chez pim

Une Soupe Stalingrad, s'il vous plait

RATP, the Paris transit agency, is running a soup contest in honor of the launch of Ratatouille DVD. They are asking people to submit a soup recipe a soup recipe inspired by one of the names of the Paris metro stops. According to the website the prize is some sort of special night on the town at one of the Michelin multi-star restaurants. If that sounds interesting to you, go and enter a recipe to try your luck.

My friend Max was way ahead of you guys though. He's got a bunch of recipes ready to enter. He's agreed to let me share some with you here. Some of these are quite good for a diet too.

Soupe Pasteur

1 lt whey

Heat to 74°C for 15 seconds.

Soupe Stalingrad

1 tsp water

Spill on pavement
Serve in place

Pad See Ew for beginners

It's taken me a year, but here's another installment of the popular "for beginners" series.  The first one, Pad Thai for Beginners, is still one of the most popular links on this blog.  It's high time I give you another one to link to (and drool over), yes?

This time we are going to do Pad See Ew for beginners.  Pad See Ew is another popular item on Thai restaurant menus.  The spelling can vary a bit, you may have seen anything from Pad See You to Pad Siew or Pad See Ewe, plus many variations in between.  The first syllable is pronounced Paad, with an elongated ah sound, as in Padma, while the last is much the same as when you see something repugnant and go eeeeew. 

Pad See Ew, no matter how you say it, means stir-fried with soy sauce.  The type of soy sauce used in this recipe is not the Kikkoman variety you find at a sushi bar, but a thick, slightly sweet soy sauce called See Ew Dum in Thai, or Kicap Manis in Malay and Indonesian cooking.  You can get it at most Asian supermarket.  (If you really couldn't find it, you can add a little sugar to regular soy sauce and heat until thickened to the consistency of maple syrup, or so I've been told.)

The fundamentals of the cooking here are really not that different from Pad Thai.  You need a good, well-seasoned wok (see the Pad Thai post), must have all the ingredients ready (at room temperature or as close to it as possible) before you begin, and, above all, you really should do it only a couple of portions at a time - I'd say four at the most.  In order to get a good wok char on everything and not turn your Pad See Ew into a pile of eeeeew-inspiring mush, your wok must be super hot so everything can be cooked very quickly.  Doing six to eight portions on your regular stove is therefore basically impossible.  Frankly, the wide, flat rice noodles normally used in Pad See Ew is even harder to deal with than the thin type used in Pad Thai.  They stick like hell and will turn into mush in a heartbeat if handled improperly.

Friday Five: Wynton Marsalis's Five Things I Love to Eat

Today Chez Pim presents a new feature, Friday Five, in which I hoodwink invite fascinating people from all walks of life to tell me five things about food. The first guest -€“ also known as unsuspecting victim -€“ is Wynton Marsalis.

Everybody knows Wynton as a fabulous musician, composer, and impresario extraordinaire. That he is also quite a gourmand is not as well publicized. It's hardly surprising though, he's a New Orleans boy, being a foodie is not a predilection but his birthright.

Get Wynton on the topic of food and he'll go on sans cesse about memorable food encounters from his time on tour,€“ which is practically all the time for him. He told me about this little husband and wife place in Osaka, right by the water. His friend - who happens to be the president of Sony - took him there. He didn't know the restaurant's name or anything besides it being a simple little place by the bay, but his eyes were all dreamy as he described how amazing the food was. His eyes turned even dreamier when he talked about the time he spent at his friends' house in Marciac, in the Gascony region of France, describing all the French country dishes they prepared for him, the home-made pâté and the delicious tortilla española. (Marciac is very close to the Spanish border.)

He also told me about this little place called El Portalon, in Vitoria, in the Basque country of Spain. "The Basque people have a thing about cooking", he said. (He can say that again!) "This was very traditional Basque cuisine, but done on a very high level", he added, "with gambas, squid and all the great seafood they have there." There was also a little something about a certain Basque beauty, but I'm sorry I'm going to skip that part because, well, because this is Chez Pim and not Perez Hilton.

Wynton is working on an exciting little project with something to do with food. I'll let him tell you about it himself - all in good time - but for now, with no further ado, I give you...

Wynton Marsalis -€“ Five things I love to eat

a simple Mexican breakfast

We had this for breakfast a couple of mornings in Baja. It's so simple, taking only a few minutes to prepare, provided you have leftover beans from dinner the night before.

It's really so simple I could hardly call it a recipe. We just cooked some Mexican chorizo until it's nice and brown and some fat rendered out. You can pour some of the fat out if you want, but you needn't bother. We cracked some eggs and gave them a quick beating, then added to the pan with the chorizo and scrambled the whole thing very quickly, until the eggs just set but still moist and gooey. You might want to add a little salt, though you really should be careful as chorizo can be quite salty on its own.

Meanwhile, the bean pot leftover from last night's dinner - Rio Zape beans from Rancho Gordo- was already warming on the stove. We also grabbed some corn tortilla we picked up from a tortilleria in Todos Santos, and started warming them on a griddle.

When everything was ready, we each took a warm tortilla, a spoonful of beans and a big scoop of the delicious egg and chorizo concoction and dove right in. That's a simple breakfast which was also substantial enough to sustain the hours we planned to spend lounging on the beach before we would be inspired to move again, this time in search of lunch.

Two "wine" blogs worth sharing

I don't know about you but I find the whole wine drinking/tasting/collecting enterprise a little vexing. Mind you, I didn't say intimidating: there isn't much I find intimidating in a bunch of boys drunk on testosterone comparing the size and value of their, um, wine cellars.

I can't really be bothered with scores and points and gold medals and whatnots. Nor do I find much value in remembering the good years in Pomerol. I learn about wine from cultivating my own taste, and from listening to stories about wine makers and their wine making practices. I chose not to put my trust in numbers but in people, and it has served me marvelously well.

It's hardly surprising that the wines I find delicious are from those wine makers whose stories I find compelling - learning about them gives me the context to better understand and appreciate the wines they make. It usually works the other way round too, I often come across wines that I adore for one reason or another, and fall even more in love after I hear the stories.

Thus is the case with two wine makers whose respective blogs I came across recently, Vincent Dancer in Burgundy and Hervé Bizeul in Rousillon.

Pasta with chanterelle mushroom, twittered

[What if I'd twittered my dinner last night? Read on!]

(ok, if you didn't know what Twitter was, just think of this post as that Seinfeld backwards episode, ok now?)

Phoenix is calling me photo-tagging demon. Must go defend my Facebook honor. Pasta bowl in dishwasher and am going for another glass of she-rooy-b...nevermind.... 8.40 PM January 20, 2008 from living room

Pasta is yum. Earthy and mushroomy. The wine plays nicely with the earthy mushroom and the slightly sweet edge from the caramelized onions. Better than I thought, even if I still couldn't say the name. 8.24 PM January 20, 2008 from dining table

Carla Bruni is singing from my Bose iPod thingy. @Sophie laisse moi tranquille she's gonna be your first lady not mine! 8.13 PM January 20, 2008 from dining table

Decided on a bottle of 2005 Geil Scheurebe Kabinett. Tried saying the name three times but failed at the first. 8.12 PM January 20, 2008 from dining table

Picking wine. Am inspired from Terry Theise tasting the other day to drink something Austrian or German. 8.09 PM January 20, 2008 from the cellar

Just tasted the mushroom, yum. Pasta going in. Another splash of fresh olive oil. 8.07 PM January 20, 2008 from front of the cutting board

Pasta is done, drained and waiting. Chopping a tiny bit of parsley just for color and fun. 8.06 PM January 20, 2008 from sink

Mushrooms going in the pan, splashing a bit of vermouth, a big pinch of salt. The pan is sizzling nicely. 8.04 PM January 20, 2008 from stove

Yellowtail ceviche and Punta Lobos revisited

This post could be called, à la Friends, The One In Which Pim Drives A Hummer And Bargains For Dead Fish.

Punta Lobos is a beach just south of Todos Santos, near the tip of the Baja Peninsula, where day-boat fishermen come in to sell their very freshly caught fish to local restaurants and villagers nearby. I'd been dreaming about getting back to Punta Lobos since Paolo took me there two years ago.

Day two of our Mexico trip, I was so itching to get to Punta Lobos to see what they've got but I just couldn't seem to get any of the boys to drive me. David conveniently disappeared with his surfboard somewhere on the beach in front of the house we rented – ok, this was his annual surfing trip so I let him off. Our friend Daniel had his nose so far buried in a book he pretended not to hear my plea altogether. Not nice.

Nevermind, I thought. I knew this town well enough - been here like twice already - I was going to figure this out myself. The house we rented was just ten-fifteen minutes south of the town of Todos Santos, and I knew that Punta Lobos was somewhere between the house and town. How hard could that be? I just have to find the dirt road leading to that beach somewhere on the stretch of ten kilos between our house and the town. I'd figure it out somehow!

Then there was the problem with the car. Well, calling it - that thing we rented from the airport in Cabo - a car would have been an understatement - a monumental one. We rented a Hummer. Yes we did. Sorry mommy earth. We didn't intend to, really. There were five of us, plus multiple bags and two surfboards. Basically all they had that would fit all of us and our stuff was that Hummer and a gawdawful-looking van that would fit twelve! So the Hummer it was. And it proved to be quite handy when we found that the road leading into the luxury house we rented wasn't so much a road as a dried up riverbed, an arroyo as they call it down there.

Menu for Hope 4 raffle results

I'm sorry we had to delay the announcement of the winners of Menu for Hope raffle for a couple of days. I'm sure you've all been on pins and needles, but before I get to the prizes, I'd like to take a bit of time to thank a number of people without whom our Menu for Hope campaign would not have been such a smashing success.

This year, Menu for Hope raised $91,188.00. It's a 50% increase from the total of last year. That's just mind-blowing, isn't it?

Our campaign couldn't exist at all without the help of my food blogging friends from around the world. This community is what made the campaign what it is today. Thank you so much everyone, you deserve a big round of applause!

I wouldn't be able to pull off Menu for Hope each year without the help of the regional hosts. They worked very hard to rally and coordinate the bloggers, and played a big role in cheer-leading the prizes from their region. Thank you Adam-Serious Eats, Alder-Vinography, Bee-Rasa Malaysia, Jennifer-The Domestic Goddess, Fanny-Food Beam, Helen-Grab Your Fork, Jeanne-Cooksister, Johanna-The Passionate Cook, and Kalyn-Kalyn's Kitchen.

I also need to thank Heidi, whose original design for the logo this year has been somewhat butchered by yours truly (although not so badly I hope) and Derrick, without whose coding genius I'd still be folding little chits into little cups like our first year.

And last but not least, we need to thank the UN World Food Programme, especially Greg Barrow in London, who took all my unusual requests and suggestions with aplomb and even pulled them off, and Richard Lee in Rome, who took the disposable cameras all the way to Africa and back for those amazing photos we've seen. Thanks also to the team at Firstgiving, a first rate online fundraising company who's been a big supporter of Menu for Hope from day one. If you want to raise money online, I can't recommend them enough!

So, without any further ado, here's the list in alphabetical order based on prize codes. If you are one of the lucky winners, click on the prize code to go to the blog hosting your prize and contact the blogger, either via email or leave a comment on their blog. You should also receive an email by tomorrow with the email address to contact for your prize. If you have any problem at all, please feel free to contact the regional host in your area, or email me.

If luck isn't with you in this round, be sure to join Menu for Hope again next year. I'm sure your luck will change for the better! Thanks so much.

Menu for Hope 4 raffle announcement postponed to Friday

We are having a bit of technical difficulties, and must postpone the announcement of the winners from our Menu for Hope 4 raffle until Friday (Jan 11).

So sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. See you back here on Friday.

misled