CITY TIPS - BRUSSELS

Stocks at stake

Making a good stock is not difficult. You just need a selection of fresh vegetables (in some countries only organic ones tend to have enough flavor to lend to water) or the vegetables plus a couple types of meat or even bones. You let everything cook over a long time, add the odd bay leaf or whatever comes in handy, and you'll get your stock. Of course, you can try to play with the aroma of spices to obtain subtle variations but the simple version is probably just as good.

Stock is a basic preparation. But that doesn't mean that one should not pay attention to it. Any respectable French chefs know this well. That's why they go through the motions (a couple of days work) to make the "fond blanc" and the "fond brun" that will serve them in all coming preparations. At least in theory.

My impression is that everybody is leaving stock behind. Restaurants do not seem to have the time or place to keep a large pot boiling. Which is understandable for establishments where the presence of a good quality stock is not really essential to any dishes on the menu.

The situation is entirely different if the restaurant is a small joint offering quite a few soups. I am thinking of Asian restaurants, of those lovely noodle soups coming from China, Vietnam, Japan.

Well, I think it is inexcusable for a small joint not to have a good home made stock, cooked over the whole day, with a flavor that grows progressively more complex and delicious.

I have at least two indirect proofs that this can be done:

1. in Japan the individual flavor of the stock is like the brand name of ramen bars. 

In the culinary manga "Aya, conseillére culinaire" de Ishikawa Saburo, episode 1 of volume 1, Aya has to convince an alcoholic chef from a ramen shop to make again the stock that made him famous (and which incidentally contains sake). 

2. A good stock defines a culture. Japanese director Mamuru Oshi built an animation film around Japanese bowls of soup as markers of a certain Japanese erudition and of the changes undergone by Japanese society.

Good reasons are obviously not enough and in the last 24hours I had the misfortune of experiencing how monothematic, flat and artificial stocks have become.

Yamayu Santatsu, ch. d'Ixelles 141

This is generally a good Japanese restaurant, even if the sushi and sashimi à la carte are outrageously priced. Personally I am quite fond of one of their starters, grated yamaimo root, which turns into a gluey white foam, with raw egg and wasabi (or with tuna). I discovered the dish there and suddenly I understood what those long roots I saw in Tagawa supermarket were for. Until then, I believed they were a Japanese variety of manioc (and I nearly poisoned myself when I tried to eat the African manioc raw...). Anyway, the foamy starter is what Japanese food should be and too rarely is: an encounter with the "Other". Two years later, I found out another use of yamaimo, namely steamed, and used as a coating for wagashi sweets.

Anyway, the lunch selection of sashimi is a fair one at 10 euro and you can also opt for gyoza and ramen. That's what I did. I got some tasty gyoza, with nice crispy brown sides. But then came the bowl of ramen, with noodles and pork slices swimming in this very disappointing brown stock.

Hong Kong Delight, rue Sainte-Catherine 35

Several people mentioned this place as being one that offers excellent Chinese cuisine. Finally I got round to visiting it. The place has lacquer duck hanging in the window. Looking through the menu, one finds a selection of vegetables, quite a rarity in most Chinese joints. However one cannot help noticing that a plate of vegetables costs more than a meat dish. What this says to me is that the meat is poor quality and that with veggies one cannot cheat much. Sorry for being cynical but that's what experience tends to do to me...

Anyway, there is one very simple Chinese starter I love, one that you can find in every restaurant in Hong Kong and that is so simple that people even make it at home: it is grated white radish cakes (Lok Bak gow or something like that) with bacon and shrimps. They are steamed first and then fried. Their charm has to do with the consistency which is creamy and light, and with the combination of animal and fish flavors. Well, what I got must have been sitting in the fridge for too long or must have had lots of rice flour and very little grated radish. The result was a stodgy paste with few bits of what looked like slices of hot dog. Simply horrible! The noodle soup with lacquer pork was a mixed affair. The pork was tender and tasty but the stock was a pale bowl of hot water. The noodles were probably already cooked a while before and their consistency had turned stringy.