might as well insert the words "word from our sponsor"

A couple of days ago while Wid and I were at a restaurant, I picked up a copy of the local English-language tourist magazine. As I flipped through it, I noticed reviews for restaurants. One of them read more like an advertisement. The author spent two-thirds of a page to write about the history of Spanish food and tapas before spending the remaining space on actual description of the food at the restaurant. Unfortunately, the description was not very useful or interesting. It was a list of things the author ate and a list of dishes available in the restaurant. I got the impression that EVERYTHING in the restaurant, even the dishes he didn't try, was awesome. Having been to that restaurant before, I know that's not true. We were only impressed by two dishes when we visited the place months ago. They were first two tapas dishes we ordered, and they were both potato-based dishes. While we had a positive start during our stay at the restaurant, we were left unimpressed in the end. The service was slow even though we were one of three or four gropus that night, and the food was thoroughly average. I had better tapas elsewhere.

I was very disappointed by the level of the writing as well as the lack of independence from the restaurant. It really read like a paid text advertisement (or at least high level of ass kissing) than a real, independent review.

An annoying trend

Haven't been posting that much on the blog recently because we've been so busy taking care of our new puppy Bonnie "The Naughty" Bonbon. I haven't had the chance to cook all that much since the new year, except for an overcooked brownie and cheesecake (curse that oven with the lack of temperature control!!!). Wid and I have tried out a couple new restaurants recently, and we noticed an annoying trend--these restaurants all try to be another Ku De Ta. It's not a good thing. They all try to charge the price of Ku De Ta, but the food is just absolutely mediocre. These restaurant owners probably figured that if Kudeta is successful in attracting so much clientile even with the expensive price tag, they can do it too as long as they have a nice ("western-style") atmosphere. I personally enjoyed the food and atmosphere of Ku De Ta, but the price is quite the turn off so we don't go there very often (only if friends or family are in town). The food is quite excellent, and we did consider it to be one of the best restaurants serving western-style food (but certainly not the best value) until we discovered Mozaic. Seriously, if I want to spend over 200,000 rp per person, might as well go to Mozaic and get the best food possible on the island without worrying about the dishes being plain average.

We adored Mozaic and had excellent experiences every time we visited the place. Even though it is one of the most expensive restaurants on the island, the food is definitely the best. Unlike Ku De Ta and the other Ku De Ta-wannabes, I actually considered Mozaic to be a great value, if you compared the prices with other restaurants of that calibur in other countries. I don't consider ourselves to be cheap because we are welling to spend lots of money on excellent foods.

I'm really disappointed by many of these new restaurants because of the lousy value. The price is too high for the lousy food. I might as well stay at home and make my own dishes, which some are starting to taste better than restaurant foods.

Gelatin versus Agar-Agar (and math rant)

I wanted to try out a Bavarois recipe that I got from one of my mom's cookbooks. The recipe calls for gelatin, but unfortunately, the only gelatin that's for sale in the local stores is cherry-flavored. I decided to use agar-agar to substitute for gelatin. I started doing research on the net, and I found that almost all the sites said to substitute equal amount by weight of gelatin with agar-agar, even though agar-agar sets firmer than gelatin (therefore ruin the ideal texture of the dish).

I became troubled by people keep calling agar-agar "vegetarian gelatin" because gelatin and agar-agar are NOT exact equivlant. Being a biologist, I always knew that agar-agar is derived from seaweed while gelatin is an animal product, and agar-agar is a kind of poly-saccharide while gelatin is proteins, so two chemically distinctive items. Because of the difference in chemical properties, the physical properies of each item are different also. Agar-agar needs to be boiled before it can dissolve in liquid (just like all those agarose gels/petri dishes I poured back in the lab) and it sets at room temperature. Gelatin, on the other hand, cannot be boiled in liquid and it needs a lower temperature to gel.

In my research for answers to my questions, I found an interesting article about different brands of gelatin can produce different levels of firmness. He contacted the company about the differences in the gelatin, and their answer was a formula that converted one "bloom" (gelling factor of the gelatin) factor to another. The author of the article got angry because he didn't understand it. What's so hard to figure this out? Weight (Bloom 2) = weight (Bloom 1) x square root (Bloom1/Bloom2). I'm not sure why he freaked out about this basic math showing the ratio between the two products. It's not like they wanted him to solve a calculus or even an algebra problem. The article was very interesting and it does show the problem of how to standardize recipes when the intrinsic property of an essential ingredient differs from one to another, but the guy really shouldn't have freaked out about simple math.

This reminds me of something else food and math related that I came across a while back. Someone wanted to make a cheesecake in a 25 cm round pan, but the recipe is for a cake in a 20 cm round pan so the person wanted to know what needs to be changed in the recipe to accommodate the new pan size. Someone replied that the person should increase the amount of ingredients by 25-30%. I really have no idea how that person got that answer because the area of a 25 cm round pan is about 1.5 times greater than a 20 cm round pan so you'll need a 50% or so increase of ingredient. Again, simple geometry math needed to figure this out.

False Advertisement

I was at the grocery store yesterday, and in the noodle aisle, I found a package that said 臺灣新竹米粉 (Taiwanese Xin-Tzu Rice Vermacelli). In Taiwan every town, every city has a food specialty (名產), and in Xin-Tzu (my childhood home) is famous for its vermacelli. I then looked at the package more closely and it said "made in China." I was so insulted that the company tried to pass off its vermacelli as the special vermacelli from Taiwan. BAH!! I don't want bootlegged noodles.

I got an awesome Chinese rice and noodles cookbook while I was in US. I'm hoping that I can find the ingredients here so I can try some of the dishes out. My mom flipped through cookbook, and now she wanted it too because of all the dishes she recognized.