chez pim

Chez Pim will speak English again soon!

Sorry to scare you all. No, I have not decided to do the blog only in French from now on. This is just a temporary thing. I participated in a blog cook-off of sort over at Blog-Appétit, but I got it done so late last night that I didn't have time to translate it into an English post as well. I was planning on doing it today but all hell is breaking loose at the moment at work, so I shall have to get to this tomorrow.

No worries. See you tomorrow back in English, er, American, I mean.

Blog-Appétit: Saint-Jacques à la Sauce Curry, Riz aux Poireaux

J'ai découvert cette bonne idée sur le blog de Pascale: un nouveau blog collectif, Blog Appétit. Ils sont plusieurs de ces événements dans le blogosphere Anglophone, mais ceci est la première fois dans le blogosphere Culinaire Francophone. Franchement, je n’était pas du tout sure si j’allais y participer. Je n’avais jamais fait un blog en Français and my French is hardly for public consumption!

Merci à Laurent, qui m’a pressée -doucement- de le faire,voici ma contribution. J'ai décidée de faire une recette avec une influence Thaïlandaise, en l’honneur de mon héritage. C’était pas facile, la cuisine Thaïlandaise n’utilise pas de poireau! On a beaucoup d’échalote pourtant. Cela m’a donné une idée, je créerais une recette qui utilise le poireau comme de l’échalote.

J’ai fait cuire ensemble le riz et le poireau caramélisé pour bien infuser le goût de poireau. J’ai aussi fait une petite sauce curry piquante, à contrebalancer la douceur des Saint-Jacques. Comme garniture, j’ai fait frire les poireaux avec des feuilles de citron vert. Ce plat était à la fois épicé et doux. Le riz était bien parfumé, les Saint-Jacques étaient relevés doucement à la sauce curry épicée. Yum.

Et voila ! --drum roll--

A moment in time

Well, this is not really about food either, unless you count paintings of pear as food related. There will be lots of pears I am told.

Anyway, my friend Matthew is having a solo show at Art21 Gallery in Palo Alto. Matt -aside from being one of my dearest friends- is also a wonderful painter. This is first solo show. He's been busy being a successful corporate consultant, but now he is finally returning to his first love, painting.

Works in this show will focus primarily on the newer, abstract series I have been working on. These works continue my exploration of light and texture interplaying with minimal forms.

Each of these pieces is a study in both the interplay of light within the painting as well as within the medium of the paint. Constructed from hundreds of layers of paint, the glazing process allows for light to be captured and refracted within the painting's surface.

The reception is tomorrow, 7-9pm, at Art21 Gallery, 539 Alma St., Palo Alto. The exhibition runs through March 30th.

In a "snarky" mood

Just saw these on the menu of a new restaurant in Vegas.

“Black Jack” of Cod Brandade
Osetra Caviar, Tomato Diamond and Cucumber “Gelée”
Ocean “Baeckeoffe” with Maine Lobster
Artisan Foie Gras “Au Torchon” with Grilled Foie Gras

What is with all this hemorrhaging of quotation marks? The "Black Jack" of Cod Brandade is a proper use alright, but what's with the cucumber “Gelée”? Is it really Gelée or is it some other coagulated substances?

What about the Foie Gras "Au Torchon"? Which bit of that phrase was really in question I wonder: the "Au Torchon" or the "Artisan"? And what of the accompaniment, could we really be sure it's "grilled"?

If you ask me, the thing that truly deserves quotation marks on any menu is the dodgy "Kobe" beef everyone seems to be so enamored of these days.

heh,
Pim--in a snarky mood "apparently"

The frogs, the frogs..

Oh no, no, I wasn't talking about the French. And certainly not about French boys, I am so done with French boys.

I was talking about the frog curry I cooked last night for my dinner party. I'd never cooked with frogs before, though I certainly love eating them. While at the Chinese market acquiring live Monterey Spot Prawns for the party, I saw some good looking frogs so I thought I would experiment with them.

The dinner, I must admit, was something of a harried affair that hovered ever so close to the edge of disaster. I had a sudden inspiration to cook dinner for 6 friends, you see. Never mind that it was a work day, and certainly never mind that I ran out of crucial supplies like chilli Paste (Nam-prik Pao) and Curry Paste -which, of course, all needed to be made.

Typepad VS SiteMeter puzzler

Sorry, this post is not about food, but I have a puzzling question about Typepad stats and SiteMeter stats that I really want an answer. I'm sure there are bloggers out there who use SiteMeter and Typepad or Moveable Type and could help me out.

I've been using SiteMeter since around the end of September, and have been somewhat puzzled by the discrepency between the stats that SiteMeter reports and my stats on Typepad. For some reason SiteMeter reports on about half the traffic that Typepad seems to see. This has been a pretty consistent trend since I began using SiteMeter.

For example, right this very moment Typepad reports 3,388 hits so far today. SiteMeters only has 1,443. Typepad has 126 hits in the last hour, while SiteMeter has 75.

What is up with that? Has anyone got this same problem? I am rather curious. Thanks in advance.

So I got lucky..

I certainly did. Wandering around semi-aimlessly in Santa Cruz the other day -what a gorgeous town it is by the way- I found a gold mine. Well, it would be one if you were as into books as I am. This gold mine is otherwise called Logos bookstore, a used book and record store in downtown Santa Cruz.

The rambling space was jam-packed with -what else- used books of all sorts. Directed by my guide, who is as big a book geek and an even bigger food geek than I am, I made a sharp left turn as I entered the store, and there I found shelf after shelf of cookbooks, some nearly new, others old and crumpled, with an authentically funky, mildew-y aroma of properly aged books.