“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.

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“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).

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Photography: Christina Simons

p>Do I need say anymore about Bourdain’s blog apart from I found this via Slashfood?

Perhaps I should also milk the archives:

Part 1: A beer and a fag with Anthony Bourdain

Part 2: On Ladro

Part 3: Eating in Melbourne

Part 4: No hippy shit

Part 5: casual eating

Part 6: Putting the boot in

Part 7: A year in nam

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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?

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This place is only 5km from my front door by foot. But it is hard to find. Walk down Clarendon Street and turn first right after Market St. I know you are worried about ducking down a dark alley in South Melbourne. With its proximity to the Crown Casino this is brothel territory where winners celebrate (so the legend goes).

But fear not. Down the alley on the left is a small non-descript warehouse with a roller door. The only sign of life is a small lit sign above a door. Welcome to the Emerald Hill Brewery (20 Ross Street, South Melbourne, Vic 3205 +61 3 9696-5491). And it is my entry to the Session#4 local brews meme hosted this week by Gastronomic Fight Club.
Bushy beards aren’t mandatory here although there are a few hanging around. We arrive at 5.30pm and there are only a handful of people sampling the two award winning beers on tap, a pale ale and a wheat beer. Soon the places fills up with women as well as men.
In the far corner are four large stainless steel containers. Near the rollerdoor an old sofa and there are some stools and small tables attached to the wall. This is a deconstructed pub in all its perfection. Plain brick walls, beer brewed on the premises. It’s about quality, not quantity although A$5 pints are very attractive.

Apparently, a batch of stout is on it’s way which is welcome for what looks like being a cold southern winter.

Our only gripe with this place is the name.

While Australia is famous for producing a popular abomination known as Fosters nobody really drinks the sweet fizzy brew here. Most people drink VB – Victoria Bitter – or the real hard nuts Melbourne Bitter.

My mates reckon the Emerald hill Brewery should produce South Melbourne bitter. Something for the simple beer nuts.

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The imperfect sandwich from Il Fornaio.

Thursday: It was a perfect sunny autumn day. There I was on the beach with my chicken sandwich when I hit an unexpected crunch. Crispy bacon, that’s okay. Then I hit something chewy. yuk! It was some cartilage and tendons from the chicken. Spit.

Another bite and more tendons. Yuk, the crust also tasted burnt.

Spit! In the bin the rest of it goes.

Result: Unhappy man who will starve rather than eat this crap.

The perfect steak sandwich from the Vine Hotel.

Friday: To the Vine Hotel (corner Wellington St & Derby St, Collingwood) where they have perfected the ancient art of making a sandwich to be eaten rather than drip down my front.

There are no concessions to fashion here. Inside two toasted slices of common or garden white bread are a couple of thin slices of steak, tomato and some lettuce. It works just fine so there is no point changing it.

Result: Happy man who gives the pub’s impending sale a plug in the Hun.

My own effort at the perfect sandwich.

Tuesday: Time to eat the leftovers from Sunday, some tender slices of beef ccoked at 60C for three hours and seared in my molecular gastronomy experiments. The bread is sliced to the correct thickness, spread with home made horseradish. Slices of beef are arranged and topped with a few (washed) leaves of rocket (aragula).

Result: Happy man with an entry to this week’s meme Leftover Tuesdays #5, the brainchild of David at Cooking Chat and this week hosted by Pam at Project F**die.

FOOD FASCIST

There are special rules to making the perfect sandwich that must be followed.

1. Engineering. It was be easy to manipulate without the help of external aids. What I mean is that just like the Vine Hotel, the sandwich should be slim and not too packed with ingredients. The idea is that you should be able to pick the sandwich up without the goods falling out (and leaving an unfortunate stain on my trousers although that is another story).

2. Bread. Unfashionable white bread is good a lot of the time, as with the toasted sandwich above. Also white bread is good for cucumber, fish paste, Marmite (Vegamite if you must) and egg sandwiches. If you must use some fancy poofta bread like sourdough it is important to ensure you are not using a slice with a massive hole in it through which the contents will fall (on to my lap leaving an unfortunate stain on my trousers). I might add that hopefully the bread will not have a burnt crust. Also breads with hard seds in them can be a problem - the unexpected crunch being mistaken for small insects.
3. Thickness. Doorstep sandwiches do have their place with bacon & egg and Cheddar & Branston pickle sandwiches. But in general the bread should be about 10mm maximum thick and cut evenly. Of course, to cut a straight slice is a challenge and requires the same steady arm required by pool players and golfers (I never thought I’s mention golf on this blog. They are a stain on the countryside).

4. KISS. Oops, slipped into management jargon there – keep it simple stupid. The common them among all the sandwiches I’ve mentioned is that they are simple. Put too much in and the ingredients are bound to slip out onto my already stained lap.

5. Fresh. Sandwiches, unless you are buying through the nose for them somewhere like Pret a Manager in London, should be made to order. There is nothing worse than everything slipping out of a slimy pre-made jobby.

6. Tuna & sweetcorn. What is it about girls and this? And what is the best method of binding the sweetcorn to the tuna so that the kernels don’t drop out on to my (obviously) ruined trousers.

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Later it was on to the funky digital media space Horse Bazaar (397 Little Lonsdale St) to meet some of Melbourne’s top bloggers, including the legendary five figure blogger Darren Rowse who organised the night and published a round-up here.

I didn’t meat any food bloggers but I did chat to James, Fairfax’s online community editor, Ren and Tania from Fashioning, Kirrily from Geek Etiquette, Alastair Cameron from his eponymously named blog, Martin from Small Office Australia, Karen from Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum, Geoff at Pseudofish and John (Craig’s tech) among others.

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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.

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Readings, Acland St, St Kilda. 

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