nickrey

Great idea. Some of my go to sites are: Fireworks Foods For Mexican Food Supplies RedSpoon Company For molecular gastronomy bits and pieces Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot For various supplies in molecular gastronomy and other food ingredients, including bulk Feather and Bone For producer to you meat supply

I did a cooking course with the sous chef from my hotel who was also from Northern Thailand. He said duck was widely used in cooking there. The error may be in considering Thailand one country as far as cooking goes. What sort of answer would you get asking someone in the US whether grits were widely eaten? The answer would depend on the region that the person you asked came from.

I have never peeled a mushroom in my life and always wash them in water before cooking. If you don't want waterlogged mushrooms don't leave them soaking.

Despite the oft quoted precision of measurement in baking, there are far too many variables to rely exclusively on the quoted amounts. Different types of flour alone make rigid measurement a fallacy. In all my cooking, I use measures as a guide when first making a recipe and adjust proportions to make the product either of an appropriate consistency or to taste they way I want it to be. Let's face it, many recipes are adjusted down from commercial quantities. Unless they have been tested many time under different conditions, they are unlikely to work perfectly every time. It's where the art and craft come into their own in cooking.

I totally agree on building up to it gradually. As the last poster said, dairy products are good for mitigating the bite. Try the Indian/Pakistani yoghurt drink called Lassi with your meals. Equally if you are having a hot curry, serve it with a raiti (yoghurt mixed with cucumber or banana). The other point of making sure that the flavours are balanced in the dish is also of great importance. If you find a dish is too piquant, add some sweetness or creaminess to balance out the flavour. You are less likely to notice the heat if the dish is in balance.

I use both so much in dishes I just throw a mirepoix of carelery in there. Are they really separate ingredients?

To label this cheese tasty is an absolute travesty. I think they missed the "Not"

Any brand names to Google, suggested export mail order sources or other helpful suggestions? While I doubt I'd ever use it routinely, it'd be fun to have a little to play with, maybe once or twice, and AFAIK, domestic sale of the stuff is alien to the UK. Try this link. It comes in a 50g pack.

Being an extremely multicultural society, it seems you can find most anything here in Sydney if you know where to look. I even scored some yuzu juice recently and there is a variety of Wasabi being grown locally that I have already tried. There are even truffles being grown at various locations around Australia. Any specialty packaged ingredients can typically be mail ordered from anywhere around the world. For example, I bought pink salt for charcuterie (not pink coloured natural salt, the one with Sodium Nitrite in it) on Ebay from the US. Mind you, the corner of the package was snipped and taped when I got it, courtesy of Customs who obviously analysed the contents for nasty ingredients. Thankfully you can now also buy tranglutaminase in domestic sized lots here in Australia. I suppose your question Erin all comes down to what is available fresh locally. If I want to try recipes from overseas cookbooks with speciality regional ingredients, I need to substitute. This becomes an art all in itself to know what is an appropriate substitute if you have not tasted the original dish. Of course there are some things that cannot be substituted. For example, I'd love to try ramps but suspect it may require a trip to the US in their growing season; of course this is also a problem for people in other areas of the US, not just overseas. So what I miss out on locally I can always try in planned Gastro-tourism trips. That seems like a silver lining

Check out this thread for some sources of Mexican ingredients in Oz.

There are lots of threads on this already. This post has information on equivalencies that should assist you.

We may be verging into the distinction between taste and flavour. If they dislike the taste, I'd suggest leaving it out completely. Or is their aversion to the flavour, which is taste moderated by elements of the dish such as texture and, possibly, memory of unpleasant stringiness? If they dislike the taste and you want to get the same mouthfeel effect, substitute something that has a similar texture (although you may find that the dislike is really a textural issue, which means that it will likely generalise to similar textured foods). If the aversion is to the flavour, you can vary the texture as suggested above by grinding the celery and altering the texture element or simply substituting celery salt, which gives a celery flavour from the ground celery seeds but does not have other properties associated with celery. I'd explore if they have any other food dislikes that may give you a clue to which is the right option to pursue.

If you're on this thread, you're open to new ideas and new ways of approaching traditional cooking. I don't think you're going to get push back here. Sounds great.

I suppose it depends on what you call exotic. I've eaten stingray, sea slug, crocodile, Thompson's gazelle (at the Carnivore restaurant in Kenya), various snakes, emu, the list goes on. In Hong Kong, I once caught the lift in a huge Chinese restaurant to the wrong floor. This was apparent as I was the only gweilo there. Not one to miss a challenge, I proceeded to order from the menu. Most of the food was both interesting and palatable. Despite eating chicken's feet for many years, I didn't really enjoy the duck's feet as I found little in the way of meat and the webs got caught in my teeth.

I still haven't actually seen or tasted one. It seems you want to get a crisp but chewy rice patty, maybe with panko? The Wiki says it started in Toronto in the 1990's and has been growing in popularity since. To make rice cakes, take rice and add seasonings, roll into a ball, flatten to desired shape. Then place in warm oven for a few hours to dry out. To serve, deep fry until they become brittle.

I consider myself a pretty adventurous eater (natto? no problem; stingray, jelly fish, chicken's feet, and off-menu offal in Chinese restaurants, bring them on) but I simply cannot eat cooked peas in the form of round little abominable things sitting on a plate. They make me gag. Over the years, I've found that I can eat them raw or pureed (in soups, sauces) just not in their pile of mushy overcooked peas state. Once I started studying taste in psychology it all made sense. It was the texture of the peas as a component of taste that was aversive to me. Other vegetables when cooked to a similar texture (including pumpkin and zuchinni) leave me with the same reaction. My solution has been to prepare these vegetables to a texture that I can stomach. I suppose this is more my learning to adapt my cooking styles to cope with an aversion rather than learning to like the aversive foods but it may also be a way that others can manipulate their taste aversions.

Interesting thread. One thing that seems to be missing from most of the descriptions is adding an acid after cooking but before serving to better balance the flavours.

If money is no object, you could do what Heston Blumenthal reported in his Big Fat Duck cookbook. On visiting Peter Barham and discussing mayonnaise, Peter pulled out ultrasound gun and applied it to oil and egg in a beaker. The vibrations broke up the oil perfectly into little droplets creating mayonnaise in a flash.

Great idea with the pre-cooked bacon rings. Nice looking dish and I'm sure it would have been tasty. Is that cheese melted over the packages? If so, how did you melt that without also affecting the texture of the scallops?

I had some left over frozen Canadian lobster (got some air miles on that sucker). Cooked up a basic blond chicken stock risotto to serve it on. The lobster was poached a la Thomas Keller in a Buerre Monté at around 60C with a slight twist. Added to the butter was a split vanilla pod. I also added a touch of salt and white wine vinegar. Here it is:

The question realty hinges on how fresh the meat was when you put it in the marinade. Was there any use-by-date on the meat? Salt preserves it doesn't rejuvenate. If you would have been happy cooking the meat unmarinated given the time it has been in the fridge, go for it. If not, don't. On a separate point, acid in marinades can turn meat mushy if it is marinated too long. It may be safe but not appealing.

I have the SVM and a rice cooker. This gives me both a reliable sous vide system and a rice cooker, the latter of which I use for cooking rice. This means I save space on gadgets as compared to if I had both a SVS and a rice cooker.

I've stopped using Kikkoman soy and now use Yamasa brand (which according to the label has been around since 1645). For fish sauce I use a Vietnamese one called Three Crabs. Interestingly the producer (Viet Huong Fish Sauce Company) was started in San Francisco by a Vietnamese American in the 1980s. My other go to international brands are: Capriete Sherry Vinegar by Bodegas Jose Paez Lobato. I've done comparison tasting and this is a very good lower-priced vinegar. Bodegas Jose Paez Lobato Gran Capirete 50 year old Jerez vinegar for a more upper end sherry vinegar. Try a few drops on a matured Spanish Manchego cheese for a real taste sensation. Balsamic Vinegar of Modena produced by Fattorie Giacobazzi. It is barrel fermented and not coloured (and taste tainted) by caramel as so many of the inferior products are.

Another variant on the triple cooked chip method. I took the first part of this process (ie using the microwave) from the excellent Playing with Fire and Water blog. Instead of peeling and boiling as the first stage, simply clean the outside of the potatoes and place in microwave on paper towel. Cook at full heat for 4-8 minutes (depends on size of potato). Take potatoes out of microwave and prepare chips while they are still warm. You can easily peel off skin if you want or leave it on. Cut into chunky chips. Place chips immediately in deep fryer at 140C, cook until slightly coloured. Drain oil, place on paper towel, and put chips aside. Crank deep fryer up to 180C then refry chips until golden. Drain and place on paper towel. Add salt immediately and serve.

Just reporting some recent experiments with cooking temperatures. I got some beef cheeks and, after reading through suggestions on this thread and elsewhere, decided to cook them at 60C for 72 hours. They were practically inedible. The meat was delicious but any sinew, gristle, etc that would render nicely with long slow cooking techniques was, well, gristly and sinewy. Next time I'm going back to cooking them at 70C. At the same time I threw some pork belly in the cooker for the same amount of time. As I was not using the belly immediately, I cooled it rapidly in an ice bath and put it in the refrigerator. To use the belly, I cut it into cubes. I then heated up a frypan until very hot and cooked each side of the belly piece until it was fully browned. The result was an incredibly tender piece of pork belly with a seared, crunchy, outside. The dish that I wound up doing with the pork belly is on the dinner thread at this link. It will definitely be cooked again.