Shalmanese

I started off a couple of stubs for y'all! http://wiki.egullet.org/index.php?title=Special:WantedPages is a good jumping off point.

I've had my Sigg bottle for 3 years now and it's been fine.

The white rabbit style milk candies are a fond memory of many a Chinese childhood.

It seems to me that "cocktail culture" universally reviles the sweet drink and sugar is a dirty word to serious cocktailians. I agree that sugar has gotten a bad rap with chocotinis and cosmos but the reaction seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater IMO. Empirically, it seems about 10% sugar seems to be the optimum sweetness for beverages. All the major soft drinks are about 10% sugar, orange juice is about 10% sugar and when I make lemonade at home, sweetening to about 10% sugar leads to the best tasting lemonade. Only Beers, wines & liquors are notable in that they often have no sugar. I appreciate the complex, dry, "challenging" cocktails but I also occasionally want simple, refreshing cocktails that are at the same 10% sugar range. How come these cocktails are universally decried by cocktail snobs as being "too sweet"? I don't see any of them complaining that freshly squeezed orange juice is "too sweet".

I'm a pretty clumsy person generally but I maybe barely nick off the end of a fingernail once every 6 months. How are you people able to cut yourself with such alarming frequency?

I think I cleaned my stove top this month. I'm pretty sure I cleaned it last month.

Uhh... $900 per month = $30 a day.

In Australia, these things are called Jaffles, don't ask me why. I used to love them as a kid. Cheese, ketchup and hot dogs was my standard recipe.

Has anyone made galangal beer before?

Uhh... with the rabbit, you just clamp the arms around the cork and pull the lever out. It doesn't take any effort at all.

Excellent blog, thank you!

One POUND of roux? That sounds way too high. If you can get it, Wondra flour is low protein which makes it useful for sauces.

One thing I noticed, being back here on vacation is that fresh food prices are on par or ~20% more expensive than Seattle/SF but prepared food is easily 50 - 75% more expensive. Also, one thing that I love about Australia that you don't get in the US is the proliferation of dedicated vendors. At my local shopping center in the Eastern Suburbs, we have 2 supermarkets but also 2 greengrocers, 4 butchers, 2 fishmongers, 3 bakeries, 2 asian markets, 1 store than only sells chicken and a deli. It's hard to go from that to the US's predominantly supermarket driven culture.

Blood Orange Beurre Blanc

Looks amazing! One thing I've noticed is that Cilantro in Australia is more leafy than Cilantro in the US. The leaves are larger and more rounded.

Yeah, every chippie in Australia will ask "Chicken salt or regular salt"

What are some dishes that you've made that were significantly technically difficult to pull off?

There's a recipe for the I think in the 1970's version of the Joy of Cooking...

That should be meringue, not lamington . And good lord is that some expensive fish...

I was underwhelmed by Tetsuyas. You can read my report about the meal here

The common stereotype is that cooks improvise but bakers follow recipes. Being someone who does 98% of his cooking on the savory side, I've always chafed at the rigidity of pastry work. However, when I do cook baked goods, I'll consult 2 or 3 reputable recipes and, more often than not, the ratios used diverge from each other quite significantly. How is it that precision is apparently so important in pastry and yet different pastry chefs don't even agree on the measurements?

Vegemite Cheesecake is something which turns out to be unreasonably good. It's truly scary just how much Vegemite you have to put in but the result is worth it.

When I'm using raw onions in a salad/ceviche etc. I put the thinly sliced onions in the vinager mixture 15 minutes ahead of time. It takes the bite out of the onions and adds a subtle onioniness to the rest of the dish.

I cut over a bowl instead of a cutting board to keep the juice. Of course, if I were cool, I would use enzymatic peeling instead.

If all you care about is moistness and you don't have access to sous vide, brine + ghetto sous vide is probably your best bet. Brine overnight in a 3% salt/2% sugar solution. Make a court bouillon or some other similarly flavorful liquid and bring it up to 70C. Put the turkey breast in and then put it covered in a low, low oven, with a thermometer in the breast and another in the water. The breast should cool the water down to 60C or so, adjust the oven so it maintains 55 - 65C (this may require cycling between low & off if the oven doesn't go down that low), cook until the internal temp hits 60C.