ChrisTaylor

Revisit time. Glenmorangie Nectar D'Or. Sweet. Caramel. Stone fruit. Soft fruit. Syrupy texture. Like something that could be served with ice cream.

Revisit time. Glenmorangie Nectar D'Or. Sweet. Caramel. Stone fruit. Soft fruit. Syrupy texture. Like something that could be served with ice cream.

Toi Toi Clutha Pinot Noir '11. The '12 seems divisive on the review front: glowing, glowing, glowing as oppose to downright hateful. Maybe the younger one is a different beast to this but I think it's okay. Fresh blackberry. Juicy. Soft tannin. Strong oak on the tail.

New Cooper's. Artisan Reserve. A pilsner. Clean. Accessible compared to, say, Cooper's vintage offerings or even their flagship Sparkling Ale. It's marketed as a craft beer but, honestly, tastes a little ... generic. Bitter. Crisp. Fairly carbonated. Malt. Like one of any number of approachable tap beers. That's not to say it's bad ... but it's not something you'd even pick up as a change if your go-to beer was something else from the Cooper's range. Not their finest hour. [Host's note: To avoid an excessive load on our servers this topic has been split. The discussion continues here]

I think here--not that I've had it--it's slightly more expensive than the 10 year old classic. Now, I haven't purchased the classic in three years or so--although I'll probably replace my distiller's edition with it--but I reckon it's one of the best entry-level malts on the market. Hard to beat.

A Hart Brothers bottling of Coal Ila. It was bottled at eleven years, making it a year younger than the entry-level official bottling. Had this bottle for ages but only just got around to opening it. Nose: Harsh. Closed. Almost ... chemical. Like you'd be using this stuff to fuel a vehicle. Adding water brings out classic Islay. Entry is a bit harsh, sharp. Some sweetness in the background. Prickly. Hint of citrus. Iodine. Salt. Caramel on the tail. Lingers for a few seconds then disappears.

Octopus, bacon and root vegetables Octopus was cold smoked for about 90 minutes. It was then cooked sous vide (77C/5 hours) before being 'peeled' and seared briefly. The root vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, fennel and parsnips with a little bit of garlic) were roasted. The bacon--my own--was diced and slowly crisped with some diced purple potatoes. I hit the finished dish with some parsley and lemon juice for freshness.

Bump. Oddly enough, it's Etienne Dupont's cider that inspired me to either find an old cider thread or start one. Crisp. Acidic. Tart. Clean. A bit of ... texture to it, some viscosity, like you'd associate with fresh, unmolested apple juice. Could see this working nicely with a bright seafood dish or some nice pork sausages. One of the best ciders I've had in a while. I mean, it's no Eric Bordelet, but it's also not $70 a bottle.

Revisiting Talisker Distiller's Edition '96. A wee bit of water really opens it up. Some fruit. Rich syrup. Not in that shallow, sweet kind of way ... more in the way bold, wintery satisfying way of butterscotch sauce. Peat. Lingering.

Cooper's Vintage '13. Some months on from when I originally tasted it. A big beer. 2.1 standards. Malt then yeast then more malt and then some hops. A robust, satisfying beer. Can't do much better locally, I think.

I'm in Australia. For much of the year the choice, unless one wants to purchase something like a wine fridge, is between fridge temperatures and a rather cheerfully warm 'room temperature'.

I've only made it a couple of times so my experience is limited, but I simply wrapped it in a couple of layers of cheesecloth and let it cure in the fridge. The surface was dry, yeah, but didn't seem noticeably drier than, say, a slab of store-bought prosciutto.

I just made this using almost the last of my Wild Turkey 101 and some KWV 10. It's a beast.

Opened a not-too-expensive 'dry red' at random to cook with. Left myself only just enough for a couple glasses. Shame, I'm enjoying it. Domaine Fond Croze Cuvee Romanaise. 2009/Rhone villages. Big blackberry. Fades into tannin ... but not too much. The Rhone villages and French wine in general are relatively new to me. Not that my wine palate is particularly flash. There's a subtle ... and I mean real subtle, to the point I wonder if I'm imaging in it, smoky savouriness to it. For a big wine it verges on what a beer drinker would deem 'easy drinking'. Shame about the bulk going into sugo, I guess ...

Lasr time I made beer I used carbonation drops. This time I am being steered in the direction of batch priming: 120g sugar to 20l of beer, the sugar dissolved in boiling water. I've been told I can use malt extract for this purpose. I want that flavour profile. Would I just use 120g or would I need more/less based on, say, malt extract's Brix rating as opposed to table sugar's Brix rating?

A fascinating series of photos, liuzhou. The beasties hanging on the right are dogs, right? How widely available is the meat? Is there any notable public outcry, as I've heard there is in South Korea?

Bump. I'm making the hot brown again, this time with a couple of key additions: a heavily reduced chicken stock (I'm aiming for a gravy-like quality to the sauce) and some homemade bacon. Having braised my bacon before, I find it adds a heavily smoky note to everything it touches. I could see that working in this context.

Flush It refers to wealth. Your new hobby isn't cheap.

So if I understand you, you're looking to expand your horizons. Right? Just not into things like offal. Even though foie gras is expensive offal and arguably has a flavour profile more assertive than sweetbreads. I'd urge you to rethink the offal thing. I mean, I'd argue that part of being a carnivore is moving beyond the rib eye. That's not to say you'll like every smell, texture or flavour but to write off things enjoyed by much of the world's population throughout history, including your people, sort of goes against your mission. I don't want to bang on about this point or derail the thread, but a gourmet is someone that enjoys good. He or she approaches food with an open mind. I mean, if you think about foie gras for a moment -- why do you desire it but no other kinds of offal? Because Escoffier drops it like a comma? Surely it's not the 'Frenchness'--I mean, otherwise you'd jump wholeheartedly on board the nose-to-tail bandwagon, right? Is it because it's expensive? Anyway. You've listed some really, really, really broad categories. Cheese? I mean, I've tried a lot of cheeses and I still feel like I'm only dipping my toes in the water. I'd argue that in addition to just tasting the stuff you're going to want a decent cheese shop or deli. Not only so you can buy the products--I mean, I'm sure you can probably order a good variety of cheeses online now--but so you can actually learn something about the products from people that love and understand them. Same applies to charcuterie, something else worth exploring. You might want to dip your toes into the world of game meat. Some big classics that might be right up your alley--hare royale, for instance. Only it has the hare's blood in it. To thicken the sauce. Are you looking to be able to say that, yes, you've had wagyu and that yes, you've consumed 50 year old Glenfiddich or are you looking to say you can really appreciate the qualities of, say, grain-fed wagyu in comparison to some high end grass fed beef? The big ticket items, with their household names and high price tags, can be lovely but aren't necessarily the best of what is available, merely what is in high demand. This is true of perhaps every category you've listed in your post. And I'd argue that it's perhaps impossible to appreciate the good stuff--and to separate the expensive and good from what which is merely expensive--without understanding the context in which it sits. You're not going to 'get' an independent bottling of an unusual expression of single malt whisky without first developing your palate won a lot of other whiskies. Similarly, until you've developed a palate a high end bottle of Bordeaux is probably wasted on you. I know that the good stuff with regards to wine is largely wasted on me. In short, I'm not having a go at you. When I first set out to 'try all the things' I too was eager to tick off all the big name items--caviar, foie gras, truffle and so on--so I can understand where you're coming from. At the same time, though, appreciating as opposed to merely consuming nice food involves opening yourself to a lot of experiences and being prepared, at times, to focus on one or two things and learn a lot about them through experience, listening to knowledgeable people, asking questions and reading. It also involves forming your own opinions, which may or may not line up with some classical perspective on what is worth spending a lot of money on. It wasn't long, for instance, before I decided I preferred the aroma of porcini mushrooms--you know, the plain old dried kind--to truffle.

Interesting to see the shell used in the presentation of the final dish. Turtle is a meat I've never had but am somewhat curious about, as I've heard glowing reviews and hugely negative ones (Heston Blumenthal's efforts at making turtle soup in his historical feast series). Have you had it? I mean, judging by the photo, I assume you've partaken. How would you describe the flavour profile and texture?

The sort of rib eye you describe is commonly sold in Australia. Most of our readily available steaks have little to no marbling. Lean, lean, lean. Nonetheless, I've had pleasing results cooking such steaks sous vide. In your situation, saute in butter or cook sous vide. If you've gently cooked the steak in a water bath the last thing you want to do is allow the internal temperature to creep up beyond whatever your original target temperature was. And it's not like you want to drop a knob of butter into a screaming hot pan. Use neutral oil with a high smoke point--or no oil, if you've got a non-stick pan--when searing a steak cooked sous vide. If you want the buttery thing, tho', you could always melt some butter (maybe a compound butter of some description) and brush small quantities of this on your sliced steak.

I find it interesting they sell turtles, tortoises and terrapins. Is there enough demand for this sort of product--reptile meat, I guess--that stores sell three varieties of meat that I assume would taste very similar? What is normally done with the turtle meat?

Revisiting anCnoc 12. Grainy. Sweet. A bit of chocolate ... malt ... Milo territory. I've warmed to this one. Of the various entry-level expressions of malts readily available to Australian consumers this is one of the most colourful.

A local IPA: Sleeping Giant. For a beer that isn't of my preferred style--I tend to find a lot of the designer IPAs overdone in the hop department, almost like someone's trying to prove something--I like this. Easy drinking.

Yesterday I cold smoked two different kinds of bacon for 12 hours over macadamia pellets. The pellets are supposedly made only from the nut itself and the shell. I found with my soldering iron-based smoker, at least, in which the heating element has direct contact with the wood that pellets produced a more consistent level of smoke than 'sawdust' does. Note that tastings were done as soon as the bacon came out of the smoker. I plan on leaving them to air dry in the fridge for a day or two before portioning/freezing. Anyway, I used two different recipes for bacon. The first was based on the very simple bacon recipe in Ruhlman's book, although I messed with the spicing a little: a bit of pepper, a bit of sugar, a few juniper berries. Significantly less salt than the second one. I didn't so much measure the salt to the gram as rub salt all over the piece of meat and vac pack it and leave it alone for a week. This batch tastes smoky but doesn't taste as cured as the second piece. I could see this piece working well for breakfast rashers. The second piece was cured in the fashion detailed in John Currence's book, although again I made some changes to the spicing. A lot more salt, a hell of a lot sugar, a lot of pepper and some dried bird's eye chilli. I went easy on the later as I wasn't sure how much heat would transfer into the meat. I only vac packed this one for four days before smoking it but, perhaps due to the higher quantity of salt and slightly thinner cut of meat, find it tastes more cured than the older one. It's a bit salty but not horribly so like the first time I attempted this recipe (the first time round, I got lazy in cleaning off the cure before smoking the meat). Maybe slightly too salty for a breakfast rasher--although I was wasting a bit off the end--but I reckon it'd work nicely in a burger, salad or pot of beans. It's nowhere near as sweet as I'd have expected from all the muscovado sugar I used or from all the molasses-coloured water that filled the bag.