Shalmanese

It seems to me that the overwhelming trend in rich, 1st world societies is tending towards going to eat out more and more at the expense of home cooking with from scratch ingredients. Is a person who cooks at home with raw ingredients in 50 years time going to be viewed as someone who builds their own furniture or performs their own car maintenence is viewed today? It seems skills like these have virtually disappeared from the average person's life unless they specifically choose to make a career out of it due to a variaty of factors. Looking at the economics of it all, I can't say I blame most people. With wages rising and food costs falling, it seems more and more rational to outsource your cooking needs. Indeed, if we take a place like Manhattan, an apartment might easily top $1,000,000. Assuming 10% of the space is taken up by the kitchen and that's $100,000 just for kitchen real-estate. Figure 5% rate of return on investment per annum and that means your using $5000 per year just to maintain a kitchen or a bit less than $15 a day. Figure an hour to prepare a meal per day at maybe $20/hr and its now up to $35 a day, add $10 for ingredients and it's $45 a day. Now for $45 a day, there are usually a lot better options that home cooking unless you specifically enjoy that terype of thing which it seems most people do not. Economically, it would be more rational to ditch the kitchen and eat out every night for a single yuppie living in manhattan. On the other end of the spectrum, say we have a 4 person family in middle america. $200,000 house with 1/5th the space for cooking, works out to be $2000 or about $6 per day. Figure $10/hr worth of labour so $16, $15 worth of ingredients so ultimately around $30 for a family of 4. Your pretty much on mcdonalds for that sort of budget so, economically, the advatages of home cooking are pretty significant. But as land prices go up and real wages go up and new technology makes it easier to prepare food on a mass scale, the numbers are going to get closer and closer to the point where it doesn't make sense for anyone to cook their own meals unless they derive pleasure from it. After all, when psychotherapy costs $100 per hour, cooking clocking in at $50 is still relatively cheap . And after that point, could it ever reach the stage where not even people who wanted to could cook at home because the infrastructure that surrounds it has disappeared (uncarpeted rooms, gas lines for stoves, supermarkets etc.)

It seems to me the entire australia cookbook market is devoted to rather inspid collections of recipes accompanied with gorgeous pictures. Where can I get some of the classic books that delve more into the fundamentals of cooking. Things like: Joy of Cooking Mastering the Art of French Cooking Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques Larousse Gastronomique On Food & Cooking

Most of the people I know said they've tried it once when it was an option on the menu just so they could say they ate it but didn't regard it as anything special enough to integrate into their repetoire. I think part of the reason is that Kangaroo is rather demanding to cook as it's a lot leaner than beef, theres a fear that leaving it on the grill for a second too long would reduce a $20/kg piece of meat into something that tastes like bad beef. An interesting variation I've seen on it is as an asian preperation, cut up into paper thin slices and then dipped into boiling water for maybe 20 seconds before dipped in some kind of sauce and eaten.

I guess that's better than Oyster Ice-Cream

I think part of the reason I like thicker sauces more is just the damn logistics of it. Every time I've gone to a fancy restaurant and ordered some fancy slice of meat with a "light pan jus", the meat just doesn't soak up the sauce properly and the meat/sauce ratio is skewed. Whats more, because it's a jus, theres so little of it which means that some bites are sauce drenched while others are practically dry. And in the end, I'm left with a puddle of sauce on my plate that's too intense in flavour to enjoy on it's own yet too light to be sucked up by errant vegtables. Call me uncivilised(or rustic if your being polite ;)) but give me a nice bucket of globby gravy and a big hunk of meat and good bread and I'm as happy as a clam.

Yes, the high heat from the roasting turns the bitter components in the garlic into a sweet pungency which makes it a lot more mild and mellow.

It's highly unlikely that theres going to be any health risks from frozen chicken stock. The only thing worth worrying about is the taste. My guess is that it should be fine. I've had stock in for longer but in reasonably well sealed containers.

My guess is that once the alcohol gets absorbed into the meat, it doesn't get cooked off which means that the meat has a sharper, bitter taste which can work well with some things but poorly with others. I guess if your worried, you could just marinate in grape juice. It has the same acidity and none of the alcohol. For marinating, the effects should be pretty much the same, marinades are not a subtle affair.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the master recipe for Creme Brulee.

Does basil not usually survive freezing for 3 months? It seems to me that if it's in a ziplock bag, its not going to pick up funky odours and it's not going to oxodise since it's in oil so what else can go wrong with it?

Nope, 100% natural insomnia.

Yes, dont ask me how my mind works. I wanted garlic and I wanted something sweet. refer to chocolate omlette above for further inspiration. The first time I tried it, I just sliced some garlic and candied it but it was far too bitter and far too sweet. Second time, I added the balsamic and cored it but it was still to bitter. Third time, I got something acceptable with the blanching in milk then coring. I haven't tried it again because it runs through garlic so quickly and I need it for other stuff :D. When I can be bothered, I'll go buy 10 heads of garlic and make a big batch keep.

My latest creation: Garlic Candy 1 head of garlic milk 3 tsp of balsamic vinegar 1 tsp of white sugar 1 knob of butter pinch of salt 1 large box of breathmints Can be scaled up as desired. First, seperate the head of garlic into individual cloves, using only the large/medium sized cloves and remove the hard bottom bit but do not de-skin. Put in a small saucepan and pour enough boiling milk in to cover (boil the milk in the microwave to save time) and simmer the garlic for 3 minutes. Remove garlic cloves from the milk and discard the milk. De-skin the cloves and cut each in half along the axis(ie: cut the long side) and remove the center heart. The heart also contains some bitterness and is best removed. Once you have achieved this, set a non-stick pan on the lowest heat setting and have your knob of butter gently bubbling and toss the garlic cloves in with a pinch of salt and allow to brown. You want this to go as slow as possible to obtain the best tasting end result so put it on the lowest heat you can get so it's barely bubbling. Once the under-side is brown, flip and allow the other side to brown. Meanwhile, dissolve the sugar in the balsamic vinegar. I find it's a lot easier if you heat the vinegar in 10 second intervals in the microwave and then stir until fully dissolved. This is the crucial bit: Once the garlic is nice and golden brown, pour the balsamic mixture in the pan and swirl around until you have the vinegar and the garlic evenly distributed and no garlic is overlapping. You need to be relatively quick about doing this because very soon, the sugar mixture will get very sticky. Once it becomes sticky, DONT touch the pan. Anything you do will just make the entire mixture roll into a ball. Leave it on the heat until the sugar mixture turns to candy. It's kind of hard to tell this and it involves a certain bit of trial and error but your basically looking for colour and bubbles. The colour should lighten from black to a medium brown and the bubbles should get progressively bigger until they are abut 3 cm across. It's more of an experience thing but it's pretty tolerant to error and if you dont get it hot enough, you get toffee which is still pretty good. Once it's reached candy stage, turn off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature (If you have so much candy that it covers more than a thin layer of the pan, you might want to empty the pan onto a sheet pan covered in wax paper to cool) and then stick it in the fridge to cool to fridge temp. Once it's cold enough, break it up into individual chunks and then either eat straight or serve atop something else.

Where does the name Alinea come from? Is there a story behind it?

I like Peters of Kensington for big budget, higher end items (knives, good pots etc) but I really want to discover a place that has middle price, no-nonsense high quality wares. Stuff like pots & pans that can take a beating or miscellaneous bits of kitchen doodads. What are some of the places you've found? PS: The Kitchen Supply store on George St is rubbish, old, moulding stock at ridiculous prices. I found a Lodge Pro Logic pan there selling for $90 when Amazon.com has it for $16 USD :o.

The proper way, of course, to clean the brown, stuck-on bits at the bottom of the pan after roasting is by using your tounge.

No, I was still up. Just about to go to bed when the cravings hit.

Well, it's 4:25 am and the steak is made and eaten with a few minor hiccoughs along the way. The first being that I needed to pan-fry the steak and I couldn't really pan fry the steak seeing as doing so would create copious amounts of steak smell that would wake up everyone in the house. Thus is created Steak a la outside. Heat your heaviest cast iron pan until it starts smoking copiously. Meanwhile, get a stick butter and take of shavings with a potato peeler. The aim is to make the butter light enough that it will instantly melt in the pan. I tried grating it but it clumped together too much. Move the steaks outside and get ready to move the pan. As you move the pan just outside the doorway, throw in the butter and then swirl rapidly before dropping on the steaks. Allow the residual heat from the pan cook the steaks for 60 seconds on one side and then flip. Allow to cook 30 seconds more and then bring the pan back inside and on high heat. Once the heat reaches back into the pan again and the steaks start smoking, the insides should be around medium rare so remove to a elevated serving platter and cover with al-foil while making a pan sauce. Serve, eat, enjoy then fall into bed exhasted, needing to get up in less than 5 hours :(.

Well, as I write this, it's 3:45 am and I have an intense urge for steak. I don't know why, I don't really think I need steak, but I know that if I don't get steak before I go to bed then I'll lay awake for at least an hour thinking about it. So what am I doing? I'm not really set up for steak so I wing it as I always do when I get hit by inexplicable midnight cravings. Right now, I have two pieces of mystery meat marinating in a bag. I know they're beef and they're flat but thats about it. If I'm lucky, it'll be rump and therefore edible, oh well, the mystery cravings demand supplication so what can you do? The marinade is again, something very crude, made on the spur of the moment. EVOO, cheap red wine, red wine vinegar, coarse peppercorns and some of my frozen herb mix (blend 4 random fresh herbs + copious amounts of garlic with enough evoo to moisten then freeze. Keeps up to... well, this ones verging on 3 months and still has a lot of kick. Perfect for freshening flavours when you can't be bothered with fresh herbs). Of course, this isn't the first utterly bizarre midnight craving. There was the choclate biscuit omlette. Don't ask me why, I needed chocolate and I needed eggs. There was my craving for fettucini alfredo... made with fresh fetucini from scratch, started at 2:30 am and eaten at 4am. There was fritattas and foccacias and even deep fried scrambled eggs (don't try this at home unless you like eating what tastes like a sponge full of oil). What are some of your particularly inspired midnight creations?

I eat cherry tomatos like popcorn (but not with any butter or salt :P). Just grab a big bowl of them and a good movie and munch away.

There a specialised shrimp de-shelling tools that can strip the shell, legs & vein of a shrimp in one action. Takes maybe 5 seconds per shrimp. I've never used one since I can't justify the cost but I know they exist.

The common mantra about roux's is you need a 1:1 fat to flour and then top it up with liquid. However, I fail to see the significance of the 1:1 thing, surely, the thickness of a roux depends on the ratio of flour to liquid and the cooking time of the flour rather than the proportion of fat. While not enough fat might stop it from coating every grain of flour, I fail to see what excess fat could possibly do to a roux. Is the 1:1 thing just a passed down bit of folklore or is there a reason to it?

Ah, I never considered that fat might act as a flavour enhancer for vegtables. Does this mean that when I make vegtable stock, it would be a good idea to throw in some chicken skins?

I would think spreading it over parchment paper and letting it dry out in a very low oven would work better than the stove-top if you've already got it to that stage. A food dehydrator would work better but it's not worth it if your only using it for stocks.

Sydney, Eastern Suburbs