Prawncrackers

It is for me a pretty standard recipe. This one was made with a live medium sized male brown crab, poached till slightly underdone – about 7-8mins. I always buy live crabs for this recipe so I can use undercooked meat that will finish cooking in the pasta. The white and brown meat is separated, only the white meat is used for the crab sauce to which the pasta is added. The sauce starts with two cloves of garlic sliced as thinly as possible so that they melt along with four anchovies as it’s warmed together in a goodly of evoo. It’s an oil based sauce so use plenty. When the garlic and anchovy have melted add some hot chilli flakes to taste and a pinch of pimento del vera or any paprika, it improves the colour. Add a splash of noilly prat (or white wine), cook out a little then add the white crab meat with squeeze of lemon. Warm through, add the pasta, check seasoning, add parsley, serve.The brown meat, the best part, is added to softened buttery shallots and warmed through. Seasoned and blended to give quick pate or left chunky if desired. Spread it on some bread and eat with the pasta. I haven’t yet found anything better to do with a brown crab.

Great looking pigeon mm84321, is it wild or farmed squab? I think i prefer the flavour of the farmed ones, especially those from France. They're deliciously meaty and more tender than wood pigeons. It was grouse for me tonight. Pan roasted with a blackberry sauce, parsnip crisps, some roasted pink fir apple potatoes and sauteed broccoli rabe on the side. A couple of comfort dishes, old favourites; goat rendang and crab linguine. I made some macarons too this week. Experimenting with savoury flavours, this one was white stilton (mixed with cream cheese) and prosciutto. Everyone i fed these too were in raptures. A big hit!

That's the kind of dinner you'd happily cook for yourself and enjoy. But would never cook it for anyone else. Well done for sharing!

Yum there's quite a lot of meat/connective/junk attached to the eyeballs. Braise the heck out of them.

It's precisely the use of salt cod/Bacalhau, the Portuguese influence that makes it Macanese. It's soaked first, blanched then flaked before using. Not the usual Chinese style of ham yue 鹹魚, the really salty stuff which like preserved anchovy in Western cuisine is used sparingly as an intense seasoning. Actually reading the Mission Chinese dish description properly he's blended the best of both worlds. Salt Cod Fried Rice, slow cooked mackerel, Chinese sausage, lettuce, egg. I'm assuming the salt cod is a primary ingredient and the mackerel component will have that intense 鹹魚 flavour. He's a canny cook that fellow.

I made some Salt Cod and Lap Cheung fried rice last night and noticed this thread so started browsing. It seems that this dish has been attributed to Mission Chinese, just like to say among the genuine innovations made by the chefs at those restaurants this dish is not one of them. This is a Macanese Classic, I'm sure people of Macau and Hong Kong have been enjoying this since before Danny Bowien was in short trousers.... Also has anyone actually made salt cod from scratch? I didn't think it was too difficult, lots of coarse salt, pressing until firm, occasionally tipping away the liquid, resalting then hanging until dry. The key is just plenty of salt. I can't buy it here for a reasonable price and making it is just as good.

Thanks, but I wish! The evenings are dark now at 7pm when we usually sit down for dinner in the kitchen. The first pic is my prep area and is lit from a strip light under the cupboard above. The other three I've used the flashgun on my camera bounced off the ceiling. Comparing them side by side I can see now that the colour balance is different on all three.

Some dinners from the past week. Spatchcocked poussin marinated in ras-el-hanout and youghurt overnight then cooked flat under a brick. Served with baba ganoush and couscous. Chicken karaage, miso aubergines and veg: More veg (celtuce) with Chinese liver sausage, twice cooked pork and salt cod lap cheung fried rice:

I almost spit my tea out!! Food. Critic. Neither word applies to the Egg.

I’m kinda in between the two assessments already put forward. Erring to Malo’s enjoyable experience then Jon’s curmudgeonly one. The buzz around the place was fun and the service was suitably informal yet efficient. Though I thought the lighting was poor, the drab vintage aura of the meek lights made the food look more and more gloomy as the evening drew in. It just doesn’t work in such a high-ceilinged room. Anyway, to the food: Starters Buttermilk fried chicken with Pine Salt. Completely meh, moist but not that crispy and couldn’t taste the pine salt. I’ve had better fried chicken in Japanese convenience stores. Radish with sesame and Gojuchang mayo. Nice combo, crispy crunchy radishes are always a nice way to start a meal. Nothing too ground-breaking here. Seems Gojuchang is the new Sriracha with on-trend chefs. Wood-pigeon sausage. Delicious! Cooked nice and pink but only a third of a chipolatas worth of meat. Like a miserable sample at a bad farmer’s market. C’mon a whole chipolata should be the minimum sausage serving in a restaurant, let’s start a petition. Fish BBQ Squid with Runner Beans, Anchovy and Sunflower. This is the best dish of the night. Lightly charred ribbons of meaty squid was so tender, tangled with strips of soft sweet runner beans in a light dressing. On one side of the tangle there was a crumble of what I thought tasted of toasted hazelnut but as there was no mention of it in the dish description I can only assume it was sunflower seeds and some kind of dried anchovy. Whatever it was it made the dish. The combination of nutty with charred fresh squid and sweet greens is sensational. Slow Cooked Dover sole, with courgettes and Indian Spices. A pleasant enough dish, nicely cooked but a bit safe and boring maybe. Meat Chicken with Girolles and Sweetcorn Polenta. Again a pleasant dish, good roasted chicken flavour. Comfortably matched with girolle and sweetcorn. I was not offended by the light snow of summer truffle over the dish, it boosted the mushroom flavour and wasn’t listed on the menu… Hay Roasted Grouse. Wonderfully cooked and young. I’m not of the school that believes it should be hung until it’s arsehole turns green and legs drop off. The breast was so tender it melted in the mouth, the legs richer and chewable. One of the best grouse I’ve ever eaten. Desserts Blackcurrant leaf ice cream, Jelly and Beremeal. Served on a blackcurrant leaf that we were advised not to eat, wtf? Jelly and icecream, what can you say? Baked Meadowsweet Custard with Raspberries. A little more interesting, I like the elusive grassy plastic flavour of meadowsweet. The raspberries weren’t too tart which is the best you can hope for with raspberries. So all in all quite good. I was expecting something a little more cutting edge but actually a lot of it was very safe, not messing around with decent ingredients. Keeping things fresh, light and tasty. I went here, The Ledbury, Hedone and L’enclume in the space of 5 days. For me at the moment L’Enclume is untouchable. The Ledbury is the best restaurant I’ve eaten in the capital and I enjoyed The Clove Club more than Hedone, whose inconsistency still baffles me.

Bingo! Thanks. I've been eating it thinking its like a really succulent tasty romaine lettuce. It's exactly like this from one of the google searches http://kitschow.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/384-blanched-choy-with-oyster-sauce.htmlMy mum is Hakka from the New Territories, she does grow that veg out until the stalks are pretty thick. It's delicious. So what would be the most common English name for it? A Choy or Sword lettuce?

Any cheaper for delivery to the UK? It's closer and we don't need to pay any food taxes for it!

Yes it's just a clay urn that you fill with charcoal. If you have good extraction indoors then its ideal for little cuts of food. I'll do some thinly sliced steak on it soon and show you some more. Thanks. I put the live eel in a large tin lined with a couple large handfuls of coarse salt and made sure it couldn't escape, it's happened before to the shock of my wife! After leaving it in the fridge for a couple of hours I took it out and scraped the slime off it, the salt helps to deslime a little but you need to finish the job with a knife. You don't skin the eels for this dish. The skin is fatty, a bit chewy and delicious. The finished dish in that picture only shows half the eel, the fatter end. Ive frozen the other half with some extra sauce. To say I'm looking forward to eating it would be an understatement 😄

Ah but Bruce my mole poblano pork cheeks were in the freezer, so I claim back the 'minimum effort' tag! Ok here's a couple of dishes that needed some work. First up is Bun Cha Gio, rice noodles with Vietnamese style spring rolls: And today something really difficult, kabayaki unagi, grilled silver eel fillets. Eel being the most difficult fish to fillet, heck they're the most difficult to kill! Been hankering for this dish something rotten and the frozen Chinese stuff just doesn't cut it. So like any good egulleter I just had to make it for myself. Once filleted it's steamed for 5 minutes before chargrilling carefully and lacquering with the sauce. I had it with some unidentifable green veg that my mother grows, i think she calls it 長麥菜 (any help?), and some kimchi. The unagi pieces were given an extra sizzle with the kabayaki sauce with the help of a tabletop Konro grill. Oishi!

The tart is really simple, roll out all butter puff pastry, cut out a round, dock it all over with a fork before baking between two baking sheets. 200C for 15mins. Caramelise your onions beforehand, spread them over the tart, arrange goats cheese and fig. Season and bake again for another 15mins in a lower oven 150C. Let cool a little. I told you it was simple. I dont really have a setup, it's just a camera! A fairly cheap Olympus SLR with a flash usually bounced off the ceiling. But for these photos I've taken advantage of some decent natural light, unusual as English evenings are typically gloomy. Actually the tart photo was taken on my iPhone 5 and tidied up with the Snapseed app. You can see where I've blurred the edges before posting the photo on Instagram.

Thanks! Frogprincess, yes three big banana shallots melted down. I should have mentioned that there was a honey and walnut dressing for that tart too. Rotuts, Shime Saba is vinegared mackerel sashimi. I like to eat it with avocado.

So i've been a bit lazy recently, enjoying your dinners vicariously but not contributing my own! I do love seeing what others have cooked in their own kitchens, for me the reason why the Dinner! thread is so inspiring. Mostly comfort food at the moment, maximum taste for minimum effort (relatively ). Chicken rice first up, with a side of Shime saba lurking Cha Ca La Vong, made with the tiny baby monkfish Mole poblano pork cheek tacos Fig, goats cheese and shallot tart

Cooked some nice octopus dishes lately and it reminded me of this cook-off. So better late than never, here's some more ideas! I tend to cook octopus in the pressure cooker first for 15 minutes. Depending on the final flavour of the dish i will add some aromatics in too but no additional liquid. There's plenty of liquid that comes out during the short cook in the the PC. This first dish had olive oil, salt, whole cloves of garlic and bay leaves in the pressure cooker. After 15 minutes the octopus is removed and left to cool. It's finished over charcoal with a smattering of cumin. Served with over smoky aubergine and a chargrilled sweetcorn salad. There was a saffron pilaf with this meal. The second was a Dong Po style octopus. The third is octopus carpaccio. I cook the octopus for a little longer in the PC with a splash of red wine. When it's cooked the octopus is removed and the liquor reduced a little, near the end some agar agar is added. The octopus is cut into tentacles, put into freezer bags with a little of the reduced liquor and formed into large balls. The octopus will naturally glue together when chilled but the addition of agar agar helps it along. When it's chilled it can be sliced finely and garnished with whatever you llike. This one had candied lemon peel, parsley and esplette pepper:

It's not so much the crushing that can damage a knife, it's making the garlic paste. You know when you use the tip and some salt to grind the garlic clove against the chopping board. The blade will flex and eventually warp. Especially if you use thin Japanese style blades. It's easy enough to fix though just rest the warped blade on the chopping board, put your hand flat on the blade, hang the handle off the end and gently push the handle up or down to straighten the blade. Though nowadays I never use my Japanese blades in this application. Chinese cleaver all the way, the big blunt front edge can make lots of garlic paste in one go..

Keep the roe in the fish and fry them whole till crispy. Theyre good just eaten whole like that. I think we call them 多春魚 because they always have so much roe in them. Not had any in years though, I'm jealous of yours!

mm84321, love our native lobsters and I'm convinced the females taste better. What do you reckon? The carpaccio looks great.

Bought a beautiful native lobster yesterday, they're relatively cheap at the moment. A female one laden with eggs - 'berried'. I parboiled it first before splitting it and removing the uncooked roe and tomalley. The lobster was cooked into a Thai red curry sauce, the meat was cut into chunks and put back into the shell. The sauce was finished with the roe/tomalley and poured over the lobster. Served it with a green mango salad and cocnut rice. First time cooking it this way, won't be the last, it was delicious.

Franci a wonderful coincidence, I had bottarga too tonight! Fried some red mullet, tomato salad and bucatini alla bottarga. A bit of the Mediterranean here in the middle of England. As close to a perfect meal that I could imagine. ; Going back in time a little, and keeping to the fishy theme here's a Thai Red Prawn Curry and Summer Rolls

The most recent time I cooked scallops i garnished them with salmon roe. The salty bursts of flavour complimented the sweet succulence of the scallops very nicely. The scallops were tea-smoked first then pan seared btw.

I'm sure the server told us the chef filleted the fresh anchovies himself and packed them in salt to cure for a year before they're ready to be eaten. They were very fat and juicy and appeared to have had no cooking done to them. The light airy bread was toasted to perfection and carried the smoke flavour from the grill. If the chef Victor Arguinoniz sold these by the tin there would be a pretty long queue. With me at the front!