simon says french food blog

Ceci n’est pas une huître

By Mara Grimm

Is it an herb? Is it a drug? Or is it the newest molecular gimmick? When I first tried one of these thick but perfectly smooth leaves at a party last month I wasn’t quite sure what to think because, quite surprisingly, it tasted exactly like an oyster. Happily, I was not the only one thinking this was too good to be true.

Ferran Adrià from El Bulli (***Rosas, Spain) told me that he serves these so called Oyster Leaves with two pearls of vinaigrette on top, and his guests are so surprised by the taste they think Ferran has come up with a new trick once again. The opposite is true.

The Oyster Leaf is all natural. It has its origin in the Hebrides, North-Scotland, but is now grown by Koppert Cress, a Dutch company that specializes in micro-vegetables. At first, owner Rob Baan grew the leaves exclusively for El Bulli, but he’s decided it’s now time for the rest of the world to share in the joy of eating vegetarian oysters.

Serve them as Ferran does, or as I did last night: on crushed ice with bread, butter and a glass of Chablis. Miss the feeling of a real oyster gently sliding down your throat? Then get some real oysters instead and use the leaves thinly sliced in fish dishes or, since it’s the season, on asparagus.
Check out www.koppertcress.nl for more.

Mara Grimm is the editor of Holland's biggest restaurant guide: Lekker. She also writes about new restaurants, shops and culinary trends in Delicious Magazine and has a monthly column on kids and food.

LET MOM EAT CAKE

  

NOTO, SICILY

I’m back in The Motherland.

It’s a work/play trip that includes bringing my parents to the land of our Sicilian ancestors for the first time. My sister and I are English, Irish, French, Italian, Dutch and German mutts, but it’s always been the Sicilian side – via our paternal grandmother – that we identify with most as a family.

I’m playing tour guide so the induction is based on food and Day One includes a visit to pastry chef Corrado Assenza’s appropriately named Caffè Sicilia.

While Assenza’s ideas and creations can be otherworldly, he’s a product-sourcing freak. If he can’t do it perfectly, he won’t do it.

His almond gelato not only tastes like an almond in another state, but even has the slight tannic tang from the almond skin along with a mix of minerals and salt in the skin that makes Sicilian almonds unique.

We also try a “Traversata del Deserto” – a cake that includes mint, black tea, lemon rind, sea salt and “lyophilized” (freeze-dried) algae. It’s the kind of thing that Mom would try but stop after one bite. 

Instead, she makes a funny grunting noise, almost like she’s disappointed.

“I’m sorry for all the cakes that will come after this in my life.”

...

Full disclosure: Assenza, who I’ve interviewed and written about in the past, came out to say hello while we were there, but we paid our bill and you can’t bake a cake or make gelato on the fly.

Caffè Sicilia MAP
Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 125
Noto, Sicily

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.

The most expensive potato in the world

By Mara Grimm

 

After working for seven years as a food editor, hardly any restaurant bill surprises me anymore.

But when I heard somebody paid 500 euros for a kilogram of potatoes I was in complete shock. And in desperate need of a taste. The miniature potato La Bonnotte is number 5 on the list of ‘the most expensive foods in the world’, next to saffron, truffle and caviar. It is cultivated exclusively on the Isle of Noirmoutier, where seaweed is added to the soil in which it’s grown. The result is a potato with a complex flavor that includes hints of lemon, earth and, of course, the sea. To make La Bonnotte even more exotic, it’s available only from May 1st to May 10th, and the local farmers produce not more then 20,000 kilos annually.

This explains the ridiculous pricing (actually the €500 turned out to be a one-time amount; at a local delicacy shop you can expect to pay around €70 per kilo), and why La Bonnotte hardly ever leaves France. So is all this just smart marketing or is this really the most special potato in the world? Dutch chef Jos de Groot of Rotterdam’s newest high-end restaurant VIS was so intrigued by La Bonnotte that he drove all the way to Noirmoutier to get some and then invited me for a four course press lunch. Jos served La Bonnotte as chips with a seaweed mayonnaise as an amuse bouche. Then he roasted them and topped them with vongole, crème fraîche and caviar. He also turned La Bonnotte into a delicate mousseline that paired well with super fresh coquilles, asparagus and lemon mayonnaise.

But my personal favorite was a dish with a fondant of La Bonnotte combined with lobster, sea fennel and the Italian sausage stolghino di culatello: an elegant dish in which both land and sea were in perfect harmony. And that’s exactly what La Bonnotte is all about.

You can try La Bonnotte until May 15^th in French top restaurants and in The Netherlands at De Librije (*** Zwolle), Le Ciel Blue (**Amsterdam),'t Brouwerskolkje (**Overveen), De Bokkedoorns (** Overveen) and Savelberg (* Voorburg).

Mara Grimm is the editor of  Holland's biggest restaurant guide: Lekker. She also writes about new restaurants, shops and culinary trends in Delicious Magazine and has a monthly column on kids and food.

IF YOUR SALIVARY GLANDS HAVEN’T KICKED IN, BLOW YOUR NOSE

By Joe Ray

Call me a traitor, but here I go.

Though it might look like pink champagne, the apéro of the summer is a beer, and not one for the faint of heart.

Cantillon’s “Kriek 100% Lambic” is an eye-popper that will stand your taste buds happily on end.

It’s also a dive into the deep end of Belgian beer vocabulary. In short, lambics are natural fermentation beers that are aged for at least three years in oak barrels. A kriek, is a lambic (or a gueuze) made with sour cherries known as griottes.

While some companies have turned kriek into a sweet and sticky mess, those worth their salt are bracingly sour.
Cantillon’s kriek has just a hint of creamy suds on top and gets its cooked cherry color from the griottes. Poke your nose into the top of a glass and you’ll get a blast the grapefruit smell that is the hallmark of many good lambics, along with a hint of green apples. If your salivary glands haven’t kicked in by now, blow your nose.

Take a sip and you’ll get a kick of that fantastic sour and acidic grapefruit flavor.

If you can find any way to get your stomach and taste buds more ready for a meal, the comment box is one click away…

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P.S. In Paris, I found my bottle at Pommier inside the Marché Beauvau - the covered market at Marché d’Aligre in the 11th arrondissement.

Cantillon has a handy place to start your quest with a partial list of wholesalers and places to buy your bottle here.

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.

Three star take-out

By Mara Grimm 

A great idea from an even greater chef: Alain Passard of the restaurant L’Arpege (*** Paris) now makes pastry for take-out. We’re not talking about your ordinary tart, but an innovation that has all the potential for becoming a new French classic: tarte aux pommes Bouquet de Roses. This elegant apple tart consists of sliced and blanched strips of apple rolled into the shape of roses and arranged in a thin pastry shell. Each tart is comprised of about 35 flowers, so it actually looks like a real bouquet.  The result is subtle, fresh, light and – thank God – not too sweet. The King of Vegetables himself calls it ‘a tart, a dessert, but also a way to express love’. We just call it the best bouquet of flowers we’ve ever received. How does it work? Just order by phone and pick up your tart 24 hours later. Prices start at €25,-.  www.alain-passard.com

Mara Grimm is the editor of  Holland's biggest restaurant guide: Lekker. She also writes about new restaurants, shops and culinary trends in Delicious Magazine and has a monthly column on kids and food.

SEX FOOD

Girona,

By Joe Ray

I can get caught up in the primordial pleasures of food – a caveman's instinct that can obscure technique, artistry and emotion. A freelancer's budget will also curb the reflex of heading to a fancy restaurant in a hurry, but Mauro Uliassi who runs his two-star restaurant Uliassi in Senigallia, Italy and is the consulting chef for the brand-new Domani in Hong Kong, helped glue the pieces together the other day at the Forum Girona food show.

I originally met Uliassi in Paris where he was showing off a dish called cuttlefish carbonara - shaved ribbons of al dente cuttlefish, cooked sous vide, topped with oven-crisped pancetta and Cryovacked egg yolk – a well thought-out and perfectly executed dish that made a clever wink at the classics.

To bridge the gap between food as fuel and food as inspiration, however, the Italian chef talks about sex.

“There's a huge parallel between food and sex. If you don't eat, you die. If you don't make love, there aren't more people,” he says, with a blunt and curious blend of math and biology, “but when you get past that, eroticism and food are pleasure.”

“If we're just hungry, I take a pig, cut it in half, stick it on a fire and eat it with my hands,” he continues, appealing to the primal needs while augmenting with a bit of spectacle, “but evolved cultures eat for pleasure.

When you eat, you must 'ooh!' and 'ahh!' - it's very important. Musicians have guitars, painters have canvases. Food is a way for me to show enthusiasm for life.”

Ristorante Uliassi - www.uliassi.it
Ristorante Domani - www.domani.hk 

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.