The Malaysian Insider :: Food
The Malaysian Insider :: Food |
| Marshmallows back into French foodie fashion Posted: 09 Sep 2012 06:57 PM PDT  Very few people realise the pillowy treats that we all know as marshmallow were invented in 19th-century France. — Picture courtesy of ©Jane Rix/Shutterstock.com Sweet or salty, flavoured with fruit, flowers, vegetables — even fish — classic versions and novel takes on the puffy pastel-coloured cubes are winning a new fan base. "Sales have been booming of late. And we are not selling just to kids!" said Julien Merceron, pastry chef at the 250-year-old Parisian confectionary "La Mere de Famille", whose best-seller is a pale green pear-flavoured marshmallow. Star French chef Alain Ducasse recently dug out the traditional recipe for "guimauve" — as the cottony sweet is known in France — promptly declaring his own marshmallows "the best in the capital". At the Fauchon luxury confectioner's in Paris a young sales attendant said she was selling bucketloads of the treats, priced at €9 (RM36) for a packet of a dozen. "Our customers are mostly elderly people and children — and among them there are a lot of Japanese. They love that it melts in the mouth and that it feels so home-made." "They are more and more in fashion," agreed Merceron, who dates the start of the craze to around two years ago. "When times are hard, people tend to look to the past. Marshmallow is linked to childhood, and that's clearly part of the explanation." When it comes to marshmallows as comfort food, France's answer to the campfire experience is a chocolate-coated pink teddy bear — bite off the head first, then wolf down the body — a staple of every French childhood. That is certainly true of Parisian schoolteacher Nicole Bermann. "When I was a little girl, my grandmother would always give me marshmallow bears. Nowadays, whenever I feel down, I eat a whole packet," she said. Sign of its enduring appeal, the little teddy — born 50 years ago in a factory in northern France — has a cult following and its own Facebook page. Anyone for squid marshmallow? The very first marshmallows date back as far as ancient Egypt whose people boiled up an extract of the marshmallow plant, Althaea officinalis, into a chewy medicinal paste sweetened with honey and used to soothe sore throats. Cut to 19th-century France, where the country's confectioners developed a version of the recipe intended purely for pleasure — called "pate de guimauve" or "guimauve" for short. Made with egg white meringue and often flavoured with rose water, guimauve was a direct ancestor of today's marshmallows — which get their gooey texture from gelatin instead of the marshmallow plant. Industrial marshmallows made their appearance in 1948, when Alex Doumak, the founder of the US confectionary giant Doumak Inc, patented a process allowing long cylinders of the sweet to be mass-produced at low cost. But small confectioners — along with amateur cooks on both sides of the Atlantic — have continued to boil up the sweets too. High-end outfits like "La Mere de Famille" use all natural-flavourings and simple recipes miles away from their additive-laden industrial counterparts — but Merceron does admit to using artificial colourings "within reason". Yannick Conraux and his partner Florence, a couple of patissiers from eastern Lorraine, wanted to take things one step further. "My husband had a childhood dream, to make a completely natural marshmallow with egg whites, sugar and natural food colouring," said Florence Conraux. Pina Colada marshmallow and marshmallow jam are the proudest creations of the pair, who are poised to start exporting over the border to Germany. Eaten toasted on a stick, or popped straight in the mouth, strawberry, orange, bergamot, aniseed and orange-flower are the most sought-after flavours from today's French marshmallow-lovers. At Fauchon the puffy sweets come in blackcurrant, orange or raspberry. But why stop there? Patrick Jeffroy, a chef from the Finistere region of Brittany, serves up marshmallow flecked with seaweed, whipped with lobster coral, Thai curry or squid ink, to diners at his restaurant in Carantec. "I work marshmallow together with seafood, you get new flavours from the combination of fish and gelatin," explained the Breton chef, unafraid of taking marshmallow into bold new territory. — AFP-Relaxnews |
| Swich Café: Fine food for thought Posted: 09 Sep 2012 04:36 PM PDT  Swich Café is located on the Mezzanine Floor of the HP Towers in Bukit Damansara. For those who are not fans of this tropical king of fruits, the decision is easy: simply ignore it. The dilemma deepens for those who admire its creamy flesh, custard-wine flavour and intoxicating aroma though: do they stick with durian in its raw and pristine state, or do they brave sampling it post-processing with a myriad of other ingredients? Personally, I tend to subscribe to the former group's philosophy. Why despoil such a lovely food's natural gifts by adding cream or chocolate or any number of foreign partners? Too often I've taken a bite of a durian cake or a lick of durian ice-cream which just felt wrong somehow.  More Mojo salad (left) — figs, pear, carrot, tomatoes, spiced walnuts on mesclun leaves with pomegranate vinaigrette; and Walnut Pine Nut Pesto pasta (right) — garnished with Grana Padano, toasted pine nuts, walnuts and pecans. Of late, I've been enamoured with the delights of a durian cheesecake, flirting with a Valrhona chocolate truffle with a heart made of durian and cream cheese, and don't even get me started on the ultimate mud pie with its generous layer of creamy Musang King. I've fallen in love. I've converted to the pleasures of durian in fine clothing. I'm a believer now. I've made the switch to Swich. Swich Café, that is.  The Beef & the Barbie — slow cooked pulled beef with homemade BBQ sauce and apple Dijon slaw on a sesame bun. Located at HP Tower in Damansara Heights, this new café has swiftly attracted a following of happy customers with its offering of good food, plain and simple. Owner Lim Cheng Cheng is a former lawyer who decided to leave the corporate world in favour of carving her own niche in the local F&B scene. For Cheng Cheng, Swich Café isn't about artisanal cuisine or fine dining ("No molecular cooking here!" she assures me). Instead, all she would like to do is serve her customers fine food — which, for her, means using only good quality ingredients. So while she would like to keep favourite dishes on the menu all the time, if seasonal ingredients are involved, she will only feature them when these ingredients are readily available and at their best. "In Asia, we import not just the ingredients, but also the recipes. However, such wholesale substitution does not really work. "The recipes, the quantities and the methods used, may not work with local ingredients," Cheng Cheng explains. Hence, she experiments a lot to get the right touch for local ingredients, rather than substituting blindly. For example, once she had discovered first-hand what mango curd is supposed to taste like, she could then test and tweak the recipe with a variety of mangoes, especially whatever happens to be fresh and in season, and hence, most flavourful. Who knew research could produce such delicious results?  The Siamese Thin — Tomyam chicken with pomelo/mango kerabu salad on French village bread (left); and Marmite prawn pasta (right). Food is food, right? And everyone enjoys food the same way, surely? One only needs to look at the global domination of franchises like McDonald's and Starbucks to be persuaded of this. Cheng Cheng begs to differ, however: "I believe there is a genuinely Malaysian palate. Just as people in the UK prefer fish and chips as they have been conditioned to like it, Malaysians like foods with a lot of flavours — both in variety and intensity. It's what we grew up eating." This understanding of food conditioning helps when she's introducing a dish that is based on a Western recipe. Adapting the recipe to incorporate local ingredients can be a challenge and a fulfilling experience for her when she gets it right. "For example, when I try recipes using lemon or lemon juice, I find that replacing it with lime not only works, but gets very good response from customers. "I believe Malaysians are simply more familiar with lime as it's widely used in local dishes. Therefore, we are conditioned to accept it when it appears in Western dishes as well. "The aim here is to not challenge the palate so much — I rather give my customers what they are already familiar with, than surprise them with the high quality and careful preparation."  Durian Tutti Frutti Cake (left) topped with freshly diced mangoes, toasted coconut flakes and drizzled with lime syrup; and Alphajores (right) — layers of chocolate ganache, dulce de leche, buttery biscuit. Cheng Cheng obviously respects and loves food. For her, every step of the cooking or baking process is a serious consideration. "I'm always weighing whether this is nutty enough or whether that has too much cream. Making everything a bit better does add up. "Sure, it means more effort, such as toasting nuts or browning butter to add flavour notes, but it's really worth it." However, she's careful not to overdo it. Finesse is definitely required. While some customers are big fans of durian or cempedak, using too much of these ingredients in her cakes would be overpowering. Her eyes lighting up, she continues: "I love cempedak as a flavouring agent. It's also nutritious and rich in fibre. But, there must be a measured hand in using it." Cheng Cheng's creative fervour is clearly tempered with a practical sensibility as she describes her latest work-in-progress — a beetroot-and-beef burger that is complemented by a cempedak aioli and fennel. "It's still not quite right yet, but we'll get there."  Cempedak on Cempedak (left) — cempedak sponge cake covered with cempedak cream; and Durian Mud Pie (right) — creamy Musang King durian filling topped with a rich ganache over a flaky cocoa crust. Leaving the rat race wasn't an easy decision for Cheng Cheng. The money was good and the opportunity to grow in the corporate world very tempting. At the end of the day though, she had no life. "I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted with my children. My Blackberry owned my life with work-related messages that demanded an immediate reply, even at odd hours." When Cheng Cheng hit her 40s, she took stock of her situation. "I tried to picture myself dying and I wondered if I would fear that moment," she confesses. "Life is finite. We never know when we might leave this world and I want to make sure that when I do, I will leave something of value behind for my children. "Not material goods, but to have them learn the value of working and creating something meaningful." She certainly has her hands full. In addition to taking care of her family, she has to manage her café and staff, and do research. Instead of attending cooking classes (having had enough of formal education after doing various law and Masters degrees for her old career), she is a thorough and meticulous researcher, often poring over food websites and cookbooks late at night after putting her children to bed. "It's tiring, of course, but I'm happier now than before. I feel like I'm creating value," Cheng Cheng admits. Given the fuss-free good food being served at Swich Café, I would say it's "Mission Accomplished".  Owner Lim Cheng Cheng, former lawyer turned food connoisseur. * Kenny believes in the day when we will all make, serve and eat only good food with love. Read more at http://lifeforbeginners.com |
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