My husband is quite the drama queen. Last night, I came home a mere 15 minutes later than my promised time, bearing some packed dinner for him, only to find him sprawled on the floor semi-naked, in a dead-body-at-crime-scene position. He then whispered hoarsely, “If…you….had arrived….15 minutes later *cough cough*, I would…have died…of starvation,” then resumed his pose while I stepped over him to go to the bedroom.
I just had to share that.
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Our dinner on Friday, the 21st of May, 2010 may have depleted our Hermès budget, but it turned out to be one of our most memorable dinners ever.
From the moment we sat down, we were served warm breads with Beurre Echire butter, what the New York Times labelled a butter with a pedigree. Imagine French cows grazing on French soil meugler-ing (mooing in French)…if them cows could sing, they’d be bellowing we have no stench, we are French, deal with it, you wench to the tune of La Vie En Rose (hip hop version) ala Edith Piaf, although I’m not saying that she sounds like a cow, but I digress…butter…oh, the most delicately textured butter with a whipped consistency (alas, images of Piaf are in my mind again) and a richness attributed by its higher butterfat content. We learnt later that all the cooking was done with the same butter.
As we supped on bread and butter, Mr Michel Rolland, consultant and owner of the Rolland Collection introduced the wines which he had paired with our meals, starting with a complex white wine, with an oaky nose, produced from one hectare of Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Muscadelle from the Lussac-Saint Emilion estate. All the wines featured were from Mr Rolland’s Bordeaux properties, namely La Grande Clotte in Lussac-Saint Emilion, Rolland Maillet in Lussac-Saint Emilion, Chateau Le Bon Pasteur (Mr Rolland’s family estate and where he was born) and Fontenil in Fronsac.
Chef Mathieu Pacaud of l’Ambroisie, Paris, tantalised our palate with the amuse bouche, a vibrantly coloured multi-layered concoction consisting of steamed foie gras royale (custard) which was covered with a green romaine lettuce velouté which derived its gorgeous colour from the use of the outer leaves. This was followed by a dish which I will probably never get to try again – chaud froid d’oeuf mollet with golden caviar. I’ve cooked eggs mollet before, and the trick is to boil the egg such that the white is firm but the yolk runny, and this is achieved by plunging the egg into cold water to arrest the cooking process. The egg, cooked to perfection and probably one of the few ingredients procured locally, was covered in a watercress sabayon and served with Robert Blanc asparagus (the queen of the asparagus world), the herbaceous flavour adding another dimension to an already rich dish. The clincher was a heaped spoonful of golden ossetra caviar, the mother of ossetra caviars, second to beluga, and harvested from wild sturgeons found in Eastern Russia. A kilogram of this type of caviar easily costs RM20,000. It was a meal that was as hedonistic as it could get.
From our conversation with the Chef d’ Cuisine of Senses, Michael Elfwing, we learnt that Chef Mathieu Pacaud had strictly insisted on using ingredients according to his specifications. The next dish served to us, a lobster stew with potatoes, sounding deceptively ordinary, was far from it. He chose to serve the Brittany Blue Lobster, a superior tasting lobster which had a rich sweetness in flavour, its flesh more chewy than what we were used to. The sauce, reduced from a stock made of sauted lobster heads was amazing. The Noirmoutier potatoes which were served with the lobster could have been a meal on its own. The potatoes are known to be the most expensive in the world and are harvested by hand. When cleaning the potatoes, I was told that they were not allowed to soak them as the potatoes would lose their flavour. Instead, the potatoes were cleaned with a piece of cloth. The potatoes looked almost delicate, the size of garlic, and possessed a sweet nuttiness in flavour.
The Kobe tenderloin, cooked medium rare, was lovely – the acacia honey and crushed black peppercorn crust provided a sweetness to the dish with a hint of butter that added some richness. I loved the fact that every ingredient, no matter how humble (in the context of this meal!), served a purpose. The confit of shallot was painstakingly roasted, pressed and sieved, and this paired so well with the fillet by providing an unbelievable smoothness to the dish.
We were blown away by both desserts. The first, a heavy sticky meringue that literally melted in the mouth upon contact (served with Gariguette strawberries), and the second, a chocolate tart with a crisp surface and a dark chocolate sabayon centre served with Bourbon vanilla ice cream (made at a ratio of 12 vanilla beans to a litre of ice cream).
And the price for such an amazing meal?
Obscene.
But worth every cent.
Chaud froid d’oeuf mollet au cresson, asperges vertes au caviar golden
Hot-cold boiled eggs, watercress, asparagus and golden caviar
2006 Chateau La Grande Clotte Blanc, Bordeaux
A different view
Navarin de homard, pomme de terre nouvelles au romarin
Lobster stew and potatoes with rosemary “Noirmoutier”
2007 Chateau Rolland Maillet, St. Emilion
Filet de boeuf de Kobe en croute de poivre et miel, confit d’echalote
Tajima filet of beef, honey and pepper crust served with confit of shallot
2006 Chateau Le Bon Pasteur, Pomerol
Selection de fromages de Herve Mons affineur
Cheese selection from affineur Herve Mons
2006 Chateau Fontenil, Fronsac
Meringue perlee a la chantilly, fruits de saison
Pearled Meringue with Chantilly cream and seasonal fruits
Tarte fine sablee au chocolat, glace a la vanille de Bourbon
Chocolate pastry tart with Bourbon vanilla ice cream
Golden Osetra Caviar
Chef Mathieu Pacaud – bottom picture, with LL; Mr Michel Rolland – top centre picture, with Aly; M.Balbis and Michael Elfwing – top picture on extreme right, Spencer and Bald Eagle – centre picture (Asian boys)
What’s heaven in French?
Oooo, you’re such a lucky woman! Such fine food, and as usual your photos are amazing!
wow.. I’ve been to senses before, but not like that.. the food you had looked amazing..
BE is one funny husband. Hehe.
yes, obscene would be the right word to describe the cost after i heard from FBB!! omg, then again if you compare to hermes, its nothing though.
was it shot using the GF1?? i must go strike lottery, the camera is awesome!
need i say anything more about the food or the way its been wittingly written?
Well worth depleting the Hermes budget! 🙂 Beautiful photos, as always…
I just wish I could have been there for that obscene but sublime dinner… 🙂
Your hubby is so funny…Lol. Possibly more drama than me when I’m hungry. 😛
And the food looks amazing!
aiyo … how come u had no presence of mind to take a photo of him sprawled that way?! that picture would have been worth 1,000,000 words! 😀
the food looks gorgeous! i usually shake my head whenever i see too much green on the plate, but that’s one of the most alluring egg recipes i’ve ever seen! if i’m ever sentenced to death by hanging and have to request a last meal, remind me to choose that!!!
Waaaaaaaaaah! So glam 🙂
Heaven is HEAVEN in all languages, great write-up, lovely photos, wonderful FOOD!
oh mah lorrrrd.. i feel like rubbing that caviar all over mah face and body .. talk about decadent.. !
BE the drama queen..! HAH! which parts of him were nakid! COMMON u have to say coz you BLOGGED IT IN THE 1ST PLACE!!! spare not details 😛 mwuahahaha
Lovely.
Such decadence. I felt tht I have not lived! Haha..will have my chance at such gorgeous food one day..
Speechless!
I told you! Your photos terror! Wonderful post – the highlight being Bald Eagle half naked on the floor! Now that picture would have been priceless!
Baby Sumo: I like your nick. hehe. And yes, I may be lucky, but I’m also broke now. 😛
TummyRumble: The food was prepared by an invited Chef, so menu and styles are different.
LFB: He is indeed!
lotsofcravings: Yes, I shot the pictures with a Panasonic GF1. I love the camera, and best of all, it fits into my evening bag. 😀
J: Ya la, you were part of the original group. Well, I’m sure there will be other occasions to dine together.
Bangsar-bAbE: He is very entertaining, and he takes his meals seriously. hahaha.
Sean: I was very tempted to take the picture and send it to you since you were party to the event. 😛 You choose a vegetarian dish as your last meal? Shouldn’t it be something along the lines of unagi, foie gras, uni and avocado? 😛
Julian Si: hahaha….yes, very glam indeed. We were lucky that we were available to sample Chef Pacaud’s cooking.
cumidanciki: Well, semi naked merely means topless, which is how BE is at home. 😀 When he’s bottomless, I’ll let you know. 😀 He was quite the comical sight, but laughter in our home is an everyday occurrence. 😀
thenomadGourmand: You’re still young and there will be many opportunities to sample such food. 😀
Pureglutton: I understand. 😀
aly: Tankyew tankyew! Your photos oso quite terror lah. Yes, I should have taken a picture, but I was shaking from laughter so any picture would have turned out blur. 😛
Oh my gosh! Such heavenly dishes! Those caviar… never had a chance to eat them yet! They all looked wonderful!
Is Chef Mathieu going to be around in KL for long?
iamthewitch: Yeah, all the dishes were amazing, actually, and my personal favourite is the lobster with potatoes. 🙂 Unfortunately, Chef Mathieu Pacaud has gone back to France. I’ve added a footnote to explain that he was here only for a few days in conjunction with a French Fair at KL Hilton.
Blew your Hermes budget?? Well worth it I reckon… the budget can always be saved from time to time but not everytime you get to sample the creation of a 3-Star Michelin chef right?
lucky you Meena… and LOL at your first paragraph about Tim! Such a lovely couple
leo: yep, that’s how we rationalised it too. 🙂 We love pissing the crap out of each other. 😛
obscenity is relative, how many digits and which currency are we looking at?
Excellent writeup. Very befitting the obscenely decadent dinner. 🙂
Are you sure this meal breaks your Hermes budget? Barely makes a dent if you were planning for a Birkin. ^_^
Ahhh… the sight of semi-naked BE lying spead-eagled on the bed.. 😀
And one last, most important thing, was the butter SALTED?? 😀
KY: i can’t reveal the amount here. 😀
gfad: thanks babe. I spoke at length with Chef Elfwing to get the details which are so crucial to this decadent meal. Well, it was expensive enough when multiplied by 2 pax. 🙂 Btw, BE wasn’t lying on the bed. He was on the dusty floor. And he wasn’t spread-eagled. It was comical. Lastly, YES, the butter was salted. 😀 Damn good butter too!
I’m a romantic. I like to imagine him with a rose in his mouth, lying strategically covered, on a rose-petal strewn bed in a room filled with lit candles of various shapes and sizes waiting to surprise you who just came back worn out from fighting fires in the boardroom, can or not? 😀
make sure he reads this comment ar..
i hope those lil caviar fertilizes in you and you give birth to fish babies.
hmm, is that the best curse i can do?
drat. heaven is so unfair. your pics are gorgeous, the meal was gorgeous, your dining partners are gorgeous, your husband prolly paid for you, chis…some ppl have it all. ITS JUST NOTTTTTT FAIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!! thumping fist on table….
i would say that ur pictures of food are simply amazing! i really like ur photos of those deli food so much:) they are such fine photos~
keep up the good work, good post!
HAHAHAHAHAHA… Unka FBB to little Nemos. Can just see him lovingly feeding them with sprinkles of fish flakes/pellets… 😀
So that’s how the Queen eat daily! I wish I was a better a servant to you. Least I’d get to lick your plate after you’re done to get a taste of your life. I should just be happy with my Fatboy Steamboat truck and Ramlee burger.
And your pichers, gorgeous!
BE. You gotsa love him 😉 Aiya…you will recover the budget with the bat of an eyelid lar. Heheh.
Your post and pictures are as usual very terror merror. Does justice to such an exquisite meal 😛
*looks forward to “the next time” but meanwhile will continue drooling at the Chaud froid d’oeuf mollet au cresson, asperges vertes au caviar golden and all the other dishes that she can’t quite pronounce….*
😀
hehehe hahaha hohoho 😛 speechless …
Wow, can’t believe that those were snapped with a micro four thirds system. Gorgeous.
And I can’t even half of those descriptions. Fine dining indeed ….
Really, really cannot disclose the amount? 🙂
gfad: he read that comment and laughed out loud. not his style, though. he does a csi victim better. hahaha.
Friggin Jealous FBB: Don’t be jealous lah. Some day your prince will come….
wyyv: Thanks! Glad you like the pictures. 🙂
gfad: Ya, imagine xmas time…he’ll have to give so many gifts to the li’l Nemos.
Munkeyboy: So sarky. Chis. off with your head.
unkaleong: BE has multiple personalities. Can’t imagine him as the corporate type after hearing of all his antics. 😛
J: Ya, next time don’t think, just do!
cumidanciki: hehehe hohoho…cat got your tongue?
J2Kfm: Well, there was a bit of post editing too. 😀 Ya, really really cannot disclose amount. DM me if you wanna know. hehe.
great food !
it’s all in the details, really. not only the dishes but this post as well. good stuff!
eggs are so versatile, hor? can pair with truffle oil lah, frommage lah, herbs lah, kicap lah..and now, caviar.
wish i had a chance to live an “obscene” moment like this too…sigh.
Aaaaaa… I want the micro four thirds!
Btw… gorgeous hair! 😉
Pacaud is the only France’s 3* Michelin Chef (along with Christian Squer) whose food I have yet enjiyed. Looking forward to dine at his restaurant, but the son (Mathieu) seems to give a bit of a modern lift to his dad’s creations. Which is interesting, and surely what the most will like, but I still would like to try both food.
Finally lunched at Chef Mathieu Pacaud’s L’Ambroisie, Paris this past Friday. Exceptional meal, indeed. You can read more about this meal here: http://tinyurl.com/6gggykh