ChrisTaylor

The festival of pig continues http://cookingthroughlarousse.blogspot.com/2010/12/rib-sticking-goodness.html

Indeed it is pork night. Tonight I'll be cooking pork spare ribs a la Larousse.

Loin of pork bonne femme with a sage and onion sauce. #41 and 42 in my Larousse Gastronomique journey.

I'd never seen Top Chef until now--doesn't free on free-to-air television in Australia, so far as I know--but I'm ten minutes in now with the first episode of season eight and already annoyed by everyone.

Recent Larousse: Rack of lamb Veal chops a la Milanaise

Yeah. I'll have a list of allergies. Schools here are generally nut-free zones, anyway. Especially in terms of stuff the school provides to kids. I'll dig around for some gluten-free and egg-free recipes for any kids with those issues.

I want to be able to make birthday cakes for my students. Catering for different tastes and for primary school kids, I figure cupcakes are better than a full-sized sponge. I can make 2-3 batches for the class in different flavours. I don't need to bring a knife into the classroom and muck around cutting portions. I'm going to ask them what flavours they like in fruits/vegetables/etc and try and work from that. I mean, if I can get away with having more than bog standard chocolate cupcakes, that'd be cool. If a kid really likes, say, oranges, to make an orange cupcake would be cool. Or a beetroot cupcake. Or whatever. I want to get some experimentation in to see what's possible with the cupcake format as I don't do a lot of baking. What's a good base recipe for cupcakes that I can, within obvious limitations (i.e. adding too many solid things like berries/chocolate chips, too much of a liquid ingredient, too much of some powdered ingredient like cocoa powder would impact in a negative way on the end result), modify? What's the best way of flavouring cakes--and I mean the sponge here, not the icing. Ideally I'd like to avoid the expense of speciality ingredients like freeze dried blueberry powder.

Last night: Larousse Gastronomique's moussaka and rice a la grecque. Tonight: chicken cooked in beer, sauteed potatoes and asparagus.

If the school was paying for it I'd go for tournedos Rossini--presented in a more modern fashion, of course--with a colourful medley of vegetables, all turned beautifully and cooked perfectly.

Last night I cooked my 25th, 26th and 27th Larousse recipes. The highlight: Cooked in duck fat, of course.

I recently replaced my Global. I went to two kitchenware shops and tried a lot of knives. Nothing so expensive as a MAC--my budget was nowhere near that high--but, still, almost everything in the <$200AUD price range (and a little bit over). The weight and handle shape of the Wusthoffs worked for me better than anything else I tried. Personal preference and all.

Old reply but, on sourcing 'roo tail: Go to either an Asian butcher (really) or a poultry butcher that either has a sideline in game or, at least, is nice enough to order in whatever you want. From memory 'roo tail is about seven dollars per kilo. Heard it's prone to drying out something awful. You'd maybe be able to source wallaby from the same butcher.

Rabbit stew with lemon and garlic from Larousse Gastronomique.

Hamburgers a la Larousse Gastronomique.

57.

It is God, isn't it?

Last assignment ever after seven years of university. Situation calls for some cognac, not that there is such a thing as a non-fine cognac. Sadly--well, not sadly--all I have is Laphroaig.

Depends a bit on the storage conditions but I'd imagine they'd be a bit sad after maybe a week in the fridge.

You're an artist, David. That veal is a work of art.

That pork looks good. Tonight I'm on recipe 11, 12 and 13 from Larousse: saute chicken Stanley (essentially chicken with a creamy mushroom and onion sauce laced with curry powder and chilli powder), glazed carrots and sauteed potatoes.

I've seen people eat it after maybe a year so, I guess, roll the dice.

Dish #10 from Larousse: tajine of lamb and broad beans.

Valrhona. Or, locally, in Melbourne, the single origin chocolate from Monsieur Truffe.

Recipes 5, 6, 7 & 8 from my Larousse project. Chicken with archiduc sauce Cucumber salad with vinaigrette Green beans

I've started my Larousse challenge--cooking through the book, making few concessions as possible--and one thing that's struck me, one thing where I am making concessions, is their choice of frying medium. I'm not a health Nazi. If it tastes good and I can say okay, I only eat this once a fortnight/month/year, I'll use whatever is suggested. I mean, I won't fry stuff in butter every day, but if I think it'll work for a particular dish, I'm not too fussed. Normal times, I use olive oil, largely because I prefer the smell to the stench of vegetable oil. Larousse uses some, er, interesting frying mediums. Recipe #4 for me is the bacon omelette and they--the crazy bastards--fry bacon in butter. Is there any good reason for this? I mean, bacon surely only needs a tiny smear of oil--possibly not even that in a non-stick pan--as it generates its own grease. I'm worried, aside from the health aspect, that butter and bacon grease just wouldn't work together. Too, there are still a lot of recipes that use lard as the frying medium. Is there any good reason for frying in lard? I've used lard when roasting potatoes--inferior to duck fat, but still okay--but I've never used it to, say, fry a steak. This, the 2009 edition, has clearly been updated in a lot of important ways, but the choice of frying mediums strikes me as one of the most obviously outdated aspects of the book. Are these frying mediums the norm for restaurants in France? Just as sometimes butter is the best frying medium, is lard ever the best? Are there situations when substituing it would detract noticeably from the dish?