ChrisTaylor

Del Maguey Chichicapa.

Do you have a copy of the 2009 edition of Larousse? This recipe may be in older editions but I don't have access to them. Anyway. pp185-186 has a recipe for caribou tenderloin with blueberries. In summary: The meat is cooked in a pan. Just like you're planning on doing.Meat is removed to rest. Into the pan goes a lone diced shallot and 45 g wild blueberries. Cook for a minute. This makes enough sauce for 1.2 kg meat so adjust accordingly, I guess.Deglaze above w/ 50mL aged balsamic and 200mL red wine.Add 200mL veal or game stock.Reduce by half. Drop heat to low. Add 45g wild blueberries, some green peppercorns and a knob of butter. Season.I can't vouch for the sauce. I just remembered that Larousse Gastronomique had something the moment I saw the thread title.

An Australian martini. First martini that I think I like, too, even tho' it's not going to topple things like the Saz or Negroni any time soon. 5:1 West Winds Cutlass to Maidenii classic vermouth.

Maidenii's classic vermouth. A relatively new Australian vermouth. Priced at the premium end of the market, I guess, altho' any half way drinkable vermouth in Australia is costly. It was a blind buy. Slightly sweet but really herbal, complex, rich. I'm just drinking it straight at the moment, which I never do with vermouth. Curious to see how it'll stand up in a Negroni or Manhattan. A little suspicious the Campari and gin will totally dominate it.

Are you able to borrow a copy of Ferran Adria's Family Meal? I say this because that book has mostly cost effective meals that are easily scaled up.

It is. All alcohol here--although not so much with Australian wine--is subject to high taxes. There's always constant chatter, too, about raising them on public health grounds. Higher taxes = lower consumption, apparently. It's probably worth noting, though, that our incomes are a bit higher. ~$50 for a case of most kinds of beer isn't as obscene as you'd think.

Amaro Sibila as James Ellroy. Dark. Bitter. Complex. Deliberately offensive to a whole lot of people. And just that little bit sweet. Monte Alban mezcal--the cheap shite with the worm--as Cormac McCarthy. Mouth-filling seediness. Subtle as Judge Holden.

Comforting favourites, as of late. Sazerac and The Man Comes Around.

Define 'pretty much all the base spirits.'. The way some of the cocktail nerds might define these maybe differs from how someone ... normal might. Do you have mezcal? What kind of rums do you have? What sort of gins? Etc. Anyway. Try a Manhattan. 2:1 of either the Carpano or Punt e Mes and some rye. Plus a dash of bitters. If you don't have any rye in your collection you could use bourbon. Go for a bourbon that's heavy in wheat or rye. Check out the related Hanky Panky, too. Similar drink: gin instead of rye whiskey. If you had Campari you could make a Negroni. Equal parts Campari plus Punt Mes and gin. A few worthy variations. Your choice of sweet vermouths suggests you'll like Campari. I assume you have a bottle of bitters on hand. If you don't, drop everything and go out and get a bottle of Angostura. Without a bottle of bitters you're very limited. Peychaud's, orange bitters, etc are all lovely--and worthy purchases--but if you have no bitters at all start with Angostura. The Old Fashioned. Yeah, I know, lemon twist ... but you can live without it. If you have a decent collection of base spirits and bitters you can spin variations from this. Base an OF on gin, rum, tequila, scotch or damn near anything else in addition to the standard rye. It's a bit of a monster but I also like the Vieux Carre.

Couple of quick questions about the basic country ham (the one in the style of Serrano, San Danielle, etc). They call for a full leg of pork. About 5-6 kilos of meat, from memory. I want to use a 1-2 kilo piece of meat because this is a trial run and I'm not even sure my curing environment is suitable. Is this okay? Will it significantly shorten the drying time or should I still figure on the 4-5 months?Is the bone critical? Sometimes I can only find leg pieces at the size I want with the bone already removed.Instead of parking it in a box during the salt curing process, can I just vac seal it?

In addition to the above I've used them in cocktail bitters. I've also seen them used in ice cream.

Endeavour True Vintage Seasonal Somethingorother. It was pretty good. Not crazy different to most other Aussie craft ales but perfectly drinkable. And, tonight, another Oakham: the Bishop's Farewell. Hoppy. Dry. Okay. I liked it better than the other Oakham but ... nothing about either compels me to run out and buy up all the Oakhams I can find.

I made the Cape Malay curry last night. It's good.

Another local. The awkwardly-branded Vale/Lgr New/World/Lager/////. Really. Five forward slashes in a row. They're not fooling around. It's a serviceable lager. The most interesting aspect is the finish. Has a sort of ... breakfast cereal-ish quality to it. Like a spoonful of dry Rice Bubbles. Burleigh Brewing's 70s style 28 Pale Ale. Verging on utility beer.

Rendang might be another good choice. It's inauthentic, but I'm fold of Zak Pelaccio's recipe. The fact that it's a bit moister than the classic might help it withstand the conditions of a pot luck, too.

I've been on a real Zombie kick lately. I've settled, for the moment, on this trio of rums: Appleton 12 Mount Gay XO (in place of the El Dorado, which is hard to find and very expensive here--and is the only demerara that's actually available, unless you count expensive plantation stuff) Ron el Santiago (a Cuban rum--near the end of it, will replace it with some Havana Club I'm happy with it. The only overproof rums I can access are unsuitable (Inner Circle Green), fiercely expensive for what they are (Bacardi) or substandard (Bundaberg). I think the drink is boozy enough, anyway. I use Cuban in place of Puerto Rican because the only PR rum that's readily available here is Bacardi.

Bad photo. Oak-smoked kangaroo fillet (cold smoked then grilled) with roasted vegetables. The cooked 'roo and vegetables were both treated with smoked butter.

Why not make bunny chow? You could maybe serve it in small diner rolls instead of the usual half loaf. A relatively simple bean curry served in a soft roll. So long as you have some way of keeping them warm, I think this could work. EDIT As for the India-derived sort of South African curry, it's my understanding--and I suspect I may be open for correction on this--that over the years they've the region-specific attributes you'd associate with an actual Indian curry. i.e. Northern and Southern Indian cuisines are different (and there are numerous subdivisions within those broad categories) whereas curries that have entered the ... canon via South Africa have a general sense of Indianness about them. People used what they had and/or lost the attachment they had to specific regional styles of food preparation. Plus there was probably a bit of cross-pollination with the Cape Malay, etc.

A couple locals: Bridge Road Brewers Celtic Red Ale. By about half way through the bottle this one had grown on me a whole lot. Wicked Elf Witbier. I basically love wheat beers by default--and really malty beers, too--so this one was winner from the outset. Maybe not as good as Murray's Whale Ale, my favourite Australian wheat beer, but still bloody good.

Because it seems like the thing to do when you have your first batch of homemade falernum waiting to be used I made a Zombie. I used the last of my Mt Gay Eclipse in place of the golden Puerto Rican rum that Kindred calls for. EDIT The Zombie is aptly-named. A slow-moving, shambling beast of a beverage. Best served in more-than-one quantities. Makes you want another, even though that still-human part of your brain insists that's a bad fucking idea.

And there's that, yes. This also applied to doing what some people online do--modifying a cheap galvanized bin (some of these people even use these bins as hot smokers). Of course, with the tools we had hacking up a fuel can was hard enough. I don't think we'd have been able to hack holes in a metal bin.

What didn't you like about gin? And what spirits do you like? Gin is diverse enough a category that the answers to those questions are critical.

Another Baird: Suruga Bay Imperial IPA. Didn't do as much for me as the other two but I wasn't surprised by this--I rarely enjoy IPAs. Oakham Ales' Citra. It's ... okay but is a bit much. As in, it's just not compelling enough, despite not being one dimensional, to justify the 500 mL portion.

What nickrey said. I mean, are these things truly and utterly impossible to access or merely difficult? I'm assuming the latter, if your intent is for someone--perhaps the sort of especially committed person that cooks from books that regularly call for hard-to-find ingredients, such as The Big Fat Fat Duck Cookbook--at some point to prepare these dishes. If the end user can maybe, with a lot of effort and some expense, find the ingredients then it's reasonable to expect that you, as the author, should be prepared to do the same. I mean, look ... I've eaten a lot of game meat. I've tracked down and eaten some things that, while legal in Australia, aren't exactly something butchers place in their display cases. And you know what? As much as I love game meat--be it kangaroo or warthog--there are a variety of reasons why mostly people eat pork and beef and lamb and goat and chicken. These animals are all much easier to domesticate, to be sure, than most things sold as game, but the reasons why beef, pork, et al are more popular go beyond that. My point is (and I know I've come at this in a roundabout way) that how do you know--as someone that has no experience with these exotic ingredients--that the exotic alternative is superior to the intensively-farmed, readily available version? I'm not meaning to be all-out dismissive of tradition here, but eating in a way that people have eaten for tens of thousands of years? What's the point unless it tastes good? By and large, traditional foodstuffs aren't something that were prepared because they tasted great. They were consumed out of necessity.

The man at the timber yard recommended oak. He supplied a sample piece. Said sample had the tongue and grove pre-cut--Ben and I both liked it.