Shalmanese

I'm flying down this weekend to cook dinner for a friend. He wants a fairly adventurous menu so I'm throwing a few nice surprises in there for him. I'm staying just north of Melbourne Uni and we'll probably be shopping primarily at Queen Vic markets so I'm looking for places that are near to that area. I was wondering if anybody could give me some suggestions as to where to find these ingredients in Melbourne. Kangaroo Loin that would be suitable for tartare Marrow Bones that I could roast a la Fergus Henderson Squid Ink Kim Chee Natto Cheese Curds Speck Chorizo Dark Chocolate Coveture Good Quality Uni Salmon Roe I think most of them meat, I should be able to find at the butchers at queen vic but I'm not sure as I breezed through fairly quickly last time I was there. He can buy some of the stuff ahead of time if I tell him exactly where to buy it. Thanks and I'll post additional ingredients as I think of them.

Happy Birthday Bryan

I always just buy a hand of ginger and chuck it into the freezer and grate straight from frozen. A hand lasts me about 3 months and costs $1.50 so it's really too trivial for me to worry about.

I think they should care because the buffet wants to be known as "that place with great crabs", not "that place that it's impossible to get crabs at".

I've noticed quite a significant fraction of my pantry is devoted to ethnic ingredients. I suspect that if I limited myself to one cuisine, I could cut down the pantry significantly. But where's the fun in that?

The lamb that I could get in America is significantly less flavourful than lamb I've had anywhere else in the world. Americans seem to like their meat mild and less gamy than most other places and the market has reacted towards that. Even the lamb imported from NZ is much milder than actual NZ lamb in NZ.

I can't imagine a sweet bread pudding working all that well but you could make a savory bread pudding. Maybe with some mushrooms and herbs and cheese.

I had a campari and grapefruit tonight. It was pretty good but the bartender looked like I had grown 2 heads and it took 2 of them to find the campari bottle. Later, they were both looking at it like I was the first one to ever order it in the history of the bar... the search continues.

Thanks, I've done the decent scotch/whiskey/bourbon on the rocks thing before when I'm buying but when we're doing rounds, it needs to be a drink at the same price level as everyone else's. I'll experiment with campari cocktails and the amaretto and cranberry sounds interesting. What's a whiskey sour like with sour mix? I've only ever had them with fresh juice.

So I've been out dancing a lot recently and the places we go are known for great music but not necessarily so much for the quality of their bar. Usually, the bar is packed 5 deep and the bartenders are hustling drinks as fast as they can. When I was in Seattle, my go to drink in this situation was a Gin & Tonic. It was quick, tasty and caused a minimum amount of fuss for all parties. However, after moving back to Sydney, I just plain haven't even had a single acceptable gin & tonic let alone a good one. I've yet to see lime in a G&T, some bars put lemon, others put nothing (oddly, one bar put lime in a friend's Gin & Soda and gave me a lemon). Also, the tonic water is often disgustingly sweet and I actually returned a G&T assuming the bar tender had filled it with lemonade and was informed that this was how it was meant to taste. Quite simply, I've given up on G&T's while I'm in Australia and I need a new standby drink. Here are the basic requirements: Not Beer or Wine: To me, Beer & Wine are made for sipping, contemplation & conversation. Cocktails are for getting pumped and feeling alive. Simple & well known: I just want to get in & out, I don't want to have to explain a cocktail to a bartender with deafening music pounding. No caffeine: I don't drink caffeine normally so mild amounts have a large effect on me. Nothing sucks more than being drunk and not being able to fall asleep. So no Rum & Coke, White Russian or Black Russians. No girl drinks: Sorry. Not too sweet: Self explanatory I'm having a hard time coming up with something that fits all of these criteria.

For those of you who've eaten it, did the live aspect make it actually taste better from an objective standpoint? If you were blindfolded, do you think you could tell the difference between live seafood and seafood that had been killed 6 hours ago?

Do you mean the Ave? I don't think there are any restaurants on 15th, at least not until the Pizza hut on 65th.

Waffle cones, fresh from the waffle machine. I've never used a cone at home just because nothing compares to a great waffle cone from an ice-cream parlour.

Heres what you can do: Finely chop the mushrooms in a food processor (or by hand if you have 3 hours you need to kill) and then put them inside a cheesecloth. Wring the cheesecloth really tightly to squeeze as much juice out of the mushroom pieces as possible. Now, use the dried out mushroom pieces to make duxelles and reduce down the mushroom liquid. Because there is no gelatine in the mushroom liquid, there's almost no limit to how much you can reduce them. I went down to a 10X reduction before I felt the mushroom flavour became too intense. It would be a waste for soups but it's fantastic as a sauce as it's just the pure essence of mushroom. If you have any dried porcini or shiitake, you can powder and then hydrate them, and then mix them with the chopped up mushrooms. You get a more complex duxelle and mushroom essence at the same time.

Balsamic Glazed Green Beans: Saute green beans over medium high heat until they're wilted and there are little specks of brown and black on them, about 15 minutes or so. Then, add in some fine slivers of garlic and toss for a minute and then deglaze with a healthy glug of balsamic vinegar. Toss for another 30 seconds until the vinegar is reduced down to a nice glaze and then serve. The key is to cook the green beans long enough so they they're soft and nicely charred.

Google for Suan Cai. Northeastern chinese food is not popular in the west so I doubt you could find any traditional Suan Cai very easily but it's very easy to make your own. My parents used to do it all the time until they discovered Saurkraut at a german grocery store and started buying that instead. As far as I'm aware, every time I've eaten it, it's been made from normal cabbage but the wikipedia entry says it's normally made from Napa cabbage. We just had some tonight in traditional chinese jiao ze (dumplings). Sheena: this blog seems to have quite a bit on chinese pickles.

Don't forget our very own Cache

Consomme! I perfect cold soup for a hot summer's day. You could also make some sort of pate with the sausages and bacon and top it with cold aspic.

You're telling me! Trader Joe's has some New Zealand lamb that is good in a pinch if you want something decent but it's a market forces thing. Americans want their meats tender and without "gamy" flavours. Corn fed beef tastes like chewy water and your lamb tastes more like veal than lamb. But if that's what the consumers are demanding, then that's what will be provided. Morton Bay Bugs are a delicacy here, sort of like lobster. If I find a place that serves it, I'll order some but it's not something you see everyday around here. Generally, the kitchen isn't too much of a mess after each party. Everyone pitches in and the entire thing can be clean in under an hour.

Apologies for not being prompt in my postings. Lets get you all up to speed. After a heavy night out drinking and dancing, I stayed over at a friend's place and we woke up the next morning and went to a noodle joint close by. She got the mongolian lamb, I got a Roast Duck Noodle Soup: The soup was just what I needed to revive me. Unfortunately, my mother was working that night so I didn't get to show you some of her chinese cooking. Instead, I just improvised a bit with some leftovers. The Roast Bell Pepper/Cherry Pasta with some Mustard Crusted Lamb Chops. Man, these lamb chops were amazing. Excellent flavour and super tender. French Onion Soup with the Roy Des Valles Cheese. This cheese wasn't as good melted as it was raw. Oh well. This was a midnight snack. The yellow thing on top is chinese steamed egg custard. You mix eggs, salt and sesame oil together well and then add about an equal part of water. Then you place it in the steamer tray of your rice cooker and it cooks while the rice is cooking. Drizzle some soy sauce over the top to finish. I didn't put enough water in this one and it was too firm. It's meant to be soft and delicate. I deglazed the pan used to cook the lamb chops with some beef stock and made lamb rice to go with it. I also had some left over shepherd's pie filling with the lamb rice and it was delicious but too ugly to take a photo of . Last night, Dad came home from Hong Kong so this was the first time the family was together in almost a year. I made a special dinner to celebrate: Lettuce, Cherry Tomato & Smoked Ocean Trout Salad. I'd seen this ocean trout at the farmers market for a few years and I loved how it tasted but I'd never bought it because it was so expensive. I finally bought a piece this week and I thought I would showcase it in this recipe. It was pretty damn good. Five Spice Rubbed Lamb Chops with Asian Greens in Oyster Sauce. I forget what sort of green this was. My mother showed me a different way of cooking them. Normally, I stir fry the greens and then add oyster sauce to the pan. Instead, she blanched the greens and then fried the oyster sauce seperately and poured it over the top. It was much more delicate and light but more work IMO. Lamb Shank & Herb Butter with Pumpkin, Leek & Saffron Milk Cap Mushroom. This was a new way of making lamb shanks I got just the day before from a Jamie Oliver cookbook my friend had lying around. You put some veggies down the bottom, put the lamb shank on top and then wrap the entire thing in aluminium foil and park it in the oven. The vegetables flavour the meat and the meat flavours the vegetables. I cut a pocket in each lamb shank and added in a mix of butter, oregano, basil, garlic, mustard and lemon zest. I wish I had anchovies here but I didn't. These are super simple to make although they take a bit longer than braised lamb shanks so you have to account for that when you cook them. There was a thick layer of fat when you open it up, I don't know a good way of dealing with that. If I were to do it again, I would have cut some slits in the silverskin, browned the entire thing before stuffing, added more stuffing slits and let it cook for a bit longer. Still, it was a pretty cool way of doing lamb shanks that I had never seen before. This afternoon, my mum made some fresh hand rolled noodles with a chinese saurkraut sauce. The northern Chinese and the Germans seemed to have discovered saurkraut (suan cai) completely independantly but they both make them in almost exactly the same way. People where I come from are obsessed with this saurkraut and it used to be every person had a pickling barrel at home just for this. You pack finely sliced cabbage and salt together and let natural yeasts and bacteria get in to form the starter. Then, on every batch, you leave the old sour mix in the barrel and it ages and develops. People have had the same starter for many tens of years and when you go back, everybody's pickle barrel has a different taste. Sadly, I think the government had health concerns about home pickling so this practise is dying down and people are buying their saurkraut from stores. If you're ever in that area of China, order some saurkraut with fatty pork and rice noodles. It's a fantastic dish. Tonight, I'm hopefully going to be cooking at a friend's house. I think this is either the last or second last day of my foodblog so I'll try and get those damn market shots up like I promised so many people.

Brown rice, Bacon, Green Beans, Red Onion.

Finally, the dinner pics are up. Apologies for the inconsistent quality, a friend with a good camera and bad photography skills were taking the photos. Amuse Bouche of Sauteed Saffron Milk Cap Mushrooms with Scrambled Eggs: I've never tasted these mushrooms before so I thought I would play it safe and just fry them in some butter and top some eggs. This was actually a really nice dish, the mushrooms were nutty and meaty and the eggs were cooked french style super slow over low heat to form a creamy base. French Onion Soup: A classic and a pain to make. I realised why I never ever make this when I spent an hour finely slicing 5 pounds of onions only to see it reduce down to one cup. It was good though for such a cold night. Had to use balsamic vinegar instead of the traditionally sherry vinegar at the end and the bacon I was using was so lean I had a hard time rendering any fat out of it. If there's one thing America does well, it's smoke. Americans have a love affair with smoke which I don't think I've seen matched in any other cuisine. The bacon I got was "lightly smoked" as opposed to supermarket bacon which is completely non-smoked. It didn't compare at all to the american stuff. Grilled Cumin Rubbed Lamb with a Borlotti, Corn & Avocado Salsa: The salsa was the standout hit for the night, everyone thought it was delicious. It's an old standby recipe I have that usually uses black beans but I couldn't find canned black beans in Australia, just another reminder of how little mexican cuisine has penetrated Australia. The recipe is just canned beans, frozen corn, avocado, lime, olive oil, sugar, salt, pepper, cumin, finely diced chilli and cilantro. The lamb was also amazing, well flavoured and super tender. It seems that what this company means by "scotch fillet" is a piece of lamb tenderloin attached to a long thin rib muscle that reminds me of flank steak. I had to buy powdered cumin since my spice grinder is still in Seattle and the cumin was more subtle than I expected. Roasted Red Bell Pepper & Cherry Tomato Pasta: As I've done more of these things, I realise the biggest pain is plating so I just had people serve themselves using their lamb dish so that explains the mess on the side of the bowl. This is another old standby dish and I can't remember where I got the concept from. You halve cherry tomatos and put them in a screamingly hot, oiled cast iron pan. the heat from the pan chars the bottom of the tomato and then you use a fork to mash them all up. Added in some red peppers I roasted, chopped and then pureeded very gently as well as some basil and it was done. Theres a nice contrast in textures between the well cooked bottom of the tomato and the still uncooked tops and the flavours are bright and simple. Sheppard's Pie: Made with 100% free range Sheppards . I didn't realise how much of an evil influence Ling has had on me in Seattle until I tried to put in more than 2 tbsp of butter into the mashed potatoes and some dinner guests started complaining. I ended up making 1/4 "healthy" mashed potatoes with barely any butter and the rest with an entire stick of butter. In the filling was lamb, onions, leeks, carrots, celery, capsicum (red bell pepper for non-Australians) and mushrooms. I didn't have any tomato paste on hand so the taste was different from what I was used to but still good. Roy Des Valles Cheese with Muscatel Grapes and Sourdough Bread: Muscatel are a type of grape I've only seen in Australia and I love them. They have a very sweet, winey flavour to them. They go especially well with cheese so I tend to throw a few onto every cheese course I serve. The bread is from my favourite baker in Australia who I showed in my farmers market pics. The cheese is a big ole stinky sheeps milk cheese which is what I love. Lychees & Passionfruit in a Lemongrass Syrup: This was a completely impromptu dessert which I probably need to work a bit more on the presentation of. I saw some cheap lychees, cheap passionfruit and some lemongrass which looked interesting. The idea for the dessert only really gelled when I got home. I simmered the lemongrass in a raw sugar simple syrup and then added some lime to balance the sweetness. Let the passionfruit and lychees steep for 3 hours and then served. It was really, really delicious. The flavours all complimented each other really well. Rhubarb Clafouti: If there was one dud tonight, it was this one. I saw rhubarb at the market and I was thinking of different desserts and realised I had never made Clafouti before. It was impossible to taste the dish before it was cooked so there wasn't enough sugar and too much flour in the dough. I also threw in some currants soaked in the lemongrass syrup into the mix but I probably should have added more currants because the ones that were there didn't feel integrated into the dish. It was still a decent dish that everyone loved but not one I was proud of. Phew, so I guess I'm only 1 day behind now. The paradox of food blogging seems to be that the result of having lots of stuff to show people is you end up not having enough time to actually show them. I didn't realise how time intensive this thing would be.

I have no idea about the beets, I've never actually tasted a pickled beet to the best of my knowledge. But fried eggs is such an obvious addition I'm surprised it even raises eyebrows. The key is to cook the egg on high heat until it's over easy. You get the crunch of the egg whites which plays off the soft texture of the meat and then you get the lovely gooey yolk which mixes in with the tomato/barbeque sauce and runs all over everything. Chefs have been topping everything under the sun with fried eggs, I would have thought burgers are one of the most obvious candidates for this treatment. One other thing I want to add is that, while I was living with my parents, I was in charge of the cooking but my parents were largely in charge of the shopping and they ultimately had to pay the credit card bill so I was always a fairly resourceful cook. I would read recipes but I barely ever followed them because it took me a long time to even amass the basics of a western pantry and then even longer for other cuisines. Instead, I would take insipirations and influences and work them into whatever ingredients we had on hand. This has always given me a rather improvisational edge to my cooking and I still hold onto that today. I very rarely plan things that far out in advance, even dinner parties and I enjoy wandering through the markets and letting the ingredients provide inspiration. I have fun making up dishes on the fly and I have to say it's been pretty rare that my intuition on what flavours would pair have ever gone horribly wrong. As for why I love cooking western food so much, when I was growing up, we always ate Chinese food at home so western food was always this exotic thing that was for special occasions only. It always looked so interesting when I had it and there was always so many new things to try whereas it was always the same chinese dishes I had eaten over and over again. So when I could cook, I naturally wanted to cook all those western foods I had heard so much about but never got to taste. In the kitchen, it was a fairly natural delegation where I would cook western stuff and my parents would cook Chinese stuff. I learnt a few recipes from them but I tended to cook them only when I lacked inspiration for anything else since my parents could always make it far better than I could. However, there were some dishes that became part of me repertoire just because I loved them so much. Among them were steamed egg custard, stewed green beans with pork and potatoes, fried julienned potatoes with celery and pork, chicken & shiitake mushroom, pork & daikon soup, chicken & sweet corn soup and fried rice.

One other thing which I think is a bit unusual about me is that I would classify myself as someone who loves cooking but not so much as someone who loves eating. I've certainly met many people who appear to love eating far more than I do. Quite often, I've found myself spending 3 hours in the kitchen to cook some elaborate meal and then realise I've scarfed it down in half an hour while watching TV and completely forgot how it tasted. I actually used to also be a fairly indiscriminate eater. Anything that was put in front of me, especially if it was free, I would typically enjoy. I remember that even after I became seriously interested in cooking, I was still indiscriminate in my eating and it was only by conscious effort that I started to raise the bar of what I would allow to pass through my mouth. Insomnia and cooking were also good friends of mine during busy times in my life and cooking became a combination of a stress reliever and procrastination device for me. I became an expert in ultra silent cooking at 5am in the morning, trying not to wake anyone else up. I also specialised in ultra labour intensive, complicated, anal cooking at that time because it was a great way to soak up the time. After every time I made chicken stock, I would seperate all the meat from the carcasses over the span of 2 hours. while obsessively straining the stock through multiple layers of cheesecloth to ensure I had the most crystal clear clarity. It wasn't that I thought it was worth it but there was something about those repetitive activities that gave me focus and helped clear my head. Another thing that seems a bit odd given my predilection for long menus is that I've realized that tasting menus utterly bore me. You sit around for 3 or 4 hours being served tiny bites of food and, somewhere around the middle, I just feel an urge to be able to dig into something rather than fuss around with all the precious presentation. Theres usually so much going on on the plate and the portions are so small that you feel like you have to take tiny bites with different permutations to maximise your dining experience. First you have to taste the meat alone, then with the sauce, then with the tiny microgreen salad dotting the plate, then all 3 in combination and then all 3 but with whatever assemble-your-own garnish is on the side. At no point do you actually get a full mouthful of anything and it always leaves the inner glutton in me vaguely unsatisfied at the end of the night. If any enterprising chef is reading, open a restaurant promoting taste & steak, 8 tiny courses of intricately prepared zen like masterpieces, a big ass ribeye with some french fries and then another 8 intricate courses of intricately prepared zen like masterpieces. I would make a booking in a flash.

The dinner went great but I was out dancing until 4am so I need to work up the energy to deal with posting up the pics. Have patience. In the meantime, prasantrin asked me about my culinary influences. To be honest, I don't remember that clearly where I really started really getting into cooking. I think I started reading about cooking far before I actually had the chance or the equipment to accomplish many of the dishes. So when I got into the kitchen, I always had a whole bunch of things I wanted to try. I guess there's not really much more to say, I read a lot, I cook a lot and I'm always seeking to improve. I've never taken any culinary classes and I have no intention of doing it professionally but I have the type of personality where I take any hobby very very seriously. In terms of style, my first and deepest love has always been French food. Something about the systematic and methodical way that the French try to classify and understand everything really suits my style of cooking which is to try and make sense of everything I'm doing. My scientific background really feeds into my cooking and I'm constantly trying a gain a sense of why I cook something that way. However, at the same time, I love improvising and pulling eclectic influences from every sort of cuisine to cobble something delicious together. Ever since I arrived in the US, I've started incorporating a lot of Southwest/Mexican/Caribbean flavors into my dishes. There's just something about that lime/cilantro/garlic flavour that I really love. I'm embarrased to say that I'm not really that good at cooking Chinese food. I can do a couple of basic things and a few home recipes but my parents always cooked the Chinese food so I very rarely would do any and I don't really have a sense of what it's all about. I'm slowly starting to expand my Indian repetoire as I start to gain an understanding of all the different spices used and I can fudge Southeast Asian with reasonable ease. I have to admit though, to a wholly unreasoned prejudice against Italian food. Italian food, as food, I will be the first to admit, can taste really great and I cook it all the time. However, it's not a cuisine I generally love cooking. The entire philosophy of "find the best ingredients, treat them simply" makes for great food but boring cooking. I'm sure plenty of people are going to leap in and defend Italian food and that's fine, I'm not going to argue. I admit upfront it's a totally unreasoned prejudice but one I have.