So, French food is good here. Joël Robuchon is “a star” – with 27 Michelin stars – the most in the world to date. He is also a restaurateur as he owns/operates many restaurants around the world. To see him cook when you eat is probably going to be extremely rare. But the point is, you already missed that time. It was more than 30 years ago when he was awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France – a very prestigious recognition that he is the best in the field. His work modernized French cuisine and also brought in influences from Japan, where he also taught.

A month ago, I had the pleasure of eating at the L’Atelier in Paris. A bar-style seating, informal, not stuffy and serving fine-dining – a major shift in French food. One could chose individual dishes or take the degustation menu (menu découverte). Naturally, we took the later since this it would be a long time before I return to Paris again. I thought the food was excellent. The garnish for the pork was a little too salty and the coffee, caramel dessert a little ordinary. The foie gras was seriously beyond awesome – and why not stuff it into the quail! The famous pomme purée was full of buttery smoothness. A small portion is all you need. Service was great and the advantage of bar seating is the ability to dine alone easily or to break up the conversation a little. By the way, I believe after school (if I did finish my 3rd term) I have the opportunity, if I am good enough, to do a 2 month internship here. Quel dommage! I only have time to finish the second term.

Bar-style fine dining

Amuse Bouche - I think it was a cold crab soup

Crayfish

chestnut veloute

Foie gras - seared. Certainly the best foie gras I have had.

Poachd egg, chanterelle mushroom

Fish

Pork

Quail, stuffed with foie gras, potato puree with truffles. This mash potato is a famous signature of Joël Robuchon. Nearly 50:50 butter to potato

A simple, light and delicious raspberry desert.

Coffee, caramel dessert.

Divine chicken with morel sauce

It is the best roast chicken I have had and easily beats what Cafe Vue or PM24 offers. But was is out of this world? It is still a chicken. Don’t get me wrong, it is excellent but I just want to stress, I still ate a chicken. I certainly have had chicken in Taiwan with very good flavour and bite. The local description is “soil chicken” – indicating they are older and, presumably, able to roam freely. Distinctively, I remember they have dark feet too. The Bress chicken is certainly one of the best chickens available for purchase but I want to point out that after all, it is competing with a fairly neutral-tasting field of birds anyway.

On another note, I never grew up with roast chicken. To many, the smell and the taste represents more of an occasion with family on Sundays. The wonderful feeling of sitting around a table discussing the week’s news and events is peppered with requests for which part of the chicken to tear up and what’s for dinner. Licking fingers. Crunchy potatoes. At least, that’s what I think a roast chicken does one’s memory. For our meal at Le Splendid, topped with a glass of wine and dessert, all lit up by the giant windows next to us will last in my memory for a long time. France is beautiful

High ceiling, art-deco lights, tiled floors, open kitchen

Chocolate moelleux with coffee ice cream - a very good chocolate moelleux

On a side note, I have been trying to perfect a roast chicken and have come across a few interesting resources apart from books. Thomas Keller keeps is simple and seasons the bird with salt, pepper and thyme only. No basting. Heston Blumenthal goes a few steps further and brines the chicken to give it extra moisture. He also carefully tasted different breeds of chicken in UK to find the best one.  As he started cooking, the skin of the bird is blanched and chilled multiples times before drying to prepare a crispy skin like Peking duck. The chicken is then cooked at 60 degrees Celsius for 4 and a half hours before finally browning the skin. And if this wasn’t complicated enough, the people on thecookingissues blog (from The French Culinary Institute of America) decides that different parts of the chicken deserve different cooking temperatures with the sous-vide technique. Although they applied the technique to a Turkey, the principles are the same. The bird they served up looked amazing.

Oh, did I mention the price of the raw chicken?

Sold with the distinctive label, head and feet attached - 12-13 Euros per kg in the market

Our plate of roast chicken was 25 Euros, plus optional extra morels for 7 Euros – not bad at all.

This is another transcendent moment in the noodle world. Hong Kong. Wonton noodle soup. This version has a broth of pork and shark bones. Clear, umani savouriness and slightly sweet. The noodles are hand-made by the traditional method of pushing dough with a large bamboo pole. Look at this video (12:20, continues in part 2 for a few more minutes) from Anthony Bourdain’s show. It is beautiful and moving to see such art still taking place in a city that could define capitalism. The noodle has such density that it almost taste crispy as it breaks in your mouth – a texture not found in most other shops. Wontons here were also great – porky parcels made right at the shop window front.

A few left in this world

Shop front

Kiritappu Wetlands, Hokkaido, Japan

Yep, these are wild irises and Hemerocallis middendorffi (yellow). To give you an idea how dense the irises were in some places here is another photo taken a few hundred meters away. It is difficult to make the irises show well in this photo since the green and purple are both quite dark. It’s either close up and beautiful flowers or wide angle but not much contrast.

Irises

7 am, Utorohigashi, Hokkaido, Japan. Salmon roe on rice

7:30 am, Daisetsu-zan YHA, Hokkaido, Japan. Salted fish, scrambled eggs, rice.

Maybe that’s going a little over the top. But the salted fish breakfast came from a YHA (a super clean and nice YHA). in japan I have not come across a accommodation serving breakfast that did not include some sort of fish. It is usually lightly salted salmon or a small fish that is related to the mackerel (does anyone know the name?). Pickles that taste fresh and only lightly acidic or salted are a fantastic way to eat vegetables.

Maybe I should just sleep earlier.

The Japanese really pride themselves on what they do. Each bowl is served with great attention to detail. The movie The Ramen Girl sums it up (despite the crap and annoying acting). The master-apprentice relationship and the kind of soul that people speak of when referring to the broth. The chef Maezumi might be a tyrant but each bowl is ‘a gift to the customer’ and ‘if you look at the ramen you feel it’.

The original shop of Santouka

My favorite on this trip is Santouka (fire, head, mountain) in Asahikawa. I later find out that shop is the original shop, now having a chain of restaurants in the US, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. The shop was busy, fluorescent lit with basic chairs and table on the side while a stool lined bar was adjacent to the kitchen. I ordered their signature dish – the shio (salt) ramen. The stock is essentially a pork bone based (tonkotsu) that is salted, like all ramen soup base is. What this shop did well was not over salt their soup. My friends often complain that ramen soup is mostly too salty. I have to agree. But this bowl hit the salt level perfectly for me. Enough to really bring the broth to life but also to be able to finish all the soup without feeling that your blood pressure is shooting above 180 systolic. David Chang describes in his Momofuku cookbook that salt need to be almost ‘too salty’  for the soup to be ready.

Expect awsome ramen

The shio ramen - a bowl of awesomeness

Just look at how creamy the soup is! For a similar reaction to what I had…try this clip on a ramen shop  in Tokyo. The soup in the clip is a triple stock, using 60 hours to make!

Simply amazing. Has anyone visited Santouka or one of their offsprings?

I am in my 3rd week of holidays (2 left) and have returned from Hokkaido. Right now it’s Kaoshiung, Taiwan, with all the tropical heat one can imagine. Thunderstorms have been forming every afternoon  in Kaoshiung this week. On the news there was a video of a small tornado. Yesterday I was at a sushi train restaurant (everything equivalent to 60 cents, including Sapporo draught) and the rain fell so hard water flooded the floors. I suspect little sailboats were needed to replace the train.

Rain fell on most days in Japan to my camera’s annoyance. Seafood and ramen was clearly not affected.

Rain fell hard on my drive to Coonawarra last year. Rain fell still on my drive to Yarra Valley this year.

When it rains, you need what I am holding below. The back of the shop opens to the a fish market in Otaru. There IS a huge difference between very fresh and ‘ok’ seafood. More posts to follow!

Salmon roe, raw scallops and sea urchin on rice - less than $10 AUD

I’ll leave a nice arrangement of fireworks here.

Lake Toya

It was a moose stew (yum!)

Today was a desk-job for me. Spent much of my time calling doctors and patients to them their urine is not clean enough for their joint replacement surgery. The phone has become a reflex and most of the time I just stare blankly out the large window next to my desk while mumbling something about “please repeat the urine test”. Much day dreaming. A little far I would say considering I thought about the time I was in the icy, misty and dark winter of Norway 2 years ago. The trigger much have been the foggy and a dense yet fine drizzle outside my window today.

The Scandinavians have really pushed their cooking to world attention in the last few years, thanks largely to Noma in Denmark. Noma has been in the top few spots in World best 50 Restaurant awards and this year finally taking the top place. Local produce, traditional recipes are elevated with a touch of new molecular techniques. The dishes that people come back and back again for are the comfort food. Carefully add a twist, yet keeping to the original soul of the dish is a hard thing for chefs to achieve well. In my opinion, the wave of molecular cooking dominating every dish on the menu has passed.  Diners are getting tired of oddly tasting and looking food that just doesn’t have the ‘wow’ factor after it’s in the stomach.  The smart chefs, in my humble opinion, picks 1 or 2 new molecular techniques and combines it with classical cooking. Food really still has to taste good in the end.

In the photo was a gathering of international students at one of the professors apartments. We had a delicious moose stew that tasted like stroganoff, in an apartment to die for.

One charming and cosy apartment

I really miss this place. The colourful houses with the white borders and white window frames stand out nicely in the white-grey winter. There is nothing more memorable than stepping on smooth ice and knowing that no matter how you shift your weight or slowly you move the inevitable is a fall on a out-stretched hand in a glove. I wonder is the city has changed much.

Outside our units in Sogn (photo from Phoebe)

I couldn’t be bothered changing my lens that afternoon. The 50 mm 1.8 works wonders but taking ‘domesticated’ sea gulls is still very difficult. I laid prone for a good while.

We drove through a rainy front and crossed from the east to west coast of New Zealand South Island. Heavy rain turned into a a steady drizzle. As we walked out of our hostel, the rain stopped and 20 minutes later, blue skies and warm sunlight hit the wet roads of Nelson. It was a very pretty town. The main Trafalgar st had flowers blooming on every lamp post. Hungry, this warm bar really made my afternoon. Has hot crispy chips and ice cold green apple cider ever been this good? Bright glow of the sun on wooden floors and table. I could have sat there for a long time.

I am planning to take my 3rd year off (2011) from the conveyor belt of medical training. Don’t worry, it will keep running until someone decides to fall or accidentally hit the red button. So what will I do in this year? The main aim is actually to join a cookery school in France. I have been looking at Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, a school of classical French cooking for designed for training people to become chefs.  It has branches around the world, including Sydney, but that just misses the point of French cooking. Many types of courses are available, including regular terms on cuisine, patisserie wine, and many short/one day courses on specific topics. The problem is it’s almost 8000 euros per term! I think I will need to locum a bit if I want to make this work. Anyway, when I say year off, it just means off the conveyor belt. I also wanted to try working in a less developed country for a different experience.

For those who want an idea of what it’s like in the school. There is a good and humorous read by Michael Booth – Sacre Cordon Bleu: What the French Know About Cooking. It’s about a journalist who pauses his regular job an joins the cookery school. Let me know if you want to borrow it.

(Picture from Le Cordon Bleu website)

The Japanese seems to have a more powerful radar at spotting what is good to eat. From being obsessed with French cusine (at the peak of French food dominance) to hearding cows that have meat looking more like fat with finely dispersed muscle fibers. A walk in Tsukiji Fish Market and soon you will discover where al the large and high quality seafood caught around the world gets sold.

Last year me and my brother and his local friends went to the fish market in the morning and lined up for a seat at a sushi bar. There was at least 10-20 different shops in the few lane ways that also sell cooking equipment, herbs and garnishes that go well with seafood. This was about 10 am. We waited for about 30 min and were seated on the counter and squeezed close the next person beside you. There could not have been more than 20 customers at one time in this restaurant.

This was the o-toro (the fattiest cut of the tuna) in the 8-10 pieces sushi degustation that lasted about 30 min. Next customer please. I respect that.

The link’s source of information is from Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook. It has good descriptions of the yakitori culture and has a good bakground information of a range Izakaya establishments in Japan.

This is a shop in La Boqueria, Barcelona, selling only chicken (? maby duck).

It’s great when writing medical notes I add a question mark in front of a point – it makes it all ok and valid.

I was reading Heston Blummenthal’s book In Search of Perfection on the perfect roast chicken (book, video) I am drooling to make a roast chicken. Secretly I haven’t tried roasting a whole bird. Which chicken should I use? Look at the chioice of birds in that shop!

Heston liked the Bresse chicken from France, though he used one from the UK with good flavour while supporting local farmers. The recipie involved soaking the bird in brine over night, drying it in the fridge, roasting it at a low temperature and then browning the skin to finish it off.

Sadly in Hamilton, there isn’t much to choose from. When I fire that oven, I will post the chicken on my blog. Tomorrow is apple and rhubarb with crumble to top.

Tucked away in the corner of Brussels, Belgium. Delirium bar (named after a local beer Delirium Tremens) is highly recommended by various locals, suppose to serve upto 2000 types of beer. I can’t see 2000 barrels but I certainly can see this bar has the largest collection of beers on tap that i have seen. This is obviously the place to be to try some Trappist beer and to forget about the day’s stress.

When the three of us from the hostel rocked up after dinner, we were presented with a menu with Trappist beers and its tasting notes. Trappist beer are made by monks. There are 7 active Trappist beer breweries remaining. 6 in Belgium, 1 in Netherlands. Most were destroyed during the French revolution and some during world war.

Enough of the history. The beer itself was different to most other beers i have tasted. It was more fruity, more hops flavor and certainly lives up to its reputation of being “trappist” beer.

A typical tapas bar, San Sebastian.

Sagardotegi, the Basque cider. The drink is poured from head height from a bottle with a special spout. Here is a little passage from wiki:

In the most traditional sagardotegi, each guest, after having paid in the region of 25 euros, receives a glass and at various intervals a txotx (pronounced [?o?]) is called. At this, everyone who wishes for cider gets up and heads to the lower section of the sagardotegi where the barrels are located. The large barrels, which are stored horizontally, have a small tap in the lid at about head-height. This is opened by the innkeeper or the first guest to reach the barrel and a thin stream of cider exits, which the guests catch with their glasses as low down as possible to aerate the cider. People then return to their tables to continue with their meal and cider until the next txotx is called. Each guest may drink as much cider as they like.

Jamon with little up-side-down hats to catch any dripping fat.

One of my weakness is that I find it hard to be content with what I have/achieve. A friend of mine said it’s such a ‘medical thinking’. I want to stop taking what society prescribes to me (or what I think society prescribes to me).

Apart from food that is. One thing is for sure, I will keep finding new things to eat: These are the best meat dishes I have tried.

Hida beef – Takayama, Japan: If you wince in disgust at the though of fatty meat then you can leave now. Selective breeding allows these cattle to accumulate lots of intramuscular fat. It’s similar to Kobe beed but not as well known internationally. Served in finger size strips and thinner slices, sizzling on a hot metal grill in front of you.

Duck rillettes – France: Duck legs cooked confit style (slowly in duck fat) then blended in more duck fat. Put it in a fresh brea roll and you have heaven in a bite. Quite easily found in good delis in Australia. Pork versions are also nice.

Roast pork – Bistro Guillaume, Melbourne, Australia: Perfect crackles, thick cut and so so moist and tender meat. I think it was soaked in brine but there was no hint of salt. The waiter said it was cooked slowly. Whatever the way, it was delicious.

Jamón ibérico de bellota, Spain: Free range pigs that live in oak forests and eat only acorns towards the end of their life. The sweet, nutty and savory flavour is dangerously painful to think about at 1 am. Although I havent yet stepped in Spain, in Australia it’s not had to find some fairly good stuff.

Ox tongue, braised slowly in spices and soy – Shoya, Melbourne, Australia. I guess this goes out to most cuts of tuff meats such as ox cheek. Over the past 3-4 years such cuts are getting popular again. A combination of being new to many people (even though in the past such cuts would not be wasted) and riding the economic crisis wagon.

A good pieces of steak cooked at home, with a glass of wine. And on the note of home cooking, pork mince simmered with onions, Taiwanese pickled cucumber, soy sauce, shallots served on a bowl of rice is hard to beat as comfort food. Cheers to that!

Japan. What was beyond these curtains was a shock to what I know about a bowel of noodles.  This was one of the busier shops on the ramen street section of a large shopping mall. We joined the queue and waited to buy tickets/vouchers for our bowel of ramen from the vending machine just outside the shop (on the right side of the shop. The tickets werecollected by the waitress outside who then planned the seating arrangements and also gave the chefs a head start to prepare the meal – very fast. When we walked in, the place was crammed with people concentrating on eating in all the availible space. The kitchen was open to view like a sushi bar.  An array of large pots were boiling at the back. The waitress said something to the 2 chefs and the chefs immediately looked up and greeted us. They did this for every group of customers entering and leaving the door, generating energy and intense passion in what they do.

2 minute later , a bowel ramen with incomprehensible quality arrived.  The best complete, one-bowel mean I have ever exerienced. This is my last supper. The soup was just not possible. Flavour, bones and more flavour. Small bits of solid fat floated on the soup. The ramen was perfect and thin. Meat and scallions was there for good measure. I have to go back again. on my short trip to Japan, I tried around 6 different Ramen restaurants only but I have opened up my heart. I am a believer. This is it. Ramen.