This link is to 2 speeches given by 2 passionate speakers on the subject of food and sourcing our food  in todays world. I'm not sure if I am being hopelessly romantic in my hope that  NZers care enough about the providence of their food, that they would prefer to be given the choice as to whether the cauliflowers they buy are grown in China, or in the soil just outside Katikati. We were told earlier this week that a family of local market gardeners are getting to the point they can no longer run a viable business and compete with the prices of the fresh vegetables been shipped in from China. That concerns me on a whole host of levels and these 2 speeches, one by Michael Ruhlman, a very good food writer ( I recommend all his books) and Dan Barber, a reknown chef in the States, who gives an especially entertaining speech on the subject of fois gras and gavage, both cover that issue from slightly different perspectives, but both arriving at the same conclusions.

Both of them eloqently discuss how the choices we make about what we eat shapes the world, and how modern methods of farming, both with the huge agribusiness and feedlots for animals is an insult to history.

Be warned - they both speak for over 20 mins, but I found what they had to say fascinating.

Labour weekend, and its been a busy one which is nice. Closed today as usual on a Monday, and Rick and I went over to the Mount as we normally do, only to find it occupied by most of the rest of NZ who were all keen to get in a bit of exercise before they head off back home  this afternoon after the long weekend. I get a bit precious about people who dawdle and block paths, but really I should get over myself, and remember that lots of people around, means lots of money being spent, which is good for all of us....

Courteneys been down at Road Cycling Nationals in Wanganui, for the last few days. Her father went down for the Time Trial on Thurs but had to head back that nite, becos we had a large outcatering wedding on Saturday together with the normal restaurant stuff, so he needed to be back, and missed her road race.

She got a silver in the Time Trial which for her was major, becos Time trials have always been her bete noir in Tours - her least favourite aspect. But all the training paid off magically, together with the disk wheel that one of the guys in the local club very generously offered her to use  - meaning that she went out totally fired up. Seriously cool - and we are seriously proud of her. Her father got a silver in the Nationals once, when he was a teenager, but he gave up riding when he started his apprenticeship. The world has changed dramatically since then, and I get the feeling with Courteney that work and study is going to take second place to cycling...

Warmed up and ready to go!

The start - At Time Trials they go off in 30sec intervals and ride by themselves. Sheer, hard grit the whole way...

The sweet part!

Proud? Who us?!!

An insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adria, who is the chef at elBulli, a restaurant that is constantly touted as THE BEST RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD.

This is my third attempt to get the blog about this book written - my previous two disappeared into cyber space, and I had to start again from scratch. But in some ways that was an appropriate sympton of my feelings about this restaurant, becos I swing backwards and forwards in terms of how I regard it. Since my previous effort  ( which I did have the foresight to save this time), I've been over at the restaurant for lunch service, and flicked thru the book again, and decided that I didn't like what I'd previously written, becos it would come across as being flippant, and that is not the impression I wanted to convey. So. I will start again.
This book is a photographic display of all that happens in a day in the world of elBulli. As is typical of anything about that restaurant though, it ends up being so much more than just a series of photos. Ferran Adria is considered by the world food media to be the best chef in the world. He is acknowledged by his famous peers as been singularly more original than anyone else in the food world, and people from all over the globe beat a path to his door to eat his food. Which is one of the first points of incongruity that I find so intriguing. Adria was doing what he is now, well before the world media got hold of the fact - but after an symposium about the direction of food, chaired by Harold McGee, back in the early nineties, during which this unassuming Catalan chef stood up and spoke about what he was trying to achieve in his quiet part of the world,  some in the media took note, decided to go and investigate, and came back raving about the experience. In doing so they created a malestorm of publicity for the restaurant, which has shown no sign of abating to this day. And in doing so,  they have make it into  a temple, a place of gastronomic reverence that anyone who takes their dining out seriously, must venture too so they can say they have been to the best. So much so, that figures quoted in the book say that they seat 50 covers a nite, and  have 8000 seats available in any one year ( becos they only open for 6 months; the remaining 6 months the chefs work in a laboratory in Barcelona working on the creative development of the 30 courses for the menu for the next 6 months), and get 2 million enquiries for those seats. There is one week in a year when you are able to book for the next season. Extraordinary. And yet for all that it remains housed in a totally unpretenscious building in a rural part of Spain - a beautiful bay. They don't charge anything like they could given basic laws of supply and demand. A number of other 3 star restaurants are conspicuously more expensive. So you are left wrestling with the contradiction - of a restaurant that has become so famous that it could charge whatever it likes, but choses not too; could open much more often and have a huge increase in turnover, but chooses to value the time spent on creativety as being more important; and which embraces the business opportunities that its fame creates, by releasing a number of products that other chefs can use to simulate their creations ( imported into NZ by Simon Gaults company Sous Chef), but which remains at core unimpressed by all the hyperbole and adulation that surrounds it.
They do what they do, becos they love what they do - and in todays world which seems to be so full of people wanting their 15 mins of fame, just for the sheer fabulousness of it all, the craft and intellect and dedication that instead appear to underpin elBulli, creates an impressive contrast. I had previously thought that such a restaurant would be too famous to have any sort of relationship with repeat customers, - they would have a constant sea of new faces coming thru the door every service - but according to the book they work hard to balance bookings  each nite between those coming for the first time and those that have been before. And photos of the owner greeting people he knew at the door, indicates that like any good  restaurant he has build up personal relationships with his customers over the years.So my suspicions were wrong.

Molecular gastronomy is a generic term used to describe the type of cooking that Ferran Adria has made famous, and which is used in a number of restaurants around the world. Some like The Fat Duck in England, and Alinea in America - design a set, multi course menu in the same manner as elBulli. As a customer, you are presented with a multiple number of tiny courses, 30 in the case of elBulli, which lead you on a gastronomic journey unlike anything you will have experienced before becos Adria is at the forefront of a whole new level of ingenuity in terms of cooking. Nothing is ever as it seems. Ingredients are deconstructed and then reconstructed in ways that are original and brilliant - and there appears to be a constant theme of humour running thru the cleverness.
And that in a nutshell is the root of my confusion about this restaurant. We work hard at Somerset to create an experience that people are going to enjoy enough to want to come back regularly. To become friends of the business. We don't dumb down our food, but we do the sort of food that appeals to people, flavours and ideas that satisfy rather than challenge. We are a local eatery, rather than an international destination. And I say that without a hint of chagrin, becos we're very comfortable with the concept.
A restaurant like elBulli is somewhere people go to pay homage - to be wowed and excited. They travel from all over the world to experience it, and the food therefore is truly unique and original. The pressure to constantly keep coming up with new ideas must be enormous. An egullet thread shows how picky people can be about the experience, and makes me question the motives of some people that go. Their mind set is more ' just becos everyone says you're good, doesn't mean I have to enjoy it" . But you get that with the public!
We have people that eat at Somerset every week - but if we served a 30 course menu of highly contrived and constructed food, I'm not sure we would see people that often, becos that is not the style of dining people necessarily  choose to endulge in that often. It is special occasion stuff. That said however, the body of work and experimenting that Adria and his team has created over the last 20 years or so, has created a number of novel ideas that all chefs can incorporate to a greater or lesser extent if they are so inclined. In quickly flicking thru the Alinea cookbook which arrived in the same parcel from Amazon as this elBulli book, I noted a number of ideas that peeked my interest and which I want to play around with, and which may eventually find their way on to the menu at Somerset in some guise. But that is us playing around within the framework of what we do, rather than embracing a whole new concept. I see a distinction and I think I'm comfortable with it. Just as we learn more each year about other cultures and their food history, so too, do we benefit from learning where brilliant chefs like Adria are going. All of it is gist for the mill.
However. That aspect aside, I confess I tend to always get a bit contrarian when something starts get enormous publicity. My instincts are always to pull against the tide, becos I just find the attendant hype becomes suffocating. So it was with considerable interest that I noted in the latest Australian Gourmet Traveller, that my all time favourite restaurant reviewer AA Gill had written a feature on elBUlli. ( Would have like to have been able to give you a link to the article, but unlike Vanity Fair, Gourmet doesn't appear to post its articles on line. The edition is dated October 2008).
AA Gill writes supremely well - he is a pleasure to read, as much for his command of language as for his ascerbic wit which always cuts thru any pretension.
If anyone could burst thru the bubble surrounding elBulli, I figured he was the guy, and I turned to the article fully expecting to have some of my feelings of the overdoness of it all, confirmed. He approaches the restaurant very warily, saying he has made a point of staying away precisely becos he finds all the hype intolerable, and believes that it is impossible to define the'best' restaurant. But he ends up being completely disarmed by how modest and genuine Adria comes accross in the interview.Adria tells him to come back in an hour to eat at the restaurant, but only after he has gone away, so that when he returns to dine, he is in the headspace of a customer not a journalist. AA Gill meekly does as instructed, and this is what he has to say about the subsequent meal:
'Now, I could tell you a lot about the dishes. About the combinations and the quality, the ingenuity and the twinning of emotion and intellect, of skill and imagination. But theres been quite enough written about dinner at elBulli, and thats part of the problem. There is a moment when actually its just better not to pour praise onto the fire of encomium. Like extreme beauty, elBullis success is as much a curse as a blessing. I will, though, say just one thing. Get on the phone. Do it now. And don't take no for an answer. Or whatever they say in Catalan."

I gather from that that he wasn't only impressed, he was actually blown away - and that means that Rick and I are going to have to go one day, so that we can eat and make up our own minds. Damn! ( That makes me part of the crowd that I so abhor!!)
 

This is described on the cover blurb as a 'biography about the fish that changed the world', which sounds somewhat grandiose, especially to us in NZ for whom cod has never featured as part of our diet; but it makes for fascinating reading, believe it or not. The sweep of history that it covers , from when the Basques discovered great masses of fish off the Americas, well before Christopher Columbus' time, thru to Iceland, post the second world war, having to fight off Great Britains conviction that it had a god given right to fish whereever it so chose, ( back in the days when imperial might, made acquisition of anything seem right), even within Icelands declared national waters. Sea voyaging of great duration was made possible thru salting of cod; the slave trade was fed on salted cod - nations went in search of the fisheries and plundered with impudence believing that nature would always replenish.

But human cleverness in developing new, and more efficent methods of fishing, has lead to stocks being reduced to levels that are unsustainable, and where once thriving industries revolved around the daily catch, now whole communities are being irrevocably changed.

The politics involved, as always leaves a considerably bad taste in the mouth - but for all that it makes for a timely and fascinating read.

There is something about these single subject books - and this is the second that I have read by this author - that make for a particularly interesting read, and I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it is to do with the fact that I find the way something has been used down thru the ages to be especially illuminating,  because what has happened centuries ago, can colour our perceptions today, without us even necessarily being aware of the link.

Or as H. Thomas Henry Huxley is quoted at the start of the book:

'The questions of questions for mankind - the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other - is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things'

An apt question in todays world, for a whole host of reasons...

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Let me take you for a pictorial explanation of yesterday, when my family and Ash Hough competed in the Motu Challenge - a gruelling multi sport event that encompasses a 70km mountain bike leg; a 17km off road run; a 52 road bike leg; 27km river kayak, followed by 10km ride, and 3km run to the finish.

Our daughters have done the event before in college teams, but this year was different becos they'd teamed up with Ash Hough who's a world class mountain biker, and their father, who's not a bad runner - so the stakes were raised, and they were on a mission to be the first mixed team home.

The event is staged out of Opotiki, which is on NZ's East Cape and is very much quiet, hinterland countryside - picturesque and rural.  Although there wasn't much time to admire the scenery as we rushed around the various transistion points trying to keep ahead of the team who were flying...

Ash reading his bike for the first leg - 6.30am in the morning...

Now my daughters have their own cars, there has to be enough trophy stickers to go round all vehicles...

Team talk before Ash goes to position himself at the start

The easy bit, before they hit the mountainous terrain and go for it. These guys are mad bastards!

The team runner looking deceptively relaxed...having just warmed up and waiting for Ash to appear

Ash heading for home...

I accused Courteney of being a 'girl' at this point - Ash just back from 2 hours on the mountain bike, good naturedly concentrated on pumping up her tyres, before he focused on his next stage, which was going to be to do the road bike let for his school team. ( And for which he broke the record!)

Warming up - she'd agonised about wearing her TT helmet , worried that she'd look too poncy, but in amongst some of the gear we saw down there, she didn't look poncy at all. ( Hannah is standing alongside in strategic position incase Courteney and the rollers part company...)

 A shot intended to show how sporting events set up in the middle of nowhere - fill the space for a few short hours with a lot of noise and action and then disappear.

I got the distinct feeling the cows weren't relishing being by the finish line, and were rather looking forward to us all disappearing...

Rick finishing his section - not bad for an old fella. Went out 2nd and came home 2nd...

Courteney totally focused on the task at hand

Hannahs sitting in her kayak on the river edge knowing that Courteney is near cos I've just yelled that information at her, and had stunned faces look back at me cos I've referred to females ( 'shes' on 'her' way) and up until that point its just been males thru that transition, and not too many at that either...

As I said, its a beautiful part of NZ, but 27kms felt like an awfully long, long way on the river

She's amazing!

Hannahs bike, ready for her finishing on the river - a photo of some significance, becos Courteney suddenly and very graciously agreed to let her brand new and horrendously expensive wheels get put onto Hannahs bike for the last 10km bike ride. Up until then, she had been resolute in her determination that no-one but she was going to ride on the Reynolds, ever! But at that stage they knew they were winning the mixed teams, and they weren't too sure how far the next team was behind, but she knew that getting on the bike with those wheels would give Hannah a huge filip, and after 2 hours on the river, every little bit could help . So....

Complaining becos the computor isn't working becos of the change in wheels. There's no pleasing some people!

I was crying!!

Results...

And a needed glass of sustenance from friends who travel very well equipped, before Rick and I headed back to Tauranga, and dinner service at the restaurant. As you do!

A chef in America, Shuna, writes an occasional blog that I read, which reveals a hugely passionate committment to the craft of cooking in a restaurant kitchen.

I am not a professional chef- my skills lie in other areas, and while I love reading about food and pottering around in our kitchen making food, I am under no illusions that I am not professional in my cooking. But living with and working with people who aspire to be chefs, has taught me alot about the personalitites that succeed, and those that you prefer not to have around when the going gets tough, becos they lack the crucial element of being a team player.

This article, eloquently and somewhat dramatically describes the kind of pressure that can come to bear in a restaurant kitchen when people aren't organised or prepped, or know what they're doing. The pressure during service is uniquely intense in a kitchen, and hard to describe to people who have never experienced it. I thought this painted a masterly picture.

In an earlier blog about the Michelle Richardson wine dinner we did on Tues nite, I mentioned in passing that those sort of set menu dinners are much easier for the kitchen, becos everyone is served the same thing at the same time - and therefore the food goes out in waves. Unlike during a normal service where a restaurant our size will have 18 different tables of different numbers of people, all ordering different configurations of food ( some eating thru the menu, some going straight to mains,), some wanting to eat quickly, some preferring a leisurely meal, and all happening at different times. It is a juggling act of interesting proportions - and when it goes wrong, and the kitchen gets 'in the weeds', it can make for a pretty intense time

When we do our alterations, we are going to put in a kitchen table so customers can sit in the kitchen and watch, and maybe get to see vicariously some of that intensity.

I'm exhausted! First cookschool in the Christmas series today, and the first one in any series is always cause for some preliminary anxiety as we sort the timing of everything ( ran over time today, but knowing my husband he'll have eliminated that extra time by the Friday class,) and await the reception of the food.  We never take for granted that its all going to be liked. Anna Robertson from Silver Bubbles had arrived very early, to set up the table decorations, becos we're using her services in this series to help inspire people to create something beautiful for their table. I've talked about Anna's talent in previous blogs, and I'm going to take a series of photos over this series to document what she does for us, becos she indicated today that things will change as time goes on, becos she doesn't like repeating the same thing too often. Sounds a bit like the process that happens with Ricks recipes, over a series - theres always a degree of evolution as we progress thru the series ...he had a sponge cause him grief today, so he went back into the kitchen to repeat the recipe this afternoon to see where he had gone wrong, and surmised as a result of that, that the shape of the bowl that you beat the eggs in over heat, makes a  difference becos it impacts on the amount of air that gets whisked in. Hmmm...

We didn't get home till late last nite becos the entire restaurant had to be reset after the winemakers dinner. We'd moved every table in the place to accomodate everyone in the one room, and even though things were 'cosy', they worked really well.  Michelle was everything I expected her to be - erudite, witty and totally in command of her subject. She introduced each wine, and brought the wine making subject alive for us all - in a way that adds a whole extra dimension to your enjoyment of what is in your glass. The kitchen had created some lovely matches with the dishes, and everything moved along smoothly and nicely, with a roomful of good customers, who were there to enjoy themselves. And in doing so, make it very easy for us...

Case loads of wine arrived, becos we are now going to feature the winery on the wine list for the next little while, with a special page description, and cellar notes for each of the wines. And thanks to our affiliated company, Somerset Wines  that has the offlicence I'm also able to now sell to people to drink at home, so the stack of boxes is already greatly diminished. ( Which is good - becos until I get my underground cellar, storage space is always at something of a premium.....)

Rick looking much too relaxed for my liking - at the start of the nite! Its amazing how much easier it is for both kitchen and front of house to only have to concentrate on the set menu. Sometimes when we do these functions, we have half the restaurant doing the wine and food match, and the other half eating normal a la carte, and oblivous to what is going on in the back room. That puts huge pressure back on the kitchen, both in terms of prep during the day, and also with timing during service. Everyone eating the same thing at the same time, makes it absurdly easy, by comparison to a normal full dinner service.

Something being plated that required reasonable levels of concentration from some of the kitchen team...

Time to go and pour myself a glass of wine and put my feet up I think!

I have found a new food writing lodestar - and I'm not even sure who lead me to this book. I ordered it thru Amazon, which means I will have read a review somewhere - possibly in the latest edition of Art of Eating( the best food magazine there is!),  becos I usually sit up and take notice of their recommendations.

John Thorne writes exquisitely - a series of essays, that I've dipped in and out of over the last month or so, and just loved having to read last thing at nite before I turn out the light. He is completely unique. I can think of no other food writer who I have read and enjoyed quite so much - but then the list of food writers that I actually respect is rather small - and John Thorne in everything he discusses, highlights what I find distasteful in so much other writing. There is nothing trendy or fashionable in what he describes - quite the reverse in fact. He reminds me to a degree of Lois Daish, who wrote for the Listener for many years, and who always made simple everyday ingredients and simple accessible recipes seem especially appealing. Mr Thorne has that same knack. He doesn't need to dial up memories of quaint villages in Tuscany to give his writing gravitas - he is content with research and contemplative analysis, and pottering around in the kitchen. The result is quietly assured, honest and enormously satisfying.

He eschews anything trendy, and instead through his beautiful prose captures a life where the cooking of food is savoured and ruminated over, in the attempt to derive pleasure. In doing so, he betrays an honest, sometimes biting portrayal of himself and those around him - and I loved the window that it opened up.

Needless to say I have been back on Amazon ordering more of his writing and also some of the authors that he has recommended - just for those afternoons when my husband and daughter head over the Kaimais to race, and I'm left home alone, you understand!

Another list that I've decided I should start, is to catalogue some of the wierld and wonderful comments and queries we get periodically from customers. I don't do a double take often, but then sometimes people will ask something that literally does pull me up short.

The query tonite that got me going:

Janine taking an order from Table 4 was asked whether the 'duck had been bled'. We're used to been asked whether the chickens are free range and organic, but I have to say thats a first with the duck. Janine didn't ask what she actually meant, and I was tempted to move in and ask, but somehow getting involved in a graphic discussion over how animals are killed is possibly not what surrounding tables need to hear....