Blether

I love the colours in this picture, though for me they burst out better if I use a hand to cover the giant opal in the background, top left. Citrus fruit has a magic translucence that works really well with light shining into and/or through it, so yes, they might have been more striking on the other side. Where is the focus - I mean at what distance ? are you stood-back-and-zoomed-in, or close-up-and-macro-mode ? My best guess is that you shot freehand and there's just a tiny amount of camera movement that's blurred the sharpness across pretty much the whole image. I could almost be persuaded that the squid legs, right at the front, are in focus - but I don't see sharpness in the plate at the same distance from the camera, so I think the sharpness in the legs is an illusion. When I was younger I used to combat that kind of camera shake by just concentrating more on being still. These days I park the tripod just next to my zimmer frame.

Ah ! Fond memories of the breadmaker without the paddle.

Touched a nerve at all ? Management - the running and handling of an organisation, a team - is a very different discipline to professional cooking, or to engineering, or to teaching or playing pro sport... to all kinds of careers. There are few, if any, careers whose core discipline is management itself. In too many organisations you see the corollary of this, where the "subject-matter" expert is promoted into a supervisory role, turns out not to have the talents or experience to manage well, and the whole operation suffers. No-one's telling a guy in his 20's that he needs 16 years in one job. The truth remains, that there is a balance to be struck, if you're looking to be allowed the responsibility of being the boss, between an incredibly diverse range of demonstrable cooking experience on the one hand, and some record of steady reliability, application and commitment to an employer, and an ability to rub along with a team for a prolonged period on the other. Sorry if that's a bit dry, but I believe it's enough a part of the mindset of business owners to be worth remembering. If I was in MattyC's shoes, knowing what I know now, I'd be asking myself those questions. Maybe he has and just hasn't mentioned it yet. Maybe it's another perspective that'll help. Who knows ? You solicit advice and people tend to give it, and I think that's kinda nice. Don't you ? Anyway, I'm delighted I could give you a laugh

I don't think you mentioned what's the longest time you've stayed in a position. You have a hell of a lot of experience - but are you remembering that a record of chop-and-change can unsettle employers ? It takes time and effort to "bed in" (stop sniggering at the back) any new staff member, more so the more senior they are. No-one wants to go through that only to have the person leave too soon. You're single ? No kids ? That makes you more of a 'flight risk'. I've done some recruiting business in the past, though not in the catering field. I heard a great comment from someone, an experienced interviewer, looking at a resume. The candidate had been in 6 or 7 jobs, none lasting more than three years, in a career of 16 years. The interviewer said "this guy doesn't have 16 years' experience - he has three years' experience, five times". Lastly, don't take "age discrimination" personally. For the older guys, it's frightening having these young, fit, healthy (strong-backed, flexible-kneed, eagle-eyed, steady-handed), sharp, up-to-date kids coming up below you, looking to take your position and your earnings. Sure old guys will stick together. That's not going to change to suit you, and you'll not escape it by changing to any other career.

I expended a lot of effort to find good eggs in this city. It's easy enough to find good eggs in the country - go to enough country hotels and you'll come across the places where the eggs are locally-produced, from properly-kept hens that eat green stuff and spend time outdoors, not tasteless, caged battery product. The taste difference is, as has been said, incredible. I think it was in the spring of last year that I spent 2 or 3 months working through different eggs here. I searched the net in English and Japanese; I avoided the internet-order-direct-from-supplier because of cost and practicality. I found some recommended free-range eggs that I tried a number of times, but they weren't it. I tried the expensive eggs in the supermarkets - 4 and 6 dollars for half a dozen (that's one-dollar eggs !) - and they were orange-yolked but still near flavourless. Finally I stumbled on a proper country egg, 3 bucks for 10, that reliably tastes richly of egg. There seems no rhyme or reason to the relationship between eating quality and price; the market clearly doesn't understand or doesn't appreciate its eggs. It seems the marketing is always slanted to the latest wonder-chemical-compound that any particular egg can boast - science bribed by "big food", and the eating quality has just been lost, forgotten. Personally, I just don't want to eat eggs without that rich, egg-yolk flavour.

The roulettes - mobile food vendors that assemble round Papeete harbour - are the stand-out of F-P dining in my memory. I liked the good, authentic crepes; the folk I travelled with loved the Asian noodles. They're not allowed to sell alcohol, but French cider is given an exception, so you can drink that or secrete your bring-your-own stash in a plastic bag like a furtive teenager. Other than that, I hesitate with recommendations because it's almost ten years ago. The place on Moorea where you can swim with the dolphins served an excellent lunch of grilled mahi-mahi. Papeete is like a provincial town in France. There are a number of good bistro-level places - I remember a pizzeria and a good second-floor Chinese restaurant. Good bread is everywhere.

From the look of the shadows, it seems to me you've got the main light not only above, but slightly behind the subject (i.e. on the other side from the camera). The light is shining into the camera - so the camera adjusts to shut out more light than necessary, and you get the flat appearance in your original picture. Backlighting itself is perhaps the most difficult to shoot effectively. You might get an improvement even by taking the shot with the subject in the same place, but from either side. Otherwise, you'll need to place the plate somewhere else, move the light, or change the lighting. It's true that mixed light sources can be unpredictable and difficult to manage - yet you may find by experiment that a particular mix works for you. As for digital zoom, it's true that you lose ultimate resolution when you use it, but it's also true that when you're posting your photos to the web the finer resolutions don't make any difference (they're more important when you try to make very big prints, 8" x 11" or larger, say). Digital zoom is a compromise you might sometimes (often, even) consider making. This shot, like many of mine, was lit by the two overhead incandescent spotlights I installed over the stove (you can see two highlights on the rear side of the rim), and whatever ambient fluorescent light got reflected around the kitchen from the overhead. The two spots are above and to either side, and a little in front of the subject. It's also digital-zoomed pretty much to the max, I think, and shot in automatic balance, automatic metering mode and macro mode, at 1/6sec (also automatic), using a tripod and a ten-year-old no-optical-zoom compact digital camera. I shot this one in a light box made up according to a link in the photography pages (?) here on eG, from an old cardboard box and 10 cents' worth of tissue paper. I sat the box next the window for the natural light, then screwed up by leaving the room lights on - you can see the shadow of the tripod, and the room lights reflected on the bowl. But you can also see the soft-light potential of the light box, I think.

You could do worse than start at photo.net's 'learn photography' page -> http://photo.net/learn/ Norman Koren's site has some more advanced, more esoteric stuff and is very knowledgeable and well-presented, but slanted more towards landscape -> http://www.normankoren.com/index.html I found him very good on setting up the computer monitor -> http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html If and when you get to Photoshop, I found these very useful -> http://www.myjanee.com/tutorials.htm Lastly, you may get something out of the articles at clarkvision -> http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/index.html - I found his study of scanner detail fascinating.

I had great success making chicken burgers a year or two back - one of those 'I didn't write down what I did' occasions, of course. As I know you know, Nakji, the Japanese 'hambaagu' (hamburger, usually served on a plate with a gravy sauce, rather than in a bun) typically uses 50/50 beef/pork mince, and is Japan's adaptation of the western hamburger (post-war, I think). And as I think you will also know, minced chicken is commonly available here.

Inspired by a rampant lemon thyme plant this season, Hugh F-W in the Grauniad this week, and an unusually pre-filleted Inada / young Yellowtail on the fish counter for the equivalent of 2 bucks 50, I made Yellowtail Gremolata, with a small pan sauce - didn't have any wine, so just water to deglaze, and a little extra olive oil: - accompanied by fresh-baked bread and followed by a simple salad of mizuna (greens). Vibrant, juicy, delicious and satisfying.

Or do as Dakki suggested and soak in fresh water to restore them - same approach as for a Christmas ham, or salt cod, or various other salted products.

D'you mind if I ask you to describe the process of making the orecchiette ?

Ha ha ! If there's one thing that can be said for the European-style chef's knife, it's that it's easier to sharpen than the hard-steel Japanese one - by the same factor that the hard steel holds an edge longer. As far as cheap knives go, the volume kitchenware/cookware market is a fashion market - the major decision drivers for the average consumer are style, design, image... not function. The people making and selling the knives are doing it to make money, by and large. That said, my experience is that the cheap knives nowadays are a lot better than the real rubbish we had in the 70's. Here in Japan (where my experience only started in the 90's) the vast majority of knives used and sold are in the 10 - 30 buck range, with light, thin blades in no small part because the overwhelming majority of users are Japanese women. On the (male-dominated) professional scene it's notable that almost every knife in the traditional Japanese range has a thick, heavy blade, the exception being the nakiri or loosely, vegetable knife. That style doesn't change as you look back at knives in the last hundreds of years, despite advances in steel technology over that time. The softer European steel is a compromise that sacrifices hardness for greater 'toughness' - the steel will bend rather than break. A few weeks ago I had a young lass over to cook with me - a smart girl, good family, graduated from one of the country's top universities and works as a BA with an IT firm. I gave her a wee chopping board, the smaller chef's knife and a little ceramic bowl to put the minced garlic in. Next thing I know, she's knocking the knife heavily against the edge of the bowl to shake off the garlic - edge downwards. And I took that knife down to 14.5 degrees per side on the Edgepro ! There were a couple of huge dings there - but they came out with (quite) a few (more) strokes (than usual) on Ben Dale's ceramic steel. No lingering ill effects (other than the odd palpitation), no sharpening needed, no depth lost off the blade. When I steel in normal use, it's once per meal for my main knife, and that's two or three strokes per side. As for learning sharpening, I found Chad's sharpening tutorial here on eG together with Ben's DVD supplied with the Edgepro to be very effective.

Wow. Over here on the east side of Asia, fillet of salmon farmed in faraway Norway is readily available retail for what must be 3 or 4 bucks a pound. (Edit to get the calculation closer - it's 7 bucks a side).

Yes, I remember reading about that here on eG, and I'm intrigued to get my hands on one of those home-refillable multi-use aerosol cans (I forget the US brand name), a version of which Ferran Adria (?) used to take A Bourdain's breath away through foamed-batter-cake. In the meantime, I haven't even gotten round to folding whipped egg whites into fish batter more than about once. The Blumenthal approach is, just as you say, relatively accessible and his technique really worth mentioning under this topic.

It seems King George Whiting is exclusively found in Australian waters, and Antacrtic Butterfish exclusively, or near so, in New Zealand (territorial ?) waters. It's also interesting the number of different species known as 'Butterfish' in Aus. Hoki / Blue Grenadier is known in Japan. For flathead in Aus I see four different fish: Cymbacephalus nematophthalmus Platycephalus endrachtensis Platycephalus longispinis Platycephalus marmoratus - which look like three similar, and one quite different fish (the first one), in terms of looks of the whole animal at any rate. The last two are very much Aus/NZ locals; the first two are found more broadly around Indonesia / the western Pacific - they at least aren't cold water species. All are known in China: none, apparently, in Japan.

Thanks for that, Nick. Strangely fishbase was inaccessible when I posted - I found another source that suggested none of those species is on the market here, but I see now it's back up and I'll have to take another look. Snadra, do you know Fishbase ? Your comment makes me wonder - it's fairly well-known around eGullet, I think. ChrisZ, have you tried frying after a dip in some (seasoned) flour (no milk, no egg, just the fresh fish fillet ? I lifted that from Marcella Hazan IIRC, using olive oil (doesn't have to be virgin, just as long as you haven't used it too many times) to fry, and like it a lot for, as you say, letting the fish shine. I like breading, too, but I'll often go the flour route for variety, and because it's so much less hassle than the egg-and-crumb-and- shuffle.

That's an eye-watering price for salmon. Why the doubt ?

I find it interesting to try and imagine Japan in 1970, well pre-bubble and when the economic boom-times were still on the brew, as opposed to in full bloom. I have a number of older friends who would have been students in the late 60's - in 1968 Japanese students were rebelling with the best of them, weren't they ?

Hi, Nick. I don't find that surprising, but reading it I realise I've no idea what kinds of fish are taken / can be taken from antarctic waters that'd be analogous to the cod (and its relative haddock) from cold waters in the north ?

It seems you didn't start out in Aus - where did you arrive from ? I can get the UK-traditional cod here in Japan, but not Scottish-and-other-parts-of-the-UK-traditional haddock. I've come to prefer tai / red sea bream over anything else for fish & chips. It's really delicious, firm and satisfying, but dry if overdone - I mean suffers relatively more in this way than softer cod & derivatives).

I have Peter and Joan Martin's Japanese Cooking (first published 1970) in a 1985 Penguin edition (CAN. $6.95). In the whole book a quick browse turned up two egg-washed grills, both of fish (one being egg mixed with uni), and no others. There is a good chapter on egg cookery with chawanmushi (4 kinds including odamakimushi), hanjuku tamago, scrambled eggs (soy, sugar, msg, katsuobushi), dashimaki tamago and two derivatives, spinach egg rolls and iritsukedoufu. Meringue... as in, sweetened ? On grilled fish ?

Yes... the knife nuts will tell you that performance has a special meaning as applied to kitchen knives, separate from what performance means in customary English. Supposedly it's analagous to performance as applied to motorcars - you can measure the performance of a car at a test track, and supposedly you can do the same with a knife - but in the end what they admit they mean is simply harder steel, as measured on the Rockwell scale. Personally, I dispute the idea that performance is even right as applied to cars. You can measure test track acceleration, if you take enough care to eliminate driver inconsistency, and you can measure ultimate top speed fairly well. You might even find car nuts using performance as shorthand for these measures. But in general usage, performance only makes sense as applied to a task or a goal. If we're racing round Laguna Seca, your Lamborghini may well beat my Subaru Impreza, but once we go down to Baja you'll be plain out of luck. It seems to me what goes on in my kitchen is far more like Rally Cross. I think it's really misleading to go bandying the word 'performance' about in a way that doesn't match its generally-understood meaning. If you go into any woodworking shop, chances are you'll find many of the tool blades are made of D2 tool steel. Which is softer even than 1980's generation kitchen knife steels - and I can guarantee you the stuff I want to cut for food isn't as hard as wood :-) Are the woodworkers settling for low-performance equipment ? I don't think so.

What a great combination of ingredients to have - as you say, they'll all work together as jambalaya, biryani, pilaf or paella - but you could also choose to pair them up and make two dishes - shrimp / smoked oysters and chicken / smoked sausage, or chicken / smoked oysters and shrimp / smoked sausage, or even the smoked stuff together and the unsmoked paired. You could make a green leaf salad with two, then rice with the others, say; or serve the shrimp boiled with garlic pieces and chopped chilli in plenty of fresh oil, in the bowl, for diners to skewer and eat, with the smoked oysters separate. If I had all those today, I'd make a green smoked oyster or oyster-and-shrimp salad with a garlicky-lemony dressing with no eggs or dairy in it, and prepare rice by the parboil-with-plent-of-water-then cover-and-finish-in-the-oven method, saute-ing some onion and whatever else is handy, with the smoked sausage and chicken, and adding that all to the rice before putting it in the oven, along with a splash of lemon, vinegar or wine. Maybe a hint of allspice too ? Or tarragon, at this time of year, though you'd need to have that to hand. Another day I might choose something very different.

Och aye, and as alternatives to the tattie scone, there are re-fried pancakes (aka 'drop scones' in foreign parts) and re-fried soda scones.