Shalmanese

Could you give us a clue? I typically marinade a butterflied leg of lamb for 24 hours in some garlic, rosemary, salt, EVOO & white wine. Then smear the inside liberally with mustard, salt, pepper & herbs and tie it up. Score the outside fat and insert some slivers of garlic and roast in a 500F oven for 15 minutes and then turn off the oven and let the lamb coast to med-rare. Potato's underneath the lamb to soak up the yummy fat and juices are a must. Usually, I also get the butcher to chop up the lamb bone when he butterflies along with any other scraps he happens to have on the day. Make lamb stock while the lamb is marinading and then reduce down to a demi to serve along-side the lamb. Of course, your going to have to tell us what you had if you want the exact same thing.

Yes, KaoLiang is very similar to Wu Liang Ye and Mao Tai.

Yeah, ice-cream made by a french pastry chef would probably be better than generic LN2 ice-cream but ice-cream made by a FPC with LN2 would also undoubtably be better than normal FPC ice-cream. LN2 is a technique, not an ingredient. The quality of the ice-cream you get out is still going to be dependant on the quality of the ingredients you put in but LN2 ice-cream just forms smaller ice-crystals.

My guess: When protein liquid reaches a temperature between 60C and 100C, the proteins coagulate into tight little balls which are insoluble in water, hence, clumping. When protein reaches somewhere between 150C and 300C, maillard reactions happen and the tight bonds between protien molecules break down into essentially fond which CAN be dissolved in water which is why it ends up so glossy. Personally, I have been extremely puzzled with the love/hate relationship chefs seem to have with scum/fond. If you think about it, they are essentially the same thing, only in different states, yet one is reviled while the other is revered.

In the other seminars, not so much, I'm just suggesting for the pot experiment to cook an entire batch where batch can have quite a flexible meaning. The problem is that the difference between a Le Crueset and tin foil with a full batch might be less than the difference between full tin foil and a single short rib. If this is the case, then your comparisons become worthless. I'm certainly not advocating 5 full braised meals though.

Well, this is the last dinner you'll see from me this Chinese New Year. Lets get on with it. I won't post descriptions for dishes that are the same as Tuesday's dinner. Pic of the table with about 1/2 the dishes already plated. "5 treasures". Chicken, Peanuts, Tofo, Carrot, Brocolli stems. "guo tie", pot stickers. I think we ended up with 5 plates of these. Gyoza, we made 2 plates of these. Pig skin jelly, clear. Pig skin jelly, chunky, the bits of skin were kept in, providing a different texture. Wood ears & Pork These are a type of bean, I don't know what. We buy them frozen in Chinatown and then blanch them with some star anise and serve cold. You pop the pods into your mouth. Secret Meatballs Steamed whole fish. Braised Chicken and Mushrooms, sorry I didn't get a pic of the actual food. Braised Beef & Potatoes. Eggplant, Beef & Capsicum. This was, uh, deep fried tofu, shittake mushrooms and pork I think. I really liked this one. The textures played off each other so perfectly. Chinese cold salad, cabbage, carrots, cucumber, rice noodles and garlic with a rice wine & sesame seed oil dressing I think. Unfortunately, we found out in the morning that the kelp strips we had had gone bad so we were forced to improvise a bit. The heat of the garlic and the acid of the vinegar married really well. Pity it was missing that briny note from the kelp. This is a rather bizarre type of chinese green, I don't know what it's called. When sauted, the juice turns a brilliant beetroot red. The colour of the liquid is purely from the greens. Steamed prawns on brocolli. White Rice. As you might have noticed, I'm rather tired so the descriptions have been a bit terse. Feel free to ask me tomorrow for a more detailed explaination of any dish. Signing off.

Hrmm... For me, it's a lot more of a delving into the theoretical foundations of cooking, trying to form a sort of system in my head so that I can understand how and why we should transform our raw ingredients into something both enjoyable and edible. I've done a LOT of reading and I've got an immense backlog of things I've been meaning to cook but haven't gone about doing yet. Right, now, I think I've good a pretty good grasp on the french philosophy which emphasizes a lot about technique and boosting flavour. I'm trying to move into italian which is a lot more about a few, natural flavours and indian which is very spice centered. After that, japanese seems to hold intriguing possibilities with it's emphasis on presentation and light, subtle cooking. That seems to be a map of the next 15 years.

All my service ware is for 4 people :D. But I'm not currently attached so it's me + 3 friends which seems to keep the conversation going. My dinner parties tend to be overly elaborate as it's a rare chance to do big, complex set pieces so anything more than 4 gets exausting. For less formal parties, 6 - 8 seems good.

I disagree that avant garde art has no limitations. Avant garde fashion still has to roughly fit the human body, avant garde sculptures still have to conform to the rules of physics. et cetera et cetera. And despite the common perception that avant garde is just a pile of random crap piled together in which critics randomly dispense either praise or criticism, good avant garde (which isn't neccesarily popular avant garde) still has to challenge the human psyche and give us a mirror into the world and ourselves and provoke contemplation. I don't see how food differs from other disciplines in this regard.

I would strongly suggest that at least for tute 1, to use 1 full serving portion worth of meat and not something as small as a single short rib. Cooking vessels display markedly different behaviours depending on how much stuff is in them. Smaller amounts of food leads to there not being as much thermal mass which can introduce larger fluctuations in temperature. Similarly, evaporation rates, temperature differentials between the covered and uncovered pot sides and cooking times may all be affected.

I suspect it would be used for cooking and not straight eating no?

When we wen't to Taiwan last Christmas, we were invited as VIP guests and sampled some 18 year aged KaoLiang and it was indeed very smooth and slightly sweet and didn't burn much at all. OTOH, we also wen't to Kinmen and sampled some of the more common varieties and it was unmigitated crap, Harsh, abrasive and with no charecter whatsoever. It's very much a case of a company using a prestige product to as a showcase in order to sell large quantities of a mediocre product. I also suspect the tanking of the Xinmen economy has probably drastically reduced QC in the last few years.

Yes, I'm not so much concerned about energy wastage as time, water & burner space wastage. Half the time, I have something in the oven anyway and I can just pop a tray in at the same time. It might be slightly lower temperature so just compensate with more stones. Going over some rough numbers, lets assume our veggies are at 25C and our water is at 100C. We lose 75Cal/gm, (assuming veggies have roughly the same latent heat as water) when we dump the vegtables in. Lets go with stainless steel because that apparently has roughly the same specific heat/cm^3 as water. (water is roughly 4) Assuming we can heat it to 300C, that means if we got the equivilant mass of water to the veggies being blanched, we would need 1/2 that volume. ie: for every kilo of veggies, you need 1/2 a litre of water or about 1 quart of steel cubes per 4 pounds of veggies. I think that no matter how good your burner is and how much water you have in your pot, there is at least a few minutes before it returns to a rolling boil. More water doesn't actually help this process, your still taking the same amount of energy out and you need to replace it with the same flame. All you do is reduce the temperature drop. With my method, you can use less water, less salt and get a better result. I don't know where you cook but I don't often find myself in need of 5 quarts of brine every time I blanch a bunch of asparagus so often, all the liquid just ends up down the drain. I meant that deep frying was essentialling the same as blanching in that you introduce a relatively cold solid to a relatively hot liquid while trying to maintain a steady temperature in the liquid for the entire cooking process. This concept is the same. With the oil, all you need to do is heat the stones to 375F instead of 500F. This way, your guarenteed not to burn your oil. The stones have just been air-drying in a hot oven for the last 5 minutes so theres no chance of it reacting chemically in any way to the oil. If you feel oogy about stones, use stainless steel instead, after all, it's what your pot is lined with. In fact, I suspect that stainless steel ball bearings would be an even better choice than river stones and more readily availible to boot.

After blanching some snow peas today the "proper" way, ie: in a big pot of heavily salted water at a rolling boil, I was struck by how absurdly wasteful this procedure is. Looking at the very basics of blanching, the idea is that you go along for quite a while requiring very small amounts of heat, and then, all of a sudden, you need a huge amount of heat for a few minutes before going back to the previous level of very low heat. Sure, you could do it by having lots of thermal mass and a very big flame. But my idea sounds a lot more elegant. Why not store the heat outside of the pot, in the form of, say, very hot river stones? Simply put some river stones in a 500F oven or a grill for a few minutes until they suck up the heat. Then, when you go to blanch the vegtables, dump the veggies in, and then immediately dump a load of river stones into the pot. The heat from the stones will bring the water back to the boil MUCH more rapidly than your pathetic non-restaurant quality gas burner could and you get greener, more vibrant vegtables with less water and on a smaller burner. Sounds like win-win to me. You could also apply the same principle to deep frying which is essentially blanching in oil. In this case, it's even easier because you could just fashion a seperate partition in the fry-basket and put the stones in the pot at the same time as the food. Just take them out again when the oil is back to temp and even the crappy, cheap electric deep fryers suddenly become useful. Any thoughts? Can you think of another material that would work better than stones? Would cast iron work? copper cubes?

Well... We get to do it all over again on Saturday, stay tuned . btw: I realised rather belatedly that I posted this exactly 13 minutes before midnight in Beijing. I should have waited and made it symbolic :P. Anyway, Happy New Year everybody!

x-posted from Chinese New Year Hoo boy.... Well, that was the big one just over. 25 people, 19 dishes, a whole LOT of work. I was just a lowly sous chef so I can only claim minor credit for any of these dishes, the really praise will have to go to my mother this time. I'm not even going to apologise for the crappy pictures this time, I was lucky to snap them at all before the food completely disappeared. The occasional arm is to be expected. Dishes listed below are in no particular order. Here's a picture of the table set up with about 2/3rds of the dishes already on it by my count. More dishes came on later and some got taken off as they were eaten so I couldn't get a comprehensive pic. Everybody ate outside on the balcony where the weather was perfect. Steamed Flower buns. Yeasted dough, moulded into a flour with spring onions and oil on the outside. Delightfully light and fluffly, same texture as man tao. These came out really well. Fried eggplants and... Pork I think. Incredibly popular, I never got to actually taste this dish :(, it was gone before I could grab a plate. Chinese bean with Pork. These are a type of bean that resemble gnarled green beans except they are over 1m long. Slightly bitter flavour, I love them. Steamed whole fish with ginger and spring onions, Red snapper I think although I'm not certain. Not one to buck tradition, no matter how recently established... Tofu with 1000 year eggs Blurry pic, excellent dish :(. This was some sort of special traditional chinese meatball of which even *I* am not allowed to know the ingredients of. Served over snow peas and tastes out of this world. Beef stewed with Turnips and Potatos, unbelievable tender and very subtle in flavour, I guess it would be an asian Pot-au-Feu. Smashed Cucmber Salad. Cumcumbers, Tofu, Garlic, Sesame. The garlic really gives it a kick and it's unbelievably simple to make and SOO refreshing on such a hot day. Wood ears sauted with pork and Chinese Cabbage. A traditional dish up north where these wood ears were grown. They are a category of fungus that only grows wild and each region seems to have a particular species which tastes nothing like any other type of wood ear. I love the taste of all wood ears but they are impossible to obtain in Australia so we stock up big every time we go home. Red Fired Pork. Pork with the skin attached braised in soy and sugar. These wen't fast as well, I got about 2 pieces before they were gone. I can understand why. Stir fry noodles with Chicken, Capsicum, Mushrooms & sesame. Uh... noodles. Good but not extraordinarily so. Chicken braised with "Jin zhen"(lit: Golden Thread) Mushrooms and vermecelli. Again, this mushroom is a local delicacy and only grows in the wild in one region of China. These were actually picked by my cousins & uncles in the woods next to their house and are the absolute best specimens of all the ones they picked as a gift to their relative from abroad. As far as I'm concerned, give a choice between truffles and these, these win. I'm not sure how to translate this... I guess the closest would be aspic, or pigs skin jelly... It's pig's skin, simmered in water until all the gelatin is extracted. It sounds gross but tastes fabulous. A very subtle flavour but the texture is refreshing and cool, simply garnished with some very good chinese soy, raw garlic and spring onions, it just slides down your throat. Shrimp fried with Salt & Pepper. One of the things you can't get in China is such beautiful shrimp, One of them almost fit's across the plate. Just a simple cornflour batter and the natural flavour of the shrimp just explodes in your mouth. God I love Australian Seafood. Uh someone else brought this... Mashed potatos with Mayo, pinapple, ham & cucumber. It was one of those dishes that sounds like it couldn't possibly work but amazingly manages to do so. Was meant to be for the kids but I think the adults kept stealing spoonfuls until it was gone . Roast Duck from Chinatown, brought by a friend Unbelievably enough, there was NOT ENOUGH FOOD cooked so this was out backup dish. It's some sort of salted spring chicken bought from chinatown, shredded and served plain, because we didn't COOK ENOUGH FOOD . Bunch of hungry barbarians *mumble, mumble*. These next two were brought on near the end of the meal as a sort of light, palate cleansing courses. Chinese greens, stir fried with garlic. I'm not sure how to translate this, it's congee with a type of green, dried bean thing in it. Slightly bitter and very minerally, A nice finish to relax the palate again after so much fat. After dinner, I served dessert. This was a plum sorbet made from some absolutely fabulous plums we bought 3 days ago. Nice, sharp sweet/sour flavour. Very nice. After dinner was over, we all relaxed on the balcony with some fruit and ice-cream (say what ever else you like about the chinese palate but they are complete and utter failures at appreciating good ice-cream ). I don't know what happened to the grapes in that pic, the condensed mist must of done funny things to the flash. The watermelon was, by happy coincidence, one of those watermelon you might ever taste only half a dozen times in your life. Intese ruby colour and a crystal clear sweet flavour. you think we were finished? you were wrong... I present to you... Gyoza! Made and cooked just before midnight as a traditional send-off into the new year. Chives & Meat, Celery & Meat, Chives & Egg, Prawn, Egg & Meat in the 4 plates although I don't remember which was which..

Hoo boy.... Well, that was the big one just over. 25 people, 19 dishes, a whole LOT of work. I was just a lowly sous chef so I can only claim minor credit for any of these dishes, the really praise will have to go to my mother this time. I'm not even going to apologise for the crappy pictures this time, I was lucky to snap them at all before the food completely disappeared. The occasional arm is to be expected. Dishes listed below are in no particular order. Here's a picture of the table set up with about 2/3rds of the dishes already on it by my count. More dishes came on later and some got taken off as they were eaten so I couldn't get a comprehensive pic. Everybody ate outside on the balcony where the weather was perfect. Steamed Flower buns. Yeasted dough, moulded into a flour with spring onions and oil on the outside. Delightfully light and fluffly, same texture as man tao. These came out really well. Fried eggplants and... Pork I think. Incredibly popular, I never got to actually taste this dish :(, it was gone before I could grab a plate. Chinese bean with Pork. These are a type of bean that resemble gnarled green beans except they are over 1m long. Slightly bitter flavour, I love them. Steamed whole fish with ginger and spring onions, Red snapper I think although I'm not certain. Not one to buck tradition, no matter how recently established... Tofu with 1000 year eggs Blurry pic, excellent dish :(. This was some sort of special traditional chinese meatball of which even *I* am not allowed to know the ingredients of. Served over snow peas and tastes out of this world. Beef stewed with Turnips and Potatos, unbelievable tender and very subtle in flavour, I guess it would be an asian Pot-au-Feu. Smashed Cucmber Salad. Cumcumbers, Tofu, Garlic, Sesame. The garlic really gives it a kick and it's unbelievably simple to make and SOO refreshing on such a hot day. Wood ears sauted with pork and Chinese Cabbage. A traditional dish up north where these wood ears were grown. They are a category of fungus that only grows wild and each region seems to have a particular species which tastes nothing like any other type of wood ear. I love the taste of all wood ears but they are impossible to obtain in Australia so we stock up big every time we go home. Red Fired Pork. Pork with the skin attached braised in soy and sugar. These wen't fast as well, I got about 2 pieces before they were gone. I can understand why. Stir fry noodles with Chicken, Capsicum, Mushrooms & sesame. Uh... noodles. Good but not extraordinarily so. Chicken braised with "Jin zhen"(lit: Golden Thread) Mushrooms and vermecelli. Again, this mushroom is a local delicacy and only grows in the wild in one region of China. These were actually picked by my cousins & uncles in the woods next to their house and are the absolute best specimens of all the ones they picked as a gift to their relative from abroad. As far as I'm concerned, give a choice between truffles and these, these win. I'm not sure how to translate this... I guess the closest would be aspic, or pigs skin jelly... It's pig's skin, simmered in water until all the gelatin is extracted. It sounds gross but tastes fabulous. A very subtle flavour but the texture is refreshing and cool, simply garnished with some very good chinese soy, raw garlic and spring onions, it just slides down your throat. Shrimp fried with Salt & Pepper. One of the things you can't get in China is such beautiful shrimp, One of them almost fit's across the plate. Just a simple cornflour batter and the natural flavour of the shrimp just explodes in your mouth. God I love Australian Seafood. Uh someone else brought this... Mashed potatos with Mayo, pinapple, ham & cucumber. It was one of those dishes that sounds like it couldn't possibly work but amazingly manages to do so. Was meant to be for the kids but I think the adults kept stealing spoonfuls until it was gone . Roast Duck from Chinatown, brought by a friend Unbelievably enough, there was NOT ENOUGH FOOD cooked so this was out backup dish. It's some sort of salted spring chicken bought from chinatown, shredded and served plain, because we didn't COOK ENOUGH FOOD . Bunch of hungry barbarians *mumble, mumble*. These next two were brought on near the end of the meal as a sort of light, palate cleansing courses. Chinese greens, stir fried with garlic. I'm not sure how to translate this, it's congee with a type of green, dried bean thing in it. Slightly bitter and very minerally, A nice finish to relax the palate again after so much fat. After dinner, I served dessert. This was a plum sorbet made from some absolutely fabulous plums we bought 3 days ago. Nice, sharp sweet/sour flavour. Very nice. After dinner was over, we all relaxed on the balcony with some fruit and ice-cream (say what ever else you like about the chinese palate but they are complete and utter failures at appreciating good ice-cream ). I don't know what happened to the grapes in that pic, the condensed mist must of done funny things to the flash. The watermelon was, by happy coincidence, one of those watermelon you might ever taste only half a dozen times in your life. Intese ruby colour and a crystal clear sweet flavour. you think we were finished? you were wrong... I present to you... Gyoza! Made and cooked just before midnight as a traditional send-off into the new year. Chives & Meat, Celery & Meat, Chives & Egg, Prawn, Egg & Meat in the 4 plates although I don't remember which was which..

It's incredibly simple, just boil and rinse pork ribs/chicken wings/something with a lot of gelatin to get rid of the scum. Then simmer in 2 inches of coca cola uncovered until reduced into a glaze. The coke forms a thick, syrupy coating that is very sweet but doesn't taste like coke. You can also add star anise, 5 spice, soy etc for flavouring. It's addictively good.

I used to guzzle down mini-jelly cups and then always came down with a splitting headache later. I don't know what was in those things but it wasn't good for you :P. Does anyone know of the mini gummy pizzas and hotdogs? I think they are made by some Korean company starting with Y. I occasionally sneak a few of those as a treat.

When I was living in Hong Kong, the cost of the ingredients would often be more than the cost of the prepared meal at a cheap eatery, albeit, with 3 times the fat and crappy produce. I mainly cooked at home because I love it but I certainly would eat out every day if I didn't enjoy cooking.

Second dinner of the entertainment season, this time, at an aunt's place. Only 6 people in attendance. bottom left:"Hong Shao"(lit: Red Fire) Pork, Pork braised with pepper and star anise I think bottom middle:Tomatos and Eggplant bottom right: Stir Fried chicken livers & gizzards top right: "Ma La"(lit:numb & hot) Beef, Szechuan style spicy beef top middle: Tofu with 1000 year old eggs (again! Whats with that?) top right: Chilli Chicken, chicken pieces stir fried with birdseye chillis bottom middle: Celery & Chillis bottom right sweet and sour fish with snow peas

My family is from Changchun and we routinely cook northern chinese food. I would say northern cooking typically contains a lot of regional ingredients like fungi, local spices etc. Its a food born of poverty and lots of it is making do with poor cuts of meat and stretch the few scant good cuts far. Beef is practically never eaten and pork & chicken are the main meats of choice. I would say a major part of northern cuisine is the pickled cabbage. Nearly every family has a big pot on their back porch with salt, water and cabbage fermenting. The water is reused and eventually becomes more complex and sophisticated. Some families have the same water for over 30 years. If you have any questions, I would be glad to try and answer them.

You can freeze roux. I don't see much point in freezing the bechamel. Just mix and boil roux and milk and you have bechamel.

The natural stuff, amber in colour. I'm eating a chunk right now because of this thread!

yup, straight rock sugar, cousin acted as a lookout while I climed up to the top shelf and stole 2 lumps, then we would sit quietly and try and look innocent with conspicuous bulges in our cheeks for 1/2 an hour. :D