Blether

Oh, man. Are you going to burst my bubble, Hiroyuki ? Maybe it's Chinese I've been learning all these years ? Let's see: "Uni spawning times vary by region, but it seems for Murasaki Uni Jul~Aug, Aka Uni Oct~Nov, Bafun Uni Dec~Feb, and one or two months beforehand is when the nutritional value is highest and they are most delicious". Murasaki means purple, and aka means red. You can translate bafun uni if you like That looks like good information, but I'm not used to the different species. I do know what good uni looks like and what not-very-nice or not-so-good uni look like, but I've never seen anything labelled other than 'uni'. As far as I've noticed, winter time seems to be when uni is more regularly in the shops / more often available cheaper. Other than that, to be honest, now that you've called me on it I'm not sure why I think uni is in season in winter. Normally for seasonality I use Kikkoman's chart (also Japanese-only) as a quick reference, but uni is one of the few things they don't actually list, so i didn't get it from there. If I google 'uni season' in English, the first result says - but I only did that search since you asked. Do you have any idea which of the types of uni are most frequently sold / most abundant in the food market ? As far as I see in the stores, in winter uni from America os most common and in summer, uni from Chile - maybe you noticed that the uni I bought were American.

Faster / more convenient, IME. Chunk of ginger, 1" x 2", for example - about a minute or a minute and a half, and it's soft enough all the way through for easy chopping, and my machine has an auto-sensor for the defrost function just as it has for 'heat up'. Haven't tried hot water on that specific one. I'm not keen, myself, on microwave defrosting for uneven things like fish, or poultry bits, because of the way it'll cook in parts if you turn your back for an instant.

That made me laugh in recognition - I've posted fuzzier. I still want some of both !

Thanks, and sorry you missed it. I put links to the previous Dinner! posts in the post in Fish & Other Seafood that I linked to above. I'll not repeat them here. Uni - the part we eat - is commonly described as the 'ovary'. I don't know about sexual differentiation in uni, like whether there is any and if there are roe on the one hand and milt on the other, or exactly how it all works, but as the part that produces the eggs, I reckon it's close enough for us to put an argument before the court Yes, uni in place of egg. As I've written before, back in the UK I'd be replacing the cured pork with smoked mackerel or kipper or similar. I've been hunting for something suitable here and have now resigned myself to not finding appropriate smoked fish, but going with salted, fatty ones. Which is probably closer to the Italian spirit anyway. Back in the previous posts in this thread, I wrote about my approach to assembling the other flavours. Uni cream pasta is something you see sometimes. The thought occurred to me spontaneously and I found several recipes when I searched Google. Uni just seems a natural for warming through a cream sauce for pasta: apart from anything else, I find it disappointing if cooked in the piece. I mean, sure, it still tastes good, but not a patch on what it is raw: it seems a waste (I feel similarly about smoked salmon). You lose that melting, diffusing richness. But used to flavour a cream, or warmed but still liquid and creamy in itself ? Great, and indeed it behaves very like egg yolk in that respect. 'Unibonara' seems a natural progression (and not exactly rocket science for someone living in this country) - you can just sense the potential as soon as you think of it.

It is wierd, but my guess is it comes out of the world of microwave defrosting and is a short form of something like From microwaveovenfacts.com. Metallic packaging's a prob, of course, and I've noticed some labels aren't inert to microwave application.

That's a very vivid picture, DeliciouslyLekker. I really liked your red cabbage, too, and the banana pudding looked tasty. Were you following the Lasagna (eG cook-off 52) thread ? I like the idea of rice, peas, coconut and curry, mgaretz. And the chicken looked good again. Is this now a game of tandoori chicken tag ? I enjoyed mine the other day and I'm happy that you inspired me to make it again. Great-looking pizza, crowdingthepan, and salmon, David Ross. I made another stab at unibonara: Details in the Fish & other seafood topic.

That looks and sounds tremendous, Pam. Can you please describe a bit more about tea-smoking in your wok ?

Uni season is coming to a close. While I can still claim it as seasonal, I made another attempt at "unibonara", or Carbonara di Mare, that I've been working on as seen in Dinner! posts here and here. I gave up on finding appropriate smoked fish and this time went with grilled-and-cooled salted aji / horse mackerel as bacon / pancetta surrogate - as seen in Breakfast!: One fish, picked over and flaked: Umeboshi and pepper Uni porn cream and Parmie Reggie garlic mise, or for Italian speakers, ミーザン・プラス I set the noodles aside to dry after making seafood lasagne earlier in the month. mise, looking the other way Successes: The salted aji is infinitely better than the previous licquorice allsorts (hokke), and a keeper. I reduced the proportion of umeboshi this time, and the dish lost some of its exhilaration. I'll go back to the previous amount, but this counts as successful experimentation. I also stretched what was previously a sauce volume for 2 servings of pasta into 4, using the same amount of core ingredients (basically just more wine and cream), without unduly compromising flavour. Failures: well, the garnishing doesn't set a new standard for clumsiness, but there was stiff competition and it didn't move far in the other direction, either. By concentrating too much on photography and too little on cooking, I exceeded my single-filament personal bandwidth and screwed up several points: - added the aji with the wine and umeboshi, as I did before with the super-cured hokke. The aji is of course more fragile (West African Mahogany is more fragile, come to that) and should have gone in afterwards with the cream, just to warm through. As a result it broke down finer than ideal, but this point almost falls under successful experimentation. - missed the pasta timing, got the sauce too thick and failed to notice and adjust with more wine before serving the second round - and finally, what with everything else I didn't concentrate as I should on the salt adjustment and got it a bit short thus suffering the indignity of the salt shaker at table. I have no excuse. And it still tasted fantastic The garnish leaves are once again 春菊 shungiku, literally 'spring chrysanthemum' and a sign of spring, so that, what with winter uni and spring greens, this version nicely symbolises the change of the seasons - albeit one week after the equinox itself. Look out for more uni frivolity in the post-season.

Hi, Heidi. In my top two pictures you can see the foil-lined grill pan of the grill (broiler) in my very standard two-burner-plus-grill Japanese kitchen stove. I have an extractor fan beside the stove, but honestly for the three or so minutes a side, I don't find it makes much smell. I remembered a related discussion from the Japan forum, and I was able to find it again (link). Smallworld had some good advice, a citrus-peel method that's quite commonly suggested here. There are good posts above and below in the same discussion. As you can see, Hiroyuki is a fan of the toaster oven, and he also mentions covered-pan-frying as an alternative. For myself, I live in the city and counter space is at a premium. I spent a good chunk of cash on a big-internal-volume, small-external-volume combined oven / microwave (I need an oven), and completed my batterie with a toaster rather than a toaster oven. Not much about fish cooking directly from me. Sorry Do you have a covered verandah or deck for that toaster oven ? Edit to add: Cottage ? Hmm. of course one of the nicest things you can do with these fatty blue fish is to smoke 'em. Hot smoking's easy enough anywhere you have the opportunity to keep a smoker. Brine 'em & smoke 'em in a batch, and keep 'em in the freezer up to 3 or 4 months (well, 6, but 3 or 4's best). Then you're never more than a microwaving or a defrost-and-jugging from smoky, savoury deliciousness.

Saturday. They only had them in pairs yesterday, which is one more than I need for the purpose I was shopping for, so I grilled 'em both this morning and had one for breakfast: lightly-salted (bought that way, as opposed to salted at home) aji, or horse mackerel. The label also notes 'defrosted', and from the fatty lusciousness of them, it's clear they were put down in high season in the autumn. They'd never have been caught if they hadn't just swum across 3 time zones... See the brown bits ? That's the bacon of the sea (non tuna-head variety) Served with almost-overbrowned chips cut from fresh potato and fried in chicken fat. Not as successful as the frozen chips (per the Dinner! thread) as I couldn't keep the heat down for long enough, but very tasty none the less. Followed by some more of the natsumikan marmalade stirred into some ordinary yoghurt: Beside the strong, fresh citrus flavour, the yoghurt takes on a carameliness from the brown sugar in the marmalade. A perennial favourite.

In the end I didn't have the opportunity to pick up another fermenting bottle. On Thursday I simply discarded the appropriate amount of mixture (3.5 pints), and replaced it with boiled-and-cooled water to get the correct dilution per the recipe. Fermentation continues.

Nice flatfish, nicely done. A dollar 69 ? I wish we could get sole/flounder for that price here (You're looking at about 4.50 and up). I bet Halifax is a discerning fish market, too. Edit to add: oh yes, and here we have "hirame" (left-eyed) and "karei" (right-eyed).

Personally, I wouldn't fry and hold for that long. Lacking pan / stove real estate, Why not just cook the fish in the oven for the 10-15 minutes (choose your temperature) ? There's lots of lovely accompaniments you can put in a sealed paper parcel with each fillet (makes a nice presentation, too, still sealed).

Thanks, crowdingthepan. For 2.5kg / 5.5 lbs of chicken legs, I salted with 1.5tsp (~7.5 grams) salt, added 8 minced chili peppers and left in the fridge for 2 days (normally 1; I was away over the weekend). I mixed in the juice of 2.5 lemons and left that to sit while I minced a whole head's worth of garlic cloves with a couple of inches of ginger, and mixed the last about 2tbsp of curry powder left over from a self-catering holiday, and 5 or 6 tbsp of paprika, into 250g / half a pound of yoghurt, with a little more salt and 4 or 5 tbsps of chopped spring mint from the pot on the balcony. I mixed all of that into the chicken and left again, overnight. Other times, I'll substitute cumin & coriander & a little more chili for the curry powder, or use home-prepared garam masala, or home-prepared curry paste (paste of course staying vibrant where powder fades over time).

The Auvergne pork really does look good, djyee100. Tandoori chicken:

Your stock sounds great. Judge whether to water it down or not by flavour. Then judge from the resulting consistency, what applications you can use it for / what else you need to do for the consistency you want. Probably one night left at room temperature is OK, but as you probably know stock is particularly prone to spoilage. Take care, or revel in your cold kitchen, whichever is appropriate.

Ach, Peter, you made me go out and buy canned smoked oysters again. Still, they're washing the wine down nicely. Don't ask me any personal questions in case I start making confessions. For me, 'haggis' is something like 'sausage'. Well, of course it is a kind of sausage, but I mean in terms of questions like "is haggis any good ?" or "what's haggis like ?". It runs the range from superb to appalling. I've even had small-producer haggis that's left me thinking, "that's a bit nasty". But 'sausage' is maybe too wide a comparison - making a parallel with 'salami' or 'kielbasa' rather than 'sausage', would be nearer the mark. I think that Grant's tinned haggis - to name the only canned brand I've tried (I think I'm right in saying before that it's the biggest) - is a pretty good product. It's on the mealy side, and tends towards the average rather than the special for meaty flavour, but it makes a decent meal in the way that, yes, smoked oysters are a nice snack, (the better kind of) tinned pate, spread on bread, is tasty and easy, and tinned sardines squash nicely onto toast. I'm glad your haggis turned out well, Paul. Thanks for breaking trail in the kitchen. If we say it's a sausage - were you at about the "25% fat" line, do you think, or somewhere else ? I'm initially surprised to read 2lbs of oatmeal for the amount of meat you had, but (a) of course I've never made it, and (b) I've not read any recipes - far less many - closely enough lately to be in touch. (Another edit: 4 1/2 hours is a long time). ETA: come to think of it, how did you coarsely grind the oats ? Do you mean you bought whole oats and had at them yourself, or you bought them ready-ground, or something else ? Oh yes, and your sauce sounds cracking.

In my short spells in a trout-processing factory, for beheading half a ton or a ton of fish between two or three of us first thing of a morning, we used a knife almost identical to 'Heavy Duty Fish Chopper' shown on page 2 here. For the heavy lifting of filleting, we had automatic machines from Germany, and for going over the resulting fillets and taking off part/completely missed rib cages, we used something very like 'Filleting Knife 8053'. I don't know the details - in those days I was just one of the guys that wielded the blades. The filleting knife hadn't as much flex as my own does. One of my colleagues put all the knives over a stone first thing, and we'd use two or three each of the 'choppers' per session. I only found this catalog recently. I'd always wondered why we used to use butcher knives to cut fish up - and here they were fish choppers all along. My manual technique always followed the cut-into-three-slices-then-remove-ribs Japanese sequence I learned from the German machinery. It's interesting that the catalog shows 'color coding' to be an important concern in trade applications.

You can use a deba for the heavier cutting in breaking down fish. It's not the best tool for taking the skin off one side of a fillet, or the line of ribs off the other. I can speak for my own (flexible-blade) filleting knife, which I've owned for many years and always been satisfied with: it's the 'Filleting Knife' on this page, and can also be bought under the designer's brand here.

That does look delicious, and for me the plate has its nostalgia value. You mentioned before that you'd a new lens - how is that working out ?

Well, dunking. And the French like to dip their tartines into their tea or coffee. I leave that choice up to you, but my cheese & digestives accompany coffee dry.

Two nations divided by a common language.

A piece of mature cheddar on a buttered digestive biscuit.

Jings, everyone's being silly these days Yours sounds pretty much like the method in English Bread and Yeast Cookery, which also references Victor MacClure, Elizabeth Craig and Marian McNeill. I just don't see how anyone can get a big, open crumb without a long rise in one form or another. That said, with the very strong flour courtesy I think of your Manitoba wheatfields, for all the open texture, mine weren't all that light. English Bread and Yeast Cookery doesn't mention Kent Huffkins - but if you did change your name you could start a hockey team called the "Sussex Plum Heavies".

So... at the weekend, this infusion came ready and I strained out the sultanas and larger solids as I poured it into a filter, and left the last of it, covered, to pass through the paper overnight. I got a good volume with little or no wastage, other than than what the sultanas soaked up. I've set them aside and not yet made a cake up with them. I think this is the best of the photos I took, overexposed as it is: I'm very pleased with the sweetness, which i think is just right, and better than over-sweet commercial drinks like Southern Comfort, Drambuie or Bailey's Irish err, Toffee. The aroma is, surprise, surprise, spicy, wit the citrus still subtle. There 's a big nutmeg flavour, the cardamom's noticeable and the clove in the background where it should be. Of course with all that it has a long, long finish. I'm interested to see how it mellows over time, but for now it's a nice sipper that got here just too late for winter. I think the Teacher's blend was a good choice, but I'd happily try this preparation with Famous Grouse, too.