haresfur

Elsewhere on the internet there was a discussion about white pepper where the claim was that white pepper oxidizes after grinding and develops that distinctive flavour I associate with Chinese cooking. I believe that the person said white pepper was usually sold ground in the Chinese grocery stores (forget if that was in China or elsewhere). I did buy a white pepper grinder, if only for western cooking where it is about colour more than a different flavour from black. But I haven't bothered to buy ground white pepper to compare. What do you do with Sichuan pepper? Grind or use whole?

It is electric as was the one it replaced. We have a gas cooktop, although there is a strong push by the environmentalists and government to move away from gas. I wouldn't have much problem with that if we got rid of all the coal-fired electric. By the way the oven racks and ceramic-coated trays from the old oven are about 3 mm wider so aren't really usable. One really weird thing I find with European ovens is that they have plated metal vertical bits to hold the racks rather than the molded indents on N American ovens. They don't seem to be as sturdy. The oven comes with one set of rollers like a file cabinet so at least one tray slides in and out easily.

The Asko oven that we put in 4 years ago started throwing an error code related to the pyrolytic cleaning function whenever our power went out (which happens reasonably often). The service guy was out several times saying magic incantations, mucking about with the locking mechanism and cycling the breaker, etc. The final time he got it working he basically said that we should ask for a replacement if it happens again. He left it with the self-cleaning running and when that finished it wouldn't unlock the door. A month or so of drama with the company and they decided to refund us for the oven. We had pretty much lost confidence in the service since this guy said he wanted to drop them. I'm so glad we bought through the local appliance store rather than a box store because they were good about getting involved and calling their sales rep. So may I introduce our new Miele that amazingly arrived and was installed before Christmas.

Yeah, a fair bit of sugar and a fair bit of fat on the meat. I think my mistake was closing the lid and not cleaning the old grease out of the drip pan. Didn't take long for it to go from a few flair-ups to billowing flames.

I will never again torch the barbie grilling Korean ribs. I think they're done...

I would read that as "noodles used to make ramen" (although of course there is nothing stopping you from using them to make something else). So, no, these are not ramen - they are a particular type of noodle. Here, at least, if I wanted someone to pick up a pack of these, I would never say, "Go to the store and get some ramen."

Given the amount of avocados grown in Australia, it is strange that avocado oil is expensive and only sold in small bottles as a health food so I haven't tried it for high-smoke-point cooking. Interesting about the flavour though. I get the grape seed oil from my crappy local grocery who seems to deal with smaller producers. Lord knows we grow enough grapes. Maybe someone could start marketing the oil by variety and vintage.

Grape seed oil or rice bran oil do well for me. If things aren't going to get blazing hot I use virgin olive oil.

But better than stuffing a duck with a plastic bag

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that Picana, or Rump cap is essentially the butt end of a tri-tip with lots of fat cap still attached. My beef dude basically sells the front part as tri-tip and the back as rump cap. Picana is very trendy now but I'm not big on the fat so I tend to go for the front bit.

Fair enough but I'm not worried about a little paper waste when I'm avoiding plastic use. Most years we are under pressure to conserve water.

I find baking paper works fine. Better than plastic and doesn't need any cleanup like a silplat would

Modernist Pizza $100 off on their black Friday sale

The garlic crop. I didn't expect really big cloves, given the starter bulbs but It should taste ok.

I planted one cherry tomato this year and it promptly died. I do have a couple of volunteers that might do something. I still have some not great green tomato chutney from a couple of years ago that I should use up before I think about preserving more.

Is the "air frying feature" just convection or something different, like a faster fan? Seems to me the rate of air circulation doesn't make that much difference but what do I know? I use my oven on convection almost all the time but it does have top and bottom elements. There is a fast pre-heat that, as near as I can tell, turns them all on and presumably brings the walls up to temperature faster.

I have an old grill rack with an enamel pan under a wire rack that I often use in the convection oven to get air circulation under the food. You might look for something like that or a wire rack that you can prop up over a metal tray. My convection oven is from Europe so smaller than an American oven but larger than a countertop unit.

Noting that acorn squash/pumpkin are not available in Australia except that I know someone who smuggled some seeds back. Unfortunately his were pretty tasteless, which was a pity. Don't know if it was the seeds or the soil or the weather that was the problem. I do like acorn squash.

Fresh figs are very delicate and don't stay ripe for long so they are probably best for small local vendors. Dried figs still taste ok and are good for cooking. A vendor at my farmers market sells nice caramelised figs which are a happy medium.

I knew about fig wasps but it is surprising how widespread fig trees are around the world given how specialised the pollination is. I have a rather sad fig tree in a pot that gets a few figs a year, even though there aren't that many of the trees around. There must be a lot of unsuccessful wasps.

We go through a lot of winter squash, which we generically call pumpkin here, because we feed it to the dogs, along with their ground meat and brown rice. I usually go for butternut and Japanese pumpkin. The dogs get theirs roasted and may get the chopped up skin. We often put it in a tagine with chicken and red lentils. The red lentils thicken the sauce nicely. Pumpkin soup is nice in limited quantities. We also like pumpkin risotto. A very versatile vegetable.

fucking earwigs!

Yes it can be saved. I put chips at least that deep in the cheap cleaver I inherited from my father. I used a file like I would use to sharpen an axe. This was the first time I used it after repairing the chips he put in it. The hammer marks on the spine are all his, though.

Guess I'm going to have to buy some shiso plants or seeds. Thanks everyone.

I could use some help with herb identification. I planted some micro-herbs that came with my covid-lockdown meal from Masons of Bendigo, reported here. The green shiso survived a few replantings and ended up in a wine barrel, happily re-seeding itself while the lemon balm didn't survive, or so I thought. This spring's crop is coming along well, but when I picked some it smelled very lemony. Hmm. I don't remember that before, but maybe it is because there is fresh growth. So now I don't know if I have shiso or lemon balm. Maybe some lemon balm was quietly lurking with the shiso ready to mount a coup. Unfortunately I ripped volunteer shiso out of another pot so I can't compare to that. Can anyone tell me what this is?