Prawncrackers

About to post some more fishy pics and saw the halibut head had disappeared, so here it is again in all it's glory.

I've bought fresh unfrozen banana leaves at the Asian Mini Market in Birmingham Indoor Market. You can find frozen banana leaves in any of the Chinese supermarkets in Brum too, Wing Yip etc

Thanks guys. I don't get much natural light in my kitchen, not even in a British summer! So that bounced flash off my kitchen ceiling has been a kind of a trademark for me on this thread. Plus it quick and easy. Seriously though I urge you all to try that sichuan dish with chicken oysters, it just the perfect variation.

Wow you can get these over your side of the pond? What do you think of them? We get lots of Canadian lobsters here in the UK but i much prefer our native variety, the flesh is denser and sweeter. But maybe the North American lobsters are better over there and it's the journey over that deteriorates the quality. Some back to basics Asian dinners for me recently. I prepared a couple dozen chicken thighs for a bbq competition and saved the oysters. With them I made the best version of this dish ever: Dried Fried Chicken Oysters with Chillies: Hotate Gohan, Shime Saba and Nasu Dengaku. Or Scallop Rice, Mackerel Sashimi and Miso Aubergine: Pork with Kimchi and more miso aubergines:

Not at all! It's just a turn of phrase, meaning I don't think I could buy better British beef anywhere else - it is the best. I think the best British beef comes from great producers who specialise in slow growing heritage breeds such as White Park or Dexter, purely grass fed no grain finishing and carefully aged after slaughter. You have more famous British breeds like Angus or Hereford but my local butcher has a really good line in these specialty breeds. I suppose i wanted to really distinguish my British philosophy of good steak with that of the US and Japan where the grading system based on the amount of marbling is king. Bruce, I knew you'd like the Nasi Lemak Here's something I think you'd like too. Steamed Lemon Sole with Lap Cheung and Shitake, Dried Fried Green Beans with Pork:

The wife had some girlfriends come round last night so had to think about cooking something a little less dude than my usual stuff. This was the best I could do, a fig, goats cheese and red onion tart. Drizzled with some honey it made a nice starter to some fresh crab linguine that followed. So back to the dude food! Nasi Lemak, Beef Cheef Rendang and Soft-shell crab. I didn't have any Ikan Bilis or peanuts but this still rocked: Steak porn. First up a 5 week aged Dexter forerib that I trimmed before chargrilling. The trimmings will make a nice burger later. This was a top piece of beef, best of British, grass-fed, tender and deeply flavoursome: More steak porn from a month or so ago. A White Park T-bone, another smashing breed of beef, again aged 5 weeks for optimum tenderness and flavour. Served with the last of the local asparagus and an heirloom tomato salad with Japanese style sesame dressing. We had a ponzu dipping sauce with this and ate the lot with chopsticks!

Yes, it is heresy. I would go further and say that crab linguine is best with undercooked crabmeat. So i never make it with anything but live crabs. They're quite cheap live brown crabs, I bought 2 large ones yesterday for £13 in the Birmingham Indoor market. Gave them a scrub, killed them and boiled them for 10mins. The white meat made enough crab linguine to feed 4 of us handsomely last night and i'm still eating the brown meat on toast all through today.

When I buy half a pig I prefer that my butcher hangs it for 4 or 5 days, it sets the meat up better for when I butcher it down. The meat is firmer and cooks better, as for taste I don't think there's any improvement.

Depends how big your octopus is, small ones don't really need tenderising. If you don't have a pressure cooker then the bigger ones are helped by some light bashing with a steak hammer or rolling pin. Remember, double suckers are better

I forgot to mention it had a liberal salting a couple of hours before roasting and i rubbed it down with lots of olive oil. Yeah, I'm thinking I should have haggled the price down a little. I'll have to play it cool next time I walk past that stall. So, you got anymore halibut heads that I can take off your hands? You know the last one was just ok, not much meat on it...

A freakin' huge halibut head, that's what I saw out the corner of my eye as I walked by the stall. I'd just bought a couple of live crabs and did a double take when this beast appeared in my peripheral vision. I stopped right in my tracks and asked how much; "a tenner", done! It's not every day you see a fresh halibut head for sale and I knew that I had a dinner guest who'd appreciate picking out the juicy bits out of it: Because I was doing crab linguine I thought that roasting it with some lemon and herbs would be the way to go but i had no idea how long to cook it for. I mean who has a clue really how long to roast a 3kg fish head for? Well, you do now, 50mins at 210C. It was perfectly cooked, we picked every part of it clean. The cheeks were massive and juicy, they had the texture of skate wings. The eyes were bursting with clean tasting gelatinous liquid. My auntie and I went at the sticky bits in the head with chopsticks in the end, she's one of those Cantonese ladies who loves to eat fish heads so you can imagine she was in food heaven. As was i! The more we picked at it the more meat/collagen/funky bits it gave up, it was a tenner well spent I wouldn't hesitate buying it again, wonderful eating.

Oh and once again thanks Alan, you've captured the magic light and food in that conservatory beautifully.

It all looks lovely, but please tell me about the oyster pebbles. They look like macarons with..? We had the bigger tasting menu in May and shared most of the courses shown by Sped98. The oyster pebbles are light apple meringues filled an oyster essence. The leaves you see in the photo are oyster leaves and taste amazingly like fresh zingy oysters, just wonderful! One of the most remarkable flavours were the little fennel bonbons in the venison tartare dish. The two little golden dome-shaped objects were delicate candy shells filled with the most intensely sweet and fragrant fennel essence. The flavour of these bursting over the tongue elevated this simple tartare to a thing of genius.

I went on a bit of a Reuben fetish a couple of months ago. Like Chris I think ox cheeks are great to pastramify, because they are so unctuous but also because they are good to portion. One big cheek is usually enough to make two sandwiches. Last time I smoked about a dozen of them, I only have 4 left in the freezer so it might be time to smoke some more! I like mine with sauerkraut, emmental and russian dressing. I know that rye is the most authentic but it's hard to get here so I'm happy to use a good white sourdough loaf. It grills up really well, nice and crispy: Though my baker friend did one time make a sourdough rye with caraway especially for my obsession, it made an awesome reuben:

Cheers fellas, I'm entering my first BBQ competition next week so have had lots of practice on those ribs. Wish me luck!

Ribs and Jerk Chicken in the smoker today. Topped off with an England goal, today is a good day!

Never, I always have a stash in the freezer from previous trips to Hong Kong. I sometimes get given them as gifts from relatives too. I don't think you can buy them in this country.

My mother gave me two joong the other week. She didn't make them, they were given to her by one of the old Hakka aunties, so she didn't know what was inside. I don't really don't like the nut filled ones, give me the fatty belly pork, lap cheung ones everyday. So i was massively disappointed when both turned out to be nut! Such was my disgust with the nut affair I decided to make my own. There are loads of ways to wrap a joong but I've been taught to make the pillow shaped ones. Depending on the size of the leaves you can use two or three. You know I don't think I've ever eaten a triangular joong! I thought I had some siu yuk in the freezer but when I came to look there was none. So i had to make do with just lap cheung, lap yuk and some conpoy. Anyone else wrap them this way?

Ah right in that situation yes you want to be as discrete as possible, i thought you were living in this country. The new Sony Experia phone has a 12MP camera now but it is quite large. From all reports the camera is fantastic.

Jenni, amongst our (eG) company you would not be considered a lunatic if you took a portable lightbox out in a restaurant, attached a white light, asked a waiter to plug in whilst you got your tripod out and clamped your phone to it; all to demonstrate how you could take a great photo with your moby. Not insane at all, just on the eccentric side of obsessive! What's wrong with using a discrete little compact camera in a restaurant? I use a little Canon S95 and it's great for those low light situations, with no flash it takes pretty decent pictures. I don't think any camera phone will come close to it's performance, not for a few years yet anyway.

You say that but I went to L'Enclume for a sunny Friday lunch a couple of weeks ago. The monthly Cartmel farmers market was on and the village was busy. But there were only two other tables (a 4 top and a single) besides me and missus. I was surprised it was so quiet, didn't affect the quality of the food though, it was stunning

Weird, i posted this only yesterday (link). That was probably about a 3lb octopus, a 4-pounder would not take much longer to cook than 35mins. Are you planning to sear it afterwards or are you going to eat it straight from the cooker?

Gosh i've not posted on Dinner! since March (i checked), I have been really lazy! But i have been vicariously enjoying all your dinners We have some beautiful native lobsters here in the UK, the meat is dense and sweet which made me think about pairing it with my favourite fruit - mango. Alphonso mango to be precise, lashings of it with coriander, tomato, daikon, mint and a lime & fish sauce dressing, The lobster was simply chargrilled with some lemongrass. A really stunning dish, one of those where as soon as you've eaten it you're thinking about when you can cook it again: Now i know how you all like a good steak on this thread so here's a dry-aged (about 6 weeks) Hereford rib on the bone. This is a typical British pure grass-fed cut of beef, not extravagantly marbled but just packed with natural beefy flavour. The aging made it wonderfully tender, simply grilled again with some salad and chimichurri:

I really enjoyed Blue Smoke on our trip to NY a couple of years ago, but then Jazz and BBQ what's not to love?

Octopus, the local market have finally got some decent octopodi. Big meaty ones from warmer waters with two rows of suckers on each arm. They taste much better than the smaller ones with only one row of suckers. You have clean them carefully, use some coarse salt and scrub out all the grime in the suckers. Turn the head inside out to empty all the organs contained inside and pop the beak out. It's pretty nasty the first time you have to do it but remember that it's worse when they're live... There are lot of techniques for getting your octopus tender; bashing it, massaging it, putting cork in the water - i've tried all those. Nowadays I just pressure cook them for 30mins in some salted water with some bay leaf and onion. I let the octopus cool before searing the tentacles on a hotplate with some olive oil, lemon, garlic and parsley. I save the rest of the tentacles in the freezer, ready for the hotplate at anytime. Great little tapa: