In Search of Total Perfection Review by Ruth Paget

In Search of Total Perfection Review by Ruth Paget 

Readers who like chef’s travel books with recipes will find much to love in In Search of Total Perfection by Heston Blumenthal, owner of The Fat Duck, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in England. 

Blumenthal traces the history and industries behind contemporary British favorite menu items including the foreign sounding ones that have been transformed a bit for British tastes. He goes a step further for some recipes by putting gastronomical claims to scientific tests like MRIs. 

His rationale for travel is to find the best model to emulate for inclusion on British menus including his own, which drives him to dine on steak at Delmonico’s in New York, Bresse chicken in Burgundy France, and Amadei chocolate for his Black Forest cake among his travel activities. 

I am always on the lookout for 3-star Michelin recipes when I read chef’s travel books so I can try some of the simpler recipes at home. The simpler recipes in In Search of Perfection are made up of about 5 to 7 basic recipes that are put together simultaneously by a team of cooks who often outnumber restaurant diners at The Fat Duck. 

I love all the sections about the various “industries” that go into making food products mentioned in the book. These sections prompt you to savor and enjoy food rather than gobble it for the dishes described below in this 436-page book:  

1-Roast chicken and roast potatoes 

2-Chicken tikka masala 

3-Peking duck 

4-Steak 

5-Spaghetti Bolognese

6-Chili con carne 

7-Hamburger 

8-Bangers and mash 

9-Fish and chips 

10-Fish Pie 

11-Pizza 

12-Risotto 

13-Black Forest gateau 

14-Treacle tart and ice cream 

15-Baked Alaska 

16-Trifle 

In Search of Total Perfection by Heston Blumenthal could help readers interested in the following careers: 

-anthropologist 

-chef 

-restaurant worker 

-restaurant critic 

-pastry chef 

-travel planner 

-recipe developer 

-cookware salesman 

-film crew worker 

-restaurant publicist

Readers who would enjoy learning about the history, industries, and science involved in everyday food items will like In Search of Total Perfection by Heston Blumenthal, especially with its bonus recipes given with step-by-step directions. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click for Ruth Paget's Books

Surviving Babel - a review by Ruth Paget

Surviving Babel – a review by Ruth Paget 

Babel by R.F. Kuang is a highly readable story about how racism in 19th century Great Britain affected its foreign policy. 

Kuang’s anti-hero is Robin Swift, an Anglo-Chinese student at the Royal Institute of Translation, called Babel, at Oxford University. Kuang’s novel is set in 1830s England where silver makes the British Empire run. Babel’s translations create magical silver that fund the student stipends and contribute to the British Empire’s wealth. 

The British Empire’s problem in Babel is that the silver is running out due to buying luxury goods from India and China. These two countries want nothing that England produces making the Indians and Chinese accumulate vast reserves of silvers as the British silver funds are being depleted. 

This situation creates the need for certain languages to be taught at Babel and the economic argument to promote the Opium Drug Wars between England and China. 

Robin Swift and his classmates learned languages to fill needs of the British Empire with no other perceived alternatives offered for employment. This negative learning environment brings in Babel’s crime element, which is threaded throughout Robin Swift’s student years and “career.” 

Learning about the traditions and lifestyle at Babel and Oxford University keeps Kuang’s novel from being a pessimistic reading experience. I liked learning about the insider names of the various academic quarters at Oxford and about the third and fourth year qualifying exams, the internships, the immersive language experiences, and profitable languages for translation. 

That students could work during the social upheaval of 19th century Great Britain illustrates the strength of Oxford University as an institution that it still benefits from today as the training ground for the United Kingdom’s leaders.

Readers who might enjoy Babel by R.F. Kuang include: 

-diplomats

-translators 

-military intelligence officers

-economists 

-students applying for fellowships to study at Oxford 

-travelers 

I enjoyed Babel by R.F. Kuang because I was an undergraduate student in East Asian Studies. This novel is definitely a book I would have discussed with my classmates over coffee and pastries at the University of Chicago in the Regenstein Library’s coffee shop. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click for Ruth Paget's Books

Great Deal on British Food Book Today on Kindle by Ruth Paget

Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook of British food is $1.99 today on Kindle.  It has 650 recipes and is 2,372 pages long.  This is a deal, if you like British food.

I own this book and reconnect with my British heritage as I read through the recipes.  Other readers might enjoy it for this reason as well.

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Fish on Fridays in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Fish on Fridays in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

I like to rotate my family’s fish on Fridays tradition between fish and chips and Baja fish tacos in Salinas, California where I live. 

For fish and chips, my family orders from North Main Fish and Chips by Boronda Road. You can choose one, two, or three pieces of batter-dipped, deep-fried cod as part of your combination meal, which comes with an ample amount of French fries.  

For a Salinas touch, I order an extra side of coleslaw (non-authentic, but healthy) made with shredded cabbage and onions. North Main Fish and Chips uses a creamy, mild dressing that is a nice finish to the crunchy and warm meal.

I looked up the history of fish and chips in the Encyclopedia Britannica online and learned that it is considered a working class meal in the United Kingdom. Deep-fried, battered fish is believed to have come to England in the 1490s with Sephardic Jews who were fleeing expulsion and the Inquisition in Portugal. 

Britannica writes that a Jewish immigrant from Belgium named Joseph Malin is thought to have combined deep-fried fish with French fries to make the first fish and chip meal in 1863 in East London. (French fries are called chips in the United Kingdom.) 

When my family wants to add some variety to our family’s Friday night fish routine, we order fish taco combination platters from Super Pollo Taquería on South Main, which come with two soft shell corn tortillas filled with chunks of cod, shredded cabbage, shredded onions, creamy sauce, and pico de gallo salsa to add made with chopped peppers, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. 

The sides that come with the combination platter are refried beans and Mexican rice. Mexican rice is made with chicken broth and tomato juice, which gives it a beautiful orange color and tangy and savory flavor. 

Both North Main Fish and Chips and Super Pollo offer more elaborate menu items with seafood, but fish and chips and fish tacos are a pretty good deal; these meals for three with tip and delivery fees are about $60. 

I like living in Salinas, California for the Friday night fish options, which make a fish meal affordable for families and provide an international dining experience for children as well. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click for Ruth Paget's Books

Eating Crunchy Fried Shrimp by the Pacific at The Brass Tap in Marina, California by Ruth Paget

Eating Crunchy Fried Shrimp by the Pacific at The Brass Tap in Marina, California by Ruth Paget 

I have to admit that my favorite bar food is fish and chips, but when beer-battered fried shrimp is available, I always order that. The Brass Tap in Marina, California offers both fish and chips and deep-fried shrimp in basket meals. 

The night my family went to The Brass Tap, my husband Laurent and I ordered the fried shrimp basket with French fries and coleslaw. Our daughter, Florence Paget, ordered the fish and chips basket. The coleslaw was creamy with pepper added and there were lots of fries. We all liked the basket meals and thought the amount of fish and shrimp was substantial. 

Both of these meals taste great in a cold, salty night breeze off the Pacific Ocean. The doors were open as we came in letting in the breeze and fog. There is seating in upholstered chairs and sofas outside with fire pits and colored lights overhead as well. 

I just love eating deep-fried shrimp dunked in spicy cocktail sauce and fries dunked in plenty of ketchup in weather like this. As I wrote that, I know full well that I am enticing East Coasters to dine at The Brass Tap, which offers those items at a reasonable price with 140 beers on tap. I had iced tea with my meal, but in the past I have drunk English Newcastle Brown Ale with fish and chips, and Czech Pilsner Urquell with fried shrimp. 

For diners looking for variety in fish and seafood, The Brass Tap has other options that look good including: 

-Boom Boom Shrimp in addition to other appetizers like Buffalo Cauliflower and Fried Green Beans  

-Blackened cod tacos 

-a Tap Salad with shrimp, lettuce, cheddar jack cheese, smoked bacon, tomatoes, and red onion (This salad shows off everything that is great about the Monterey County region.) 

The Brass Tap is a neighborhood bar by California State University Monterey Bay. Faculty and staff eat here along with older students. The music is slightly loud with a youthful ambience. On the weekends, there is a live DJ and karaoke. 

I think The Brass Tap is fun and offers the fish and seafood I like. The other food items are multicultural with items like BBQ wings, tacos, pizza, and Asian BBQ sandwiches on the menu. 

The Brass Tap is located right off Highway 1 down the street by Starbucks and close to Marina’s Century Theatres with lots of parking and good eating. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France 

Click for Ruth Paget's Books

Prime Pork Chop Dinner at Pub's Prime Rib in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Prime Pork Chop Dinner at Pub’s Prime Rib in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

One of the best times of year to order a pork chop meal at a locals’ favorite restaurant like Pub’s Prime Rib in Salinas, California is October when the weather turns from very hot to very cool. 

This is the time when areas with strong animal husbandry traditions separate the spare, weaker hogs and cattle for slaughter from the animals that will be kept for breeding over winter. What this means for the consumer is the abundance of pork products in fall like brats, sausage, bacon, and pork chops. One classic example of how this seasonal abundance was used in Germany is the Munich Oktoberfest, which was started to celebrate a wedding with many guests. 

Pork chops made from freshly killed hogs are very tender and some say more flavorful than pork that is preserved in various forms to last throughout the winter. What is true for hogs is traditionally true for cattle as well. 

With that backstory told to my family, my husband Laurent, our daughter Florence Paget, and I set out for a delicious meal at Pub’s Prime Rib downtown. Pub’s was established in the 1940s, and I like to think that John Steinbeck ate there. 

Our favorite family writer, Florence Paget, and her dad began their meals with French onion soup that was full of savory onions with gruyère cheese melted over the top of the bowl and down the sides just like you see in French cookbooks. It was a golden delicious stew. 

I started my meal with a wedge salad made with cold and crunchy iceberg lettuce with lightly salted blue cheese dressing, chopped fried bacon, and chopped, succulent tomatoes from the blistering hot summer even in Monterey County. I like this salad, because it is a nice contrast in texture, taste, and cooking method – raw. Good appetizers are supposed to contrast in this way with a main dish. 

For our main dishes, Florence had the prime rib with baked potatoes and vegetables. Laurent had lobster ravioli. Both of these dishes came with a large dinner salad beforehand. Laurent ordered seafood in a month with an “r” in it, which the French say are good months for seafood due to colder water. Florence was getting prime rib from freshly killed October cattle. 

I ordered the pork chop dinner, which I considered a German hauptgeriichte, or main dish from elite cuisine: 

 -a one-inch thick, large pork chop that came with caramelized apples, roasted baby potatoes, and sautéed spinach in a rosemary-mustard red wine sauce. 

The pork chop was easy to cut and the lovely side dishes filled me up, so I did not order dessert, but the crème brulée and New York Cheesecake both looked tempting. 

Pub’s Prime Rib in Salinas, California is a cozy place for dinner with a full bar in front and a good choice of meat and seafood dinners. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click for Ruth Paget's Books

Glad Tea Party by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Glad Tea Party:  Carmel’s Cypress Inn Continues an Elegant Tradition by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I still smile when thinking about taking my elementary-age daughter Florence out for tea at the lovely Cypress Inn in Carmel, California.

I talked to the editor at the editor at The Monterey County (CA) Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) and asked for an assignment to encourage the afternoon tea tradition around Monterey County.  She agreed and sent me off to the Cypress Inn with my elementary-age daughter Florence.

Florence and I dressed in black-and-white dresses and shoes and away we went to the Cypress Inn in Carmel, California.

The following article has been modified, but the content is still the same:

I loved to play tea party with my daughter Florence when she was a toddler.  Now that she is a young teen, we can really dress up and visit one of Carmel’s coziest places for tea – the Cypress Inn.

Built in 1929, the Cypress Inn is built in a Mediterranean style with white-washed walls, orange roof tiles, and a glorious, sun-lit patio with tropical plants; the Cypress Inn is reminiscent of Andalusia.

On a recent visit, my daughter Florence and I had afternoon tea and sandwiches out on the small patio garden that holds just four tables.  Florence looked pretty in her black-and-white dress with her hair pulled back.  We just needed black hats to fit in perfectly with the Palladian windows I thought.

We chose teas from a tea box with compartments from the Mighty Tea Company.  Florence chose African rose nectar tea, and I tried rainforest mint.

While the hotel manager prepared our tea, we admired the red, pink, and purple flowers in the garden around us.  Lush, green foliage climbed the outdoor chimney and the posts upholding the porch eaves.

Hummingbirds flitted from blossom to blossom and blue jays hopped around looking for crumbs.  A red flowering potted plant decorated our table.

Flowers also decorated the Cuthbertson bone china that arrived on each of our individual tea trays that held a teapot, sugar cube holder, creamer, tray of whipped cream and jam, a tea-shaped strainer for tea leaves, and a plate of tea goodies (sandwiches and cookies).

Florence agreed that I had taken her out on a fancy outing for tea when she saw the tray of tea china and tea treats.

The teas all had a lovely, copper color and pronounced flavors.  Florence’s tea was made up of African rooibos leaves flavored with tropical fruit and blossoms.  The mint in my rainforest tea had a subtle flavor yet present flavor. 

We used the tea tongs to pick up rough-edged, brown sugar cubes and place it in our tea.  We used the flower-patterned creamer to pour in cream.  The result was a highly perfumed, sweet tea like chai.

Our diamond-shaped tea sandwiches made with spongy, white bread gave me ideas for picnics at the various “granges” – Rustic Community Centers - around Monterey County.  My favorite sandwich was made with ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and lemony mayonnaise.

The sandwiches came in star-, diamond-, circular-, and half-moon shapes.

We each ate a large scone that filled us up.  Tea scones are made with evaporated milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and flour; they are moist and taste wonderful with dollops of whipped cream and strawberry jam.  Florence suggested mixing jam and whipped cream as a scone topping.

I ate pecan rich Mexican wedding cake cookies.  They are also called Russian teacakes.  (Trotsky allusion?)

According to Andrea Israel’s Taking Tea, the American tea-drinking habit has its origins in the British tradition.

The afternoon tea tradition began in the 18^th century when Duchess Anna of Bedford presented tea and sandwiches to her guests while her husband was out hunting.  English colonists brought their tea ritual with them to the New World.

Article end

In addition to Andrea Israel’s Taking Tea, the following book about afternoon tea has many baking ideas and recipes:

The Perfect Afternoon Tea Recipe Book:  More than 160 Recipes… by Anthony Wild and Carol Pastor

You can buy small tea sandwich cutters in the form of stars, diamonds, circles, and half moons at Amazon.com or restaurant supply stores.

Pinkies up!!!!  (Not necessary, but teaches balance without spills)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Dancing at a Home Party with an English Family by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Dancing at a Home Party with an English Family by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After our hostess made the trifle, the wife of another one of my husband’s colleague’s arrived with her little boys. 

The boys played with Florence and called her “baby doll.”  The women drank cuppas of tea, and  I supervised; Florence was small and real and not a doll despite running around and pushing the boys on the floor.

I was discovering that baking was an English woman’s great asset.  We ate a beautiful apple-spice cake that the other woman guest made at home before visiting.  I knew that walnuts in banana muffins were what vegetarians considered to be a hidden protein and thought baking was a tremendous skill to acquire one day.

After tea, our hostess began to chop vegetables as we talked.  I volunteered to help, but our hostess would hear none of it.

At 4 pm, another set of sons arrived home from school, they changed out of their uniforms and played a little with Florence before going at each other to play mock-rugby.

Florence rejoined the ladies where we could feed her biscuits and juice.  The men arrived around 6 pm and dinner began.

We ate the crudités with the hummus and taramosalata.  Our hostess ordered Indian “take-away curries, masalas, and saags.”  “Take-away” means “take-out.”  I loved my British English lessons.

The wines I selected at Tesco went well with the spicy Indian food – a Sauvignon Blanc from the Touraine and a Soave from the Veneto.  I also bought a Chianti like everyone did in the 1990s, but it was not right with the food.

We put on some Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Bee Gees, and Elvis Presley music and danced.  I danced with the kids in a circle and Laurent was teaching “The French Rock” moves imitating Travolta to the English women. 

The guys came over to dance with Florence, the boys and me in a circle.  The kids conked out, and the adults kept dancing until the windows steamed up.

We opened up the windows for air at 3 am and finished eating the spicy, Indian saags, masalas, and curries.

Laurent and I went home laughing and wanted to come back and visit Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern England one day.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Exchange Student in London: Making a Trifle Dessert with an English Family - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exchange Student in London:  Making a Trifle Dessert with an English Family – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When we arrived at the house, my husband’s colleague’s wife made tea and served us larges mug of it with milk and called it a “cuppa.” 

She opened several boxes of biscuits, placed pretty paper doilies on a plate, and nicely arranged the butter cookies for us to dunk in our tea.  I had indulged in so much stroller aerobics during my visit that I knew I could indulge a bit.

Florence sat in her stroller throne and ate butter cookies while the trifle class began, and I loaded up on cookies (biscuits).

The day before, our hostess cut up a sponge cake and layered the bottom of a round bowl with it.  As I watched, she placed a layer of strawberry jam on top of the sponge cake and sliced fresh strawberries on top of this.

She said you could use any kind of fruit and jelly of the same fruit in the trifle.  Next, you add a layer of yolk-colored vanilla custard on top of this fruit and jelly layer.

On top of this custard layer, she placed shavings of chocolate, which we ate with our “cuppas” of tea.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Exchange Student in London: Attending an In-Home Trifle-Making Session - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exchange Student in London:  Attending an In-Home Trifle-Making Session – Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One of the best memories I have of our trips to London was spending a day with one of my husband’s colleague’s wives making a trifle pudding dessert. Trifles resemble Appalachian Banana Pudding, so this has become a two-part series.

Our family friend picked Florence and me up early in the morning and off we went to do grocery shopping at Tesco.  We bought vegetables to cut up for crudités as well as hummus and taramosalata – Greek caviar spread. 

I liked being able to buy ethnic food items at the local grocery store like Laurent and I did in Chicago at the Treasure Island store downtown where we lived in Marina City – the corncob towers.

Back in London, we bought a package of vanilla custard to make the “trifle.”

I told Laurent’s colleague’s wife about the banana pudding my aunts used to make where you would layer the sides and bottoms of a glass baking dish with vanilla wafers and place sliced bananas on top of the vanilla wafers.

Then, my aunts would place a layer of cooked butterscotch pudding on top of the bananas and let it cool and then put a layer of vanilla pudding on top of the butterscotch pudding.  Finally, they would place a 1-inch layer of homemade whipped cream on top of this and refrigerate it.

They would eat a big piece of this with a lot of coffee with milk in it for breakfast and say it was their beauty secret.  (They all looked like Marilyn Monroe or Lucille Ball even without make-up.  I have tried to pattern a lot of my domestic life on theirs no matter where I live.  They clean their own homes, cook, do laundry, and tend to work at secretarial jobs when children are small.)

My sister Kathie babysat me as a child.  We often ate banana pudding for breakfast before going out for walks and shopping in all sorts of weather.  In the summer, we went out for a morning bus ride to Palmer Park Woods in Detroit to go for a walk and feed the ducks Cheez-Its. 

On the way back home, we would sometimes stop at a Lebanese or Chinese restaurant for lunch or Howard Johnsons.  In the summer, Howard Johnsons would let me swim, if we bought a full lunch afterwards. 

We both cleaned house after I was six years old.  I could do some simple tasks that my sister showed me how to do. 

Laurent’s colleague’s wife asked me why I did not go to private school as a child.  I told her that we all knew about Winston Churchill’s boarding school experience, because his mother Jennie was American. 

We really did not like too much corporeal punishment.  My family tried to reason with children, yelled, took away privileges, and would finally swat you once on the behind (in private), if these other measures did not work instead of hitting children.

I told her my mother preferred Montessori teaching methods and had books about it at home.  (The Sunday School I went to taught us the methods in it like cleaning up after butter cookies and lemonade at a very young age.) 

She raised both of us according to its “castello or castle management” organizational style in addition to traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic.

I added Waldorf-Montessori-Jesuit Catholic to this later in life, because I knew how important art and music and Biblical knowledge are for personal relaxation and ethics.  I especially liked how the Hungarian Esterházys ran a great estate and hired the composer Joseph Haydn as their personal musician for nightly entertainment.

This was the American side of trifle making and child rearing practices.  To be continued….

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie