The Krug Room

CYY 的生日飯, 今年我們選了到文華的The Krug Room. Krug Room其實即是MO的Chef's Table, 每天只供應Tasting Menu的晚餐, 由酒店的總廚Uwe Opocensky一手設計和炮製, 菜式嘛... 據chef uwe 自己的形容, 是progressive gastronomy 的style, 風格也深受Ferran Adrià的影響, 當然Dining Room內還feature了被譽為全城最extensive的Krug 香檳Collection...

星期六的傍晚, 我們抵達酒店大堂時, 已經看到負責招呼我們的waiter在等候著, 帶領我們從chinnery bar後面穿過一道non-descriptive的門口, 到達我們今晚用餐的"隱閉"地點 - 一間長長的dining room, 只放著一張雲石做的高身communal table, 牆身和地板以橡木作裝飾, 旁邊也放了champagne第一趟發酵用的木筒作擺設, dining room的一邊, 就靠著廚房, 透過玻璃窗, 裡面的作業情況一覽無遺 - Relaxed, 簡單, 耀目而不落俗套. 桌子上作裝飾的碟子, 寫上了詩仙李白的<<將進酒>>: "人生得意須盡歡, 莫使金樽空對月", 此時此刻, 尤為貼切. Oh, 還有, 房間內, 有一面黑色的牆, 上面以粉筆寫上了我們Dinner Menu的"謎面" - 只是些單字 - "Farm", "Pond", "Miyazaki"... 看了, 已有"未進餐, 先興奮"的感覺, 就是想看看每個單字代表的是一道甚麼的菜式, 帶來的是一樣甚麼的味道.

晚飯先以一杯Krug的Grande Cuvée作序幕, 要逐一形容Chef Uwe為我們預備的菜式, 恐怕並不容易. 也為著保留神秘感, 所以在此不贅. 總之, 寫在menu的, 看到的, 嚐到的, 和感受到的可以是截然不同, 雖然可能是些平凡得不可再平凡的食材 - 蔬菜, 龍蝦, 魚生, 宮崎牛... 只是從賣相到味道都充滿了意想不到吧. serve每一道菜之前, Chef Uwe都會親自一一解釋. 細心一看, 其實每一道菜式都表現了分子料理中的不少技術, 同時照顧了視覺, 嗅覺和味覺多元的享受, 從此也看得出他設計餐單的深度和心思, 也給我們上了一趟很有趣的烹飪課.

就例如amuse-bouche後的第一道菜 - "魚子醬", 是以蘋果汁配以香檳, 混入海藻膠 (sodium alginate), 再"逐滴逐滴"放入加入了鈣粉(calcium chloride)的水裡, 形成了像魚子醬般質地的小粒粒, 放在小罐中上桌, 這正是el bulli的得意傑作. And FYI, 這些"化學品"其實並不是甚麼新發明, 而且也經常運用在日常食品中 - 例如麥記的蘋果批的餡就加入了海藻膠, 以帶出糊狀的口感. 其他分子料理的煮食方法如spherification, gellification, sous vide, cold smoke, flash-freezing (by anti-griddle)都一一用到. 書就看得多, 真正見到嚐到又是另一回事, 真令人拍案叫絕.

新意還不單是在食物方面: 晚飯中間, 廚師特意帶來了Ferran Adrià有份參與釀製的Inedit Beer來伴其中一道名為morning mist的菜式, 是很柔和很smooth的啤酒, 剛巧跟菜式散出"一縷輕煙"的香氣和大麥的味道相配. Matching wine就見得多, matching beer反而是頭一遭.

這天晚上, 絕對可不只是一頓愉快美妙的晚飯這麼簡單, 而是體會了藝術與烹飪, 科學與創意一次妙不可言的結合. 要"搭枱"的一餐飯, 這肯定是我們最貴的一餐 - but really is a very chilled, delightful and tasteful evening, and a well-worth one too (反正"千金散盡還復來"嘛, 不是嗎?)

details:
when? may 16 2009
where? The Krug Room at The Mandarin Oriental, 5 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong
occasion? birthday celebration
menu highlights? miyazaki, lobster noodle (I will leave it up to you to imagine what they actually are)
drinks?
Krug Grande Cuvée Brut
Pazo de Señorans Albariño Rias Baixas 2007
Inedit Beer by Estrella Damm

425 days

Just as we feel like we have just touched down at HKG after separate trips to UK and the Philippines not that long ago (in March and April), we are already planning for our big one next year - South Africa!


That's because we have bought the tickets for the World Cup 2010 successfully! (can't be more happy when we found that out one late April morning from their website saying our tix application's going through!) It's going to be the Semi-final match at Cape Town, to be played in the new stadium by the waterfront (the picture's only a simulation - they are still racing to complete the stadium on time for the tournament) The tickets ain't cheap, but it's hard to pass up on this once-every-four-years experience.

It's still 425 days to go (oh yes, I already started counting down!), but I am getting excited already. Hopefully my England team can finally make it that far then (and more), and Rooney won't do anything stupid to get himself red-carded this time.

Now we are trying to get a pair of Quarter-Final tickets as well - so we can double the fun! Keeping our fingers crossed on that - we will know in a couple of weeks whether we got lucky.

Chicken a la carte - a video about hunger and poverty

I hope this gives you all with something to think about and reflect on - especially next time when you left food on the table...

Something new under the sun

It's been said that the british national dish is not fish-and-chips as many would have guessed but chicken tikka masala; and when we came up with this idea of having Indian food together in London, our friend e suggested this trendy place on Kensington High Street. We were also meeting our friend d who happened to be in town and his friend c. well, d and e are high school mates, e and I crossed path in both Washington dc and boston, and d and I were college roommates. That’s how this dinner gathering came about. Talking about a small world.

The dinner came right after a jubilant afternoon when we saw my favorite football club came out victorious in the big London derby march, so that already set the right mood for the evening for us. The restaurant’s located in the heart of Kensington on the main street and about 5 minute walk away from the tube station, so it’s not hard to find at all.

The menu does take us a bit of time to study over: there are the a la carte ones and also several tasting menu sets we can chose from, and after some deliberation we came up with a consensus to go for the 6-course “Jugalbandi” tasting menu. Turned out it's such an eye-opener – definitely not like any Indian food that we have had before. Ever! On the menu it said it’s a selection of traditional dishes; well if that is so we definitely feel the need for a whole new lesson on Indian cuisine.

Starting off with an amuse-bouche of spiced coconut soup with chicken served in an espresso cup, we then moved on to dishes like scallop in kokum and lime leaf “foam”, trio of chicken tikka, tandoori grouper with “upma”-Indian cous-cous in a champagne and cardamom sauce, and spiced wild mushroom rice with mini papadum and tomato “makhni” ice-cream... and they were all presented so beautifully.


And you can imagine, as with typical Indian, they were so all rich in flavors, with familiar spices and some not so familiar ones, and all in their unique shapes or forms. Every course was such a delight as it’s brought in front of us one by one, and so were the conversations we shared in between, trying to catch up on how everyone’s been in their lives and having a good laugh. Since almost all the courses came in tidbits of a single ingredient cooked multiple ways, we were able to sample quite a bit of different tastes.

By the time we finished dessert, which was a pinekernal, cashew and pistachio brittle with silky chocolate moouse and masala tea icecream, it’s already 10:30pm, and that was the time when we were "politely" asked to move to the bar area for drinks so our table can be cleared for another round of patrons. Well, it's already late and there were actually people waiting to come in, so fair game, I suppose. And my cup of masala tea drew the evening to a satisfying close.

With our regular Indian restaurant of choice being in the somewhat filthy chungking with dishes such as chicken tikka masala, tandoori on a hot plate or garlic naan, needless to say, the evening at Zaika will easily come down as one of our finest Indian dining moments. Always something new under the sun, I must say.

details:
when? march 21 2009
where? Zaika, 1 Kensington High Street, London.
occasion? a get-together with friends
menu highlights? Tandoori Machli: Tandoori Grouper, marinated in ginger and chillies, "upma"-Indian cous-cous, in a champagne and cardamom sauce

When Vintage Champagne Met Napa Valley Cab

This is one of the few evenings that food's not the major attraction at Kitchen@17a, but wine. I am talking about the "Open That Bottle Night" celebration on the last Saturday of February, taking cue from two Wall Street Journal columnists to enjoy the bottles that we never found an occasion good enough for them.

"Exuding honey, vanilla and light coffee notes, this creamy Champagne straddles youth and maturity. Well-balanced, fine and vibrant. The coffee and vanilla notes will develop with age."

We kicked off the evening with a bottle of bubbly which our friends have graciously contributed - a 1998 Dom Perignon. Well, after tasting it, we jokingly vowed that we would never drink anything else (as if we can afford to do just that). It's creamy and crisp with fine persistant bubbles. A divine wine that went perfectly well with the seafood dishes we began with - I certainly hope our friends didn't regret opening it and sharing with us.

"An elegantly style, this is well-balanced, with a mix of smoke, spice and currant-laced Cabernet aromas that maintain their focus, ending with a long, lingering finish that keeps the fruit at the forefront."

We then moved on to the Napa Valley cab that we picked up last year at a newly-opened wine shop a few blocks down from The French Laundry at Yountville. It's a 2004 Rocca Family Cabernet Sauvignon - a small production wine (900 cases) that came highly recommended by the shop owner. As we swirled and enjoyed a sip, it's not hard to understand why people said young Napa Valley cab can handily beat some of the big boys on the other side of the ocean in horizontal tasting. 2004 has been our vintage of choice lately, and we did try a few supposedly famous and coveted ones, but nothing compared to the complexity and maturity of this. Aromatic, balanced, long finish and all that. A classic cab and certainly deserved every bit of the 93 points Wine Spectator gave it. I supposed it’s the scarcity of the wine that made us hesitate to pop this open earlier, but I am glad that we tasted this just at the right time.

As for food, I decided to go a little adventurous, and hence a few dishes made its debut at Kitchen@17A. The minimally-marinated salmon was cooked "sous vide" style at 55C for 20 minutes - it's simple yet amazingly full of flavor and moisture - just as what other die-hard sous vide enthusiasts have commented online. No doubt this is the best way to cook salmon, both from effort and taste point of view.

Taking the bloc of foie gras that our friend has given us as a souvenir last year, I then made some "wontons" and served them with bonito-lime broth and porcini mushrooms. It's something that I just made it up, taking inspirations from joel robuchon's foie gras ravioli recipe and dobin-mushi that we tasted at iwanami - one of our favorite Japanese restaurants. I personally found it interesting (especially as an amuse-bouche) but the reviews from the table were mixed - I did make the broth "a little" on the sour side, thinking it would balance the fatty texture of foie gras and showed some contrasting taste to the palate.

For entree, I repeated the duck confit that I made a fortnight ago, and used roasted chestnut and potatoes as side this time. It's a time-consuming process to make the dish from scratch but it's worth it, I think. We ended the evening with cheese and dessert courses - a chocolate fondue (valrhona 72%) with tidbits of strawberries and butter cake. Can't go wrong with that - I figured even if I screwed up with those new dishes I could get some consolation points back from a "safety" dessert.

A good idea copied from someone else turned out to be a great evening for us (and our wines) I think we definitely should make otbn our yearly tradition. Next year, maybe I can convince cyy to let go of those opus ones and lafites that have been sitting in our wine cabinet for too long...

(those words of italic typefaces are reviews from the Wine Spectator - not mine)