From Paris

"Delicious!"
When I hear this from people with their mouths full of my pastries and a smile on their face,
I would always say: "Good, but I can do even better!"
This is a motto of my everyday life.
Sadaharu Aoki



J is a darling and brought me back two boxes of delight from Sadaharu Aoki's store in Paris. An amazing gift box full of three flavoured cakes, two flavoured florentines, sablé breton, chocolate sablé, hazelnut sablé, chocolate orange slice, tuiles coco, marrons glacés and a smaller box of chocolates each presented in a different color (see photo above). I have wanted to try Aoki's pastries for a couple of years now so this was a special treat.

The first and most striking thing about the products was the presentation. The white box with silver and grey writing and silver string had the allure of a Tiffany's blue box - fetishistic magic in other words. You just know something fantastic is inside from the get-go. Unsurprisingly the insides were magical. Subtle and delicate flavors, the over-riding aspect being a lightness of touch.

Aoki has made an international reputation for himself by combining Japanese flavors with French techniques.

I like to create simple things, but it is the most difficult thing to do, since simple things cannot be manipulated. Sadaharu Aoki

For those who can't make it Paris or don't have lovely friends like J to bring you something back - here is a recipe from Aoki-san - roughly translated from the French



Financier with green tea
Makes 20 Financiers
Prepartion time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes

* 45g egg white
* 50g powdered sugar
* 5 g of glucose or honey
* 45g clarified butter
* 25g powdered almond
* 25g hazel nut powder
* 15g flour
* 2g matcha green tea powder
* black sesame seeds
* white sesame seeds
* guerande sea salt

A mold with 20 slots - 3 x 5cm each

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Mix the egg white and sugar without making a foam. Add glucose or honey.
3. In a strainer, filter the powdered almond, hazel nut powder and matcha green tea powder - incorporate into the mixture without adding air
4. Heat butter to 80 degrees C, add to mix and emulsify as you would a mayonnaise. Heat the mixture in a microwave. You want to get the temperature of the mix to 40 degress C.
5. Fill the moulds with the paste (the temperature of the mix should now be 30 degrees C). Sprinkle with white sesame, black sesame and sea salt. Put in oven for 12 to 15 minutes. Best served cold.

Aoki has three stores in Paris and one two in Tokyo - here's a picture of him in his store in Paris. I look forward to visiting the store in person this fall.

Simmered Mackrel in grated Daikon

Serves 4

4 pieces mackerel (150-200g each)
300g daikon (Japanese radish)
1/3 tsp salt
2 chives (chopped)
3 tbsp mirin
some plain flour
vegetable oil for deep-frying
1/3 tsp salt
150ml dashi (Japanese stock)
3 tbsp soy sauce

* Rub salt onto the mackerel and leave for 10 minutes. Grate the daikon and drain lightly.
* Coat the mackerel with the flour thinly and deep-fry until browned.
* Place the mirin in a pan and bring to the boil. Add the dashi stock and bring to the boil again. Then add the mackerel and simmer for a few minutes. Sprinkle the daikon on top and remove from the heat.
* Serve with the broth. Garnish with the chives.

A day like only New York can offer

Sometimes I wonder if I should leave New York and then I have days like yesterday and I think I should NEVER leave New York. The day started simply enough woke up, didn't move, and decided to forgo my usual trip to the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza. Stayed in bed for a bit. Woke up, drunk some juice, went and got my dry cleaning. Came back rocked out to some Northern Soul - especially this Wigan Casino segment in a BBC TV documentary called Dance Britannia. Then went out to Chelsea to meet a friend at the Gladstone Gallery for Shirin Neshat's new show.







What an absolutely fantastic experience it was - a small group of photographs were excellent - especially the one seen at the top of this post which when seen full scale is almost mystical but the meat of the event was the two rooms each showing a separate high definition film.

MUNIS follows the story of young woman and her magical encounter with a dead activist. FAEZEH sees a woman escaping the city to a magical orchard. Yes magical describes both movies and I don't want to give away the plot here.

I was blown away by the cinematography and spiritual feel of these short films. I know I will be going back for sure. Each film also includes a fantastic electronic soundtrack from the ever brilliant Ryuchi Sakamoto. If you are anywhere near West 24th St and 10th Ave go see this.

Here's an Interview with Shirin Neshat from July 2000 in The Guardian, Interview from Adriondacklife and a review of the new show from this weeks Time Out.

We also caught the show of Poul Kjærholm furntiture at Sean Kelly Gallery (way too dry, elitist and brittle in it's presentation) and a not so inspirational show by minimalist Japanese artists Atsuko Tanaka and Akira Kanyama. Maybe Shirin was just so good no one could compete.

To kill some time before dinner I went to the fantastic new, three floor Kinokuniya bookstore at 1073 Avenue of the Americas to pick up the new issue of Casa Brutus which I mentioned a few posts ago (more on it in another post). Of course I should have known I couldn't resist the store and I also broke down and bought a book I've been looking at there for the last 3 months - Electronic Music In The (Lost) World - a fantastic visual document of Synthesizer music in Japan. A few days from the end of January and I broke my no new books in January self imposed rule !! So much for my will power.



Staying with the developing theme, afterwards I went to Japanese restaurant Sakagura, 211 East 43rd St between 2nd & 3rd Avenues - a place wonderfully hidden in the basement of an office building (odd on the way in / fantastic once you're inside) - I ate:

* Fluke Carpaccio - Thinly sliced fluke sashimi drizzled w olive oil topped with plum paste, salmon roe and shisho leaf
* Satoimo Iridashi - Taro, potato, eggplant, and shitake mushroom fried and served with a broth
* Tori Karaage - Deep fried chunks of chicken marinated in sake Ginger infused soy sauce
* Pear Millefeuille - a desert of Earl Grey ice cream and Pear Millefeuille
* and a glass of Daishichi MINOWAMON Sake.

YUMMY !! I am not reviewing it. It was DELICIOUS and I am most certainly going back to Sakagura.



After that I went to meet my friend Kabir at musician George Lewis' house party. His upcoming book "A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music" is a title I mentioned in my very first post here (things I am looking forward to in 2008). I wasn't expecting to know anyone there and neither was I expecting George to remember me from the brief time I met him at Mills in Oakland but he did, and also old San Francisco jazz friends Bassist Lisle Ellis and Keyboardist Vijay Iyer where also there as was drummer Guillermo E. Brown who I hadn't seen for years. Lisle reminded me of a cover story I wrote on him for California Jazz Now way back in the early '90s and told me how the follow up article had only just came out recently - the cover of Cadence magazine - it only took over a decade !! We smiled about it and I told him that even though now I have been doing PR for many years that press doesn't matter. The people in the music who know the music are always the most important and then those who enjoy it - press or no press. Guillermo E. Brown told me about an upcoming solo gig at the Apollo in Harlem in April that sounded like it will be great.

House parties in New York can be a trip - first off it's just fascinating to see where and how people live - in this city it's so diverse and George's apartment was at Central Park West and 105th St not a neighborhood I'm often in. First conversation I had was with two Japanese women - turns out one of them improvised a special vocal piece by none other than Takehisa Kosugi a musician whose music has really been inspiring the hell out of me lately. The other lady works at Music From Japan - a cultural organization who are presenting a show of Toru Takemitsu music I just bought tickets for this week!. My Japanese theme had continued in and by itself !!

A few interesting hours later, after meeting a fascinating young Columbia University student working on a new controller device, I headed home with a bunch of people from the party. On the train I reached into my bag to show my friend Kabir (a electronic musician) the book I just bought - he showed it to an older couple next to him (also from the party) and the man said "oh - there I am !!" It was Morton Subotnick !! I was speechless. The book had an entire page showing 9 of his albums. He didn't know about the book and was curious where I bought it - saying appropriately "do they still have bookstores ?." He and his partner Joan La Barbara had been at the party but somehow I hadn't got to meet them. Hand shakes ensued and some smiles as we all realized just how wonderfully odd but captivating this city called New York can be. Bring on more days like this.

Funny thing I could have kept going too and gone either to No Ordinary Monkey or Matthew Dear at Minimoo. Suffice to say I decided the day had been perfect enough.

Sake Sommelier speaks

Chizuko Niikawa Sake Sommelier at Sakagura 211 E. 43rd St, talks to New York magazine.



My own interest and knowledge in Sake was greatly fueled early last year on my first trip to San Francisco in over nine years. The source? The wonderful Sake specialists at True Sake 560 Hayes St, the first store devoted to Sake in the US. Owner Beau Timken's book "Sake: A Modern Guide" is essential reading and a perfect place to start. When I was there I inquired about their plans to open other stores - New York was mentioned as a possible next location but now they've been pipped to the post.

Sakaya, 324 E.9th Street (just east of 2nd Avenue), is proof enough that if you get a good idea you need to move fast. The store opened in mid-December to little fanfare but that is sure to change since Sakaya has picked the perfect location right next to what is rapidly becoming a kind of mini Tokyo forming along 9th and 8th Streets. Former Food & Wine publisher Rick Smith and his wife Hiroko are the team behind it. They are also wisely hosting a series of Sake tastings to help their customers knowledge base grow.

For those looking for more on Sake on the web I would recommend Urban Sake and the Sake column in Metropolis Japan