Prawncrackers

Auntie Dejah, snap! I had beef rendang too tonight, ox cheek - my favourite cut for making rendang. This was part of a spicy Asian food tour for a couple of my mates, we can all handle a bit of chilli heat so I cranked up the volume on all dishes. Alongside the rendang I cooked salt and pepper prawns (langoustine); Pork with Chillies and Thai Sweet Basil; Fire-exploded Kidney Flowers and a Green Mango Salad.

Here's one for Chris Taylor and the start of his smoking adventures; bbq baby back ribs - kinda KC style with a nice sloppy sweet sauce. Check out the nice pink smoke ring on them, they were in the smoker for three hours then a couple hours wrapped in the oven with a little apple juice to keep them moist. Then something completely different; Ras-el-hanout spiced pigeon breast & confit legs, toffee cumin carrots, giant couscous and lightly curried shallot rings. Smoothest chicken liver parfait ever with a brûlée topping, taken from the Heston at Home book. The parfait was just as good as the famous "meat fruit" dish I had at his Dinner restaurant in Knightsbridge, sublime!

So this is just another dude pronouncing a name incorrectly, he just happens to be French. I've heard the boss and employees of the company on two separate TV shows (one Rick Stein, the other James Martin) confirm that it does rhyme with oily cat. It could be that they have a particular habit of misinforming celebrity chefs from the UK but these shows, particularly Rick Steins, are watched by millions so they would be shooting themselves in the foot! They have a phone number 0033467777520, why don't you ask them yourself? Going back to Parmigiana, how about dropping the last syllable - Parmagian, making it sound like Parma John. Most commonly heard on Top Chef - "So like I hit it up with a little Parma John!!".

This is absolutely wrong, it's as Blether pronounces it rhyming with oily cat. Dear old Rick Stein went to where they made it and got it straight from the horses mouth. He'd been using the stuff for decades and had been wondering how to pronounce it for that long too. So he was mightily relieved to find out from the actual head honcho.

I generally think it's commendable when English speakers attempt to pronounce food items with their original flavour. For example Spanish Paella with the double "ll" sounding like a "y" or Chorizo with the "z" sounding like a slurred "th". It kinda distinguishes those who really care about the origin of they're eating, the culture behind it and those that don't. These words don't exist in the English language so it's obvious to adopt the native way of saying them. For me, the peculiar thing is with those French terms that because of the legacy of French culinary tradition we tend to mangle in English. Why say "filay" when we mean fillet? It's a fillet, that's the English word for it. Are we trying to impress the listener when we say it say with with a suave sounding "fi-lay"? When we cook Italian food I suppose it's acceptable to use arugula and parmigiana, it's gives the impression that what we're cooking has that authentic Italian credo that is so important. But personally I like to use the perfectly good English words for them, rocket and parmesan. I know it's a not a pronunciation issue but it leads me to the one word that really gets my goat: headcheese!! Why oh why is this word in use, Fromage du Tete I can understand but to translate this directly into headcheese seems like a linguistic abortion to me when there is perfectly good English word for it; Brawn.

Osso bucco is traditionally served with saffron risotto, the classic dish Osso Bucco alla Milanese. One of our favourites, but one that's quite involved and not really a dish to cook after work midweek. But using a pressure cooker the meat is done in half an hour, then adding orzo to soak up all the braising liquor made for a wonderful quick meal: Regular pork carnitas on one day: Led to an idea for Bacalao Fritters. Light & crispy fritters with a garlic lime mayo and pico de gallo. This was a taste sensation, now to see my bank manager about that food truck...

If you are looking for a more powerful flavour then you could try this recipe for Dong Po Pork in the RecipeGullet, posted by yours truly. In the Sichuan restaurants here you always get this more "glamourous" version of the dish rather than the standard red-braised pork. Percyn, lobster noodles recipe; i always get asked for this. When i get the chance i'll put it up on the RecipeGullet!

You really do have to be brave when making caramel for Vietnamese cooking. An underdone caramel is a bit one dimensional, the further you take it the more interesting it tastes. I've only ever made it with white sugar, has anyone tried other kind of sugars?

Hey cheers folks it's nice just to be cooking again after my mandolin accident. Looking back at that meal there was a lot for just five mouths, it could have easily fed eight of us. I deliberately chose the smallest chicken I could find and pared back all the plates too. The number of hot dishes is probably the maximum my kitchen can produce! I think if I ever get round to hosting a Supperclub evening then this would be my ultimate home banquet menu, how much do you think I could charge? Auntie Dejah, after poaching my tiny chicken I put some chicken wings and an Iberico ham bone to boost the stock and make a facsimile Shanton broth. I used this to cook both the rice of course, and the lobster and crab dishes. The crab meat was freshly picked that day, flavoured with the usual stuff and thickened slightly with potato starch. I'm not a big fan of thickening with egg, is this what you mean by creamy sauce? The steamed seafood dish is very simple but so delicious. The only thing to consider really is how long to soak each item. After advice from my mum, it was cockles and squid soaked overnight, scallops soaked in the morning, the little fish were really tiny and all they need were rinsing. It all gets mixed up with hand minced pork shoulder, some ginger, soy and steamed gently for 20 minutes. So good with rice. Sheetz, there is a cheat with making chicken look presentable. No matter how badly you chop the legs up, just take the breasts off the bone, remove the inner fillets, press the breast down before slicing them on a slant. Now cover up the legs with the neatly sliced breasts, hiding all the carnage underneath! But that's not what I do, of course...

We had some Chinese friends visit this weekend. They live a distance away in Kent and it was the first time that we've had them round. Now it seems that I have a few signature dishes that I'm known for, especially Chinese ones, and every time I cook for someone for the first time it's always these dishes that they ask for. One of them also said that she wanted to eat till she fell over, so I was happy to oblige. First up was lobster noodles and steamed razor clams with black bean sauce: I don't cook with dried seafood often but I fancied recreating one of my mothers Hakka dishes for my friends. It's one where you simply steam some reconstituted dried scallop, cockle, squid and tiny fish with some ground pork - one of my favourites. I also made Chicken rice, golden sand prawns, choi sum with crab, mekong catfish (Ca Kho) and ox cheek rendang. The last two dishes are not Chinese but were special requests: A couple of hours later when we could manage it, we had Matcha Cheesecake for dessert. Again, not Chinese, but with the Mah Jong made it feel sooo Chinese!

...... Don't be offended. It just looks like you could use more practice fileting your fish. It isn't clean. Maybe your knife is dull or something, I don't know, but as you have more experience I am sure the fillets will look a lot better. I am so happy to hear that home cooks are filleting their own fish. Hats off to you. Gosh, well, I think us lowly home cooks will all have to try harder then! Seems like ages since I last posted dinner, haven't been cooking much lately because I sliced the top of my index finger off a few weeks ago. It was with a mandolin and although I managed to finish cooking that meal, it put me off cooking for a bit afterwards! So it's time for a catch-up, a couple of simple to prepare dishes first to get me back into the kitchen; a creamy smoked trout, pancetta and pea spaghetti: and pad krapow gai, well it would have been krapow but I couldn't find any holy basil that day so good ol' regular basil instead. Just what's needed for a quick mid-week meal: Now contrary to popular belief, you can make southern fried chicken in a pressure cooker at home. This was buttermilk based recipe, I shallowed fried it on one side, flipped it and stuck the lid on my Kuhn Rikon PC brought it up to the first ring and cooked it for 8 minutes. The results are a little soggy when you first pull it out but 5 minutes in the oven develops a beautiful crust with the juiciest meat ever: Salt baked Gilt-head bream, samphire, hollandaise and braised fennel: Spiced Wild Duck - seared breast & confit legs, Pilau Rice and a thick Cashew Gravy: Grouse, Pumpkin Puree, Cabbage, Pancetta, Spuds and a scrappy red wine reduction:

Big fat Spanish green Gordal olives, marinated with garlic and toasted almonds.

From your photo I would say the piece in the bottom right corner is the only one worth roasting for it's marrow. That's the only centre-cut one, but then one is never enough. You need a least two of those for decent portion, save that one till you get some more! The bones look pretty clean too, personally I don't bother soaking it but I'd give them a rinse to remove any bone dust. The other pieces are fine for stock of course.

Maybe what you've experienced is the same style of Modern British cuisine? Is not that surprising that two leading Central London restaurants use the same techniques.

Kinda partial to Thai salads, you know green papaya or green mango, carrot, cucumber, lots of fresh zingy herbs and searingly hot chillies. Lime, fish sauce and sugar dressing. In the summer I'm seriously addicted to them.

Brilliant eG Foodblog Scotty, I think you should do one every year!

Glad to see you're still with us rro, you've really earned your eG wings on this mission soldier. Well done! Was there any differnce in texture and taste between the bright red female roe and the milky white male 'roe'?

When I first saw those photos of your meal at Commis I thought wow that really reminds me of L'Enclume here in the UK. Very similar techniques creating beautiful food using wonderful seasonal ingredients. Loving your blog Scotty, food porn galore!

Rendang, I have three portions of it in my freezer right at this moment. I never cook and it eat it right away as everyone knows it's better the day after. Well it's pretty good after a couple of months in the freezer too. I usually vac pack it so I can warm it through in a water bath straight from frozen.

We ate the most sublime Baklava at Karakoy Gulluoglu a couple of years ago, we have never eaten baklava since. It was that good! But yes tell us more, Istanbul is such a wonderful eating town. Superb meat dishes, bewildering variety of kebaps and simple fresh seafood. Makes me want to go back just thinking about it, not to mention I get to eat baklava again.

Hey Scotty your food always sings to me, very much looking forward to this blog. I know everything is going to be delicious!

You're right rro, I don't think i've seen scallop roes eaten raw anywhere either. Scallop sashimi is great, what do they do with them in Japan? They're a bit soft and mushy whenever i've prepared whole scallops, maybe they aren't that great eaten raw. There's only one way to find out, and I nominate you to be the first egulleter to try!

My my isn't your mango firm dcarch! Indian and Pakistani mangoes are my favourite fruit and I eat so many when they're in season from April to August. Alphonso, kesar, badami, sindhri, chaunsa are the most commonly available variety in the uk. They are all very sweet and perfumed, the flesh is virtually all pulp with no fibre. So much so that you can eat them by squeezing till they liquify in their skins. You then bite a little hole and suck out all the pulp. There's no wastage. With all the varieties i've mentioned I can't see that a mango splitter or the corkscrew method working at all. They are just too juicy and soft.

Brittonv, yup the pan works on induction. If your main criteria for buying a non-stick pan is non-stickability then this pan isn't for you. It won't pass the no-oil-fried-egg cooking demo but for durability it's pretty good. There's not a scratch on it after a year. The light colour of the lining is good for sauces, which is another benefit over trad non-stick pans.

I had a very average saturday lunch at Hedone a month ago. How about Bar Boulud?