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Keith_W

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Everything posted by Keith_W

  1. Sobaaddict that salad of yours is inspiring. I think if I made it, I would want to throw in some elderflower or violet concentrate as well. In fact I have everything I need to make that salad tonight ... except the marigold Baselerd and ChrisTaylor i'll have 10 of those please!
  2. I enjoy a good rant as anyone else and yours was the most enjoyable rant I have read for a long time! I realize you are in the USA, but here in Australia a "hot dog" might mean that you get a boiled sausage and a steamed bun. I have had my share of arguments with other Aussies about this crime against hot dogs, because to me a hot dog should be fried or grilled sausage on a toasted bun. Thankfully there is a gourmet hot dog movement where the sausages used are usually decent - either bratwurst, frankfurters, or kransky.
  3. Electric cooktops and woks don't go together. Not even flat bottomed woks. If you use a flat bottomed wok on an electric cooktop, only the bottom of the wok gets heated up. Cast iron has very poor thermal conductivity, which means that the sides of your wok will heat up very little. If you are going to use an electric hob and you want the sides of the wok to heat up, you need a more conductive metal, like copper or aluminum - unfortunately there are no copper or aluminum woks that I know of. As to why food sticks - it is because your wok isn't hot enough. As you have noted, the surface of your wok is full of jagged edges. When the wok is heated, the jagged edges (which represent metal crystals) start moving relative to each other similar to Brownian motion. You can actually see this - sprinkle some peppercorns on your wok and you can see them being pushed around by the crystals. The more the wok is heated, the faster the crystals move. When you put food on the pan, the food immediately cools the metal underneath and they slow down considerably and shrink. This causes the crystals to grab on to your food. As you continue to supply heat and your food heats up, the crystals start moving again - which is why food, when left on a pan for long enough, eventually gets released. Unfortunately, if you are using an electric cooktop and a cast iron pan, the heat is supplied very slowly - so slow that your food would be burnt before it is released. With normal wok cooking, this isn't much of an issue because the wok is superheated. Any food that is put on it floats on a bed of its own steam - the so-called Liedenfrost effect. Chinese style stir-fries are intense, hot, and fast. I hope you can see that a wok by itself isn't going to help you cook Chinese food. If you use a wok, and fail to heat it up properly, you are simply using a giant pan with curved sides. You need to think about how you are going to replicate that high intensity heat at home. I presume your house isn't plumbed with gas, so maybe you could consider an outdoor wok burner. I don't mean to discourage you, and I hope this isn't taken that way.
  4. All those menus sound like what I would suggest. Incidentally, I have a Porsche too. At the last club picnic I just brought along boring sandwiches. Some of the other guys had more elaborate menus. I did make sure I had Wagner's Die Fliegende Hollander blaring out my car stereo though! I didn't go so far as dress up in Lederhosen ... that might be something to save for the next picnic.
  5. Wow Choc Doc, you put a lot of work into that meal. Some great ideas there and lovely plating as well. Hats off to you.
  6. I have been to a few of those car club picnics. I first owned an Italian car and now a German car - I have noticed that the owners tend to bring culturally appropriate food! If you are going to be hanging out with owners of Astons, may I suggest cucumber sandwiches, a galantine of chicken, pork pies, salad, scones with cream and strawberry jam, and washed down with Pimms?
  7. Keith_W

    Caramelized Carrots

    How much oil you use doesn't really matter - the carrot doesn't absorb too much oil in the brief time it is in contact with it anyway. It's not like a mushroom, which is porous and can absorb copious amounts of oil.
  8. Ann T I am almost ashamed to post this picture after looking at your delicious roast chicken and spuds. Those potatoes are perfect! David Ross THAT BURGER!! I WANT IT!!! basquecook Are you a chef? Your food certainly looks very cheffy. Morkai have to agree - the lamb looks incredible. You can see the juices glistening in that photo. Love it! Anyway, dinner tonight. Nutmeg roast chicken from Spice Trip - recipe here. Chicken: deviated from the recipe by injecting a 10% brine into the deboned chook. I rubbed it with nutmeg then left it for 24 hours to marinade. It was then panfried and roasted on a bed of onions, garlic, and thyme to an internal temperature of 60C. Simple roast potatoes: Baby Nicola potatoes were parboiled for 20 minutes, then panfried in duck fat. They went into the oven at 180C for 45 minutes, next to the chicken. Wilted spinach: Baby spinach leaves were wilted on a frypan with some butter, salt, and lemon juice. Result: The chicken had a really assertive nutmeg flavour. I found it a little overpowering, and could have done with some balance from other spices. Roasting the chicken over onions made for a beautiful sauce - plenty of flavour in those moist onions.
  9. I have been making my own "sun dried tomatoes" for a long time. As dcarch says, do it in the oven if it is too cold outside. These are some cherry tomatoes, cut into 1cm slices resting on basil, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt, sugar, and pepper: You can sort of see what they look like on my Margherita pizza:
  10. mm84321 that is so pretty it makes me want to cry!
  11. My ultimate cheap meal is bolognaise sauce. These are its virtues: It is inexpensive and you can throw whatever leftovers you have in it. Everything you need to make this sauce is cheap - canned tomatoes, mincemeat, carrot, celery, onion. Suitable leftovers - chilli, any type of cheese you may have, most types of meat, most types of vegetables, beans, mushrooms. If I had to, I could make a batch of bolognaise sauce for less than $25 and it would last me for seven days. It is convenient. I make my sauce in great big batches and freeze it in little plastic containers. That way, if I am pressed for time, all it takes to get dinner ready is to boil up some pasta and microwave the sauce. Bolognaise sauce is versatile. You can use it in: pasta bolognaise (spaghetti, linguine, penne, farfalle, etc) and lasagne. You can put it between two slices of bread with some cheese and make a jaffle. You could pour it on baked potatoes and hot dogs. I started making batches of bolognaise sauce when I was a student 20 years ago. My recipe has evolved, I no longer need to save every penny, but I still enjoy the convenience of it.
  12. Option 4: do it the day before, keep it in the fridge, ask the host if you could borrow the oven for 30 minutes.
  13. Lest I be accused of causing food poisoning, I need to insert a warning - if a bird is suffering from septicemia then the meat likely won't be sterile. In such a case you should discard the bird. Or you could try to cure the bird with a tetracycline before eating it
  14. Looks like puffed rice. These are sometimes used as a coating for frying. I'm sorry I can't help with a recipe, since I have never made it.
  15. Re: earlier concerns about pigeons carrying Chlamydia. There are different species of Chlamydia. The Chlamydia that causes sexually transmitted diseases and eye infections is Chlamydia trachomatis - this is not the same as the Chlamydia which infects pigeons (and many other birds, e.g. parrots, parakeets, etc) is Chlamydia psittaci. C. psittaci can be carried by these birds as a commensal or it may cause an infection. When a bird is infected, it may be tired, skinny, listless, and refuse to fly. Transmission to humans can be either via ingestion or inhalation. Common methods of ingestion include kissing these birds, handling the feathers or droppings and then handling food without washing your hands. Inhalation of C. psittaci may occur when you inhale powdered bird droppings, in some cases mowing a lawn full of bird droppings may produce a cloud of C. psittaci which you may inhale. Human infection by C. psittaci causes psittacosis, commonly known as parrot fever. The most common manifestation is pneumonia, but it can also infect the heart, liver, and brain. Severe cases might result in death, but this is uncommon. Fortunately psittacosis is easily treated with antibiotics. In birds, C. psittaci may be found in the intestinal tract or lungs, or anything contaminated by bird droppings (i.e. all the surfaces). The meat itself should be sterile. Take home message: it is safe to eat these pigeons provided appropriate precautions are taken. Thoroughly wash everything, avoid cross-contamination, and make sure the birds are exposed to enough heat to pasteurize it. Remember, pasteurization is a function of both heat and time.
  16. Do you have an advance copy in your possession or have you heard something I haven't? If I were to speculate, I would say it is a book about the techniques they used to take those photos. Someone who is interested in food photography, perhaps?
  17. Franci: I see, thanks for the link. That focaccia batter is in line with what I have experienced in the past with that level of hydration. I was thinking to myself that with that much water in it, it would be impossible to roll out ... but I see that they actually pour out the batter in that video. High hydration does also give you a softer, lighter, and more airy dough and I am sure it would make a beautiful foccacia. I have to try it myself
  18. I would vote for the Kamado as a more versatile cooking instrument. As others have said, you can reach much higher temperatures in a Kamado AND you can use it to sear meat. A Kamado can not go as low as a pellet grille, which means that it is not suitable for cold smoking. If you really do want to try cold smoking, there are tricks that you can use - e.g light a single BBQ briquette and lay it on a mound of sawdust to smoulder. You could also jerry rig a metal barrel and some air conditioning duct to feed smoke into the lower vent of the Kamado. My Kamado is outfitted with a Rocks BBQ Stoker PID controller. This setup allows me to dial up a temperature and the machine simply blows air into the charcoal or cuts off the air supply to maintain the temperature. It works very well, there is even an app for your Android phone that allows you to observe the cook remotely.
  19. Franci, 70-80% hydration for pizza dough is very high indeed. I have done experiments with pizza dough, and I found that the dough becomes difficult to handle at hydration levels above 65%. Once you go to 70%, by my experience this is the tipping point between what I would call a "dough" and a "batter". High hydration doughs are difficult to handle - they stick to everything, require a lot of flour to lubricate, and are fragile. They seem to keep this property even with prolonged kneading. Of course, I acknowledge that the ideal hydration point depends on the flour you are using, which is why I usually make my pizza doughs with a hydration of 60% and then start adding water and observing how the dough behaves.
  20. Another roast chicken dinner. Chicken: injected it with a brine made from milk, pepper, and 4% salt. The milk was brought up to 90C with 2 tbsp of black peppercorns then left to infuse. It was then dunked into boiling water to tighten up the skin, then brushed with a mixture of paprika, salt, and melted butter. I left it in the fridge to air dry for two days to help the skin crisp up. It was then slow roasted at 100C to an internal temperature of 60C, rested for 45 minutes, then returned to the oven at 250C to crisp up the skin. Pan roasted fennel (as per Ottolenghi): cut into steaks then seasoned and seared on butter, then into the oven to finish cooking. Sprinkled with lemon zest. Chanterey carrots: microwaved for 3 minutes then briefly sauteed. Chicken jus: a simple reduction of chicken consomme. I'm not quite sure why it went cloudy. The consomme was clarified using Heston's freeze gel clarification method. It was a gorgeous crystal clear liquid when I started, but after hard boiling it turned cloudy! Perhaps I caused the proteins to clump together? The intention was to present a beautiful crystal clear chicken jus, but it didn't quite turn out! Garnish: fennel fronds, lemon zest, nasturtium.
  21. Beat me to it, rotuts. Most "low salt" diets recommend replacing the Na+ with K+. K+ is regulated within the body to a tight window, between 3.7 - 5.0 mmol/L. In a healthy person, excess K+ is excreted by the kidneys. In someone with kidney failure, or as you say, some medications - K+ might accumulate in the body. Typical medications include: potassium sparing diuretics (e.g. Spironolactone), ACE-inhibitors (i.e. any drug ending in -pril, e.g. Ramipril, Captopril, Perindopril, etc), ARB's (any drug ending in -sartan e.g. Candesartan, Telmisartan, Irbesartan), etc. In any case, tolerating a low salt diet is a matter of conditioning. This is much like people who don't like skim milk but get used to the taste after a while. I switched from full cream milk to soy milk for my breakfast cereals. Initially I hated it but now I find full cream milk too heavy. Salt is the same - once you start reducing your salt intake, you will get used to it. If you have a medical condition that requires a low salt intake, I would suggest you simply start reducing the amount of salt you add to your food. You will get used to it. (edit) looks like Shel_B beat me to it too
  22. He did say grilled, guys. I would suggest a simple rub of olive oil, salt, and oregano and serve with chimichurri.
  23. There is no need to lard it. The meat is tender enough.
  24. Thank you! rotuts, no sauce. The filling was not crunchy because it was steamed by the bread. To be honest I am not sure if anybody ever bakes long yok in buns - at least I have never seen it. They normally use char siu. If char siu is used, then it goes in with fried onions and some thickened char siu sauce. Long yok is normally eaten by itself or in a sandwich. Why did I do this? To irritate huiray, liuzhou, and others weinoo, you can easily buy this in shops but over here at least it is very expensive - $20/100gm. That works out to approximately $4-5 per slice. I bought the minced pork for $7/kg. Very cheap if you don't take the effort and the mess into consideration. Pilori, thank you! Here is the recipe: - 1kg minced pork, 20% fat - 250gm sugar - 1.5 tbsp fish sauce - 4 tbsp soy sauce - 1 tsp five spice powder - 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder * - 1/2 tsp licorice powder (kam cho) * - 1/2 tsp white pepper - 1 tsp MSG - 2 tbsp rice wine - 40gm Nam Yue (red fermented tofu) - Salt, about 1 tbsp - 1/2 tsp red food colouring * optional 1. Mix everything together and leave in the fridge overnight to marinade. Don't skip this step - the overnight marinade extracts protein from the mince and helps hold the jerky together. 2. Spread the minced pork over baking paper to a thickness of 1-2mm. This is by far the most difficult step. I simply grab a handful of mixture then spread it out by hand. You could also try rolling it out between two pieces of baking paper. 3. Dehydrate in an oven, fan forced, at 100C for at least an hour, or until the mixture feels like rubber. If you are using multiple racks like me, rotate the racks every 20 minutes. Alternatively (if you live in a warm area) - dry the mixture in the sun. Do not be tempted to terminate the drying process early - if you do, your jerky will crumble back into mince! 4. Cut into squares then roast over a charcoal grille. Alternatively, lay the pieces in a single layer on a rack and bake in a 180C oven for 10 minutes, flipping the pieces halfway.
  25. I spent two evenings making roast pork buns. The roast pork in this case is a Cantonese classic called "long yok", also known as "yok kon" or "ba kua" (depending on which Chinese dialect you speak). It is a type of pork jerky, made by mixing minced pork with flavourings, then rolling out in sheets and drying them. After drying them, they are grilled over a charcoal grille. The result wasn't as pretty as I would have liked (should have used sugar in the glaze for the buns!) but it certainly tasted really good!!
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