Adam Balic

Dinner. Pork was marinated with ground chipotle, maple syrup, cumin, tomato, all spice and achiote. Served with salsa, sour cream and salad. Yum.

If I make Moussaka, as there are two of us I mostly make it in the form of Papoutsakia (little shoes/slippers) like this: Papoutsakia for instance, I used oregano, all spice cinnamon and a tiny bit of pine honey. ← This is an absolutely charming way to serve moussaka. Do you scoop out most of the flesh from the aubergine, and if so, do you then fry it and mix it through the mince? It strikes me as being a really great way of serving it for say a dinner party (rather than presenting a lovely, large moussaka and watching it splodge into gloop on the plate as it is served). ← I can't claim an original idea, this is from Rosemary Barron's excellent "Flavours of Greece". She describes this as a private home variation. You half the eggplant, salt it, fry it off then bake it. The flesh is extracted and added to the meat sauce. She also has a great suggestion for the white sauce. Egg yolks are added and mixed through, then the whipped whites are olded through. Makes for a very light textured sauce.

Another of my favorite stores in Edinburgh, "Lupe Pintos". As you can see they supply Mexican and Spanish ingredients (and some North American classics). These people are brilliant. Friendly, euthusiastic, helpful and great produce. Unfortunately, do to English weather I couldn't get the fresh chillies, tomatilla or epazote that I wanted for tonight's meal. I was going to have tortilla with beef steak and grilled poblano strips. Instead, it will be grilled pork steak with red chilli sauce. Mexican cuisine is something I have only learnt a little about recently and I love it. Until exposure on egullet and other sites my experience had been of universally crap food. I mostly make a cooked red salsa, as I like how the bitterness of the chilli is removed in this process. The chillies I am using today are left to right: Ancho, Pasilla, Cascabel and Guajillo. I like this combination of chilli a lot. Really fruity and complex flavours. The only other additions are a tiny bit of cinnamon and tomato puree.

Yeah. . .I just noticed that! Thank you so much for bringing it to my attention! Quite an interesting compositon there. Hmmmm. But aren't those TWO tongues? Bold, you are. Or else it is some historic Medieval recipe I've just never read up on. . . ← Two tongues yes. These are Stag tongues that a friend gave me. I then brined them.

You forgot to mention the tongue . I don't think that I could ever be a professional chef. Aside from my age and the training required, from the very little I know about it, it looks like a hugh amount of work, stupid hours and I suspect for most, just not that rewarding. Also, as much as I am interested in food, I am much more interested in other aspects of it then personally cooking for strangers. I am very interested in food culture, but I'm just not that interested in the restaurant side of things. For those with an interest in food writing, restuarant reviewing seems to be the most productive and marketable. Realistically unless you are independently wealthy, a job has to support you and yours. Again I think that given the amount of sacrifice and work involved, it is not something I could do as I am just not interested enough in reviewing restaurants. My interests in food, although broad, are largely my own and I don't think that they are of hugh interest most people, even those that are interested in food. So in this regard I think it is best to accept that it is better to remain an enthusiastic amateur, rather then ‘a mere dilettante’. But, I tell you what. If I suddenly came into independent wealth, I would use the freedom of it to research and hopefully contribute something worth while and interesting. People will never know enough about their relationship with food and I am thankful to, and envious of, those authors that have enriched my experience of this totally absorbing topic.

Well I though I would go a little ethnic for lunch today. I had a British prawn sandwich. As far as I am aware were don't have these in Australia and when I first saw mention of one in the UK I thought it was a joke. It is one of the better choices at the capus sandwicharia, lacking the cat food taste of corned beef, the rendered fat texture of the pâte (pronounced "Patty" locally) and the industrial vinegar burn of tuna mayo. Unfortunately the poor littel buggers have to take a post-mortem swim in a sea of Hellmans finest, but other then that not real complaints.

Mexican, weather permitting. The chillis are only picked by the supplier in Devon if it hasn't rained the night before. At the moment it seems like a 50:50 chance of Mexican tonight. Texan? I thought you were American.

RE: Cheese and bringing back food from holidays. We nearly always bring back a great deal of food and related material from holidays. My pantry is full of honey, jams, vinegars, oils and spices and my fridge is full of cheese, salami and other bits and pieces. My holidays never end in this way really. From a recent Spanish trip I bought back this lot. Left to right is salted pork skin, dried serrano ham knuckles and a block of salted lard. These are for stews etc. Due to the limited amounts of each, stew recipe has to be pretty special to be "skin/knuckle/lard" worthy.

Well it started life as a hugh block of soft relatively fresh cheese that I bought back from Lipari. Over the last 2 years it has dried out to much the same constistancy as parmesan/aged pecorino (looks an unattractive grey colour). As far as I can tell the salt really only pentrated the surface layers (long gone, I have only a small nugget left), so what I get is a sheep milk cheese flavour, similar to Manchego.

I'm impressed! Are the changes mainly intuitive tweaks or do you try out something completely new regularly? ← A bit of both. I read through cookbooks and other food related books most nights and there is always something that makes me think "I should really make this". And there are more interesting dishes in the world then I will ever be able to cook in a lifetime. But I do like to cook a steak every so often too.

Sorry, I meant do you plan to travel there and do one of your famous pictorials? And do Vietnamese! You already have the chili paste on hand. ← Kevin I have no plans to go to North Africa in the immediate future (Who are your sources? They are rubbish ). Northern Scotland in a week and Greece in September. Is that good enough. Bad news on the Vietnamese front, I will explain later.

I like Leith and the The Shore. When the weather is good we often go down to Leith and have a few beers outside. I also like Daniel's, because I like the bizarreness of an Alsatian bistro in Edinburgh, but mostly because I really like tart flambe.

Mmmhh, garganelli al ragu, simply delicious. I'll keep my mouth shut regarding the ricotta . Did you make the pasta yourself? ← If I say "No" will you hold it against me?

You mean "101 ways with mince"? Usually, serve as is tonight, but if I have guests I will make papadelle to go with it. Or I will use it to make lasagna, stuff cannelloni or Moussaka. The lasagna is either a Northern Italian version or a more free form Sicillian "shitty lasagna". If I make Moussaka, as there are two of us I mostly make it in the form of Papoutsakia (little shoes/slippers) like this: Or sometimes I alter it into a chili or other such thing. Edit: Obviously I don't use the same flavouring for all these. In this Papoutsakia for instance, I used oregano, all spice cinnamon and a tiny bit of pine honey.

Hey buddy, I prefer "devil's advocate" to "inherent western paternalism". As for Mr P. and cuisine. This isn't just his position, earlier in the week there was a discussion on "Cuisine" v "Kitchen" where it was proposed that the worlds cusines were French, Chinese and Italian. I have no opinion on such things as I don't understand the discussion.

Partial bus strike and not a bad late summer's day by local standards, so I grabbed a coffee after the gym and walk into work. It's not a bad thing when you go past a castle every morning to work.

No, you are correct it is green Joradnian Z'atar and iti is a dry mix. It contians roasted wheat, thyme, sumac, coriander seeds and sesame. I use it to dip bread into, flavour couscous or mix with butter to place under the skin of roasted chicken.

Ragu is pretty much done. Meat is soft but not mushy, liquid is nice and rich. While the pasta is draining, I take the fatty part of the sauce and pot it in the pasta pot to fry on high heat for a few minutes. This seperates the fat (which is mostly in emulsion), so when I add the pasta it gets coated in flavoured fat. It also adds another flavour element. The pasta is then added, more sauce is added and mixed though. My wife will have parmesan, I will have salted ricotta with it. Salad and Black Hamburgh Muscat grapes for dessert and that is dinner.

No, not really. I read and I think 'who is that twat?' and damn it, that twat is me.

After conferencing with the wife, final additions are: rosemary, thyme, oregano and parsely. At this point I check for seasoning. If it neads salt, I add salt, if it is bland I add a touch of red wine vinegar or a pinch of sugar.

OK. I have decided to make it into a vague Southern Italian thing. Normally, I would add these, which are the best capers I have had, obtained on a trip to Lipari (an Aeolian island, Sicily), but not tonight as I want to use the left over sauce for something else. So I will add garlic, chilli and this herb mix my wife got at the Syracuse market in Sicily. We have little idea what is in it (a few things are obvious), and it tastes more North African then Italian.

Pie was complete filth. Sadly, no pie this blog did consider a suet crust dumpling pie, but then remembered that it is summer. Anniversary. Yay.

Tonight and tommow night are the last nights I will cook. On friday I will be cooked for at a friends house (they are very scared about being on a blog ). I don't feel like cooking North African, so not this time. Tomorrow I will do either Mexican or Vietnamese, depending on the views of a higher authoritory.

At this point it doesn't look good, but it gets turned down to simmer and left for about two hours. This is standard, but sometimes I do variations on the theme: - 100% pork with rosemary cooked in chicken broth and white winewith not tomato or milk (recreated from a meal in Florence). - 100% pork sausage is cooked with porchini and cream - As tonight (without the ingredients I will add later), but with chicken livers. - 100% pork with cream, fennel and white wine.

Once the contents have fried to the point I want, I add a few more main ingredients. (apart from tomatoes that is) Some cheap wine and the most expensive milk I can get. Slightly more milk then wine. At this point I also add a few primary flavours, bay leaves, nutmeg and pepper. Nutmeg and bay leaves taste similar and I like the way they create a sort of backdrop for other flavours.