nickrey

The lock on top of the Pickl-It is a simple fermentation lock, as used in brewing. It is in essence a uni-directional lock blocked with water that allows gas to escape without letting air in. See this wikipedia link for an explanation of how it works. These can be purchased inexpensively from home brewing shops. There is no reason why you couldn't create something with a jar, a drill, and some form of sealing the lock into the lid (perhaps wax?).

I found an interesting trick to keep pickles under the brine. Partially fill a plastic bag with your pickling mixture. Twist the top of the bag so that there is no air in it. Tie a knot in the top of the plastic bag, place the water filled bag on top of your vegetables that are already in the pickling mixture then close the lock lid.

This is a link to the patent which explains the product in detail.

Sous vide cooked steak dredged in Teriyaki sauce before searing sliced on top of stir fried bok choy, ginger, garlic and chili in oyster sauce. Topped with home made cucumber and daikon pickles courtesy of the Momofuku pickling recipe.

If you don't want to go to any trouble, use already prepared pesto or tapenades. Simply cook pasta, drain and toss sauce through. The heat of the pasta will warm the already cooked product. That said, you don't need to spend a lot of time on very nice tomato based pasta sauces. Chop some garlic and onion, put into a cold saucepan with oil, bring up to heat and cook until transparent. Toss in a can of crushed tomatoes, including juice. Add your extra bits (eg. pitted olives, anchovies, tinned salmon, capers or whatever takes your fancy). Cook at medium heat stirring occasionally until tomato thickens; think bubbling mud pools to get some idea of how it will look. Finish with salt, sugar, and vinegar to balance flavor. Throw in some basil leaves or a prepared pesto and that's it (serve with grated parmesan). If you are quick at chopping, it really shouldn't take much longer than it takes to cook the pasta. Think dinner in twenty minutes, most of which is things bubbling by themselves on the stove top. In place of canned tomatoes, you can use a prepared passata which is just sieved uncooked tomatoes. You will still need to cook to get bring out the sweetness. Additionally, if you want an easy, tasty pasta. Cook the pasta and drain. Toss through some very finely chopped or crushed garlic, butter, and grated parmesan. Again, the raw garlic will cook in the pasta.

Is this guide available online? Would love to give a gander. Unfortunately no. It is available from newsagents in book form for around $20 or as an i-phone app for $11.99.

Over near the casino at Darling Harbour is a restaurant called Blue Eye Dragon which serves exceptional Taiwanese food. Chinta Ria, mentioned above, is cheap and cheerful with nice food. Again if you like Chinese food, try Golden Century, which serves very good Cantonese food. What sort of food do you like? Are you willing to travel a few kilometers? If so, I'd pop off to Surry Hills or Darlinghurst where there are many fine restaurants (Bentley Bar and Grill for techno-emotional), Billy Kwong for fine Chinese, the Four in Hand for great food in a pub setting, A Tavola for fine Italian. All these are moderately long walks but worth it. You could also try Otto at Woolloomooloo wharf. All of the restaurants (except Chinta Ria) are rated 14 or more out of 20 in our local good food guide and all worth a visit.

As Pierogi described, my pump up mister worked fine for a while but then just shot out a stream of oil. I've gone completely away from misters, brushes, etc and use a squeeze bottle filled with oil.

Let's take a step back from subjective opinions and emotions and look at what we are talking about, which is rating performance. The top person in the world at Tennis beats others (not all others but sufficient cumulatively to gain the title). The top formula one driver doesn't win all races but wins sufficient to beat the other competitors. In all such cases, it is clear who wins because the scoring is not only well defined but the area in which performance occurs is totally circumscribed (fastest, most points, etc.). Let's now move to restaurants. There are so many different subjective characteristics involved that as someone who regularly measures these things (as a psychometrician and psychologist), I'd have to say that you would have a snowball's chance in hell of coming up with criteria that everyone agreed on, let alone then rating them accurately. Is there any clearly definitive way of creating a list of the world's top restaurants? I would have to say no. This makes any list such as this, and I would include Michelin ratings here, a soft target for anyone who wishes to criticise it. As someone who regularly measures using assessment instruments that have a level of error, I know the best way to deal with these is to take into account the level of error and place an appropriate level of credence in the results. Just because you have an opinion that varies from the list in one area, does that make the list wrong? Does it invalidate all items on the list? Who is to say that you did not experience one of the good days at that restaurant when, God forbid, the owner/celebrity chef may actually have been in the kitchen. A list such as this that combines opinions from food professionals is a great step forward in an area where there are as many opinions as diners. Think to yourself how you have had the same dish as someone else and loved it when they found it adequate or wanting. Would I use it as my only list? Not at all. Read other ratings, combine information, seek opinions from those whose opinions seem to match yours. Then make your choices about where to spend your hard earned money. I say long live the San Pellegrino "Top 50." Is it perfect: No. Is anything else in this area? Definitely not. Is it easy to criticise? Just look at earlier posts. Now on to tackle art prizes, I hear they are a subjective lot as well...

Looking at both the serious eats article and McGee, the final temperature is important because when the temperature is too high the fibers are deformed such that the meat will not take in excess liquid, instead expelling it onto your plate or the chopping board. What happens then if you use a mechanical tenderizer such as a Jaccard? When this is used, you effectively cut the fibers and modify the meat's structure. Presumably you then create channels in the meat where the juice can be distributed despite the temperature. Is the resting time shortened with Jaccarded meat as a consequence? Ground meat (see Kent Wang's question above) similarly has a modified structure that may require less resting than intact meat for the purposes of retaining juiciness. For ground meat, however, it seems that many of the web-based discussions of resting burgers seem to center on the process ensuring that the meat is properly cooked rather than as an aid to it retaining juiciness.

See this link for some more information on high pressure processing and how it works.

Rules of thumb: Handy Illogical Logical ... Now I'm getting really confused.

Hi Kim, Nice looking dinner. Have you ever made Arancini with your leftover risotto? Thanks, Nick. Well, that's leftover ORZO risotto (my daughter and I can't eat rice - both have had gastric bypasses) - do you think it would work? I adore arancini! For interest's sake Kim, have you ever tried farro as a substitute for rice in your risotto?

One rule of thumb I've come across is resting for half the time it took to cook the meat.

If my memory serves me correctly, if you freeze 10 units of water, you get 11 units of ice, ie. there is a 10% expansion on freezing. This leaves a lot of room for the vacuum to be mitigated as the fish thaws as long as it was either frozen before being packed or packed at the appropriate vaccuum for fish and then frozen.

Smoking eggplants on wok burners? I am so going to make up some baba ghanoush. I haven't had a decent one for ages and the combination of bite and creaminess on the middle palate is still indelibly etched in my mind. It's almost an archetypal taste.

I'm not sure if that would happen Pedro. The frozen state of water is larger than its thawed state so we can surmise that the frozen fish will be expanded beyond its normal size and vacuumed in that state. Given this, as the fish thaws it is likely to shrink somewhat. It is therefore possible that the vacuum will not be as strong on the reduced sized and now-thawed fish. Definitely worth an experiment to see if it affects texture.

If you measured by volume this would explain it. Because of gaps left between the granules of coarsely ground salt, it will contain less weight of salt than the same sized container of finely ground salt. Less weight = less dense brine. Another very good reason for moving to weighing with scales rather than measuring with cups.

Out of all the dips I make, the hummous invariably gets the most positive comments. The recipe is simplicity itself. Add to a food processor: 1 x 400g can of chick peas (reserve a few for the garnish) 2 tbsp of juice from the can Juice of 2-3 lemons (depends on juiciness of lemons, use your judgement and adjust it to taste) 2 x garlic gloves, peeled and crushed Large pinch sea salt (Maldon, Sicilian or similar) Small pinch cayenne. Turn on food processor and blitz until it is uniformly smooth with the consistency of thin cream. Leave processor running and add tahini gradually until the desired thickness is reached. I take it to a thickened cream type consistency. Serve hummous, garnish with reserved chick peas, sprinkle with Za'tar or paprika, drizzle with olive oil and serve. This is what mine looks like: Tips: Not all tahinis are good in hummous, experiment until you find one you like. Equally, not all lemons are good in hummous: try to avoid ones that are bitter.

Fenugreek seed. I use yellow mustard seed, it probably doesn't matter. Dried Indian Chilies (see this post for varieties you could use). Buy them from an Asian food market rather than a Mexican food supplier.

My bet is that the chef used some dried chillies and deep fried them in oil. This adds a smoky heat which would not appear in the milder dishes (which would not have used the dried chillies). Rather than using the oil as Amy D suggested above, they tend to leave the chillies in the final dish: it is Szechuan after all. edited to add: Fuschia Dunlop talks about a smoked flavour (yan xiang wei xing) that is created by smoking salted meat or poultry over wood and leaves. Tea-smoked duck is a form of this. Other smoking ingredients include pine needles, rice straws, peanut husks, sawdust, or rice straw. If you are interested in this form of cooking, I can totally recommend her book "Sichuan cookery."

Tonight's dinner was sous-vide prepared salmon draped with asparagus and bacon bits with triple-cooked chips and a burnt butter and lemon sauce.

If I may add one additional point on this question. If you are playing at the very margins of temperatures for pasteurization, you'd better buy yourself one of the extremely accurate calibration thermometers that Pedro uses to ensure that your water is kept at the right temperature. There is also the question of a drop in temperature when you add the meat as well as problems related to water circulation that can lead to variances in temperature. Personally, I don't cook chicken below 60C and leave it to cook for two hours. Moreover, I am quite happy with steak cooked at 57C. They are both juicy, tender and do not require pushing the envelope. For fish I am likely to push the boundaries more but only cook it very briefly and make sure I purchase extremely fresh and well handled produce.

Hi Kim, Nice looking dinner. Have you ever made Arancini with your leftover risotto? Thanks, Nick. Well, that's leftover ORZO risotto (my daughter and I can't eat rice - both have had gastric bypasses) - do you think it would work? I adore arancini! I'd definitely try it. Please let us know how it turns out.

I never used to cook the burghul for tabbouleh but always found it too grainy even after prolonged soaking. A few nights ago, I cooked it and the result was perfect. It was more like a couscous addition to the Tabbouleh but with the nutty wheat flavour of the burghul.