MISODOFU

Another fruitful visit to restaurant Inada. Chef Saburo Inada had just returned from Japan, bringing back with him a brownish-greyish paste which he served to me in a scoopful, accompanied by slices of bottarga. I savored microscopic bites, trying very had to guess what it may be. That's a sort of exchange of courtesy among food people, namely the challenge of delicious yet unknown foods. After a few minutes of thinking, all I could tell was that I was trying something which had fermented and which resembled a cheese that tasted like miso. Actually it is miso fermented tofu from the South of Japan. The flavor is quite complex, salty but also reminiscent of chestnuts and of mirin. I had tried something similar in a yakitori joint in Tokyo and tried to get to know more about the product over there, without success of course.

A notable dish was the crab meat wrapped up in scallop sashimi (wonderfully translucent sheaths of fish), sitting on a base of dashi jelly and with grated yuzu sprinkled over it... 
This time I could not find anything about it on the net but have not given up yet.
At the moment my first for fermented foods is quenched by a slim but very dense booklet, Tsukemono, by Ikuko Hisamatsu. It describes a big variety of pickling methods (Japanese and Korean) using miso, salt, rice bran, sake dregs...A veritable goldmine of information.

HOME FOODS- Broad bean salad

Here's the recipe of a delightful salad I conjured up yesterday afternoon:

a cup of freshly shelled broad beans, slightly steamed or tossed in hot water for five minutes.
a cup of thinly sliced Chinese cabbage
two table spoons of chopped fresh cilantro leaves
vinaigrette: olive oil, tamari, mirin, Japanese vinegar and a little water (adjust according to taste but this is the classic Japanese mix used for nearly all recipes), little grated garlic

It's super simple. All has to do with the peculiar taste of the beans. The cabbage is a sort of mild buffer zone, the soft texture of cilantro leaves offers the aromatic binding and the sauce is a slight diversion (the idea is to use little of it, so that one can still taste the bare ingredients.
It worked for me like a few lines of poetry.

Second course was a slice of Poligny St.Pierre, a goat cheese with a very floury bouquet and the consistency of fresh yeast in the middle and fluid cream around the edges. It has the shape of a truncated pyramid and tastes best when the rind has begun to mould into white curls. A divine cheese, serves with white shelled almonds that re-hydrated in water overnight, a spoonful of mixed sprouted grains for a fresh mustardy punch and a few drops of berry juice (any juice as long as it is not too sweet).

CITY TIPS BRUSSELS - La rue des pittas

Pitta is one of those fast foods which actually require a long preparation. It is assembled quickly, that's true. But for that assemblage to be truly successful, several things have to be in order. First of all the selection of thinly cut greens to be packed into the flat durum bread and briefly toasted. Your average pitta joint will probably display thick cuts of onion, carrot, canned mais, tasteless beef tomatoes (if you are lucky) and lettuce. At "L'Express" pitta comes in the best Lebanese version. Just imagine the visual effect of thinly sliced cucumbers, fennel, carrot, parsley, red cabbage and the dazzling array of flavors they can conjure up. Of course the main pleasure of a pitta is the meat. Roasting on the spits, totemic cones of marinated chicken and lamb have been assembled slice over slice, after marinating for a day. The marinate is the secret of the house (finally a business that has a secret they can be proud of and which is more than MSG...). I guess there is some citrus fruit in it for the slightly tart juiciness and possibly some typically Lebanese spice like the burgundy colored grains they use over raw onions. The bottom line is that the meat used in these pittas is of good quality.
Most pitta joints use some kind of greasy spam, a reconstituted tasteless brownish mass that imitates the shape of the piles stakes but simply does not compare to them in terms of flavor.
To blend the meat and veggies a sauce it may a good idea to spread a creamy sauce on the durum bread. In most cases, mayo or other mayo-based sauces will be used. The good news here is that house offers freshly made garlic sauce (best with a dash of hot harissa) and even the tahina sauce (sesame seeds).
Stepping into L'Express is like joining a busy film set: customers hang around the counter, giving the odd glance to the large flat screen broadcasting an Oriental version of MTV. Three men cook the pittas in white shorts and ties, looking like the cast of a French movie from the 60s. On their side, a cornucopia of fresh fruits for juicing and below a small room where customers can try out some shisha.

ELDERBERRY

Notwithstanding the fact that supermarkets are best to be avoided, they still provide an interesting research ground as to what the industry thinks customers will be more attracted by. At least, that's how I look at them: they are a display of the industry's applied intelligence. Yesterday I paid a short trip to one of these medium size city supermarkets.
It was time of Christmas foods reductions. Small samples of cheeses packed together with a small bottle of truffle flavored oil apparently sold less well than expected.
To my surprise, I could not find wheat germ, yeast extract, corn flour. These are basics that are used for baking. The fact that they were not there tells me that very few people are busy with foods that take a bit of time to make and bake.
Anyway, at one point I caught the sight of a bottle of elderberry syrup. Elderberries grow a bit everywhere. In Italy there is an industrial cordial called "Sambuca", which is extracted from the plant, has a flavor similar to pastis and makes water turn into a milky liquid.
The flowers are white, very small and they grow like an umbrella. My mum tells me that they were used to make biscuits and that they are quite aromatic. I even found a recipe for covering these umbrella-formations in a sweet batter and frying them.
The berries are a bit more difficult to come by. The only time I remember tasting them was in 1996, in the Black Forest, near Freiburg. In Germany it is easy to find elderberry jelly, a dark jelly with a flavor with a very subtle flavor.
The reason why the elderberry syrup was there, next to an Alpine herbs cough syrup, is that elderberries are a mega source of Vitamic C. A closer look revealed that the syrup is mostly sugar and that elderberries are a mere 14%. Despite this (the fact that one is buying sugar for a pretty high price), two spoonfuls of syrup contain 100% of the recommended daily Vitamin C intake for an adult person.
Here below is a comparison between grapes and elderberries.

GRAPE

Nutrition values:
Vitamin A: 80 I.U. per 100 gm.
Vitamin B: Thiamine 0.06 mg.:
Riboflavin 0.04 mg : Niacin 0.2 mg.
Vitamin C: 4 mg.
Protein: 1.4 gm
Calories: 70
Fat: 1.4 gm.
Carbohydrates: 14.9 gm.
Calcium: 17 gm.
Iron: 0.6 mg.
Phosphorus: 21 mg.

ELDERBERRY
Nutrition values:
Vitamin A: 600 I.U. per 100 gm.
Vitamin B: Thiamine 0.07 mg.:
Riboflavin 0.06 mg : Niacin 0.5 mg.
Vitamin C: 36mg.
Protein: 2.6 gm
Calories: 72
Fat: 0.5 gm.
Carbohydrates: 16.4 gm.
Calcium: 38 gm.
Iron: 1.6 mg.
Phosphorus: 28 mg.

GASTRONOMICA

Interview with Darra Goldstein, editor and founder of "Gastronomica". Darra is professor of Russian literature at Williams College.
A fascinating Skype conversation, nearly an hour long, which failed to be recorded, leaving me in the panic to remember it all!
Anyway, the text will be published by the Slowfood magazine.
As a preview, I'm posting pictures of what must have been a pretty memorable event back in 1959, the first USIA (United States Information Agency) exhibition, "The American National Exhibition" in Moscow! The Eameses took part and designed some of the displays. In addition, Nixon and Krushev had a rather blunt exchange of minds, triggered by the display of "the American kitchen". It went down in history as the "kitchen debate" and I will try to search for a transcript of the conversation.
The USIA exhibitions lasted until 1979, and Darra worked on the last edition, which was dedicated to agriculture.

HOME FOODS - FERMENTED NUT CHEESE

This is a pretty freaky field I discovered in the book by Renee Loux Underkoffer, "Living Cuisine". Basically the Maui-based chef makes something similar to cheese by letting re-hydrated seeds ferment with non-pasteurized miso and then mixing this with different herbs and shredded vegetables. It just did not work. I was quite puzzled, until I realized that the 85 degrees temperature needed by fermentation was quite a bit more than the 18 degrees of my kitchen!

Now I am trying on the lowest temperature inside the oven...

In the meantime, my first batch of red cabbage sauerkraut has been officially launched. After some cross-checks I decided to opt for the ceramic bowl plus plate option. I am taking some risks, since the two don't fit tightly. But after some reading, the worse that can happen is that I will have to discard the layer closest to the top.

Why I am using the ceramic bowl has to do with the fact that I wasn't able to find fermenting crocks in Brussels. The organic stall-holders from the market pointed me to the Polish immigrants in Brussels. After all, isn't Poland one of the homes of pickled cabbage? Well, it's the home of industrially made sauerkraut. All the Polish shops I visited sold the stuff but both the owners and customers could not believe that when I said I wanted to make "sauerkraut", I actually meant making the sauer kraut myself, from scratch.

It was not even easy to look for these recipients on the net because at first I did not even know under what name I should look for them. Now, after some research, I can point all those interested to the cheapest German fermenting crock supplier.

HOME FOODS - GOMADOFU

Time to try new things! After some searching for the magic ingredient, I managed to make "gomadofu". It took a few minutes and an hour resting time in the fridge. I followed a very simple recipe by Clea, published in her book on agar agar. Agar agar is a Japanese seaweed, available as a white powder and used to turn liquids into a nice textured jelly that will stand pretty warm temperatures (something that does not happen to other types of gelatine). Clea's version takes less time than the traditional one I saw the chef of a shinto monastery perform in front of my eyes. I was spending some time on Mount Haguro, one of the holy shinto places of Japan. One of the traditional foods of the monks is a tofu-like block made with sesame seeds. The Japanese chef had to give the mix a vigorous beating in order to get the required silky consistency. 

By using agar agar, the whole process is faster and easier and the result quite fine! I served it with a sauce of tamari, vinegar, oil and yuzu spicy sauce. But next time I want to experiment with a yuzu flavored version and a different nut (why not cashew or almond) in the place of sesame.

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.

CHICKEN

First meal of 2008: boiled cock! 

Outrageous? Boring? No, no, no, it's delicious. Definitely a forgotten pleasure.

Of course, when the only place where one can buy chicken is a supermarket where supply only includes mass produced and badly fed birds, there is no point trying the recipe out. But if you can buy a cock from a farm or find a good quality specimen in a store somewhere, then boiling over a low fire with vegetables can yield a divine meal.

An adult male chicken requires a bit of work, a series of operations that my mum used to carry out when I was a child and which served as a first, domestic introduction into basic animal anatomy. Yesterday, after many years, she went through the motions again, showing me how to clean the stomach, remove the bile, the eyes, the tongue and so on. The deconstruction of the bird turned into a baroque ceremony as the tv played the famous arias from the Opera of La Fenice in Venice.

The chicken made a last plunge into a tall pot of boiling water. After 45 minutes, carrots, celery, red onion, garlic, fennel, catalogna spigata, bay leaves and potatoes followed. 

Little compares with young chicken stock, well actually hen's stock is even better (they say it's the food reserved for a woman who has just given birth, my mum's tale from a century and a half ago). 

I also like the Chinese version, where the chicken is served cold with a wine and garlic broth.

But in China you can still buy your chicken alive and people (some old people) know what a tasty chicken looks like. But that's another story...

FOOD PEOPLE

MOIRA HOLLAND or why I like old people...

Moira is a 76 year old woman living in Cuggiono (Italy). I met her in the Eremo di Miazzina, a recovery hospital for old people north of Lago Maggiore. At first I thought her funny Italian accent had something to do with the people living in the mountains. But when I asked her where she came from she answered "sono inglese". As conversation continued in English I said, "you are not English, you are English". The accent I know too well but this was an Irish-born, Scottish-raised woman whose family actually came from Flanders and received the surname "Holland" from their area of origin. In Britain, the Hollands where linen weavers, a Flemish speciality of those times (19th century I suppose).

Anyway Moira left home at 19 - she did not get on with her stepmother - and embarked on a ship. The next thirty years she worked as an onboard chef, traveling across the Oceans, from South America to the Caribbean Islands. She learnt to dive a bit and water ski. 

I asked her what was the most beautiful place she ever visited:

"there are not beautiful places, it's the atmospheres, flying from Lima to Caracas, the Amazon forest below me like an endless carpet, in 1986".

Today, Moira is learning to walk again after breaking her hip and spending 12 days in reanimation.