We get alot of compliments on our bread at the restaurant - bread we make ourselves, using a starter. It was quite an uphill process to learn the ins and outs of making bread, even one as relatively straightforward as ours.

We referenced alot of people and alot of books along the way and this man kind of became  our bread guru, and in this video he explains the bread making process succinctly and cleverly, and shows just why we turn to him every time we've had a query.

There has been a massive bread renaissance, as he refers to it ( an expression I loved and will now shamelessly co-opt!), over the last 20 years or so, and literature abounds on how to make bread properly. Peter Reinhart has written some of the best books, but its taken years for us to absorb all the detail, and to understand all the variables.

His recipes are incredibly detailed as he explains the wheres and whyfores in each stage, and every time I sit down with one of his books learn something afresh.

He has a supreme understanding of the science behind the transformation of wheat thru the various stages into baked bread, and he explains the scientifc reasoning for each stage, in a way that enlightens.

And behind all the theory is the iron clad conviction that bread has to taste good for people to want to eat it again - so understanding the science is all very well and important, but ultimately it is only useful if it is used in the production of good tasting bread.

Maybe it is my age - but I am conscious that I have got to a time and a place where I'm no longer content just to accept that things can happen. I like to have it explained to me why they have actually taken place, and when it comes to matters of dough, there is simply no one better out there at sharing his passion for the craft then this gentleman.

Be warned! I've rediscovered TED, a bountiful source of knowledgable people talking about their passions, so the videos I get excited about and want to link too,  like this one, will probably be ongoing...

We're quiet in the restaurant tonite, so I've come back over to the house to get on top off the pile of cookschool bookings that have just arrived. A really glorious evening - still, sunny and quite beautiful. It doesn't feel like we've had many like this so far this year....

I spent the afternoon in a dark movie theatre, which is possibly why it feels extra special to be sitting here  luxeriating in such a stunning evening. ( Went to see my first full opera -  Rialto is showing The New York Met HD movie productions of some of their classic opera's,  and it was truly stunning to watch something so world class, albiet rather lengthy in duration and somewhat blighted by the fact that I thought  the hero in this particular saga was distinctly wet. If I'd been the heroine I wouldn't have held out for his return quite as resolutely as she did!)

But back to the TED lectures - this one of Malcolm Gladwell discusses the research that leads to the range of choice in the food products that the food industry decide to offer us, the consumers. And I found that kind of fascinating becos many is the time that I've stood in a supermarket aisle and just kind of been intimidated at the extreme range of choice. I've often wondered why we need so much. This lecture explains why the food industry thinks we do. I do understand the concept of competition, but sometimes I feel that the huge array of options is counterproductive, becos it  simply ends up being confusing. Or at least it does to me.

This lecture explains to a degree why we have that choice now, and it also verifies a comment that Steve Jobs made to his biographer that he had never had any interest in doing any  form ofmarket research prior to  launching a new product, becos it was his firmly held belief that the public didn't know what they wanted until he gave them the gizmo. So asking people if they wanted a touch phone prior to making one available to them, was a waste of time in his opinion. Apple is now one of the most successful companies in the world, so theres a chance he was right.

All kind of fascinating I think!

I have read books on the subject of the dropping of gastronomic standards in France. A subject of much chestbeating in a country that has for centuries considered itself superior to all others.

But MacDonalds has got more than a toe hold there, and there is a younger generation who aren't as interested in the time consuming aspects of either producing top quality food product, or of doing long apprenticeships in tyrannical kitchens. Times have changed and standards have dropped, and big corporates have moved in.

There is little money to be made in restaurants at the high end of the market. To generate substantial profits you need volume and low wage costs, so the mentality for many is to buy in vacumn packed or frozen foods that are produced in a factory, and then use unskilled ( ie cheap) kitchen labour to simply reheat it. It happens. Whether the figures quoted in this article are true or not, I'm can't say, but certainly we're aware its a trend.

Not a new one however. I remember 20 years or so ago, having a somewhat strange conversation with a food rep who essentially told Rick that he was mad to be making all his sauces from scratch, when he could buy them ready made, and in doing so save on wage costs. When we tried to explain to this guy, that the reputation that mattered to us, was precisely that we make everything from scratch, that that is what gives us our point of difference, he told us we were kidding ourselves, becos the public can't taste the difference.

To a degree he's right. A big percentage of the public would not taste any variation and are more focused on the price, but we continue to believe that enough people can and do care about the provenance of their food, and like that an establishment cares enough to want to craft the food they serve their customers right from the basics.

We believe its at the very  core of what we do, and nothing will ever change that.

I  confess to a bit of a magazine fetish, and I have found that reading online will never take over from that initial frission of pleasure which I get when I sit down to savour a pile of clean, crisp new magazines.

And one of my favourite titles is Vanity Fair. The articles are always wide ranging, sometimes a little too Hollywood centric for my personal taste, but there is always one or two articles buried in there, that more than compensate for all the beautiful people. A classic example was discovered today when I was curled up in the armchair waiting for Rick to get back from his ride.

It was this one on the economic crisis, by Joseph E. Stiglitz,  which provided me with one of those  ' ah, ha'  moments that helps clarify in my own brain, certain aspects of what is happening on a global scale.

We're a small business, and to a marked degree we are exposed to what happens in the general economy, and then  NZ by virtue of its small size and dependency on overseas markets, is in turn, dependant on how the foreign markets are going.

It is all very well us being good at what we do - cooking nice food, and serving it to people with a smile - but if there aren't enough people inclined to want to spend their hard earned cash on a nite out at a restaurant, then we are not going to generate enough turnover to be viable.

I have always been too well aware that its important to stay relevant, and as a long term business that becomes even more crucial, becos staleness in what we do, will put customers off, and affect the number of people that we get thru our door. So alot of the research we do, is geared at making sure that we are staying current with trends, and giving our customer base, in general, what they want.

But sometimes our numbers are affected not by what we do or don't do, but more by the general economic feeling. If theres alot of pain being experienced, then we are inevitably going to be affected.

So what happens in the economy on a national and an international level is something I am always curious about, becos I very much want there to be enough people around wanting a nite out at Somerset. It helps me pay the bills! By virtue of the wide ranging sorts of customers that we get thru our doors, I get to talk to alot of people about business and stuff. And articles like this one help me see the bigger picture, and I find it a much less painful way of absorbing economic data then I did with the obligatory Economic papers that were part of my Commerce degree. I can't say I was ever very enthusiatic about those!

I figured that the sheer, uninhibited gorgeousness of this baby's laugh just had to be shared...

Such joy! - such happiness! In a world where there is too much horribleness, sometimes its rather nice to be reminded that there can be something pure and pleasureable - something with no strings attached. It simply is what it is -a contented happy little man, expressing his sense of enjoyment.

Captivating!

Am just about to head out the door to pick up Rick and Matt from the airport. Benson caught a pheasant down below this morning to my distress, and is currently in his run demolishing the remains.

I really do believe that girls can do anything, but there is no doubting that I would have wished for a male around the place this morning to take over dealing with the bloodied and dismembered remains of the poor bird.

And I guess its a bit after the fact to be wishing that our dogs weren't bird dogs - its genetically imprinted in them, and is the main reason I don't have any chooks, becos I just couldn't bear the slaughter that would ensue on a regular basis.

I'm pragmatically enough inclined to know why they do, and sentimental enough to wish that they wouldn't!!

Anyway...

This article is written by a gentleman who has just filled in as the New York Times restaurant critic, when they were between 2 permanent appointments, and I thought his commentary on how things have changed in the discussions that surround the restaurant world since last time he wrote reviews, to be very interesting.

Predictably its a New York centric perception of the hospitality industry but his thoughts are relevant anywhere in the world that there is an internet connection.

I am home alone at the moment , Rick has gone down to Christchurch to support Courteney for when she races tomorrow in the road race at Elite Nationals, and maybe its becos I'm pottering around on my own, being somewhat selfindulgent in what I choose to do as you can be when you find yourself by yourself, that I found the time to listen to this lecture by Sir Paul Callaghan, given in Wellington a few months ago - a link given in an article I'd just read in North and South.

I have all but given up on relying on traditional news media for information, becos over the last few years it has become such trivialised dross, and so often simply inaccurate,  that my abiding sentiments usually on reading something in the daily papers, or hearing it on the TV news, is to be annoyed by the inepitude or deliberate attempt to blow something up out of nothing. In fact my one and only new years resolution was to keep the TV turned off, and not allow myself to watch it just for the sake of it being on. Too much of a waste of precious time spent in a completely unfulfilling way.

Therefore it comes as a pleasant surprise to sit up ( actually I was lying down, with the microphone on the computor wound up loud but that is somewhat beside the point!), and listen to a man of science like Sir Paul, give his practical and unfanciful interpretations of data, which is usually  woefully misrepresented in the mass media.

He obviously believes passionately in NZ Inc, and is at the same time an incurable optimistic and has a recipe for the business future of this country that I thought profound and thought provoking.

We have come back to a busier week in the restaurant than at the same time last year, fueled by exactly what I'm not too sure. It  does however create a note of positivety that I'm very happy to have at the start of the year, especially after the preceding 12 months which were so erratic and unpredictable in their occupancy patterns.

I have long since stopped having any expectations in terms of what business might be like weeks or months out from my present. When the bank occasionally requests a budget from me, I either fudge, prevaricate or give them figures based on the previous 12 months. I never predict growth, and that is not becos I am necessarily pessimistic in any way, but becos I've come to understand that as a business, we are completely exposed to the vagaries of the local, national and international economy, in ways that we can not possibly have any direct control over, but which can have an all too dire impact on our turnover, regardless of what we might do on a micro level.

And neither can we necessarily predict what may happen or how it may impact on us, so to do a budget stating what I expect the restaurant income to be, 8 months hence is an exercise in futility as far as I'm concerned. I avoid it if at all possible.

I do however, believe passionately in this country, and in the kind of people who live in our community, and I have feel nothing but irritation towards those who feel fit to denigrate NZ relative to other places in the world.

And so to hear a man of the calibre of Sir Paul Callaghan, express so eloquently his beliefs in how NZ could, and absolutley should, grow its prosperity , is to underscore and extend my own impressions.

Somerset is  but a tiny contributor to the local economy - but the healthier that economy is generally, the better for us and everyone we deal with, and I am hopeful that New Zealanders in general will stop the tall poppy syndrome, that is now so dated,  and refuse to allow the media to talk down to us, and start believing that we are a country with some truly world beating attributes. And I'm not just talking about the scenery!!

This link to New Year wishes was sent to me, somewhat predictably by a Scotsman!  We didn't have the words to Auld Lang Syne handy on New Years Eve itself, as we stood on a deck and watched the midnite fireworks over at the Mount, so you'll have to forgive my indulgence of listening to them for the first time this year...

There are days, especially this time of year, when everything in our working life gets conspicuously busier, and I have a tendency to occasionally feel a little sorry for myself, becos of all the balancing of various things that I may have to do in the day.

And then I watch a clip like this that Jim has just sent me, and I decide that its time I got over myself!

And sometimes I wonder if the guys in the kitchen get a little bored with the repetition in their work regime - where each day they prep food, only  to have it eaten that nite, and therefore have to begin  all over again from scratch  the following day.

Somehow the degree of that repetition pales into insignificance alongside what this gentleman does in his working day...

Just in from a walk - unfortunetely the wind is back and I got blown around a bit out there, which is fine when its at your back, but a bit more of a challenge when its front on...

Catching up on some internet reading before I get ready to head over to work and thought I'd link to this latest David Lebovitz blog on some tips for working in domestic kitchens, becos I read them thru nodding my head in agreement.

It made me think about our cookschools, one of which we did today, and during which my role is pretty much to interprete alot of what happens for the home kitchen.

Commercial equipment is much more powerful than domestic - right from the wooden spoons we use, thru to the food processors, refridgeration and ovens. Not to mention dishwashers. Commercial dishwashers have a 1, 2 or 3 minute cycle - a stark contrast to the hours that domestic ones seem to take.

I very seldom prep in the restaurant kitchen, but do a reasonable amount of cooking at home, some of it experimental and some of it for the family. Rick is the reverse. He doesn't particullarly enjoy working in our kitchen at home becos of its limitations relative to what he is used to working in.

It is our intention one day to custom build a kitchen that will have commercial equipment at its heart, and be set out with better bench space, but for now I make do with what we have.

David Lebovitz has come from years of cooking in professional kitchens to a tiny one in an appartment in Paris, and his suggestions for ease with the limitations that those space constraints impose all made sense to me.

As people arrive for cookschools we always offer them a coffee, and Rick and I stand behind the espresso machine for the first 10 mins or so making coffees.

The vast majority of people have one - variations on the white or black basic choice abound  - trim milk/ soy milk/ decaf etc - but the highest percentage is flat white. I would go as far as saying 95%.

We get the occasional hot choc and sometimes a tea request, but most people, just like me, need to have their morning coffee to kick start their day.

Yesterday we did a large private class, and some of those people came back for a second one while they waited for the whole group to arrive from Whakatane. I got the impression that for some of them, the coffee was acting as a pick me up after a heavy Saturday nite...

I used to drink alot of coffee in the day. Shifting into the house next door to the restaurant had an appreciable impact on the level I drank, becos the espresso machine was within such ready acess at all times, and becos I drink black coffee, which is usually a double shot, my caffeine intake was consistently high.

A couple of years ago I was on homeopathic treatment for a few months, which means you can't have any alcohol or coffee, and going cold turkey on both was an interesting experience, if nothing else just to make sure that I could actually do it a nd that I was I was in fact in charge!

Ironically I think I found giving up the coffee harder than I did the wine, and interestingly once the 3 months were over, and I started drinking coffee again, I found that I didn't want to drink as much, and  over the intervening time I haven't changed. I now have 2 cups of coffee in a day - usually one in the morning and one when I go over to work at nite, and I need those to be good cups of coffee!

So I thought this article on coffee was interesting becos it talks about people who are far more geeky about coffee then we are, but it also describes  some major issues that are affecting harvests and which will inevitably have an impact on coffee prices. (I'm sure I read somewhere else that coffee is one of the biggest commodities traded on the world markets.).

Statistics I also read somewhere revealed that NZers still drink an astonishing amount of instant coffee, a fact that intrigued me, becos in the world that I inhabit, I hear predominantly chat about cafes which are assessed in terms of how good their coffee is. I tend to assume that everyone has embraced the world of espresso, but that just shows maybe, that I'm more of a snob than I thought I was.

The baristas in this article are far more elitist on the subject of coffee than I am, and probably will ever be, becos I just don't feel a need to push the subject to that degree of specialisation. We get our beans from Waiheke Island roasters, fresh each week, and  we like the dark roast.

For us, for now, that works. And talking about which I think I'm due my first cup... so will head over and put the answerphone on and make my husband one as well.

( He tells me there's a case of Pedro Ximenez sherry on the restaurant doorstep. Thankgod! Our suppliers have been waiting on the shipment to arrive, and we sold out almost 3 weeks ago, and we have alot of customers who always finish their meals at Somerset with a glass of Pedro Ximenz poured over our vanilla icecream, and its been no fun not been able to give them what they want, becos nothing really, comes close to the distinctive flavours of that sherry.)

We got these cups thru Jane at Island coffee - they're handmade in Sydney and I love them to bits. They were intended as latte cups, but I drink my coffee out of them exclusively, even my long blacks, ( but not filled to the top obviously!) We get the occasional gripe becos they don't have handles, but to me that is part of their charm.....

Chris sent me this link to some quite stunning photos, which are inspiring in a week that I'm struggling with my photography homework.

Wish they'd also post the shutterspeeds and aperature settings they used...

A sobering visual of the number of McDonalds outlets covering America....

Fast food reigns!

The more I read about this man, the more impressed I am. I've watched a couple of videos of him giving lectures at Harvard on food and science, and I've watched him at David Changs Momofuku restaurant at about 2am in the morning, looking somewhat the worse for wear, but still exhibiting a curiousity about the type of food that David Chang is doing that was creating such a buzz.

This article goes some way to describing the essence of the man...

I do realise that it is a bit of a constant  theme running thru many of my blogs to have a whinge at the perception generated by a lot of the shows on TV, that cooking professionally is a glamourous, high profile job, available to anyone with the right look and sufficiently abrasive personality.

Why would you bother doing a boring repetitive apprenticeship in a restaurant kitchen, where there aren't any cameras, and you're just a lowly line chef, and no one thinks you're especially fabulous, just to learn how to cook?

How much better to avoid all that tedium and leap straight into the public eye via TV....

This article makes a very good case for why such an approach is not good for the future of cooking in restaurants.

Our daughter is addicted to the Australian Masterchef which is drawing to its final at the moment . And we had customers in the other nite, who had to be home in time to watch it. People love these shows, even though they are so scripted and  disconnected with reality.

I don't think its an obsession thats going to end anytime soon, regardless of what we, in the industry doing the hard graft,  think of its relevance to the real world. And we have had our share of young guys straight out of polytech training who genuinely do believe that they are now officially 'chef's', and will be able to automatically stand in the shoes of someone like Rick, who has had decades of hands on cooking experience.

In our eyes they are just at the beginning of their cooking career, and those that don't see it that way, do not get any traction in our kitchen. We simply can't be bothered with the egos and the attitude.

And as a bye the bye, more on the same theme from Lauraine Jacobs recent blog  where she decries in much stronger terminology then me, the celebrity cult surrounding food tv and glossy food magazines....

Last week we got invited to a breakfast at the wonderful Pasifika tent that is part of the Arts Festival to listen to Paul Gilding speak.

He gave a witty, perfectly pitched speech to a group of local business people, that included a brief synopsis of his unconventional life experience to date, all of which has led to his committed belief that the economic model that has been the guiding light of capitalism for the last century, is seriously flawed. Growth at all cost is not necessarily better, in fact becos we are now using 150% of the globes resources to produce at the level we currently are, then any further appreciable surge in economic growth is actually going to be scientifically impossible.

He is instead advocating a 'steady state'  where the economy is measured around other indicators then simply monetary growth.

The speech linked to here, is one he gave in London, and is slightly different to the one we listened too, but carrys a very similar message.

We left the breakfast, hurrying back to the restaurant in order to be organised for a cookschool, and the day unfolded in a way that I didn't really have a chance to sit down and debate some of the points he'd raised. So listening to this video has given me a chance to revisit his arguments, ( Rick and Courteney are both glued to Cue TVs coverage of the 2nd stage in the Tour of Southland),  and once again I am struck by how they are a natural fit, with where I feel I have arrived in terms of  both my personal and business life.

Four years ago we were intent on growth for the business - we embarked on ambitious plans to bring in investors to allow us serious expansion into both the bistro section of the dining out market, and also to become large food producers for food that people could eat at home.

In the face of the gathering financial clouds that were looming in 2008, we didn't get the full amount of the investor finance that we wanted, and we walked away from the plans, bruised definitely, but also considerably wiser for the whole experience.

I have been asked a number of times subsequently whether I am pleased that we didn't go ahead now that the global financial crisis has affected NZ's economic confidence over the interceding years. My response for the first little while was that, no I wasn't pleased, becos we would never know whether our ideas would have worked or not. But the truth is, that as more time has passed,  and I pass certain numerical milestones like turning 50, and we look at our children and what is happening in their lives, and we debate what is important in ours, it has slowly dawned on me, that business expansion is no longer a priority.

Other things have superseded it.

We are fortunate to love what we do. Most of the time it is a hugely satisfying occupation to be involved in. ( There are days most certainly, when I don't feel anywhere near so enamoured of it, but they do tend to be few and far between!). And what I've come to appreciate is that we don't actually have to grow the business to enjoy it any the more.

As one of the potential investors said to me back in 2008, when he was challenging our assumptions over our growth plans, 'why not focus on polishing what you have here; why not make it shine like a precious jewel?'. It was a way of thinking that took my fancy, even though at the time, it didn't fit with what I was trying to achieve.

The last four years have been challenging to be in business, and I don't think we're at the end of that particular down turn yet either. There is more to come. And that creates its fair share of stresses and strains, but I don't think it is just blighted ignorance, that allows me to continue to look ahead with a sense of positivety and enjoyment.

I really do believe that we are lucky.

I haven't been very well over the past few days, and one of the strongest indicators that I am now officially on the mend, is that my appetite has started to  return.

Anne not wanting to eat is usually a contradiction in terms, and I've been very grateful for my nitely creme caramels, which I've pathetically scooped out of the bowl, hunched up in my dressing gown, looking ... no, we won't go there!

Today we were taking a friend out for lunch to catch up and to say thankyou - she's just had a large overseas trip, and we'd borrowed her house in Ohope for the Motu challenge - and I was a bit apprehensive  about how I'd feel, about the food that is. But no. New dishes on the Grange Rd menu, and I tried a gravalax salmon salad, that was served with new potatoes and beans and micro greens - a perfect balance for my here  and now. Executed with the light hand that I've come to really respect from Mark.

Which is all a back ground way of saying that maybe I'm not feeling quite as enthusiatic about food as I would ordinarily, but even so when I clicked the link to Paula Dean wrapping cheesecake in filo and then deepfrying, I have to say I was stumped.

Why would you?

We spent a whole Christmas series a few years back introducing people to the delights of Graham Crackers, which are what you will find in the base of most New York cheesecakes convincing them that it was worth going to the trouble to make their own becos they wouldn't be able to find them to buy, and Rick expounded at length what he had learnt about cooking the cheesecake just enough, so that when you can to eat it, the texture was silky and sublime.

And I don't think we're precious about food, I really don't.  But I do really believe that good chefs have the happy knack of knowing when to step back from a dish, that adding new ingredients and techniqes will just confuse the palate. Rick tells me quite often to leave well along, as I'm tempted to add yet another ingredient to a dish. Its important, I get told, to know when enough is enough. I agree

This is definitly in the realms of absurdity.

This dessert concoction of Mrs Deans is something quite outside my sphere of reference, and I would have to say I don't watch her on the Food Channel, but I've decided on the basis of this video that the whole thing is a shleck. Its a set up. She's taking the piss. She has to be.

I don't like dissing people. There's enough trowls prowling the internet downloading their bile in an anonymous and invective loaded fashion, so I never want to  join even the far fringes of that type.

And there is alot of very uncomplimentary stuff written about Paula Dean - but on the basis of this, I've decided that she is going to have written on her grave stone 'Gotch'u!' 

She's doing what she does very deliberately. She must know that she has totally destroyed all the factors that make a cheesecake  a wonderful dessert, and that at some point she'll own up and tell us that it was all a big charade, and she did it becos some of the 'thou shall eat healthy' types brought out the devils advocate in her.

I think I need to believe that.  But I don't know, I also think I just lost my appetite again....

We've done a cookschool today, and unusually there were a number of first time attendees in this class, and that always seems to generate a slightly different pace, and we have to remember to mention things that we tend, after all these years, to take for granted. Like the fact that the butter we use is always unsalted...

We go back to basics with explaining why we make pastry in a food processor, something that people who've been coming to classes for years know automatically. Its never a bad thing to have to go back over the essentials and explain the whys and wherefores. I'm currently reading ' Ideas in Food', a quite unique cookbook that looks at everyday ingredients and techniques and analyses how we might better improve the way we do things.

 Some ideas are radical, a completely new way of looking at something, and some are simply a logical extension of the way things have always been done, but using new technology and equipment to improve the process. Just as how 20 odd years ago, we went to a cookschool that Damien Pignolet did at the then, Epicurean Cookschool, and told us that we should be making pastry in food processor. Back then we were firmly wedded to the idea that good food had to be made by hand, and that included pastry, and using a machine somehow cheapened the process. In actual fact what we learnt and what we've been passing on in cookschools ever since, is that a processor used correctly makes better pastry more consistently, and that, we've come to see as a good thing. By hand, doesn't have to literally mean using the flesh and blood body parts only.

Part of the conversation I had later with one of the ladies evolved around where I thought New Zealanders sat relative to Europeans in terms of their appreciation of food. She was a German who's lived in NZ for 20 years, and we had an interesting too and fro with me being adamant that I believe Kiwi chefs are as good as anyone else in the world, and have the added advantage of not being tied to tradition, but are able to reference a wide range of food cultures.

But  New Zealand food and the restaurant scene is constantly evolving and changing, and as I mentioned in an earlier blog we came back from the meal we had at Al Browns new restaurant in Auckland, The Depot, convinced we'd seen the emergence of a new trend for New Zealand ( its already happening alot overseas), which ironically is referencing many old fashioned ideas - cooking over wood, using cheap cuts of meat, and an oyster bar when the mollescues are shucked to order - and presenting them in a very appealing package.

We have a style at Somerset that is different to that - it is a style that didn't spring to life fully developed on our first day in business but which has evolved over the years, into what we are comfortable with and what our customers appear to be comfortable with. I've just read a review of a New York restaurant thats closing its doors after 35 years, and which has consistently done the same food in the same environment all that time, becos that is what the owners were comfortable with, and there were enough customers happy to go back to eat the same dishes each time, for the owners not to feel the need to change anything.

We have a constant balancing act going on with wanting to change and to titivate aspects of the restaurant, but to always do it in a way that it is an improvement, and not seen as a radical alteration in course. When we did the major building alterations back in 2003 my biggest fear was that we would alienate our existing customer base, by changing the feel of the restaurant too much, even though that upgrade was desperately needed both from an aesthetic and also a practical perspective,  and for those reasons we made sure that nothing on the wine list or menu changed initially. We rolled on as before, just in a much nicer and more spacious space.

And each year Rick makes changes to the menu  as seasonal ingredients dictate, and my wine list evolves as my exposure to new wines increases. Its an ever ongoing process that I don't see ever really stopping.

My thoughts on training and how I want the front of house staff to treat customers have been modified and developed over the years, as I've worked with different temperments and seen different outcomes. The way we treat our staff in todays world is much more collegial, and dare I say it, pleasant, then what we once would have done, becos we prefer to work in a pleasant and supportive environment. None of this just happens. You make conscious decisions along the way becos something has worked really well, or maybe it hasn't and you are learning from the failure, but I do feel that we are constantly learning,

And for all those reasons it was perfect timing for me to come back to my desk this afternoon and end up on the video of some relaxed chat that Eric Ripert, a top New York chef has with some chef contempories of his about their individual philosphies. They come from quite different perspectives and each one is very successful at what they do, proving that there is no template that you can drop over all hospitality business, and declare that that is the way things should be done. I thought the discussion back and forwards was fascinating.

This link is to an interview with Eric Ripert that sets the tone on the man - the restaurant he is a part owner of, Le Bernardin,  is one of the most highly rated in New York.

And the chefs he chats with that I'm familiar with, are; Grant Archatz, who owns Alinea in Chicago, and who comes across as a very intense and focused perfectionist, who is very much at the centre of the molecular movement, and linked closely to Ferran Adria from el Bulli, and Thomas Keller from The French Laundry; Tony Bourdain, who by his own admission was always only really a basic line chef, without any pretensions to be considered great, but who has gone on to substantial fame and fortune, through the books he's written about the restaurant industry and his TV shows which we don't see enough of in NZ; David Chang, the current enfant terrible of the New York culinary world, who's first restaurant Momofuko set most of the established norms as to what should happen in a serious restaurant on their ear. He combines and references Korean food with Japanese, with European ideas, and has become very famous; and Jose Andres is a Spanish chef who owns a number of restaurants in Washington and who has a fascinating approach to food, and is a close personal friend of the very influential Ferran Adria.

These gentlemen have considerable gravitas within the restaurant world, and I thought it fascinating to listen to their approaches as to what inspired them. There was agreement and disagreement, which doesn't necessarily point to a right or wrong approach, but instead proves maybe, that each sucessful restaurant business is a result of a whole host of influences. There is no one correct path to take.

Take a little time out in your day and watch this beautiful video. Its a 15 minute ode to something that we, in the Western world are loosing - the belief that making something from scratch every day, simply, singularly and in  a totally focused fashion has its own merits and can be a reward in its own right.

So often when we master a skill, we believe its then time to expand or to change or to grow - the thought of doing the same thing in the same place for over 45 years is quite alien for most of us.

I love it - I love the sense of family, the sense of continuity, the sense of realness. Quite wonderful.

And a fascinating contrast to the book I finished reading in the early hours of this morning, a biography on the Widow Cliquot. The businesswoman who grew the Veuve Cliquot champagne house into an enormous international conglomeration. The total other end of the business scale to this local pizzeria.

Last year I discovered the very wise words of Kenny Shopsin  in his totally unique and wonderful book " Eat me - the food and philosophy of Kenny Shopsin", who's take on the food media, on customers and on his children struck a number of chords with me. Kenny has always totally eschewed any fame or attention - he didn't want to become famous becos of all the attendant bullshit that came with it. This Italian gentleman appears to find the fame a form of acknowledgment which in his gentle fashion makes him happy, and who am I to say whether that is right or wrong.

The paradox I suspect, is that the more he gets written up as the ultimate pizza destination in New York, the more curious 'foodies' will need to go to tick it of their list, and that increase in numbers wanting pies means he gets busier, and people have to wait longer for their orders, becos it would appear he refuses to have anyone help him make the pizzas, and people wouldn't like the wait.

And the locals who have supported him thru all the years before he got famous would also have to wait along with all the tourists, and maybe some of them start dropping away, as the wait becomes more than they want, and the business becomes more of a tourist destination than a local pizzeria as has happened with the likes of Harrys Bar in Venice.  That restaurant is now a caricature of what once made it great, simply because its client base has changed dramatically over the years to almost totally comprise of an everchanging parade of tourists 'doing' the famous spots while in the city. And in the process, to my eyes  it lost its authenticity.

That is one of the costs of fame that Kenny was so  critical off - he wanted above all to stay real to his local community, and I admired him for that approach enormously.

One of the daughters in this video refers to the fact she prefers to work out the back away from the customers becos she doesn't like dealing with the negativity that people express when they feel they've been waiting too long for their orders - and that is something I suspect that would happen increasingly as their customer base changes percentage wise, over to first timers who are there to experience something they've heard or read about, and who have no sense of personal connection with the business.

 We are not a culture that is good at waiting - we expect our food to be ready in minutes, and even if we have read in advance that the pizzas are made single handedly by an elderly gentleman, that still doesn't translate in the minds of many as meaning, that they personally may have to wait a conspicuous period of time for their handmade pizza to be assembled and cooked.

Possibly I read too much into it - and more than anything I will go back and watch it and just enjoy the craft and the focus.

It's funny the places you end up on the internet, when you can't sleep and get up in the early hours of the morning to do some work... Believe it or not I got to this video of Steven Jobs giving a Commencement speech via a food blog, and I watched it initially with a modicum of scepticism becos ever since we did a private lunch at the restaurant 20 years or so ago, and I listened to a bunch of computor geeks, eulogising about Mr Jobs like he was the next messiah, I've always regarded the cult of hype that surrounds Apple, as being somewhat excessive and distinctly purient.

But you'll find no argument from me with the basic concepts he outlines here on how to approach life and living....

Friday, 7th October. I've just sat down at the computor to catch up with a few things after a cookschool and see that Steven Jobs has died today. Little did I know when I posted the above a few days ago that his death was so iminent, and it makes his suggestions on living like every day is your last, all the more poignant and powerful. Hmmm...

My husband is sitting in the lounge strumming his guitar to some fairly cruisy music, and I've just been catching up on some internet reading and got linked to this series of international food blogs that Saveur Magazine recommend. Possibly don't need anymore additions to my Favourites list becos it takes awhile in my week to keep uptodate with all the reading as it is, but thought some of these looked rather promising, so wanted to share the list.

We've just had a busy Friday and Saturday nite in the restaurant ( becos the AllBlacks aren't playing until today, Sunday!) and that has completely restored my sense of equilibrium, and reminded me that we do know what we're doing, and we do have a good business and people do like us, and that lying in bed at 2am after an excuciatingly quiet Saturday nite ( becos the AllBlacks were playing the French) is really a complete waste of time that won't achieve anything, becos that grudge match was always going to be compulsory viewing for the vast majority of Kiwis, and we were therefore inevitably on a hiding to nowhere, so it is just one of those bumps in the long road we travel, that we have to absorb and move on from!

Think I've managed to clear that hurdle now! Until the next time...

I'm the person who stated in the previous blog that I couldn't get myself organised enough to ensure an ongoing supply of microgreens in a small tray on the deck, so my chances of starting from scratch and creating a produce heaven like this restaurant owner has, without some expert help, is totally zilch.

But I have to say it is very, very inspiring...

Some of the most wellknown chefs in the world recently got together to discuss important matters, and as a result of the meeting released a statement as to how they hoped chefs of the future would treat their vocation.

In this article an English restaurant reviewer takes umbrage at the double standards inherent in the pronouncements, and I have to admit I smiled a little wryly as I read his comments, becos I do sometimes feel that there is a certain tendency in some quarters, to take the whole business of restaurants and chefs and what they do, as being of considerable more impact to the world in general than what in fact they actually deserve...

( I'm allowed to take it seriously becos our livelihood depends on it - but I would never consider telling those around me how I felt they should practise their trade. It can all just get a little too precious for my tastes.)

I have just finished reading 'In Defense of Dogs' by John Bradshaw, a fascinating study on canine behaviour that detours from alot of previously accepted theory. I was curious to read theories that differed from the wolf mantra that has underscored most of the dog training wisdom up until now. Mr Bradshaw argues that studies are now showing that domesticated dogs are so far removed from the behavioural traits of their canid forebears, that to attempt to modify their behaviour, by  aligning them to wolves is setting everyone up for failure.

He made a number of fascinating points, not the least of which was to underscore my sense of disquiet that the system of pedigree dogs imposed on us when we had a litter a couple of years ago. There was alot not to be impressed with.

I have always loved dogs, and need them as part of my life, even though their presence can be smelly, messy, and something we regularly have to organise around. They require time and energy that can often be inconvenient, but in return  they are a constant presence and a source of love that gives me immense pleasure, and which is not something I can always adequately explain. It just is.

But that is maybe why I responded to this article on a dog at Ground Zero, that was used to help the recovery people deal with the enormity of what they were facing, with tears.

Dogs are special. They provide us humans with something that can't necessarily be quantified, but which is still inordinantly profound for all that.

One of our pooches -coincidently  providing me with a study for my photography homework, on depth of field. He is the pup we kept out of the litter we had,  and he is the most sunny natured dog, I have ever encountered. Quite beautiful

Far be it from me to diss the opposition. It is something I just don't do- ( well not beyond the occasional grumble in conversation with good friends, or splutter in my personal diaries).

But this restaurant hasn't opened yet, so technically I'm not being critical of competition am I?

I'd like however, to draw your attention to this column in the Bay Sun, written by someone who we happen to know has eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world - in Chicago and London and Paris - so who has credibility in my eyes, as to what actually constitutes a great restaurant.

And I think he very succinctly put a sense of perspective around some of the more interesting statements made in an interview about this soon to open new restaurant.

And he made Rick and I smile over our morning coffee. Thankyou 'Winston' !!.

A link to a very cool series of mainly restaurant food images from Paris...

I have a copy of Anne Lamotts book ' Bird by Bird' currently heading in my direction together with a number of other ordered books. ( I figure that a bit like shoes, you can never have too many books...)

This book I'm hoping is going to give me enough to reflect on, and to help me get over my current aversion to sitting down and focusing on the restaurant book, that I thought at the start of the year that I would have written by the end of the same year.

It hasn't happened - the muse has vanished, and even though I continue to write blogs, and copious amounts in my personal diaries, I haven't quite been able to rekindle the enthusiasm to resit down with the book script.

This book, 'Bird by Bird', comes highly recommended as a description of the creative process that writing is, and I'm hoping that rather than making me feel inadequate, it will instead buoy me  with an enthusiasm that has gone awoy over the last few months.

The article that I link too here, by Ms Lamott, struck a chord becos I have just had one of those gloriously reflective days, that don't come along too often, where theres been nothing especially that I've needed to do, beyond indulge in a very profound sense of the present. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

And now I'll head over to work, becos Rhonda isn't well, and will make sure I'm back at the house in time to watch the final in this series of 'The Good Wife", ( its my sole compulosry TV viewing) and will go to bed, with my emotional tanks feeling reasurringly recharged.

I have just spent a frustrating hour or so trying to set up something that should, in theory be quite simple, but I was overly optimistic, and it has become a whole heap more complicated. Which is frustrating, and I've had a wee rant to my computor about the fact that I find not being able to do what I want to do very annoying, but I think I'm over that now, and thanks to the expertise of other people, we will find a way around my dilemma.

But I'll have to wait for that...and patience is not one of my virtues!

By happy serendipity in the midst of my angst, Chris sent me thru this link to a delightful video, that I've replayed a number of times just to soothe my jaggered nerves. Ravels Bolero was the dominant piece of music in a fantastic movie that I remember from my Varsity days, although I can't recall the name  of it now, and it subsequently became the soundtrack to alot of my living back then.

Flash mobs get a lot of bad press, and to watch the concept put to such effective and delightful purpose like this, is just what I needed this afternoon Chris, so thankyou!!

( I especially loved the Dad at the start, who sat down on the ground with his kids, just to saviour the moment...)

 A lovely article I thought, on what it is like being married to a professional chef.

Some of it I nodded my head in agreement with, and some of it is not my experience, but there is no doubt they are a different breed, these people who work in a commercial kitchen every day.

 Our focus as a food business is to provide food that tastes good to customers in a pleasant environment with service that aims to make them feel at home. We want them to enjoy the experience enough, that they are going to want to come back.

We hope they will take away positive memories of the meal. It therefore goes without saying that one of the things we most profoundly don't want, is for anyone to report back that they believe that the food they ate at Somerset has made them sick.

For any business that sells food, the question of pathogens in the food, and the unfortunate effect they can have on peoples digestive systems - to the extreme case of sometimes causing death - has to be constantly a priority.It is the elephant in the room, that while we may not always directly address, we are constantly aware of.

Government thru its food agencies, imposes a series of rules and regulations on those of us in the commercial trade, some of which have validity and some of which are nonsensical. Various fashions have come and gone over the years we've been in business - plastic chopping boards and surgical gloves for food prep being two notable examples. But we respect the general thrust of what they are aiming to achieve, even if sometimes we feel that the rigidity of their pronouncements are somewhat extreme.

Michael Ruhlman in a recent blog talked about making chicken stock and leaving it out in the kitchen for a number of days - reheating it before eating it, on each subsequent occasion. I remember my mother doing that with huge potfulls of beef and vegetable soup. It never made it into the fridge until the quantities were small enough to go in a bowl that would fit in a small domestic fridge. None of us ever suffered any untoward ramifications from that soup, even though that method would run counter to health authority recommendations today.

The article by Harold McGee that Mr Ruhlman refers to in his blog, makes for interesting reading - and explains from a scientific perspective, the question of bacteria growth, and raises the very valid point that one of the most dangerous things you do with food is have it hanging around in a temperate climate ( ie your kitchen bench!) which encourages bacteria to multiply dramatically. Heat or coldness is best. And for that reason I happen to believe that most serious food business' are safer environments becos of the size of the commercial equipment they have for chilling food.

At home our fridges are smallish, and usually well packed with product, meaning that each additional thing that is put in there, especially if it is warm is going to lift the overall ambient temperature and that is not a good thing.

By contrast in a commercial environment the chillers are usually walk in, and extremely well insulated, meaning that the overall temperature is consistently kept much colder, and by definition, safer.

Food safety is a constant refrain in the commercial kitchen. It is part of a professional chefs training, and it is something that we take very seriously.

That does not however exclude us from the occasional phone call from someone claiming that the food they ate at Somerset has made them sick. We don't get those phonecalls very often, but that infrequency doesn't make it any the less difficult to deal with, becos naturally we are horrified at the thought that we may have been responsible.

Sometimes the calls are purely frivalous - someone has had a  three course meal, chosen particullary rich dishes, drunk more than they normally do, and gone home feeling uncomfortable. Sometimes though people have reacted to something, and the only real point in our defence that we can make, is that it is natural to assume that food poisoning has been caused by the last meal you ate, when in fact it could relate to something grabbed from the home fridge earlier in the day, or even the sandwich that sat in the car for too long.

I have developed a most unfortunate and quite odd allergic reaction to dried porcini. Why only dried ones, and why porcini and not other mushrooms I have absolutely no idea. It was a problem that arose suddenly  - I'd previously been blissfully unaware that I had any issues. But a couple of times eatingf a new dish we had put on the menu that had very unfortunate ramifications for me, made me consider what it could possibly be that was causing so dramatic a reaction.  It took me awhile to figure what the problem was, but now as a result I'm wary eating most funghi, and definitly avoid dishes that have generalised descriptions of the mushrooms they use, just in case.

 I mention that becos sometimes the adverse reactions to food that we eat out is not becos of slack food hygiene, but becos of allergic reactions, and sometimes we can have spent a lifetime of eating before we discover said allergy. Fortunetly I guess, the porcini experiences that lead to my distress had happened at Somerset, which allowed me to isolate what the problem was. I was eating the dish at the same time as Rick; he was having no adverse reaction and I was up all nite, so something didn't add up, and becos we were eating identical food, on more than one occasion, I knew that it had to be about me and my reaction to the food, not the food per se. If there was something wrong with that or its cooking or storage then Rick would be sick too.

Good food operations are constantly working on minimising the risk of bacteria contamination. It is in our best interests to do so.

Why is it, that human beings, who are capable of so much sordid horribleness, can also produce something this exquisite? How do we cover that wide a spectrum?

I'm not going to go over to the restaurant tonite, becos the polar blast that has blanketed the country is meaning that we're having an exceedingly quiet nite, so will stay at my desk sorting some stuff here.

The Bay of Plenty may be one of the few parts of the country that has escaped any snow, but it is still exceedingly cold outside, and people are obviously uninclined to want to venture out. Not a lot we can do about that fact, except grin and bear it.

By chance I've got to watch a couple of videos that I want to link too, becos they sort of epitomised to me the range from the sublime to the virtually ridiculous of what is shown on food TV these days.

Julia Childs was the first to ever really feature on TV as a serious practioner. She had a massive influence on a whole generation of cooks, and inspired people to go into the kitchen by imparting practical information along with a deliciously impish sense of humour, that never took herself too seriously. Even though she was in fact, formidably intelligent and extremely well researched, she never came across in a starchy fashion.

Rick can't watch her. Becos she never worked in a commercial kitchens, her knife skills and general dexterity make him flinch, but he is the first to admit, that she has an encyclopedic knowledge about cooking technique, so while he finds her movements in the kitchen awkward, he has respect for her know how.

Her biography 'My Life in France', tracks her discovery at the age of over 40 of a desire to learn how to cook, and describes the steps she takes to learn from experts and then to pass on that knowledge. It became her life long vocation - she never stopped wanting to learn.

The second video however comes from  what I see as the ridiculous end of the spectrum - this represents  rather too well all that I struggle with about modern food TV shows. They are appearance driven - all to do with looks - and end up feeling shallow and totally unsatisfying. Admittedly this video is a promotion for the release of a cookbook, rather than an actual show on TV, but it epitomises all that puts my teeth on edge.

And I've just read that Heston Blumenthal has left his wife of 22 years for this particular woman. Hmmm...

My respect for this man is boundless. He is to me a real chef, and a great one.  We bought his 2 original classical books, La Methode and La Technique years ago, and they are timeless  in the good sense that they contain.

In a world where so many strive only for fame, and believe that they can achieve that thru looks or thru a novel point of view, rather than thru being masters of their craft, someone like this, who talks only of real mastery of technique, restores my belief in the need to be real.

Regretfully he is in the minority on food TV, but that only makes him all the more precious.

The last few years have been a challenging time to be in business, and I know becos of the wide range of business people that I get to talk too in a week, that our experiences are not unique. We have been thru a number of economic cycles in the 25 years of experience that we have accumulated, and this  downturn has not been deep for us in terms of the drop of numbers, but it has hurt becos of the length of time that it has gone on for.

We have debt, more debt than we probably should have at this stage of our business life, but we had to buy my parents out of both the trading company and the land owning partnership a few years back, and once that was paid off turned round and purchased tracks of land on both sides of the restaurant to protect its boundaries When we started out here we were in a rural area, but as the land got more built up around us, the possibility of acquiring neighbours who would object to noise became a potential problem that we wanted to avoid. Buying the land made sense.

And that is all fine - I have no regrets about the decisions we made, and am very thankful that we are paying mortgages rather than rent.The contraction of the economy over the last few years has meant that we had to revisit some of the dreams and schemes that we did have perculating away, and question basically every aspect of what we are doing, and what we want to be doing in a few years time. That can be quite a illuminating process to work thru.

I don't think I would describe any of it as fun exactly, but I do know that it has been a useful learning exercise that has not been a waste.

I am however sensitive to general economic comment, becos we are very much at the forefront of discretionary spending, and while we may have a formidably loyal clientbase, we need to attract people above and beyond that to remain viable. And those people won't come to us if they're feeling too negative about their spending options, so I always wince when I hear talk of the money markets running scared as I did when I caught the news headlines tonite, before I headed over to the restaurant for a quietish Friday nite. ( I don't like 'quietish' Friday nites, I much prefer them full!).

Hence my relief on reading this article which, while disclaiming acess to any crystal ball, did say that yes the stock markets have reacted negatively this week, but we shouldn't be putting too much weight on that. Its a jittery abberation that will pass.

Certainly I hope so!

Via the Chocolate and Zuchini monthly newsletter I got to see this food video that I thought was especially clever - no people straining selfconsiously in front of the camera and detracting from the subject matter. Rather just witty and  to the point details presented in a clever format. I liked it very much, even if I'm not much of a fan of deviled eggs...

I'm just about to head over to the supermarket to get the Sunday papers becos I'm home alone, with Courteney and Rick out on a big bike ride. The sun is shining and I have the prospect of a lovely, long uneventful day stretching out in front of me to enjoy...

We reopened Sunday nites this week now the kitchen team are all back, and looks like I may have to go over for a wee while tonite, but I"m grateful that it'll be making up for a Saturday nite made too quiet becos of the rugby.

I've read this  commentary on what some top American chefs think of the current crop of chef trainees out there in todays world with interest, becos if there is one lesson that has become ingrained in my pysche over the years, it is that any food business is only as good as the  cumulative total of the people working there.

A few good key staff certainly help, but if you have too many people who lack the right attitude and loyalty - who essentially don't really care - then you end up putting most of your energy into dealing with internal fires, and life can get pretty dismal.

I would rather be understaffed, numbers wise, but be surrounded by people who are committed to Somerset, and who have a positive attitude. Working with those sorts of people is ennervating, and the positive interaction means that we are able to focus on the task at hand, rather than getting bogged down in side issues. It is a much nicer way to work for everyone.

This article is talking about the kitchen team, and the trend overseas where most of the young graduates seek fame and fortune, as portrayed on the Food Network, with a minimal amount of hard graft on their behalf. They work around the name restaurants so that their CV's bustle with impressive names, but as one of the interviewed chefs says, all they ever did there was peel carrots, so the fact the name is on their CV actually means zilch in terms of their cooking credibility, becos they never stayed long enough to work their way up the kitchen hierarchy and learn the real stuff.

We have always been inordinately lucky at Somerset in that we have had significant longevity with our kitchen guys. They start at the bottom, most often on dishes, becos that gives us a chance to assess their attitude. It is frightening how many young trainee chefs have the audacity to think that putting their hands in a sink of dirty dishes is beneath them.

We don't agree. We want to work with people who have a collaborative attitude, who are not scared of getting stuck in and doing anything that is required for the desired end result. Anyone with a developed sniffy attitude, and a belief that somehow they're superior to someone else on the team is not going to last.

The most recent example of how that works is Hayley who was on dishes parttime for a year while finishing at school and her first year at polytech, and then came out front and trained as a waitress while she waited for an opening in the kitchen. I told her that it was good for chefs to have a front of house perspective and would stand her in good stead further down the track. She has proved formidable - an impressively competent young woman.  With John and Matt leaving at the start of this year, we were able to slot her into a fulltime position back in the kitchen where she will now train  and learn from Jamie,  Craig and Rick and do her qualifications in house with James Broad coming in to assess her.

So they tend to start on the dishes, and if they have tenacity and stay on and an opening comes available then they will start over on the oven side of the kitchen, and over the years will learn all aspects of both the prep and also the kitchen service. In a kitchen like Somerset where everything is made from scratch with a relatively small team, that means that everyone gets to do everything. We don't have seperate pastry or meat sections like some of the very large kitchens do. Our guys cover everything.

It is repetitive, unglamourous work - repeating the same tasks day after day. People who think that professional cooking is all about the glitz and glamour on TV programmes are rapidly disabused of the notion after a few days in a 'proper' kitchen and they don't tend to last.

To train as a chef takes a long time, becos its a craft, and there are layers of knowledge and expertise to acquire,and those young hot guns who think they can whoosh in and out and pick up a reasonable skill level in a matter of months are deluding themselves, and not doing our industry any favours.

The conflcting emotions that I feel about this very famous restaurant are well caught in this piece by a Guardian writer. I've alluded to el bulli many times in blogs becos it fascinates me on a whole host of levels.

A restaurant that has long been claimed as the Best in the world is closing at the end of July, becos the owners feel it is time for a change. They have revolutionised certain aspects of restaurant food, and helped change aspects of collaboration between the cooking world and the scientific one. But they weren't unique - there were other chefs travelling down a similar road, but  somehow Ferran Adri became known as the most famous.

And I find it all curious - the media beat up that is. The Colman Andrew book on Ferran Adris life was fascinating in that it showed how El Bulli used to have to close for 5 months of the year becos it was in such a geographically isolated part of Spain, and over the winter season, not enough guests bothered to go there for it to be worthwhile opening.

But as its fame was spread by food writers jumping on the bandwagon about its brilliance, people from all round the world 'needed' to go there to eat. If it was the best restaurant in the world then there are people who would fly their private jets to Spain especially to eat there. Lots of them.

Becos of that world wide demand, getting a table at the restaurant became virtually impossible.

Now I'm not saying thats a bad thing. That would be stupid, becos that sort of publicity means bums on seats, and that volume ensures a restaurants viablility. ( Although ironically in elbullis case apparently it didn't. Regardless of how busy the restaurant was it ran at a loss, and the money was made thru the books an food product that they sold.)

But. Publicity of that degree and intensity distorts for me, what the restaurant originally set out to be. An example of what I mean by that is Harrys Bar in Venice, a classic restaurant/ bar that has been going since the 1930s, and which has become so well known internationally, that it has morphed over the years from being a wonderful local trattoria into a slick expensive tourist trap, that no native Venetians would be seen dead in.

And I guess that really is the source of my conundrum, becos as an owner of a restaurant business, my biggest sense of satisfaction is derived from the ongoing contacts that we have had with a whole host of people over years. That foundation we have built up sustains me in ways its hard to put into words, but is very genuinely what I believe to be the core of our business.

I have nothing against tourists, far from it in fact. But I wouldn't like them to be the biggest percentage of our customer base, becos I believe that would change dramatically what Somerset is all about.

If Somerset was somehow miraculously to become world famous and become beseiged with out of town tourists visiting expressly so they could tick the experience of their 'to do' list, then our locals would be squeezed out, and the whole dynamic of the place would change and alter and we would cease to be what it is that got us written about in the first place, but that wouldn't stop the flow of tourists coming, becos the dye would have been set.  I've seen that happen with certain restaurants in NZ, that have been written glowingly about in the food media, and linked to famous overseas food personalitys and as a result there is a constant stream of people wanting to go, even if the actual experience is desultory at best.

Does that make sense? It is the fame of the restaurant not its quality that draws people and I struggle with that logic.

El bulli I think is a special and unique case where even as the storm of publicity built up around it, becos it had so cleverly redefined what a restaurant meal could actually be, and becos the owners were so very professional in what they did, quality never seemed to have wavered. And my understanding from some of the reading I've done on the subject, is that  part of the reason for the closing is becos the fame part of the equation has become too heavy a burden for them.

They simply got weary of all the demands on their time and their energy.

Hmmm...

And now I'll go and have a shower and head over to the restaurant. Its a Saturday nite and we are not full becos the AllBlacks are playing the Springboks and that is being televised at 7.30, and a whole lot of NZers won't come out for dinner for that reason. Rugby has to be watched live apparently. ( Maybe if we were famous, we'd be full?!)

Ah well, I shall go and be polite to what locals have decided to come out and I won't mention the rugby...

Have just got back over to my desk after a cookschool and sorting thru the various emails included a couple from Chris, and this one I just had to share becos it made me smile..

And now I will head out for a walk to recover from the rather substantially rich lunch that the cookschool comprises of this series, becos I know that if I go and read the paper then I'll end up falling asleep, and that walk would be much better for me!!

El bulli is closing, and Anthony Bourdain filmed there during the last month. Watch these 2 video clips to get some of the culture of the extraordinary restaurant, but especially the second one which shows Anthony, Jose Andres and Ferran Adri himself sitting down to the last el bulli menu.

A no choice selection of 30 courses at the absolute cutting edge of where food can go...

Chris, who is the source of so much information for me, some of it wanted, and some of it, umm... unsolicited shall we say! - sent me thru this link which I thought was curious.

I am currently in ongoing denial about the fact that I may have reached an age where I need glasses to clearly pick out things at a distance. I am starting to embarass myself by missing people I know in the restaurant, becos my eyesight isn't good enough to distinguish people at a distance, and unless I have the opportunity to get up close and personal with each table ( which on those nites that I get over there late, after people have already been seated, doesn't always happen), and I hate for people to think that I'm ignoring them, when in fact, I just haven't seen the fact that its actually them.

And then Rick is starting to struggle with small print, phone numbers are causing him grief - so when he gets back from picking up the fresh fish I'll be intrigued to see who he sees in the picture, becos I suspect it will be the opposite to me. I saw Albert Einstein quite clearly, and had to move back a fair way from the computor until Marilyn Munroe became apparent.

Curious!

I really need to go and get on the spinner! The fact I'm still sitting at the computor cleaning out my inbox means that I am procrastinating, and I'm going to have to stop shortly and get on the bike.

But before I do I just wanted to link to this becos I think the man is simply brilliant, and it so succinctly says everything really.

Although I have some money management friends who I am sure will pull me up over some of the logic....

I had got on the spinner to do a quick 45 mins before we headed out to friends for dinner on Sunday nite. The cookschool we'd done during the day had gone later into the afternoon as people sat around the table chatting. And I'd come back over to the house knowing I needed to fit some exercise in, but also wanting to read the Sunday papers - which took a while becos too much horribleness had happened  around the world and I needed to plow thru it all, and that meant that I was under pressure for time  when I finally got round to getting on the bike.

The Tour de France has featured reasonably dominantly in our house over the last few weeks, and my spinning happened to coincide with the segment on the Time Trial stage in which Cadel Evans claimed the yellow jersey being on TV.  It wouldn't have been politic to do any channel hopping till that was over, and as a result by complete fluck I caught the last couple of minutes of a new series on cafes around NZ, which was featuring Nikau Cafe in Wellington, and the chef who I recognised straight away as Kelda Hains, an ex Tauranga lady who worked for us back in the very, very early days at Somerset.

Mentioned to Rick that I'd seen Kelda, and we both therefore were interested to watch the programme in its entirely last nite on TV3 on demand ( after The Good Wife, which is my complusory weekly viewing), becos last time we'd caught up with Kelda, she'd been working at a cafe up Cuba St, and that feels like it had been awhile ago. She'd also worked at Lois Daish's late, great Brooklyn Cafe, when she first shifted to Wellington.

We haven't been to Wellington in too long - a city both of us called home once - and which we both still love. Becos of the infrequency of our visits south, we tend to be a little out of touch with the dining out scene, and I hadn't been aware of this Nikau cafe tucked into the city gallery. But I am now, and next time we're in the vicinity we will be making a point of going to visit.

Such passion and enthusiasm, and amazing hard work. Its impossible not to be warmed by their keeness to bring something special and unique into peoples lives.  I've just checked their website and they've been going for 7 years, and are open 7 days, for almost 12 hours a day.

Thats impressive!

Doug has just sent me thru this photo of the final scoreboard for Wine Options - tallies that were much poured over last nite as the evening progressed. All in the spirit of lighthearted competition mind you! We ended up finishing mid field - our normal strengths with white wines deserting us last nite,when we put in a rather average showing, as can happen.

Ah well. I use the Options as a way of personally testing my own palate, to see if I'm improving my wine memory and extending my tasting range, and I definitly felt that I'd made progress on the preceeding 12 months, so will now set about studying judiciously for next year! As you do...

Read this article this morning on the Michelin Restaurant Guide with interest, becos it comes at the issue of whether the Guide still has any relevance in todays electronic age from a slightly different perspective to those comments about it that I've previously read.

The Michelin Guide has huge clout in France especially - or perhaps I should rephrase that - has had huge clout, but there are now a number of considered opinions that the degree of the importance is starting to wane as the restaurant world moves on from being totally enthralled to the French classical way of doing things.

I have read a number of books in which the chef/patrons talk about how the main focus in their restaurant business has been to achieve that first Michelin Star, and once that has been accomplished to push on to a second star, and then ultimately the holy grail of the third star. Business empires are constructed on the publicity and resulting increase in business that attaches to being given 3 stars, becos there are so few restaurants with that rating. For the last few  generations of chefs it was seen to be the apex, the embodiment of perfection in the culinary world.

A cautionary tale I read a number of years back which struck me throughout as being so sad, was 'The Perfectionist' by Rudolph Chelminski, a true life  tale about the life and death of Bernard Loiseau, the owner of La Cote d'Or. A restaurant that he took over the years to culinary greatness, borrowing significant amounts of money along the way to create the kind of luxerious aesthetic that he deemed necessary to finally attain the coveted 3rd star, and then when some years later he caught wind of the fact that he was going to loose a star in the soon to be published annual guide, he committed suicide rather than face the humiliation of being down graded, and have to deal with the inevitable lose in business that would follow.

Chefs like Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay all talk in their early autobiographies about how they were fuelled by their desire to attain Michelin stars, becos they believe that in doing so they would gain credibility and gravitas, and effectively prove themselves.

Its a concept I've never been fully able to grasp, becos I could never quite get my head around why people who are so good at what they do, and who are daily recieving accolades for what they are achieving with their restaurant, would still feel that the final arbiter of whether they really did rate as restaurateurs came down to the opinion of what an anonymous inspector had to say about their dining experience.

It may be true that that inspector knew considerable amounts about dining out, about food and service. It may be that he/she was a very educated customer,  but I could still not see why one persons opinion, out of all the thousands that would come thru your door, would be awarded such a disproportionate level of clout.

No doubt the  significant lift in business from the resulting increase in the number of people wanting tables as a result of reading the publicity over the awarding of stars would be motivation for alot of up and coming chefs to seek the status of being a Michelin starred establishment. But reading some of the comments by these people over the years, it felt like a while heap more than that, almost more as if their credibility as a chef was inexorably tied to how many Michelin stars they had, becos they was how they were judged against their peers. And none of them  could bear to be found wanting.

The Michelin Guide became the final arbiter of who was the best, and people seemed to need its credential for a whole host of reasons more complicated than just the likely impact on their bank balances.

In New Zealand we have nothing comparable to the Guide. We have various magazines who over the years have run annual awards, with varying degrees of longevity and market penetration. But most peter out over time. And partly as a result of that we have been able to operate here at Somerset somewhat under the radar. We have had some writeups over the years - a critique by Deborah Coddington back in her reporting days, before she embarked on her political career, and an article or two by Lauraine Jacobs and Lois Daish in the respective magazines they worked for - but nothing for a long time, and that is quite deliberate. We don't go looking for the publicity.

I have always felt extremely strongly that the longevity of Somerset is tied up with the warmth of the connections that we have with a wide client base, that goes back a number of years. We are part of the local community, and simply put, that is what sustains us through all the twists and turns  in the economy. We are not based in an area reknown for its tourist trade, so we are not going to be  financially sustainable by just attracting a constant flow of the  one off diners that tourism tends to generate. Our business has been built on return trade - on people enjoying their dining out experience enough to want to repeat it again, and hopefully again.

That has come to mean that our client base is made up predominantly of people who have either been to Somerset before or who have been recommended to come by someone they know, rather than something they've read, and that makes what we do so much more enjoyable, becos in the vast majority of cases we are dealing with like minded people.

We don't win everyone over - no business can. I don't necessarily relish that fact but I've learnt to live with it.

And on every perspective that I personally operate  at Somerset - as one of the owners, as maitr'd, as waitress and as occasional toilet cleaner - I can't state clearly enough that I derive more satisfaction from dealing with all those people, then I ever do from the desire to achieve the dubious status of an award or star equivalent.

There is just a complete lack of need or want to go down that path from either Rick or I. We didn't spring fully formed in that opinion at the beginning of our business career I might add, and we understood in the early days that some of the publicity that we got from Michael Guys Eating Out Guides  and the Listener/Montana awards helped put us on the map. But we've being around long enough now, to have build a critical mass in our clientbase, who create enough  chat about the restaurant to attract a continual seam of new faces.

And as a result we are able to be totally self indulgent and not feel in any way deprived becos we don't have a certificate hanging on our walls proclaiming us to be the 'Best' of something. ( I took down all the old awards in the early 90's when I overheard a customer I didn't know commenting on the fact that they were a few years old. I took the point and removed them to the attic, where I think they still sit!)

Our sense of worth is tied up in so much more than just an arbitary form of rating, and I guess that is why I found the book on Bernard Oiseau so sad. Everything was caught up in an ephemeral notion of perfection, and that is something that can never be attained, and it is too demanding and impossible a standard to every be measured against.

As the article state, times are changing, and the iron grip that Michelin once held on dining out sensibilities is slipping, and what will be interesting to observe over the next few years is whether thats a permanent change  or merely a temporary blip. My money is on it becoming increasingly outmoded. There is a whole generation of chefs out there who haven't the remotest desire to play by Michelin notions of formality , and they are catering to a market who use social media and technology to inform them, so the need to have a hardcopy guide sitting in your bookshelf has become extinct.

Its a different world, and Michelin has become a relic. And now the money men are in charge of its future, I think its doomed.

It is impossible  to watch a video like this and not be totally impressed and inspired. Del Posto is in New York, it is one of the restaurants owned by Mario Battali, and is, I believe, intended as a very formal expression of Italian style food.

That video shows service of the 'collezione' menu, which is the most expensive menu in New York - $US 1269 for 2- and has to be prebooked and pre arranged.

I linked to it, via an interview with the manager of Del Posto who gives some interesting insights into running an extremely busy restaurant in a major metropolitan city.  I cannot even begin to imagine people being prepared to wait for 2 and a half hours to get a table, but such is the population density in cities like New York, that when a restaurant is in demand, or has won awards,  then people need to go there. And there are only so many seats to go round, so they double and even triple book tables during the course of an evening, to maximise the number of people they will do.

( In Tauranga - if we suggest to people that we are full, but will have a table available by 8.30pmish, we almost invariably get told that that is too late. Imagine the response if we told them that the table wouldn't be ready until 10.30pm!)

And then there are the cooking videos that the chef there makes - they are amongst the best food videos that I've ever seen, polished, seamless and perfect. And blissfully totally lacking that ghastly hyperbolic verbal exaggeration that you tend to get on shows on the Food Channel. No exclaiming or oohing and aahing - just very clever camera work, obviously extremely competent real chefs doing the prep, and great music.

We're having gnocchi for dinner tonite - I defy anyone to watch this video and not feel compelled to want to eat it. Perfect!

The crab one is pretty cool too...

I'm no fan of restaurant reviewers, and especially not of the type of anonymous bile that gets deposited onto the internet by bloggers who feel a need to spread their particular brand of misery around.

But even I feel that sending someone to prison, for sentiments expressed is a titch overdone!

I have to go over to the restaurant early tonite, becos Rhonda's been in Auckland at a wine tasting and won't be back until close to 7pm, so I need to be back up for Roz in the initial stages, rather than mooching over later when those 2 have got everything organised and ready for customers, as I'm wont to do these days.

Have just sat and watched this video, and suspect I'll probably sit down in front of it again when I come back over to the house, becos there was alot in it about the description of the creative process, and I suspect I'll delve deeper on second viewing, and that is very serendipitous for my here and now.  Its a rather delightful description of  finding creativity within, from Elizabeth Gilbert, the woman who wrote, Eat, Pray, Love.

I'm currently trying to write a book, which was supposed to be tying in with our 25th anniversary at the restaurant and that happens next month,  but  I doubt I'll have the book done by the end of the year at the rate that I am going. And that is becos my creative process in not going well at all - I am being too contrived and careful and as a result am almost incoherent, which for someone who rants and raves in her diary on a regular basis, feels extremely strange. Mind you, my diary is completely private, no-one else is ever going to read that, so I can write in a totally uninhibited fashion, becos I never need to weigh up how people are likely to react to what I'm saying.

Mind you, I've just started reading Christopher Hitchens autobiography, and the fact he writes so very well, is making me feel patently inadequate by comparison, and damaging what fragile ego I had left about the whole process.

But I do know that comparisons are odious things, and maybe my struggle with the process is to do with the way I'm approaching it, and maybe I just need to allow the writing process to be. Just as I do when I write in my diary. Hmmm...

The local media has stirred itself up into a frenzy over someone been filmed planking on a railway line.

Watching this green market beside a railway line, kind of puts things into perspective just a titch, and makes you realise that some people need to get a life!

There are things to worry about and there are things that really aren't worth the energy...

During my teenage years, my mother decided, based on what she would have read, that salt and sugar were the root causes of most health issues and they were effectively banned from our household.

No salt was added to any cooking, and she even went so far as doing the bottling without sugar.

It was a belief system totally imposed on a generation, and was part of a time when there were many warnings about food. As I recall we were also only supposed to have 2 eggs a week also - to avoid our arteries getting clogged up.

And yet over the same intervening period, the range of packaged, industrialised foodstuffs that we now have to choose from, and which has become an increasingly large part of many people diet, grew exponentially.

We encounter it often in the cookschools, people looking for alternatives to fat becos they believe its bad for them, and not wanting to use salt.

it is not my place to discuss medical science becos I am no expert, but it has always made intuitive sense to me that food in itself won't be bad for you if you have a little of what you fancy and keep a varied, natural diet. ( Presupposing of course, that you don't have an allergy to something. Thats a whole seperate issue.)

I've always been suspicious of the reasoning that pushes the line that it is more healthy to buy industrialised food stuff than one in its natural state, for instance the butter / margarine argument.

There is a city councillor in New York who believes so fervently that salt is killing everyone, that he wants to introduce legislation banning restaurants from using it in their food preparation. And the scary thing is that he is serious.

So an article like this one makes perfectly logical sense to me on every level, I read it with relief,  and  will quote it in the cookschool today, should anyone comment adversely on the duckfat that Rick  happens to use....

In a nutshell:

The tendency of scientific studies to isolate parts of our foods and determine whether or not they are good or bad obfuscates a clear picture of the larger processes involved in eating and metabolizing in the human body. It also complicates something that shouldn't be complicated: eating real, whole foods as they exist in nature. Isolating and demonizing certain aspects of real, whole foods -- like fat and salt -- only confuses the public

I was linked to this interview via another website I was on, the exceedingly caustic Gastropoda, that I read with equal relish.

Sometimes I struggle to pick up on some of her references becos she uses a form of code, but most of it is seeringly accurate. At least from the perspective of my world view!

Therefore I probably shouldn't have been surprised to read that she is also a fan of AA Gills acerbic wit, and devastating ability to capture the improbable in sublime english.

He's on his best behaviour in this interview, but  you still get glimpses of his sharpness.

This link is to a blog by Dorie Greenspan, who writes on baking. I have a couple of her books and use them regularly, so her take on matters is something I respect.

I did have to smile reading this blog becos the subject of caramalisation v's burnt is one that comes up often in cookschools. In the current series Rick is making a straight caramel, which he prepares in advance, puts to one side so it hardens, and then remelts at the last minute to drizzle over the top of the floating islands, so that it provides that needed balance of a crunch against all the smoothness of the meringue and the creme anglaise.

Professional chefs take their caramalisation to a stage further then most home cooks are brave enough too, becos they know that the further they take it, then the more flavour it will have, whereas those at home  fret about how close to burning it they are getting, and tend to stay shy of cooking it out as far as it can go. Or at least I do.

Every so often we get a negative comment from a customer about either our thin apple tart, which Rick likes to cook until its caramalised on the edges of the pastry. Some people intreprete that colour as burnt, whereas to our eyes it means caramalisation.

And likewise our caramel sauce that we use as I've mentioned previously, is made from a caramel base to which water and then cream is added. A Nico Ladenis recipe I believe.  The caramel is cooked out as far as it is safe to take it, meaning that it has bitter overtones and a complexity of flavour that simply doesn't appeal to some people who like the kind of caramel that you get from mixing condensed milk with more sugar and butter.

I've learnt not to swing into defensive mode, when someone critiques something like that. Their comments betray that they don't understand, and that is OK. Its not a question of us thinking we're right and they're ignoramuses becos they don't know what caramel is, but more that, everyone has a different perception - they sit somewhere different on the scale.

 And as the comments beneath the linked blog attest, there is no one simple answer. What is burnt to one person may not be to another. I know that it is a subject ( a bit liked corked wine) that generates alot of discussion between Rick and I, some of which is fairly robust!

And yet it probably shouldn't be - becos he unfailingly gets it right even when he takes it further than I may think is safe. And the reason I know that is becos of what my nose tells me. Burnt caramel has a distinctly acrid smell. Its impossible to miss, and thats when you throw it away and start again.

As I've mentioned once or twice before, I really rate this man - I enjoy his honesty and lack of pretension, and I thought this interview contained a number of interesting nuggets, not least being his take on restaurant critics.

We were approached during the week by a local publication that wanted to do a review on Somerset, but wanted us to  cover the cost of their meal. How can that be? How can the subsequent article be in any way valid if it isn't neutral? It is really just a form of paid advertising, masquerading as a restaurant review. In other words, a way for them to fill up column inches, but it is no way a restaurant 'review'.

And becos we don't do any advertising, we fail to see why we should be a party to something like this which is essentially misrepresentation.

A true restaurant critic is one who visits the restaurant incognito, ( usually on more that one visit),  who has a good understanding of food and wine, rather than just being someone who likes to eat out occasionally, and in addition is someone who can write well.

Ruth Riechl who used to be the restaurant critic for the New York Times has written a couple of books on the subject, and the extremes she went too, to avoid being recognised by restaurateurs, always keen to know whether she was in the house. The New York Times carries enormous power, and a positive review from them can have a substantial impact on a restaurants turnover, becos suddenly everyone is clamouring  to go to the favoured place.

That need to please the critics becos of the possible subsequent beneficial economic repercussions  has therefore created all sorts of unpleasant scenarios, which Anthony Bourdain alludes to in the interview. Its distorted the whole process,  to an extreme degree.

Within New Zealand no one publication carries that kind of clout, although we have a few who like to tout themselves, as being the most important.  But very few of them employ people to specifically review restaurants, and become experts on the subject. They are usually journalists in general rather than restaurant reviewers specifically.

So we have a catch 22 situation where the publications don't take the reviews seriously, and as a result the restaurants and the public tend to follow suit.

And maybe when I read about some of the extremes that go on in other countries, becos of the power vested in the critics, maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

I am utterly convinced of the fact that each nite in the restaurant I am more interested in those clients with whom I have years of shared association, and  also those clients who may be on their first visit, but who, if we get it right, we will see more of over the years to come. Those sorts of people who build our business and sustain it, are the ones who matter to me, and that is simply the way it is.

This blog is written by a very passionate chef in the States, who writes intensely on her views of appropriate behaviour in a commercial kitchen.

Her views expressed are a complete and diametric contrast to the tosh shown in the videos I linked too in an earlier blog, which portrayed an egocentric and totally obnoxious head chef.

There is no doubt as to which end of the continuum that I feel myself to be. We work very closely with our staff - and becos we live next door to the business and our garage is storage for alot of product, and the dryer, the staff mooch backwards and forwards between the house and the restaurant on a frequent basis. There is very little seperation in our private lives and our working ones.

And I seldom see that as a problem these days, becos we're working with a bunch of people who's contribution on all levels I really enjoy, and in that respect I regard ourselves as very lucky.

Becos we know from experience that it only takes one person who doesn't fit, who wants to do things their way, or who has ego issues that require games being played, for the whole balance in the work place to be disturbed, to everyone's detriment.

And my memories of those times are not pleasant, so I am able to be very grateful that the team we have had for the past few years like each other and us, and being a part of Somerset.

It makes life much more pleasant for everyone - including I might add, our customers, becos they walk into an environment that is genuinely positive. We're not having  to pretend.

I loathe snobbery with a passion, and we get to see occasional flashes of it as we go about our job, and I'm never impressed.

Snobbery is something I associate with people who think everything is about perception, and is tied up in their need to impress others.

That and also their belief that the intrinsic value in something is directly related to its percieved monetary value. If a bottle of wine is worth $250.00 then snobby people will be more impressed with the taste of that wine, then they would in one that was worth $25.00. But that is presupposing that they know the dollar value of the wines before they try them, and that is where I take issue.

Often their snobbiness is all about their ability to pay for something expensive, and not at all about their ability to understand and fully appreciate what it is that makes the wine, or the concert so special.

Massive international companies are built on the need for human beings to be associated with the hype of certain brands, and they will pay a premium, even though there may be no discernible difference between that object and another, beyond a recognisable logo.

 How much do the people really know and understand and appreciate. Or how much of their sense of enjoyment is tied up with wanting to impress other people with their ability to afford something percieved as rare and valuable.

For all those reasons I found this experiment to be quite intriguing - people percieve talent when they're told its something precious, but when left to their own devices, are they capable of really understanding?

Mmmm... ( Must go - Courteneys skyping...)

This link is to 2 short video clips of a TV series in the States that Anthony Bourdain has apparently been one of the writers for.

I read a reasonable amount about the behaviour in some of the large, named restaurants and I suspect that this captures reasonably accurately what goes on in some.

But watching it, all I thought was - this is crap. Its all about misplaced ego and insecurity on behalf of the head chef, and its  the customers who miss out as their food gets swept onto the floor, precisely so he can assert his authority in a rather pathetic need to be king dog.

It ain't an admirable way of doing business.

Tuesday is my book work day, when I make myself sit at the desk and plow thru all the stuff that has to be dealt with like wages and taxes and bills. Never much fun, but absolutely essential to the smooth running of the business.

The pile of envelopes that needed to be opened today seemed especially large, and I'm currently feeling like the swag of bills that needs paying is never ending, and I'm therefore in the mood to be rather sorry for myself.

Which is pathetic but all of which  you get occasionally! So I went looking for something to cheer me up, and read back over some David Lebovitz blogs that I hadn't had the time to clear from my inbox. This short video on a visit he pays to an old fashioned confectionary shop was just the buck up I needed.

I like being inspired!

It's curious. We have enough land here to grow alot more for the restaurant than we currently do. Something I've been very conscious of, ever since that first burst of enthusiasm when we moved into the house next door back in 2004, kind of tapered out in the hard light of reality.

We spent hundreds of dollars buying citrus and feijoa trees, and clearing away other fruit trees in the orchard that Mum and Dad had established previously and which weren't thriving. We were going to streamline everything, and put in large vege gardens, and be quite fabulous I figured.

But pukekos and rabbits, dampened down that enthusiasm rather considerably, as they plundered and destroyed the majority of our new seedlings. In the face of their constant menace, my determination kind of withered.

I've sallied forth with other good ideas on occasion, but it would be fair to say there hasn't been alot of follow through. The worm farm is probably the abiding bright point, and the efficency with which those critters turn our waste into nice dirt constantly staggers me.

Its taken awhile but I think we're finally on top of the rabbit population, and the dogs have disencouraged the pukekos rather effectively, although Benson did catch one munching on feijoas the other day,  so it may be time to start reconsidering our strategy.

Financial constraints place limits on just how grandiose those schemes can be, but there is alot that can be achieved with some good honest sweat, and not necessarily alot of money, so we are beginning to tentatively start making noises, about extending the gardens and orchard down below. And chooks are very much part of the grand plan, even though our dogs represent a bit of a hurdle where birds are concerned.

All of which I mention by way of link to this video of people who are growing organic vegetables commercially. It is too easy to entertain romantic notions about getting back to the land, and doing things 'properly', when the reality in the hard cold light of the day, is considerable physical work  and very little financial gain.

People who work the land work incredibly hard - their bodies are bowed and bent from all that physical effort. Hands and skin deeply lined and furrowed - it ain't for the soft. And that is why I sometimes listen to some of the more recent eulogising about how important it is to buy local and keep things small and artisinal with a tinge of cynicism, becos its easy for writers to romanticise about the notion of organic growing, but its quite another thing to be the person who gets up morning after morning in the frigid cold to go out into the fields, especially when all that effort is done for very little return.

I'm gradually working my way thru a beautiful book, 'The Seasons on Henry's Farm - A year of food and life on a sustainable farm', which describes a farm not at all dissimilar to the one in the video, and echos the same values of careful stewardship of the land.

Would I personally have the constitution to work like that? - hell no, of that I am under no illusions.

People tell Rick and I that they think we work hard, but our kind of work is very different to the graft required to grow things, and I'm never tempted to kid myself otherwise. The restaurant is a constant presence that requires time and effort from us, but our role within it has changed over the years, and as a great team has built up around us, we are positioned to work less hours in the business than we used too, even though it is bigger now than it used to be.

All of which allows us some extra time to work on the land, maybe....

 

I am about to head into town to buy myself some trousers for winter - need something that I can wear in the restaurant that isn't denim.

Was checking my emails before I departed and got caught reading this really interesting post from David Lebovitz, that I've had sitting in my inbox for awhile, awaiting the time to sit down and go thru it leisurely.

I read a number of international blogs on a daily basis, and Davids would be one of my favourite, partly becos he lives in Paris, and has a lengthy background as a professional chef, and therefore substantial credibility in my eyes. But he also writes really well, and has a deliciously selfdeprecating humour and covers really interesting subject matters, so his blogs are constantly a source of wit and inspiration.

I blog becos I enjoy writing very much. I've been a diarist most of my life, becos I need to get stuff down on a page sometimes, just to sort out the jumbled thought processes that I regularly over indulge in. I've written newsletters for the business for a long time now, and the developement of the website back in 2007, has allowed me to up the regularity of those letters to once a month, becos of the ease of the electronic process.

On top of that, the website has allowed me to indulge in writing blogs. I don't send them out, and I don't have a comments section, becos I am not targeting a huge audience or feel in any way driven to drive up my search engine ratings.

Quite the reverse in fact. The blogs are a totally personal indulgence, geared around our daily life, and relate to the restaurant and happenings, and discoveries I make on the internet that I think may be of interest to like minded people. I get alot of comment on them, both thru emails and thru conversations I have with people in the restaurant and cookschools - but that is a two way conversation between the reader and me, and not something that I've ever felt an especial need to share with a wider audience.

Maybe becos I'm in such a people orientated business, day after day, I tend to shy away from the need to have a lengthy list of comments after anything I've written. The act of posting the blog is sufficiently fulfilling for me - it is a process I enjoy, and that is enough.

So many people blog these days - the internet has created a hugely democratic forum where anyone who has something to say, can put it out there. David Lebovitz is one of the best in the field, and I figured reading his pointers on what works for him in writing a blog would be interesting, becos like most things in life, if you're going to be bothered doing something, then you might as well do it well.

And now - enough procrastination! - time to go and try on some trousers...

Its wet - heavy rain that looks like its going to hang around all day. We slept in late,  becos its too miserable to head over to the Mount, the dogs are pacing outside, waiting for me to appear to take them down below for their morning run.

I've been sitting at the computor doing my breathing exercises and picked up on this video on making bread at Tartine Bakery - so am now feeling warm and inspired, becos I probably love good bread more than most foodstuffs.

Think I'll go over to the restaurant and borrow some of the bread starter and come back and make some bread with the Hislops wholemeal flour.

That feels like a gratifying kind of thing to do on a wet day...

It became rather trendy a few years back to start using beef that had been grain fed. Beef that came with a hefty price tag, but which was fashionable and much hyped in the food magazines. We tried it, were underwhelmed, and effectively wondered what all the fuss was about.

Worse, my naturally suspicious nature came to the fore, and I began to decide that the whole thing was a very clever marketing ploy to convince people to eat grain fed beef, becos it was cheaper to produce than having cows wander all over those expensive paddocks. But it was pitched as a luxery item, so as to perversely generate demand. And back in those days I didn't even know about the horrors of the concrete grain yards used in the States for alot of their mass produced meat.

Somehow I just always smelt a rat, and it simply didn't make sense to me. Cows eat pasture. They have an elaborate multiple stomach system that allows them to break it down. It makes good, simple sense, so why would you try to pervert the way of nature unless you were doing it to gain some economic advantage.

This video rather eloquently discusses those issues and underscores for me, that here in NZ with all that massive expanse of green countryside, it makes sense to have our cattle eat grass.

I rate Anthony Bourdain. Something I've said many times. I admire his fearless approach to calling things the way he sees them, and not, in any shape or form pandering to the elitism that can surround our industry.

He is a man fully aware of his own failings, and not afraid of pointing out other peoples, when he feels they may have possibly lost sight of them, and be taking themselves a little too selfimportantly.

So his take on a restaurant as polarising as el bulli is one I'm always going to read with interest, becos el bulli has become so extraordinarily fashionable, that if any one could punch thru the myth making it would be this man.

But he doesn't. Quite the reverse in fact. Which means that I hope we get to see the TV episode that he refers too in this article, becos it would make for fascinating viewing.

My antipathy to these sorts of lists is well known. I mutter on a regular occasion about various awards and competitions, becos to my admittedly jaundiced eyes, they so regularly lack credibility.

But inevitably, unfortuntely, over time, they take on a life off their own, and get quoted in the regular press as a simple statement of fact. I don't know how often I've read in various publications that Noma is the 'best' restaurant in the world. It is actually only deemed as such according to this list, but the notoriety that the list cleverly generates, means that it ends up becoming a self perpetuating fact. Even when it is only ever founded on opinion.

And I find that ever so curious, mainly becos marketing is not one of my fortes, but this whole exercise sqreeches publicity at me, and when you read the first paragraph in the linked article you understand why.

Noma wasn't busy prior to the  publication of the list, but as a result of being named the top restaurant in the world, it is now impossible to get into, becos everyone who is interested in food matters, now has to go, to see what all the fuss is about. A sense of being up with the Joneses.

And yet jurors who's votes determine what restaurants go on the list and where they are placed, don't apparently actually have to prove that they've eaten at the restaurant they vote for.. How can they vote for something on hearsay alone? What credibility can that possibly have?

It gets worse. Chef/restaurant owners are asked to be jurors, so they are voting on their own establishments and those of their peers. How can that possibly be just?

It isn't. But it will continue to selfperpetuate, becos that is the sort of world we live in, and I can but shake my head in wonder.

Many years ago Rick and I were judges for the Beef and Lamb awards. We agreed to do it only if we could judge restaurants out of Tauranga, becos it just didn't sit comfortably with us to judge our contempories. We managed it for a couple of years, but eventually pulled out when we were asked to do the final judging for a couple of local restaurants, becos it was easier for the organisers to get us to do it then to bring in out of towners.

Our sense of unease, meant we stopped then. And I was also curious at how much my enjoyment of the dining out experience was tainted on those occasions when we were eating at restaurants as incognito judges. I didn't enjoy how it made me feel, and we decided that it wasn't a process that we wanted to be part off, so pulled out totally, both as judges and as competitors, and are much happier for that decision.

But the accountant in me, understands the difference to the turnover of the respective restaurants being on this list would mean. Quay which is the only restaurant that I could see in Australia or NZ pn the list, is fully booked on a Friday or Saturday nite for the rest of 2011. Not something that we could lay claim too by any stretch.

So my principles are all very fine and dandy, but I don't mean to cast dispersions on those who do chose to go in competitions and use the resulting awards as publicity, becos it is a perfectly reasonable business strategy.

Its just one that for us, always came with an unpleasant taste, that we really didn't want to swallow....

One of the things I put alot of time and effort into doing at Somerset is supporting NZ producers. An approach made much easier over the last few years as more and more people have gone into business making interesting stuff.

I can distinctly remember a time when I used to read Australian food magazines and feel a sense of envy at all the interesting food ventures that they had going on over there,  but that is a feeling that has totally dissipated now, becos over the last decade or so New Zealand has become full of interesting people doing interesting stuff.

One of the things I stumbled on in a restaurant in Auckland was a ginger beer made on Waiheke Island - Hannah ordered it I think, when we were out for lunch.

It is quite unlike the gingerbeers we'd previously stocked, which are essentially soda, with flavoured ginger syrup. The Waiheke Island ginger beer is made from real ginger, honey and lemon juice. It is quite beautiful - but more appealing to grown up taste buds I suspect.

( The gingerbeer with 2 other drink products that we source and sell alot of; Camla Farms Apple Juice, and Herons Flight Sangiovese Grape Juice)

We have plans to head up to Waiheke this year- we also get our coffee beans from up there, and have been promising Stephen and Jane for years that we'll come visit. Hopefully this year will be the year that we actually get to do so, and will make a point of visiting the brewery also.

Watched this video therefore, of a natural gingerbeer operation in the States with interest. Sent the link thru to Rob at Waiheke Brewery and his response was how nice it would be to have a factory like that!

This link is to a fascinating dissertation on desserts, which provokes a number of questions - why do we finish our meals with a sweet course?, and discusses in depth the work happening in Spain to push the boundaries of what a dessert would traditionally represent in our minds.

It occurred to me when I was reading the article, that maybe the reason that the Spaniards in particular have become so well known for the intense research they do into new ways of tasting, is, in part becos their food culture has been so trapped by tradition over the centuries. Each sucessive generation has followed the recipes from their mothers kitchen, with no deviation ever being allowed. Taste had to hold true to the memories.

So when these restaurant chefs decided to break free from those restraints they started out on a road that has seem them progress a significant distance from where they began. And it is a journey that has been watched with interest all over the world, and emulated in many restaurants.

For me personally - there is too much artiface attached I think in this style of approach to restaurant food. As an example of what I mean by that, the description towards the end of the article of the dessert that the chef was creating to try and give the diner a frission of what it felt like to be the top soccer striker scoring a goal, that he so admired, just read as vaguely absurd to me. And not becos I wanted to belittle what the chef was trying to achieve, but more becos I couldn't see the point. The two events, soccer and eating, are so disparate, that I can't see any reason to try to bring them together. But the chef in this instance obviously has a passion for both, and is trying to creatively combine his two loves.

But I still want to eat food that has the cultural connotations that are related to food and which  make me feel good. Food for me is about nurturing rather than challenging.  But that isn't to say that I don't one day very much want to eat at some of these restaurants to experience the brilliance of the chefs.

But that would be a cerebal experience - one in which I suspect Rick and I would be tossing back and forward lots of questions accross the table, about 'how' the chefs achieved a certain effect, and 'why' they did something. It would be stimulating and interesting, rather than relaxing.

And that is why at Somerset I can't see us ever totally following those trends, becos our aim here is to cosset and nurture rather than provoke. But having said that, it doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to some of the techniques that these chefs are using, becos sometimes just becos something has always been done in a certain way doesn't necessarily mean it can't be updated and improved on.

And we read and watch with interest, becos we are constantly learning interesting perspectives, that mean that the food we cook in the Somerset kitchen now, has progressed significantly from what we started out doing 25 years ago. And that is a continuum that I hope never stops.

But I doubt I will ever feel the need to play music in my cellar ( when I eventually get my underground one) for the wine - and different styles of music for different regions of wine?! Umm...no. No, I have to say that is not something that I can logically follow thru in my mind!

I wrote a blog sometime ago, about Grant Achatz's new restaurant that was about to open, Next, in Chicago, something that has subsequently happened.

I watched this video with interest, becos it gives insight to the food to be served over the next 3 months, the kitchen and the restaurant setup.

As expected, it is a supremely serious undertaking, with the investment in plant and fittings and people being quite significant. I can't see any where, how many covers it does, but would be curious to know, looking at the number of people working there.

We do 65 covers on a full nite at Somerset, and that is with 4 chefs and 1, sometimes 2 kitchen hands, and 4, sometimes 5  front staff. Next looks to have a considerably higher ratio of staff to customers than that.

And the kitchen fascinates me. They have set all of that up from scratch, and the investment in dollar terms would be not inconsiderable. At Somerset we inherited a rundown, patently non commercial kitchen that we have spent the last 25 years gradually bringing up to commercial specs, and enlarging.

We now have 3 commercial ovens ( although admittedly one of them is so old that the oven part is used as a plate warmer only, but we still use the gas elements), 2 walkin chillers- one food, one wine -  and a reasonable spattering of commercial size and weight equipment.

None of which comes cheaply and all of which has had to be done gradually as we could afford too, rather than when we'd have liked too. I guess it made each addition hard earned, and therefore much appreciated, but still I watch the video on this link, and look at all the equipment in this brand new kitchen set up, and just kind of go 'wow'. Because these guys have spent millions of dollars on the fitout, and that is even before you get into the investment in all the people they have working there.

Some of the top restaurants in the world trade at a loss - el bulli did. Their costs outstrip their earnings, but becos of other sources of income like book sales, or down market bistro style affiliated operations, they are able to keep going. Or maybe simply becos they have investors in the background with sufficiently deep pockets, and a willingness to keep funding the deficit.

Our reality is circumscribed by the much more boring reality, where we find the bank requires the mortgage to be paid regularly, so any decisions we make, are contingent on their affordability. Tedious, becos the wish list never seems to get any shorter, but I also sometimes  remark that its debt that provides the incentive to get me out of bed in the morning, so maybe I need a bit of negative push to motivate myself. Hmmm...

Next will be a success, and probably a financial one too,  becos Grant Achatz is one of the most famous chefs in America, and people will beat a path to his door  - but someone has had to paid for all this in advance of any income being earned.

I'm impressed!

This is the sort of thing that I find absolutely fascinating....

How often over the years have I reached for a bottle of Tabasco sauce and used it purely becos a recipe has called for its inclusion. I know it adds heat to a substance, I know its made from peppers and I knew that the company that first made it was still based in Louisiana, becos I'd read that somewhere, but beyond that, I hadn't really given it much thought.

And then I read a blog like this one, which brings the whole subject alive, and gives all the back story, and I find it impossible not to be totally captivated. It makes the sauce so much more than just another bottle in my pantry. It gives context and appreciation, and I like it when that happens....

Have just had a meeting with our insurance broker as we do the annual insurance - something we've done with Bob once a year for the last 25 years, and which is normally just a quick precis of what has gone before. But this year I had images of Christchurch fresh in my mind, together with the hassles we had with the driver's insurer paying out after Ricks bike accident last year, so I wanted to be absolutely certain that we'd covered all the angles, including those that you don't necessarily think about in advance.

The rather sobering discussion about the connundrum that lots of  businesses in Christchurch are now having to face makes for some  unsettling thoughts and has required a couple of emails to be sent to lawyers and accountants just to follow up on a couple of details. I understand that we can't protect ourselves from every possible likely scenario, but I do want to make sure we've covered all the obvious bases.

And now I'm going to head out for lunch with Allison, and have a good catch up natter which sounds like much more fun!

I have just had one of the most frustratingly irritating couple of hours that I have spent in a long, long while, as I attempted to navigate on line the process of verifying the security for our eftpos transactions.

A complicated, convoluted process that appears to my jaundiced eye to achieve nothing more than indemify the bank, rather than us, should there be any fraud. All of which tends to make me rant and rave when it takes up my precious time, that I'd far rather be spending doing something else, but in this instance I have to see the process thru now its been started.

Am however going to head out now for a walk, becos my brain is fit to burst, and I don't want to go over to the restaurant for evening service in this currently very cranky state. That wouldn't be fair on customers or staff!!!

So a nice hard walk to shake all the irritation loose is in order I think, but before I head out the door I thought I'd link to this latest post on Courteneys website describing her first week in America- looking and sounding really good I'm pleased to note.

A short, but kind of interesting, becos of the time line it draws, precis of coffee drinking...

I read a book some years back - The Devils Cup by Stewart Lee Allen, that was an absolutely fascinating history of coffee drinking down thru the ages, from what historians have guessed to be the original goat herder in Eithiopia who got a buzz from chewing on the raw beans, to modern times, where coffee is one of the biggest traded commodities on the globe.

The sort of history that I find revealing and stimulating, especially on a subject so close to my heart.

Becos we live next door to the restaurant, I never have coffee in the house, prefering to flick over to the restaurant to make a proper espresso, if we decide to have a coffee. And I don't think we are unusual in that we will travel out of our way to go to a cafe that makes good coffee.

Its a comment in fact,  that I hear often when people are discussing what they think of cafes - the final bestowing of grace tends to depend on whether they like the coffee or not.

So good coffee in todays age is essential, even though when we opened in 86 we had a filter machine,  becos espresso machines simply weren't that common. We couldn't afford to buy one until the early nineties from memory, and in that few short years, the public had come to embrace espresso coffee with alacrity, and expected to be able to buy a fluffy cappucino whenever they dined out.

Now its pervasisve presence is everywhere in our dining out culture, and not the exclusive preserve of the main metropolitian areas. All sorts of tiny towns have people standing behind coffee machines with honed skill levels that justify them being called baristas.

And the most commonly ordered drink these days is a flat white - with the milk fashion now being for a creamy texture, rather than frothy. I don't go to Starbucks so I don't know if they still follow that American fashion of  mile high fluff, that never appealed to me, but certainly most of the places I drink coffee, swirl their heated milk to produce creamy milk , which has a flat top in the cup. I know I've overstretched the milk when I end up producing coffee with bubbles on the surface, and I get annoyed with myself when I do that.

Becos its a no, no in our world.

Text just thru from Hannah - they finished the Arc in 14 hrs and 58 minutes, beating the 4th team that had Andrew in it , by over an hour! Not that we're competitive!!

Nope. Change that..another text just thru says they got 2nd overall. One minute ahead on points, so very cool!!

I personally find so many written restaurant reviews to be underdone, capacrious twaddle, with the writer revealing more of what they don't know, then delivering any true insights into a particular restaurant .

Becos anyone can eat out, it seems to follow that anyone thinks they can review a restaurant. But they can't. And they can't more often than not, becos of a simple lack of knowledge about the subject matter. Personally liking or not liking something, is  simply not enough gravitas to actually critique something. That is called passing a personal opinion, and being a restaurant critic should operate on a whole seperate level.

But so often what I read in our papers and magazines, betray a personal bias, and a lack of food knowledge - and it would be fair to say that it makes my hackles go up. Repeatedly.

This man however is different. Not only can he write sublimely, but his depth of experience brings a whole added level of  interest to his restaurant reviews, even in one like this, where he totally annihilates the restaurant concerned.

This is restaurant writing as I would love it to be always...

Have tried to find an earlier link that I did to a review that Mr Gill wrote on el bulli, during which he raves about the restaurant, so as to prove that his acerbic and very clever command of english isn't always used just to be negative, but I can't  find that online. However in looking for it I did find this interview with the man himself about his  modis operandum, which reveals alot about the man.

I think this is entrancing - a video that I got onto via David Lebovitzs blog, about an artisinal chocolate maker in Paris, that shows a level of craft and committment, that to my mind, transforms what is essentially a job into something infinitely more satisfying.

The French do this degree of culinary craft so very, very well - and the customers in the shop take it all so very seriously, and I simply love it!!

 A tongue in cheek, but nonetheless rather witty, account of how to treat the bill when dining out with friends in a restaurant. Becos its American there is discussion about tax and tips added to the bill, but the basic principles still remain relevant.

Is it just my imagination or do we see alot less of the fraught shenanagins that we used to encounter all the time over splitting of bills? It became  so tedious, that we got into the habit of always checking with a table at the time of taking the order as to how the bill was going to be paid, and if it was intended to have individual ones, then we would use our numbering system, finding out who was with who,  to do individual accounts during the evening, which we would then give to the table. ( All customers at a table have a number - thats how we know who to give the food too, without asking who ordered what, an absolute no,no in my world.)

A little more effort for us during the course of service but vastly preferable overall to the performance that would otherwise occur when you would end up with a crowd of people hanging around the counter to pay at the end of the nite, and debating what they had  and hadn't had to eat.

Guaranteed they would forget about the portion of bread, or the glass of wine or the coffee, and it was not unusual to still have money left on the account when everyone had supposedly paid. And somehow it didn't seem fair to charge it to the poor smuck who was the last to pay.

So instead we ended up being the poor smuck who wore the cost.

And not to mention the unedifying sight of people worrying over whether they paid an extra 50c more than what they had actually inbibed. I could really never see the point, but then I don't like meanness in any shape or form, and I just find the principle of coming out for dinner, having a pleasant meal in company I enjoy, only to end it on a note of vexasiousness over what I'm prepared to pay for, to somewhat take the shine of the occasion.

I have witnessed on too many occasions, that sort of behaviour impact negatively on peoples enjoyment right at the point when they're leaving the restaurant. And that is why we go to the trouble of doing seperate accounts, becos we want to make the bill paying stage a smooth process, not fraught, since that will be the last impression they walk out the door with.

The fact that its someone amongst the groups meanness that may have created the problem is quite beside the point. We're the ones that get left to deal with the fallout.

We seem to see a whole lot less of that type of behaviour these days. It is much more common when we ask how the bill is to be treated to be told that it will be split equally amongst the table. I like to think thats a sign of the public simply being more adept at dining out, than maybe they were 20 odd years ago.Whatever the reason, I know its an approach I vastly prefer.

So I agree wholeheartedly with this gentlemans belief that when you eat out with friends you enter into a contract not to be mealymouthed about the paying.

If cost is such a consideration then don't eat out. When I am having one of the weeks when I feel distinctly impecunious, then I stay home, rather than going out to a restaurant, and roast a chicken, and try very hard not to feel sorry for myself!

Mind you. Equally offensive to my mind, is his ultimate conclusion that splitting the bill can therefore create the belief that you can have more than you would ordinarily becos your total will be subsidised by others.  That behaviour is just as deplorable. And do people who behave like that get invited out again?

Don't ask!! I have escoteric taste in my reading, and earlier today caught this article in Vanity Fair  which mesmerised me, becos it explained so much that had perplexed us when we were in Cork, Ireland a few years back.

We'd flown to Ireland from France, specifically to visit Ballymaloe Cookschool and had a marvellous few days, exploring what Darina and Tim Allen have created there.

But we were fascinated by the fact that out in the very rural countryside you could be driving along a country road, and suddenly come upon a modern, newly finished subdivision, with a large number of completed, immaculate houses, and not one singe occupant.

We were confused. Where were all the people?

But reading this article, I am no longer confused - in fact I read it and wanted to weep. For how many years was the Celtic Tiger economy held up to us as a model that we should be emulating?

Somehow, I don't  think so. Economics is actually pretty basic  really- and has alot to do with producing something that someone wants to buy. Suburbs  in the middle of nowhere, for which there are no buyers? Umm...

Have just driven back over the Kaimais in the rain after catering a wedding in Hamilton. Lyn and I followed Rick and Courteney in the truck, Jelte and Ali were in their car, and Hannah and Andrew stayed with his Mum in Hamilton. Its been wet all day, and the drive felt long, abiet leavened considerably by the chat that flowed between Lyn and I.

A delightful wedding for very special people - its nice to come back feeling like the mission has been happily accomplished. We haven't unloaded the truck - all the staff at the restaurant had gone by the time we got back, and its wet and dark, so will get up in the am to do that.

Have however sat down at my desk before heading to bed, to do my breathing exercises, and chanced upon this rather fascinating interview with Bernie Madoff, done over the phone from prison.

I read about this man first in Vanity Fair a  couple of years back, and he's fascinated me ever since, becos he embodies to me, all that has gone wrong with the financial shenanigans in this world, where the pursuit of money, purely for the sake of having more money, is what life seems to all about to some people.

An approach which in this instance, has come horribly unstuck. Sobering reading.

I tend to be a believer in the thought that what goes round, comes round....

Time for bed methinks!

I feel more than a little inadequate in the face of the devastation that has been caused in Christchurch, and it was with almost relief that I responded to a phonecall from a friend who's organising a large fundraising concert at Holy Trinity later this month, which we will be able to actively contribute too.

It will be good to actually do something concrete, rather than just wringing my hands at the horror of it all.

Courteney alerted me to this auction on Trademe though - and I thought the thread of comments and especially the house owners responses were simply pure gold, especially in the face of so much horribleness.

How someone who has gone thru what he has, can find the humour and the humanity in his situation to the degree that he does, utterly impresses me.

And note that buried in amongst all the delightfully appreciative comments there is one, becos there is always one, who simply fails to see the point in any of the humour.

I think you have to feel sorry for that person. Don't you?!

And I have a very real problem with the terminology 'service director'. What a pompous, silly, self important expression. Barely passible in a multi layered, complicated restaurant like The French Laundry, where you really do need someone front of house to be a director, and manage all the various aspects of service. I still think its an unecessarily bloated word to describe what is, in essence, a maitr d' role, but I don't tend to take umbrage with it being used there, becos maybe its just the Americans wanting to update an old fashioned french term, and it can have some validity, given the complexity of the role in a restaurant like that. But it still sounds a bit too over the top for me.

Chefs are still called chefs - that term is given serious connotations and gravitas, and has survived the trip accross the Atlantic without being translated into 'kitchen director ', so am not sure why maitr d' hasn't.

And it is especially jarring to my ears to be used in a restaurant where the customers are expected to get their own cultery out of containers, and place them on plastic topped tables, that appear to lack even any form of napkin.

Director of what exactly?!

Grant Achatz who is the co-owner and chef of Alinea in Chicago is about to open a new restaurant called Next, and this article details what the restaurant is going to achieve.

Alinea has become one of the most famous restaurants in America - he is an alumni of the incomparable Thomas Keller, and is known as a one of the molecular gastronomy chefs, where dinner comprises multipe small courses, and nothing is quite as it seems.

We have the cookbook, and the food is quite extraordinary and quite out of the range of a kitchen like ours. You need a whole range of very specialised equipment to reproduce that style of cuisine, not to mention a serious number more chefs than we have.

But that doesn't make it any the less fascinating.

So what does a chef who is at the top of his game do? Rather than duplicating what he has already created in other cities, he has decided to open a new restaurant in Chicago where the menu and theme will change completely every 3 months. Hence the moniker Next.

First up they are doing classical french cuisine from the writings of Escoffier, and then they will be undertaking Thai cooking, and next...

Mr Achatz is in the priviledged position where money does not appear to be remotely a problem.  Traveling to the source, extensive experimentation, and acquiring all the specialised equipment that he needs   is simply taken for granted. Partly becos of his wealthy business partner and partly becos Alinea is such a successful restaurant.

There is a flicker of envy as I read thru the  seeming lack of budget constraints as they set about organising this new restaurant. Oh, that our lifes were so untrammelled by nasty considerations of financial dues...

But then again I'm the one who always says that its debt that gets me out of bed in the morning, and if I didn't have it, would I be as driven as Mr Achatz to keep creating and being innovative, given I'm a lazy tart at heart. He is at the top of the culinary world, he doesn't have anything to proof, except obviously a very deepseated passion for the creative process.

You have to admire it!

The concept of changing not only the entire menu but also its complete focus every 3 months has got me to thinking though, becos it is quite a unique and different approach.

Restaurants become well known for certain dishes and people like that sense of continuity. So to change all the food totally is to deny people that sense of continuity and I find that curious.

Restaurants like Alinea are what I call 'trophy' restaurants. They are considered a destination by gourmands, somewhere to be ticked of their list of must visit. People travel from all over the world expressly to eat there, becos within the foodie media it is given such significance. .

It would be interesting to see the stats but I strongly suspect that by far the biggest percentage of their customer base is first time customers. People eat there, so they can say they have - it is not about establishing any form of relationship with the restaurant over time.

Somerset rather lacks the international gravitas to be considered a trophy restaurant, and we as owners have deliberatly steered a course away from featuring in the media, becos we have come to distrust alot of what that can represent.

More important for us is the return trade, the people that we have built up an ongoing relationship with over years. And with each of those people it varies - some we see once a year on special occasions, some we see almost weekly, but for all we are part of the local landscape, and as such we are familiar and comforting.

And so it is with our menu. People associate certain dishes with it, and expect to see them when they come - the squid, duck and licorice can't be changed - all of which makes me rather curious about a restaurant that is going to change everything regularly. I'll be really interested to read later how they're finding it work for them.

Our menu is considerably longer than it used to be, partly in response to the fact that we feel a need to retain certain dishes becos a large percentage of our customer base want to see them, while also wanting to create seasonal change and variety. So we keep the classics, and add and subtract others, but the bones of the menu are recognisable from one visit to the next.

And in doing so we are currently offside what the food media consider to be correct for restaurants. Years ago in restaurant reviews I would read ( and record in my diaries!) comments to the effect that the menu of the reviewed restaurant was too small and limiting, but in todays world, food writers have swung with the fashion and decided its much more hip to have a small, tightly focused menu.

Fashion dictates to food and those who write about it, just like in the clothing world.

We however, prefer to take our cues from our customers and our own innate sense of what is right for our business in our part of the world. So our menu maybe unfashionable in its size, but Rick and I can live pretty happily with that fact!

And if you've made your way thru all of that, you may be interested in this video where Mr Achatz is interviewed - move thru the text to the end of the video where you'll see the style of food served at Alinea, and the intense, severity of the concentration. Totally inspiring...

Rick and I have just had a couple of very pleasureable days down in Ohope, celebrating 25years of (usually!)  happily married life. We borrowed a friends beautiful house right on the waterfront, and got to completely relax and enjoy.

( Courteney and Rick heading for the sea. )

In between the walking - round the hill edge of the peninsular to Whakatane, a glorious couple of hours- and swimming, I got to catch up on some reading which had nothing to do with my old diaries, that I've been spending so much time absorbed in recently. Time for a break from those I'd figured...

In an earlier blog I'd referred to Gay Bilsons book 'Plenty" which I'd read a number of years back, and remembered as a very idiosyncratic and personal account of owning restaurants in Australia, and decided that maybe it was time to have another read.

Which I've been doing, and in amongst some of the other stuff that shes given me pause to consider, I went on a search today for the Australian food writer Michael Symons ( as opposed to the American chef, Michael Symon ), who she refers too often,  becos the name rang a bell and I thought I had one of his books.

If I have, I can't find it, and I think I'm confusing him with someone else, but I did find this interesting article that he wrote in an Australian newspaper, about how all the increase in food talk over the last 25 years or so, has taken food as a subject out of the back pages of womens magazines and into the main stream. So much so, gastronomy is now considered a subject worthy of acedemic study.

And like him, becos my lifes interest is so centered on food, I can only see that as a developement in a positive direction.

A rather fascinating video on the making of espresso - the machine  he uses is enough to make me drool in envy.

So many things factor into the quality and variance of espresso coffees, and its amazing how often in reputable restaurants you can end up with a cup of coffee that shows the person who has made it doesn't understand the basic principles.

I drink black coffee most often, and, becos these days I only have 2 or 3 coffees daily,  I deliberately try to drink those  at places where I know that I'm going to get a 'proper' black ie one with a reasonable level of crema on top. Occasionally I end up having a coffee somewhere new to me, and the coffee is presented with no crema whatsoever, indicating that either the coffee isn't fresh or the grinds haven't been compressed enough, and the water's run thru them too freely.

We have a small machine that is sufficient for our needs and the space that we have, although occasionally I do fantasise about a bigger, better one, but I suspect that money will go on ovens first becos they are higher up the list of priorites. And understandably so. But I am allowed to have the occasional dream!

Last Tuesday, Rhonda and  I pumped out over 70 coffees, one after the other in a succession out of that machine - me on loading the coffee and she on milk, becos she does it better than me -  and as long as we aren't lowering the pressure by taking too much boiling water off to fill teapots during that process, it will get us thru even a demand like that. So while I may tell Rick occasionally that I'd really like a nice new shiny big espresso machine, I can't honestly say that we 'need' a new one.

Not yet anyway....

As a by the bye, thought his version of a machiatto was interesting. I was trained that a machiatto was a short black, 'stained' with a spoonful of hot milk froth on top. What he made looked more to me like a small version of a flat white in an espresso cup. I wonder if thats typically American....

We're quiet in the restaurant tonite, so having gone over for an initial sorte, I've left everything in the very capable hands of Rhonda and Roz and retreated back to my desk to catch up on some reading.

My Favourites list keeps getting longer and longer, as blogs I like reading link me to others, that I then feel a need to return too on an ongoing basis, so sometimes catching up on them all can take a little while, and lead me off in all sorts of escoteric directions...

This is a link to a video of a tofu making factory in the US, and as usual I get enthusiatic watching someone who cares and is passionate about what they do.

Tofu is something I have tried to eat on many occasions, always wanting to like, but never managing to relish the acutality. That was until we tried it at Merediths restaurant in Auckland last year, where it comprised part of  a clever vegetarian course and ended up being one of the standout dishes in a superlative meal.

I haven't been able to source tofu as good as we ate that nite though, and watching this video has got me to wondering whether I should contact the restaurant to find out where they get it from, or maybe someone reading this might  know, and can pass on the contact to me.

Something I want to play around with more...

A link to a video Michael Ruhlman has done on the need for awareness in chefs. Go beyond the video and read  the comments becos I think some have actually extended his thoughts better.

A team who are aware of each other and working to a common goal with focus, be it in the kitchen or out front in the restaurant, is a pleasure to be a part of. And when it works it can feel seamless, even though, deceptively, people are always putting effort into ensuring the smooth flow. It never just happens by default.

However, no matter how large the team is, it only takes one person to lack that notion of awareness,  or worse to not care about it, and in the process  have a totally disproportionate and negative impact on the overall pattern.

Good people are very, very important.

Am about to head over to the restaurant for our first cookschool of the year - which also means the first in this series, and that means that Rick is already over there, making sure that everything in his list  is prepped and ready to go, becos theres always an element of the unknown going into the first class.

There is no doubt that one of the reasons for Somersets continued survival rests squarely on  Ricks shoulders and his ongoing ability and need to be consumately organised and sorted. He hates not been ready.

Have just been clearing my emails, and one of them linked me to this. Tell me that the photos in this link of the Tartine Bakery in San Francisco don't make you want to get up and head into the kitchen!

I've long had a hankering to set up a really good bakery, an idea that my husband resoundingly squeelchs every time I'm given to an occasional murmur. All he can see is long hours and very hard work, for very little return.

And I see something rather more spectacular than that., exactly like the feelings evoked by these photos - well,to me anyway! Rick probably wouldn't respond the same way, although I'm sure he'd be enthusiatic about the quality of the baking. 

We have the Tartine cookbook - its great, and after the cookschool today I'm going to come back over to the house kitchen and make something - just becos!

 This blog by a chef in the States, is an interesting take on the immediacy of restaurant cooking. I can't agree with all her conclusions - some things are simply more important than keeping customers who are ready to eat dinner, happy.

I remember when the phone call came thru from Auckland that my mother had suddenly died of a heart attack while staying at my sisters.  We were sitting out the back of the restaurant with our daughters who at that stage were 8 and 6 years old, and who were eating their dinner - and the phone call was a complete bolt out of the blue. Staying at the restaurant and dealing with service that nite, was something that we didn't even entertain - we simply had to head up to the family, had to deal with this horrendous event that had suddenly overtaken us.

I wrote a letter of apology later to the organiser of the medical group who was due in that nite, becos the service they would have recieved would have been slightly less polished,  than they would otherwise have recieved, becos Ricks and my abrupt departure left us short staffed.

The response I got was gracious and understanding, and said in essence that under the circumstances, there simply wasn't an issue.

And so I feel reading this blog... Work is important, the demands of a restaurant are immediate, and you never want to let the rest of the team down, but... At the end of the day, it IS only a meal in a restaurant, it is NOT life and death stuff, and if someone has to wait a little longer than they would normally for their meal to arrive in front of them becos one of the staff has suddenly had a dire emergency crop up in their personal life,  then I can't see that as been the end of the world.

I can't agree that work is more important than the people in your life - but I do agree that work and routine provides a framework and helps heal.

I think the two are distinct and seperate issues.

I've just rewatched my earlier posting on the horrors of the artificial Sandra Lee and the truly abysmal cake that she constructs ( to call it cooking, would be to totally misrepresent that word!), and decided that no, I hadn't been too harsh in my edict about how horrible it all is.

Coincidently I've just discovered this short video of Anthony Bourdain, a commentator who I really do respect and like, talk about the ridiculousness of food TV in todays world.

He says it all really...

Dear God! Watch this video, from one of the highest rating presenters on the Food Network in the US, and tell me that it doesn't make a complete and utter farce of the meaning of the word 'cooking'.

Its beyond hideous - its just unbelievably sad...

Think I'd better go to bed, before I really start ranting and raving...

This short video is precisely why I can't take the Food Channel seriously.

Food and its enjoyment is a huge part of my life - it preoccupies a significant number of hours in my day, but  that said, I still recoil from this sort of over the top, pseudo sexual response to putting a morsel into your mouth.

Its just overstated and overplayed, and in doing so cheapens the whole process.

But that tends to be typical of the American approach, they aren't reknown for being understated, regretfully.

Watched a couple of the last episodes of the Australian Masterchef, this week, and have to say I was hugely impressed with how collaborative and warm the relationships between the contestents themselves and with the judges was. No need to emphasise disharmony and drama for the camera, the story that was happening naturally was quite enough to entrance the viewers.

They were actually allowed to come accross as real people, genuine and pleasant - and proved in the process that that can make good TV.

Bill Burford who wrote the extraordinarily good book " Heat', also wrote an article for the New York Times a couple of years ago, that explores what has gone wrong with cooking programmes on TV, and that pretty much summed up my sense of distaste.

Something that the intervening years has only seen intensify. We got Sky primarily to watch the  Food Channel ( and the occasional rugby test, and maybe also a certain bike race in France that my family can't get enough off!),  but we hardly bother to check it out now.

It simply doesn't appeal, and thats a shame.

Sometimes I wonder if our generation got it wrong. All that pressure that came to bear from our parents generation to get an education so as get ahead. Education, mortgage, committement, work - the need to acquire the big assets, the means of being well to do.

Our children are definitly wired differently, they appear to be oblivious to the same pressures that we had, and are following quite a different trajectory in life to the one we did,  and I watch a video like this and just wonder if maybe their generation have sorted the balance a little better than we did....

All of those things that we used to rush around worrying about achieving and acquiring when we were younger, just don't seem quite as important now, as you watch people you care about,  have to deal with some of the really significant issues in life, like failing health, and accidents and relationship breakups.

The stuff that really matters in life is often that which we take for granted until we don't have it anymore.

Hmmm...

This video  that Doug has just sent me thru, brought tears to my eyes, and I'm not religious at all! But something about the randomness of these people suddenly and unexpectedly bursting into such a beautiful song, in the most unlikely venue, gives a real sense of joy.

The looks on the faces of people who obviously hadn't been aware of what was to unfold, are rather lovely - the surprise, turning to pleasure. The fact that people stopped in the middle of a food court, which is designed around the idea of fast eating, quick turnaround, and listened and savoured the experience is most poignant.

This is a busy time of year for those of us working in hospitality and retail, and sometimes, it is useful to have a reminder about the deeper meaning of Christmas, becos we can be guilty of loosing sight of its specialness, in admidst all the hurly burly.

All rather cool I thought!

Have just spent the last hour doing a bank reconciliation under the Xero system, which allows me to do all the coding, and then spit out a monthly Profit and Loss and the statement for GST by the very simple click of the mouse.

Using Xero has hugely simplified what used to be a major manual undertaking for me, and which labouriously would involve me coding direct onto the bank statements, and then having those transferred to the computor in my accountants office. And needless to say, the more people that got involved the more time the whole process would take.

These days I can be printing of monthly P&Ls, on the first day of the next month. I very much like the immediacy of that information and the fact that I control the process.

Sometimes the computor and I don't agree - and I therefore code to the Suspense account, figuring that I'll sort thru that when Sharlene and I get to have our end of year discussion about it all.

I did an accy degree - changed my major from marketing to accounting actually, purely becos I had decided that I was never going to get married and never going to have children, and therefore, if I was going to do a Commerce degree, then I might as well do the most practical major that I could, so that finding a job and supporting myself would be relatively easy.

Ha!

I'd finished my degree but not my professional exams when I got married to Rick and discussions about buying this restaurant business in Tauranga with my parents started swirling. So while I got to work in a proper accounting office for a couple of years, I never really got to the point of any great seniority.

I did however get a reasonable grasp on the basics of accounting concepts, and many is the time that I have been thankful for that over the years here in business. It doesn't necessarily make us any more money, but it does mean I am unfailingly aware of what our financial status is. I can't use convenient ignorance to make dumb decisions, and sometimes I think that has been a blessing in disguise.

Certainly as the years have gone on, and the technology available has become so accessible and user friendly - the time involved in dealing with accounts and financials is conspicuously less than it used to be, all of which I see as a very positive trend, becos it allows me to feel so much more on top of things.

So, even though sometimes I don't like the figures that are printed out on the bottom of the Reports - at least I'm getting it in timely fashion.

Pleased to see that the November turnover is significantly up on November 2009 - that is a trend that I'm always happy to note, and which I'm hopeful is going to be an ongoing one....It has been a challenging couple of years, and any indicators that the economy in general may be starting a real upward trend, are seized with alacrity.

Rick is on the road driving Courteney up to Auckland Airport - she flies out this afternoon to Sydney to compete in the NZ team in a series of Criterions that have been organised over there. Criterion racing is not one of Courteneys fortes, she much prefers the long road races with lots of hills to seperate out the pack, whereas Criterions are more circuit racing, with the sprinters coming to the fore.

A great opportunity for her though to go and test herself, and improve against some of the worlds best, so she'll be gone for a few days and peace and quiet will descend on the house!

In the current cookschool series ( 2 to go - after about 26 all up in this series I think... including the private classes), Rick uses leaf gelatine, which alot of attendees haven't previously encountered.  We've used it before in a class when we made a chocolate jelly, but in this series its used to mould potato, and is then cooked, where it disappears, becos gelatine doesn't like heat, leaving no trace. The advantage of using it is that we get the shape we want from its setting properties, and then when we cook the dish, it disappears. That is something we're also doing with the lamb shoulder dish, that accompanies the rack on the restaurant menu, again becos of the same properties.

We got the idea out of a Michel Richards  cookbook I think, or it could have been Heston Blumenthals, but the idea of using an ingredient in what is not its normal context, is typical of those guys, who are choosing to push the envelope a little with their approach to cooking.

All of which is by way of introduction to this video, that Rick and I sat down and watched the other nite, becos we've also been trying to make a jelly using bubbly wine, and capturing the bubbles in the jelly, rather than having them dissipate as the jelly sets. Was sure I'd seen reference to how to do it in one of the cookbooks, but hadn't come accross it again. Which is why this video caught my interest especially becos its on the subject of Gelation, and I figured that I might learn something out of it.

I didn't gain any further insight on that particular subject, but I did broaden my knowledge on a whole host of other aspects of gelification, that made the hour and so of watching very worthwhile.

The chef concerned is Jose Andres, a Spaniard who rates Ferran Adri as a close personal friend, and who's restaurant empire in America, has evolved into been a recognised exponent of the avant garde culinary movement. These guys totally transform food into something other than what we are used too and what we expect. Some of the work they do is very, very clever, and some of it is just too far fetched for me. But with all of it there are ideas to be picked out, and adapted into the context that we work with here at Somerset - and as we explain in the current cookschool, while we can never see ourselves fully embracing molecular gastronomy, we do see that we have alot to learn from what these guys are reinventing.

And the fact that the lecture is held at Havard University, rather than in some Culinary School, shows the crossover that these chefs have now established with the science world. They work together so closely  - and all roads needless to say, lead back to the very extraordinary Harold McGee, who, arguably was the originator of this whole approach to food being a science project.
Kind of fascinating!

The below has been copied from a blog I read periodically, written by an American pastry chef, who has worked in various places, and who writes interestingly about her experiences.

She cares passionately about her food and about the people. Sometimes I get the feeling she cares just a little too passionately becos she allows herself to get very let down over the failings of others. This post is an example of her wanting to imbue some of her work ethic into those she works with.

She jumps around the place a bit - in the years I've been reading her blog, she would have changed restaurants 6 or 7 times - and maybe it is that peripatic nature that doesn't allow her to create the kind of work atmosphere around her that she most wants. I can't be sure.

I do know that at Somerset we currently have the best working environment with the people we work with that we've ever had. Its a long established team that we have there now - both kitchen and front of house, and they gell very well.

I can honestly say its a pleasure. We have our moments, of that there is no doubt, but over all I find that they tend to balance each other out with their strengths and weaknesses, and more to the point they genuinely like each other, which makes for a civilised  working environment for all of us. Something I value enormously.

It certainly isn't always sweetness and light, but in general I find that the team want to do what it is that they do well, and care enough about what they do to put in place good practice. For the horrible few weeks that Rick was either in hospital or unable to stand for longer than a couple of hours a day - the day to day business of Somerset rolled on, becos the team rose to the occasion magnificently, and just stepped up and did what was required.

Something we were both enormously grateful for.

The odd thing can go askew, and problems in personal lifes can intrude occasionally - but we seem to have the level of rapport, that if something is giving Rick and I concern, we can sit down with the person and talk stuff thru.

It hasn't always been that way with everyone we've employed over the years - in fact my attempts to point out some facts of life, as I percieved them to be,  to some of our staff in the past, has lead to the occasional spectacular blowup - and maybe we've learnt from those experiences and don't let the work environment become so negatively distorted before we step in and start addressing issues.

Thats part of it I think, and the other contributing factor is simply the calibre of people that we have around us. They like being part of Somerset and we like having them there, and that creates a win/win situation that is to everyones advantage.

25 November 2010

put some gratitude in your attitude. now.

Posted by shuna on 25 November 2010 at 02:19 AM in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,

I can't watch Jamie Oliver on TV any more. Someone who needs cameras in their lives as much as he does, becomes a bit suspect in my eyes, in terms of what his genuine motivation for some of the crusades he embarks on really is.

It just all feels a bit morally superior, and crusading - and I'm a bit anti the concept of Crusades, not believing that the original ones were a force for good at all.

This link is to an article on school food in France - and watch the video, its fascinating. Underscores just why I love the French approach to food so much. They take it so seriously - and they start from birth with that approach.

Completely civilised, and totally as it should be. I don't think Mr Olivers services are going to be required....

The title of this blog is the title of the article that I wanted to link too, becos I thought it contained some really interesting information, about a subject that often crops up in discussions at cookschools.

We are strong advocates of using NZ olive oils instead of imported ones, not only becos we like supporting local initiatives, but also becos the single estate oils that we use, Ellsgrove from Hawkes Bay, and Onemata from here in the Bay of Plenty, are of a vastly superior quality to what we taste of the supposed extra virgin olive oils brought in from overseas.

But Rick usually makes the distinction in the class that he uses these oils for dressings, when the flavour differential really matters,  and seldom cooks with them. Price has always been  a factor in that decision, becos we go thru substantial quanitties of cooking oil in a week,  but Harold McGee in this article makes some other very valid points about what oils we should be using to cook with, and I thought his points were really interesting.

Harold McGee is our go too person for any practical food queries - his book "On Food and Cooking" is the bible for any queries about the science of the kitchen.

In this current series Rick cooks with alot of butter, more so than normal. Butter is his favoured medium, becos of the flavour, and I often feel a need to semi apologise for the gay abandon with which he is inclined to throw it around. My husband is whippet thin and fit, with no health issues, and has never had to consider  any foodstuffs being the enemy. 

He quotes Des Brittans The Coachman restaurant where he did his apprenticeship back in the late 70s and early 80s, as being a professional kitchen where over 40lbs of butter was clarified at one time, twice a week. Back in those days if you wanted to buy olive oil you went to the chemist....you certainly didn't cook with it. Much too exotic!

Butter is fat, and fat equals flavour, so it is the preferred cooking substance for a lot of chefs. But for those of us who cook at home, and who are more inclined to want healthy options for our daily diet, this article indicates that cooking with the most expensive oils is not necessarily the best route to appreciating their flavour.  Save them for the dressings....

This article is a sweetly meditative piece on what a professional chef in New York, cooks at home when he gets home from work.

We differ quite dramatically, in that I can't think of anything worse than sitting down to a meal of substantial proportions in the early hours of the morning. If I recall correctly we used too, in the early days of the restaurant, primarily becos we were working such long hours that we didn't really get time to fuel up during the day, so sustenance would quite often be takeout food, grabbed on the car trip home.

We used to have to get up relatively early in the morning to get our daughters ready for their school routine, so if we'd delayed going to bed in order to cook and eat, we would have got hardly any sleep. And that would have taken a serious toll, so pragmatism reigned, as it does sometimes.

Rick doesn't particularly enjoy cooking at home, becos our kitchen in this house is small and lacks the commercial equipment that he is used too. So cooking is a role that I fulfill, and just like the writer of this article is something I find meditative and relaxing.

But I think the main point made is that professional chefs don't feel a need to eat fancy and complicated restaurant food at home, and nor do they expect others to cook it for them when they eat at friends houses. I know people get performance anxiety about cooking for Rick, and its taken some of our closest friends a while to realise that simple home cooked food is a source of pleasure for him. We know many people who are great cooks, and dinner at their houses is a real treat.

About to take the dogs down below, but just flicking thru my emails as they prowl impatiently outside waiting for me to appear, and have worked my way down the beautiful series of photos in this link that Chris sent me.

I love photography - the revelations contained within can be quite stunning, and these photos are classic examples of that genre. Proving that we live in an immensely diverse world.

Sorry guys! These mornings I'm waking up earlier and sitting at the computor to do my breathing exercises, which means I'm getting time to read more on the internet before my day begins, and some of this stuff is just too good not to do a link too...

Conscious theres been a bit of a barrage of stuff recently, but my momentum may possibly die down...

This link is to a really cool video of Eric Rupert, who is the chef/owner of one of Manhattens top restaurants Le Bernardin, and who does a cooking show in the States called Avec Rupert.

In this clip he cooks with some of his close friends, who just also happen to be top chefs in their own right, people like Anthony Bourdain,  David Chang, and Grant Archatz,  and some of the conversations about where and how these guys get their inspirations, made fascinating listening.

I loved the collaborativeness of what they were doing - the desire to share, just felt kind of cool.

And then right at the end Eric makes the perfectly framed observation that its not about the end result, but rather about the search for it. Life is a process, a journey, and sometimes if we are so focused on where we're going, we forget to make the most of each step along the way.

This is a man who looks like he knows how to enjoy what has come his way.

And now the rest of my day begins - and first up I'll take the dogs down below, while the wine details for the cookschool today are printing off, then I'll come back to check whether I've heard back regarding a couple of queries I had, regarding the wedding we've got on this weekend.

But at least I get to start the day with some nice inspirational images in my head...

I really wanted to believe in Gordon Ramsay, and I have defended him for years against those who find his profanity so offputting.

His ability as a chef was more important to me, and I've always thought that was indisputable. Having read his biography,  I had nothing but respect for someone who had build up so much, when he had come from such a crappy background.

Admittedly I have stopped watching the reality shows he does, especially the ones filmed in the States, becos they are just hideous, and so removed from a real live professional kitchen as to be absolutely farcical. But I understand his need to keep filming becos he makes more money from appearing on TV than he does from his restaurants, and he needs the one to help cover the debt on the other.

But as this article in The Guardian sets out, he is in danger, and the way the argument between his father in law and erstwhile business partner and he, is currently playing out in the public eye, in the most torrid fashion, is not doing anyone any favours.

Hubris is a horrible thing - and I don't believe it has to be a natural consequence of great success. But how often do people seem to loss a grip on reality...

Hmmm...

Rick has just poured me a glass of bubbly and we are settling in for a quiet nite at home. A somewhat pleasureable prospect after a pretty full on week, and the awareness that we have another one similar, looming.

Before I shut of the computor though, and retreat to the pile of magazines that I picked up from Mag Addiction today, I thought I should link to this review of the very poignant movie " I am Love".

We had gone to see it  a few weeks back - I had managed to get Rick there under slightly false pretences becos he is not especially a fan of subtitled movies, but being a huge Tilda Swinton fan, and starting to turn our attention to all things Italian as we begin to map out our 2012 trip, it seemed like too good to miss.

And so it was. A sublimely beautiful movie on so many levels - which is why I wanted to link to this exquisitly written review of it, that captures the essence far better than I could.

As someone who has always considered herself a feminist, I couldn't help but very naturally agree with all the sentiments expressed in the article, becos it made perfectly logical sense to me.

But interestingly for me personally, it hadn't been that need to fully embrace joy that had been my abiding impression of the movie. Maybe becos contrary to the female character, my life is one in which I get the luxery of being able to express myself fully. No - what I took away most of all, was a new awareness that while all the grounds on the land we own here may be rustic and unkempt, becos we lack the time, the money and the knowledge to fully develope them, that very simplicity can have its own appeal. And I should stop the internal harping about what we should be doing.

In the movie there is a real visual juxtoposition between the immacutely manicured gardens of the palazzo that the main character lives in, in Milan. Quite extraordinary by any standards. And then up in the hills behind Milan, her lover has found complete comfort and peace amidst a wilderness. Which intrigued me, becos it was beautiful becos of that simplicity, not despite it.

So while I sometimes get frustrated that I can't direct more of my time and finances towards the land around us, I have decided not to let that rile, but instead to be very thankful for what we have, and to luxeriate  in all the little changes that I note in the morning when I take the dogs down below for their morning constitutional. The smell of the blossom on the grapefruit trees at the moment startles my senses awake, and yesterday I noted that the blossom on the quince trees has yielded to tiny  buds of fruit.

And for now, those regular and very pleasureable little discoveries, that happen with the changes in the seasons, will be quite enough to sustain me. There is no doubt that  I have,  "I am Love" to thank for the distinct change in my perspective.

You have got to love the passion of these 2 in this video - well at least I think you do!

Curious to watch them make the cupcakes becos prior to sitting down at the computor to do my breathing exercises, I was watching Australian Masterchef, while I was on the spinner - a programme I dip in and out off, and was intrigued to watch the making of an Opera cake.

We had to make a massive one  of those years ago for a birthday party - and I thought the way they made the butter cream on the show was very interesting - by adding a hot sugar syrup to the beaten eggs, and then adding the butter, its a different technique and I'm curious to give it a go.

Got me to thinking about my mothers Continental cake recipe, which was a classic in our family all my childhood, and got requested and wheeled for all major family functions. We had it on the restaurant menu when we first opened, but Rick never shared my enthusiasm for it, and it slowly slipped off the menu, and the last time I made it was, unsurprisingly as the result of a special request from my sister.

I always figured we could do the blancmange filling in it better, and watching this buttercream today I think I've just discovered how. I have no doubt that Rick will be less than enthusiatic when I suggest that we ressurect this cake, but I have more allies in the restaurant kitchen now, becos some of the other chefs are more pastry orientated than Rick is, and if I can make one that incorporates the kind of flavours that I've currently got tossing around in my head, it may yet make a worthy replacement for the Chocolate Fondant Pudding which is overdue being replaced on the menu.

Or so I think!

I'm up early this morning to get some work done at my desk, before heading over to the restaurant for a cookschool, and got sidetracked on some of the daily internet reading that I do, by this well written article that very cleverly captured the extremes of chef hubris.

I personally find such behaviour totally unacceptable - and if I'd been spoken to like that, I'd have left. No one deserves to be made to feel like crap. And this is an extreme example of restaurant staff behaving appallingly badly, becos they have got too caught up in their own press.

As with all things in life however - there are degrees. I have always believed in a restaurant setting that the most desirable outcome is when the needs of the restaurant is perfectly calibrated against the demands of the customers. Always a balancing act, becos you have a room full of people all requiring something slightly different, to which the restaurant staff have to direct consistent service and food.

In reality you are never consistent - becos people are so hugely variable in the way they behave, and that necessitates, different responses from us. My language and the way I talk to a young couple on their first nite out, will vary from the way I respond to a table of business people who eat out regularly and whom I am very familiar with.

We are not automatons, and we don't regard our customers as all being the same either - so getting the pitch right when you can be confronted with a wide variation in human behaviour is one of the biggest challenges of the hospitality game.

And getting it right so that everyone is happy, within the confines of what your particular restaurant provides is even more of a challenge. Becos no matter how good you are at what you do, you are simply not going to be able to please all the people all the time.

That just simply cannot be.

So we end up with a reality where there are degrees - where there is an ever changing place on the continuum, that we as front staff are for ever calibrating.

In a restaurant like the one described in this article, the chef is completely absorbed in his own brilliance, and the customers are merely an annoying appendage to the need for someone to eat his art.

In other words he's an arrogant jerk, who's lost sight of the fact that restaurants are there to provide a warm satisfying environment for people to eat in. He sees it purely as an extension of his ego.

But at the other end of the scale, you can also get customers who similarly loose sight of the fact that the restaurant is not there to cater solely and exclusively to their tastes and their whims, and theirs alone. Customers are equally capable of behaving in an atrocious manner.

All restaurants have points of differences, the aspects that give them their individual character, and customers, who on their first visit, feel the need to try to try to assert their superiority by demanding that things get altered - be it where they are seated, or changes to the menu, or complaints that their favourite wine isn't on the wine list, or....  are really an opposing version of a similar style of hubris.

In other words they view the dining out experience as being all about them. It never occurs to them that the kitchen may have spent months working on a dish to bring the balance of flavours together. Maybe the end result doesn't appeal to them personally, but that doesn't make them right and the kitchen wrong. It isn't that simple.

Some people however view life thru an intensly self orientated perspective - and running into those types always represents a challenge. Sometimes their demands can be satieted with a minimum of fuss, and sometimes they simply can't be,  without significant impact on other diners, and that is when I tend to become exercised, becos my role is to attempt to ensure the balancing of the majority of our customers enjoyment. And  I therefore get bothered when I see one person, or one table, having a disproportionate impact.

It happens. Not often, but it happens.

So, for every overly arrogant chef out there, there is unfortunelty also customers who have forgotten that sharing public space with others requires, what my mother always used to describe, as simple good manners.

Manners oil the wheels of human engagement, and make everything smoother and more pleasant.

For everyone.

Had read about this trend in Wine Spectator - restaurants in the States starting to use the ipod as a device to give customers more information about their wine lists especially, then would normally fit on a printed menu.

And now according to this article some of the Australian restaurants are also embracing the idea which means its only a matter of time before we see it in NZ...

Do I think its a good idea? I don't know... Part of me tends to ver towards the thought that you can get just a little bit too precious about gadgets and information in a restaurant setting. In the end, what the dining out experience is about I would think, is the personal engagement that allows people to relax and enjoy their dinner companions, and the whole experience of eating and drinking.

The more complicated you make the information retrieval to achieve that outcome, the more I suspect you detract from that as an end result.

But then I know some people, who would consider having an ipod to play around with at the table to be the highlight of the evening, so I guess its a case of each to their own!

In the restaurant you get used to people with various food issues - the range of foodstuffs that some people can't/won't eat can be lenghty, and one of the reasons for our menu being reasonably long, is that we've quietly got to incorporate alot of those requirements over the years, so that if people don't think to pre alert us - which a surprising number don't- then we have something we can fall back on.

One tricky request to the kichen during the middle of a busy service can be enough to throw the whole line, and we try hard now to avoid that eventuality. We cater all requests, and I think we've pretty much had them all - right down to halai killed meat for some muslim guests a number of years ago.

People can't eat dairy, or soy; they're allergic to peanuts or hazelnuts; can't have any grape based product; they're vegans and won't eat any animal product at all, including eggs and diary; and then the biggy is gluten allergies.

I get intensly irritated by the types who profess to be vegans and eat the entree and main and when it comes to dessert order a brulee, and when its pointed out to them that that contains both dairy and eggs, but we do have a lovely fruit sorbet they might like to try,  they airily wave their arms and say ' oh well, nevermind I feel like a brulee tonite..' Proving somewhat conclusively I always figure that they're not really vegans at all.

 And then another of my pet hates are the women who have the richest dessert possible, and then insist on low fat milk for their coffee to follow. I used to refuse to stock trim milk ( I tend to get bees in my bonnet over some things, sometimes!), and it was the staff who finally overruled me and insisted on us having it as a choice, cos they'd got sick of dealing with the customers who couldn't see the perversity of cleaning up a dessert full of cream, and then complaining cos they couldn't have milk stripped of all flavour in their coffee. Drink it black for gods sake!

But you get that!

Some people have serious health issues, and have to adjust what they eat accordingly, and that I most definitly get, and we will bend over backwards to  provide options for people so that they too can get to enjoy the experience of dining out. But I have considerably less patience for those who I feel are being affected, and use supposed dietary limitations as a way of grabbing attention. That attitude I have to say, I simply don't get.

We have a  number of customers with gluten issues - a significantly growing number actually, and amongst that group are those with celiac, which is a most unfortunate subset all of its own, that we have learnt over the years to take very, very seriously. A very good customer of ours is one so afflicted, and Christine came to France with us, and broke my heart cos she wasn't able to enjoy the croissants that were a regular morning treat. Plus she comes to all the cookschools, and becos of that we've done alot of experimenting using other grains flours so that she can eat whatever we cook. The Gluten Free shop in Cameron Rd is a god send - a treasure trove of ingredients and information.

It doesn't end there of course. Gluten is hidden in so many foodstuffs, especially alot of the asian condiments that we use, so we've had to learn to back up and avoid certain things.

I thought this link to a Michael Ruhlman interview with a lady with celiac, was particullary illuminating, becos it spells out not only the dire bodily consequences that these people have to put up with if their requests for gluten free food isn't taken seriously, but also talked about just how generic gluten is.

I have to confess I'd never previously considered the possibility of cross contamination - and that is something that we will talk about in the kitchen at some time, becos it is one of those simple things that we should all be aware of.

The only foodstuff that has an adverse effect on my dietary system is dried porcini mushrooms - god knows where that came from, I was fine with the fresh ones I got to eat in Italy -, and that is something I only discovered a few years ago, and has made me a little wary around most funghi I have to admit. But I can't begin to imagine what it is like to have to watch everything you put in your mouth as closely and obsessively as some of these people have too.

Have got up early this morning, becos a long list of things to do today, before we drive up to Auckland to pick up Courteney from the airport, and with the brain abuzz, it seemed to make more sense to get out of bed and get on with my day, rather than lying there tossing and turning...

Clearing emails is always one of the first tasks of the day - and some of the blogs I get sent, lead me to all sorts of interesting places on the internet. Thought this link to the morning prep in a Parisian patissiere was particullarly apt  for a whole host of reasons.

Proper patissieres fascinate me - the range of product available and made fresh on a daily basis, is huge, and the amount of detail that goes into some of it is quite extraordinary. A degree of skill that I can only marvel at - and feel somewhat envious of the population base of sufficently appreciative people, who will come into the bakery day after day, to purchase what has been made. Meaning they start with a clean slate every nite, ready to make everything from scratch all over again.

The number of Japanese apprentices is interesting - apparently the Japanese have a great love of all things french, and they overwhelmingly represent the majority of  overseas attendees at most of the Culinary Schools in France. Given they have such a strong and distinct culture of their own, I find their obseisance to the french food one, to be curious.

But then to a degree I share it - my fondest memories of France are of the cafes and bakeries. The daily ritual that was so easily slipped into, of heading into town to buy the bread and croissants, and to have a coffee and pastry. And to sit back and watch the world pass by, enveloped in a warm haze of knowing that I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Hmmm...

Am just about to have a shower and head over to the restaurant - we're in for a reasonably busy nite, and given I've had a mooching kind of day, it will be rather pleasant to have to move my toush.

Spent a fair part of the afternoon trying to remove a link that I'd inadvertently dropt on to the computor when I was trying to track down how we could possibly watch Courteneys World Championship race on Saturday on the computor.

NZ TV isn't covering the Championship,( and typically featured a segment on 2 non selected Allblacks on the news tonite, before it made mention of Linda Villumsens bronze medal in the Time Trial), so I'm trying to figure how I can stream it from an Australian channel, but ended up in places that caused me a bit of grief, until Chris undid the damage. He's very good like that.

We were supposed to be flying over to Melbourne tomorrow to watch the race, but Ricks not allowed to fly, becos its too soon after his collasped lung, so we've had to cancel out, and he is antsy beyond belief and quite unbearable to live with, hence my endeavours to find a way of watching from a distance!

Ah well...that is why a busy nite in the restaurant will be pleasant relief...something else to focus on!

This link is to an interesting article that Mark Bittman has written in the New York Times on the trends emerging that indicate people are taking food more seriously. It dovetails nicely with alot of the other reading I've done over the last little while, and I therefore thought it might be of interest.

We have a private luncheon on at the restaurant currently, and I've just left a long table of 41 people happily chatting and eating the slow roasted shoulder of lamb to come back over to my desk for 10 mins. By the time I go back over, Rhonda and Roz will have placed a glass of lemon posset with churros in front of everyone, and I'll stand behind the coffee machine and pump out the coffees.

A 40th wedding celebration for some very special people - and it is one of the privileges of what we do, in that we get to share in some of these milestone occasions, for people who matter.

Flicking thru my emails as I always do when I plonk myself down at my desk, I was delighted to see that David Lebovitz, a blogger I read regularly had visited Balleymaloe Cookschool in Cork, and had done a lenghy dissertation on how fabulous he found the place.

We made a point of going up to Cork at the end of our Dordogne adventures back in 2007 to have a look at the selfsame cookschool, becos we'd met  Darina, the owner here at Somerset, when she had called in while travelling thru NZ. A lady you were made to feel instantly relaxed with, we were determined to go and have a look at her set up, becos her reknown is world wide, and she was so enormously welcoming.

My mother was Irish, so I know a bit about Irish hospitality, but Darina and her family quite blew us away, with their welcome, and their enthusiasm for what it is that they do. The world has caught up with what she has been espousing since the early eighties. Once she was almost a lone voice, but now the whole notion of farm to table is enormously trendy, and taken up as a badge of honour by every young chef trying to earn his/her stripes.

Her set up in the rolling countryside of Cork was truly inspiring, and I was delighted to read this post from David Lebovitz, and to see in it, that she continues on, undaunted and undented by the declining economic fortunes of Ireland.

It has been an interesting couple of weeks- I think I've been in a state of almost suspended animation, going thru the motions, but not really being fully engaged either emotionally or mentally.

Everything however is on the improve ( except for the weather!). Rick is home, and slowly healing, he is going to be in pain from his broken ribs for awhile, and he's currently finding things like taking the dogs down below very taxing on his breathing, which for a man as hyper fit as he is, is super frustrating.

But in terms of possible and probable injuries he was remarkably lucky, so we hold on to that thought as we negotiate what needs to get done each day. First cookschool in the series tomorrow - Matt and I will be sharing a number of the jobs I think, becos Rick won't be able to quite as fluid in movement as he normally is, but we'll sort it.

Our kitchen team have stepped into the vacumn created by Rick magnificently - they are a nice group of people. All of them have done some sort of tertiary cooking training, and all of them have rather strong opinions on the relevance of alot of what they were taught.

Working in a kitchen like Somerset, they get to extend their skill base significantly becos we make so much from scratch. And that bodes well for them, whereever they may end up in the world, becos they have inherited a wide range of skills.

It gives us immense satisfaction that Somerset can set up these guys with such a solid foundation, becos the ability to cook  well underpins everything that we do.

Anthony Bourdain is a chef/writer/TV presenter who is not to everyones taste, but who I have mentioned before that I really rate, for his no holds barred approach to telling things the way they really, really are. I've talked about his latest book in an earlier blog, and I found it a delightfully entertaining read, and insightful look at what goes on behind the seeming glamour of all the publicity.

Michael Ruhlman in his blog, has managed to get a link to one of the chapters in the book, which pretty much encapsulate everything about his approach. In a nutshell, he's saying that there are so many people out there with starry eyed perceptions about being a chef, and owning their own restaurant, and they totally go about achieving their goals the wrong way. As I've mentioned - he doesn't pull any punches, and it makes for good reading....

I think I am a contrarian. I don't mean to be, but there is something buried deep in my pysche, that tends to react in a negative fashion, when the media get hold of a concept, and I start reading various people who feel the need to beat me and everyone else around the ears about what we should and shouldn't be doing in our lives.

Simply put - I hate to be told what to do. Especially by people who I don't have any reason to respect, and especially by people who climb onto the latest fashionable trend, and run with it, espousing easy catch phrases, but lacking any real depth of analysis.

And this link to an article in the New York Times, captures exactly the sense of uneasiness I've always had about those who would have us focus solely on locally produced food. An idea that is trendy to toss around, and fashionable to be seen to be getting behind, but which, when you start really exploring the angles is devoid of the actual justification that these people claim to have exclusive rights too.

But then, I'm not keen on taking extreme, absolute positions on anything. Life just simply isn't quite that clear cut, and stating absolutes leaves you no wriggle room, and I always like the opportunity to be able to reconsider.

We buy local where we can and where it makes sense - but we don't claim the moral high ground over the issue, and nor do we purport to do so exclusively. I think to do so is a gimmick, a bit like the TV show on the Food Channel some time back, covering a young chef who sort to run a restaurant only using food sourced in the greater London area. He wasn't doing that becos he really 'cared', he was doing that becos it gave him a point of difference, and was therefore an idea the TV producers were prepared to run with.

I personally believe it was devoid of any moral genuineness, and in fact all to do with publicity. But I say that becos I also happen to be somewhat cynical about most peoples reasons for wanting to be on TV, and not becos I actually know whether the restaurant is still there, and still surviving using ingredients sourced from London. Somehow I doubt it.

The history of food is writ large thru ingredients having moved all around the world over the centuries. The locavore purists taken to their logical extreme would have us deny the glories of some of the greatest food cultures in the world. Thats nonsense.

New zealand is a primary producer based economy - we need people in Asia, the Americas and Europe to want to eat our kiwifruit, our dairy and our meat. And to to get that produce to those markets it has to be shipped. Having people screaming about the carbon imprint of such shipping is just a vocal and emotive form of tariff I believe, and one that is devoid of acedemic proof, as this article amply points out.

And thats part of the reason why I get uncomfortable. But the other part is simply becos I really don't like people telling me what I should and shouldn't be eating. I'm quite grown up enough to be making those choices myself, thankyou very much!

Yes, yes and yes!!

I have a huge problem with so many of the restaurant reviews that I read in the media becos so much of the comment portrays a complete lack of real knowledge about the subject matter. And it seems perverse to me becos if you don't know what you're talking about, then why be in print, and worse, sit in judgement on people?

This link is to a blog that Lauraine Jacobs wrote on the subject - and  I have to say, Lauraine! - I was impressed! You have captured succintly the frustration that alot of us in the hospitality industry feel, becos restaurants are such easy sitting targets.

Thankyou!!

This movie I have got to see...

I understand perfectly, the innate need to be good at what you do, but I don't quite get the sense of obsessiveness that drives people to need to be the very, very best at what they do.

To put themselves and their families thru the agonies that trying to achieve a Meilleurs Ouvriers de France qualification  entails.

A bit like striving to become an Ironman, perhaps! - only different....

The current cookschool series that we are finishing in a couple of weeks, was pitched as a modern take on vegetarian food.

And the response from people has been interesting. Some people who would normally come to a series didn't, becos it was vegetarian food, and others who hadn't been before, told me how delighted they were that they could finally come to a class, becos they only eat vegetarian food.

It is the sort  of food that Rick and I are eating more and more of at home. We are consciously moving away from eating meat every day, and the reasons for doing that are primarily to do with health I think. Health concerns, tinged a little bit with the awareness of the cost of meat.

I have frequently made the comment in cookschools, not just this series, but in fact many over the last few years, that I do believe that our culture's approach to a hunk of protein on the plate has limited time left. We will increasingly follow the other countries who have developed a cuisine that provides sufficient energy to fuel people,  in which the meat protein features as a minor player.  Thai and Chinese food are 2 examples that immediately spring to mind.

And this article explains why that is a process that is indeed likely to happen, and to happen within my lifetime. I thought it made profound sense.

We definitely see it as a positive thing that over the last few years, the restaurant trade in general has started to embrace the idea of buying local, and using seasonal ingredients.

Rather than shipping strawberries half way round the world and delivering them to NZ in June as an expensive, out of season fruit, that has novelty value, but are tasteless and horrible to eat, we have long since figured that its better to wait until November and December when we head up to the Somerfields farm in Oropi, and buy strawberries that have been picked a mere few hours ago.

And as much as we appreciate the way that companies like Sabato, who import a range of top European food products, opened our eyes in the mid eighties to ingredients we'd never heard off, let alone had the opportunity to taste, we have been equally excited in more recent years, by the fact that alot of those overseas products have been subsequently superseded in our pantry by NZ grown equivalents.

As I've just mentioned in the latest newsletter, it gives us real satisfaction to be able to use and support local initiatives.

But as with most things, it is possible to become just a little too earnest and extreme in the championing of local stuff, and I never want to get to the place where I feel the need to hector our customers about the great deal of trouble we go to on their behalf. Becos that can all get just as pretenscious, as the erstwhile desire to be seen to be eating expensive out of season produce once was.

The food from all the great cultures of the world has been in a constant state of evolution over the centuries,  as the explorers spread out accross the globe and came home with novel ingredients, that, when they were first introduced were very expensive becos of their rarity. Then they gradually became commonplace and generally accepted, until such time as they were so integrated that people couldn't remember a time when they didn't cook with them.

Its hard to imagine Italian cuisine without the tomato, but when it was first brought back from South America, it was considered poisonous and banned by the Vatican.

So I guess my point is, that supporting local farmers makes sense on all levels, and is something we naturally endeavour to do, but to become too narrow in focus, can be much too limiting , and I don't think that is necessarily healthy.

We won't buy local if it doesn't taste as good as what we can get from overseas. With fresh ingredients its a no brainer, becos locally grown and freshly picked, is always going to be superior to that which has had to be shipped across the world, since deterioration begins from the minute a fruit or vegetable is picked. So its a pretty easy equation to figure - the closer we are to where its grown, the fresher its going to be, and therefore the better its going to taste.

But that doesn't necessarily apply for value added products. With some of those it has taken awhile for producers to appear on the NZ landscape with sufficent skill to duplicate some of the artisinal producers of Europe and Asia. One of the most exciting developements for us personally, over the last few years, is the fact that we can now source various ingredients like olive oil, and cheeses and charcuterie, along with things like proper wasabi and smoked paprika all made here in NZ to exactingly high standards.

And then of course there is the additional issue that this American article raises  which I hadn't thought about before,  being the fact that so many of the restaurants that are quick to trumpet their committment to the locavore food movement, are strangely silent on the fact that their wine lists are heavily international in their listings, and the carbon miles  used up in moving that stock around the world, somehow undermines their earnestly stated intentions to do good by buying local.

Always a danger in being too absolute in your stated position is that you set yourself up for a fall, and thats why I'm always naturally a bit suspicious of people who extreme and absolute in their stance.

13 August

And as a postscript: - had to laugh at an email I recieved from Brian Bicknell today, thanking us for the dinner on Tuesday nite, in which he mentioned that he'd read this blog, and while he understood the concept of locavore, hoped that we would still continue to buy our wine from Burgundy, Italy Rhone and Marlborough. He promised to bring his on horseback if required, so as to cutback on the carbon imprint!

Probably isn't - but does create a rather humourous mental image!

Forget all the crap and hysteronics you get to see on reality TV about restaurants, and revel in the precision and beauty of this movie about a day in the life of a 3 starred restaurant in Paris, Guy Savoy.

The hospitality industry doesn't get anymore focused or serious than this. Quite gorgeous....

Was pondering an article I'd read in the paper this morning, about the cons of joining Facebook, and how superficial that kind of electronic connection can be.

I have no desire to join Facebook, and can't see that status changing in the near future, and a big part of the reason for that, is that my work life surrounds me with people to chat too, and exchange opinions with on a daily basis, so there is no need to further share my private life.

I guess to a degree I do that thru this blog, and that seems to work for me.

This short video on a cafe in Paris, captures perfectly why I think eye to eye contact, and real physical interaction is so much more satisfying, then the form of connection you get over Facebook.

Something to smile at on my way to make my early morning coffee....love the bemused smiles on peoples faces!

David Lebovitz is an American pastry chef, ex of the great Chez Panisse, who now resides in Paris and has written a number of cookbooks, with a definite focus on icecream.

He also writes a regular blog which I get and enjoy reading, becos of his take on living in Paris ( something I dream of doing one day!), and his general take on the French and food.

This particular blog should be compulsory reading for all young qualified chefs who are looking to extend their training overseas. The French understand that cooking is a craft that takes many years to master, and that to learn from someone who is a master at what they do, is in fact an honour. That is why the top European restaurants can afford to have almost as many chefs in their kitchens as they have diners in the restaurant, becos they are not paying the 'stagnaries' - those who have come to do a stage and learn.

As I've pontificated about before, in previous blogs, we have a problem with the attitude of some of the young, recent graduates of the polytech training system here in NZ, who seem to think that having completed the tertiary side of things, that they are now officially a chef.

It would be laughable if some of the repercussions of that attitude that we've observed over the years,  hadn't been so costly  in terms of people employing inexperienced chefs, who can't deliver consistently good food, and then wondering why their investment is going backwards in terms of turnover.

The good ones know that they still have lots to learn - and the holy grail for most is to head for Europe - and this blog pointedly lays out what they should be bearing in mind.

We are not so busy tonite, and I have come back over to the house, having done the initial meet and greet. For reasons I don't fully understand I decided to wear shoes with heels tonite, not my usual flat ones, and while they looked good, their practicalities, especially out the back on the walk to the wine chiller, was seriously dubious.  But sometimes you just do put form ahead of function, just becos the urge takes you!

However, I couldn't have done it on a busier nite, where I needed to pull my weight more...

I got away with it tonite, but have come back over to the house remembering why I have a pair of shoes that I have worn practically ever day for the last couple of years becos they are so eminently comfortable and practical, both of which are important characteristics when you're on your feet as much as I am on a busy nite.

The house feels preternaturally quiet - we're had both daughters home for awhile,  and with their departure, things feel very peaceful,  which is not all bad! So have come home to my computor, to update my reading, without the noise of the TV in the background - although I suspect Rick won't be far away and will be turning on the Tour...

Amazing to think that in a couple of years we might be there somewhere at some stage, watching those guys flash past, but a little more water has to flow under the bridge before that becomes definite.

All of which is a preample for what I wanted to link too, being a blog written by John Thorne, who just happens to be my all time favourite food writer - I have most of the books he's published and I adore his languid and unhyped style.

This link is to a blog that he writes occasionally  - which I check in on periodically to see what he's written. I hope you enjoy his gentle and total esoteric manner. This is food writing as it should be!

I'm sort of watching the Magic in their final, but they're currently 10 goals down, and I can't quite bear to sit in front of the TV, so have retreated to my computor with one ear cocked to the commentary...

We did a private cookschool today for a local accounting firm, a really nice group of people, who, when I left the restaurant, after coffee had been served,  looked very relaxed, and happy to while away a Sunday afternoon in situ.

Am about to head back over to the restaurant for an hour or so becos unlike the last couple of Sundays, we are reasonably  busy - which I suspect has everything to do with the fact that the All Blacks played the Springboks last nite, and  meant we were only half full, which is not how I like Saturday nites. Oh well - hopefully tonite will go someway toward compensating...

Just flicking thru my inbox and Chris has sent me this link which shows how to open a bottle of wine if you happen to get caught out without a wine knive. The french remain resistant to the idea of screw cap closures on wine, preferring the romance and history of corks, but the reality now in NZ is that as much as 95% of the wine that we open in the restaurant is  screwcap, negating the need for any wine knives.

I have to say that the approach shown in this short video is novel, though perhaps not one I'd be inclined to use on a delicate old wine - but then again, if you really, really needed to get the top off, who knows....

This link has absolutely nothing to do with the restaurant world, but have just come over to the house after working a busy lunch, and clearing emails, and encountered this email that I'd been sent.

The laughing that I did watching it, was something I definitely wanted to share... so clever, succinct and devastating. Well - at least I think so!

Find it interesting in this article, that a club has to be set up to deal with the notion of BYO at high end restaurants in London, but maybe thats how to avoid getting people to misuse the priviledge.Hmmm...

Interesting that the restaurants quoted limit the nites that they are happy to accept BYO, so you get the feeling that they're dipping their toes into the water but are undecided whether to take the plunge completely.

I've written at length on BYO previously, and am completely comfortable with our position on the subject.

We have a good wine list, we provide nice glassware, that we attempt to match to the grape type being drunk, and we offer a wide range of wine by the glass.

With the wine list I try to cover a range of price points, as well as different terroir, and give people options that will sit well with our food. I consider the wine choices and the way that we serve it, to be an important part of what we offer to customers.

When we opened in 1986 the notion of a BYO restaurant was much more prevalent, and in those days we only had a BYO licence. The onlicence came later, after the loosening of the liquor licensing laws in 89, and was a natural progression for our business.

Wine research and sales are now a big part of what we do - it is not just a minor addendum to the food.

However, we have continued the BYO option, in addition to offering the wine choices that we do,  becos by the time we had established the onlicence so many of our customers were used to bringing their own wine, and I didn't want to stop them being able to do that.

It is a habit that is fading with time, and there are many evenings now when we get no BYO at all.

But it is still part of what we offer and I can't see that changing.

I was interested therefore to read this article on how some restaurants in the UK are starting to re embrace the notion of BYO as a way of countering empty tables, in the current economic downturn.

We get 2 distinct subsets of people who choose to bring their own wine to the restaurant.

           - those who aren't really interested in wine, but will have grabbed something under $10 from the supermarket, and bring it still in the bag, and ask us to chill it. Price is all that matters to those people. And I've got used to being nonchalant about it - the only time my eyebrows start venturing skyward is when one person at a table, will leave the restaurant after having being seated, and drive across the road to the supermarket, becos they've noted on the menu that we have a BYO option.

It is not unknown for people who do that to reappear, and wave the bottle of wine they've just purchased at us, and ask if we have one of the same thats cold that we could serve instead of the one they've just bought.....

       - and then we have a group of people who have good cellars at home and who want to bring a special bottle of wine out to dinner, and for those types it is very much our pleasure to serve their treasured wine properly. That often involves decanting, and is something we enjoy doing.

I guess the moral is, as with anything, there are always some who will abuse the intent of what you offer, and if you let yourself get too ground down by those few, then you have allowed them to take away your sense of pleasure in what you do. And that would be tantamount to admitting failure. And that is somewhere I choose not to go.

I rate this guy. Read 'Kitchen Confidential' years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed the no frills approach to describing restaurant cooking.

Have watched him on and off on the Food Channel, but we don't watch much of that channel becos we can't stand most of the presenters, so have been out of touch with whats he's been doing, and interested to read in this interview that he's just written a new book.

I'll be heading to Amazon next to order a copy, becos I do enjoy the way he simply ain't scared to call it as it is. And that includes himself. There are absolutely no delusions of grandeur, and that can be very refreshing...

Watching people who are good at what they do gives me a sense of pleasure, even when I am aware in the process, that their skill makes what they are doing look deceptively easy.

This pastry ends up being amazingly thin - but retains a pliability and elasticity that is extraordinary. Quite amazing I thought...

Every month or so, we get a whole pig carcass from Free Range Farms. Buying the whole pig, has made us relook at a number of things, becos ordinarily in the restaurant, when we have a meat dish on, we buy in only the required joints. For instance the midloin of lamb comes to us from the Hawkes Bay - packets of 6 loins all perfectly filleted and pretty much equal size, 10 kilos at a time.

It costs more to buy our meat that way, but it also means no waste, and its been our modus operandum for years.

It does however mean that the chefs in the kitchen merely have to open a plastic bag to access the lamb - there is no butchery skills beyond that. And that is something that has regularly given me pause - becos when you read about the great European kitchens, butchery is a necessary skill for chefs, as much as all the other aspects of the kitchen. And our guys simply weren't getting exposure to it.

In todays world, just as much with us domestic cooks at the supermarket, we can now buy our meat in a homogonised fashion, that doesn't remotely resemble the animal from whence it came. And most of us prefer that - becos we've become hypocrites, my generation, and when we eat meat, we don't especially want to be bothered with the notion that an animal had to die for us to do so.

Getting a whole carcass - head, eyes, ears, tail, the lot, kind of knocks your sensibilites around a little, becos there is no doubt that that was once a sentient being. And interestingly, becos that is reinforced, it makes you much more inclined to not want to waste any. So one of the positive aspects to come out of us dealing with the whole carcass, has been our need to step outside our comfort zone, and come up with ideas to special in the restaurant - just to use up the various cuts of the animal. That is an ongoing exercise that is really good for the whole team.

John has made a terrine a number of times, from the head. We call it euphemistically - "head cheese" - but then describe it for what it is, and invariably people at the table shake their heads with distaste. Why would you eat cheek meat? - how disgusting... Actually, not at all. When you think about it, it shouldn't matter where the meat has come from on the animal. Why is the cheek more disgusting than the belly? - except we are the generation that have got used to eating fillet, and we regard any offal or cheaper cuts with deep suspicion. And in doing so, we deprive ourselves of a whole range of treats.

It reassures me enormously, that whenever we special the 'head cheese', while we may get alot of negative comments, we do also get enough people who are either familiar with the concept, or who are prepared to give it a go, and we always sell out.

I love it - but then I love terrines and pates. They are a way of eating that has infinite appeal to me.

Somehow however - I doubt that we will ever present the head roasted, as an intact entity, as is done in this linked blog. Something tells me that bringing a platter of that out to the restaurant, would push people just that little bit further than they are prepared to go....

We'll stay with 'safe' for now - and just poke at the boundaries every so often to see what response we get. I fully concede that sometimes people surprise me, and an idea that I don't think is going to work, can take off, and certainly with what I'm reading about what is happening, especially in the States, there is this whole groundswell movement back to the idea of using whole carcasses, and getting back into the ancient craft of salume or charcuterie. Its an idea who's time has come round again.

And the fact that we're using free range pork - thats being raised here in the Bay, fits into that whole concept perfectly.

An example of a terrine John made last year from head meat,  that was spectacular. Wrapped in leek, and topped with a prune chutney.

Was following a series of comments of comment around the web, prompted by a blog from Michael Rulman discussing the behaviour of a journalist who, while dining in a restaurant with an open kitchen, took umbrage at the way the chef was yelling at one of his staff, and took it upon himself to go into the kitchen and tell the chef that he thought his behaviour was inappropriate.

As I read the commentary with a kind of morbid fascination I ended up on an associated blog by a female chef, who led me to this truly fascinating video of the commercial, but handcrafted, production of croissants and Danish pastries.

Acompanied by some spunky music, its a riveting 10 min viewing of the making of the pastries. I've tried many times, with varying degrees of success to make croissants, and I learnt alot about what I'd previously done wrong watching this.

But it was also edifying to realise just how much easier a job is made when you have the right tools for it  - hmmm....

We have a customer who's first job was as a tea taster in Ceylon. Not your average kind of occupation, and I'd known Colin for a number of years, in his more conventional role as a corporate accountant before he told me about his tea tasting years.

And I think what brought the conversation up was a dismissive comment he made about the list of teas I have at the restaurant - he told me only one of them, the Darjeeling, classified as a true tea.

I have bought fresh tea for years from Tea Total, and rather prided myself on the fact that we have used loose leave and offered a range of flavours, well before it was fashionable to do so.

So I probably objected to his criticism, as I'm wont to do, but , on hearing his pedigree, was immediately hushed into respectful silence. Usually the best approach when you realise the person you're talking too, knows more about the subject matter than you do, I find!

Naturally then, I thought of Colin when I read an article in the latest edition of the Life and Leisure magazine, on the Chen family in Hamilton, who have created a traditional Oolong tea plantation and factory in Rototuna and Gordonton, just over the hill from us here and  familiar territory  becos its where our daughter races quite often.

By happy serendipity Colin was in the restaurant later in the week, and I gave him the magazine since he'd heard about the plantation and was curious to read more detail.

This link is to the website,  click on The Tea Journey once you get past the introduction, and then click on the little video of Zealong Tea Factory - to see how the picked camelia leaves are made into the special fermented tea that is oolong. A fascinating blend of ancient technique and modern technology.

And apparently there is now a teahouse and restaurant open on the site, so I will aim to head over there sometime soon, to have a look.

I find such innovation and committment to quality truly inspiring.

I'm not far from heading over to the restaurant - we are very quiet tonite which never exactly thrills me, but it will allow Rick and I to sit down and do some work on menus for a couple of functions that we have coming up, and it will also mean that I should be able to get back over to the house to watch 'The Good Wife', which has become compulsory weekly viewing for me. So not all bad..

One of the subjects that comes up for discussion in cookschools, and which I'm conscious that I still haven't quite got my head around is flour. Different flours ( assuming normal wheat flours here), impact on the end product, and our flour in NZ is different to European flours, meaning that interpreting some of the recipes from Europe or America, is the equivalent of guesswork sometimes.

We have added to our library on baking quite considerably over the last couple of years, and one book in particular : Bakewise - the hows and whys of successful baking, by Shirley 0. Corriher, gives an extremely literate breakdown on why various chemical reactions take place, and what you can do and use, to control those reactions in the direction that you want. But it was another cookbook which I can't find right at the moment ( story of my life!), that gave one of the most lucid descriptions of the different types of flour, and what they should be used for. I'll add a postscript when I finally dig it out.

Within reason, in the restaurant kitchen we try to stay true to ingredients and use what is stipulated, rather than jumping around too much. But experimentation borne out of necessity, -ie I don't have any of that so I'll try using some of this - can occasionally give rise to a whole new discovery - that sometimes can be a very pleasant surprise.

But it can become a logistical nightmare for an operation like ours, where a wide range of foodstuffs are made from scratch - to use a hugely variable range of subsets of ingredients. So out of necessity and practicalities, a certain amount of standardisation happens, and flour is a classic example. We use strong flour, which is high in protein, and which is intended for bread - but which we use for all our baking and pasta making as well.

Sometimes specialisation makes all the difference to the end result - using kecap manis, Indonesion soy, rather than Tamari which is a Japanese soy, means a totally different flavour, becos, while once, in our ignorance, we may have thought that all soy sauce was soy sauce and therefore by definition, the same thing, we now know that that is far from the case, and different Asian countries have quite unique soy sauces, that don't cross over.

But with flour we have discovered that we are getting the kind of results that we like using strong flour, so the one fit is working. Although next time I try and make a sponge I may source some flour with less protein in it, becos cake flour is supposed to be lighter than strong flour, and that would be a useful excuse to blame my distinct lack of impressive results in the sponge making department all these years!

Rick is making fresh pasta in the current cookschool series, - and we feel quite strongly that normal strong flour will make perfectly good pasta. Its simply not necessary to buy Italian durum flour.

This link is to a blog written by Dan Lepard, an extremely good UK baker, discussing the different types of flour available, and I thought it broke down a subject matter that I've had several goes at trying to get my head around, in a logical fashion.

As a college student I used to bake for a few of Mums friends, as a way of earning some income. When I think about it now, I don't recall ever reimbursing my parents for the ingredients that I would have used - but that would have been typical of my mother, she was a very generous lady. The only rule was that I left the kitchen as I found it - which I must have done to a tolerable level, becos I don't remember too many arguments over it. And they also tolerated the noise of the mixer going for sometimes hours at a time, which when I think about it now, was pretty decent of them...

Rick and I were given a mixer as a wedding present, and that particular one ended up doing service in the restaurant when the one we inherited with the business died.

Now at the restaurant we have 2 mixers - one huge, that holds about 30 litres, and doesn't tend to get moved around. The other is a bench top one, but still commercial, and considerably larger than the average household one.

I replaced my old one some years back with a Kitchen Aid - that I have grown to love. My efforts at baking continue unabated, becos my family are so frigging active that they need constant calorie top ups, and I'd far rather they were eating homebaking, then some of the other options out there.

( They actually not normal my family - Hannahs just won the Superdune multisport race in Auckland; Courteney has just texted to say shes arrived safely in Shanghai with the rest of the womens team where they racing on Chongming Island in an international event that includes the World Cup; and my husband, god help me, has just enrolled for the Iron man in Taupo next March. Theres nothing normal about any of them!)

  So I bake, regularly, and the Kitchen Aid makes it a pleasure, mainly becos it creams butter and sugar better than any other machine I've ever used. And with well creamed butter and sugar, the rest always feels like a breeze.

Just before Christmas we bought a Kitchen Aid food processor - for use in the cookschools. The restaurant kitchen has a Robot Coupe processor which is larger and has considerably more grunt than the average domestic one, but which also understandably costs appreciably more money. I have always been a bit twitchy in the classes about using a machine that most people wouldn't have access too - becos it makes some of the jobs look much easier than people would find them to be, once they were transplanted back to their own kitchens.

Hence the new foodprocessor, which we bought at Table Pride, and which I have also grown to love, becos of its flexibility. They really are magnificent machines.

So was not at all surprised to read a David Lebovitz blog on the subject of visiting the Kitchen Aid factory. This is a chef who writes books on desserts, and who raves about his mixer - a ringing endorsement in anyones language.

Baking has been such a marked part of my life for so long, that I'm always left slightly aghast in cookschools, when we occasionally get asked by people, how else they can tackle a recipe that Rick has made in a mixer, becos they don't own one. I just can't imagine not having one in my kitchen, becos I use it so often in a week, and I'm  therefore always intrigued that people manage to get by without one. Some people do.

We also get asked what we would recommend for a domestic kitchen, and it is with complete genuineness that we tell people to go to Table Pride or Culinary Council, and have a look at the Kitchen Aids. They'll have them for life!

Just been flicking thru my emails, and read this article on popcorn which I thought interesting. Hadn't realised that popping corn was as old as it was - and always find the history behind various foodstuffs to be fascinating. The how's and why's that things evolved.

I mean for example, what on earth convinced the first people that red beans growing on a low lying shrub could be hulled, layed out to dry in the sun, then ground and made into a hot drink - that we know as coffee?  We'll never find out I guess, becos such pertinent details are buried in the mists of time, and all we can do is conjecture. But for some reason, someone, somewhere in Africa probably tried it, liked it, and from there a world wide industry has grown over centuries.

Likewise with corn. I knew it had been collected and dried to be made into flour, since the earliest times,  but I'd thought the idea of popping it was relatively recent- but apparently not so.

We did popped corn in a cookschool last year as one of the fingerfood options, and I noted over the series that people could be easily divided into those who liked the idea and those who didn't. Not everyone got as excited as I did! - but you get that sometimes...

It was something that I'd never encountered growing up - so I thought the idea was fantastic, and especially since we were able to access some wonderful corn grown in Tolega Bay. The range of butters that you can coat the popped corn with are endless - and in that class we used the NZ wasabi, but for a winemakers dinner we used truffles. All sorts of possibilities!

Don't I wish I could be as quick on my feet as this woman was, when asked an inane question by an interviewer.

I always think of the sharp retort hours later...

Darina Allen is one of our gurus. We met her at Somerset when she called in unannounced one Christmas Eve, when Anne was feeling decidedly over people and tired and grumpy, and nearly, so very nearly told her to go away becos we were closed. But something in the dim recesses of my brain registered the name, and made me say ' you're famous aren't you?', to which she responded in her eminitly understated practical fashion.

She's wonderful. Her cookschool at Ballymaloe is a huge source of inspiration to us. We made a special point of flying up to Cork after our French cookschool in the Dordogne a couple of years ago, just so we could go and get a take on what she has created there. I wrote a blog on the subject at the time, and have continued to accumulate her cookbooks, becos our approach to good food  resonates  with hers. I just wish I had half her energy.

She writes a weekly letter on the website and this link is to one discussing her eating experiences on a recent trip to New York. As is to be expected with Darina, she crammed a whole heap more into the trip than most mere mortals would be capable off, and she embraces all with her customary exhurberance and enthusiasm.

Thought the points she made about the rise in interest in specialist butchery, charcuterie in other words,  was fascinating, becos it's something thats happening here as well, but also picked up on the reference to the trend that restaurants have of opening cafes alongside their main restaurant,  that focus on' food to go' - food that people can take home and reheat. That is exactly what we have targeted with Somerset at Home, so reassuring to know that our instincts are playing out on a larger scale.

We are getting a reasonable amount of comment regarding the article that was in the business section of the Bay of Plenty times earlier this week, which featured us, along with Mount Bistro and Two Small Fish as being representative of owner/chef restaurants in the region.

The point of the article was driven by comments from Peter Blakeway, in a discussion about how cheap dining out in NZ is expensive, and  the more upmarket restaurants are cheaper, relative to Europe.

It was certainly something we noticed in France, in that as you moved up the chain of formality with dining out, the cost doubled on each step.

We simply don't get those kind of jumps in NZ.

So Peter believes that our top chefs in the region aren't earning what they are worth, and that has the danger of us losing potentially good talent as they follow the money overseas.

Fortunetly for Somerset Rick is wedded to more than just me - and isn't planning on heading anywhere else, any time soon, becos he wouldn't get as much free time to get out on his bike, and he'd hate that.

We ate at what we believe is NZ's top restaurant a couple of weeks ago, The French Cafe in Symonds St, and it cost us $150 each. ( Admittedly with rather abstemious drinking becos we were driving back to Tauranga that nite.) And the food was absolutely world class - so when you compare that to the prices in this blog that David Lebovitz has posted about eating in top Paris restaurants, I think there can be no doubt that dining out in the upmarket restaurants in NZ is good value by world standards.

And that probably is becos we're too far away from the monied markets, and our restaurants don't have the kind of international catchet, that the long established French ones have cultivated. And we're servicing a much smaller local market, and therefore have to price accordingly, if we want to get enough bums on seats to be viable.

What the article doesn't mention but which is relevant is that a number of 3 star restaurants in France have tumbled into bankrupcy over the last couple of years, as the number of customers prepared to pay those prices dwindled, even over there.

So pricing is a conundrum whereever you are, obviously.

At the end of our Italian trip back in 2004, we flew from Venice to Paris, to spend 5 days, becos I was worried that we might never get back to Europe, and I didn't want to die not having been to Paris of all cities.

We lugged Patricia Well's book on Eating well in Paris, all the way over there, and used it to find some of the iconic bakeries, patissieres and chocolate shops, as you do.

Poilane's is perhaps the most famous bakery of them all - and we were fascinated at how tiny the shop was, and how formal the service , and how tiny the range of what they offered was. About 5 different things.

We bought some of the bread and an apple tart, and headed back to our hotel room to digest and literally dissect.

This video explains the background to the bakery, and how Lionels daughter has taken the family tradition to another level.

"Art of Eating', my favourite food periodical has also done some indepth articles on the subject of bread in France, and discusses Poilanes in huge detail.

It is simply iconic, and the interchange with Dorie Greenspan in the video, shows exactly why. And that is one of the things I love about the French and their approach to food. Familiarity does not breed contempt. They do not need novelty for the sake of it - instead they recognise quality, and will purchase it day after day after day, allowing businesses to specialise to a very high degree.

What bakery in NZ could survive only making 5 different products? We need to have a wide range to cater to a diverse market so as to achieve the volume of sales that we need to be viable. Hmm...

A colourful blog on why the chefs world is a draining, exhausting metier, quite contrary to the rose tinted version of immediate success and stardom some some young people think they are going to leap frog into.

We deal with the public in what we do - and sometimes they are the source of our greatest pleasure and satisfaction, and sometimes they make you walk away with a sense of complete incredulousness at either their bizarre rudeness, or their ignorance.

Therefore I laughed out loud at a couple of the client interchanges described in this blog - whereby a web designer explains some of the expectations of some of the clients he deals with.

Some people simply defy what I would call reason - they're in their own strange parallel universe.

Have a big pan of calasperra rice perculating away on the stove - don't think I'd quite call what I'm making paella, becos there's a conspicuous lack of traditional ingredients in it, but its a rice based dish, cooked in the paella style, and using up some leftovers,  and in the process I'm giving my family a necessary dose of carbohydrates. Courteneys been out on the bike for 130kms this morning, and Hannah did a 43km kayak race down near Whakatane yesterday, so energy replacement is always a high priority around here!

While it cooks, I've read and pondered this article  on Why there are no Great Women Chefs -  actually I printed it out and lay on the bed to read and cogitate, becos its lenthy and weighty in  volume and depth. We did outcatering for a wedding last nite - and have just finished putting away the last of the stuff. As always, its the carting around of all the equipment and crockery and glassware and etceteras, not to mention the logistics of serving food in a space not designed for meals, thats makes catering such a challenge.

The brief for this wedding was very specific - we had a bride who knew exactly the effect she wanted to create, and the wherewithal to spend the necessary money to create that look.  Abby and Bridget from Blanc, did a truly spectacular job in creating an exotically beautiful ambience, up at Bridgets home, Little Farm.  And fortunetly for us, the weather played ball, so even though we had to cover a fair amount of space over the evening - the marquee was a long way from the garage where the kitchen was set up - at least we didn't have to contend with the hassles that rain or wind can create.

So all good. But my body is definitly weary this morning - a useful reminder of why we don't roll out for too many of these out functions these days!

All of which led me to be having a lie down reading this article - which I might add is the sort of thing I just love to digest. I'm aware its not considered especially popular to define yourself as a feminist these days, but its one of the very few labels that I'm still happy to defiantly claim. I read my Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedman as a teenager, and have believed all my life that women should be able to do whatever it is they want too. An attitude I've actively instilled in my daughters.

As I get older though - and observe life thru different prisms - marriage/motherhood/career - I have learnt to appreciate some areas of grey, in my previously stridently held opinions. I've never waived on the belief that women can do anything, and we shouldn't be defined as who we are by our relationship to the males in our life,  and I doubt very much that I ever will -but I do believe that the balancing act for those of us who choose to have children, as well as continue to work, means that we have to make decisions, that sometimes aren't easy. We can't necessarily have it all.

My generation possibly thought that we could - and I sometimes ponder that that approach didn't quite work out as well as we thought back then it was going too. But I see in my childrens generation a slightly different attitude when they look ahead. They are more clearsighted about the choices they face - they understand that they will have to make those choices, and  they seem more willing to make the lifestyle alterations than maybe we were, possibly becos we felt we had something to prove.

So I read an article like this with interest, becos basically its asking why female chefs aren't given the same industry accolades and acclaim as male chefs. And in doing that its asking the age old feminist question - women are as good as men, so why are only a tiny percentage of them being feted and acknowledged?

The underlying assumption ( and I happen to believe its the one where my generation came unstuck), is that women want to beat men at their own game. They want as many James Beard Culinary prizes and as many Michelin stars, so that they can prove that they are as good. The implied belief, is that without those accolades they haven't  really suceeded, beocs success is defined by how big your restaurant empire is, or how many awards you have to your name.

And that is never going to happen, becos as the article thoughtfully points out, all those assessment based systems are founded on beliefs that encourage the macho, traditional brigade style kitchen - exactly the type of environment that women tend not to thrive in.

In other words - 'can women who choose not to play by the same rules as the boys; who are equally ambitious culinarily but prefer different lifestyles - a slower pace, a more communal spirit in the kitchen, motherhood, less manic hours, or one restaurant where they cook as opposed to ten they oversee from afar - still vie for the same trophies as their male counterparts? As long as success is measured by the male status quo, women will likely remain overlooked."

The article quotes examples of tokenism - where one women competes in Iron Chef America for example, just so the producers can't be accused of sexism. But the rules of engagement are male orientated, and the women who play be those rules end up looking masculine in their approach. But to achieve the awards, and the status, and I guess, the financial benefits, that is the road some feel they must travel.

Not all though - some have chosen an alternative route, and prefer to eschew the hierarchial system dominant in traditional kitchens, and to focus on their restaurants more as an expression of themselves than as the start of an empire. ( And needless to say there are a number of male chefs who also fit that criteria.)

These people will never will michelin stars becos they don't play by the rules of engagement required by such a system - and therefore, they never achieve widespread recognition, and therefore by further extension they are not considered, great chefs.  What is meant there is that they are not 'famous' chefs. They don't have a carefully cultivated public profile.

And that in a roundabout way brings me back to the feminism of my childrens generation, becos that is what I see at play here. These female chefs are not slaving absurd hours under ridiculous pressure  to acquire michelin stars, becos they have made the consicous decision that they don't want too, and that is ultimately going to mean the demise of those systems of ranking of restaurants. Not yet - it will take a decade or two, but its going to happen.

Something that I see as an enormously positive developement. Its already happening. More and more top chefs - both male and female are opting out of the oldfashioned hierarchial notions, deciding it doesn't fit with their values and what they aim to achieve in their business' and their lifes.

Because for every Mario Batali, who is building a huge empire, and is in constant motion, there is a chef somewhere, cooking exquisite food, nite after nite, in the same restaurant, and inspiring the people around them, and in the process building a heartfelt place in the community in which they have chosen to place themselves.

They will possibly never be as wealthy or as wellknown as the Mario Batalis of this world, but if you feel sorry for them becos of that, then you've missed the point.
They simply don't want to be. They see that lifestyle for what it is, and don't want to have a bar of the personal cost that maintaining that level of pressure, inevitably and inexorably requires.( Have you seen how unhealthy Mario looks on TV at the moment?) Other things are more important, and that to me is what feminism is really all about. The ability to make personal choices based on what is important to me and those I love.

So there are lots of great female chefs out there. We just don't know about them becos they are more interested in what happens at their stove, than in cultivating media attention and thru that marketibility and celebrity.

This article goes on to blame the media for being complicit in inflating the significance of male egos, while downgrading women in cooking shows to the exposed cleavage type home cooks on the Food Channel. An example quoted is:

'When Gabrielle Hamilton opened a tiny, uncomfortable place called Prune in 1999, her idiosyncratic menu caught on, the restaurant became successful and today she's a much-admired figure on the scene. When David Chang opened a tiny, uncomfortable place called Momofuku Noodle Bar is 2004, his idiosyncratic menu caught on, the restaurant became successful, and today he's a much-admired figure on the scene -with numerous awards, scads of magazine profiles, and two more restaurants and a public that worships him. However you account for the difference between these two career trajectories its got to include something besides just the food"

I agree. It is something other than just the food, but unlike the writer of the article I'm not quite so quick to conclude a societal conspiracy to keep the woman chef in her place. I've read David Changs book, and he is one seriously driven individual, who, like Mario Batali, is constantly restless and looking for the new and exciting. ( They must be a nightmare to life with these types!). And maybe that personality trait rather than his gender, is why he's continued to build a bigger and bigger empire and in the process, elicit more and more comment.

The underlying assumption is that to be percieved as successful - we have to be wellknown, well off and have a large empire. Maybe that simply isn't the case - maybe there are some people out there, both male and female who want a more balanced approach to their lives and their families. Maybe its not just about their egos....

A rather gorgeous short video of dogs in motion - which regretfully turns out to be an artfully filmed ad in the end. You get that!

My friend Chris, who is a huge part of our life here at Somerset thinks these sortsof challenges are fantastic. I think they are distinctly odd - and can't even begin to imagine the amount of time that is spent setting them up.

But it is exactly that sort of minute fastidious detail that appeals to Chris, and is why he is so amazing with computors - and perhaps why I have to learn everything the hard way...

Vanity Fair is a magazine that I devour cover to cover when it arrives, and one of the main reasons I love the magazine so much, is the quality of the writing. And  of the columnists, Christopher Hitchens rates as one of the best. The depth of his knowledge, the stringency of his opinions, and the glorious flowing english that he uses to articulate those thoughts, constantly staggers me.

By coincidence this weekend I've finished reading a most thought provoking book "Inside the Kingdom' a study of the 20th century Saudi Arabia, and what led to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 being Saudis, when Saudi Arabia was considered an ally of America.

My world view is very west centric - very English and American based, becos of the education system I grew up in, and yet  I enjoy taking the opportunity to look at things thru another set of values sometimes. It illuminates and it can enrich, and it can widen the sphere of reference significantly. Not something I see as a bad thing. And as a result of that I found this book fascinating.

This link is to a lecture that Christopher Hitchens gave to the Daniel Pearl Memorial on the subject of anti semitism - and the connections and contrasts to the book I'd just read were immediately apparent. Muslims and Jews seem to be locked in a perpetual struggle that has no solution and no end. 

He speaks as he writes - eloquently and profoundly - and I will wander over to work now with a head full of thoughts...still confused, becos no-one can offer easy answers, but with quite a bit to chew over, metaphorically speaking.

I suspect I'm probably not alone in finding this quite extraordinary, and in hoping that this degree of political interference in what people eat could only happen in America...

A congressman in New York wants to introduce legislation that will ban restaurants using salt in the preparation of food. All salt. Huh?!

That is so absurd on so many levels that I wouldn't know where to begin to rant, and right now I have to head over to the restaurant, and probably just as well!

Dan Lepold is a baker that we rate very highly, and have a couple of his books.

I also happen to have a great love for good hot cross buns, and rue the fact that Dean is no longer at La Boulangerie, becos his hot cross buns used to be superb.

Last year I made some of my own - but in my typically disorganised fashion, I can't remember just what book I sourced the recipe from. Have a feeling it was out of a magazine, and trying to find that again will be like the needle in the proverbial haystack.

But while I ponder which I should use, I thought this an interesting article on what I should be aspiring to achieve...

This link is to a blog I check in on periodically. The author cooks in both the US and England, and she makes some interesting points sometimes.

I have mentioned previously, my frustrations with some of the attitudes of young chef trainees who are somehow encouraged to believe, that a quickly achieved qualification somehow magically caterpaults them into the world inhabited by the likes of Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver.

Cooking is in fact a craft learnt over time - a lot of time, which requires a huge amount of imput - and this blog captures some of the hugeness that is required rather well I thought.

( I couldn't link onto the exact blog alone - so just for future reference the particular one to read is dated,  24 Feb 2010)

I've been hovering around the computor - flicking backwards and forwards from the restaurant for the last couple of hours waiting for the results of Day 2 of the Womens Tour of NZ to be posted. We'd spoken to Courteney earlier, but Rick wanted the results to see how she was going in the overall scheme of things.

Cycling results take a bit of understanding, and he's currently pouring thru them as I caught up on emails. This link was sent me by a good customer, who'd just read it and thought we might be interested.

I thought tjhe restaurant critic who wrote the article,  sounded like a grumpy old man, but a grumpy old man who's eaten in enough restaurants to know what he likes and what he doesn't. And interestingly I agreed with him on virtually every point - which is unusual for me, becos normally, what people do and don't like in restaurants is so variable and so up for personal interpretation, that its virtually impossible to achieve unanimity.

But in this case I ticked each box!

 This is a link to the latest Michael Ruhlman blog, in which he ponders on why he gets so much satisfaction from the act of cooking, and his resoning, and some of the following responses from people underscore for me, exactly what going into the kitchen at home is all about.

And it is exactly that sense of pleasure that we try to capture in the cookschools - people see good food being prepared; they get to listen to the chit chat that goes along with that; they eat it in the company of chatty relaxed people, and then, hopefully they go away enthused..

But now I have to head over to a busy Saturday nite service at the restaurant ( busy is good!), and the type of cooking that goes on in the restaurant kitchen, over the next 4 hours is the sort of cooking that only a special few put their hands up for. It is not relaxing or cathartic. It is presurised, full on and intense - and I'd far rather be out front!

I've done my pottering in the kitchen ( at home ) today, while Rick was over in Morrinsville with Courteney. Made some chicken stock, a sort of paella for Hannah and I for lunch, a chocolate and banana loaf that I'll take over to Morrinsville tomorrow, when I join the others - and the hugest dish of muesli for the girls to take back to their flats.

Courteney thinks Josh's muesli at Slowfish is the best, so I asked him for some pointers, only ever having made the bircher style muesli before - something that niether of my daughters are fans off! - and I've created this concoction based on his directions.

That is the kind of cooking that I enjoy - that gives me sustenance and enjoyment, all rolled up together . What the chefs do in a professional kitchen is a whole different level all together.

I never knew that each snowflake has a unique and quite beautiful formation. Not living with snow, and seldom having ever handled it, its just not something I needed to think about. But this link shows some how truly exquisite  and intricately complicated nature can unexpectedly be.

I've always thought of snow as an homogenous mass, so the fact it actually comprises myriad tiny, beautiful, totally individual crystals, has rather grabbed me.

Proof perhaps, that things are seldom as they seem on the surface...

I am no computer buff, but I do enjoy the daily updates I get on American politics from the Daily Beast, and this afternoon becos I had nothing else to do, I'd gone to flick thru the updates, and by fortuitous timing caught a live streaming of Obama's State of the Nation Address - a written version of which is linked here.

We'd had friends for dinner at home on Monday nite, and one is an American - and a Republican American, who undoubtedly sits substantially more to the right of the political system than I do, and the ensuing conversation that we had about the impasse over health reform in the States, was very fascinating, cos it gave me glimpses of a mind that works quite differently to my own.

He was predictably no fan of Obama's - and looking at some of the impassive faces in the audience, during the Presidents speech, I would say that he is not alone.

This link is to a Michael Ruhlman blog on the subject of salt - one of those vexatious issues that get brought up a lot in cookschools, becos Rick uses salt in his cooking, since he believes firmly that it improves, enhances and deepens flavour.

We get asked less these days for alternatives to use, and I can't decide whether we've pissed off the people who used to ask all the time, and they've stopped coming, or whether, like the whole fat debate, people are beginning to realize that a little bit used consciously ( I thought the tomato description nailed it perfectly!), is OK, and we really should stop worrying... there is no single magic bullet for health.

A customer of ours, who we knew well - he and his family came to France with us a few years back - died last year from motor neuron disease. A disease that came on very suddenly about 18 months ago, and which processed inexorably to all our horror.

Mark had recently gone to Mexico to have stem cell implants, but he died before the treatment had any chance to potentially improve his condition.

We saw and spoke to him and his wife on a number of occasions - as you do. I thought I empathised and sort of understood what they were experiencing.

Reading this article though has made me realise that I had no frigging idea - humbling and devastating.

This link is to a TV programme in the States featuring Eric Ripert from Le Bernardin. In this particular episode he explores a garden affiliated with a restaurant in California, and I found it inspiring listening to 2 chefs with significant restaurant kudos,  discuss the importance of fresh produce.

Gardening is one of my New Years resolutions - we have established a worm garden here, and have 2 raised gardens for vegetables, and I'm slowly going to build up the range of produce that we grow. For now I'm focused on tomatoes and eggplants and some herbs, but the repertoire will expand as my confidence grows.

Wouldn't it be fantastic to have the kind of knowledge and practical expertise to tap into that this chef in California has in the lady from Love Apple Farms. Maybe one day Anne..

David Lebovitz is a food blogger and cookbook author that I refer to alot. He lives in Paris most of the year, and talks about his passion for pastry and dessert cooking in an approachable manner that I really enjoy.

I've just read his latest blog which included a list of his favourite cookbooks for the year, and almost inevitably that included a couple on the subject of making macarons. As he says, making macarons properly is more to do with technique, than it is following a recipe.

We have cracked it here at Somerst - and the macarons the guys are making are fantastic. But that doesn't stop me delving into more books on the subject, and reading about some of the more bizarre flavour combinations that some people try.

This link is to a whole host of web based articles on the subject of macarons, that David Lebovitz recommends as being useful.

And now I think I'll go and water the tomatoes down below, before I have a shower and get myself in the right head space for a busy lunch at the restaurant...

Totally unrelated to my world really - but an extraordinary video sent by Chris, thats just, well, amazing....

I am not a chef. I'm an enthusiastic home cook, and I have always considered my role in the cookschools to be one of interpretation. Rick is a restaurant chef with a much higher practical skill level to me, and also most of the people that come to the classes. Alot of what he does instinctively, comes from years of experience, and without that experience, the rest of us sometimes want to know why things happen, when you're cooking. Why if you do things one way, a certain texture will be created, but if you omit a stage, something else quite different will happen.

Rick's response to alot of the questions we used to get in the early years of the classes, was a simple ' becos thats the way it is'. He understands the process, but not being a chemistry scientist, did not necessarily feel a need to get to grips with the science behind that transformation. Chefs referred to other chefs who had gone before to learn their trade, and things were explained in practical terms.

But in the late 80's and early 90's, the scientists starting gaining traction in the food world, and it is not uncommon now to have a pairing between a famous chef and an equally famous scientific chemists.

 Harold McGee was one of the first scientists to come to public awareness, and we  bought his epic book "On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" many years ago, becos it is a superb reference for why things happen.

But most of our need so far, to delve into the book has been postdated - it has been in response to queries we've had, or others have had about the cooking process. We haven't as yet taken it upon ourselves to dabble too far into the world of molecular gastronomy.

Molecular gastronomy, as I've mused before, is a style of cooking that I haven't quite been able to get to grips with, becos it feels too contrived and attention seeking. And yet, when I really think about that, I have to concede that all restaurant cooking is technically attention seeking, in the sense that you want your food to be good enough to attract paying customers to visit your establishment - so therefore we all seek to create attention.So the criticism isn't really valid.

Perhaps then, my vague sense of unease over this new style of 'cooking' is to do with the fact that it has no roots in traditional cooking - it is science interpreted using edible ingredients. It is food broken down into molecular reactions. It is not food that evokes memories of our grandmothers table or other nostalgic memories. It is food that is built quite literally in the testtube, and as such I recoil, becos I naturally suscribe to a much more romantic notion of food.

However. I have sat thru this hour long video and chuckled to myself many times. This gentleman, Herve This, is a french chemist, who works with a top french chef Pierre Gagnaire, one of the exponents of molecular gastronomy. He is the scientist who enables the chef to 'build' food, but not as we have always known it.

And his enthusiasm makes it hard not to be drawn into the  possibilities of his world. He has the sort of ever enquiring mind, that is forever seeing possibilites, and is in no way shackled by tradition. A wonderful quote was
'an open question is a promise of an answer". In other words, a problem is not a problem - its the chance for a new discovery, for new knowledge.

All cooking is chemistry - it is the transformation of molecules by heat or agitation, or acid or some other form of manipulation. The degree to which we want to take that depends on where we sit on that particular continuum I guess. Chefs like Ferran Adria at el Bulli in Spain, and Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago, have established reputations based purely on molecular gastronomy. Their food constantly pushes at boundaries, and is new and exciting and totally challenging becos it is unlike anything that has come before.

Some people love it, and some people hate it.

Having listened to this delightfully exhurberant frenchman I have to say my opinion has shifted slightly.And where I was once wary of the whole molecular movement,  I can know see that it is not necessarily about supplanting established mores, but more to do with knowledge. If we understand why something happens in a certain way, then we have new knowledge, and new knowledge is what drives the human race forward, and what differentiates us from other animals.

Just becos something is traditional and has always been a certain way, doesn't necessarily make it better. As Monsieur This says in this video, slavery was traditional, and we decided that wasn't a good idea - so tradition by definition is not always better.

Knowledge opens doors - it expands our horizons, and that has to be a good thing. We have already been doing some experiments at the restaurant with sous vide cooking, that are distinctly 'non traditional', in the sense that we are cooking meat for much longer periods of time, at lower temperatures, becos we are discovering that with some muscle dense meat, like lamb shanks, that long slow cooking breaks down the connective tissues, and makes the meat much more tender and moist to eat.

Those sorts of experiments will intensify in our kitchen, thanks to the vacum packer, and the flexibility that that gives us. I doubt that we will ever end up like the famous molecular restaurants in presenting food that is purely molecular gastronomy. But I can see a future in which by slow degrees, we use new and innovative techniqes that are grounded in science, to make food interesting.

As I've said many times before, there are certain dishes on our menu that will never change. Some of those customers that come to us once a week, and those that come once a year for special occasions, want to eat the duck and the licorice icecream every time. There are a surprising number of people like that. They are in their comfort zone and far be it from us to dislodge them.

But there are others who like to be surprised and stimulated, and we also have a natural interest in learning and extending our repertoire. So there is always room to learn new stuff, and some of that will inevitably work its way thru to the menu.

And I think that is exciting, becos once again it proves that you can't possibly know everything about the food world. There is always going to be new stuff to consider, so I'll never be able to get bored.

Contrary to the impression I may be giving I am not obsessed with the Julie/Julia movie ( although it has been a useful reference point, when people got twitchy about the use of 'butter' in the last cookschool series. We could quote Julia Child as someone who lived to a great old age while eating lots of butter...)

But its topical at the moment - becos the woman who started the whole thing by writing a year long blog about her project of cooking thru Julia Childs epic cookbook " Mastering the Art of French Cooking", has just released a new book, describing her life after the project finished, called 'Cleaver'.

This link is to a TV broadcast of her describing the book - and I was curious to see her in the flesh, becos as I said in an earlier blog about the book she wrote, I had felt that the movie didn't capture her character. She's much tougher and grittier in real life, then she was made to appear on the small screen I thought.

And what I found interesting is that this book talks about how she goes of on a whole new tangent of learning to be a butcher, which is a curious career choice, and from what I understand, short lived.

Julie cried when she was told by a reporter that Julia Childs  herself, had not been a fan of her blog, and thought that she was doing it for the attention, and not for any real love of food.  She justified that sense of dissapointment really well in the book, I had thought, but interestingly, in a funny kind of way, I think that JC was absolutely spot on in her assessment.

Food is not really what its all about for this lady - its much more a forum to explore and analyse the complications of life in general. Curious...

We had a large table booked for lunch today - supposed to be 18/20 people and we staffed up accordingly, becos if some of our other regulars turned up, it would be a busy lunch. A long table was set up in the restaurant last nite, and even though we know from previous experience with this group that numbers can vary ( both up and down), Rhonda rang them and confirmed yesterday in the vain hope, that we would have some surety.

Not to be. We have 9 people sitting at one end of a long table... and there is absolutely nothing we can do, except get on and serve them, and ignore the empty seats.

I'm just immensely grateful that they weren't coming tom, when we have a lot of lunch bookings, and would have been turning bookings away if these guys had been booked.  This costs us today becos we brought in a kitchen hand and an extra waiter, but at least we didn't turn away any bookings.

It must be Christmas time!! I think I'll head over to the Mount to clear my head.....

This is an amazing video clip that shows Julia Childs addlibing on the David Letterman show when the element she has to cook a hamburger on  doesn't work.

As he says towards the end of the clip, she is 'very inventive and quick on  her feet'

In fact nothing what so ever seems to faze this lady -its as if she just totally lacks the ability to be embarassed!

Sometimes I wish that I came similarly equipped!

This article blames the  trend towards the dumbing down of restaurants in America to blogs written  about how people don't want all that goes with fine dining anymore.

But I suspect is has a whole heap more to do with costs. Keeping linen table cloths and linen napkins on our tables costs us a significant amount every month - but its money that I consider well spent, becos I like the look and the feel that linen gives the restaurant.

So its not a trend that I'd like to buy into...

( Time for bed - it has been huge day...)

If swear words offend you, I wouldn't go on this link - becos swear words proliferate! But it's kind of an interesting window into a world quite different to the one I choose to inhabit.

Recently I bought a pair of jeans from a shop I'd never been to before - and I come away with a strange taste in my mouth, from the efforts of the admittedly, friendly enough sales assistant to encourage me to buy more. I was on a mission to buy jeans, and wanted nothing else, and had to vest a reasonable amount of energy in deflecting her efforts, when all I wanted to do was pay and leave - and not be forced to get rude in the process, becos I don't especially enjoy being rude.

Once she'd determined that she wasn't going to make any additional sales out of me, the offensive then switched to collecting my personal data, which kind of fascinated me. Its a trend that the comments in this blog I've linked too, indicate have been going on for awhile in retail, but one I've been blissfully unaware off. Possibly becos the shops I tend to shop in are ones I'm already known in.

But this link would show that this is a massive trend in both retail and now hospitality to build data bases of clients. We live in a world of constant contact, with Facebook and Twitter - and we're regularly exhorted to stay in communication with our customers.

I tend to believe differently - to think that too much contact can lead to overfamiliarity and fatigue.

I also get quite miffed at the checkout when the process of paying becomes protracted, becos of the information that accountants in a head office somewhere, require  to be entered into the computorized till system. More often that not all I want to do is pay and leave - I don't want to be captured in any shape or form, digitally or otherwise. And for that reason refuse to have one of the supermarket loyalty cards so they can track my spending.

The original rant in the link was from a restaurant owner, abusing his staff becos they hadn't collected customers email addresses. The issue of the absurd level of abuse directed at his staff aside , I can't quite get my head around, a business owner believing the collection of a volume of customer data is crucial to business success.

Call me really oldfashioned, but regardless of how much I enjoy the opportunity to wax on these blogs and newsletters that I write, I have never suffered from any form of illusion that it is that contact with our customers that bring people to Somerset. They are simply part of the restaurant story - but what really matters, what really determines whether people are going to come back to the restaurant, is the experience they have when they're there - the food, the service, the ambience.

Working hard to ensure that enough people enjoy that, is what our business concentrates on more than anything else. Becos that's what we think is most important.

I know that people enjoy getting the newsletter, becos I get alot of positive feedback about it. But I also know that it only goes to people who have directly requested it - either electronically or via conventional mail. And that is deliberate, becos I abhor the thought of sending it out unsolicited. We redid the mailing list last year quite deliberately - becos over 15 years it had got large and unweildy, and I correctly guessed, that we had ceased to be relevant in some peoples lifes. If people chose to continue to get the letters from me, they needed to fill in forms and return them, and from those I rebuild the list. That gives me the reassurance that the people I stay in contact with are people who are interested in hearing about what is going on in our world. That works for me.

I simply don't believe that everyone who comes thru the door at Somerset is going to want to either necessarily return, or  have that one visit mean that they are now contacted on a regular basis, by us.

But I guess my focus has always been on the 20% - the 20% of customers that give us 80% or our business. That is a perspective spelt out to me many years ago, by a man who's opinion I had alot of respect for, and although I didn't agree with him fully at the time - having watched our client base over the years develope, I tend to believe he was right. We are not going to please everyone all the time - but we have a large base of very special customers who I would rather focus on, then attempting to be all things to all people. And expecting all people to want to hear from us.

We're a niche business and that approach just doesn't make sense.

I therefore read these comments, on the link  with a distinct sense of distaste and lack of comprehension. And hopefully that doesn't sound pompous - its just that I genuinely don't 'get' that approach. Adn what concerns me, is that the comments that followed the blog , indicate that collecting customer data is now a recognised and standard business approach in America, which means it wil doubtless follow suit here.

And which means I will spend even less time than I currently do in chain stores, and a whole heap more in locally and personnally owned business', who treat me as an individual, and not another statistic.

 Alot of  my more right wing leaning friends scoff when I mention something I may have read in the Listener. But this link to an extraordinary article, proves to me ( not that I especially needed the proof), that the Listener is a great source on all sorts on interesting, thought provoking issues.

This is a speech given by David Foster Wallace to a group of graduating students - and it is a superb dissertation on the old 'glass half empty / full' connundrum.

In other words - life is what we, personally choose to make of it - a thought I will ponder as I make the way up the Mount shortly...

I made a point of sitting down to watch this episode of 'New Zealand on a Plate' before I went over to the restaurant last nite, becos not only do we know the chef presenter, Peter Blakeway, but we also knew the local food business'  that were going to be featured,seeing as how its focus was on the Bay of Plenty. I therefore had somewhat of a novel experience to see people I know, talking about what is that they do to a camera.

Peter did a superb job. He loves TV work and I thought his enthusiasm shone thru - aided and abetted by the very important fact that he also happens to be a seriously good chef, who doesn't just exclaim about all the wonderful bounty, but who can actually create something great to eat out of it, all the time making that prepping process interesting.

All rather cool I thought, and showcased this beautiful area we live in superbly...

New Zealand on a Plate, Episode 3, 3 October  2009.

An interesting article written by Simon Gault on the subject of molecular gastronomy.

He is probably New Zealands most experienced exponent of this approach to cooking, and I thought what he had to say, stripped away some of the criticism that is fueled by ignorance alone.

Maybe we should ask him to come and do a guest chef spot at Somerset sometime, so we can learn some more...

I have just been approached by the producer of the Masterchef series which is soon to start filming in NZ to put the word out there to any amateur chefs who might be interested in being part of the process to contact them.

Apparently the one in Australia has absolutely blown away any expectations in terms of the number of viewers they were expecting, hence the desire to make a NZ version.

So - the script is as follows:

ABOUT THE SHOW

MasterChef - the global phenomenon is about to hit New Zealand television. The

programme which first appeared on screens in the UK in 1990 is still going strong and

Australia has just completed their first season to rave reviews and extraordinary

audiences. In July this year over four million tuned in to watch the final - an audience

bigger than the entire population of New Zealand. Not only did this set a new Australian

record, these ratings prove the delicious combination of food and individual achievement is

one of the most significant trends in television today.

MasterChef New Zealand will be filmed between October-December 2009 and will be

shown on TV1 in 2010. Via a huge promotional campaign on the network the show looks

set to attract thousands of applications from across the country - students, mums,

professional sportsmen, solicitors, nurses and cleaners amongst them. Young and old,

each will come prepared with raw talent and enthusiasm to leave their old life behind and

enter the kitchen with one driving aim: To become New Zealand’s first ever MasterChef.

ARE YOU THE FIRST NZ MASTER CHEF

The search for New Zealand’s best amateur chef will begin with auditions being held in

Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland. Cooks will be given a chance to

impress our judging panel enough to be invited to attend the final audition in Auckland. Its

here we will discover our Top 24.

The Top 24 go through a series of challenges that will put their cooking skills and their

palates to the test. Only 12 make it through to the weekly elimination rounds where they’ll

face a range of cooking challenges that will examine their ability in several styles of

culinary excellence.

Please note….to enter you cannot have any formal tertiary or other professional catering qualifications acquired in the last 10 years. Are 18 years and over.  You cannot have ever worked full-time in a kitchen as a cook, chef or in food preparation.

If this is you then go online to:

tvnz.co.nz/masterchef-new-zealand/want-masterchef-nz-2973586

Have just been over to the restaurant to help Rhonda and Grace cope with the initial onslaught of customers. Its Sunday nite and normally not a nite I front at the restaurant, but tonite, perversely, we are busier than we were last nite, Saturday nite, and I thought I should go over to help.

The All Blacks were playing last nite, and I assume that had some impact on making our Saturday nite so quiet - a game televised at 7.30pm at nite cuts right thru the dining evening. Fortunetly we had some catering on as well, so the nite wasn't a complete washout, but I sometimes do wonder when I will get to the point in my business career, when I won't be so put out by a quiet nite .When I'll just learn to roll with the punches...maybe when the bank balance isn't quite so adversly affected...hmmm...

Anyway -  this is supposed to be about cooperage and wine barrels.

I've always loved wine barrels. There is something about the age old craftsmanship that appeals to me immensely, and I was very excited when I acquired the small french barrel below from a shipment Steve Bird brought into the country last year.

As I've mentioned in a previous blog, we use it to make our red wine vinegar, and I love it to bits.

Its small however, and I was  therefore delighted when I was offered a larger one, from the Bourgogne region. I've brought it home and am currently trying to reswell the wood which has dried out and shrunk as a result. That means that its not water tight - a definite liability for something you want to hold liquid! A bit of a mission though trying to soak something this large - had considered taking it round to a friends swimming pool, but don't think the chlorine will be conducive to nice tasting vinegar, so have desisted with that idea...

This link is to the latest David Lebovitz blog in which he shows pictures of the cooperage process, from the tree trunks - through the process of creating the barrels. In his blog he's talking about barrels used for cognac, and I'm acting on the assumption that it would be the same for wine barrels.

In the marvellous book "Wine and War" by Don and Petie Kladstrup, theres a wonderful description of how the Resistance used wine barrels to move men around the country. Apparently the wood allowed just enough air in to let them breathe.

Amazing things really!

It has been a funny kind of week, and I haven't been much inclined to do very much of anything really, possibly becos I'm preoccupied with 'other' stuff.

Announced to all and sundry last nite that we were going to sell up everything and run away, becos the current state of the bank balance is depressing me, but as one long term customer pointed out, ( and by doing so, very effectively cut me of mid torrent!), she's heard that all from me before, and she just knows we're not going to do anything that stupid.

She's probably right...

But sometimes it feels good to vent!

  I had however gone off on a bit of a tangent during the afternoon,  when one of the Paris based blogs I read regularly gave me a link to a beautiful looking chateau close to the Normandy/Loire region, and that got Rick and I discussing the probabilities and possibilities of another big European trip. We get asked alot when we're planning the next one, and I'm starting to get warm around the edges about the thought of embarking on the start of the organisational process. And certainly this particular Chateau looked liked a rather gorgeous place to begin. Hmmm..

We could of course sell up here, everything, and then just do cookschools and the occasional foray overseas. But then again as last nite proved, hospitality and restaurants are in my blood, and I do love what it is that we do, so I really can't imagine not doing it any more.

Any way - this link is to an interesting article on an American website which is very restaurant focused, and discusses the current state of dining out in America, and I thought made some interesting points.

We have some friends holidaying down in Nelson at the moment - and I've sent them names of restaurants to try, and have been reading their subsequent reports with interest becos we're heading down that way in a month for Courteneys Nationals, and are hoping to get to some of the good places to eat.

I think I'm in need of the break!

Ah well - first cookschool in the Christmas series about to get underway - have Kelly from Nest, who's lent us a heap of platters to showcase the food, and Anna from Silver Bubbles getting the table organised so I'll wander over and make everyone a coffee.

And go over again with Rick what it is exactly that we're doing. We always fly a little loose in the first class, as he brings it all together for the first time - but we had friends home for dinner on Monday nite who got experimented on, so we know that the flavours work - it'll just be timing of stuff today. By the time we've repeated it 25 odd times, we have it down pat, but always a relief to get the first one out of the way...

Some things you just have to share...http://www.flixxy.com/water-slide-jump.htm

As always, reading Michael Ruhlmans blog, leads me to other interesting places on the internet. This article by Michael Pollan, starts off as a dissertation on the importance of Julia Childs, and why the new movie about her that is shortly to hit our screens will be great viewing.

But the article then moves on to encompass how cooking on TV has evolved from the educative tones of Julia Childs day, to what is classified as 'food porn' today. The Food Network is more interested in targeting eaters who are likely to buy product from its advertisers, than it is in educating people to vacate the couch and the TV and head into the kitchen to cook.

The article is a fascinating discussion on why the art of cooking from scratch has become lost to so many, and at what cost to our culture. For someone who cooks becos I love to do so, but who also listens to a wide range of people at the cookschools, talk about their own approach to cooking, I found the article a pin point accurate description of where our culture currently sits, in its attitude to food and cooking.

Much to chew over. I hadn't considered before that we are the only species who transform our food source thru the art of cooking. Other creatures eat food in its raw state.

'Cooking is a metaphor for the transformation of nature into culture". In other words, by cooking we are adding value to what we eat, and like anything there are those amongst us who take it too an extreme, and get horribly pretenscious about it all, and then there are those who create good food, becos they like to share and nurture. And there are also those who simply don't care. They eat whatever is easiest, fastest and cheapest, becos food is purely a source of fuel to them.

I think I am comfortable with where we sit on that continuum.

I'm currently catching up on some internet reading - its gray and miserable outside, and I'm not feeling very disposed to do anything really - so flitting around various posts is working for me right now.

Thought this little video was interesting, becos in part it is such a different way of looking at presentation of food in a restaurant. Alinea is a restaurant in Chicago, that is at the forefront of the 'molecular gastronomy' movement. What they do there is quite unique.

Customers of ours have just come back from a major overseas trip during which they ate at a number of 3 starred establishments in Chicago, London and Paris - and their descriptions of the meals were vivid and fascinating.

They ate at Alinea and had their dessert brought out to them on this silcon mat - and said it was an amazing finale to a special dinner.

These guys are thinking outside the square all the time, and constantly pushing at boundaries - while here in Tauranga, we worry about whether we're pushing our customers too far outside their comfort zone by us finally making the call to stop serving potatoes in our vegetable dish, since most of the mains are plated with a form of starch! It seems a little incongruous sometimes...

Michael Ruhlmans blog is one I refer to regularly, feeling that he has his finger on the pulse in terms of food and industry trends in America. He's a journalist, not a chef or restaurant owner, but one who decided that before he wrote a book on training to be a chef, that he himself would do the training at the Culinary Institute of America, and his book on the experience is fascinating.

His passion for cooking comes thru in all of his books that I've read, and I'm currently dipping into the latest " Ratio" with considerable interest. Mainly becos both Rick and I seem to have reached a stage, where we are constantly asking 'why' in terms of things happening during the cooking process. Partly fuelled no doubt by questions from cookschool attendees over the years, and our own observations in repeating the classes, that slight twecks here and there can create a substantive difference. I find it all fascinating, and love the new genre of cookbooks that tend to get into more description about why things work out in certain ways.

As a bye the bye, Harold McGee was the granddaddy of this type of scientific approach, and I've read some interesting links that show how profound his influence was on chefs like Ferran Adria and Grant Achatz who's restaurants have been at the forefront of the whole molecular gastronomy approach to food, a strong restaurant movement over the last 10 years or so.

We don't tend to take our 'why' questions quite to that degree however, becos its not a style of cooking that we are necessarily comfortable with, nor what we suspect our customer base would want to eat week in and week out. But we do like having access to information about queries, and there is an abundance of that around now, regardless of the level you operate at.

And thru Mr Ruhlmans blog I've read a number of interesting links to all sorts of things relating to food.  The latest being the hugely hot topic of the provenance of our food supply, and the evils of agribusiness. The movie "Food INC' is creating a large amount of comment in the blogshere, and in his latest article Mr Ruhlman describes his emotional response to the excesses protrayed in the movie, where profit is more important than food safety and human health.

Large companies are easy targets to paint as villianous, money obsessed evil entities. And history is littered with copious examples of how true such a portrayal can be all too regularly.

But!

Unfortunetly no argument is ever easily onesided, and I thought this blog from another commentator was a useful reminder of what the actual reality is for a whole host of people - and that while it is easy to romanticise the agrarian existance as being one of harmony with nature, the reality of farming people who had to deal with the vagaries of the weather and the sheer unrelenting physical hardship involved in working the land, tends to get lost somewhere in the descriptions by those determined to paint a rosy picture.

Which is why I always cringe a little over those who become obsessed about trumpeting one side of a picture. Life is never that uncomplicated, and I resent more than a little, those intent in hitting me over the head with their world view, a view that will usually brook no dissent.

I am acutely aware that I live in a fortunate country that allows me to make conscious decisions over what I eat and why. I have the ability to make rational choices, and I deliberatly do so becos my own health and that of those I love is very important to me. And I happen to believe there is an indelible link between what we eat, and how are bodies and our minds fare.

Which makes me very pro a lot of the arguments propounded in literature and movies like this - I feel that there is no doubt the pendulum has swung too far in support of intensive, unsafe farming methods, and I make the choices of what I buy to eat accordingly.
And I believe that the awareness that something like this movie creates is incredibly healthy, becos it influences the direction of the pendulum, but at the same time, I have to confess to a slight twitch at the evangelical zeal of some of the people involved.

However - I also acknowledge that to generate attitudinal change  in society, you need people who are prepared to stand up against the prevailing wisdom ( thank god for the suffragettes I say!), and in doing so these people seem to set themselves up for a whole host of abusive riducule. A couple of subsequent articles on Alice Waters, shows the backlash that is generated when people feel they're being told how to live by someone who has a priviledged reality.

Which kind of means I've argued myself round in a circle, which I think is more to do with my own self image. I've never seen myself as a crusader, or someone intent on changing the world. I simply lack the grunt required, or the need to project myself out to that degree.  My immediate environment and those I care about, and who care about me, have always been more my focus - and the way Rick and I live is pretty much reflected by that.  Without ever feeling the need to have a mission statement, or anything quite so absurdly pompous,  we live, both in our personal and business lifes, in a way that makes us feel comfortable. And that means making constant changes as we learn and grow as people, and have new information. It is a constant process, and one that I feel fully engaged with.

And that I suspect is why I have a tendency to shy away from dogma, becos it is entrenched and unbending, and resolute, and I just don't believe that life can be that unforgiving.

Hmmm...

I'm sitting at my desk, contemplating a typical Tuesday, which revolves around all the start of week stuff - bookwork, throwing out opened wine at the restaurant, responding to the answerphone, and a myriad other small tasks at my desk.

Have just had a quick flick thru my inbox, and smiled at the short video at the end of this Paris Breakfast blog, on sitting at a cafe in Paris, watching the world pass by.

In the few days that we have spent in Paris - the highlight for me, was not going up the Eiffel Tower or other monuments of significance, but instead those quiet moments when we rested our weary feet, and snaffled a table, content to pay the extra to sit down, so that we could kick back and watch...

My favourite photos of the 4 of us, are of us doing exactly that - even though the girls were appreciably younger back then, they were still quite content to sit back and absorb.

How could you not?

But a trip to Paris is not on my immediate agenda, so maybe I'll just mooch over to the restaurant instead, and make Rick and I a cup of coffee, as you do!

 I am a huge Meryl Streep fan, and have read a number of books on Julia Childs - so the idea of watching a movie of Meryl Streep playing Julia Childs, is equivalent to my idea of heaven.

Hopefully not too far away from being released in New Zealand...

If you watch the trailer of the movie in this link you'll get to hear Meryls version of Julias voice. I can't believe she nailed it that accurately.!

There is a huge amount of comment about this movie in the blogshere - I'm not sure that I'll go to see it, becos graphic images of animals suffering takes me too far out of my comfort zone.

But for all that I think the issues that it raises are hugely important and are part of the continuum being expressed in all manner of media, about how important  the provenance of the food we choose to eat is.

So many chefs and foodwriters have been trying to draw peoples attention to the importance of what is at stake - and ironically I suspect a movie like this will probably have a more profound impact, becos actual pictures have a way of conveying a message more stridently than a picture created out of words.

The more people start thinking about it all though, the better for all of us.

www.youtube.com/watch

Bethlehem Cornerstone are having a party to celebrate their first year in business tonite, and the marquee's up and the band's playing, and I don't think I'll be getting to sleep anytime soon, becos this house is far from sound proof.  So having fed the puppies and tucked them up in their kennel, I've just read this New York Times article, via Michael Ruhlman's blog, and I thought it was particularly apt, and a wonderful description of someone following their heart to discover their lives work, rather than succumbing to what they thought they ought.

I grew up in a household where a high expectation was placed on the notion of all of us going on to get tertiary education. My parents had not been given the opportunity in their youth, and therefore they set a requirement on us achieving what they hadn't been able too. It was simply expected of us.

Through a somewhat circulatory route I finally ended up with a BCA, majoring in accountancy, and for a year or so worked in a small accounting firm in Wgtn, before we made the call to move up to Tauranga and buy the restaurant with my parents.

I can distinctly remember gazing out the window from my desk, which in those days was on the 41st floor of the Williams building on Lambton Quay, temporarily distracted from a cheque book I was coding for a client, and thinking to myself, that I would much rather be out there writing the cheques, than sitting in an office coding them.

I learnt alot in my time there, and the skills have come in useful over the years in our own business, but I never felt like I really belonged. I never felt that that was it - my career path.

Whereas the restaurant life and all that it means, is my vocation. I feel incredibly lucky to enjoy what I do to the degree that I do.  But its not a profession with the same degree of kudos that accountancy has. Does that bother me? Certainly not now, not remotely, but perhaps for those first couple of years I was a product of my upbringing, where the professions were looked up too, and maybe I considered that what we did lacked some of that gravitas.

One of the partners from the old accounting firm came to visit us shortly after we opened the restaurant - he was a sweet man and an old school accountant. I sat down to have a coffee with him after his lunch, and he floored me when he pronounced that he couldn't get his head around how I would leave a profession like accounting to work in an industry where I 'served people". I equally was stunned that he didn't feel that as an accountant he was also serving clients.

But I didn't doubt that what he was really alluding too, was that underlying assumption that waiting tables is a lowly occupation that doesn't require a high skill level, and is therefore not a job to aspire too.

It is a general preception that I think became all too prevalent for a number of years, when it was assumed that everyone wanted to go to work in a suit,  and all the apprenticeship schemes were done away with. A philosophy that created a serious vacumn of skilled labour in a wide range of industries. Stupid really.

And now I see signs everywhere that we are trending back in the other direction - that people are discovering that a job that is a craft, is satisfying on so many levels, and not something to be in any way disparaged.

Our own children will never be coralled into an occupation becos their parents think its the correct one. They have the world at their feet in terms of the options open to them, and unlike our generation they don't appear to link status with an office job. Quite the contrary in fact. Its an approach I admire and think is really healthy.

As I've mentioned once or twice before, perfecting macarons has been a mission for our kitchen for the last year.

The professional chefs in the restaurant have taken my first very humble efforts to a whole new league, and any time I encounter a french blog with photos of the macarons in patissieres over there, I'm able to confidently think, that ours are as good.

And achieving that standard has been no mean feat, becos they're not easy.

We sell a steady stream in a week - some people have them in the restaurant as a sweet note with coffee, and some people take home packets of 4.

We store them in large glass jars on the bar, and some people when they walk in exclaim straightaway, knowing exactly what they are, and others comment on the strange looking melting moments!

I did however read in this Paris Breakfast blog that Laduree , one of the upper end french patissieres sells over 12,000 macarons a day, from its 4 shops in Paris. No  - that is not a misprint!

We pipe ours by hand, but I guess if you're making that kind of volume, the need to get things automated becomes a bit of an issue, as this series of photos shows.

Somehow I don't think our requirements will ever reach quite that level...

Jamie has just made some licorice, orange and white chocolate ones, which are utterly stunning, and seeing as how licorice icecream is so strongly identified with Somerset, could create a nice kind of niche, I figure...

The food a family eats in a week. This link is to a series of photos of families from all over the world showing the amount of food they eat in a week, and the cost of it in US$.

Extraordinary the range of the amount that human beings are capable of surviving....

Previously I've written about the connundrum that El Bulli represents to Rick  and I in terms of the style of food that it serves - this whole concept of molecular gastronomy is one that we don't pretend to have got our heads around. Food for us is  a sensual experience rather than an intellectual one - but I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that a statement like that over simplifies the subject.

We do use our intellect a reasonable amount in analysing new dishes and discussing the reasons for various things happening in the cooking process, and for understanding the background behind things.  We are constantly reading and experimenting, and  trying things and discussing them. Our body of knowledge is a work in progress that has been built up over years, and which we are sure still has a long, long way to traverse. Chefs like Ferran Adria however, push the barrel out a whole heap further than where we go, and this link is to a meal that a Paris based writer had at the restaurant back in 2006.

Dinner at el Bulli means:

35 courses over 6 hours

International travel based on when you manage to get a booking in the restaurant. Something you leave to the discretion of the restaurant, rather than you telling them when you want to come. They will fit you in maybe, when they can..and you will be hugely appreciative of the favour!

It's a whole another world, and one day we are going to have to go and try!

 This is a link to a CBS interview with Alice Waters who is considered  by many to be one  of the gurus of the food movement in America which, over the last couple of decades  has seen a gradual change in peoples attitude to food. The Farmers Markets that are now increasingly prominant in  New Zealand, can be linked back to her efforts in Berkeley in the 70s to get a market up and happening in an urban area.

Nothing that she was doing or espousing back then was original -  she was simply  transplanting the ideas that she had absorbed in France with the likes of Richard Olney - and taken back this concept of eating locally grown, seasonal food to a suspicious American public.

Increasingly such ideas have found reasonance with a wider and wider circle of people - but as I think the comments made in this followup thread to the CBS interview with her, the flag bearers of ideas  that provoke people to make changes in their lives have to be prepared to wear some fairly derisory personal comment.

I'm never sure why people who disagree have to respond on quite that level, but then I'm no fan of the degree of idiolatry that can come with the territory too. I find much healthier dialogue tends to happen in the middle ground.

All interesting - and links to another article on Serious Eats, that points out somewhat plaintively, that just becos things are espoused as been artisinally produced, doesn't by decree mean that they are going to taste good. Life isn't that black and white, unfortunetly, and just becos you suscribe to a belief that small producers are better  that mass produced food stuffs, it doesn't mean you can park up your critical facilities and assume that all product produced from small producers is going to be by definition, better. Becos it simply ain't so!

This link is to a recording of Fair Go, and shows a debate over culpability in a situation where inexperienced diners in a middle of the road restaurant, thought they had ordered a couple of glasses of cheap red wine, but were instead presented with the most expensive wine on the list which was decanted in front of them and then poured into their glasses. Grange Hermitage, a mere snip at $575.00 a bottle.

The programme endeavours to show that this particular diner is not someone intent on getting something for free, but was instead out of his comfort zone, and was misunderstood by the waiting staff, and presented with something that was substantially outside his means to pay for.

I found it all really interesting, and what had led me to track it down on the TVNZ website, was the fact that good customers of ours came in for dinner last week having watched it, and had what I thought were intriguing comments to make. They felt that the restaurant had been unfairly targeted by the programme and that the owner had tryed to point out that it really isn't the restaurants responsibility to make a judgement call on whether or not customers can afford what they order. And I agree. I try really hard not to judge people by appearances - to do so, reeks of snobbery.
However. If a bottle of wine of that value was ordered, and tellingly the restaurant had only ever once before in 9 years, sold another bottle of Grange, then I would have thought that alarm bells, or at least considerable interest would have been peeked by who was ordering such an expensive bottle of wine. I know it does with us - and we don't have any bottles over the $200 mark.
I know that at the very least I would check or make some comment with the table before I pulled the cork - becos once that cork is out there is no going back..

To my mind, the crux of the whole issue is the discrepancy between what the diner believes he said, and what the waiting staff member says she heard. He said he ordered 2 glasses of Grange; she says she heard a bottle of Grange- the Grange, quite understandably isn't available by the glass. So therein is the rub.
Interestingly, as with most wine lists these days there were 2 columns of prices - one for bottle prices and one for glasses. And only a few of the wines are available by the glass which means a lot of blank space in the glass price column. I thought the suggestion of the TV reporter that to avoid confusion that column should then be filled with 'N/A", was ridiculous. If its blank its pretty bloody obvious that its not available by the glass I would have thought. I simply don't believe in pandering to the lowest common denominator - that means everything gets far too PC for my liking.

However- this gentleman obviously didn't read the list properly, and made an honest mistake. So who is responsible? I thought Mike Egan, the Restaurant Assn president, and a very experienced restaurant owner in his own right, expressed it totally accurately, when he was interviewed in the clip and said it was a perfect storm. No side had had malice of intent, but becos of circumstance and lack of understanding, it ended up with a very unfortunate outcome for all. ( Which I'm pleased to note that Penfolds have put right, subsequently.)

How do you avoid something like that happening? - communication and instinct I guess. Rhonda and I have spent alot of time around people in the restaurant, and you tend to very quickly catergorise them, and its relatively easy to pick up when people are out of their comfort zone, and would be appreciative of a little guidance, either with the menu or the wine list - and we really enjoy talking to those people and going the extra mile to find something that they would enjoy. ( Having said that, there is also a breed of people, who when they are out of their comfort zone, respond by getting aggressive and rude, and after an initial effort, we tend to back off those sorts.)

But, as I tell my husband reasonably often - communication is a wonderful thing!

When a query arises about a recipe  these days, more often than not Rick and I tend to head to the internet rather than to our extensive book and magazine library. There is a massive worldwide community out there of people, ready and willing to share their love of good food.

That process has led me to a few writers who I especially like - who's philosophies and approach to food reasonates with me, and I refer back to those people on a regular basis.

Was interested therefore to see that most of the blog writers that I go to are on this list just published by The London Times of the top 50 food blog writers in the world.

Since I'm surplus at the restaurant tonite, and technically supposed to be on bed rest, I thought I'd have a little perusal of some of the sites that I'm not familiar with. Has just served to underscore that the web is an extraordinary tool, for sharing information easily and directly. It truly is amazing!

Via Michael Ruhlmans blog I got to watch this video of a passionate Italian chef making pesto creamier than I've ever seen it, and with some fascinating asides about the importance of soaking the basil, and putting wine in the pasta dough.

We have a garden full of basil at the moment, so I'm going to make this tomorrow becos it looks like my idea of heaven...

Home alone today - Courteneys racing over in Te Awamutu in a 2 day tour, and Hannahs up in the Coromandel doing a 24 hour bush trek, as part of her training for the 4 person adventure racing team she's just got into, and I'm needing some down time after a particularly frenetic few days, to restore my sense of equilibrium, before I front my least favourite nite of the year - Valentines nite. So the dogs and I are having a quiet kind of day - we'll take the coffee grinds down to the compost later, but I don't envisage exerting myself too much more than that, although I will have some food ready for the family to consume on their return. Because they'll be needing it!

Maybe my sense of distaste for all the overhyped commercialisation and herd like behaviourial patterns that  Valentines Day seems to generate in people, has made me particularly sensitive to the  understated frankness and honesty of this amazingly competent man, in this US network interview. The pilot who brought the plane down with no loss of life in the Hudson River.

Hero is a word sometimes used too glibly, and attributed to people who do little more than create lots of press about themselves and their own fabulousness. But this gentleman is in a totally different class all together. An amazing man!

As I've written previously, molecular gastronomy is not something that Rick or I have embraced as yet. We haven't had the opportunity  so far, to eat at one of the restaurants that are considered world leaders in this modern style of cooking, although we have occasionally experienced foams or powders in Auckland  and Wellington restaurants, which are derivatives of the general approach.

Both of us naturally gravitate to food that makes us feel good, rather than food as an intellectual exercise - which is why I guess, we're both a little dubious about some of this molecular stuff. But not having tried the best, we don't feel in a position to really comment, and we've both read the Alinea cookbook and Thomas Kellers latest on sous vide cooking with a heightened sense of curiosity and the intention of trying some of the techniques.

Was intrigued therefore to read thru David Lebovitz's experience  in his latest blog thats just arrived. I thought he captured extremely well, the debate that is going on in the food world as to whether this a  passing trend, like nouvelle cuisine, or something that is going to permenantly alter the way we cook in the future.

It was also interesting to read the comments posted at the bottom of the blog, , becos they somewhat concisely represent the arguments that flurry around the food world about this style of approach to food.

We did a dinner recently with John Hancock from Trinity Hill - an old friend. John wanted to showcase some of the European grapes that they are growing in New Zealand, Arneis and Viognier and Tempranillo, so we took our cue from that and matched the wines with tapas style food, simple and flavoursome  and Europe based. Uncomplicated food, that belied the effort behind it.

In his introduction, John said some very gracious things about what Somerset meant to him, and talked alot about Ricks ability as a chef, which was lovely - and got me to thinking about the style of food that we do, which is described by Michael Guy in his latest restaurant guide  that I read today as 'classic'.

I guess we are classic in approach, and there are dishes on our menu that we will never be able to remove becos they are too entrenched, and some people eat the same thing every time they come to the restaurant, even if that is once a week. But we do like developing new ideas and extending our horizons, and the menu and the cookschool menus also reflect that process. Current in our world at the moment is this concept of molecular gastronomy, which people seem to feel a need to either rave about or revile, and for a long time, we've debated our approach. We've not had the opportunity to eat at either el bulli in Spain or Alinea in Chicago, maybe the 2 most famous restaurants of this type of approach, and before I comment conclusively on my sentiments, I would like to have experienced the very best to weigh my conclusions.

There is a forment which is pretty much media generated as I see it, over whether this style of eating is overdone, and people really prefer to eat safe and familiar, and this article  is a interesting argument pushing the strengths of chefs who want to challenge themselves and their diners.  If you click on the Marco Pierre White link, you go to a forum where he and Anthony Bourdain decried the rise of this style of multi course complicated food - but I suspect they were being contrary, purely to create a reaction.

We have the Alinea cookbook and also one that Thomas Keller has just written on sous vide style cooking, and I'm planning on reading both during our closed time, just to absorb some of the philosophy. And Rick and I will bat backwards and forth our attitude to this type of cutting edge cooking, and it will be interesting to see if some of the technique ends up reflected in some way on Somersets menu. Will keep you posted...

Increasingly these days, when I am looking for a recipe or need to research a food question, I find myself heading to the computor rather than to our extensive library of books and magazines. I can get lost for hours following various links around, and reading different peoples interpretations of certain things. Most of the stuff I read is food related, by virtue of what I do I guess, and I've sort of narrowed down the range of writers that I automatically turn too, to a few, who's opinions and writing styles I respect.

Was intrigued then to see in Dorie Greenspans recent blog a link to a Bon Appetit article that lists a number of food writers that that magazine rate. Some of my favourites were included, and when I get a bit of down time I may have a little squisy at the other ones that I'm not familiar with.

David Lebovitz, Doris Greenspan and Heidi Swanson are 3 I refer too regularly. David and Doris are both Americans who live a reasonable amount of each year in Paris - an aspect of their lives I quite freely admit to envying significantly! And Heidi is a vegetarian foodwriter who sends out a weekly email with a recipe, which I quite regularly print off and try, even though I am far from a vegetarian. She writes beautifully and takes exquisite photos.

Others that I rate but who aren't in the Bon Appetit lineup include Michael Ruhlman who is the writer behind all Thomas Kellers cookbooks. His blog is very wide ranging and I go to it for information rather than recipes - but did smile this week at the coincidence in a recent blog where he described the process he was going thru of breaking down a whole pig carcass. He co-authored a fantastic book 'Charcuterie', which we refer to alot, and is very much putting it into practise. We got an unexpected email from Sally at the Free Range Farm to say that our pig was ready for collecting from the Katikati butchers - which will mean a serious amount of work breaking it down over the weekend. And when I finish here, I will head straight for Michaels book to do a bit of research. We are hoping to get these pigs on a regular basis, and to upskill ourselves significantly in charcuterie. Ham, bacon, sausages - it is our intention to learn to do it all, but we will be taking baby steps initially, and just learning as we go.

It will be a great opportunity to run with specials in the restaurant though, of the very best organic pork, farmed right on our doorstep, up in the Kaimais. An idea I love.

Michael is also close to Anthony Bourdain who's book ' Kitchen Confidential' I read years ago, with increasing incredulousness at the extremes of restaurant conditions and people that he described. We had breakfast this week with Diane Ponzio, our favouritest New Yorker, and she is adamant that while she was a struggling muso working tables she worked with some of the people that he describes in the book, so maybe it isn't quite as much a fiction as I thought. He has gone onto increased noteriety thru his various TV shows, and I just enjoy his jaded, erudite take on stuff. He's cynical and nasty, but also genuinely passionate about food and people, and I think its a much more stimulating combination then some of these plastic presenters who just keep pontificating about how absolutely fabulous everything is at the top of their voices. I find them strident and trite.

Lunch service is not far off starting, so need to head over to the restaurant - with 'Charcuterie' tucked under my arm! The phones go beserk this time of year with people wanting to order vouchers, and making enquiries about cookschools and product, and its much easier if I'm there to deal with that and leave the staff to get on with the tables.

This article says it all as far as I concerned.

I watched Obama's acceptance speech tonite and wept. He's the right man, in the right place at the right time.

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.

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 am sitting at the dining room table working thru Courteneys various documentation for University next year with her. This particular daughter makes hard work of this sort of process, and likes to have someone around to check, double check and then triple check each stage. And someone to get grumpy with when things don't go quite the way she wants them too...

There have been a few digressions along the way as she collates documents and goes to find information, so I've been reading in short bits while I wait - 'The Simple Art of Marrying Food and Wine" a delightfully erratic but enormously comprehensive book written by Malcolm Gluck and Mark Hix, about that interesting world of Wine and Food matches. My interest is spiked at the moment becos we have 2 wine makers dinners coming up, and want to come up with a range of ideas that are going to be fresh and interesting, and which are going to make the wine shine. As I read, I'm sipping on a glass of the Riesling that Michelle Richardson has sent me, the only wine in her intended line up, that we haven't previously tried. A refreshing reminder of why I like riesling so much!

Having covered what I could in the book, I've been going thru some Wine websites for further information and ended up by default on one with 2 interesting articles that I thought I'd link too. The first is on what the writer expects from a good restaurant, and reading it irritated me, becos it showed how virtually impossible it is for any restaurant to please all the people all the time, becos people can't even exactly, precisely quantify what it is that they want in a restaurant. We're doomed to piss some people off, some of the time!

And the second article, refers to wine prices in restaurants and how they attempt to rip customers off. An article responded by a UK restauranteur with a pleasantly more pragmatic understanding of the reality of trying to make money in a tough industry.

Sometimes uneducated opinion, especially when originating from a self descriped expert,  does so much damage, becos all it does is reinforce existing stereotypes, and make it harder for those of us who care about what we do and who go out of our way to attempt to provide value to our customers, while at the same time making enough money to pay our bills, resent enormously, the implication that we are trying to rip our customers off.

Hmmm...

Back to Courteney... she's currently trying to find the various character references that people have written for her for a scholarship application. We're nearly done!

Got connected to this series of photos via one of the foodblogs that I read regularly, and thought it was worth sharing becos the originality and effort that goes into these peoples lunches makes an amazing record.

As I mention quite often in cookschool, becos chicken stock seems to come up in conversation rather regularly  being a base ingredient in so much, it is not unusual for Rick and I to have stock with poached chicken and vegetables for lunches on days  when theres no classes on, but our range of lunch ideas tends to stay small and  is reasonably often repeated...

So I have to confess I was mightily impressed by these people who own an Art Gallery and who put this kind of time and effort into what they eat in the middle of the day.

Scroll down past the initial part of the webpage and you'll end up with a series of photos of "What we made for lunch".

We were in Auckland yesterday with the staff for the big Trade show, and at one point in the afternoon, before dinner, Rick and I flicked over to Mt Wellington to have a look at Farro Fresh, and did comment that a store with that kind of range, would be simply fabulous in Tauranga...and would make, making interesting lunches, so much easier... Hmm...

We have been doing cookschools since 1997, and over that decade we have witnessed interesting changes in nuance with how people respond too, and talk about food. When we started out, there was appreciable reluctance from a significant number of people, to eat anything that was percieved as high in fat, or questions would always be asked about how we could substitute the use of salt.

Salt and butter and cream are some of the cornerstones of Ricks cooking, and he has remained steadfast in his use of them, believing that fat and salt underpin and draw out flavour, and without them, food tastes bland and unsatisfying.

As the years have gone by, less and less people comment negatively ( maybe those people have stopped coming to the classes!), and we've noticed a drop in the trend in the restaurant, where people will order a rich dessert and then want lowfat milk in their coffee. A habit that has always struck me as perverse and contradictory, and has long irritated me excessively!

I have always subscribed to the theory that a little of what you fancy occasionally is not going to do you any harm, and people who treat everything that passes their lips as something to be analysed and fretted about, are turning one of lifes true pleasures into a trial. And I've never been able to see the point in that. This article in Saveur online ( Saveur probably gets my vote for the best, most authoritative food magazine published),  is an interview with Michael Pollan, on precisely that subject, only he discusses the issues alot more eloquently.

There are 2 problems with food at the moment, as I see it. Those that eat processed crap the bulk of the time, and don't have the budget or the inclination to improve their diet; and then those who are so fixated on 'health', that they forget that food is about sustenance and enjoyment.  Food has become something constructed in a laboratory to improve your colesterol. Perhaps his best punchline is: 'if your grandmother wouldn't recognise it as food, I wouldn't eat it" !

Interesting, pertinent reading, that dovetails very comfortably with what we feel and how we approach food. And I am sure underscores part of the popularity of cookschools worldwide, becos people are looking to rediscover a healthy and positive relationship with creating meals again.

Stories like this one, below, gladden my heart enormously and make me feel positive about the future. Human endeavour seems to need to move to extremes - the pendulum swings out a long way in one direction, before it self corrects and starts going back the other way. But at some point it always does.  And I think this article articulates a movement that is gaining momentum and swinging away from the huge corporatorised farming style of the last few decades. Farmers markets and restaurant chefs are creating a demand for artisinally grown food, that is seeing a resurgence in the viability of small family owned tracts of land, and I think that is really exciting.

I'd just very much like to have a farm like this on our doorstep that we could tap into..

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E3DA1E3FF935A2575BC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Have just watched this interview with Thomas Kellar, one of the worlds most recognised and celebrated chefs.

We have his cookbooks, The French Laundry, and Bouchon, and read about him in the food media all the time. This is the first time I've seen him speak, and liked very much what I heard. Sincere and compelling I thought - with a lack of ego.

Will leave my comments at that, cos now heading to Amazon to see if I can track down the Ferdinand Point book he talked about. Should probably check our bookcase first though, cos we have a number of cookbooks from the great french chefs gathering dust!!

The following is a link to an interview between Gordon Ramsay and Michael Parkinson, which was done earlier this year I think.

I like it becos it underscores for me what it is I admire about the guy - and I'll be able to direct all those people that call him  one dimensional and loudmouthed , to it, to see quite a different perspective. I'm forever defending him in cookschools, becos people in general tend to be critical of him, and I've long held that there is a whole heap more to the man than the expletive driven individual we see on some of the TV series.

He's enormously sucessful, and enormously passionate about what he does, but still delightfully human.

Gordon Ramsay interview

Friday nite is well underway at the restaurant... Rhonda has everything under control, so I've beaten a retreat to catch up with some stuff at my desk. There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day at the moment, to do everything that I need too. Have menu changes to email thru to Simpson Print, together with some wine list updates of vintages.....

I've installed a computor programme for wages after years of doing them manually - and got a quick lesson on that early this week. Amazingly fast,  and is going to be great once I'm feeling a little more confident about finding my way around. I need to go back in and find an employee that I managed to delete this week - he has finished, but I deleted him before calculating his holiday pay - inadvertently!! So am going to be here for a while!

Have just checked out the latest blog on Michael Ruhlmans blog -something I refer to regularly, becos I like his take on most things, and was intrigued to read the latest ( April 17, 2008) on fois gras. Fois gras has become a cause celebre in the US, with activist groups targeting restaurants who serve it, and using extraordinarily extreme measures, to try and force them into stopping serving a foodstuff that these self appointed public watch dogs have decided is cruel and unusual. I've felt for awhile that such a stance is a little suspect, becos fois gras is considered a luxery item in the States, and therefore in targeting it, they are really striking a blow at the 'dillitente rich'. Which is fine, but not consistent. So much of the cheap chicken that is sold in supermarkets in vast quantities, not to mention the beef and also pork, is farmed under truly appallingly cruel conditions, and I am convinced that if the general public were aware of just how extreme some of those environments were, then they wouldn't consider buying the end product. But to target that stuff in a militant fashion, means making people who shop to a budget each week have to examine their consciences, and that would be a much harder sell to the general public. So instead these groups go for the easily targetable, at the luxery end of the market.

I'm suspicious.

When we were in France last year, we were in the middle of fois gras territory, and gavage ( forcefeeding ) is considered a perfectly normal thing to do. there.  In no small part becos the geese and ducks naturally gorge themselves when they are about to undertake the long migatory flights, where they don't stop for feeding. Its an ancient custom, which can be done in a much more humane manner than a lot of modern farming and slaughtering techniques of animals, so it has always felt a little perverse to me, to single it out as a sign of mans inhuman treatment of animals.

I came home  feeling  a little conflicted, becos I'd gone to France expecting to be revolted by the process, and I didn't end up feeling that way. As I said in the booklet I sent out to our cookschool attendees about our impressions, like anything it can become cruel when it is industrialised and the animals are force feed by machines. But done as it was always intended to be, it is not cruel - and I thought this blog captured that sentiment really well. Proved the point actually.

Like anything - misinformation is dangerous in the wrong hands, and its amazing how people can build a cause around something without bothering to check the facts...

I'm currently reading a book 'How to Pick a Peach - the search for flavour from farm to table", which somewhat eloquently explains what has happened to the supply chain from grower to consumer over the last 50 years or so, for various fruits and vegetables, together with the breeding work that has been done to give us better vegetables. It is American based, and makes for fascinating reading, so the latest link on Michael Ruhlmans blog  made sense to me, becos of the political issues involved.

The explosive growth in farmers markets in the States is a direct response to people objecting to how dissicated and horrible the fresh fruit and vegetables they buy thru major shopping chains has become - and they want to go back to the flavours they remember from their youth. Big business has taken over alot of agriculture in the States and has a vested interest in  keeping the small operators at bay. This article explains the way they use their political leverage to achieve that.

It makes sobering reading.

I find much of what is on the Food Network to be truly dismal - very few of the presenters have the kind of credibility that makes me want to kick back and relax and watch them. Most times I find myself cringing and reaching for the remote. It appears to be mostly about hype and youth and looks , and the wow factor. Very little about excellance and knowledge build over years of experience, and empathy. Rick Stein  and Mario Batalli are about the only 2 that I watch with any sense of enjoyment - and I'm distinctly off Rick Stein since I found out his moved on from his wife for a younger model! Have to remind myself that that doesn't bear any relation to his food knowledge!!( And is essentially none of my business!)

Bill Burford wrote a superb article in The New York Times that captured the pressure for commercial success that seems to outweigh food credibility on the Network

Michael Ruhlman, an American, who's an author, and judge for the Iron Chef in the States, writes a good blog that I check out frequently. I also have a number of his books - found his ones about training to be a chef at the CIA ( Culinary Institute of America) especially fascinating. He is close friends with Anthony Bourdain, who's determinedly non politically correct approach to absolutely everything is one I've longed admired. Niether of them are fans of what the Food Network has become, and this link is to a blog that Anthony Bourdain wrote about one of his first TV series being hauled out of the archives for a reviewing ( and interestingly, without first any consultation with him. It would appear that keeping the 'talent' in the loop is not considered a necessary part of the business!)

A good customer has just sent me this interesting link to a Radio NZ broadcast about umami - the timing of which was most fortuitous, becos we'd been discussing it in the kitchen the other day, when Matt mentioned that he and his mother had watched a programme about it on the Food Network.

I've read various articles about umami over the years - I think the first time I encountered it was on a wine course that we did at Mills Reef with Bob Campbell, when he started discussing flavours. For centuries the accepted version has been that there are 4 main flavours - all food can be broken down into salty, sweet, sour or bitter, but a Japanese chemist at the start of the 19th Century did some work that illuminated a 5th taste, umami, that he described as the flavour when food starts to break down. Glutamate. His theory was published and  resoundingly rubbished at the time, and has only really  gained credence over the last 10-20 years, particularly in the hands of chefs, who have grown to understand that certain foods have an intensity of flavour that adds to the overall deliciousness of food. Foodstuffs like parmesan cheese, overripe tomatoes, soy sauces that have fermented, meats that have been browned to the point of caramalisation... by incorporating these flavours into dishes, then the overall flavour impact goes up, and customers like that, so chefs have become increasingly aware of 'umami' flavours, and have started consciously doing, what good cooks in all the great cuisines of the world have known on a subconscious level for centuries.

Needless to say the number of magazine articles on the subject have increased significantly over the last few years. I got a book thru Amazon a couple of years back that describes in detail the concept of umami, and includes a number of recipes from top American chefs- 'The Fifth Taste- cooking with Umami" David and Anna Kasabian

Its an idea that I suspect there will be alot more hyperbole about in the years to come, as mainstream media catches on to it, so listen to this broadcast and you will be substantively ahead of the play! I liked the concept expressed that in the acceptance of this fifth taste, which took awhile to break thru scientific orthodoxy, it was the chefs as artists who trusted their tongues and sense of taste, who finally convinced the scientists. Artists lead the scientists.. for some reason that is an idea that has resonance with me. I like it!

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup - click onto Good Taste and you should be able to listen to the recording... sorry about the pyschedic imagery though!

I have a very computor literate friend, who is indispensible in my life, for sorting out all those little glitches that are inevitable for people like me, in dealing with computors. I don't especially like machines, as much as I respect the range of information that they open up, and the ease with which I can access that information. Still - they cause me great angst sometimes, when they don't perform as instructed, and I am regularly grateful for the presence of Mr French. Even if I do have to endure my intellectual capacity being questioned on a regular basis!

Chris also regularly sends me titbits he discovers on the net - I have no idea how anyone can spend as much time as he does in front of a computor screen, but I am regularly the beneficiary of interesting asides, about food and wine.

The latest one I got today I thought was worth sharing, becos its such a bizarre concept, and not one I hope will catch on! An extension on the automated sushi bar idea, I suppose...

A restaurant in Germany that delivers food to the tables via a robotic system and therefore elimates the need for waiting staff. I think I'd rather pay my staff, and nourish my customers not just with food, but also with personal service!!