Shalmanese

You said it was a thick liquid so I'm guessing you're actually judging the stock while it's hot. It's meant to be solid when cooled.

Thanks, I'll just ask for "the really eggy dish you don't have on your menu" next time I'm there shall I? . If you're ever in the area, try the Dumpling and Noodle place. It only opened up a few years ago and it's one of the only places I've found in Australia that does proper northern chinese dumplings. I think I lucked out by living right next to seemingly one of the very few greengrocers in Seattle as well as being 2 blocks down from Whole Foods and a bus ride from the U-District farmers market. Anything I want, I can pretty much get near by me. Farmers markets in both places have this uneasy tension between selling cheap produce for frugal hippies and overpriced boutique goods for yuppies. The second category is far more profitable and it's sad but inevitable to see farmers markets shift in that direction. One thing I've repeated many times already is that I vastly prefer the Australian style shopping of butchers and fishmongers and greengrocers and supermarkets rather than just buying everything at your local megamarket. Restaurants, I would have to give the win to Melbourne for this. Seattle is a great food town and Sydney is a great food town but I've never been anywhere where the calibre of restaurants is so high and people seem to care so much about what they're eating. Uhh... I googled Ragazzo and I got "Ragazzo is a stallion with an outstanding temperament, great charisma and a most positive approach to everything he is asked to do" and "Ragazzo is a graduate of East Carolina University with a B.S. in education. She received her J.D. with honors in 1984 from the University of North Carolina" neither of which describes me very well. Australia has even less of a "cuisine" than America does and all of our "Australian dishes" like damper are not something that people eat typically. We do have some idiosyncratic practises (beetroot on burgers) and idiosyncratic ingredients (vegemite) but that does not a cuisine make. Instead, we seem to be a nation of borrowers and will steal shamelessly from other cultures and make it our own. We have whats called "pacific rim cuisine" which is the fusion of asian flavours with classical western techniques and, returning here, I have found there is a much greater comfort with asian flavourings and techniques in Australia then there is in Seattle. We also have a large immigrant culture from the middle east and Kebabs/Gyros and other lebanese/greek foods are very common here. Mexican is something we do poorly here, not having an established immigrant base. Middle to High end Chinese is something that Australia has that the US doesn't. I've read about all the struggles trying to get Americans to accept Chinese as legitimate haute cuisine. There are probably a dozen authentic chinese places in Sydney where you could easily spend $500 a person loading up on lobster, abalone and shark fin. I honestly don't know much about them. I stay away from them and they stay away from me. Mmm... Roaring 40s is a great cheese and probably one of the most well known Australian ones. The chicken is marinated in a spicy "piri piri" sauce and then grilled over an open flame.

I met up with a friend who was going to Tetsuyas with me as well as a few of his friends who weren't. Started the night off with a Beez Neez beer: If I recall correctly, it's a honey wheat beer or something, made in South Australia and one of my favourite Aussie microbrews. Then we headed up to the Belgian Beer Cafe where some of our group was having dinner. It was 1/2 price off mussels for guys and free cherry beers for girls who wear red so we were drafted as mussel mules: Cherry Beer Frites Mussels Poulet, Mussels and Chicken Oysters on the half shell. Then, onto Tetsuyas: The House Bread with Tetsuya's Truffle Butter. The bread was an organic sourdough and it was sour and well textured. (the other choice was an italian white which was also excellent). The truffle butter was pretty damn addictive. Pea Soup with Bitter Chocolate Sorbet: I was intrigued by this flavour combination but it didn't work in my opinion. Not a fan. Smoked Ocean Trout and Avruga Caviar with a quails egg wrapped in... crab? on top. This was a solid, if unexciting, dish, the trout tasted great. I was never that much of a fan of caviar and I didn't think it added especially much to this dish. You were meant to crack open the quails egg and use it as a sauce over the top and I would have liked an eggier egg I guess. The yolk was quite pale, perhaps because it's winter? Leek & Crab Custard: This was one person's favourite dish but again, I thought it was well executed but ultimately, fairly boring dish. The flavours were good but nothing really stood out about it. I felt like I had tasted it 100 times before. The crab tasted like nothing. Scallop Carpaccio with Red Wine Vinagrette: Unfortunately, there was just too much vinagrette on this and it drowned out all the flavours. On top of the scallops, there was some fried cuttlefish, a microgreen salad and individual flesh sacs of key lime. I loved the surprise of finding the unannounced elements in the dish and it might of been great if not for the vinagrette. This is Tetsuya's signature dish, Confit of Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout with Konbu, Daikon, Fennel and a Seasonal Green Salad (next picture). Given how much this had been hyped up, I was expecting a lot more. If this was just another dish in the series, I would have quite liked it but I expect a lot more from a signature dish. The texture of the trout was firm, almost raw, but not melt-in-your-mouth tender like I expected confit to be. The Konbu and the trout worked well, but not amazingly. The bits on the bottom all added a new dimension. A bunch of microgreens and a Balsamic vinagrette. Something I could have made at home and utterly forgettable. Ravioli of Queensland Spanner Crab with Tomato & Basil Vinagrette. I don't know what a spanner crab is but I plan to eat as many as possible before we fish them to extinction. This was the first dish I really enjoyed unreservedly that night. The spanner crab is actually a disc down the bottom, wrapped in Konbu. Inside the ravioli was some lobster and the broth was scented with basil, lemongrass and a very aromatic shellfish stock. I made the comment to one of my friends that if I could go into a chinese noodle shop and order a bowl of wonton soup filled with this, I would be very, very happy. Grilled Fillet of Barramundi with Braised Nameko, Enoki & Woodear Mushrooms: Again, solid but not great. The barramundi tasted of barramundi, the mushrooms tasted of mushrooms. The combination is what you would expect. Twice cooked de-boned Spatchcock with Olive and Caper Jus: Apologises for the blurry picture. We had a bit of debate at the table about whether spatchcock was the bird name or the deboning method and I don't think we ever got an answer. I was never a huge fan of olives or capers and I felt, in this dish, they added too much salt and the dish was overseasoned. I assume it was skin wrapping the outside of the spatchcock except it was soft and flabby, an inexcusable way to treat poultry skin in my book. It seemed like it was meant to be served that way but I would have liked the texture contrast of the crispy skin. Grilled Wagyu with Lime & Wasabi: Theres a matsutake mushroom on the bottom and a ponzu gel on top. This was the second unreservedly stellar dish I had that night. Wagyu is just... Wagyu, it's unmistakably good. I've come to realise I have little patience for DIY dinner construction on a plate, it took me a while to get the right wasabi/lime balance and by the time I did, half the wagyu was gone. I guess that's just a stylistic thing, hopefully the assemble-your-own fad will start ending soon. Comte with Lentils: Another dish I was quite happy with. The lentils were slightly sweet and the cheese was nutty and pungent. I never thought of serving cheese with lentils before but I'll have to steal that one from him. Beetroot & Blood Orange Sorbet, Strawberry Shortcake: The Beetroot sorbet was probably the most inventive dish of the night. Unfortunately, it fell short on flavour and was just plain weird. It wasn't awful but it wasn't the best flavour pairing in the world either. The strawberry shortcake on the other hand... OMG, soooooo good. It was a perfect encapsulation of a strawberry shortcake in a shotglass. We had the desserts paired with a Nivole Moscato d'asti and the wine worked so well with the shortcake. Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with White Beans and Dates: This was another simply fabulous dish. There was some espresso powder in the ice cream and everything just meshed together really well. I didn't expect white beans to work well in a dessert but the texture really complimented the rest of the dessert. Chocolate Terrine with Mascarpone & Cognac Anglaise: Hrmm... I'm actually a bit surprised at this one because one of the diners is still on his restricted license and New South Wales has a 0 tolerance for alcohol thing. This leads to stupid things like people getting fined for having a slice of rum cake but that's the law. We specifically asked the waiter to tell us if anything on the menu had wine or liquor in it and this was never brought up. I've never been a giant chocolate fan and, IMO, nearly every chocolate dessert is over chocolated at the expense of other flavors. However, I recognise that's a personal prejudice so I won't even attempt to judge this dish objectively. I had the Japanese Green Tea with Corn and Rice in it, 2 diners had Macchiatos and one had an Espresso. Petit Fours, one with sweet potato, one with dates: The sweet potato one was interesting. It looks like a chocolate truffle on the outside but it's a sweet potato on the inside. I think this one actually worked. The date one was fabulous, I loved the flavours. So what did I think of it overall? In my opinion, it started off weak and got stronger as it went along. The Spanner crab and wagyu were the clear standouts from the savoury side and the desserts were all strong. I think any one of the dishes, if it were 4 times the size and served as an entree, I would be happy paying $25 - $30 for. However, I was paying over $160 USD per person for the food and that puts this restaurant at a different level. I can't fault the kitchen for it's technical skills but I just really didn't much of anything tonight that really dazzled me or impressed me with it's novelty. The two other restaurants of this calibre I've eaten at were Clio in Boston and Alinea in New York and, both times, I came away with a much greater sense that I had eaten some amazing food. However, at the same time, the duds at both these restaurants fell far below the worst of Tetsuya's dishes. I had heard so much hype about Tetsuyas so maybe that had something to do with it or perhaps my background leads me to be much more critical of restaurant food. If you want a solid meal full of lots of good food, Tetsuyas is a pretty good place to go. If you want a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I didn't feel like I got it there.

Back to the farmers market pics: This is my second favourite cheesemonger at the market. My favourite one usually has a lot of good stuff but nothing there was really hitting me that time. I bought a cheese which tastes sort of like the Roy des Valles which I love but was slightly milder and a bit cheaper. Cheese in Australia seems to be really expensive to me, probably because importing it from europe costs so much. There are some domestic cheeses which are pretty good but I generally buy without looking at country of origin. Wild mushrooms are something which I think Australia tends to do poorly although it's gotten a LOT better in the year that I was gone. It used to be you could find white and brown ones fairly easily and a few Asian ones like shittake, enoki and oyster but anything more exotic than that was very scarce on the ground. This stall was one of the few places I had ever seen wild mushrooms last year but I see them popping up at markets and gourmet stores now. I bought the last of the pine mushrooms from these guys. I've never tasted them before and, on googling it, it looks like I have the saffron milk cap mushrooms. Any tips for cooking them? Right now, I'm thinking of just simply frying them in butter and topping some scrambled eggs with them as an amuse bouche. This fishmonger is new at the markets. On the top left, you can see some Vongole, these are the only types of clams that grow native in Australian waters IIRC. I had a hell of a time trying to find clams for clam chowder last year before realising Australia doesn't really have clams. On the top right are the infamous Morton Bay Bugs, probably one of the more unfortunately named foods. I have to admit I've never had them before but by reputation, they're delicious. I couldn't believe the size of these prawns. They were as big as my fist. If he sold them raw, I would have bought some but I don't have any interest in buying cooked seafood. This lady's biscotti were really, really good. This place was selling all lamb. It does my heart good to see lamb being given an equal billing with beef in butchers and supermarkets. I already have my lamb so I didn't buy any here. Whole bunch of flavoured olive oils. This guy is selling a whole bunch of Thai produce. I remember when I saw him on his first week there, he had a LOT of incredibly exotic produce. Probably half of it I had never even heard before and another quarter I had only seen in pictures, never in real life. Unfortunately, it looks like the really exotic stuff had problems moving so he's had to cut back and go more mainstream. Even so, he has thai eggplant, banana leaves, all sorts of weird fruit and chillis. I would love to start experimenting with some of the stuff there if I had more time in Sydney. I just got back from shopping so I'm going to go take a nap and then try and get the Tetsuyas pics up before the dinner party tonight. Heres what the menu looks like at the moment: Amuse Bouche Sauteed Pine Mushroom with Scrambled Egg Appetizer Warm Lamb Salad with Borlotti Beans & Corn Soup French Onion Soup Pasta Roasted Red Bell Pepper & Cherry Tomato Pasta Main Shepards Pie Cheese Roy Des Valles with Grapes and Sourdough Pre-Dessert Lychees in Lemongrass Syrup Dessert Rhubarb Cake

14 course food coma... will update tomorrow.

I went to my local farmers market today with my brother. Here are some pictures from the market: Here is the entire farmers market, 3 lanes with stalls on both sides of each lane. Seeing as I am talking to mainly americans, I would estimate it's about the size of a football field . This is my favourite baker who does excellent sourdoughs. I wanted to snag that sesame loaf but I turn around and someone else took the last one so I have a loaf of spelt bread. This guy was cooking shrimp on a grill (no, it was NOT a barbie). He was also selling chorizo rolls. These guys were selling some kind of turkish flatbread stuffed with mince and spinach. We bought one and it was pretty good. An ethiopian stall, I've had some stuff from there before. Lunch having been solved, we went shopping: These guys have an impressive range of gourmet goods. It's hellaciously overpriced but I'm impressed by the product. Foie Gras, Goose Fat, Confit... Going to have to continue this later, friends are here, heading off to Tetsuyas...

Heading off to the farmers market now and then Tetsuya's in the evening, soooo excited.

Hey Shal! Great blog! We'll have to plan a homecoming party when you get back to Seattle.... So what are scotch fillets? I've not heard that term before. ← I wasn't quite sure myself and google is being a bit unhelpful. It's a purely Australian term and I thought it was the ribeye cut. Wikipedia confirms it's the ribeye but a local newspaper segment seemed to indicate that it wasn't. Anybody willing to chime in here?

Sadly, this blog isn't coming from Melbourne, it's from Sydney. I was just in Melbourne last week but expect to see some shots from Queen Vic Markets coming up soon. You can eat the skin? I tried it and it wasn't too appetizing. Any tips for getting the flesh out?

Just got back from the Google thing. Unfortunately, they don't allow photos within the googleplex . They just had the standard assortment of function food, only done better. Some mini sandwiches, wraps, hummus, guacamole, nuts, cheese, deli platter, potato chips etc. In absence of photos, let me show you some threads of mine from previous times that I particularly liked. Philosophical Is Home Cooking on the Irrevocable Decline? - I still maintain that I was right and food is turning into a hobby, not a necessity. The Dumbing Down of the Western Palate - This thread taught me a whole lot of things Culinary Heresies - I loved what some people came up with in this Food Miles is [redacted] - The title had to be changed to avoid offending some of the more delicate souls on here. Avant Garde Toast Bubbles - I never ended up doing anything with this. I should revisit it sometime. Fat Free Roux - The topic was fairly mundane but the experimentation was fun So what else can I blowtorch? - I was surprised there hadn't been a blowtorch thread on eG before Just Plain Crazy Professor Shalmanese's 2 week cooking school - I attempt to take a complete novice and school him in the art of cooking in 2 weeks. It's a reality TV show without the cameras! 21 in 21 for 21 on my 21st - I cook 21 dishes over 21 hours for 21 guests because it's my 21st birthday... Craaaaazy fun. And at the end of my thread, I do 22 courses for my 22nd. And no, I'm NOT planning on continuing it for next year although that's what I said last year too! The Supreme eG Baking and Pastry Challenge - I was tapped as part of the eG Iron Baker competition to complete 7 dessert courses in a week. Wanting to add a bit of difficulty to the challenge, I created a 6 course tasting menu to serve with it and each dessert reflecting an element from each course. And then my 7th dessert was the first (and, as far as I can tell only, vegemite dessert ever created).

Wow. You are a machine. I'm so looking forward to the next few days. I noticed that many shops don't allow picture-taking, don't know why (spies? copycats?). I take my clandestine photos with a camera-phone, pretending to think while placing it against my chin (a la Oprah). The Sang Tung chicken reminded me of Mortal Kombat (hello, twentysomething). Sounds great, though when you type out descriptions it always seems as though there's crack in the food ("ultra addictive") ← Keep in mind I haven't had many of them in almost a year so I'm in junkie-scoring-a-fix mode right now. Once I sate myself, I'll start describing things normally.

Oh yes, I forgot the obligatory fridge shots, well, here's what it looked like on the day I got back: I think I win some sort of prize for that right? After I left for Seattle, my parents shipped my little brother off to a fancy boarding school for a year and, with the kids out of the house for the first time in 21 years, Dad took a sabbatical in Hong Kong. As a result, the entire house has been pretty much empty for the last 6 months with my mother alternating between Hong Kong and Australia. I was the first one back, my mother got back the next day, my brother came back 4 days ago on the same flight back from Melbourne and my Dad gets back this Friday. So this is a clue to why I named my blog the Itinerent Chef. Even though I'm back home, it still feels like cooking in an alien kitchen because we have nothing here. All the pantry items are gone, the fridge is bare and I need to buy all my foodstuffs from scratch. Here's the fridge as it looks this afternoon: On the top shelf are a whole bunch of homemade pickles. The northern chinese LOVE their pickles and they will pickle anything to keep them going through the harsh winter months. Personally, I can't stand pickles so they're all my parents. On the right is some Vanilla Yogurt. Full fat yogurt is something I think Australia does far superior to the US. Almost every single flavoured yogurt in the US has all sorts of weird gums and thickeners in them and I haven't yet found one that tastes good. When I'm in Seattle, I just buy plain yogurt from a company called Mountain something or other and mix it with my own fruits. On the second shelf is a whole bunch of Lamb. I am absolutely in love with lamb and I found the lamb in the US to be very bland and mild so I ordered a giant "pack" of lamb from Rutherglen Farms when I got back. The lamb stew and the leg of lamb from the Melbourne dinner was from that lamb and now I have 4 loin chops, 4 shanks, 2 racks, 2 scotch fillets and some diced lamb left. The scotch fillets are going to be rubbed and seared to go over the top of a warm lamb salad on thursday and the lamb chunks will be going into a proper shepards pie. The shanks and rack are for my family and I haven't quite figured out what to do with the loin chops yet. Oh, and also something random I saw walking along the street: I would LOVE to own this lamp if it wasn't $100 and I didn't have to lug it all the way back to Seattle .

Time to take you on a walk around my neighbourhood. I live right next to the University of New South Wales where I did my undergrad and the university has a huge asian population so, as a result, there's a "restaurant alley" quite close to the university full of cheap, student eats. Most of the places are quite generic, cheap student food but there are a couple of decent finds in that area. This is Oporto, a local portugese chicken chain. There are 3 different portugese chicken chains in Sydney, Oporto, Ogalo and Nando. From what I heard, they're all started by the same family who's 3 brothers had a massive falling out. Each place is slightly different and people have debates about which is their favourite but they're all really excellent for chains. Right next to Oporto is an italian place called Giovanni. I really, REALLY wanted this place to be good as they have such an interesting menu but I've been there twice and both times, it's been mediocre . What a shame. The very front sign, in green is the Hidaka supermarket, my local asian supermarket which we'll go into shortly. Behind it is the Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House, a restaurant specialising in Beijing and Northern Chinese food. Not surprisingly, it's very good for it's dumplings and noodles but the rest of the menu items are rather mediocre. Behind that is the Fajar Indonesian restaurant. I've only been in there twice but it always seems packed with Indonesians. I think I would be lynch mobbed if I went into an Asian supermarket and didn't show the pocky aisle so here it is. For hzrt8w, here is the hot sauce aisle. It's quite small and I'll be going to a larger asian grocer later this week hopefully. I mentioned earlier that my two junk food vices are asian peanuts and sunflower seeds. Here are the brands I like. I call the peanuts in the middle "old man" peanuts and they come in regular and garlic flavour. Garlic costs a bit more but I always get that. Garuda peanuts are different and also really nice and I always find it funny that they have the same name as the airline company with the horrible safety record. Chacheer sunflower seeds are simply the BEST, most CRACK COCAINE filled sunflower seeds in the entire WORLD. The red ones in the middle are regular, the green ones on either side are coconut. They have a few other flavours but those two are my favourite. Mi Goreng are a type of Indonesian ramen noodle but they must be processed in the same factory as the sunflower seeds because they are also filled with crack cocaine. They contain 5 different flavour packets inside, fried onion, kecap manis, flavoured oil, hot sauce and soup base. You HAVE to eat them drained of all water, if you eat it like a noodle soup, it tastes like crap but dry, OMG, soooo good. These were all the rage at my High School and we ended up using them as scrip. I went to a part boarding/part day boarder school so us day boarders could buy them in bulk and sell them to boarders at quite a hefty markup. It was great. Here's another thing which I haven't seen outside of Australia. They're called Jelly Joy and they're this pouch of half jelly/half liquid with a straw in them. The texture is really unique. They cost 75c a pop here which is about 60c US so I bought 3 of them. Unfortunately, at this stage, the manager saw me taking photos and chased me down and asked me to put down the camera. I have no idea why but I thought it was pretty odd. Maybe they thought I was from the health inspectors or something. Here are the 3 jelly joys I bought, taken out on the street. Slurpy Mango, Slurpy Strawberry and Slurpy Lychee flavour. Finally, I went in for lunch at my favourite Chinese restaurant on the strip: Kingsford Chinese Restaurant. Because we're in the suburb of Kingsford and it's a Chinese. Imaginative, I know. There's only 2 dishes worth ordering here, the rest of it is undifferentiated garbage. But those two dishes, damn they're tasty: Salt & Pepper Squid. Bits of squid fried in a crispy batter with salt and Szechuan pepper corns. Sang Tung Chicken. This is an entire chicken, fried until the skin is crispy and the meat is succulent and then topped with this ultra addictive, slightly sour sauce with hot chillis and garlic and spring onions in it. Damn, I wish I knew how to make this.

I had to keep this under wraps for a day but here's something I did last thursday. The only equipment I brought with me was my knife, my apron and my wooden spoon. Everything else, I found on site. Notice how many of the dishes were very easy to scale: Salad: Just double the amounts Soup: Just toss in more veggies, meat and stock Risotto: Use more rice Roast: Throw in another leg/serve less meat per person Also, I cleverly used the relatively cheap soup and risotto to fill people up before the expensive lamb so I could provide some relatively fancy ingredients while at the same time, sticking to a very affordable budget. In the end, it took barely any time at all to whip all of that up and it was all extremely delicious.

My mother's family is from Changchun. My father's family is from the countryside near Jiaohe. I'm glad you loved Changchun, I've only been there a couple of times. The China was all from the friend who let me use their house. I think we alternated between 3 sets. He has a dishwasher with a fast rinse cycle so we would just shove one set in and in 20 minutes, it would be ready for the course after the one we currently served. I don't just like making elaborate feasts for my birthday, I just plain love making them full stop. For me, it's a way to really push my cooking to the limits and see what I'm capable of. I love really stretching myself to the absolute max and always trying to improve on the last time. As a rough history or "dinner party milestones" I've had: - 6 courses, 4 people, 1 week of prep - 10 courses, 4 people, 1 week of prep - 6 courses, 4 people, 2 days of prep - 21 courses, 21 people, 1 week of prep - 6 courses, 4 people, 5 hours of prep - 22 courses, 18 people, 2 days of prep - 7 courses, 19 people, 5 hours of prep As you may have noticed, I've never had a dinner party under 6 courses before .

Thanks markmorse, I got the creator's email address so I'll point him to that site. The Blind Eye Organ was great. The idea behind it is so obviously simple. The resistance between the pen and the earth circle is what determines the frequency. As you draw, graphite is being laid down onto the page and reduces the resistance. Here are some pics I managed to snap: This is a shot of a video he was playing: And here's him doing it live: Dorkbot was a whole lot of fun and I had dinner with my best friend from university at his place. His family is from Hungary and his grandmother had cooked a traditional hungarian dish: It's as ugly as sin but absolutely delicious. I'll have to bug him about the Hungarian name of it but it was some sort of green beans in a creamy sauce and chicken in a red wine sauce. After dorkbot, I was still a bit hungry so we grabbed a late night falafel wrap: Kebab shops are ubiquitous around Sydney and one of the only places open late as they cater to the drunk trade. that is simply amazing. Your energy is mindblowing! (but I´ve thought that before, when reading about your big dinners for large groups). What´s it like being back home? which PNW foods will you miss when in Australia, and which Australian foods (besides cheap passionfruit ) did you miss while in the US? ← As I've become more experienced with cooking, it seems easier and easier to cram large amounts of cooking into small quantities of time. The prep for this meal was extremely basic and I actually had half an hour at the end to have some civilised cocktails before the guests arrived. I'm going to highlight some of my favourite foods that I miss in the next few days so have patience . I'm doing a PhD in Computer Science in the field of Human Computer Interaction. I'm looking at taking an idea from Developmental Psychology called Theory of Mind and trying to apply it to the design of social software. My premise is that how we behave online is affected by what we think other people think about our actions and what we think other people will think about what we think about them and so on. I've just completed my first year so it's all very preliminary at the moment. Before that, I was doing research on tabletop computing like the newly announced Microsoft Surface and looking at how time pressure affects tabletop interaction. Before that, I was working on computer vision algorithms for camera localisation. I prefer not to count hours travelled as it just depresses me too much. However, I've become somewhat of a seasoned traveller by now so plane flights are relatively tolerable to me. My Seattle to San Francisco flight left at 6am so I held my 22nd birthday party the night before and partied till 4am. I was asleep before takeoff and slept the entire way to SF. Took a brief nap in SF airport and then was asleep before takeoff again and managed to squeeze in a good solid 5 hours on the plane. Noise cancelling headphones, a laptop with a 5 hour battery and a whole stack of TV shows and movies held me up till I got to Beijing. In Beijing, I was already unjetlagged and got a good solid 8 hours in a hotel bed. Every time I go to Beijing, I always try to have some lamb skewers, some peking duck and a lot of shopping and I managed to get all 3 on this trip so I was happy. Beijing to Sydney was another redeye and I again got a decent amount of sleep and I was completely fine once I got to Sydney. Hrmm... that's a hard question to answer. I think I'm in the middle right now. I've started getting my claws in Seattle but I still define myself as an Australian there. On the other hand, I certainly don't feel like I'm at home here. It's quite clear that I'm a temporary guest. I was never much of a junk food person at all but my two vices are Chinese peanuts and ChaCheer Chinese sunflower seeds. The peanuts I could get in the States but my brand of sunflower seeds, I couldn't find AT ALL. I've eaten one and a half bags of these things in 2 days which is NOT GOOD seeing as each bag contains 80 grams of fat but these things are SOOO addictive.

Well, I'm back for the night so I thought I would tell just a bit about me to start the blog off. I think I'm one of the youngest members on this board having just turned 22. I was born in Mainland China and my parents are Chinese, from the Jilin province in the north east but my family emigrated to Australia when I was 5 and I consider myself more Australian than Chinese. However, my family still cooks Northeastern Chinese food so expect to see some of that in the blog in the next few days. I first got into cooking around year 9 or so when I started helping with the basics around the kitchen but, during my high school years, I was never a very serious cook. My specialty was Spaghetti Bolognaise with the sauce coming out of a jar and, even then, I had a love of Western food which continues to this day. I finished high school in Geelong, a city about 100km (70 miles) south west of Melbourne and moved to Sydney to start my undergrad degree in Computer Science. During my first semester, I was living in a college and there were no cooking facilities whatsoever open to students and it was only during that time that I realised how much I missed cooking. After the first semester, my parents found a job and a house in Sydney and I moved back in with them and that's the house I'm living in right now. After I moved back in, I started getting really seriously into cooking, discovered eGullet, read through the entire of the eGCI over the course of one sleepless night and fell in love with the community here. In Sepetember of last year, I moved to Seattle to start a PhD program in Computer Science at the University of Washington. Even though I was living in a share house in Seattle, the other people in the house never really cooked so Seattle was the first time I really had a kitchen to myself and was free to buy and cook whatever I wanted. Seattle was also the first time I started hanging around other foodies as eGullet people seem thick on the ground there and, all in all, I'm having a blast of a time over there (if only someone could do something about the rain!). And now, it's summer holidays in the US so I chose to abandon the lovely Seattle summer and return to what has been torrential downpour and regional flooding in Sydney so I could visit my family and friends again. I had always wanted to do a foodblog and I thought this would be a great chance to show all of you what I love about Australia and my local neighbourhood as well as providing an informed contrast between Australian food and American food. I've got a fairly packed blog lined up for you this week. Tomorrow, I'll be giving you a tour of some of the local eatery's around my neighbourhood and take you to my favourite Chinese hole-in-the-wall for lunch. For dinner, I have a function at Google I'm attending so you can take a sneak peek at the Sydney Google office. Wednesday, I'll take you to one of the local farmers markets I used to attend regularly when I was here and dinner is going to be at Tetsuya's, widely considered the best restaurant in Sydney and ranked 5th best in the world. Thursday, I'm going to be cooking another Lamb dinner for a bunch of my friends so I'll walk you through the markets and then the dinner. Friday, my Dad gets back from Hong Kong so I'm planning to cook a special family dinner. Then Saturday and Sunday, I want to showcase some of my parent's cooking of authentic Northeastern Chinese food which is not nearly as well known in the west as Cantonese or Szechuan food. I have a conference paper I need to submit by 5pm EST (7am my time) so I'm probably going to be up fairly late, compulsively procrastinating so I should be checking into this thread fairly often.

Greetings and welcome to another foodblog from a Pacific Northwesterner. Although I live in Seattle now, you won't be seeing any food from that region for I am on my summer holidays in not-so-sunny Sydney. I have to run off real soon so I'll leave some of the introductory stuff for a bit later. I was asking for advice from some former foodbloggers once I knew I was going to be doing one, and one of them told me that many foodblogs start off a bit slow so I'm going to start this one off with a dinner I just cooked in Melbourne for some of my friends: Melbourne and Sydney are the two largest towns in Australia (although neither are the capital). I did my High School in a small town quite close to Melbourne and so many of my High School friends are still living there. I hadn't been back since I left High School 6 years ago so this was the perfect time to return and catch up with a lot of old friends who I hadn't seen for a long time. As part of my last day in Melbourne, I was going to cook a big going away meal. The main problem I was facing was trying to find someone who could donate their kitchen and house to me hosting a party. It was a bit touch and go for a while with a few people saying they might be able to do it, and then not being able to and I was structuring my menu around being adaptable to any kitchen I would have to walk into but, fortunately, on the noon of that day, someone finally came through and things were very quickly organised. So in the end, I had 2 hours to shop and then 3.5 hours to cook 7 courses for 19 people. Here's what I managed to pull off: The Inaugural Fitzroy Garden Salad - Milkweed, Radish, Apple & Lemon Thyme with a Raspberry Vinagrette. I love using the combination of Radish and Apple and it's appeared a bunch of times in different salads. I'll tell a story of how the milkweed got into the salad in a later post. Someone at the table suggested this salad needed a name and we were dining near the Fitzroy Gardens so that's how the salad got it's name. Irish Lamb Stew with Onions, Potatoes, Parsnips, Turnips, Carrots & Roasted Garlic. This was a great dish for a cold, winter's day and it was deep and hearty with all the different root vegetables. Dead easy to make as well Mushroom Risotto. At this stage of the night, I was pretty drunk so I pressganged people into stirring the risotto for me. The great thing about cooking for friends is, if you're clever, you can push them into the kitchen while you're quaffing red wine at the table and being belligerent. Roast Leg of Lamb with Minted White Bean Mash and Sauteed Silverbeet. The Lamb was rubbed with garlic, rosemary, lemon thyme, anchovies, & olive oil and roasted in a low oven until perfectly medium rare. The beans were pretty magical. I simmered them until almost tender with some trimmed off lamb fat and the silverbeet stems and then I placed the entire thing underneath the lamb when it was roasting so all the fat and drippings dripped down onto it. A bit of mint at the end really brightened it up. The silverbeet was just sauteed lightly with some garlic and chilli flakes and they were great too. Apple & Rhubarb Crumble with a Feijoa Sabayon. Anytime I'm drunk and get to play with fire is a good night in my opinion so once I found out the kitchen had a blowtorch in it, sabayon was put on the menu. Rhubarb was looking great at the market and a crumble is always a good way of doing a dessert without needing much equipment. Feijoa is an interesting and rather unusual fruit. I had never had it before that day and I bought a bunch not knowing what I could do with it. It tastes sort of a cross between sour apple and kiwifruit and, according to wikipedia, it grows in South America and now New Zealand/Australia. It went really well in this dish as it played off both the apple and the rhubarb quite well. Passionfruit Truffles. I always love ending a meal with Truffles now since they're so easy to make but give such an elegant finish to a meal. I hadn't eaten passionfruit for almost a year as they're either impossible to get or absurdly expensive in the US. So when I saw them, 7 for $2 at the market, I snagged as many as I could and just went on a binge. Anyway, I'm going to go be nerdy with my friends now at Dorkbot but I'll post something later tonight (It's 6pm here in Sydney so later tonight means in a few hours).

What can't duck fat be used for? I just use it as my generic, go to cooking fat for anything savory and it always turns out 5% better than if made with olive oil/butter.

Are you using skim/2% milk? The higher the fat content, the more effective. If you have cream, that would work the best. Then again, with vegetable oil being so cheap, that would be my first goto.

You can either do lots of things or a large quantities of a few things. This is really restricted by your cookware, if you have big pots, by all means go for the larger quantities to make your life easier. A quick rule of thumb for me is that the average person should be eating between a kilo and a kilo and a half (2 - 3 lbs), 200 - 300gm of which should be meat (1/2 - 2/3lb). If you plan your quantities out in this manner, everyone will be full but not stuffed. Use a lot of bulk dishes to fill people up. Stuff like soups, salads, pasta, mashed potato, roasts etc. scale up really well to the size of pot you have. In the end, 20 - 25 is not a lot. If you're used to cooking for a family, then you cook with about 6 portions normally. Double the quantities, put out 2 different main dishes and supplement with a salad and soup and you're about done.

I owned a furi chefs knife and I've given away and reccomended others to friends. Sure, the steel is not the best and it's made in China but the knife is just so damn comfortable that it doesn't matter. I tried global/wustof/henckels and they all didn't feel half as comfortable as the furi.

I thought I was the only one to do 1:1. Every TV chef I see and every cookbook I read lays down the golden 3:1 rule and I just ignore it but I thought I was committing some giant culinary sin. Funny.

Where do you get them from in Sydney?

Due to a variety of circumstances, the next few weeks will involve me cooking in a bunch of different people's kitchens, many of which will either be fairly unstocked or stocked without me knowing whats there. As a result, I'm going to have to adapt my cooking style so that I can create an entire meal solely off the stuff I can find in the supermarket without leaving much in the way of excess ingredients when I leave. That seems to cut a huge chunk of the available repertoire of cuisines for me, all of which seem to require a substantial setup cost in terms of pantry items. Off the top of my head: Chinese: Soy sauce, five spice powder, oyster sauce, rice wine vinegar SE Asian: Fish sauce, Chillis Indian: Spices Italian: Olive Oil Sure, you can take shortcuts and fudges with each one of those cuisines but I would much rather prefer to keep the integrity and just adapt my cooking towards dishes that are naturally suited towards this sort of situation. What sorts of foods/cuisines are naturally suited to using fresh ingredients only with no or minimal reliance on pantry items which I might not have access to? edit: Also, logically following on from this requirement is nothing which requires specialised equipment either. I have my knife, a wooden spoon and an apron. Assume a stove, an oven, a chopping board and a set of basic pans is available but not much else.