Shinboners
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Three new cookbooks spotting in Readings today:
"Every Day" by Bill Granger
"Tolarno Bistro" by Ian Hewitson and Bob Hart
"Matt Moran" by Matt Moran
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I'm not sure I agree with that logic.
Anyway, one thing for sure is the guy can cook. Afterall, that's what it's all about.
Any business is tricky, but I think restaurants is one of the hardest industries to survive in. I think that many people hang on for too long (due to their emotional involvement), and can easily lose everything. The fact that Perry can look at things coldly and exit on (more or less) his terms shows that he's got a pretty good mind at work.
He's a very wealthy man, so he must be doing something right.
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I hope he does well also.
Should do, he's had plenty of practice........
Some might say he's closed more restaurants than he's opened, but that's the restaurant game.
He has the balls to put his money on the line, but he also has the brains to walk away before the losses kill him off. It makes him a pretty smart operator imho.
It'd also be interesting to know how many (bad) opportunities he's turned down too.
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Neil Perry and Rockpool Bar and Grill was the feature article in this week's Epicure.
Here's the link: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/10/...1455634702.html
The numbers involved are mind boggling. I hope he succeeds though.
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From the Rockpool Melbourne menu:
http://www.rockpool.com/common/newsletter_...e_rp.aspx?id=21
It's interesting to see that they've got Iberico ham on the menu. It wasn't that long ago that customs allowed roquefort into Australia. So, will we be seeing unpasteurized foie gras in Australia soon?
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Got any good crab recipes?
In regards to blue swimmer crabs, the recipes mainly involve using its meat for salads and for stuffing pasta.
I'm going to take a longer look at the recipes and try one in the next couple of weeks.
But for crabs in general, I like them cooked with ginger and spring onions (the way that you find in Chinese restaurants).
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Two more that came to mind:
"Takeaway" by Les Huynh. Asian takeaway food that you can do at home.
"Classic E'cco" by Phillip Johnson. His favourite recipes from his restaurant.
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Hi all
Having been brought up to only buy crabs if you can get them alive, I've never bought the blue swimmer crabs that I see at the Queen Vic Market and on Victoria Street in Richmond. I assume these crabs have been cooked and frozen OR snap frozen.
Anyway, are they worth getting? Do I just eat them as they are or can I use them in the various blue swimmer crab recipes that I have?
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I almost always leave a tip. It might be due to having friends who have worked as waiters, and tips make up a large chunk of their income (and also hearing some of the horror stories of some of the diners they've had to put up with). I usually leave about 10%, but if the service has been exceptionally good, I'll tip a lot more
However, I won't leave a tip if I get bad service.
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A few new books that have appeared over the past couple of months:
"Let It Simmer" by Sean Moran
"Wild Weed Pie" by Janni Kyritsis
"Every Day Cooking" by Allan Campion and Michelle Curtis
"Foodies Guide To Melbourne" by Allan Campion and Michelle Curtis
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How was your visit to Melbourne? What restaurants did you go to? What did you find good and not so good?
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Why bother to talk? Just cook it anyways... plonk it on the table and I'm sure someone will be curious enough to try.
Um, no.
I'm not going to waste my time and energy cooking food for people who won't appreciate it (especially when it's a dinner party for no more than six people).
Of course, my other pet hate is when people say, "Um...is the meat cooked? It looks a bit pink, and there's a bit of blood there....". But that's another rant for another day.
Talk is cheap. Action man, action!!Well, the conversations usually go like this:
Friend: "So Dan, what did you eat on the weekend?"
Me: "Well, I cooked up some <insert offal>"
Friend: "Oh yuck! How can you eat that sort of stuff?"
Me: "Well, have you ever tried it?"
Friend: "No! It'd be disgusting anyway because...."
blah blah blah
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everyone only wants to eat the outside... not the inside and the dangly bits...
There's probably a couple of issues on why this happens.
Firstly, it's not a matter of taste and texture, but a purely psychological issue of, "oh, aren't those the bits that help the body get rid of waste?". They just can't get their heads around the idea that offal is cleaned by the time you cook it. Plenty of people are under the impression that offal will taste terrible, when in fact, they've never even tried it to make a proper judgement.
Secondly, there's an issue of price. Offal is cheap, so people don't think that it can be any good (or if it is, it's only good for pet food). Funnily enough, these same people probably don't have any problem with paying top dollar for their foie gras dish at Vue de Monde.
Thirdly, for most people, the post WW2 boom meant that most people can afford the prime cuts of meat, so offal was off the menu (so to speak).
Personally, I generally can't be bothered to talk people around. I just give them the option that if they want to try offal, then I'll happily have them around and I'll cook it. But if they're not interested, it's not me that loses out.
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So what's wrong with Australian diners then?
Is it the association with 'old fashioned' liver dinners? Or is it some throwback to anglo conservatism?
Being a multicultural society, it seems that Aussies are slow in embracing the wholesomeness of offal. One never finds trotters except at Chinese restaurants and some Vietnamese noodle joints that serve Bung Bo Hue.
Bistro cooking?? I mean, I want to see France Soir plate up pied d'cochon man...
And it seems we have enough of other cultures hanging about to fully diversify what the whole idea of offal goodness is all about. Why isn't it happening? Are chefs and diners too concerned with the latest fads? Sure, as a developing culture, still nascient in terms of culinary tradition, would it not be more wise to look within and to history for reference before striking out to a bold new world?
So, one gets off a soapbox and another begins to rant...
Well, someone must be eating offal as every restaurant in town seems to have at least one offal item on the menu. And I guess that a little bit of movement is better than none.
However, who is eating the stuff? I know I am....in fact, chatting to the maitre'd of France Soir after I had my main, he happily noted that I had the lambs brains for the entree....so either he's got a good memory OR not that many people eat it. Go to any French bistro in town, and I reckon that the vast majority of diners are happy with their salads as an entree and steak frites for their mains. Maybe it's just chefs cooking for other chefs, a few foodies, and those from the ethnic groups that still eat offal.
btw, does anyone know if any Melbourne restaurant does Koffman's stuffed pigs trotter? I know Becasse in Sydney does a version of it, but I don't think I'll be up in Sydney anytime soon.
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Excell Meat Company: 207 Lygon Street, Carlton Ph: 9347-5516
btw Pein, the next time I'm there, do you want me to say G'day to Frank for you?
Oh, and in regards to the ox cheeks, there are a couple of butchers at the Queen Victoria Market that carry them as part of their normal stock.
All the blood that must have poured on to your plate when you cut into the liver would have turned my stomach. Well done, I might enjoy it.Blood? When I've bought calves livers, which are sliced off one larger piece, there are no noticeable drops of blood. I'd say you see more blood when buying cryovaced meat.
And anyway, the liver is sliced 5mm thick, so it cooks quickly. If you it right, it's nice and pink in the middle.
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My idea of heaven was my great aunt cooking me lambs' sweetbreads for breakfast - simmered first till tender then drained and fried.
Speaking of offal for breakfast, Aux Batifolles in Richmond has baked eggs with foie gras and port on its menu.
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I didn't like John Faine's questions. Some seemed a bit condescending or ill informed.
I think it's a mixture of being ill informed and his interviewing style not suiting what Henderson (well, foodies) would like to hear. Faine usually plays the devils advocate and asks his guests to justify their views. This works well for issues like politics, but not for something like food, music, and many forms of art.
That's why I think Virginia Trioli or Derek Guille would have been better. When Trioli did the drive time shift, she'd have a weekly interview with a Melbourne chef on Wednesdays. Meanwhile, Guille is one of the best interviewers in the media - he has a skill in getting his guests to open up. He'll ask a question, get out of the way, and let his guest talk.
Still, it would have been worse if it was Richard Stubbs interviewing Henderson. Stubbs is more interested in the sound of his own voice than letting his guests talk.
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By the way, the interview is available by Podcast or MP3 download.
Go to http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne/podcast.htm
Go down the page to John Faine - The Conversation Hour and you will be able to download from the links provided.
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I caught most of John Faine and Tonya Harding (thank god it wasn't the apalling Jill Singer as co-host) with Fergus Henderson today.
With some of Faine's questions, I think he was a bit bemused by Henderson's philosophy of Nose To Tail Eating, and asked a couple of very questionable questions about whether eating offal had anything to do with his Parkinson's disease. Nonetheless, Henderson treated everthing with the same warm and quirky humour that he shows in his cookbook.
Anyway, he spoke about his Parkinson's disease and how the operation has helped him immensely. He dryly noted the irony of spending a lifetime eating brains, and now the cause of his problem is within his own brain. Harding spoke of how her father got her into eating lambs fry and Henderson noted that lambs fry in England is the testicals, not the liver. He loves having lunch, and spoke about the honesty of his food (noting that Faine got it wrong by describing his food as gastroporn).
Faine is usually a good interviewer, but I would have liked him to explore more of Henderson's philosophy rather than trying to debate it. It's a shame that Virginia Trioli or Derek Guille couldn't do the interview.
Ferguson wil be doing a dinner at the Point tonight (sold out), but he will be doing a talk and doing some cooking demonstrations this weekend at the Abbotsford Convent as part of the Slow Food festival.
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Well, the pain of having to give up our reservation for dinner at Three, One, Two the other week has now just increased. No doubt with the place winning best new restaurant and McConnell winning best chef, there will now be a three month waiting list to get in and prices will start heading upwards.
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The missus went out with the girls on Friday night, so I got a serve of cassoulet from La Parisenne in Carlton. Ah, it was very good. And the little one (all of 10 months old) had her first taste of cassoulet too - she loved it.
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More on Aux Batifolles in Richmond. It's now open and it's located at 258 Swan Street, Richmond. Apparently on opening night, they had no customers. But since then, they've done pretty well. Unlike the mother ship in North Fitzroy, they do breakfast and lunch on the weekend.
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um, 3rd outlet dude... vue, cafe, then bistro... like laundry, then bouchon, then per se... three... must be a lucky number thing...
I'll be intrigued to see what his bistro will be like. Melbourne has plenty of very good French bistros, so I wonder if Bennett will refine the bejeezus out of it as Keller has done with Bouchon (and I mean that in a good way). It'll be interesting to see what menu he comes up with and the pricing.
agree Shin... but i just took keller 'cos his name came up first in my mind... i'm still dreaming about what could have been with my one chance at getting a spot at the laundry... another story for another time...When you get around to replying to the PM I sent you the other week, you can tell me the story.
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And the show continues...
Looks like Bennett is following in Keller's footsteps with the multiple outlet thing...
I would have thought that Marco Pierre White would have been his main inspiration with the mutiple outlets with different price points - didn't MPW have a similar strategy when he was running his restaurants in the 90s?
Neil Perry has also tried the same thing over the years with Rockpool as his flagship, and places like Wokpool and XO to cater for a lower price point. And I've read that Mario Batali and Daniel Boulard also use the same strategy with their restaurant empires in New York.
Greco - Slacko
in Australia & New Zealand: Dining
Posted
On reflection, you do make a very good point. Certainly there are quite a few Melbourne people who run some very good empires of higher end restaurants. I would assume that there would be a few in Sydney too.