A friend of mine has a gourmet blog called Fork Out! Part from the blog being a short but good read I need to urge you to read a particular post about crayfish. The author sets out to do a comparative review [...]]]>

A friend of mine has a gourmet blog called Fork Out! Part from the blog being a short but good read I need to urge you to read a particular post about crayfish. The author sets out to do a comparative review of fresh Swedish crayfish versus frozen Chinese crayfish. Not being a total devotee to the crayfish mania that hits Swedes in August I usually go for the fresh varieties. Now, the findings being interesting but perhaps not surprising the best part is the comments. You see, a lot of the author’s friends has inside information on the Chinese crayfish. I say no more, go read and laugh and stop buy Chinese crayfish.

Image by Fork Out! author Monika, I hope she doesn’t mind if I credit her.

During a recent trip to London we visited a place that had pretty awesome dumplings. We’d grown tired of the English cuisine and had been recommended both Hakkasan, an upmarket Chinese restaurant, and it’s sibling Yautacha, focusing on dim sum – [...]]]>

During a recent trip to London we visited a place that had pretty awesome dumplings. We’d grown tired of the English cuisine and had been recommended both Hakkasan, an upmarket Chinese restaurant, and it’s sibling Yautacha, focusing on dim sum – or dumplings if you like.

We went for the latter and I must say that was a good choice. There was steamed dim sum, baked dim sum, grilled dim sum and pan fried dim sum, deep fried dim sum and cheung fun. Pork, beef, prawn, mushrooms, vegetable – you name it they had it – and we had it all. Well not exactly every single type on the menu but a fair share. I guess we counted 15-some different ones. Not everyone was amazing, I mean the mushroom one (the green thing on the bottom of the picture) was nice but very subtle compared to the five spice pork and prawn one, but overall they were truly amazing!

Arrive a bit early and try some of their very asiatic cocktails. Since I don’t really fancy all that sweetness and ice I preferred the martinis but for all you exotic drink lovers you wont be let down.

One little detail that was a tad annoying was the noise level. Yes I sound like an old fart saying this but we were seated downstairs, which was much cozier than ground level, and it just was very loud. Hey, I usually love a bustling restaurant but here came to be just a bit much for any longer séjour to be pleasurable.

So summing up the dim sum experience – go there. And if you’ve been there – what did you think of it?

Just the other week Restaurant Magazine announced this year’s list of the worlds 50 best restaurants. I was glad to see that El Celler de Can Roca grabbed the place as first runner up – cause I just payed them another visit. If

Just the other week Restaurant Magazine announced this year’s list of the worlds 50 best restaurants. I was glad to see that El Celler de Can Roca grabbed the place as first runner up – cause I just payed them another visit. If last time was awesome this time was twice that. I woud say the big difference was the wine, not that the food wasn’t tweaked too but the wines – wow. Also, this time, we were there for the lunch seating at 1 pm. Must say that was an excellent choice as you will see there was quite a lot to eat and drink.

First amuse bouche: Caramelized Olive. You can see the presentation yourself but what you can’t see is that they were filled with anchovies. Wine pairing for all appetizers was Albet I Noia El Celler Brut D.O. Cava.

Second amuse bouche: Campari bombon. Basically a fragile bonbon with Campari inside.

Third amuse bouche: Anchovy bones. Like last time – imagine prawn crackers but with anchovy and their bones left. Also a version with seaweed.

Fourth amuse bouche: Chicken cracker.

Fifth amuse bouche: Ring calamar adaptation. Best calamar I ever tasted; not particularly traditional but oh so good.

Sixth amuse bouche: Vegetable salad. Smallest one I ever tried, like an gunkan-maki.

Seventh amuse bouche: Truffled brioche and pot au feu broth. One of the best ones this lunch.

Eighth amuse bouche: “Escalivada” with anchovies and smoke of ember. Charcoal-grilled eggplant, pepper, onion and tomato. Served with a glass bowl over the plate that contained the smoke.

First course: Artichoke, foie gras orange and truffled oil. Can it go wrong – no it cannot. Interesting way to serve foie gras and I applaude it. Wine: Torre del Moro ’09 D.O. Conca de Barbera.

Second course: Charcoal-grilled king prawn with acidulated mushrooms juice. After devouring the meat part we went for the insides of the head – did they inject something or could it be that good by just being grilled? Wine: Josephshöfer ’99 Auslese VDP Mosel.

Third course: Onion soup, Crespià walnuts and Comté cheese. A new way of doing the French classic – onion soup with bread and cheese. Hot damn! One of my favourites. Wine: Renard Fourcharme ’95 Magnum A.O.C. Chablis Premier Cru.

Fourth course: Sole, olive oil and Mediterranean flavours. Also one that we had the last time. We ate from the bottom up: fennel, bergamot, orange, pine nut and olive oil. The crystalized olive oil kind of candy on top was awesome. Wine: Stéphane Tissot ’07 Savagnin A.O.C. Arbois.

Fifth course: Baby squid with onion rocks. One of the top squid dishes I had. Crisp and good. Wine: El Rocallis ’06 D.O. Penedès.

Sixth course: Red mullets with suquet (Catalan seafood stew) and lard. They sure know their seafood here and the green lard dumplings was really interesting in a very good way. Wine: Nelin ’08 D.O.Qa Priorat.

Seventh course: Steak tartare with mustard ice cream. Spiced tomato, caper compote, pickles and lemon, hazelnut praline, meat béarnaise sause, Oloroso-sherry raisin, chives, Sichuan pepper, Pimentón de La Vera (D.O.) smoked paprika and curry, small scoops of mustard ice cream and mustard leaves. Do I need to say this was the best steak tartar I’ve ever tasted. Wine: Pardas Rosat ’07 Vi de Taula {Penedès}.

Eighth course: Lamb with mint and peas. It was the neck of the lamb and the sauces was simply magical. Wine: Oloroso del Puerto Lustau Almacenista D.O. Jerez.

Ninth course: Green Colourology. This little miracle cleared our palate before the deserts. Quite similar to the green chromatism we got last time. The small candy like things was Chartreuse candy – well needed. Other flavours was mint and avocado. Wine: Clos Martinet ’07 D.O.Qa Priorat.

First desserts: Blood orange and beetroot sherbet. Bold flavours and just plain fantastic. But never mind that, don’t you just love the way it looks?! Wine: Grans Fassian Kabinett ’07 VDP Mosel.

Second dessert: Vanilla, caramel, liquorice, dried and caramelised black olives. No comment other than – yummy. Wine: Mont-Rubi Advent Sumoll ’08 D.O. Penedès.

Bonus round: Apple and foie gras timbal with vanilla oil. Are we at… what, 19 servings? Well why not one more? And hey, we all love foie gras, specially this classic Can Roca creation. Wine: Olivares Monastrell ’08 D.O. Jumilla.

Time for coffee and grappa, no problem to down the nice sweets that was served: Golden praline, Palet d’or, Yuzu bombon, Mont Blanc and Raspberry. Phew, we managed all pralines as well. The raspberry was my favourite.

After it all we got a tour of the wine celler and kitchen where we bumped into Joan Roca, the savoury master mind.

Oh yeah, we can do this at home… just need to upgrade my kitchen.

Seems like a humble and collected guy, at least here after service.

So how could we end this magnificent day when the time was only 6 pm? We took a taxi into River Café on the steps to the cathedral and drank beers and margaritas and ate pintxos and tapas in the warm spring sun. Awesomeness!

I was just watching an old show on Swedish television, SVT, called Plus. It has been like an ombudsman for consumers since the mid 80′s. It used to be hosted by Sverker Olofsson that became [...]]]>

I was just watching an old show on Swedish television, SVT, called Plus. It has been like an ombudsman for consumers since the mid 80′s. It used to be hosted by Sverker Olofsson that became the average consumers’ hero when he battled companies for doing their customers wrong.

Only, now Sverker wasn’t there anymore. I was a bit sad but that’s not what I’ll rant about now. I was more upset with a segment they seemed to have in every episode nowadays. A segment where the hosts tried if and how much they could haggle down the price for different goods and services. I would even call it dickering. This time it was gas stations and home electronics stores that were being targeted. Of course it came down to what margins the goods had – petrol not so much while some gadget a bit more – no major revelations there.

So why am I upset at this? Isn’t it nice to get a little guidance on how to save a few bucks… or crowns. Well yes and no. I believe that in a transparent market, like the one we are close to today, consumers will in many cases have enough information to make good decisions. Prices are usually quite easy to benchmark and there are a bunch of services that even help us out with it. Our coice to then spend our money where we find it fit teaches the market what will work and what won’t. Watching the host beg for free coffee at the gas station or lie about how much money she brought with her to the store was just embarrassing. What did this tell us really?

The point I think they wanted to make didn’t at all come through though. I think, or at least I want to think, that they we’re trying to show that if a business just showed that they were willing to do a little extra for the customers, the customers would become more loyal. The begging didn’t quite make a good enough case.

I for one prefer to focus on the quality of the product or service I’m acquiring and the value I get for my money. Sure, I’d like the best available price but I won’t go so far as to drive the providers to focus solely on how they could deliver a lower price. My challenge is always how to find the best value for my money and in my world – that’s rarely achieved through dickering. But then again, I’m spoiled.

Don’t get me wrong, bargaining is a crucial part of business but that’s not what I saw today. So, do you haggle?

Disqus, what the heck is that? It’s really just a separate system for handling comments on your site. I had comments before and nothing wrong with [...]]]> So I switched to Disqus a little while ago, not a big decision really with the amount of traffic and comments this blog has

Disqus, what the heck is that? It’s really just a separate system for handling comments on your site. I had comments before and nothing wrong with the handling of them in WordPress so why make the switch? The truth is that I’m experimenting to learn more, basically what this whole blog is about for me but I find all of these commenting systems or platforms quite interesting.

The idea is simple, with better ways to leave comments and share these with a network of friends and other interested and engaged people you get more out of whatever content you’re consuming. Haha you say looking at this place and yes, as I said, not the finest example of engaging content or rich strings of comments and reactions.

Part from Disqus there are a number other services available like Echo, used by big players like Technorati, and Intense Debate, which has been acquired by the company behind WordPress. This is only three but in my research, which was quick and dirty, I found that these are the ones most people are talking about now.

A quick check in Quora (interesting place for questions and answers by the way, sometimes I find really good answers there) reinforced my presumption: Echo seems more focused on social mentions, reminds me of BackType also worth just mentioning, while Intense Debate seemed not as innovative as Disqus and focused primarily on WordPress (yes I know I use WordPress but I’m getting to some sort of point soon, I hope).

With the idea of getting more people more involved through their networks, Facebook’s improved commenting plugin seems like a good alternative. Since almost a tenth of the worlds population is on Facebook (yes, I know, that was some horrible use of statistics) you have some interesting networks to tap into there.

However, TechCrunch’s experiences showed that it might not be so great after all. Read their thoughts here and here. Basically it is a bit exclusive, but let’s hope this improves since Facebook at least state that you can “enable users to comment using other login providers“. The Next Web also put together a pros and cons article.

And there I was, back at Disqus, hoping it will produce some more interactivity and richness to your part of this blog. But more importantly, what do you think and what are your experiences from these commenting plugins or services?

A bottle of Jacques Selosse Initial had been sitting in my fridge for too long and earlier this week we decided to pop it together with some foie gras. The champagne was amazing. Unlike any champagne I’ve ever tried before. Too bad the Selosse’s aren’t [...]]]>

A bottle of Jacques Selosse Initial had been sitting in my fridge for too long and earlier this week we decided to pop it together with some foie gras. The champagne was amazing. Unlike any champagne I’ve ever tried before. Too bad the Selosse’s aren’t the most reasonably priced bubbles. But who cares when it’s excellent. Richard Juhlin writes about it in one of his champagne guides and it seems he too is in love with the wine. Both he and other’s talks about Anselme, the genius proprietor, and his training in Burgundy which makes the wine almost a Burgundy with bubbles. And man does that work! Next bottle I’m aiming for an older vintage, they’re suppose to excel.

Ever heard of pine nuts leaving a bitter or metallic taste in your mouth? I did a couple of months ago but didn’t think much of it. That was until a a glass of juice almost had me convinced I was being poisoned. It has now lasted several days and the worst [...]]]>

Ever heard of pine nuts leaving a bitter or metallic taste in your mouth? I did a couple of months ago but didn’t think much of it. That was until a a glass of juice almost had me convinced I was being poisoned. It has now lasted several days and the worst part is that it seems like it can stay like this for weeks.

For a food loving guy like me, this really blows. Have I mentioned I do enjoy wine as well, apparently that will be one of the most revolting experiences with pine mouth. Crap-damn-it!

Moving past my disgust, pine mouth is quite an interesting phenomenon. Everyone seems puzzled with what’s behind it. Some has suggested rancid nuts and scientists have tested for led and chemicals, fortunately without results. Lately, though, it seems like it has something to do with what type of tree the nuts are taken from. Since most samples that have caused pine mouth are from China, many seems to be switching to other suppliers. You see, the harvests haven’t yielded enough so it seems ‘regular’ pine nuts is getting mixed with other types. As it is hard to distinguish between the different types I am too boycotting Chinese pine nuts from now on.

If you’re interested in reading more about this there’s a really good blog by a grad student specialising in food perceptions – The Great Pine Nut Mystery. Among other things she lists different types and if they’ll give you pine mouth. Swedish food journalist Lisa Förare Winbladh has also written about this after experiencing it, in Swedish though. Or you can just Google it and you’ll see that it seems to be trending.

Photo by Paul Goyette.