Uyen Luu

potato crème brûlée

Bottle Apostle had an extra seat at their supper club table in the basement of their beautiful wine shop in Victoria Park so asked me to come along for a 6 course, wine matching meal created by Sven Wassmer, a handsome Swiss man and sous chef at Viajante.

It was a the first time I had ever been to a supper club on my own and was rather nervous but thought, what the hell, I am going to really enjoy the food as I usually do at Viajante/ The Corner Room At The Town Hall Hotel. This is what is great about living in London – there are always different things to do and with regards to food, there are supper clubs and pop up events everywhere to enjoy some decent food by some remarkable people.

Swen Wassmer

The food was really spectacular, I loved how the menu was written in its most basic way (new trend apparently), for example, with “potato crème brûlée”, one would expect so little yet got so much taste in the mouth! All the corners of my tongue were twisting and turning in a jive! It was my favourite dish, beautifully presented with flowers and shoots and tasted more than I could have possibly imagined. This was the same for all the dishes and I loved every single one.

cod, cucumber, yoghurt

scallops, tomato, pine

beef, lemon, leek hearts

chocolate & fennel

Each course was matched with wine by Bottle Apostle who gave a full on description/ short education of how, why, when, where… very interesting and beautiful. I ended up buying the pinot noir, £30 – worth every penny!

Matching Wines:
Pfalz Riesling Brut 2009 Reichsrat von Buhl
Kamptal Gruener Veltliner Loesterrassen 2011 Gobelsburg
Blanco Venezia Giulia “Blanc des Rosis” 2009 Schiopetto
Chamoson Petite Arvine 2010 Favre
Chard Farm Mata Au Pinot Noir 2009 Central Otago
Nach Sieben Likoerwein 2003 VOLG

Bottle Apostle usually hold supper clubs in their basement. You can check them out on http://www.bottleapostle.com Look out for Sven Wassmer – this food was stunning! & other collaborations they may have. Highly Recommended!

Thanks to Sophie Denning I was a guest, kindly invited by Bottle Apostle and therefore did not pay for this meal which would have cost £70.

For more of an in-depth account of the food and the wine please visit a blog called REAL SIMPLE FOOD whom I shared the lovely evening with.

I had to take many deep breaths as I was reading “Ru“, a novel by a fellow Vietnamese whose path through history lead her and her family to Quebec and similar to me, to London. Ru is a story of a young girl, turned mother, it is about a life as a refugee and immigrating. The book is brief yet powerful in its very selective sense of wording. Some chapters are no longer than a paragraph but often, I had to put the book down and shake myself out of a trance and a realisation that Kim Thúy is telling my story or that of my mother, my father.. my people.

“Ru” is a memoir, fictional and autobiographical. It is non linear in its chronological order, one moment in the past, another in the present. It is neither driven by plot nor narrative but by a visceral poetry and imagery of war and peace intermingled with the matter of human love between mother and daughter.

I last read such a painful depiction of war in “The Pianist” by Wladyslaw Szpilman but this isn’t a story about the war but a story about what happened after the war:

“As a child, I thought that war and peace were opposites. Yet I lived in peace when Vietnam was in flames and I didn’t experience war until Vietnam laid down its weapons.”

When I was little, I would often eavesdrop my mother who nattered endlessly to her friends whilst I was colouring-in or pretending to be watching the television. She gossiped about her youthful days before I was born (during the war) in her white an áo dài. She was beautiful and was being wooed by handsome men, all she had to do was pick a husband. She reminisced on having fun with her brothers and sisters over hot steamed buns and fried fish. When they craved a certain thing to eat, like a barbecued pork bánh mì that they couldn’t afford, they would order one with little or without fillings and share things between themselves and delight over delicious tastes. The stories were endless but seemed peaceful and happy.

I hardly heard stories of people being blown up and the horrors of war, perhaps they knew my young keen ears were listening after all. When we immigrated to the west as refugees, the story of the  boat  people after the war was never told. It was all about the Americans,  who were defeated by “rice eaters” and the suffering of their own men in Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now. Nothing was heard of the millions of Vietnamese people who were not only stripped of their livelihoods, homes, land and possessions but also of food and lived in fear for their lives. Families sent their sons and daughters to escape out to sea, facing death, be it on land or sea, they risked it for freedom. At sea, women and girls were raped by pirates then fed to sharks and many simply died in storms or starvation/ thirst on fishing boats or were captured, denounced and sent to “re-education” camps. On land, everyone had to whisper in fear of a Viet Cong with a gun, who may or may not take your life.

This is what Kim Thúy evokes in Ru – “In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French, it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow – of tears, blood and money.” She poignantly draws an image of hunched back women who bent over for decades picking rice grains to that of a six year old boy, killed while delivering a message:

“I cried with joy as I took my two sons by the hand, but I cried as well because of the pain of that other Vietnamese mother who witnessed her son’s execution. An hour before his death, that boy was running across the rice paddy with the wind in his hair, to deliver messages from one man to another, from one hand to another, from one hiding place to another, to prepare for the revolution, to do his part for the resistance, but also, sometimes, to help send a simple love note on its way.

That son was running with his childhood in his legs. He couldn’t see the very real risk of being picked up by soldiers of the enemy camp. He was six years old, maybe seven. He couldn’t read yet. All he knew was how to hold tightly in his hands the scrap of paper he’d been given. Once he was captured, though, standing in the midst of rifles pointed at him, he no longer remembered where he was running to, or the name of the person the note was addressed to, or his precise starting point. Panic muted him. Soldiers silenced him. His frail body collapsed on the ground and the soldiers left, chewing their gum. His mother ran across the rice paddy where traces of her son’s footprints were still fresh. In spite of the sound of the bullet that had torn the space open, the landscape stayed the same. The young rice shoots continued to be cradled by the wind, imperturbable in the face of the brutality of those oversized loves, of the pains too muted for tears to flow, for cries to escape from that mother who gathered up in her old mat the body of her son, half buried int he mud.”

I met Kim Thúy when she came to London on a book tour and I was invited to have dinner with her at the General Agent of Quebec’s residence in Holland Park. The dinner was imaginative in flavours and really superb and the General and his wife hosted a lovely evening where I got to ask Kim Thúy many questions.

Like myself, Kim Thúy has had to reinvent herself in many ways before she has devoted all her time to writing. She was a seamstress, translator, lawyer and a cook/ restaurant owner. Kim said she only ever cooked one dish and people would come to her restaurant and eat that. She laughed that she would never call herself a “chef”. “I am just a cook,”  and she giggled all evening. No matter how being in the west “had given confidence to my voice, determination to my actions, precision to my desires, speed to my gait and strength to my gaze…” Kim had a heart of a Vietnamese lady even though she says in her book, “I no longer had the right to declare I was a Vietnamese because I no longer had their fragility, their uncertainty, their fears.” She laughs and jokes and I relate to her as “Chi”, meaning, sister.

She tells me how her book is not yet accepted in Vietnam as this story of war during times of peace is not really talked about. “Children nowadays do not know why so many people had fled and why they come back to visit.” 

She says that if she had written her actual story, there would be just three pages. “Its not just about me”, she says, “its about many boat people who had to leave the country.” It took her a year to write this book and she weaved stories she heard together to make one.

She says it means to a lot to her when Vietnamese people who have immigrated relate to her book. I feel that she gives us a voice, rarely people are aware of what happened to all those millions who fled and were lost at sea.

“Some (Vietnamese) people criticise it for not having a stronger side against the Communist,” she chatted, “I wanted it to be more about our plight.”

It could easily take 2 and a half hours to read “Ru” entirely but it does seem like it has left pockets of insight in my heart and mind, staying with me, resonating and almost like when you see a thing of beauty or a thing of pain and you just want to cry out loud. It is as if she has given the reader a third dimension, by not saying everything, not placing too many words so that each person could possibly read, see and feel this book in many different ways.

Perhaps this story is very close to my heart and what my family went through but its got to be one of my most beautifully written books. Highly recommended!

Ru’s going to be a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime from Monday 25 June 2012. It’ll be read by the French-Cambodian actress Elodie Yung. There’s no preview online for it yet, but this is the homepage for Book at Bedtime: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx

Kim Thúy is currently working on her next novel.
Thank you to Anna-Marie and Andrew Franklin at Profile Books for the invitation.
Thank you to The Agent General Quebec – Pierre Boulanger and his wife for hosting such a wonderful dinner.

Thinly slice rump steak and place on noodles. It will cook perfectly once you add the boiling hot ph? broth

Photo by Janice Bruce-Brand

My friends Seb, Nada & Mira

Photo by Janice Bruce-Brand

Gennaro Contaldo came to say hi.

Bee

Thank you to Donald Russell for supplying the beautiful beef bones, ox tails, rib trims and rump steak for the ph?  noodle soup.

Thank you to Fin & Flounder for supplying the most delicious sea bream, beautifully scaled and gutted.

Thank you to www.waiyeehong.com  for supplying oriental ingredients and many many soup bowls.

Thank you to all those who donated to Jamie’s charity and came for lunch and the extra pairs of hands that did all the washing up! Thank you so much!

Finally, a big thank you to Danny McCubbin for inviting me to host a supper club lunch and for always supporting me.

My recipe for Saigon summer rolls can be found on The Good Food Channel.

Avocado & Coconut Sorbet

I ate the best steak of my life in Aberdeen at Mal Maison. That was because Donald Russell supplied them with the meat. Rib-eye, rare. They also supply to The Queen so I think that says it all about the quality. Donald Russell flew me up to Aberdeen for a butchery masterclass at their factory. I stayed over night and spent the day with them. And who else flew in the same time as me and was eating the same steak as me at the same restaurant? Donald Trump!

Mal Maison – Aberdeen

Donald Trump

Other people go to the beach! I go to a butchery! I made a lovely short break of it. A car picked me up, then I had lunch at Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food at Terminal 5- surprisingly nice. This tripped appealed to me especially because I cook very often and I really should start to know my rump from my rib-eye, where they belong on the cow and so on.

I only ever buy free range chicken from a supermarket and always use my local butcher for meat. I am rather used to seeing them bring in carcasses and dissecting the required cuts for me. I remember when I was a child, London was filled with butchers and fish mongers but now, it is disappointing that they are so scarce because they have been out lived by big supermarkets who have taken over the monopoly board.

Donald Russell had been a favourite of mine after they supplied an event I participated in, at Henley Royal Regatta a few years ago. Whenever I hear that Donald Russell’s produce is on offer, I would jump to order it because it is good. I mean it is really really good! Here was a chance for me to have a masterclass in butchery and this opportunity wasn’t going to be missed. They supply to top chefs and restaurants like Marco Pierre White and Le Gavroche.

When I went into their offices, immediately I saw a poster of the Swiss supermarket, Migros, which brought back a ton of good memories as I was commuting in and out of Zurich for 7 years of my life in my twenties (due to a long distance relationship) and always loved the meat they had. I remember thinking, if only supermarkets in London would supply its customers with such good quality meat and spent many hours planning dinner parties over the meat counter.

Hans Baumann

Turns out, Hans Baumann (Managing Director) from Switzerland was employed to set up Donald Russell by a Mr Donald, a gentleman farmer with his own slaughter house and a Mr Russell a supplier of the meat. Hans ran the  old round Swiss Centre with the Swiss clocks in Leicester Square back in the day of the late 80s, when we were buying posters from Athena. This was how Donald Russell eventually came to supply the wonderful supermarket Migros with its beautiful tasting meats.

I met the charming Hans over tea at the Donald Russell head quarters and he loved that I remembered the Swiss Centre and knew much about his native country and had unknowingly enjoyed and desired his produce way before I knew what Donald Russell was.

As a typical Swiss, Hans was all about quality. It was no wonder that he had turned Donald Russell into a brand with a Royal warrant.  What does the Queen usually order I queried. “It is not for us to disclose”, he chuckled.

“In Switzerland, we would cut everything according to the different parts of the cow”, says Hans. “But when you came to Scotland, people could cut meat with a chain saw!” Hans Baumann then applied new rules of cutting meat, sending butchers to France and Switzerland to train. “We dare to cut and trim how it should be to bring out the best. We dare to charge more for it, make less profit for more quality. We dare to do what we believe to make the best steak.”

So why are Donald Russell products so good, I asked? “We take two steps further than anyone else, we cut more off for more enjoyment. We take all the muscles off, the chain and silver skin. We were the first to go and say that we have to mature meat for 28 days and others follow our example.”

Rib-eye

I was shown around the butchery, looking at every station, from rib-eye to sausages and it was interesting and almost beautiful to see how they treat the meat, as if every piece is treated with prizing care. Portions are cut to chef’s orders or for online sales. They take out connective tissues, waving knifes like in a martial art movie and weigh pieces to be vacuumed packed. I am told it is all very labour intensive but it looks effortless because the butchers who have decades and decades of butchery experience. They also train young apprentices in the art.

The hanging room was haunting. Headless carcasses are left to mature in a refrigerated room, each with a label of which farm it came from, when it was slaughtered and by whom and who ordered it. Everything is traceable. The butchers buy cattle at a particular weight so that they can get more of a uniform cut. All in all, a remarkable insight to where this good quality meat comes from.

Afterwards, I was shown a whole lamb. Within 30 minutes, the butcher had butchered every part of the animal. Demonstrating each cut and its uses. It was like being a a science class, watching the anatomy of an animal dissected into edible cuts. His knife was bendy and sharp. He used all his strength to pull the carcass apart and sometimes used a saw. It was hard to comprehend that the lamb was once a furry, cute living thing as each piece became more or less a jigsaw that would never be put together.

But I was in for more than just butchery at Donald Russell. Stefan Kolsh, Head Chef of Donald Russell’s  ready meals was waiting to feed and I didn’t realise how exciting that was going to be – to enjoy ready meals as if they had been cooked by someone at home. I live alone and I also cook for a living so when its just me and I really don’t feel like cooking, I am partial to a ready meal and have tried most supermarket’s ready made lasagnes, curries and shepherds pies but have never tasted anything as good as what Donald Russell offers.

Stefan Kolsh

Stefan is also a Swiss man who experiments in his kitchen: ways to make the ready meals taste delicious and homemade. He tells me stories about how he has painstakingly experimented with ingredients because when they have to be frozen and stored over a certain period, then they change so he has to understand all these elements. He uses chicken thighs for his chicken curries because the meat is moist and tender. He rejects the nation’s love affair with chicken breast, commonly used in curries. This raised his kudos by miles and just goes to show how Donald Russell is a leader in good taste!

I tried the entire range, from the canape quiches to pork pies, beef wellington and curries and fell in love. I need to buy myself a bigger freezer so I can stock up on dinners. It is highly recommended.

Thank you to Liz Webb who looked after me for two days. My wonderful stay at Mal Maison. It was wonderful to meet Hans and Stefan and all those charming Scotsmen at the butchery. I will take what I have learned from Donald Russell to choose better cuts of meat. It is for sure that I will only shop at a supermarket as a last resort.

Donald Russell also kindly supplied beef, pork belly and prawns at my recent event at Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. (another post to follow).

The Food Urchin also went to visit Donald Russell – read more here

www.donaldrussell.com

Table Lumiere

I was about 21 years old when I first set foot in a fine dinning restaurant in mid Europe with The Hungarian Count, his mother and his mother’s mother. He held my hand. He stood tall and protective over me, his very own Vietnamese Eliza Doolittle, being slightly worried that I may slip up. He had already primed me like in Pretty Woman, which fork to use… and I pretended that I had also grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth and replicated my hosts’ dinning behaviour year after year until it was perfectly natural for me to be in a fine dinning dinning room.

I discovered that it didn’t have to be as stiff as it is portrayed to be. Certainly, no one should be roaring with pints of beers in salutation but one can equally have a good time, just a different sort of time. People did put their elbows on tables and cause a bit of noise and laughter. It was all ok, even if you dropped something or the snail flies from your plate, like “slippery little suckers”.

I love going to a good restaurant, the idea of being in a Michelin starred restaurant gives me a big sense of excitement and happiness where butterflies and stars explode in my stomach. As a blogger, I am lucky to be invited to a few but it remains a treat that I don’t want to take for granted.  I love dinning Michelin cuisine with a good friend and/or someone you love because the experience of being treated (usually) so well and to eat delicious food one would not normally be capable of creating is something to be savoured.

I had the opportunity to go on a press event and have a masterclass on The Art Of Fine Dinning that is held at Alain Ducasse At The Dorchester, who holds three Michelin stars. There, I got a prescient insight to how the restaurant is run on a daily basis from Nicolas Defremont, the Restaurant Director whose been with Ducasse for years – (he went to Ramsay but came back). He shared the key principles and exclusive trade secrets behind developing the perfect contemporary fine dining experience.

When you have to pay top dollar to dine at Alain Du Casse, you would expect to have perfect service and setting. They iron their table clothes three times! The table settings are meticulously placed and checked. Each piece of crockery and cutlery is thoroughly polished by hand. They even have a station in the kitchen dedicated to this. Then there is the “one finger rule” of placing your wares on the table, everything being one finger away from another so that every setting can easily be replicated the same way and placed symmetrically. The little details makes a big difference says, Nicholas, especially when one table’s ware, the Table Lumiere, costs £200,000.

The secret to ironing (which I am terrible at) is to iron the table cloth on an ironing board then spray the cloth with water and iron on the actual table the second time. Finish off any creases on the third time before setting table.

Having a warm water spray with half vinegar aids polishing glass and tableware including cutlery when the dishwasher leaves residue and wear gloves so to not leave your own finger prints on polished wares.

Here are the rest of the tips – 12 Service Commandments from the masterclass.

Setting the table to the perfect standard of fine dinning was harder than expected, even when I thought it was perfect, Nicolas came and re-adjusted everything! haha!

The best thing about the class was the wine tasting! Of course! We met Head Sommelier Vincent Pastorello who demonstrated some top Sommelier’s tips like which glass to pour which wine into. I had no idea it made such a difference how a glass can change the taste of a wine when we compared it.

Big glasses do not mean better tasting wine because it looses too much oxygen and of course, at which temperature it should be served at. Serving a chilled bottle of wine straight from the fridge doesn’t necessary do the wine justice either and some should be taken out an hour before serving to get the best taste.

Here is a guide:

Included, “Nature” By Alain Ducasse

The Art of Fine Dining masterclass costs £120 per person at The Dorchester.
www.alainducasse-dorchester.com

My trip was courtesy of The Communications Store.