Lord Michael Lewis
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Posts posted by Lord Michael Lewis
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Someone's wet his pants.
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I am not sure that these are hyponyms, as far as I can construe that term[.]
Whoops! Pissed again.
I should have written hypernyms. I wanted to use this term precisely because of its empirical nature.
Animal is a hypernym of dog and dog is a hypernym of Rottweiler. The point is that animals and dogs only exist for purposes of categorization. What count are the hyponyms, unless of course you are an obsessive taxonomist.
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Why this obsession to pigeon-hole everything?
I mean, even if you could define one of these hyponyms, what possible use could it have?
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Talking of Flambé, whatever happened to the Gueridon(sp) trolley.., and to chaufroid(sp) for that matter?
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Tony, It's evident that I am in a tiny and embattled minority of one. And should Blumenthal be credited with doing only as you say, I'd come running over and join you and the rest of the wets.
How about books? If we follow your reasoning the author of 'Crime and Punishment' is Troy 'Badger' Stebbings (translator).
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Forgive me for raising this again, but...
Look, this isn't about mere copying, this is about heralding someone as the most innovative British chef for fifty years. And it's about the heralds not knowing or caring that the credit for the innovation is grossly misplaced.
Or to put it into the simplest possible terms: if Rayner and his colleagues had said something like, "Blumenthal pulls off a technically adroit imitation of culinary greats like Adria and Bras..." I would have absolutely nothing to say on the subject. I repeat, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SAY.
However this isn't the case. Blumenthal is being lauded for something he's not responsible for. And I do mean, lauded, a good example would be the opening papragraph of Rayner's extraordinary 'review' of Blumenthal's new riverside brasserie.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/...4362028,00.html
So, this is not about copying; this is about perspective.
The fact that makes food so exciting -finite ingredients, infinite possiblities- is what makes, for me, the relationship between Blumenthal and the press so depressing. With an infinity of of furrows to plough how can it be acceptable to, not only, plough someone else's but also to reap their crop?
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Kevin Mangeolles was one of those who wnet on the Caterer magazine trip to the French laundry. Clearly he came back with a full note book.
Much like your beloved Heston Blumenthal on the Caterer jaunt to El Bulli.
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Out of curiousity, did Rayner recognize the dish as Keller's?
I've had Keller's version and it was quite nice, although I imagine that it's an easy dish to get wrong.
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Steve, have you ever considered learning French?
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Hurrah for steamed suety stodge!
It put the Great in Great Britain.
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Once a Francophile Yank called Steve
Voiced opinions which would make any Brit grieve
Until his views on Game Pie
(a provocative lie)
Caused the Home Secretary to ask him to leave.
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I am ashamed to say I didn't make a cassoulet this past winter. My wretched store of duck confit turned green - never happened before.
Oh the shame of it!
Nice to see John Whiting here, as I think Yvonne mentioned his Paris writings are a valuable resource even if he can't resist punning his own name.
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Regarding Suvir; firstly, I suspect that English is not his mother tongue, so well done for being able to caulk your hull in a foreign substance. Secondly Survir, I imagine, comes from a different cultural background than many of us so what may appear meandering and political to Plotinki is probably germane to Suvir.
Plotinki, instead of scanning posts in search of chinks (the armour type), why don't you make an effort to assimilate what posters mean. You are too competitive regarding debate and being competitive in one's autumn years is not consistent with either wisdom or the advice of doctors.
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So you don't like British food. That's okay. But 'bilge'? You're not really fostering debate are you?
Greene King vs Lafite: One does what one can with the materials available. Have you ever tried making red wine with wheat?
And what exactly do lager louts have to do with this discussion?
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Plotinki noticed that restaurants serving British food are few outside the UK (he's right). He correlates this paucity with his own opinions on the cuisine. And bingo! The reason there are few British restaurants outside the UK is because British food is 'shit' (wrong and offensive).
Alarmingly, he seems to have quite a few dancing to his tune in a vain effort to disprove what is quite an obvious non-sequitur. The exhaustive listing of pie shops and chippies is not the point here. What matters is whether Plotinki can reason that the scarcity of expatriate restaurants is due to shittiness of the cuisine, and whether he can credibly discount other factors.
Plotinki's are feeble and genophobic claims and I'd really like to see him demonstrate their worth rather than just parrying good-intentioned, but ultimately, credibility-lending ripostes.
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The question is an interesting one but framed as it is, in order for Plitinki to further rubbish British Food, one that doesn't merit a response.
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Let's kill this thread because we are never going to agree on wether (sic) steak and kidney pie tastes good or not (it doesn't)
.Plotinki, If you can't recognize the culinary and technical merits of a good Steak and Kidney Pie you shouldn't be wasting your own and other people's time here. We all have likes and dislikes but you are dogmatically employing any tactic to rubbish a national cuisine and I find this offensive and inappropriate.
Fried and battered seafood can be found all over Europe including France and is an excellent mode of preparation. The batter protects the fish and absorbs any juices that might otherwise leech out, it is also extremely quick and this also favours the delicate nature of seafood. Comments like this only serve to reinforce the overall impression that you don't know what you're talking about.
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I said "developed and popularized" you numbskull.
That means we can take the credit for it in the same way that the French do about wine.
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Upper? Are you sure you don't mean not habitually drunk by the labouring classes?
It was the British that developed and popularized these products, and for this reason they fall well within the canon of British contribution to the common gastronomic weal.
What about Rum?
And Gin?
And Tea?
And Coffee?
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Let's not forget England's historical control of:
Claret (Bordeaux)
Madeira
Sherry
& Port.
Drinks quite as British as beer.
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Geezer, why don't you expand on this? Perhaps you could lend the cause a little credibility.
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Captain Tony, you're clearly not working class.
The working classes spend their money on expensive DVD entertainment centres and NEXT storecards.
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Much as I love posh food. I wouldn't feel comfortable about meeting my makers with my tripes galvanized by the culinary vanguard.
For me it would have to be the British soul food:
Roast rib of Angus, deep pink and well, well hung (like Shiva).
My Gran's dear departed Yorkshires.
Roast potatoes & parsnips, crispy mind.
Brussels sprouts (I'm going to hell, so who cares about wind).
Elsenham's horseradish.
And a lot of gravy made from the rest of the steer.
To finish perhaps an apple crumble, with a good egg custard (also know as creme Anglaise [Plitonki are reading this?])
If my goalers permitted it I'd wash the whole lot down with two or three botts of Absinthe.
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Jimnyo, Is there any chance you could expand on your more pithy posts. As they stand, I find them not a little irksome.
Guggenheim Bilbao Restaurant
in Spain & Portugal: Dining
Posted
Once you've stepped over the seafaring Dutch Country & Western singers sat on the floor eating their packed lunches and pushed past the miserable looking cagouled Swedish couple sharing a Fanta and borne inspection by cruel German eyewear you're thankfully through the bar and inside the restaurant.
Not surprisingly, being the Guggenheim, the dining room is a bit.. well Arty, and if you're sitting on the banquette arty means uncomfortably impractical. I'm a big fat man known for the length of his members, but every time I wanted to take a swig of my organic vanilla & orange infused white wine aperitif I had to almost get up, doubling my belly in the process which didn't auger well for the digestive process. Especially since I'd ordered a seven courser.
The event kicked off with a miniscule glass of smoked leek porrusalda a Basque leek soup that indeed had a smokiness about it.
Iberian Pig Ear Tempura was next with, by way of Borneo, a wizened shrunken tomato and a cube of goat cheese. The shrunken head was very pleasant as was the goaty stuff but it's not surprising that the Japanese never tempuraed a pig ear even an Iberian one as, whilst not being unpleasant, its sole grace was to sound intriguing on the menu.
Salt cod or Bacalao is an unavoidable ordeal for the visitor to Northern Spain. But rather than the shoe-leather-smell-of-geriatric-ward product that I'd manfully chewed for hours on previous occasions the piece in the Salt Cod Terrine with Yeast Juice and Pumpkin was a joy, obviously the stuff the Basques reserve for their own use. A four centimetre cube of cod was balanced Palladio-like on four pumpkin pillars astride a frothy moat of yeast coloured yeast juice which tasted, not unsuprisingly, of fresh yeast. Quite to very nice. What wasn't nice was the plate, a large undulated ceramic square with a depression in the middle and a cruel way of distancing the stuff meant for my mouth yet further from said hole.
Baked fish of the day was Hake, to my mind the Chris O'Donnell of the fish world. Again I was due to eat my fishy words. An astoundingly correctly cooked bit of Hake crispily reclined skin side up on a yellow cushion of mashed yam (I think) also someone had thoughtfully drizzled some Cep sauce around the whole recumbence. Something slightly hot in the tuber mash was a welcome oral aphrodisiac and made this, for me, a very nice dish.
The Slab of Roasted Duck Foie gras was none too slab-like. In fact, were a form description necessary 'toe part of a shoe' of Roasted Foie Gras would have been better. It came with glazed liquorice flavoured carrots which were over-liqouriced for my simple tastes, and the liver, although well ovened was strung with those horrid tubey things that remind one inopportunely that what one is eating performed another, more animal, function before arriving on one's plate. Altogether un-good.
The tortuous big square plate made another unwelcome appearance this time filled with Creamy Pistachio, Coffee Extract and Cream. Having had to compress the contents of my stomach to get near the thing perhaps coloured my opinion of the dish. But nevertheless it was quite nice.
The luminary dish was a Frozen Egg Yolk covered with Fresh Ewe Milk and (more) yeast. A lone egg yolk was shorn up on some tiny biscuits and then anointed with the frothy milk-yeast mixture. It was extremely nice, the yolk was as if it had been churned but I was assured that it hadn't, and it had no flavour other than yolk but that, I was surprised to find out, is more than enough.
A chocolaty thing was next but I was distracted with thoughts of ordering another yolk affair. A surprising Basil sorbet was like a kick in fries though and the dish was able to maintain my attention long enough to lick the plate.
45 Euros for the food.