haresfur

Agreed. I just made some chicken-stock based soup with a touch of star anise - not enough to make it taste "asian" but adds depth

I think it is almost a different spice from dry. Less pungent, maybe. I feel the same way about fresh vs. dried basil. Dry is nothing like fresh but has its place.

Drying bay leaves 😁 Donned my mask and took branches around to the neighbours. It was a good excuse to check in on them. It looks like some of the bushy suckers survived the wattle attack and will survive.

I think this is the correct thread because my bay tree is under there somewhere. A pretty wattle in bloom but acacia have short lives and this one is not indigenous to my area and quite weedy so I'm not too sad to see it go, aside from the damage to the bay.

Cinnamon in savory dishes. Just a bit in a paprikash and see if your friends can identify the flavour. Also Vegemite: umami secret weapon.

Whisky Mac using Stones Special Reserve Ginger Wine -better than the original 1 oz Aberlour A'bunadh 1 oz ginger wine 2 oz hot water

It's faster to cook a skinny snag to a crisp than a fat one

I'm resigned to growing fruit just to keep the parrots happy. It's worth it.

What direction does it face? Will there be enough shade where you want when you want? If not you could put up some shade-cloth and that would give you more options for where to put things. My paver area gets far too much sun from the west. Have a beautiful red-gum tree that throws shade but it is too big and too close to the house. I would take it out except for the shade.

In my usual fashion, I winged-it with a tri-tip before doing my eG research. I have done sv tri-tip before, but this time I went for low temp oven, at least in part to help warm up the house (it is winter here, after all). 125 F seems really low - I was shooting for about 58 C, but hit 56 C. I fussed with the temperature a lot during the cook, starting with a 200 C oven then dropping the temp after 15 min to around 120 C. Then dropped some more as the internal temp seemed to be rising too quickly - I was aiming for 3-4 hours cooking. What was interesting was that the temp rise completely stalled out at an oven temperature of ~70 C so I had to bring it back up again. I did like the way the surface dried out nicely and kept the spices. and the fat rendered some compared to sous vide, but it ended up as rare I care for and too rare for my beloved. I'm thinking next time trying about 90 C until it gets close to temp and then maybe dropping it to hold internal temperature for an hour. After that, maybe a quick sear under the broiler. My oven has far too many options, I started with heat from above and below but the bottom wasn't getting dry so I switched to heat from above plus the re-circulation fan. So maybe try convection. Sorry, no pictures - we got to the "need to eat -now!" point.

I like grilled pineapple. Grilled peaches are good, too.

Yes, some aren't designed as well as others. Something to look for.

My advice re induction is that you really want fine temperature control. I liked having induction but lack of adjustment was a problem. Could you build an outdoor woodfire pizza oven?

I put about 2/3 in the sauce, although the recipe didn't call for that. It was a good plan. I spent $70 AU on 31 g and saved a bit, which is in a container with some eggs for weekend breakfast. Probably could have sliced a bit thinner but my mandoline is finicky. @liuzhou, According to the ever-knowing internet (even discounting the partisan Aussie articles) the Australian truffles are good quality. You should have seen the monster that the vendor had dug up yesterday.

Nice enough but the appeal is mostly lost on me.ly

I suppose you could look at it as a silver lining, but different things are showing up in the farmers' markets here as the people supplying the restaurant trade are trying to diversify. I felt compelled to take one for the team in supporting them with the bonus justification of "hey, I can post it on eGullet: Picked two days ago. It actually was very sad because they had just booked out a bunch of truffle tours when Melbourne was put back under lockdown. I know nothing about truffles, and frankly have a very poor sense of smell so it will be interesting to see if I can taste what all the fuss is about. Our younger Dalmatian, Jazzy, has an excellent sense of smell and she thought it was pretty interesting.

My beef bloke doesn't use those or styrofoam trays for that matter. He sometimes uses biodegradable bags that I wouldn't trust. I know it is a little thing but I like to minimise plastic use where I can.

Other people are not as cavalier as I, but I sous vide meat in the vacuum packs they came in unless I want to put something in with it. I use a non-chamber sealer if I want to use a new bag unless there is a lot of liquid, where I use freezer zip-lock bags. I mostly do porterhouse for steaks and for sv, I don't think bone-in adds anything. I find I like to go a little higher in temperature than I would for conventional cooking, so 58-59 C. Maybe with a filet, I'd try lower. Chicken breasts at 60 C are great for chicken parma or throwing into salads.

I prefer tempura zuke flowers without the stuffing

In better times, we can go to a market garden/restaurant/car detailing place staffed in part by developmentally disabled people. They gave us a pile of broccoli leaves to stir fry. Not sure I'd go for them all the time, but a nice change.

Cheap for Australia

Good point. My new oven will hold a temperature down to 30 C. With fan-forced, I don't need to keep the door open. I have dried herbs but haven't tried anything wetter. My hint from when I had a dehydrator is to dip apple slices in orange juice before drying so they don't turn brown. Tastes nice, too. Anyone have a good source for optimum drying temperatures of different foods?

Keeping moving wasn't the problem

Doing a backpacking trip on mostly beef jerky and raman noodles was, um, a mistake.🤢