haresfur

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?

One of my father's standards was fried spaghetti. He would put leftover spaghetti in a cast iron pan with butter on high heat and fry until it was crispy to the point of charring then scramble some eggs in with it. I am far more refined. I use olive oil, don't burn it and usually add oregano, garlic, and maybe even some veg. If you rinse out the bowl and fork used to beat the eggs and serve it in that, then I reckon it counts as a one pan meal. I also don't drop cigarette ashes in the pan.

What happens when a Thai/Australian cookbook author "partners" with Angostura to come up with a dish? You get Lemon, Lime, and Bitters Thai chicken. (Lemon, Lime, and Bitters is a popular drink here). Conveniently I had a chook in the fridge to break down and coriander bolting (already!) in the garden for the coriander root. I made a few modifications due to ingredients on hand and because I wanted to finish off a bottle of Fees Aromatic Bitters. Found I had to reduce the marinade down a lot to use as a glaze for the last step. I thought it was really tasty. edit: I totally forgot the rice

Not a place I was expecting to see in my small city. My partner is overseas and I mentioned to my barista that I should have some duck, since she isn't big on it. He told me about this Korean BBQ in the city centre and said I couldn't miss it. Decided on a duck wrap since I wanted the salad. Not huge but very nice. The skin wasn't crispy, but was ok. I'll have to try the crispy pork (hanging on the far right) next time. I sat at a picnick table outside to eat since it was a rare sunny day for our wet winter/spring and because I didn't want to share with the Dalmatians.

I don't know... a fuzzy-logic rice cooker is very cool and high-tech but a fuzzy-logic controller for a nuclear plant sounds worrisome.

Report back if you die

For what it is worth, bamboo steaming baskets are still used for sticky rice in Thailand and Laos.

Freeze your own cold-brew and add hot water

The duck spent the night uncovered in the fridge and the frosting hardened up. I've never made anything like the fluffy frosting called for in the recipe but it seems like it might not have held up as well. What do you think? The duck was successfully transported to the Kyabram Wildlife Park with plastic wrap and spent the time until lunch safe in the staff's office. They were impressed(?) Well they thought it was lots of fun. Our friends were a bit bemused. I think the book was after their time. We ate from the tail forward to the head and neck and gave the front to the park staff. I'm calling it a success.