“In an industry lacking in female http://www.debeers.com/ stars, she stands out like a rising soufflé,” writes Elle Magazine of chef Margot Janse, spotlighted in this week’s column. But whether it’s dining high or low in Hyderabad, India; mouthwatering Indian desserts; the best ways to prepare tofu and eggplant; or where to eat in New York City and the newly published 2012 Michelin Guide to NYC restaurants – here, a digest from websites and the English-language international press online.
Coming Up in Italy, UK, USA
“Love transcends the crisis” reads the http://ift.tt/JzgZiU 2011 poster for Italy’s Alba International White Truffle Fair, taking place from October 8 to November 13. The fair is a terroir bonanza where all the local sausage, cheese, bread – more than one could even dream of – is sold. Week-ends are when the truffle market takes place. This is what the poster’s words refer to: the superbly aromatic Tuber Magnatum Pico, also called the “white diamond,” which costs $2,500 a kilo (2.2 lbs).
The Dartmouth Food Festival, on in 2011 from October 21 to 23, draws quite a crowd to this small town (pop. a mere 5,500) at water’s edge in the south western part of the UK. Along with markets and wine events, the program includes a children’s festival, mixology demo, South Devon Crab Street Party… More about the festival, which started in 2002, here.
The Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, “Hawaii’s oldest food festival,” takes place in the Kona districts of the Big Island from November 4 to 13, 2011. Coffee-related activities include “living history” farm tours, a coffee picking contest, cupping competition, barista challenges. Coffee trees thrive in Kona’s volcanic soil and “everything from planting to picking is done by hand” – one of the reasons why Kona coffee is among the world’s most expensive.
Flavor Napa Valley: A Celebration of Food, Wine, Fun is on from November 17 to 20, 2011, mostly in Greystone at the Culinary Institute of America. Many events (at $95/person) are devoted to wine tasting including “A Hedonist’s Ultimate Tasting: Godiva Chocolates and A Special Selection of Extraordinary Wines Tailored to Them.” But the food side includes: “What To Do If Someone Gives You A Truffle,” and “Poaching: The Art of Gentle Cooking” with ueber-chef Thomas Keller. Various meals and excursions on the program run from $75 to $1,000/person.
More festivals during October and November here.
Restaurants in Jeddah, Moscow, Paris
What’s nice about Mariam Nihal’s review in the Arab News of “Bharat” an Indian restaurant in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – “pure incarnation of glamour for Jeddah socialites and food aficionados” — is that it reads like a mini-course in Indian cookery. Example: “Try their shrimps and avocado papdi chaat, which is street food turned into extravaganza – what Bharat does best. It consists of sweet and sour prawns and avocado salad on a crispy wheat wafer, topped with tangy green herb sauce, tamarind and date chutney. Drenched in sweetened yoghurt, the chaat is sprinkled with chickpea crispy vermicelli.”
The writer’s run-through of the desserts looks like this: “…chilled Rasmalai, a delicious velvety fragment of milk that is rolled into a creamy semi-solid mixture and topped with pistachio nuts and creamy sauce…Kulfi (Indian creamy ice cream), which is distinctive in flavors such as rose, pistachio, cardamom or simply plain…Gulab Jamun made up of hot bread dumplings with a delectable sugary syrup …Carrot Halwa is a classic style of carrot pudding topped with cashew nuts and pistachio and garnished with pineapple compote…Moja pudding, a heavenly mixture of wholesome and sweet whole wheat.”
In “Moscow’s Best Restaurants, From Formal to Funky” on Epicurious.com, Colleen Clark reports that despite quirks, “a brash, energetic eating experience awaits travelers armed with a little research, a fair amount of cash, and a sense of adventure” in Moscow. At Turandot, “the menu, created by Alan Yau – of London’s Yauatcha and the international brand Wagamama – is a dizzying globe trot through Asia and Europe.” At Varvary, molecular Chef Anatoly “Komm’s take on borscht is a riot of unexpected temperatures and shapes: The soup’s traditional garlic-bread accompaniment is reborn via slivers of crisp beets dotted with garlic ice cream.”
“Start with butter lettuce leaves cupping falafel topped with pickled apple and mint,” at Bar Strelka. Try Café Khachapuri and Noah’s Ark for regional cuisines, Armenian and Georgian respectively. And don’t miss Stolovaya No. 57, a re-creation of a workers’ café in GUM department store, where “‘herring under a fur coat,’ a layered salad of the salty fish, shredded beets, carrots, and mayonnaise” is served along with “pigeon’s milk cake. Legend has it the confection got its name because dairy, eggs, and sugar were so hard to find during Soviet times that they were ‘rarer than pigeon’s milk.'”
It’s no surprise that launch lunches for Kampot pepper, which comes from Kampot province in Southern Cambodia, took place in Paris at Ze Kitchen Galerie Restaurant in the 6th arrondissement. Years ago, chef William Ledeuil “fell in love with South-East Asia. The more I read about the region, and the more delicious food I ate [when I travelled there]…the more it fascinated me. [So] I decided to find out more about rhizomes, herbs and other ingredients from Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and experiment with them.” The result is a unique mix of Asian ingredients in his Mediterranean-based cuisine.
CNN International picked up on the on-going campaign to get the pepper launched again after production was decimated during the Khmer Rouge regime, and recently broadcast a feature on the “Kampot peppercorn, tiny but bursting with spice and an additional depth that ranges from citrus to nutty” (as Pamela Boykoff describes it on the CNN website).
Spotlight on Chef Margot Janse in South Africa
Accolades do not stop for the Le Quartier Français which calls itself an “auberge” and is located in wine country in Franschoek, Western Cape, South Africa. Its Tasting Room restaurant has been on the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best restaurants list non-stop since 2005: in 2011, it occupies 36th place. It has also received awards for being the “best restaurant in the Middle East and Africa.”
And it’s all down to Margot Janse. This Relais Châteaux “Grande Chef” stands out not only because she has achieved top-tier status in what still is the male-dominated world of haute cuisine, but for the “African inspired elements” that grace her cookery – “a melange of French, Malay and traditional South African dishes.”
More about Janse in a profile by Rosanne Turner for Morning Calm, the in-flight magazine of Korean Air.
Features: London, Kyoto, Hyderabad, New York
“OK, I confess. I have a serious cook crush on Yotam Ottolenghi,” writes the Los Angeles Times’s Russ Parsons in “Ottolenghi Eggplant, Oh Yeah.” Ottolenghi is the Israeli chef who has made a huge name for himself in London by turning vegetarian cuisine into something so sexy and delicious that even people who aren’t vegetarians, vegans, etc. can’t get enough of it. Parsons is intrigued by Ottolenghi’s “affection for the eggplant,” which the Brits like the French call aubergine. He reports he has tried an Ottolenghi recipe for eggplant in buttermilk sauce and: “This guy can do no wrong.” Ottolenghi himself writes a regular recipe column – which also includes non-vegetarian dishes – for the UK paper The Guardian.
Via Bloomberg, The Washington Post’s Joe Yonan appears on the pages of Qatar’s The Peninsula with an article called “When To Tweak Your Tofu.” He offers great advice on different ways to prepare the soybean curd, which at its best bears no resemblance to the flabby blandness many associate it with: “At a multi-course breakfast in a beautiful Kyoto inn, the server, wrapped in traditional garb, poured soy milk into a cast-iron pot set over a candle and topped it with a lid. There it sat for five, 10 minutes – it felt like an eternity – before she uncovered it and we spooned it out: a creamy, nutty, delectable custard made out of little more than soy milk, presumably thickened with nigari, a bitter salt. Heaven.”
Required reading if you’re headed for Hyderabad, India’s sixth most populous city, in southern India: “Tease Your Tastebuds With Hyderabadi Food” by Abhishek Raje in the Times of India. Excellent tips include the handmade sitaphal ice cream from Famous Ice Cream in the Mozamjaji Market, the biryani (meat, vegetables and spices with rice) at “the posher joints like Paradise, Hyderabad House, Jewel of Nizam…[or] the smaller eateries like Cafe Bahar, Dine Hill [where] uniformed chauffeurs queue up for takeaways,” and what the author calls “bandi grub.”
“So popular are these roadside bandis, that some of them have become famous landmarks of the areas. Be it Govind’s dosa bandi near Charminar where your dosa is topped with a generous dollop of Amul butter or Chachaji dabeli near Dimmy Paan Palace in Sindhi Colony, which runs out of dabeli within four hours every evening, the tiny Mumbai kulfi stall near Pizza Hut on Banjara Hills Rd. No. 12 which boasts of over 20 varieties of kulfis or the creamy, rich chai sold at the tea stall opposite the XLNC store near Banjara Hills Police Station.”
The Montreal Gazette’s fine-dining critic, Lesley Chesterman, goes to New York City and writes that it has “become a destination for so much more than fancy dinners. Yes, there’s great high end, but there’s also inventive ethnic food, delicious casual fare, and a renewed interest in American cuisine. Walking the streets of New York, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of gourmet emporiums, cool bakeries, tiny taco shops and fancy food trucks.”
In “What and Where To Eat in New York City: So Much to Choose From, So Little Time” she covers a number of musts, from Eataly, the “new 50,000-square-foot food market dedicated to all things Italian” and “the Union Square Green Market … an oasis of green [where] farmers sell honey, ciders, breads, pies, cheeses, vegetables, eggs, flowers and so much more” to Eleven Madison Park – one of the two top-end dining venues in the city which have just received a third Michelin star in the new Michelin guide “New York City Restaurants 2012.”
An October 5 press release from Michelin says that “Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare and Eleven Madison Park have joined five other New York restaurants at the Michelin three-star level, the highest recognition in the culinary world. Only 98 restaurants in the world currently hold three stars. Of them, seven are in New York City.”
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