haresfur

Not sure if it was here or elsewhere, but I decided to try a suggestion to snip the leaves off my volunteer tomatoes at the end of the season to get light into the green ones to start them ripening. Worth a try but probably should have been done earlier. They only get late afternoon sun.

Thanks. They make good hot sauce but I don't think I've tried that one.

Looks great. How are you making your verde?

Carnitas made in my La Chamba clay pot. I prefer chunks to shredded. Confess to rendering more fat than I usually do. Confess that it tasted pretty good. Served with yellow corn tortillas (Mission, not the good ones), brown rice, sour cream, greens, some volunteer roma tomatoes, and garnished with finger lime spheres from a tree I'm getting going. Sour with a nice pop when you bite in.

Tasmanian curried scallop pie. Apparently a speciality of the state. Could have used more scallops but they were insanely expensive at the grocery store. Could still taste them though. Made with Keen's curry powder, of course (originated in Tasmania).

The best tortillas I have ever had are made in Melbourne Australia by La Tortilleria. One thing I learned is that they do not dry the masa between grinding and forming the tortillas. I don't know if that is the key compared to using dried masa but I can't argue with success. I don't think they sell their masa - at least I haven't seen it but maybe at their restaurants. I want to buy some because I'm dying for some decent tamales. I used to be able to buy the tortillas in town but now have to go to a store 30 min south, if they have them in stock. Better yet is to go to one of their restaurants in Melbourne where they sell them by the kg. In that case I usually vacuum seal and freeze some then snip an end off the pack and put in the microwave for 30 seconds or so to steam them. If I'm using fresh, I put in a terra cotta tortilla warmer I made with a moist cloth or paper towel and nuke. I think getting the right steamy warmth without being soggy is the key to a good soft taco. Flour tortillas are ubiquitous and come in a large variety because wraps are popular. In terms of fillings, haven't been very inspired - your basic ground meat or chicken with cheese, salsa, guac, sour cream, salad mix. Occasionally some fish tacos made with baked frozen fish nuggets.

I haven't tried it but some people lacto-ferment mustard. That might help give you what you are after.

A friend took me to Mochinut in Minneapolis. They were very soft and tasty.

There is a lengthy topic on making hand-pulled noodles. Very challenging. Probably best left to the professionals. Maybe worth a trip to Melbourne.

I was just wondering the same thing because I cook past in larger batches than I eat at once. Seems like it would be handy to have in the fridge for a quick lunch.

Indirect heat like that has worked well for me. I have a stainless smoker box that can be filled with water-soaked wood chips that works well perched over the side burner, under the grate. It is a bit hard to tell the temperature right where the meat is - the thermometer on the lid reads hotter because it is higher.

I would have to special order a whole tri-tip - my guy only packs the one half as tri-tip, and I think the other is rump cap (which he is also learning to label as picana for the cool people). That's ok because there are only 2 of us. I do know about the grain but have to try cutting on the bias. That's something I have generally only been doing for flat steaks like flatiron and banjo. I think even my knives are sharper than his, though.

I'm not much of a Fever Tree fan. Or at least I haven't found a gin that goes well with it. My preference here is usually Cascade, although I have some Luxardo gin that surprisingly goes well with Schweppes, which is usually too sweet in a G&T. Overall, I lean to cutting the vermouth down to 0, and having a Campari and soda.

I've tried an Americano using tonic water and found it too sweet for my taste. Then again, I find Campari somewhat too sweet.

The plastic bags of roast chook served up by grocery stores are known as "batchelor's handbags" here. Emma Buswell was the winner of the City of Joondalup 2022 Invitation Art Prize for her work, ‘The sometimes luxury handbag and other suburban fables.’

I would never have thought of using a spring form for upside down cake. Always used a cast iron fry pan. We have a family debate about using crushed pineapple (me) or rings (her). Both work. Cherries are only if you are making it with kids. Is there anything unusual about the cake recipe? It looks quite dark inside.

That all looks great. Did the cilantro taste come through after grilling? I've taken to smashed cucumber salad. It really seems to integrate the dressing into the cuke and the cuke into the dressing.

No photos, but I think I did a pretty good stir-fry prawns and veg. I'd say I'm getting it down, but I like the fact that it is never quite the same. Fried the prawns in my Korean chili oil, which gave a light snap, which suits my aging upper digestive system. Pulled them out and added red capsicum and zucchini chunks, along with some rice bran oil to char. Then onion, garlic, ginger, and a few mushrooms that needed to be used up. Oyster sauce (not a great variety but needs to be used up, and vegan fysch sauce, which frankly I like better than fish sauce, so shoot me. I was going to post about it in the fish sauce topic but didn't want people coming at me with pitchforks for being off topic. Finally prawns went back in with some sesame oil. I think the key is to try to get the zuke charred on the outside but creamy soft inside.

Well, according to google 1 US tsp = 4.9 ml 1 Imperial tsp = 5.9 ml According to the ones in my drawer with tsp and ml marked, I think both from the US and Australia, but at this point I'm not always sure 1 tsp = 5 ml According to what I pull up on google, 1 tsp fine salt or table salt is 5.7 g and 1 tsp unspecified salt is 6 g. My guess would be that these are 5 ml tsp, but that is just an assumption Epicurious has a weight conversion chart that shows it is all over the place but unfortunately goes from g to volume, and I am more interested in the other direction since I will use weight if it is given and my brain doesn't want to do the work to calculate volume to weight.

Yes, I'd call that a schnitzel, or in the vernacular of my country, "a schnitty"

Wanted comfort food and made meatloaf with sauerbraten gravy* and spaetzle. * gravy is used loosely because I didn't have pan dripping from cooking the roast so used beef stock and because I way over thickened it. The meatloaf recipe said to grate the onions for a moister result. I used a mini food processor attachment for my stick blender and they were right. Probably overblended. Oh and panko instead of bread crumbs, which is good because I never have bread crumbs around The spaetzle were more successful than my previous attempts but I ended up with paste stuck to many utensils and countertops. Turns out the reason I thought this sauerbraten and meatloaf would be a good combination. My partner pointed out that a restaurant we used to go to decades ago served it.

So his rant is really more of a troll. If it was a chemistry lab, with someone who actually understands analytical chemistry, you would put in decimal places to show the required precision. The last decimal place would be uncertain. So 1.0 kg could be 1.1 kg or 9.9 kg and 1 kg is a wild-ass guess. In this case, it is still easier to use weight, which negates his argument.

That is crazy to take out the original measures. I'd go further and say the recipe writers should test the recipe using the volume measurements that they calculate rather than trusting some table of conversions. In particular, going to the US, I would want to be sure that the conversion is correct since a cup is not always a cup.

Why does he think that using weight rather than volume somehow means you have to be as precise as your scale can be? Go buy a 1 kg bag of onion and that is how close you have to be. Ok, I know you don't get 1 kg bags so go buy 2.2 pounds or as close as you can get in the store. Maybe throw in another if it is spring and the onions are old so you will have to censor out a fair bit of the outer layer. Still easier than packing diced onions into a measuring cup. Sure, it would be more precise to say the weight of diced onion rather than the weight of onion before dicing, but like he says, it doesn't really matter that much.

IMO if your sausage rolls end up just ok, you are doing well