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Spot the crap stuff (and pic) in my status symbol kitchen.What kind of swamp do I inhabit? No, I don’t live in Elwood which is now merely stinking canals and is vulnerable to subsidence.I’m talking about the stinking, sticky slimy loathsome depths of depravity that my mind has sunk to meaning that I can’t even take a simple email on face value.My curt reply to his enquiries on the local food blogging scene no doubt left Michael Ruhlman, an opinionated man at the best of times, having some fairly strong views on what sort of twat I am.In my defence, I received his email on April 2 which meant he would have sent it on April 1 and my cortex was filled with April Fool’s pranks.What I like about Ruhlman, the writer of The French Laundry Cookbook, a definitive work on Charcuterie blah blah, is that he is opinionated and a food snob (note I don’t say F–die) to boot.I know prior to its recent release here The Elements of Cooking was already popular among local chefs including Attica’s Ben Shewry. It’s the sort of book which is essential if you are starting out in the kitchen. But it is equally useful for old hands.It finishes off with an A to Z of useful cooking terms but I like best his essays laying the ground work for a proper kitchen and good practice - stock, sauce, seasoning, eggs, heat, tools, good cookbooks (very American-centric for Australia) and finesse.On tools, all you need is a chef’s knife, a large cutting board, a large sauté pan, a flat edged wood spoon and a large non-reactive (Pyrex ideally) bowl.Note he doesn’t say a set of Jamie Oliver Pans, Gordon Ramsay cunting egg slice, Nigella Lawson incontinence pants, Al-Qaeda box knife set, Bill Granger toothbrush or Toby Puttock wooden spoon.This sorts of things definitely should not be on your shopping list when sifting through all the kitchen junk at the Myer or David Jones sale.What amazes me is that Ruhlman doesn’t even mention the wok probably because he is from the Francophile cooking school.He reminds me exactly how much rubbish I have in my kitchen.So how about this? Why don’t we all blog (or leave in comments) the best and worst of the tool in your kitchen by 4 May you time.I’ll then do a round up of the best and worst gadgets.I’ll leave the last words to Ruhlman, who Stephanie also keeps going on about, because they are so good:

“As a rule, any tool that has only one use should be avoided: examples including the shrimp deveiner, cherry pitter, hand crank fruit peeler, special slicers for butter, eggs, avocado, mango et cetera. Also be wary of buying sets of anything: figure what you need, and buy that.A well-outfitted kitchen is defined by its efficiency and by the quality of those tools that make it efficient. The fanciest kitchens with the most beautiful pots, pans and appliances I’ve found to be the least used kitchens and therefore the worst kitchens. I hope the kitchen as a status symbol is a short-lived phenomenon.”

Food Fascist- The copper pan I bought in the David Jones sale. Embarrassed- Probably didn’t need the Auber-WS PID temperature controller that I’m rigging up to the Martini Monster’s rice cooker (thanks for that) for sous vide (boil in a bag) cooking.- I’ve caught a cold from somebody at The Age who apparently doesn’t have a venereal disease.- Last night going to the Emerald Hill Microbrewery (beer natch), The Clarendon (riesling, calamari), Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons (pig), Bistro Guillaume (the best lemon tarte known to humanity. Hendricks Martini), Nobu (saki), Borsch Vodka and Tears (vodka, martini, absinthe) and the Martin Monster’s for yet more booze (5am) was over the top.- John Lethlean you are too noisy. At least the lesbians sitting next to you in Dunkeld said so. Where was Michael Harden’s noise meter?- Bugger. I pitched that idea last week.- Dunkeld sommelier: I still haven’t forgotten the time you stole my Clarines while feeding the cat. But a returned email or phone call would be nice.- Ellie, keep your mouth shut.- A few of us are thinking the food at Attica has the edge on Dunkeld. Sorry.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Inevitiable any inside story on the restaurant business in new York will draw comparisons.Phoebe Damrosch doesn’t serve up the hard drugs and bad sex that Anthony Bourdain dragged us though. But the food is much, much better in Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter. It gives an insiders account of the opening of Per Se, a restaurant run by one of the world’s top chefs Thomas Keller of French laundry fame (who was rumoured to be opening at Crown in Melbourne for a while).Damrosch gives an insight into the detail that goes into the service in the restaurant from staff education through to handling food critics.

“It occured to me at the end of our first day training that if I were a skeptic, I might find this whole thing a little cultish. There were philosophies, laws, uniforms, elaborate rituals, an unspoken code of honour and integrity and, most important a powerful leader…” she says.

If you are interested in service and what it means. If you are interested in how  it is anticipating the needs of the diner rather than being servile and what it really takes to offer proper fine dining - especially if you work in hospitality - then read this book (And click on one of the links to buy from Amazon).

Popularity: 13% [?]

I’m about to embark on the next of my molecular gastronomy experiments with Heston Blumenthal’s roast chicken which will take several days to prepare. But first a survey of other chefs’ approaching to roasting chicken.

It is perhaps apprpriate to kick-off with this one which I found in The Futurist Cookbook, first published in 1932. I particularly like Elizabeth David’s opinion on the slim volume as a “publication of preposterous new dishes”.

by futurist Aeropainer Diugheroff:

“Roast a chicken emptied of its insides. As soon as it is cold, make an opening in the back and fill the inside with red zablione on which are laid two grams of silver hundreds and thousands. Attach cockcombs all around the opening.”

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The future of cooking: In the kitchen at Interlude 

A couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon in the kitchen of Robin Wickens and his chefs at Interlude. He was developing a new lamb dish which involved spraying coffee in the air while eating it (you may recall later that night I sucked on the glass straw). This weekend my account of that afternoon and subsequent meal was published in The Australian.

Local chef George Biron points me towards Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a fascist and founder of the Futurist movement, who published his manifesto of cookery La Cucina Futurista – futurist cookery – in 1932. Apparently, the book had stuff like a meal where while dunking salami in coffee, you stroked a cat and had perfume sprayed in the air to the sounds of Wagner.

Marinetti’s thought diners were weighed down by pasta which filled stomachs. he also thought it made people placid and sceptical if it was eaten too frequently. In short pasta was subversive stuff.

According to Ask Oxford:

“This absurd gastronomic religion, he said, must be abolished immediately.”

“Predictably, these ideas provoked uproar in the Italian press and among the general public. In every restaurant and in every home there were arguments about the benefits or otherwise of a diet of pasta. The Mayor of Naples declared that vermicelli al pomodoro was the food of the angels; Marinetti’s reaction was that, if that were the case, it simply served to confirm the boredom of life in paradise.”

Everything was prescribed to be sensual. Ingredients included flowers, exotic fruit, coffee, raw eggs, and cloves and perfumes were to be sprayed in the dining room.

“…and the diners were given materials of different textures such as velvet and sandpaper to stroke with their left hand. Sweet was combined with savoury to produce startling effects, and bitter and sour tastes were given their place: sardines with pineapple, mortadella with nougat, cooked salami with coffee and cologne. An aphrodisiac cocktail was devised, consisting of pineapple juice, eggs, cocoa, caviar, red peppers, nutmeg, and cloves…”

I’ll leave the fascism alone for now. But I have a cat, Wagner and an atomiser.

More experiments in futuristic cooking coming soon. In the meantime, anybody got a copy of Marinetti’s book for sale?

Popularity: 29% [?]

Well look what landed in my in tray this week – Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) and Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection: Reinventing Kitchen Classics.

Having recently spent an afternoon in the kitchen with Robin Wickens, a local chef of a similar ilk, I’ve become quite interested in the whole idea of molecular gastronomy. I’ve decided to try a few experiments of my own – the first of which will be cooking a steak the traditional way versus the scientific way, something I’ve learned from Wickins.

One steak will be griddled and then left to rest. The other will be sealed in a ziplock bag and cooked until rare. I’ll then brown it briefly in the griddle. I really want to see the difference.

Of course, this experiment is easy compared with what I have planned for Heston Blumenthal. Following in the path of Julie Powell who spent a year cooking Julia Child’s recipes (and wrote a book about it) and closer to home Sarah who did a similar thing with Nigella Lawson I’m going to cook every recipe in his book.

That gives me eight recipes including Roast Chicken and potatoes, pizza, steak and a Black Forest gateau that involves a domestic vacuum cleaner (a journalist challenged this gateau in The Independent with hilarious results).

Easy huh?

Not exactly. After I source the correct steak it takes some 18 hours being cooked at 50C (122F). The chicken takes somewhere between four and six hours and requires a fairly efficient blow torch (not the namby pamby type used for desserts). I’d estimate that each recipe probably takes about three days to prepare.

Wish me luck.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Readings, Acland St, St Kilda. 

Popularity: 6% [?]

Over at Simply Simon, a blog that also covers life and faith as well as Melbourne and food, there is something I should bear in mind not just on this blog but in my new column in The Herald Sun:

“Food critics can be a pompous lot. I’ve said before that much restaurant criticism is little more than posturing: ‘Look at me!’ the reviewer says, ‘Don’t I write well and with such culinary wit?’ The truth is, as a person deeply interested in food and in the restaurant culture of my city, I find most reviews boring and unhelpful.”

He reviews Kitchen Con: Writing on the restaurant racketby Trevor White.

Simon Says: “Perhaps the most helpful point that White makes is that good restaurant criticism needs itself to be hospitable, welcoming to and empowering of its readers. There is no place for pomposity.”

My copy is about a week away, awaiting departure from Staufenberg in Germany together with the Penin Guide to Spanish Wineand The Hairy Bikers Cookbook.

Popularity: 7% [?]

There’s probably more than a few hangovers in Canberra today as the Prime Minister John Howard – a great friend of George Dubya) yesterday celebrated ten years in office. If we believe the PR, he was Australia’s great white hope (don’t mention multiculturalism) rescuing us from Labor, high interest rates, unemployment and almost certain doom.
I’m not one of the big man’s cheerleaders. But I am feeling a tad delicate myself. Pat over at Gourmet Traveller reminded me of Fergus Henderson’s restorative, a Dr Henderson.
For a man who’s suffering from Parkinson’s, I can’t believe there is a picture of Henderson in his cookbookNose to Tail Eating knocking back a full wine glass of the stuff.
I prefer to use medicinal-sized doses. Take two tablespoons of Fernet Branca and add one of Créme de Menthe. Adding crushed ice improves it no end.
FB is a very bitter drink made from a secret recipe, which includes some 40 herbs and spices, apparently including myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom and saffron. It is brown in colour and with the addition of the créme looks the colour of pond water. The unsophisticated think this stuff tastes terrible but in reality it is a wonderful post supper digestif.
Anyway, knock back the mix and be careful. As Henderson says: “…this is so effective you can find yourself turning to its miraculous powers with increasing regularity. Do not let the cure become the cause.”
And if you are too hungover to mix this yourself, there is a mint version of FB available.
Over at the Labor camp there may be a few sore and battered heads too. Perhaps they could leave out the Crème de Menthe. The bitter taste is what they seem to enjoy.
Food fascist

1. If FB is too bitter, Averna makes a decent set of training wheels.

2. Why oh why do you have Créme de Menthe in your drinks cabinet?

3. Is it true the Pope drinks Créme de Menthe?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Until she died, I’d never taken too much notice of Julia Childs. And I’d cerainly never heard of Julie Powell even though I had more than a healthy interest in food and blogging. That was until I tripped over Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, I tiny apartment kitchen.
What surprised me was how much I enjoyed this book. Julie, 30, embarks on the challenging of cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.
Many disasters, vodka and tonics and cigarettes later Julie becomes one of the most famous food bloggers out there.
Culinary disasters await around every corner. As do successes. It’s a very funny book and its great to track her progress from secretary to food writer. Food writing needs more fresh young talent and here it is.
She’s now hanging around in her pygamas wrinting. And blogging. Me thinks she needs another food project.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Isabella Beeton wrote her world famous cookbook between the ages of 21 and 28. She died shy of her 29th birthday and had syphilis, according to Kathryn Hughes the author of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (HarperCollins,

Popularity: 7% [?]