Chef Life: Musing on speed and skill, plus why Bearnaise is like an abusive boyfriend. It always threatens to split.

egg yolks and a splash of white wine vinegar

A few years ago, I bought Thomas Keller's cookbook "The French Laundry". I used to thumb through the pages and see photos of chefs washing freshly picked greens with sunbeams streaming through the windows while they gazed happily across pristine vineyards and rolling California hills. The only thing missing from these scenes were the Disney birds and bunnies.

Tapas in Seville or Sevilla

This is my final post on our trip to Spain and it feels a little strange writing it.  I am currently in an expat ghetto in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong and am looking out over the harbour as it is wracked by rains.  The humidity, the spices, the textures in the food couldn't be different from Spain.  But there is one major similarity between Hong Kong and Spain.  Good food is ubiquitous.  Any bar, cafe, hole in the wall, plastic stool under tarp or other establishment offers you the potential for a good meal which England and London can't match.

To show what a food dork I am let me tell you a story.  Before (re)visiting Seville this time I lay in bed after our meal at the El Bulli hotel (here) until 4am on my blackberry researching which places to go to.  I gained inspiration from the Ginger Gourmand's tapas hunting trip to Jerez (here) and also the Gourmet Chick's trip to Seville (here). Then, I remembered what I said above and thought stuff it, we can't go wrong and left it to chance.

Chef Life: So you think you can slice a tomato?

Everything I thought I knew about cooking has just changed. It's not that I can't cook. Or that I've been operating under the delusion that I am a good cook and someone's proven me wrong. No, this is restaurant cooking. Being a great home cook doesn't really apply, and I found this out when I learned how to slice a tomato.

Right

I was a week into my new job working as a chef at the Victoria. I had been helping Scotch Egg on the larder for a few days, and then suddenly I was placed on the sauce section. I'm not sure about other restaurants, but the chefs at the Victoria know how to work every section whether it be larder, sauce, or pastry. It works well because when things get hairy, everyone has the knowledge to jump in and help.

Restaurant Review: El Bulli Hotel - La Alqueria in Hacienda Bonazuzu outside of Seville

Now let me just say this.  I had no real desire to go to El Bulli and am not in any way disappointed by the fact that after about 6 years of trying and getting up to 20 of my friends to send emails requesting reservations on my behalf each year that they are closing.  Of course, what I really wanted to go to is the offshoot, the second in class, the emulation, the El Bulli outpost that is La Alqueria in Hacienda Bonazuzu just outside Seville.

Tarifa in Spain (the food and the kiteboarding)

There was a moment when I wondered what Jen and I were doing in Tarifa in Spain. That moment came when I was waist deep in a salt water lagoon by the side of the motorway trying to stop my kite from crashing into the road. My hands were bloody from a combination of the salt and friction on the kitesurfing bar. I then turned round to see Jen crying with frustration at being smashed repeatedly into the 2ft deep water by her kite. Oh, and it was raining, in June in Southern Spain (unheard of).

Then we drove back to Tarifa and began to eat and it all became right.

Restaurant Review: Ozlem off Kingsland Road (and groups of bloggers)

Jen and I haven't been to too many restaurants with other bloggers as we have the good fortune to be going out with fellow food obsessives.  There is therefore no need for an excuse to travel halfway across London in search of something fried or seared and we are all the happier if it is in some ridiculous location.

I can only presume that one of the major reasons food bloggers eat together is that our passion for food is slightly perverse and sometimes your friends or partners just  can't be enticed to that out of the way place in Dalston for 5% better lahmacun.  I wrote this post whilst Jen and I were in Andalucia in Spain and days were planned around its regional delicacies or where the next seafood hit came from.  Art, culture, history; they were all adjuncts to the food.

Restaurant Review: Bar Boulud in Knightsbridge (and why Giles Coren is wrong)

Giles Coren is wrong and I went to Bar Boulud with the intention of showing this.  Semi- unfortunately it was not the restaurant to do it with.

I got back from holiday and had a flick through The Times at my parent's house.  I don't normally read The Times as I like immigrants and don't care about celebrity gossip.  I was curious to see what Giles Coren was ranting about this week in his review of Bar Boulud and found him high in the ridiculous stakes with his views on anonymity.

Giles Coren's stance on anonymous dining is simple: restaurants "can only serve [Coren] the same food they serve to little old you".  Well putting the patronising aside from a man whose daddy was a very successful journalist, he is wrong.  They can serve very different food.  And as he seems to accept the service can be different, very different.

Chef Life: Service, please!

We were in Spain for 9 days, and even though I had nothing to do but lay around in the sun, I was dreaming about my new job as a chef. The other night, I sent Tom into hysterics. He was awake and heard me say in my sleep, "I have to plate up the beetroot. I have to plate up the beetroot." I think it's pretty clear service consumes me at the moment.

Restaurant Review: Goodman in Mayfair

London seems to go through food phases and now is definitely the time of the infantile.  It is burgers and pizzas.  And why not?  When done well they are some of the purest and best dishes one can eat.  But then, inevitably and like a spoiler comes the question; which is the best one?  Where can you get the best burger, the crispiest pizza?  It becomes infectious and a game of one up manship that unfortunately magazines like Time Out have become in thrall to.  Each issue is now Top Ten "blah" and in being so loses a certain depth and appreciation of the variety on offer.

Restaurant Review: Little Lamb in Chinatown

I had never had Chinese hotpot till the other week as I have a simple rule in life - the Japanese do everything better. Their cultural trait of obsessiveness lends to perfection. Therefore, why bother with Chinese hotpot when you can have Japanese shabu shabu instead?

What I wasn't clever enough to realise is that Chinese hotpot is a different beast than shabu shabu.

However, I was ill and must have been quite run down as Jen managed to get me to go to Little Lamb for hotpot rather than me insisting on shabu shabu. She had had it a lot in NY so I left it to her to order. She filled out a form a bit like a bingo card (or a dim sum menu if you are being less flirtatious with words) and we sat back and waited.

Jen Still Cooks. My life as a chef in training.

People often asked me who it was that taught me to cook. Honestly, I can't really say. I can't pinpoint it to one thing in particular. Sometimes I make a conscious effort to learn. On an early morning with coffee in hand, I trade in reading the Sunday paper for the CIA textbook. Other times it's unconscious. As a kid I'd watch my grandmother pull out a abnormally large metal case that looked like it should've been used for deep sea diving. Instead it steamed fish.

Restaurant (Review): Elliot's (futurely) of Borough Market pop up at Pavillion Cafe

I went to Elliot's with no intention to blog and just to have a good dinner with an old friend.  Then I arrived and realised that London is far too small and I couldn't blog as I couldn't trust my own partiality.

I realised that I had met the chef (Isaac McHale) before at Penny University.  I also recognised an old school friend who turned out to be the architect who revamped the Pavilion Cafe itself and is now working with Elliot's to launch their upcoming restaurant in Borough market and is probably the only guy who has actually been successful from my year at school (Asif from Asif Khan architects).

However, the food was too pretty not to be photographed so here are my snaps from the evening.

Price - £50 including matching wines from the Wine Apostle

Ginger Pig Pork Butchery Course in Marylebone

I am a suspicious person these days and this relates to the Ginger Pig as my best friend is a man who adores pork.  I can get back home on a weekend and find him elbow deep in 5kg of ground pork lung, liver, kidneys and other offcuts making some home made pate.  In one year of living with him there has not been a dish which did not have pig in it.  Therefore the choice for his 30th birthday was easy; it had to be a pork butchery course.

The reason for my suspicion was that whilst doing my research on the best place to go for a butchery course I read a lot of reviews of PR days out at places like the Ginger Pig and was nervous whether we would get what they would got.  Did they get pork chop whereas we would get pork trotter?

Bushmills Distillery in Northern Ireland

As Jen has already posted some of the pictures of our time in Northern Ireland at a friend's 30th (here) I thought I would follow it up with the other epicurean delight over there - our tour of Bushmills Distillery in, erm, Bushmill.