chez pim

Would you like some pepper with that iPod?

When I was at the Fat Duck a couple of months ago for dinner, one of the dishes we were served on our Tasting Menu was not food at all. Rather, what came on a small square plate were two shiny new iPod shuffles. They were intended to accompany a dish that was perhaps even more bizarre than the gadgets themselves.

Heston Blumenthal, the chef, said he wanted to experiment with using sound to enhance a dining experience. Hence the iPod, playing the soothing sound of the sea breeze and waves gently caressing the seashore. The dish itself was dubbed Sound of the Sea, with different components on the plate representing something from the seaside. No Seagulls' poo or oil spill residue though, instead we had sand made of tapioca infused with miso, with medallions of Monkfish liver (Ankimo) in a seawater foam. There were also some bits of Abalone, clams, and Samphire, which, appropriately enough, is sometimes called Sea Asparagus.

Watch Cheese Mature

A gourmet version of watching the paint dry? Evidently not, judging from the thousands of people who have gone to the Westcombe Cheddar site to watch a wheel of cheese, yes, mature.

The cheese with its name in light is Westcombe cheddar, a farmhouse and appellation-designated cheese made in Somerset, England. It's been made in the same location for over a hundred years, though the quality had gone down for a time, the cheese has now been restored to its former glory. And now they've gone and put a webcam on it so we can all watch the cheese as it matures.

The concept of cheese as a living thing that matures and decays might be foreign to those used to buying dead, shrink-wrapped, plastic cheese from the supermarket. If you've never tried English Farmhouse Cheddars, perhaps this webcam might inspire you to do it. You'd never go back to that bright orange monstrosity ever again. Neal's Yard in London stocks the cheese. I've also seen it at Cowgirl Creamery in San Francisco. I'm sure someone in New York does too but I'm not sure where.

This Cheddar TV is all fine and good, but come to think of it, in the spirit of my Fabulous Girls' Guide to Eating Local post, how about the web cam on Tom Calver, the dishy cheesemaker and not the molding cheese, eh?

Fancy a go with Chrissy?

No, no, Chez Pim hasn't turned into one of those sites. These photos are from perhaps the hippest art installation in London at the moment: Simply Botiful by the swiss conceptual artist Christoph Büchel. The installation is at the newish Hauser & Wirth Coppermill Gallery in London's East End.

Simply Botiful is not so much an installation as a fun house, where one climbs into closets and freezers to get to hidden nooks or navigate a maze of dead fridges to see yet more appliances. I'm not entirely sure if I actually got anything the artist was trying to say, but it sure was interesting. Walking through bedrooms and rather mangy living spaces composed of everyday objects gave me a weird feeling, like being forced into voyeurism, especially since it was also strangely captivating. There were things that were there clearly to shock you –explicitly pornographic images, torn pages from the Koran, cling-wrapped copies of Mein Kampf, and half eaten, half rotten food items littered in every corner. Yet the entire thing was oddly convincing and stops ever-so-short of being completely surreal.

The fat edition

How can you not love a market where you can buy goose fat by the tin? And duck fat too. Where's the market, you asked? Why, Borough, of course. Goose fat makes superb fries, and so does duck fat, although the best oil for fries, I must say, is horse fat.

When we were in the South of France last year, my friend Mikael sourced some horse fat and we cooked up some french fries -ahem, frites- in it. Gloriously beautiful fries we got from that rendered horse fat.

How fat was that duck again?

"Get thy arse back in the kitchen", that's the message from François Simon, not to Heston Blumenthal, the subject of his article, but to enterprising French Chefs. Who is François Simon, you asked? Why, only the eminent French culinary critic, whose influential words -or poison pen, depending on whom you are speaking to- grace the pages of Le Figaro, the Parisian paper of record, every week.

The good Monsieur Simon just wrote a review of The Fat Duck in Madame Figaro the other day. No, it's not the rave review that the Independent UK thought it to be, but a good review nonetheless. He asked French diners a rhetorical question, have you been there? "But why..", replied his imaginary counterpart. "Because it is good, sometimes very good", Simon retorted.

And what was that about whose arse again? Well, the more I read the piece, the more I find that it is far less a review of the Fat Duck than Simon's insidious way of making snide comments at the lauded French chefs –the ones whose empires rule far and wide yet are rarely seen avant le feu (citing, by name, Ducasse, Robuchon, Savoy, Bocuse), and the ones whose cooking is 'timid', taking no chances (Marx, Decoret, Barbot, Camdeborde). Like a father praising the children next door to his own brood, Papa Simon used The Fat Duck's Heston Blumenthal's creative cuisine -somewhere between Mary Poppins and the fabled chefs' chef Alain Chapel- and the fact that Heston's behind is seen -yes- behind the line day in and day out to shame his children into behaving.

Cooking Thai in London

It's a good thing I find cooking Thai food in London such fun –there are always rare ingredients that I couldn't find in America- because I am always made to work when I am here. My London friends insist on a meal, but luckily they are also happy to help me shop and chop and pound and do all the things required for a proper Thai meal.

Finding a kitchen for me to cook in is a different story. I have a history of demolishing nice kitchens and leaving indelible marks of oil spatters on ceilings, chilli stains on aprons and tablecloths, imprints of a mortar on the hardwood floor, to name but a few damages I've left behind. And I'm not even mentioning the garlic burn on poor V's fingers –I didn't even know one could get garlic burns. Miraculously, this time the mad scientists John and David volunteered their kitchen, to the resounding cheers of the other friends cowering in the corners for fear that their kitchen might have to be sacrificed.

It is really a lot of fun to shop and cook with these friends, because they are real foodies, and so interested in everything regarding Thai food. Unfortunately for them, I am a cook and not a chef, so I am horrible at planning anything, from the menu to the shopping and the cooking itself. David -no not my David, not the other David either, this is another one entirely- tried to sit me down on two different occasions at Monmoth café to write down what we were going to cook so he could make a shopping list. The menu was finally haphazardly drawn, only to be changed on a whim as soon as I found an intriguing ingredient at the market.

Hello London

So I made it to London. This time I'm staying in a neighbourhood that's almost entirely new to me, Bermondsey. I'm renting a little flat here for a couple of weeks before I make my way down to France for Burgundy-spitting fun.

I wondered if London would feel a little odd, coming back into town for the first time since that horrible day. Living in America, and especially on the faraway West Coast, it's easy to feel insulated and disconnected from the world at large. We are very much the world unto ourselves.

Am I scared? No, I don't think so. It would be supremely silly to, no? But then again I haven't made it down the Tube yet. We shall see. I should hope not though. So many things in this world are completely out of my control, if I were to worry about all of them that would be all I do.

Swinging London

Arrived just a little over two days ago, and got into the swing of things quite immediately. Seriously. And you wonder why I haven't got time to blog? Here's why...

Arrived Friday early afternoon.
Went directly to tea with Scott at the Wolseley, lovely, as usual.
Met Brian for a beer at Soho Square.
Then off to dinner at Tayyabs. The queue there was really getting near epic proportion. Luckily, no queue for us.

Saturday
Tube trouble meant quite a late arrival to Borough market.
Breakfast with John and his friend Craig at Monmoth, the little cafe around the corner from Neals Yard, with yummy coffee and delicious bread and amazing butter and jams.
Our little group picked up more friends and got bigger and bigger while romping around Borough -like a rolling Katamari, really- adding Max, Juls, Akiko (and her Chris), and, finally, David, to the gang.
Various people had to run home to deposit their Borough acquisitions, so Max and Juls and I ended up chez Pierre Gagnaire, the Salon at Sketch, for tea. Tea was lovely, pastries even more so, the service, on the other hand, was horrendous.
Dinner with part of the larger gang rejoining us, at Fino.
Went there merely because we couldn't get into Moro with such a short notice and a big group, so Fino was chosen as a second choice, but was completely surprised by the quality of the ingredients and the meal in general.
Finished the night at another club in that hood.

How fat was that duck?

quite...

How to cook a pigeon

St.John, the first of three meals. More soon.

How to wake up properly in London

at Monmoth cafe, around the corner from Neals Yard at Borough.

Best/Worst food moments of 2004

Continuing on the tradition I began last year, here's the Best/Worst food moments of 2004:

Best overall food experience: Food blogging on Chez Pim

Best food shopping moment: A mad race across Paris in imaginary matching-colored scooters with Lynn and Matt to buy more honey from Jean Paul Couto at the marché bio on Blvd.Raspail. (more on this later)

Most fun cooking: Another Thai feast for the London friends, this time chez V.

Best I didn't know it could taste like that dish: This is a tie, between the slow-cooked egg with white bean soup at Manresa, and the tranche de lard fermier au caviar pressé at Pierre Gagnaire.

Thai cooking in London, take two

I've been completely snowed under since I came back from my mad 3-week trip. I have at least a whole week of blogs that I have to catch up on—not to mention all the hundreds of work emails that have been threatening to crush me to death.

But I must make an exception today, implored by my dear friend Vanessa, to blog about the day that we shopped and cooked together for our large gang of friends in London. Here's one for you V.

This dinner was something of a sequel to the dinner I cooked a few months back for the London friends. There were some who couldn't make it, and others who would love to join in the cooking. The last time was at Tony and Fahro's lovely riverside condo in trendy Wapping. Undaunted by the state in which we left the Finches' kitchen afterwards, Vanessa volunteered her cute place in Kew for this one.

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.

Best/worst food moments of 2003

Best Overall Food Experience: The day trip to Paris from London with Martin, beginning with Robuchon, then for patisserie from Hermé, on to procuring Castleton été at Mariage, and finishing the afternoon with chocolates from Hévin.

Best Food Shopping Moment: Flash-mobbing Borough with the OA crowd.

Most Fun Cooking: In Bangkok with my Aunt Chawiwan. The Thai feast for 16 hungry londoners with Max, Simon, and Vanessa.

Best "I didn't know it could taste like that" dishes: Roasted Woodcock (brain, innards, and all but the feathers) at St.John

Best Restaurant Meal: St.John

Best Overall Restaurant Experience: L'Arpège, malgrès les betteraves.

Best Service: L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, on the third consecutive lunch in August, and Kiss, by Naga-san, as always.

Most Fantastic Discovery: The New Tayyab, The Sutton Arms (now closed, dammit!), St.John

Best homey dessert: Rosie's crumble and custard at the Christmas Party at the Sutton Arms

Best fancy dessert: Ispahan from Pierre Hermé

Worst fancy dessert: Ispahan at Ladurée

Most Bizarre Meal: 66

Most Blah Meal: 66

Most Disappointing Meal: Nahm

Worst Meal: Nahm

--------------
Best Compliments:
"Best Overall Food Experience of 2003: Pim's Thai Banquet (by some stretch)", Tony Finch
"When you find the time, will you marry me?", Maurice Naughton

Another day, another fantastic meal at the Tayyab

Met with Tony, Fahro, Vanessa, Bapi, Robin, Simon and Gary Marshall tonight for another fabulous meal at the Tayyab.

Fahro did the ordering, as usual, and I was happy to see that the first plates that landed on our table had big piles of lamb chops on them. I had to fight those guys for them though, they were ferocious!

The selection of curries and breads were also superb. How Wasim can pull off a meal like this while charging peanuts is beyond me.

By the end of the night Bapi gave me a new name “the diminutive and ferocious lamb chop eating machine that is Pim”. I like him.:-)

Robin, Simon and I went over to St.John Bread and Wine in front of Spitafield market for a night cap. But of course my version of night cap included something sweet. I had a dessert of pear sorbet which was served with a shot of vodka. Fantastic.

Robin pulled a Mr.Hyde act tonight. Normally he is this very nice and quiet person, letting everyone think that Simon was the nasty one of the two. We have all been fooled, I tell you.

MVH and Barnes, a nice long Sunday lunch

Eating week in London continues with a planned lunch at MVH, which frankly I wasn't entirely sure I would be able to keep after the huge dinner last night.

But the task master that is my friend Simon insisted that we kept the appointment with our other friends, so I met up with him in the morning to pick up a train at Waterloo out to Barnes. I'd been looking forward to this lunch, as anything that could get Simon to take public transport all the way out to Barnes just for a meal has got to be *that* good.

The train ride was lovely, but we had to get off one stop early as the stop nearest the restaurant was closed on Sunday. We had a rather nice walk along the river to Barnes, going through what was supposed to be one of the most exclusive suburbs of London. It was indeed true as we ran into Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong walking his dog!

We got to the restaurant and met up with Martin and Gavin for some pre-lunch drinks. (Don't you love the English!) Vanessa, who lives the nearest to the place, was the latest, but since she lugged a pestle and mortar all the way to Wapping for my Thai dinner last night, I couldn't really blame her.

The restaurant was in a lovely small building right in the center of the village. The dining room is quite small with an understated kind of cool. We headed first upstairs for the drinks, and the look of the whole place changed. Martin said it was like being in Miss Faversham's house, I completely agreed. There were odd tables and chairs, somewhat morbid paintings of ugly naked guys on the wall (of which some are quite nicely done actually). The look was indeed one of surreal Dali-esque. The drink was a bottle of a lovely Australian Sauvignon Blanc, chosen by Simon, but without a snide comment about women and “those unused to wine” this time.

The meal was good, though everyone thought that it was a notch lower than their usual standard. We started out with a spectacular Reindeer carpaccio, nice morsels of flavorful cured meat with a bite from tiny bit of chilli spiked oil. I thought it was great.

The next dish was a let down. It was an overly salty duck confit. Almost everything about it was nice, the crisp skin, the tender falling off the bone meat, and the flavorful sauce. The only problem was a whole box of salt someone must have accidentally tipped over the confit jars! Quite a disappointment! Gavin chose the best of all of us, as he was the only one who had the boudin blanc rather than the confit. The bite that he was kind enough to share with me was quite tasty.

The chef had spent some time cooking in various parts of Asia, mostly in Indonesia, I was told. His experience was quite evident in his spicing and sensibility, not to mention the sweet layered cake that was given to us upstairs at the bar. My main dish was a roasted poussin with Indonesian fried rice. The poussin was great, lovely crisp skin and flavorful flesh. The fried rice was good as well, with a lovely toasty scent of a well seasoned wok.

Before we had a chance to taste our food the waiter came by with a universal sauce to pour on top of everything. The sauce was brown, with the color and consistency of dark Chinese soy sauce, and even shared bit of burnt flavor of the soy. He chuckled a bit when I asked what kind of sauce it was, answering with a preface that the chef was Ducth, and explaining that there was a pot in the kitchen into which scraps of meat and vegetable went. It was this that was reduced into the dark sauce, the specialty of the chef. Then he chuckled some more before adding that the sauce may have been a bit illegal in the UK. The chef is Dutch, you see, so his “pot” sauce actually has Pot in it.

Martin's lamb cutlet and Vanessa's curry salmon garnered a satisfying nod or two from each of them. Good, but not great as usual was their comment.

We shared the 4 desserts on the menu: a chocolate pot au crème with a chocolate spring roll, stilton served with a glass of dry white port, olives, bowl of cumin seeds to dip the olives in, some bits and pieces of crackers/breads, a pecan strudel, and a Kalamansi crème brulée. Martin was in love with the pecan strudel, was most obsessive over it. I didn't think too much of the crème brulée, which was a bit too liquid for my taste. The taste revelation of the day was the anchovy stuffed olives rolled in cumin. I would have never thought to mix those flavors, but it was most pleasant. I loved it.

During the meal Martin and I chatted about the plan to have dinner at Pierre Gagnaire and Comme Chez Soi in January. He was afraid that it might not happen after all. I told him of my somewhat uncertain plan to trek out to Paris to buy tea and eat, he was intrigued. By the end of lunch we agreed to take a day trip to Paris together. We'd try to get a reservation for a lunch a Gagnaire, and then he would let me loose in the afternoon to buy tea and other things before returning to London together in the early evening. This is going to be a fun trip!.

After the meal Vanessa, Simon and I took a walk by the river to Hammersmith bridge. The walk started out nicely, but grew increasingly dark and muddy, by which time it was too late to turn back. The sprinkle of rain that accompanied the earlier part of our walk turned into a full blown monsoon by the time we crossed the bridge. Poor Simon was soaked by the time he saw me to my door on Queensway.

Pim cooks London

Yesterday was indeed fun. Thanks to the collective effort of my friends Max, Vanessa, and Simon, we put out quite a spread of nine dishes for sixteen people. I really couldn't have done it without them.

The cooking, or the preparation for the meal, rather, started in San Francisco, where I made my grandmother's famous Nam-prik Pao (roasted chilli paste) and two kinds of curry pastes, green and red. They were carefully concealed in jars and encased inside many layers of ziplock bags to evade the sniffing dogs Tony mentioned.

Max and Simon accompanied me to Chinatown the day I arrived in London to survey available ingredients before we finally settled on the menu. I had a menu in mind, but was so inspired by the abundance of Asian ingredients in London that I decided to add a few dishes to celebrate those things I couldn't get in San Francisco. Those Asian grocers in London have everything I tell you--wild gingers (Krachai), Prik-thai on (fresh green peppercorns), fresh baby corns, proper green mangoes, betel leaves, etc. I'll cook Thai food in London any day!

The next day, Saturday, I met up with Simon very early in the morning at his place so he could drag me to his favorite butcher and fish monger out in Islington, where fabulous terre and mer ingredients were procured for the meal. Then Max joined us on a trek to Borough, where we also met Vanessa. I really didn't need to get anything from Borough, but how could I start my week in London without a proper visit there to eat everything in sight first? So there we were, it was only after I'd eaten half the market that we could move on over to Chinatown to do some real shopping.

Shopping in Chinatown was fun. We went to at least four different markets to get the best of everything. I must commend my army of bag carriers, Vanessa, Max and Simon, for following me around from place to place with only a snide comment or two. We bought enough food to feed an army, or at least a whole gang of hungry OA Londoners. One stop was made at a new dimsum place to rescue Simon from an otherwise certain death.

Next stop was chez Mr.and Mrs Finch, who had kindly, and perhaps unwittingly, agreed to let us use their kitchen for this mad enterprise. In the manner of Iron Chef Morimoto, I sat down to write the menu in longhand, in Thai. My sous chefs found it quite useful I later learned.

Soup:
Tom Yum Goong
Hot and sour shrimp soup. There are so many versions of how this dish is made in Thailand. I always do it my aunt's way. Making first the stock with lime leaves, lemongrass, a couple knobs of galangal, and shrimp shells, the stock is then strained, and at the last minute add the shrimps, heads and all, some mushrooms and some more lime leaves and lemongrass for garnish. The pot is removed from the heat before lime juice and fish sauce is added. It is finished with my grandmother's secret roasted chilli paste. A few chillies are thrown in whole to be crushed to taste in each serving.

Starters:
Goong Gra-bueng
Crispy pancakes of minced and spiced prawns.
Yum Talay
Spicy seafood salad, with squids, octopus and haddock filets. The dressing was made with a base of my roasted chilli paste with lime juice, fish sauce and a bit more fresh chillies thrown in for good measure.

Main dishes:
Gang Kiew Wan Gai
Green curry chicken with apple aubergines. This is my aunt Chawiwan's specialty. And my version was definitely pale in comparison to hers. The paste was made in San Francisco and smuggled into the UK specifically for the event.
Pad-ped Moo Nor-mai sai Prik-thai On
Dry curry of pork, young bamboo shoots and fresh green peppercorn. I was inspired to make this dish after spotting the fresh green peppercorns in Chinatown. I've never seem them in the US, probably due to some stupid import law. The base for the stir fry sauce was red curry paste, made at home and smuggled into the country. I used a huge piece of pork knuckle that Simon's butcher cut specifically for us, with ample fat and skin for good texture contrast. Also thrown in were some fresh young bamboo shoots that had been cut into bite size and blanched for a few minutes. The stir fry was finished with a handful of green peppercorns and Thai basil. This was my favorite of the whole meal.
Hoy-lai pad Nam-prik Pao
Clams stir-fried with roasted chilli paste, some extra garlic and chillies and a handful of Thai basil to finish.
Pla Todd Gra-tiam kab Nam-prik Pao
Garlic fried fish served with roasted chilli paste. This is my version of comfort food, simple deep fried fish with plenty of garlic, served with a side of the roasted chilli paste.
Nam-prik Long-rua
A spicy and pungent relish of garlic/shrimp paste/lime/chilly/etc, served on top of crispy fried haddock and smoked haddock flakes. If there's such a thing called Royal Thai dish, this is it. It is definitely my favorite relish. The relish is very pungent, sour, salty, and spicy all at once. It is served with fried flakes of fish. Traditionally the crispy fish is made with grilled catfish, but for this meal it was made of fresh haddock mixed with some smoked haddock. This Nam-prik is to be eaten with plenty of rice and fresh vegetables, which in this case were some fresh apple and pea aubergines, cucumbers, and wing beans.
Moo-wan
Caramelized belly pork. This is a traditional accompaniment to the Nam-prik described above. The interplay of flavors and texture is what truly sets royal cuisine apart from simple street food, so this dish of extremely sweet and tender Moo-wan is to be eaten with the pungent relish, the crispy fish, and the fresh and crunchy vegetables.

All of these dishes were cooked the Thai way, that is to say, by instinct rather than by strictly adhering to recipes. I have in the past written up a recipe for the Tom Yum Goong and Gang Kiew-wan Gai. Just follow the link to them.

When I have the time I will make another Moo-wan and write down the recipe to post here. It's actually quite easy to make. You first marinate the pork belly with some fish sauce, coriander roots, and white pepper, then slowly braise it in the marinade and some water. The pork belly is braised until just this side of done, then sliced thinly and added to the caramelized sauce made of fish sauce, palm sugar, shallots and white pepper and stewed a bit longer until fork tender.

Simon and I promised poor Robin who was too sick to attend the dinner that we would keep some food for him. Unfortunately the gang finished everything. There wasn't even a bite of ANYTHING left at the end of the meal. Poor Robin.

For desserts we had some sweets from the Tayyab, and some fantastic truffles from Sam.

A jar of Nam-prik pao each was offered to Tony for kindly letting us demolish his kitchen, to Simon for organizing the whole thing, and to Max and Vanessa for the much appreciated and skillful Sous-Chef-ing. I also have to thank John and David for helping to clean up. I guess I owe those two some chilli paste next time I'm in town.

All in all, it was definitely a fun evening. I'm sorry we couldn't fit the whole lot of you Londoners. I guess we'll just have to do it again, don't we?

Analouk and Mela, first two meals in London

The first day in London started out quite nice. I got into central London and settled into the flat by 9am. The first stop of the day was a walk to Planet Organic, to stock my empty fridge with some food. Simon met me for lunch in MY neighbourhood for a change. We ended up at Analouk for a nice if not spectacular Lebanese meal. My jetlag may have had something to do with my lack of enthusiasm toward the normally nice food at the place.

Max met up with us later for a jaunt to Chinatown to survey available ingredients for our Thai feast the next day chez les Finches. Then Simon and I ended the day with dinner at Mela.

This was my first time at Mela. Apparently Simon had been in talks with the chef to publish a cookbook, so they took great care of us. I had the most spectacular dish of roasted quail in tomato masala called Bater Khada Masala. This and Robuchon's caille caramelisée are two of my favorite quail dishes of the year. We also had a Malabari seafood stew which I adored. It came with fresh mussels, scallops and prawns in a spicy and coconutty sauce heavily scented with coriander. Yum.

The funniest thing about the evening was the bottle of wine Simon picked for our dinner. He chose this Argentinian Malbec, touting that it was a lovely wine that would go well with our spicy Indian meal. The wine came, it was indeed nice. After pouring our wine, the waiter settled the bottle right in front of me. Being an avid reader that I am, I couldn't help but notice a description on the label at the back of the bottle. It said something to the tune of, “this is a nice and light wine suitable for women and those unused to wine.” Simon and I had a good laugh over it. When I told my other London friends about it, they thought it must have been satire. I didn't think so, that label was dead serious and not intended to be funny in the slightest. Don't you love those chauvinistic Argentineans? :-)

On the way out of the restaurant the M.D handed me a small packet. I didn't pay much attention to it, thinking it was probably a biscuit or something. Only after I returned home that I found out that he had given me some nice Indian bracelets. How sweet. Next time I am there I must thank him properly.

Nahm in London, such a waste of 100 quid!!

So here it is, my long awaited review of Nahm. Sorry I kept you all waiting for days, wasn't playing hard to get really, just was very busy since I got back. Anyway, I hope you found it worth the wait.

As our friend Simon said, I had a low expectation of the place, and it was definitely met. I went there not really expecting a great and authentic Thai meal, rather was hoping for a well-executed if somewhat westernized Thai dinner. Not that I questioned if David Thompson could really cook Thai food, but I believed authenticity was dictated more by the customers than by the chef. I hardly expected an up-market London restaurant, one with a Michelin star no less, to be a truly authentic Thai place.

Simon and I in our best garbs (The good Mr.Majumdar in his velvet waistcoat beat me hands down in the dressing up department) got to Nahm for our dinner reservation at 8. The place was very dimly lit with oddly yellow flattering-no-complexion lights. There was not a Thai face in sight, neither among the service people nor the clientele. That wasn't a good sign. The menu was brought to us by an Australian waiter who stood by the table reciting the mantra of the place, which was basically telling us to order the set menu. There was no explanation why the menu was constructed that way, only to tell us to pick one from each category. His manners reminded me of those of the flight attendant reciting the your-nearest-exit-may-be-behind-you speech.

The menu was in slightly oddly transliterated Thai accompanied by corresponding explanation in English. There were some interesting items that one may not see so often at normal Thai places, such as Nahm Prik Makaam Boran, and Dtom Klong Pla Grop. I was at once intrigued and skeptical. A few items in the menu were things I rarely order at restaurants in nor out of Thailand, the reason being they were so hard to do well that I just didn't bother. Mi Krob and Green Curry for example. By looking at the menu alone, it seemed that David Thompson had at least attempted to serve Royal Thai dishes.

Simon and Jay Rayner told me about the semi-apartheid among service people at that restaurant, so I came prepared to speak Thai and order in Thai just to stir things up a little. Unfortunately the Aussie blue-eyed boy who came to take our order couldn't decipher a word out of the names of the dishes I tried to order in Thai, so I ended up having to use English. Oh well.

Here's what we had…

Ma Hor
Small squares of pineapple and small mandarin segments topped with minced prawns and chicken simmered in palm sugar and topped with deep fried garlic and shallots

These were, as Simon said, inoffensive little things. They tasted fine, but appeared to have been mixed for a while before they arrived at our table so they tasted sort of old. The fried shallots were over done so tasted a bit burnt.

Mii Grop
crispy Thai noodles with prawns, beensprouts and chinese chives ( garlic chives ) topped with a cage of crispy egg.
Simon polished off both his plate and mine. I myself found this unpalatable. The egg net was mushy, and, as with the “crispy” noodles, tasted of the oil in which they were cooked. The seasoning was overly sweet, completely missing the fine balance of sweet/sour/salty and a citrusy undertone of the original dish. I found bits of kaffir lime leaves in the mix, they had no place in this dish.

I was truly surprised by the bad quality of this plate. As I said before, I went there not expecting a great authentic Thai meal, but I at least expected things to be well-executed. This Mii Krob tasted old and sloppily done. This just wasn't a good start.

Yam Pbetyang Sai Lamyai
A salad of mallard with Thai basil, cashew nuts and longons ( small fruits )
I found this dish to be badly done as well. The salad dressing was so-so, not too good, but didn't miss the point completely as in the Mii Grop. The problems here, however, were the quality of the ingredients and the execution of the dish itself. The small pieces of ducks were chewy, and tasted decidedly bland. I found the huge chunks of shallots in the mix particularly offensive. Biting into one of those gigantic piecse of shallots, some almost 1cm thick, one could taste nothing but the sharp pungency of raw shallots. Paper thin slices of shallots, on the other hand, would have taken on the taste of the lime and fish sauce dressing and harmonized the flavor. Thai salads are meant to be eaten in small mouthful, with each ingredients partaking in every bite. The ingredients thus should all be cut, sliced, or chopped into small pieces. This Yam was just badly done!

Dtom Klong Pla Grop
A soup of smoked fish with tamarind.
I was sort of looking forward to this dish. This is a specialty of the Southern part of Thailand, where the Pla Krop (smoked fish) originated. The soup, when done well, is perfumed with the smoky fish.

When the soup came, I took a huge whiff and barely recognized the scent of the Pla Krob. The soup itself tasted overly salty and sweet, with a barely discernable sourness from the tamarind. It was just not balanced well. I thought the dish wasn't completely beyond repair, and asked for some lime juice to restore the balance of the flavor. The waiter struggled a bit with my request, perhaps he thought I wanted a lemonade or some such thing. After a few minutes of explanation, he came back to the table with a small bowl of lime juice. A mere teaspoon in each soup bowl restored the soup to a balance. This wasn't rocket science---it really surprised me that no one in that kitchen fixed it before it arrived at our table. Feh.

Nahm Prik Makaam Boran
Spice tamarind relish with sweet pork and betel leaves.
This was my favorite dish in the whole meal. The sweet pork, which could stand to be in smaller bites, was tender and tasty. The tamarind relish was brightly flavored, and in perfect balance of sour, spicy, and sweet. The texture of the relish may have been a bit of an acquired taste, but I found it quite good.

Geng Gwai Pla
Green curry of monkfish with Thai aubergine, wild ginger and basil
I took a bite of this curry and must have made quite a face as Simon immediately took notice. I found it offensive. The curry was bitter and tasted green. The various eggplants in the curry were just overdone. I thought for a bit about what really was wrong with it, at first blaming the bitter eggplants, but finally it dawned on me. How obvious! It was because the fresh curry paste hadn't been cooked long enough in the oil to get rid of the raw taste of the herbs. That was the problem. How could this happen in a starred kitchen I had no idea. Badly done, again.

Pla Tort Nahm Sahm Rot
Deep fried royal bream with three flavoured sauce.
This one was hohum. The sauce was a good balance of sour/sweet/salty/hot as it should be, but the whole dish was just ok. I found the presentation a bit odd, we got a tail end of a bream, deep fried and covered in the sauce and a very generous sprinkle of fried shallots. It looked more like something we served in a servant's quarter than a Royal Thai dish. For almost 100 quid per head one would think we deserved a whole fish!

During our savory course, the Australian Maitre D' came by the table to inquire about the meal. I told him it wasn't good. He appeared surprised and interested, prompting me to explain what I thought was wrong with the dishes. I started with the Mii Krob, and was about to launch into the other dishes when he interrupted me and said he would go into the kitchen and let the chef know about my dissatisfaction. He disappeared toward the general direction of the kitchen and never returned.

That concluded our savory, next came the desserts..

Grathorn Loy Gao
Santols simmered in perfumed syrup
with
Kanom Chan Bai Dtoei
Pandanus flavoured layer cake

I ordered this dish out of curiosity than anything else. Santol is a great tropical fruit that does not travel well, but I was hoping for this much money Mr. Thompson could really manage to bring it to a London table. The sweet cold soup came, with not a santol in sight. Swimming in the “jasmine perfumed” syrup and “jasmine perfumed” iced (overdone?) were chunks of Lychee, not Santol.

I waived a waiter to our table to inquire about the missing Santol, the silly misinformed man pointed at the Kanom Chan (Layered Cake) and said “that” was Santol. After a few words back and forth arguing about the meaning of the word Santol, he disappeared toward the kitchen to ask the chef about it. Like the Maitre D', he never returned.

As for the Kanom Chan, Mr.Thompson should be ashamed of using the name of a lovely Thai dessert to label his dirt-poor imitation. The layer cake à la David Thompson was a pasty, tough, and tasteless crap, a far cry from the tender, sweet, fragrant and extraordinarily beautiful layered cake (Kanom Chan) of Thailand.

Kao Niaw Mamuang
Mango and sticky rice
The texture of the sticky rice was great, though it was overly sweet, lacking the saltiness to balance the taste. The single slice of mango on top of the rice tasted of nothing. In San Francisco I often serve sticky rice with in season nectarines if I couldn't find mango of good enough quality, because using mediocre mango in this dish would just be beside the point.

Kanom Mor Geng Kanun
This one is even a bigger shame than the layer cake. The taste of this Kanom Morgeng was offensive, the texture weirdly resembled something your dog regurgitates after a tummy ache. The real Kanom Morgeng of Thailand is a delicious dessert of caramelized egg, palm sugar and coconut custard, mixed with either bean paste or taro paste. The texture should be sort of a spongy crème caramel. Kanom Morgeng is baked in a large square tray until a golden crust forms on top while the inside is still soft and gooey yet retaining its shape even after cutting into serving portions . How this glorious dessert could lend the name to the shapeless pile of pus at Nahm was beyond me.

Thus concluded the meal. The bill came to be nearly 200 pounds. This meal would have been ok had it been 20 quid a head, it was practically highway robbery at 100!

at St.John with two picky eaters

I had a very interesting meal last week at St. John in Smithfield. It was interesting because I was doing St.John, my ultimate carnivorous Valhalla, famous for nose to tail eating (of pigs that is), and I was there with two absolutely picky eaters. What fun!

I agreed to take my esteemed director and his wife out to dinner one night while on our business trip in London. My boss is an engineer type who thinks a meal at the Olive Garden is gourmet, and his wife finds anything beyond plain chicken irksome. They insisted they wanted to try English food, so I asked Simon for a recommendation. Simon suggested the Sutton Arms, which sounded just perfect for what they were looking for.

We had a longer day at the office than we planned, by the time we made it out to Barbican it was almost 9.30pm. We got to the Sutton Arms and found it completely full, and were forced to go forage somewhere else for dinner. The choices we found in that neighborhood were between modish pubs full of young fleshy things on a night out and too-fancy-to-be-any-good Indian restaurants. I finally decided to take them to St.John, thinking that we would at least be able to find something on the bar menu to eat.

To my surprise there was a table available in the dining room. My boss (I will just call him John, as in Doe) thought we should sit down and eat properly. His wife Jane, yes as in Doe, who was not at all adventurous when it came to food or indeed anything else I gathered, found the menu exceedingly suspicious. I assured her there's bound to be something she could eat, though I wasn't entirely sure myself.

I grabbed a menu and looked through it quickly to find something Jane could eat. My eyes glanced quickly pass foie gras, marrow bones, and other curious items, and settled on a dish of something described as Slip Soles. At any other restaurant that would definitely be fish, at St.John I wasn't entirely sure. Searching for a better alternative I found a dish of rabbit, bacons and beans.

“Ah, rabbit”, I said, triumphant, “You eat rabbit, yes? They're just like chicken.”
“Oh, no, I'm not gonna eat those bunnies?” She whined.

This was going to be a curious meal, I thought to myself. Looking over at the next table, someone was happily tucking into a plate of soles. “You could eat that right?” I asked her to be sure. She agreed.

So it was time to order. John said I should just order for him too, as he really couldn't make out the menu. Despite it being clearly written in English, many things came with a pedigree rather than a descriptive name. Braised Saddleback with prunes and onions, for example, could have been pig's hide as far as he knew.

So I ordered for everyone. For starters we had langoustine, foie gras, and roasted marrow bones. I managed to convince the reluctant Jane that the pate de foie gras was the pa-tay stuff she could find at fancy parties. I wanted to try it because I was curious to see how Furgus Henderson did foie gras. For the main course, I ordered the Slip Soles for Jane, of course. For John I chose the braised hare, probably because it looked like something he could eat without much protest. The waitress informed me that they were out of many interesting items on the menu, but the chef just added another main course of Saddleback with prunes and onions. I loved pork belly so I decided to go with that one.

The langoustines were supremely sweet and were served with a hefty bowl of lemon mayonnaise. I knew the Brits loved their mayonnaise, from the countless variations on the theme of mayo sandwiches catered to my London meetings, but the sheer size of the bowl still astounded me. The langoustines themselves were in fact so sweet they needed little if any embellishment at all. Looking up from my plate after a few minutes of devouring the delicious little creatures, I was horrified to see my companions' plates littered with discarded shells full of delectable roes.

“You can't throw those out! They are the best part!” I cried.
Looking puzzled, they asked if they were supposed to eat those neon bright roes. I said either you eat them or surrender them to me. It would go against every ounce of my food snobbery to let them go to waste. Startled, they obediently began to eat the roes.

“These are good, they're just like caviar” exclaimed Jane.
“Yes, Jane, caviar, eat or send them to me”, I mumbled.

Then the foie gras and marrow bones arrived. They were both served with country bread toasts that were just this side of burnt. It's late, I gave them an excuse. The marrow bones looked delicious; I moved the plate over near me and dug in with delight. The first bite was a bit too greasy, and needed salt. I adjusted my strategy and sprinkled a few flakes of salt on each piece of bone and stirred them well with the knife. The next bite was just perfect, a healthy dose of that marrow spread on toast with a bit of the pungent salad. I loved it.

Meanwhile John and Jane were quite happy with the foie gras. Jane found it much more agreeable than the pate she was used to. Duh!, the meanie in me thought. Of course it was! I decided to try the foie gras myself and found it underwhelming. It was not a problem with the dish, I didn't think. The foie gras looked every bit a good terrine de foie gras should be, large, pristinely pink chunks of liver bind together nicely in aspic. The taste, on the other hand, was a little bland. I didn't know if this was the fault of the dish or merely an inadvertent result of eating it after many mouthfuls of the assertive tasting marrow and parsley salad.

The only way to know was to give up the marrow bones and clean out my palate with lots of water and bread. Looking down at the couple more pieces of bones on that plate I decided not to. I could get a good foie gras pretty much anywhere in Paris. Hearty and honest to goodness marrow bones like these were hard to come by. I happily returned to my bones.

Jane was intrigued by my unabashed enthusiasm over the bones. She asked to try a bit. Grudgingly I assembled a bit of bread, the marrow and the salad for her. “It looks nice like that”, she said, taking the bite. Surprisingly she liked it. This was turning out better than I thought.

The main course of braised hare, slip soles, and braised Saddleback were great too. Although I found my own plate the least interesting of all. I had expected a dish of long braised pork belly, what arrived were two long pieces of lightly smoked pork belly ham. They were delicious, if a tad underwhelming. The prune and caramelized onions enhanced the salty, slightly smoked meat. The contrast of flavor was lovely, the salt and slight smoky taste cut down the greasy effect of the fat. The sweet taste of the prune and onions was a nice foil for the meat. The problem was I found the portion far too large to sustain my interest all the way through. Just like Robuchon's gazpacho, I wished it had come in a smaller portion. John and Jane each took a bite, and pronounced it just like ham. I sighed and assembled them each a piece of pork with a bit of the prune and the onion on top. They tried again and their eyes lit up. “Wow! It's much better like that!” they proclaimed. Exasperated, I thought to myself, “precisely, that's why they CAME TOGETHER!.”

The hare was scrumptious, full of flavor and not at all gamy as John feared. Dark pieces of wine-braised, falling of the bone hare meat were served with mushroom and a dark gravy. The taste was complex, warm and every bit a perfect braised dish should be. It was definitely home-style, yet impeccably executed. Even Jane took a bite. It didn't look like a bunny on the plate, she exclaimed.

The tasty soles were served in a manner of Sole à la Meunierre. It was not the best I've tasted, but definitely a respectable one. The soles were pristinely fresh and quite well done, though I detected an unpleasant bit of greasiness to it. This to me was what differentiated a superb Sole à la Meunierre from a good one. Unfortunately the soles here fell only somewhere in between. Jane loved it. She found it a bit difficult to deal with the tiny bones, but didn't let that stop her from enjoying it.

On the side we had superb and buttery new potatoes sprinkled with chives and quite agreeable green beans. For wine we shared a bottle of 1998 St.Chinian, a nice, bold, peppery wine. The young-ish wine would probably benefit from a bit of breathing time, but we didn't quite let it.

We ended the meal with a wonderful plum crumble which were served with two generous pitcher of custard cream. I love the English.

To my surprise, my unadventurous dining companions loved the meal. They found it a tad odd, mind you, but loved it anyway. Who would've thunk it. John even picked up the tap, ok yeah we were both on expense so it wasn't a big deal. But you know what? I had a fun time myself, seeing them both opening up and trying new things were fun. It was like watching a tentative child taking a first step. This is sort of my volunteer work, my contribution to the great unwashed humanity. My snobbish and goodie two shoes side loved it I tell you. I'm taking it up as a new hobby!