Prawncrackers

Visually his suckling pig platter is 10/10, just incredible wasn't it? But... if your suckling pig skin is flabby then you're knocking off 3 points straight away, slightly tough meat - that's another point off. So I think Howarth was spot on there, and we can only go by what he tastes. Though I hope he and that dish makes it through. If he gets the crackling right then the judges will have to call time on the main courses, that one is the winner!

If you are looking for an immersion circulator then here is an EU supplier on Ebay. I've had my eye on these this week, there have been three on auction from this seller. The first one sold for £132 (pounds sterling, approx 150euro), the second has just sold for £156, and then this is the last one at the moment. You can see that the seller normally retails these for 299euro here on his website. So it's likely that he'll stop auctioning these on ebay!

Thanks for sharing Alan, absolutely stunning food and photography to match. I was just wondering about this meal the other day, so I'm glad you've posted these. But now you've made me wish I should have gone to this gastronomic tour-de-force! Just a couple of things though: What is back to front risotto? And where is the picture of the BBQ pork cheek!?

Wow, Percyn that marbling is really striking. It really goes to show the difference between grain and grass fed. I cooked up a treat for my buddies birthday last week; a rib of Dexter beef, well aged and by UK standards nicely marbled. Grass-fed of course, and utterly delicious with ample natural beef flavour. The rib was actually too big to fit into my biggest saute pan so i had to lop a bit off. We had it with grilled lobster and mammoth king prawns. There were other sundries but the plate was getting a little crowded to photo! First time cooking surf n' turf, not sure if it works for me, maybe too much of a good thing? Anyway not been posting much on the Dinner thread recently but I have been gawping at all your delicious meals. You guys went through a Mexican phase a couple of weeks ago, I think you were all subconsciously inspiring each other. Well it worked for me as I decided to do something with the dried chillies that have been hanging around my cupboard. I toasted some ancho, pasilla and chipotle chillies, soaked then blitzed them with some garlic, cumin and cinnamon to make a 'mole'. Then roast/braised a load of veal shins in the sauce with a little water till tender then shredded the meat and put back into the now thick sauce. I don't know what to call these, it was a fly-by-seat-of-pants type dish so i'm sure that they are in no way authentic, if i had to guess then Veal Carnitas maybe? What I do know is that with the guacamole and tomato/cucumber/radish salsa it tasted pretty amazing: Oh and a midweek standby for us, Tonkatsu:

As a self confessed Brummie "foodies", it is to our shame that it's taken us this long to visit Turners. So after much encouragement from Nick Loman we've managed to haul ourselves the 20 minutes to Harborne last Saturday with Nick himself and his lovely partner Hannah. The only menu option available was the Tasting/Degustation/Omakase, but as it has been described to me as the best cooking in Birmingham I was ready to experience what Mr Turner has to offer. So let's bring it on: Some Canapés; Parmesan Gougeres, Pork Crackling, Salmon and Beef Tartares. Bread with a selection of butters A little amuse of Beetroot and Malt Then a choice between Pork Belly, Israeli Cous Cous, apple, vanilla, bay leaf... or Foie Gras, pain d'epices, pinapple, coconut. We two gents chose the fatty pina colada and a very unusual but outrageously delicious combination it was. Scallops, oxtail, parsnips & horseradish Skate, sweetcorn, chicken, sea vegetables, buttermilk, jus gras Veal, Asparagus, Wild Mushrooms, Celeriac, Truffle, Madiera Chocolate, Cherry, Kirsch Artic Roll Perfectly executed Petit-fours I would have to agree with the wise man who described this as the best cooking in Birmingham. Better than the other Michelin starred places; Simpsons (conservative, warm and familiar) and Purnells (flashy, modern and slick). This sits right in the middle, progressive modern British cookery with bags of confidence. My favourite dishes were the Veal and the first dessert which to my mind was a perfectly deconstructed version of a Black Forest Gateau. The only false step was the skate, which was a little bland and suffered from the pappiness that sous-videing can impart to delicate fish. It was a great night and such terrific company. It won't be long till we're back to sample more of Mr Turners brilliant food.

I miss the roast goose. The very end bit of the leg is best where all the juices have collected, the meat slides of the bone wrapped in a perfect layer of burnished skin. Thanks for sharing

Nice Chris, you know this kind of Chinese food kinda just looks right presented this way rather than piled up all on one plate. It's purely psychological I know but I can see myself holding a bowl of rice to my mouth and eating those dishes now.

David I've eaten a similar dish to the one you had here, in a nice Paris restaurant. A sort of fried pattie of picked over trotter stuff, mostly gunky gelatinous skin, bits of tendon and the odd bit of "meat". So to me it looks fairly representative of that French rustic style of cooking and in keeping with the other dishes you were served. It wouldn't be fair to compare it to Koffmans signature trotter dish, which I have to admit I've never tried but is so famous I could probably describe in detail - unctuous deboned pigs foot stuffed with light chicken mousse and morels with a rich sauce, right? Can't really set it against this then can we now?! The quail dish looks really good though, I had a thought about combining quail with pomegranate a couple of weeks ago but never got round to it. The addition of pistachios sounds wonderful, any clue to how they did the sauce for that dish? Btw I quite enjoyed the trotter dish I had in Paris, but then I like all that sloppy stuff!

Tracey, i say go for it - that dish has all my favourite things on one plate!! Last week I cooked a rack of lamb spiced with ras-al-hanout, potato/beetroot dauphinoise, salad with a pomegranate dressing. The dauphinoise is one of my wife's favourite dishes. If you've never tried this variation then I urge you to soon. I use 2:1 ratio of spud to beet and cook it a little longer than the usual potato only classic. Keeps well for a couple of days too, we had it with steak and it was just as good. Yesterday, unusually for a Monday, I cooked two courses. Ok partly because it was Valentine's day but mainly I wanted to clear some room in the freezer. Yeah who said romance was dead?! I cut up some bone marrow to roast for a starter. For the main I had some frozen langoustine so made some stock in the pressure cooker with the heads for risotto and gently sautéed the tail meat. I had a lot of leftover parsley, so made some parsley oil with which to dress the plate.

Stupendous looking food, match by your photography. Thanks for posting, I'm now yearning to go back.

Marbling-wise, the most marbled beef I've ever seen in these shores were a couple of rib-eye steaks from Angus cows, here's a pic, pretty impressive marbling eh? Well aged too, these steaks were bought four years ago from a little butcher in Solihull. It's a tiny shop that shares floor space with a grocers and a fishmonger. They just buy their stuff in and don't actually do much butchery so I wouldn't think they'd know whether it'd been grain finished. The White Park beef that I've come across certainly has some impressive marbling too, if you want to know more about that then call Traditional Farmstead Meats in Berkswell. Tastewise, hands down the best beef I've ever eaten in this country has to be Dexter from Deer n Dexter. I eulogised in the Thick Steak thread here. Pretty decent marbling too if that's your prime criterion. If you're interested maybe we should chip-in on big order.

Yes I always use pork belly but I have also seen pork hocks on some restaurant menus. Never ordered it myself, but as long as the skin is soft and the meat is melting then it should be a great dish.

When my family buys suckling pig, we pick it up around 11am and tuck into it 4 or 5 hours later, the crunch is definitely still there so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Best not to reheat as hot skin is never as crispy as cold skin. If your pig is still warm when you buy it don't cover it, the steam will spoil your crackling a little.

One of the very few recipes I've put on the Recipe Gullet is Dong Po Pork, so knock yourselves out! I must confess that i didn't use the claypot to braise my pork, just an ordinary metal casserole. The result was fantastic this time, the pork was made two days in advance and I pressed the meat out of the liquor for those two days. The trick with this dish is to cook it whole and only slice the meat when it is cold so that you can slice nearly all the way down. By luck when I got round to slicing it was almost perfectly 8" x 4" so I took two 1"x4" strips off and hence the dish turned out perfectly symmetrical in the claypot. The strained and defatted liquor was poured back over the pork and then the whole thing was warmed through thoroughly. To describe the meat as melting would be an understatement, it was luscious. This dish was a life saver as almost everything else was a la minute. But like you said earlier YSL, you gotta make an effort for CNY!

I didn't take any photos of the New Year's Eve meal at my mother's place, we did have Kau Yuk but that was the only Hakka dish she made. She did manage to score the meatiest King Crab legs i'd ever eaten though and we had the usual assortment of veg and steamed fish - a particularly luscious lemon sole. A gulleter on another thread was moaning about the how lemon sole is soggy and simply inferior to dover sole. Well that may be the case if it's grilled or fried but when fresh lemon sole is steamed whole on the bone for 9.5 minutes it's amazingly sweet, moist and tender. Everything a Cantonese fish lover looks for, so it's a bonus for us that it's half the price of dover sole. But I did take a couple of snaps of the CNY meal I cooked yesterday. Some of my work colleagues were thinking of going out for a meal to celebrate but managed to convince me to cook instead. So with everyone chipping in for the cost of ingredients I did my best give them a feast. I did my usual lobster noodles to start then laid on some luxury [1] chicken rice TM, steamed bass, golden sand shrimp, stuffed tofu/pepper/bitter melon & gai lan and dong po pork: Even though my colleagues all said they hadn't played Mah Jong for years and couldn't remember the rules, after dinner we played for four hours! We were very slow though and only managed four winds but enjoyed it immensely. [1] Coined by one of my guests as i'd put some conpoy in with the chicken rice - just to, you know, take it up another notch in a Pimp My Chicken Rice kind of way!

Yup I hard fried the head and skeleton first and I had a good nibble on the cheeks afterwards. The nuggets of fish were lightly seasoned and dusted with cornflour and can take a good frying too. I would normally steam this kind of fish but this was a delicious alternative.

This thread needs a refresh, luckily I've been getting some good seafood down the market the past week. Last week they had this wonderful looking fish, Brown Spotted Garoupa all the way from Sri Lanka. I filleted it into strips and deep fried the whole lot. It was lovely eating, I made a sweet dipping sauce and a refreshing green mango salad: This morning for the first time in ages they had fresh sea urchins so I snaffled a couple and had them spread on sourdough toast donated by fellow gulletter nickloman, cheers Nick, glad you enjoyed our early morning trip! Another rarity this morning was the freshest Mackerel I'd ever seen in this city. I can't even remember the last time I bought fresh Mackerel, certainly we are talking many years and I do look out for them too. Freshly grilled mackerel is one of my wife's favourites and this one didn't disappoint. It's just a reminder that something so tasty is also so inexpensive, you don't really need to spend so much money on lobsters or turbot or even sea urchins. Beautiful fish with shimmering iridescent skin. Inspired by a Paul Ainsworth dish; Grilled Mackerel, Sweetcorn & Brown Shrimp Salsa and Potato Salad:

Cleaning, gutting, filleting fresh fish slowly and carefully. I love the transformation from primal beast to pristine fillets using practised skill and my wonderful knives.

Matt I have this Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker, I can highly recommend it. I have to admit that I was swayed to get one because of the endorsement of Heston Blumenthal, he uses them on his In Search of Perfection cooking series. If they're good enough for him! They are simply the best quality so if I were you I wouldn't hesitate to get one.

Very nice thanks for sharing, those are exactly the home cooked dishes that I grew up eating. I'll post up some of my mum's New Year dishes later in the week so we can compare!

Wonderful start to your blog Erin. What is that cannonball behind the durian fruit, is it some kind of massive pomelo? Please can we get some more market shots of your local fish and meat this week.

I am down to my last incredible STP, might need to revisit Cartmel just to restock. No such thing as mail order around here of course!

Gorgeous looking dish, bravo!

I've had whalemeat once on my second visit to Tsuikiji market. It was breaded and deepfried on a stick. Delicious it was, very meaty, not fishy and the cut I had was very tender. The taste was very much of red mildly gamey meat, like ostrich strangely. I would definitely have it again but maybe in a different preparation because if you bread and deepfry anything on a stick then it's gonna taste good!

That sounds like dinner at my mum's place too, we are also Hakka folk. We'll have a dish with fat choy (black moss) of course, dried oysters, sea cucumber and maybe some fish maw. The fish at the market was disppointing yesterday but i've prepared the traders for next Weds! I'm not cooking this year, my mother will be and i've specifically requested Kau Yuk (pork belly and taro) as it's one mt favourites. For such a simple looking dish it's actually a little labour intensive and she seems to cook it once a year. We always have poached chicken and we will probably buy a roast duck. As for the suckling pig, wow, are you cooking that at home or buying it in (peach garden)? I always promise myself that one day when I have an oven big enough the first thing I will cook in it will be a suckling pig, oink!