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haresfur

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Posts posted by haresfur

  1. That all looks great @FrogPrincesse. I may have to try beer in the red cabbage. A recipe I never got from my father and my siblings hate it so I wing it. Has to have apple and bay leaves. And cider vinegar to keep it red. I have taken to slicing the cabbage thin with a knife because I have too many childhood memories of bleeding into the box grater. And of course it is better reheated. Still working on the end of the batch.

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  2. The tale of Trash the Kitchen Imperial Stout.

     

    The main things about Imperial Stout is that it uses a huge amount of malt and a huge amount of hops, so it isn't cheap to brew, but it does keep well. I decided I wanted a bit of molasses flavor so added some blackstrap.  I used malt syrup and set it to boil on the stove then I'm not sure what happened, but managed to boil it over sending sticky gunk all over the stove and down the front of the oven to the floor. I was not popular with the cohabitant.

     

    Anyway I finished the ferment and secondary ferment and bottled it up. Unbenounced to me, the stuff that makes molasses taste the way it does is unfermentable. When I pulled a bottle out of the cupboard in the basement and cracked it open after a few weeks, it was like disgusting watery molasses. 

     

    Three years later, the rest of the batch was rediscovered in the basement and it was exquisite. 

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  3. 1 minute ago, rotuts said:

    @haresfur

     

    Ive never had fresh , real wasabi/  keep that in mind.

     

    I did see a show from GB that discussed and tasted the difference.  its grown in some sort of secret place

     

    as its so expensive .  the tour of the facility was interesting , green house , flowing water etc

     

    and the taster was someone that Id seen before and agreed with on other topics.

     

    the take away was the it had to be grated freshly , and the flavors were very transient 

     

    I free ginger , and horseradish whole , and grate from frozen.

     

    Is consider doing that rather than grate and freeze.

     

    based on the show and my experience w ginger and horseradish.

     

    Everything I've read says not to freeze it whole because it turns to mush. The instructions and what I read elsewhere said to grate using a circular motion, push into a lump and wait 5 minutes.

     

    It came vacuum-sealed and I resealed the remainder in a new bag.  

     

    Australia has very strict biosecurity rules so I'm not sure it would be allowed in from outside the country. So I'm glad they can grow it in Tassie. I don't know if Japanese wasabi tastes different.

     

    Definitely got our entertainment value even though the shipping doubled the cost.

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  4. More of a give than a get, although I did benefit. Bought some real wasabi, grown in Tasmania, to try out because someone was wondering how different it was. About a 3 cm piece of stem vacuum packed and shipped express with a cold pack. Along with a grater and threw in some dried mountain pepper berries since I was spending so much on shipping anyway.

     

    The grater seemed a bit small and not the easiest to use. The wasabi was spicier than I had imagined so the flavour difference seemed more subtle. It was better than the horse radish stuff but didn't exactly rock my world. There is no really good sushi where I live so we made do on that end.

     

    Have plenty left over so need to think of ways to use it up. I read somewhere that it actually freezes ok after grating but of course couldn't find the website again.

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  5. I didn't recognise Gilbert Shelton's name but he was actually my entry into this obscure corner of the internet and many of you probably know his underground comics "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" and "Fat Freddy's Cat" I guess he likes sardines, too.

     

    image.thumb.png.22895ac8f5c085ce6eb5154cae3d15a8.png

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  6. I recently stumbled down quite a rabbit-hole of sardine-can art that I thought I would share. I don't know if it some Jungian thing or what, but it crops up in actual can labels and in art inspired by sardine cans. Maybe it is some fascination with the way the key curls the lid back. Something strangely satisfying about that.

     

    I didn't always save links to sources and some might be considered NSFW, depending on your work. Mermaids, you know. I'll start with this overview.

     

    image.thumb.png.ba47d4feb87bea5e9ba0bb88fddac4e7.png

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  7. The major grocery chains here have gone all-in on self checkout. At the store I go to most, there is usually only one lane with a checkout person and that is the one at the counter where they sell cigarettes so they are constantly leaving you for the smokers. They have also made it very hard to pay with cash - I assume handling the cash and paying for armored transport costs more than the credit charges. Since they do such large volume I wouldn't be surprised if they negotiated a very low fee. 

     

    Along with this they have been getting heavily into face recognition, AI monitoring to see if you were keying in cheap veg for expensive ones, and various methods to keep people from dashing out with their trolly. Like experimenting with ways to lock the wheels if they think you are stealing. Very dystopian. 

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  8. I can get Berkshire pork at my farmer's market but seldom do because it is far to porky for my taste. The tenderloin is ok. I understand with pork the sex makes a difference to the taste but they don't specify. If I want female pork I need to go to the Footscray Market in North Melbourne and it is far too much trouble to bring back on the train so I haven't tried to see if it makes a difference. Anyone have any experience with gendered pork?

  9. Speaking of Camembert, Australia doesn't pay much attention to European controlled designation of origin laws and Australian "Camembert" is practically interchangeable with Australian "Brie". Recently I bought some French Camembert and remembered why I wasn't fond of the strong smell. My younger Dalmatian has a very good nose and went nuts over it, however.

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  10. 2 hours ago, liuzhou said:

     

    In general, those with a flat blade are 菜刀 (cài dāo) which literally means vegetable knife but is use as a general cook's knives which are used for yes, chopping, but also slicing meats etc. These are usually the only knives in a domestic setting.

     

    Those with the curved blade edges are 切骨刀) (qiē gǔ dāo), literally cut bone knife, and are generally butcher's knives intended for cutting through bones, cartilege etc as well as slicing meats. The meat vendors in every market in China use those. Rare in home kitchens.

     

     

     

     

    Well my question/confusion is about the ones you and others have been saying are for home cooks like this one:

     

    On 11/12/2023 at 3:48 PM, liuzhou said:

     

    I don't know, but I can find no evidence that it is a Chinese brand. The name in 'Chinese' does not equate to Enoking and using the 'Chinese' name on an internet image search only returns a bunch of images from garish looking comics. No knives. 

    Not to say that they don't make good knives.

     

    To over-simplify, there are basically two types of Chinese cleavers. What we call a 菜刀 (cài dāo) which literally translates as 'vegetable knife' but really means kitchen knife or chef's knife. This is most cooks' go to in China. Mine weighs 434 grams.

     

    caidao.thumb.jpg.d536d8d749751e016a4e7314ffb03532.jpg

    菜刀 (cài dāo)

     

     

     

    vs this one which has a basically flat blade profile

     

    On 11/16/2023 at 7:44 AM, btbyrd said:

    The CCK is twice the knife at (less than) half the price. If you like the all metal construction of the Global, try the CCK KF1812. $80 from Action Sales.

     

     

     

    I inherited one like the second from my father who used it to whack apart all sorts of things (the spine is covered with hammer marks). I took the chips out of the blade but am not sure whether to put a curve back in or not.

  11. What is the practical difference in use between the cleavers with a very flat blade and those with a curved blade? I would think the former would be better for chop-cutting vegetables and the latter maybe better for slicing or rocking but I don't really know anything about Chinese cutting technique.

  12. That looks fantastic! Of course there are the heathens on the US west coast who like Dungeness crab 🙂.

     

    I'm a bit surprised about the mayo but have never actually made crab cakes. I had some great ones out in suburban Maryland visiting DC last June. The manager of the restaurant harangued the kitchen to make them for us, even though it was lunch and they were a dinner special.

     

    Partner used to board her horse at a very nice property north of DC. A woman who lived nearby would come around and sell home made crab cakes that seemed to be basically all lump crab. Partner was out of town and I managed to wrangle a weekday dinner invite for crab cakes and champagne. One of those all time meal highlights.

     

    I wonder if panko would make good crumbs. That's what we use in meatballs.

  13. White cockatoos in the Top End develop taste for durians, the world's stinkiest fruit

    Mr Siah said durians had a hard, spiky exterior, and the cockatoos with their "steel beaks" had found a way to crack into the fruit and access the creamy, yellow flesh inside. "It's just a recent thing," he said. "We used to have a farm down the road that grew melons and the cockatoos and corellas stayed down there at this time of the year, so we didn't have much of a bird problem. "But that [land] is now becoming a croc farm and cockatoos don't like crocodiles, so they've immigrated down to neighbouring farms and some have started liking a taste of durian."

     

    Mr Siah said the first durians of the season were fetching more than $30 a kilogram wholesale, meaning the cockatoos "were picking the most expensive fruit in town". He said despite the pressure from birds, as well as extreme temperatures, he expected a reasonable harvest this year of up to 15 tonnes. In 2014-2015 Mr Siah travelled the world through a Nuffield scholarship to study alternative and cost-effective methods of deterring birds and bats from destroying crops.

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