Precious French ingredients

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It's been a while since our last Lunch Club meeting, and we decided to revisit Caprice.  The volcano eruption in Iceland has made its effect felt throughout the world.  As a consequence of the disruption to air traffic in Europe, it meant that the supply of European and French ingredients was temporarily cut off.  We made the lunch reservation early in the week, and had to rely on our contacts in the kitchen to ensure that some of the items in stock would be reserved for our little gathering.

The amuse bouche was refreshingly delightful.  Parma ham and tomato concassé with mozzarella on top.  The saltiness of the Parma ham dominated, somewhat tempered by the tomatoes - which were cold and refreshing on a warm day.  The mozzarella was liquid and cream-like with a very grainy texture, and the basil coulis on top completed the insalata Caprese.

Langoustine ravioli, veal sweetbreads, chanterelle mushrooms in shellfish bisque emulsion - I loved this dish the first time I had it, and apparently this is the dish which earned Caprice its third Michelin star.  The fat and juicy langoustine was very delish, and the sweetbread was nice and creamy.  The shellfish bisque was so good that I actually told my fellow diners that I was thinking about licking the bowl...without using the bread to soak it up as I didn't want anything to detract from the taste.

Challans duck fillet cuit au plat, duck leg pastilla, young carrot and aromatic pearl barley - I shared the duck with the male elf, and it was such a pretty dish!  The duck was so pink and juicy...with some jus on the side, and sat on top of carrot purée.  The pearl barley was firm and bouncy to the bite, with candied cherries and orange peel (or was it clementine?) which made the whole thing almost a little sweet.  Yum!

The other part of the dish was the pastilla - very mini and cute, yet delivers so much!  The moment I cut it open, the aroma of the spices emerged to greet me.  The shredded duck confit was really nice with a touch of mint.  I told Chef Vincent that next time I'd like him to make me a giant version...

I also had a bite of the Racan pigeon en croûte, nori seaweed, foie gras, broad bean and artichoke fricassée, which I'd really enjoyed on my last visit.  I still think this is an awesome dish...

I brought a bottle of 2002 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard to match the birds.  Bernard the sommelier was smart enough to suggest chilling the decanter, which brought the wine to its ideal serving temperature.  It drank beautifully.  The nose was very open, gorgeous, fruity, a little bit sweet at first, with caramel, mint, Asian spices and pine needle.  As time went on the sweetness became more and more prominent.  I must savor my remaining bottles...

Next came the cheese...since they know we all love it so much.  A plate of seven was laid out in front of us, and we were in heaven.  The resident Froggie even raised her arms and croaked "Yessss!!!"

Coulommiers - this cousin of Brie was salty, and smelled a little like green peas.  The rind had a heavy taste of ammonia.

Abbaye de Cîteaux - made by the Trappist monks at the L'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Cîteaux.

Laurentine - this goat cheese with bay leaves was very nutty, salty with slight acidity on the palate.  Sooo creamy...

Bonde de Gâtine - I love this cheese...lots of ash on the outside, and the taste was acidic and salty at the same time, with creamy texture.

Comté, 4 years old - yummmmmmm...... pretty salty but there was still a hint of sweetness.  Needless to say it paired incredibly well with the 1999 Château Chalon, which had a nose of straw, sweet grass and oxidation in general.  The combination of the two in my mouth resulted in very pronounced flavors of sweet corn.

Cabri Ariégeois - one of the Froggie's favorite cheese... basically goat milk Mont d'Or... pretty stinky, runny and just totally awesome.  Later in the evening, I found that one of my friends has a family retreat in Ariège... must. go. visit.

Fourme d'Ambert - this was such a nice blue... I could taste a touch of sweetness among the salty flavors.

When I arrived at the restaurant, I was devastated to find out that the remainder of their wild strawberries had spoiled, and that we wouldn't be able to have those wonderful berries.  So I settled for the red berry and bourbon vanilla millefeuille, yoghurt and lemon sorbet.  Berry millefeuille is always good here, and to avoid squeezing all the cream out I decided to use my knife and karate-chop the pastry... Haiiiii Yah!

I also had a bite of the tropical coconut tiramisu, exotic fruit minestrone and pabana sorbet.  This was awesome.  You get mango, pineapple and coconut all in one bite... kinda like a piña colada.  Perfect for warm weather.

Finally, we got to the petits-fours...and my eyes opened wide at the sight of canelés.  I loooooove these little things, and swallowed it in one bite.  The orange and guava jelly was superb as usual.

It was a really awesome lunch, I'm glad we kept it "light" - I vetoed the addition of a pork belly course - since I still had a dinner to go to tonight!

The roast goose taste test

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One of the topics that's been discussed ad nauseum is the roast goose at Yung Kee (鏞記酒家).  The goose has a reputation many feel is no longer justified today, yet loads of tourists and long-time customers still flock to the restaurant for it. 

My office is just up the street from the restaurant, yet I found myself having patronized it only once in the 4 months that I've been here.  Meanwhile we've been getting our roast meats elsewhere - in particular roast goose from Yat Lok Restaurant (一樂食舘) on neighboring Stanley Street.  I've always really loved their roast goose drumstick with thick rice flour noodle soup (燒鵝脾瀨粉), and we've always felt that the goose here would give Yung Kee a run for its money.

For lunch today we decided to do a taste test.  I bought a quarter goose (bottom, with drumstick) from Yung Kee, and a standard portion (例牌) of goose from Yat Lok.  There was also an order of char siu (叉燒) and choy sum (菜心) from Yung Kee.  I laid the food out on our conference room table and we dug in.

As we expected, we still preferred the goose from Yat Lok.  While Yung Kee gave us bottles of their nice home made gravy and plum sauce, the goose itself just wasn't as good.  I thought Yat Lok - or whoever they source from - had done a better job roasting, which was all the more apparent when it comes to the drumstick.  They also seasoned it a little more and the meat had more flavor.  By comparison the meat from the Yung Kee goose was a little more bland.  It's still a decent roast goose, but just doesn't measure up.

So there you have it.  Totally subjective, and the opinions of a couple of amateurs.  But for me, I'd always rather go to the hole-in-the-wall nearby rather than the overrated establishment.

Yet ANOTHER fake from China

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News surfaced over the last couple of days about yet another fake/copied product out of China, although this time I'm not sure it was done with the full knowledge and blessing of the officials.  I'm talking about the theme song to the 2010 Shanghai Expo - 2010等你來.

The song was supposedly rolled out to count down the last 30 days before the start of the Expo, and the video featured well-known celebrities such as Jackie Chan, Yao Ming, Andy Lau, Lang Lang and others.  The composer of the song is Miao Sen (繆森).  There was an earlier controversy where some members of the public questioned the similarity of the song to Welcome to Beijing (北京歡迎您), the song used for the 100-day countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  Mou refuted that claim, saying he composed the song back in 2004, way before the Olympics.

Now it has come to light that the song is basically a copy of Sonno Mama No Kimi De Ite (そのままの君でいて), originally released in 1997 by Okamoto Mayo (岡本真夜).  There is enough similarity between the two songs to cause real embarrassment to the authorities, who have stopped using the song and removed it from the official website.

I've attached a video on YouTube, where someone has done a composite to show the similarities.  I invite you to see for yourself.



This is yet another egg on China's face, and will no doubt raise more questions about the authenticity of things coming out of China.  In the age where some Koreans seem to claim as their own everything/everyone from Confucius to Qu Yuan (屈原), the figure behind the origins of the Dragonboat/Tung Ng/Duan Wu Festival (端午節), this is the last thing we need...

Sausage fest

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Once again a group of us reconvened in a house in the boonies, for a day of home cooking and non-stop eating.  It was sausage day today, and we would be making three different types of sausages.

I arrived in time to sit down for a bowl of Korean dumplings and rice cakes in soup.  Very yummy, and light enough to prepare us for what was ahead.  There was of course plenty of kimchi, with two batches having been aged for different lengths of time.

Then we got down to business... three separate batches of stuffing were being prepared.  First was the Italian sausage, with fennel seeds and peppers.  I started the film the process of the first team stuffing the sausage casing, with the male elf carefully (or was it lovingly?) massaging and stroking the ever-growing sausage.

Having cleaned the stuffer, a second batch was loaded in - this time with filling that included diced kimchi and chili pepper flakes for the kimchi sausage.  The male elf relinquished his place to someone new, who kinda flipped out and yelped at the sight of the protruding and growing mass.

A little while later, bags of coagulated pig's blood were broken out and mixed into the bowl with steamed rice and vermicelli.  This would form the contents of the soondae (순대), the Korean blood sausage that I love so much.  The casing was checked for leakage, but it was something that we had to live with.  Our most experienced team quickly realized that using the stuffer was going to be impossible on this one, and a piping bag was brought out to do the job.  The soondae came out shorter, without linking, and were quickly put into hot water bath or steamer to make sure the blood becomes solid and fuses with the other ingredients.

As we started to get hungry in the afternoon, the soondae was sliced up and eaten as snack with the usual dip of salt, chili pepper and green pepper powder.  I must say that this was better than any soondae I've had in Korean restaurants in Hong Kong.

We all helped with the preparation of the other dishes for dinner.  Shortly before sun down, we moved the party up on the roof and ended up dining in the middle of our host's real-life FarmVille.  Our grill chef quickly went to work and grilled up the sausages as well as lots of kalbi.  At the end of the meal, the pork neck was brought out and put on the grill also.

There was, of course, way too much food to go around.  We started with a dip of eggplant caviar - à la Robuchon - on thin slices of Robuchon baguette.  This was way better than any baba ghanoush I've ever had.  The Moroccan carrot pavé was nice and refreshing, with the taste of orange blossom water and a touch of coriander.  The gnudi was interesting... while it's meant to be like gnocchi, it tasted more like a buttermilk biscuit with a very moist and wet center.  Céleri-rave rémoulade, cherry tomatoes, and greens picked from pots right next to us (including chrysanthemum greens) rounded out the cold side of things.

We also had quinoa with braised fennel, thyme & toasted almonds; very yummy chapchae;  and a salad of asparagus, peas, and fingerling potatoes.  The skins on the peas were removed by hand through group effort, and the elves - aka Sous-Vide Monsters - put the asparagus under a human vacuum and cooked them sous-vide.

We were stuffed and done with dinner pretty early, and went back downstairs to digest.  It would take us another three hours before we moved on to desserts.  The two batches of caramel corn donuts were both yummy, but I preferred the second batch with the sugar on the outside instead of the caramel.  The apple pie came out pretty late, baked with Granny Smiths and served with homemade caramel ice cream.  We also had two different cakes brought in by air: a pandan chiffon cake from Bengawan Solo as well as a red bean, pine nut and mochi cake (松子玉露) from I-lan Cake (宜蘭餅).

I managed to polish off a few bottles of wine, too... The 2006 Grosset Chardonnay Piccadilly wasn't bad; the 2006 Mollydooker Shiraz Blue Eyed Boy drank pretty well, maybe because I was doing the Mollydooker shake... The Henri Bonneau Les Rouliers was  nothing to write home about, but then again it IS a vin de table...

We went home very late, with our stomachs still full and wondering when we will get hungry again...

You win some, you lose some

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It's been a while since I met up with this particular couple, and we decided to go to Wagyu Kaiseki Den since they are "members" with a stash of wagyu at the establishment.  I was happy to be back, as it's been 2 months since my last visit and the menu has changed.

前付: Kagoshima gyu, takenoko, taranome with sesame sauce and torigai, urui-apple jelly - in the cup, the jelly was acidic and pretty interesting, with some young Hosta leaves (ウルイ).  The cockles (鳥貝) were alright.  What's outside was more interesting... beef was yummy with the sesame sauce, and the bamboo shoots (筍) was very fresh and nice.  The use of Japanese Angelica shoots (たらの芽) were also interesting.

八寸：shiro asupara, shirauo-tamago, five color yasai maki, soramame, negitoro sushi w caviar, hotaru ika, uni tofu - the soup of white asparagus was bland.  The firefly squid (蛍烏賊) was very, very nice...fresh and full of inky flavor...wish I had a half-dozen of these.  The sushi (ネギトロ鮨) was ok.  The uni tofu was very nice...the texture of the tofu matched the uni well, and the sea urchin itself was fresh and sweet.  The icefish (白魚) and egg roll was OK, but the veggie roll was better.

椀物: ebi shinjo and tai shirako clear soup, nanohana, yuzu - I can't believe I actually ate the shirako (白子), something which is at the top of the small list of things I don't eat...  but I will admit that the little dollop of poached red snapper sperm was very creamy and flavorful.  The ball of shrimp paste was not bad.  Two sprigs of rapeseed flower and some shavings of yuzu skin complete the soup.

造り：chef's selection sashimi - the slices of abalone were pretty nice...very tender.  I didn't have the tuna.  The young yellowtail (はまち) was OK.

箸休：Japanese tomato and hawasabi - the small tomatoes were very ripe and sweet, but the horseradish leaf was a little bland...

進肴：lobster, kabu, takenoko, seri tempura with truffle sauce - the turnip (蕪) tempura was very interesting as it was still juicy inside.  The slice of bamboo shoot was OK, as was the Japanese parsley.  The lobster was very, very yummy with the black truffle sauce.  What a great dish!

蒸物：sakura tai-chasoba mushi, tororoimo, kogomi oroshi-an, yuzukosho - this thing totally destroyed my palate, thanks to the spicy yuzu-flavored pepper.  The mash of the Japanese yamaimo thickened the soup.

主菜：charcoal grilled wagyu - four pieces of fatty, very yummy wagyu sirloin... doesn't get much better than this.

Once again we had the awesome wagyu sandwich, with thin slices of beef along with diced tomatoes in between two pieces of milky Japanese toast.  I'd be happy just to make a meal out of this thing...  Wish they'd make this available for lunch takeout!

雲丹，松葉かにとエンド豆土鍋ご飯 - we were offered the choice of black truffle rice again, but I declined as it's past the best season for black truffles.  The rice with sea urchin and crab is always nice, and you can really taste the sweet and savory flavors of the crab.  I had two and a half bowls...

Dessert was a simple mochi with muscovado syrup (黒蜜).  Classic and nice.

I brought two bottles of wine for the evening.  We started with the 2003 Penfolds Yattarna, their top-of-the-line Chardonnay.  I've never had this wine before, and it was such a pleasant surprise!  My friend thought it was a white Burgundy... nose of minerals, ripe and sweet grass, sweet butter, flint and citrus.  Great acidity balance.  What a beautiful wine!  Interestingly, with the inky flavors of the firefly squid in my mouth, the wine turned very ripe and oxidized...the acidity completely disappeared.

I brought a second bottle as backup, and my friend couldn't resist opening it.  The 1996 Joseph Drouhin Chambertin turned out to be a big disappointment.  To be honest we probably didn't decant it long enough, but still... The first whiff smelled of manure, and the high acidity was immediately apparent.  The nose continued to be a little funky, gradually normalizing to reveal just the fruit with time, even with a little eucalyptus.  Acidity was high throughout.  Not a pleasure to drink at all.  I bought the bottle from Winebid.com at what I thought were very reasonable prices for a wine of this level and vintage, and the condition of the bottle seemed perfect.  Oh well...

I was very, very full...and pretty buzzed since I started the evening with some wine in the office.  We must do this again sometime...