Cook your way thin

So I've started cooking again. This has been driven mainly by the fact that I can't bear the thought of another butternut squash soup with steamed broccoli dinner. Food rut, anyone?

Also, in an attempt to move from being slim to becoming a waif (bride-in-a-bikini-mission), I've been dipping into the "French Women Don't Get Fat" book, which is the most pretentious piece of food writing I've ever read - how can she write that one of French women's greatest assets is they know how to laugh? Inaccurate at best. That said, it certainly motivated me to get my head around some on piste recipes aimed to shrink my bum while at the same time ticking off the pleasure value box.

My source? Marmiton.com. Idiot proof recipes which only use basic fresh ingredients (no running around looking for marjoram required) and reviewed by 100s of French women who spend their life cooking, eating and managing to stay inside their skinny jeans. P.s. Google translate will get you through this should you need it.

They have a section called "Get thin!" . None of this "be your best self" or "healthy living" BS you get in the States. I think this would go down rather well in Hong Kong, where people are more than a little frank about each other's size. Last week one of my Honkie colleagues saw a photo of another colleague who she hadn't actually ever met in person, and called her up to inform her that she hadn't expected her to be so fat, and how about laying off the sweeties?! Note that the other colleague is American. Global team building at its best.

Anyway, here's a dish I made this week, which went down rather well and which even a blindfolded monkey could pull off:

Filo pastry round of parsley, ham and tomato

Ingredients per person:

2 pieces of filo pastry (go down to City Super and buy it)

1 tomato sliced

1 slice cooked ham roughly ripped

1 slice of goat's cheese

Chopped fresh parsley

Calories: 290 (if you're stingy on the cheese)

Prep and cooking time: 20 minutes (from walking in the door with bags to serving)

Here's the trick that changes this dish from being a blt samousa to being vraiment gourmande:

Get your two sheets of filo pastry and rummage around your kitchen for a ramekin or small bowl. Put the filo sheets (one at a time) inside the ramekin, so you've created a little pocket. Then put all the ingredients in the pocket and close the filo pastry around it. Seal it and then flip. So now it looks like a large round of camembert. So pretty and almost El Buli-ish in the art of disguise. Marmiton has a vid on this.

Stick in oven at 200c for 20 minutes. Serve with leaves and vinagrette.

Future wife ranking spikes upon serving.

NYC Eating

Coffee and Continental breakfast

Cafe Gitane - Italian and Frog petit dejeuner hang out

McNally Jackson - Self-consciously curated left wing books for all day browsing and chewing

Think Coffee - Crap coffee but good outdoor seating on Bowery

Joe - Thick black coffee on a bench in West Village

Brunch

The Standard Grill - Big sunglasses, models and fantastic food (ghetto chic)

Cafe Habana - Bad cuban food, great cuban music, waitresses that look fresh from Havana (ghetto chic)

Bubby's - Same as The Standard Grill but with babies. Arrive early or risk being run over by prams (preppy)

Bar Marche - Good food for crying over boys (preppy)

Public - Australian modern food (upscale-ish)

Lunch (all are good for taking parents, in-laws and clients)

Any michelin star restaurant with a prix fix menu (Nougatine, Bouley, Joel Rubichon etc)

Any Keith Mcnally restaurant (Balthazar, Pulino's, Mineta Tavern, Pastis etc)

Cipriani Downtown - Yuppy-st Tropez sort of place

Dinner

Momofoku - Ramen. If the queue is killing you, go round the corner to Leon (hipster casual)

Hecho en Dumbo - Modern Mexican, mean Mezcal cocktails. Don't expect to leave sober

EN Japanese Brasserie - (minimalist)

The Modern - Full on at the MOMA (parentally friendly)

Adour at the St Regis - Deliciously French (parentally friendly)

Wallse - Minimalist Austrian (parentally friendly)

Detox (Go alone with your dog)

Liquiteria - every juice on earth

Angelica's Kitchen - raw, vegan food for those who love their bodies more than life

Parentally friendly = somewhere your father feels comfortable. Well lit, tablecloths, space between the tables and waiters in closed shoes

Ghetto Chic = fashionably grungy. Kate Moss sort of hang outs

Minimalist = upscale but no table cloths

Preppy = pea coats, navy blue jeans and alice bands

Cooking Class for Cooks

I've just come back from a French cooking class.

6 of us gathered together at 10am this morning. All girls. All with "starving" men at home. One girl had actually been given the class by her boyf as a birthday present. I spotted him just before we begun, kissing her goodbye before hastily running off to get his hair cut. Well they do say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Anyway, there we were, a Scott, a Canadian, an American, a Frog and me. And, of course, the French chef and his Sri Lankan sidekick, Jaguar. No I didn't make his name up.

So, aprons on and the class begins. Chef thinks outloud as he throws ingredients together and adds odds and ends to our mixtures. Questions asked in English are ignored and anything referring to measurements or quantities are answered with a shrug and a huffing sound. Other questions considered too silly to answer include where to buy the lamb we were making, "ziz is a restaurrant, we ave a supplier", do you have this recipe written down anywhere "mais non" shrug and, can I beat this in a blender, "Aie aie aie, t'es americaine ou quoi??!"

So, with much follow-the-leadering, secret additions from le chef and fetching-and-getting by Jaguar, lunch was made. And wolfed down by the girlies. Sorry boys.

Here's the recipe (typed hastily into my iphone with grubby hands):

Lamb with garlic sauce

Garlic Sauce

White wine 1 cup
4 garlic cloves crushed
Large pinch pepper
Bunch fresh thyme
Reduce
Beef stock cube
Add cream at halfway reduction (1 dollop)
Boil until reduced
Put through sieve with spoon (squeeze)
Bring mixture to boil
Add roux (flour, water, butter over heat) and mix
Add salt or anchovies to taste

Garlic Sauce

Lamb

Remove fat
Paper towel dry
Cut in half
Olive oil in pan
Pepper and dried thyme
Hot pan
Fry on outside in small batches
Sage and thyme (dry)
Put in oven at 180c or let sit

Lamb

Cherry tomatoes
Cut in halves
Add olive oil
Sugar

Stick in oven
Caramelize

Ratatouille (ziz we learn in anozer class if we want)

Profiteroles

Warm water (2 cups)
Butter (1 cup)
Pinch salt
Tsp sugar
Let butter melt in hot water
Add 1 cup flour once butter is boiling (take off flame)
Mix
Put on lowwww flame and knead until it's no longer sticky
Add three eggs and knead until you get ribbons (keep adding eggs until you get ribbons)
Pipe onto baking sheet

Pastry

Ribbons

Piping

200 c slightly open open ( to let steam out). 20 min. Then close and reduce to 170c and let dry 20 mins

Chocolate sauce
Black chocolate (72%)
Put in 1 cm water
Melt
Don't burn
Add water to make a little runny

Profiteroles with vanilla ice-cream, chocolate sauce and almond thingies

Now I'm recovering on the sofa. Tonight we will be eating spaghetti or something equally innocuous.

By the way, in case you're thinking of also doing a mad hatters cooking class, here are the details:

La Terrasse , G/F, No.19 Old Bailey Street, Mid-levels, Central, Hong Kong (852) 2147 2225

Just Green

I'm highly skeptical about the "organic" movement. In New York I simply refused to go to Whole Foods. Ghastly place. Over priced, over marketed, over packaged and over crowded. I must admit though that after watching Food Inc (which I rolled my eyes at throughout) I switched to organic meat. Watch the movie. You'll see why.. But all the other stuff... like organic toilet paper..puullleeeeese.

That said, I got totally suckered into this whole thing yesterday. I've been trying to wean T off Kellogg's Special K as it's just a pile of chemicals, and so I thought maybe I could find him some muesli or something. So I headed down to Just Green. A live-longer-live-local-be-happy sort of shop. And boy did I enjoy it. It was just like being in a cosmetics shop. Hundreds of products that promise you everlasting youth, in scrumptious boxes, without any of them necessarily having to prove that they can deliver.

I passed the fantastically packaged organic tea, drooled over the organic-all-natural stemmed ginger cookies, and inhaled the scent of the fair trade milk chocolate with nutmeg. Note that all these delicacies (and maybe even the entire shop - and most definitely the shop assistant, who looked like she'd been freshly shipped from Hull) had been imported from England. Live local my arse.

This whole thing is really a big fat con to give people with disposable income something to dispose their income on. But I must say, as I sit here munching on T's Red Fruit Crunch Organic muesli (developed by a "pioneering vegetarian"), I'm thinking I could just hop down there later tonight maybe and get some natural-fair-and-delicious tea to sooth me after a long hard day at the office. Something to help me come closer to the natural order of things. Sucker.