DimSumDolly* - the different morsels of the life of a foodie

The Zen of Fish

Sushi lovers will love the book The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket by Trevor Corson. I certainly enjoyed the read because the book is filled with the history of sushi, scientific explanation of the common types of fish and seafood eaten in Japanese cuisine, and it gives an insight into the arduous training required to become a sushi chef.

If you think the book will read like a science textbook, please let me allay your fears. The book is nothing like that and is, in fact, very engaging. The human interest element in the book is provided by the owner of the California Sushi Academy, Toshi Sugiura, and this particular class of students that Corson has chosen to document in writing. For 10 weeks, Corson is like this omnipresence in the sushi classroom where he observes the students and their progress. He reports on their success and struggles and, in particular, chooses to focus on three students. The first a 20-year-old woman who's overcoming personal struggles as well as those in handling live fish, sharpening knives etc. The second, a former Japanese pop star who has abandoned his pop career in his native land to pursue his love for the culinary arts. Lastly, a young 17-year-old hormone-raging boy who thinks that learning to cook sushi during his summer break is going to score with a whole bevy of girls.

Interspersed with this narrative are easy-to-understand explanations of things such as:

- How miso is made - has to do with some kind of bacteria

- How umami comes about - something about amino acids

- How sushi came about and the different varieties that exist in different parts of Japan - very interesting! What we know as 'sushi' today actually originated in Tokyo as a form of fastfood. But the first forms of sushi appeared way before that in other parts of Japan and looked different.

- What type of rice is best for sushi - short grain most expensive. So cheaper joints actually use medium grain rice.

- Why you need to wash sushi rice with freezing cold water - sushi apprentices in Japan can spend up to about two years just washing rice every day till their hands go numb!

- The California roll, dragon roll, and caterpillar roll being bastardised versions of sushi

- Why mackerel (saba) is perilous to serve raw

- Why yellowtail (it goes by a variety of names depending on the stage of growth) is such a popular fish. Anyway, kanpachi is lean, wild yellowtail whilst hamachi is farmed and is a closely related species to kanpachi.

- How flat fish like halibut, turbot, and flounder evolved. Did you know some of them have eyes on the right (karei) and some have eyes on the left (hirame). At sushi bars in Japan, hirame have a reputation for being more delicious and hence are more expensive. Karei are cheaper and tend to be eaten cooked.

- How the anatomy of a fish affects the way it is being sliced for sushi and sashimi. E.g. the veins in tuna run along the body and converge into one point. So sushi chefs like to slice tuna in triangular pieces so that it looks more visually appealing when plated.

- Why it's rude to call a woman maguro, i.e. tuna - because tuna fish swim stiffly and so calling a woman maguro means she is stiff during sex. Wahaha.

Apart from all that, readers are also introduced to octopuses, geo-ducks, tuna (all three varieties), sea urchin and other sea creatures that we gamely tuck into. The book also teaches us the correct way to eat nigiri sushi!

Like the blade of an accomplished sushi chef's knife, the language of The Zen of Fish is sharp and succinct. It's a book I'd highly recommend to anyone who's interested in knowing more about Japanese food. In reading this book, I've been accorded with a much better understanding and appreciation of Japanese cuisine, as well as the effort and pains put into constructing a meal. The book is also marketed under the title The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice and it can found in the Singapore National Library.

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

~ Laurie Colwin, 'Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant' in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone is a collection of essays about dining alone and I've sieved out excerpts from the book in the past few entries to give you an idea of what the book is about. Some of the writers revel in having only themselves for company as it's the only time they get to have me-time amidst having to juggle the demands of family life. Others find the act of eating alone utterly depressing. Some relate dining alone to memorable times of life like living on their own for the first time or going off to college. The book's an easy and quick read and goes down easily on the literary palate.

For this blog entry, I'll write my own thoughts about dining alone. I can't say I like dining alone all the time because I associate food with social activity. I like dining with family and friends where there is conversation over the table, where you catch up on what happened during the day or what's happening in one another's lives.

At work, I like dining with colleagues. I think having lunch alone is depressing. I find that it's very different in Singapore compared to London. In Singapore, locals like to have lunch together in the workplace. To not partake in this lunch time gathering would seem very anti-social. And really, it's during lunch time that all the office gossip come spilling out. So to be in the know, one must eat with colleagues. Haha. To know all the office gossip, I've discovered that the best person to befriend is the office receptionist.

Anyway, in London, I found that many people like to eat in or at their desk. Maybe it's just some angmoh thing. Apart from the times I travel alone and lived in London, I seldom find myself dining alone.

However I do sometimes enjoy times when I have the flat all to myself and I sit in front of the TV and veg out. My secret junk food indulgence is Nissin cup noodles which doesn't contain an ounce of nutrition. I like the chicken flavour and chicken & mushroom flavour. I'd crack an egg into the cup before pouring the hot water into it. But oh, before all that, I'd also pick out the yellow foam-like bits which are supposed to be egg. But I hate it 'cos it tastes like foam/sponge. So I pick it out with a pair of chopsticks first. After three minutes, I take my cup noodles and sit in front of the TV and watch whatever takes my fancy - usually not much 'cos the state of TV these days is dismal. But I watch it nonetheless 'cos usually at that point I don't want to think.

And if I cook for myself, I do simple stir-fry and can cook everything in one pot sometimes. I remember how I used to cook rice in a pot in London ('cos I didn't have a rice cooker) and what I would do is to add the pieces of meat - usually chicken - and the sauce and vegetables into the pot together with seasoning and fry everything. And voila, I get fried rice for dinner. Then for dessert I'd make green bean soup for myself. Other times I'd buy fresh pasta and cook that for dinner and pair it with raw baby spinach for the requisite greens. Another time I made Japanese curry for myself. I'm a lazy cook so I always go for the easiest dishes! :)

So anyway, what is your 'Alone Food'?

Luxury

Eager to be the good neighbour, wanting to make sure she wasn't lonely, I invited her over for dinner with me and my three small children.

She gave me such a look. 'Why, uh, thanks ... but you know, I think I'll just stay in.'

'No, but really, I have this big ham I was going to cook - '

She grinned. 'But I was looking forward to it, actually. Sometimes you just need to curl up with a plate of scrambled eggs all by yourself. I never get to do that. It's like heaven. You know what I mean?

Well, I didn't until she said it. And there hasn't been a day since then that I haven't thought wistfully of that plate of solitary scrambled eggs.

~ Holly Hughes 'Luxury' in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confession of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

Eating Alone

I have thought about the apparent contradiction that someone who has dedicated most of her working life to cooking should be so reluctant, when she eats alone, to cook for herself. The explanation is that I consider cooking to be an act of love. I do enjoy the craft of cooking, of course, otherwise I would not have done so much of it, but that is a very small part of the pleasure it brings me. What I love is to cook for someone. To put a freshly made meal on the table, even if it is something very plain and simple, as long as it tastes good and is not a ready-to-heat something bought at the store, is a sincere expression of affection, it is an act of binding intimacy directed at whoever has a welcome place in your heart. And while other passions in your life may, at some point, begin to bank their fires, the shared happiness of good homemade food can last as long as we do.

~ Marcella Hazan 'Eating Alone' in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

Dinner for One, Please, James

Eating as a simple means of ending hunger is one of the great liberties of being alone, like going to the movies by yourself in the afternoon or, back in those golden days of youth, having a cigarette in the bathtub. It is a pleasure to not have to take anyone else's tastes into account or explain why I like to drink my grapefruit juice out of the carton. Eating, after all, is a matter of taste, and taste cannot always be good taste. The very thought of maintaining high standards meal after meal is exhausting. It discounts all the peanut butter that is available in the world.

~ Ann Patchett 'Dinner for One, Please, James' in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

Broken Relationships

Consider this my warped idea of a post for Valentine's Day, but I thought why not since the day is about relationships. The Museum of Broken Relationships is about love gained and lost.

If you've suffered from a broken heart or cut off ties with anyone or anything, the exhibits in this travelling museum will strike a chord with you and tug at your heart. On the plain, black-and-white photocopied handout given out at the museum, it says that the museum offers 'the chance to overcome any emotional collapse through art creation'. The museum came to Singapore from 8 - 19 Jan 2009 as part of the M1 Fringe Festival.

Exhibits are made up of objects donated by people like you and I. These objects are embedded with memories and emotions of the past which the donor wants to let go off. It's a form of catharsis. The exhibition has been showcased in Croatia, Berlin and Singapore was its first stop in Asia.

The museum was conceptualised after the demise of the relationship between founders Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, both of whom were born in Croatia in 1969. This is their attempt to 'create and preserve an international collection of our human emotional heritage' and to show that 'despite all cultural differences and political beliefs, we all share a common human experience'. Here are some exhibits that I took pictures of.

"It lasted 300 days too long. He gave me his mobile phone so I couldn't call him anymore."

"You talked to me of love, gave me small gifts every day; this is just one of them. The key to the heart. You turned my head; you just did not want to sleep with me. I realized how much you loved me only after you died of AIDS."

The message written by the donor of the wedding ring picture above.

Yo Quiero Ser Tu Sol

The museum wasn't big in size, but it was certainly big in heart. There were old love letters and letters sent to an ex- as a form of closure. There were many others that had stories which were overwhelmed with sorrow and loss. Others might slip a slight smile on your face brought on by its bittersweet nature. Some will wash waves of nostalgia on you. Nonetheless, there will be something you can identify with. Lonely and broken hearts will know we are not alone.

If you fancy donating something, you can get the details on how to do so from the website. The Museum of Broken Relationships is not the most famous and biggest of exhibitions, nor were the exhibits worth very much monetarily, but it's certainly one of the most poignant I've visited.

Happy Valentine's.

Tippling Club

My food buddies and I went to the Tippling Club for a leisurely Saturday lunch a few weeks ago and we were presented with some interesting molecular gastronomy fare.

I liked the open concept of the place where diners can see the staff preparing cocktails and the chef preparing certain dishes. Loved also the idea of all the bottles of alcohol hanging up there waiting to be plucked.

The lunch menu of the month.

Upon sitting down at the counter seats, we were given three carbonated grapes each. The moment you pop one into your mouth, there's a sizzling and fizzy sensation on the tongue. A very cute touch to start off the rest of the meal.

Superfinefeline ordered the Mojito which was first served with some mint leaves in a glass of hot water. The idea was for her to sniff and imbibe the smells coming out from the soaked mint leaves first before going on to the real drink.

Next up was this work of modern art with three sticks of charred green peppers with a soy miso sauce at the top. The charred green peppers aren't the most pretty things but boy did they taste good when dipped into the soy miso sauce. You have to pick up these black things with the pair of tweezers provided. The black stuff was batter which tasted very light and nice.

There was also the cured salmon slice with caviar. It wasn't too salty and went down well on the palate.

The roast scallops with compressed cucumber, melon, yoghurt emulsion and passionfruit froth was next. I felt that this dish wasn't salty enough and tasted rather bland if not for the yoghurt emulsion. The compressed cucumber and melon didn't do anything for me - couldn't taste its sweetness - even though they were supposedly compressed at don't-know-how-many atmosphere pressure so that all the essence of the cucumber and melon goes to the centre of the fruit. Could hardly taste the passionfruit froth too. Each time a course is served, the chef comes and introduces the dish. But we got lost halfway through the description each time as it all sounded so complicated. Anyway, I wasn't too impressed by the flavours of this dish.

The sweet corn and saffron soup came in the form of smoked milk ile flottante, truffle soil and baby salad that comprised of baby rocket, baby basil, baby coriander, purple shiso, and African violet. The yellow, inviting colour of the sweet corn and saffron soup which was poured in only after the dish was placed in front of us really whetted our appetite for this soup which was lightly creamy with hints of sweetness.

The main I chose was a liquorice braised pork cheek with roasted endive and thickened olive oil accompanied by bits of roasted sesame and peanuts. The menu said 'pork cheek' but the chef later said it was pork shoulder which had been braised for 48 hours with spices used in Chinese braised pork. There pork was very tasty and had hints of chilli in it, however I felt that it was just a tad dry. It would have been better had the meat been a little moister. The roasted sesame and peanuts added texture with their crunchiness.

Superfinefeline, Skinny Epicurean and Nibble & Scribble went for the poached bass. The green sauce is a wild garlic and parsley broth which was delicious went paired with the poached bass and the fondant potatoes on which the bass was sitting. I liked the bass better than the pork as I preferred the bass's lighter and more natural flavours.

Dessert came in the form of this deconstructed and post-modernistic crème brulee with strawberry soup and white chocolate crumble. This was such a lovely creation and it looked like an abstract piece of artwork that I could hang on the wall. It tasted as good as it looked. The custard had vanilla beans in it and its flavours were balanced by tartness and tangy flavours of the strawberry soup.

The other dessert on the menu was the blue cheese cream with puffed bread croutons and baby salad. The blue cheese cream tasted of mushrooms and the crunchy bread croutons and salad added texture as well as provided balance for the heavy blue cheese.

These chocolate truffles sitting on a plate of bright green basil salt were then brought to us after we asked for the bill. They were divine! So smooth and so chocolatey. It was a lovely way to end what was a very enjoyable meal what with all the interesting food pairings and food presentations.

Much credit must be given to Tippling Club's attention to detail and the nice touches they employ in the restaurant. For example, I loved the receipt being delivered in a wooden box filled with spices. When opened, aromas of star anise, cloves and cinnamon whiff ast your nose. The size of the box also allows a credit card to fit snugly into it.

I also liked these little sprigs of white orchids in brown bottles hanging in the restaurant.

There are a few tables if you prefer at a table rather than at the counter. I like that the restaurant was surrounded by glass, allowing you to look out to the lush greenery that surrounds the place. The place exudes such a fresh, tropical and relaxed feel. It would also be a great place to go for drinks as they have a wide range of cocktails on the menu. Service was also pretty good. If you want to try the food, it'd probably be better to check the place out for lunch rather than dinner if you don't want to burn too big a hole in your pocket.

Tippling Club
8D Dempsey Road
Singapore 249672
Tel: 6475 2217
reservations@tipplingclub.com

Table for One

But in practice, eating alone feels wrong. I'm so accustomed to eating with people, and serving people who are eating with people, that the social aspect of it seems inextricable from any other step on that journey from farm to table. Without the shared appreciation, a meal might as well not exist, like a book with no one to read it except the author.

~ Erin Ergenbright in "Table for One" in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

How to Cook in a New York Apartment

You need music to cook to, especially under less-than-deal conditions. Break it out. Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan for soups. Bruce Springsteen for stews. Turn up "Atlantic City" when you're making beef stroganoff. The heat coming from the stovetop is making you flushed. To find balance, cover your radiator with the red beach towel that has survived six apartment moves. Pour yourself a second glass of wine. Hum along. Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.

Stop humming.

~ Laura Dave in "How to Cook in a New York Apartment" in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections

In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you're feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you're feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let's face it: the reason you're blue is that there isn't anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it's almost always at the wrong time.

~ Nora Ephron in "Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections" in Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

The Man Who Ate the World

In The Man Who Ate the World, Jay Rayner The Observer's food critic, takes readers on his search for the perfect meal and bring us to some of the most expensive - but not necessarily ones with the best food - restaurants in the world in seven cities: Las Vegas, Moscow, Dubai, Tokyo, New York, London and Paris. Here are some excerpts I've gleaned from his book:

Las Vegas

Restaurants: Ergo, Bouchon, Bartolotta, Mesa Grill, Mix (which he hates), Nobu, Lotus of Siam

"It had struck me, as I moved from linen-covered table to linen-covered table, that the success of the new breed of Las Vegas restaurant now lay in its ability to transport you from the city in which it was located to somewhere else entirely, by sheer weight of excess. That dislocation I had experienced so acutely at Bouchon had actually been present at all the places I had eaten. In order to make you think that Las Vegas was now a really sophisticated place, which they had to make you stop thinking about Las Vegas altogether, and they had done so pretty successfully."

Moscow

Restaurants: Café Pushkin, The Peking, Sirena, Tsar's Hunt, Sumosan, Turandot

"The restaurants here do not feel like somewhere you go to eat, not even the ones like Tsar's Hunt where the food can be better than average. They feel like a redoubt, one built against a surfeit of politics and history at the door. In the restaurants of Las Vegas the fantasy was by turns charming and ludicrous, but never sinister. At the end everyone went home. Here, the fantasy restaurants feel necessary, a place of escape and therefore a vital resource for those who can afford them, and that in itself is troubling. No one cares about the food. Just as in Soviet times, they only care that they are part of an elite who can visit them."

Dubai

Restaurants: Al Mahara, Verre, World Trade Center Club, Indego, Al Nafoorah, City Star Restaurant (located in the poor - an often unseen - part of the city and costing a fraction of the price of the other restaurants visited)

"I realise now that I am still searching for the quintessential Dubai experience, the one that sums up the place in the way the Pushkin, with its mix of play food, sentimentality and sky-high prices, sums up Moscow; but it is difficult to get a handle on this city. Many of the signs are in Arabic. The spoken language is English. Most people are Indian. The food is from everywhere. The restaurant critic is confused."

Tokyo

Restaurants: Yukimura, Gagnaire, Hiramatsu, Japanese restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental (name not given in book), Tapas Molecular Bar, Okei-Sushi (Rayner loved this restaurant),

"Tokyo's restaurant world has proved a steep learning curve for me. In other cities I have visited, identifying the top restaurants has been a breeze ... In Tokyo nothing is obvious ... I had been told stories about tiny high-end places, hidden away in apartment buildings or in the basements of office blocks, serving intricate menus of extraordinary clarity and precision to just four or six people. There were dozens of them. The problem was that I didn't know any of their names, let alone how to book myself a seat."

"They [restaurants] are piled on top of each other, like children's building blocks. They are crammed down the narrow side streets between skyscrapers, squeezed in along the major boulevards, secreted away in both the basements and uppermost floors of department stores. They are everywhere. The vast majority, obviously, are Japanese, and most of them offer just one style of cooking: here a tempura shop, there a sushi joint, over there a ramen bar. In the Japanese restaurant business the specialist is venerated over the generalist."

New York

In New York, Rayner and celebrity food blogger Steve Plotnicki go on a restaurant crawl of some of New York's top restaurants in one night. It read like heaps of fun and gastronomic decadence!

Restaurants: Jean-Georges, Per Se, WD-50, Pearl Oyster Bar, Waverly Inn,

"It is nearly 12.30a.m. We have been eating for six hours. It occurs to me that in one night in New York I had managed to experience as much of this city's restaurant scene as I had in a week in all the other places I had visited. This, it seemed to me, was down to the nature of the trade here. It was adversarial, a battle of wills. Clearly, once Plotnicki had got Jean-Georges and Per Se on board, the others had felt duty-bound to play ball. And then, with the enthusiasm of New Yorkers, they had all bought into it [the restaurant crawl] fully, accepted it more as a happening than dinner. Steve Plotnicki, king of the food bloggers, had turned eating out into a competitive sport. Our only opponent had been ordinariness, and it seemed to me that we had won."

London

Restaurants: Square, Petrus, Galvin, The Greenhouse, Le Gavroche,

In explaining the bad restaurant food and the lack of regard for good food in Britain: "Both the war and, even more importantly, the nine gruelling years or rationing that followed had left the country with a collective sense that to spend proper money on sustenance was somehow indecent and that the flamboyance and display associated with the 'Continental' restaurant - all that setting fire to things! All that stuffing of one bird into another! - was a gross self-indulgence and certainly not the done thing in Britain."

"The most corrosive impact of the forces that shaped London's restaurant sector, particularly at the top end, was a by-the-numbers approach, which insisted that certain things be done not because they might be, say, fun or even merely pleasant, but because it was a 'fine-dining' restaurant, and that's what a joint with that title demanded. With little embedded restaurant tradition to pull upon, there was no real culture of professionalism and precious little skills base in the UK. All the new breed of restaurateur could do was ape what they had seen in France or the US - and all too often they were about as convincing as a six-year-old girl in Mummy's shoes."

Paris

In the culinary capital, Rayner embarks on an experiment which is like a scaled-down and posher version of SuperSize Me. He has lunch at a high-end restaurant every day for a week. If he is asked whether he wants to try the tasting/degustation menu, he will have to order it. He goes for a medical examination before and after his experiment to see if it makes any difference to his body.

Restaurants: Restaurant Alain Ducasse, Guy Savoy, Pierre Gagnaire, Le Grand Véfour, L'Astrance, Ledoyen, L'Arpège

"There was no doubt in my mind that a lot of the effect achieved by the Parisian three-star - and by high-end restaurants in general - has little to do with the food itself and everything to do with the supplementaries. Chuck enough gold at the walls, hang enough crystal off the ceiling, employ enough pretty twenty-somethings to care for your every need and follow you to the toilet and, if it's done with the requisite professionalism, most people will regard it as a good night out before they have eaten a thing. By setting the Paris restaurants up in sequence, I had cut through all that."

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Rayner writes in the first person, in a style that's very conversational where he addresses the reader directly. Like every foodie, he's obsessed with food blogs and we learn of his addiction to blogs and forums like eGullet.com, Chez Pim, Opinionated About etc.

However, he sometimes came across as hypocritical. For example, on the one hand he says he wants the authentic experience so he can give a fair assessment of the restaurant. Then on the other, he goes and makes reservations by either calling on the restaurant's PR company or pulling some string or two to wrangle a table. More often than not, he ends up getting comped or will have some extra dishes appearing on his table without prompting on his part. Of course, once you do that, you're never going to get an authentic experience as such. Later into his journey, however, he does realise that there's some conflict in his quest for authenticity and the free meals (and sometimes posh accommodation) that he's getting. Thus he decides that he should make it a rule that he pays for his meals. However, 'cos of his reputation and connections, he still got many free meals and special treatment even when he forked out money from his own pocket. But I applaud his efforts.

"When I was eating on the house, I was always somebody's bitch. That was something I didn't like. Somehow, from now on, I would have to pay for every meal myself. Of course, it would be expensive, but if I didn't do that, I would never find the type of experiences I was hunting for. I would never understand what was happening out there. The journey would be wasted."

Though it's a book that's not necessarily accessible since not many of us can really afford to travel and eat the way he did, it's a piece of literature that's delectable enough for the literary foodie especially with Rayner's acerbic wit and self-deprecating humour.

Matchmaker

I received this text message at midnight last night from old pal Van Tan (we go back to primary and secondary school!):

"It's official :) thank you for introducing us!"

Ha, that's now Good Friend No. 2 I've helped hook up with someone! I'm so happy for her! And I'm feeling quite pleased with myself. Haha.

Now people, return the favour! :p