A Tiger In The Kitchen

Poilane Miche: Tackling A Legend

As usual, I had bread on my mind the moment I returned to New York from my latest trip to Singapore.

After weeks away from my oven, I always touch down just itching to bake something. And this time, a quick check with my fellow Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge bakers revealed that they were mired in a difficult spot in the bread lineup.

"We are in Sourdough right now," said Daniel in Berlin (a.k.a. @MisterRios of the Ährelich Gesagt blog). "Everyone is tRYEing their best."

Ahh, bread humor. Gotta love it.

After the laughter subsided, however, I started to get worried. Sourdough in the hands of lesser bakers can be a massive pain in the tush. 

I should know.

Just last month, bolstered by a successful pane Siciliano and wondering what to do with a bowl of sourdough starter, I brazenly decided to take on a legend: Poilane miche -- the Holy Grail of breads.

Top 10: The Memorable Eats Of 2009

 

You know it's been a good year when you are able to say this: 2009 was when I began to eat for a living.

I'd always been a devotee of affairs of the stomach. I may have written about fashion and other lifestyle areas for a living but baking, braising, trying new recipes, eating out -- those were what consumed me when weekends rolled around. 

Luck has its ways of finding you, however. Now, on the precipice of 2010, I'm beginning to close out a lunar calendar year of cooking and eating with my family in Singapore as research for my book, "A Tiger In The Kitchen." 

My journey so far has taken me many places -- France, where I had the loveliest gingery champagne cocktail with friends old and dear; China, where my father and I went in search of my great-grandfather's footprints in the village of his birth. And, of course, Singapore, where my aunties and maternal grandmother have been plying me with meals, recipes and much, much love along the way.

With all that I've packed into 2009, it's hard to decide what the highlights have been. But, inspired by some stellar Top 10 gastronomic lists out there (definitely check out Sam Sifton's list of Top 11 dishes in New York in the New York Times), I decided to give it a go.

Here, in no particular order, are my 10 memorable eats of 2009. 

Enjoy, buon appetito and listen, let's do this again in 2010 ...

At wd-50: The French, They Came

Walking into wd-50 early Monday evening, you couldn't help but notice the distinct stillness.

It felt almost like entering a temple -- the air was plump with reverence, laced with frissons of anticipation.

The dinner about to happen wasn't just any dinner, after all -- Michel Bras, one of France's most highly regarded chefs, was manning the kitchen for just one night. And New Yorkers had been working themselves up into a lather over trying to get in.

Having had the good fortune of seeing the announcement of this dinner the moment Eater.com posted it (and also being in possession of fast fingers and a cellphone nearby), there we were, quietly filing into the dining room -- hungry.

The meal that lay before us was a nine-course vegetarian tasting menu. Bras, a three-star Michelin chef, has made his name on dishes with inventive treatments and combinations of ingredients -- powdered fruit, crushed seeds, sprinklings of whole flowers for added flavor -- that are carefully orchestrated to taste anything but pedestrian. (It's also worth noting that Bras, who also has a restaurant in Hokkaido, is also known for dishes that are presented with a tinge of Japanese artistry.)

Now, in his little restaurant overlooking Laguiole, a picturesque town in the mountains of Aubrac in southern France, fresh fruit and vegetables that grow wild in the region are the stars of the dishes. In New York, Bras applied the same strategy to his menu -- from the moment he arrived three days before, he'd been scouring the city's greenmarkets to come up with this meal after seeing what produce he could find, according to our waiter. In fact, Luc Dubanchet, one of the organizers of the meal along with three others featuring other French chefs at David Chang's Momofuku restaurants this month, told the New York Times that Bras said he is “incapable of doing it any other way.”

And so it was that we arrived with open minds and eager stomachs.

Paris: A Lunch With A View

For a first-timer in Paris, the Sister had not done badly.

Sure, we hadn't managed to get into L'Ami Jean or Hidden Kitchen, but the basics had been covered: Berthillon ice-cream, Laduree macarons, cervelas at Brasserie Lipp, a cocktail at the Hemingway Bar.

What was left on the list? Much too much.

Nonetheless, we decided, end with a bang we must. And so we found ourselves packing into a tiny elevator and rocketing into the gray Parisian sky.

The lunch to end our lunches (for now) in Paris would be at a classic -- Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower, which, at more than 400 feet above ground level, offered a sweet spot to sip some bubbly and look out onto the city beneath.

Paris: Putting The "Ohh" in Aligot

Like many good New Yorkers, I had come to regard carbs as the enemy.

I'd accepted that Asian noodles were my Delilah. But with a few exceptions -- any dish of steak frites that crossed my sight being the main one -- I'd been able to stick to this waistline-watching strategy. I would push around (most of my) potatoes on the plate and leave bread (mostly) untouched. 

Paris, however, has ruined me.

There were the perfectly baked breads that just demanded to be devoured. The delightfully salty butters that called to you from the table, insisting on being slathered on said perfectly baked breads and then devoured.

And there was the aligot at L'Ambassade D'Auvergne, a lovely little restaurant that specializes in the super elastic dish of melted Laguiole cheese stirred together with mashed potatoes and garlic.

My breaking point came when I set eyes on the aligot.

Fighting it was futile. I admitted defeat and said, "Just take me."

Shhh ... People Are Eating

Not that I was looking, but I may have found a restaurant that's even quieter than Chanterelle, a place in New York that was so hushed when I dined there a few years ago that you could probably have heard a toothpick drop.

We're not quiet folk, my sister and I. So we knew we were in for it when we stepped into L'Ambroisie in Quimper, France, and the place was so silent that you could almost hear the soft shufflings of proprietor Armelle Guyon as she glided from table to table taking orders.

There's been quite a bit written recently about how noisy U.S. restaurants have gotten -- like crowded train stations filled with shouts and clangs, really. However, when it comes to dinner, my quibble tends to be with places that are on the other end of the sound spectrum.

After all, who wants to feel like they're eating in a stalled elevator sans muzak?

Mont-Saint-Michel: One Ancient Omelette

We had heard about The Omelette, of course.

About how Annette Boutiaut, a late-19th Century innkeeper in Mont-Saint-Michel, had begun keeping eggs in store to whip together quick omelettes for hungry guests waiting for their dinner. We knew it was a key component of the town's history -- one that has thrived over the decades as a big tourist trap draw. 

Even so, as we approached Mont-Saint-Michel and marveled at its imposing medieval abbey on a mount rising from the water and towering over a vast expanse of grayish blue, it seemed like there should be more. 

If this grande dame of a town had to have a gastronomic one-trick pony, shouldn't it be something more than a trifling breakfast dish masqeurading as dinner?

But there it was in every restaurant -- most notably as the main course on a 55 Euro set menu at La Mère Poulard, where Annette's omelettes first appeared. 

What could possibly be so special about a bunch of beaten eggs fried in a pan?

When Brittany Was Our Oyster

The rain was coming down, not hard, not gently -- just with enough of a tap-tap-tap firmness to make us think more than twice of not stopping at all when we spotted the little oyster shacks by the Cancale bay. 

This being June, we knew we were technically in the wrong month for oysters -- if you still believe the "you should only eat oysters in months with 'R' in their names" theory. But we were in Brittany, which reportedly produces a quarter of France's oysters every year.

These oysters, they had to be tried.

Paris: A Roman Behind The Bar

We're sitting at the Hemingway Bar at the Hôtel Ritz Paris, my friend Greg and I.

He leans over and says, soft and deep, "That face, it's beyond the dreams of pornography."

The face would be that of Roman the bartender, the friendliest man behind a bar that we'd met in our Paris jaunts thus far.

Greg and I, we're bar people -- we adore eating at bars, perhaps even more than eating at actual tables.

At bars, you tend to get to know your neighbors well -- even if conversation only starts up because a fork is in your elbow. You have a front-row seat to behind-the-counter action, all the little dramas that aren't meant to permeate through the welcoming smiles of waitresses.

You also get to know some pretty gifted entertainers pouring drinks -- and Roman happened to be one of them.

Paris: The Tried And True

 

The upside to visiting Paris with a first-timer: The excuse to retread paths well worn.

There is the Angelina chocolat chaud yet undrunk, the freshly baked Poilane pains undiscovered. 

The sister, she has come to Paris with guidebooks well-marked and images of Amelie's Montmartre flitting through her head. But first, the basics must be covered; important stops must be made.