Prawncrackers

A left eyed flounder or is it brill? Either way it was the freshest fish at the market the other day so I gutted and scaled it and aged it for two days before cooking it. Decided to fillet it and deep fry the whole lot garnished with crispy everything; garlic, shallot, lemongrass, chilli, thai basil. A nam jim jaew dipping sauce and plain som tam lurking in the background. Dried seafood is treasure to Cantonese cooks, here's some white fish, squid, tiny scallops and prawns. Soaked and steamed in a hybrid Canto-Japanese style savoury egg custard. The egg was diluted with bonito dashi and mirin. The som tam made a return with some charred squid thrown into the mix.

I know you guys like a steak dinner so I'm happy to oblige! A nice Dexter rib, 1.2kg aged for about 5 weeks. Seasoned it liberally with salt the day before cooking. Used the Ducasse method for cooking a fat steak and roasted some bone marrow to go with it. I garnished it with crispy chimichurri (my take), served with truffled spaetzle and a salad. Check out the crust and the gorgeous yellow fat that comes from pure grass-fed beef, it was great eating.

Massive oysters from Colchester, a day old so decided to deep fry them as a snack. Mentaiko mayo dip. Last night, Earl Grey tea smoked duck breasts, served in gua bao: Today a nice fat silver eel, bigger than my biggest board! I saved the liver and bones this time. The eel was steamed first then grilled with tare. The bones were deep fried till nice and crispy, the liver gently steamed for a couple of minutes. The whole lot was served with a seaweed salad, leftover tea smoked duck and veg from last night, anchovy bokkum and a good sprinkling of sansho pepper. Oishi des!!!

A couple of straightup Chinese dishes, no deviations or alterations, no fusion ingredients or techniques. First is Dongan chicken 東安雞 The next is Shandong style sweet and sour fish 山東甜酸魚. It's usually made with carp but I can't get decent carp here and red bream on the the day was so fresh.

That's a lovely dish. Three sardines is exactly the right amount! I had mine smeared with gojugaru and grilled over charcoal. I also grilled an aubergine for nasu dengaku. You know I've eaten a lot of fish in my life and there aren't many things tastier than the humble grilled sardine. So cheap too, £1.70 for three.

I picked up four moulds in a shop on Dotonbori, Osaka kitchen town. I wish I bought more! They weren't expensive either. I don't think you can get the right colour with silicone ones, not without sacrificing the correct texture inside. Yes I used beeswax. I also don't think you can get the right crispy crunch without using the 'white oil' mixture of beeswax and butter. All of the above and a lot more. Aromatic like a red curry, not as hot but more deep with earthy cumin, clove, coriander, nutmeg rounded off with peanut.

Thanks guys. The canelé were surprisingly straightforward to make. It was my first attempt! Shelby Google Paula Wolfert recipe and cross reference it with Chezpim if like me you can't work in cups.

David Thompson's mussaman curry really is something special. Every cook needs to try this wonderful recipe from 'Thai Food' for themselves. Though be warned it may spoil you for average high street Thai food for the rest of your life. This one was a duck curry. I made Canelé Bordelais earlier in the day and had these for dessert!

Pink fir apples are a type of small knobbly potato, my favourite, really sweet and nutty. Fries up to a great crisp much better than store bought. Standard southern Indian beginnings, fry onion and garlic, add fennel fenugreek cumin turmeric chilli powder, add tomato and curry leaf, Cook down to paste then add a little water, Cook down a little more then add ground coriander, tamarind water, salt and sugar. Add crab then thicken with freshly grated coconut. Finish with a tarka of dry chilli, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, curry leaf. Quite a simple "curry" only 15 mins to cook and a great one to have in the locker.

So I bought a mackerel, crab and grouse at the market last weekend. No I wasn't going to put them all on one plate! Though admittedly mackerel and crab would have been lovely together. The first thing I cooked was the crab. Cleaned it up, steamed it for 15 minutes then made the Chettinad Crab Curry from Rick STein's India cookbook. Had it with plenty of plain rice, it was a "mindblasting" curry Ricky: With such fresh mackerel I just cure lightly to make shime saba and snacked on sushi the whole day, some nigiri in the morning and oshisushi in the evening: The grouse was simply roasted, served with cavalo nero, broccoli, guanciale, pink fir crisps and a fig compote to cut the richness:

Thanks Huiray, the plate is just a random purchase from Selfridges department store. I think it was from the Anthropologie concession. They always have some nice stuff.

What would you do with a spanking fresh sea bass and a live crab? I've never considered sea bass sashimi at home. Salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, razor clam all yes but never sea bass. But it was so fresh that I couldn't resist. I cured it kombujime style. Basically a light sprinkling of salt and sandwich between damp kombu for a couple of hours. It was excellent, just the right texture. The crab I steamed and picked the flesh out. It was a female with a little roe that was used as a garnish to a vibrant salad of cukes, daikon, carrot, baby corn, sugar snap peas, green mango, mint, thai basil, coriander and fiery nuoc cham dressing made with birdseye chillis:

Time this thread had a bump up! First off a freezer clear up, had some gua bao and smoked eel in there so combined the two. The eel was gently fried and dressed in a black bean sauce then garnished with peanut brittle, pickled mustard greens and coriander. This was an amazingly intense snack. ua Two variations on Golden Sand shrimp 金沙蝦 First with crispy Thai basil. Celtuce and pickles accompanying: The second with sweetcorn, lemongrass and curry leaf for a more Singapore/Malaysian flavour. Similar accompaniment here: I think I preferred the more focused flavour of the first. 金沙蝦 is one of my favourite dishes anyway and adding the basil improved it.

I cold smoked it first for a couple of hours then roasted in a fan oven for 20 mins at 200C

Gosh well it's been a while since I last posted dinner but enough lurking already! Here's what we had tonight; smoked bone marrow with chimichurri and shallot rings. Mackerel, brown shrimp corn and mentaiko mayo potatoes. A pear tart to finish.

We had a pastry tour of Paris last year and if you go to Jacques Genin and do not have a millefeuille then you've committed a food crime! My memory of it was that it was simply perfect. It was freshly made to order, the pastry was so light, the texture of each leaf was so refined, buttery, salty and sandwiching chocolate or vanilla creme of amazing intensity. My knife quite literally fell through the layers clinking onto the plate like a sigh. Sadaharu Aoki great opera cakes in the Japanese style. Carl Marletti for choux pastry and in particular eclairs. Pierre Herme of course for macarons but also the fantastic canelé. La Patisserie de Reves for spectacular displays and the Kouign Amann are awesome. Des Gataeu et Des Pains had perfect croissants. It was a good hioliday!

I'm drying some of this batch for a couple of days to see if the texture improves.

Hola egulleters! Those of you who know me know that I like to turn my hand at Charcuterie now and then. Nothing is more satisfying than breaking down a whole pig and turning it into delicious cured meats and sausages. I'm quite happy making a wide range of products but there's one thing that I just can't get right. Fresh Spanish cooking chorizo, in particular I want to try and recreate this wonderful stuff from Brindisa http://www.brindisa.com/store/fresh-chorizo-and-morcilla/all-fresh-chorizo-and-morcilla/brindisa-chorizo-picante/ They're wonderfully red, juicy and packed with deep pimenton flavour. Now when I make them I can get the flavour right but the texture is all wrong, very mealy, not at all juicy and the colour loses it's vibrancy too easily. What's the secret to them I wonder? Some kind of additive and/or food colouring? My recipe sees me mincing 2.3 kg fatty pork shoulder through a fine die, mixing with 80g pimenton, 50g salt, 30g sugar, 35g fresh garlic and stuffing into sheep casings. Here's a photo of them: I rest them overnight in the fridge before cooking with them. Maybe I should be putting some curing salt in there and hanging them for a couple of days? Does anyone have any experience making this kind of juicy fresh Spanish chorizo or even chistorra?

A Dexter is a breed of cow here in the UK described in this link http://www.thebutcheryltd.com/beef.html They produce fabulous meat, some of the best that you can buy here. I was really lucky to pick this up as my butcher only had one Dexter carcass all year before this one.

Howdy! Been lurking a lot recently, but I thought I'd surface after cooking this amazing piece of beef for Xmas dinner. An untrimmed five rib Dexter, aged for about 6 weeks - I cut the ribs short, rendering the fat for another day and saving the trim for burgers. Seasoned the whole joint two days before Xmas. In the morning I roasted it at 100C for about 4hrs until the internal temp reached 40C. It was rested for two hours then seared all over just before serving, it turned out perfectly. Best roast beef that the family has ever eaten. To quote my cousin it was "the beef of dreams"!

Oh that's wonderful, will definitely try that with the next pig. Is that just salt in the cure or do you think there's some #2 in there too? Also a proper cold smoke then how long drying?

Brawn people, brawn, there's a perfectly good English word for it. There's absolutely no need to transliterate the French. That's like saying four-twenties instead of eighty! I've been talking down half and whole pigs for few years now but I'm always stuck for ideas when it comes to the back leg. Sometimes I take a couple of tranches off it for Chinese stir fries. But more often than not I've been grinding them up for salami. What does everyone else do with them apart from curing them for hams?

It may be a little subversive to apply Middle Eastern or North African spicing to pork but for me it really works. In this case, a pork chop marinated in yoghurt and ras el hanout, served with a Persian saffron rice, raita and a hot naga pickle: And as everybody else is doing it, here some Gua Bao. Stuffed with smoked beef rib, pickles and peanuts:

Consecutive Chinese dinners this week so thinking this thread could do with a bump! First off, king crab in black bean sauce, with the leftover crab in fried rice with lap cheung. Broccoli and liver sausage with oyster sauce. Golden sand cod cheeks, dry fried broccoli with lap yuk, mustard greens and salty duck egg.

mm84321 if i could hit like five times on your last post, i would!