Going With My Gut

Lunch by Chefs Janice Wong and Peter Gordon at #SGTakeout London

Above: Chef Janice Wong of 2am Dessert Bar in Singapore, and Chef Peter Gordon of The Providores and Kopapa in London

 

A couple of Fridays ago I was invited by the Singapore Tourism Board to attend a lunch cheffed by Janice Wong who runs 2am Dessert Bar in Singapore (previous writeups on her work here and here) and Peter Gordon who heads up The Providores and Kopapa in London.

They were the opening act for the Singapore Takeout global tour, where a shipping container refitted as a mobile show kitchen visits 9 cities over the span of a year, and chefs from Singapore (sometimes teaming up with an in-city chef) showcase dishes inspired by Singapore flavours. The lunch today was going to be mostly the same dishes being served to the public all weekend, but plated on actual plates rather than disposable Takeout takeout bowls. (See what I did there?)

I am generally sceptical about fusion food, taking quite seriously the advice that a Thai restauranteur once gave me, that "fusion food is confusion food". But sceptical is different from complete religious disbelief. Sometimes unexpected combinations produce delightful, cuisine-changing reactions and developments. So why deny oneself those opportunities? Food-mad folks, of all people, must live by the code that the proof is in the pudding, surely.

So here I was, on this rainy Friday lunctime, waiting for the chef demonstration to begin. Snacking on Janice's chilli chocolate coral mousse, apparently inspired by the old Mayan practice of combining cacao, honey and chili as medicine. Very pleasant indeed. I'm not a fan of super airy mousses. This one had sufficient structure and heft without being heavy. With of course that tinge of heat from the chilli.

 

 

For the demonstration, Janice and her sous chef Cathy demystify the process of "printing" onto edible parchments. If I remember right, it involves

• Printing words or a photo of choice with edible ink onto a transfer sheet (remember those iron-on t-shirt designs of the 80s?)
• Adding pectin to a flavoured puree of choice and then spreading it very thinly onto a silicone tray
• Putting on the transfer sheets, so that the heat from the puree will transfer the ink onto the sheet
• Letting things cool, scraping the sheets off the tray, then gingerly peeling off the transfer sheet

It's a cool party trick, and could be a fun wedding favour if you're into that kind of thing. Not really my style, even though it's probably the most painless way of eating one's words.

 

 

And now to lunch. Both chefs were going to do 3 courses each.

As a pre-appetiser, we get a taste of Janice's laksa mac & cheese. That is, your usual 4 cheese sauce, spiked with Prima laksa paste. My eyebrows jumped with scepticism, but once in the mouth, this totally worked. It was like a mini Singaporean David Chang moment.

 

 

Appetiser: Yu-sheng (raw fish) salad reimagined with tuna tartare, mandarin orange emulsion, and foraged herbs and flowers. Very light and fresh. For me it would never replace the traditional yu-sheng dish at Chinese New Year, an altogether more rustic, messy affair. But quite a fun off-season experiment.

 

 

Main: Laksa infused dumplings with noodles. Not very visible here, but the dumplings looked like the mini cat-ear variety. Very comforting on a rainy day. I could go for a big bowl of this.

 

 

Dessert: "Popcorn" with caramel, yuzu parfait and passionfruit sorbet. Popcorn with caramel totally works, obviously. Janice had said this was very much inspired by snacks in her youth, and I know exactly the one she means, having ingested way too much of it growing up myself. The light mellow acidity of the yuzu did a great job of balancing out the sweetness in the dish, but the too-tart passionfruit sorbet pushed it too gruffly over the edge. Has potential if it could be brought back from the brink. Why apologise for the fundamental taste of popcorn?

 

 

Petit fours: "Toffee pudding" made with gula melaka (palm sugar), squidged onto a dollop of kaya (coconut and egg jam) custard. The combination of sweet and sweet was too much for me personally. I'm trying to persuade my mate Goz who runs the London-based Singapore supperclub Plusixfive to do a different twist on this -- keeping the kaya custard, but subbing in a buttery, slightly bitter coffee cake. The tastes of a old school Singapore breakfast in one bite, essentially. We'll see how that goes, eh.

 

 

And now to Peter Gordon's showcase for the day.

Appetiser: A reimagined oyster omelette. This omelette was stuffed with crab meat, and garnished with mango sauce, deep fried shallots and coriander on top, with the oyster naked on the side. New Zealander Peter Gordon is said to have spent a respectable amount of time travelling around South East Asia, learning about its flavours through research and osmosis. This dish made me think, "yeah, this guy gets it". Possibly my favourite dish of the whole event, though involving crab and oyster gives it a very unfair advantage!

 

 

Main: Roasted pork belly cubes on steamed white rice with a pineapple sauce. Interesting in theory. But the pork belly was a little too dry, and there wasn't enough gravy on the rice to make up for that dry mouthful. Pleasant, but didn't get me in the gut.

 

 

Dessert: Almond milk with flaked almonds, strawberries and I lost track of what else. Peter Gordon's take on bo-bo cha-cha, so I heard. Not a dance from the 50s, but rather a Singapore dessert of diced sweet potato and yams and chewy tapioca flour shapes cooked in coconut milk. It was in a pretty glass, but this dish struck me as a prime example of fusion food being confusion food. There was just way too much going on. Plus (admittedly unfair) the very smell of almond milk or cream makes me retch, so I had to push this over to Goz right after the first mouthful.

 

 

Overall, the lunch was the fun result of a series of professional culinary experiments. Some dishes sparked lightbulbs that I reckon a few food bloggers including myself will want to go develop further in our own kitchens. Others were pretty "meh" and were best left in the slushpile. But that fun of finding out is the point, I reckon.

If you happen to be in Paris next week, Singapore Takeout hits the streets of gay Paree 30 June - 2 July at the Hippodrome Auteuil. The event will be cheffed by Andre Chiang of Restaurant Andre and Chef Sven Chartier from Restaurant Saturne. Stay updated via the Singapore Eats Facebook page and register here for the Paris tasting sessions!

Top 10 Eats in Europe, Middle East and Africa -- My Guest Post for Guardian UK's Been There

I was delighted when Guardian UK's Been There approached me about writing a guest post about my top 10 eats so far, after 5+ months on the road.

The list in my post "Eating Her Way Around the World" covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and hopefully suits a range of budgets. (Well, except the uber-posh / silly expense account bracket, given my own financial limitations.)

Above all, I focused on a list of eateries that for me captured a sense of place and local flavour.

I hope it's helpful and enjoyable list for all you hungry travellers out there!

Constant Craving in Paris

First, many thanks to Ann, who housed us in Paris, so that we could go at all. May your generosity be equally apparent in your dishes when you start culinary school in the fall.

"you got very hungry when you did not eat enough in paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. when you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in america would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the luxembourg gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the place de l'observatoire to the rue de vaugirard. there you could always go into the luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. i learned to understand cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when i was hungry. i used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted..."
-- A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

My Dad introduced me to Hemingway 11 years ago with the passage above, just before my first trip to Paris. The words were striking then, but the spark of truth in them set ablaze raw nerves this time around when Babs and I hit Paris on a tight budget, trying to conserve cash for when we were going to meet up with our fellow food dorks in San Sebastien.

1st row above: Asparagus and €49/kg wild mushrooms; The olive and spice counter at the food hall of Le Bon Marche, reportedly the world's first department store, on Rue de Sevres.
2nd row above: I'm not the only food paparazzi in Paris... but I did manage to catch a (crappy) shot of the Delicious Don of Rue St Dominique, Christian Constant, in the window of his latest venture, Les Cocottes.

This sojourn was clearly going to require superhuman levels of disipline, and a litle strategy.

I cross-referenced food bloggers Chez Pim, Chocolate and Zucchini, David Lebovitz and Dorie Greenspan, to triangulate a view on what was going to get us maximum bite for buck in Paris. I also sent out a Twitter SOS to see what friends who had gone before would advise. Here's a summary of learnings from this reluctantly frugal foodie.

Tip #1: When Tight on Dough in Paris, Eat Bread

Paris no doubt gags with gastronomy, but in reality many locals dine very simply for dinner on bread, cheese, maybe a little something else, and probably a glass of wine. So to buy research time, we joined the locals in the breadlines and bought baguettes, baguettes, and more baguettes, and picnic-ed on park benches, bridges, and by Ann's little balcony.

Above: Deli-bought tomato and mozzarella baguette and rabbit terrine for €6 per person, dined on at the Luxenbourg Gardens (as per Sunny D and Hemingway's advice); Market-bought tomato, comte cheese and onion marmalade baguette, probably for ~€3 per person

Tip #2: Settle in with the Early Settlers

Another good tip from Sunny D was to eat ethnic, specifically from the groups that had well-established enclaves in Paris. Chez Pim and David Lebovitz provided 2 gems: Fabbo pho and falafel, at La Bambou and L'As du Fellafel respectively.

La Bambou in P'lace de Italie -- a neighbourhood chockablock with Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Laotian eateries -- was our first sit-down dinner in Paris. At 9.30pm there was still a line out the door and once we got through, there was a cacophony of Cantonese, Vietnamese, and French from Asian faces. Good signs of street cred.

I ordered the house special pho (a.k.a. with everything -- beef slices, meatballs, tendon, and how could I say no in Paris...tripe). Babs and I also caved into appetizer avarice, and shared a salad with prawns, jellyfish and slices of belly pork. By the time I was digging into the cauldron of beef broth that showed clear respect for lovely bones and boiling time, I was tearing with happiness....and the deliciously fierce red chili slices.

L'As du Fellafel, on the other hand -- and the other bank, in Paris's thriving Jewish quarter -- provided a bargain stand-up dinner of pita overstuffed with moist falafel or meat of choice, with shredded cucumber, red cabbage, smoky grilled eggplant cubes, garlicky tahini and a sweet chili sauce. Oy veh!

Tip #3: For Fine Food, be Finicky

Over the 3 days we were in Paris, I slowly crafted a priority list in my head for the requirements of our headline (waistline?) act. I wanted 1) traditional French cuisine; 2) the traditional French cheffing approach of basing the day's menu on the best of the market offerings; and 3) not having to sell a kidney to pay the bill.

Christian Constant's cafe -- inspired by the recipes of his Basque-region grandmother -- fit the bill perfectly. We trekked a little east of the Eiffel Tower, and down Constant's growing Rue St Dominque stronghold, which houses his gastronomic HQ, fish foundry, cocotte canteen, and Cafe Constant.

Once inside, we dawdled over the chalkboard menu, and finally decided on 1 pre-fixe (i.e. bargain) 2-course meal and another 2 courses ala carte.

Pre fixe menu: A warm rocket salad with prawns and parmesan, followed by a very old school pork loin and lentils

Ala carte: A chunky lobster ravioli in bisque, followed by beef tenderloin on a bed of rocket (always a great pairing) and very creamy savoury mash.

Babs spotted Monsieur Constant making the rounds with the customers, but I have to admit I was very happily distracted at the time.

Afterwards....a delicious afternoon nap at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Bon appetit, frugal foodies. And if you have other max-bite-for-buck recommendations for Paris, please do share your expertise here. Paris may be a moveable feast, but I for one am hoping to go back, this time hopefully before another 11 years go by.

La Bambou
70, Rue Baudricourt
75013 Paris, France
+33 1 45 70 91 75

L'As de Fellafel
34, Rue Rosiers
75004 Paris, France
+33 1 48 87 63 60

Cafe Constant
139, Rue St Dominique
75007 Paris, France
+33 9 75 82 08 07