Adam Balic
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Posts posted by Adam Balic
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For a tight seal required for the production of sparkling wine, would you not also require cork? Widespread use of cork was a pretty late development, so I can imagine that a punt was incorporated into some bottle designs (for strength) well before the the development of cork closures and sparkling wine? The beaker obviously doesn't contain a punt related to champagne production.
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I just want to say thank you for everyone who has chimed in to help - it appears that I am buying flank steak, but it must be some difference between US and Australian beef or cooking/marinating method... the stuff I have bought isn't nearly as flavourful or tender (which is odd as Australian beef is usually some of the best you can buy).
I'm not much up on my cuts of meat, but I've consumed a lot of Australian beef here in the US, & the flavor is markedly different from US beef - generally a bit lighter & less intensely beefy.
Of course this represents only what's available at my local supermarket, so it's highly anecdotal.
It could be grass fed v grain fed, but it could also be down to some other very local factors. Due to the drought lots of beasts are being sold at a much younger age then usual. That is why a lot of the meat at the market is labeled "yearling" beef etc.
I haven't eaten and beef in the USA, but so far I have been very unhappy with the quality of the Australian beef I have had in general, so maybe there is also a basic quality difference.
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I don't believe I've ever tasted a rutabaga, and it's rare to see them in the markets where I live.
I*'m not surprised, since rutabaga, since are native to colder climates. They migrated from Scandinavian countries to the British Isles into the Northern Midwest states.
My old friend "Martoon", when he was in 4H, grew a rutabaga in his sandbox that weighed over 14 pounds! It easily won the Blue Ribbon at the County Fair that year. In fact, it was so big that Martoon, who was good at math, figured he could have cut his giant rutabaga in two and won both the First and Third Place Ribbons with the pieces.
Cutting it in two would have best been accomplished with a chain saw though, since rutabaga, when they get large, have the consistency of a block of wood.
SB (Growing rutabaga in Hawaii would be like growing pineapple in Minnesota
)I never liked these growing up in Australia, but when I moved to Scotland and tasted them again after 10 years ago I found them to be delicious. On moving back to Australia I find that I still hate them here. The varieties are obviously very different. The Scottish type is very large (as big a honeydew melon), mild flavoured and very sweet, the Australian version is a 1/5 -1/4 of the size, not as sweet and has a very pungent flavour.
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"more thoroughly" ? Are you asking if something immersed in boiling water becomes more cooked than something blanketed in steam?
Not in my experience, tho it may reach a certain point of done-ness sooner.
With the asparagus steamer, the bases will cook in the water as it comes to the boil, I would think that the tops would only start to cook through once the water approaches 100.C.
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I learn something new every day. A couple of questions, though:
1- I think the answer is yes, but does boiling definitely cook more thoroughly than steaming?
2- Even with just steam, wouldn't the vertical orientation mean the bottoms get cooked more quickly than the tops?
Steam temperature sea level (14.696 PSI) is about 100.C, the same as temperature of boiling water. Steam in a pan like this will not be 'dry steam' (all
water molecules all in a gas state), so I guess the difference in cooking will be due to the conduction of heat in liquid v gas state, with the complication that most of the steam is actually droplets of liquid water.
In my experience, unless you are super skilled at trimming the bases, the tops will be over-done before the bottoms are tender. For this reason I normally trim the base.
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The instructions are correct (although they can be steamed if you like). Originally, these puddings were boiled in a cloth, so there was never any question of steaming. Later with the development of baking powder, steaming became possible (and practical).
This is from a cookbook circ. 1930's:
Marmalade Pudding
1/4 lb flour, 1/4 lb breadcrumbs, 1/4 lb suet (chopped), 1/4 lb sugar, 1/4 lb marmalade, one egg. Mix well together, put into a buttered basin and boil for two hours.
Steamed Pudding
2 oz butter or beef drippping, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup jam, 1 cup jam, 1 cup flour, 1 level teaspoon soda mixed in half a cup of milk. Beat butter, jam and sugar to a cream; add flour then soda and milk. Steam for three hours.
Originally these steamed puddings where made in special vessels with tight fitting lids, but you can make them in a basin also. Even when in made in the special vessels they were still partially immersed in boiling water. I think that "steaming" simply refered to partial immersion.
As the former type of pudding could have been made in a cloth and boiled totally immersed in water, but these have largely fell out of favour. So I think that the term "steaming" was remained attached to the way that puddings are made, even if not entirely correct.
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Broiling is no longer used in the UK and "grilling" would cover both what you describe as "broiling" (especially in domestic settings) and "grilling", except if the latter was done outdoors then it would be BBQ.
I'm just interested in the terms as technically they should be interchangeable, but a distinction seems to have developed within the last 50 (?) years?
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When you broil, the melted fat just runs off the meat into the platter on which the steak is resting. When you grill, the melted fat runs off the meat into the flames and burns.
A vaguely related question. I have a few older cookbooks that talk about broiling steaks. They use a gridiron, so I assume that this is what would now be called 'grilling'? Do you have any idea when the modern distinction between broiling and grilling became common place?
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Adam, can you clarify a couple of your comments?
First, while I understand what you're saying about roasting, I don't get how it applies to steaming. Is there an old use of the term that differs from modern usage?
Not that I am aware of. The point I was trying to make was that if people are use to a term connected to a specific food item then they tend to stick to it even if the term is technically incorrect. I can't remember if we have ever boiled asparagus in our home, but if we did I would proberly say 'steaming' out of habit.
People will also use terms that sound more attractive as well (like "saute" for "fry"), and in part I think that this is what is going on with boil=steam
Second, I guess I don't understand your method for cooking rice. What are the steps and at what point do you consider it to be steaming?For plain rice, one cup of rice is fried with one tablespoon of oil until 'done', then 1.5 cups of hot water are added. The lid is placed on the pan and the heat turned to the lowest setting and it is left for 15 minutes. After this the heat is turned off, the lid taken off to release the steam and get rid of the water on the lid, replaced and the rice left for another 5 minutes or so.
I know that this isn't steaming over a body of water, but the rice actually absorbs the water in the first 7-8 minutes, after this the only water in the pot has been absorbed by the rice or is in the form of steam. When cooking for a party etc, the technique is even more exaggerated, rice is boiled for 7 mintutes, drained (this could be for a few hours or more) then put into a pot with the lid on and placed on the lowest setting, for at least 15 minutes, even up to an hour depending on the nature of the rice.
It may not be classical "steaming", but there is enough water vapour in the system to qualify as steaming I should think. I don't think that there is a precise culinary term for the process as Europeans have been boiling the crap out of rice for the most part.
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In some cases word use remains the same although the technology changes.
"roasting" is another one I guess. Before enclosed domestic heat sources and ovens, "roast" meat was done via a direct heat source (on a spit for example). Meat cooked in an oven was "baked" meat. Now we call meat cooked in the oven roast meat, with only the distinction for "baked ham" remaining.
My old asparagus cooker is a small basket which fits into a tall pot. The bottom inch or so of the asparagus sits in the water, the rest out. So this would be "mostly steamed, but partly boiled" asparagus to be correct. Ditto the absorbtion method I use for cooking rice. Innitial the rice frys, then boils and then steams. I think that if anybody asked I would call it "steamed rice" to keep it simple ("boiled" sounds too much like the old Anglo- method and fried means something else).
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Did they test any other types of wine?
Some recipes require some pretty specific wines, which I can't see how they would be interchangeble. Sure one big red wine might be interchangable with another, but a wooded buttery chardonnay for a riesling? Or can you sub- in any white wine for vin jaune for example?
Also, I'm not sure that I agree with all aspects of this blind tasting approach. OK, it gives you a small data set of some objective data. But I don't cook blind-folded and part of the enjoyment of the process is emotive, not rational. I like the idea of cooking regional dish's with the regions wines for instance. It may not matter to the dish or to my guests, but it is part of the pleasure of the experience for me and that is why I do it - for pleasure, not to be accurate or correct.
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It occurs to me that the Dutch baby is really a cousin of the clafouti. You could probably make a great cherry Dutch baby. And cherry season is just around the corner...
I think that a clafouti rises because of whipped egg whites and (I may be exposing my ignorance about baking here) baking powder.
I don't think I've seen a clafouti recipe with whipped egg whites or baking powder, though I won't swear that there aren't any that call for those. Here's Julia Child's recipe. Not the same as a Dutch baby, but not too different either...
Clafouti belongs to a class of similar dishes. Two others I can think of are cajasse and flognarde. A typical recipe for the latter contains 40g flour, 60g sugar, 3 eggs, 125 ml milk, lemon peel and 60g of butter. It can either be plain or cooked with apples, pears, plums, grapes or raisins. Not that different to the Dutch Baby really.
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Australia has plenty of savoury pies it is true, but these are almost always small, hand held, individual portions, rather then "family" dishes. It's true that you can get larger family style pies, but they must represent a tiny proportion of the total. So I think that pies in Australia represent a fast food, one reason why it isn't the same case in the USA is simply that there are other foods that fill the same niche. This may reflect specific circumstances or simply be a result of chance.
The original free standing 'coffin' pies largely fell out of favour during the latter part of the 18th century and pretty much disappeared by the mid-19th, with a few exceptions like pork pies and veal pies. The was an increasing trend to using pie dishes, even when the pie was a double crust. So I don't think that the States 'lost' anything, there eating preferences simply reflect the greater trends at the time and local preferences. The development of the "Pot Pie" reflects this.
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What background is the VC? If they are Anglo-Celt then all the usual cliché apply (see below), if of another background then it might be worth finding this out. My grandmother has lived her since 1954, but I bet she has never eaten a pavlova of lamington yet.
On the other hand I love a good pav and I think that pavlova is a very good idea. Assuming that fresh cream is not an issue. If it isn't too humid then the base can be made well a head of time and the cream an topping can be added at the last moment. Although I have never seen it in a cookbook and is most likely a source of cultural shame, second only to passionfruit was a topping of grated peppermint-chocolate ("Peppermint Crisp" to be exact), so other toppings other then fruit are fine. The "Milo" (chocolate-malt drink) I supplied myself with in Scotland was made in Kenya, so you could include this in a dessert. Milo icecream is excellent. Milo on a pav may be going too far though.
Lamb or Beef on a spit roast would be fine an appropriate.
Although we have excellent fisheries and varieties of fish, most Anglo-Aussies still proberly eat fish in the form of Fish and Chips. Grilled fish/prawns is always welcome.
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I definately will miss having access to Scottish langoustine, but the ability to choose prawns other then frozen farmed tiger prawns is great.
Since there are so many varities caught in Australia waters, we have been doing some taste tests. So far it is the Brown Tiger Prawns (Penaeus esculentus) that comes out on top to my mind, although my wife finds them a little too rich.
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There is also "The Escoffier Cookbook: Guide to the Fine Art of French Cuisine" which is an abridged version (not sure who did the translation).
There are also plenty of the 1965 translation on "Ma Cuisine" kicking about on ebay etc. One thing to be aware of is that the translations can be quite different to the original text. In the words of the "Ma Cuisine" editors
"Such gastronomic delights as frogs' legs and snails, for which France is justifiably famous, are included, and in many cases where ingredients are unobtainable outside France alternatives have been suggested, so that readers in the English speaking world may still enjoy the best of French cooking.".
I haven't had the chance to look through the 5000 recipes of "Escoffier: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery" to see if this is also the case.
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Have been here since December:
- BBQ sorted out now and in much use.
- Chillies: good supplies of dried chillies (and other central and south American products) for Mexican cooking at Casa Iberica in Fitzroy. Will have to grown my own to get fresh types. Tomatillo's of average quality sold at Vic market under name of "Chinese gooseberries".
- Excellent Middle-Eastern stores, butchers, bakeries etc on Sydney Rd.
- Ditto SE-Asian on Victoria St and Footscray.
- Not bad Malay food at Laksa King in Flemmington.
- Over all pretty happy with quality of fruit and veg (although variety is what is missing), very happy with the fish, not at all happy with the quality of the meat. Due to the drought there is a lot of cheap yearling beef about, but even accounting for this the meat is far too lean and not aged for any length of time. At the Prahran I actually watched a butcher cutting all the fat off a pile of rib roasts (and thereby making the end product pretty terrible). The irony is that beef marketed as 'wagyu' commands a large premium and it is heavily marbled. Will have to find a decent butcher that will produce the type of meat I want.
Still looking for a specialist Greek food store. Considering the large Greek population in Melbourne I am somewhat surprised about this.
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Perhaps it would be helpful for Italophiles to think of North America as an Italian culinary region. There are, after all, something in the neighborhood of 26 million Americans of Italian descent (as in, at least one Italian grandparent, a definition that would include Steven Anthony Shaw, aka Fat Guy, named for my grandfather Anthony Pugliese). That's more than any region of Italy, a country whose whole population is about 58 million.
This I think is what a lot of people perceive as a very American attiude (rightly or wrongly). My father was born in Australia, therefore I am of Croatian descent, but I am not Croatian. By descent I am also about 1/4 Scottish and I lived there for 6.5 years, but I'm not Scottish either. My son was born there, maybe that makes him Scottish? I'm not sure, but one thing that is certain is that one sure fire way of pissing off a local is for somebody to say "my great-great-great grandfather was from X, therefore I am an Xian".
I think that leaves Italian-Americans in a peculiar situation. By decent you might be 100, 50, 25 etc percent Italian and consider yourself culturally and Italian (-American), but in reference to the original country, I'm not sure that counts much to the people that remain there. In a country were much of the cuisine is intensely local, it must appear very odd for a group of people to say "this is an Italian recipe", with not reference to a particular region or custom. This isn't the same situation in some diversely spread populations, for instance colonies or ex-colonial cusines.
It might be a useful (and I think that it is) intellectual framework to consider Italian-Americans as being a seperate Italian region, but in practice this just doesn't work.
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In regards to food, I have never heard an Italian (in Italy) say "that dish X is not Italian". On many occassion I have heard then say "That dish is not Tuscan/Chiantian/from Gaioli/the way that my mother makes it". I don't think that there is much of a concept of "Italian" cooking in Italy itself.
I don't think that this is a specific Italian thing. Everybody does it. Americans with BBQ for instance. I once spent Christmas with some Canadians that insisted that I had ruined Christmas dinner by serving it in the evening and cooking roast pork for a main. In terms of my experience in Italy, my in-laws insist that the way that tripe is cooking in the next village (in a tomato sauce) is just not right (they serve is cold, with olive oil and salt/pepper). I think that this is pretty standard human behaviour and applies to attiudes other then food.
My Tuscan brother-in-law has moved to Melbourne for the last year. While he says that the food is good, he says that he rarely bothers to cook dishes that he is familar with from home as the raw ingredients are just too different. The lamb here is much older (and not milk fed), the pork has a very different fat content and is very pale, the zucchini are not the right type, the tomatos are fine, but the exact type he wants isn't here, the cuts of meat are completely different and dairy products are very different. A simply dish or braised zucchini* just doesn't turn out 'right' here.
I think that there is a different in acknowledging that a dish is just not correct, in terms of resemblance to familar item and being protective or exclusionary about a cuisine. The latter could be applied to comments by Americans in Australia that our BBQ are not really BBQ as they are actually grills. While this is certainly true, it doesn't take into account local history and usage of the word.
* the variety of zucchini used is called lungo fiorentino, it is different to most of the strains as the fruit is picked just as the flower opens, so it doesn't have time to explan after fertilization. The simple reason for this is that the unfertilized fruit is about 15 cm long (rather then a few cm in other varities). They have an intense flavour, firm un-fibrous texture, are not watery and have tiny seeds
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This may not prove completely reliable since we date Latini's tomato recipes in Naples to 1692 (sauces
?), more than a century and a half after the fruit had been introduced to Europe, however after tracing the early history of pasta, meatballs & sauces, At the very end of the 17th century Latini published a recipe in Naples that is rather similar in concept to a Mexican salsa (pretty much anybody who has seen the recipe makes the same observation), but not very similar to a cooked tomato sauce
Francesco Gaudentio's 1705 recipe is cooked and more similar to what we would recognise now. It also suggests that tomatos were much more widely accepted and cooked in Italy then is obvious from the records that exist.
The second edition 1797 Leonardi's work is often quoted as the first tomato and pasta sauce, but doesn't seem to be correct, as the recipe is for a tomato culi, without mention of pasta (I must check this for myself when the text becomes avalible). Some sources say that the first published example didn't occur until 1839! Italian's were migrating to America by this time, so it would be interesting to document pasta with tomato sauce in America.
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2) "Yankee Doodle went to town aridin' on a pony..." There was macaroni in these here parts for quite some time long before Ellis Island gained significance. There might be some intersections to explore regarding the kinds of dishes that were prepared before large waves of Italian immigrants arrived in the United States.
In the song, "macaroni" has nothing to do with pasta. It was a reference to a club of dandies in London. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_..._18/ai_95150309
The Dandy part is correct, but there is a pasta connection.
This chap was quite American wasn't he?
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I read the article, and wasn't offended much. I think however, that if she had written about the food history of a Thai family, and then published their recipe for pad thai which included ketchup, I'd have been offended.
It's all about frame of reference...
Oddly I have a few bilingual SE-Asina cookbooks published in Singapore or Malaysia, where tomato ketchup seems to be a relatively common ingredient in noodle dishes. Its use in pad thai is something I don't know about however.
I don't use dried basil (I don't like the anise flavour that it has), but have been in Italy and Spain often enough to know that somebody is using it quite a bit as it is pretty common to see it on sale, ranging from supermarkets to little peasant ladies selling it in old jam jars.
I can't see that much to offend me (and I am easy to offend), but interestingly it pushes some people's buttons. Italian mountains? "Driving though the Scottish moors" doesn't imply that there is only one moor in Scotland, so I don't see that fault in the article. Maybe it would be better to say 'Driving though mountains in Italy', but really this seems like looking for a fault to me.
I'm liked the article well enough. My personal preference is for more data and personal story line, but that isn't nature of this article I would have thought.
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Interesting article. I think that it is a common theme for immigrant families, the food of home is not possible to replicate in the new country and due to the abundance of meat, dishes that were once for special occassions become everyday dishes.
One thing that I am curious about is spaghetti with meatballs. OK it is an Italian-American dish, but I'm surprised by how quitely it is adopted by Italian families in America. The authors mother was 1st/2nd generation and yet this seems to be a standard family dish.
Also, I know that spaghetti and meatballs is called an American dish, but in many european cuisines, forcemeat balls where a very common garnish for grander dishes. Is this the case here, a festive ragu etc has been transformed into an everyday dish and in the process lost all the addional ingredients, except the meatballs?
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In the 4 months since I've moved to America, I've gone through 500mL of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 200mL of peanut oil, 300mL of duck fat, 400gm of butter and around 700gm of bacon fat. Pretty much all of the EVOO was used in salad dressings so virtually all my cooking is done with animal fats.
I pretty much never use pre-rendered fats anymore. If I am searing chuck for a braise, I will trim all the large chunks of fat off and render that in the pan while I prep everything else. I then use the rendered beef fat to sear the meat and pour off any excess into the bin. Most other dishes, I'll start with a rasher or 2 of bacon and render it out in the same manner. One great tip I've found is to use far more fat than is actually needed to sear something. The extra fat tempers any hot spots you have in the pan and gets deep into the nooks and crannies of the meat giving a superior sear. Once you've finished searing, just pour any excess fat out and let it cool before disposing of it.
The taste of animal fat just cant be beat for getting warm, rich flavours into a dish when used judiciously.
Shalmanese: Have you found that US bacon is far more fatty than AU bacon? As you know, our fattiest cuts are the "middle bacon" with fat and rind attached, and the "normal" bacon is short cut which is pretty much just the loin (very lean). The middle bacon seems to be the loin with a little bit of the belly attached to the end.
Australian meat in general is extremely (far too lean). I've discussed this with various people and the consensus seems to be that the main factor is the modern health consciences diet, with part of the driving force behind this being the very successful decade of heart awareness campaigns.
So yesterday I was at the Prahran market watching the butchers cut all the fat off the steaks and roasts. Rib roasts seem popular, but most of the roasts I saw had all of the external fat removed. I can't see any conventional domestic way of cooking a joint like this without it being very dry. Another thing to note is the huge amount of marinaded meat that is sold, in part to counteract the tendency of very lean meat to dry out.
Like the UK, pig growers receive finacial penalties if there is too much fat on the carcass, depending on where you are it can be as low as 11 mm of fat. There has also been a move promote breeds of pig that have more muscle bundles. Much of the loin cut bacon you get now will have this little round fillet sitting in the fat layer, 20 years ago this feature was very rare. If you have access to cookbooks from around the '30's you will see streaky bacon that is mostly fat with a few pink stripes of meat, not the reverse is true.
The punt and its history in glass
in Wine
Posted
Cork oaks have been around for a long time and there is evidence that it has been used sporadically though in the last few thousand years as a closure, but widespread use of it as a closure in wine bottles is largely an 18th century phenomena.
Without widespread use of quality cork closures in Champagne, then the punt isn't of much use. I'm not sure when cork became the closure of choice in Champagne, but didn't the Dom die at the begining of the 18th century?