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rarerollingobject

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Everything posted by rarerollingobject

  1. I have a pair of Global fish tweezers, and love them. The blades are fine enough to grapple any bone, and they don't mangle the fish. I was mortified when I got them (what an expensive but useless gift!! You really shouldn't have! No, you REALLY shouldn't have..) but am now a convert. Yeah, I tweeze.
  2. Confirmed - I live in Sydney too, and every time I walk into Martin's I have a mild heart attack at the prices, though the fish IS beautiful. For reference, I get most of my fish in Sydney's Chinatown and the prices are roughly half. Though mostly the turnover is in whole fish, rather than fillets, and the whole fish are sparklingly fresh. Still pretty expensive compared to Nth America though. Nick - I see you have Movida Rustica. Is it a worthy purchase? I love Movida with a passion - planning a trip to Melbourne in Feb to get a fix of that and Cutler & Co/Cumulus Inc - but I'd been considering this book and am curious if you'd recommend it.
  3. Sure thing - will PM you (and anyone else who'd like it!) the recipe.
  4. Those rocks look very Sydney. And the headlands look like the Sydney heads. The tree, not so much!
  5. Unless it's a remarkable coincidence, I think the vine tomato tarte and the torn croutons were mine - and I'm Kate, pleased to meet you! I read somewhere once that tomatoes retain alot more flavour when you cook them with their stalk (Heston Blumenthal, I think) so always try to, and they pop off v. easily once cooked. Dinner last night was a gigantic concoction of roast carrots, parsnip, butternut squash, shallots, cinnamon and other spices, apricots, cashews, mint, rose petals (to gild the lily) and preserved lemons. Over buttered couscous!
  6. andiesenji: I love that egg preparation, harks me straight back to childhood! Though we called in 'egg in a basket', I suspect it's one of those dishes so fondly regarded that it has heaps of 'stage names'. C. sapidus: now THAT is my kind of food. Looks amazing! This morning was a slightly unusual combination of radish, bacon, onion and chilli home fries, topped with an egg fried in..duck fat.
  7. Aperol and prosecco.. perfect for a hot Sydney day. The slight dryness of the Aperol (blood orange and rhubarb notes) cuts the sweetness of the prosecco just enough to be seriously refreshing.
  8. Following up aschall's beautifully light and healthy dish with my 'coronary on a plate', red-braised pork belly. And cucumber ginger pickles!
  9. OK, I'm being obtuse here I think, but how do you deploy it for scrambled eggs?? With the whisk attachment while they cook..? Before they cook? Though I wouldn't imagine a blender is necessary for that..hmm. (I don't have an immersion blender, but am in the market for one, so am a heady combination of inept and intrigued).
  10. This morning's victuals: Gruyere, bacon and habanero scones.
  11. Hi - not only are they pan fried, they're pan fried in duck fat, no less! But only because I had some on hand I was trying to use up, normally I'd use olive oil (tho the duck fat does make them beautifully brown). The sardines are on a rye crispbread, exactly. The brand I like (in Australia) is Ryvita.
  12. A sprinkle of Bragg's Liquid Amino Seasoning gives a very umami, meaty taste IMO. It's kinda soy or worcestershire sauce-esque but a little more protein-y, to my taste. You can normally get it at health food shops and the like.
  13. Oh god - I know this story well. I too get sent to alot of those mega US conventions, with the added delight of having to fly 20 or so hours from Sydney to get there. The one thing I have ended up doing is making my damn fine meal of the day breakfast. Either hot breakfast at the hotel if the food looks passable, or supplementing that with bircher muesli I occasionally bring with me and fruit and yoghurt I can scrounge from the hotel or nearby shops. It's not normally a habit for me to eat a huge breakfast, but I do when I'm at conferences because it fills me up fairly well enough to be able to resist the majority of the crap conference food (weakest when hungry), and because it's one meal at least in the day over which I have some degree of control. Other than that, you have my sympathies!
  14. Zucchini, feta and mint fritters. With Greek yoghurt spiked with chilli and lemon as a sauce. Apologies for the somewhat haphazard pic! And the next day, sardines hidden under avocado (because my boyfriend won't eat them if he knows they're there, but is none the wiser if he can't really see them), with lime, salt and pepper.
  15. Dinners from the last few evenings: Tomato, gruyere and mustard tarte Burrata, rocket (arugula?), mint, proscuitto and peach salad with croutons on the side to pile the burrata onto Crispy fried polenta with pork and veal meatball ragu and cavolo nero
  16. I use it on Asian salads..white cooked chicken, or Japanese cucumber salad, things like that. I think it has a cool, clean taste and I fancy that I can taste slight tea notes to it as well, though this could totally be my imagination, given that essentially tea=camellia.
  17. Have a cold so wanted something spicy and comforting; bokkum gochujang (ground pork stir fried with Korean chilli paste, honey, garlic, ginger and rice wine) and sigeumchi namul (blanched spinach with sesame oil, garlic, green onions and soy sauce). This was perfect; the long, slow, building burn of the gochujang had me gulping mouthfuls of the cool spinach by the end of it, just to damp down the fire!
  18. Yeah, that'd be pretty overwhelming. Though not completely unheard of..there are some old school tempura places in Tokyo and Kyoto that deep fry purely in sesame oil. The end result is dark, funky, and strong but not unpleasant.
  19. One thing that does help, I've found, is having your butcher (assuming you can find one who's willing) cut the bone vertically and then into sections, rather than round cross sections. Like this (not my photo) It's much easier to both ensure the marrow is properly cooked AND scoop it out this way.
  20. I am constantly planning meals around the various fats in my fridge and quite often use poultry fat (duck, chicken, goose) for stir frying Asian greens. Anything I saute and want to get a nice golden fond on (prawn fritters, dumplings) I'd also use poultry fat for. I also use camellia oil on white cooked Chinese dishes and cold Japanese salads; I love the cool, clean taste and it just seems right. Strangely, despite considering it the king of fats, I find fewer uses for pork fat..I occasionally melt some down and drizzle it over stir fries or pan fried noodle dishes before serving, like you might finish pasta with olive oil. I've eaten in cheap, great restaurants in HK where they serve liquid pork fat in squeeze bottles on the table, purely for squirting onto your white rice, which, with a little soy sauce, is quite the taste sensation..
  21. Depends how much you want to make, the consistency you're looking for and what you'll use it for. When I want some for Mediterranean style applications, eg. tahini, I just toast sesame seeds and then food processor them with olive oil till it's smooth. If I'm using them for Japanese recipes, like gomae spinach, I just mortar and pestle them with a tiny bit of soy sauce to moisten, but leave them quite grainy, i.e. not so smooth. If you're looking for a large amount, and then preserving them somehow..I'd probably food processor/blender them with peanut or olive oil and then top in the jar with another layer of oil to seal but keep it in the fridge and use it quickly as it goes rancid pretty fast.
  22. Not the most appetising looking plate, but none of my photos are! Breakfast of champions, aka cheater's congee; oatmeal cooked in chicken stock with white pepper, soy sauce, crispy fried shallots, chopped green onions, a spoonful of leek flower sauce, lao gan ma chilli oil (in this case, the one with peanuts and sichuan peppercorns), and a honking good dollop of goose fat in the centre.
  23. Check out Radio Bar in Harajuku for cocktails. Have also heard it referred to as Bar Radio. Either way, it's amazing. I also highly recommend Restaurant Yonemura in Ginza for amazing, "haute cuisine non kaiseki" food. If you haven't already seen it, this post from Chubby Hubby's blog is a great starting point, and covers just about every category you're looking at. link He also has a similar post on Kyoto here. Keep in mind that finding any specific address in Tokyo can just about do your head in, and that a large part of the joy of eating there is just wandering around and finding amazing places - my point being that don't get too invested in planning every meal at a specific restaurant, because chances are you won't be able to find it anyway. (My routine now is to look it up on Google Maps Streetview in advance, then position the streetview pointer at the nearest train station, and "walk" myself to the restaurant's address so I'll at least have some sense of the visual landscape and the right direction for when I get out of the station). Or, even better, a phone with Google Maps and inbuilt compass. If you haven't already, research the nearest station and if possible, best exit, for each place you want to go. Your categories look good - maybe a specialist unagi place too?
  24. Favourites: Julia Child. Everything, everything. Ina Garten - I watch her when I'm stressed and a couple minutes taking in her somnambulistic speaking tones and her otherworldly use of butter, I'm calm as a Hindu cow. I'm also highly tickled by her Hamptonsness, her coterie of very camp on-show friends, and the fact that she seems to keep a guy around permanently to do nothing more than decorate the table..! Jamie Oliver, but really only on Jamie at Home. Love the garden scenes and the freshness of his food, though his addiction to lathering MORE olive oil over every finished dish already liberally cooked with olive oil kinda ooks me out. Rick Stein - he is such a roly poly cheery sort and I love his unabashed enthusiasm, as well as his occasional grumpy old man-ness. His personal life is somewhat..brow-raising, which sometimes makes me go "hmm" as I watch him, but hey, it's his personal life and I try to remember that it's none of my business. Anne Burrell - we don't get her show where I live, but what I've watched online I've been quite taken by. I love her food. Annoyed by: Kylie Kwong. I'm Australian and her speaking voice is just too Australian to bear. Plus her chronic overuse of the word "beautiful" - everything is "beautiful", ginger is beautiful, these onions are beautiful, this chicken is beautiful; vinegar, for pete's sake, is beautiful..arghh. My boyfriend and I have a KK drinking game, where we must quaff every time she uses the word "beautiful" - needless to say we get quite drunk. Ainsley Harriott - grinning idiot. SUCH a ham. And I'm otherwise a very big fan of ham! Rachael Ray - it's her speaking voice. She's nasal, loud and yell-y. Nigella - chronic and comedic over descriptiveness. Lentils are "crocodile-skin green", cocktail sauce is "blushing bride pink", the sound of the knife cutting iceberg lettuce is..well, you get the idea.
  25. A mighty tasty Japanese-Korean hybrid breakfast; rice, mackerel marinated in saikyo miso, mirin and sake and then grilled, and parboiled spinach with garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, black pepper and green onion.
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