haresfur

I sometimes leave them out because they are bloody hard to crush!

I don't think the Captain would add anything to your cabinet that you couldn't get elsewhere. I have a nostalgic connection and it is my basic dark rum but it certainly isn't top shelf. If I wasn't up to my limit I'd pick it up duty free. You might want to look for a Venezuelan rum if you can't find them locally. Chris Taylor may remember which one we sampled.

I've heard Smucker's recommended, too, but in the US I just used one of the brands targeted at the digusting-flavoured coffee trade - Toranni, I think. In Australia I like Cascade cordials - available in about any supermarket.

I've been working on a white-bean chicken chili that I'm getting pretty happy with. I've been using black-eyed beans but any white bean would do. I'm sure the taste profile could be adjusted but for the purpose of this thread I think it is a nicely efficient use of the pressure cooker. The procedure is: Take one whole chicken, remove legs/thighs and wings for a separate dish and put the rest in the pressure cooker and cover with water. Cook on high pressure for 20 minutes. Crash cool and remove the chicken. Add 2 cups beans to the broth and pressure cook on high for 25 minutes. While the beans are cooking take white meat off the chicken and shred with forks. Slow cool the beans (or get impatient after a while and crash cool). Drain water to level of beans but reserve to add if needed later. Add chicken, 1 cup chopped onion, 4 jalapenos chopped (or more - family compromises, you know), a green capsicum (or red) chopped, cumin, salt, pepper to taste. and simmer about an hour. Serve with sour cream or shredded white cheese and cilantro. I haven't experimented with pressure cooking after adding the chicken back to the beans because I worry about making mush.

I haven't actually had any commercial product but I think, yes. It is very sweet but the green walnut flavour is powerful. In some way's it is like pimento dram - sugar syrup with a punch. That being said, it isn't like a lot of cocktails call for it. Bonus points if you can figure out how to cook with it. Pork maybe? ETA: Oh, Nocino, maybe. The friend who made it is Polish so he didn't actually name it for me.

I think I like this Not sure 1 oz silver tequila (Sauza) 1+ tsp nocello (homemade gift) 3 drops Bittermans xocolatl bitters This is the prototype size. The three ingredients each have taste profiles that I find rather strange and don't balance but seem to complement each other.

I just picked up another set of these: They are great for stock cubes because they have lids. Aussie seem to only make tiny ice cubes so I use them for cocktail ice, although I'd like even bigger ones. The sloping sides make it pretty easy to release the cubes.

You can tempura elderflowers, too.

Do you eat much fish? I remember from Sweden a long time ago that rodspette is very nice.

I agree with Chris. The Cooper's Celebration is very good. It has the thinness of a real British bitter that I haven't seen in many craft beers. The hops taste more American to me, though.

I think the telling part is, "the pizza at UPN is of the highest caliber. By that I mean that it was as good as any Neapolitan pizza I’ve ever eaten--but no better." It seems to me that Neapolitan pizza has such a narrow specification that it pretty much by definition has "flown as high as it can go." The process is constrained to give a particular result so the latitude to produce something transcendingly different is minuscule. If it was amazingly different it probably wouldn't be Neapolitan. What does he expect?

Our beer-club beer at work this week was Coopers 62 Pilsner. I'm not a big Pilsner fan or mass market beer fan, but this was pretty decent (or maybe I just really needed a beer). I agree that Coopers is the best mass market brewery here. And you don't get a bottle design with less wank factor.

A knife is easier to clean! (and it's probably already dirty).

I usually shave frozen ginger with a knife. Even with my crappy knives I can get wicked thin bits.

I was just thinking that "dose" is an important point. Many of us are too used to grabbing great gobs of cheese. I think this is a case where less is more. Oh, and Gorgonzola stuffed dates are nice.

Australians don't seem to be big on solstice celebration. The only news item I saw was about people doing yoga in New York. I'm not sure if it is because the continent is at relatively low latitude or that traditional European near-solstice celebrations are out of phase. Some people do the English Christmas dinner for ~summer solstice but it makes more sense to throw something on the barbie. Right now my house could really use warming up with a roasting turkey, though. Maybe I'll just buy a chook and call it good.

Personally, I'd be more worried about whether it was a blue crab or some other species than about where it came from. But I suppose there could be some issues of freshness, contamination, or environmental damage that relate to the where, rather than the what.

You could try watching the scene with Elle MacPherson eating Stilton in Sirens and see if the positive association helps.

Thanks for this, since it's warm-drink season here and I have some limes that need to be used up. I substituted Stones Ginger wine for the syrup and bumped the volume up to an oz. I used 6 oz water and found a splash more brandy didn't hurt. The honey was "Cup gum" but stringy bark eucalyptus might have been a bit stronger. Overall a winner until limes get too expensive. Oh, and my honey came in a plastic koala. ETA: I'm surprised you call this posset, since I thought posset had curdled milk in it.

Bendigo Wholefoods has a small Mexican section that includes canned black beans. They are pretty expensive but so are any canned beans at Coles or Woolies. I saw that they had Masa and dried peppers but yes Mexican ingredients aren't always easy to find. And even the Costco salsa comes in laughably small jars. Good thing though because I'd never be able to fit a gallon in the fridge.

I took a slab of Costco's Kirkland beer to Beer Club at work (Friday have a beer after work) because it was something I knew no one had had before. Attendance has been fairly low so it lasted through 3 weeks. That meant I got to try all but the wheat beer. I wasn't super impressed by the amber but it was good enough. The pale ale was pretty hoppy and I quite liked the IPA. Overall good value for not too much more than a slab of Victoria Bitter (VB = blech). For non-Australians: it cost $50 but Sierra Nevada will run you $75. Too bad a Costco run takes most of a day for me.

The whole roll?

I can second punnet, always used for soft berries (in the UK at least). Its bigger brother is the chip. You can get around 6 punnets in a chip. It is a minefield of units over here, we have sort of gone metric, but still stick with imperial when we can (just in case metric doesn't catch on?). Large quantities of vegetables (particulary root veg) can be purchased by the stone, which is 14lb. Onions are often purchased by the net. Cooked shellfish is often purchased by the pint (or half pint). I still haven't figured out the volume of a punnet - or does it vary?

Gee, working in northern Canada bush camps, no one would think of putting anything but condensed milk in their coffee. I'm sure I'll think of others later but the first thing that comes to mind in Australia is no canned pumpkin. And Aussies love their pumpkin. They don't understand pumpkin pie, but wouldn't canned make decent quick pumpkin soup? I would really like to keep some cans on hand because there is nothing like pumpkin to plug up a runny dog's digestion (or unplug a stopped up one).

Rum collins: 1 lime muddled with raw sugar, Cuban dark rum, shaken, strained over new ice, soda. The pith bitterness seemed to come through more than with lemon, but maybe because the lime was at its use-by date. Still refreshing. I'm trying to figure out the right alcohol level. My initial mix with a bit over 1 1/2 oz rum was refreshing but the rum taste didn't quite come through. But more rum killed the brightness. I'm thinking white rum would be better or maybe (gasp!) no rum at all. Aside: I dispair of my dwarf lime trees ever bearing fruit. I think I need to plant a lemon tree.