For all the Scots I know, most of them chefs, I wonder how do they become great chefs. Looking at some of their food from Scotland I really do wonder if Haggis will ever conquer the world or one has to be born with an acquired taste for this unique dish. I admit; the rest of the world has similar dishes like Saumagen from Germany, Tripas from Portugal, Drob from Rumania or Buchada from Brazil. But no other nation makes such a big fuss out of it and even has a special day to celebrate

Burns Supper, celebrated by Scots all over the world on the 25. January calls for Haggis. For the Scots here in Dubai I had to prepare for such a dinner a dessert to complement this nations culinary evening. Cranachan is such a typical dessert and after some lengthy research I found to me the most suitable version.

Ricky, the bagpiperagreed with me that this version of Cranachan was the best he ever tasted, relieving me of any fear to upset 200 plus Scotsmen in the ballroom next door!

Cranachan with Drambouie Ice Cream

serves 4

600 gram Raspberries, fresh

560 gram Double Cream 42%

60 gram Honey, finest quality

60 gram Single malt Whisky

100 gram Oatmeal

20 gram Honey

20 gram Icing Sugar

36 gram Butter, unsalted

4 scoop of Drambouie Ice Cream from Napoli Ice Creamery

Method:

Toast the oatmeal lightly and let cool down. Combine with icing sugar and honey and place on a baking tray. Cut the butter into cubes and scatter on oatmeal mix. Place in oven for 10 minutes at 180 Celsius until golden. Set aside to cool.

Fill a dessert glass with 3/4 of the raspberries, reserve the remaining raspberries for later use.

Place the cream in a mixing bowl and whisk creamy. Add the honey and whisky and pour the cream over the raspberries. Sprinkle the remaining berries on top the cream and set in chiller to set.

Before serving sprinkle the golden oatmeal on top and serve with a scoop of Drambouie Ice Cream.

Cranachan is a traditional Scottish dessert. Nowadays it is usually made from a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey, and fresh raspberries topped with toasted oatmeal. Earlier recipes for cranachan or cream-crowdie are more austere, omitting the whisky and treating the fruit as an optional extra. Modern recipes have a high double cream content, while originally this was replaced wholly or in part by crowdie cheese.

A traditional way to serve cranachan is to bring dishes of each ingredient to the table, so that each person can assemble their dessert to taste. Tall glasses are also a typical presentation.

It was originally a summer dish and often consumed around harvest time, but is now more likely to be served all year round at weddings and on special occasions. A variant dish was ale-crowdie, consisting of ale, treacle and whisky with the oatmeal – served at a wedding with a ring in the mixture: whoever got the ring would be the next to marry

The Raffles Dubai is one of the newest hotels here in Dubai, officially opened on the 21st of November 2007. For a long time I was planning to visit the hotel, especially since I know the original Raffles in Singapore. After a quick call to Prince Chef Waleed, Chef de Cuisne at Azur all day dinning restaurant, M and me where off for a closer inspection of the newest “kid on the block”, Asian hospitality from Singapore meets Dubai with a touch of Egypt.

The hotel itself is a all-suite, 248 of them, hotel build in a pyramid shape with four wings. As I entered the hotel lobby I was just astonished of its interior design. What a lobby, everything is just perfect! I was especially impressed with the flower arrangement seen everywhere in the lobby, the water curtain featured in the middle of the lobby. We where meeting Chef Waleed at his restaurant Azur, kept in a refreshing white theme. Only two sections of the restaurant had green chairs and we where explained that these where the private tables. Great idea! One great feature this restaurant has is its terrace and actually every other restaurant has its own terrace too.

Fire & Ice is a very well designed fine dinning restaurant on the same level as Azur. Main features of this Grill & Bar venue is the open kitchen, huge mirrors and spiral staircase to the above private dinning rooms. It even has a wine cellar where one can choose a wide variety of wines.

Asiana and the Noble House, both located on the 17th floor are more for the Asian palette, the first serving dishes from East Asia and the second one modern Chinese cuisine. Again, every restaurant has its private dinning rooms and of course, a terrace. The New Asia Bar & Club does look inviting even during the day time but is actually open only at nights.

On the very top of the pyramid, one can expect the best to come, is a jewel I need to re-visit at nights. China Moon Champagne Bar, overlooking the fast changing skyline of Dubai. With its colorful interior, sofa beds and glass tables reminds me of a supper club in Ginza, Tokyo. To get up to the top one has to pass a statue, the main feature of these bars.

Raffles Dubai, Sheikh Rashid Road, Wafi City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Tel: +971 4324 8888

In the past few weeks I get more comments, great comments about my photography in this Blog and they are almost every time surprised that I take most of the pictures with a point and shoot camera! Yes, I do have a couple of Nikon’s, a Mamiya and a Olympus like mentioned in this previous post. I however have always my trusted Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 in my bag wherever I go, and I use this beast where ever I am. The use of the camera is so easy and the result is just stunning. In many situations I can’t use the Nikon D200 like when I am in restaurants or concerts, therefore I am relaying on my trusted Lumix’s 10 Mb sensor.

Get the full review here

Reviewing the LX2 – the successor to one of the only memorable compact cameras of 2005 – has been a slightly disappointing, yet totally unsurprising experience. Like the FZ50 reviewed last month, the LX2 is an ‘upgrade’ that fails to address in any convincing way the single glaring problem with its predecessor. Rather than going back to fundamentals and working on the weakest link in what is otherwise a very desirable camera – noise – Panasonic decided, presumably because the ‘market’ demands it, to add even more pixels and use the sledgehammer noise reduction of the Venus III processing engine. To be fair to Panasonic the output is an improvement over the LX1, though only by a narrow margins, and at anything over ISO 200 it’s ‘different’ rather than ‘better’ (again, to be fair, it does produce better prints). Noise is measurably lower than most competitors, but the noise reduction artefact’s and loss of fine low contrast detail are a heavy price to pay.

Anyway that’s enough ranting about noise and noise reduction. On the positive side IS0 100 output is excellent , easily on a par with the best cameras in the 7-8MP class, and the camera itself is a joy to use. Rarely does a camera this compact put such a sophisticated level of control at the user’s fingertips, and the newly-expanded functionality of the joystick controller means you rarely need to enter the menu system when you’re out shooting. This – along with the slider switches on the lens barrel for aspect ratio and focus mode – means you’ve got direct access to pretty much every control you would ever need in everyday photography. I’d love to see Panasonic adopting a twin dial system (as used on SLRs, the FZ50 and the Ricoh GR-D), but as it stands, compared to most similarly-specified cameras the LX2 is still a genuine ‘photographer’s’ camera.

The 16:9 ‘widescreen’ CCD isn’t merely unusual; it is totally unique, and – together with the wide 28mm zoom – offers a unique perspective on the world, allowing the photographer to capture sweeping panoramic vistas in a single shot without cropping. It also makes a lot more sense now that the LCD screen matches the aspect ratio of the sensor.

Of course the 16:9 aspect ratio isn’t without issues of its own, most specifically when it comes to printing (it doesn’t fit any standard print size and most computer monitors will display it ‘letterbox’ style). I, personally, love it, but if you don’t use it (in other words if you use the 3:2 or 4:3 modes) there is little, if any point buying the LX2; you lose the wide angle lens and may as well look at less expensive, less noisy 7 or 8MP alternatives.

And so, in conclusion, we have what is becoming something of a theme with Panasonic’s high end models; a superb, innovative, unique and well-designed camera with an (apparently) noisy sensor and – much more importantly – a processing engine that replaces fine detail with smeary, watercolor-like artefacts. You can avoid this by turning the noise reduction down and sticking to ISO 100 or 200 (you REALLY want to turn the NR down at ISO 200) – or by shooting in raw mode and doing your own noise processing, if it bothers you. Of course at ‘normal’ print sizes the noise issue is largely moot, but if you want to make decent enlargements you will need to pay careful attention to the setting you use when shooting, and stick to the lowest ISO modes.

If you like shooting wide, don’t feel the need to shoot at higher ISO settings (I personally wish Panasonic had included an ISO 50 option), and relish the idea of a pocket camera that offers real photographic control, the LX2 stands pretty much in a class of its own. It’s ideal for landscape photographers and I for one really, really enjoyed using it as a walkaround alternative to a digital SLR on bright days. A good camera, but still – thanks to the limitations of the sensor – not a great one. Like the LX1 before it, the long list of ‘pros’ saved this camera from an Above Average rating, plus the fact that at ISO 100 the output is excellent.

Perfect for: advanced users (particularly landscape photographers) prepared to do raw processing, who rarely if ever need to go over ISO 200

Not ideal for: Casual ‘snap shot’ photographers, anyone who takes most of their pictures in low light (particularly if you always leave your camera on ‘auto everything’).