lizziee

Schielke, This is a copy of Marc's post: Here is an article to be published in the upcoming issue of Great Chefs magazine. MICRI - THE MIRACLE SAUCE BASE Marc Cosnard des Closets 2002 The sunny Costa Brava in Spain is best known for its beaches and tapas bars. Lunch is served at 2 pm and is followed by a siesta before returning to work and dining again at 10 pm. This leisurely pace is why millions of tourists flock to Barcelona and the surrounding area. A visit to the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in the Catalan capital, a bullfight, a plate of smoked ham and marinated anchovies with a glass of hearty red wine are among the main attractions. Few go there to find the perfect ingredient for making sauces. Who could imagine that this area is a veritable laboratory of culinary innovation? In the past ten years celebrated chefs and food scientists have been churning out new ways to prepare and serve food. Foam desserts and multi-layered shot glasses of sweet and savory reductions are served in fine dining establishments around the world. These are just a few of the marvels developed by Catalan chefs in their laboratories. Making a sauce can take hours of work and often requires many hard-to-get ingredients just to distill the essence of a particular product. Most sauce bases are made from animal products such as bone gelatin obtained after long hours of cooking. They need to be flavored with various ingredients, fat must be skimmed off and the sauce must be strained again and again before emulsifying with starches or butter to give it a smooth texture. This whole process results in high saturated fat content and reduced vitamins and proteins. The final sauce base is perishable, has one flavor and one color, usually brown. Professional chefs prepare different sauce bases every day: poultry stock, fish stocks, beef stocks, veal stocks, vegetable stocks etc. Restaurant kitchens have lots of room, many hands and a variety of ingredients to make this possible. At home it is a different story, you usually have to prepare your sauce base the day before you are going to use it and spend hours toiling at the stovetop to reduce your sauce to the right quantity and consistency. Then you store the extra sauce base in your freezer until you use it again or, as is usually the case, throw it out a few weeks later. Now there is an alternative. Chef Miguel Sanchez Romera of Restaurant l’Esguard in San Andres de Llavaneres (Sant Andreu de Llavaneres in Catalan) just 1 hour north of Barcelona, Spain, spent five years developing a neutral sauce base that will revolutionize sauce making. Chef Romera studied fine arts as a youth until he entered the medical field. He is a noted neurologist specialized in epilepsy. He began his culinary career at age 45 and opened his restaurant in a former winery. Today he works in a hospital from Monday to Wednesday and helms the stove the rest of the week. His quest for a perfect sauce base that would be healthy, easy to use and able to support different flavors and ingredients resulted in MICRI, a gel derived from Cassava, a starchy root vegetable also known as yucca or manioc. It is originally from South America and was introduced into Africa by Portuguese sailors. Cassava has a very high vitamin C content and must be cooked before being eaten otherwise it is toxic. The formula is secret but MICRI is being sold in Europe by Spanish company Solé Graells (sole@solegraells.com) at a cost of approximately $15 for a 3-pound container. MICRI is odorless, colorless, tasteless and fat-free. It can be used hot or cold as a sauce base or emulsifier. The semi-hard elastic gel texture can be adjusted by adding water and hand whipping or machine blending. It must be stored between 32° and 47° Fahrenheit and stays fresh 3 weeks after opening. Gelatin has two textures: hard and crumbly whereas a MICRI sauce has a smooth texture. Its chameleon-like ability to retain color and flavor without cooking is unique. A lemon sauce tastes like lemon, rather than lemon and cream or lemon and butter. A Béarnaise can be made with shallots, tarragon, white wine, vinegar and MICRI substituted for the butter and egg yolks. Anyone who has made this sauce knows how fragile it is and how frustrating it can be to serve a beautiful piece of meat and put a broken sauce on the table. Chef Romera’s cuisine is as colorful as it is flavorful. MICRI allows him to offer a variety of taste sensations and visual surprises in each dish. His Venison with Sobresada Tatin, spice sauces and currant sauce is an example of this. Spicy sausage filling, called Sobresada in Spain, is placed on sliced and sugared apples in a mold and cooked for about 18 minutes until the sausage is cooked and the apples have caramelized. Venison loin is seasoned, pan seared in pork lard and served with the Sobresada Tatin, currant sauce and 48 dollops of flavored MICRI. Chopped herbs, spices or blanched and pureed vegetables are mixed with MICRI to preserve their fundamental essence and color. Each bite of venison and Sobresada Tatin varies with the chosen sauce. Like many doctors Chef Romera is modest about his accomplishments. Like many chefs Dr. Romera lets his food speak for itself. He has earned one star in the Michelin guide and his notoriety is growing beyond Spain. A meal at l’Esguard is a pleasure for the palate and a salve for the soul.

Under Spain, Marc Cosnard des Closets mentioned an article that he had wriiten about MICRI, the miracle sauce base that Chef Romera is using at his restaurant, L'Esguard. The article is in the magazine "Great Chefs Magazine", and it is now out on the stands. (It is definitely worth buying.) Jinymo asked "I thought I'd mention that my Google search for MICRI turned up nought. Should anyone have more information about this product, please post in Cooking or General. I am very very interested in the tremendous possibilities." I found it at http://www.solegraells.com/ Now, I have a problem. I don't read a word of Spanish and I would love to order MICRI and try it out. Where is MICRI listed? In what proportions should it be used as a replacement for butter and eggs? Is there anything else that looks interesting to order? How do you actually order anything?

"More importantly, though, what I think most customers have yet to learn is that they have the power to be more involved in the creation process than they currently assume." (Fat Guy) Fat Guy is completely correct that a customer is and should be an active participant in the dining experience. An enthusiastic, knowledgeable customer is able to enhance the restaurant experience in terms of the cuisine as well as the service. I am often asked why we get special tasting menus, why does the sommelier spend so much time at out table, why do the wait staff go out of their way for us and it is really very simple. We are eager diners who approach a restaurant wanting to be pleased and more than willing to trust the chef and the staff. "Ultimately, preferential treatment can best be judged by the service."(Lesley C) VIP service is open to everyone, not just repeat customers, big spenders or known critics. If anything, I wonder if the critic, who is trying to be low key and anonymous, will get as good service as the "average, enthusiastic" diner. Also, I wonder just how many critics are as anonymous as they think they are. A well-known critic, who thinks he is completely anonymous, was dining at a recently opened restaurant. He was spotted by the valet parking guy who in turn told the owners.

Lesley C, On one of those threads you said," And it's no fun when everyone knows what you look like (the anonimity bit is the best part of the job)." Would you explain why you find anonymity the best part of the job?

Lesley, Would you please let me know where you have posted? I would like to read it.

FG, Do you feel bad again? Suvir, Thank you for your kind thoughts. I see e-gullet as an education in itself. I enjoy the exchange of ideas as it challenges my assumptions and often forces me to research what I had taken for granted. Sometimes, I feel as if I am back in college doing a term paper. Also, I will often post a half-formed idea to see how other members feel. I think it is through these exchange of ideas that the world of fine dining and the culinary arts can grow and flourish.

Now that is saying a mouthful! A first for e-gullet!!!!!

"best consumer advocate is the one who educates the consumer with great food writing, all the inside information, the real scoop on the chef and the food and the thinking behind the whole shebang. You just don't get that in a follow-up fact-checking phone call after three anonymous meals. And I also think a reviewer has a duty to the craft; that is to say a good reviewer is trying to elevate dining by being an advocate of excellence, just as art and film critics are in part trying to push the art and film worlds to improve rather than cater to average tastes" FG, I started this thread with the thought that maybe anonymity might produce better/fairer reviews, but I have completely changed my position. I now think that full disclosure is absolutely the only way to ensure good restaurant reporting. I wish every chef/owner and critic had a copy of what you just wrote and pin it on their wall and remember that the goal is to elevate dining as well as educate for excellence.

I also posted a review in that same thread. Yes, he is wonderful.

As Nina would say,"I love it when you talk dirty."

Steve, Similar to Diner's Journal, but more in depth. She will mention dishes she liked as well as those she viewed less favorably. She will comment on the decor, ambience, service, but briefly. It definitely is not a review; the title says it all - A First Impression, a preview. The actual review does not necessarily follow right away. There can be quite a time lapse or it can be a few months. There doesn't seem to be any hard fast rule.

In reviewing a restaurant, the problem for both the critic and the diner, is that it is not a static situation. A restaurant is an evolving, ever-changing, dynamic thing. Staff changes in both the front and back of the house can alter the dining experience dramatically. There is also the problem for the critic to keep updating his own reviews - what he said 2 years ago, last year, even 6 months ago, might have changed. Take the situation with Postrio in San Francisco. A couple of months ago, Bauer gave a scathing review saying that the restaurant was just a shell of what it once was. (In this case, he was right). I was interested to see if the Chronicle had updated its data base to reflect this recent review. It hadn't; Postrio was still listed as a three star with Bauer's glowing review from a number of years ago.

Would you write Michelin and suggest it?!

"Since total anonymity is unattainable (there will always be information leaks) and has so many negatives (I think they are overwhelming) the more logical way to level the playing field is for critics always to be announced." FG, I think this is the crux of the issue. It takes away the cat and mouse, gotcha aspect of anonymous restaurant reviewing. The Craig Laban article in the Journalism thread points this out. (Craig Leban). If a critic has the power to make or break a restaurant, then I feel it is his/her responsibilty to not set up a restaurant to do less than their best, particularly in those first crucial three months. Also, it gives a level playing field to every restaurant. Most of the high-end restaurant chefs/owners/staff know who the critic is and "play the game" accordingly. Steve P. says, "I'm quite happy if a chef rolls out the red carpet for a reviewer, even though it's not the typical meal in that restaurant. But when I go there, now I know about it and I can ask for it. So I conclude that more information is always better." Steve, I also agree with this as well. Why not go into a reviewed restaurant, mention that fabulous dish that XYZ critic had, and say, "I would love to have that wonderful dish that XYZ described?" At the beginning of this thread, as a result of conversations with chefs/owners/staff, I felt that anonymous was better. I must say that I have changed my mind, given FG's parameters, which I would love to see employed. My problem is with the extraordinary power that a LaBan or a Bauer or a Grimes has, the not so clever disguises, "I'm just your average Joe diner", and the "gotcha attitude", even when the critic professes not to have one. As an aside, Irene V., the LA critic (not my personal favorite) has started a First Impressions column. Rather than review a restaurant during that shake-down period, she gives first impressions letting the restaurant as well as the public know which direction the restaurant is going, what she sees as some pitfalls, pluses etc. As for Steve P's remarks re Michelin --- there is a huge difference between a two star on the way down and a two star on the way up and he is absolutely correct that Michelin gives no clue which way the wind is blowing. For us La Pyrmaide was a disaster and Auberge et Clos des Cimes a wonder. Both are two stars, but the former is definitely on the way down and I would love to see the latter get a third.

The bias I am refering to is not the critic's bias or subjectivity, but the favored treatment of the chef to the critic. Bias was obviously a poorly chosen word. To quote myself: Our area of disagreement has to do with "how much the chef can really do when a critic is recognized." I think a great deal from service, to actual preparation, to presenation. I might have a bias towards a certain author or artist, but the author or artist can't change his work to suit my taste or be extra careful that everything is to the "best of his ability." A book or a painting is done, finished, ready for everyone to experience the same end result. We might review it differently according to our bias, but we are reviewing the same thing. That just is not true with cuisine. "We might review it differently according to our bias" --- I absolutely acknowledge that reviews are subjective but what I find with the not so cleverly disguised reviewer is a tendency to get preferential treatment. I am also not suggesting the complete elimination of by-line reviews, but I would love to see a Michelin type system in the States that was in addition to what we have now.

" It does nothing to address the fundamental issues of bias and dishonesty that should really be worrying us." I totally agree with you on the above point. That is why I proposed my question when you asked for the best reviewers in the world. I predict that the list will be short. Our area of disagreement has to do with "how much the chef can really do when a critic is recognized." I think a great deal from service, to actual preparation, to presenation. I might have a bias towards a certain author or artist, but the author or artist can't change his work to suit my taste or be extra careful that everything is to the "best of his ability." A book or a painting is done, finished, ready for everyone to experience the same end result. We might review it differently according to our bias, but we are reviewing the same thing. That just is not true with cuisine.

FG, Influence peddling can happen anywhere. But, in cuisine, a chef can change the product- the finished result.

Fat Guy, You are correct, Michelin is not a review, but a rating. But by its anonymity, it eliminates any and all bias. As for art or film critics et al, I think it is very different, The work is a finished project. My review is not at all dependent upon special treatment. A restaurant reviewer is getting something especially created for him or her. What other critical writer can claim that kind of treatment?

There are so many ways that a restaurant, even with a corkage policy, can discourage BYO's when they only do it as a courtesy. For example, without obvert disinterest and bad service, a diner "knows" when their own wine is not exactly welcome. On the other hand, every, and I emphasize the word every, time we have brought wine to a fine dining restaurant, the sommelier has engaged my husband (who is the true wine expert in the family) in a lengthy discussion about wine, tasted what we brought, and enjoyed the exchange. I can't believe this is phony, in the name of good service. I honestly believe that sommeliers as well as chef/owners sense the excitement of the diner for the wine and the corresponding excitement for the food.

First, you know their names. Second, why does Michelin work?

As a flip side to FG's question who is the best restaurant reviewer, I would like for members to ponder an alternative - complete anonymity for all newspaper reviewers. I wonder what would happen if newspapers stopped the use of bylines for their restaurant reviewers. Instead of a review by William Grimes et al, it would be a review by a reporter or group of reporters from the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post. The restaurant critic would truly be anonymous; nobody, neither the restaurateur nor the public would know who the critic was. The critic would have no "star power", no need for useless disguises, no special treatment, no recognition value. Of course, this is assuming that the reviewers chosen have some expertise. But, we never know who the "Michelin Men" are and in fact don't even know the criteria for their evaluations.

Beachfan, Have you found the attitude toward BYO to be very different between the West Coast and the East Coast? In my experience, it never seems to be a problem in California. In restaurants that we go to frequently, it seems to be encouraged.

Like Wilfrid, once I started researching this topic, I couldn't stop. However, Wilfrid still gets the grant to go to Paris for further research. Of course, if he needs an assistant........ I hope I haven't been redundant. Again, using the Great Chefs of France as a reference, Blake and Crewe theorize that many French chefs went to Britain because "Britain was for so long the richest country in Europe and it was there that people of wealth, in a more stable society while political unrest reigned elsewhere, could provide the conditions in which cuisine could flourish." The great French chefs left an indelible mark on cuisine in Britain; they cooked in Britain, but they might as well have been in France. There was Louis Eustache Ude, a contemporary of Careme who worked at Crockford's Gaming Club in London. It is said that Jules Gouffe "who raised the Jockey Club to a shrine of gastronomy. There was Bignon, at restaurant Riche, who was famous for his sauces. There was Magny, who invented his petite marmite and did wonders with ecrevisses a la bordelaise." There was Alexis Soyer who worked at the Reform Club and designed one of the finest kitchens in the country ---"many features of his kitchens remain in the reform Club, 140 years later. "And then there was Escoffier who with Cesar Ritz "created the concept of the grand Edwardian hotel, with its splendid luxury and cosmopolitan menu of dishes" at The Savoy Hotel, later the Carlton and then other Ritzes. According to Blake and Crewe, Escoffier's genius is evidenced in his Le Guide Culinaire in that he codified "almost everything to do with cooking, explaining it in scrupulous detail and bringing up to date much that was old-fashioned. He distilled the experience of a century and added to it his own extraordinary flair." It was Escoffier who "brought cuisine to is peak and spread the gospel of French cooking. At about this same time, the gourmet-writer, as in past times, also helped to spread the gospel of French cookery. Probably, the most famous of these was Churnonsky. The influence of Churnonsky was enormous; his favorable opinions just about guaranteed success for a restaurant. He wrote extensively and covered every aspect of gastronomy and cuisine. He saw 4 distinct types of cuisine: First, "haute cuisine, 'the concentration of the finest talent and the finest talent.'" Second, "French family cooking - 'I have never eaten better than in the houses of the wine-growers of my own locality, the peasants of the Landes, Breton fisherman, Lyon silk-weavers and the workers of Paris.'" Third, "regional cooking - 'The ideal marriage of gastronomy and tourism.'" In Churnonsky's 1933 work, Le Tresor Gastronomique de France, he catalogued all the regions of France by local produce, wines, game, cheese, herbs, liqueurs, even including typical menus. Fourth, "impromptu cooking ----'done on a pot luck basis with whatever comes to hand ..... shrimps caught on the spot, fish from a nearby stream, milk from a farm close by, the best parts of the hare just decapitated by a speeding car, fruits from the hedgerows, vegetables 'borrowed' from a farm when its owner isn't looking.'" It is no wonder that Churnonsky was awarded the Prince of Gastronomes in 1927.

In Blake's and Crewe's Great Chefs of France, the authors mention a number of important factors that allowed a larger proportion of the population to "indulge in the pleasures of the table." Between 1789 and 1815, the small property owner emerged;"the number of small peasant-owners of land increased by a million." Also, hunting laws were altered allowing more and varied produce to more people. "The seigneurial dues had been abolished, so that wealth was gradually more widely distributed." But, and I think this is the most important fact, "the close liaison between cuisine and the produce of the land - perhaps the most distinctive feature of present-day French cooking" (copywrite date of the book is 1978) ---"was guaranteed by the fact that France, in contrast to Britain and Germany, remained a predominantly agricultural nation until well into the nineteenth century. Even today, when France is a leading industrial nation, its soul is rural -- and the roots of good cooking are always in the soil." Another important development during this time was the emergence of the restaurant. In 1789, there were only about 100 restaurants in Paris. By 1804, there were more than 500. It was not just the chefs who opened restaurants but "jewellers,goldsmiths, embroiderers, haberdashers." This new proliferation of restaurants and "the uncertainity in questions of manners among the nouveau riche both created the need for guides and critics." Grimod de la Reyniere instituted the Jurie des Gourmands in which the jury tried out dishes and gave a certificate to those that they approved of. Their findings were published in Reyniere's Almanach des Gourmands. In 1814 Blanc's Guide des Dineurs was published and Michelin was started in 1900. "The gourmet-writer, as opposed to the producer of cookery books, is a singularly French phenomenon. The great difference between the two is that the cookery-book writers, of which Britain and the United States have always had a plethora, are prescriptive and dictatorial, whereas the gourmet-writer is descriptive and encouraging; not tramping on the imagination but, by intelligent speculation, prompting it to soar."

Wimpy, The reason it took Pierre Gagnaire some time to respond is that they are closed from July 15 to July 30. Have a wonderful time. Enjoy Pierre Gagnaire.