Adam Balic

Of course it is a matter of personal taste, but I really like these wines with a significant amount of age (15+), otherwise they come across as giant fruit bombs to me. I drank a 1997 Speri recently and this was the case for this wine. Will re-vist in 10 years time. If you are not in the same league as Plotnicki (and let's face it who is? ) then you may try to track down some Bertani Amarone. The produce a more old fashioned Armone, which really has to be drank afer some cellaring, however they tend to release older vintages of wine then the other producers. Depending where you are you should be able to track down the 1985 vintage. Excellent wine, I could sniff a glass all day. Amarone is going through a period of popularity, so a lot of wine that was going into straight valpolicella is now going through the amarone process. I wonder what this is doing for the quality?

Sure. Shred green papaya on mandolin, pace in bowl with lime juiceand pinch of salt. Shred carrot on madolin, make ultra fine slices of red cabbage and red pepper (those long thin pointy ones from Tescos are best, but otherwise bell pepper). Mix papya with other veg. try to get more papya then other ingredients. Use only a tiny amount of red cabbage, as it has a flavour that over powers the papaya, its main role is to colour the papaya pink. Mix in coriander, mint and Holy basil leaves (not to much of the latter). Dress with lime juice/chinese black vinegar, fish sauce and palm sugar to taste (plus salt). Spinkle with crushed roasted peanuts. I don't add oil to this salad, but you could add a few drops of toasted seasame oil I guess. Papaya should be in lime juice (just enough to coat) for about 15 minutes to wilt/softed slightly. Other veg, added at end to prevent wilting.

Well spotted, but only mussels and beanshoot salad is from the Pink Bible. Larb made by my wife from old family recipe (Australian Women's Weekly Thai cookbook, circ. 1992), wonton and papaya salad from your's truely, sea bass my impression of a favoured Vietnamese recipe.

Deep fried wonton with pork/dried shrimp/ herb/spice filing Green Papaya salad Beanshoot salad Pork larb Mussels with Thai coconut currry and mangostens Crispy fried Sea Bass with ginger sauce Rice flavoured with pandanus leaf Banana, passionfruit and coconut clafoutis, again flavoured with pandanus leaf.

I thank you both. Now seem to be OK (it wasn't serious, it just made me feel mildly drunk all the time and gave me the sensation of falling). Sirlion steak with creme faiche and green peppercorns Jim Dixon's roasted cauliflower Roasted vine tomato Extra fine green beans steamed and tossed in nut brown butter and almonds. All in all a real circ. 1970's meal (apart from the cauliflower).

Pork loin on bone, braised in full cream jersey mill with garlic, rosemary, cinnaom and cloves. Quarted fennel bulb added at last 20 minutes of cooking. Side serves of Yellow footed Chanterelle risotto, baby savoy cabbage, first class smoked bacon with above mushroom trimmings and chestnuts braied in butter. Have some type of brain virus thing at the moment, got distracted and burnt milk sauce and fennel bulbs , over cooked the cabbage . Sauce tasted very good before burning episode . Poached Comice pears and Bourbon vanilla icecream.

Croatian red wines can be good, but many are very old fashioned (i.e. Oxidized, high alcohol, thin etc). Some of the native grape varieties are very interesting (this is where zinfindel originated). Look out for Plavak (or Plavak mali), this can make some interesting red wines. The white wines tend to be on the old Italian model (deviod of all fruit), but you can get lucky. Avoid Riesling, as in Croatia it is mostly Italian riesling, which sucks, not Rhine riesling, which is great. Had a good Rose in Morocco (forgot the name), but I hadn't had a drink for 10 days and this may have coloured my view. Suck and see, I'm afraid. As mentioned Tannat is an interesting grape, definately needs age through.

Recipe II. From Robert May's "The Accomplisht Cook", 1660. (Avalible from Prospect Books, UK. One of, if not the, greatest English cook book). Again another English cook/recipe. Tortelleti (one of several pasta recipes in the book) "Take pease gre[e]n or dried, French beans or garden beans (Broad/Fava beans?), boil them tender and stamp them; strain through a strainer, and put to them some fried onions chopped small, sugar, cinamon, cloves, pepper and nutmeg, some grated parmisan, or fat cheese, and some cheese curd (ricotta, cottage cheese etc) stamped. The make a paste, and make little pastries, boil them in broth and serve them with sugar, cinamon and grated cheese in a fine clean dish." Obviously, no measurements, you are expected to add the spice to your taste. Have made these using petit pois (so left out the sugar as they are sweet enough), but served them with sage and butter - rather good. In some areas of Northern Italy you can still get tortellini/ravioli etc served with sugar, cinamon and parmesan (so it is 'authentic'), but I don't like this so much. If you used dried green pease then I imagine that very small versions of this dish would go very nicely in a ham based broth.

Not sure about exact dates, but both cumin and coriander are found in ancient europeon cooking, so I imagine they have been in British cooking for some while, comming in and out of popularity over time. I have seen some early 18th c. references to chilli (cayenne etc) in English cook books, so it would have been introduced sometime between the 16th and 18th C.? Tumeric I have no idea. Possibly as late as the British Raj, but I will look into it. You forgot Nutmeg and Mace. Very few 18th C. recipes without at lease one of these.

This yet another Mulligatawny recipe. This time from: Mrs A.B. Marshall's "Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes", published in 1891. (Mrs Marshall ran a cookery school in London and was a poncy Mrs Beeton). Potage Muuagatawny Take six large peeled and finely sliced onions, four washed and dried mushrooms, two large tomatoes, three large sour apples or a small handful of sour gooseberries; a bunch of herbs (thyme, parsley and bayleaf) and a good plateful of any nice cooked or raw game or poultry bones, or a cut up chicken; fry these together in a stewpan for fifteen minutes in two ounces of butter, add juice of one large lemon, two red chillies pounded, 1 1/2 Tbsp of curry powder, a desert spoon of tamarinds, a saltspoon of ground ginger and two ounces of creme de Riz;cover this with three quarts of good flavoured stock make from cooked meat bones; replace pan on stove, bring contents genty to boil on the side of the stove for about one and a half hours, occasionally skimming. When cooked removed meat from bones, sieve out stock pound meat and veg. mix back with stock and strain this through a tammy (fine cloth). Serve with plainly boiled rice. I think that I would prefer the earlier versions as their spice blends are more interesting, although the sour componants in the above recipe would be interesting.

Sorry, only just saw this. Twisties, Oh boy Oh boy, could I do with some twisties.

Pinic OK, but not great since they changed the formula in the early nineties. Actually, I'm a Polywaffle man myself.

Miss J - Welcome back, expect full report of food at your leisure. I make pho, pho not so good as back in Australia, as it lacks Vietnamese mint (my favourite herb, not avalible in UK ) and beef tendons (no idea where to get these). Cure for post-holiday blues? Tough one considering weather and all. Ride bike through Hyde Park? Drink? Yes drink I think.

Certainement.

What is it about lemon-grass that makes it so offensive when used outside a South-East Asian context I wonder? So you are saying that to get a fushion of cuisines that results in a positive product you either have to approach it from the point of view of an out growth of "organic development" or you have to have a great depth of knowledge/perception of what the synergy between to different cultural tradions/ingredients etc will be? Doesn't leave much room for the majority of people. Kinda, works like a mobile-phone, as it has a radio receiver, you dial plug specific number, you get the business.

Exactly. What is it that gives a particular cuisine it's "distinctiveness" then? Is there in particular point in damning a particular dish/restuarant etc because it isn't "authentic"? Why is it so popular to damn "fushion" cuisine, when clearly are cuisine is dynamic, not static, therefore fusion of various cooking traditions is an intergral part of most cooking traditions? Day-Glow, Xtra-mansize, butt plug being wrapped in preparation of you secret santa.

Oh yes, thank you for reminding me of Indian's history - I forgot about the seperate statehood of the regions at that time. I agree, the dish in question is unlikely to be an authentic regional dish, but if you apply that criteria, then the dishes created by Escoffier for the Prince Regent were not French either (or the River Cafe "Italian" ). The soup may very well have been created for the Sahib, using local ingredients, but how did it get to that point, without any reference to the indigenous cuisine? I know of certain cooks who add spice/chilli to almost any dish that they cook (otherwise it tastes bland apparently), could a possibility be that a indigenous cook "spiced-up" a "bland" British soup to suit their tastes, rather then a British cook using local ingridients? Australia is still Pink, especially Sydney.

I thought that it may be interesting to post some recipes from the past couple of thousand years. First up is a recipe published in 1829 by Med Dodds (UK). "Mullagatawny or Curry-Soup, as made in India Have ready pounded and sifted an ounce of coriander seeds, the third of an ounce of cassia, three drachms of black, and two of cayenne pepper, and a quarter of an ounce of China turmerick;mix them well. This quantity will do either for two chickens, a large fowl or three pounds of meat. Cut down the meat into small pieces, let them boil slowly for half-hour in two quarts of water; then put in four onions and three cloves of garlick shred and fried in two ounces of butter. Mix down the seasonings with a little of the broth and rice flour, and strain them into a stew pan, which must simmer till the soup is smooth and thick as cream. When it is within five minutes of being finished, add lemon or citric acid in the same proportion. Serve the meat and soup in a tureen; boiled rice in a hot water dish." Simon or Suvir - does this recipe in any way resemble an India dish? The variety of spices used seems to be wided then used in the modern version of this dish and note that the meat is served with the dish, along with rice. Could it be that originally it was an India dish one pot dish, which for British tastes was seperated into a soup and meat course?

The native USA ham that I had was given to me by some fellow egulleters (sadly I have forgoten the name of the ham type), it was very similar to a Serrano/Bayonne/Parma type dry cure. It was very good, but having questioned various Americans on it, they consider it to be too salty. Sad really. I'm guessing that quality Serrano/Bayonne/Parma type dry cure hams are never frozen, even in a liquid N2 bath, there not a chance of instantly freezing something of the mass of a leg of pork. Loads of lysed cells and brining solution would be a very bad thing for making a ham.

Great site. I had some Smithfield ham when in the US and thought it was good. Will these hams be made from frozen meat? I should have though that that would make an inferior product?

OK, here is a basic recipe for a dry cure ham. Take leg of pork/"ham", remove bone with small sharp knife (do not break the skin!). Rub the following mixture all over the ham (incuding where the bone was): 2 pounds of salt, 3/4 ounce of saltpetre, 1/2 pound good flavoured brown sugar. Leave overnight in a dry cool area (no a refridgerator). Make brine: Boil together 1 l red wine, 1 l of water, 1 1/2 ounces of saltpetre, 1 pound sea salt, rosemary, juniper berries, allspice berries (whatever aromatics you like). Allow to cool. Place ham in cooled brine and weigh down with a very clean board or other cleaned weight (ham must be covered with brine). Leave for 12 days in a cool place (brine never to get above 65.F). Drain ham and hang for about 3-6 months. If you wouold like to smoke it then smoke it after the first 48 hours of hanging. A variation on this would be to use a mutton ham. In Italy, they would not use the red wine, in Croatia they would add garlic to the brine cure. A very good book for cureing recipes and techniques is Jane Grigson's "Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery" (actually two books, now in one volume). A wonderful book, everybody should have it.

Pasta with a sauce of Brocoli, fresh tomato, anchovies, chilli, garlic and olive oil. Would have added pinenuts and sultanas if I had them, but I didn't, so I didn't. If that makes sense?

It was a joke son.

I have a jar of the large woody black type, should they have a very strong smokey smell or is this artifact of their processing?

What an interesting thread. What was your family food culture when you were growing up? I think we were working class, but I'm not sure. Parents still clean toilets for cash so I am guessing yes. On my mother's side of the family (Anglo-Celtic) food was enjoyed, but not good, except with a few exceptions. On my father's side (Croatian) the food was both important and excellent. In my immediate family, Mum would cook most of the meals, on rare occasions my father would cook pasta. BBQ and spit roasted pig/lamb was always done by Dad. Mum didn't like cooking, so meals weren't that exciting, although she did try. From the age of 11-12 I started cooking, especially on weekends. Rarely full meals though. Was meal time important ? No. As a young family we ate at the table together, but as we (my brothers and I) got older it tended to end up in front of the TV. Was cooking important? No. Although may mother went through phases (bread making, jam making, bottled fruit etc). What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? There were penalties for all most everything, but I can't remember elbows on table penalties specifically. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occasions? Living 50 km from the nearest town, there was very little oppertunity for restuarant meals. I can only remember a few Chinese meals and Fish 'n' Chips. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? Yes or in a seperate room (had only a small table). When did you get that first sip of wine? 5-6? Don't remember. Was there a pre-meal prayer? No. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? No never. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? Very little I should think.