nickrey

You're most welcome, it's been fun doing it.

Stupid question: are there deer in Australia, or would that have been imported venison? And what do Australians generally think about exotic meat and hunting? Given the very strong anti-whaling sentiments there, I'm wondering if horse meat, foie gras wild venison and the like are also taboo. The venison I was going to get is farmed. Chris has covered your other question quite comprehensively.

Breakfast on the last day. As I mentioned up thread, my daughter has been working in her gap year before University as a head barista. The cafe is in our Foreign Affairs Department (equivalent to US State Department) and, as you can imagine, they like their coffee. She makes around 800-1000 coffees per day as an individual. This is what she did with her coffee this morning pouring with milk I had frothed. We then had buttermilk pancakes with ricotta, strawberries, home-made crème fraiche, and maple syrup. We're off to Fourth Village for lunch.

The markets are open 365 days per year, with the period around Christmas being their busiest. When the heat can get up to 40C on Xmas day, more people are tending to move to lighter food rather than pretending they're in the Northern hemisphere. Must change the name of that dish, which is one entirely of my creation. It's actually the duck that is cooked twice, being first a confit and then cooked in the broth in a pressure cooker until it is falling apart. I mix the duck with chopped scallions for texture, chopped shiitake mushrooms for body, egg white for binding, plus seasoning. The broth is Asian-inspired and addictive. How about Raviolo of twice-cooked duck in a five spice broth?

Nice looking fish Paul. Moreton Bay Bugs are a species of slipper lobsters. Thanks to Wikipedia for telling me that the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization prefers the name flathead lobster, while the official Australian name is Bay lobster. They are treated similarly to lobster when cooked. More information can be found here.

The high turnover takes care of this. The empty car park you saw is most unusual, as other locals have already commented.

Thank you Nick, I'm fully sated now. All that was really from one shop? Amazing Stuff. Yes, all one shop.

Hi Linda, Probably the best I can do is point you to the Sydney Fish Market's sustainability page which has some comments about Australian seafood practices. Commercial fisherman have quotas. There are fishing exclusion zones in place and the courts take a dim view of people who violate these. A summary of regulations in place and prosecutions can be found here.

Thought it was time to go from surf to turf. Summer is great but the dishes tend to all be light and we use more seafood than other sorts of meat. Tonight we have something different. Despite the trip to the seafood markets, I thought I’d stop off at the North Sydney markets to get some venison. Unfortunately the Mandagery Creek people weren’t there, so I settled on some lamb backstraps. Now what to do with them? A form of baba ganoush with its eggplant should go well with it. What about other vegetables? Those Mediterranean vegetables I did earlier in the week (which was the first time I’d done them) should go well with the eggplant. This was our main course, and of course I had to cook it sous vide. For appetiser, I’ve really been wanting to try the Movida anchovies on toast with smoked tomato sorbet. Out with the ice-cream maker and on with the recipe. Basically, the dish comprises a crisp toasted piece of stale sourdough bread, topped with a special anchovy, some smoked tomato sorbet, and some soaked salted capers. The entree was twice cooked duck in raviolo and five spice flavoured Asian broth. The dish looked like this: Now on to the main. We wound up having sous vide cooked lamb backstraps (55C at a few hours). This was served on the hand-cut babaganoush and accompanied with char grilled vegetables.

lol, nothing. I thought with all the seafood I'd been cooking it was time for a change of pace. I try to buy and cook fresh so did not want to buy something I wouldn't cook today. It was simply a picture tour for my fellow eGulleters.

Yep, it was around 8am.

Ok. That's it for that shop. There are a number of others like it in the markets, as well as the wholesale side of the business and numerous other food shops and restaurants. And if you're hungry after all that, here is a seafood platter from Nick's seafood just for you

Continuing the series

This is De Costi's, which is the shop whose stock I will show to you. For our non-metric users: please not the prices are per kilo not per pound. A kilo is 2.2 pounds if you want to convert to see the comparative prices.

OK now for the fish markets. I've got a lot of photos but was able to batch process them. Let's just get our bearings. This is a series of shots of the markets from outside and inside. Take note of the blue shop second from the right. That is where we will be looking at the seafood in detail. And here is inside the market. I'm showing you this to give you a sense of perspective of the magnitude of the markets and the comparative size of the one store whose seafood you are going to see.

Still working through the Fish market pictures. In the meantime, I cooked some bacon that has been curing in preparation for the weekend. Here is the bacon cured, pre cooking. It was cured as savoury bacon with salt, sugar, pink salt, cracked peppercorns, garlic, and bay leaves. Here it is fresh out of the Weber BBQ Kettle where I cook and smoke it. The picture was taken prior to the skin being removed. And here it is on mine and my wife's BLTs. My kids had the Duck Laab that I made last night.

Back from fish markets and I've got a lot of photos. Need to process them before posting. Here's a teaser. Fresh marinara mix. More later.

Having read Malcolm Gladwell's recent book Outliers, he argues that you need ten thousand hours of increasingly complex practice to reach the point of exceptional performace. The thesis is interesting but simplistic from a psychological perspective. It doesn't take into account the intersection between natural ability and practice. You can have natural ability and never practice sufficiently to be an outlier. Or you can practice as long as you want but if the intersection between motivation, ability, and perception is not there, you're just not going to crack it. We all know people who seem to benefit more from experience than others. Show them once and they're doing it. Show others five times and they still have trouble doing it. To become an outlier, you have to have a combination of raw ability, learning ability in that particular skill, tenacity, and exposure. For some this will come later. For some earlier. We've long since passed the notion that the brain locks into place after puberty. New neural networks continue to be created throughout life. There is thus no hard and fast rule that you have to be exposed to something at a young age to reach a certain level of proficiency. It's just that given the same ability, motivation, etc if you start earlier, you have a leg up in terms of experience over those who started later.

Yes, we always get head on prawns here when they are sold whole. No, I didn't use them but I must admit to loving them at teppanyaki when they are fried.