nickrey

I'm surprised that no-one else has reported cooking their lamb shanks in a pressure cooker. It mimics the effects of low and slow but in a much compressed time frame.

My experience is the same as Julian's. Unless you want something a little out of the ordinary such as chicken's feet, trolleys are way it is delivered.

If you are happy sharing the booty with an Aussie, I'm up for a quarter. Last time I imported pink salt, Australian Customs opened and tested it so I suspect this will get the same treatment (hope they don't stick their hands together). Perhaps we should take this into a private message discussion to work out the details.

I don't have a Food Saver and my vacuum is somewhat primitive in terms of starting the sealing process. With a mind to their application in Sous Vide, I have a lot of ice cubes of various stocks/oils/assorted liquid flavourings in my freezer. For this I use a single ice cube tray, freeze the item and then empty the cubes into a zip-loc storage bag. Note that oils take a longer time to freeze than other liquids so you may need to leave them for longer before moving them to the storage bags. When I want to add a liquid to a sous vide cooking bag, I simply add an appropriate amount of the relevant fat/stock/flavouring and seal as normal. When the package is placed in the sous vide apparatus, the liquid thaws and cooks perfectly, without the risk of leaving additional air in the package and having it floating. You don't really even need to pre-plan for a particular dish, just have a range of liquids and fats pre-frozen.

Just tonight I had a wonderful dish of "pig bits" at the Burlington in Sydney. Pigs trotters that had been slow cooked down into a little jelly bundle were served with a "quenelle" of horseradish cream. A smoked pork brawn was served in a shot glass. Finally, slow cooked pigs ears were cut into strips, crumbed, and deep fried and then served on a small salad of mayonnaise and fennel. Delicious, "cheffy" and a wow to offal lovers (or, to be specific, me ).

The trick with beer batter is much like that used with tempura batter: it needs to be cold. Make sure your beer is chilled. Next, as someone said above, use equal quantities plain flour to cornflour. Add salt (and pepper for a bit of bite). There is sugar and other goodies in the beer that substitutes for the sugar that would normally be used in tempura, so I'd lay off adding sugar or add bits gradually to see what the best mix is. As for tempura, don't stir the batter too much; the lumpy mix makes for interesting textural sensations when deep fried. This way, you'll get puffy, crispy, and tasty batter (which is most likely what you are looking for). As you make the batter at various times during the day rather than fresh, do as someone said earlier and chill it. This ensures that the batter cooks and crisps while leaving the fish cooked through but not overcooked. For interest's sake, much of our traditional fish and chips here in Australia was made with Flake (spelt 'S. H. A. R. K.'). A swimmer's revenge, methinks.

I second adding a small amount of acid (eg. sherry vinegar) just prior to serving. It lifts the whole sauce. If the sauce needs a umami hit, try adding some powdered dried shiitake or porcini mushrooms. I powder them in a spice grinder and add the powder when needed to enhance the flavour profile and overall mouth feel.

One of Australia's food magazines, Gourmet Traveller, just released their 2010 Australian restaurant guide. In their top, three star, category the only Melbourne restaurant to make the cut was Shannon Bennett's "Vue de Monde." In response, many Melbourne correspondents have been extremely surprised by the omission of Jacques Reymond, MoMo, and Cutler & Co from the top ranking. I'd put all four of these on your list of possibilities.

Most of these combinations just emulate in some way a sweet (corn), sour (lime), salty (the bacon in Bittman's recipe) and hot (chili) combination. Add some cilantro for interesting pungency and you have your taste combination. Some of these combinations work particularly well together and, as has been mentioned up thread, the combination of these ingredients (well apart from the corn, but you can substitute palm sugar) are widespread in South East Asia. My suggestion if you are sick of the combination and want to try something new? Substitute other ingredients with similar flavour profiles: you never know where it will lead you. For those of you who hate chili, try pepper as a substitute. Substitute tamarind, lemon, or any of the many flavours of vinegar for lime. For those who don't like cilantro, use other herbs. Salt can be added as itself or as fish sauce or soy sauce or oyster sauce, all of which add extra flavours. Worcestershire sauce adds salt and tamarind amongst other flavours. For sweet, you can add anything that has a sweet flavour. Some ingredients add a number of these tastes at once. Just remember to make the final product balance on the palate and you are away.

I have not tried it sous vide but Swordfish is something like the steak of the sea. It retains its firmness when cooked. In conventional cooking the firmness property is actually a drawback as I'd have to say 80% of the time it is overdone so it would be a definite candidate for sous vide.

Thinking back to my experiences eating Leberkäse in Austria, the texture was extremely fine; similar in many ways to that of a hot-dog frankfurter, albeit in a loaf type form. The problem with doing this at home is that the techniques used to grind meat finely into a paste tend to add extra heat, which causes problems with emulsification, possibly leading to splitting. The question is how to get an extremely fine paste without heating the mixture too much. Professional butchers use bowl cutters that can handle this task with ease. Ruhlman and Polcyn in Charcuterie when talking about hot dogs recommend spreading the meat on a tray and chilling it in a freezer until it is stiff, processing it and then repeating the process until the desired texture is reached. My thinking is that for Leberkäse you'd have to do this multiple times to get the mixture fine enough. What approach have you actually used to this point?

Liverwurst (or leberwurst) is made from the usual sausage-making bits of pork as well as fresh liver. It is made in casings rather than as a terrine principally because it is boiled in the casing for an hour in the final cook. This recipe is adapted from Antony and Araminta Hippisley-Coxes' Book of Sausages (now published as The Great book of Sausages) Ingredients are (you can take liberties with contents and proportions, but try to maintain a ratio of more liver than the summed weight of cooked pork bits and fat and slightly over 20% fat): Liver Onion Mix - finely minced 3 1/2 lb pig's liver 4 oz fried onion Fat - coarsely ground 1 lb salted pork fat Pork stuff - pre-cooked and coarsely ground 1 lb pig cheek (simmer for around an hour to pre-cook) 1 1/4 lb pigs snout (simmer for around two hours to pre-cook) (or 2 1/4 lbs mix of shoulder, belly, whatever, just pre-cook, or not, according to cut) Spices/Seasonings salt, pepper, ginger, marjoram, cinnamon and/or cloves Mix everything together then pound to a fine, smooth paste (you could use a food processor, just watch the heat generated). Put in casing. Place in warm water, bring to boil, and leave boiling for an hour. Depending on preference, you can cool smoke it or not. Good luck.

If you haven't done so as yet, check out the eGullet Culinary Institute Course on stock-based sauces. It addresses a number of issues relevant to your question. The course is located here.

I hate the texture of hard-cooked egg yolks. As a consequence, I have worked long and hard to get to the stage where I can reliably cook poached eggs such that the white is cooked through and the yolk is runny. For me this is egg nirvana. As with all issues of individual taste, there is no right or wrong answer. As such, we may need to agree to disagree.

Haven't posted here for a while. Thought I'd share tonight's dinner. Fillet steak stuffed with pate and wrapped in spinach. Served with smashed roast potato and roast beetroot with home-made horseradish cream. Tasted wonderful.

We're going to Phuket in November this year. When in tropical climes I find I can stand only so much of lying by pool before going stir crazy. Has anyone had any experience of cooking classes in Phuket? What has your experience been? Coming from Australia I have a reasonable experience with cooking Thai food, looking for someone who can teach some in-depth techniques. Thanks for your input.

As there will be plenty of solid texture in the artichokes, you could probably do something like an eggplant "tapenade." Prick the eggplant and brush with olive oil. Bake in oven until very soft. Cut in half and scoop out the contents. Season. For the tatin, put down the layer of artichokes and then layer of tomatoes. Spread the eggplant mix over the pastry and place eggplant side down on the other ingredients. Bake and serve as normal. edited to take out quote of post above.

I used a non sandwich bread as well, but I liked the dichotomy of the perfectly round hole (and egg) and the rough bread. I softened the butter quite a bit to avoid bread damage. ← Couldn't you butter it first and then make the hole?

Hi Dave, interesting recipe. I always thought that tamarind was a key element of worcestershire sauce.

Pretty dish, well done. What was the acid in it to cut through the duck fat? How did the dish taste?

This topic brings up all sorts of memories. My father was (and still is at near 80 years of age) an avid angler. The first photos of me past the normal baby photos show me holding a fishing rod like I meant business. Given this background, I grew up using fish scalers and really can't think of not using them when cleaning fish. They were typically a handle attached to a round metal ring with corrugated/serrated teeth. Bigger than the beer bottle top mentioned above, but you get the idea. These scaled a fish extremely rapidly, without affecting the skin underneath. My suggestion if you are looking for one is to go to a fishing store and ask them what they use. This should lead to your purchasing something cheap and very effective.

It appears that the link between garlic in olive oil and botulism poisoning stems from an incident where three people suffered botulism poisoning after consuming garlic bread made from garlic in olive oil. Check this link for the abstract of the report. Garlic is a low acid food. When you put such foods in olive oil where there is no oxygen and store them at room temperature, it gives ideal conditions for botulism to grow. So why isn't this form of poisoning more common? Put simply, botulism has to be there in the first place for it to grow. This is obviously far from a regular occurrence. But food safety processes are there to prevent known risk factors: just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't happen. The acidifying agents referred to in the article as being required by the FDA act to make the oil medium unsuitable for botulism to grow. I'm not sure what effect this would have on the garlic flavor you were talking about.

Looks like your post got overlooked in the discussion of washing rice. You may have noticed that most of us have rice cookers, which avoids the problem totally. If you want to use a pan and the absorption method, the secret to rice not sticking lies in temperature control. Use around 1 1/3 cups rice (well washed ) to 1 1/4 cups water (US measures). With the lid on, bring the mixture to a boil and then reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes until the water is absorbed. Then reduce the heat as far as it will go and leave for another 15 minutes. Turn off heat and leave for 10 minutes more (the latter two steps allow the rice to absorb the residual water and cook through). Then serve. On the other hand, if you don't want to go to the expense of getting a rice cooker, you could always get yourself a microwave rice cooking container. Take 1 Cup rice, wash thoroughly. Put sufficient water in the cooker such that touching the rice with the tip of your index finger, the water is one knuckle above the rice. Put in the microwave on high for 11 minutes. Let it rest for a further ten minutes with the lid on, open, and serve.

Coopers brewery is Australia's largest producer of malt extract. You can buy it in tins from home brewing supply stores. Not sure where one is near you but it should be in the yellow pages.

My wife and I do this all the time as well. When we can't identify something, we often ask and the query is passed to the chef. Most often they are very pleased that someone is showing such a strong interest in their food. This has led not only to discussions but also, in some cases, to lasting friendships. Sometimes the dishes we are served have a flavour gap so we ask for a condiment to add to round out the flavour. For example, yesterday my wife had a pasta dish that was very pleasant but a bit bland. She added salt but something was still missing. By asking for some chopped chili to add to the dish, the heat profile increased with the added bonus that there was also a new texture.