nickrey

Because of cooking differences across various parts of chickens, frying a bird all the way through until cooked is often going to result in the inconsistencies that you reported. It was this issue amongst others such as speed that led Harland Sanders to come up with his patented technique of deep frying the bird in a industrial form of pressure cooker. As they say in the specials "don't try this as home" so we really need an alternative that creates a similarly moist but well crunched result. I'm with Peter the Eater on this one and use an Asian technique of double cooking the chicken. First gently poach the chicken until it is cooked: you can use aromatics at this stage to flavour the flesh. Cut the bird into serving pieces and then dredge these in flour, then egg, then seasoned breadcrumbs (I use the Japanese Panko crumbs). Put these ingredients on separate plates and work consistently across in this order (this reduces the chance of the dry ingredients turning to a soggy mess). You then deep fry (at the temperature you used) to add texture and colour to the surface rather than to cook the bird through. Remove the pieces when they are coloured to your liking, drain and blot on kitchen paper and serve.

Or rock salt.

Should have added, sniff each oyster as you open it. Off oysters tend to be fairly easily recognisable and not something you want to serve to people.

The Sydney Morning Herald good food month has morphed into a more formal festival with Joanna Savill as its inaugural director. Part of the program involves a world chef showcase being run at Star city with concurrent sessions over two days (Oct 10-11). Session titles are Thailand/Vietnam, China, World food, Asia, Creative, and Japan. I'm already booked in for sessions on both days. Judging from the interest last year in Ferran Adria's talk, tickets may sell out quickly. Check out this link for more information.

Single malt, normally something really peaty like a Laphroaig quarter cask non-chill filtered. No ice, no water, just smoky silky smoothness. Of course being cask strength of 48% alcohol by volume may account for its nightcap potential.

Probably the worst thing for a beginner to do is to attempt to open the oyster in your hand. This is where the majority of the stab wounds occur and the best way to lose the liquor. Open each with the oyster on a cloth on the bench. The video pointed to above is good but I'd add that it is best to dampen the cloth to give better grip and stability. Once you have loosened the oyster from the shell by sliding your knife underneath it, flip the oyster over so that the best side is presented to the customer. Very experienced shuckers, of whom I do not consider myself to be one , do this in one movement. Additionally, I'd get some practice in before the event. This has the added bonus of providing yummy bivalves to eat.

To broaden the discussion slightly, there is also a lot of talk about creating a pellicle on all foods prior to smoking to enhance smoke penetration. When cooking my bacon, I smoke it at the same time without creating a pellicle. It is indirect cooking in a Weber BBQ but this process means that that the surface of the cured pork goes well above 140F (to get the desired core temperature). My bacon tastes very smoky despite two possible disadvantages (higher than 140F heat and no pellicle). Can I add the pellicle question to Chris' temperature question? I can see its validity in cold smoking but cannot see where it would impact on warm/hot smoking when the surface of the meat is undergoing dramatic changes due to the cooking process.

My father lives near the ocean. To improve the flavor of defrosted frozen shrimp, he gets a bucket of sea water and soaks the shrimp briefly in it before serving (needless to say, he doesn't rewash them afterwards). He claims it adds the sea back into the shrimp. If you are not near the Sea, perhaps you could do likewise with a brine solution with a concentration similar to that of sea water. It seems the composition is 96.5% water, 2.5% salt and 1% other things (reference here). If you use unrefined sea salt, that equates to around 1 part unrefined sea salt by weight to 27.6 parts water.

Pan juices, deglazed with brandy, add soft green canned peppercorns, cream. Reduce significantly. Adjust seasoning and spoon over now-rested steak. Another alternative is to use liquids left over from other dinners (eg. slow cooked lamb shanks made with mirepoix of celery, carrot, and onion) and reduce them over high heat to a thick sauce consistency. Sometimes I add butter-fried sliced mushrooms and shallots to this with some sherry vinegar for an acid finish. As for many others in this thread, I use the sauce as a thin coating rather than drowning the steak.

A healthy discussion has been occurring on what is actually meant by the term free-range when applied to pigs at this link. This led me to ponder other commonly used terms applied to food that may potentially mislead consumers unless they are adept at reading the fine print. Some quick examples could be: Description on package (real meaning) low fat (high in sugar) "light" olive oil (light in flavor not fat) all natural ingredients (contains seaweed extract that lots of us know as MSG) 90% fat free (10% fat) Contains 5% real fruit juice (along with 90% water and 5% chemicals for flavoring and coloring) Just wondering what other examples people can contribute?

And let's not even start on "organic" as a label, I shudder every time I see it.

I'm just about finished one of the best combinations of personal biography, food history, insights into regional cooking, and recipes that I've come across. The book is Giorgio Locatelli's Made in Italy: Food and Stories. It won the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year in 2007 and in 2006 was named the best Italian cuisine book in the world at the Gourmand world cookbook awards. The recipe for Porcini (Cep) Risotto alone makes up for the cost of the book.

This is not entirely clear to me. The dishwasher is not the answer, because when I have put aluminum sheet pans in the dishwasher, they have discolored and eventually pitted. ← Sitting in the back of my mind was something I heard about aluminium reacting with dishwashing chemicals with potentially explosive consequences. Checking the Internet, I found this document which states that the machine dishwashing liquid in question "Reacts with aluminium, zinc, tin and alloys of these metals producing flammable hydrogen gas." Perhaps this is what the lost aluminium from the pits in your sheet pans turned into in your dishwasher Sam.

You've already done some of the best. Perhaps you might like to try Azuma in Chifley Square. At the other end of the spectrum from fine dining, and if you like your sake, Toriciya in Cammeray is a lovely little izakaya. I also quite like one of my local restaurants Yu Ge Mu and Shimbashi.

Let's look at some of the sources quoted in the article, for example, the RSPCA states that "the majority of male pigs on the continent are routinely castrated without anaesthetic (approximately 80 per cent)." Conversely, this means 20% are castrated with anaesthetic. One can ask to what extent the free-range pigs under consideration are represented in this 20%. Similarly, his source for spaying being conducted without anaesthesia was "animal welfare activist Temple Grandin." Again I'd just like some more information on how widespread this practice is. My reading since this topic arose of the Denominaciónes de Origen accreditation suggests that the most important determinant of quality is the type and amount of feed to which the pigs are exposed during the montanera, or intensive feeding period during winter when feed becomes more plentiful. That some producers may subject the pigs to commercially intensive practices in the periods leading up to this is quite possible but once again I'd like some more information on actual practices. It could be that many of the producers involved have addressed these issues. It could equally be the case that only a minority have. Due to space limitations in production, many articles tend to be reduced to what the editors consider the most salient points. It is what is omitted that will give us better information to make reasoned judgements, particularly in such a potentially emotive area. As a thought-provoking piece, I think we'd have to say that the article is already being very successful.

My concern was not with his credentials but rather with the way this piece was written. The last thing I would want to do is play the person. It is, however, a logical fallacy to expect that someone who is an expert in one area will necessarily be an expert in all areas they express an opinion on. That is not disputed but what is missing is the documented prevalence of these practices. The piece makes it seems like the practices are not only widespread but almost mandatory. Do all farms use them? Let's start off with a baseline, work out what is actually going on and work from there. I am sure I used the word "balanced" earlier. Even the quoting of facts can be used in an unbalanced manner if they are selectively reported, as is possibly the case here. That being said, he may be quite right in his conclusions but let's test the alternatives through reasoned discussion based on a comprehensive assessment of the facts.

I'd agree. Historians typically try to consider both sides of an argument. In this case, all the quoted sources seem to be right out of the PETA catalogue of emotive arguments to sway opinions. Where is the balance? Are any producers doing things differently or will all be swept away in the same emotive argument? I think Anne has hit the nail on the head as to why such opinion pieces draw attention. In today's world the disconnect in the consumer's mind between where their food comes from and where it actually comes from is vast. People think food comes from plastic packages in supermarkets. It doesn't. It comes from living breathing animals, most of whom would not have existed at all were it not for our desire to consume their flesh. There may be some merit in elements of the piece. I'd just like to see the other side of the argument as well. Thanks for pointing the article out Fat Guy, this should lead to some interesting discussion. But does anyone have verified facts so we can add some balance?

Next experiment. Using Sebago potatoes again. Boiled till fully cooked again, this time in slightly more salty water. Cooled and dried in the fridge for a few hours. Dredged in olive oil. On the premise that if they are cooked, they need more intense heat to crunch up the outside rather than circulated heat to cook through, I decided to cook them under the griller (broiler) on full heat, turning in the middle of cooking to brown both sides. The result was actually better than last night's effort. Still not as good as deep fried but in essence it tasted like sort of a crispy skinned mashed potato. Would most likely be a definite winner with kids. Thinking about modifications, I'd probably cook in less salty water and use sea salt on the outside to give a bit of textural variation. This is a picture of the chips:

Had to edit my post (we must have been typing at the same time), it was actually a sebago.

That's a red potato? ← Post late last night I checked the packaging, it was actually a sebago. I know from watching "In search of perfection," different potatoes have different outcomes for deep fried chips. Can the same be said for oven fries? This was included infernooo's original list as "starchy or waxy." Heston Blumenthal proposed that it came down to moisture content: What type of potato works best?

I tried it out with a Pontiac potato, which is one that I find works well with deep frying. The potatoes were peeled, sliced into equal sized chips and then cooked in salted boiling water for around fifteen minutes. They were then removed from the water and placed on a wire rack in the fridge to cool and dry for two and a half hours. The cooking was done in a 250C (482F) fan-forced oven until brown (around 15 to 20 minutes). The oven was pre-heated and the rack with the chips on it was placed on a pizza stone that had been in the oven while it was coming up to temperature. The chips were turned during cooking to make the cooking more even. The four chips were (L to R) no treatment ----- sprayed with olive oil ----- dredged through olive oil ----- dredged through duck fat. When broken open, they looked like this: They were all sprinkled with sea salt and we then tasted them. All the chips were cooked through and the potato inside was creamy. All the oil treated chips had a noticeable crunch on the outside. The one without oil was solid but not as crunchy as the others. None of the chips, perhaps apart from the one with duck fat, tasted particularly "oily or fatty." The lack of a fat sheen on them supports this. The order of preference in terms of eating for both my wife and myself was: 1. dredged in olive oil 2. sprayed with olive oil 3. dredged in duck fat 4. no treatment. In summary, they were very passable chips and better than many examples of fried chips that we have bought as take away (soggy, fatty). They tasted not only more healthier but were also more appealing to eat. The chips were nowhere near the taste experience of triple cooked fried chips, but I think this was to be expected.

You are quite right, "many" is too strong. Reading back through the topic, the discussion on oven fries was more in terms of absorption of the oil and whether it defeated one of the reasons many people cite for using this technique, which is to reduce the overall amount of fat. What we can likely take from that thread in addition to this is some of the concepts of multiple cooking, which infernooo covered in part with the comment on par boiling. The technique that is used in Blumenthal's triple cooking of chips involves going beyond par boiling to fully boiling the potatoes such that they are cooked through prior to placing them in a refrigerator to remove moisture from the surface while coalescing the potato back into a more manageable solid form. These are then cooked a second and third time via deep frying. Has anyone tried this technique with oven frying instead of deep frying? Presumably you could significantly increase the oven temperature in order to crisp and brown the outside while concurrently reheating the inside, rather than cooking it from scratch.

Many of these issues are addressed in eGullet cook off 45 on this link

An early drinking Grange will tend to be good drinking from ten to twenty years after vintage, typically towards the end of this time. The actual cellaring time depends on the individual vintage but these are wines that improve dramatically with age. Penfolds tastes their wines regularly and there are whole books dedicated to when each vintage is best enjoyed (Southcorp Wines, The Rewards of Patience). If the vintage was 2003, the recommendation for drinking is 2015 to 2030. (see this site for details)

Try them in a pasta sauce. Or if you are really keen there are 3116 recipes for eggplants at this enthusiast site. Type "mashed" into the search engine and you will find a few you can start from