Slice of Life

By Peter Gordon - May 2008

dine turns three and I eat Sea Cucumber stomach

I returned from New Zealand and Japan a week ago, and whilst the former was pretty much all work, the latter was one eye-opening culinary experience followed by another. In Auckland, we got the new autumn menu up and running at my restaurant dine by Peter Gordon, with a slant towards comforting dishes reflecting the cooler weather. On April 6th all of the dine team: managers, chefs, bar staff and waiters celebrated dine’s third birthday with a huge cocktail party on a lovely Sunday afternoon. We’d invited 300 people, thinking maybe 120 would give up their precious Sunday, but we were ‘mobbed’ by 270 fantastically cocktail-dressed guests: A mixture of friends, suppliers, regular guests, press and Auckland ‘personalities’. The party was great, the food was delicious and we drank some gorgeous wines, organised by Julie Woodyear-Smith, dine’s manager for the past three years. Julie has now left for another exciting project (more on that when I’m allowed to say), but in the meantime Kim Harris and Mohammad Tahghazait are looking after the restaurant and making sure our guests all feel special. My head chef Ben Mills (you can read his first ever recipe column in this month’s Life and Leisure magazine) and my sous chef Nancye Pirini had the chefs working like clockwork to get everyone fed and we served a mixture of new dishes and ones from dine’s first ever menu.

At 5am the following morning I went off to the South Auckland abattoirs to see the slaughter of all manner of beasts. First up were about 40 deer, followed by cattle, sheep and then pigs. Whilst a slaughterhouse is a slightly surreal place to visit, it should be considered an essential part of a chef’s training. But all too often chefs and consumers alike have no idea how the meat we cook and eat gets to be a steak or a roast in the first place. I’ve been through slaughterhouses before, but never one in New Zealand. As a kid we used to help the drivers offload the sheep and cattle from the trucks at Imlay freezing sorks in Wanganui – my home town. We were never allowed in, but had a pretty good idea of what went on. What I am always so impressed with is the skill and focus that the people working the line possess. It’s a really hard job to do day after day, but it’s something that needs to be done at 100% concentration in order that we consumers can sit at the dinner table and partake in the delicious meat that New Zealand produces.

Once the new menu was up and running, it was time to head off to Japan to celebrate my birthday, and the 20th anniversary with my partner Michael. The following 10 days were brilliant, one amazing culinary experience after another. Ten years ago I’d cooked with a Japanese woman called Akiko and she is now married to her chef husband, Yoshi. They own and run a Tokyo restaurant called Aronia de Takazawa which only has two tables (they can, at a squeeze, feed two tables of four). Over the preceding six months Akiko and I had been planning our visit, and when we arrived Akiko and Yoshi took on the role of our tour guides, when they were able to leave the restaurant. It has to be pointed out that when they’re not at the restaurant it has to close. We checked into the gorgeous Park Hyatt Hotel, our room on the 49th floor facing Mount Fuji (not that it ever came out from behind the grey skies), and began briefly to experience Japan. We had two days in Tokyo before heading over to Kyoto on the Bullet Train for four days to experience the last of the cherry blossom season, then we headed back to Tokyo. To describe everything we experienced would take too many pages to write, but just let me say that:

• Salted Sea Cucumber stomach is delicious. Crunchy, pungent, addictive.

• Fermented one-year-old mackerel sushi is an acquired taste, but one which we liked. Likewise fresh Bonito livers.

• There’s obviously no better place to go to for mugwort noodles than Japan.

• Fresh warm tofu for breakfast is a brilliant way to start the day – especially when served in your own room from a wooden barrel in the gorgeous Hiiragiya Ryokan (traditional inn) in Kyoto. If you want to stay here, book a year or more in advance and ask to be in the oldest part of the inn.

• Yoshi’s beef dish, utilising rice crackers, soy, nori and other things specific to Japan, is quite simply AMAZING.

• Kyoto’s tsukemono (a huge variety of pickled vegetables) are my new culinary discovery. Try the pungent eggplant one that tastes like washed rind cheese and the crunchy daikon and cucumbers with chilli.

• Sake is delicious – especially when bought from smaller producers, and is almost always best served chilled.

• Moochi is a gorgeous rice flour-based ‘dessert’. We ate almond-sized ones floating on top of sweet azuki beans topped with macha (green tea) syrup and coconut milk, in Kyoto’s market. We also had ones coloured brightly, filled with red bean paste in Tokyo.

• Taxi doors open automatically, operated by the drivers, who wear caps, gloves and epaulettes. They also shut automatically – so don’t even go near the doors!

• Always get a map printed out of where you’re heading – street names almost don’t exist in Japan.

www.aroniadetakazawa.com

http://www.hiiragiya.co.jp/

Cheers, Peter