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Wow..an eG lovestory! That slightly warmed the cockles of my black, black heart. Heh. GREAT beginning to a foodblog..love it. Plus: I was very excited for this blog just seeing the Bones and Fat books alone..two of my bibles.

Tartare couldn't be easier! Just hack it up and flavour to taste. I mean, I'm sure there are treasured techniques for cutting against the grain, or pre-chilling, or something, but I ignore all that and just choppity chop. Post back with your creations! The manufacturer's page is here. I got it through an Australian online deli (ideli.com.au) but I'm sure the manufacturer could advise if there are distributors in your area. Dinner here was a simple one; found these lovely padron peppers at the farmers' market and fried them simply in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. Although, you know how 9 out of 10 padrons are supposed to be sweet and mild and it's that last 1 of 10 that's hot enough to blow your head off? 10 out of 10 of these suckers were hot as hell. But addictively tasty. There was much swearing and chortling at Chez RRO last night, as we all cheerfully sustained slight chemical burns to the mouth. Then had a simple smoked tomato and roasted garlic soup, non-artistically drizzled with worcestershire sauce and olive oil.

After salivating over Blether's pork pie pictorial, I had a serious hankering for one (a pork pie, not a Blether! Presumably.. ). Not really having the time to invest in making pies myself this weekend, I bought a pretty good one from a deli near me, and ate it with hot English mustard and salad. Would have liked a coarser grind to the meat, but it was actually pretty good. Tasty jelly, well-spiced meat, tender crust.

Love the duck soup, DanM! I hadn't seen it before either..it's quite interesting. Salty and oceany. The only ingredients listed are octopus and salt so I presume the binder is whatever natural collagen/gelatine/chitin?? octopuses have. I love that the product name is "Tenerezze di polpo" - tenderness of octopus! Dinner here was more tuna. Since it's skipjack and not as purely delicious as other types of tuna, I decided it wouldn't suffer from a tartare treatment, so made three flavours: *Mayo, sriracha, and crispy fried shallots *Mirin, soy, sesame oil and sesame seeds *Avocado, lemon juice, diced chilli and hazelnut oil Served with wonton wrappers, fried till crispy, for scooping.

Where to begin..fantastic seafood from a bunch of people, but I particularly like ScottyBoy's fish tacos and those fantastic scallops from bmdaniel. On the meat front, Twyst's shortribs look DELECTABLE and C. Sapidus and dcarch, your meals are astoundingly beautiful as usual. And that brisket, mgaretz! Also, some beautiful vegetable preparations there, Kim Shook, Panaderia Canadiense and kayb. Yum. I've missed so many good meals! Dinner here was all about sausages and scallops; I bought some very interesting octopus sausage (!) and turned it into a mini appetizer with a seared scallop and some chervil: Then fried up some chorizo, deglazed with sherry and mixed with some very barely cooked scallops as a textural counterpoint. This was a flavour and texture sensation, but needed the very lemony salad served with it.

No, but now I really want to try it. And I think I'm going to! Thanks for the idea.

Most of the 'mites' taste too umami to me..Vegemite, Marmite, Promite etc. Many Americans have possibly never had the "pleasure" of tasting these, which are essentially boiled down yeast extract. It's not just that they're too salty (which they are), but too mouth-puckeringly savoury, to my taste.

I'm thinking red braised beef, or pork (shoulder if belly is too fatty). Other than that, maybe some dan dan mian? You could cook the toppings etc beforehand and then just boil the noodles at the last minute. Ribs - everyone loves ribs, maybe black bean spareribs or plum sauce, or honey garlic. Gong bao/kung pao that you make mild and sub pork for the chicken (since you already have a chicken dish) could work too. Or make up a big pile of wontons/jiaozi and boil them at the pass. Don't know about your equipment setup, but a steamboat or hotpot could be fun? Prep all the ingredients beforehand and let 'em go at it. If you have a rice cooker, you could steam up some claypot rice with pork etc. No seafood?? That's unusual for Australians, even teenagers. Hmm....maybe char siu? That'd be OK reheated. Other than that, you could branch into the wonderful world of Aussie Chinese dishes, like black bean beef/lamb, or black pepper beef, or a decent version of sweet and sour pork. Also, for some amazing Cantonese inspiration, checkout hzrt8w's pictorial thread, here. Lastly, I know they're not Chinese, but some of the Malaysian mild rendang curries or Vietnamese caramel braised dishes are absolute stars to make ahead and reheat.

Fantastic food..those meat platters!!

Lovely breakfasts, all! I especially approve of pork in the morning, heidih. My breakfast might not be everyone's idea of bliss first thing in the morning, but I LOVED it..barramundi bellies and 'wings' (the side bit of the fish), simmered nitsuke-style, in sake, soy, mirin, sugar, dashi and big slices of ginger to chew on at the end. So good..the wings (of any fish, really) are so deliciously tender and sticky with glorious fat and collagen. Mmm.

Japan is the mothership for ingenious food packaging. One of my favourites: every convenience store in Japan sells onigiri, rice balls with some kind of stuffing that are then wrapped in a sheet of nori. When you make these at home, the nori quickly goes soggy and limp from touching the rice. The ones sold in Japan are brilliantly wrapped in two layers of plastic, one layer BETWEEN the rice and the nori, and designed in such a way that you can tear off the plastic and the inner sheets come out of the centre of the onigiri without destroying or messing up the structure. The nori stays perfectly crisp until you're ready to eat it. Hard to explain, but it's brilliant. it is in action.Of course, it directly relates to my major bugbear with Japanese packaging..the insane amount of plastic used. Brilliant for onigiri, but individually wrapped green onions? Ridiculous.

Grrrr, Bruce, I'm trapped in a food-less environment with no chance of a decent meal for HOURS and I have to look at THAT..everything you post makes me ravenous. RAVENOUS. Or moreso, anyway.

Oh, they think I'm pretty mad! Especially because I'm always dragging them all over Sydney looking for one improbably ingredient or another, or trying to convince them to split the shipping charges on, say, six different types of dried chiles and a huge bag of jamaica flowers..but they happily eat the spoils, in fact two of them are now making YOUR carnitas themselves, so how's that for the power of the internet?! Hehe.

No. But it's tuna-ey enough to satisfy, and since all my o-toro and chu-toro eating over many trips to Japan in my lifetime have quite possibly depleted the ocean's stocks proportionately enough for about 50 people, I have some compensating to do.

WOW - scottyboy, that pig.. And the squash flowers look lovely too. I can taste the crunch from a hemisphere away. Dakki - that meal is just beautiful. I'm quite entranced by texture of your tortillas..I don't know exactly what I mean by that, other than I'm jealous I'll never find ones as good as those here! Jan Virtanen, your ratatouille is gorgeous. It's actually something I've never cooked, but that picture makes me want to. And kayb - a ginger mojito! Delicious. Here it was a pretty simple seared skipjack tuna sashimi. Or tataki, I guess. Got a nice charry crust on it and served on salad leaves dressed with umeboshi (sour plum), soy sauce and camellia oil. I try not to eat or buy tuna that much unless I can be sure of its provenance but a friend caught this one a few hours before with a good old fishing rod, so I feel OK about it.

It was fantastic! Smoky and vinegary and deeply savoury. I've made your carnitas (your posts are how I first heard of carnitas!) and love the hit of brown sugar to caramelise, so when the recipe I had for the chilorio (used this one) had no sugar, I was a bit doubtful that I would love the taste so much, but I kept the faith and have to say, I think an edge of sweetness would not play well here, to my palate anyway. I'm sure there are chilorio recipes with sugar in them (no?) but I really liked how deeply..savoury the meat was.

Thanks for your kind words re the chilorio, guys. I'm really getting interested in Mexican cooking, it's quite fascinating and so, so delicious. Dinner tonight was at the opposite end of the flavour complexity spectrum; a very simple piece of pan fried snapper, with a spinach, tamarillo, balsamic and jamon salad. Tamarillos are native to S. America I think but are now very common in Aus and NZ..it's the sort of fruit you might find on a big tree in your grandma's backyard, along with fig, mango and lemon trees. The flavour is tart and bitter and quite complex.

Loving the write up guys, thanks for posting. It's reminding me I must get out in Sydney more! Looking forward to what else you have planned, you lushes.

Well, I made it! It wasn't easy getting anchos and guajillos but nothing a little internet shopping couldn't fix. Mine is much less saucy than yours, so I might need to track down that Mexico the Beautiful cookbook and see if I can improve mine. Thanks, Bruce!!

Success!! After dreaming for what's seemed like forever about C. Sapidus's chilorio over on the Mexican thread, I mail ordered me some anchos and guajillos and got down to it. It's not as pretty as Bruce's (or as saucy), but it sure was tasty. ETA: dcarch, that is just insanely beautiful, as usual, and Norm, that looks delicious, but you are indeed a brave man to follow up dcarch! Thanks for taking one for the team!

I like the look of that, especially the kimchis. Yum. As for me, I thought I had nothing to cook in the house, having not shopped in ages, so imagine my glee when I remembered I had this beautiful Chinese bacon, some flowering chives, a grizzled old lump of ginger, and a last remaining duck egg. The bacon is amazing, it's cured in star anise, cloves, black pepper, cinnamon and brown sugar (at minimum - this is just what I can taste): Defrosted some duck stock and soaked some shiitake mushrooms, and had a lovely Chinese-style risotto with the bacon, chives, ginger, Shaohsing wine, white pepper and a drizzle of sesame oil. Topped with a fried duck egg and hoped my arteries see the morning.

I know, I feel that way too! I have lists all over the place of food things I want to try, or learn about, or experiment with..it gets (joyfully) overwhelming, doesn't it? Re the cheese - one of my very favourite summer breakfasts is yoghurt cheese smooshed onto wedges of fresh Lebanese pita bread, muddled in more olive oil and za'atar, and eaten with chunks of perfectly ripe tomato, and maybe some black olives. Some strong mint tea, and bliss! Mmm!

I do this all the time with yoghurt, but rather than mix in the spices, I only mix in salt (to help the drainage along) and then roll balls of the drained cheese in spices - some in za'atar, some in dried mint, some in chilli and lemon zest, or whatever. That way you can get heaps of different flavours out of the one batch and the balls store really well in the fridge under a film of olive oil.

Great looking meals, everyone! Especially love the crawfish tails and percyn's quail. I bought some beautiful wagyu/kobe beef slices (the 'karubi'/kalbi cut, without bone), and grilled it very simply, just 45 seconds on each side. Served with ponzu and sesame seeds, and lots of green beans and broccoli in sesame ginger dressing as a side.

A sticky rice zhoong from my local Thai grocery. They make a couple different varieties, but since I don't read any Thai, it's always a bit of a roulette as to what I'll end up with (which I like!) This one was lemongrass sausage, peanuts, shiitake mushrooms, caramel pork, dried shrimp and little nuggets of chilli. Yum!