Adam Balic

I guess my cooking coud be called undisciplined contemporary Australian cooking. Although, not in Australia as it sounds a bit poncy. I come from Melbourne, which is incredibly multi-ethnic. This is an easy term to use, often people talk about in relation to London for instance, but on a per capita basis, Melbourne has much more diversity. Anyway, I am comfortable with lots of different types food and I like to cook. So although I have ~ 300 cookbooks, only two of these are chefs books, the vast majority being along the lines of "The cooking of SW-France", "Imperial Mongolian Cuisine", "Sicilian cooking" etc etc. So the best advise I have is cook, read, vist markets, talk to people about their food and cook some more. A very good place to start bookwise is with Grub street publishing (scroll down to 3. World Cookery Series) for instance. * edit: Just to be clear, I have nothing against Chef cookbooks, just explaining my experiences. Infact, I would like more of these books as they are strong on technique, which is what I and many of my cookbooks lack.

Damn, how did you guess? Crispy bits on side of gratin dish were infact delicious. Maybe be there is a market for cream and potato starch "crackling". Oh, my God. I just invented vegetarian/Kosher/Halal pork scratchings. I am going to be rich I tell you.

Never, my memory card isn't that big.

Well here is the finished product (observe restaurant quality plating ). I didn't tell anybody about the chocolate and nobody guessed. There was some discussion on 'really beefy flavour'. Braised oxtail with chocolate sauce, garnished with sauted mushrooms, pancetta and oregano gremolata. And potato potatoes dauphinoise.... We also had a salad of bitter leaves with toasted walnuts and a hot dressing of pancetta and red wine vinegar (pancetta sauted until fat is rendered out, red wine vinegar added to hot fat, this used to dress the salad). Dessert was an Australian classic "Lemon delicious pudding". It is a very simply self saucing pudding, during the cooking it stratifies, so you get a light cake on the top, a thick lemon custard layer and a thing custard sauce. I used too little mixture in too large a dish, so there was less of the latter then I would have liked. Still Yummo though.

More help with Australianisms. "cack-handed in the kitchen" = Thank you for the kind comments though......

OK, now is when we go out on a limb. As I said after this long cooking process, the liquid looks insipid, clear and a vague pale yellowish-brown in colour. I coulld have made a seperate sauce. Didn't, so I have adapted aTuscan technique for making a sauce for wild boar. First make a light caramel Add some red wine vinegar and reduce to a light syrup. Add a small amount of dark bitter chocolate Only a small amount is required. Due to the saltiness of the chocolate, it is best to reduce the base sauce first, then add the chocolate mixture until the correct colour/flavour is reached. You shouldn't taste the chocolate and in this case I have restricted the amount of sugar so that it isn't sweeten to the palate, it just tastes richer.

Alrighty then. For better, for worse the oxtail has completed it's cooking. Collagen broken down, check; Pinkness retained, check; Meat not dried out, check. Will now have to do something with the sauce now. Mental note to self: All those times that you considered making a stockpile of demi-glaze and didn't do it? You were right to think that you would regret it later.

The thought has not escaped me that I really should have thought throught this announcing what I am going to cook. Just forget about all that discussion which demonstrates my obvious cack-handedness in the kitchen and imagine that I said: "Tonight I will be cooking Oxtail. Was quite happy with the result, but I think I can do better next time"* * Applogies to tomcbell for nicking his excellent image.

I guess that the S shaped curve is measuring the rate of denaturation v temp, rather then % of denaturation v temp as well, which complicates things. I would never have guessed that my grandmothers had such an intuitive grasp of mathematics. Next time I see them I wil have to ask them about what level quantum uncertainty they find in their bread making. No wonder grandma Balic never liked Schrödinger.

Well I am a complete amateur in regards to this, so all advise is most welcome. My understanging was that collagen denatures at about 60C/140F? Are you saying that it will break down at lower temperatures as well. In otherwords I had though of the break down of collagen to gelatin as having something of a typical S shaped curve, are you saying it is linear? What I find difficult is the application of detailed chemisty like breakdown of collagen to gelatin with application at a macro level. Can knowing how a cut of meat cooks, help in knowing how another will react, without empirical testing? For instance doe the large amount of collagen and bone in a oxtail insulate the meat more then in other cuts?

Lunch today is cold tofu with Laosichuan pickles (mustard tuber, turnip, kohirabi, asparagus lettuce, cowpea, celery and chillies). I mostly have a combination like this or soup for lunch during the week.

The restaurant was "Muang Thai" (Hanover street). I have been here several times now, and while some dishes have been disapointing, I have had by far the best Thai dishes in Edinburgh here as well. No the most exiciting decor either, I'm not really bothered by this. A disapointing dish was the mussels as they were frozen New Zealand greenlips -no excuse for this in Scotland, good dishes were the lap/larb and the prik dishes. Some really heat in these. I also like the fact that the curries are (as far as I am able to judge) correctly made. The red curry is rich with coconut milk, the jungle curry is coconut milkless, rather then having a choice of some halfway bastard versions like many of the other places in Edinburgh.

I can't be bothered. When I have been enthusiastic....Something like that? Brum I know, but Balti? ← Tah Maggie. Re: "Can't be arsed". It could be an Australianism ("I don't give a rat's arse" and "Running around like a blue arsed fly" definately are), but it seems to be popular in the UK as well. For more tips on how to use this phrase on the internet click here (only if you can be arsed).

Too late she cried waving her wooden leg. But thank you (looked at your eGCI course an made at 'best guess' at the oxtail) The problem is that the dynamics of the reactions horribly complicated an knowledge of how one cut of meat cooks, doesn't nessarily translate to another. Collagen breaks down at at set temperature, but I it also takes energy to do this. With really collagen rich cut like the tail, that is a lot of energy that has to be put it, mean while the muscle fibres get more dried out. I have a really neat temperature probe, which I have been using to note down how various cuts cook, but as this was an overnight cooking, there was no point.

Well after 8 hours at 60.C the meat on the oxtail pieces is still contracted and far too tough to eat. This is to be expected as the collagen in the connective tissue should not have broken down yet. The stew is now cooling and after work I will defat the liquid and cook the stew at a higher tempeature to break down the collagen to lip smacking gelatin. I am hoping that the very high connective tissue will buffer the texture of the meat, so that it doesn't feel dried out. I wonder if a shorter (3-4 hours) cooking time at a higher temperature would be better (not a popular theory at the moment) for this particular cut of meat. One interesting thing that seems to happen at this low temperature is that all the colour is extracted out of the red wine and usually complexs with the protein scum that floats to the top of the fat layer. The remaining liquid is extremely clear (most likely due to the lack of aggetated movement in the liquid which would incourage tiny particles to become suspended in the liquid) and if I fussed about enough I guess you could have a clear broth that tasted of red wine, but what I think I might do is to reduce the liquid, colour it with chocolate and thicken it with butter at the end to give it a nice shine and some body. With all the dissolved gelatin it should 'feel' thick on the tongue, but if I make it look a more luscious then this should add to the effect. That's what I am thinking anyway.

Well back from Birmingham, where I saw possibly the best game of test match cricket for a decade and I went to a Balti house. As far as I can tell it is a way of making curries which originated in Birmingham, not sure of the exact details, but it is named after the dish it is cooked and served in. Sort of a sizzling hot plate type effect in the end. The Balti houses are quite interesting, ranging from pretty modest places, to more up market joints. However, the vast majority are BYO and amazingly cheap. While making our minds up, we were given these onion bhaji. In the end we chose a 'chef's special' (loads of coriander and lemon) and a more traditional Madras curry. Both good and long with naan, rice and a jug of Lassi, this cost us £11 a head. Bargin. Our other meals in Brum were this Curry Laska from the startling in appearance Selfridges. I love curry laska and have had it only once in the last 2 years. This one was OK, but not quite right. I really must make it myself. Infact, the only really bad food we had was the Full English Breakfast, were my request for a poached egg was met with complete confusion "Chef doesn't know how to do that". Well chef did attempt it and chef fucked it up quite royally, my plate was swimming in water. And the airport dinner. This is what I got after waiting in line for half an hour. It represented one very few choices of hot food (other then Burger King). In a city that has invented the Balti, why do they serve this crap? There was no Balti at the airport or any Sub-Continental food at all. What a crime. Right plane was late, it is after 12:00 and I have just browned some oxtail, put it into a pot with red wine and aromatics and poped into the oven at 60.C. Hopefully, it will be done by dinner tomorrow.

Right I am off to Birmingham to watch a game of cricket. Guess what dish created in this city that I will be eating tonight. As I am cooking for guests on Monday I have one cooking task to do, that is to marinate some ox-tail in red wine. I will put this in the oven on sunday night to slowly braise.

Well, breakfast is a couple of dry biscuits with vegemite, cofffe and pain killers. Dinner was only for six last night, which is unusual. Cooking for six is as much work as 8-10 (but my wife claims it is easier to clean up after), but you get to cook less things, so it isn't as interesting. We started with dips and a few bubbles... So here is the fish. People really, really liked the Lebanese stuffing and I should have made much more. The fish had a good flavour, but there was very little of it. For a 45 cm fish, it had very little flesh, being mostly spines, spikes and fangs. Not a good image of the lamb. The lamb was braised in lamb stock (made from the bones), tomato and a few spices for 6 hours at 120.C. At this point I added the burghul (which was toasted in oil/butter), sealed the lid and cooked it like a pilau. Lamb was pink and tender etc, wheat was really tasty, so I was happy. We had this salad. Next time I would cut up the pitta into smaller pieces. My original idea was to use the bread as a scoop, but this was stupid. Dessert was very simple, melon marinated in white port, orange flower water and mint. More drained yoghurt with Tasmania Leatherwood honey and raspberries.

I cooked the stuffing mixture until done. Eh, cooked onions until translucent, added walnuts until toasted and the onions where golden brown, but not burnt. Added the rest of the ingredients an cooked it down. I do this because it is easier to stuff with a solid, rather then a liquid and I want these specific flavours, not raw flavours.

Right, now for a bit of information. While I was cleaning up, I started tossing out various veg that I couldn't remember buying (never a good sign), while I was doing this, I came across these. Both are sweet potatoes, yes, both are the purple skinned, pale fleshed type, yes, so they must taste the same. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The one on the right is by far the better type. It tastes of butter and sweet chestnuts with a non-mealy texture. It comes from New Zealand and is known as a "kumara", it can be identified by the violet colour of the skin (rather then dull purple), which you can see when you scratch it with a fingernail. For those in the UK, it can from Sainsburys of all places.

Have been feeling rubbish all day, but now feel better after a fortifing toasted bagel and Baba Ghannooge Cods always look sad, but their heads are excellent in Singapore Fishhead Curry, and if you get a head an shoulders they roast well (and look darn scary on the table). Thanks for the Rum information, I really appreciate it. I have never paid much attention to it as Bundy and Coke was the drink of thugs in my home town, and in Scotland there are Malts to attact. But they once drank Rum in quantity in Scotland too. This is a Regency recipe and started my interest in Rum. You may or may not know my interest in historic cooking, in one Scottish meal I made I was looking for a pre-dinner drink that was, well, not shortbread tinny. This fitted the bill: Right I have made a few dips for dinner tonight. I was going to make a few other things (I always over cater, sometimes dramtically so), but have been out of for most of the day. What we have here is Baba Ghannooge, Hommus bi-Tahineh (a bit lumpy) and drained (for 48hrs) yoghurt with mint. I will dress them later. Dip for punters: Blow torch works real well on eggplant for Baba Ghannooge.

Normally I would use foil, vines leaves, banana leaves or wet newspaper. Fig leaves are excellent if you can get them, makes the fish smell of vanilla. Depends on the fish though. Sea bream type fish like this seem to be less sensitive to drying out. I am considering basting this fish, so at the moment it just sitting here looking at me. I can debone, but in this case I choose not to debone as I can't be arsed. When I have been arsed, I have had the most luck with deboning from the dorsal surface, not the belly. Also, some fish seem to taste better with bones. I really like Hake cooked on the bones as I like the slightly gelatinous richness that this gives.

The household is ill today, so I am working from home. Lunch was from the previously discussed Valvona and Crolla. Scotland has an established Italian community (not that you would know from the standard of the Italian restuarants in Edinburgh) and this Deli was set up by the present owners family in the 1930's. It has an extremely good range of produce and actually trucks in fresh produce from the Milan market every week (I think). No feeling very hungry, so I just had this roll. I have also done a little prep work for tonights dinner. Lamb shoulder was deboned and marinated overnight in lemon juice, olive oil with garlic, mint, cumin and all spice. This has been spread open and coated with a cooked mixture of walnuts, tomato, barbarberries, cinnamon and cumin. After being tied up, it will be braised in the oven. The fish tonight will be stuffed with a mixture, very vaguely, based on the Lebanese Samkeh Harrah:onion, coriander (ground and green), walnuts, pinenuts, garlic, sumac and lemon juice. Actually my only major departure from the Lebanese dish is that I also used the peel from some Egyptian pickled limes (the label says "lemons", but they are definately limes). These contain nigella seeds and safflower (for colour). They taste like Persian dried limes, but are easier to work with. Stuffed to the gills.

Jonathan - Edinburghs food has improved even in the five years I have been. But it still has a long way to go. The light at this time of the year is amazing in the twilight. I suspect that it is doe to the latitude as you get an amazing blue light quality, especially nice to see in the New Town. V&C original store is at the end of our street, I have a love/hate relationship with them. Love the produce, hate that it is often not stored well (or maybe it is a turn over thing). It is sad to see the state that some of the amazing cheese they have ends up in. Other then that I can't complain, it is a very good resource.

These are pea eggplants. Very bitter, but I like them in rich currys to cut through the sweetness of the coconut milk. Not everybody agrees on this point though.