Shalmanese

Oh, I didn't realise it was a spin off, has anyone been to the original? What was it like? I'm thinking of heading there for lunch tomorrow to try it out.

I would just try and light the lemon oil instead. Lots of bartenders know the trick.

I've been eyeing the spot in Ravenna where the old Alebrijo used to be and it's finally opened as India Bistro on Sunday. Went in today to get a menu, looks like pretty typical indian fare but with a heavy emphasis towards lamb which looks promising to me. Most promising dish to me looks to be a Rack of Lamb Marsala ($16) and a Murgh e shaan - Chicken breast stuffed with dried fruit, cheese & spices and topped with an almond sauce ($14). The location seems to be a death trap so I hope this place does better than Alebrijo. In other news, La Casa del Mojito has opened a second restaurant on the Ave, around 55th or so. I never went to the original on Lake City way but friends have told me good things about it. Went to the Ave one a few weeks ago and it was a satisfying meal.

I really have no time for these half baked conspiracy theories of yours.

you take all the excess skin and trimmings from a raw bird and then cook it in a pan so all the fat renders out and browns it.

I probably use a 2:1 ratio of vegetables to meat, pre cooking weight. Skin tends to be much more flavourful than bones weight for weight so you can get away with such a heavy vegetable proportion without it feeling unbalanced (think of how much flavor is in the skin compared to the meat of a grilled chicken breast). I also toss in more garlic than a normal stock and make sure I cook it long enough so that the garlic gets nice and soft to get a mellow, roasted garlic note through the stock. At the moment, I'm leaning towards a fiery tortilla soup with the tortillas fried in chicken fat although I do have some lentils in the pantry...

I just want to bump this up again after making my second batch of crackling stock and becoming a complete convert. It's by far the simplest method I've yet discovered to making stock and yields a rich, concentrated brown stock with amazing depth, complexity and sweetness. You avoid the conventional roasting process because the fat browns the bones and the frying of the vegetables leads to a lovely sweet vegetal note which you don't get from a classic brown stock. You use so little water in the process that you don't have to bother reducing after straining which was always an annoying extra step for me. The stock comes out well gelled and ready to freeze. Here's my refined procedure: Trim the fat and bones from chicken thighs/drumsticks and dice the fat into less than 1" by 1" pieces. Toss the entire pile of fat and bones into a saucepan with 1/4 cup of water and set on high heat. Stir occasionally until the fat starts rendering out and the water evaporates. Lower the head to medium and keep cooking until the bubbles become foamy, this means all the water has been rendered out and your chicken is as brown as it's going to get without being burnt. Add in roughly chopped onion, celery, carrots and whole, unpeeled cloves of garlic and cook until there's slight browning to all the vegetables. Add just enough water to cover, bayleaves and any dried or fresh herbs you have lying around, then simmer for 2 hours. Spoon off the top layer of fat and discard or use in future cooking. Strain, chill, peel off the fat cap. At this point, the stock is gelled enough you can cut it into cubes with a knife, place on a baking sheet and freeze. Once frozen, store them in a ziplock bag and use as desired. The entire process takes less than 3 hours as opposed to a better part of the day for a conventional stock and is easily scaled up to however much you want. Now I'm trying to figure out a soup that would help show off the stock. Something robust and hearty enough to stand up to the chicken flavour. Any suggestions?

To me, it seems like the cornstarch is necessary. You have to get the right viscosity to get the egg to fan out into the right texture. The way I do it is to keep the soup stirring in a constant circular motion and pour the egg in a thin stream. I think a common error lots of people make is letting the soup get too cold. Even a minor drop in temperature makes the egg take longer to coagulate which causes over dispersion. The combination of stirring and dropping in cold egg will lose a lot of heat so you really need to have the burner cranked up to at least medium. A cook's instinct is you never want a soup to go past simmer so they'll usually have the burner on a whisper which won't work.

I've switched to cooking my steaks at a medium temperature in a generous amount of butter. Great crust, great flavour and no smoking up the kitchen.

wow, I never knew what a sesame plant looked like until this thread. Cheers.

If it's too gelled, your yield will be low. Probably the best bet is to dilute it until it can just gel in the fridge.

Wow, this is a great idea, I can't believe I never thought of this.

Something delightful Something raw Something hot Something cold Something subtle Something carnal Something pungent Something sweet Something sinful

Spoilage is caused by bacteria reproducing in your stock. If it's been in the over for 12 hours, it would of been sterile, if it's sealed inside a watertight bag, there would have been no way for new bacteria to get in. Your stock was perfectly fine.

If you have a trader joes nearby, their wine (two buck chuck), EVOO (californian estate EVOO) and balsamic are all very high quality for a very good price.

Going to be in Newport for 5 days next week. Any new places to keep an eye out about?

Some of the ideas I did for a recent dinner party show off some nice ways of unobtrusively stretching budgets: * Salads with exotic leaves: If you can scavenge or find a good supplier, often you can get great tasty, exotic salad leaves for a steal. * Root vegetable medleys: Just potatoes or parsnips can seem like filler but if you throw in a whole bunch of different ones, either into a stew or roasted, then it seems much more upscale with little more preparation time on your part. * Risotto: Seems very fancy and upscale yet is almost criminally cheap because it's pretty much just rice. A small amount of high quality, expensive ingredient can be stretched very far. * Beans: Beans are always a bit unusual and can be made to seem very sophisticated, a minted white bean puree for example but cost a few pennies if you buy them dried. * Good Chocolate: The chocolate itself costs quite a bit but you can give people a big hit of flavour with relatively small amounts of it which makes it quite cheap. I think the entire 7 course menu I made above came out to a food cost of $15 AUD which is about $10 - $12 USD per person yet I don't think it was noticeable that any of the dishes were visibly cheapening out.

To me, the veal bones and chicken feet and calves heads and whatever else escoffier uses are purely a product of his time and have no real place in modern stock making. They were put in there to contribute gelatine to the stock and little else and the gelatine was mainly there as a cost reduction procedure. The more gelatine you have, the less you need to reduce before it reaches nappe which means the less actual flavourful ingredients you need. Thing is, nowadays, you can just buy gelatine, for pennies. So stop worrying about the damn veal bones, focus on stuff that actually has flavour like stewing hens and oxtail and short ribs and other meaty cuts. Add in the requisite gelatine at the end of the process to get the mouthfeel you want.

No way, that would have been insta-death for any chef that attempted it. I don't get the (seemingly recent) foodie fetish for roast chicken, is it Keller inspired? When did the meme come from that a roast chicken is an uber chef test like the omlette? A "perfect" omlette is not hard to make for chefs of that skill level (In the all star special, stephen managed to make the "perfect" omlette with one hand tied behind his back) and a "perfect" roast chicken should be trivial too. A simple roast chicken might be delicious but it would tell us nothing in particular about that particular chef's skills as a chef because any of the other chefs could have made an equally delicious simple roast chicken.

Yup! Ichi-ban boshi was also another regular place of mine when I was working in Bondi Junction (they have 3 stores IIRC). If you get in early enough, order the tonkatsu ramen. Otherwise, I usually get the one with grilled, braised pork belly. Giant serving although I think it's mainly the soup which fills you up. I've only managed to finish off an entire bowl of the soup once.

There's quite an active market for these sorts of scales on ebay for people who have a frequent need to measure out very accurate amounts of fine white powder.

I've eaten at Kopitam before. Great food, rude service like you said. Still worth a visit anytime you're in that area. A friend of mine was doing an art project at the Powerhouse museum and it was a regular haunt of hers.

Cold baked potatoes make the best corned beef hash. Just pop a few extra potatoes in the night before, whole.

This is brilliant and I don't know why I never thought of this before. I floated the idea of stock Sous Vide before but people thought the small yield wouldn't make it worthwhile. Once, when I cooked stock, I put strainer on top and pressed it down using a cast iron pot to keep the aromatics below the waterline. I filled the pot with some cold water to weight it down and only after I made stock did I realise that the water inside the pot came to 100C without boiling. In theory, you should be able to make a perfectly clear stock using this method because there's no agitation whatsoever in the inner pot. I've been meaning to experiment in that vein but never found the time to do a proper investigation. Thanks for suggesting a much easier way of achieving the same thing.

Ok, I'm looking at your menu more closely now: Le Menu Degustation Iberico Skin Cracking w Whipped Melon Marscopone Are you sure crackling will hold up for a day? How are you planning to store it? I'm worried it will absorb moisture and get stale. The flavor combination doesn't wow me either. and/or Sea Urchin in Lobster Jelly & Cauliflower Cream-Foam Eh, sounds unappetizing. Needs something sharp to punch through the cloyingness, lemon thyme? chives? dunno. Liquid Ravioli of Onion Soup and/or Fresh Pea Soup These just sound boring to me and they don't complement each other. Pea ravioli was great the first time Adria did it but it seems just too cliche now. Can't toy raviolize a more interesting soup? Something with a bit more interplay? Tasting of Pigeon (Alternatives?) Pigeon Leg Confit w Potato Chip (Alternatives?) Smoked Pigeon Breast w Potato Puree Robuchon style The potato things will bite you in the ass. Chips and mash sound really easy to pull of because they're such basic recipes but when you have to coordinate them with everything else, it gets messed up. Deep frying is generally *never* a good idea in these circumstances. I would recommend replacing it with some other starch &garnish preparation that's less fussy. Tomato Consumme Caviars (or just consumme or foam...) w Crispy Basil Again with the deep fryer, not a good idea. Beef Four Ways Beef Tenderloin Tartar w ??? Sliced Japanese Wagyu Rib Finger, slow roasted , brushed w soy w sushi rice Pan-Seared DryAged US Cube glazed with bone marrow Braised Beef Cheek red wine plum sauce w ??? Why are you slow roasting wagyu? Sounds like the flavors don't really meld in this, I don't see anything that ties them together. You have the cheeks which are sweet and then the soy which is oriental and then marrow and tartare... Foie Gras Duo Pan-seared Foie Gras w Black Cherry & Red Wine Reduction and/or Armagnac Foie Gras Terrine w Brioche Toast You realise that for 4 people, the appropriate serving size is about one slice of the terrine between the 4 of you? what are you going to do with the rest? You can't really downscale a terrine so you better have a good plan for the leftovers. Cheese Course Whipped Brie de Meaux en Feuillete, Pepper & Watercress Roquefort Trifle w French Butter Pear Relish Sicilian Cannoli w Goat Cheese & Ricotta Can you get cannoli shells small enough? Do you need 3 cheeses at this point? Dessert Course *Seasonal Fruit* Sorbet Shortcake w Vanilla Creme Fraiche Sauce Lemon Sabayon Brulee in *Nut* Tart & Whipped Honey Candied Apple of Creme Farine & Poached Apples a la Mode Sorbet shortcake? Sounds interesting and tasty if a little crowded. Petite Fours - Red Hot Truffles (infused w chilli) - Citrus Shortbread (yuzu scented) - Grape Jellies - Pistachio Torte Maybe cut down to a single petit 4 at this stage if you even get to here.