nanamoose

Joy and Sadness at French Laundry

French Laundry menu on 23 Februsary 2007
Originally uploaded by nanamoose.

Dodie Smith said in her novel, “I Capture the Castle”, that beauty always carries with it a tinge of sadness perhaps because of its fleeting existence. My friend Mimi said that a beautiful piece of music makes her sad. My friend Kailin said that she had a piece of sushi in Causeway Bay the other day which was so good it made her cry. I could not agree with these people more. If you are having trouble comprehending this complex feeling, I suggest you go to French Laundry. It is guaranteed to put more smiles and sighs on your face, almost simultaneously.

The feeling of joy and content enveloped me as soon as I stepped out of our rental car onto the charming village of Yountville in Napa. Clear blue skies, vineyards stretched across gentle rolling hills, attractive yet unassuming stone cottages, and a reservation for lunch at French Laundry… SIGH… if only life could be like this every day!

We were recommended the Donnehoff Riesling, a dessert wine, to go with our first fourcourses. This pairing was so perfect and made me so ecstatically happy that when my fellow diner said that he could swim in a swimming pool full of this wine, for the first time with wines, I felt like I would have gladly jumped in with him.


Shortly after came our first out of the nine courses, Cauliflower “Panna Cotta” with beau soleil oyster glaze and sterling white sturgeon caviar. If you believe that first impressions either make or break a deal, this panna cotta surely made, or may I say, locked the deal. The cauliflower panna cotta was “quite exquisite”, or “heaven in my mouth”, as proclaimed by my fellow diners in mock English accent, and somehow the English seemed necessary to express just how “exquisite” this light cauliflower pudding was paired with caviar. The caviar is heavy, salty and flavoursome while the panna cottta, in all its apparent richness, managed to be light, slightly sweet and very refreshing.


The second course, the Moulard Duck “Foie Gras en Terrine” with shaved black truffle, celery branch and pomegranate-truffle “Gastrique”, came with brioche toasted to perfection and three different kinds of salts including the ‘Jurassic Salt’ which apparently is some 4000 years old.
The third course, Sashimi of grilled Kahala Belly reminded me of something I might be able to get at Nobu, and yet the beech mushrooms “a la grecque”, eureka lemon “confit” and cilantro shoots that came with it reminded me of the phos I had in Saigon.

I remember eating our fourth course, the Maine Lobster Tail “Cuite Sous Vide” with poached rhubarb, Tokyo turnips and watercress “coulis”, and not being able to stop laughing. This lobster was so tender it verges on resembling the texture of the notorious mantis shrimp in Hong Kong, French style. Like truffle on your instant noodles.

You move from extreme happiness slowly through to slight disappointment from the fifth course onwards as the meal went downhill towards the end. We had rabbit, lamb, cheese, a light apple sorbet, and a chocolate and pistachio mousse, which were all, honestly, quite forgettable. Not to say that any of them were awful, but something I would not have expected from Thomas Keller. The saving graces were the donut and coffee mousse and permission to visit the kitchen, all especially crafted for us to rectify a mistake they had made earlier during the meal.

After lunch we took a stroll along Washington Street to Bouchon, the bakery and bistro attached to French Laundry and where the latter’s breads came from. If not for my bursting stomach I would have bought all the breads on display there but ended up snatching up only a croissant and pain au raisin. You know how hard it is to find good croissants and pastries, even in Paris. But my croissant and pain au raisin, after sitting a whole day in its bag, remained light and buttery - just beautifully delicious.

Some question whether French Laundry was worth its price tag and all the hassle attached to getting a reservation, especially when the latter half of the meal proved to be a bit of a disappointment. To me however, not many expereiences give me joy and sadness at the same time. French Laundry was one of these experiences. So if you ask me, its well worth the pilgrimage.

The Imaginary Friend’s Cookies

The truthful origin of this little pleasure is long lost, thus adding to its mystery and good taste. As the story goes, Mrs. Chan went to ________‘s (forgot which friend; lets call her Amanda for now) house in West Park, Hsinchu, one day about 20 years ago with her bunch of ‘see lai’ friends to _______ (purpose forgotten). Amanda brought out these lovely cookies which she just made to share with her friends and Mrs. Chan, loving these little treasures so much, asked Amanda for the recipe. Amanda told her that she will need:

For the pastry:
300g plain flour
one ‘bar’ cream cheese
an equivalent amount of butter

For the filling:
200g crushed walnuts
200g brown sugar
egg whites (amount as required) to mix the two together

So home Mrs. Chan went with some imagination and out came these wonderful, incredibly easy-to-bake cookies – a flaky buttery pastry on the outside, a crunchy yet chewy walnut filling on the inside. I’m not a big nut person so for me to say that these cookies are wonderful should really mean something.

For those of you with less imagination, I will tell you that you need to cut the cream cheese and butter into little pieces, throw into a big bowl together with the flour and kneed until they form a big lump. Refrigerate overnight. Bag the walnuts in a plastic bag and crush them into fine pieces using a rolling pin. Mix the walnuts with the sugar thoroughly while adding just enough egg whites so that these two ingredients stick together.

Take small rounds of the dough, about the size of a Malteser, and kneed into a long oval shape. Put a heaped teaspoon-full of the walnut mixture in the middle and fold the two thinner ends of the oval towards the middle so that they overlap each other slightly. Put on a baking tray and bake in 180’C heat for about 18 minutes.

Best served with nanamoose’ tea.

The teahouse that knows nothing about teas

夢入江南煙水路,行盡江南,不與離人遇.
睡裏銷魂無說處,覺來惆悵銷魂誤.
欲盡此情書尺素,浮雁沈魚,終了無憑據.
卻倚緩弦歌別緒,斷腸移破秦箏柱

夢入江南煙水路, 本是北宋詞人晏幾道 “蝶戀花”裏的第一句, 現在變為紫雲軒綠茶茴香煮餃子的菜名, 覺得如何? 我第一個反映是 ‘哇! 意境好美啊’, 可是細想想, 這夢入江南煙水路跟餃子有什麼關係呢? 來過紫雲軒的人就會知道, 根本沒有任何關係也不需要有什麼關係, 因為紫雲軒本就是個買弄藝術文學的地方。

昨晚吃過灣仔重慶雞公煲 (這內地的連鎖店好吃是好吃, 可是我嫌它有點不衛生的- 火吼不夠且食物用保鮮紙鬆鬆的包著擺在門口的冰箱裏自選) 之後閑著就跑到明茶坊準備喝杯茶消化肚子裏的雞公兼串串門子，怎知碰了釘子，明茶坊7時就早關門了！還好遠遠看到Vivian還在店裏收拾就厚著臉皮闖了進去。跟 Vivian 聊著聊著說起最近在數碼港開的紫雲軒，一時興起茶隱又發作，離開明茶坊後就撥了電話過去問個究竟。其實之前在SCMP 及明報裏看到香港居然開了我慕名已久的紫雲軒我就早想去見識一下了，但發現它晚飯只供應盛價港幣 980的套餐心就冷了半載。這天晚上問過紫雲軒，說可以單叫茶點（但晚飯還是沒有a la carte），那當然去瞧瞧！

入場的感覺是非常的戲劇化 - 4500尺的白 - 白色的中式挑花門，白色的長桌，從天花版延伸出來的白色樹枝吊飾令我想起Narnia裏的女巫，但除此之外我非常的失望。首先，厚厚的一本餐牌裏 90%的文字都是班門弄斧毫無意義又擾亂視線的。結果看了半天還是找不到茶在那兒只好問那看似主管的嚼口香糖男。“請問有單叢嗎？” 沒有回答。“鳳凰單叢有嗎？” “我們有龍井烏龍等， 你要什麼茶？” 結果在毫無選擇餘地下叫了西湖龍井，第一泡喝下去還不錯，但第二泡馬上苦到不行，原來他們居然把茶葉一直泡在水裏！儘管坐在對面的一對盛讚紫雲軒的食物好吃，旁邊那盛在有人那麼高的花盆裏的冰淇淋看上去也甚是吸引，但這兒水是溫的茶是苦的茶葉是泡在水裏的，我們發誓以後不會再來這個叫自己作 “Green Tea House” 的地方了。

PS：這兒還不准拍照！以為自己是什麼新鮮蘿蔔皮!

Green Tea House is a pretentious place. With names like “Autumn Sky” for woolong-tea leaves roasted lamb and being a business established by an apparently attractive artist / musician / female chef from Beijing you would expect it to be a fairly poetic place in itself. Well, dramatic it might be with a 4,500 sq ft pure white space made up of white tables, white Chinese doors and white ceiling adornments that reminded me of the Chronicles of Narnia, but poetic, no

I asked for a Phoenix Supreme and was met with a blank stare from the gum-chewing manager who smelt like he just went out for a cigarette at the back door. I asked again, and instead he answered, “We have many kinds of teas, like Woolong, Longjing, what tea do you want?” Forced into a corner I chose West Lake Longjing. When it came round to my second cup and the tea went extremely bitter I realised that they had allowed the tea leaves to just sit there soaking in the water for over 10 minutes. Like those who perm their hair know never to wash their hair the first day they are permed, all Chinese tea lovers should know never to soak tea leaves in water when you want proper tea (and proper tea is not what you have in dim sum restaurants). As a result, the tea I had at Green Tea House was cold, bitter, and all in all just wrong.

Sorry Green Tea House, but your pretentious, abusive Chinese acts ain’t working on me!

If you insist, Green Tea House is at shop 208, The Arcade, 100 Cyberport Road (tel: 29896036)

The Pee Shrimp

Does anyone know what the English name for 賴尿蝦 is? The monstrous-looking crustacean the size of a lobster but with skin like a shrimp? Whatever it is it was the best dish I had at Under the Bridge Spicy Crab in Wanchai. Try not to think about its pre-historic looks and focus on the deep fried garlic, which is generously sprinkled over 4 out of the 6 dishes we ordered (shrimp, crab, razor clams, Under the Bridge fried rice, chicken wings and veggies) and which is oh so yummy we thought we could eat spoonfuls by itself, and the goodness of the shrimp would eventually catch up with you.

Call me 老土but I have never really been a crab person, mostly because I am just way too lazy to scavenge its limbs for meat and get myself all cut up. I therefore loved this shrimp. With the size of a lobster one is big enough to satisfy my tummy and yet the texture I found to be even better - sweet, chewy, and not quite as stiff some lobster meats. Perhaps a bit like a magnified langoustine? Have this with their special fried rice – Excellento!

Tea in a Bag

Cat with her teas
Originally uploaded by nanamoose.

My favourite thing in this world, the one thing I cannot live without and the one thing that always brings a smile to my face is milk tea. The English tea with milk, the Hong Kong Style Lai Cha, the Taiwanese bubble tea, the Japanese “Royal Milk Tea”, nanamoose’s secret milk tea and finally the Thai iced tea, you name it, I love all kinds of tea with milk, so much so that I even wrote an essay about it back when I was applying for college in the States. I of course was not accepted into that particular college (perhaps for the better since I will have been stranded in milk tea no-man-land), but my love for milk tea remained if not grown.

The highlight of our short 2 day transit in Bangkok was, coincidentally, the Thai iced tea sold by the first coffee & tea stall we came upon walking from MBK to Jim Thompson along Rama I Road. You could not miss this stall. The mere sight of the enthusiastic tea operator and his assistant shouts good tea, and the way he skillfully poured a pre-concocted mixture to the plastic bag (seeing we were tourists he first poured it into a plastic cup, but we were soon reminded of our mission to stay local & opted for the bag instead) then adding the condensed milk only adds to the drama and hence the taste. The aroma was unmistakably Thai, the consistency just right and the plastic bag, just lovely. I trust their coffees would have been great too.

A Tropical Shangri-la - Luang Prabang

little monk struggling to keep up with the procession
Originally uploaded by nanamoose.

I have read extensively about how spiritual Luang Prabang is with its 32 active monasteries lining its narrow, dusty roads and seen a countless pictures in travel journals of its saffron-clad monks collecting alms from the local community every morning. Yet no reading quite prepared me for what I experienced in Luang Prabang. Buddhism is very much entwined in the lives of the local people the same way it is in Tibet, but here the monks are actually part of the local community. Perhaps due to the proximity of the monasteries with the city or perhaps due to the monks’ proficiency in English, novice monks here sit side by side with tourists in internet cafes and engage with them in conversations in Mandarin or English about anything from their daily routines to their hometown to Hong Kong.

This was the first time I visited a city nestled in the middle of the Mekong and was spellbound by the mystic air it exudes upon this ex-French colony. Though I have not quite anticipated the large number of foreigners in the city (thanks perhaps to UNESCO’s acknowledgement of Luang Prabang as a World Heritage Site in 1996) to the extent that they seem to outnumber the locals sometimes, Luang Prabang remains a sleepy little village where indeed, time has quite forgotten. Simple wooden homes creep down gentle slopes to the Mekong and Khan rivers where children frolic, naked, in the muddy rivers. Temples with tiers of slopping, gold-rimmed roofs sit side by side with grey, Angkor Wat-ish stone stupas. The architecture here is French and Cambodian, the Lao language reminiscent of Thai, the food a mixture of Thai and Vietnamese, yet Luang Prabang paradoxically reminds me of Shangri-la in Yunnan. There is no altitude sickness here, the village is decked out in palm trees and the monks are draped in ginger and saffron robes instead of maroon, but its spirituality and laziness, its gentle and gracious inhabitants and above all the tiny foreign community here working to preserve and market the local heritage via homeware stores, restaurants or cafes, suggest a tropical Shangri-la.

Highlights of my 3-day stay in Luang Prabang:

ACCOMMODATION

The Grand

Since we had to move our dates around we scoured for hotels last minute at Bangkok airport and came upon The Grand. Situated about 10 minutes away from town, this hotel looks more like a small resort and boasts a large garden and individual terraces in each room. The rooms are a bit old however, and so were the guests (the average guest age looked about 65).

The Apsara

Our original hotel of choice, the Apsara is smack in the middle of town with decadent four poster beds and a small balcony overlooking the Khan river. The rooms are bright, clean and tastefully decorated, the waiting staff friendly and best of all, the food fabulous (see “Food” below)!

FOOD

Tum Tum Cheng

This casual restaurant along Sakkarine Road, which also boasts a cooking school, has the best Laotian spring rolls (very similar to the Vietnamese ones) in town.

Ban Vat Sene

Very cosy and charming little café also along Sakkarine Road with very good iced coffee (once again very similar to its Vietnamese counterpart and made with condensed milk).

The Apsara

Every time I think about the Apsara’s laap fish salad and buffalo sausages I will not be able to stop salivating. The Lao version of laap is not much different from the Thai version, but in Thailand the “larb” is usually served with minced chicken or pork (I think). This quintessential Lao national dish is made with fresh mint, lime and chilies and when mixed with minced fish produces an aromatic salad that just keeps you begging for more despite the heat. The buffalo sausages, on the other and, takes a bit more getting used to. Buffalo sausages boarder on the hard side rather like the Chinese Laap Cheung and are eaten with thin slices of ginger and garlic. Do not attempt this dish without an ample supply of mints.

Pho Shack


Laotian pho
Originally uploaded by nanamoose.

Two minutes away from the Apsara there is a cute little hut serving perfect Laotian pho (amongst other noodle dishes which I do not know the name of) al fresco under the shades of giant palm trees. I cannot tell the difference between a Laotian pho and its more famous Vietnamese sibling (both comes in a fragrant broth and generous helpings of herbs and chili), but who cares when the pho is this good?

Sandwiches made fresh along the streets

Here fresh French baguettes are wrapped around grilled chicken and chili paste and served like Vietnamese subs. The French baguettes were better than any I have had in Hong Kong.

SIGHTS

Wats

Wats litter the streets of Luang Prabang like Cha Chaan Tangs in Hong Kong and all are living, breathing museums & art galleries where the town’s historical and cultural significance is displayed. We visited Vat Xieng Thong, Vat Visoun and That Phousi (which boasts the best views of Luang Prabang).

Sisavangvong Road Night Market


Little handicraft hearts made by the Hmong ethnic minority
Originally uploaded by nanamoose.

You cannot miss this bustling night market where local merchants and artisans sell everything remotely textile-related, from slippers, duvet and cushion covers, scarves, table cloth to baby clothes. You haggle hard here, but even without haggling the prices are unbeatable.

Ban Phanom weaving village

I was told by a friend who visited Luang Prabang a couple of years back that live weaving could be witnessed in the numerous weaving villages located just outside of Luang Prabang. I was therefore a bit disappointed to arrive in Ban Phanom not seeing any actual weaving in action but instead taken to a small indoor market where weaving demonstrations were performed on request. I can only assume that this is another side-effect of Luang Prabang’s increasing popularity under UNESCO’s efforts.

Caruso

The nicest store in Luang Prabang selling Lao inspired homewares. I bought a pair of silver sticky rice canisters.

Kopnoi

The look is urban but the products are strictly Laotian handicrafts at this eco-friendly export centre next to Vat Visoun. We bought tons of bamboo-weave-inspired jewelry and was very much drawn to its Sticky Rice Exhibition which showcased the history and development of this Laotian staple.