Monthly Archives: February 2012

Bunny Chow

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It is funny how certain dishes grab your attention immediately on a menu. The one that got my eyeballs today, when we were having lunch at a local surfer’s café, was “Bunny Chow Chicken Curry Pizza.” Now that is a mouthful to read! And parsing it took me into an unknown space. I tried conjuring up the components and an image of rabbit’s ears together with ‘number 55 chinese take away’ on a piece of fine Italian dough came to mind. Not a pretty sight.

Gary laughed at my naïve translation; pointing out that the bunny derives from a South African word for a local indian people (Bania) and not from the pet rabbit. Usually it is just called bunny chow chicken curry but this dish had been extended, presumably for the macho surfer – in the way the ‘gutbuster breakfast’ at a certain all nighter cafe in Brighton, UK has become legendary for serious nightclubbers in the early hours.

The café we were visiting was located in Muizenberg – a popular very blue and laid back beach place, open to surfers of all levels. It was on the front with fantastic views overlooking the bronzed bodies and shark tattooed boards. Gary had the bunny (see above) and I had a less evocatively named, but still tasty, toastie sarnie.

The original South African dish originates from the 1940s as indeed a kind of take-away. The local Indians, who were not allowed in certain cafes and shops during Apartheid, were served a lovely curry, out the back of the restaurant window in Durban, in a scooped out loaf of bread. The bit that was scooped out was then put back on the top like a plug – the bread acting like a container. The modern day version is more refined but the sentiment behind the dish remains. And apparently the butter chicken is every bit as scrumptious.

I remember frequenting an American-style bakery chain, called Panera, at lunchtimes when I lived in Bloomington, Indiana. It also used to serve piping hot food in very large scooped out sour dough bread – if requested by the customer. They literally called it a ‘bread bowl’. Bunny chow, however, looks and sounds much better.

Just like I find the name odd, I find it strange that you can eat the container your food arrives in. Now, that really is sustainable cooking.

Cape Town

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I nearly had to postpone the start of my dream fellowship trip to Cape Town, as flu continued to wreak havoc with my body, brain and mind. I’m normally a heavy cold person – getting caught out once a year – and soldier on, with tissues abound. But this time, I was knocked for six. Splitting headaches, shivering bones, crawling skin, and no appetite for life.

Somehow, I managed to get through the worst of it by the weekend and decided to take the risk of flying.

As I was gingerly whisked off to Heathrow, my driver commented on how the way to tell whether someone has flu or a cold is to tell them there is a £20 note in the garden. If they have a cold they go outside and pick it up; if they have flu, they won’t even register what you are saying.

I don’t even remember looking outside or opening the blinds. I did not even Google my symptoms to check what I had. For the last 4 days I had been struggling to think along a straight line, let alone bothering to check my email, etc. Instead, all I did was fall into feverish, delirious sleep at every opprortunity. When eventually I woke up, I’d struggle to the bathroom, and then return to bed in an altered state for another day.

The flight to Cape Town just passed me by. Then I watched the passengers as they plopped out of the plane, like drops from a pipette, onto hot soil. The warm unfamiliar air hit my face as I joined them. I was taken aback. I’d managed to arrive without going through any bout of nerves, anxiety or stress. At least there was a silver lining to the great illness.

G, my host, welcomed me to his adopted country. He looked totally at one in it. As we drove through the burbs back to his abode, I listened to him talk about “braai”, and living in different parts of SA. Then we drove to the bay, bought excellent coffee from a wonderful local bakery, sat down for a bit and watched some baby seals flip their tails. There was an intoxicating smell of fresh fish being grilled, cleaned, and caught. Everywhere I looked, I sensed a Hockney-sparkle in the water.

Peacefulness and perfect sunshine enveloped me. I felt my body beginning to stir; ready for some blue-sky thinking.

Sweet Spot

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There is a new American quarterly magazine out called Lucky Peach that is about food and writing; the second issue features articles on the sweet spot of cooking. Such moments occur at a significant point in the trajectory of cooking – when something tastes just perfect, having been matured, dried, marinated, etc. Left any longer and the magical umami is ruined. Any less and it has not triumphed.

Underlying the metaphorical term is the idea that there is a limited window of opportunity to discover the optimal experience. For a chef to hit the sweet spot requires making a dish just so. Sweet spots can also have perfect moments. But you have to know how to recognize them. They can easily come and slip past unnoticed. A chef can overdo a dish by not turning the heat down at a key moment.

“You have to act at certain moments in certain ways. That is what cooking is.” (Donald Patterson, Lucky Peach)

Magic moments happen when the diner, reciprocally, experiences the chef’s perfect moment; often it comes unexpectedly and that is part of the magic. Suddenly, out of the blue, arrives a train of intense sensations. The trick for the diner is to savour them for as long as possible; lingering over them and replaying their unfolding delights before depositing them in a multi-sensory memory bank.

The other week I revisited Roganic; this time, with some fellow colleagues, S and D, from the Slade School of Art. They were as enchanted by the whole dining experience as P and N were as described in an earlier post.

D and I had the vegetarian menu. As we contemplated the sweet spot, our first dish arrived; “caramelized cauliflower, sour cream, raisin, roasted lettuce and pennywort.” It comprised smoked cauliflower florets, both white and brown, and a glistening gem lettuce heart sitting like an expensive jewel surrounded by a coating of cauliflower dust, gently flecking the rest of the plate. The composition was simply stunning; the palette of colour, shape, size and texture was perfectly spaced and balanced.

It looked too beautiful to eat – D commented on how it reminded him of a scene from Gulliver’s Travels that he had just been watching with his children. The separation of the tiny vegetables, herbs and thinly painted streaks of sauces made it look like a Lilliput landscape of trees, plants and streams.

We began by visually grazing all the different elements. But our mouths soon began watering, and we found ourselves involuntarily picking up our knives and forks in anticipation of the tastes. First, to be speared was a tiny white floret on the left of the plate. This was followed by the scooping up of an adjacent brown floret; our sweeping manoeuvres were delicately repeated, smearing each floret with alternating touches of brown raison jus and white sour cream. The symmetry was engineered and anticipated as part of the chef’s – Ben’s – perfect moment. We both just got it.

Once the florets had been devoured, we sliced into the emerald centre-piece. The texture of the lettuce and its fused tastes were divine.

Without discussing the implicit ordering behind our deft left-right-centre moves, D and I discovered that we had done exactly the same; it was as if the miniature forest before us suggested how we should approach and enter it in the way a painting does. And yet this was the first time we had seen this delicately poised dish.

It is well known that plating is central to gastronomy along with the selection of cutlery and tableware. One foodie blogger suggests that it should “completely obfuscate how the dish should be eaten. This serves to replace the diner’s initial hunger with feelings of uncertainty, inadequacy, and ultimately inferiority.” However, I think this blogger is missing the point – what is key is the playfulness behind the chef’s plating, especially how it triggers unexpectedness and joy in the gentle deconstruction of it. It is not about feeling like a lesser mortal but understanding its ephemerality – a core part of the pleasure is knowing how to appreciate it when it has gone.