Leave me out of the kraut!

*This was written a few days ago, but I was busy in the mountains of Austria, and as a semi-nod to the brilliance of the Nolte/Murphy combo, I had to leave the “48 hours” bit in.

** I like it when my absence is justified, though. It’s like mercy killing of time. Kind of. And better still when I’m doing things that I can tell my kids about one day, such as my time in Austria. Because we all know there are things that you can’t tell your kids about; dominatrix basements, that goat-on-chicken action you saw during your fifth grade field trip to the farm, or even real mercy killing. Kittens tied to bottle rockets? That’s just poor form.

Real post begins here: In the past 48 hours, I have gotten chased by cows and chickens (the sheep ran away, probably due to some inherent fear of what a lonely Scotsman is capable of,) pulled Portobello and Porcini mushrooms from their wooded homes, and eaten some serious amounts of meat. Never in my life have I eaten so much food that I took from the earth with my bare hands. A week in Austria brought me more of a physical connection to my food than I have ever experienced, other than that cherry-pilfering incident in Puglia, to which I still thank Charlotte and Jessie for their desire to “muddy up a bit.”

But back to Austria. We ate apricots, plums, apples and pears straight from the trees; blackberries required a bit of bloodshed, but so be it. “Of the earth” is certainly an unspoken battlecry in Austria, where people are fanatical about their local products, and even the smallest cheese producer or sausage-maker deserves a visit, because they are probably dedicated to not just their craft, but also to preserving local traditions.

The irony of all this is, Slow Food probably wouldn’t have the same success here that it has in England, Italy, or even the United States. Austria is as close to a natural, organic country as I have ever seen, which I can say after seeing the food culture of more than 20 countries in my lifetime. Milk producers have formed a consortium, producing “bio-organic” milk, as they call it, and fiberboard cows colored red and white (for the country’s flag) dot the small cities, as testament to the pride the local farmers have in their products.

As I sat down to dinner with a few Austrian and American friends, I marveled at what lay before us. Bread, cheese, yogurt, butter, honey, tomatoes, mushrooms, cured ham, cider, and schnapps, ALL from within 20 kilometers of where I sat. It was ridiculous. I’ve sat at my own table, eating venison or striper, caught by my step-dad, but that was just the meat. This was a revelation. Why can’t everything be like this?

The Trinidude

I first met Michael back in cooking school, nearly a decade ago now. Despite being born in England, he’s Trinidad through and through. Trinidad is one of those countries where it’s difficult to figure out the proper name for someone who comes from there. Italy? Italian. France? French. Connecticut? Connecticutter (a bit more interesting.) But Trinidad? Trinidadian? Trinadese? So we’ll call Michael a Trinidude. This Trinidude has the ultimate Caribbean laugh, that deep belly laugh that comes out as an accent to pretty much whatever he says. His O’s last longer than if they were covered with Honey Nut, packaged by General Mills, and stuck in the basement for a few years.

So, seeing him 9 years later, as the hot-shot pastry chef of Bibendum, a fine dining French restaurant in London’s posh South Kensington, it makes me realize: I’m glad I stayed friends with him. Because friends get free food, or more specifically, free desserts.

Now don’t get me wrong. Mikey’s a fantastic guy, and I would doubtlessly be friends with him even if he wasn’t a chef. But when I gave up the pastry track after 3 days, and he stuck with it, I knew that he’d end up with a ton more pastry skill than I ever would. So is it wrong to reap the benefits of someone’s skill, when you still see it with the awe and magic that comes with your own inexperience, and is something that it no doubt deserves anyways?

I stopped by to see him today at Bibendum, and typical of a chef on a Saturday afternoon, he was literally up to his elbows in prep for his chocolate walnut torte, which I was lucky enough to try as an ending to my own light lunch. 9 Duchy of Cornwall oysters were as meaty and briny as the waiter described, and I have to admit a touch of respect for a place that offers only a well made mignonette and sliced lemon with their oysters, instead of the gloppy and ubiquitous cocktail sauce that does little more than make the over-cooked shrimp at your holiday party barely edible. In lieu of champagne or a pale ale, the home-made ginger beer was a nice peppery compliment to the shellfish.

And then the torte. It was a dense chocolate, with some sparse chopped walnuts floating throughout. A soft banana ice cream sat on a small bed of what I can only guess was raw chocolate nibs, and was creamy, but with enough body to please a man who has subsisted on only gelato for the past 8 months.

Overall , it was a very enjoyable experience. The layout of Bibendum’s oyster bar allows covered, open-air seating, and is great for people watching. It does a good job at representing a lighter, more casual companion to the fine dining restaurant upstairs, and Mikey and his works lend itself to helping create such an overall positive experience.

To Mong, or not to Mong

Monging is perhaps my 3rd favorite career choice. Now, I know, purists will say, "But Andrew, there's too much diversity these days in the monging industry. Fish, cheese, fish-flavored cheese, sausage, ferrets." Bah! I say...after haberdashery and good old-fashioned under-water basket-weaving, monging is king! That would make it, say, a duke really. Or prince. But I don't want to get sued by a spaghetti sauce. They break-a my legs.
But the F.K. (Formaggio Kitchen, a true cheese shop in every sens of the word) would probably win the superlative of "Most likely to have an independent security force in 10 years" award, if they don't already. They could be training them in the cheese caves as we speak. Being exposed to overly ripe Epoisse, forced to breathe in an open Marcetto, and then required to spend a fortnight with only a Casu Marzu to give them the nutrients required to stave off death. Yes, my friends, you shall be doing research to see what all these cheeses are, but so be it. You see, you learn when you read my quirky mind-gunk. I'm like milk for your brain...I make you strong! I don't know if this milk=strength thing is true though, as I was forced to consume canned O.J. whilst my pre-school mates downed those awesomely-constructed 1/2 pints of milk. Chocolate even! And you know the sound of something slightly wet sliding out of a can...that sucking, slick sound, that audal Kryptonite to an already weakened Lac-tard such as myself? But I made it, weak bones and all!
Whoever invented that stuff is evil, by the way. And was apparently born without taste buds themselves. Who thinks they can really pass off frozen, canned, orange juice concentrate and not expect repercussions somewhere down the line? I hope his dog was torn apart by a pack of stray cats, or something just weird enough like that. And while we're on the subject, fruit punch flouride? Cherry-flavored ANYTHING? Where the hell did they get the cherries to use as a basis for that flavor? The fields just outside of Chernobyl?
But back to the cheese. Indeed, I fear the future, when country lines break down (as we have already begun to see with the introduction of the Euro, erasing even a small part of a country's identity with the dissolution of its unique currency), and large food conglomerates have private security forces, and wars will rage over whether American cheese should be neon orange, or that pale pasty white that I can only relate to my own skin, sans freckles. This will be known as the War of Kraft vs. Land O' Lakes, and Laughing Cow will surely be called in as the Blackwater-esque special forces. Creepy. But true!

Thought of the moment

When underlining reading materials for an exam becomes less about highlighting the important parts, and more about making sure your pen lines stay perfectly between the lines, then it's time to take a break.

There's hope for us yet.

I emerged from my apartment, and found myself behind one of the endless numbers of haute couture women that are so numerous in the warmer months here that I swear they breed in the stagnant waters of the Po River. The social elite, which is saying a lot for a city with the the highest standard of living in the country. Although, I will note, with the insatiable obsession for all things outwardly beautiful (wear nothing but Chanel, live in a hovel, that sort of thing), who knows...maybe she was homeless.
The point is, I saw this dressed-to-the-nines lady finish her cigarette, drop it on the ground, step on it, and with great difficulty and obvious hampering to her perfect appearance, stoop down to grab it and throw it away. In a trash can. Now, in a place where cigarette butts fly through the air like confetti at a Louisiana David Duke parade, it's a nice thing to see.
It's like there's a cigarette butt smoldering in my heart right now.

Je suis un poutard

Mustard rules. Double entendre. I can use that because I was just in France. I like it chunky, like my peanut butter (not of this faux plaster-of-paris crap that I see in some places.) Ha, and there you go. Faux and paris, wow, this is rife with all things Frenchie.
Why is French's afraid to show off what's inside? I guess, as a bit of an exhibitionist myself, je ne comprend pas. Those tiny globules of goodness, all mixed up with vinegar, salt....it's perfect. And the Fallon Moutarderie in Dijon showed us this, resplendent in their recorded sounds of mustard being ground (does it REALLY get any better than that folks?), and played over speakers while we stared at a centuries-old wheel of stone. Personally, she could've told me anything, that it was used as currency, that the people of Dijon pray to the wheel, it being their watcher, and a hell of a lot more fun than that Children of the Corn deity.
(I love, by the way, that in France, you can add -erie onto the end of anything and make it a store for such. It's like the -eria here in Italy, but better....because it's French.
But what else goes perfectly on it's own, a tasty two-some of ingredients? Nothing, my friends, nothing. You there, with that cocktail sauce, tartare sauce, or ketchup? You must rely on your cocktails of shrimp, your burgers of (ham?) to satisfy the saucy smear. But give me bread and mustard...hell give me a finger and mustard (preferably mine, but Alyssa Milano's, my Milano cookie, would work as well,) and all is right with the world.
Oh, and mustard cures gangrene. Don't go ask some "professional," damnit, trust me. Or, do the whole maggot thing, and then smear some mustard on them. It be tasty.
Needless to say, the mustard lady had me wrapped around her little finger, and her little finger was not so little.
This post n'est pas bien. I'm not really feeling it. What I am feeling is a screaming sinus/allergy/sore throat trio that puts the Roman Triumverate to shame. So, I was going to come to some grand sweeping conclusion about being a grand poutard, which is essentially a big mustard whore. There, I said it, you can go on with your lives, the joke's over.

The perks of my school

Ah, they look like wee ants against the awesome power of the Gelato Uni. sign, don't they?
And yes, this place is real, and is as much of an actual University as Dr. Pepper actually holds a Phd. Just kidding. This is the place to learn all things gelato. The way that American ice cream has a higher fat content (10-20%, vs. 3-12% in gelato), that a proper gelato increases in volume by 20% when properly spun, and that sugar directly affects the size of the ice crystals, which in turn cannot be perceived by the human tongue when less than 25-30 microns.
I know what you're thinking. You're like "Wow, Andrew, that's amazing. But I've always wanted to know if the freezing temperature of a substance increases in direct proportion to its molecular weight."
Well, my friend, it does. And on that note, if you're calling me Andrew, you're not my friend. Go away.
Seeing the glorious, gleaming equipment inside the Gelato University made me realize just how old-school our sorbet and ice cream production was back at the Lumi. Towards the end, Johnny T and I would stand there at our 2 1/2 gallon pots, and whisk away, bringing the arse-ton of cream and vanilla up over a low heat in order to properly temp in the egg yolks for vanilla ice cream. It was truly a bonding experience, and no one really cared if you got the sweet sweet vanilla cream all over you from vigorous over-whisking. Mas nous ne sommes pas les poofs...I can guarantee that.
But seriously, there's a whole University DEVOTED to gelato! They're freakin' serious about it too. We went over the chemical compositions of the bases, the viable substitutes for sugars, proteins, and whatnot. It lets you see what's behind the curtain for a bit, which is almost bittersweet. I love the frozen stuff...it takes me to a better place (a place that's slightly cooler than the 104 degrees that I am currently forced to exist in.) But you learn too much about it, and it loses some of its innocence. And ice cream, gelato, sherbet, the sorbet I was weaned on during my many years as a lactard...well they're the physical manifestation of innocence. A luxury, and a creation of desire rather than necessity, well part of me just want to be able to experience that for as long as I can....
At the same time....I'm a numbers dork, and I love seeing how things work. At now I can see why Grom on the upper west side of Manhattan can get away with their insane prices....its worth it, when you know what goes into making true, proper gelato (especially given Grom's environmental approach.) And, it doesn't hurt that the didactic aspects of our studies here involve making, and consuming, large quantities of gelato. Pas mal.
At the end of the day though, I'm still a total sucker for B&J's Heath Bar Crunch.
Off to Burgundy in the a.m., and I shall try to write more while I'm there.