nickrey

Looking forward to the week. Boy am I embarrassed that I didn't recognize Woolloomooloo.

Perhaps it's a personal operator error with making home-made breadcrumbs but yes I do think they're better.

Magic? No. But Panko are surely the best breadcrumbs I've come across for frying.

Guinness is a stout made from dark malt. Wheat beer is, not suprisingly, made from wheat. It is often called "witbier," which translates to white beer. This is probably related to its pale colour. My suspicion is that Guinness would not be a particularly good substitute.

Hi Nick, Just wondering how you arrived at the 82C - 12 hour combination? Is it directly from Thomas Keller? I've found a number of time/temperature combinations in the archives but mostly around 60C and for 36+ hours. I'm guessing you've cooked many pork bellies and I'd be interested to learn from your experience. I've got one brining in the fridge at the moment... It's almost a direct lift from "Under Pressure," Keller uses 82.2C for 12 hours. Interestingly, the recipe is not indexed as pork belly; instead it appears as part of the "degustation de porcelet, rutabaga mostardo, wilted mustard greens, and potato "mille feuille," p. 156 in my edition.

Looking forward to more Kim.

Exactly how I do it. Though after I shock it in ice I place a sheet pan with a little bit of weight so when I cut it into portions It comes out nice, flat and purdy. Looks great and I will try this but I actually crumbed mine with Panko breadcrumbs and then deep fried it (is that what you call breaded?).

I first heard of them in the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe." At that stage, I still didn't know what they were. On attempting the BBQ recipes in Modernist Cuisine, they had a recipe for them (which was probably one of the easiest of the whole set). I made them up and they are delicious. They now have a home in Sydney but are most definitely not native.

Just thought I'd share a post sous vide cooking technique with you that I used on pork belly yesterday. I cooked it sous vide al a Thomas Keller at around 82C for 12 hours then chilled in ice water. Interestingly, this allowed me to pour off the "porkmazome' that was still liquid and remove the meat from the now congealed fat. The fat I then microwaved to liquify it again and strained into ice cubes to use as rendered pork fat in later dishes. Following Keller's advice, I trimmed the belly and removed the skin and most of the top layer of fat. I then cut the belly into serving sized pieces. So far this follows a conventional approach. Keller's recommendation is to fry it on all sides until it is browned and serve it. As I wanted to serve it with a choucroute à l'alsacienne I realised that the dish would need a bit of crunch. So here's the variant. I crumbed the now refrigerated pork belly and deep-fried it for service. Both my wife and I thought this was the best way we have tasted sous-vide cooked pork belly so far.

In my experience a bad cook is someone who doesn't pay attention to what they are doing, has no interest in improving, and doesn't seem to taste what they eat to see if it could be bettered next time.

Wow, what a journey. Thanks Chris and Nich. I must say that reading your descriptions of being worn out by the eating journey put me back in the mind of being overseas visiting Art galleries whose collections only rarely come to Australia. Here you linger over them: there you get "museumed out" and race through them without gaining full enjoyment. Did you feel that you suffered from top-class restaurant burnout because of the compressed time frame within which you visited them all? Thanks for the summary of the restaurants and your opinions. Which ones would you go back to? Which ones were the ones where once was enough? Which ones would you go to for a different sitting (eg. Bentley for dinner)?

If you've cooked them before, you'd know how easy it is to overcook them. I'd agree with brief grilling or frying. As you're looking at something different, how about trying them en papillote? Use additional elements in the parcels that only require heating rather than cooking so you can then time your cooking solely on how long it takes the swordfish to cook. As an alternative, you could also add seafood elements that require similar amounts of cooking such as shelled prawns (shrimp).

You mentioned a single-malt (Glenlivet) and a blend (Johnnie Walker Black) as what you have mostly sampled. As you get more into whisky and it more subtle nuances of flavour, I'd recommend going exclusively down the single-malt path. Basically, they can only be called a single malt if the whisky all comes from one distillery. In wine terms, the grapes would all have been grown in one area rather than blended from many different areas. That having been said, they take whiskies from different casks and blend them together to make up the distinctive taste of the distillery (they are single malt, not single cask). If you have started out with Glenlivet, I'd recommend working through some of the milder whiskies until your palate catches up with the nuances. Don't go leaping in to Islay malts, which have super peat until you have explored taste subtleties: One good reason for this is that until you train your palate, you may prematurely say these whiskies are not for you and miss out on a possible favourite. There is a fun paper that was published in a journal called "Applied Statistics" called "A Classification of Pure Malt Scotch Whiskies." I cannot tell you how much I admire researchers who got a grant to taste and study Whisky (pure genius). Anyway, they went through Michael Jackson's (the other one) whisky books and used his descriptions of each whisky to come up with twelve different categories of types of whiskies. For each of the of the types, they picked one that is most representative of each class. They also analysed the eleven areas where Scotch is made and came up with the most representative of each of these. If you want to run a broad based exploration of whiskies, you could do a lot worse than sequentially buying a bottle of each of the archetypal scotches to explore the differences. In line with my advice above, I'd suggest trying some such as Highland Park, Springbank, Macallan, Auchentosan, etc and then work your way through others to the peat monsters such as Lagavulin or Laphroaig. Check out the article here.

After all these wonderful home-made dumplings that have been posted recently, I've ordered Andrea Nguyen's Asian dumpling book. Will post some of the experiments as they progress after the book travels from US to Oz.

Cooking them normally for sufficient time to brown the crumbs leads to perfectly cooked meat. Pre-cooking is most likely to lead to overcooking.

I'm enjoying the write ups too and looking forward to more. Didn't want to say anything before you went there but we were very disappointed in a meal at Guillaume a few months ago. Not just the service but also the food, which was average or poorly executed: the highlight of our meal was not even very original - a version of Thomas Keller's salmon tartare cornets.

If sous vide was used for everything regardless of the raw produce type, I think I'd agree with Gold. But in a flurry of hyperbole often seen in "list", he has ignored that fact that sous vide is a process that can be used to bring out the best in some cuts of meat. On a personal note, I cook some items sous vide but I also barbeque, smoke, grill, fry, slow cook, pressure cook, roast, etc. dependent on the outcome that I want to achieve. Gold may be surprised to find that many of us augment sous-vide cooked meat with such culinary miracles as blow-torching to give a Maillard effect; sauces; garnishes, including different textures; using different types of meat to add variation (eg. wrapping prosciutto around sous-vide pork and frying post sous-vide cooking). Or perhaps, as he is a restaurant critic, he may not be surprised: but that wouldn't make for good copy.

Looking forward to your reports Chris. With that list I'd see it as somewhat the opposite of "taking one for the team"

It needs more liquid and you shouldn't be kneading it anywhere near that amount of time. For conventional dough you bring it together, put it in the refrigerator for an hour. Then put it through the machine which is where the only kneading it needs will be done as you form the pasta. If you overwork it and form too much gluten and be too tough when you cook it.

In Australia, we call them brandy snaps. Recipe here.

It seems that this would be perfect being cooked sous vide, possibly around 85C (185F). It would be set and forget with no chance of exploding cans, etc. Has anyone tried it?

"The Botanist" has landed!! I ordered it direct from the Bruichladdich site (link here) and it arrived on Friday. First impressions in a G&T using Qtonic are that it has a very complex and floral flavour, which is unlike anything I've tried before and very pleasant. Going to try it in a martini tonight to check out what it's like. Unlike many gins, this one does not hit you around the head with juniper. If you're after a complex floral and (sweet) herb flavoured drop, it's definitely worth a try.

Welcome RoManPa, As you are new to the area, allow me to suggest that you look at Chris Amirault's index to the original sous vide topic (link here). This index groups the original discussion under subheadings linked to specific posts that you can use to look up what you are searching for, including equipment, safety considerations, cooking certain items, including vegetables, etc.

Thick for toast for eggs in the morning. Thinner for sandwiches.

Nice photos. blackp and I tried the MC flavouring and the Ruhlman savory version and we both preferred the Ruhlman variant. Guess it's all down to individual tastes.