Pandan whatio?

In my post on Bubbleology last week, I mentioned an ingredient called 'pandan' but failed to elaborate on what it was. In case you were wondering, I fortunately happen to have secured a bunch of pandan leaves to show you.

Pandan leaves

Meet pandanus amaryllifolius, a well-known face in the South East Asian food circuit. Usually appearing at foodie taste parties alongside coconut milk, pandan's role is to give dishes a heady scent and flavours a long finish. It's very distinct as a flavour, though, so it escapes comparisons to other foods. I can't say it's anything like basil or coriander or curry leaf or lemongrass. However, if you try to imagine an open field or a forest in South East Asia with lush vegetation, you might be able to guess at the taste of pandan. In fact, the closest I can get to describing pandan's scent is this: it's what the tropical rainforest in Singapore smells like after a heavy rain shower.

Bruegger's Soup

I have been having a lot of soup for lunch lately. Why? Because at the over-ripe age of 37, I am going through orthodontic treatment with braces. Mid-life crisis, you ask? Perhaps. Truffle is worried that it is a form of gateway treatment for other cosmetic adjustments. I have assured her that I will not be having a boob job any time soon, though I might consider Botox in my 50s. Heck, by then, everyone will be self-administering the stuff!

Bubbleology, Soho

On some nights, I wish Central London had an alternative evening-drink locale to the stinky pub (featuring sticky floors and faded upholstery) or the flashy bar (featuring ladies of the night). You know, a nice place where you can just kick back with friends, dress casually, and not be surrounded by bodies pressing into you with their lager-breath or women's voices getting screechier as the alcohol absorption increases. (Admit it, sometimes we all want an alternative to that sort of evening!)

In many Asian cities, this 'alternative' is actually a well-developed genre, and there are hosts of coffee chains, local tea shops and ice-cream parlours staying open late (even well past midnight on weekends), offering young people a relaxed, civilised place to get out of the house. One such place is the bubble tea café.

Bubble tea originated in Taiwan in the 1980s and is named for the bubbles that develop on the surface when shaken. It comes in black or fruit tea combos and can feature plump tapioca pearls at the bottom of the cup, slurped up through wide straws. For me, bubble tea means shopping in a hot tropical climate and stopping for some cool refreshment, or hanging out with friends after a movie with no one getting drunk around you.

This is why I was especially pleased to be invited to the launch of Bubbleology, a new bubble tea café in Soho. Co-founder, Assad Khan, worked in a New York City investment bank for a few years before returning to the UK. Along with that infectious NYC enthusiasm for commerce, he brought back with him the idea for a chain of bubble tea cafés. Aware of the drink's Taiwanese origins, he approached that country's representation to the UK and was soon dispatched to Taipei, where he learned how to make bubble tea from the masters and identified the best suppliers for the specialist equipment he needed. Back in London, he approached Dan Einzig, designer of the successful chain of young, fun and family-friendly Giraffe restaurants. Not having cash to give him upfront, Assad offered Dan Einzig an equity stake in the idea (the two later brought in angel investors). All in all, from putting the idea in motion to opening the first café in Soho, the process took just 10 months. I don't think anyone can fail to be impressed by that.

Koya, Soho

Sorry for the long absence, peeps. I've been working on an interesting piece, which still needs some attention. In the mean time, Frangelico and I were in Soho last night, for a press launch of a place I can't talk about yet (online press embargo until Thursday, you see). After the event-that-shall-not-be-named, we thought we'd head to nearby Koya, a Japanese restaurant that's become hugely popular in a very short space of time.

Koya's specialty is udon, which is made fresh in-store every day. You can get it atsu-atsu (hot udon with hot soup - the dashi is made fresh daily too), hiya-atsu (cold udon with hot soup on the side), or hiya-hiya (you work it out). It's very hard to find good udon in London, so I'm not surprised at how this place has taken off. The quality of the udon's texture rivals my previous best-find at Defune (although the taste at Defune remains unbeaten).

Transatlantic Food Tasting

One of the many benefits of being a food blogger is that people take your tasting skills rather seriously. Within a span of two weeks, I was invited not to one, but to two food tastings - one in Portugal (see earlier post on trip to Martinhal) and the other right here in the country club in our little town of Davidson, NC.  Martinhal was looking to expand their lunch menu for their casual beach and pool restaurant and our country club was looking to hire a new chef. Both food committees were small (10-14 people) and I was honored to have been invited to both.

I was expecting both experiences to be vastly different. I expected the tasting in Martinhal  to include intricate hues of sophisticated tastes and did not expect as much complexity here in Davidson. I was surprised. In Europe, there seemed to be a return to refined simplicity, with basic herbs and simple flavors of garlic and olive oil bringing out the best in high quality seafood and meat. In the US, there is a burning desire to encompass the entire world of taste in one sitting. "Make it pop!  Where is the burn? I want a full flavored meal! What is so creative about this dish?" Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed and cherished both tastings, like one would cherish two very different children.

There was one overarching theme though, the folks who organize these tastings don't necessarily want to know if YOU like the food, they want to know if you think everyone ELSE will. In Martinhal, the one question that was asked a few times was, "but will the Portuguese like it?" The answer? "60% of our clientele are British..."  The question raised here in Davidson was,"yeah, this guy makes excellent seafood.  But how many club members enjoy seafood?" I love seafood, so I swiftly changed the subject both times this question was asked.

Here are some of the highlights of the food tasting in Martinhal.

Tender, fresh from the sea, succulent Portuguese sardines in vinegar and olive oil with slices of garlic.

Medium rare steak with clams - plenty of garlic, olive oil and rosemary. Fan-bloody-tastic! A nice red to wash it down! (Chilli Padi, please send me the name of the wine...)

Shrimp. Whoo boy. Garlic, garlic, garlic, olive oil, olive oil, flavor flavor flavor! Yumm.

Superb lobster dressed in a cotton dress to show its true beauty. So no heavy white sauce with melted cheese to cover it all up!

What were we served in North Carolina?

Top rate sushi! This Mexican chef of Japanese and Italian descent had driven 120 miles to the NC coast to get the best fish for our tasting.

He was indeed creative. This was a lunch salad with a grilled cheese sandwich and fried egg as the main components. One of the best salads I have ever had.

Steak with prosciutto and tomato dressed with a vanilla-bean sauce. I have only had this type of sauteed tomatoes in Indian food. This was the winner that night.

Rack of lamb served Osso Bucco style. Hmmm, I would rather have rack of lamb grilled or real Osso Bucco... But it looked good and it made a statement about his creativity.

My final favorite - Salmon Made Three Ways.

So, that's all folks! If you would like to invite us to other tastings, Cinnamon and Truffle would be happy to oblige!

Best,
Cinnamon

Martinhal - The Benefits of Being a Sister of a Hotelier

Truffle and I are two sisters out of four. Truffle and I have written about sister number 4, Rice Krispie, but have yet to mention sister Premier, Chilli Padi. The reason is that I had been waiting to visit her in Portugal, which I recently did.

Chilli Padi and I are only three years apart. We grew up together as a pair and Truffle and Rice Krispie, much younger than us were the other pair. Chilli and I fought and argued like typical sisters, but she took care of me too. She always looked out for me at school, took me to her friends' birthday parties and she was my go-to person for homework. There was no way I could compete with her and I knew early on not to bother. She was stronger, smarter, and more outgoing. Teachers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins were all very impressed with her and always commented on how intelligent she was as a child. My fifth grade Chinese teacher once said to me, "Your sister is so smart!  Her Mandarin is so good! What happened to you?" Mind you, I did have a couple of things going for me too. I was the cute one. I had chubby cheeks and a mean pout. I'd also like to think that I had an artistic flair - I was good at drawing, I was pretty good at school plays, and could always make Chilli laugh. 

We also had very different tastes. She liked chocolate ice-cream, I liked strawberry. She liked savory, I liked sweet. She liked meat, I liked fruit. We might have been different then, but not anymore. I loved all the food at her hotel and resort in Portugal.

Err, yes, you read correctly. My sister continued on that stellar path and she and her husband, Mr. Dessert, have developed, built and now run Martinhal Beach Resort & Hotel.  Not only that, they managed to pop out four lovely children while building a business. We visited them recently for Spring Break and had the best family holiday ever! The hotel and resort is gorgeous!  The architecture and design is modern-contemporary and just stunning. The place is filled with great art and the spa is top notch. The most memorable for yours truly? The cuisine at Martinhal.

Here are just a few highlights:

As Dunas restaurant (The Sand Dunes). Their more casual restaurant by the beach with the best seafood in the region. Portugal is known for fresh seafood served grilled with a side of potatoes and salad/vegetables.

   

Seafood lunch platter. You can't have this combo unless you sister runs the place!

 Garlic shrimp! Yum. You have to peel them with your hands which means you get extra flavor on your fingers.

Grilled fish, Portuguese style, but taken a few levels up Martinhal-style. 

Clams with garlic and cilantro/coriander. Would you believe my American kids loved this dish!  

 Portuguese coffee to wash it down.

O Terraco (The Terrace) restaurant where breakfast and dinner are served.

Breakfast. A picture tells a thousand words...

 Porto Branco. Pre-dinner drink in lounge.

I have more pictures but not enough time. Chilli and Mr. Dessert were kind enough to invite us to a food tasting for As Dunas restaurant. So, much more in my next post!

Chilli Padi and Mr Dessert, congratulations on Martinhal. We are very proud of you. Chilli Padi, I expected and will continue to expect nothing less from you. Love you!

Cinnamon

Pastel de Nata - some things do change

Truffle has been very patiently waiting for me to post for the past couple of weeks. The first week we were away on Spring break in Portugal. Last week, Chocolate was very ill - high fever, vomiting etc, the in-laws landed, work has been hectic, the pond needed cleaning, the butterfly bushes needed pruning (timing is of the essence) and we still haven't unpacked. Oh, and I went in search of a Havanese puppy and think I found him!  More on him later. At this point, I want to put down some of the notes I put together in my head during our trip to Portugal. The following is the first in a series.

Did you know I lived in Portugal many years ago? It was the Fall of 1999. I went to Portugal to study Portuguese in the Universidade de Lisboa for a year. I finished the first semester but not the second as I ended up marrying Prince Charming in the Spring of 2000 in San Francisco. The five months I spent in Lisbon were wonderful, yet bittersweet, and I will always have fond memories of that city.

One of the things I loved about Lisbon was its Pastel de Nata - a flaky tart filled with egg custard and baked until the top burns unevenly. I suppose it is my Creme Brulee II (see post on Creme Brulee). Cafe life is very much part of one's day in Lisbon and we would stop to have a coffee and pastry twice a day at a minimum. Pastries are varied in Portugal, though usually with the following ingredients: milk, eggs, sugar and canela (cinnamon!). Oh my goodness, maybe that's why I called myself Cinnamon! No, it is because cinnamon is Prince Charming's favorite flavoring and it's a cross-cultural ingredient. In addition to its Western use in desserts, it is used in meat curries in the East. Anyway, I digress. 

I would usually have a Galao (tall coffee with milk) or a Meia-Leite (espresso with milk) to go with my Pastel de Nata or two Pasteis de Nata... The best place for this Pastel was, probably still is, Belem. A historical place in Lisbon by the ocean front. If you couldn't go all the way there, the second place was the Lisbon airport. I would always stop at the cafe on the way in or out. It was a little tradition of mine.

We went to Portugal for Spring break, to visit my older sister, Chili Padi, in Sagres and we had to fly via Lisbon. We had, oh 3-4 hours at the Lisbon airport (which I couldn't recognize - it was far bigger and was much flashier with shiny Lacoste stores) and I very excitedly dragged my family to a cafe to order some breakfast. I haven't spoken Portuguese in 12 years and gathered up some rusting words from a web-covered part of my brain, "Um Bolo de Arroz, dos cafes e dos Pasteis de Nata, por favor." Wait, coffee is masculine and Pastel is feminine, so it should have been duas Pasteis!  Or is it the other way around? Is it dos or is it dois? Man, I didn't think my Portuguese was this bad! My daughter, Chocolate, turned to me and said, "Don't forget my orange juice!"  The poker-faced woman behind the counter broke out in fluent English to say, "we don't have juice, we only have nectar (European pulp-juice)." "Er, that's fine. I'll have a donut too. Thanks."

Things do change. 12 years ago, no one sellling Pasteis spoke English. The pastel was much better then, too.

Cinnamon

Piri Piri Sausalito

This post has nothing to do with the little town across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. Sorry. I happened to pass through Sausalito on the way from Muir Woods back to San Francisco, and I really liked the sound of the name and was intrigued by the different pronunciations in American-English (sauce-a-lido) and Spanish (sow-sa-lee-to). A 'sausal' is a willow, and Sausalito therefore derives its name from little willows. So now this post does have something to do with the town after all.

Anyway, here are some pictures of our piri piri sauce-a-lido from last night. Hint, hint, Cinnamon!

Paprika, chili, red onion, lemon zest, lemon juice, white wine vinegar

Covered with basil

Sautéed red peppers awaiting addition of more peppers and chicken

Et voilá!

The recipe is Jamie's, from that fabulous new book I talked about back in January. Except that I had to use green chili instead of the real piri piri. So, in truth, what this post isn't about at all is the piri piri. Still, that doesn't mean Cinnamon's off the hook just yet...

Love

Truffle

So, what's with Truffle and this salt thing?

Regular readers might have heard my rant about there being too much salt in food, in restaurant food in particular. Since it's World Salt Awareness Week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain.

As I've said before, many restaurants over-salt their food, either because they're trying to cover up the tastelessness of poor ingredients, or because they've just gotten used to cooking that way. As restaurant-goers' palates become used to having a lot of salt in what they eat, the demand seems to be going up in an ever increasing spiral.

Just say 'no' (photo source)

Like the rest of life, there is never an up without a down (a version of Newton's Third Law), and there are health consequences to having too much of this stuff in your diet. Seriously, a list of the side effects reads like a Who's Who of undesirable health conditions: heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, stomach cancer, osteoporosis, obesity, dementia, a predisposition to diabetes and Alzheimer's... the list goes on. But in this day and age, when we're being warned of so many dangers posed by so many things (salt, cholesterol, alcohol, etc.), it can be hard to keep on top of what's at risk of causing what, and why it is exactly that too much salt isn't ideal. From reading around, here are some key facts:

Spuntino, Soho

Spuntino is one of the newest arrivals in Soho - having opened its doors just this week - and the London foodie scene has been all abuzz about it. So, Frangelico and I thought we'd take a break from my detox and check it out.

Here in the UK, there is routinely plenty of nostalgia for days and glories past, but a new angle is a twingeing in the heart for all things Prohibition (except for, given 24-hour drinking laws, the not-actually-legal part). Speakeasy-type cocktail bars have mushroomed around the city, and it now appears that restaurants want in on the action too.

Located on Rupert Street (not far from sister restaurant, Polpo), Spuntino is very much into the subterfuge aesthetic. The restaurant's name is barely noticeable in broad daylight, with the appearance of having been thinly scratched with chalk onto tarnished metal sheets. It must be practically invisible at night.

The vibe continues inside, with jangly blues rock and a Prohibition-era-inspired cocktails list, offset by the waiter/bartenders of a heavily-tattooed rockabilly persuasion. Guests sit up high at a large counter, which curves around the main floor under a high ceiling. A wall behind the counter is covered in exposed white tiling, with blue-grey mosaic up near the ceiling. (They speculate that the building used to house a butcher's.)

The cocktails list is conveniently short and primarily one-worded, which means that the staff's knowledge thereof needs a tiny bit of improvement. Our waiter was very forthcoming and talked us through the list, but upon being asked what a couple of the cocktails contained, he had to go away and check with someone else. (I didn't mind this too much, to be honest, because he was very polite, and I wasn't in a hurry to go anywhere.) There's a mix of sweet and bitter on the list - the Negroni is a good choice if you want bitter, because the campari/vermouth/gin combo is a good prelude to the food.

To go with the drinks, we had a side of the eggplant chips with a fennel yoghurt. Very nice. The batter of the chips was appropriately thin and with a grainy texture, while the eggplant within was molten as a contrast. The yoghurt's fennel aroma came forward and filled the senses.

As with Polpo, the mains are a bit hit and miss. The truffled egg toast was a delight, with the flavours balancing artfully - a messy, yolky centre oozing over thick, wholesome toast, with truffle lifting it up, and a grated, cheesy melt keeping it grounded. This is going to be a dish everyone talks about.

The Mac & Cheese also deserves mention, for this reason: it's the closest thing I've found to real American Mac & Cheese in London. Usually, when trying to reproduce this import, the Brits will choose being true to the cheese over the authenticity of the dish, and you get a chewy brick, heavy on chewy cheese. That is what ought to be called, rightfully, a pasta bake made with macaroni-shaped pasta. A real Mac & Cheese, on the other hand, is a gentle and creamy phenomenon. This is what you get at Spuntino. I would have liked more flavour and less blandness, though, and I hope future iterations will sort that.

So, now for the misses. The baby gem salad with egg and creamed cod sauce - although fresh and given a bit of get-go by the egg and croutons - was extremely salty. It was so salty that we couldn't finish it, despite craving the contrast of the greens and vinaigrette-tang to the rest of the meal. As I've said before, London restaurants over-salt their food, and this has got to stop. (Salt Awareness Week is coming just in time.) A couple of other dishes were very plain: the calamari, chick peas and ink, which didn't feel well-conceived or executed; and the popcorn with cayenne, which didn't register at all.

The desserts list is - like the cocktails - short, but sweet. Our waiter recommended the peanut butter and jelly, and we went with it, no questions asked. It came as a pleasant surprise, therefore, that the 'toast' sandwiching the jelly was in fact peanut butter ice cream. Given that I'd had an out-of-this-world peanut butter sorbet in San Francisco recently, there was no way this ice cream was going to be able to compete. Nevertheless, peanut butter isn't something that often fails to please the taste buds, and I liked the inventiveness and attractiveness of the dish. The only thing that stopped me in my tracks was that, upon being asked, a waiter told us that the ice cream was made with Skippy peanut butter. Now, Skippy may be Skippy, but I've never seen a version of it in the UK that doesn't have hydrogenated fats (aka trans-fats) in it. Fork down, dessert unfinished.

Overall, my assessment is this: worth a try, if you're in the area and don't mind waiting with punters on a narrow Soho pavement opposite a live peep show. I won't be making Spuntino one of my favourites, and I wouldn't go out of my way to get there for just the food (and definitely no queueing), but it's a thoughtfully fitted-out place in which to feel the Soho vibe, enjoy a drink in a fun-comfy-smart setting, and try out a few tasty dishes.

Love

Truffle

Update

Because of the natural limits on how much two people can eat, we didn't get to try the Sliders (mini burgers, named either because they're so tender they slide down your throat or because they're so small they slide off the skillet). The omission had been nagging me a little, so we went back the next day to try them. (This was also a question of doing justice to the menu offering, you understand.)

The beef and bone marrow was passable - it was tender (from the marrow) and had an alluring addition of thyme, which complemented the gruyère. The lamb with pickled cucumber, though, was awesome - very flavourful and worthy of a second order. The brioche on which the sliders are served aren't anything to write home about - a little stiff and manufactured.

The zucchini pizzetta was good - with chopped mint and chilli. (Again: go easy on the salt, guys!) Next down the line was the sliced sausage with lentils and radicchio, which was ok - nothing to offend, but nothing jumping out at you either.

For dessert, if you like cheesecake, you'll have to try the brown sugar cheesecake. This was delicious. It has all the satisfying solidity of a baked cheesecake and is superbly elevated by the brown sugar. The grappa prunes and syrup, while not exactly a complement, presented a balance, rendering the next bite of cheesecake a delightful surprise all over again.

The Pancake Day that (almost) didn't happen

You might recall that, on Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day), I went in search of pancakes in San Francisco. Well, as reported previously, the café was gone, and I'd walked all the way into the heart of the Tenderloin just to find that out. You're likely to have heard of the Tenderloin district if you've been in SF - probably in a conversation with the concierge, following the word "avoid" and preceding "at any time of day or night". Seriously, it's not that bad, but it does inspire a vague feeling of discomfort. Legend has it that the policemen who walked this then-dangerous beat were paid more and were therefore able to buy better cuts of meat, earning the locale its name.

I'd decided I wasn't seeing any pancakes that day, put it down to foodie misadventure, and wandered into a nearby kitchen shop. There was plenty there to keep me entertained for a while: inventive cooking utensils, cookbooks, and low-price cookware (relative to London at any rate), with a couple of cooking demonstrations thrown in. One of these involved something called Ebelskiver, which on closer inspection turned out to be Danish pancakes.

This is how they looked as they were being made. Pancake batter was spooned into an oiled pan shaped thus, and a teaspoon was used to drop dollops of raspberry jam into the centre.

The pancakes were turned over with curvy wooden implements. I heard knitting needles can be used too.

I didn't particularly feel like eating something filled with jam at that moment (I'd have preferred just the fluffy pancake), so I didn't try any. But at least I got a visual on some pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and managed to get some photographic evidence.

I was chatting to a couple of science teachers in front of this demonstration - a Euro/American couple teaching physics and chemistry in Beijing - who were in San Francisco for a conference. While I was firing away with my camera, they then struck up a conversation with another spectator. Just before that person left, I overheard that she was Danish and that she'd just moved to San Francisco from Singapore. Oh the things I might have told you about Danish Ebelskiver and her experiences in Singapore if I'd managed to speak to her! There's another term for the lexicon: foodie missed opportunity.

Love

Truffle

Versatile Blogger Award, or Finding a Way

The good thing about jet lag (yes, there is something) is that you're sometimes up in the early hours, in that time of day when you can still hear the universe humming to itself softly. You can still hear the Earth grinding on its axis, turning its face, seeking out the sun. And the sun slowly obliges, as the world around you welcomes it from its unceasing travels, where it's already brought day to others before you. I can hear birds emerging and singing into a space that's still theirs, and dawn's light stirring the dew from the trees. It is a drawn out moment of expectation. And in that moment, there is such clarity as does not exist at any other time of day.

My acquaintance with this started when I was at school in the Cotswolds, having flown back from holidays in Singapore. Through my time at school and then at university, I would (for a few days after travelling) wake up at around 4 or 5 o'clock and have that special time in the morning all to myself, to listen to the Earth turning. Coming back to a new term, I was always excited about the new beginnings - new things to learn, seeing friends again, hearing about their holidays and learning more about their lives, a new season to look forward to (usually Spring or Autumn), more steps to take to get closer to where I wanted to be. And during that time of humming before dawn, my mind would be clear, and I would be centred. Gradually, other sounds - the early milk round, tyres washing along the street, footsteps walking to work, the post slapping down onto a rug - would creep in, overtaking what I'd been listening to. I'd move on, shower and breakfast, walk or cycle to classes, start the day.