Shalmanese

both whole foods and my local supermarket have started carrying frozen stock which contains no salt.

Why would you go to a restaurant just because it couldn't be as bad as they said it was?

Ditto, sounds like they just botched up once and found something they could blame it on. I bet if you made them make fudge 20 times in a double blind, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

I bought 2 gigantic packages of chicken thighs yesterday and in the process of seperating them into individual portions, I ended up with a giant portion of trimmed off fat and skin. Not wanting to see them go to waste, I decided on a little experiment. I set all of the fat plus a couple of spare bones I had lying around to render out until they got crisp and brown, to the stage I would normally get them to if I were making cracklings. Then, I added a whole bunch of onions, garlic and carrots directly to the hot oil and let that cook until it got browned and caramelised. Added water directly to the pan and let it simmer for 3 hours. Let it chill, took off the fat cap and underneath was an amazingly flavourful, well gelled, brown stock. It had a nice rich, roast chicken flavour and was wonderfully sweet from the caramelised vegtables. I wouldn't use it for a soup but it would work great in a gravy. The only difference is that next time, i would skim off some of the fat before letting it chill as it was hard to break through a fatcap that thick. I don't know about you but I seem to find myself with excess fat trimings far more often that excess bones and I previously didn't have much of a clue what to do with them. This seems like a really quick and easy way to make something useful out of them. The best part is you can just toss any bones you have in with the fat and it will brown up right next to them. Personally, I prefer cooking the stock with the huge fatcap on top as I suspect some of the flavour from the fat gets transferred into the stock but I might be wrong and it might be easier to drain all the fat out first and then cook it like a normal stock. I assume this works as well for beef as it does for chicken.

Pretty much all fats are liquid at 98.6F. If this were not the case, they would have a very unpleasant mouthfeel as they would not melt and release flavour when you ate them. The melting point for a fat is an indirect proxy of the amount of saturation. Saturated fats can pack in much more closely to each other and form tighter bonds so they have a higher melting point.

Yes, US bacon is generally significantly fattier than Australian.

I think it's been a persistant bias that anything done to lowbrow food can't possibly be good when done to highbrow food. Thus, sugar, MSG and "processed" foods have been unfairly maligned, not for what they are, but for what they've been used in. One of the amusing things I've found about Molecular Gastronomy is how they've systematically pulled the wool over diners eyes about the origin of their techniques and chemicals. I have no beef with using sugar or MSG in my food. I think one needs to be careful when using them because there certainly is the temptation to use them to cover up inferior ingredients but a judicious application can certainly have a legitimate purpose in the kitchen.

In the 4 months since I've moved to America, I've gone through 500mL of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 200mL of peanut oil, 300mL of duck fat, 400gm of butter and around 700gm of bacon fat. Pretty much all of the EVOO was used in salad dressings so virtually all my cooking is done with animal fats. I pretty much never use pre-rendered fats anymore. If I am searing chuck for a braise, I will trim all the large chunks of fat off and render that in the pan while I prep everything else. I then use the rendered beef fat to sear the meat and pour off any excess into the bin. Most other dishes, I'll start with a rasher or 2 of bacon and render it out in the same manner. One great tip I've found is to use far more fat than is actually needed to sear something. The extra fat tempers any hot spots you have in the pan and gets deep into the nooks and crannies of the meat giving a superior sear. Once you've finished searing, just pour any excess fat out and let it cool before disposing of it. The taste of animal fat just cant be beat for getting warm, rich flavours into a dish when used judiciously.

I made a variant of it a few weeks ago using Young's Double Chocolate Stout and the results were phenomenally good. I browned an entire chuck roast and then just threw it on top of some carrots and the beer. Let it slow cook and then reduce and you get a wonderful, sweet, bitter, chocolatey sauce.

Another Set D person checking in! I'm excited because this is going to be my first chinese new year away from home so no lavish spreads like I'm used to. I'm going to be making dumplings from scratch for the first time but I can't wait to see what you can pull off!

I thought the Japanese influence largely came about from Ferdinand Point's trip to Japan and how he drew on that as inspiration for nouvelle cuisine.

Some people have recently complained to me that they miss my posts in the dinner thread. I never realised I had a following so now I feel obligated to catch up on the last few months worth of stuff. Southern Dinner: Roast Pork, Collard Greens, Southern Green Beans & Corn Bread Cassoulet made with home cured duck confit, not especially authentic but delicious. In retrospect, throwing the sausage on top at the last minute was a mistake, it became dried out an tough, Caeser Salad on the side: Beef Goulash, Sauteed Spinach & Noodles: Chicken Breast, Sauteed Spinach & Almonds: Poached Monkfish with Acorn Squash & Linguica Risotto and Balsamic Glazed Green Beans: Banana & Walnut Bread: Chocolate Mousse: 3 Types of Truffles, Rum & Orange with Demera Sugar, Hazelnut & Almond, Dulce De Leche & Coconut

Soy sauce as a ubiquitious marinade ingredient is certainly one influence.

No pictures but... OMG, I think we just had EVERYTHING on the menu at union. I was dining with scarlett and 22tango and connie (sorry, I forgot your egullet name) as well as a whole bunch of friends who each knew each other through wierd and intricate contortions. There was just so much food being passed around it was like sensory overload. The highlight of the evening was probably the pork belly although there were no real duds at all. It seemed like half of egullet was there that night. We saw rocky, little ms foodie, seagal and I'm probably forgetting a bunch. Anyway, I have to say I'm definately a fan of union.

I think the major beef with the food network is not neccesarily that it's dumbing down the content to make it more approachable so much as it's apparent shift towards fostering low expectations and standards. Starting with simple basics is fine as the start towards an ever improving journey, throwing shit from a can into a pot and telling viewers that your dinner party guests will never know is not.

I think it was either the old Joy of Cooking or Larousse that had a recipe for potatos cooked in resin.

It seems just plain butter is going to be finickity. Make the centre too cold and it will be a puck, make it too hot and it'll be hard to prevent leakage. Probably a better idea is to first emulsify the butter with some sort of thickener to produce a more reliable texture. The simplest butter sauce is just a beurre blanc. Can you freeze a buerre blanc or will it seperate? What if you drop it into LN2? Another alternative might be a seared hollandaise. The flavour of the butter will still shine through but it will be a lot easier to handle and the egg proteins will significantly help in browning. Moving into more esoteric regions, you could do something similar to Dufrense's deep fried mayo and use Gellan to emulsify it. You won't get the lovely liquid cascade though. What if you add gelatine to butter? Is that even possible? Lots of room for experimentation.

Why would you use a dishwasher to clean a peeler? I always just give it a rinse in a good stream of water and flick it a few times to dry and it's back in the drawer. Seems like loading and unloading it from the dishwasher is actually more work and if you ever need to use it between dishwashing cycles, then you have to clean it by hand anyway. The key is to clean it as soon as you finish using it so theres no time for dried on crud to accumulate.

This is actually not too far from the truth. There are dedicated companies who provide basically a Chinese Restaurant starter kit. They provide everything from the menus to the decor to the food which is part of the reason for the homogenity of American Chinese food at a certain level.

Any news?

Some good suburbs to consider are: Newtown (Bohemian, student, very central and lots of little restaurants but no real food shopping to speak of) Bondi (Urban chic, close to the beach, ungodly expensive but very good food shopping) Coogee/Randwick/Kensington (This is where I used to live. Reasonably priced, close to the city and some quite decent stuff) Northern Sydney/Chatswood (You'll have to ask someone else, I never go up there) Darlinghurst/Surrey Hills (Colonial style houses close to the city, lots of good restaurants, I don't know what the food shopping situation is like) If you're coming from london, the prices for everything will look cheap I guess.

Tonight, I very gently browned some linguicia, red pepper flakes and garlic in EVOO and then tossed in anchovies, clams and a splash of white wine. Clamp on the lid for 3 minutes and then toss in some lemon zest, parsley and lemon juice and serve. Absolutely delicious.

Just an update but I've managed to lose 10kg/20lb on my "Eat whatever the fuck you want as long as it's salad" diet .

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've been singing praises for Spaghetti with Peas for a long time now.

spring rolls obviously.