eG Foodblog: akwa - Shaolin style gastronomy

[SobaAddict70]

Our next Foodblogger is akwa, otherwise known as Will Goldfarb, formerly of Cru Restaurant in New York City.

Will may not be online until later tonight or possibly midday tomorrow due to internet service being spotty in the Hamptons, but I wanted to get his Foodblog started in the meantime. I'm sure many of you will have questions as to his tenure whilst he was at Cru, not to mention what does a pastry chef eat during the day.

We have had pastry chefs blog before in the eGullet Foodblog series, notably Dessert, the Most Important Meal of the Day and Living the Dream, I Guess. This is the first time (and hopefully not the last) that we've had a known chef sign up for the series.

You can read about Will's previous work in the following threads:

A vanilla foam with blueberries was the palate cleanser, and a lovely chocolate cream with passion fruit sorbet and creme fraiche followed.

Foie is now served roasted on quince puree with yogurt, almond and black truffle ice cream, which he and Goldfarb are collaborating on and, as of last Friday, still tweaking. Gallante says that yogurt and truffle is a classic combination that he learned to love at Bouley. I tasted the ice cream without the addition of truffle -- if Goldfarb serves ice cream of that texture and concentration of flavor for dessert, I’ll be at Cru every night. They were working to make sure that the ice cream wouldn’t be too rich. If it is, Gallante says, it’ll be like serving foie gras with a butter sauce. On the plate with the liver will be a playful touch: roasted quince with a foie gras emulsion sauce.

Cru Restaurant

NYC -- The New Chocolate Lover's Heaven?

Frank Bruni, main restaurant critic at the New York Times, reviews Cru Restaurant here.

Soba

[tan319]

Bring it on, Will!!!

Can't wait to read and absorb.

Have fun!

PS: VERE looks very interesting.

[akwa]

Miami vices

Marinetti and the atkins

...l’artiste culinaire n’obtiendrait-il pas un sens “inne”

en reunissant dans un meme plat des graisses, ..., du glucose et du sel?

Herve This

A comic sensibility is essential if one is to outmaneuver ubiquitous exploitation...

Tom Robbins

3. Keep your station orderly.

Daniel Boulud

NEW YORK, August 15-The sky is falling.

All the cool places to go have been bombed. The dollar is worthless. And some bizzarre manipulation of a high protein diet has become fashionable. It is unclear exactly what health benefits this diet may have, other than that people who are already in top condition swear by its efficiency. In reality, this diet is no different from any other, in that it is a way to commercialize boredom rather than creativity.

The only choice is to push forward in gastronomy. This drive must recognize the universal appreciation for fat and sugar. Properly constructed, this soothing sensation may transport the guest by slipping off her socks. Why then, the need to strip cuisine of joy? Perhaps it is part of this nation’s collective conscience that a pleasure, by its nature, is destructive.

El Bulli has risen to the forefront of innovative cuisine with their imagination. (By the way, selling ideas rather than “roast chicken” had never even been attempted.) Albert and Ferran never forget that people want fries and candy, first and last. In the same vein, Gagnaire has developed Herve This’ Molecular Gastronomy in the form of a foie gras and glucose symphony.

To create is not to copy, said Maximin. That goes for personal philosophy as well. So what tools are at our disposal to recreate Beuys’ fat blanket? A return to infancy. A true zero. A Combal.0. A real diet can be formed with a real relationship to a real person. The core of all known political and gastronomic movements are intimate. Only when the initial “best intentions” are made digestible for mass consumption do they sacrifice relevance. Therefore we identify the essential ingredient in any sustainable diet. The concept that completes the consumer. In a word: love.

Love is this: that two solitudes border, protect, and salute each other.

Rilke

How ironic, that a nation obsessed with same sex unions, ignores on a nightly basis the same sexyless unions of proteins without starch or fat. But historical precedents abound for the apparent incongruity: random free association often evolve into fascist monotony. The last original thoughts in cuisine and politics ended badly: Nobody wanted to eat Marinetti’s salami in cafe; and although wildly popular and fashionable, Fascism failed to maintain the Futurists initial inverted openness.

Unlike the abolition of pastasciutta, La Cuisine Nouvelle was embraced by a new nearly global culture. In time too, the desire for fresh food became just as systematic and repressive as the original grand cuisine it replaced. Guerard’s cuisine minceur became a commercial. To be fair, the Fascist evolution wouldn’t have proven too popular in the valley.

Then again, maybe it would have.

This morning for breakfast I had the Zone diet peanut butter and chocolate bar.

[Jinmyo]

Crazy pastry chefs.

Blog on, Will.

[chefzadi]

This morning for breakfast I had the Zone diet peanut butter and chocolate bar.

How does it taste?

[akwa]

like a 1.29 version of ducasse's famous palet monte carlo

This morning for breakfast I had the Zone diet peanut butter and chocolate bar.

How does it taste?

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[little ms foodie]

beautiful beginning, I know we will be in for a treat this week!

[Chris Amirault]

My god, references to Zone diet bars and FT Marinetti in the same initial post. I am in awe, sir. Blog on, indeed!

[akwa]

i am in a bit of a quagmire

having changed careers and moved into the world of private patronage from public exhibitionism and subsequent public flogging

i find myself with the time to consider various options for my mid morning snack on one of my two days off

right now i am torn between a bacon egg and cheese sandwich from the deli on the corner of 20th and park, and a chicken parm stromboli from the pizzeria on third between 20th and 21st

fortunately i have been in this position before, but on the road between turin and firenze

If the Medes darken the sun, then we shall have our fight in the shade.

Dieneces

David Mamet’s Spartan returns me to another narrow mountain pass: the ascent from Savoie across the Alps to Turin. I can’t stop thinking about the oyster.

A cube of watermelon. A sprig of frisee. A wisp of smoked tuna. A crumble of almond praline. Two cubes, alike in dignity, in fair Rivoli, where we make our scene.

The first is nothing; it is impossible. Close your eyes; the second is an oyster.

Unlike Gatsby’s dream, Davide Scabin’s virtual oyster is exactly what it claims to be.

Just close your eyes.

wait maybe it was the road from turin towards san remo?

[Fat Guy]

right now i am torn between a bacon egg and cheese sandwich from the deli on the corner of 20th and park, and a chicken parm stromboli from the pizzeria on third between 20th and 21st

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Think you should have both, but hold the cheese on the bacon-and-egg sandwich (salt, pepper, butter, toasted roll, bacon well done, eggs fried break the yolk). And a Twix for dessert.

[akwa]

i never eat dessert after breakfast

[Fat Guy]

Before, then.

[akwa]

Think you should have both, but hold the cheese on the bacon-and-egg sandwich (salt, pepper, butter, toasted roll, bacon well done, eggs fried break the yolk). And a Twix for dessert.

generally both is better than one or the other, but i feel strongly that the american cheese component of the bacon egg and cheese make for a more desirable mouthfeel than the buttered roll, so therefore, i can clearly not choose the roll in front of me

on the other hand, the stromboli will also offer a cheese option therefore potentially repetitious and detrimental to the palates ability to recover, so i can clearly not choose the stromboli in front of me

[akwa]

Before, then.

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its possible that this would compete with the lingering taste and texture of my zone diet bar,

so you can see its more than a quagmire, its an enigma wrapped inside a pandora's box

[chefzadi]

What's a twix?

[akwa]

What's a twix?

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quelle nightmare

[Fat Guy]

I believe "stromboli" is Italian for "an enigma wrapped inside a Pandora's box. Synonyms: quagmire, Catch-22, conundrum, Twix."

[chefzadi]

What's a twix?

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quelle nightmare

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sounds like something that would obliterate the lingering aftertaste of the zone bar.

[Smithy]

What's a twix?

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quelle nightmare

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sounds like something that would obliterate the lingering aftertaste of the zone bar.

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I should think so. It's a pair of layered skinny candy bars, each roughly the size and shape of a finger or a fat short stick: crispy cookie layer on the bottom, with, er, nougat I think as the next layer, then a caramel layer, and the whole wrapped in milk chocolate. Definitely not a high-class dessert, but one of the few candy bars in which I indulge now and then. I tell myself I'm only hungry for a bit, so one bar will serve. Then, somehow, the packet of two disappears.

[jackal10]

How does if differ froma Kit Kat? http://www.nestle.com/Our_Brands/Chocolate...tionery/KitKat/

Virtual oyster? Would not the watermelon have the wrong texture?

Dimidium facti qui coepit habet; sapere aude, incipe.

To have made a start is half of the business; dare to know, so begin!

(Horace: Epistles I, 2 Line 40)

[therese]

How does if differ froma Kit Kat?

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A single piece of cookie (sort of shortbread-ish) instead of layered wafers with chocolate. And a Kit Kat lacks caramel. Caramel very important aspect of a Twix.

[Fat Guy]

Kit Kat is just crispy wafers and chocolate, and has a rather crisp texture overall. Twix is cookie, caramel and chocolate, and has a soft, luscious texture and feel.

[bergerka]

I would've gone with sausage, egg and cheese (the melty American kind that contains little-to-no actual product of cows) on a toasted everything bagel, myself, but I'm a hedonist that way. Damn the torpedoes!

...second Steven on the Twix, though. Very important aspect of any balanced mid-morning snack.

K

[Smithy]

How does if differ froma Kit Kat? http://www.nestle.com/Our_Brands/Chocolate...tionery/KitKat/

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KitKats lack caramel and are crunchy all the way through, whereas Twix have a caramel layer that provides textural contrast. KitKat layers are thin wafers interleaved like the layers of a dobosch torte. Twix have only one layer of each component. Although there is a distinct split in the KitKat, it's still all one candy bar. Twix are two separate coated bars in one package, resulting in a higher surface:volume ratio. Since Nestle makes KitKat and Mars makes Twix there may be a difference in the chocolate, but I can't swear to it.

[SobaAddict70]

We've seen matcha Kit-Kats before.

I wonder if there'll be a matcha Twix eventually...?

So, tell us, Will...any new desserts lately?