haresfur

I like this idea and think you could also do rice with salt, rice with sour, rice with sweet to show that none of those cover the umami flavour and that the umami dishes have more in common with each other than they do with the other tastes

Christmas lunch. Clockwise from top left: sangria with nectarines and orange, prawns fried in Korean chili oil, gravlox, savoury biscuits, soft blue cheese, Camembert, smoked ham, Swiss cheese, bresaola, homemade fermented pickles, marinated artichoke hearts, olives, marinated eggplant, sun dried tomatoes. Didn't even break into the Camembert, much to Dalmatian Jazzy's chagrin (she loves Camembert but still made out ok). We were stuffed so are having Pavlova for tea. The noisy miner birds ate my ripe blueberries so only mango on the pav.

Pork tenderloin with fennel and apples (and onion) I was going to sous vide the pork but found this recipe that roasted the tenderloin on top of the fennel and apple and decided to give it a go. Not too bad. They had you keep the root end on the onion to hold it together, but I don't think that works. I went a bit heavy with the rub on the pork, which was seared before roasting. Roasting the fennel tones down the anise flavour. Maybe would make again.

Finally named this drink and had a couple last night so decided to repost Viva Maria! 1.5 oz tequila - recently I've been using bianco but reposado should work 0.5 oz green walnut liqueur - made by a friend so I assume it is equivalent to nocino 2 tsp Benedictine 7 drops Xocolatl Mole bitters I serve over ice but you could stir and strain. A lemon twist wouldn't hurt. First was per spec with silver tequila and my friends homemade green walnut liqueur that I really need to use up. Nice but too sweet. My advice is to make your nocino less sweet if you are planning on mixing with it. Second was with reposado and my nocino. Balance was better but I think the silver tequila works better. A lime twist didn't really work, although it would be in keeping with the Mexican theme. Will have to try a lemon twist sometime. I am overly proud of the name because of the Benedictine, because, well you really should see the movie (incidentally is not as good as I thought as a teenager watching late night French-Canadian tv, which had much more liberal content policies than the English channels). Still worth a watch.

It looks like one of my cucumber plants might survive but I don't have my hopes up. My dill is getting rangy and flowering, so I decided to start fermenting some pickles using over-packaged, over-priced "Qukes." They are marketed as a snack for kids, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. It probably would have been cheaper to buy Polski Ogorkis. Started with a mix of black pepper, allspice berries, and brown mustard seeds along with a grape leaf and 6 small bay leaves. I mixed up a 4% brine including the cucumber weight. About 6 lightly smashed garlic cloves (not shown) And some dill Trimmed the blossom ends of the cukes. Hope I cut enough off to prevent the pickles turning to mush. Turns out they didn't pack into the 1 liter jar so I had to repack them into a 2 L, which was a bit of a mess. and I spooned out some floating spices, Added more brine and topped with a plastic bag full of brine as a weight. It's been hot and humid here so the house is warm so I tucked everything into an evaporative cooler to try and keep the fermentation temperature down. Now I wait.

Looks like you could have bought one for next year, too

I've had worse turkey than the 1 kg boneless breast thing that came in a foil baking tray and I've had worse gravy than the packaged chicken gravy heated in the microwave. Roasted carrots were decent, but the fennel fronds that were in with them were inedible and didn't really flavour the carrots. Mash with roasted garlic and jarred cranberry.

This is such a shame. I friend took me there a few years ago and the baked goods were a level above anything else I have experienced Customers 'heartbroken' after fire closes Sub Rosa Bakery for 'foreseeable future'

My vegetarian sister's tradition is to cook Indian for Christmas. I can get on board with that. Is making paneer difficult?

Beautiful bowl! Nicely filled.

Welp, I'm embarrassed to admit that I totally forgot that I had planted some white onions. No wonder most of the elephant garlic looked weird. Very nice on burgers tonight.

Pavlova is traditional Christmas dessert in Australia and New Zealand

I was actually thinking of starting a topic on how to break down a chicken because I do it quite differently from what's described in Ad Hoc at Home. I remember seeing an Italian cooking show where a housewife did it entirely with kitchen shears. I'm sure everyone has their own preferred method.

I have been keeping that on hand. Have made some decent soup with it and using Adam Liaw's microwave mushroom method. Microwave sliced mushrooms in a bowl and they release moisture leaving the chitin so it doesn't get slimy. Pour it all into the stock, spice to taste, heat.

I think that food would make up for a Blue Bombers loss, not that I keep track of them these days, so thanks for the update.

My theory is unencumbered by actual data but I think you want to have a small excess of acid over the baking soda. Not because of how it acts as leavening, but because a bit of acid usually tastes good while a bit of soda tastes chalky.

Do let us know what you decide

Harvested my garlic crop except for some elephant garlic that I will give a few days. I think these started as last year's crop but I just left them because they didn't really do anything. Have some more that didn't do anything this year, so I'll leave them and see what happens.

Some fermenting geeks like to make lacto-fermented mustard rather than using vinegar. I haven't tried it.

A quasi-traditional thing we like is stuffed pumpkin. Ideally you have a small American looking pumpkin, clean out the insides, cram in as much bread stuffing as you can and bake until heated through and the pumpkin is cooked. Slice into wedges to serve. You could probably do something creative with another kind of pumpkin/winter squash - might have to remove some of the flesh to make room for stuffing. Some people in Australia do traditional Christmas but a most do a cold lunch with maybe ham, prawns, salads, charcuterie, whatever. Pavlova for dessert. So you could borrow that idea, particularly if it is hot.

I think you wouldn't get proper heat transfer through the air in the container. I suppose you could fill the container with water, but that would be stagnant, not circulating. And I don't know what it would do to the texture because it would be kind of like boiling them but at ~ 60 C

Doesn't usually bother me. Use quality oil, I guess. I generally use better quality canola for this but rice bran oil would probably be better but more expensive. The biggest problem is how hard it is to clean the filter screen in the range hood

Spring rolls and egg rolls are very different beasts. Spring rolls are common here, egg rolls not so much, except for Chico Rolls that are generally sold at fish and chip shops. People seem to have some sort of nostalgia for them. I live in one of the places that claims to have originated Chico Rolls, but I can't imagine why that would be seen as a positive. Basically the nastiest egg rolls you can imagine filled with god knows what. Their only redeeming quality is that the company sponsors the local roller derby team. I was going to suggest this. Easy but time consuming. I have frozen them quite well. In terms of frying, I find shallow frying makes more of a mess than deep frying so yes, do it in a deep pot and use one of those stainless mesh covers to keep the splatter down. Ikea sells them. Deep frying isn't too bad. The oil can be strained and reused. You probably can get a restaurant to take your used oil for disposal when the time comes.

An Australian TV show about rural living and agriculture, Landline, just did a show on combating food waste and one of the segments was about a company that was making dehydrated vegetable and fruit powders. Apparently dehydrated broccoli contains quite a bit of protein.