Adam Balic

Pristine and white I can do without. I look forward to Waitrose if it actually increases the amount of decent food vendors in Edinburgh, however if it is simply a better version of M&S (which is what the food section of the Edinburgh Harvey Nicks turned into) and it takes away customers from smaller independent stores that already sell good product, then I can do without that.

I think thaqt it could be argued that Orange Roughy Stocks are not longer under utilized. I'm curious about the nitrogen freezing - is this liquid nitrogen excluded oxygen or have a initial very low temperature freeze? Also, how widespread is this with the green lipped mussels? We have excellent local (Scottish) blue mussels, but occasionally green lips crop up in dishes, the last time I had them was about 6 months ago and the lack of quality was very obvious. I have enjoyed fresh green lips in NZ, so I have nothing against them.

I've had them fresh in New Zealand and frozen in various places around the planet. Fresh they are quite good, they tend to be on the large size but are sweet in flavour. Frozen, they tend to end up tough and fishy in most cases. As for blues mussels, the Atlantic species Mytilus edulis is excellent, at it's best plump and sweet. The closely related M. galloprovincialis is also good, but can be bitter (maybe more to do with location - Med. sea and Australia then species). Horse Mussels (Modiolus modiolus) are much larger and tend to be tough but a good wrapped in bacon and grilled. At the end of the day freshness is more important then species I think. I wouldn't choose to eat frozen mussels if they are a main ingredient. Also, location seems to make a big difference in flavour.

Another traditional English pudding, "Burnley Pie" from Lancashire. This area is particularly rich in regional recipes and there are quite a few that use dried figs like this pudding (for instance "Fag Pie"). It is very similar in flavour to 'Sticky Date pudding'.

Dude, I do not do "liquids", as liquids are the Devil's spunk.

Spinach - full of toxic oxalic acid. In fact all vegatables as they are full of lectins, phytotoxins and enzymes. All nuts and pulses for similar reasons. All fish, wild stocks are at crisis point and I'll be buggered if I will eat tilapia, might as well eat frigging goldfish. All other seafood, these are either filter feeders or scavengers, how revolting is that. All poultry, full of disease organisims and gives you breasts. All animal derived red meat, obviously this is a mine field of the potentially fatal. Find out more about diet in my new book "Yeast extract for well being".

I look forward to Waitrose, but I notice that the location of the stores in in the two parts of town that actually have a decent selction of shops. Stockbridge has an excellent butcher and fishmonger, I hope that this will not result in the these places closing - which I think is likely given the popularity of places like "The Store". Obviously, one is in favour of the freemarket economy that will solve all the worlds problems, but I would rather not have Waitrose with clean shiney surfaces, no chit-chat with the staff and decent opening hours, if it means that the only fish I can buy is not actually as good quality or interesting as what I can get now. Ditto with all the other fresh produce.

OK, after some smooth talking down at the Deli, I now have the rind and fat from an entire Prosciutto di San Danielle. I used the fat in the gulasch, but any other suggestiosn for a traditional usage (nothing lewd mind you).

There are very few species of commerically harvested clams in Australia. The most common is the rather small (often tough, bitter and sandy) "pipi".

The old English term for the the first milk after calving is 'beestings' or 'beastlyns', odd how similar the words are. A more modern term is 'colostrum'.. The way it was used in England was to dilute it somewhat and warm it to blood temperature, after which it would set to a rich curd.

We get farmed Red deer in Scotland, which is very good (people bang on about how much gamey/better wild deer is better then farmed, but I imagine that these people have never had to eat a wild stag tasting of pure testosterone and musk). This roe deer is wild. They are quite different tasting animals, not even that closely related. I thought that your animal might of been a chamois as Pontarmo suggested, but I was too tired to look up the Italian for it at the time. Turns out to be 'Camoscio', so no help. Also, the Chamois is more like a goat in shape, although it has its own genus.

Cervo just means "deer" I think. The deer Family is "Cervidae" and the root is common to many if the Romance languages. All the deer meat I have seen in Italy seems to be Roe deer (I'm sure there are others though?). I prefer roe over red deer venison and this is what my butcher sells. Roe deer are quite small, with unimpressive antlers and not that elegant looking, like other types so maybe you saw a stuffed roe? Could be some type of alpine goat/sheep thing?

Roe deer, to be authentic . Good, 'cause I used caraway.

Leftover Gulasch di Cervo. I have been making a few different types of goulash over the last year, this is one of the more interesting tasting ones. I think that the red wine and vinegar give a lift to what can be a rather heavy dish. One issue I have is that the online sources I looked at suggest 'cumin', surely caraway seeds are more likely? Once again it suffers from brown food syndrome, but you known what, brown food often tastes very nice.

Since one of the Dutch words for them was "walghvogel" ('disgusting bird') it seems unlikely that they tasted very good.

According to Marco Polo, Unicorn most likely tasted exactly the same as the sumatran rhinoceros "They have wild elephants and plenty of unicorns, which are scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. They have a single large, black horn in the middle of the forehead. They do not attack with their horn, but only with their tongue and their knees; for their tongues are furnished with long, sharp spines, so that when they want to do any harm to anyone they first crush him by kneeling upon him and then lacerate him with their tongues." Closer to Europe, it most like tasted like Giant Sable Antelope or Oryx.

1182. To cure Hams.-.....To each large ham allow half a pound of bay salt, two ounces of saltpetre, eight ounces of coarse sugar and half-pound of common salt, with four ounces of Jamaica and Black pepper, and one of coriander seed. pound all ingredients and heat and mix them well; but first rub in six ounces of the salt and the saltpetre, and after two days the rest of the salt and spices. Rub for half an hour. Lay the hams in a trough;-keep them carefully covered, and baste them with brine every day, or oftener;-turn them occasionally. [Although. no mention is made in this recipe, from others in this section the ham lies in the brine for 3-4 weeks] 1186. Mutton-hams.-Proceed as at No.1182, using for one ham a fourth oth the salt, but half of the spices and sugar. Rub the ham well with the hot pounded salts.-[Obs.] Ram mutton, though disliked at the table, is when good, thought to make the best flavoured hams. In the Highlands, dried junipers are used in curing mutton hams. No sort of meat is more improved by smoking with aromatic woods then mutton. Mutton-hams, when dried, will keep long enough, but scarely improve after six months. This is from "The Cook and Housewifes Manual" by Meg Dods (1829; Edinburgh).

I was given some Sichuan peppercorns by a student from guizhou, they are very potent and do not caontain any of the black seeds. If any UK based person would like a sample then PM me.

How interesting. Historically, Mutton hams where produced in the UK, it was quite a common trade item from Scotland to England. They were usually smoked. I have a few recipes for them, if you are interested I could post these.

As Sam mentioned, I'm sure it would be fine. The traditional hard-shelled quahogs Mercenaria mercenaria have actually been natralized in England (they like the warm waters around power plant outlets), not sure about your part of he world. In your part of the world "Sandmusling" are what in the USA are called softshelled clams. Not sure it these are good for chowder though. I plan to use razor clams, which are cheap and plentiful here.

What is the major purpose of the salt pork, as a source of cooking fat or as a flavour. Would a good substitiute be a combination of salted fat back and bacon?

Certainly, there is a move towards leaner pork in the UK and Australia. I worked in a piggery while going through university and the thickness of the backfat was measured by ultrasound. They were aiming to get a minimum level, but slightly under this level was detrimental to the animals health, so obviously this is a problem. This is a pig from Lithuania were lard is still a major source of cooking fat. The depth of the backfat was 50-70 mm, rather then 17-20 mm in Australia.

The Scots are British also and have been quite capable on the doing bad things to others and themselves and are historically much more diverse then the move to emphasize all thing Celtic would suggest. Shetland places a great deal of emphasize on their Norse history Click, so the Blackwoods thing is not surprising. As for the gins, well I like them a great deal. Very individual, many gins talk about botanicals blah blah, but in the vast majority of cases the major flavour is always juniper berries. The Blackwoods is not in this catagorie, it has a very individual flavour profile in many ways more similar to Alpine herbal liquors, then any other gin I have had. Did I mention that I will become British (Scottish?) in a week and a half?

Sounds interesting. I have this little book called "Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens", which has recipes for fish, scallop, corn and lobster chowders, so I will give one of these a go. A question, what exactly is salt pork (cut, cure, ration of fat to lean etc) and what would be a good substitute?

If you force lard deep into a roast it will not melt, unless you like a very high internal temperature. Up until the development of the enclosed domestic oven, roasting was done in front of an open source of heat, usually on some type of spit arrangement. When you 'roast' in the oven, it is actually what would have been called 'baked' meat. The two type of cooking are quite different, the former has a high radiant heat componant and this is most relavant of larding and barding, as it helps to keep the surface of the meat cool, and prevent it from drying out, while the interior of the meat heats up and cooks. There are numerous historical illustrations and descriptions of how to lard meat, these indicate the the lard is inserted at a shallow angle, with much of the lard actually on the outside of the meat. This makes sense if you want to keep the surface of the meat cool. Even cuts of meat like a fillet, which are tender and don't need internal lubrication, where larded like this. Another purpose was to add flavour and this is mostly what is done now as, drying out of the meat in an oven isn't such a big deal. This was done historically by rolling the lard strips in herbs/spices or in some case inserting things like strips of Seville orange peel or even anchovies instead of lard. Obviously, in this latter case there is not going to be any 'internal' lubrication of the meat. In this modern setting, if you want to deeply lard a chunk of meat, you are much better off using strips of bacon ("Lardons"), rather then backfat, unless you really like large chunks of fat through rare roast. Barding is also a good way of keeping the surface of meat cool and moist, and unless uou have a very fine larding needle and a lot of time, larding game birds would actually be counter productive as it would disrupt the flesh too much. The reason why larding/barding was more common then using caul, is that fat is a year round prodcut and always on hand, caul was much more finite and mostly only avalible around the time a pig was killed. Obviously, this issue is no longer a problem.