Yes, Chef…

March 18, 2020 / by Philippe Dova

What makes your Caesar salad “special”, exactly?

I didn’t want to serve my customers an easy, classic Caesar salad – it wasn’t my world. So I tried to work on this salad. It’s a baby gem lettuce imported from Italy, featuring a normal Caesar dressing with eggs, anchovies, garlic, mustard, salt and pepper. But I put some hazelnut paste and some balsamic pearls on the bottom, and on top of the salad I mix some baby gem with gin. Usually baby gem doesn’t have too much taste, so the gin helps to push out the greener notes of the salad. Then I shave some frozen foie gras on top.

Is foie gras a common ingredient in Italian cuisine?

Not really, but I use foie gras because it helps make the taste richer and the dish more valuable. This is goose foie gras and with a few little flakes of sea salt on the top, its taste is just amazing. Cold, it melts in your mouth with the fresh salad – it’s a great combination. I love it and the people who eat it love it as well, so I think it’s fine.

When exactly did you create this recipe and how long did it take to perfect it?

I started working on this salad about five years ago and I spent a couple of months to adjust the taste, the texture, and the balance between the gin, hazelnuts, salt and foie gras.

Ultimately, it’s a very sophisticated Caesar salad…

In Hong Kong, you need to work this way. You need to give the best you can to your customer by using premium ingredients you can find in the market. At the same time, you need to make your business work. Sometimes, what you feel in your heart is too complicated for people to understand. You need to make a choice between what you want, what you decide and what’s working.

Luca’s Special Caesar Salad

Caesar dressing

• 6 anchovy fillets

• 1 garlic clove

• 120g egg yolk

• 300g lemon juice

• 1 spoonful Dijon mustard

• 80g olive oil

• 400g seed oil

• 60g parmesan

• Salt and pepper (to taste)

Mix the egg yolk with the two oils, like when you prepare a mayonnaise. When this mixture is ready, add the rest of ingredients, with the solid ingredients finely chopped.

Pancetta tesa

• 60g pancetta 

Cut with a slicer and cook on 2 trays in the oven at 120°C for 40 minutes.

Hazelnut paste

• 500g hazelnuts

• 30g–50g vegetable oil 

Cook in the oven at 160°C for 20 minutes. Blend with vegetable oil and set aside.

Other ingredients

• 4 heads fresh baby gem lettuce

• 120g frozen foie gras (or foie gras terrine)

• 20g Gin Mare

• 1 jar balsamic pearls

• Olive oil (for seasoning)

• Salt, pepper and Maldon sea salt (to taste)

Cut the baby gem heads in half and fill them with the Caesar dressing you’ve prepared. 

Take one plate and pour one spoonful of hazelnut cream on the base. Julienne the other half of the baby gem and season with gin, salt, pepper and olive oil, and place in the middle. 

Put the other half of the baby gem on top. Spread some balsamic pearls around the salad. Cover with shaved frozen foie gras and finish with dry pancetta. Add a few flakes of Maldon salt to taste.

The Dough Must Flow

March 4, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Most people who make their own bread do so to control what goes in it. Bread should really only contain six or seven ingredients: flour, liquid (water or milk), oil, sweetener (sugar, honey, agave or molasses), salt and yeast. I often add an egg to my breads to give them some squeezability; for vegans, ground flaxseed works just as well. If you want to be fancy, you can also throw in things like herbs, fruit, nuts, seeds or cheese. Some people may add dried gluten to their breads to give them more elasticity, especially if they are using flours like teff or spelt that are low in gluten.

I recently looked at the ingredients of a popular brand of locally produced bread – one that’s available in all the supermarkets here. Do you know what else it contains? Flour-treatment agents to make the loaf rise more so that the bakery can use lower-quality flour and less of it (you’re essentially paying for bread-flavoured air), emulsifiers to reduce the rate at which the bread goes stale, preservatives to prolong shelf life and stabilisers to assist in the uniform dispersal of ingredients. The use of all these chemicals in food is legal in Hong Kong, but is it any wonder that more people are experiencing food intolerance issues these days?

With the plethora of affordable bread-making machines available on the market, it’s never been easier to make your own loaves of wholesome, grainy goodness… not that it was that difficult before. My machine is a basic model that offers 12 settings for different types of breads (basic, whole wheat, French, et cetera). To be perfectly honest, I actually use the dough setting for all my breads and then pop the dough into the oven.

True, the advantage of using a machine from start to finish means you only have one pan to wash up, but baking your bread in the oven means that you can shape it into something other than a boring rectangle. Thanks to an instructional video on YouTube, I’m now a pro at making a six-stranded braided challah. You can also add interesting items such as apple chunks, grated cheese or sesame seeds to the dough once it’s ready. (Some machines automatically add items like dried fruit or nuts during the process, but mine isn’t that sophisticated.) Oven baking also means you can get the crust just the way you like it.

Another good reason for making your own bread is that it’s therapeutic. When I focus my attention on that blob of dough on my kitchen counter, any trouble that’s been sitting on my mind just disappears. The aroma coming from the oven also helps to melt away any worries or concerns I may have. Bread-making is also a great way to bond with your kids over an activity; my friend already has her two-year-old helping her pour the ingredients into the machine. So go ahead and get baking! It’s easy, it’s fun and you’ll feel better knowing exactly what’s in your bread.

Beet Bread

• ½ cup warm water

• 14oz can of sliced beets, finely chopped or puréed

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1 teaspoon honey

• 2¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

• 1 cup whole wheat flour

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 1 packet (2¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast

• 1 egg or egg substitute (optional)

Tip: To get a redder loaf, swap out half of the water for the beet liquid from the can.

Add the ingredients to your bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select the dough setting. When the dough is ready, either pour it into a non-stick baking pan or mould it to your desired shape on a very lightly floured surface. If the dough is too sticky to mould, add very small amounts of flour at a time until the dough is soft. Cover the dough and let it rest for about ten minutes. Bake the bread at gas mark 4 (180°C) for an hour. You’ll know it’s done when you tap it and it sounds hollow. Allow the bread to cool completely on a cooling rack before slicing or serving.

No Beef About It

February 19, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Are you a flexitarian? If you like a nice, juicy hamburger or a curried chicken as much as the next carnivore, but you’re reducing your meat intake due to its environmental unsustainability, then welcome to the club.

You’ve probably already heard (or maybe even tried) those new plant-based protein products that have the look, feel and taste of the real thing. However, I’ve never sunk my teeth into a fake burger – because I’m allergic to them. Many of these products contain sunflower or coconut oil, which I can’t eat.

A friend recently posted his latest attempt at making vegan fried chicken on social media – and that got me intrigued. Could I make a juicy vegan burger at home? I quickly consulted the experts at Google Search and found dozens of recipes for something called “seitan”. Seitan is the Japanese word for food made from wheat gluten, but it’s apparently the Chinese who invented the concept of fake meat more than a thousand years ago. If you’ve ever had a plate of fake duck, beef rib and curry chicken as an appetiser in a vegetarian Chinese restaurant, that’s seitan. And just like real meat, seitan can be baked, roasted, fried, steamed, grilled and even eaten raw. One of its qualities is that it absorbs the flavours of seasonings that are directly added or in the liquid it cooks in – so pretty much anything you can you make with meat, you can make with seitan.

As a meat substitute, seitan is higher in protein than tofu, and has as much protein per ounce as beef and chicken. It’s also high in selenium, iron, phosphorus and a few other essential elements while being low in carbohydrates and fat. On the downside, though, seitan is low in lysine, which is an essential amino acid. It’s also unsuitable for celiacs and those who are sensitive to gluten.

For my first foray into homemade seitan, I thought I’d start with something easy. All it took was ten minutes to prepare, plus another 60 to steam, and my vegan pepperoni was good to go. At last, I can enjoy a vegetarian pepperoni pizza or a hearty “meaty” soup with rich smoky flavour.

Now that I’ve mastered pepperoni, I’m going to turn my sights to more complex seitan fare, such as wiener schnitzel and chicken piccata. My adventure in plant-based proteins has only begun!

Seitan Pepperoni

• 1½ cups vital wheat gluten

• ¼ cup nutritional yeast

• 2 tsp paprika

• 2 tsp mustard powder

• 1½ tsp cumin

• 1 tsp garlic powder

• 1 tsp cayenne pepper

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tsp ground pepper

• ½ tsp oregano

• ½ tsp white sugar

• ¾ cup cold water

• ¼ cup tomato paste

• 2 Tbsp olive oil

• 2 Tbsp liquid aminos (or soy sauce)

• 2 tsp liquid smoke flavouring

Android, There’s a Fly in My Soup

January 8, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Whether it’s autonomous robots delivering pizza, welcoming guests and offering room service at hotels, or making cocktails on cruise ships, it seems our new metallic companions are finding much to do in the hospitality and food-and-beverage sectors – and nowhere more so than in Japan. A cafe has just opened in Tokyo’s lively Shibuya district, Pepper Parlor, where the vision of the 2008 anime series Time of Eve, in which androids and humans coexist, seems to have been realised. It’s not the first time such a venture has opened in Tokyo, but this time around it comes with the backing of tech giant SoftBank. 

At Pepper Parlor, a variety of bots work with their human companions, including the iconic Pepper. The 120cm-tall talking robot has become something of an icon in Japan since being launched by SoftBank’s robotics unit in 2015, appearing in hospitals, stores, airports and museums. 

At Pepper Parlor, Pepper greets customers, takes their orders, interacts with customers at tables and even takes photos. It’s a fascinating and unique experience that gives us a glimpse of a perhaps inevitable future.

Lobster Love 

January 8, 2020/ by Philippe Dova

What was your initial inspiration for this recipe?

It’s a take on something that I used to eat when I was quite young in England, like home food. But I wanted to give the diners of Skye a bit more of a luxurious experience.

When did you think about making it a signature dish at Skye?

I’ve known since I was quite young that I wanted to be a chef – and there were a few dishes that I always thought of, even when I was younger. “Ahh, if I ever got my restaurant, I would put this on the menu…” Originally, it was just going to be macaroni and cheese, but obviously, now I’m older and wiser. I think you can’t just put macaroni and cheese on the menu! [laughs]

Where does the lobster come from?

From Brittany. We get it live – we buy it live and we get the delivery three times a week.

Is it a difficult dish to cook?

I wouldn’t say it’s difficult. The difficulty is in making sure that the base recipes are correct, whether it’s making the pasta, the bouillabaisse, the Mornay sauce… They are very traditional recipes, which sometimes seem to be quite easy to take shortcuts but are easy to get wrong. To make a good bouillabaisse, a good Mornay sauce… it takes time. So it’s these things that, if you get them right, everything will fall into place.

How long did it take to create, adapt and finalise the recipe?

I guess it was two to three months of just thinking, sourcing the ingredients and tasting before we actually put it on the menu and we thought: “Yeah, we got that right.”

Skye, The Park Lane Hong Kong, 27/F, 310 Gloucester Road, Causeway Bay (parklane.com.hk)

Brittany blue lobster mac & cheese (serves four)

• 2 Brittany lobsters

• 5g butter (for lobster)

• 100g 36-month Comté cheese (grated)

• 2tbsp butter

• 2tbsp flour

• 300ml milk

• 100ml lobster bisque reduction

• 1kg lobster head

• 1 Roma tomato (chopped)

• 1tbsp tomato paste 

• 50g vegetable oil 

• 1 bunch thyme

Poached lobster

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Cut the lobsters on the cross of the head and bring directly down between the eyes. Twist the head from the body and wash thoroughly. Twist away the claws from the body.

Bring water to a rapid boil. Place the knuckles in and start a timer for 2 minutes. Once the 2 minutes have finished, place the bodies in and boil for an additional 4 minutes. Remove the lobster parts from the water, and place on a tray to drain and chill. Once cooled, break open the shells and remove all of the meat.

To finish, heat the 5g butter in a pot to 63°C. Submerge the lobster tails, knuckles and claws in the butter and heat through, approximately 8 minutes. Transfer the lobster parts to a paper towel to drain any excess butter. Season and serve warm.

Comté cheese sauce

In a thick-bottomed saucepan, melt the 2tbsp butter and foam it a little. Add the flour and cook out lightly, stirring all of the time. Gradually add the milk and whisk until fully incorporated each time before adding more. Once all the milk is added, cook for a few more minutes to cook out the flour. Remove from heat and whisk in the cheese, followed by the remaining butter. Pass through a chinois and store in the fridge. 

Lobster oil

In a large saucepan, bring some of the vegetable oil to a high heat. Add the broken-down lobster heads and cook, stirring regularly, until they have glazed a little in the pan. Add the chopped tomato, thyme and tomato paste, and sweat for 5 to 10 minutes. Add the rest of the oil and place in a 180°C oven for 1 hour. Cool down after it is finished. Strain the oil through a sieve lined with muslin.

Cosmic Cab

November 27, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Earlier this month, the famed International Space Station was the recipient of some rather unusual cargo courtesy of the Northrop Grumman resupply rocket: 12 bottles of red wine. Likely to the chagrin of the astronauts, it’s not for their delectation; rather, it’s all for the betterment of matters vinous, as French start-up Space Cargo Unlimited plans to study the effects of microgravity and space radiation on the ageing process of wine. 

It’s a like-for-like comparison, too. While the wine will remain sealed in its glass bottles, samples from the same batch will age simultaneously on Earth. Both sets of samples will be kept at a continuous 18°C (+/-2°C), considered to be the optimal temperature for ageing wine. After the wine returns to Earth, researchers will then assess both samples to determine how space ageing affects the fermentation process and taste. Specifically, the study will investigate the role of colloids (such as tannins and polyphenols) and how the space environment affects them. 

The outcome is about more than just wine. Future long-duration space missions require storing food and medicines for long periods, which may affect the nutrition and taste of the former and the potency of the latter. Learning more about how the space environment affects complex liquids could lead to improved storage methods that reduce potential negative effects. For example, previous studies suggest that resveratrol, a component in the skin of wine grapes, may limit the effects of space radiation. 

Yes, Chef

November 13, 2019 / by Philippe Dova

What was your inspiration in creating this recipe?

I was looking for what could make a good marriage with white truffles. Achieving harmony with white truffle is very complicated; that’s what I learned with Mr Robuchon. Only pasta, some seafood, eggs and mushrooms – especially button mushrooms – work. One day, while thinking about button mushrooms, I had a flash and remembered a recipe we had created with Mr Robuchon in 2016 for the European Football Championship in France: button mushroom ravioli with white truffles.

What’s your personal touch for this new recipe?

I added scallops to mushroom duxelles. It provides an iodised touch that is in perfect harmony with the mushroom and the white truffle. The duxelles is made with the whitest part of the mushroom; the excess parts and the stems are sliced to make our sauce, so there’s nothing that goes to waste. With these extra parts, we add a light aroma of mushrooms, to which we add a little cream to bring lightness to our dish. Finally, we add a few sea urchin tongues on top – it’s a nice touch of iodised colour and the sea urchin also blends very well with the white truffle.

With all these ingredients, is it a rather expensive dish to make?

Well, if you remove the truffle and the sea urchin, you are also not obliged to use scallops, so you could make a button mushroom ravioli. It would be an absolutely sublime dish with very cheap, basic products and, in addition, a dish that would perfectly suit vegetarians.

Does this somehow relate to your definition of a great chef?

Yes, with simple cooking that’s cheap and doable at home for everyone. It’s the same for a sommelier – put them in front of a Château Pétrus and other great wines, and it’s easy. But for me, a real sommelier is one who’s able to find a basic wine that isn’t expensive, but exceptional. It is based on this choice that we recognise a professional. In the kitchen, it’s the same. One could put truffles everywhere – it’s easy…

How long did it take you to develop this recipe?

Between Macau and Hong Kong, about eight working days. At the beginning, the recipe was very good, but we tried to improve it. There’s always something missing, so at the end we added some little mushroom chips to bring a crunchy side to the dish. Honestly, if a recipe doesn’t work and you don’t feel it at first, you can stop! After that, it’s just making small adjustments, like the racing car engines that mechanics used to adjust by ear a few decades ago.

THE RECIPE

Scallops in ravioli, topped with a Saint-Hubert smoked Fleurette sauce (serves four)

• 4 scallops 

• 8 sheets of gyoza dough 

• 400g white button mushrooms

• 1 shallot, chopped 

• 40g of butter 

• 200g of liquid cream

• 1 small white truffle (optional)

• Sea urchin coral (optional) 

Put Some Tiger in Your Tank

October 16, 2019 / by Howard Elias

If you’re looking for new ways to eat healthier, you may have already heard about tiger nuts, which are quickly gaining global traction. Contrary to what the name implies, tiger nuts are neither cherished animal parts, nor are they nuts. They are, in fact, edible tubers, much like potatoes. They’re a bit larger than a chickpea, and they have a slightly sweet taste and a chewy texture.

Known by its scientific name Cyperus esculentus, tiger nuts grow wild all over the world because of their hardiness; they’re most widely cultivated in Spain, West Africa and India. Above ground, the tiger nut plant, which has many names including yellow nutsedge, looks similar to a tuft of grass. Below ground, though, tiny tubers form along its root system, and just one plant can produce several hundred to several thousand tubers during a single growing season. With its deep, spreading roots, it’s not surprising that many people consider it to be a weed rather than a food source.

But for people who do eat those tiny tubers, tiger nuts are healthy in a variety of forms. People in the Valencia region of Spain like to drink a sweet milk-like beverage called horchata de chufa (check out our recipe). In West Africa, tiger nuts are eaten raw as a side dish. Tiger nut oil can be used in salads or for frying. Tiger nut flour, which is high in insoluble fibre, can be used in gluten-free paleo cakes, cookies and breads. A growing number of cosmetics also now contain tiger nut oil due to its high antioxidant content.

Good news: Tiger nuts are also high in monounsaturated fat (that’s the fat you want in your diet), vitamins C and E, and minerals such as iron, phosphorus, zinc, potassium and magnesium. They’re low in calories – and they may even boost libido, too. So if you’re looking to put some tiger in your tank, tiger nuts are a great way to add more nutrition into your diet.

Horchata de Chufa

• 1 cup tiger nuts

• 2 cups cold water

• 2 Tbsp maple syrup

• ½ tsp cinnamon

• Ice

Sparkle Bright

October 16, 2019 / by Jon Braun

Whether it’s quaffing in the summer heat or celebrating the holiday season in style, champagne and sparkling wine have always been classic choices. But why not bypass the typical bubbles and explore the fizzy world of sparkling sake from Japan?

A relatively recent addition to the sake landscape, sparkling sake has become more and more prominent over the past decade. Featuring fresh, bright and complex flavours and textures, it’s easy to drink, is lower in alcohol content (usually from 4% to 10% ABV), spans from dry to sweet, and is fantastic for pairing with a wide range of cuisines.

To understand sparkling sake, it’s important to know the basic method for producing still, uncarbonated sake. Using just four ingredients – rice, water, yeast and koji (Aspergillus oryzae, a type of fungus/mould also used for fermenting things such as soy sauce and miso paste) – sake is a fermented beverage that’s in some ways quite similar to beer production. In its simplest form, a brewer takes a specialised rice variety and polishes each grain down to remove the outer layers, then adds the koji to break down the resultant starch into sugars. 

After roughly a week, water and yeast are added to the mix (in a series of additions) before the resulting mash is allowed to ferment for another two to three weeks. After fermentation, the solids are filtered out, the sake is pasteurised and bottled, and then it sits for a storage period of approximately a year before it’s ready for release. 

As the yeast feasts on the sugars from the rice, the resulting carbonation bubbles usually escape the fermentation tank. So there are three main methods to produce sparkling sake: forcing pressure into the tank to keep the carbon dioxide in the liquid, injecting carbonation directly into finished sake, or adding active yeast to bottled sake for secondary fermentation. The last practice tends to produce hazier sake that’s quite distinct from its filtered counterparts; some higher-end renditions even use the méthode traditionnelle technique used in the Champagne region.

Served chilled in a champagne flute or a white-wine glass, sparkling sake tends to be light and crisp (and much less rich than regular sake), with aromas and flavours ranging from fruits and florals to more savoury notes, and with differing balances between acidity, sourness and sweetness. Though many breweries in Japan are now producing sparkling sake, you’ll often be able to find larger exported brands such as Mio, Dassai, Ichinokura Suzune and Chikurin.

The Song Remains the Same

September 18, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Wine pours its way through human history like blood, and despite the fact that we call the oldest of it vintage and pay appropriately vertiginous prices for it at auction, a new study in the scientific journal Nature Plants suggests that the wine we drink today is incredibly similar to wines drunk by the Romans – and may have existed for hundreds or thousands of years before Caesar, Cleopatra and the influential entourage that comprise our first and earliest study of history at school. Certain grape varieties from France’s luminous Champagne region, such as chardonnay, have been made into white wine since the Middle Ages. 

To determine the genetic lineages of the wines they studied, researchers collected 28 grape seeds from nine ancient archaeological sites in France, some of which were at least 2,500 years old. Scientists (including ancient-DNA researchers, archaeologists and contemporary grape geneticists) investigated the grapes’ genes and compared them to their modern-day counterparts – a first for viticulture and science. 

And here’s the remarkable thing: Of the ancient seeds they tested, all were genetically related to the grapes we grow and drink today. Almost 60% were within one or two generations of modern varieties and, in at least one case, researchers discovered evidence suggesting consumers are drinking wine from the same grapes, or a direct relative, as a medieval Frenchman did 900 years ago. It’s the rare “savagnin” blanc (not today’s sauvignon) – a light, floral style grown in eastern France. 

In the case of the more familiar pinot noir and syrah grapes, we are drinking grapes that are direct genetic relatives of those used during the Roman Empire. “It’s incredibly likely that someone 1,000 years ago was drinking something that’s pretty much genetically identical to what we drink today,” says Nathan Wales, a co-author of the study and a University of York lecturer specialising in paleogenomics (the study of ancient DNA). 

However, before we all dance a merry tale and claim kinship with history’s nearest and dearest, scientists sound a note of caution. Living things, especially plants, which preceded humans by millions of years, evolve. But humans, in some cases, have slowed down this evolution by propagating the vines through cuttings – viticulturists will typically cut off a piece of the wood and replant it, essentially creating a genetic clone of the original plant in an attempt to preserve its exact taste. The new vine is almost genetically identical to its parent, perpetuating the merlot or pinot grigio lineage.

The climate is evolving, too, in ways that jeopardise grapes that haven’t evolved genetically due to human interference. “These grapevines have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, but everything around them has continued to change,” writes postdoctoral researcher Zoë Migicovsky in the report, adding that warming temperatures are increasing the strength of certain pests and pathogens. “If these varietals are genetically identical all over the world, it means they’re all susceptible to the same pests and diseases as well.” In other words, they could equally all be lost.