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Barmy bagels

New York City is home to many exorbitantly priced culinary delights such as the $25,000 ice cream sundae and $10,000 martini. Now, there’s a $1,000 bagel. It is whole wheat, but it is what’s on the bagel that boosts the price: white truffles and gold leaf jelly. It’s also available without toppings for $1.20.

All I want for Xmas

This mindbogglingly pimped out Tercenturian Hamper from Fortnum & Mason is sure to please even the most persnickety hamper aficionado. It arrives brimming with yummies like smoked Scottish wild salmon, Beluga caviar, champagne truffles, lime curd & lemon curd, gourmet cheeses & ham, and a 25 Person Foie Gras en Croûte feast. To wash it all down, they’ve included a 5-liter Jeroboam of Château d’Yquem, a magnum of Krug Champagne Vintage Collection 1981, Vintage Fonseca 1955 Port,  Baron de Lustrac, Armagnac 1900 & other over-the-top and excellent vintage Château/Grand Cru bevvies – made all the more tasty when quaffed from the accompanying William Yeoward handcut crystal Champagne jug & flutes.

For chasers? White Tea from a ceramic tea caddy, crackers & chunk comb honey in a William Yeoward Glass Honey Pot, and chocolates nestled in a silk box. (Cashmere socks are thoughtfully included in case of a chill.) Even the ubiquitous fruitcake that circles the globe each year on an endless journey of regifting makes an appearance – this time as a three-tier extravaganza – as does a St James Christmas Pudding. Tercenturian Hamper £20,000

Ramsay aims for purely female brigade at Royal Hospital

Michelin-star chef  Gordon Ramsay is so impressed with the wealth of up-and-coming female chefs that, from next year, he plans to man, or should that be female, the kitchens at his flagship Royal Hospital Road kitchen entirely with women. He told the Observer magazine that there is “an articulation of calmness” about female chefs that makes them particularly impressive when they get it right. His new protégé, Clare Smyth, currently heads up the team at the Royal Hospital restaurant. “I would say that a talent like Clare Smyth comes through the kitchen maybe once every 10 years,” said Ramsay. “The last time was with Angela Hartnett in Aubergine and that was back in 1995.”

Sunday Snapshot

How many scoops of stewed beef can you pile onto a bowl of rice? Two video-savvy cooks who tried to find out could find themselves out of jobs after the Japanese beef bowl chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. suspended them for posting a clip of their experiment on YouTube. It shows a man in a Yoshinoya uniform heap ladle after ladle of steaming stewed beef onto a bowl of rice. By the sixth scoop, the mound of stewed beef is twice as high as the porcelain bowl, with bits tumbling off the sides
“It’s just a disgrace to treat food this way,” said Yoshinoya official Haruhiko Kizu.Company cooks are trained to top beef bowls with just one scoop of beef, he said. The company tracked the culprits down by scrutinizing the clip for clues, eventually identifying the restaurant and the employees.

Whisky is a strong drink and usually considered something to enjoy after a meal. But Italian and French restaurants in Tokyo are planning a new way to enjoy the drink–malt whisky in particular–with seasonal menus designed to match the character of the beverage.
“As malt whisky has a high alcohol content and a distinctive flavor, I created a menu that can stand up to those characteristics. I believe grilled or smoked dishes particularly suit the flavor,” Ma Chambre chef Masaharu Manaka said, explaining a five-course set menu the French restaurant in Roppongi, Tokyo, will offer in January along with Glenlivet whiskies.
Among the dishes, Manaka especially recommends akaza shrimp and foie gras cooked in savoy cabbage and served in sauce americaine as well as char-grilled Iberico pork shoulder served with Madeira wine sauce. They will be served with Glenlivet Nadurra and 18-year-old whisky, respectively. “We recommend that you enjoy Nadurra with just one rock and the 18-year-old straight or with a little water.”
Ma Chambre also will serve a cocktail prepared with 12-year-old Glenlivet, orange juice and grenadine syrup as an appetizer for the 12,000 yen set menu.

Jean Georges isn’t a restaurant known for its attachment to experimental cuisine; if anything, J-G Vongerichten’s highly formal flagship is considered a bastion of old-school tablecloth dining. But Vongerichten has always been in the gastronomic vanguard, and he and chef de cuisine Mark Lapico are among the city’s most ardent admirers of the CVap oven, a controlled-humidity technology they use so much that there’s three of them in the kitchen.
First invented (and still used) as a way to keep Kentucky Fried Chicken fresh, the CVap has moved on to finer establishments. By cooking with moist heat at extremely low temperatures, the CVap can cook delicate fishes, beef tenderloins, and even custards in short periods without losing any moisture whatsoever — the hallmark of sous-vide cooking, but without all the hassle of bags and warm-water baths. “It’s so good,” Vongerichten tells us. “Like sous-vide, but without all the troubles. It’s so much better than the bag.”

Gordon Ramsay is aiming to create the world’s first Michelin-starred airport restaurant with his new Heathrow venture.
The celebrity chef has spent £2 million on the latest branch of his culinary empire inside Terminal Five, which opens to the public next year, and is hoping it will become a must-visit destination for first and business class travellers. The 180-seater restaurant’s menu is to be modelled on his award-winning Boxwood Cafe; at the Berkeley Hotel, which offers “fine dining with a New York twist”.
Ramsay secured special terms with the 10-year lease. Airport operator BAA has given Ramsay preferential terms with a 10-year lease instead of the usual five years because it is hoping the restaurant will become a major attraction, alongside Prada and Tiffany, in the £4.3billion terminal. Named Plane Food, the establishment will become Ramsay’s ninth restaurant in the capital. He also has recently opened two gastropubs – The Narrow in Limehouse and The Devonshire in Chiswick.

That Was The Week That Was

Think of it as a giant tip. A wealthy widow repaid the kindness shown to her by a family that runs a Chinese restaurant she frequented by leaving them $21 million, and a High Court judge ruled Friday that her will was legal. Golda Bechal’s 1994’s will said she wanted Kim Sing Man and his wife, Bee Lian, the owners of a Chinese restaurant northeast of London, to inherit her money. She died at age 88 in January 2004. Bechal’s five nephews and nieces asked the court to declare the will invalid, claiming their aunt was suffering from dementia. They asked the judge to give the inheritance to them.But Judge Donald Rattee accepted the restaurateurs’ evidence that Bechal, sad and lonely after the deaths of her husband and son, became like a family member to the couple.They went on foreign holidays together and regularly got together at their restaurant and at her apartment in Mayfair, central London. Kim Sing Man remembered Bechal as a classy woman who “always enjoyed her Chinese pickled leeks and bean sprouts.”
Meanwhile border control officials and police were had their eyes on other Chinese chefs and arrested 19 suspected illegal immigrants after a series of raids on Chinese restaurants in North-East Wales.Two others suspected of running an operation that left the suspected illegal immigrants living in “squalid conditions” were also arrested after the raids on Thursday evening.
Two of the 19 were later released, leaving seven women and 10 men from China and Malaysia to be questioned by officers.
Around 50 police and immigration officers raided five restaurants, including four in Rhyl and one in Ruthin. Obviously the chefs hadn’t been reading their own fortune cookies.
That most English of Chinese chefs, Kenneth Hom, brought out a new range of cookware for any of his countrymen still left cooking but more especially for the English wannabe Chinese cooks.The ancient teachings of feng shui cites that the kitchen needs to be a place of peace and organisation with plenty of space to carry out what is seen as the highest expression of love – cooking! So don’t work up a sweat tackling with your wok; keep your cupboards tidy and orderly with the new revolutionary Tao Easy Store wok from celebrity chef Ken Hom. This ground breaking and innovative new wok has a unique folding handle which reduces the woks size by 40% allowing it to be stored easily in cupboards, drawers and even the dishwasher! Ingeniously designed the handle is fitted with a spring loaded secure locking system with an audible ‘click’ which lets you know the handle is locked securely and ready to use. You”l be able to store it effectively but the question is will you be able to use it effectively ?

Back to basics

An award-winning pub in the UK is urging more pub chefs to go back to traditional British pub grub and put mutton on their menu instead of Green Thai Chicken Curry. Licensee of England’s oldest freehouse, Royal Standard of England, Matthew O’Keefe, has advised chefs that the winning formula for pub food is to keep it simple.
Mr O’Keefe heralded mutton as a “simple tasty and inexpensive” alternative to the exotic foods many other pubs dish up. Mr O’Keefe’s comments follow the launch of the Mutton Renaissance Campaign in 2004, supported by the Prince of Wales.
“There are 12,000 independent pubs in the UK and they should all be selling mutton – they are lucky in that they can bypass the big supply chains and deal with the farmers directly.
“Mutton really gives independent pubs a point of difference – the big chains won’t have it and neither do the supermarkets. You will be selling something straight from the farm and customers will be eating a bit of history.
He added: “This is not an altruistic vision, but one of good business sense. I want simple and ordinary food to taste good.”

Jamie reinvents the collapseable kitchen

Is the storage space in your kitchen so small that it gets filled when you buy a box of cereal and a couple of cans of soup? Or are you the kind of person who rarely cooks and so hasn’t invested much time or energy in acquiring the needed pots and pans to do anything more complex than boil some water? Or maybe your just starting out in the world of cooking and want to get some useful cookware but you don’t want to dedicate a huge amount of your life or budget to it.

If you are any of these types of people, then Jamie Oliver has something for you. It’s called the Tefal Survival Kit and it is a set of cooking equipment that fits together into single, nice, neat stack. When taken apart it contains a wok, frying pan, sauce pan, two glass lids, and a universal handle so that you don’t burn your fingers. Best of all it comes in a fun, blue camouflage pattern. Unfortunately, right now it looks like it is only available in the UK, you can order it through Amazon’s UK store and pay international shipping.

Let them eat (Italian) cake

Italy already has strict rules governing the origin and quality of its wine, while Parmigiano parmesan cheese can only be made in Parma and regulations on “Italian” olive oil are being tightened. Now Christmas cake has become the latest product that the government and manufacturers want to protect from foreign imitations.

Italian bakers produce some 117 million panettone and pandoro cakes every Christmas — worth 579 million euros ($849 million). By law they must be made according to strict rules, including using only butter and beer yeast. But those rules do not apply abroad, meaning exported Italian cakes may not be up to scratch, and foreign-made versions may only bear a vague resemblance to the tall, puffy, golden desserts prized by Italians.

Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro said the government was looking at ways to protect the real Italian cakes from growing competition in Latin America. Officials are examining whether they can take action at the World Trade Organization. “We can’t let all these imitators use a name, a brand that gives them a link to territory that isn’t theirs — in a way they are mocking consumers,” De Castro said.

Earlier this year, De Castro said he would push the European Union to accept a plan to make all olive oil sold in Italy carry a label saying where the olives are grown — a move to support Italian farmers who complain that the majority of “Italian” olive oil is made from olives grown elsewhere.

Gastro bartenders

The folks concocting drinks at your favorite bar have moved up the ladder so don’t refer to them as barmen anymore :  They’ve been elevated to “mixologists”  as they search for ever more enticing ways of getting you looped.   This coming year, they’ll be especially concerned about your health, of all things.  Trendy bars, restaurants and clubs will formulate cocktails from organic fruit juices, vegetable purées, and vitamin-filled sports drinks instead of gooey syrups on the dubious premise that if you’re drinking anyway, you may as well also get your antioxidants.

Cocktails are being “enhanced” with herbs like rosemary, basil and lavender, and bartenders are playing with bergamot oil (think Earl Grey tea) and even saffron.

Superfruits – pomegranate, acai, goji berries – that last year were hot in health food stores are now so mainstream that they’re appearing in alcoholic cocktails.

Bartenders also are creating desserts, in tandem with pastry chefs, so you’ll be able to eat your cocktail.

Some loopy scientists have discovered that adding alcohol to strawberries and blackberries increases their antioxidant capacity.  So watch for them, and other highly colored elixirs (like watermelon juice) to subliminally lure customers into thinking that the latest Cosmo variation is good for their health.