When himself went to Berlin to University ( a life time ago), he spoke no German, whatsoever. Arriving at the Hauptbahnhof, near midnight, the station restaurant was still open. Looking at the menu he recognised Nothing! But wait a moment Steak Americain! STEAK, that will do! So he chose that but to his great surprise, it was raw meat!

Times have changed, and steak Americain, or steak tartare, is one of our favourites. Of course it got a bad rap after the various BSE scares, but honestly we find it a delight, especially when it is prepared in front of you, at your table. One restaurant in London that I like and which has recently been re vamped is The Ivy in Covent Garden . I have checked and it still serves Steak Tartare either as a starter of as a main course. We were in Montreux Switzerland recently, and ate at the Jazz Cafe ( it was the Montreux Jazz festival) . On the menu we found Steak Tartare and of course we both chose it. Our friends newly arrived from Houston Texas, where they like their steaks ( big and cooked) were not so keen but JB did choose the duck and asked for it rare, and then he had food envy when he saw ours!   

 It easy to make yourself, but especially easy here in France, as the butcher will mince top quality steak for you. However, in the UK I would recommend either you mince the meat yourself, or chop it by hand but make sure it is chopped finely.

To make your own Steak Tartare you will need:-

500g of beef fillet, diced or minced.          25g of shallot or red onion finely chopped

40g of cornichons, chopped.                       40g of baby capers, rinsed

20g of Dijon mustard.                                   90g of mayonnaise

5 drops of Tabasco.                                        14ml of brandy

1 pinch of parsley, chopped.                          Salt and pepper to taste

To serve:-

4 egg yolks.       4 slices of sourdough bread And or Double cooked French ( Belgian ) fries.    100g of rocket 

Michaël Torfs reports that the Belgian government is working on a new law which determines the composition of mayonnaise. You might think that this is a bit weird, however, Mayo is an important part of “Frites et Mayo” “frieten met mayonaise” (chips with mayonnaise). De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, Belgian newspapers, and this has been picked up by The Times and the Guardian of London. The current law (1955 ), decrees that real Mayo should contain 80% fat and 7.7% egg yolk. But in times of food consciousness many manufacturers make a healthier options, which puts the Belgian producers at a disadvantage.  Actually not sure why someone would choose a lighter Mayo with the French fries after all they themselves are highly calorific, especially as in Belgium French fries are always double cooked and the best triple cooked. By the way, French fries were not apparently invented by the French but by the Belgians in the 17 th century, which strikes me as odd, as Belgium as a country did not come into being until after the Napoleonic wars! Ah Well!

Himself, when asked the other night “what would you like for dinner?” came up with the idea of Boulliabaisse. Great idea, I thought, but we had to compromise as if you read French cook books, One can not make a true Boulliabaisse, without  Racasse, ( a fish of the Scorpion Family) and alternative in the UK is Gurnard, or possibly monkfish. Acording to the orginal doyenne of cookery, Elizabeth David, said there are as many “Authentic” Boulliabaisse recipes as there are cooks!

So lacking Racasse. or anything similar, we connocted our own recipe, using that which was available, so I guess it could be called a fish stew along the lines of Boulliabaisse. The whole principle of this dinner was that himself would cook dinner. And he did.

So for our version of Bouillabaisse, he used.

1. about 200 grms each of white fish, salmon, wth the skin removed and cut into chunks. 200 grms each of Shrimp( large ones, de-veined and heads off) Squid, cleaned and cut into slices.12 od so mussels.
2. 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 onions chopped, 2 sticks celery chopped, 1 fennel bulb, chopped, 6 cloves garlic, chopped.
3. 2Tbsp tomato puree, 1 can chopped tomatoes 
4. a bouquet garni composed of thyme, bay leaves and fennel sprigs
5. 1/2 bottle white wine. plus some Rouille for eating.( see later)
6. a splash of lemon juice
7. a splash of pernod ( optional of course)

1. Boil together the oil and the wine. Add the vegetables and cook until soft. Add the canned tomatoes and the tomato purée. Add the  bouquet Garni,  along with the lemon juice andPernod.
2. add each type of fish  separately , and cook gently, when cooked remove and put to one side, and then cook the next, until you reach the the shrimp and  mussels.. return all the fish to the stew, taste and season, add more wine of stock to create enough liquid to be able to add the shrimp and mussels. Simmer, and the shrimp and shell fish will only take a few minutes to cook.

To try and be a little more authentic this should be served in large bowls, along with some  slices of French bread toasted with some garlic butter, AND Rouille stirred into your bowl. Rouille is a fiery sauce, from theMediterranean, It is made by whizzing together, several cloves of garlic  along with 2 small red chili peppers and 1 red pepper. Take a thick slice of bread, remove the crust and soak in a little of your fish soup. Squeeze it and add to the garlic etc., Whizz in little by little an egg yolk and then add bit by bit up to 4 Fl Oz of Olive oil ( as if you were making Mayonnaise. If you think this is a bit of a faf, which I can understand, then you can by it ready made in many supermarkets. 

I am pretty sure most of you know of Wasabi, that green hot paste type Japanese condiment that is used with Sushi and other Japanese  meals. However did you also know that Wasabi is difficult to cultivate, and that makes it quite expensive. Outside of Japan it is rare to find wasabi plants and therefore, due  to its high cost, what one buys is usually a mixture of horseradish, mustard, starch and green food coloring. Often packages are labeled as wasabi, but the ingredients do not actually include any or little real Wasabi. I believe that high end Japanese restaurant do use real wasabi and will grate it for you at the table ( have to admit to having not seen this being done in London). Looking at my box  of “hot and spicy grated horseradish ” it contains  24% horseradish,  and only 1.6% wasabi. It also contains various E numbers, colorants and Soy ( in case you are allergic to soy.! 

  
 Another product, that I have had an ongoing gripe about is, truffle oil! Celebrity chefs, wax lyrical about the stuff, TV cooks both amatuer and professional use it and so the home cook, thinks, I can do that as well. I too was fooled by what would seem to be a remarkably successful scam on foodie culture: truffle oil. 

Despite the name, almost all truffle oil does not contain even trace amounts of truffle; it is olive oil mixed with 2,4-dithiapentane, a compound that makes up part of the smell of truffles, is artificial and is made in a laboratory ! Essentially, truffle oil is olive oil plus truffles’  rather unpleasant  smell. Looking up  food sites you can find Truffle oil from about £5.50 for 250Mls, ( waitrose)   ( ingredients stated as olive oil and flavouring) to Carluccio’s Oilio al Tartufo,     ( ingredients, olive oil 99.9% and white truffle 0.1%) a Bit of a rip off! Even more outrageous in my opinion, is the TRUFFLE HUNTER, who claims they have a superior concentated Black Truffle oil, when looking at the ingredients, it states, Extra Virgin Olive oil, Olive oil ( I assume that is Bog standard olive oil) , black truffles( I think that it should read a smidgin of black truffle, as you can see a tiny bit floating around) and black truffle flavouring. They do not elaborate on the flavouring but I can assure you it is nothing more thatn Cheap as Chips, 2.4 dithiapentane, and if Himself  still had a laboratory, I am sure he could conjure me up some.  

 One of the leading brands is Urbani, from Italy ( $25 for 250 mls ) and as you can see from the lable, it pretends to be White truffle oil, BUT look at the lable. One American blog, states that he finds the smell of Truffle oil to be a real Aphrodisiac, but he too was fooled, by this scam. Wikepedia, tells the obvious with top American foodies, declaring it should be outlawed. 

  
 However , we have already understood that truffles are fairly rare and expensive, they can cost  as much as €10,000 per kilo, so why am I suprised that we are fobbed off with something that contains almost NO truffles.
So what else is new on the food scene. Well the younger himself, as previously stated, wondered why on earth I was taking so much stuff to France, including Garlic, I might add. BUT have you seen or tried this ( to me) new type of garlic. it is single bulb garlic, easy to peel, easy to squash with a knife, or in a garlic press. I love it! It also known as  monobulb garlic, single bulb garlic, or pearl garlic, is a variety of Allium sativium and the single clove is about 25-40 mm in diameter. It tatses like garlic though maybe a bit milder. It originates in Yunnan province in Southern China.  In the Uk one of the retailers is Lidl, the German discount supermarket.  

We have now been to all three of Bruce Pooles, Michelin Starred restaurants. The first to open was, Chez Bruce in Wandsworth, 1995, the 2nd, The Glasshouse in Kew in 1999 and finally La Trompette in Chiswick, in 2001. All suburbs of London. My personal favourite has always been La Trompette, basically as for a while there, I could walk to it, second in line was the Glasshouse, also easy to get to, as it is on the district line, right next door to Kew underground station, and then finally Chez Bruce. I wrote last year about Chez Bruce, but it is way down my list of must go to restaurants and not only because it is south of the river  and oops I don’t really like going south of the river, a bit too much of a faff, BUT we found the service, decidedly  iffy. For example, the waiter addressed us with ” You done with that?” Alright in a lesser restaurant maybe, but in a Michelin starred establishment. NO!, The lights were turned up bright before we were hardly on our coffee ( I was almost expecting the chairs to be put on the tables and the floor to be swept!) But the worse crime I felt was that when I tweeted Bruce, about this, there was and has never been a reply. Too Bad.

We also found that out of the three, the Glasshouse was the most affordable, +/- £32 for three courses AND the sister restaurants often gave away vouchers for a special offer, midweek. Not any more I fear, as the price is now £47 in both the Glasshouse and in La Trompete. Affordable for two but when you take the family , it now becomes almost a 2nd mortgage, by the time one adds wine, aperitif, coffee and service!

Still, we went for a birthday treat, and I have to say, we were all ( well almost all) very happy with our meal.The restaurant was full and the service was still as slick as ever. 

 The willowy brunette chose the Watercress Soup with a slow cooked hens egg, she said it was excellent, but then she is very much a soup person and I could have predicted that as being her choice. The boys chose the Tartare of Welsh black beef with smoked paprika and candied beetroot. Me, I had the cured salmon with a prawn beignet avocado, and oyster dressing. All very scrumptious! 

      For our main courses, we chose the loin of Welsh lamb, our newly wed said it was lovely , the Cornish cod was delicious  as was  the wild garlic risotto, however, the other half of the newly weds, who is seriously into food, declared that his Line Caught Turbot ( and additional £5 ) was sadly disappointing, that the red pepper sauce, did nothing to enhance the dish and that somehow the sauce was sweet.

   
   We all skipped dessert so can not comment on that, but back to the Michelin Stars. In a February edition of the London Evening standard it was reported that La Trompette in Chiswick, was given a one-star rating out of five by  Food Standards Agency inspectors, a one-star status means “major improvement necessary”.

The report, following an inspection by a Hounslow council food safety officer in October, said the restaurant had struggled to reach safety standards over several years and had “still not got to grips” with them.

The officer was concerned that the head chef “demonstrated little knowledge of the location and content” of the food safety manual. Other shortfalls were in systems to prevent rodent contamination and cross-contamination of E.coli 0157.
So all I can say is that I hope they have got themselves sorted out by now, as certainly this was  my favourite of the three restaurants, but we shall see.