Gastroville | Exploring the bounties of nature

Putting your life at stake with a meal

By Mikael | Published: January 29, 2010

Is it worth risking your life with a meal? I didn’t reflect over it before I sat in the taxi on my way to Yamadaya Fugu in Tokyo. The barman at my hotel had just before I left the hotel told me that he would never eat fugu, or blowfish, and that people die from eating it. Many more than what is reported, he claimed. I thought he joked, but in the taxi it got obvious to me that he might not have. I did get some second thoughts on my way in the taxi, but somehow it was too late to pull out from the meal at this point and if I did I would look like a coward. Surely a restaurant that has been around for generations and that is specialized in fugu would be the safest place to try it. Then again, even Tiger Woods can make a triple bogey.

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Buying and cooking spiny lobster and how to avoid disappointments

By Mikael | Published: December 29, 2009

Langoustepdt

I wrote this post some time ago but never got around to publish it. Being in the middle of the festive season, it seems appropriate to push the post button now and it will buy me more time to finalize posts related to Japan.

One of the most sought after lobsters is perhaps the spiny lobster from the Mediterranean so I will write about that this time. But the principles are the same for any kind of lobster.

I frankly don’t know many people who see the big deal with spiny lobsters or regular blue lobsters. When disappointing, and it often is, a spiny lobster it is just a chunk of really boring protein. And it can be a chewy chunk too.

To succeed with any kind of lobster recipe, whether it is European blue lobster, American lobster, spiny lobster or slipper lobsters, the quality of the lobster is essential. If not of great quality, it can indeed be one of the most disappointing expensive ingredients on the planet. But if it is of top notch quality, the flavors and textures can be sensational. Yes, at its best, to my palate it is one of the truly great ingredients. So what determines the quality of lobsters?

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Tidbits from Japan

By Mikael | Published: December 6, 2009

I am working on several posts from the trip to Japan I did with Pim and David Kinch. It was a great trip. We tried a lot of restaurants, saw many incredible things and I brought back lots of food and material from Japan.

Right now I am busy trying to figure out how to ignite the binchotan I bought and how to keep it burning. Well, I kind of did succeed yesterday and grilled red mullet filets under a burning piece of binchotan. The result was the best cooking technique for red mullet I have come across. Simply astonishing. When I told David in Japan that the first thing I would do with the binchotan when I got home was just that with red mullets. That is a no-brainer, David responded. He is right.

Here are some tidbits.

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Fugu or blowfish.

Posted in Cooking | 6 Comments

Kawamura – THE steakhouse in Tokyo

By Mikael | Published: November 29, 2009

filet

If I ever were to write a 50-must things to do in one’s culinary life, there are a couple of things that would be obvious choices, some of them are fries fried in horse fat, Mediterranean deep water shrimps (aristeus antennatus) directly off the boats – of course you are munching down the whole shrimp including the shell with the seawater still in the head -, live tiny squids still crawling when put in the mouth, aged (plus 10 years) preserved foie gras, Corsican tiger veal and buckwheat fed duck. Just to be clear, eating at the Fat Duck or el bulli would not make it at all to my 50-musts list.

On my Tokyo trip a few new such obvious items on the must do list were added. One of them is to eat at the Kawamura steakhouse in Tokyo. Calling it a steakhouse wrongfully suggests it is a large restaurant, which it isn’t. Shoebox operation is a better description.

Posted in Cooking | 24 Comments

Off to Japan

By Mikael | Published: November 20, 2009

I am off to Japan. It is a trip I have been looking forward to for some time. We have a very interesting schedule. I have many small projects I while I am there. One of them is to find out how important the provenance of fish is in Japan. I will be blogging when there. In Europe few seem to care anymore where fish comes from. Not even whether it is farmed or not. It is a sad development. Just one quick recent example. These red mullets were caught in deep current waters in the Mediterranean. The color suggests they should be named brown mullets not red mullets. Their stomachs were cramped with shrimps. The belly smelled of shrimp. The mullets had a very delicate flavor somewhat reminiscent of shrimp. They were absolutely glorious.

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Crousti-bleu – That is how I want my beef

By Mikael | Published: November 20, 2009

I am difficult with my beef. When in restaurants, I tried for a long time to explain in detail how I wanted it cooked, but with little success. I suppose a stressed chef hit by 40 or more covers doesn’t have the time to listen to a maitre d´ who explains what the pain in the ass client in the dining room has just instructed him how the steak should be cooked.

Then one day when I was about to give up, I found the two-word description I had been searching. Crousti-bleu. I want my steak crispy on the exterior, well seared but not charred with a good flavor from the Maillard reaction. Then inside I want it blue. Body temperature, but not warm, so that no liquid would run out from the beef when cutting it. Warm enough to optimize the beef flavors of beef.

Croustibleu

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Paleo-style beef tartar

By Mikael | Published: October 8, 2009

There is one ingredient that the love of to me is a litmus test if someone is a real gourmet or not. It is bone marrow. I am partly joking, but I am also partly serious. I adore bone marrow and I know only very few serious foodies who don’t share that view. I have a preference for raw bone marrow. You can spread it raw on a warm toast or you can add it to beef tartar.

Paleotartar

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The black art of murdering fish

By Mikael | Published: September 10, 2009

I have a hypothesis. I have been thinking about it for some time. It makes sense.

Merou_3

I assume that everyone who reads this blog knows what ike jime is. For those whose minds it has slipped for one or the other inexplicable reason, you can read about it here, here and here. Even if it hasn’t slipped your mind, I highly recommend those blog posts anyway. They are great. For those in a hurry, ike jime is a technique for slaughtering fish by which the brain is spiked and the spinal cord is destroyed by a wire or needle that is pushed into the spinal cord.

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Scorpion of the sea with cuttlefish-“Bolognese”

By Mikael | Published: September 7, 2009

Chapondemer_3

When I talked to David Kinch of Manresa on the phone the other week he mentioned that he had been doing a Bolognese kind of sauce using cuttlefish instead of meat. It sounded intriguing and caught my attention. I asked him for the particulars, but he just responded, got to run Mikael, talk to you later. In a sense it was good he did not have time to elaborate. It is more fun to play around with my fantasy not being influenced by too detailed instructions. Afterwards, it is always interesting to compare how in this case David had done his Bolognese.

Chapondemer_1

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Caviar of toro

By Mikael | Published: September 4, 2009

torocaviar2

Some posts ago I wrote about toro-spread with sour dough crackers. It was a great find to make spread from toro, o-toro of course. So simple as a preparation that it made me wonder why I had not thought of it before. And it was good. No, it was not just good, it was simply fantastic. Yet, after I had done it a few times it made me restless. I couldn’t sleep. The flavor was remarkable, especially with not too oily tuna belly that had been rested enough to put on those complex tastes so typical for tuna belly. It was like the ultimate baby food, which perhaps perplexed me since by default I don’t like baby food appearance in food. Good as it was, there was something missing. It was begging for contrasts and complexity to fulfill its true potential. Over the course of a good week, I tried what seemed to be everything with it. Every time the inescapable conclusion was that it was best in its most natural state with the sourdough crackers. But something was missing.

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Squids

By Mikael | Published: September 3, 2009

squid_2

I like squids, but I am so often, not to say always, disappointed when served them in restaurants. It is really simple, I want them fresh and I want them very gently cooked. Frankly, there are very few places that offer squids to my satisfaction. I only buy them myself when they are in the pristine condition shown on the picture above. If not, it is better to cook and eat something else. This time of the year is a good time for squid in the Mediterranean. I got the ones on the image yesterday.

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They were 20 centimeters long and still crawling when I got home with them. One sign of freshness is that they either move or respond to being touched upon. If they are not responding they may still be fine if they still have that translucent appearance as on the picture. Also important is that the skin is undamaged. Most squids sold have been frozen. Frozen squids look like on the picture below. The picture was actually taken on a famous fish market in the Mediterranean region and I suppose most people who buy them believe they are fresh. I suppose they once were. Before they froze them that is.

Posted in Cooking, Ingredients | 12 Comments

Eating oysters and a simple way to cook them

By Mikael | Published: September 1, 2009

Not everyone likes oysters. I adore them. A lot of people behave strangely when eating oysters. First they pour lemon and various condiments on the oyster to mitigate the oyster flavor. Then with a glass of wine ready in one of their hands, they take the oyster shell in the other hand, put it to their mouths, tilt the shell and quickly swallow the oyster and instantly wash it down with the wine. It is a bit like blowing ones noose backwards. Normally, I put nothing on my oysters and I chew them. I chew them thoroughly and savor the flavors of oyster that develop on the palate. The quality of an oyster is like with any food partly determined by its flavor; the length and complexity. I only drink the wine I have with my oysters when the flavors start to fade after each oyster.

oysters4

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Random notes from tuna land

By Mikael | Published: August 26, 2009

tonno_1

In the spring, the blue fin tuna go the Mediterranean to mate. Many of these huge fascinating creatures have travelled from far away. Some have spent the winter here. It is during the full moons that they mate. There are fewer of them, at least the wild ones. Few seem to dispute that. Just how bad the situation is for the tuna in the Mediterranean is hard to say. The Western Atlantic tuna is on the verge of extinction. The Mediterranean tuna is not likely going extinct any soon but it is partly due to some relatively bizarre reasons. Some 15 years ago, the tuna fishing trade took some odd turns. Due to a growing demand from sushi restaurants in Japan and elsewhere for tuna all year around, there was an unsatisfied market for fat tuna. To meet this demand, tuna fattening farms were set up.

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