.

おでん/ ODEN

12 september 2008, jumat malam,

Malam ini menu oden...mmm...uda mulai agak sejuk kalo malam, jadi kalo makan panas2 lebih enak...Caranya gampang kok, tinggal bikin kaldu, masukkin sake n kecap asin, trus tinggal cemplungin deh bahan2 yg mo dimasak.


Biasanya si bahannya lobak, kentang, wortel, konyaku, telur rebus, chikuwa, gobou dll, terserah deh, masukkin baso ikan juga enakkkk...hehehe
Yg penting air kaldunya itu bikin dari rebusan hanakasuo..ato pake dashi kasuo bubuk, trus tinggal masukkin bahannya, rebus dengan api kecil mpe meresap, biasanya di hari kedua lebih lezaaaattt....cocolannya pake karasi miso kuning....wiih, jd lebih sippp