Keith_W

I cooked the Modernist beef brisket tonight, and compared it against a conventionally smoked brisket. However, I inverted the recipe for the Modernist brisket. The recipe (as printed) says to smoke first and sous-vide later. I did the sous-vide first and finished with smoking. Therefore, the comparison was between: - Sous-vide 72 hours - followed by 7 hours smoking vs. - 7 hours smoking All of us preferred the conventionally cooked brisket, minus the sous-vide step. The Modernist version results in a MUCH more tender brisket, with all the connective tissue nicely gelatinized. You could eat the whole thing without picking bits off your teeth. However (as my friend said) the whole thing has a homogenous texture, which was reminiscent of canned meat. The conventional brisket tasted more like real meat - there was more to the tooth - a nice mixture of tender and chewy bits. We had a discussion about how the context of the food affected its perception. I served it up with sauce and bread and a simple salad - so perhaps in this context, we would have preferred something a little less refined. If I had slice it up in a neat square, and served it on a nice mash, with some dainty garnish ... perhaps we would have preferred the Modernist brisket. As it is - all 3 of us preferred the conventional brisket. Sorry MC.

Sole a'la meuniere, cooked on the bone. Garnish of lemon supremes, parsley, viola and tulip. Did you know that tulip petals can be eaten? Neither did I, until I tried. It has a mild sweet taste with a very subtle perfume. Viola pretty much has no taste, but it does have a vivid orange colour.

I hope that the recipes do not involve any hard-to-find ingredients such as Liquid Nitrogen, Activa or Carageenans. I can cope with agar-agar but I am not going to order a dewar of LN2 any time soon.

Peri-peri chicken:

Received my copy yesterday. I paid a deposit for the second print run soon after the first run sold out back in February. I received an email notifying me that it had arrived on the docks on the 11th, but was finally released from customs on the 18th. Reason - it arrived in a wood pallet from China, and any imported wood has to be fumigated and quarantined! I was pretty shocked by the size of the box, especially since I went to the bookshop in my small car: It only juuuuust fits in the boot. I was up late reading this thing - a truly exceptional book. I have never encountered anything of this scope, with such high production values before.

Try cooking it "a'la plancha" on the BBQ. - infuse garlic into olive oil, then dip the calamari into the olive oil - heat a cast iron pan on a burner while you heat a hot plate. Both need to be extremely hot. - place the calamari on the hot plate, then iron pan on top of the calamari - cook for 60-90 seconds - remove, drizzle with lemon, chopped parsley, salt + pepper, serve immediately.

This step is described in Heston Blumenthal's "In Search of Perfection" series - the episode where he goes in search of the perfect Spaghetti Bolognaise.

Does your recipe include MSG? Try it on a small batch and see if that gets you closer to the restaurants. Nickrey is correct that in Asian style cooking, meat and bones are blanched first to remove impurities. If you complete this step correctly, your broth will be almost consomme-like in clarity. No need for egg rafts. Most Vietnamese restaurants keep their Pho soup recipes very close to their chests. I doubt if they would let you in to their secret, and you won't learn much from watching them work. When Pho is ordered - they cook whatever needs to be cooked, put all the stuff into the bowl, then ladel hot broth over it. You will be none the wiser. NO thanks for bringing this up. I'm hankering for a good bowl of Pho right now!

Thank you for your replies. Of course, I should have done a search for "big green egg" ... over here we call them "Kamado style cookers" because BGE does not have market dominance And thank you for pointing me towards the correct forums.

Hello Aman, my garden has been thoroughly deweeded. I have been looking for the first signs of weeds appearing, when JOY OH JOY I spotted an Oxalis sprout! I eagerly ripped the poor weed from the earth, gave it a rinse, and popped it in my mouth. Very tart, like lemon. Apparently the flowers and leaves can be eaten, so I suppose I would use it as a garnish for fish and chicken, or in salads.

I bought a Kamado over the weekend and thought I would head over to my favourite cooking forum to see if there are any threads on this. I did a search - only 3 threads! This one was the longest, and was last updated in 2004!! Why isn't there more Kamado love? Is it because these are not as sexy as immersion circulators, antigriddles, rotavaps, ultrasonic homogenizers, carageenans, and alginate? I cooked my first meal with it over the weekend and was astounded by the results. I am mulling over the possibilities offered by my new unit. I have ordered a Rocks BBQ Stoker - which is a computer controlled fan that controls air supply to the charcoal, and thus maintains the temperature of your Kamado. With this, my Kamado will be a handy alternative to my oven.

That looks like an awesome sandwich, Sqwertz. Really envy your house as well - would love to live with the forest like that. I am smack bang in the middle of an urban jungle. Concrete everywhere. Ugh

Thanks ChrisZ. I have found another site - Weeds Australia. This is starting to get very interesting!

Perhaps I will use this thread as a depository of information for stuff I have found. Here is one. Oxalis spp. Weedyconnection link "Leaves and flowers: raw or cooked. A pleasant lemony flavour, they make a nice flavouring in salads. The leaves are available from June to October and the flowers from December to April, or even later in mild autumns. Use in moderation, see notes at top of sheet." Appears as if Oxalic acid is a Calcium binder and can reduce intestinal absorption of Calcium - hence the recommendation that it is fine as a garnish or to enhance salads, but should not be eaten in large quantities. I just realized that I threw out a large quantity of this a couple of weeks ago when I thoroughly weeded my garden! When it grows back (as it inevitably will) I will pluck a few leaves to try!

Thanks for your help everyone. andiesenji, I do have a book on Australian bush tucker. However - as rollingobject says, it is not applicable to Victoria. Very few of those species grow down here. They are more applicable to Queensland or the Northern Territory, but not Victoria. Sylvia - thank you for your suggestion. I will look for that book. rollingobject - very helpful link, thank you! I have seen some blackberries grow wild (e.g. on Flinders Street, on the fencing right next to the main road) but I haven't been game to pluck one to try.

Lately I have grown more adventurous - trying things I normally wouldn't eat. Last night I tried eating a tulip petal - it was delicious. Slightly sweet and not offensive at all. I know that Ben Shewry forages for herbs and plants that grow wild in Melbourne. Unfortunately I am not as clever as Ben and I don't know what is edible, and what isn't. Does anybody know what plants that grow wild can be eaten? Preferably with a picture

I have eaten in Quay and tried cooking some of the recipes from the book. The biggest issue I have (and you will have) is the garnishes. Unless you have some of those herbs and flowers growing at home, you will be extremely lucky to find parsley flowers, coriander flowers, etc. in your local market. I actually went through the trouble of growing my own nasturtium and a few other plants that he needs just so that I could make some of his recipes. The book is beautiful and pulls no punches. It is worth attempting a dish, even if you can not complete it, just so you learn the secrets behind the restaurant. I bought the "Noma" book by Redzepi on the same day. That book is useless by comparison. Most of the dishes are based on stuff that he forages for in Norway. Well, none of that grows in sunny Australia so about the only thing "Noma" is good for is plating ideas. The Quay book is prettier, showcases more techniques, and is more accessible.

I don't know if mine is the correct technique or not, but it works. My aim is to produce a nice crust with a medium rare interior. Problem is, fish cooks very quickly - by the time you get a nice crust, the interior is overcooked. Solution: 1. Lightly coat the surface with caster sugar. You do not want to taste the sugar - the idea is the sugar caramelizes, encourages the Maillard reaction, and then disappears. 2. Cook the fish straight from the fridge. For thinner cuts, I sometimes put it in the freezer for half an hour to get it really cold. 3. Use very high heat. For some thicker pieces of fish, or for more dense fish, the method sometimes works too well and the interior remains undercooked. If this happens, finish cooking in the oven.

^^^ I'm glad that someone appreciates my sense of humour ... Seriously, great thread. Learning so much about pressure cooking. Shelby's blog was especially interesting - next time I make fried chicken, I will try to pressure steam a piece to see what happens. Quite eye opening to see how much fat dripped out with that method!

Thank you both. That scotches that idea, then.

For quite a while I have been trying to perfect my fried chicken recipe. Every recipe I have tried results in the same texture of crust - shattering crispiness. I have tried deep frying at different temperatures, varied the amount of resting between dredging and frying (frying immediately after dredging causes crust to fall off, a 1 hour rest seems to be the best), and even tried spraying water on the batter, and the opposite - dehydrating the crust in a low temperature oven. I am after a KFC-like crust. Don't ask me why - I was brought up eating it and that's what I want! I was chatting to someone about my fried chicken when he revealed he was a former KFC employee. This is what he said: Aha! So that's the secret! Well, I have a valve regulated pressure cooker, but I am VERY wary of deep frying anything in it under pressure. Water will boil at 121C at 2 bar of pressure, and the water temp will not rise any more because of the pressure regulation - it will vent steam. Oil will not behave in the same way - I suspect that the oil temperature will keep rising. The steam from the chicken will build up 1 bar of pressure and then vent, but I know that 1 bar of pressure will not correspond to the oil temperature, which I have no way of measuring. I suspect that the temperature will run away and some kind of disaster will await me when I release the pressure and open the lid. Perhaps water condensate will drip back into the oil and make it splatter everywhere. Or worse, the damn thing might catch fire in a spectacular way. Is there a SAFE way to deep fry in a pressure cooker? Or is it truly the bomb?

Melbourne, Australia here. Still waiting for the phone call from my bookshop

Hi Chris, I know what you mean when you say you like the look of the Aria menu. If you mean "good, solid food which is well executed that I could eat every day" then Aria won't disappoint. But if I were to take the trouble of going to Sydney, I want to see what they are capable of, and not have to pay more for food which is just as good (and cheaper) in La Luna. My pick of Melbourne restaurants: Rockpool, the two Movida's (but not Movida next door), Cutler, Cumulus, Verge. Could do better: Maze, Fifteen, Grossi Florentino. Disappointments: Ezard (nearly everything was over-seasoned), Pearl (the Duck curry was plain awful).

Hi Chris, i'm from Melbourne too. On our last trip to Sydney, we ate at Quay, Tetsuya's, and Aria. Quay - without doubt Australia's no. 1 restaurant. The critics say so, and I think they are right! Everything that came out was unfailingly pretty, perfectly cooked, and had an incredible complexity of subtle flavours and aromas. The mud crab congee was to die for. The broth was clear and smelt powerfully of ginger. Yet when you taste it, the expected pungency of ginger was quite muted. Everyone has seen the guava snow egg on Masterchef. If you taste it in real life (especially with the accompanying wine, which tastes exactly like the dessert) - you will never encounter anything so refreshing, with so many contrasts in texture, and yet so subtle in flavour. After I finished my dinner I told the waiter that I have nothing left to live for. Tetsuya - not as good as Quay, but still better than anything in Melbourne. Everything was done to a very high standard - food was perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned, and plated with a delicate touch. Everyone's plate looked absolutely identical, almost as if they were photocopies of each other. Score one for consistency. I was amazed by some of the dishes - chicken that was daringly cooked until it was only just done - unbelievably tender and moist. Similarly, the grilled prawn and confit fish were only just cooked to the point of doneness and dressed with the simplest of dressings. The precision and consistency of every dish was amazing, and is not something you see very often. The service was examplary - they really looked after us. Aria - a good restaurant, but the food was rather boring. I have nothing to complain about the quality of the food, but you can eat similar quality pork belly, lamb, and chicken at countless places in Melbourne. I place Aria somewhere around the standard of Maze, but even then Maze sometimes shows flashes of inspiration and creativity that are missing in Aria. Not worth mentioning "Aria" in the same sentence as Quay or Tetsuya. I haven't been to any of the other restaurants on your list. Oh and BTW Chris ... it was me who has been commenting in your blog

Don't you think an Asian grocer will look at you funny if you went up to him and asked for Brassica rapa chinensis (Latin for Bok Choy) If you google the names we have mentioned, you will find the vegetable.