nickrey

When I first started cooking I used to salt as recommended in the recipe. After a while I stopped and have not really noticed a difference. More recently I read somewhere (sorry I read a lot of food articles, can't remember exact source) that the eggplants we tend to get in Australia are not as bitter as ones that are used in many others places around the world. I'd definitely support tasting first and deciding to salt on the basis of actual flavour rather than just slavishly following a recipe that may have used functionally different base ingredients.

I like aspects of the show but the elimination of contestants by peer votes makes it too much like Survivor: Masterchef. Will the best chef end up as the winner?

Can't agree more Sam. See my earlier post on extracting ozmazome for pictures on how easy this is. Thickening it by simple addition of a roux is easy. Adjust the seasoning and there you have your sauce.

If you are doing it commercially, I'd second the burr grinder. You can set the size of the grind with extreme precision and they are mostly industrial strength machines. Moreover, they do not heat up the spices like a blade grinder will. Don't buy a doser model. This is used purely to assist in delivering coffee into a filter basket for pouring espresso. My coffee grinder is a Rancilio Rocky Grinder, a rugged beast that gives an exceptional grind. As is the case for rotary coffee grinders, if you use this for grinding spices you can say goodbye to using it for coffee.

When it comes to the practical over the theoretical, I'll always go with the former. Thanks for doing the fieldwork Chris. On the other hand, I know from your posts you have an extremely well controlled cooking set up. Perhaps the skin provides an error margin for the rest of us.

Nice picture. I just did an auto adjust with Windows photo gallery. Here is the result.

My suspicion is that the main difference will be in the cooking rather than in the curing. The skin provides a layer that protects the fat and stops it from rendering down in heat as much as it would without it. The skin does not typically become crackling but it does change texture significantly in the cooking process. Without it, the heat would be applied directly to the fat. The skin is removed prior to slicing the bacon, which leaves the fat that you see on the side of rashers of bacon. This is a central contributor to the cooked taste of bacon. Without the skin, you could probably expect to lose much of the fat or have it rendered similar to that seen on a cooked pork cutlet. When cooked subsequently, it would not behave in the same way as conventional bacon fat. If you are stuck with pork belly without skin, perhaps you could try lowering the cooking temperature and cooking for a longer period (still reaching the recommended core temperature)?

As it's just a few kilometers away, I'm there quite regularly and I haven't seen them there Peter.

The benches in my kitchen are all stainless steel so I don't have much of a problem in that regard. I flamed the cutlets on the stainless steel plate in the photo. I guess if you had bench tops which would be damaged you could use a similar stainless plate and put it on top of your stove - unless of course you have one of those glass topped units - then you're out of luck. Thanks for the microwave tip, I'll give it a shot next time, cheers, Peter. ← I do mine on a porcelain dinner plate. Working on the premise that they use ceramics in the insulation system on the space shuttle for re-entry, I assume it can stand the heat.

From the excerpt on Amazon, it looks like he gives all the ingredients again.

All the seasoning mixtures in Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen are made from scratch with all ingredients listed. I don't have the other book so am not sure about that.

Without seeing a picture of the packaging, it is very hard to locate. Try google images with the search term "sambal pecel" until you see the packaging. Is it this one?

I love the Tetsuya's one, and many of the recipes aren't as complicated as you'd imagine. For Australian restaurants, I think Justin North's "Becasse" is outstanding. For top end restaurant cookbooks, there's The Botanical (Paul Wilson), Lake House(Alla Wolf-Tasker), French (Damien Pignolet), and Ezards (Tegue Ezard). I think these books are just that little bit better than the Bathers Pavillion one. ← I'd add the "Pier" cookbook to this but with an extreme caution: you may find yourself making three different stocks/sauces to simply accomplish one dish. Easy in a restaurant but an absolute logistical nightmare in a home kitchen. Mind you, the products are exceptional.

Sambel is the same as sambal, which is a condiment using chili peppers. Pecel is an Indonesian sauce made with peanuts, typically serve over salad such as Gado Gado. Maron in Java is a place. Rasa is a taste, sense feeling. Pedas is hot. What you have is a hot, tasty, chili based peanut sauce to be used on a salad made of blanched vegetables that is probably made in Maron, Java. To actually source it, you will need more information, like who produces it, etc. I found this sauce which is a pecel peanut sauce but am not sure that it is the same as the one you have. Try the terms "gado gado" or "pecel" alone in Google to see if you can find your particular sauce.

A bit like the pie idea I suppose but as long as they are not too moist, you can wrap leftovers in filo pastry (following directions to brush with butter) and bake. Filo suprises!

You don't mention what form of storage they are in. Are they vacuum packed? Is there a moisture absorbent compound in with them? If moisture has penetrated the package, there is a strong likelihood that they are spoilt. If not, this article tested them out to at least 15 weeks and they were fine. Once exposed to air, the shelf life is around 8 - 15 days If they are irradiated, they last even longer. To be safe, I'd probably buy some more rather than use a year-old product.

When my daughter was young we used to put a smear of vegemite on her teething rusk. Needless to say, today she enjoys both vegemite and umami rich foods.

Sounds very similar to the values I got.

I have been through this exercise with the SVM as a consequence of overshoots very similar to those described in the posts above. Using a smaller JNP-1800 10-cup cooker, I found the following settings work well. The PID controlled advanced settings were used to set the unit power to 75% to moderate the speed at which the unit heated. The PID settings that I arrived at after much experimentation (plus a rejection of the auto tune results which still resulted in overshoots) are P 100, I 60 and D 80. These seem to hold the temperature rock steady over the entire cooking period. The other variable that seems to affect reaching temperature and temperature maintenance is initial water temperature. When filling the cooker, I run the tap water until it is at a temperature around 2C higher than my target temperature. On adding the cool sous vide packages, the temperature is typically near the target so the heating requirement is not as dramatic. The unit thus only has to maintain a constant temperature rather than heat to target.

I bought it on Amazon but have seen it since at the Essential Ingredient in Crow's Nest so it must be here.

Thanks for the information, it does look like the ones I have but the ingredients list on the vacuum sealed pack has olives, brine, salt, and oil.

I recently found a packet of selected shriveled olives. As usual having bought the new ingredient on impulse, the task now is to find out more about it. Searching the Internet I came up with the translation of the Greek 'ΘΡОΥΜΠΕΣ,' which is Throubes (sometimes Throumbes). Apparently they come from Thassos and are fully ripened on the tree. They are then salted and stored in brine and oil. I've thought of using them in places where I would typically use Kalamatas. My instinct is to make a tapenade with them as well. Does anyone out there know anything more about these olives? Any suggestions on how to use them? What about storage? The latter is important as I have 2 kilos of them.

I'm going through an experimental period. Home made double-cooked duck confit and spring onion ravioli in a star anise and cinnamon broth.

The salmon was delicious. The spinach is quite light and crunchy after deep frying. As my daughter was up later in the week, I made the dish again. This time I peeled small sheets off the spring onions and cut the batons much finer than what is shown in the picture. It was then soaked in a mix of water and mirin, which led to it curling and making a more attractive garnish.

But you have to admit that, over the last ten days or so, the rather 'limited' response from pro kitchens boasting about their use of traceable calibration standards would seem to indicate some basis for my earlier contention! Perhaps there is (or should be) an opening for a new service industry? However, for home kitchens, I don't think that many question the accuracy of ANY measuring instrument - not even their fridge, freezer or oven thermostats. So, I wouldn't expect to see much of an uptick in reference thermometer sales, based on domestic buyers. ← Mind you, home cooks who do sous vide currently tend to be slightly different (in a good way of course). I calibrate my sous vide using my thermapen and am sure most of us discussing this topic in eGullet do something similar, particularly given the number who are scientists of some type of another.