Tasting Kitchen
Welcome to Tasting Kitchen. Season’s Greetings – or should I say Seasonings Greetings! This holiday TK issue is full of spices and flavorings. We talk to four talented and ambitious chefs about the flavor profile – or Flavor DNA – of dishes from India, Sichuan, Vietnam and the Isaan region of Thailand. Think cardamom, black salt and saffron, red peppercorns, red chilies and green chilies, dill, Kaffir lime, lemongrass, coriander, galangal and turmeric. We take a look at spices in history, and how even back in the Middle Ages savvy marketers knew the value of a good story. Spice merchants claimed that birds used cinnamon sticks to make giant nests in the cliffs above beaches in India, which “cinnamon hunters” then plotted to obtain. Today India is still associated with the world’s best spices. In this issue, for our first Tasting Destinations feature, TK’s Director of Photography David Hartung and Senior Writer Lucy Morgan traveled to Old Delhi to visit the world’s largest spice market and to New Delhi to visit one of the world’s top restaurants for modern Indian cuisine. One of our featured wines is the peppery Austrian Grüner Veltliner. We also talk to a New Zealand Wine Master about what makes great wine great, and to a leading French Champagne Chef de Cave about the value of patience and restraint. There are also some crabs running loose in the issue. A master chef in Macau shares his recipe for Quinoa Lobster Salad while five more from Hong Kong and Singapore share their favorite crab dishes and culinary musings. Happy Holidays,
Welcome to Tasting Kitchen.
Season’s Greetings – or should I say
Seasonings Greetings!
This holiday TK issue is full of spices and
flavorings.
We talk to four talented and ambitious
chefs about the flavor profile – or Flavor DNA
– of dishes from India, Sichuan, Vietnam and
the Isaan region of Thailand. Think cardamom,
black salt and saffron, red peppercorns, red
chilies and green chilies, dill, Kaffir lime,
lemongrass, coriander, galangal and turmeric.
We take a look at spices in history, and
how even back in the Middle Ages savvy marketers knew the value of a good story.
Spice merchants claimed that birds used cinnamon sticks to make giant nests in the
cliffs above beaches in India, which “cinnamon hunters” then plotted to obtain.
Today India is still associated with the world’s best spices. In this issue, for
our first Tasting Destinations feature, TK’s Director of Photography David Hartung
and Senior Writer Lucy Morgan traveled to Old Delhi to visit the world’s largest
spice market and to New Delhi to visit one of the world’s top restaurants for modern
Indian cuisine.
One of our featured wines is the peppery Austrian Grüner Veltliner. We also
talk to a New Zealand Wine Master about what makes great wine great, and to a
leading French Champagne Chef de Cave about the value of patience and restraint.
There are also some crabs running loose in the issue. A master chef in Macau
shares his recipe for Quinoa Lobster Salad while five more from Hong Kong and
Singapore share their favorite crab dishes and culinary musings.
Happy Holidays,
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tasting news<br />
味 觉 之 周<br />
taste week<br />
Jean-Luc Petitrenaud introduces a new generation of<br />
bon vivants to the French art of cooking and eating well.<br />
FRANCE’S CULTURAL PROGRAM to promote<br />
French cuisine and spark an interest in<br />
gastronomy was launched in Macau on<br />
the 28 th of October. Known as La Semaine<br />
du Goût (Taste Week), it was created by<br />
French TV personality and food writer<br />
Jean-Luc Petitrenaud as a way to educate<br />
children and young adults about how to<br />
eat well. In the peaceful gardens of The<br />
Seasons restaurant, a beautiful space<br />
tucked away in a corner of the Macau<br />
University of Science and Technology<br />
campus, Petitrenaud met with the press<br />
to talk about his vision for La Semaine du<br />
Goût in the Greater China region.<br />
“When I came up with the idea for La<br />
Semaine du Goût twenty-four years ago,<br />
the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin,<br />
told me, ‘Fine – come to Paris. Bring five<br />
hundred chefs and artisans and see if it is<br />
a success. But if it does not work out, then<br />
we scratch it.’”<br />
Petritrenaud’s plan was simple: a<br />
chef would visit a school to explain to the<br />
children the importance of using good,<br />
fresh ingredients; to encourage them to<br />
recognize and taste different produce;<br />
and to think carefully about what they<br />
eat. It worked. La Semaine du Goût was a<br />
success, and the program has continued<br />
to grow. Last year in France around 7,000<br />
chefs delivered classes to schools all over<br />
France.<br />
“This year we are bringing the<br />
program to Asia for the first time,” says<br />
Petitrenaud. “We want to see how the<br />
children respond and then next year we<br />
will make the program bigger.”<br />
La Semaine du Goût in France<br />
He continues to keep it simple. A understand the flavor spectrum within<br />
bread-making class is a hit with a keen one food group.<br />
group of middle school children who “The most important thing is curiosity,”<br />
love working with the sticky dough. “We says Petitrenaud. “Don’t just eat mindlessly,<br />
explain how to make dough but then we guzzling like an animal. Think, and look and<br />
let the children shape it however they wonder about what you eat. I want La Semaine<br />
du Goût to spark curiosity in its par-<br />
like. They really enjoyed it!”<br />
In a tasting class, an attentive chef ticipants, not just for the cuisine of France<br />
encourages the children to sniff diffferent but for the food they encounter wherever<br />
coffee beans and to taste chocolate with they go. You need to eat with your brain<br />
different levels of cocoa to help them and heart as well as your mouth.”<br />
32<br />
| TK | flavor dna
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