The Lunchbox #15
Starchy snacks, a very wholesome salad and who is serving who in restaurants?
What I’m currently consuming
The debate: Passive Pasta Cooking
Have you heard the one about the about physicist and the angry Italian chef? No? Well, you’re about to. Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist, Giorgio Parisi, recently got in hot water after he re-shared a post on his Facebook page by architect Alessandro Busiri Vici encouraging people to save a few cents on energy by cooking pasta without constant heat. According to Busiri Vici, the trick is to boil the water, add your pasta, cover with a lid, wait two minutes, then turn the heat off. Wait one minute more than the prescribed cooking time, and Hey Presto! you apparently have a ‘perfect’ bowl of pasta.
As it did the rounds in the media, this pronouncement has caused rage among Italian chefs, particularly Michelin-starred chef Antonello Colonna who was quoted in La Repubblica, saying this method of cooking pasta wasn’t as smart as you might think and that cooking pasta with the heat off will just make it rubbery, adding that it would never be served in a top class restaurant like his. Chef Luigi Pomata agreed, saying that cooking pasta off the heat would be a disaster and “Let’s leave cooking to chefs while physicists do experiments in their lab.”
Having tried it myself, I can confirm that OK, maybe spaghetti is edible, if not a little spongy, but rigatoni is simultaneously gummy and undercooked. I’m taking the chefs’ side on this one.
To Watch: The Gyoza God
Like dumplings? Well you’re likely to enjoy this brief peek into the determined mind of Hitoshi Umamichi. Originally a regular, he loved the dumplings at Tokyo's Gyozanomise Okei so much, that when he learned it was about to close in 2005, he bought it and installed himself in the kitchen. He still uses the original recipe from the restaurant’s opening back in 1954, having assiduously tweaked and adjusted it over the years until he was finally happy. As was Michelin, who soon inducted it into their guide. Watch this short movie for some mouth-watering close-ups, unusual chopping techniques and inspiring dumpling devotion. And I challenge you not to have a terrible craving afterwards.
The Guide: The Best Chinese Restaurants in London
Last Sunday marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year, with the gentle and amicable water rabbit taking over from the strong, brave water tiger. As the 15-day festival begins, what better way to celebrate than to eat. The brilliant writer Cat Sarsfield, whose Substack I am a huge fan of, has written a comprehensive piece for The Modern House on the best places to find Chinese cooking in London, from across the eight regions and covering the whole of London. Even if you don’t live in London, this is great reading just for her glorious descriptions of food such as “Shredded-pork fried noodles – crispy, thin and stained with dark soy” and my favourite, “bouncy, sauce-laden hand-pulled noodles.”
Something to fill you up
Beetroot & Soft-Boiled Egg Salad with Rye Croutons
How do you know ingredients will work together in a salad? Because you’d also eat them as a sandwich, that’s how you know. Everything in this dish loves each other’s company, tapping into the ingredients and flavours of my Russsian/Jewish heritage.
It’s a riot of wintry colours, vegetables and textures, but the star of the plate is the rye crouton: crunchy and savoury on the outside, yielding and chewy on the inside. Your basic bread crouton has nothing on these.
See my how-to video here
serves 2
2 medium golden, candy cane or red beetroots
2 thick slices (about 200g) rye bread
2 tbsp olive oil
2 medium eggs
½ cucumber, peeled, de-seeded and cut into chunks
A handful each of radicchio, chicory and rocket - or any salad leaves you like
1 1/2 tbsp capers, to serve
2 tbsp chopped cucumber pickle, to serve
A handful of dill, chopped, to serve
A few sprigs of chives, chopped, to serve
Mustard dressing
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp creme fraiche/sour cream
1 tsp red wine vinegar
A big squeeze of lemon
4 tbsp olive oil
Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/gas 7 and wrap the beets in foil (you can also boil them whole for 45 minutes if you’d prefer). Place in the oven for 45–55 minutes (depending on size) until you can easily insert a sharp knife. Once done, remove the foil and slip off the skin under running water. Cut into eight pieces each.
Meanwhile, cut the rye into large chunks (you can leave the crust on), toss in the 2 tablespoons of oil and some seasoning and spread out on a lined baking tray. Place in the hot oven for 15-20 minutes until they are crisp and a shade darker; allow to cool.
Next, bring a small pan of water to the boil and cook the eggs for 8 minutes, then drain, run under cold water and peel before cutting into eight pieces each.
Whisk together the dressing ingredients and season lightly.
To assemble, rip the leaves and scatter over a large plate or salad bowl. Throw in the cucumber, followed by the beetroot and eggs. Scatter over the rye croutons, capers and pickles, then generously drizzle with the dressing. Finish with a good coverage of chopped dill and chives, then get eating.
Something to finish you off
The multi-talented Bre Graham has just brought out the most delightful book, Table for Two, written for those moments when you want to show someone how much you care through food. It has a range of recipes from dead-simple to a bit more over-the-top, depending on the moment. This woman knows comfort food and that’s why I love her recipes. This particular recipe caught my eye as not only is it pleasingly simple, but it stars rhubarb, which as just come into season.
Perfumed Panna Cotta
Delicate and divine, perfumed with vanilla and rose, these little panna cotta are utterly irresistible. They have a luxurious, voluptuous wobble, and are equally lovely served by themselves as they are with the roasted rhubarb on the side. If you can’t get your hands on a vanilla pod, a good-quality paste will work too. These panna cotta are super simple to make, but do start to prepare them either the night before, or the morning of serving to allow them time to chill and set.
200ml double cream
3 1⁄2 tbsp whole milk
1 vanilla pod, split and seeds scraped out, or 1 tsp vanilla paste
60g caster sugar
1 1⁄2 sheets of gelatine
1⁄2 tsp rosewater
2 rhubarb stalks, trimmed and chopped into equal-sized pieces
a little finely grated orange zest
juice of 1 orange
crystallized rose petals, to decorate (optional)
In a small pan, gently warm the cream, milk, vanilla and 3 tablespoons of the sugar on the lowest heat for 10 minutes, until infused. Stir occasionally to ensure the sugar dissolves and does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Take the pan off the heat.
Add the gelatine to a large bowl of cold water and let it soak for a few minutes until soft. Remove the gelatine from the water and stir it into the warm milk mixture with the rosewater until dissolved.
Pour the mix into 2 x 125ml moulds or small glasses. Pop them in the fridge where they’ll need about 6 hours or so to fully set.
Heat the oven to 160C fan/350F/Gas 4. Place the rhubarb in a baking dish and sprinkle over the remaining sugar, the orange zest and juice. Roast the rhubarb for 15 minutes, until tender but it still holds its shape. Set aside to cool completely.
To serve, gently dip the moulds or glasses into warm water to help ease the panna cotta out onto serving plates. Serve with the rhubarb and, if you’re feeling fancy, a single crystallized rose petal placed on top.
This recipe is taken from Table for Two: Recipes for the Ones You Love by Bre Graham - out now (DK, £20)
Power dynamics in restaurants. Who is serving who?
How do we feel about eating in restaurants these days? Have you noticed your expectations have grown higher, hand-in-hand with your financial anxiety? Does eating out now feel like more of a treat than before?
Having worked in restaurants for years, my sympathies always lie with restaurant rather than the customer. So much hard work goes on behind the scenes and as customers we’re often too quick to criticise “How much for a steak?!”, “The portions are so small!”, “The place is empty, why can’t I have that table?!”, because we don’t see the behind-the-scenes machinations and difficult decisions that take place. No-one is in the business to make money, that’s for sure.
Having said that, we’re in a frustrating and vulnerable position as a customer: we’re paying for something based on trust and if it’s not to our liking for whatever reason, we can’t just take it back with our receipt like a pair of jeans.
This may come to explain why Tripadvisor and Google Reviews have become restaurant customers’ stomping ground as it’s a place to let off air after an unsatisfactory experience, the consequences to the restaurant be damned. As I mentioned in my first Up On My Lunchbox, complaining is hard - you don’t know how they’ll react or if you’re even justified in speaking up.
This is a pretty miserable situation for restaurants as if a customer doesn’t bring up their grievance at the time, the restaurant has no way of checking its validity, defending its own position or smoothing it over. With the current social weight of Tripadvisor etc, everyone can now be a restaurant critic, whether they know what they’re talking about or not. So it can often feel like the customer has all the power in this respect, creating an Us and Them dynamic. Has the good will and relationship between restaurants and their customer begun to break down? Countertalk, an online meeting space for the restaurant community reported that at the end of last year, many restaurants described an “uplift of complaint emails, poor reviews, short tempers and intolerance.”
As pockets are being pinched, customers want more and restaurants have less to give as they’re being squeezed from all sides themselves. As I wrote here two weeks ago, they’re having to find ingenious ways to provide the same service with lower food margins and higher staff and energy costs.
So what’s the solution? Perhaps we customers needs to go in with a more forgiving attitude and an awareness of the pressure they’re under. That’s not to say we should accept anything under par, but if we’re not satisfied, the best thing we can do is be honest and speak up at the time. This allows them to make it better for us and anywhere worth their salt will deal with all fair feedback in a gracious way.
Any thoughts on this? Comment below.