REAL FAKE FOOD

And so to Japan House in Kensington to see ‘Looks Delicious’ an exhibition of replica food, the kind of thing you see in the windows of certain Japanese, and indeed Korean, restaurants, clueing you in about what the food you get inside is going to look like. The Japanese terms is shokuhin sanpuru, I understand.

Of course these replicas don’t convey what it’s going to taste like but then as is often said, we all to a greater or lesser extent eat with our eyes.

 

To be fair, most of us would be rather alarmed if real world examples of some of this food was brought to our table but that’s all part of the fun.  The more extreme examples on display are, as I understand it, winners of various competitions held by The Iwasaki Group.

 

This not quite earthquake-proof tower of burger:

 

         A horsehair crab with two glasses of beer.

 

But others looked completely convincing.  These sandowichis:

These oysters look good enough to eat:

 

This octopus looks pretty much like the real thing.

 

Though in fact the last octopus I ate was at the Zuzu Bistro Bar in Stratford looked like this:  which is rather different, and arguably not looking quite as good.

photo by Caroline Gannon

Now, it just so happens that as I was wandering the paths of my neighborhood I happened to come across a small rock that looked, to me anyway, very much indeed like a lamb’s kidney.  Here it is with the real thing for comparison

 

The cooked kidney looked like this:

 

The rock has remained raw. The world is full of simulacra, but you wouldn’t want to eat all of ‘em.

 

 

 

OCTOTOPIA (POSSIBLY OCTOPIA)

And so we went to Leigh-on-Sea; me, Mel and Marianne, a place where I think I’d been before but I didn’t remember much about it, except that there were cockle sheds, more than you'd think the whole country would need.

And we went to Osborne’s – who seem to rule the roost around those parts and we had a fish platter with a few extras – the extras chiefly whelks and baby octopi, my preference and which my companions didn’t fancy much, so I got to take most of them away with me.

They looked even better when I got then home, and they tasted great.

But I must say I did feel a bit bad about the baby octopi – there were so many of them – it was like eating a whole extended family – maybe a whole generation.  Why this didn’t apply to the prawns and whelks I’m not sure.  I think it was because the baby octopi had heads, and also perhaps because they were babies.

Want to see the Psychogourmet in action?  Of course you do.

Want to see an octopus in action? Yeah, why not? Note: it’s not a baby:

MORE CEPHALOPOD FUN

Well, my birthday was coming up, and being a hard man to buy for, I wandered into Pier One and saw they had a cocktail shaker with an octopus design, and I said OK, I’ll have one of those.  I might have said that even if it hadn't been my birthday.

It never looks quite as photogenic as I feel it ought to, and the octopus head does look like something from outer space, but I’m not saying it like that’s a bad thing.

And then curiously, the very same day, I was in the local Vons supermarket and I saw they had octopi for sale – they'd never had them before - so obviously I bought one.

Now, I have cooked octopus quite a few times – it has been discussed elsewhere on this very blog - how to avoid rubberiness is always the problem. We know that Jiro (the one who dreams of sushi) has his staff massage the critter for an hour or so, but I knew I wouldn't be doing that.  So instead there was marinating, and a longish boil at which point it looked like this:

And then a quick fry.  So that it came out looking like this:

It tasted pretty good.  Texture-wise it was perhaps just a little bit soft, though that’s better than being rubbery, I think.

 And then, developing a small obsession, I was in a Japanese supermarket a few days later and I saw they had two kinds of octopus for sale, both according to the label, perfect for sashimi.

The one with the small suckers seemed to be cooked already, and could have been eaten straight out of the pack.  The other one with the giant suckers (I had never seen suckers like that) was raw as raw could be and needed work, though I wasn’t sure quite what – a good boil and a deep fry is what it got.  It was OK, not rubbery but perhaps a bit chewy -  I think there’s a difference.

There is, of course, more than one way to deal with an octopus, as this image from Nobuyoshi Araki (my main man) undoubtedly proves.  I hope they ate it afterwards:

MI CASA ES SOUS-VIDE CASA

Being the well-connected tastemaker that I am, I sometimes get sent emails about “new and exciting” products.  I don’t actually get the sent the products themselves  - I’m not that well-connected - but at least I’m spared the agony of being corrupted.

So I’ve been receiving a lot of news lately about Sous-Vide magazine.  I suspect most of the world has never heard of sous-vide cooking - vacuum-sealing ingredients and then cooking them very slowly in warm water bath for a very long time, and requiring some expensive machinery if you’re serious about it.

Among those who have heard of it, many are still skeptical. I once ate a boiled egg that had been cooked sous–vide (for 12 hours as I remember, but I may be exaggerating) and it was great, probably as great as a boiled egg can ever be – but you know, it was still a boiled egg.

Anyway I thought the days of peak sous-vide were behind us but given the existence of the magazine (now on its second issues) perhaps not.

The current issue has recipes for sous-vide octopus (and it does seem to me that would be an ideal way to cook octopus) and also instructions on how to make sous-vide compressed watermelon and cryoconcentrated pea soup (don’t ask).

And there is even a sous vide recipe for – set your face to stun - a cocktail, in this case named “A Sour in the Key of Raffi” as served at The Aviary, Chicago.  The mag tells us, “This gin-based cocktail combines a kicky sous-vide banana-curry syrup with a thick, creamy egg foam and nutmeg finish.”

Oh, who among us hasn’t craved kicky sous-vide banana-curry syrup with our gin?  I won’t spoil thing for you, and them, by giving away the rest of the recipe – full marks for effort - and it ends up looking like this:

You know, I’m really glad I don’t have to drink it.

EAT ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN

I don’t write the news I only sneer at it.   OK, I know we’re supposed to feel that we shouldn’t eat octopi because they’re smart – they can open jars and so on  - which lord knows many humans aren’t very good at.  

I have Catholicism in my background – I can whip up guilt at the drop of a rosary bead – but I don’t feel too bad about eating octopi.  They do taste good but I’ve always had trouble cooking them – it’s not so much a question of the raw and the cooked, more the raw and the rubbery.

Anyway,  I suppose I had always assumed that octopi lead essentially blameless lives, and I never had them down as public fornicators, but I was wrong about that it seems.   For the last ten years the Seattle Aquarium has had an annual octopus breeding day – male and female octopi go at it for the delight of a paying public.  It’s educational, for the kids, right?

This year however, the event was cancelled because the male octopus – named Kong, was too big.  Kong was, and I suppose still is, a 70 pound giant Pacific octopus who would apparently require a mate of at least sixty pounds – and they couldn’t find one that size.  Any smaller than that and there was every chance that Kong would regard the potential mate as food, and eat her – whether before or after breeding, I’m not sure, and either way it puts the lie to the quiet, blameless business: Kong was definitely a cannibal and possibly also a necrophiliac.  I’ll bet that’s not as fun a date as it sounds, and it does make me feel a bit better about eating them.

I can definitely see the physical beauty and sensuality in the form of the octopus, and we do know that the Japanese have a whole category of what we might call cephalopod erotica – I’m not sure they make a hard and fast distinction between squid and octopus.

And as it happens, I’ve been enjoying some pretty fabulous Shirakiku Brand Japanese shredded smoked squid this week.  As it says on the pack “We have selected the most essential parts of squids as raw materials to process this delicious Shredded Squid which is sure to be your special favorite.”  No artificial colors, no artificial flavors – just smoked squid, sugar, salt, vinegar, monosodium glutamate, chilli pepper and sorbic acid.  Hell yes!  Did somebody say umami?  And it’s so chewy!!

There’s also, I don’t think you can deny, something definitely phallic about the squid on the pack.  Is that what it’s really all about?