Prawncrackers

It makes my April booking seem a very long way away now. Well at least you can all test the menu for me so I know exactly what to order!

I'm in both camps. In general white plates for Western dishes plated individually. For a 'composed' plate or a bowl of pasta then a white plate or shallow bowl always seems the most sensible choice to me. But I do love a patterned plate for Asian or shared dishes. I'm starting to get a mild fetish for individually patterned plates, I just think they're wonderful for serving up Asian dishes. As each dish (in the food sense) is different I try to match a suitable looking plate or bowl to it. Bought a lovely large black pearlescent plate the other day which has little pastel flowers on it that I plated this quail salad dish on. The black of the plate made the colours of the salad pop, to my mind it made it much more appetising and it was pretty nice to begin with! So as for Nick's suggestion that food always looks better on white plates then I would definitely disagree with him on that point (I don't usually ) I suppose there are as many differences in styles of patterns as there differences in styles of cuisine, if not more. Chinese plates are usually intricately patterned and of course Japanese ceramics elevate plating to whole another level of gastronomic artistry. It's strange though how subjective things can be though, imagine a large Chinese style platter say with a fish pattern and a banquet sized serving of lobster noodles served upon it. Then imagine that same platter but with a large Italian family size portion of lobster spaghetti, feels wrong dosen't it?! They are essentially the same dishes (ok stretching a little but the same ethos at least) but clearly a large white platter or solid colour is best for the latter but the question may be whether it would be better for the former too? It's like eating long pasta in a bowl with chopsticks, slurping it up like soup noodles. It shouldn't make a difference to the taste but somehow it does, try it, I know it's psychosomatic but every bone in your body knows that eating spaghetti carbonara like you would ramen is wrong. That sense of wrongness affects if not the taste then at least the pleasure of eating it. I may have got a little sidetracked but I think my drift is that the plate is very much part of the civilised eating experience. So at home whether you prefer white or patterned, just make sure you've considered how you plate your food, it does make a difference. White plates in restaurants are generally just a practical issue, they are easy to replace and uniform. It doesn’t really say anything about the place, they're perfectly neutral. But when I see interesting plates in a restaurant then I know that it's another level of detail and that may augur interesting food too.

First post of the year for me on the Dinner thread as I sliced my finger pretty badly a couple of weeks ago. Couldn't cook a thing! Glad to see everyone on top form, all your dinners have kept me nourished. I spotted some goose and noodles from Shelby a few pages ago and that unusual combo made me smile because I had some too at the start of year. It was a quickie meal using up some leftover Cantonese roast goose from xmas and instant ramen noodles, tasty though: I also saw some Thai beef salad earlier from rarerollingobject that i really fancied. So when my finger fully healed I got to julienning a load of mooli, cucumber, shallot, chillies and green mango for my own take on it: The salad I enjoyed so much that I made it again today but this time to go with some grilled quail wrapped in lime leaves Vietnamese style. There were also some salt and pepper langoustines, with lemongrass for that SE Asian twist.

Wow that sounds amazing, seriously tempted but Feb is going to be a busy month for us. I take it you're going Alan? If so please remember to take photos for us, I want to see every delightful course.

Thank you Nick, I'm fully sated now. All that was really from one shop? Amazing Stuff.

He should get one just for his Louis XV dessert.

Arrghh, you're just going to have go to the market again and take more pictures. I want my fix of antipodean seafood porn!

Looking forward to it Nick, can I request some uniquely Australian fish like yabbies or moreton bay bugs? I don't think i've ever seen them on the forum.

Chufi I've visited Japan three times but I'm still jealous of your trip. Why? Because the first time is the most mind-blowing, I have no doubt you will have an incredible time. Hopefully cherry blossom season too, sigh... As for foodie ideas, you can easily spend the first week and the last week in Tokyo itself, the place is awesomely big in every gastronomic respect. Here's a short report on a whirlwind visit we had a couple of ago. I would spend a couple of days in Osaka and a couple more in Kyoto. I have relatives in Fukuoka in the south of the country so have enjoyed incredible ramen there and mentaiko but to visit it may be a little out of the way.

Shelby I never knew you lived on a farm either! Looking forward to your week especially some KC barbeque, tonight, you've promised.

Here is my New Year's Eve hotpot in all it's glory. I had a very low-key xmas cooking-wise and this extended to New Year Eve too. That's why a hotpot was ideal. Most of the stuff I had in the freezer; frozen chicken wings and Iberico ham bones for the base stock, regular sized prawns, mussels, oysters, turbot, sliced lamb and beef from previous hotpots. The most notable exceptions were the mahussive penaeus monodon or giant tiger prawns. They've been tempting me all year at the wholesale market and on Thursday I finally bought a box. It's hard to get a sense of scale but note my sushi knife (10" blade) and the bottle of wine, these puppies were meaty. I bought some tofu puffs, lettuce, Chinese leaf, cuttlefish and beef balls too. The only cooking I did was to simmer the stock, prepare the turbot and prawns, and make the sesame dipping sauce. That's the beauty of hotpot! One of my guests brought some Black Forest and Donut Cupcakes too. We were so stuffed that we didn't even get to soak some noodles:

I'm defrosting a freezer load of seafood and putting together the mother of all hotpots tonight. Don't have to cook and I get my freezer back in readiness for the new year!

I had a wonderful truffle tagliatelle last week, those ingredients but with a rasp of nutmeg too, beautiful flavours.

Chris, looking forward to your week. Trust you to have bagged the prized Xmas foodblog, I feel assured, we all know we're in safe hands this holiday season with you. Let the feasting begin!

Cool bread, how did you make the moulds?

A couple of dishes clearing out the freezer of some veal shin, halibut, prawn-heads and chicken stock. I decided to use saffron in both dishes to make things a little interesting. First up is a classic Osso Bucco Milanese. The veal was cooked in a pressure cooker for 30 mins, the whole dish only took an hour from start to finish. I made it on Sunday but now I'm thinking this could actually be a mid-week dish! Whilst making the first dish I used the trimmings from the sofrito to make a prawn-head stock for the Monday dish of halibut, saffron potatoes, braised little gem & peas, brown shrimp and creamy prawny sauce. This dish ate really well, the potatoes were soft and mashed into the sauce to soak it all up.

Great photos of some very good food David, lamb and grapes sounds particularly interesting. Stonking or as we say around here Bostin!

Hmm I love this dish, the last time I had it out was in Hong Kong. It was with small unshelled shrimp that you ate whole, the shells were very thin and crispy. Dejah no need to experiment as I have been practising this dish at home for a couple of years now. I can give you my ongoing notes and you can carry on my good work. Though I can't recreate exactly the HK style because I can't get that type of shrimp so I use shelled tiger prawns or the like. It's actually very simple, you boil a couple of salted duck eggs for 9-10 minutes and extract the semi-cooked yolks. Then batter and deep-fry the shrimp as normal with any batter you like. More often than not I will just use a quick and easy cornflour/flour coating. Set the crispy coated shrimp aside then add the yolks to a tablespoon of fresh oil, not too hot, you can mash the yolks beforehand but it doesn’t really matter as they dissolve readily in the heat of the oil. Toss the shrimp back in, coat them with the eggy golden sand and season with just salt or if you prefer a little spiced salt. Don't overcook and serve.

What is breakfast? Does a meal eaten around 11am count as breakfast if I got up really late at 10am and pottered around for an hour? Feels brunchy to me but as I'm not in New York and there's no Brunch topic I shall submit the following as Breakfast and let you decide. They have eggs mind! First up is a Leftover Chipotle Pork Quesadilla and Fried Eggs, you can tell it's early in the day by the slack way I've sprinkled the coriander and parsley: Secondly there's Smoked Eel, Beetroot, Quail Eggs and Creamed Horseradish. There was some toast too which made this one of the tastiest breakfasts I've ever put together:

I had a chew on it but brain is brain and these are such small birds, couldn't really say if it had an excellent flavour or not. If I had to guess it would be just like roasted duck brains, of which I've had plenty, quack! Isn't it strange that there's such ritual about eating this particular bird: - Don't draw them - Tuck the head under or spear the beak through the body to roast them - Scoop out the innards and spread them on toast - Split the head open and pick out the brain It seems that a Woodcock is like an English Ortolan.

Wonderful, I really enjoyed the video, thanks for sharing. Look forward to your written review.

Thanks Peter, can you believe this was breakfast today?! That's why the eggs, it's not breakfast without eggs. I forgot to mention that there was a smear of butter under the pancetta and I roasted the bird for 25mins in a hot 200c oven, basting twice.

Woodcock, you don't see one for ages then two come along! The first one I saw was at Moseley Farmers market last weekend. I knew fellow egulleter Nickloman was looking for this rare little game bird. So I messaged him and within 15 minutes he'd come and snaffled it, dedication indeed. I'm glad he got it because he's far more enthusiastic than me about them. I bought my favourite pigeon and wild duck instead. But by pure accident in the week I was offered the second one by a friend who's off on a long holiday and was clearing out his freezer. He couldn't remember where or when he bought it, but assured me it was this year. Anyway, it looked in fairly good condition so I took it. I knew that Woodcock are not normally drawn but I only learnt from Nick that it's because the birds defecate when they take flight. That's why you can roast them whole and scoop the innards out to spread on toast. I had it with beetroot, quail eggs and a marsala pan reduction. Delicious tasting meat, rich and gamey especially with the innards. You can see it's little heart just on the corner of the bread:

Interesting, all the recipes i've ever read had me brushing every layer of filo with melted butter. I used to make Baklava quite regularly but stopped after coming back from Istanbul this year. But this method looks so simple I may have to try again. The reason I stopped making baklava, in fact we've not even eaten any, since Istanbul was Karaköy Güllüoğlu, the famous baklava shop there. The wife and I thought we'd eaten Baklava before but after eating these beauties we knew right away that we'd be spoilt for them for a while. For me there are two big differences between home-made and these jewels of perfection - pastry & butter. Don't you find that the shop bought filo is actually quite thick? I never realised it before but eating these the pastry is so incredibly light and airy, I don't think I can compare it to anything else. In the photo below of a walnut variation, I've tried to count the layers - i think there are about 32 on top and as a guess it must be about the same at the bottom, over 60 layers! The butter they use has an incredible rich flavour, almost cheesy. It's little weird to begin with but after three visits we could not get enough of it. I know that every region has their own style but after eating these I couldn't face eating my own sorry creations: So the problem for me is where can I get the thinnest filo pastry possible? The corollary to this is, how difficult is it to make your own?

mmm hmmm i am feeling that!