origamicrane

thats not too bad these private kitchen do charge £50+/head They are usually an 8 course family service meal consisting of new dishes and luxury items that you just won't see in a normal restuarant. So what's on the menu?

There's quite a buzz about private home kitchen restaurants in hong kong where retired chefs and home cooks would open up their homes for paying customers a few nights a week and cook really REAL home cooking. I wonder if that could ever catch on in London?

apathy... can't be bothered.... maybe the forum has exhausted all interesting discussion on London's current restaurants?

it's the low season and there hasn't been many new openings lately. There a new chinese restaurant in chinatown called New China, it's pretty good, a cut above the rest of chinatown and is on par to the Chinese Experience restaurant. anyone know of any new opening in london?

part of me (the conspiracist side) is wondering if the different names was a deliberate attempt at disassociating the animal from the meat? maybe one day farmer John accidentally ran over and cooked up little Timmy's pet sheep Daisy. When little Timmy asked "Where's Daisy gone?" farmer John replied "errr... she must have flown up to heaven to be with the other clouds... hmm... yeah... thats right ...anyway Timmy would you like another lamb chop?"

They actually ran a item on this on the 6pm news on bbc. They are actually right now running test on the crabs to see if they are suitable for human consumption. And the guy on the show said that if you head down to Isleworth at low tide you can see the crab burrows. Just wait for the green light.

thats why i want to go and harvest them! they will make a killing in chinatown and we get the full backing of the environmentalist for saving their native crab species. Fisherman thank you i will take you up on the offer pm is in the post anyone else interested in going crab fishing?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4690988.stm Just read this article about invading mitten crabs. This is like that thing about invading american crayfish in UK rivers. well i like crayfish and i like mitten crab how do you go about harvesting stuff like crayfish and mitten crabs??

Pig, cow and sheep probably all originated as onomatopedic representations of the sounds the animals make? SB (or maybe not) ← hmmm... baa? oink? moo? quack? cluck? what noise does a fish make?

hmm... but that just makes me want to ask where did the words pig, cow and sheep come from?

I was at a chinese steamboat dinner party the other day and a friend helpfully labelled the food pig, cow and sheep that got me thinking fish is fish, chicken is chicken but why is sheep called lamb/mutton and pig called pork and cow called beef? its one of those days... stuck at work bored with too much time on my hands. anyway if you have an answer let me know so at least i would have learnt something new for today cheers

a rice crispy block dipped in white chocolate? as the rice base? have a rice crispy base of rice, use thin sheets of chocolate to be the nori-seaweed wrap use some strawberry jam mixed in with some sago pearl to make it look like salmon eggs.

Isn't flounder called lung lei, or "dragon's tongue"? ← yep leng lui not sure what its called in english though. so we got several things with dragon in the name now how about dog?

dragon beard sweets... lobster... longan... there a fish with dragon in the name isn't there? baby rat ? close your eyes it tastes like chicken

you know one of the thing I wanted to do last year for the show was to actually look through one of John Torode's cook books and cook one of his recipes for the challenge. Thought it be quite amusing to take a recipe from his book, cook it and then let him rip the crap out of it before revealing it was his recipes. but i didn't get that far anyway

Dragon is a legendary animal. Can't count that. You can eat snakes or lizzards as a substitute. But... oh no, we already have snake on the zodiac... ← Komodo dragon? although they are endangered and I think they might even be toxic. just settle for non-endangered animals/ food that have dragon in their name.

Who would like to eat monkeys, horses and rats? ← the french and japanese have a liking for horse meat. and chinese eat just about everything remember my dad telling me about eating new born baby rats in alcohol.

no coffee jelly in the uk except in a japanese restaurant and even that is very rare. i think jelly fell out of favour in the uk a long time ago. A mix of percieved old fashioned dessert and mad cow gelatine by products. But personally i love it i have made both gelatine and kanten the gelatine has a nicer texture as teh kanten just disintergrates in your mouth. never really used a recipe just made a double strength cup of coffee and enough sugar to just make it sweet and a packet of gelatine. I use sugar syrup and condensed milk as toppings so the jelly itself doesn't have to be so sweet.

hmmm.. don't think we do any zodiac related food stuff. and chinese new year meals are pretty set like other cultural celebratory meals. like you must have food that sounds auspicious you must have luxury ingredients abalone, conpoy, shittake, hair fungus, dried oysters, noodles, etc. Actually think it might be a little disrespectful to eat chicken to celebrate the year of the chicken or any other animal that rules the year. Closest thing I think would be eating lobster on the year of the dragon as lobster in chinese means "dragon prawn/shrimp"

was on the last series, its actually the editing that makes the two of them seem ruder then they actually are. The comments that are shown are just a snippet of what they say. After you finish cooking they spend 3-5 minute chatting to you about your dish and they usually make positive and constructive comments to begin with and the they finish off with their final comment and judgement and that is what is shown most of the time which makes it seem that they only ever have bad things to say. judging is still very random though.

Chinese - Golden Palace, Harrow. Blue Thames, Battersea. Super Star, Lisle Street chinatown. Indian - brilliant /gifto , southall

should we set up a list for good fishmongers, grocers, etc?

Macken Brothers Turnham green

Go to Boisdale. It's burns night today. I was there on monday night for a Burns night supper. They had a bagpiper play "Scotland the Brave" as the haggis was served and the waiter recited the address of the haggis. There was a lovely jazz band playing. They are meant to have the largest selection of whisky in London. And the rest of the menu is pretty good too I had a lovely 28 day hung piece of sirloin with roast shallots, blue cheese dauphinoise and black truffle jus. check it out http://www.boisdale.co.uk/

won't need the hooligans we just give them all meat mallets and lock them all in a room for 30 minutes...