chez pim

Buy Adam's book!

You have heard of Adam's book by now, of course. That Amateur Gourmet Adam. Remember the nipples? Yes, those.

Yes, Adam's got a new book out, The Amateur Gourmet: how to chop, shop, and table hop like a pro. It's a fun little book that will make even the most jaded foodies wish that they could see the world with his fresh, eager eyes, then join him in a plate of pasta with the simplest tomato sauce and share his unabashed delight in good food.

Adam drops by Chez Pim today to conclude his virtual book tour, and brought not just his book but a slice of his very own coffee cake - ok, Martha's coffee cake, but he made it. He's also got a few reasons why you guys should go and buy his book.

Top Five Reasons Chez Pim Readers Should Buy My Book
by Adam Roberts, the The Amateur Gourmet

5. My brilliant recipe for asparagus, potato and cheese Pad Thai.

4. I've eaten at Manresa, and I used the correct fork for every dish (sorry about stabbing you with that pitchfork, Pim.)

3. While I'm not as well-travelled as Pim, I'm much better at "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?"

2. Remember that guy who plagiarized Pim's restaurant review? I plagiarized my whole book from him.

1. Miss Pim herself appears in the book on pgs. 139 and pg. 142. I hope I don't owe her royalties!

Final reason why you should buy Adam's book: He's a good friend of mine, and I adore him. And so I adore his book too. And I am helping him plug a few books - or better yet, a lot of them. Hey, nepotism makes the world go round!

Top cooking tips from Ferran Adria

(If you are reading this post on a RSS reader, you might want to click through to Chez Pim for the video.)
Can't score a reservation at elBulli for this lifetime? Try a few of Ferran Adrià's top tips for home cooks and make your own elBulli Lite™ meal at home.

In this video clip Ferran Adrià shows home cooks a few good tricks. Some are rather neat, like a frozen Mojito you can keep in your fridge for a whenever Mojito fix, or using a simple peeler to make rather sophisticated-looking petals of avocado, or some very pretty bites of bread and chocolate seasoned with salt and olive oil. There are also one or two Sandra Lee moments in there: a bit of rum in this, vodka in that, and also an odd, whipped concoction made with mayo and canned tuna, and then mayo lightened with whipped cream. On second thought, that last one is probably more a testament to the Spaniards' love of all things mayo-ed - there are myriads more in the clip. Heh. Oh, yeah, and who knew Ferran read Martha Stewart Living?

If you followed his advice then a kitchen without a Siphon and a good stick blender would be entirely unworthy of your cooking talent. I agree with him on the stick blender, and I actually have a lot of fun with a Siphon, but I should warn you that though the Siphon itself is inexpensive enough, it's the cartridges you need to make the thing fizz that'll kill ya. On second thought, with the Mojito para todo el dia, who cares about an overdue credit card bill or two, yeah.

I don't know what show this clip originally aired, but it appears to be a TV show in Spain. My friend Roge, the blogger behind PistoYNopisto sent the link to me and I had a lot of fun watching it. The video is long, nearly an hour. Consider yourself warned. That's an hour of your life you won't be able to take back. Don't come crying to me afterwards.

If you didn't feel like spending a whole hour watching this thing. Here's the list I made from it – the snide comments are entirely my own, of course. By the way, if you want to buy anything he recommends (or a close approximation thereof), I've put them together in my Amazon Store for your shopping convenience.

Spot a trend: have you gone raw?

It looks like we're pretty good at trend spotting, aren't we now? Last week I posted about our cow share and weekly supply of Nutmeg's raw milky goodness, and this week two major newspapers in the country published articles about raw milk.

The NYT asked, "should this milk be illegal?", and the Washington Post wondered if raw milk is udderly foolish.

And me? I'm on to my third pound of butter. Perhaps when I got to my tenth I'd have this figured out so I coould tell you all about it. Bordier, watch out, there's a new crémière in town. ;-)

Meanwhile, here is a whole other kind of raw. A tad, um, NSFW, if you asked me.

No children menu here!

Ici il n'y a pas de "menu-enfant"

C'est à dire, pas de steak haché d'origine incertaine, pas de jambon poly phosphaté, pas de poisson carré ni de "cordon bleu", pas de purée industrielle, pas plus que de ketchup ou de sodas ... Ici les enfants ont droit aux plaisirs de la table et à celui de découvrir les saveurs. Ici ils mangent de la vraie cuisine comme papa et maman. Le goût est culturel, il s'apprend et malheureusement ce n'est pas dans les cantines scolaires que nos enfants le découvriront. Peut-être est-il encore temps de réagir !!!

(Translation)
No children menu here.

That is to say, no hamburger meat of uncertain origin, no chemically treated ham, no fish sticks nor "cordon bleu", no dehydrated spuds, not even ketchup or soda. ... Here the kids have the rights to the pleasure of the table and the discovery of flavors. Here, they eat real food, real cuisine, just like daddy and mommy. Taste is cultural, it is learnt, and sadly it's not something our children can acquire in the school cafeteria. Perhaps there is still time to do something about it!!!

Found on the 'menu' at an underground restaurant with a super cute name, Le Lapin Tant Pis, in Forcalquier, Provence.

Nothing to add, really, well, except, AMEN brother.

(Image borrowed from Tagaland. Warning: that site contains low music.)

Pruneaux à l'Armagnac: Prunes in Armagnac

(If you are reading this post on a RSS reader, you might want to click through to Chez Pim for the slideshow.

In Gascony, you're not invited in for coffee. You are invited for pruneaux. Not just simple prunes, mind you. The prunes they serve in Gascony after dinner - or as a side to a dishy conversation - are pruneaux à l'Armagnac, prunes soaked in Armagnac. Sweet, potent, delicious, and certainly not the stuff your grandma takes to stay regular. Unless your grandma is Tony Bourdain in drag.

I've been pining over the prunes soaked in Armagnac since I came back from Gascony. One lucky day, I came upon a bag of prunes in my cupboard, Pruneaux d'Agen demi-sec that I bought on a visit to Kate's Camont earlier this year. I had nearly forgotten about it. Now I can have my own pruneaux at home.

The first obstacle between me and my pruneaux is finding a bottle of Armagnac. It's not as easy as you think. If the Armagnac is too old or refined, it would be a crime to muck with it. While crappy Armagnac just isn't worth drinking, prunes or sans prunes.

Two cutest things

Ella found Clotilde's new book I left on the chaise sofa and went to investigate. I managed to snap a picture before she lost interest -what, you don't have a camera ready wherever your new kitten happens to be? These two are the cutest things in my house right now.

Of course you know Clotilde has a new book, yes? If not, where have you been? She's everywhere, including the Today's Show just the other day. How exciting! If you missed it you could watch her online here.

I grabbed my copy today and spent the afternoon on my sofa snuggling up with it, sipping a cup of tea -which, admittedly, would have been a tad messier to do when reading Chocolate and Zucchini online.

The many inspiring recipes are not sending me into the kitchen today though. I've got to get packing. I'm leaving for Spain tomorrow for a quick 10-day trip. Alas, while Clotilde's book can tag along to keep me company, my Ella won't do so well in the luggage. I'm going to miss her so much.

I'll see you Monday from rainy(!) Pamplona. Kudos to anyone who can guess what I'd be doing there. Oh, and if you are in the US or UK, Clotilde is in the middle of her book tour at the moment. Say hello for me if you see her!

What's in my fridge?

Sam asked the question, what's in your unedited fridge? A bunch of bloggers played, even my friend David in Paris. I envy the Bordier butter in his fridge. Good butter is so hard to find this side of the pond.

What's in my fridge then? Well, evidently far too many bottles of wine, three of which are opened. Not sure what that says about us really. There's a bit of Wlliam Fevre Chablis Montmains (1er cru) still in the bottle, left over from when I made the noodle with crab meat and green garlic the other night. A bit more left in the bottle is Eric Texier's wine, a Côte Rôtie St.Véran from '03. It's not showing so well, to tell the truth. We opened the half bottle of Meursault ('02 Jobard) that's been hanging around in the fridge for a while. We left just a tiny bit in the bottle that I put back in the fridge -ostensibly- to deglace a pan or something later. As though I don't look enough like an alcoholic, I should tell you there are four bottles of champagne in there as well. None opened, happily. Two Paul Bara, one of which is, of course, a rosé. A bottle of your average everyday Mumm, and a Crémant something or another. There's also a bottle of Brachetto -not entirely sure how or why it's there.

In the none-booze department, the jams -confitures, preserves, pick a term you like- are representing well in my fridge. Two jars of Christine Ferber, one with the last spoonful or two of Quetches d'Alsace and about a half jar of Pêche de Vigne. One jar of June Taylor's Candied Seville Peel in Syrup, a perfect match for the Strauss Yogurt you see on the top right corner of the picture here. There's a jar of Asian Pear Chutney from Frog Hollow, of the fabled peach farm fame. Did you know they make chutney and jams as well? This Asian Pear Chutney is perfect for goat cheese, like the Acapella in Ash that I picked up from Soyoung's stall at the Ferry Plaza market yesterday.

Purple Peruvian Potato and a quick Frittata recipe

(If you are reading this post on a RSS reader, you might want to click through to Chez Pim for the slideshow.)

Have you tried these beautiful Purple Peruvian potatoes? They really are strikingly purple both inside and out, and the color remains even after cooking. As the name implies, these potatoes were cultivated first in Peru, by the Inca who –apparently- considered them food for the gods.

I found Cynthia and Scott harvesting these weird looking potatoes up at the garden on Friday. From afar they looked, well, quite like, um, black turds. But a closer inspection revealed a beautiful opalescent shine on the dark skin. A spud in metalic purple skin, how cool is that?

A few people were up at the garden that morning, and as the sun shone brighter we were getting hungry. It fell to me to whip up something quick to feed us, so I decided to use these gorgeous potatoes to bulk up some eggs for a quick Frittata fit for a crowd.

The usual Frittata recipe calls for cooking the eggs first on the stovetop for 15-20 minutes on very low flame, then another 5-10 minutes pass under the broiler at the end. But, as I said, we were getting quite hungry. So I devised a shortcut to cook the Frittata quicker.

Chickens and Eggs, Haute Couture Style

An egg fairy gave me a baker's dozen tray of colorful eggs the other day. The fairy, in fact, is our lovely gardener Cynthia, and the eggs came from the flock of fashionable hens we keep at the Manresa biodynamic garden.

I'm not kidding about the fashionable bit, really. As you can see from the pictures above, some of them apparently walked straight out of fashion week into our chicken coop. We have Araucana hens, with colors ranging from light brown to copper, accented with gorgeous black patterned feathers. We have the White-crested black Polish hens, sporting jet black feathers and a head of striking white plumage –David calls them the Chanel chicks. My favorites are the Buff-laced Polish hens, with the same billowing plume as the black Polish hens but in light brown and feathers intensifying in colors from beige to brown -the shades just perfect for the coming Spring fashion, Oscar de la Renta's, I'd say. Plus, these are not only haute couture chickens but they are fed haute cuisine. They eat the surplus produce from the garden and scraps from the kitchen at Manresa, no all go into a compost pile for them to peck on to their heart's content.

chez Josh in New Orleans

(The photos with me in it are by our friend Jill Dupré)

We arrived late this afternoon to New Orleans. And I found myself immediately installed in the kitchen cooking for ten. We are celebrating tonight, a visit that's two years overdue for me, and a homecoming of sort for David. We are at a gorgeous old house belonging to Josh, David's old school friend, and Jill, his lovely wife.

The 'Whose dish' contest!

David has an enormous collection of menus from some of the best restaurants in the world. Some of them adorn the walls -in the you know what- at the restaurant while others live a quieter life in a large trunk upstairs. The other day he pulled them out to organize, and to see if there are more we want to frame and put up on show. There are a few of mine in that set by now too, though I must admit they are sort the Johnny come lately's, since I didn't start my collection until just a few years ago.

Looking through these old menus, I got an idea that there's a fun game I can play with you here on my blog. It is said that to be a great chef, one has to be more than just a good cook who could replicate other people's recipes, but one that has a style that is unique to his/her own. Many of these restaurants whose menu we were perusing are famous not merely because they serve great food, but because they have a style that is unique to them. These characteristic styles are often enhanced by the sense of place, the local produce, or we might even say the proverbial terroir.

So, to put this conjecture to a test, and also to test the culinary intelligence of you, my dear readers. I've devised a little contest for us. I'm going to give you twelve menu items, and you have to match them to the corresponding restaurants. But to make it a bit more fun I've decided to give you 15 names of restaurants. So, three of the fifteen are just decoys, you understand? Now, shall we play?

Which dish belongs to which restaurant's menu?

Listen in, Chez Pim on Living on Earth again

Despite my best efforts at taking the usually pristine quality of their content down a notch the last time I did a commentary on the show, Living on Earth is airing yet another piece from me this week.

You can listen to me lamenting the crappy-tasting-ness of processed junk food masquerating as something good for you in 'health' food supermarkets. You know what I am talking about, the 5-bucks-a-box cereals that taste like extruded cardboard. Yes. Those.

Keep your ears out for my voice on Living on Earth, airing on NPR stations near you. Or you can go to LoE's website for this week's show to download a podcast of the entire thing, or just the piece from me. The transcript is also available.

(This commentary is a rework of an editorial I wrote for the Spring issue of Edible San Francisco.)

The Fabulous Girls' Guide to Eating Local

If you're a regular reader on the food blog circuit, I'm sure you've heard an earful about this month's Eating Local campaign. I know just what you think, who needs the crunchy granola types telling us how to be fabulous?

No worries, fabulous girls of the world, Chez Pim, the poster child of shallowfabulousness, is coming to the rescue. No, I'm not going to tell you to eat local to save the environment, support local farmers and artisans, or reduce our dependant on oil. None of that boring altruistic stuff I tell you.

Yes, yes, of course, eating locally grown or produced foods will do all of that good stuff, but it's hardly helping us, is it? No, girls, I'm telling you to do this out of our straight, unadulterated self-interest. Trust me on this. It's going to be so, well, fabulous.

.......

This post continues at the Eat Local Challenge blog.

tag(s):food|Eat Local

What fish is this?

It came from Portugal. Line caught. Six kilos in all. It took less than 48 hours from the time it came out of the water to its arrival at Manresa's kitchen door. Shipped in a special cool container, it never had direct contact with ice. That would have been ruinous to the delicate, precious flesh. Chef broke it down and cooked every single piece himself, on a pan, slowly basting with plenty of butter.

That simple. That's the glory of this fish. It hardly needs any intervention.

Two pieces made it home with David tonight. This is not exactly fitting in with my Eat Local campaign this month, I know, but I never said I'd eat exclusively local. And there's not a chance I'm turning this thing down. What is it? Do you know?

'Le Making' of Chop Talk, or Chez Pim in Style

Taking a page from Pascale and Le Making of her cookbook, I'm doing a little post on Le Making of Chop Talk. Oh come now. Don't give me that line about tooting my own horn again. It's not every day a girl finds herself all prettied up in the T Magazine. So pardon my glee but DID YOU SEE ME THERE IN THE NY TIMES??

Wild speculations in the hinterland known as food forums go from the silly to the absurd. Even notes of congratulations here and elsewhere want some questions answered. Why was it in the Style section and not the Dining section? Are those people really your friends or are they models? Was that devil in the blue dress really me or someone hired for the occasion? So, here are your answers.

It all started one day in early January, Christine Muhlke from the Times asked if I'd be interested in doing a little entertaining for her paper. It'd all be pretty simple, she said. None of that overstyled [insert food magazine here] business, she said. Of course I said yes. Yes, Please, actually. (Might I repeat is THE NY TIMES?)

So we picked a date that's convenient to them, less so for me as we were in the middle of moving purgatory -but it's for THE..ok you got the picture- so we moved the location to Gary's über stylish house perched atop the Berkeley Hills.

The best pig roast - bar none

Ingredients:
One 100-pound pig on the spit
One enchanted garden
One breezy Santa Cruz evening
One Pacific ocean shimmering just over there
Friends, old and new

Mix all of those together and what do you get? The best pig roast ever. Well, o.k., the best pig roast ever in my very limited pig roasting experience.

The day before the roast, the two hosts Chris and Hugh drove thirty miles up the gorgeous California coast to Half Moon Bay to pick up the pig from Bar None Ranch. (It's May and it's Eat Local month, remember?) They chose a gorgeous black Birkshire pig from the line-up, and the people at the ranch did the rest. Hugh called her Henrietta.

They took her back to Hugh's cottage on the coast, stuffed her with Chorizo, got her tied up for the spit before rigor set in, and put her in Hugh's bathtub full of ice to wait for the party the next day. Can you imagine going to the bathroom with a dead pig all tied up in your tub? Emily, Chris's wife, said it was quite a scene from a horror movie. Lucky the guy with a ski mask and power saw didn't come crashing through the door in the night.

Eat as local as we can!

I'm sure you've heard me mentioning the May Eat Local Challenge a few times before. My friend Jen at Life begins at 30 joins up with Locavore to organize this challenge. I am going to take her up on it. And I hope you will too.

You don't really need me to tell you why we should eat more locally grown food, do you? You know it's a good idea to reduce our dependant on oil: all those gas-guzzling trucks and planes shipping food from who-knows-where to where-you-are can't be good for the environment. You even like the idea of supporting local farmers and local artisans. Diversity makes for a nice environment to live in, no? If the entire San Francisco Bay Area looks like the Financial District, where are you going to hike on Sundays?

Are those your arms thrown up in the air? Is that a shrug I see? You're giving up before you even got started? Eating Local is easy for me to say, that's what you think, yes? I live in bountiful California. I have access to farmers markets and all kinds of amazing local produce that you would never see at your farmers market -if you even have one, that is. How are you going to do it?

Are you ready to eat local?

The farmers market in downtown Santa Cruz today was a study in color: bright orange beets, green asparagus, colorful flowers, and purple everything. There was purple everywhere: purple carrots, purple kohlrabi, purple cauliflowers, and even purple 'red' cabbage. I felt a strange urge to put on something purple too.

The season is a little odd because of the incessant rain in the last couple of months. The cold, wet weather is keeping some winter vegetables around long after they should have been gone, and holding up the spring produce and fruits that should have been around by now.

This is going to be a difficult season and a difficult year for our local farmers, which is all the more reason to support them, as my friend Jen put it quite eloquently on Bay Area Bites.

I'm taking a cue from Jen and join her on the Eat Local campaign next month. Won't you join us too?

(More farmers market photos on my Flickr)

tag(s):food |Santa Cruz |Farmers Market |Eat Local |Locavores

Listen in, Chez Pim on Living on Earth

(Listen to Pim on Living on Earth: download the MP3 file)

A little while ago an email arrived from Eileen Bolinsky, the senior editor of an environmental radio show called Living on Earth, which airs on National Public Radio. She asked if I would be interested in adapting the blog post Green Packaging into a piece for the show. I, of course, was delighted. Living on Earth is one of the shows I listen to on my Saturday KQED allstar line-up, beginning with Cah Tawk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! (I used to be SO good at this game!), This American Life, and eventually Living on Earth. And, lest the radio shows I listen to damage my frivolous street cred, I should probably tell you LoE ends just in time for me to begin contemplating what to wear to dinner on a Saturday night.

Adapting the blog piece for the radio was an interesting exercise, actually. It gave me an entirely new respect for the podcasters among us. I had to pay attention to everything, not just wording and phrasing but also the sound and rhythm of the words and sentences when read out loud. Thank goodness Eileen had an inexhaustible supply of patience to guide me along to the end. She was even present –albeit virtually- at KQED recording studio when I went in to read the piece.

And if I'd thought rewriting a blog post for the radio was quite an exercise, recording it proved to be a new challenge entirely. Where was Ira Glass when I needed him? Imagine my surprise when an instruction from the producer went like this: "I want you to read this graph and I want you to be indignant!" Indignant? At the bamboo sticks? Oy! And it didn't end there. "That was great!" he said, "now lets do this other graph and can we have lament?" Huh huh. It was all I could do to stay serious. I'm no actress so telling me to do lament is just giving me a good fit of giggles. But I must say, all in all it was more than a little fun.

Get the MP3 file on the Living on Earth website.

P.S. While you are there you might want to listen to the other segments on the show as well. The one on sugar sweetened drinks and obesity epidemic in kids, especially, is great!

tag(s):food |green packaging |Thai street food |Living on Earth |NPR

Take it slow, baby, part III (Gang Som, coconut-free sour curry_

Inspired by my thai cooking session with Slow Food, I've been talking a bit about the history of Thai food on Chez Pim. This post is the third installment, you might want to check out Part I and Part II as well.

A lot of coconut based curries are quite well-known and popular in Thai restaurants outside of Thailand. Less well-known are coconut free curries, like Gang Som (sour curry) and Gang Pah (Jungle curry). It's too bad, really, because these coconut free curries are every bit as good, if not even better because it's also good for your diet.

Tonight I made my favorite coconut-free curry called Gang Som. I used the paste that I brought back with me from Thailand. It's homemade, still, since it was made at my home in Bangkok and packed for me to take back to the US.

The curry paste itself isn't hard to make though. I've done it plenty of times. It is far superior than anything you could buy in a can, so I really suggest you make it yourself. The ingredients are quite easily available, even, so there is really no reason for you not to make it yourself.

Gang Som is made from a type of red curry paste, which could be made from dried chillies as well as from fresh chillies. My family is more in favor of the paste made from fresh chillies, so that's what I usually do. The main flavoring ingredients are the chilli paste, tamarind, and fish sauce. There's a bit of palm sugar in it too, not to make it sweet but just to round up the taste a bit. Shrimp paste gives the paste a bit of complexity, but it is entirely optional. I make my Gang Som with shrimp, again from family habits, but you can just as well do it with practically any white fish.

Take it slow, baby: part II (or, how to turn fish into cloud)

(Continuing from part I.)

Thai food, when we really think about it, is really far more Ferran Adrià-esque than it is Alice Water-ish. We take an ingredient and work at it –pradit pradoy, as we say in Thai- until in the end it sometimes resembles so little of the original form. An example for this is Pla-dook Foo or crispy fried catfish, my favorite accompaniment to many types of pungent Nam-prik relish. We take a catfish, cook it on the fire until done, take the cooked flesh off the bones and fluff it up with the tines of a fork, then deep fry that fish meat until it is crispy. The end result of this is hardly recognizable as fish, more like clumps of cloud. Oddly crispy kind of cloud. You'd never guess that it was fish until someone clues you in.

We are fond of apparently odd pairings, like the Pla-dook Foo that we have just spoken about, which is paired with not only the pungent Nam-prik relish, but also with caramelized pork belly. There is also a snack dish of salty dried fish tossed with sugar and paired with watermelon (Pla-hang Tang-mo) which is sometimes served with sweet sticky rice.

And then there is Khao-tung Jompol, my favorite store-bought snack of all time. It's made from rice, cooked to a paste and then spread thin and air-dried. The resulting dried rice paper is broken into large chunks and fried, then broken again to smaller chunks and tossed with sugar, salt, and pork candy floss (Moo Yong). Yes, I said pork candy floss. It's just what you read, pork cooked with lots of sugar until it resembles candy floss or cotton candy. My friend Eric said that this could have walked out of an El Bulli cookbook. I can see that too, can you?

A lot of things to catch up on

Harold McGee and Manresa dinner auction
For a mere $5,000 to a good cause, you and seven of your bestest friends can be guests of Harold McGee and Manresa for a private dinner. David will cook a 5-course meal based on the Spanish experimental methods, and Harold will lead the evening's discussion about the chemistry of the food and its preparation. I am not going to bother telling you who Harold McGee is, because if you didn't know him by now then this meal would certainly not worth $5,000 for you. The silent auction is going on now. (Scroll down to the 'Once in a lifetime' category to place your bid.)

Learn how to make Marmalade from June Taylor
Our very own First Lady of Preserves June Taylor is sharing her secrets of marmalade making! You too can get in on this by signing up for one of her two hands-on classes on 3/25 and 4/22.

Taste Everything Awards 2006
Hillel of Tasting Menu is hosting the second annual Taste Everything Awards, where food bloggers honor the best producers or sellers of food and other kitchen things. Check out the listing of the first two days' worth of awards here. And check back chez moi Thursday to see who I'm giving my Taste Everything award to.

Chris Cosentino goes to Britain!
And so can you. You can join a gastronomic tour to Britain led by Chris Cosentino of Incanto. Chris will take to you visit Prince Charle's organic garden, go Woodcock hunting, see an Oyster Farm in Marsea, have a very piggy day at the famous River Cottage, dine and St.John and the Fat Duck. Not to mention the Only in London experience of breakfasting at Smiths at Smithfield, with the butchers in blood-soaked apron from Smithfield meat market next door.

And we have the first born!
Our lovely Farmgirl Susan has got the first born ewe of the season. She is called Rose, and the honorary ownership of her goes to Jennifer New, the lucky donor in our Menu for Hope II campaign, where together food bloggers from all over the world helped raised more than $17,000 for UNICEF's funds for the earthquake survivors in Northern India and Pakistan.

bits and pieces

A little round up of what's been grabbing my attention around the internets lately, amongst the blogs and the non-blogs alike.

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First stop at a new food blog, Tea and Cookies, where a certain Ms.Tea meticulously documented her farcical –if also a little alarming- descent into food blog madness. Make sure you swallow whatever you've got chewing before you read it. I don't want to be responsible for anyone choking or anything!

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The next stop shows us a very pretty new(ish) blog, Harriet's Tomato, whose recent post touched on two of my favorite things: British farmhouse cheese and who else but the lovable Wallace himself. Come to think of it, if my TV wasn't buried somewhere in the mountain of boxes, and Neals Yard wasn't so far away, I wouldn't be typing up this post now. Instead you would find me parked in front of the tube watching the latest Wallace and Grommit adventure while munching on a good wedge of Lancashire Poacher or Stinking Bishop.

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How did I find out about these new blogs, you asked? Why, I am not such an egoïste that I technorati myself on a regular basis! What a preposterous idea!

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Not on the blog circuit, there's the piece by Rachel Cooke in the latest Observer Food Monthly that got my eyes tearing up on this drizzly morning. She reported on the miraculous recovery of Fergus Henderson, arguably the most beloved cook in Britain. Fergus was diagnosed with the debilitating Parkinson disease in 1998, and every St.John regular has been a witness to his deterioration, which had all but taken him over by the time I last saw him in London.

Green packaging, the Thai way

When I was a little girl in Thailand, my favorite street snack, Kanom Krok, were sold not in a Styrofoam or even paper box, but in a little boat made of Bai Tong, banana leaf. (You cut a rectangular piece from a large banana leaf, fold two corners on one side over each other and nip them together with a tiny sharpened wooden stick. Do the same on the other end and you get a cute little boat.) Back then, so many desserts and even savory dishes were served in packets and containers made of everything from lotus leaf, banana leaf, or even the long, thin pandan leafs woven into a basket.

Those were the original green packaging, local and sustainable. Then plastic became less expensive, and the even cheaper Styrofoam arrived. The opportunity to pollute the environment was equalized for all. These days when I go home, I find less and less of the wonderful natural packages. And when I see them, I can't help but snap a photo or two, keep sakes of time gone by.

The first photo on top of this post is a packet made from folding the two ends of an oval piece of banana leaf, fastened with a thin strip of the same material, and secured with a sharpened stick. Hoe Bai Tong, as we call it in Thai, is used for a variety of steamed food, savory and sweet.

Michelin France 2006: 'The Red' is done!

Last Friday, Libération, the Paris paper, published a scoop on the new Michelin guide for France 2006. The biggest news, perhaps, is the awarding of the –long awaited and highly deserved- third star to Oliver Roellinger in Brittany. Shall I just say I told you so?

Frankly I am not sure what has taken Michelin all this time, Roellinger has long been acknowledged by his peers –the likes of Troisgros and Gagnaire with plenty of stars to their names- to have earned his proper place amongst the best of them. But then again, Michelin appears to have a lot of catching up to do.

That's probably why I wasn't particularly surprised to see that Yannick Alléno did not get his third star, despite the fact that Le Meurice has consistently been performing at the three-star level. I'm not even the only one believing so, Vincent Noce who wrote the Libération scoop said as much himself.

While snubbing the new generation, such as Alléno, Piège, and Frechon (who is not my favorite), Michelin seems to have changed its mind on the issue of chefs with multiple restaurants. Gone are the days that Alain Ducasse had one star taken away from a restaurant merely because he opened another that also received three stars -legend has it that back then Michelin didn't believe a chef could consistently support two three-star establishments. Michelin of today, however, appears to be on the side of the empire-building chefs. Joël Robuchon has gotten four stars altogether from his growing fiefdom that stretches from Paris to Monaco (Michelin doesn’t rate the one in Vegas). Pierre Gagnaire took over Gaya since la rentrèe last year and promptly receives one star on this guide just a few months later. On the strength of the signature bearing the name of Alain Ducasse on the purchase contract alone, Benoît gets to keep its long-endangered star, even if the ink has barely dried and Ducasse hasn't even taken over the operation yet. Change is the only constant in life, I suppose.

happy last day of the year, and the new year too

Have a very happy last day of the year everyone, and an even better new days to come in the next year. Yet another year of blogging chez Pim continues to be so much fun, especially because you are around to read it. Really. This year marked a huge change in my life, and together on the blog we laughed, we cried, we cheered, and even jeered. We also cooked a bit. And again we ate and drank our way around the globe, through bad meals and good meals and even better meals. We even got around to doing some good for a change.

Chez Pim has gotten probably more than its share of accolades, but ultimately -all ego and snarkiness aside- this is just my silly blog. I eat because I live, and I write because I love it. I am happy that you are around to share it with. My best wishes to you and yours for tomorrow and many more days to come.

Let me take us into the new year by showing you where I've been hanging this holiday season -yes, dodging hot pans, sneaking a taste of this and that, and all around trying not to get in the way at Manresa. Click on the collage above to see more holiday dinner rush action in Manresa's kitchen. Cheers everyone!

(P.S. Remember to check back tomorrow for the list of raffle winners from the Menu for Hope II.)

Unloved greens

A brief interlude from being a goodie two shoes, I'm going to go on a little rant. A couple of Saturdays ago at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, I wandered over to Mariquita farm stand and saw a pile of the most beautiful baby greens. They looked like happy vegetables. They really did, all bright and green and curly and cute and little. I didn't know what they were, so –as one does- I picked one up and took a bite. It was spicy and crunchy, with a deliciously complex flavor, like fresh salad greens with a little dose of wasabi. That little baby has got a lot going on!

Awarding season again

That Gridskipper has been seen skipping happily by this way again, this time with an URBS (Urban Blogging Awards 2005) nomination in hand. Chez Pim is up for World's Best Urban Food Blog. Frankly I would have been much happier if our friend Graham of Noodle Pie made it through this round as well. No one blogs street food like the Pieman, and if that's not urban-y goodness I don’t know what is.

Alas he didn't make it, but Chez Pim did. So did our blog friend Aun of Chubby Hubby and four other food blogs. Unfair? Quite likely. But, really, Graham dear, if you want to speak of injustice, shan't we start with how I lost the Hottest Urban Blogger nomination to some dude with a mannequin!!

Go drop a vote in for us, dear friends?

P.S. Also, Kate at Accidental Hedonist is taking nomination for this year's Food Blog Awards. Check her out.

an urbane life

It is market day, a day to be out, enjoying the crisp, clear weather. Parking yourself on a public bench next to an old friend, perhaps for an animated conversation or each staring out into the crowd in silence, together in solitude. A bottle of wine is no less agreeable than a cup of coffee, even at nine in the morning, so long as it is shared among friends.

No, this is not fancified or forced whimsy far too easily found in many an urban farmers market, nor a fierce shopping-cart race under the fluorescent sheen of your local Safeway, but an urbane way of life that is still trucking along nicely in some damn lucky parts of the world.

Meanwhile, back in the good old U.S. of A., you are what you eat has never been so right on.

(Click on the photo for more market day pictures.)

The Hungry Planet: What we learn from what the world eats.

I am a firm believer that one key to co-existing in this increasingly messy world is empathy. I also believe that few things can teach us more about our neighbors than simply peeking into their kitchen windows. What people eat, what food is available to them, what they cook, how they eat, even the smallest things in our larder can tell a huge story.

I recently came across a book to feed just that part of my curiosity. It's called Hungry Planet. Aaron from Ten Speed Press in Berkeley gave it to me when he came to dinner a couple of months ago. From the first minute I opened up the first page, I was hooked.

A mini revelation

Or a mini confession, perhaps. I was afraid of moca pots. You know, that fabled Italian coffee making contraption that everybody and their brothers rave about? I was afraid of them. To me, they were menacing, threatening to explode in my face if I left them just a second too long on the stove.

That sounds rather silly, I know. Well, I should probably tell you I'm afraid of pressure cookers as well, for pretty much the same reason. Notice I said reason?

Well, I'm happy to say that is no longer true. (At least the moca pot bit, I'm still not going to look the scary pressure cooker in the eyes.) A few days ago my friend David L. insisted on loaning me one of his treasured moca pots, after patiently explaining to me how unlikely it was for the moca pot to actually explode as I feared. Ever so reluctantly I took his advice. I also took his advice on the Malongo fair trade coffee as well -bought from Monoprix of all places. And this morning I have a huge bowl of delicious café au lait to thank him for.

Who knew that moca pot would make such a great coffee? I hardly remember now how I put up with the muddy french press coffee when I was away from my espresso machine! I'm not even going to speak of the Illy pods, whose undue influence I was under for years before I was finally liberated by the kind folks at Bluebottle Coffee Company. There's something new to learn everyday.

What dreams may come..

So my computer is dead. I was hoping to spend this quiet Sunday catching up on blogging and email (which has about a few weeks worth of backlog due to accessive traveling combined with laziness). Alas, it is not to be. My little computer went to sleep last night, and this morning it refused to wake up, no matter how I pleaded. Luckily I've spent the last day or two uploading recent photos into my flickr, so you could at least occupy yourselves with them until -or should I say if- my computer returns to life.

The first photo on this slide show was one of my favorite dishes of our shopping/cooking trip to the South. At the wonderful fish market in Ventimiglia, we found some anchovies so fresh they were practically breathing still. I couldn't help but bought some. When we got back to the house in Mougins, David set about fileting them with expert precision, then he cured them for a couple of hours, covering up the filets entirely in gray salt. We served them as the first course with a splash of good olive oil and some fennel flowers that we found in the garden. Simple, and just delicious. Click on the photo to see more of our cooking fun. Also, I've put up two other photo sets, from our trips to Ventimiglia market and San Remo market in Italy.

à bientôt...I hope. Wish me luck.

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Update!

Good news, my computer isn't dead after all. I walked all the way over to David L's penthouse to see if he could help resuscitate my baby, and as it turned out, it's not my computer that's dead, it's my power adapter. Silly me. So tomorrow I will find a new power supply, and for now I only have a couple hours on this battery to catch up on a few things. More posts on the French and Italian riviera and also many more on the week in Burgundy up soon, I promise.

The Truffle Don

The scene was a dark parking lot, somewhere in Monte Carlo, in the Principality of Monaco. We had been waiting impatiently for the arrival of a mysterious figure, known only as the Truffle Don.

The Truffle Don is something of a legend amongst those in the know up and down the Riviera. Many have heard of him. Yet only the lucky few could truly vouch for his existence. He always travels with a driver, who looks to me more like a bodyguard. I suspect he serves both purposes.

He sells the best truffles. Only white. And only from Alba. Nothing and nowhere else. The problem is you'd have to find him first. And, between you and me, that's not an easy thing to do. Of course it is not a simple matter of money. This is the Côte d'Azur we are speaking of. Everyone here has money, and probably more than you or I have.

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.

Pimus Ignoramus

Hi there Aussie readers,

It seems like I've been receiving a lot of you new visitors from way down under there, thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald reprint of the Observer article. Nice to meet you mates. All of you. Yes, even if some of you have been a teeny-bit miffed at me for not showing proper respect to the incredible and energized food scene in Australia. Well, um, sorry. I can't do everything now can I? Who do you think I am, Anthony Bloody Bourdain? Ha.

Actually, I would have loved to talk about the scene there if I'd actually known anything about it. The last time I was in Australia, and it was only Sydney even, was 2001. I had lovely meals at Tetsuya and Rockpool, but back then my blog wasn't even about food so I never wrote about them. Oh, yes, and I haven't forgotten the mind-blowingly good coffees to be had everywhere, even at the most random of cafes. I know, I know, I'm due for a visit very soon. Perhaps someone would like to sponsor a trip?

And of the food blog scene over there, I must admit that the only one I've really read on a regular basis is my man Anthony's Spice Blog. Sorry. Would it help if I said I've been reading our man Anthony's antics for years now....he's been on my sidebar for about that long, even. I don't really know much about the other ones, but I'm sure I will look you all up when I make it down to there again. In the meantime, I just found this little Australian meme, Omnivoribus Australis. Check them out, there are plenty of links there to food blogs from all over Australia.

ta, (or whatever it is you say down there)
Pimus Ignoramus

How to rehab a city girl

I am feeling my city girl cred receding by the day here. Hanging out in Santa Cruz does that to you I suppose. I mean, I always shop farmers market and all that, but even that can't compare. Here, the farms are practically steps away, and I find myself learning all kinds of new things all the time. You know, stuff you never thought you needed to know, but it's kind of cool now that you do. Things like, tomatoes on the vine smell like flowers. Did you know that? I didn't, for sure.

The first time I went to see Joe at his farm, I took a walk among the rows of his dry-farmed tomatoes. Walking along, I absentmindedly let my hands brush gently against the vines and the fruits. Back in the house, I kept smelling this fabulous fragrant on my hands, bright, green, flowery scent that was completely foreign to me. I sniffed my hands, mumbling to myself how amazing this mystifying scent was. Joe overheard me and shook his head incredulously. It's the tomato, silly, he said. And it all made sense, tomato fruits grow out of tomato flowers, nothing mysterious about it. So of course vine-fresh tomatoes smell like flowers. Duh, me.

The case of a straying hand

The food world is abuzz with a brewing scandal. The subject at hand is the new book, the Seasoning of a Chef, by Doug Psaltis. The particularly contentious bit was the chapter on his all-too-brief tenure as a sous chef at the fabled French Laundry. Freshly out on his fanny after Mix, Psaltis took up the position, arriving in sleepy Yountville mid summer, before the end of fall he was out the door again.

Psaltis didn't have too many kind words about the restaurant's operation or his time there. He claimed that the walk-in at the French Laundry was a mess, the rank and file cooks incompetent, and Thomas Keller himself preferring aesthetics to taste. Nothing all that bad, as slandering comments go. Like most biographies, the stories all seemed heavily biased toward the teller himself. Nothing new or noteworthy there either.

It's all Rashomon, you might say. But then again, even in Rashomon, there were a few indisputable facts. A samurai and his wife traveled through a forest. They were met by a common thief. A fight ensued, the samurai ended up dead, and his wife disappeared. The four tales were all rifts off this factual theme.

The bone of contention here was mostly based on the story that Psaltis himself told, not in the book but rather belatedly on the thread discussing his book on eGullet. Psaltis claimed he slapped the hand of a runner who refused an order to remove his hands off the pass. For many, this story was highly disputable. Some wondered out loud precisely where Psaltis's straying hand hit the unfortunate runner. Others were caught mulling if this slap of hand -or wherever- contributed to Psaltis departure -voluntary or otherwise- from Yountville. So, in this case, it was the fact of the matter that was in dispute, not the retelling of the story from various points of view. Even my relativist self is demanding to know who is telling the truth. No, it is not all Rashomon to me.

Fantasy Sushi

Il était une foie.*

Yes, and so it began, once upon a time not too long ago, a prelude to the assault that was to come: a foot-long tube, two-inch in diameter, of pristine liver, Monkfish liver or Ankimo, cut into half an inch thick pieces, sprinkled with chopped spring onions and bathed in a pool of tart Ponzu sauce.

The scene was an unlikely storefront in a run-of-the-mill California strip mall, this particular one in the green Silicon Valley. I had been given a secret password to enter this special place, hidden in plain view, to partake in the sushi meal to end all sushi meals. Or so it was claimed. What ensued was not so much a meal but a fight to the death battle, ending with comatose diners staggering out the door in bewilderment, bloated in gut and ego, and with a void the size a month’s worth of London rent in the pocketbook.

Just got back

..from glorious Baja, where we spent many long days on nearly deserted beaches, interrupted only by quick sojourns back into town for tacos and ceviches, washed down by plenty of Pacifico. Yes, of course I took some pictures, but Im not compelled to attend to them at the moment. I'm just a little too tired from all that relaxing. Come back in a day or two and I promise to tell you what the breakfast of eggs and shaved dried beef tasted like.

In the meantime, join Adam's Gourmet Survivor game to benefit Katrina victims. Have a little fun while helping out a good cause. Cheers.

A hick in critic's clothing

People in the city complain about their Bruni, while we in the other city moan about our Bauer. And Ced, dear Ced just goes on sans cesse about his darling Meredith.

But you know what? It's the Londoners who one up us all.

They are trumping us with this bloke Gareth McLean, the latest in the parade of oddly amateurish restaurant critics in the UK Guardian -some of whom have questionable knowledge of food and even less so of dining in general. In his current review in said paper, Mr.McLean had this to say:

Since I don't believe in foie gras, the ham hock and foie gras terrine was out of bounds. And since it's way too old lady to order soup in a restaurant, the leek and potato soup was also a no-no. That left crab ravioli and red mullet or honey-roasted duck confit salad. Here, my unshakeable belief that crabs are reinforced swimming spiders and so shouldn't be put near one's mouth was, well, shaken. Mainly because it's wrong to eat ducks. Not for the same reason it's wrong to eat pigeons (they're dirty birdies, even if the ones you get in restaurants are not plucked off grimy streets), but because ducks seem like nice birds and, despite often living in stagnant water, mostly look clean. So the ravioli it had to be, and it was very tasty.

With his peculiar -if not downright insane- sensitivities, one wonders what he was doing play-acting a reviewer in the first place. And I'm not even mentioning the part about picking bacon bits out of his teeth and contemplating mending the fly on his PJ. I Kid You Not.

We should all count our blessings, starting right about now.

Dirty Girl's dry farmed Early Girl tamatoes: or why you should shop at the ferry plaza tomorrow, part duh!