Cooking World

Hotel Plaza Athenee is one of Paris’ symbols. Each of its five restaurants has been awarded with the best experts’ estimations, as in Plaza Athenee Alain Ducasse is responsible there for the cuisine - the most titled chief-cook in the world, the person without whom the haute cuisine concept is just impossible.

Among unconditional advantages of the menu a la carte - Breton lobsters with young vegetables “primavera” (120 €), fillet of gilthead (80 €), chop from a guinea-fowl with goose liver (80 €), and some other.

Almost all well-known people of the world have stayed here: successful politicians and actors, diplomats and musicians, businessmen and writers. This hotel, which was founded at the beginning of the twentieth century and distinguished by the maximal concentration of antiques and subjects of art, is a living picture of that magnificent way of life in the imagination of the modern European.
Today hotel has five restaurants. Each of them has delightful cuisine and firm “Ducasse” service: a little bit theatrical, but unostentatious at the same time. The main restaurant of the hotel - Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenee - specializes on traditional high French cuisine with set of author’s dishes from the chief - Phillip Mark. He has worked at several three-star restaurants at historical hotels of Southeast France: Vista Palace and Don Caesar.

Under Alain Ducasse’s direct management Phillip Mark has created for Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenee the menu where the majority of dishes are based on two-three seasonal products that make meal simple and elegant without excessive complexity and grandiosity so peculiar to modern French haute cuisine.

London gourmets have received a new occasion for conversations: after the reconstruction has opened Bluebird - gastronomic and secular legend.
The restaurant, founded in 1997, has always had the glory of one of the brightest places on Kings Road. For ten years the establishment has fairly dilapidated that has led owners to the idea of reconstruction. The author of a new interior became designers of fashionable architectural studio Conran and Partners. Due to their efforts Bluebird has found a new embodiment. The restaurant has been divided into two various on style rooms.

The author of the new gastronomic concept of restaurant became young chief-cook Mark Broadbent. Mark names himself the pupil of well-known cook David Nichols, which today is working in London hotel Intercontinental. For the last several years Mark has headed kitchens of many popular restaurants: Mortons on Berkeley Square, The Oak on Notting Hill, Isola in Knightsbridge and Inn the Park in St. James’ Park in the neighborhood with the Buckingham palace. Last Mark’s place of work was restaurant Terrace (two Michelin stars) in Dorchester.
Mark names new culinary direction of the updated Bluebird, as «modern British». The cook has not simply presented for the London public something in patriotic style. He has spent long time traveling to use high-quality and harmless products which are delivered in restaurant only from small Britain’s farms.
Certainly, there are some dishes which imply use of import components. However Mark has tried to minimize their number.

How ballerinas of the Big Theatre grow thin? It is said, that their favorite diet is white wine with a slice of cheese or red wine with red fruits. So self-denying people simply do not refuse the pleasure to drink a glass of red wine after each meal. Scientists have established why wine is so useful to keep-fit. In has cholagogues in its structure - first relief for an organism. Other - correct insulin content: very often excess weight is connected to it. The third – strengthen endocrine glands’ secretion, the fourth - support normal acidity. Besides, scientists from Harvard University have established: “daily” glass of wine reduces risk of stones in kidneys on the whole by 39 %. Champagne clears an organism from harmful substances. And aperitif promotes stimulation of gastric secretion and an intestinal motility, that salutarily influences digestion and metabolism.

Experts of «Wine and health» forum and German Wine Academy studied wine influence on 40 patients with excess weight. Half of volunteers daily drank 200 ml of fruit juice and stuck to a strict diet, the others were treated with the same amount of white dry wine. Results of experiment have shown: patients drinking wine have lost 20 % more of their weight, than those who drunken juice.

With confidence we may say that only natural wine is good for the health. But all depends on the situation. It is quite obvious that doctors give their preference to red wine. However, white wine is in something even more advantageous. For example, if red wine has more antioxidants, in white wine they are more effective, as they are less on the size and more easy penetrate into tissues.
But all the same red wines have more useful substances, especially those which were created from ripened grapes with a thick peel. Among such wines there are a lot of French and Chilean wines.

Red wine prevents clot formation, salutarily influences cardiovascular system. The mechanism is known: wine improves lipid exchange, promotes correct balance of lipoprotein in blood, suppressing development of an atherosclerosis. Besides it promotes to cholesterol balance, raising the content of good cholesterol and reducing amount of bad cholesterol. And also softens the tendency to reduction of arteries in stress situations, reduces blood pressure and increases diameter of blood vessels.

Wine medicine
Researches of scientists do not need any new tests. The most important tests have already been conducted by life and results have been reflected in statistics which only should be comprehended and analyzed. Why, for example, in France death rate from cardiovascular diseases is twice lower among world average parameters? And this is despite of the superfluous cholesterol content in fat and spicy national cuisine! Such cuisine should turn back for the nation in general heart attacks, insults, mass arthritis. Americans, who studied this riddle, have called it French paradox.
In clinics of the Western Europe wine treatment was prescribed two centuries ago. Russian doctors have paid attention to wine a little bit later, from the middle of the XIX century.
But what are those magic components which transform wine into panacea? No one definitely can answer this question though for the last years there have been numerous attempts to penetrate into curative secret of the wine. Till now it is a deep dark secret: six hundred components are determined and measured, but the total number is unknown. It is precisely known, that wine 80 % consist of biologically pure water, and contains from 8 up to 15 % of spirit received as a result of sugar fermentation. The rest - in microscopic dozes are: organic acids, glucose and fructose, phenol compounds, aromatic substances, volatile oils, complex ethers, aldehydes, tannins, 24 microelement including manganese, zinc, rubidium, fluorine, vanadium, iodine, titan, cobalt, potassium, phosphorus, etc. And also mineral salts, “nutrients”, amino acids, proteins and vitamins. But all force is in proportions, in complex interactions. And scientists of all world try to solve the mechanism of their influence.

But surplus here is more dangerous, than a shortage - all curative qualities from excessiveness turn to harmful. So, antioxidants, hunters for free radicals, at unlimited drinking turn to them and destroy vessels, strongly diluting blood. The measure was established by English and American researchers who have recognized special benefit of red wine with the big tannin content. The Danish scientists are in general against quantitative restrictions, insisting: the more the person drinks, the longer he will live. They are denied by known French doctor-dietician Michel Montiniak: «No more than half-liter of wine a day».
The basic list of wine’s merits was determined, and the majority of scientific from different countries agrees with this list. Wine:
• stimulate appetite;
• strengthens endocrine glands’ secretion;
• promotes bile flow, secretion of gastric juices and maintenance of normal stomach acidity;
• dilates vessels;
• has antibacterial properties, removes toxins;
• normalizes metabolism;
• improves sleep;
• strengthens an organism;
• raises immunity and vigor;
• promotes restoration of vital forces at their decline;
• enriches an organism with microelements, B vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B8, B9), amino acids;
• prevent from atherosclerosis;
• promote delay of cells ageing;
• prevents oncological diseases;
• reduces cholesterol content;
• prevent from caries and dental calculus;
• is an as excellent antistress means.

“There are more old wine-lovers, than old doctors”, - says the French proverb. The Frenchmen can be trusted. They have the longest in the world life interval. And at the same time France is the leader on wine consumption per capita in Europe. Experts confirm the truth of the French saying.
The fashion to be healthy
The main fashion which has struck the West is a fashion on healthy mode of life. It has the most direct relation to wine, and new sensational openings prove it. «Wine prolongs life», «Wine treats cancer», «Wine against atherosclerosis» - press of the last years are full of such headlines.
Everybody knows about curative properties of Cahors wine. Perhaps, due to these properties this wine has been used in religious rituals and is considered a church wine – even priests fearlessly gave it to infants during a christening. French authorities “from medicine” consider that the true dry Cahors wine (Cahor) is the unique wine which does not destroy liver, and on the contrary, strengthens it, and besides regulate work of the cardiovascular system.
But doctors very reluctantly advise patients wine treatment. For example, the American association of cardiologists, recognizing wine’s prophylactic properties, nevertheless does not recommend doctors to inform patients of them. It is clear: not everyone can keep measure, and the measure is extremely important. It is known: two - three glasses of wine in a day for men and a maximum one and a half for women.

Known all over the world Japanese cuisine has great variety of dishes and its regional specialties. Some of the most popular Japanese dishes are native, but many of them have long ago penetrated in the eating culture and became Japanized.
These dishes are categorized into rice dishes, seafood dishes, noodle dishes, nabe dishes, soya bean dishes, yoshoku dishes and some other dishes.
Nevertheless, the typical Japanese meal consists of so called bowl of rice or gohan, a bowl of miso soup or miso shiru, pickled vegetables and of course, fish or meat. While rice is the main dish, several kinds of noodles are cheap and very popular for light meals. Being island inhabitants, the Japanese are very proud of their seafood. The wide range of fish, squid, octopus, eel, and shellfish can be met all kinds of dishes from sushi to tempura.

Seafood Dishes

Seafood dishes are prepared and eaten in many different ways: raw, dried, boiled, grilled, deep fried or steamed.

Sashimi is typical raw seafood. Many fish can be enjoyed raw if they are fresh and prepared in the right way. Most types of sashimi are served with soya sauce and wasabi.
Yakizakana is grilled fish. Many varieties of fish are cooked this way.