Category Archives: Cooking

TikTok Food

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TikTok has been around since 2016 and caught on like wildfire amongst young people all round the world, as quickly as Facebook did when it first took off. It is fast and furious, and because of this terribly addictive, leaving you wanting more. Essentially, it is a social media platform primarily targeted at GenZ, who spend hours making and viewing their’s and each other’s short, snappy and slickly-edited videos. Each TikTok video typically lasts less than a minute. After clicking on a random video, the viewer can easily find themselves immersed in watching hundreds of other videos from that person’s account and then before they know it are onto someone else’s videos. An hour or more can easily pass by just as the videos do.

The choice of topics covered on TikTok is endless, but most videos are about the stuff that young people are into these days, including dance moves, fashion, jokes, adorable pets, lip synching and slapstick pranks. They also include skills that traditionally most kids have not shown much interest in, such as cooking. I was listening to The Food Programme on the radio the other day which just so happened to be featuring the growing trend amongst young people watching TikTokers demonstrating how to cook, that is quick and easy, without fuss, while looking yummy. Collectively called #FoodTok, videos in this genre have been viewed many billions of times. The mind boggles.

One of the people mentioned in the programme was Poppycooks, who has made a name for herself by specialising in how to cook the humble spud. Her video of how to make roast potatoes went viral which she then followed up with several other recipes of cooking potatoes, from crispy to crunchy to fried to mashed. She was really clever in working out how to keep viewers coming back for more, by adding a new video each day of the advent calendar, this Christmas just gone, comprising 25 recipes. The best was left to the 25th December, salty, super-thin, mouth-watering chips. They are indeed moreish. Poppy also has a cheeky look, adding a pinch of humour every now and again. You can’t but help fall for her and her style of cooking. The sound of her breaking open and biting into a crunchy potato is mouthwatering – and would make most people want to peel some potatoes and get cooking.

Like with other social media platforms, the secret to which TikTok videos become viral is largely down to a combination of algorithms, appeal and advertising. The trick is working out how to sustain interest. Many people may have a one hit wonder while a few go on to make a career out of it. Poppy, for example, has nailed it. She now has over 2 million followers. But staying high in the leagues of TikTok influencers creates huge pressure. The FoodTokers have to keep conjuring up new recipes they can show off in consistently tantalising ways always under 60 seconds! It is an amazing skill. Unlike the celebs of yesteryear, who have become famous through wealth, being in the know, being a looker, and/or having a huge talent, these youngsters can rise to the top  through their deft video-making and editing skills, making things look easy and super cool. They may only discover they have a real talent to entertain when beginning to create the videos. And literally anyone with a smartphone/camera can bubble up and become a star over night. This is one of the joys of this media – its serendipity.

Sometimes, people experience autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) when watching FoodTok videos, which essentially is a tingling body sensation that starts on the scalp and then progresses down the back of the neck and spine. For some people, this kind of sensation can be triggered by listening to crunching, slurping and other whacky sounds. SamSeats, for example, has made an amazing video of many tingling sounds associated with preparing a fancy ratatouille dish.  The sounds include ice cubes being dropped in a bowl, a knife slicing through an assortment of veggies and the rapid and fine chopping of garlic cloves and sprigs of herbs. It is music to the ears and makes you want to watch and listen to the video again. Each time you do, you hear something new. The second time I viewed it, I heard the glugging sound of oil being poured from a bottle and the frying of onions. Such food performances, speeded up to fast-beat tempos, are simply sumptuous. I can see how addictive they are (although sadly I never experienced the ASMR sensation of tingling).

And now I am tempted to upload to TikTok my old fashioned YouTube video (10 years old now) of ‘a plate of sizzling food’ being served up. Here it is: sizzle sizzle.

 

(Image of roast potatoes from lianaskitchen.co.uk)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

British Bake-Off

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NadyiaI couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between two ladies, in their eighties, sitting at the next table to me at Costa Coffee as I was trying to do some marking. It was much more riveting than the printed words in front of me. One was regaling to the other her immense pleasure at watching the last episode of the Great British Bake-off. The other had not watched it but listened intensly.

Her friend was waxing lyrical in a loud voice about the programme. Her opening gambit was saying how a lovely Muslim woman had won it:

“She was a typical Muslim woman – very timid. You know. But then as the show went on she really blossomed. I thought how wonderful. You don’t see that, do you? Oh and her husband was a real hunk. Got his own fan club now. Not surprised. Lovely couple…”

Her friend nodded with interest.

“Must come from a really good British family. On the last day at the tea party her mum and dad were so excited for her. And her husband thinks the world of her. I have never seen such a lovely couple. Gorgeous. Don’t see that in a Muslim family. He gave her so much encouragement. He was so proud of her… It brought tears to my eyes.”

The star of the show, Nadiya, is a Bangladeshi mother of three, aged 30. She and her husband have shown what a truly multi-cultural society we are in the UK, slicing through all the stereotypes about what it means to be a Muslim in Britain. The same conversation I just heard, is being repeated up and down the country, in its myriad of coffee shops and echoed throughout social media – in the aftermath of the competition. There have been hundreds of thousands of tweets about her victory – all in the same vein. Just a few have dared to say she only won it because she was a Muslim. Which of course is absolute rubbish. And has been counter-argued by the likes of Pritha Bardhan, who tweeted, “She won the Great British Bake Off because she’s able – not because she’s a Muslim woman. Her soda can cake and choco peacock were amazing.”

weddingcakeNadiya’s showstopper in the final was to bake a British wedding cake for the one her and her husband never had at their wedding. It was a lemon drizzle cake (a classic British favorite) draped in some of the jewelry she wore at her wedding and wrapped with some of her sari dress. She joined her britishness with her culture. Perfect fusion.

A striking factoid about what it means to be British is that more people watched The Great British Bake Off final than voted for the Conservative Party in the last general election in the UK. Well over 14 million viewers watched it live (while many more watched it later on iPlayer). That speaks volumes.

Ninja Talk

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greensmoothie Many of us dread going to the hairdressers as much as we do when visiting the dentist. Having to engage in small talk for an hour or so can be quite exasperating. After the first few minutes of niceties ‘sharing’ where you went on holiday, followed by isn’t this spell of hot weather too much, the conversation can often dry up. A few can open up too much and start to overshare what they got up to last week or moan incessantly about anything from the price of parking in town to the crisis at Calais. The easy option is to hide behind the glossy magazines, immerse oneself daydreaming in the background music or play Candy Crush on one’s smartphone.

I actually look forward to going to my hair salon as I have developed a quirky rapport with my stylist, Ella, where we usually skip the small talk and move straight into something a little more alternative – whatever tickles our fancy. This morning we began by talking about the row of very luminous green Maidenhair ferns that adorn the windows of the salon. A new addition. I asked her how come they were looking so healthy when they are so hard to look after. That was her cue. Ella went into rapture as she marvelled about the precarious art of fern care. Besides frequent watering and daily misting the secret is to give them a full immersive soaking once a week – but not any old soak it has to be just so and only for a few minutes. At the beginning of their new life in the salon they nearly died. It was only when one of the assistants took over did they make a recovery.
maidenhair

We then moved onto the current craze of using Nutribullets for making smoothies for breakfast and throughout the day. She regailed how her last one went up in flames and left the house reeking of an acrid burning smell. On investigating why it had spontaneously combusted it turned out that she had left it on for a couple of minutes too long and that had no doubt caused the motor to overheat. She fessed up to walking away to do something else and then coming back ‘probably’ a bit longer than a couple of minutes. Anyone who has kept a blender on full blast for a few minutes knows that smell only too well. Anyway she had the balls to take the burned out bullet back to the kitchen store who replaced it without question for a newer one called a NutriNinja. Those Nutri guys have done their marketing homework. Bullets and Ninjas as names for fruit pulverizers. Masterful.

nutriNinjas are commonly associated with warriors – secret weapons used against enemies. In the US there is a popular TV reality series where competitors have to tackle a series of challenging and heart-stopping obstacle courses to win. It’s about power and blast. The NutriNinja boasts a 900W motor that blends using its “21,000rpm stainless steel blades.”

Unlike the Nutribullet, the NutriNinja has a control panel that allows the user to set the time for the blasting after which it stops on its own accord. Perfect for the likes of Ella who wander off and forget the time. Genius design.

It seems this the Nutri family of machines is transforming a whole generation’s way of eating. Everyone in the salon fessed up to owning a Ninja or a Bullet and enjoying throwing whatever was languishing in the fridge into it to make exotic smoothies or creamy porridge. We went through the list of must-have veggies and fruit to use and the no-no list. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries were the best. Half a carrot not a whole one as it make it too bitter. Avocados and bananas were considered too claggy. Celery did not work well. Ella likes throwing oats, almond milk, dates, frozen berries and some kale into hers for breakfast. Another stylist favoured Kale and spinach and apple and ginger. And on they went including the other clients describing their concoctions and wonder drinks. Vodka was also added for nighttime drinks. They revelled in the art of mixing fruits, vegetables, nuts and grain with yoghurts, milks and whatever – in the way artists enjoy setting up their palettes. Utterly riveting. I was chomping at the bit by the end, ready to go and buy my NutriNinja.

But as with any new pleasure there is always a killjoy lurking in the background telling us too much of a good thing is bad for you. Research has shown that you get hungrier more quickly if you drink vegetable and fruit smoothies rather than crunch and munch your way through them whole. The sugar spike can come all of a sudden causing the premature hunger pangs. But as pointed out by Rhik Samadder on his blog “it’s not for healthy people. It’s for incredibly lazy people.” And there are many of those in the world. Ella, for example, would barely manage a piece of toast most mornings. Now she is powered up with vitamins and zest every morning. And it is so much fun to play with not knowing what it will turn out like each time.

How Much?

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hatch'sThere is a lovely fish market called Hatch’s next to where we are staying on vacation in Cape Cod. There is always a queue of people inside buying from the many different kinds of fish on sale. Three of us went in there the other day to buy some fish for a planned BBQ and looked at each other blankly when confronted with the fish counter – we were clueless. We admitted to each other that we had never bought fish from a fishmonger before. K said she just went and selected fish from the cooler fridge in the supermarket. R simply shrugged and I said I had never bought fish in my life – being allergic to it. We watched the other customers pointing at various fish and making purchases. I watched one woman being handed a big bag and the fishmonger saying “that will be 87 dollars.” I gulped, wondering how was it that fish could cost so much.

Then our turn came. R pointed at the mussels and muttered something like a pound or a pint. The sales assistant helpfully showed us an amount and we all just nodded. Then K asked for some cod. The man asked us how much? We answered in unison, “enough for three?” The man took a huge slab and showed it to us and we all nodded together again. In the end, it turned out to be enough for 10 people!

The next day I went to buy some salt water taffy fudge in an old fashioned candy store and the sales assistant asked me if I wanted a pound? That seemed an awful lot so I replied half a pound – which turned out to still be a lot.

A couple of generations ago everyone went to the greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers and bakers and knew precisely how much and in what units to buy – be it apples, sausages, eggs, bread, milk or sherbet lemons. How we buy has been transformed in the era of supermarkets and online shopping – where we simply look and select pre-packaged food. Some may read the quantity on the label but most just select a shape and check the price.

It is not just the way we shop that has changed it is also many other aspects of how we go about our daily lives. An article in the magazine, TechCrunch, published this week by Rajat Suri discusses how software is transforming how we live, from fine dining to driving cars. He points out how there is “an entirely new consumer-facing software layer of apps and services being deployed as we speak”. Tablets are now appearing on tables in restaurants that diners can select their meals from and no doubt will soon recommend to the diner what they would like to order, thereby obviating the procrastination that wastes waiters’ time when coming to a table to take an order from a party who have not decided. The smart dining software could check, too, the nutrition and calories of the ordered dish which in the background could be uploaded to the diner’s latest healthy living smartphone app. Other vital statistics might then pop up to amuse the diner such as how many people have eaten that dish today, how many are left in that restaurant (thereby removing the disappointment when the waiter returns and says “I am sorry we have run out of that dish.”). Who needs to interact ever again with a surly waiter or a fussy diner?

smileyBut perhaps the scariest idea about smart dining software is to use it “in real time to optimize operational processes like waiter steps of service”. Instead of being able to linger and chat with customers or be assigned to their favourite tables, waiters will be monitored by smart software that will learn and then schedule the most efficient way of getting food to the table with the minimum number of waiter steps, eliminating any unnecessary deviations from the optimal path for the restaurant. Now, that really takes the biscuit out of AI and big data.

Meatless Month

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day1Is it possible to give up meat when you are a serious carnivore? I bet a couple of Danish guys I know – who eat serious amounts of meat usually at every meal – that they could not go a month without it. I was surprised when they took up the challenge. There was much joshing and ribbing in the build up to the start. But on the first day of their new veggie diet, in mid-June, they went about it with much gusto and seriousness.

Throughout their meatless month, they ended up cooking many different dishes of vegetables, cheese, falafel, patties, pastas and more. They went through feeling very hungry, eating healthily, then sometimes eating badly (lots of pizzas, beer and cheese) and having to suffer, by having to cook meat for the rest of their family whilst not eating any of it themselves. It was very difficult at first – but the anticipation of the enormous meat feast at the end kept them going. And what is more, they now eat less meat in their day-to-day diet.

At first they both felt really hungry all the time, but then after a week they began to feel normal and even lost weight. A highlight was keeping in touch on a daily basis through sharing their experiences via email updates. Everyday they took photos and sent them as attachments to me with a description of what they had eaten, with witty asides. I’d really look forward to seeing what they had concocted, and, on the occasional day when they didn’t, would start to get worried. But my fears were unfounded. My emails sent to them showing concern made us bond more and their replies would be even wittier.

By the end of the month I had a collection of 60 dishes they had cooked and/or eaten. Involving the family, sending photos each day and chivvying each other along helped enormously and in its own way was a creative way to change a deeply ingrained and habituated behavior.

Below is an abbreviated version of our shared diary.

Day 1
J: – spinach and ricotta pasta with tomato and chili sauce
So far so good
M: I seriously dont know what to say
BUT Day 1 in the Veg World

Day 2 Breakfast
photobreakfast1
AND there was bacon and sausages on the buffet too, but I proudly did not have any.

Then for dinner:
J: 2x vegetarian pizza. Spinach, mushrooms, feta, chili – they were really good actually!
day2Jesper
M: Homemade Flatbread with Falafel and Fetta
day2M
Day 3
On day 3, M got his daughter and friend involved and they helped cook a 3 course meal:
“My daughter A and her friend made dinner today – 3 courses. Hashbrown with salad as a main and chocolate cake for dessert. Really nice.”
day3J1.1day3J1.2day3J1.3

Day 4

I did not hear anything on day 4 from either of them and got worried, so asked if they had cracked. They replied:

J: “No, not cracked at all..! Made my best effort so far. Mushroom and asparagus risotto – using vegetable stock. Cooked over a few hours in good company of a bottle of Rose. One of our most delicious meals in a long time. I think you would both have liked it.”
M: “No no.. Pasta dish with onion and cream. A little boring. Btw: Yvonne, what should we eat for protein?”

Sunday is usually a day for a roast with a big piece of meat or fish. The guys had to endure a Sunday without:

J: “Leftover Sunday But with a fried egg. The white blob on the left is a slice of goats cheese pretending to be steak ”
leftoversunday
M: “Pasta with spicy beans. The rest of the family had salmon – not easy!”
Mpasta
After the first week I asked them how they felt about having given up meat for a week. Both said they were getting better at it but still felt hungry.

Day 8

This day was really tough for M because he had to visit somewhere that did not cater for non-meat eaters. That can be really hard – especially for the first time:

“We visited C’s daycare center yesterday where we had dinner. I had salad, carrots and rice. Seriously, vegetarians were not catered for. So I had what we call koldskål when I came home (advanced buttermilk).”

After two weeks I sent an email to them celebrating the occasion:

J: That is “two weeks left” I am thinking…
Me: are you dreaming of aubergines or bacon sandwiches?
J: Just bacon – no bread involved in my dreams.

Then came a night without an email from either of them and I got worried again, so sent an email to this effect:

J: “No worries. we had a long working day and ended up at the pizza place where I had a Quatro-Formagio 4x cheese one, again…”

Mbrithday
It was M’s birthday during the month – usually a time for a big feast. He got up at 2.00a.m to pull the pork and slow cook it. Then during the birthday meal, itself:

J: Here is what we had today..
While we had the vegetarian lasagne with salad, on the plate, the other guests had the pulled pork roast sandwiches.. Very hard to stand the temptation! But we did!!”

The use of the subject heading could sometimes be filled with suspense. One day, J simply sent in the subject heading: Oh..and a breadstick….
Inside, the message said: “Very filling :-)”
breadstick
After 3 weeks

“One week left. Look forward to a less restrictive diet, but feel a bit overwhelmed by the thought of mountains of meat, which I dreamt of just two weeks ago…”

Whereas for M, he was finding it all a tad tough:

“Still no meat. But dinners are getting more and more boring.

Nearing the end of the month, fear crept in for J:
“First day with meat will be Friday – at the group’s BBQ at P’s place. I am a bit scared actually… Might have to start out a bit slow. Seem to have adjusted to no meat by now. The first week I was soo hungry, but that is not really the case anymore. In fact I seem to fill up a lot easier than ever before. I also had strong meat craving for the first 2 1/2 weeks, but not so much anymore. A bit confronting when I think about a huge steak actually… what have you done to me!!”

The final day

Was a big surprise.

J: I think this photo speaks for itself..
finalmeatJ First taste of meat after a month. Went to the research group’s BBQ last night, and brought with me the biggest T-bone steak I could find. I must admit that I felt a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to eat it all…

But it was delicious..! Absolutely fantastic, I have to admit. But then again it was a really nice piece of meat. The other meat-things I tried after that (meet balls etc, sausages, etc.) did not give me the same experience of satisfaction. So a month without meat certainly has done something to my perception of meat.
Felt very full afterwards though, and have had a bit of a tight stomach since.. I think I will ease it in over the next couple of days.
But nice feeling to be “allowed” meat again :-)”

M: “In the beginning I was hungry all the time, but was also enthusiastic about the whole thing. I actually searched for interesting and new recipes – which was partially successful. But it was difficult to change as my family still wanted to eat meat. Also, to make more sustained behavior change I think I would have to go into lentils and beans – which I didn’t. So the problem is that I ate unhealthy – chips, cheeses, bread with butter – just to avoid being hungry all the time. But I didn’t have stomachaches like I sometimes have – probably due to the lack of red meat. So I have cut down on red meat – which is probably good for me.”

On my travels, I’ve come across some of the most delicious braais and BBQs. I also discovered pub meat raffles (offering huge tray loads of raw meat). The idea of winning a pile of pork that would otherwise cost 40-50 dollars makes many salivate. However, the prize goes to Fiji, which I am currently visiting. It used to be called the ‘Cannibal Isles’ – a country that up until two hundred years ago still enjoyed eating the flesh (cooked or raw) of its (human) enemies. We’re off to see the caves tomorrow where there is an old cannibal oven still intact…

Deconstructing Salad

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At a workshop I was running the other weekend on ‘Creative Dining, Cooking and Technology’ we were treated to the culinary delights of hot chef Ben Spalding. One of the dishes that he brought to the table was a small bowl containing a delicate salad that was beautifully plated. The pieces were tiny – a wisp of fennel, a sliver of radish, a shard of celeriac. The dish came with a paper print-out listing the ingredients – all 30 of them. Rather than place forkfuls of the assembled leaves, seeds and other tasty morsels into our mouths to munch – as one typically does when confronted with a mixed salad – the brightly-coloured list encouraged us to deconstruct its contents, identifying and matching up each ingredient to those on the list. I managed about 20. My neighbour slightly more. It was very much a shared experience as we compared notes; firstly, describing the visible dimensions, of colour, shape and form and secondly, articulating the taste, crunchiness and lingering flavours. Talking about the leaves transformed the usually talked over salad experience for me.

I asked Ben’s sous-chef, Nathan, what next and he said their new challenge was to come up with 50 ingredients that they could forage and which would go together. Upping the ante or what. Usually, a salad has between 1 and 15 ingredients with a dressing of 4 or 5. It is often regarded as a dish to freshen the taste buds or whet the appetite. Of course, there have always been main salads, where the leaves are accompanied with tuna, chicken, salmon, egg, nuts or cheese, often with grandiose names, such as Caesar, Waldorf, Caprese or Nicoise. But for a side salad to take centre stage and become the talking point was a stroke of creativity.

It made be think of the word salad and my childhood memories of being served it at school. Not nice. Always cold, off-putting and uninspiring: limp soggy-tissue lettuce, insipid thistle-threaded tomato quarters and ugly-tasting beetroot slabs. Then I switched to fonder memories: the first time I really understood what mouth-watering meant: tasting a bunch of ultra-fresh radishes served up by themselves on a plate with salt crystals and a slaver of creamy butter on the side. I could not get enough of the combination.

One memory led to another. Food is great for letting the mind wander. From salad to salad days. A lovely turn of phrase from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra – referring to the period when one was young, inexperienced, and carefree. From carefree to listening to ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon’ being played on Radio One. To baking a different cake each week – chocolate, banana, lemon, cherry, walnut…to the delight of my family at Sunday tea. Stringing together poignant memories is a joy as anyone who has read or seen the film of Nigel Slater’s book Toast will know.

It was lovely to be able to pick at Ben’s salad and discover new ingredients rather than act all grown-up, trying to balance the delicate pieces on a fork. The secret to creative cooking is choreographing surprise that lets the diner deconstruct the dish and discover what’s hidden.

Pairing 101

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It is increasingly trendy for gastronomy restaurants to pair a wine with a course, matching the notes, flavours and textures of one with another. You read the list of ingredients in a dish and then the type of wine they think matches it. Trouble is it is difficult to imagine the effect of the pairing just from the words, and by the 4th dish one begins to start drowning in the adjectives and labels, and start to lose the plot. And, if the tasting menu is 5 courses or more then that amounts to tasting 5 or more different wines. One’s eyes start to swim a bit. But maybe that is all part of the experience.

The basic idea of pairing, which has been around for centuries, is to enhance the dining experience; the elements of one are meant to bring out the elements in the other, resulting in an accentuation of tastes. The texture, smell, sugar, acidity, etc., in both food and wine are assumed to react differently in each other’s company. The trick is to make sure they are compatible in the matching.

There are numerous websites, books and guidance to help the amateur select the right type and taste of wine to match the kind of dish and its way of cooking. For example, Natalie has an online tool that even lets you select a food type (e.g. pasta), a dish made of it (e.g. gnocchi with brown butter and sage) and then when you press the button, it selects the type of wine you should serve up with it (e.g. Pino Blanc).

It is a bit obvious but reassuring for those who are just learning pairing 101. There are some basic ground rules about matching, such as white with white meats and red with red meats. A fundamental aspect is to understand the balance between the ‘weight’ of the food and the ‘body’ of the wine. For example, one would not mix a Cab with a light fish and, conversely, a Pino Grigio with a hearty, venison stew. But when it gets to deciding on a vintage and its terroir and matching these with the complex set of flavours that a good chef creates, you are joining a different league. Only highly trained sommeliers seem privy to the chef’s thinking behind the complex dishes. Then, just like the beautiful game, it can be a pleasure to score, but you need to understand the rules of their game, and they can seem quite elusive at the highest level.

Yesterday we went to a restaurant in Cape Town called Planet that served 5 course menus – both regular and fully vegan – with matching wines selected by the very knowledgeable and brimming with enthusiasm, Carl Heinz Habel. We ordered two regular and one vegan. The pressure to choose the right wine to match the balance of the ingredients in the meal was offloaded into his hands and I, for one, was grateful for this. He seemed so jolly, attentive and knew his onions.

As we sat down on very comfortable chairs in the rather grandiose Nelson hotel, the ladies were tucked in and immediately provided with a handbag stand to place their bits on – rather like the portable stools creaky folk carry around with them to sit on during long trips to art galleries. We were tickled pink by this detail – we could only assume its function was for the ladies to keep an eye on their purse when wanting to do a bit of fixing and fussing without having to grope around on the floor or the back of the chair for it. I kept thinking how some old biddies might have popped their pooch or feline friend in their bag for company. It was the perfect shape and size for nestling a well manicured spoilt pet in.

Our sommelier, Carl, had done all his homework before. He’d gone to great lengths to chose five different wines that matched each of the dishes – and it turns out they were different for the regular and vegan menus. Whereas I had First Sighting Pinot Noir 2009 with my starter of marinated mushroom terrine, G had de Grendel PIno Gris 2010 to match her quail terrine, rooibos cranberry jelly, and smoked corn samoosa. Normal wines use animal products for purification, vegetarian use egg-white and vegan some unheard of chemicals…I was convinced that they were inferior.

We decided to keep the menu as our extended cognition companion, and placed it at the empty place at the table – it proved to be indispensible by the second course, as we could not remember what we had ordered or the wine that was to accompany it!

We straight away tasted each other’s wines. For some, that might seem like defeating the object of pairing but sharing and comparing is such a natural part of the dining experience. My fear was confirmed; I felt short-changed bar one wine. Somehow, G’s wines always seemed more colourful, leggy, full bodied, long noted, punchy, and enhancing. We were completely bowled over by one of her wines, in particular, forgetting all about the food momentarily and just concentrating on savouring her wine – a local Semillion from the Cape. It just sung to us a complex and rich melody – irrespective of the dish we were eating. And we wanted it to keep playing. Sadly, the glass emptied all too quickly and the waiter did not seem to want to replenish it. Instead, the next one arrived, which turned out to be a real anti-climax.

I am sure there is an art to how one tastes a wine, takes a mouthful of it and combines the lingering and ensuing notes – just as there is an art to tasting dishes. However, I always get caught up in the conversation and forget to drink the wine, after an initial tasting. Then before you know it, the waiter is standing next to you, ready to pour the next pairing wine. I either have to leave the old one standing or slug the remainder quickly. Neither approach is satisfactory. I can’t seem to get the talking, wine sipping and food sampling mix sorted.

Knowing how often to sip, at what point during the eating and how much to leave at the end to maximize the balance of grape and grub, seems a step too far for me. And sometimes one can be mightily disappointed with a wine and not know what to do, especially if your fellow diners are enjoying theirs much more. One of my vegan wines had no taste at all. It simply vanished in the mouth and left me wondering where had it gone. When I explained this experience to the sommelier, he was rather taken aback; presumably it being rare for a diner to dare question his selection. He swiftly took my barely touched glass away and returned, saying that there was nothing wrong with the wine – insinuating, perhaps, that it was my palette that was at fault. As a gesture, he replaced it with a big fat bulbous glass filled to the brim with a big, shouty Chardonnay. I was not sure how to react to his brashness and so took a tiny sip, heard it scream “tourist” at me and so left it equally untouched until the next more lively glass of Pino Noir arrived.

I am sure pairing can be lots of fun; breaking down and matching up the elements that chef and sommelier have brought together but, on reflection, perhaps we’d have been better off slowly sharing, at our leisure, the same bottle of fine wine, that we all liked the sound of rather than being paced by the courses.

And finally, as noted by wine expert Mark Oldman, “Food and Wine pairing can be like sex and pizza: even when it’s bad, it can still be pretty good”. But a very dry wine with a very sweet food is, in his words, “the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard” (Wikipedia). On another day, I am sure my vegan wines would have enhanced the dishes, but on this occasion, the more powerful and potent opulent atmosphere of the place and the wit and charm of my dining companions, overshadowed the potential pleasure of the subtle pairings on offer. But much merriment was had by all.

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.

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.

Sizzle Service

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A group of about 12 of us traipsed down to the basement of a restaurant in Chinatown on a rainy and windswept evening in Manchester. It was the tail end of our second day at an intensive workshop, where we had been hard at work landscaping the future of human-computer interaction research. We were exhausted and hungry. Two round tables had been pushed together in a corner, under a cove, hidden away from the rest of the restaurant. We shuffled in and sat down in anticipation. Big, heavy, black-coated menus were handed out to each of us. We began flipping through the vast encyclopedia of dishes, embedded in sticky plastic pages.

My neighbour to the left, M, and myself took the easy option, selecting the vegetarian set meal – not wanting to navigate and choose. The rest went for the full chinese, selecting an assortment of platters.

To our surprise, the veggie soup arrived first. Two bowls of murky brown liquid, with various mushroomy things floating in them, were placed in front of us. We looked at each other, took a sniff of the rising steam, and instantly had the same gut-reaction. The smell was acrid and sewer-like. I’ve never been keen on the British variety of Chinese food – liberal lashings of MSG do not agree with me. But this kind of whiff was new to us, signaling a no-no; we both moved our bowls to the centre of the table, untouched, and switched back to our bottled beers.

I then went in search of the toilets, and found them at the top of a rickety staircase, which was hidden behind a thick curtain. Stacked up outside the ladies were boxes and sacks of onions, carrots, greens and other supplies. They had to be awkwardly navigated around. Once inside, it was cold and shabby; a notice on one cubicle door saying ‘out of order’.

The evening was not boding well.

It is times like this when one needs to dig deep to raise the spirits – or take one’s leave – which was not an option. I gulped slowly on the cold air and descended again.

A large tureen of chicken soup had arrived that was being efficiently ladled into two semi-circles of bowls, next to where my seat was. This classic dish was appreciated much more by our fellow diners than the pungent vegetable soup. Soon after, the ubiquitous duck arrived with plates of flat pancakes, diced spring onion, cucumber and various red and brown sauces. No veggie equivalent was brought and so our companions invited us instead to make duckless rolls. We declined.

Meanwhile, the waitress had stood right next to me, chopping and dicing the meat off the duck’s back, inches from my face. I took out my iPhone and filmed the last moments of the spectacle. I am always amazed at how rapidly a whole solid form can transform into a plate of shreds. But to be so close was something else.

Our party, now filled with chicken gloop, relaxed and raised their voices. M and I looked at each other and sipped our beers again. What were we to do? We took the duck scene as our cue to be mischievous. I can resort to being quite cheeky if it is just me out of my comfort zone – and when not able to escape – but with two of us in the same state and up for it – well, it can get out of control.

A lively member of our party, H, on the opposite side of the table had been telling her neighbour about her hen night. We listened in. She started to tell us about how Tim the butler, had suddenly appeared at her house, with a well-chiseled and buffed six-pack, standing to attention, almost naked. He spent the evening with her and her friends, playfully serving them cocktails and nibbles from the fridge.

This picture of fantasy service was in such contrast to the prosaic, slap-on-the-table style we were witnessing. M and I began playing a game of ping-pong, batting quips and one-liners across to H and each other about the contrasting scenes. We stretched the butler story far for all to share, embellishing and exaggerating in detail the more surreal aspects. Our banter became contagious and before long we had the whole table in fits of laughter.

Plates of more dodgy-looking, lurid-coloured and MSG lacquered food arrived, but it ceased to matter. M and I picked at it and puckered our faces; by this stage the evolving narrative had become our food. Our chopsticks became drumsticks and we drum rolled each new part that was added to the story or repeated in more detail.

The climax came when the waitress slapped down a signature dish of fizzing, shiny meat. “Sizzle, sizzle.”

There is only so much high-octane, chopstick banter that can be juggled before it falls pancake flat. After the sizzle moment, we grabbed the keynote speaker, who was falling asleep from Korean jetlag, and took her back to the hotel – but not without encountering a murky tapioca lake of hailstones and sleet that had descended on the streets whilst we were in the bowels of Mancunian Chinatown.

Timing is everything.

And check out Butlers in the Buff.

Tasting Colour

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There is an art to selecting a superlative set of adjectives to describe the eating experience of gastronomic dishes – just as there is to explaining the fusion of ingredients and methods used to create them. Reading the captivating and conjuring words for dishes on a menu, then hearing the expanded accounts from the waiters standing next to you bearing plates of delights, primes the taste buds, but recounting afterwards the sensuous and delectable explosion of tastes they elicit can leave the uninitiated fumbling in the dark. The ease and eloquence with which the top chefs judge and comment on the finalist’s dishes of this year’s BBC Master Chef competition puts me in the shade. Instead of trying to compete with the food critics, chefs and foodies, I decided to ask my dining companions to talk about what ever triggered their experience of eating amazingly prepared molecular food.

Three of us went to Roganic, a temporary (pop-up) organic restaurant in Marylebone, run by Simon Rogan and Ben Spalding, and described by John Lanchester (the food and drink critic for the Guardian) as “pop-up on Viagra” with a “fair degree of modernist wizardry”.

We opted for their modest -sized and -priced, three-course lunch.

My companions, Paul and Nadia, started off in fine fettle, describing the free appetizer in terms of its unexpected weight and how it took them completely by surprise, as its texture and shape suggested it should be something else. Paul exclaimed, with animated gesture:

“It was like double surprising, it looks much heavier than it is, you pick it up and you realize it is much lighter than it is…You think it is going to be crunchy because of the crunchy stuff all the way along the top and then you bite into it and it is squidgy all the way through.”

This form of unexpectedness seems to be key to the intensity of subsequent pleasure.

As we moved onto the starters, Nadia began talking about her food colour experience – that neither of us had ever heard of before – and for which her husband thinks she is slightly barmy. She started explaining how she sometimes experiences – without warning – eating food in terms of hues and different shades of beige and brown. She does not know when it will happen, or which foods; it just happens:

“I don’t see it here (points to dish). I see it inside (points to her chest). Beige. I don’t know how to explain it. For me there is a clear link. I can’t cook with it because, if I think about it, it is a totally different experience, as it becomes an association. It comes, just like that, I can’t stop it.”

How exciting is that, I thought, sometimes getting an internal colour that you can’t see when eating a dish. Far from thinking she was a bit batty I was rather envious. I’ve never had an internal colour experience.

Back to earth – we noticed on entering the restaurant that there was a large pebble in the middle of each table. It seemed to go against my naïve knowledge of Feng Shui. The waiter smiled when we asked what it was for and said wait and see. We tried to guess – not having read any of the foodie reviews which mention it – but all got it wrong. The waiter reappeared and plopped on it a dollop of hand-churned, Malvern-salted, infused butter. Instead of the usual discreet side-pot of top-sliced butter we had a pièce de résistance – a cream, pearl-wave perched on a powerful rock, overshadowing even the beautifully nested assortment of bread rolls and crisp bread. And it felt beige!

Something as simple as changing the setting makes one see, the often taken for granted, in a completely new light – in this case, bread-spread. We all wanted immediately to scoop it up and then gleefully drop it on to our bread.

The pebbles are handpicked from Folkestone beach by the chef and their cold core keeps the soft creamy butter from melting, but also acts as a good ice-breaker for the dining party – you can’t help but notice it when you sit down. Clever.

I was curious to know how they were cleaned – thinking 30 large stones in a dishwasher might be quite a challenge to balance alongside the plates and glasses – not quite the same as stone washing a pair of Levis. Of course, there is a carefully thought out stone-cleaning procedure, including soaking them every night in salted water, boiling them for a couple of hours each week and lots of brushing and scrubbing afterwards, to make them pristine clean. They even tried baking something on them one time in the oven but several broke so they abandoned that idea. This anecdote of exploding rocks triggered Paul to recall his own about how when he and his wife lit a fire on a big rock to cook al fresco – while camping in the Australian outback. It turned out to be a sedementary stone that exploded in their faces, showering them with pieces of hot stone that burned little holes in their clothes. Stone the crows, I thought.

The unexpected highlight for me was a leek dish that used the King Richard variety. It turned out to be far from being the common or garden variety and much more befitting of its regal name. My categorizing of leeks is something I cook up with potatoes on a cold day to make a hearty soup. Roganic’s dish, however, completely reconstructed my conception of what a leek is. To start, the waitress came over to our table and showed us the dish that had just come out of the oven, explaining how it had been cooked. At first glance, it looked like a small, uncooked Cornish Pasty on a bed of peat covered in thyme. Then she pointed out that what we were looking at was a clay dish and we realized that the leek had been encased and cooked in its own mummy-like, clay pot. When next it arrived, de-cased and plated, it looked plump and golden, sitting on a spread of shallot jam. The waiter then shaved a Norfolk truffle ball on top of it, using great precision. My King Richard was finally ready to eat. My moment of pleasure turned into an explosion of intense flavours – I’ve never experienced a leek to be quite as beautiful. The Barcelona tapas experience came flooding back to me. I had to close my eyes and go ‘ahhhhhhhh’.

Each of the dishes brought their own surprise array of delights that we joyfully assayed; colours, textures, weightiness, crunchiness, and whatever words came out of our mouths. We tried their signature onion ash (that looked like something in between peppery flour and the gunpowder debris from indoor fireworks) along with foraged herbs, petals, wood sorrel, intensely, aniseedy shoots and various sprigs and seeds.

Finally, we enjoyed a warm afterglow that ended the meal – a small liquor glass of Douglas Fir-infused milkshake followed by a baby Victoria sponge cake which popped and crackled as we bit into its icing – like a delicate sparkler going off in the mouth. If only I could get a silver colour like Nadia gets her beige colour. Just imagine what that would be like.