nickrey

It seems the only two variables are amount of cure and time in the cure. I would suspect amount of cure. I laid it out and pressed it in on both sides. I would guess it was more than the 1/4 cup he says to use. He says that one could put the belly in the bag and put 1/4 cup of the cure in the bag and just urge it around. I spread the belly on a sheet tray and rubbed the cure in on both sides. I'm sure it was more than 1/4 cup. I guess this was the issue as it was in the fridge in the bag for six nights. The question to all the other bacon makers is how much cure do you use? ← The problem may be that you pressed it in. I dredge it without pressing it in (that is, whatever is going to stick sticks; what doesn't stays behind) then put it in the bag. This seems to work without it getting too salty.

Last night I went to a Chinese Restaurant in Adelaide, South Australia, called T Chow and wanted to share some of the dishes from the specials board with you: Black Bean and Chili or Salted Cabbage with Duck Intestines Braised Fish Stomach with Chinese Mushrooms and for a more local flavour: Green peppercorn sizzling crocodile. Dishes that I had from the main menu were: Oyster Omelette Pork Belly and Taro Casserole. The style is Chiuchow/Teochew cuisine (hence T Chow)/Chaozhou cuisine. My dishes were delicious and many non-Chinese locals were enjoying the food.

No No No, you got it all wrong. I don't want to hear about dishes i can put truffles in. The point of this thread is the, out of the ordinary. What do you put truffles in that don't usually have truffles go in, on, around, beside, them. ← hmm... I suspect that truffles have been tried with most things and are used with all manner of dishes already, that is the point of the thread I indicated which used truffle oil. Using actual truffles would simply be a more expensive, intensified, version. Truffled cheese has been around forever. By using shaved truffles with a non-truffled cheese as you did, you've got a variant on a common theme. I look forward to seeing if anyone comes up with anything new.

I totally empathise with your inability to get all the books. We have good bookshops in Australia but don't always get them as soon as others on eGullet do. My Amazon account works overtime, but unfortunately not as much as when our dollar was close to parity with the US$ (we're now around 67c to the dollar )

You may find something of interest in this thread which looked at uses for truffle oil.

The Flavor Bible is exceptional but given your statement on where you consider yourself to be, it may be something to keep in mind for the future. Perhaps a move from the rustic to the refined may be a next step. It seems you might benefit from some advanced techniques onto which you can add your flavor sense. Consider The Cook's Book -- it contains chapters from experts in many different areas of cooking from around the world. There are some good reviews on Amazon as a kind of try before you buy. Although it contains recipes, it also contains techniques in a wide range of areas that may assist you in moving your cooking to the next level that you talked about.

This was a tip from Mario Batali. When cooking onion and garlic together, if you add them to hot oil, the garlic will burn. Instead put them into a cold pan with the oil, turn on the heat and cook.

Not quite what you are looking and out of print (but fairly widely available second-hand) is Vincenzo Buonassisi's "The Classic Book of Pasta." He is a member of the Accademia Itliana della Cucina. Translated from the Italian, it represents 30 years of collecting and compiling pasta recipes. In Italian cooking, the pasta itself is the star of the dish. As a consequence, the index is organised by Pasta type rather than by sauce ingredient. This sort of meets one of your requirements. Moreover, the book is organized into sections by what goes with the Pasta (eg: section one covers pasta with vegetables; section four covers pasta with fish; and section seven covers pasta with pork). If you are looking for "authentic," this one is hard to beat.

There are many consumer reports on the effectiveness of appliances such as coffee makers as well as many eGullet threads comparing particular techniques (ways of making stock, cooking eggs, etc). One common feature in these is that techniques are applied, outputs are compared, and a statement is made that “technique X is better than technique Y” or “coffee maker X is better than coffee maker Y.” Being someone who often uses technique Y or coffee maker Y, I am somewhat bemused as I have deliberately chosen these techniques or this equipment because it produces better output than the other techniques. For example, I use the whirlpool method of poaching eggs and get (close to) perfect poached eggs every time and have a semi-automatic Rancilio Miss Silvia coffee machine from which I get a (close to) perfect espresso every time. In both cases, it took me months of experimentation and many failures to get to the stage were I could call the results (close to) perfect. I say close to, because I’m sure I’m still learning even now. When techniques are assessed on eGullet, often people have a favourite technique that they have used for years. They then compare it with one of the alternative techniques that they are trying for the first time and proclaim that their favourite technique is better. This approach would be fine if you were comparing two out of the box products in which the skill of the operator plays no role (eg. comparing the picture on two TVs from the same source). Where skill is involved, as it most certainly is in cooking, this is an unfair comparison. If one were to test techniques fairly, you would get two people with equal skill in the different techniques and then provide the output to an independent tasting panel to get their opinion. Great in theory, but this is rarely possible in the real world. Perhaps the best way of looking at different techniques – and this is one that it provided by eGullet extremely well – is to get input from people who use the different techniques and have them talk about their successes and failures using the technique. They might even conclude the posts with a statement that it took them many months of trial and error to finally get it right. Recently I started making Tortillas. I followed the recipe from the book and had some moderate success. But I had no measure of what was good, particularly in Australia where Mexican food is not especially common. By posting a query to eGullet, I received some invaluable tips from people who are experts that accelerated my learning dramatically. How many perfectionists out there have persisted with a technique or piece of equipment and find that they can create things that were not possible with the “out of the box” techniques that always rate highly in initial comparisons?

I bought it after it was described in another eGullet thread. I'm with you Chris. For someone looking for flavor combinations that work when creating new recipes, it is an invaluable resource. I am also making marginalia about additional combinations that probably don't feature as highly in the USA as they do here because we are close to Asia.

Mushrooms are a strong source of umami and one of the best ways of intensifying the flavour of mushrooms is to dry them. I take dried Shiitake mushrooms (from China, bought at our local supermarket, or try an Asian grocer) and put them into the electric coffee grinder that I dedicate to grinding spices. The result is shiitake powder, which can be added to food to give a really nice umami hit. As I use the grinder for some strong Indian spices, I cleaned it out first by grinding some rice and cleaning out the resultant coriander/cumin/chili flavored residue.

It sounds delicious. Keep us in the loop regarding your experiments.

Galangal is very similar to ginger in the way it behaves albeit slightly more pine/floral note on the palate. For one fish were it me, I'd do the same as you and use around an inch (around 2.5 cm). Because of the toughness of the root, take care when slicing and make sure you slice it very thinly.

Looking at the bottle, it seems that the mix is one part vinegar to five parts water. Does this make it a cordial rather than a drinking vinegar as talked about in the other threads?

After experimenting with different times and temperatures, I've decided I don't like sous vide eggs. The truly perfect egg is poached

I'd try lime juice with this. You really need the sharper acidic notes to contrast with the soy/sesame. Using something like tamarind would add too much sweetness on top of the sweet potatoes. Ginger as mentioned above would, I suspect, make a complex soup even more complex; mind you the ginger vinegar sounds wonderful and I can think of a number of dishes it would be perfect in. I'd also add some heat in the form of chilis -- but then I almost always say that

Interlude is no more. Reserve and Fenix were two other Melbourne restaurants that tried the "molecular gastronomy" path, and both of them closed their doors over the past five years. Still, the influence of el Bulli, Fat Duck, and co. can be seen on Australian menus with the use of foams, low pressure cooking, unexpected flavour combinations, etc. Two places in Australia (and I haven't been to either of them) who might be included in a list of molecular gastronomy restaurants are the Royal Mail Hotel (www.royalmail.com.au) in Dunkeld, Victoria and Marque (www.marquerestaurant.com.au) in Sydney, New South Wales. Dan Hunter of the Royal Mail Hotel was a former head chef at Mugaritz in Spain. At the other end of the scale, there's a place called Tender Trap (www.tendertrap.com.au) where....well.....here's the review from Epicure - http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/tend...6377235127.html ← There's also Bentley Restaurant and Bar and Oscillate Wildly in Sydney

Very special aged traditional balsamic vinegars are used as an aperitif as well.

There is a separate thread on this book here. The book is really a number of books in one: it is an autobiography of his cooking as well as a resource book of the philosophy and science underpinning his cooking and a catalogue of most of his recipes. The writing is clear, cogent and easily readable. It is a massive (sit-at-the-table-to-read) book and the recipes are not modified for your normal home kitchen, as he did in his Search for Perfection series. Instead the recipes unapologetically detail how the meals are created in the restaurant; and he is not a chef to take short cuts. I have not cooked a whole dish out of the book as yet but have used a number of processes within it to augment other dishes that I make. Moreover, the book is full of snippets of knowledge that make the difference between having a complex cooking process work and wondering why it didn't. Is it worth the $ is a question for you given what you want in a book. For me it was very much worth it; for the average newspaper reviewer, as you will see in the thread, it was not. Although this probably says more about them than the book.

Once we've passed the question of whether to add acid to provide balance (yes!!!), we need to consider the type of acid. I always try to use an acid that is common in the culture from which a dish arises (eg. I'd typically use lime in Thai food rather than vinegar and rice vinegar in other Asian food rather than a European style vinegar). The next consideration is the type of flavor that you want to add. Acids come in many forms, not all of which will blend with all ingredients. Thus, it is good to have a range: lemon juice, lime juice, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, tamarind, sherry vinegar, verjuice, yoghurt, sour cream and so on). I have all of them in easy reach when cooking and will grab the one that will add the best flavour and that matches the style of cooking. I cooked a Chili the other day that was complex in flavour but flat in my middle palate; some lime juice sorted this out very quickly, which makes sense in terms of its role in Mexican cooking. I'd also endorse looking at the Thai approach to flavour as a model. Sweet, salty, hot, and sour makes for a good starting point when you are tasting and adjusting your seasonings in cooking.

Have a look at this link. It discusses the best way to cook sausages. Hopefully, you can use the techniques to enjoy them better.

Without tasting the chili, it is impossible to say what was in it. The base for chili tends to be beef: ground or cubed, particularly braising type cuts. Some people add pork, while others swear by venison as the best meat. Beans are added by some and eschewed by others. If you are good at dissembling tastes, you can use the following as a guide for detecting additions that may have given the chili a more complex taste profile than you have been used to: onions worcestershire sauce (tamarind is it's central flavour so it is sweet-sour) unsweetened cocoa (chocolate and chili are a match made in heaven) or Mexican bitter sweet chocolate bay leaf Different types of chilis (typically ancho and jalapeno but may also include habanero if it has a high heat component) tomatoes (paste or mashed or even a prepared sauce) cumin oregano liquid smoke (or smoked paprika, which gives the smoke plus another capsicum variant) beef broth beer or ale (sometimes Guinness) sugar (or molasses) garlic (some swear against using this) beef suet (fat) More exotic and less common seasonings include cinnamon, allspice, mace, star anise or cloves. Cook it low and slow and adjust seasonings to taste (I sometime add lime for a sour note to the flavour profile). Hope this helps.

Thanks for the pictures Jackal10, it really brought your menu alive. And those wines! Any one would merit a tasting all of its own.

Intrigued by the concept of pressure cooked stock, I had to try the recipe for Chicken stock from the Big Fat Duck Cookbook. As he does in a number of recipes, Heston made the flavour profile more complex by using the central ingredient in a few different ways (he sometimes slow cooks onion with other ingredients and then adds some more at a later stage to give a different texture and flavour). The stock was made by first cooking the vegetables and chicken in what was essentially a typical pressure-cooked stock (with skimming prior to the pressure cooking). This was then cooled naturally, opened and more chicken added for a second cooking. The aromatics were added after cooking to steep into the mixture. The result was perhaps the most flavoursome and complex chicken stock I've made. As noted by many people above, the secret for a clear stock made in this manner appears to be to not allow the pressure cooker to come to a boil (ie. to keep the pressure cooker at a temperature that cooks but does not open the steam valve on top).

It seems histamines may indeed be your culprit. This link has a discussion of some of the science underpinning its action.