balex

don't gloat

My burgundy nut friends all agree that most of the 90 Grand Crus aren't ready -- this was after a Clive Coates horizontal tasting last year. (unfortunately I didn't go). So a few hours in the decanter could be appropriate.

salmoriglio

I think you are thinking of octopus -- a different animal entirely. Large octopus can be very tough unless pre-treated in some way -- beating is good, but freezing also works. The little baby ones don't need this treatment. Squid and cuttlefish are both pretty tender and need only very brief cooking. In fact they are a bit like cabbage -- cook them either a very short time or a very long time; anything in between is generally a mistake.

So my beef turned out very very well, but I felt it was the wrong sort of beef. The joint I was using (from Lidgates in Holland Park) was quite well marbled, and had been tied with a layer of fat around it. This was unnecessary I felt and all melted out in the initial browning. Perhaps a different joint of beef would have been better -- something a bit leaner but still tender. But not too lean, because a lot of the flavour is in the fat. It seems that what are traditionally the best joints for high temperature roasting aren't necessarily the best for low temp. roasting. Perhaps sirloin?

Ha, I thought it was an interesting regional name for chevril and I could impress some snooty waiter in Lyon by using the local term! Oh well. Great blog, btw. I work in Geneva (though I live in London) and Lyons is the nearest culinary centre of gravity. Also a few months ago my flight was cancelled at Lyon airport and I managed to snatch a quick lunch at Leon de Lyon. I was at the check in desk at 12 45 and by 1.25 I was at my table. Then when I rolled onto the replacement plane in the evening, the people in front of me were going "well I thought of going into town but it seemed like too much effort" "yes, and I had quite a nice sandwich" etc... and I was keeping a very smug and self-satisfed silence. Good but not great lunch --- I was a bit cut off from my normal sources of information and that was the only restaurant I could think of. Do you have any good "bouchons" or other good addresses to recommend in Lyons?

What is chevrefeuille? I assume it is a herb -- is it the same as cerfeuil (chevril in English)? Picture here

A question about fat. I have done quite a lot of slow cooking of pork (e.g. shoulder) where you cook it at close to 100C which renders off a lot of the fat. I am about to cook a boned rolled rib of beef -- and it has a fair amount of fat around the outside and in a strip in the middle. I am a bit worried that this will still be there after 6 hours at 65C. Is this a problem? Do you need to cut it out when serving/carving?

Bistro 21 was pretty good -- the more traditional things were well done. I had jambon persille and then a confit of duck, and a treacle pudding. Good flavours, nice presentations, slightly clueless service. The star dish was a slow cooked beef stew with mash and excellent gravy and crispy onions and mushrooms. About £30 per person. Not wildly interesting wine list, but again quite fine. All in all a pleasant surprise, well worth visiting if you are in Durham.

Marvellous. I bought this in Rome and hand-schlepped it back. Absolutely delicious. Quite a vegetal nose, with a lot of green pepper and touches of mint and other herbs on the nose, and then a beautiful long, perfectly balanced velvety drink afterwards. Beautifully integrated tannins -- I was expecting it to be a bit too young but it drank very well. Nice, when that special bottle exceeds your high expectations, really one of the nicest wines I have had for a while.

You seem to be focusing very much on fame and recognition here: I don't think even in this narrow sense that creativity is so important. It is very clear when you move away from Western High Art metaphors, to considering it as a craft (which it is), and in other countries. For example, in Japan, as you may be aware, some people are designated living national treasures; some of them are very famous, yet are not truly 'creative' in the sense you mean. I think one or two are noodle makers -- a friend of mine was in Japan researching a book on Japanese food and met some of these people. Closer to home, there are famous bakers, and ice cream makers (like Pasquale Alongi at San Crispino). So you can become famous without "conceptual creation" just by a real commitment to (and talent for) refinement and excellence. I think what these people have is an individual style, or set of values that inform their work. That doesn't have to be original. Fergus Henderson is a good example. Very distinctive style, no true originality. And that is not a criticism, it is a compliment. And in Paris some chefs and restaurants are rightly celebrated for adhering to, and refining a very traditional cuisine.

If I make a perfect pizza -- I am creating -- I am creating a pizza. I can't say it any clearer than that.

I have not been very good at explaining myself. Let me try to show where we differ by picking on one of your phrases: This seems reasonable -- but you use words like importance and influence, rather than words like excellence and brilliance. The words you use relate to recognition and fame rather than achievement and quality. I agree that originality is probably important for the former. But consider Rachmaninoff (or even J. S. Bach!) -- both old-fashioned in some sense, and critics have in the past given them a hard time. But both great composers. Consider great performers like Alfred Brendel. What he has composed is not, to me, of any great interest. This is not a criticism of him as a performer. When you consider a chef as a performer, he is normally like a conductor of an orchestra; sometimes one can conduct from the piano, but generally the conductor doesn't play an instrument. A conductor is a performer, so I don't agree with your argument that Ducasse is not a performer. You can be a great performer without being massively original. Maybe Pollini is a better example here, if we stick to classical pianists. Most opera singers have not composed at a high level. I also don't think it is an insult to be compared to Pollini, rather than Beethoven, or to be compared to Callas rather than Bellini. I assume you don't either Thus, I think one can be a great chef without creating new dishes. And some of my greatest meals have been prepared by such people. They are rarely famous; often one never knows their names. There are a few exceptions: chefs who have become famous for cooking very traditional food. I have never eaten Batali's food, but he sounds like he might be an example. Or Fergus Henderson in London. But if all you are talking about is famous chefs in expensive restaurants in NY and London; and your criteria are fame, money and column inches, then I agree -- originality is a key factor. But no one would disagree.

Could you explain some of the basic details of cooking in a FH? In USA and Oz? Sounds an interesting twist on communal cooking.

How narrow?

I think your last point is indisputable. If you make your name by being an innovator, and then stop innovating, then this is very bad for your reputation. But you are focusing on a narrow range of cooking -- high-end, fine-dining, leaders, leading-edge etc. -- in a few cities or countries. I agree that fine dining in London and New York has changed a lot in 40 years, and will change again. What about Tokyo and Bangkok? Or Naples? All cities where you can eat very well indeed. All we can conclude is that there are some culinary cultures where change and innovation are important, and others where novelty is mistrusted. And I think just as one can justly criticise some cities for being too faddish, one can criticise Rome, for example, for being overly conservative. Secondly, very little "innovation" is true innovation. Saying that Batali's use of offal is an innovation is a bit like saying the Strokes are original. The innovation is only an innovation in a very narrow context. Similarly Ducasse's championing of terroir and Italian food can only be considered original in the context of the narrow frame of reference of French haute cuisine in 1990. The molecular gastronomy appears to be a genuine innovation -- but it is one based on scientific innovation rather than aesthetic innovation, and that works on a different basis. (Sorry this is a bit rambling -- I am cooking some pizza bianca according to Steingarten's recipe and I am a bit over-excited)

This is the sort of rhetoric that I profoundly disagree with. It assumes that progress/change is good in itself, that there is a train leaving the station and if we all don't leap onto it, we will be left behind .... Only a problem if where the train is going is better than where we are now. You have to argue that point on its merits and not just assume it. In England we suffer from this rhetorical trick a lot in the context of European integration, so I am maybe over sensitive. Back to the food: you can make a good argument that the quest for novelty results in less succesful dishes since there is obviously less development time for each dish. And to be concrete, l'Ambroisie has the most accurate and perfect cooking of all the 3-stars in Paris I have been to, and it is very conservative, though not unoriginal. The menu changes quite slowly, and the range of dishes is quite small.

Absolutely - emphatically - NO - I am NOT in agreement with this. I really hate playing this game - the My Gastronomic Experience is Bigger than Yours game - let me just say that I've made and eaten my fair share of a lot of different kinds of baguettes around Paris - and compared to those with whom I've had the privilege to work, I know NOTHING - BUT I have STARTED to develop SOME kind of a palate - and the average neighborhood boulangerie baguette is pretty good - NOT CRAP. I agree. The regular baguette, in my experience in Paris, is delicious. Maybe a little simplistic if you are feeling picky, we which we always are here on eG, but delicious. The tradition is generally a bit heavier and more complex.

Boy, a big question. I think the analogy with composers is completely wrong. If cooks are anything they are performers; pianists rather than composers. Sometimes they play pieces of their own composition, but I am happy to hear them play pieces by those old dead guys. Some people crave originality; some people don't. The meals I have enjoyed most in the last ten years have been very unoriginal, but I've never been to el Bulli. I think originality clearly has an importance in very media driven restaurant cities like London and New York. For a chef to get media attention and manipulate it to his advantage, he needs to produce 'news'. This means change: new restaurants, dishes, ideas and so on. It isn't clear that this serves the interests of the consumer.

Very formal food in a very formal setting; not what I would call relaxing. In my experience, more often ruined by adults than children, since children tend not to be taken to places like that. Certainly my last two bad experiences involved adults behaving inappropriately. The Western restaurant experience generally takes place in public dining rooms, so inevitably there is some interaction with your fellow customers. In Japan, it is more based around private dining rooms; this might be more congenial to some people, and indeed most high-end restaurants in Europe do have private dining rooms where the more exigent members of this site might find the tranquillity they crave. In reality though, I think the specific objections to children in general voiced on this thread are caused by some specific prejudices against children, verging on pedophobia. Some people even seem to indicate that they object to well-behaved children in restaurants. Because they might get 'tense'. This sort of prejudice is unacceptable whether it is directed against children, blacks, gays or disabled people, or people from particular national backgrounds. To avoid confusion, I think that a "fancy" restaurant is entitled to expect a certain standard of behaviour from all its customers, children or adults. The host is responsible for choosing a restaurant that is suitable for all of the party. And if I take my children to a fancy restaurant and somebody at the next table gets all "tense" because he/she is worried they might start misbehaving -- too fucking bad.

Great course! One comment -- you say a joule raises one cc (or 1 g) of water by one degree. This is the old definition of a calorie -- which is actually about 4.2 joules. (and a food calorie is 1000 of these calories) What sort of thermometer do you recommend? I have a crappy digital meat themometer with misleading temperatures on the side and I am in the market for a good one. Are there any that are oven safe so you can leave them in the whole time? If the oven is at 60 degrees then this is not a problem I guess. What about wireless ones?

Good point. I normally buy "baguette tradition" which is better and not regulated in price (the two factors are correlated )

More or less what jack said above -- in Paris you buy bread twice a day. That is why you have bakers about every 100 yds throughout the city. Why you also have lingerie shops every 100 yds is a different question. In other places without this infrastructure you have to have a loaf that lasts a bit longer. In London, Maison Blanc does a decent baguette -- still a way off the real thing but at least recognizably the same type of bread.

They have really ridiculous advertisements in Italy. Given that in Italy you are in general never more than about 100 yards from a great cup of coffee, they have to put the characters in ridiculous situations where they can't have reach a bar. So in the mountains, on a giant construction site etc. All done with hand gestures in a really cheesy way. the product is good too.

You're close to Hunan, an idiosyncratic and excellent Chinese restaurant. Harvey Nichol's food hall has some good stuff. La Reserve is a good wine shop on Walton Street.