ChrisTaylor

Fantastic find. The negative reviews on Amazon cite a lot of stuff I can tolerate -- the fake worn look, the little margin notes, etc. What I can't abide is the lack of proper index or contents. I only need one of those and I can make do.

Really? I'd pay Zuni, Thai Food and Kennedy. Then again, I'd put Larousse on my list, and the first Joe Beef book ... so my list is probably quite skewed. Perhaps a more sensible suggestion -- rather than being Negative Nancy to the whole thing -- is to add Locatelli's Made in Italy. And perhaps in place of Larousse I'd put Complete Robuchon. Escoffier, too. I geek out on old sauces and I figure there are worse things to learn than the mother sauces, etc. Momofuku is one of my most-used books, so I guess it'd be on my personal top-25 too. Also, I like that they included a River Cottage book. I'd pick Meat, though.

I think that's the first time I've seen the (original) bench top! Nicely done.

This is an Australian salmon -- no relation (well, ignoring the one all fish have) to actual salmon. I caught this about a week ago and turned it into Thai-style fish cakes. I was very happy with the end result, and failed to see why these fish have a bad reputation. Perhaps it's in the handling -- I bled it straight away and had it cleaned and in the fridge within ~30 minutes. They're a lot of fun to catch, too.

Not exactly relevant for 'first foray into grilling corn', but in re-reading this post I had a flashback: If you've got access to very fresh corn and have a fondness for making, it's worth a shot. To, y'know, replicate something you've maybe never tasted.

I grill it in the husk. Low temp. Maybe 20 mins. Then peel the husks back -- fire helps! -- and season.

This evening I've been assembling choucroute garnie. Total coincidence, but Iggy Pop's Lust for Life is playing in the background. Seems about right.

Do you live somewhere coastal? My inclination would be to put them on a small circle hook and convert them into something fresh.

Kitchen Confidental got me into food, and The Les Halles Cookbook was my first cookbook. You see, I was a just-moved-out-of-home student with pretty much same autistic kid's palate I'd had since forever, and something about his writing convinced me it was okay to try anything. There might be a dozen cookbooks I have a deep love for, but Bourdain's wriitng holds a place in my heart that the Joe Beef book and etc never will. When I was out the other night there was a special on offer -- pig's trotter stuffed with cotechino. It seemed fitting.

I don't own the Lotus book, but I like the Gingerboy book. A lot of recipes, and once you've got a stocked pantry you could make most of them. Nothing too obscure if you can access SE Asian ingredients.

I failed to snap a photo, but the other day I pulled an Australian salmon off the local pier. Now, Australian salmon aren't ... you know, Atlantic salmon. We have that here, yeah, and it's mighty popular -- they farm it, and stock it in a few inland systems, but it ain't what you're getting if someone presents you with the local variety. Australian salmon ... isn't. See: http://goodfishbadfish.com.au/?fish=australian-salmon They get a bad rap, so far as the eating quality goes, but I'd never eaten one. I usually catch-and-release, while a lot of people try to convert them into gummy sharks or similar. The advice from people who do like them is simple: bleed them, chill them, eat them within 24 hours of plucking them from the sea. I did as instructed, feeding the innards to some friendly seagulls, and found the flesh to be tolerable. I don't think I'd be particularly excited to eat fillets of the stuff, but I'd use it in a curry or fish cakes or similar.

If you're planning on fishing for trout or whatever's available locally, some odds-and-ends -- a bit of flour, maybe a small tin of Old Bay -- can be nice. I got the tent thing out of my system when I was a kid, but even when I'm staying in a cabin somewhere I'll pack that.

There's a lot of content on YouTube re: 'egi'. If you've got jetties or rocks somewhere local, and you know there's a weedy or reefy bottom, you can have a go. Most any light rod will do the trick.

I suppose growing it -- or hand-diving or netting or whatever -- could go in that title, too. And. hey, I suppose this thread might end up containing pix of the 'nasty bits'. Anyways, as much as I like cooking, I'm also somewhat interested in the 'primary production' side of things. For instance, this afternoon I caught these guys about 15 minutes from home: All caught on an artificial jig during the middle of the day. The heads and wings I'll use for bait, while I'll get a couple meals out of the tubes. Who else (at least on occasional) hunts, catches, etc dinner?

This advice holds true for Australia, and I can't see why it wouldn't hold true for anywhere else. Antique stores. Charity shops. You might call them something else, but I'm sure the concept exists -- people donate stuff to a shop, the shop sells the stuff, the proceeds from the sale go to whatever charitable cause the shop is affiliated with. Yeah. Anyway, you buy second hand glasses from those places. You can get some killer bargains. You may stumble on a full set of something nice, sold way below whatever it's worth. You may also run into odds and ends -- ones and twos and threes. I like this, given I have limited storage space.