chez pim

life or blog?

I'm in Paris now, arrived last weekend from London. The weather has been glorious, and, in between convoluted meetings, I have been eating up a storm.

Revisited La Régalade to see if the new chef was any good, trekked out to Chatillon to a secret Algerian place, tried L'Entredgeu for the first time, and made a -far too rare- visit to an old friend L'Ardoise. I even have a few meals from NY and London that I haven't written about yet, including the most delightful evening in the company of the incomparable Ali of Kebab cafe. There are also a couple more days yet in Paris--and a few surprises in my bag.

The only problem is there is no time to blog properly. I would have no life at all if I blog about all things I do in semi-real time. On the other hand, if I spent my life blogging rather than living, the blog would not be at all interesting to anyone.

So I have chosen life, for the next few days at least. Forgive me. I shall blog again after I return home to San Francisco this weekend.

St.John Restaurant Smithfield and the Revenge of the Piggy

At St.John (the restaurant, not the B&W this time) last night with a big gang of friends to top up my fantastic eating week in London with a roasted piggy at St.John.

I had been waiting for this meal for weeks, ever since my London friends suggested we get a gang of us together for a pig feast for me when I'm in town. St.John helped us assemble a menu to compliment the pig.

Here's what we had:
Starters:
Langoustines and Mayonnaise
Mussels and Cabbage
St.John's famous Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad

Main course:
Whole roasted piglet

Sides:
New potatoes and greens
Monk's beard
Watercress salad

Puddings: (English for desserts)
Lemon sorbet and Russian vodka
Biscuits
Seville orange bread and butter pudding
Rhubarb fool

The New Tayyab: an Indian meal extraodinaire

I dragged my ragged self and three colleagues to the Tayyab for dinner on our way back from Ipswich Wednesday night. The New Tayyab is my favorite Indian restaurant in the whole universe, minus India, to which I've never been.

The restaurant is this little but wildly popular place out in Whitechapel, a somewhat rough but extremely interesting neighbourhood in London's East End.

St.John Bread & Wine and cooking Thai in Camden

Yesterday was my second day in London, I spent the morning at the office, well, after all, this was supposed to be a work trip.

The work-free afternoon was spent at my favorite restaurant in London, St.John (B&W) in Spitalfield, with my favorite person in London, Max. How much better can a day get? Max and I hadn't seen each other for a couple of months, so we had lots to catch up on. I also hadn't been back to St.John (neither the restaurant nor the B&W) in a couple of months, so there was much eating to catch up on as well.

St.John, as you probably know already, is the brain child of chef Fergus Henderson. His philosophy is nose-to-tail eating, showing respect for life by not letting resources go to waste. Most people who have never been to St.John think of it as a gimmicky place that serves chitterlings and pig's feet just for the thrill of it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chef Henderson's inspiration was never to shock people, but to show respect for the sanctity of life, and the purity of ingredient and taste.

My blog is (almost) burning! Madeleine au Citron

I didn't want to let another IMBB go without participating, so here's my little contribution.

I went through a Madeleine Madness period last year, during which I baked batch after batch of Madeleine and came up with my own recipe. Recently someone tried the recipe and sent me a rave review of it. He also would like to know if I had a recipe for a lemon-scented Madeleine. I am posting that recipe here in honor of Cake Walk. This is a variation of my original recipe, minus the tea, instead using lemon zest for a delightfully lemony perfume.

Madeleine au Citron, à ma façon
Ingredients:
200 g. Pastry flour
5 eggs
120 g. granulated sugar
160 g beurre noisette
10 g. soft butter, for greasing the mold
80 g. liquid honey. If your honey has crystallized, just warm it in the microwave for 20 sec.
Zest from 1 large or two small lemon

Follow the instruction from the original recipe, but skip the tea infusion. Also, add lemon zest to the egg mixture toward the end of the beating.

Voilà, lemon Madeleine. Enjoy.

Of Craft and Monster

At Craft last night with Mr.and Mrs. P., Jaybee and his wife, and the lovely Vanessa. I had already expected that going to Craft with Mr.P would be an experience, and it certainly was. The flurry of activities around our table was dizzying, as it was evident that Craft knew what was expected of them by their number one customer, and delivered, beautifully.

I arrived, fashionably late, again, when everyone was already seated, my patient waiter holding the chair while I and the others at table exchanged a round of kiss-kiss and pleasantry. By the time I finally sat down my glass was filled with a lovely bubbly, Vilmart's *Coeur du Cuvee* 1996, that Vanessa brought for us.

A waitress appeared beside Mr.P, asking him in a politely hushed tone if he would like to have the chef cook for him. She also informed us of the specials of the night, a large lobster flown in fresh from Perth, Australia. A couple of nods around the table and the baby was ours.

Mas: a delightful surprise

Dinner Monday night was at a new restaurant called Mas. I'm not kidding you when I said new—it was opended only ten days prior.

The name of restaurant is French for a farmhouse, but the only thing in the modern yet warm dining room that could be remotely connected with a farm, French or otherwise, was the decidedly “barnyard” nose on the '90 Chateau de Beaucastel I had at the end of the meal.

We were seated much later than our reservation time, but Joe, Stefany, Peter and I were having so much fun chatting, not to mention sipping the champagne (Gimmonet's NV champagne) that the gracious staff kept pouring in our glasses, we were hardly bothered. By the time we made it to our table, I was already a bit tipsy from the fizz.

The restaurant and, particularly, the chef, Galen Zamarra, was highly recommended to me by Daniel, who worked with Galen at Bouley. So, we all decided to let Galen cook for us. What a wonderful meal it turned out to be.

Babbo and Sripraphai: Two down, how many more to go?

Day two in Manhattan, one dog-and-pony-show down, thirteen more to go. Ugh. The upside is, I've had two very pleasant meals so far, at Babbo and Sripraphai.

Last night we ate at Babbo. Actually, it was not at all our intention to go there, but we ended up there by a combination of fate and ignorance. Originally, I intended to take my colleagues to Lupa, but the hour-long wait (at10pm! no less) discouraged us from doing so. I thought of another place, a somewhat casual small plate-ish Italian restaurant, where I like to go just after I landed in town. The place was, actually, Otto, but my malfunctioned brain erroneously convinced me it was Babbo.

On the road again, and the new IMBB

Life has been absolutely crazy these last couple of weeks. I am running around today trying to finish all sorts of errands before I leave town. Yes, again.

This time I am heading to New York, London, and Paris. All for work, but, I did manage to arrange a few interesting eats along the way.

Like an orange on a Seder plate

I was invited to a fantastic Seder last night at the home of Allison and Dave.

There was an orange on the Seder plate, which I didn't recall seeing at my previous two Seders.