A Balic

Take roe, cover in salt, wrap in paper towel. Remove paper when soaked in liquid, replace salt and paper. Continue until no more liquid is apparent (days). The roe should be pretty firm by this stage and dark. You can conpress it with a board to firm it up some more and to give it a rectangular cross-section. You can freeze it or pack it into salt. Very nice grated on pasta.

Wilfrid - I ate some smoked fish roe, on brown bread and butter, last saturday. The fish species was unknown (maybe cod or grey mullet). The crackle-pop sensation was good, as was the flavour, rather like a mild smoked salmon. My plan is to get some fresh roes and to make some bottarga for pasta sauces etc. Are the shad roes fish eggs (hard roe) or milt/semen (soft roe)?

Score 1: Dry Australian Humour. There was a good 15-20 minute pause between the creation of each individual pasta. I make a personal ravioli/raviolo temporal distinction of exactly two minutes. Any two (or more) stuffed pasta made with < two minute delay between the creation of individual pasta is a ravioli, any pasta with a > two minute delay is a Raviolo.

Raviolo - you know one large stuffed pasta for eating as an individual unit. I needed to taste test while I created them, so I ate two or three I would guess. I was discussing this with a friend and we decided while correct Italian would be ravioli, if you had more then one, Raviolo was a better culinary term for a very large stuffed pasta. Still confused?

I think that the problem with the "classic english cellar" is that you end up purchasing a large proportion of you wine, based on the expectations of other peoples tastes. This kind of removes some of the fun of getting the wine in the first place. Also, wine auction market is becoming less straight forward (ie. not so much concentration on Bordeaux first growths), so that makes it a little more tricky to buy for resale. My tastes may not be that similar to others, so while I would buy a case of Vouvray to age for 10+ years, who would buy the other case? Similarly, I could buy a case of the latest fashionable Cab., Syrah etc for its resale potential, but I may not neccessarily want to drink itself. When the Paul Bocuse restaurant in Melbourne closed in the late 90's they sold off the wine cellar, I bought some bottles of '90 Ch. Riesusec and Ch. Climens for about 30 quid each. These are great wines and I want to drink these types of wine, but their resale value isn't very good, so If I want to drink these types of wine I have to buy them for myself not anybody else. If I had a larger budget I guess I could get wine purely to re-sell, but that doesn't interest me at this point. Is this being naive, do you think?

The pouch smelling was a sciene thing. Widgeon always tastes a little fishy to me, Teal is better.

It does sound great, and I will go there next time I am in London. Fosters is not drunk by any Australians I know. It is horrid chemical crap that only the British would drink (Possibly Americans too). If I could have done my Ph.D. on cheerleading I would have. I'm sure Andy often says "I insist on paying Bruce", slightly before Bah-hahahaha.

I don't think pouch would be very nice, to tough. My wife has smelt the inside of a potaroo's (a small kangaroo like thing) pouch, she didn't recommend the experience.

Cabrales - it is illegal to kill Koalas, because for some reason people want to stop the bloody stinking things going extinct, so you can't eat them legally. Also, a squirrel served sans tail? I smell a rat.

Oh, its one of those "Sir, you must wear shoes in the restaurant!" places. Pity, sounded interesting. And that's Dr. Balic to you Simon. Steve - thank you for correcting me, I sometimes get haute cuisine and peasant food confused when there is a large sellection of foie gras to be had.

No I haven't, I can't stand bloody Koalas. Revolting animals. I have heard that they taste very bad because of their diet (eucalyptus leaves only).

"Wilfrid" from the old english for "he who is envious of the tree-rat eaters".

What happened to "jiggly chick"?

Well, I was thinking instead of (as in a Chevre and scallop pizza; blue cheese onion marmalade pizza etc), but as well as, works also. Not a great fan of multi-cheese pizzi though.

How do you feel about Chevre or other cheese on Pizza? In Scotland they use orange cheddar -Blarrrghack!

I like pizza with a thin crust, my favorite pizza is just garlic, olive oil, fresh mozzarella with procuitto and rocket and more olive oil placed on top after it is cooked. Less is more for me. Am I a freak?

Steve - that was a terrific description of two very different meals, I thoughly enjoyed reading it. Club Gascon sounds great, I guess its the logical extention of a tasting menu. If it isn't to rude to ask, how much does an average meal cost at Club Gascon? Sandre and Zander are the same fish (or a least very closely related fish), Pike-perchs (I think they are called 'Walleyes" in the states). On of those bony-fresh-water fish that tastes boring to everybody except the french.

I have found this discription of a Indian liqueur that sounds very similar to what was described to me "......Rajasthan, various kinds of liqueurs known as ashas, supposedly made up of as many as seventy-five different ingredients as diverse as human blood or crushed pearls and drunk 'mainly for potency'. Ashas were essentially elixirs intended for royalty alone". Do you know anything about "Ashas"?

Adam -- When you have a chance: how educational, and how good an outlet, has reading about food in non-recipe books been for you? Cabrales - my choice of reading material is most often non-fictional works, mostly social history stuff, and trashy Sci-Fi. So the former is educational, but rarely about food. The Peter Robb book "Midnight in Sicily", while not about food, has some of the best food writing that I have ever read. See link: http://www.duffyandsnellgrove.com.au/titles/midnight.htm If you would like to discuss this further we could state a seperate thread?

My friend is a she and her father is Bishen Bedi. I met him once (unfortunately at his ex-wife's funeral) he liked the sausage rolls I had made for the wake.

I had being thinking about this cocktail and Indian food question, when I remembered that one of my friends (whos father is an ex-Indian cricket team captain) telling me about a liquor that here father had that was for very special occasions and very important people. From memory it was based on a Mogul recipe and was basically Eau de Vie with gold flakes flavoured with spices and for same reason a partridge. I can't recall at what point in the meal it ws served at, so it may not be a cocktail as such. Personally, I think the mango and champagne is a much better bet. I had a Bollinger and mango cocktail at a restaurant in Melbourne a few years ago - very nice.

Back in Australia, I have about 150 bottles of wine stored. These have been lovingly collected over the years and as in most cases the bottles are singles (ie. no two of the same wine, I was student when most of them were collected), so the tend to get taken out on special occasions, which means that some are drunk to early, some to late. At the moment this wine is being aged for about 5 years from time of purchase to consumption, I would like to aim for 10-15 years. I have been starting to think the minimum size for an effective wine cellar. My thoughts are that about 500 bottles would be about right, the time it would take to work thought the wine, would mean that there would be a minimum of about four years turn over, with some thought I think it would take me out to ten years. In terms of minimum number of bottles of the same wine, I think that three bottles is of each wine is what I would like to aim for on my budget. The first bottle would be drank after five years of cellaring, the other two to be drank at a time based on the performance of this bottle. What do people think about this?

Depending on what level I am cooking on, I choose the wine accordingly. Casual meals get casual wine, meals that have some thought put into them have wine chosen in the same way. I guess I have a mental "map" of what wines I think go with particular types of food. eg. I like old Sauternes and smoked salmon or wild strawberries (not that I have the former or the latter very often ), Pinot gris with poached salmon, aged cab. Sav. with lamb etc. I think that these mental combinations can only be gained by experience. For example I was served Moscato di Asti with warm chicken liver mousse a few years ago, I loved the combunation, but I would never have come up with it independently. Dining is the same, if it is casual then it stays on that level. I could happily dine by myself, if I purely wanted to focus on the food/experience. For instance all my friends have refused to go to St. John, so I will most likely eat there by myself. However, the dining I most enjoy is being at a never-before-tried-good restaurant with my wife. Friends I prefer to cook for or have them cook for me. Other diners do not matter at all to me unless they are intrusive, but I don't think I would eat alone in an empty restaurant, unless for a special reason.

I rarely eat out in since moving to the UK. I love eating out but at the end of the dining spectrum that I can afford the food/wine isn't that interesting, so if I do go out to eat it is for a special occasion or socialisation, not food. Cooking at home (or eating at friends homes) is my food outlet then by default. I also enjoy cooking, which is nice. I invited two friends to dinner tomorrow, this has now turned into dinner for nine people. As it is a work night, I am cheating a little. Entree: Thai pork salad (made by my wife); Main: red curry duck (duck bought pre-cooked = cheating) with lychees, Veg. Green Curry, Blanchan Spinach; Broken Rice: Desert; Coconut/pandanus claflouti with mango. I will use commercial curry paste jazz it up a little and we will all have a great time for no great effort. This is all great fun, but it doesn't educate me very much about food, which sadly I think that you do need to dine out, or at least eat other peoples cooking, to get prespection on.

Cabrales - part of the dining experience for me is the social aspect. If you remove the subtle marriage of food/wine bit from dining then that is mostly what you are left with. I would happily pay for a food that was perfectly complimented the wine I was drinking, but that is a very rare thing to find at the cheaper end of the dining spectrum. In France, Italy, blimy even Australia you can by cheap wine that is great for casual socialisation. But, so very often in the UK I have been out with friends and drank overpriced swill and second rate swill at that. I realise that this is not necassarily the restuarants fault, but I am sure that it is possible to provide cheap wine that is also pleasant to drink. There must be money to be made from tracking down lesser known, good quality wine and providing these to restaurants? Most likely not, otherwise somebody would be doing it.