Kong

I had an excellent meal in Paris this week at a restaurant called Kong.  It occupies the top two floors of the same building as Kenzo (very mod clothes that would probably make me look ridiculous, if I could afford them) on Rue Pont Neuf.  I was in Paris on a business trip, saw a brief writeup on the place in a magazine, and asked the hotel to book me a table. 

From the Pont Neuf, the restaurant looks like a big greenhouse, or maybe an upside down salad bowl sitting on top of the building; from the the inside, it offers fantastic views over the river.

Decorated by Phillippe Starck, the bar feels like some very hip (and wealthy) 28 year old’s living room.  It’s a bit darkand a bit industrial, but still comfortable. Clear acrylic panels between booths are lit from below and have faces printed on them.  Makes you feel like someone’s watching you (with a slightly disdainful eye, of course – this is Paris after all).  The face theme is repeated throughout the restaurant, on monitors in the dining room and on the backs of the acrylic Ghost chairs used at many of the tables.

After dark, you don’t get the same views, but the dimly lit restaurant offers a romantic setting in keeping with Paris’ reputation.  As I was dining with a work colleague, romance wasn’t on my mind (sorry Perry – I’d rather have been dining with Kris…) – I was more focused on the food.

The food was great.  We started with a mixed entree platter of spring rolls, black perch tartare, artichokes poivrade, seared tuna, and california rolls.  Everything but the tuna was fantastic.  The tuna was a bit fishy and not particularly flavorful.  For mains, I had Chilean Seabass (Bar du Chili) with black rice.  Perry had a Filet de Beouf with peppercorn sauce and fries.  My fish was perfectly cooked, and served with an interesting (miso based?) sauce.  Perry’s steak was good, if fairly ordinary, but he said the fries were great.  The food was well prepared and the nicely sized portions were presented very simply.  We split an excellent bottle of bordeaux that went well with both dishes.  A lemon tart and pannacotta with strawberries rounded out the meal.

All in all, a great meal in a great setting.  Expensive, but not over the top.  Well worth a stop next time you find yourself in Paris.

Summer Berry Cobbler

There is no more irresistable summer dessert than a simple berry cobbler, served hot from the oven with some good vanilla ice cream.  Here’s an easy recipe that you can adapt to whatever fruit happens to be in season.  This recipe will serve two, but is easily doubled or tripled for larger crowds.  You can make it in one big dish to take to a picnic, or individual ramekins for a more sophisticated presentation.  With a little practice, you can pull this together in about 10 minutes, plus 20 for baking.  You can also make the dough a bit ahead of time and keep in the refrigerator until you’re ready to assemble the dessert.

Preheat your oven to 375 F/190 C.

• 1 1/2 cups summer berries (any mix of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries you like)
• 1 tablespoon white sugar (adjust depending on the sweetness of your fruit)
• 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
• 1 teaspoon corn starch

Mix the filling ingredients together and put in a small baking dish – a 6 in. ramekin works well.  You can also divide between two 1 cup ramekins if you want to make individual desserts.

Place the following ingredients in the bowl of a food processor:

• 1/2 cup white flour
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 stick chilled butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Pulse these ingredients a few times until combined, but don’t overdo it.  The dough should be the texture of course cornmeal.  With the food processor running, add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream.  As soon as the dough starts to come together, maybe another 10 seconds, stop the blade and scrape the dough onto a clean cutting board or counter top.  Pull the dough together into a ball, gathering up any loose crumbs.  Pull off chunks of the dough and place on top of the berry filling – cover well, but not completely.  If you leave some gaps, the berry juices will bubble up through and caramelize on the crust.  Brush the top of the dough with a bit more heavy cream, and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the top has puffed and is golden brown. 

Serve immediately with vanilla ice cream or heavy cream.  If you’ve made it in individual ramekins, you can poke a hole in the top and drop in the ice cream.  It’ll melt and blend with the berries and give you a lovely blending of temperatures and textures.

This recipe adapts will to any kind of fruit, but as the crust is extremely delicate, I think it’s best with soft fruits.  Try a mix of rhubarb and strawberries – cut the rhubarb into chunks and simmer with a bit of sugar and grand marnier until the rhubarb starts to soften.  Then mix in the strawberries before topping and baking.  Peaches or apricots are also great in this dish, and you can add a few nuts too, if you like.  Slivered almonds or crushed hazelnuts go really well with orchard fruit.

One more note: I find it easier and less of a mess to just make the dough in a bowl with a pastry blender.  If you don’t have one, you can probably find it in your local grocery store for about 2.99.  They usually have a simple wooden handle with 7 or 8 stiff parallel wires running down below the handle in a semi circle.  You mash the wires through the flour and butter mixture until you get course crumbs (you’ll probably have to scrape the butter off the wires a couple of times), then add the cream and mix and gather with a spoon or your hands.  Use the same basic process for pie crust or crumb topping.  I find that this method gives me much better control than the food processor – it’s very easy to overdo it with the food processor and end up with a tough pastry crust.  You also have only one bowl and the pastry blender to clean, rather than the food processor blade, bowl and top, and you don’t have to put the food processor away afterwards.

The Holly Bush Pub

We had dinner tonight in a local pub in Hampstead: The Hollybush.  We were invited by some friends who were celebrating a birthday.   Everything about the pub was great except the food, which was pretty mediocre.  Not bad, but not worth the prices they were charging.  It’s a nice, old fashioned local pub, with a bar area out front and a warren of small rooms with tables in the back.  Their selection of beers was excellent, with a range of bitters from smaller breweries, and plenty of lagers, ciders and stouts as alternatives.  The wine list, while pretty short, had a nicely varied selection. They had enough servers behind the bar to cope with the crowd, so you didn’t have to wait too long for your pint.  The servers were all friendly and helpful.  We ordered a few beers to start while we decided on food, then put in our dinner order.

There were about 12 of us, so it wasn’t surprising that the food took a while to come out, but the wait started to seem excessive after about an hour…  We ordered a burger for the kids, which was probably the best of the meals (even if they didn’t eat it), and chicken two ways for ourselves: a goat cheese stuffed breast quarter and a chicken and mushroom pie.  The food was OK.  The burger was nicely prepared, with shreds of horseradish mixed in with the meat and, while a little rare for the kids, was nicely cooked.  The roast chicken and pie were both pretty tasteless, as were the mashed potatoes served with them.

Overall, we had a nice night out with our friends, and really enjoyed the pub.  I’d just suggest you start off there for a pint or two, then move on if you want a meal.

Chimichurri

We grilled some steaks last night for the 4th of July (not much of a holiday, here in London – go figure, but we had a nice evening anyway), and I made one of our favorite sauces for it: Chimichurri.  This is a traditional Argentinian sauce and marinade for beef, and I first had it at a local Argentinian steakhouse, The Gaucho Grill.  They have a number of restaurants around London, and seem to have avoided the curse of restaurant groups so far – maybe because they’ve stayed pretty small and upmarket.  They source all their beef from Argentina, and cook it in the traditional Argentinian way, turning it only once during cooking.  They have an excellent selection of Argentinian wines (this was also the first place I had Malbec, which has become one of my favorite red varietals).

Traditionally, chimichurri is made with parsley, oregano, olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika, but I’ve been making it a little differently:  Finely chop equal parts flat leaf parsley and cilantro (coriander).  I usually do a half bunch of parsley and a bunch of cilantro, which works out to about a cup and a  half of chopped herbs.  Mince and add 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, depending on how big they are and how much you like garlic.  Add about half a teaspoon each of salt and pepper, half a teaspoon of chili flakes (adjust depending on how spicy you like it), and pour in good olive oil to fill out the sauce – maybe 3/4 of a cup.  Add about 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, and mix it all up.  If you let it stand for an hour or so, the flavors will blend, but you can eat it immediately.

Chimichurri is a fantastic sauce for grilled steak, or just for dipping good crusty bread in.  It also makes a great marinade for steak – just pour it over the meat in a zip top bag and let stand for a few hours or overnight in the fridge before grilling.

Recently, I’ve been using Aleppo pepper flakes for this sauce, sourced from Penzey’s Spices – a great mail order source for any sort of dried herb or spice you need, if you don’t have a good spice market nearby.  They also have a number of retail stores around the US, so check their web site to see if there’s one in your area.  I guarantee you won’t be able to leave the store without half a dozen jars!  Anyway, aleppo pepper is a bit less hot than your usual chili flakes, but it has a lot more flavor.  If you use it, double the amount for the recipe.  It’s also great on anything else you’d use chili flakes for, especially pizza.