Julie & Julia & Boeuf Bourguignon

I was lucky enough to be invited to a pre-screening of Julie & Julia last week, along with heaps of other food bloggers. I really enjoyed the film, it's a combination of the book-from-a-blog "Julie and Julia" and Julia Child's autobiography "My Life in France". While Julie is a bit of a whingey, self-obsessed loser who doesn't deserve her angelic husband, the story of Julia and her lifelong love affair with food, France and her husband Paul is truly beautiful. Meryl Streep's performance is just uttter genius. I can see this one ending up on my DVD shelf with Dirty Dancing and Pretty Woman!

I'm now reading My Life in France on the commute into London and have almost finished it in a matter of days. Julia's energy and zest for life really comes through in her writing. Of course now I want to go and live in Paris...

Being British, I wasn't as familiar with Julia's work as those across the pond seem to be, so I decided to try one of her recipes for myself. As luck would have it, Julia's publisher has the recipe for her signature Boeuf Bourguignon on its website. I haven't replicated it here as you really need to read it in Julia's words to get the full effect! If you would like to have a go yourself you can find the pdfs here:

http://knopfdoubleday.com/marketing/cooking/BoeufBourguignon.pdf

The recipe was quite a bit of work, but the little tips and tricks Julia gives help you achieve a truly delicious result. Even the method of sauteeing mushrooms was a revelation to me. I know which cookbook I will be buying next....

So, in summary

Julia - yes! yes! yes!
Julie - not so much

Macaron class at L'Atelier des Chefs

Not to be confused with coconut macaroons…macarons are a sugary French delicacy, think little domed, almondy meringue biscuits sandwiched together with something sticky and decadent. They are a treat I'd tried in Parisian cafés but never been brave enough to bake before. However with some encouragement from Niamh of Trusted Places, moral support from a whole host of fellow food bloggers (Lizzie, Su-Lin, Krista, Josh, Alice, Helen, Jonathan, Abi, Kang, Tom, Bron, Mark, Mia and Shuna) and expert instruction from our teacher Baldwin, on Saturday the impossible became possible.

We split into four teams, each of which was assigned a different flavour of macaron. My team was tasked with the Foie Gras & Porto variety, a sophisticated flavour combination in chic cement-grey. Another first for me was de-veining the foie gras, a messy job but very satisfying. Rather like walking barefoot in mud and letting it squidge between your toes, we plunged our fingers into the foie, squeezed and pulled it apart, ripping out the veins wherever we found them (much to the revulsion of our vegan videographer!). We then simply whizzed this up in the machine with some porto, butter and cream to make a super-rich and luxurious filling.

We then moved on to the basic recipe for the outer macaron shells, which was identical for all the teams save for the different lurid food colourings.

Basic Macaron recipe

350g icing sugar

250g ground almonds

215g egg whites

150g caster sugar

1) Preheat the oven to 160c. Whisk up the egg whites with a pinch of salt, add the caster sugar and beat until you have a stiff and glossy meringue mixture. Add food colouring of your choice.

2) Sift the almonds and icing sugar through a chinoise to get a fine powder.

3) Mix the dry ingredients with the meringue mixture throroughly. There's none of the usual gentle folding, in fact you're intentionally knocking the air back out of the meringue mixture. We used a plastic spatula to cut and fold the mixture until it was smooth and shiny. It is ready when a cut in the mixture absorbs back in 9-12 seconds.

4) Use a piping bag to pipe macarons onto a greaseproof paper lined baking tray. The trick is to let the tip of the piping bag rest on the greaseproof paper at a 45 degree angle and increase the pressure without moving the bag. This makes the macaroons perfectly circular.

5) To get the air bubbles out of the macarons (and therefore stop them cracking open in the oven), drop the trays onto the worktop hard!

6) Let the macarons dry for 15 minutes at room temperature. They are ready to cook when they are just "touch dry".

7) Cook for about 15-20 minutes in the oven.

8) Leave to cool on the tray, then sandwich together with your choice of filling.

It is really up to you and your imagination as to what to fill your macarons with. Some great filling ideas from around the blogosphere can be found. How about chocolate ganache, passion fruit or cardomom, wattle seed and orange? Even Nutella would go down a treat I'm sure.

After almost two hours of slaving in the kitchen, we finally got our just desserts (literally). The foie gras teamed perfectly with the sweet, crunchy and slightly gooey macaron casings, rather as it does with a sticky dessert wine. I also adored the golden-brown salt caramel variety. The raspberry & rosewater were subtle and fragrant, belying their razzle-dazzle-red exterior, and the lime & ginger were zingy and refreshing in a zippy green. After trying one of each flavour, we picked up our doggie bags (haggling/bargaining/fighting for our favourite flavours where necessary) and tottered on our sugar-fuelled way.

L'Atelier des Chefs was the perfect place to pick up a tricky new skill in a relaxed atmosphere. Of course if you're not willing or able to go to all that trouble you can pick up a few macarons from Laduree. However, all that labour comes at a price. And you wouldn't have half as much fun…

The Princess

Gaddi's tasting menu

It was our 1st anniversary this week so we decided to splash out and try the tasting menu at Gaddi's. The dining room was similar to Toscana at the Ritz-Carlton, very traditional and glitzy, with the addition of a sultry jazz singer and band. The ambience was just perfect, the music lovely but unobtrusive, the service attentive without being obsequious. I was already impressed and so far we had only tasted the water and bread selection...




We started off with an amuse-bouche of tuna tartare on a bed of fresh vegetables. This isn't the sort of thing I would usually choose but I can say I have definitely been converted. The fish was beautifully tender, almost melting in the mouth. The tomatoes and beans provided a contrasting fresh crunch.





Our starter came next - foie gras with cubes of rhubarb jelly and a rhubarb puree. My two absolute favourite things in one dish! I have never seen foie gras served with rhubarb before but they tasted very good together. Unlike my experience at Spoon, I had just the right amount of crisp but yielding brioche to go with. A sweet white wine set this dish off perfectly.

I'm afraid I gave up on photo taking after the starter, I was just too interested in focussing on eating...

The first course was some pork belly served with a crisp, wafer thin piece of bacon, poached apple slices and black pudding. Quite a traditional combination but nonetheless delicious.

Next we moved on to salmon poached at 55 degrees in olive oil, with asparagus and a fennel sauce. This was categorically the most beautiful salmon I have ever tasted. Interestingly, the wine choice for this course was a red, but a deliciously soft and light one.

Our final main was roasted pigeon. I can't remember what this was served with - the four glasses of wine must have been doing their job!

For dessert, something I wouldn't normally choose, passionfruit sorbet with nougat. I was overwhelmed by this dish - the sorbet was fresh and fruity and contrasted well with the more solid sweet flavours of the nougat.

For me, the best thing about tasting menus is that it forces you to try new things and you often find them to be delicious. Otherwise I always end up plumping for chocolate fondant with red cherries wherever I go! This meal wasn't cheap at HK$1700 each including wine, if that isn't extravagant enough for you there is also a more ambitious ten course version...