It was a sunny day...

The summer has kinda arrived!

It was a sunny day yesterday. The lavender along the footpath to my apartment block is blooming. Even the bumblebees are out (I wonder where the bees live. I want get some lavender honey for the honey duck dish!)

Sadly, it didn't last. It is cloudy again today.

English weather...

South Africa Chinese 'become black'

My colleague told me today that by law, I will be considered as a black person in South Africa because according to yesterday's new, the South African Chinese are now officially classified as 'black'.

A little background:

There are not that many Chinese people in South Africa. Chinese people first came to South Africa when gold was discovered in the 1870s and there are now less than 100,000 of ethnic Chinese people in South Africa. Since then, they lived as an isolated minority in the country.

Under white minority rule (and the apartheid) the Chinese were classified as non-whites and so, they were treated as second-class citizens. Interestingly, Japanese people were given “honorary white” status (partly because they were wealthier and fewer in number than the Chinese.)

After the independence, the ANC (African National Congress) introduced the Black Economic Employment (BEE) policy, under which large companies have to surrender a percentage of their equity to previously-disadvantaged individuals. The policy aims to reverse decades of apartheid bias and inequality. The "previously-disadvantaged people" covers Africans, Coloureds (mixed-race people) and Indians but has excluded the Chinese, which was also previously discriminated against.

Now, with the new court ruling, South African Chinese will now be included in the definition of black people in legislation covering the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deals.

But just base on my observation when I was in Jo'burg, the South African Chinese are generally middle class people who run some small business. I don't get the feeling that they are working in tough manual labour work. Perhaps the new immigrants are, I didn't see any.

I don't think the local people will like this ruling. The companies who are looking to satisfy the BEE requirements may prefer to introduce a Chinese business partner, because the Chinese people are generally considered to be more hard working. Also, as the ties between China and the African countries become stronger, a Chinese face in the business would always help.


For more information:

Article from Wall Street Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/06/19/in-south-africa-chinese-is-the-new-black/?mod=googlenews_wsj

Article from BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7461099.stm

Article from a South African website:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20080621090053620C573311

Chicken water

Have anyone else experience this: You try to stir fry chicken. You have only added oil and the chicken, but the frying pan is filled with water and the stir fry becomes kinda like a stew.

I knew that it is a common practice for the food industry to pump water into their meat. But the amount of water that came out of my organic chicken was just unacceptable. I have paid so much for the chicken and I got so much water with it ('organic' water, I hope!)

So I did some research and found that in some meat products, up to 40% of the meat's weight can be water. I may very well be the person who pays 40% more for my meat.

More interestingly, I found that the industry has, up to late 2003, use beef or pork protein to bind-in the water to chicken meat. So what if my religion forbids me to eat beef or pork??? Some corporations just have no morals at all.

Oil 2.0, the solution to the global energy crisis?

What will happen if you can succesfully develop an economically-viable product that takes agricultural waste and turn it into diesel fuel? At the current growth rate of oil price, you will be very very rich!

LS9 in the Silicon Valley is trying to do exactly that by using genetically-modified bacteria. They are not quite there yet, but so far, the results look good (though a little too good to be true).

According to the Times Online article, crude oil is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E.coli during fermentation. So by modifying them by custom designing their DNA, it is possible get them to 'excrete' diesel fuel.

Of course, for fermentation to take place, you will need raw material. This is not a new concept, as the biofuels industry is already using feedstock such as sugar cane and corn to produce fuel. However, activists are complaining because some countries (namely Brazil) are clearing rainforests to grow these crops and some people also think it is wrong to use food crops for fuel while so many people are starving.

So LS9 has decide to feed their bacteria with agricultural waste such as wheat straw and woodchips, and the experiments have produced positive results. What's even better, is that their genetically-modified bacteria produce a substance that is almost pump-ready so that the energy-intensive distillation process can be shortened.

Now, I think the idea is great, but it is really too good to be true.

Anyway, the article has left some questions unanswered:

• What exactly makes the LS9 bacteria different from other biofuels in that it can do without sugar to kick-start the fermentation process?
• If the product is crude oil, then it is still a 'dirty' hydrocarbon. Why is the article claiming the fuel to be carbon negative? It may be a renewable source of energy, but certainly not carbon-negative.

For more information:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

St. John Restaurant, London

I don't quite remember how the conversation around St. John started. But it's vaguely around the Restaurant magazine's best restaurants 2008 winners list:

1. El Bulli, Roses, Catalonia, Spain (Best in Europe)
2. The Fat Duck, Bray-on-Thames, UK
3. Pierre Gagnaire, Paris, France
4. Mugaritz, San Sebastián, Spain (Chef's Choice)
5. The French Laundry, California, USA (Best in the Americas)
6. per se, New York, USA
7. Bras, Laguiole, France
8. Arzak, San Sebastián, Spain
9. Tetsuya's, Sydney, Australia (Best in Australasia)
10. Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark
11. L'Astrance, Paris, France
12. Gambero Rosso, San Vincenzo, Italy
13. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, London, UK
14. L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, Paris, France
15. Restaurant Le Louis XV, Monaco
16. St John, London, UK (Highest Climber)
17. Jean-Georges, New York, USA
18. Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, Paris, France
19. Hakkasan, London, UK
20. Le Bernardin, New York, USA

I have heard about St. John a number of times, and I have always thought that the restaurant is at some out-of-city location (like El Bulli, Fat Duck). But it turns out to be right by the Smithfield Market!

Just to get off track a little, SP and I visited the Smithfield Market when we first arrived in London. We were jobless, and we had nothing to do. So we visited the Smithfield Market, which is a 800+ years old meat market (well, the site has been a meat market for 800+ years). Just like the Billingsgate Market, the Smithfield Market mainly caters butcher, shops and restaurants. The trading hours are from 4:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon every weekday, making it just as inconvenient as Billingsgate.

Anyway, back to St John. It is located on St John, which used to be the principal thoroughfare to the market in the old days. The restaurant is specialised in "nose to tail eating", with a strong devotion to offal and other cuts of meat rarely seen in restaurants. The menu changes every day but it covers things like pig's ears, trotters, duck's heart and even squirrel when it is in season (there are so many of them in Hyde Park I can't imagine them not being in season!)

The famous bone marrow and parsley salad. yummmm

Langoutines & Mayonnaise. It was very fresh and the 'flesh' is sweet and firm. It's a bit too much work though.

Cured beef and celeriac. The celeriac goes really well with the cured beef (someone has started eating before I took the photo!!! hehehe)

Chitterlings (pig intestines) & chips, with a BBQ/plum- sauce-like sace

Venison offal & Chicory. As Ms SL said, "best eaten together"

Overall, the chefs, Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gullive, try to follow traditional British recipes, so it's a good place to take overseas visitors to, only if they don't find offal offensive! They also have a big winelist and you can almost get everything by glass, which is great.

Thanks Ms SL for taking me to St John!

For more information:
http://www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk/

Morocco trip, Dec 2007 - Fes

Fes is the third largest city in Morocco and it is one of the four so called "imperial cities". The main crafts are ceramics, leatherwork and carpets, but you can find almost every kind of traditional crafts and shops within the medieval medina.







The medieval medina of Fes is about a millennium old. The narrow and crammed alleyways is busy with carts, mules and donkeys carrying goods to and from the souks.

The alleys are quite narrow (SP has used a wide angel lense here)

Fes was the capital of Morocco at various times in the past, the last such period ending in 1912, when most of Morocco came under French control and Rabat was chosen to be the capital of the new colony, a distinction that city retained when Morocco achieved independence in 1956.

The city is very famous for its tanneries.

(click to enlarge)

The backbreaking work of scraping the skins and moving them from one tanning vat to the next looks like a never-ending process. The average cowhide weights about 25 kgs! The stench of rotting animals and various chemicals was bad, even from 4 floors above ground! Imagine standing in those tubs bare-footed for day after day!

Just as a contrast, here is the nice, clean Royal Palace (Dar el Makhzen) on the other side of the city:

There is a big square in front of the gates. There are security guards in front of the only entrance to the square and it seems that only tourists are allowed to enter the square.

The gates to the palace are masterpieces themselves.

There are a number of key entrances to the old city, each has their own gate:

The Bab Boujeloud (Blue Gate)

Back to the old city:

This was the entrance to some sort of library

The Kairaouine Mosque is the largest mosque in North Africa, with a capacity of 20,000 worshippers. It became the home of the West's first university at the beginning of the second millennium.

There are a number of entrances to the Kairaouine Mosque. I really like this particular photo. The lighting and the composition is great. No touch-up required!

Entrance to the restored Musée Nejjarine des Arts et Métiers du Bois (Nejjarine Museum of Wood Arts and Crafts)

The building's originally provided a commercial trading area on the patio floor and lodgings on the three levels above.

Section of the old city wall

Food being served from a window. In this case, it's the local specialty B'sara (butterbean and garlic soup served with olive oil poured on top)

It is a great photo of 'before' (below deck) and 'after' (in the roaster)

We bumped into Sara and Ben from our Sahara tour just outside the Blue Gate. As we go around the country, we ended up bumping into everyone from the tour group. What a small world!