- Scott
I'm one of those annoying people that happily discounts any number of menu items on the basis that "No, I cook that sort of thing all the time myself". I don't, of course. I don't have a brigade of sous chefs chopping vegetables perfectly, or making silky sauces to go with my fish dinner, or putting the final touches on the plate using a pair of minature tweezers and a pepette. Which is just as well really, because restaurants are one of the few places that we get to sit back and witness some modern day magic. It could be some tricky molecular gastronomy.... or the best vegetable soup you've ever eaten.
It's pretty cool to see restaurants open the recipe book for home cooks to have a crack at - but I always wonder if they really give you all the info. I mean, in this time of shrinking expense accounts and vanishing disposable income, of wannabe home MasterChefs and people who "love to host" - why would you? Surely it's bad for business?
Having enjoyed the awesome modern Vietnamese on offer at Cafe Hanoi (http://www.cafehanoi.co.nz/) a couple of times I was overjoyed to see a few of their signature dishes turn up in the latest Cuisine magazine (http://www.cuisine.co.nz/) which, also awesomely, we are receiving free as a make-good for the power company stuffing up our bill two months running.Anyway, having just about come to blows over who would get to eat the last serving of Cha Ca (grilled fish with turmeric, galangal & dill) on my last visit, it was pure serendipity that this recipe was among the six or so Hanoi's chef Jason van Dorsten was willing to cough up.
The process itself is easy; marinate some fresh white fish fillets (in my case gurnard) in ginger, galangal, turmeric and fish sauce and then pan grill it with onions, beans and dill. To serve, all it takes is some nuoc cham (garlicky chilli) sauce and some rice / rice noodles.
For once - and anyone who knows me will understand how hard this was for me to do - I actually followed the recipe to the letter. And even measured and weighed ingredients as accurately as your average chemist might when mixing up Granny Jean's heart elixer. Well.... almost. Truth be told I've never grown dill in my herb garden and the idea of buying leafy green herbs is a bit foreign to me - unless it's really 'foreign' leafery we're talking about. So I substituted fennel fronds. And second, I added some tamarind paste I found in the fridge (I've used it maybe once in the last nine months so I was keen to decrease it's 'cost per swallow' ratio). It seemed to make sense to me... French vibe with fennel; check. Viet-Thai vibe with tamarind; check.
The end result? It was bloody tasty. But it was incredibly salty - which is odd given my salt pig barely came within a trotter of the pan. It was so salty that Fiona, my wife and fellow blogger - whose only real connection to her farming upbring is that she still likes to nuzzle a salt lick from time to time and is the sort of person who likes to add salt to their butter - found it almost overbearing. I licked my plate clean, but also drank seven litres of water and had a kidney transplant for dessert.
What went wrong? Was it the tamarind? Was it really that far gone? Does fennel have some weird reaction when it encounters fish sauce? Maybe I should just have given in and done what the guy in the chef jacket had asked me to... or perhaps I should book a long lunch at Hanoi and try it all again.
Ah... so recipes in magazines are good for business then. I get it.
