Shalmanese

Truffles are set. Spoke on the phone with the snooty gourmet store today. The european truffle season hasn't started yet but the Western Australian truffles are doing well. $2300AUD/kg which isn't even $1800USD. A nice surprise. Hopefully, they'll be as pungent as the european versions. They're from french stock so they should be good. OTOH, I can't seem to find a decent place to do equipment hire. Plates, cutlery, glassware, stuff like that. I'm going to phone some caterers tomorrow but it looks like they just handle boring round white plates and I want something a bit snazzier. We'll see. Keep you updated as the thing progresses.

Yeah, I don't generally talk about my age online unless it's relevant. I'll be leaving Sydney on August 19th and arrive in Seattle, Washington on Sept 4th. I'm adamantly opposed to cake, don't ask me why. I've documented my problems with choux dough/ I guess I could do a rich chocolate slice or sorts. I'm a dude. I don't know yet. I'm budgeting about $50 AUD (~$40 USD) per person not including alcohol but I think I might get under that. Man hours? I've got a few hours on wednesday, all of friday and all of saturday set aside for this. It's probably going to take 100 or so man hours in total but I'm expecting friends to help pitch in. edit: I'll keep a track of spending and put a detailed costing up here.

How did you make the shot glasses? I've been trying to figure out the best way to make ice serving vessels. But even with boiling and purified water, I still get unsightly bulges in the middle of my molds and unmolding is a major pain. I would like to carve them but my freezer doesn't get cold enough for them to stay frozen long enough to carve.

Hrmm... is there likely to be any issue with butane burners in a rented apartment? What sort of BTU's do those things get up to? I might just bite the bullet and treat myself to a full blown induction hob. I've always wanted to play around with those.

Because the space of possibilites is much greater than what is commercially available. A charcuituie provider can only realistically offer a dozen or so different products of one kind before economies of scale and brand confusion set in. Of those, at best 4 are what everyone else is doing which leaves 8 unique possibilities. If you have 5 charcutuie providers near you, thats barely 40 choices, if your very lucky. What if you want to make a sausage thats venison, sour cherries and bourbon? Can you buy that? What about bacon smoked with pear wood and spiked with cloves? Salami with oregano and crushed juniper berries? I'm just pulling stuff outta my ass and I'm sure at least one of those tastes horrible but the point is you get to experiment and customise it to your own tastes.

I dunno, I guess thats sort of the appeal of it. I'm taking the drunken greasy pig out to it's ultimate extreme. Mainly, its a reward for keeping up with me for so long .

Wow, goddamn. !7 definates already and I'm still far too light on the dessert side. I dunno, I'm out of inspiration on the dessert side. Everything I want to do is going to require far too many ramekins or ring molds or stuff to be practical.

To fill in a bit of detail about my plans: Can anybody tell me what the black truffle season will be like at that time of the year? One of the things I'm toying with is to cook some ultimately decadent burgers at 4am after a hard nights drinking. Wagyu mince, speck, fontina cheese, a fried free range egg and some shavings of black truffles sounds like just the thing after a hard nights drinking. I haven't been keeping up with truffle news. By memory, I recall the Alba Winter truffle season was abysmal but nothing about Perigord. Other things I'm almost definately doing: Breakfast is probably going to be sourdough pancakes, with either strawberries or blueberries and some canadian maple syrup. After that, I want to dive into a loaf of fresh sourdough bread straight out of the oven with some Le Escuer (or however it's pronouced) butter which I've been eyeing for over a year but could never justify buying at $8 for 125gm. I want to, at some point, make my "ultimate bar snack" which is a mixture of freshly fried potato chips fried in lamb and duck fat, roasted almonds, lamb cracklings and strips of crispy duck skin, all coated with a light powder of sea salt/black pepper/chilli powder/lime zest. I want to do some make your own pizzas for dinner. The dough will be pre prepped and people are just free to put whatever crazy combo they want on there. I want to do fresh pasta from scratch on the day. People get a chance to knead the dough, roll it out and cut it and have a giant pasta making party. Dont know what I'll do with it, maybe a ravioli of peas and ricotta or mayby just boiled, browned in a little butter and with black truffles shaved over the top. I want to see if I can get a wagyu brisket and slow cook it for the entire morning and have it for lunch but I have no idea how one should cook brisket to best accentuate the silky decadence of Wagyu. I want to do some roasted pita and other biscuit sort of things with a hummus dip, roasted red pepper dip and guacamole so people will have something to munch on in between the torrential onslaught of food. I want to do some fresh sydney rock oysters with a verjus granite which I had as an amuse once and fell in love with. I want to do Coca Cola chicken which was always a special childhood dish. I want to do a rack of lamb with some chimchurri sauce over some briefly wilted baby spinach and arugula and walnuts. edit: Need a killer recipe for Chimchurri. I want to sear some duck breasts and then thinly slice them and put them on top of an asian inspired salad with a killer dressing. Any suggestions for recipes? I want a soup which is a layer of creamed corn on the bottom, then a spicy lobster bisque and finally topped with a hazelnut/wild mushroom foam. All in a dematisse. I've been dreaming about this for quite a while and it just seems so right. I have NFI how I would make the foam though. I want to do my signature miso-pumpkin soup with ginger and sesame which has such a silky, sexy flavour which will leave you guessing as to how it was made if you didn't know. For desserts, I definately want an flight of sorbets for a palate cleanser. I want to do a 1 bite creme brulee where I get chinese ceramic soup spoons and fill with custard a la minute and cover with some sugar and then gently flame the top. One bite of custardy goodness is all your getting but I want it to pack a serious punch. I want to do something with chocolate but I don't know what. I was thinking of doing deeply rich chocolate truffle to eat either before or after the brulee . But the thought of it now bores me. I can't think off the top of my head a deeply sexy chocolate dessert which could be prepped well ahead without needing 21 ramekins. Some things I'm still up in the air about: Scallops, somehow. I can't think off the top of my head what works best. Osso Bucco or Boeuf Borguignon, not sure which. A Thai chicken soup possibly a lamb curry or braised lamb shanks of some sort. A Ceviche of some kind As I said earlier, this is going to be the type of food that I love to cook. Occasional bits of flair but, more fundamentally, that deeply satisfying mix of ingredients which just becomes so inherently right. I'll post up more ideas as inspiration strikes. As with all things of this nature, new ideas will pop up all the time and I doubt the final menu is going to look anything like this. But I'll keep you updated as to how the menu will change.

So I'm finally taking the crazy plunge and going ahead with this. On the 29th of July (sadly, people wern't available on the 21st), I'm having my belated 21st birthday celebration with almost an entire day of cooking, eating, drinking and celebrating. I'm going to attempt to cook 21 dishes of food for 21 guests over the course of 21 hours. The plan is to start at 7am in the morning with breakfast, cook a steady stream of food for lunch and dinner till about 10pm, go out on the town and get blind stinking drunk and then come back at 4am and cook some more post-drinking greasy food. People are free to pop in and out as they wish and everyone is welcome to join in the cooking frenzy. The fact that I'm doing this while also writing my Masters thesis and planning to move halfway around the world 2 weeks after that just adds to the craziness but it will probably be the last time I'll see many of these people for quite some time so I want it to be something special. I'll keep updates about the plans for the day as the thing evolves. and I would love to get feedback from the community on how to best run this.

wow, that was a stunning post chiantiglace.

I'm maining interested because in almost ever area of cooking, homemade foods are vastly superior to anything store bought yet diet foods seem a curious exception. I could make a fantastic vanilla ice-cream but if you asked me to make a vanilla ice-cream-like-product that was less than 5% fat, then I would fail abysmally compared to a store bought version. It seems a curious deficiency for home cooks to be lacking in the skills of texture manipulation that big commercial processors use to make diet foods taste less awful. It seems to me that proper mastery of this area should in theory give much more range to all sorts of foods, diet or not. Even if it is only to subtly alter a recipe so that less fat can be used without the taste being compromised.

I personally like the idea of turning Z kitchen into an undergroud speakeasy. Making it legit would remove some of the frission of the operation. Now that I'm on the same continent as you, I'll definately have to come over and check it out when you get it up and running.

Pelvic Fatigue?!?!?!

Good to know, thanks How high is high exactly? Looking through craigslist, a shared room goes for roughly $300 - $500 a month which is not much worse than Sydney. Then again, it's impossible to tell how nice these places are. Is $500 for a nice room in a decent neighbourhood reasonable or dreaming? How do herbs do? Oh, I fully intend to!

Good to know. What do you mean by grad student housing? All I can find on the UW website is residences where lots of people are packed into 1 building and all the food is catered for. Does UW offer freestanding apartments with kitchens? How do you people survive? Damn, I was fearing that. But I guess you guys compensate with the supermarkets offering more choice and quality. Right? Right? Please tell me thats so. What about farmers markets? Luckily, I adore seafood although I don't know how much of it I can afford with my budget. Yeah, but on the downside, I don't get to gloat and taunt you guys all summer long with that glorious balcony and I live through 2 winters in a row. Great, when I get settled in, I'll make a post in the ISO thread and we can organise a giant shopping expedition or something. Yeah, no matter how bad it is, it still couldn't compare to the horror that is the University of Sydney. Still, I had a perfectly nice meal at the Flowers bar on the ave last time I was there. I should be arriving either September 4th is or September 12th. Still have to work some things out on this side.

Also: How do the seasons work over there? When does stuff come into season and when does it go out again? Whats it like in Winter? Is everything either imported or preserved or is there still some decent local fresh produce?

So I've been accepted into graduate school at the University of Washington and I'm about to uproot my life and move halfway across the world. I'm hoping for some kindly egullet people to give me some pointers about the whole seattle culinary landscape. I'm more interested in the day to day food shopping stuff than restuarants or that sort of stuff. So just a few questions I have at the moment: * I'm planning on living without a car and taking the bus to UW every day. What parts of Seattle are close to public transport, has good food shopping and is affordable? * I've heard that it's nearly impossible to get a rental with a gas stove. Is this true and is there any way to find one thats not 100 years old? * What are some of the must visit food shops? I know about Pike Place market and theres meant to be a great spice shop which I unfortunatly never got to visit last time I was over. I've also heard there was a great cured meat place. What about kitchenware, are there any restaurant supply stores or the like? Where can I pick up a good knife? * Ethnic supermarkets in Seattle. How easy will it be to find asian, mexican or other ethnic ingredients? * As far as I can tell, I've been spoiled living in Australia to expect butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers to be de rigeur in every shopping district but apparently this is a rarity in all but the toniest neighbourhoods. Is this correct or am I mistaken? * Whats the cost of living like in Seattle? I had a look at the eGullet Shopping Cart project and it looks like things are probably 25% more expensive in the US than I'm used to. Doing the conversion from AUD/Kg to USD/Lb is gonig to mess me up for a while though. * Farmers markets, where are the good ones, which ones are not worth the trouble? * Whats good, fresh, local and ridiculously underpriced for it's quality in the area? I love finding underappreciated gems. * On a more general note, what are some good places on the internet to order stuff thats hard to find locally? * Any reccomendations for good places to eat around the University district? I'm going to be living on a grad student stipend so I won't have large wads of cash to be flying around but I intend to eat well and cook to my usual standards. I might have to sacrifice a few luxuries in my diet but I still believe it's possible to make incredibly delicious food even on a moderately tight budget.

A friend of mine snapped this shot: in a seafood shop around kennedy town and was wondering what it was. it's totally stumped me, it looks like some sort of mushroom but way bigger than I've ever seen. He says the box is a standard size box so each piece would be about the size of your arm. Any ideas what it is?

Looking forward to reading about your exploits. Currently struggling through the tail end of a thesis which has severely hampered my cooking mojo so I'm expecting to live vicariously through you!

Manufacturers try to hide it because many people believe falsely that it is unsafe and should be avoided. Manufacturers are by and large not in the business of educating people.

Sure, ok. They taste bad, they might be bad for you (no proof is ever given however) and they are all that is wrong with the modern food industry. That doesn't address my question. Is it technically feasible? What are the processes, can they be adapted to home use and has anyone tried to do it? I'm asking not because I am interested in eating diet foods at home, but beacause I find the science and process of it interesting and I feel it would be a worthwhile area to look at if possible. People already experiment with baking with fake sugars and there have been a number of highly technical threads in the pastry forum about it which I find highly interesting. For everything else, knowledge and debate seems completely absent. And FYI: Everything I've heard about Olestra is that the anal leakage claims are far overblown. I would love to get my hands on some Olestra but it seems impossible to get in retail channels.

So Diet foods which attempt to imitate the full fat versions are made with a combination of high tech gums and extracts and other chemicals which are not normally found in a home kitchen. Which means you can't make your own flavour or play around a bit with the texture like you can with home made foods. Is it even remotely possible to make these diet foods at home or is it simply beyond the technological capabilities of a home kitchen? If it's not, have people tried it? Whats easy to make, whats impossible?

A rather annoying solution would be to take the pan off heat and measure the temp and then put it back on again.

Cook a steak, make a vinagrette, roast a chicken, mashed potatos, french fries, pasta with tomato sauce, poach a side of salmon, bake a pie, bake a cake, make a merengue, poach an egg, scramble an egg, soft boil an egg.

Not really. Olives in their natural state are inedible but put through a complex chemical process, become delicious. Wine is much tastier than grape juice. Bacon and other cured meats go through similarly complex curing processes. Cheese is the controlled rotting of milk and yet tastes great. Applying heat to fat & protein causes a maillard reaction which is insanely complex. All of these food preparations are far more complex than what corn has to go through to make HFCS. Just because they're older, they're more accepted but it doesn't mean they're any "better" or "worse" than the untreated state.