Eat, Drink, Art

July 4, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

The new tower at Fondazione Prada’s Milan venue has just welcomed the Torre restaurant on its sixth and seventh floors, designed by renowned architect Rem Koolhaas with Chris van Duijn and Federico Pompignoli from architecture firm OMA. Koolhaas describes it as “a collage of pre-existing themes and elements combining works of art and design furniture”. 

That’s not just any furniture or art, either. The sixth floor, an area of 2,300 square feet, is divided into two parts: the bar and the restaurant. Both spaces are characterised by contrasts between the large floor-to-ceiling windows (which offer unprecedented views of Milan), the warm tones of the parquet, the walnut carpentry work and the hemp panels that cover the walls. The bar has a fireplace surrounded by Soviet armchairs and Eero Saarinen’s Tulip tables, along with two works of art by Lucio Fontana: Cappa per Caminetto (1949) and Testa di Medusa (1948–54). The polychrome ceramic Pilastro (1947), also by Fontana, introduces guests to the restaurant area, which seats 84 and is arranged on three levels to slightly offset the point of view. 

Artwork by luminaries including Jeff Koons, William Copley and John Wesley adorns the first two levels, while the walls also feature some lovely artist-designed plates created especially for the restaurant by John Baldessari, Thomas Demand, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Mariko Mori and others. There’s also a triangular outdoor terrace featuring metal grills characteristic of the Fondazione Prada’s exteriors. The seventh floor features the chef’s table, with a glass wall and view of the kitchens and a private terrace. 

Boys’ Toys

June 20, 2018 / by Howard Elias

If you asked the man in your life to cook something other than an omelette or fried rice, would he know how? Happily, humanity has evolved since the time when the kitchen was deemed the exclusive domain of women and today, many men are just as comfortable preparing a hot meal. When it comes to high-tech kitchen appliances, though, some devices seem to be targeted more towards carriers of the Y-chromosome. They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – and if that’s true, then these internet-connected kitchen appliances are sure to warm a man’s aortic valve.

iFavine iSommelier Smart Decanter

I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t the sexiest of product names – but if it results in a delicious glass of wine, who really cares? This “smart decanter” pumps highly concentrated and purified oxygen into any wine, enabling you to speed up the decanting process; a traditional one-hour decant now takes just one minute, a two-hour decant takes two minutes, et cetera. The proprietary app offers wine and winery information as well as professional recommendations on decanting times. So go ahead and turn that HK$120 bottle of overpriced supermarket plonk into something that’ll fool your guests into believing you splurged on an expensive label from a speciality wine store.

PicoBrew Model C Homebrewing Kit

If you’re a craft beer-loving hipster, then you’re going to love brewing your own soon-to-be-award-winning frothy libations at home with this countertop appliance. The PicoBrew Model C lets you whip up five litres of your own fresh and tasty beer at a time – without all the complex equipment, vessels, sterilisation and messy clean-up. Choose from more than 180 recipes on the company’s website or create your own using the Pico FreeStyle programme. Place your order online and the company will even deliver a PicoPak ingredient kit full of fresh grains, hops and yeast right to your home. Brewing time takes only two hours and it’s grain-to-glass in just seven to 14 days. The appliance also connects to the internet so that you can monitor your brew from a mobile device. Hurrah! Your days of drinking cheap swill are over!

Vine Art

June 20, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above: The forecourt of Nouveau Chai

Pont des Arts, the acclaimed Hong Kong-based wine company, participated for the first time in Vinexpo Hong Kong. The company is the first high-end French wine brand to build a bridge between art and wine, Bordeaux and Burgundy, East and West, and collectors and newcomers. Pont des Arts connects the best from the art world – including artists such as Zao Wou-Ki, Yue Minjun, Miquel Barceló and Yan Pei-Ming – and the wine world, with French wine experts such as Paul Pontallier and Étienne de Montille. 

Echoing the famous quote from Aristotle that “art and wine are the ultimate pleasures of free men”, Pont des Arts aspires to merge the worlds of art and wine into a unique concept, bringing a limited-edition collection of wine and spirits to life, created in collaboration with world-renowned winemakers and artists. 

Every Pont des Arts bottle is adorned with a carefully selected work of art, chosen together with the artist, to match the flavour profile of each wine. At Vinexpo Hong Kong 2018, the company presented an exclusive experiential booth for professionals and wine lovers, immersing visitors in the connected realms through a guided presentation of Pont des Arts’ limited-edition collections and the latest releases. 

The impressive portfolio featured a group of limited-edition items. On day one, it was a Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru “Abbaye de Morgeot” 2014 and a Corton Grand Cru “Les Maréchaudes”  2014, with a label rendered by Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming called Wild Game: Second Way of the Tigers. Day two featured a 50-year-old Armagnac dubbed “Beyond Life”, created in collaboration with Samalens and with a painted label by Zao Wou-ki. And finally, on day three, guests marvelled at an 18-year-old single malt Japanese whisky created in collaboration with the Fuji Gotemba distillery, with a painted label by Marie-Laure Viébel. 

The Art of Smart

June 6, 2018 / by Howard Elias

Weight management is big business these days, so it’s not surprising that product designers and developers of smart kitchen appliances are rushing to introduce items that will allow you to easily track what you’re putting in your stomach. Here are a few items that might whet your appetite.

HapiFork

Both nutritionists and your mother will tell you that if you eat slowly, you’ll end up eating less and digesting better – and that’s the logic behind this internet-linked utensil. The HapiFork helps you monitor and track your eating habits, and even alerts you (with the help of indicator lights and gentle vibrations) when you’re eating too fast. Among its measurements are how long it takes you to eat your meal, how many “fork servings” are taken per minute and how long the intervals are between those servings. This information is then uploaded via USB or Bluetooth to an app so that you can track your progress in real time and hopefully modify your behaviour. The company currently just makes the one utensil, and there’s no indication that HapiSpoon or HapiChopsticks are on the horizon just yet.

Hidrate Spark Smart Water Bottle

In any climate, keeping hydrated isn’t only good for your brain, kidneys and joints, it’s also good for reducing your appetite for fattening snacks. The problem most people have throughout the day, though, is that they either forget to drink water or they just don’t drink enough of it. The Hidrate Spark Smart Water Bottle has a built-in sensor that automatically records how much you have drunk (in millilitres or ounces). If you haven’t met your hydration goals for the day, the bottle will start to glow as a reminder to drink more. The bottle syncs with the company’s proprietary app and integrates with a number of popular fitness trackers so that you can check on your progress in real time, too. It also comes in seven different colours to match your personal style.

Eat Healthy: Kombu and Squid Steamed Rice

June 6, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

There are more than 10,000 different types of seaweed in the world, but only one is crowned the “king of seaweed” – kombu.
It’s low in calories and rich in a variety of health essentials, including fibre and minerals such as calcium and iron. The former
is your best detox friend, while the latter two play critical roles in improving skeletal functions and the immune system. What’s more, the delightful combination of kombu and squid will satisfy your palate for that elusive, savoury taste of umami.

How to prepare (serves two)

* 125g of fresh or defrosted squid, cut in half with the tentacles left whole

* 2 pieces (about 35g) of kombu, soaked in water for 8 hours, then shredded 

* 1 cup of Japanese short-grain rice mixed with red rice (which has twice the fibre of white rice)

* 1 small piece of ginger, peeled and julienned 

* 1 teaspoon soya sauce

* 1–1.5 cups of water (enough to submerge all the ingredients)

* Chopped parsley (optional)

If You Can’t Stand the Heat…

May 23, 2018 / by Howard Elias

How smart is your kitchen? If it’s like mine, you can bet it’s fairly dumb. Yes, you may have a coffee maker that you set before you go to bed, so that it has your morning jolt of goodness brewed and ready as soon as you hop out of the shower. Perhaps you have a fuzzy-logic rice cooker that prepares the tastiest and fluffiest rice you’ve ever eaten. But both of those examples are yesterday’s tech – today’s smart kitchen appliances harness the power of the internet to deliver benefits that make you wonder how you ever survived without them.

Arguably, the smart kitchen appliance that has received the most buzz so far has been the connected refrigerator; quite a few big-name manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon with aims of convincing you that you need to buy one right now. These fridges have an extra-large internet-connected touchscreen built into one of the doors that offers a variety of apps including a shopping list, calendar, bulletin board, music player, photo album, the weather and even recipes. Some models can even examine what’s already inside your fridge and notify you when you’re running low on items so you don’t have to open up the door to check. The shopping list app will then connect you to your preferred online supermarket and place your order for you – all you need to do is unpack the groceries when they arrive at your home. 

However, if that sounds a bit too pretentious for your humble lifestyle, there are a number of small, smart kitchen devices have been released in the past few months. Here are just a few:

Behmor Connected Coffee Brewer

Working with an app on your phone, this smart coffee maker allows you to control the pre-soak time, the temperature, and the altitude for precision brewing. If you and Amazon’s Alexa are already acquainted, you can get your cup of java brewing with just your voice, too. The machine also allows you to create and save brewing profiles so that everyone in your family can have their cup exactly the way they like it.

Wireless Perfect Bake Pro Smart Kitchen Scale

If you love baking, this may be exactly what you need. Connect the scale to your mobile device, select one of the companion app’s more than 300 recipes (or use one of your own), place a bowl on the scale and start to pour your ingredients in. A virtual bowl on your screen will fill up as you pour and will tell you when to stop according to the recipe you’ve selected. Want to make an eight-serving dish for ten people instead? No problem! The scale will automatically adjust the quantities needed to give you perfect results – no matter the number of servings, or the pan size or shape. Now that’s smart.

Air- picurean wonders

April 6, 2018 / by Howard Elias

Around the world, cooking-show fans and celebrity-chef groupies are well aware of the culinary technique known as sous vide, though they may not have tried their hands at it themselves. But now, with a number of affordable sous vide precision cookers available on the market, making that perfectly cooked edge-to-edge steak at home is not only possible, it’s easy, too.

Sous vide (from the French for “under vacuum”) has actually been around for a few centuries. Benjamin Thompson, an American-born British physicist and inventor, has been credited with inventing the technique back in 1799 when, almost by accident, he left a piece of mutton in a hot-air roaster overnight. Although Thompson used air rather than water as the medium to transfer heat, the result was the same – a nicely cooked, juicy piece of meat. Since that time, a number of French and American engineers, scientists and chefs have refined the technique, eventually developing specific guidelines on cooking times and temperatures for different foods. 

Protein-rich items such as beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, seafood and even eggs are ideal for sous vide, but you can prepare some vegetables this way too – including carrots, pumpkin, asparagus and beetroot. Today, numerous companies market sous vide machines, with all the accoutrements you’ll need to bring the restaurant experience to your dining table.

At the core is the immersion circulator, which looks like a giant thermometer. All of them have a large LED panel on top so that you can set and see the precise temperature of the water your food is bathing in. Some are even Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-enabled so that you can check the water temperature remotely – and this is helpful because the cooking times can be quite long (sometimes even days), so you don’t have to babysit it. Just turn on the machine, set the desired temperature and walk away. The only problems that can arise are if the water level gets too low, or if the bag that the food is sitting in leaks or breaks. There are, however, simple ways to get around these snags.

The second thing is a vessel for the water. While you can use a large metal pot, it’s not ideal – for one, you won’t be able to see the food cooking. Also, water will evaporate off the surface, meaning you may need to top it up from time to time; this will affect your water temperature and the final cooking result. Fortunately, you can get around this issue by either covering the top of the pot with cling wrap or by covering the water surface with ping-pong balls. The better solution, however, is to purchase a clear-plastic food storage container that has a hole in the lid for the immersion circulator to fit through. These are inexpensive, and available online or in speciality stores.

The third item is a plastic bag to hold the food in as it cooks. Chefs use restaurant-grade bags and a vacuum sealer, but you don’t need to go that route. Instead, use resealable freezer bags and the water-displacement method to remove the air from the bag prior to sealing it. (More information on this is available online.) Finally, you’ll need a good iron skillet or an oven grill, so that you can sear the outside of your food right before it goes on the serving plate. 

Admittedly, sous vide isn’t the final word in cooking; you won’t be replacing your microwave oven or hot-air fryer with one of these. Cooking times are very long, so you’ll need to plan well in advance – even soft-boiled eggs take 45 minutes to cook. (They are delicious, though!) And some foods, like onions, don’t turn out well with this technique. But if you have the time, and you love your protein to look and taste as if Heston Blumenthal or Joël Robuchon cooked it himself, then sous vide is the way to go.

Here’s my recipe for beef brisket, which I adapted from different recipes. It results in something the British call “moreish” – everyone will want more. Every slice from edge to edge should be cooked to perfection.

Scientific Inspiration

March 2, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above: Atum Desserant

How much do you know about food? In the eyes of scientists, the delicious ingredients of meat, fish, vegetables and fruits are just organised mixtures of compounds that can create unlimited possibilities of taste. In 1988, French scientist Hervé This coined the term “molecular gastronomy” – referring to the studies of how physics and chemistry help transform the tastes and textures of food. Even earlier, his collaborator, Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti, first brought up the idea of applying physics to the kitchen in 1969. 

Today, the practice of molecular gastronomy is often associated with the use of liquid nitrogen, emulsifiers, edible gels, and equipment such as the blowtorch and pipette, which are more often found in laboratories. Innovative chefs who love exploring the next levels of flavours are experimenting with how ingredients behave under different temperatures and pressures, and how the old tastes can be wrapped in new forms or the other way round – such as caviar made of olive oil, spherical xiao long bao or spaghetti made of fruit through the process of gelification. 

Some chefs may prefer “experimental cuisine” or “modern cuisine” to the more scientific term. The Cooking Lab, just outside of Seattle, is a sizeable research kitchen and laboratory dedicated to culinary trial-and-error using scientific knowledge. Led by former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold, the lab is also behind the influential six-volume cooking bible Modernist Cuisine, which was published in 2011.

For avant-garde desserts that look like contemporary art, Atum Desserant offers sweet and savoury choices, freshly made in the open kitchen – its signature is Improvisation, made with liquid nitrogen ice cream and any other fun ingredients you desire. The restaurant also has a dessert plate featuring Hong Kong-style claypot rice flavours. 

16/F, The L Square, 459-461 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay | $$

Hong Kong’s pioneer of molecular gastronomy, the three-Michelin-starred Bo Innovation provides a sumptuous dining experience focused on food and novelty, led by “Demon Chef” Alvin Leung. Try the signature molecular xiao long bao and char siu bao, as well as the foie gras with mui choy ice cream.

1/F, J Residence, 60 Johnston Road, Wan Chai | $$$$$

What Comes Naturally

March 2, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

At Usagi no Nedoko in Kyoto, expect to discover the beauty of nature in a classical Japanese atmosphere. Located in a traditional house originally built in the early Showa era (the mid-1920s and ’30s), the abode has been renovated and transformed into a cafe, a shop and a small lodging area, furnished in the simple, old style of the city.

The cafe here serves a menu featuring dishes and desserts inspired by rocks, stones and minerals. You’ll find delights including panna cotta topped with purple jelly that resembles amethyst quartz, cocoa cake that references black charcoal, and assorted cheeses and meats arranged in a way to look like various gifts of nature such as calcite, marble, jade and the famed “pork stone” – a treasured piece of jasper carved into a meat shape in the 19th century that’s today housed in Taipei’s National Palace Museum. The menu is seasonal, so expect the unexpected on your visit.

Fry, My Pretties, Fry!

March 2, 2018 / by Howard Elias

On last year’s Singles’ Day (November 11), I took the plunge and decided to join the millions of people across China and Hong Kong – to do some online shopping. My purchase? An air fryer. I had heard about these magical countertop kitchen appliances for a couple of years now and how they fry foods using a tiny fraction of oil compared to traditional deep frying. Clean up, too, I had heard was a breeze. Being a contained unit, there’s no chance for oil to splash around your stovetop and onto your kitchen floor. A bit of soap and warm water on the handheld basket and presto, you’re done!

Philips launched the first air fryer back in 2010, introducing the world to something called Rapid Air Technology, which circulates very hot air – up to 200°C – at high speed, cooking the food on the inside and producing a crispy layer on the outside. It does this using up to 80% less fat than deep-fryers. Love French fries? They’re still fattening, but not nearly as much with this. Like to buy frozen dumplings, but only know how to steam them? Now you have another option. Thinking about microwaving some leftover pizza? Put it in your air fryer instead. Got a taste for chicken wings or shrimp? Your air fryer can make those crispy, too.

Today, there are quite a few air fryers on the market, with prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to just a bit more than HK$1,000. Most are quite simple; they have a temperature setting and a timer, and that’s it. Inside, there’s a basket to hold the food and perhaps a few other removable items such as a wire stand, possibly for multilevel cooking. (I have yet to use mine to know for sure.) They also have a removable, easy-to-clean drip tray. Being a neophyte at this type of cooking, I opted for a Chinese model that had a number of preset programmes available. Instead of pressing three buttons – temperature, time and start – I’m pressing two. Now that I’ve used the machine a fair bit, though, the presets are becoming less important.

Although my appliance came with a not-so-handy recipe booklet (my Simplified Chinese is good, but not that good), there are plenty of air fryer recipes available on the internet. Because this is such a simple appliance to use, it’s easy to experiment. I began my culinary journey with sweet potato fries. I cut a few sweet potatoes into spears, coated them with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil, a bit of salt and some rosemary, added them to the basket and pressed the “chips” preset button on my machine. They were delicious, but admittedly more limp than crispy. My next set of attempts involved a variety of fresh vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, sliced tomatoes, carrots and Brussels sprouts. Again, all were delicious, but I learned that my machine needs to be hotter and cook longer than what the recipes call for. 

My next foray involved more fiddly fare – homemade spring rolls, teriyaki-flavoured tofu, taco-seasoned chickpeas, and green beans dipped in a flour, egg and breadcrumb mixture. The beans were a bit messy, but they all turned out to be deliciously crispy. My greatest success to date has been apple chips, which are fabulous. Simply slice up an apple, coat the slices with a teaspoon of vegetable oil, and air fry them for about 12 minutes at 190°C. If they’re not crispy enough, put them back in the machine for a few more minutes. Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on top and you have a healthy snack that has no added sugar, no salt and no preservatives. It’s also a lot cheaper than the packaged version.