Gourmet 1st - 31st January 2014
INDONESIA
Island Wine and Escapes Home to twisty vines growing under brilliant blue skies.
This Will Tickle Your Ribs For three days I had all the ribs I could consume.
Is a Restaurant Franchise the Right Choice for You Fine Dining Menu Sushi in America Shish Kebab History
Brewing Coffee America’s Best Pancakes Bali food
www.gourmetindonesia.net
Dine Talk
Sushi in America America is becoming a nation of sushi connoisseurs, able to discuss the difference between o-toro and chu-toro. Senior Editor Ray Isle looks at the stats, the buzzwords, the masters and mavericks, and the do’s and don’ts.
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merica has become a sushi nation. Sushi is passed by waiters at bar mitzvahs, served in college food halls, sold in plastic trays at convenience stores. There’s four-star sushi and nightclub sushi, sushi shower curtains and sushi refrigerator magnets. Sushi is a relatively recent arrival in the U.S., making its first small inroads a decade or so after World War II. A sashimi dinner in the 1950s at Miyako in San Diego, if you knew to go there, would run you $1.25. By the mid-1970s the chef at Tokyo Kaikan restaurant in Los Angeles had invented the California roll. The number of sushi bars in the U.S. quintupled between 1988 and 1998, and has kept on growing. Since the turn of the millennium, sushi has thrived at the heights of American cuisine, with classicist sushi chefs shipping in rare fish from Japan and avant-garde chefs bending tradition daily. And, in what is perhaps the ultimate compliment, American-style sushi has emigrated back to Japan—though Americans might feel strange ordering a Nixon roll in Tokyo.
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Dine Talk
Sushi Deconstructed Sushi rice should be Japanese short-grain white rice seasoned with a mixture of rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Wasabi comes from a plant related to the mustard family; a master sushi chef will grate it himself. Gari is ginger pickled in rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Japanese soy sauce, or shoyu, is made from wheat and soybeans fermented with koji, the same mold used in fermenting sake.
Sushi By Numbers • Highest reported price ever paid for a tuna: $83,500, in 1992 • Number of individual servings produced by the highest-priced tuna ever sold: 2,400 • Length of longest sushi roll ever made, in feet: 4,381 • Number of seconds it takes a bluefin tuna to accelerate from 0 to 50 mph: about 3 • Number of seconds it takes a Porsche 911 GT3 to go from 0 to 50 mph: about 3 • Number of seconds it takes an auctioneer at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market to sell a tuna: about 3 Value of seafood moved through Tsukiji each day: $2.7 million
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• Weight of a toro (fatty tuna) hand roll at Manhattan’s Monster Sushi, in ounces: 5.1 • Pounds of tuna sold at Manhattan’s Monster Sushi (on 23rd Street) in 2004: 14,600 • Number of sushi restaurants in Lexington, Kentucky: 1 • Number of sushi restaurants in greater Los Angeles: 276 • Number of rice balls a Tomoe MSR-3000 sushi machine makes in one hour: 3,000 • Number of sushi pieces Masa Takayama of Manhattan’s Masa makes in one hour: about 200 Price of a 12-piece sushi dinner at Randalls supermarket in Houston: $4.69 • Price of an omakase dinner for one person at Los Angeles’s Urasawa: $250
The Sushi Lexicon Nori Seaweed, harvested primarily off the coast of Japan, that is dried, roasted and pressed into sheets. Awase-zu The seasoning added to cooked short-grain sushi rice is made from rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Sashimi Sliced raw fish without rice; sashimi should be eaten with chopsticks rather than fingers.
Dine Talk
Classicists These five chefs belong with Masa Takayama, of New York City’s Masa, in the pantheon of America’s top sushi classicists. Los Angeles HIROYUKI URASAWA OF URASAWA After Masa left for New York, his student Urasawa opened his own place in Beverly Hills. Seasonal rarities are standard here—from October to March, look for fugu (blowfish). MORIHIRO ONODERA OF MORI SUSHI Mori, a perfectionist among perfectionists, hulls his own rice every day; his choice of fish is equally exacting, featuring rarities like sweet, rich buri (wild yellowtail). New York City TOSHIHIRO UEZU OF KURUMAZUSHI Uezu was head chef at one of Manhattan’s first sushi bars, Takezushi, then opened Kurumazushi in 1977. Try his shiro-ebi—tiny white shrimp imported from Japan’s Toyama prefecture. Seattle YUTAKA SAITO OF SAITO’S JAPANESE CAFÉ & BAR Visiting Japanese baseball players swear by Saito’s specialties, such as fresh ankimo (monkfish liver). Washington, DC TAKASHI OKAMURA OF MAKOTO The focus is the dishes of Japanese kaiseki, but Okamura’s sushi is just as exquisite.
An Avant-garde Master At Sushi of Gari and its new offshoot, Gari, in Manhattan, chef Masatoshi “Gari” Sugio, opposite, specializes in innovative flavorings that never overshadow the taste of the fish. Among his 130 radical inventions: tai salad (Japanese red snapper with microgreens, pine nuts and a lotus-root chip); sautéed foie gras with balsamic mousse; bluefin toro with ponzu mousse; marinated tuna with pine nuts on fried nori; marinated tuna with tofu sauce; squid with shiso flowers.
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Hightlight
Island Wines and Escapes Home to twisty vines growing under brilliant blue skies, the islands here produce stellar wines and travel fantasies.
Island Wine: Santorini This Greek island’s volcanic soils and gnarled vines, some more than 80 years old, produce bright, citrusy whites, mostly from the Assyrtiko grape. They’re spectacular with the incredibly fresh local seafood. ISLAND WINE: SANTORINI WINES TO TRY 2009 Argyros Estate Atlantis White ($17) Third-generation winemaker Yiannis Argyros blends indigenous Assyrtiko with two other “A” grapes, Athiri and Aidini, for this sunny, inviting white. US sommeliers worship Sigalas’s lively Assyrtiko. Photo © Theo Morrison. 2010 Sigalas Santorini ($21) Sigalas, a leader in organic farming here, ages this minerally white in stainless steel, giving even more crispness to the Assyrtiko grape.
Dine Talk
Brewing Coffee French Press, Espresso or Turkish Coffee are three methods that will have insoluble particulates suspended in the liquid. Insoluble solids will precipitate out of the brew over time, if you don’t disturb the liquid. Hence your mug of French Press coffee might taste gritty nearing the end, and there is muddy residue in the bottom of the cup. Suspended solids add a sense of body to the cup, but can also add bittering tastes. Soluble solids are bonded with the water molecules, and will not separate over time. There are five main factors that control brewing results. First is the brew recipe, the ratio of water-to- coffee. More on that below. Second is the particle size of the coffee: finer grind means more surface area of the bean is exposed to the water. Third is the temperature of the water, ideally between 198-204 f, since water is a better solvent at near-boiling temperature. The fourth factor is contact time, how long the water and coffee are in contact with each other. And lastly is agitation, since stirring the coffee-water infusion increases extraction rate of soluble solids. Other factors influence the brew, but these are the main ones. Most people find that when 20% of soluble solids are extracted from the coffee grounds, the brew has the best flavors.
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The Chemistry of Coffee Brewing...when you brew coffee, hot water acts as a solvent, washing the soluble solids out of the coffee grinds and into the brew. If you dissolve table salt in water, you have a soluble solid. Brew methods that use paper filters have only the soluble solids in the cup. Some brew methods also allow insoluble solids to enter the brew.
Too much extraction (too fine grind, too long brew time, too hot water, too much coffee in the recipe) and the brew is bitter. On the other hand, under-extraction results in a thin, weak cup. Simply using more coffee grinds cannot fix other brew problems: If you use 20 grams coffee and 350 ML of water and 4 minutes steep time to achieve 20% extraction (it should), using 40 grams coffee with a contact time of 1 minute to compensate will not result in a better cup. Knowing these simple theories might help you troubleshoot that next bitter, weak, or a flat tasting cup. Here are a few general tips too: 1. Rinse all paper filters with hot water to wash away loose paper fibers that will give an off taste in the cup, especially when brewing small amounts. 2. Preheat your brew device, your French Press, Filtercone, etc. You can do both by simply heating extra hot water, and washing/preheating in one step. 3. Keep brewing equipment clean! Old sediments easily make for rancid flavors in the cup. A good rule of thumb is if you smell an odor from your coffee making equipment, clean it. If you cannot remember the last time you cleaned your brewer, clean it.
Hightlight
Bali Food
Balinese food is not readily available to tourists unless a Balinese family invites the tourist to a meal or he goes to a temple. Restaurants catering for tourists do not serve authentic Balinese dishes, nor do hotels. The reason is that there is too much preparation, large quantities have to be prepared and it has to be eaten when it is fresh. It is often spicy and very tasty.
The Balinese traditionally used banana leaves as plates. Balinese chickens are much healthier and have the taste of real chicken, but can be tougher than Western battery-fed chickens. Battery-fed chickens only live for 41 days, specially and artificially bred to produce large chunks of breast and short legs. The rush is now on to reduce the period of 41 days. Etiquette There are a number of rules concerning food, drink and behavior. Cake is always served with coffee or tea, nuts and krupuk with rice wine, and tea, water or tuak with the meal. The host does not usually eat with guests. The Balinese eat with their right hand, as the left is impure, a common belief throughout Indonesia. The Balinese do not hand or receive things with their left hand and would not waive at anyone with their left hand.