blog

This great picture of a restaurant sign in Rennes, France was taken by my friend Ciprian. It naturally inspired me to contemplate that amour de pomme de terre —love of the potato.

I've mentioned our local organic farm where we buy our eggs several times before. They also sometimes sell some locally produced food items. We spotted this wild garlic, or bärlauch pesto the other day and had to try it. (Ironically it turns out it's made by one of our neighbors who lives across the street.)

There are two types of cooking for me. One is the type you do for sustenance, since we do have to eat every day. The other type of cooking I do for the creativity and the relaxation. Putting together a delicious, pretty, or ideally both delicious and pretty dish is a challenge, and a lot of fun. And that's the type of cooking that I write about mainly here.

I wrote this review way back in March 2004. The Hungry Tiger disappeared from public view for a while, but it's now back in a new home, so here's my original review again, with updated links.

The Hungry Tiger is named after a character from from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum, and has a charming quote from that book as its subtitle:

Most of the time I think we just go along without thinking much about such big themes as Our Cultural Heritage. But these days I've been contemplating more and more on this. One reason for this has been the movie Lost in Translation. For various reasons, this movie has brought up a lot of debate and thinking about what it is to be Japanese. (Some of the conversations about the movie are on my other blog.)

Japanese people like to consume soy beans in many forms. The most well known soy bean product outside of the country is tofu, and edamame (green soy beans) is gaining in popularity too. There is one Japanese soy bean product that probably will never become very popular in other countries though, and that's natto.

I had been eyeing an interesting looking recipe in the weekly paper / advertising rag from Coop, one of the two big supermarket chains in Switzerland, for several days. The recipe was for a lentil loaf, with potatoes, leek, dried mushrooms, cheese and cream, held together with eggs. Since I have been on a sort of sort of lentil kick recently, it was something I really wanted to try.

It hasn't been a good cooking week for me, since I've been very busy. Saturday is my birthday though, and we have been wondering whether or not to go out for dinner, or to cook something (well, for Max to cook something) at home.

The window of a boulanger (bakery) in Beaune, France