rarerollingobject

Hmm, I can access it (from Australia). Also tried it from an Edinburgh IP address and it works fine. Perhaps you have cosmically pissed off Williams AND Sonoma!

heidih, just snapped quick photo for you: The ingredients on the jar read: Leek flower, ginger, salt. And that's pretty much how it tastes; sweetly oniony, salty and piquant. I use it in a lot of things, including non Chinese fare, as it really adds oomph.

Oh, that looks delicious. I know Campari is a variety of tomato, but it's given me an idea..to roast tomatoes in a little Campari (the alcohol). I think the sweetness of the tomatoes would really balance out its bitterness nicely. Going to try, anyway. Love the egg yolk porn. Also sounds very appealing..the sweetness of melted leeks is one of my favourite flavours ever.. Breakfast for me was a cardiologist's dream: scallion pancakes, fried in duck fat. And because I can never leave anything alone, I doctored some up by brushing one side of a cooked pancake in Chinese sweet bean sauce, chilli oil, and leek flower sauce and then smacking it back down into the pan, onto an egg. This is sort of a cheat's approximation of a jianbing egg crepe, a pretty common street snack in Beijing. Sometimes I break up yutiao (crispy crullers) into the centre for crunch or fry a wonton skin till crispy first and sandwich it between the pancake and the egg.

Behold my Lentils of Doom! To my eye, the bay leaf even resembles a rather jaunty quiff. That's it, I'm hallucinating.

After a week of non-cooking (and worse, pretty much non-eating), I figured I needed some nutrition so this is dinner for the chronically overtired: celeriac, puy lentil and cavolo nero salad with hazelnuts and mint, a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe. It was good, but slightly depressing - needed something meaty and fresh to go with it, maybe a pork chop or some lamb. And now I look at this picture, is it just me or does those lentils in the centre look like slightly menacing eyes?

And if you do choose to brine, I'd try to submerge it to just below the skin. Making the skin any more moist is going to cause problems.

Cass - beautiful sushi rolls! And starting with inside-out ones too..very nice. SobaAddict70 - such a spring-y dish..morels and leeks! Be still my beating heart. Kim Shook - radishes and sea salt are such a classic and lovely combination. Dinner here was another Rozanne Gold recipe, ras el-hanout chicken with tomato-ginger chutney. And butter-scorched broccoli. Normally I like to mix my own spice blends, but this ras el-hanout has (copied from my spice merchant's website): Paprika, Cumin, Ginger, Coriander Seed, Cassia, Turmeric, Fennel Seed, Allspice, Cardamom Green, Dill Seed, Galangal, Nutmeg, Orris Root, Bay Leaves, Caraway Seed, Rose Petals, Lavender, Sichuan Pepper, Grains of Paradise, Long Pepper, Black Pepper, Cubeb Pepper, Lemon Myrtle, Mastic, Cayenne, Cloves, Mace, Brown Cardamom, Whole Kashmiri Saffron Stigma... ..so yeah, glad I'm not bankrolling that one! This recipe is a real winner though, the whole meal was entirely do-able in 20 minutes and was delicious as hell. Will be making this again and again, I foresee.

I swear - pretty much every one of your posts gives me a hankering. Not just the chiles (although that's a good start), but your flavor combinations always sound enticing. That's so lovely to hear..the highest compliment possible for a greedy-guts such as myself! And Ann_T, a roast beef sandwich with mustard sounds like the breakfast of champions to me! This morning, however, was a fairly pedestrian bowl of bircher muesli, or at least, steel cut oats soaked overnight in milk. I don't mind them not cooked, they go nice and chewy. Topped with a little brown sugar, pistachios, ground cinnamon, ginger, crushed green cardamom, and black pepper for the requisite zing. And some totally unnecessary rose petals, because they're pretty, and they go with the Persian thing I was going for.

More duck! Leftover five-spice duck, meat and skin, crisped up with cashews, cranberries and honey till hot and toasty, and then piled onto greens and mint leaves. Dressed with a mix of pomegranate, lime and mandarin juices, grated ginger, minced Thai birdseye chillis, soy sauce and olive oil. The other half of the pomegranate was whacked over the top of the salad as a garnish. It's a Jamie Oliver recipeand is truly the tastiest use of leftover duck or turkey, IMO. Preceded by a couple of very strong mint juleps as I had so much lovely mint to use up.

dcarch - I have no words - that crackling!! And what's the sauce on your sous vide pork? Thanks guys. No recipe per se - just rubbed a 4lb duck with five spice powder (ground cloves, star anise, sichuan pepper, cinnamon and fennel seeds) and salt, drizzled with a little olive oil, pushed chopped ginger, red eschallots, whole star anise and a cinnamon stick inside the cavity and closed it up with a skewer, and roasted it at 390F/200C for 90 minutes. I was originally planning to cook it for 120 minutes but it looked perfect and a temperature check indicated it was OK at 90, so I pulled it then. The secret I think for the crispy skin is letting the duck sit in the fridge, uncovered on a plate, overnight before cooking. Dries it out and makes it much crispier. Hmm, I was just going to use honeycomb tripe from Chinatown, the sort I'd normally braise till meltingly soft. I think that's one of the triumvirate of stomachs..might need to leave this till next weekend, when I'll have more time for an in-depth tripe investigation (so to speak!). Thanks for the advice!

Aha! I was thinking last night in bed (What? Who doesn't go to bed thinking about food, food forums, and eGullet?? ) that "haresfur's another Aussie, could be him.." and here you are! Moving straight to Bendigo from overseas is intriguing! Understand entirely if it's too personal a question, but why Bendigo? Anyway, looking forward to this muchly, alot of the food media in Aus. is too centric to the bigger cities so will be great to get a regional perspective.

Dakki, here's a compliment for you: I have been able to think of nothing but crispy tripe since you posted your tacos. I mean this almost literally; I've found myself in work meetings this week pondering how I'm going to get my hands on some tripe and the sorry excuses that pass for corn tortillas in Sydney and try to recreate. It's on the cards for tomorrow, mark my words. But for now, dinner tonight was five-spice roast duck. Carved the breast, legs and wings for immediate eating and am turning the rest of the carcass into a duck/pomegranate salad tomorrow, stock and of course lots of beautiful rendered fat. Served with beans, simply steamed and drizzled in duck fat, and some cucumber-garlic-ginger quick pickles.

Here I am! Nope, not I. I don't think that Chinatown shot is Sydney, unless it's Cabramatta somewhere. I'm with Mjx, thinking maybe ChrisTaylor.

Zucchini, mint and haloumi cheese fritters. Look pretty innocuous, eh? But lurking in that sauce (Greek yoghurt, doctored up with lime juice and salt) are EIGHT chopped Thai birdseye chillis, the ear-ringingly hot ones. I was in (blissful) hell eating these.

dcarch - incredible!!

Shaved zucchini, feta, red chilli and preserved lemon. Nice and refreshing.

Must be lamb chop week! Grilled lamb cutlets and salad of shaved zucchini, feta, red chilli and preserved lemon.

That looks delicious. I really should try to cook something from the Thai Food book. I eat at his restaurant here in Sydney quite a bit, and have the book, but I've never cooked any of his recipes, I don't think. Dinner for me was going to be seared beef fillet on soba noodles, but I lost energy for the searing and so turned the beef into yukke (Korean steak tartare) instead. Chopped finely, mixed with crushed garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, black pepper, honey and green onions. The raw egg on top sort of melds deliciously into an unctuous sauce. Sprinkled with julienned cucumber, nashi pear and crumbled nori just before eating.

I always really like the look of the food you make, MiFi. And mgaretz, pork basted in honey..sweeter words are rarely spoken. I made saikyo-yaki, fish (in this case some sea perch, and some mackerel) marinted overnight in the sweetest, most delicate white miso from Kyoto, with a little ginger, mirin and sake mixed in too. Then grilled till the skin is blistery. And some tomato/balsamic salad, and zucchini sauteed with almonds and lemon zest.

Sometimes the price of fish amazes me, in and of itself and compared to other things. Yesterday, I bought two medium-sized mackerel for AUD$4 total. Pretty astounding already, but compared to say, a bunch of parsley at $3, or a newspaper, or a bus trip to go one stop, it astounds me on a cellular level that two living, breathing, pulsating lives are 'worth' far less. I see these prices sometimes, and think "Other things' lives shouldn't be this cheap..". I'm not a vegetarian, and have no issue eating flesh, but that the cost should be so little to me (but so great to the mackerel!) is somehow disquieting. Disclaimer: I understand the market pricing argument and economic inputs and value add to a newspaper are empirically higher. I understand the scale of the mackerel catch contribute to its consumer price. I understand that natural resources are also expended in the production of those things. I understand that parsley is also living. I understand that 'worth' is totally subjective. But to ME, this is life out of whack. On a lighter note, I can't believe that people will pay for skinned and pin-boned salmon portions at $10 per kilo ($5 per lb) more than salmon you might have to run your knife over yourself...

A bit of a disparate (and/or desperate) meal for me. Oysters, doused in Tabasco, and cauliflower, caramelized in butter and then mixed with hazelnuts, and slices of beurre bosc pear. I normally prefer oysters without any extraneous flavours but the spice was nice.

Great looking meals, everyone! Esp. all the bone marrow..yum. Dinner here was a beautifully simple sauteed chicken with roasted grapes, from this recipe by Rozanne Gold. Amazingly tasty for a recipe with three ingredients; grapes, chicken and butter. With a simple green salad on the side, and a earthy Nebbiolo.

I second this recommendation. It's one of my favourite books of all time - I'm not vegetarian, but could happily be, on this kind of food.

At the risk of over-porking the equation, crushed fried pork rinds might stay crunchy on the sausage outer without detracting too much from the pork. If they're too hard to find, what about some panko, crushed to slightly smaller flakes than they already come in? I've coated things in crushed sembei rice crackers too, for frying, and the crisp stayed sufficiently crispy.

What kind of crazy question is this? I'm thinking anyone here who DOESN'T eat the chicken skin, or at least try to optimise it to some level of crispy edibility, should just hand in their eGullet membership card, take their toys and go home! I could SORT of countenance medical or dietary reasons I guess, but even then..a fine line. Kidding. Though I say this as someone who managed to eat 8 sticks of torikawa (nothing but crispy chicken skin, bunched up on skewers) in a Tokyo yakitori bar recently, closely followed by 4 skewers of pope's/parson's noses..or whatever the little bundles of fat and crispy skin from the tail end of a chicken are referred to in the US..?