Beating basil by hand

Executive Summary:
1st time: hand made pesto in a mortar and pestle. Beating time: 50 min. Effort: considerable. Worth it compared to Cuisinart? Nope.

Full Verson:
For years I've read a few cookbooks whose authors say that handmade Pesto has a superior texture and better flavour than pesto produced by machine. This year, having 3 remarkably productive pots of basil in the back yard and a little time on my hands, I decided it was time to find out.

After picking, washing and air drying 3 cups of basil leaves, I set to reducing them to a paste. What a task. I have a solid porcelain mortar and pestle and pounded and ground away for about 40 minutes. The 3 cups was reduced to about 1/3 cup! Then came the pan roasted pine nuts and 5 cloves of fresh garlic. Pounding continued. Add a little salt, a few peppercorns and a small handful of grated Romano. About 50 minutes later all this was reduced to something I'd call a paste. Olive oil stirred in, it was done.

I would say that the aroma produced through this lengthy process was wonderful, but the colour showed that the basil had oxidized more than when bashed by machine. But all that aside, when mixed with pasta and served up with tomatos, it was very good. Just not better than what I get by the usual method. Even the texture was not much different. So, bottom line is that it was a noble experiment, but I'll go back to mechanization.

London in spring...

Well maybe it's not Paris, but it's no slouch. A few quick notes on some very nice places to eat if you've got time on your hands in London.

Tapa Room
109 Marylebonne High Street
+44 020 7935 6175
This is a busy, noisy New Zealand tapas bar created by chef Peter Gordon. They serve a wonderful array of fusion tapas, and have both crowded table service and a bar that accommodates singles.

Zaika
1 Kensington High Street
020 7795 6533
Really top-flight Indian food here. Well worth the visit.

Boulevard Brasserie
40 Wellington Street
Covent Garden
020 7240 2992
A pleasant surprise just around the corner from my hotel in the theatre district. Prices are reasonable and the food is a creditable rendition of classic bistrot fare.

Envying ladies who lunch

After an early start with breakfast meetings, and then posting the consequences, I managed to escape to lunch with a friend from Australia, her husband and another Australian. Went to Restaurant Les Ombres on the roof of the new Musée du quai Branly. It's distinguished not only by the view of its next door neighbour, the Eiffel Tower, but by an excellent chef. I had la carte, which today consisted of:

• Salade de mâche en écrin de noix de Saint-Jacques, vinaigrette tiède à l’huile de noisette
• Moules de Bouchot aux chorizo et parmesan, avec grosses frites confites à la graisse d’oie, and
• De Paris à Brest en pâte à choux, crème pralinée à l’ancienne

All accompanied by a lovely Givrey Champs Lalot Vieilles Vignes. I don't know what vegetables were in that salad. Mâche certainly, but also some sort of very crisp round stalk, cut about the size of baby peas. The scallops were raw, and very thinly sliced. The hazelnut oil and the odd toasted nut pulled it all together beautifully.

A couple of hours of good conversation and good food left me motivated to try to walk off some of the calories, and the left bank is a good place to do that, even if it's cold outside. The reports of 30 cm of snow and cold back home takes the edge off even that.

Chaumette

A list of favourite restaurants in Paris I got from a friend came with the notation that Chaumette is the author's family's favourite Paris Bistro, despite its not having a history with Hemmigway. I can see the point. It's a young crew, and chef Tanguy le Gall does an excellent job on classic bistro fare. Near the ever-expanding Radio France HQ, it has only about 30 seats, but a good menu, and the food is well cooked and well presented. One quirky feature is "pommes de mer": little ratté potatoes roasted with a sprinkling of coarse sea salt crystals. A little out of the way but well worth the walk from nearest metro stop. (Wierdly, YouTube has a video of Chaumette, credited to Philippe Noiret.)
Chaumette (16e arrondissement) 7 rue Gros, tel 01 42 88 29 27

Les Cocottes

Taking advantage of a cold, snowy-sleety night in Paris, I was successful in getting a seat at Les Cocottes de Christian Constant. There has to be some advantage to being Canadian, and braving the cold and snow to get a seat in a crowded restaurant seems to be one of them. It's a long, narrow room with a limited menu. Most of the dishes are prepared en cocotte – in small cast-iron lidded pots. Obviously not the excellent roquette salad with a poached egg and lardons coated in something like reduced balsamic vinegar. But the main of a crusty cabillaud sitting atop a bed of well roasted potatoes and carrots in jus de viande acidulée. The special of the day was rabbit in a rosemary broth. I also saw a wonderful looking roast chicken haunch on a bed of risotto. Scallops were served with endive in a bubbling mass of butter foam. As one review said: you can eat healthily here, or not. Take your pick. Well worth the effort of getting there.
133 rue St-Dominique (7th Arr) +33-1-45-50-10-31

Always befriend the bartender

A tip for the lonely traveller ;-)

Having failed for the second night to get even bar seating at the Swinging Door, I wandered further down the waterfront in SF, past La Mar, to the Waterfront Restaurant. I'd noticed it during the day's long walk. They have a lovely simple menu: several kinds of fish, grilled or roasted, with 4 kinds of sauce. Extras are extra. I started with a heritage beet salad, on a bed of arugala and frisée, then went for the Ahi Tuna, grilled, with grilled asperagus on the side. It was perfectly cooked, and the lime-cilatro mayo was a nice counterpoint. Being Sunday, I started with a martini made with a local SF gin called 209. Worth the premium price. As a wine I had a brilliant Sangiovese from Pietra Santa Winery in the heretofore unheard of Cienega Valley. It was full bodied, with a nose filled with black fruits and spice. Wish we could get those in Canada.

Oh, and the bartender... he was generous enough to top up the glass of Sangiovese and, apparently looking for conversation, offered a few complementary glasses of a Frog's Leap sauvignon blanc just to clear the bottle. As he said: "All good."

San Francisco find

A happy discovery in San Francisco: La Mar Cebicheria Peruiana. I had been trying to go to the Slanted Door for new wave Vietnamese, but it was lined out the door even though past 9 when I got there. No loss: La Mar had wonderful fresh fish, clean flavours and nice spicy aji amarillo peppers. I had half orders of a couple of kinds of cebiche (criollo and nikei) and a causa limena (crab, potatoes, aji amarillo, quail egg, and lime -- see pic.) sitting at the bar. Excellent food, and though the service was quite slow, the room is lively, and the cooks behind the bar friendly (willing to put up with painfully unpracticed Spanish) and actually from Peru!