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Senin, 24 Januari 2011

Sriracha, Seductress in a Squeeze Bottle

Sriracha, Seductress in a Squeeze Bottle: "

'It's THE gateway drug of chili heads.'

'You know it's a sign that you've got a good condiment when you're making dishes to accommodate your condiment.'

-comments on chowhound.com's thread Sriracha Chili Sauce, Condiment or Crack?"

She fell in love with the seaside – A year has passed

This past year was a tumble. A dive that started – what felt like – a few seconds ago. Possibly with a busy sunday lunch at the restaurant, with only Guillaume and I doing service.

And to be honest we had no clue about how this whole restaurant thing worked. I remember our first ice-cream quenelles. I remember making way too much mise-en-place because we were so terrified we would run out during service. I remember the long hours.

But mostly I remember how happy I was. And certainly, how happy I am when I realise that I can handle a busy service, or organise my section, or even when I highlight the words from my prep list – meaning it’s been made.

So yes, 2010 was a good year. With laughs and tears, and more laughs. With perfect quenelles, and trust me when I say it’s all about the quenelle. With delicious food and delicious people.

I fell in and out of love twice. I fell in love with my job. And I fell in love with the most amazing people who make my days seem like a dream.

Namely, head-chef Richard Hondier, sous-chef James Mitchell, and my very own petit-pois or ecureuil sauvage - depending on my mood – Jack Walker, the apprentice.

james and jack

Because in the end, there is no such thing as being surrounded by people who are passionate and push you out from your comfort zone, instead of being carrier-driven.

Now, I wish I had had the time to take more pictures of some of my very favourite desserts – mostly created for the set lunch menus – but service is fast and at times, brutal. A bit like being hit by a wave.

So instead, I’ll share my favourite experiments, because this is what I feel like doing at home now. Experiment, fail or not.

A beetroot cake. Possibly one of the best things that ever got out from oven. It was moist and fragrant. The perfect support of a rich cream-cheese frosting or a long afternoon of writing.

The cocoa brownies. My favourite discovery of this past year. Brownies that are chewy all the way through. And so easy to make, you’ll be able to have them for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner.

The avocado macarons. The recipe hasn’t been written yet, but those macarons were delicious. And not only because I’ve finally found the right settings on our oven for them to come out perfect, each and every time.

macaron pile

A rhubarb entremet. Made in early spring. With the people I care the most about. My grand-father went for a second serving and this, my friends, is a sign.

The little matcha brioches. Matcha might be an acquired taste to some, but for me it is the absolute favourite. And those cute brioches were simply delicious.

A lemon cake. This one was made and remade a greater number of times than I dare to admit. Everybody seems to love it. This is why I always have one in my freezer, just in case.

lemon cake sliced

Looking backs at my recipes inevitably brings back memories.

Hours spent sat at the brasserie just below my old flat, writing the very beginning of a pastry book, while the snow was on its way.

Hours spent at the restaurant, working hard and playing harder. Filling the pages of my moleskine notebook with ideas for the desserts and afternoon teas.

Hours spent chatting with my friends Violet and Janelle, whose support I cannot be thankful enough for.

Hours spent trying to understand how to set up a business in London. Saving every penny you very genereously gave me to, one day, make my dream come true. And trust me, you’ll be the first to know when that happens.

This year, I have few resolutions. The main one is to focus and unclustter.

resolutions

I will finish to write my book. I will learn ever and forever more. I will eat out as much as I possibly can afford it. I will learn Japanese. I will create a work portfolio. I will slow down at times.

And, because I feel like starting everything over again, I will stop writing here. Only to find a better place, which hopefully you will like as much as I do.

So while I’m drifting ashore on my little boat, I wish you all a happy new year. See you soon, on a new island.

happy new year

Comme un lait fraise

As I mentionned yesterday, I will now be writing somewhere else. Not because I’m not in like with foodbeam anymore, but because it feels right. Just like the moment I share with the coolest kid on the planet this morning.

Quite obviously, foodbeam will stay forever in my heart and on the internet.

For now, comme un lait fraise – or like a strawberry milk, you choose – is not yet the cosy place I had dreamt about, but I’m hoping it will eventually.

A place to share precious recipes, moments and places. A place that smells like rain and feels like being wrapped up in a blanket.

I will be honest with you and say how terrified I am with the thought of starting all over again. But it makes sense.

So join the party. And follow me across the pond! xx

Tutorial: Flex for the BlackBerry PlayBook in 90 Minutes

Tutorial: Flex for the BlackBerry PlayBook in 90 Minutes: "

My new “Flex for the BlackBerry PlayBook in 90 Minutes” tutorial is now live on the BlackBerry Developer Site."

Sam Rockwell On Cowboys & Aliens

Sam Rockwell On Cowboys & Aliens: "And he'd like to play a superhero

Alex Gibney Making WikiLeaks Documentary; Separate Julian Assange Biopic Also Planned

One of the first big pieces of news out of Sundance is that Universal will fund a documentary about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, directed by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Casino Jack and the United States of Money). Together with the biopic of Mr. Assange that is about to go into development at a different company, that would make him quite the man of the moment — if he hadn’t already been the man of the moment thanks to the actions of WikiLeaks over the past months.

[UPDATE: Deadline says that HBO is also developing a film about Mr. Assange. This one would be a co-production with the BBC based on Raffi Khatchadourian's June 7, 2010 New Yorker article called No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency.]

More detail on each film after the break.

Deadline confirms the deal with Universal but isn’t able to say whether Julian Assange will participate in the film. Regardless, the movie could be a firebrand that surpasses the interest generated by Mr. Gibney’s last few films.

Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks and therefore responsible for the release of thousands of confidential government documents, is a figure that people tend to either love or hate. To some he’s a hero and a champion of free speech and democracy; others see him as an enemy and someone who endangers our freedom by compromising the inner workings of government. (And there are probably many who see him as a troublesome, egocentric kid.)

All that being the case I’d say that Alex Gibney is the perfect man for this job, and I’m eagerly awaiting the results of his work.

In addition, producers at Josephson Entertainment and Michelle Krumm Prods have optioned Andrew Fowler‘s forthoming biography of Mr. Assange, called The Most Dangerous Man in the World. They plan a ‘suspenceful drama thriller’ based on the bio. The book follows the WikiLeaks founder from childhood to the present day. Producers compare the story they want to tell to All the President’s Men.

No word on a screenwriter, director or cast for the biopic at this point. Too bad Steven Soderbergh likely won’t have any interest in this; he’d be great for it. [Variety]

‘Margin Call’ – A Movie About The Financial Disaster That’s a Cinematic Disaster [Sundance Review]

It is safe to say that Margin Call was my most anticipated film of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Having scored a spot on the buzzed-about 2010 Black List, Margin Call has an all-star cast featuring Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, and Zachary Quinto. It is also topical, purporting to be based on true events and chronicling the actions of an investment banking firm at the epicenter of the 2008 financial disaster.

Sadly, Margin Call is an unfortunate lesson in what happens when you make a movie that, like The Social Network, features dozens of characters talking intensely at each other for 2 hours, only with none of the skill that Sorkin or Fincher brought to their particular film. Hit the jump for some further thoughts, plus an audio blog I recorded with Laremy discussing the film. (He loved it. I hated it.)

Margin Call begins with a scene that’s so good, it makes the punishingly mediocre material that follows all the more disappointing. There’s a round of layoffs happening at an investment banking firm and risk management specialist Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is among them. The scene in which Tucci is fired masterfully captures all the nuance of such an uncomfortable situation: the robotic nature of the woman’s voice as she delivers the news, the subtle, almost imperceptible way she checks his dossier when reciting how many years he’s worked at the firm, the awkwardness experienced by Dale right afterwards. (Picture the opening scene of Up in the Air, where Clooney fires a hapless worker, only more raw and brutal).

Dale goes to pack up his office, but in a case of bad timing, it turns out he was right in the middle of putting together a report that portended the entire firm’s downfall. Before he leaves, he hands his work off to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), a lower-level analyst who happens to be brilliant with numbers. Sullivan finishes what Dale started and realizes that, not only is the entire economy is headed down the toilet, but their century-old firm may not survive.

What follows over the course of the next hour that comprises the second act of the film is the information in my paragraph above being reiterated over and over again. No joke: that exact same information (including how Sullivan got his hands on the numbers) is passed up the chain of command in explicit detail several times, making this nearly-2-hour long film feel frustratingly padded. But don’t worry, each time the film makes sure to spell it out for the laypeople in the audience by having a character state something along the lines of “Tell me this like I don’t know anything about finance or accounting!” Thanks, Margin Call! Seriously though, we get that it’s a bad situation. Tell us something new or move it along, please.

[In the film, there is a dialogue exchange where one character says that the situation will get ugly, and the other responds 'How ugly?' His rejoinder: 'Really, really, really fucking ugly.' Picture this scene repeated 5-8x and you will start to get an idea of what it was like to watch this film]

When you create a film that deals with a hopelessly complex issue such as the housing crash, you can choose to either capture the complexity of the issue using a strong sense of verisimilitude and/or focus on the human drama behind the scenes. (We’ve seen films that have done both. Hell, we’ve seen films starring Kevin Spacey that have done both. Recount, anyone?) The very cursory financial information provided in Margin Call hardly qualifies it for the former. I have literally heard finance-centered episodes of NPR’s Fresh Air that were more informative, more exciting, and more emotionally loaded than the entirety of Margin Call.

More unforgivably, all the characters in this film are complete ciphers. Several of them are given subplots that go nowhere, but with only paper-thin details about each one, we have no reason to care about whether X’s dog survives, or whether Y gets blamed for this whole mess, or whether Z gets fired. As both a dramatized document of one of the worst crashes in our history AND as a riveting drama, Margin Call fails completely.

There are moments when Margin Call springs to life and demonstrates exactly why it was a candidate for the vaunted Black List. Every now and then, a character delivers an interesting monologue with a clever turn of phrase or an eternal truth wrapped inside it, and we wonder what might have been if the film had maintained this level of consistency throughout. Instead, most of the film features pointless, clunky dialogue about how much money the characters make, with a large dose of heavy-handed expounding on “What It All Means, This Whole Investment Banking Thing.”

This is writer/director J. C. Chandor’s first feature-length film and it shows. The performances are excellent throughout (Spacey and Irons are great, and Quinto continues to impress as a dramatic big-screen actor) and the film looks great, but almost all the other choices are nearly disastrous. Scenes that could be easily edited to be more tight instead chug along sluggishly. Entire characters that contribute nothing to the plot could have been combined with others or excised entirely. There is nothing in Margin Call that is not illustrated far better by other observers and artists, even those using other forms of media. For example, John Wells The Company Men and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air provide more intimate portraits on the agony of job loss. And those looking for something more exciting and/or profound on this subject would also be better served reading the works of Michael Lewis.

I can’t imagine anyone I know who would want to watch this film. I can’t imagine any studio that would want to buy or distribute this film, seeing as how there is no scenario I could envision in which it would perform well at the box office. Sure, it centers on a hot button issue, but the level of filmmaking skill on display in Margin Call unintentionally reveals the unfortunate truth that in movies, topicality isn’t everything.

Here’s my discussion about this film with Laremy from film.com.