Archive for August, 2016

One of the things I was particularly impressed with about the food in Iceland was that everywhere did a good hollandaise sauce. It seemed to be the standard sauce that everywhere from fancy restaurants to service stations did. Perhaps they just mass-produce or buy it in in jars, but it all tasted very good.

I recently picked up Michel Roux’s book on sauces and decided to give hollandaise a go. It is difficult to get right. My first attempt was a total disaster as everything separated. On the second attempt, I combined the book with a video tutorial to better results.

I cooked it over a ban of barely-boiling water to keep the temperate as low as possible. It is hard work. You have to whisk for five or ten minutes, then gradually add the clarified butter while you continue to whisk even more. Next time I might do this final whisking using my stand mixer, but that isn’t really an option while you have it over the heat.

I ended up with a super-thick sauce that could easily have been mistaken for a custard. Next time I might add a little more water.

The result is something special though. We didn’t even have a dinner to eat it with: we just spread it on bread and ate it, and it was delicious.

I was recommended Le Cordon Bleu’s Complete Cooking Techniques who said it was more than just a cookery book: it really took the time to explain the techniques used in cooking. It is available new for around £65, but it you are happy with a used copy you can pick it up a hardback copy for £0.01. There is £2.80 shipping on that, but still a bargain.

It is a comprehensive book. There are five full pages discussing the different equipment you may find in a kitchen and what they are all used for. Each section (fish, beef, cheese, vegetables, etc) has a full spread on what to look for when buying them. It takes you step by step through cleaning fish, which colour photographs to illustrate each stage. The margins contain suggestions containing extra tips for doing it like the pros, examples of cuisines that use the technique and histories of the foods.

There are very few recipes in the book. In the chicken section for example, it shows you how to prepare a bird for roasting, jointing and cutting the pieces, and different methods for cooking chicken. It is up to you what you do with those techniques. There are some recipes in there, but they feel more like they are there for illustrations, and perhaps a little out of place. Some of the techniques are recipes in themselves: making a terrine for example is pretty much the whole process of terrine-based dinner.

I like the attention to detail the book brings. It has a “finishing touches” spread in which it talks about the garnishes of herbs and decorations you can add to a dish to finish it off. It also contains a host of useful tables: approximate cooking times, what cut suits each cooking method, what herbs to use with what dish.

The downside is two-fold. First, I already knew a lot of the stuff in the book. Not because I had ever read it but because you pick it up as you go along. I am interested to know why you should add herbs at the very end (heat destroys their delicate flavour) but after 100 recipes telling me to add the coriander just before serving, you pick that stuff up anyway.

Second, there is very little actionable stuff in the book. I feel I know a little more about cooking, including why I am doing things, but I don’t know what I will do now to put these ideas into practice to reinforce the knowledge.

In January, there was internet outrage regarding a photo of school children in an art gallery. They were sat by The Night Watch by Rembrandt. However, instead of looking at the artwork, they were all looking at their phones. Many described it as the death of civilisation.

Later, a teacher named José Picardo responded, pointing out that the kids were actually using the musuem’s app to learn more about the painting. He also posted another photo from a few minutes before showing the students diligently studying the painting.

So much for that then.

But suppose they were just checking Facebook instead of looking at the artwork. So what? As soon as old people (I include myself in this group, as I probably don’t qualify as a young person anymore) see this they ask “what is wrong with the younger generation?” However, there is no reason to assume it is young people that are broken. Maybe what we should be asking is “why is this art gallery so shit that people would rather check their phones?”

Have you been to an art gallery? It’s really boring. Whenever a group of friends and I visit a museum, we can maybe do an hour before at least some of the group are bored. Maybe the difference is that the young people, as ever, remain the most honest critics.

You can argue that young people have no attention span, because it has been ruined by the culture of immediacy. Yet somehow they manage to sit through films at the cinema, or much longer sporting events, without exploding.

I don’t know what the answer is to making art galleries and museums more engaging to a younger audience (or any audience). However, blaming the children does not sound like the answer.