手作り市. te tsukuri ichi, barang kerajinan tangan

26 april 2009, minggu

Hari ini rencana pergi ke flea market, biasa da liat liat barang, kalau lagi hoki, dapet barang bagus harga murah...hehe. Dapet cup lucu lucu n baju seragam sekolah masih baru banget, buat Mei. ..wah.

Trus di ruangan yang satu lagi, ada pameran barang kerajinan tangan. Bagus bagus, tapi harganya juga baguss banget..hehe, maklum da buatan tangan, dihargai banget disini.
Mulai dari kerajinan tangan dari kayu, mpe dari kertas...bagus banget...
Dari asesoris cewek mpe batu batu alam yg dirangkai jadi cincin ato kalung. Trus ada lampu meja, yg dibikin dari kertas, dari kotak susu kata orangnya si. Ada bermacam macam tas rajutan, tas dari kain, segala bentuk barang yg terbuat dari kain, banyak macem dah..... rajin banget bikinnya...bagus, tapi ya harganya juga bagusss

Coup

Lately I can't seem to find a recipe to work for me. Sure, I occasionally beat my food into submission - or into a cake - but at the end of the day I've left it to the food to do the work while I sit back and enjoy the results. So I think my groceries have gotten together, elected a leader, and launched a coup. I've thus far imprisoned an unpliable yeast bread, an unfreezable ice cream, a dry and overly clovey cake, some overcooked chicken and stinky salmon. I'm trying to torture the name of their leader out of them. Maybe the limp cilantro sulking in murky water in the fridge is behind this. Or the one night stand I had with the chili sauce left it bitter - literally.

I don't know what's going on in my kitchen.

There have been a few allies however. Warm and comforting goat cheese grits. Spicy lamb meatballs. And my new favorite tomato curry sauce which gets along with everyone.

I found a recipe for a chick pea curry called chana Punjabi or chole (cho-lay). I've made and eaten chole before, but I gave the new recipe a try. Basically you cook up some chopped onions, garlic, ginger, and jalapenos, and then puree them with some fresh chopped tomatoes. Simmer the sauce for a while with spices like paprika, garam masala, turmeric, and coriander. At this point, you are meant to add chick peas but it occurred to me that the sauce was good enough to mix with any kind of meat or vegetable, and I had a piece of meat mysteriously marked "Goat" which I was ready to cook. The mysterious meat portion turned out to be a rack, and I decided that rather than cut it up and stew it in the sauce it would be better off roasted. I marinated it in garlic, ginger, red pepper, turmeric and salt over night, then seared it off on the stove before transferring it to the oven. Two hours later the goat was soft and supple, falling off the bone with a nicely browned crust. I poured in the tomato sauce and let it roast a bit longer, so that the tomatoes could take on the meat with their own sweet roasted flavor.


If it looks like I devoured the meat, it's true. Drenched in my new favorite sauce, it was delicious. Not to be outdone by my rebellious kitchen, I prepared a nice plate with, of course, some greens on the side.

Now that I have my tomato sauce ally, I can get back into the battle and try to hold off the dried out salami, the moldy cheeses, and the mushy vegetables. Soon I'll be whipping them into shape, or at least into a hot dish. Because that's where bad food goes to die.

off the record

April 27

If someone tells you something in confidence, it’s in confidence. You have to respect that or you’re a jerk. I’ve had colleagues in the past who have insisted that we shouldn’t have off the record conversations at all, because they just get you into trouble. But sometimes interviewees let things out that you can talk about, and that’s how I learned of the tentative opening date (okay, opening week) of New York City’s first ever Baja Fresh, at 465 Lexington Ave. (between 45th and 46th streets if Google Maps is to be believed). If all goes as planned, Qdoba and Chipotle will have new competition starting the week of May 11.
Mark your calendars.

April 30 update: I guess all didn't go as planned, as Eater.com is now reporting that Baja Fresh won’t be opening until the week of the 19th at the earliest. No big shocker there — the only New York restaurant I can recall opening on time was the original Tasting Room.

Marcus in the kitchen, at Aquavit, on Monday, during lunch

April 27

Marcus Samuelsson was actually in the kitchen at Aquavit, on Monday, during lunch.
That might sound a little condescending, but Marcus is the chef-owner of Aquavit, not the executive chef (that would be the able and always-gracious Johan Svensson), so he doesn't really need to be there.
But he came out, said hello and chatted a bit with me and my lunch companions, publicist Jeffrey Ward and chef Rodelio Aglibot. Jeffrey's from Rockit Ranch Productions, a restaurant company based in the Chicago area. One of its newer restaurants is Sunda, where Rodelio's the chef. He calls his food “New Asian,” which he thinks sounds less hackneyed than "pan-Asian" and less lame than "fusion," and I think he's right.
I'd interviewed Rodelio before, when he was at Yi Cuisine in Los Angeles, and he always was doing interesting things with food
(sweet avocado mousse with lychee sorbet and raspberry sauce, garnished with candied jalapeño; eggs benedict with kurobuta pork adobo, instead of Canadian bacon, in puff pastry — this was back in 2004-2005), so it was good to finally meet him.
He's about to add a lunch menu that will have ramen and his own take on such Hawaiian items as plate lunch and loco moco. He also does a great-sounding Thai fried chicken, which he marinates in coconut milk with various Thai flavors, simmers it to an internal temperature of 160, and then coats it in rice flour and deep fries it.
But today, this is what I ate:
chilled watercress soup with tuna tartare, watermelon, egg and caviar
a mid-course sent out by Marcus of braised short ribs with leeks, pumpkin seed pesto and sweet potato
Gravlax and shrimp sandwich with avocado, egg and espresso mustard sauce,
then we split an Arctic Circle (goat cheese parfait with blueberry sorbet and passionfruit curd)
and I finished it off with an expresso.

Salt & Vinegar Crisps

With the intro out of the way, we can crack on. Let’s begin with air. Or maybe foam. Anyone know when an air becomes a foam? Answers below please.



For the uninitiated, and those without access to liquid nitrogen, vacuum packaging devices, Large Hydron Colliders and other assorted machinery, airs and foams seem to be an excellent point of entry into the seemingly murky (and achingly complex) world of molecular gastronomy.

They are also relatively easy to create and apparently hard to fuck up (although, as expected, I did manage. You shan’t be seeing my ‘poached egg with paprika foam and roasted chickpeas’ because it looked like something from low budget Korean horror movie, circa 1983).

Airs and foams have come in for a bit of stick recently with some chefs apparently desperate to adorn all their dishes with a garnish that looks like gargled frog spawn. This is a bad thing.

But they do have their uses. They are light, delicate and carry flavours in a completely unexpected way. They’re also tremendous fun.

If you think you’ve never experienced such a level of gastronomy, think again. Unless, of course, you’ve never had a cappuccino – foam at its most famous. Or Foamous. *Sigh*

Using milk is one way to create the effect. Another is to use a chemical derived from soya beans or egg yolks called lecithin.

Although predominantly used in food production as an emulsifier (a go-between that helps the combining of fats and water – as in a béarnaise sauce), lecithin can also be added to virtually any liquid then whizzed up to create delicate bubbles of flavour.

Not wanting to ruin another perfectly good egg (see above), I thought about other possibilities and came round to the idea of using an air to flavour homemade crisps – something I first encountered at Midsummer House in Cambridge where we had crisps with a sweet balsamic foam as a pre-lunch nibble.



It was a neat twist on olive oil and balsamic vinegar, so often a satisfying starter when served with crusty bread. Time to get experimental.

With this in mind, instead of deep-frying the thin slices of potato, they were brushed on both sides with extra virgin olive oil and put into a hot oven.

Meanwhile, I mixed 75g of balsamic vinegar (not the good stuff) with the same amount of water, added 0.5g of lecithin and let it dissolve into the liquid.

Using a ‘wide mouthed container’, as recommended by another blogger, I then applied a hand blender to the surface of the liquid in an effort to create the small, stable, bubbles that form the ‘air.’

Oops.

There are still dots of balsamic vinegar on the ceiling, the fridge, the kettle and, probably, my hair.

Panicking, I plunged the blender deeper into the dark liquid.

Oops. Again.

The blade managed to cut cleanly through a small raised nipple in the base of the plastic tub and all I could do was watch as foamy (hooray!) vinegar and water slowly leached out onto the surface and down onto my socks.

Sometimes all you can do is watch as the horror unfolds. So that’s what I did.

Two towels later I remembered the potatoes, now a slightly darker shade of brown than I’d anticipated.

Oops thrice. Time for coffee.

Composure and cool regained I forgot everything that had gone before and started again.

Peel potato. Slice thinly on mandolin (carefully avoiding the cutting off of fingertips). Brush lightly with EVOO and bake in a slightly cooler oven for about four minutes on either side. Salt with Malden sea salt on emergence and leave to cool on something slightly absorbent. Like David Guest’s face. Or some kitchen paper. I tend to use the latter.

Meanwhile: mix vinegar and water with weird yellow powder and blitz carefully with a hand mixer. Leave for five minutes then collect the resultant bubbles into a small receptacle. A shot glass or small espresso cup will suffice.

Phew.



Dip each crisp into the foam and then shove it into your expectant mouth. Prepare yourself for a flavour explosion and a melding of textures so wondrous you’ll want to streak naked through the streets. Or at least have another. And then keep going until they are all gone.

For more delicate morsels, follow me on Twitter.

What Might Have Been...(an introduction to 'Molecular Gastronomy')

Between the ages of about 12 and 16 we spent, as a family, three summers in a tiny coastal town on Spain’s northern Costa Brava.

At the time, the resort of Roses was known for few things apart from the inevitable mini golf course, a go-karting track and perfectly serviceable stretch of beach. It was bustling enough in the evenings without feeling oppressive and enjoyed a steady trickle of tourists, predominantly from Germany and Britain.

How things change.

Sort of.

Roses’ most famous landmark is now a restaurant. But not just any restaurant: the best restaurant in the world. Officially. Ferran Adria’s El Bulli has once again been awarded the accolade of serving the best food of any establishment on the planet.

The restaurant’s name (meaning ‘bulldog’ in honour of the orginal owner’s pets) has become a by-word for culinary experimentation, as well as excellence, and Adria’s influence continues to make its mark on menus all over the world.

His, now notorious, style of cooking has been dubbed ‘molecular gastronomy’ but the name is considered to be something of a misnomer with even the founding fathers of this new cuisine trying to throw off the tenacious label to try and make it sound less inaccessible.

Where is all this going? Well, sadly, at the time I was holidaying there, El Bulli, despite having notched up two Michelin stars, was not the place of gastronomic pilgrimage it now is. It was known amongst the tightly knit fraternity of the foodie elite, but certainly didn’t feature on my culinary radar, nor that of my parents.

As a result, we never went.

It saddens me to know that at the time, there were some nights the restaurant would struggle to make ten bookings.

They now receive about two million requests a year with only a tiny handful – 8,000 – lucky enough to bag themselves a place during the six months it is open.

But, whilst I might not have direct experience, or even a reservation, I am in possession of the next best thing.

A while back I wrote about receiving the Texturas starter kit, the equivalent of a foodist’s chemistry set to allow budding ‘molecular gastronomists’ (since no better term has been invented I’ll struggle on with this one) to replicate some of the cutting edge techniques that have made Ferran Adria truly famous.

And I’ve finally got round to paying with it.

So, this is by way of introduction. And, hopefully a justification for the slightly – erm – unusual nature of the next few posts.

For more verbal foams, airs, spheres and purees, follow me on Twitter.