ChrisTaylor

The brisket glazed w/ peach (peach jam + bourbon + braising liquid = glaze) is good, altho' in my case the 4.5 hours was way too long to braise a piece of flat. I pulled it at 4 hours and it was almost overdone then. He says you must not ever never even think about peeking at it before the full 4.5 is up. If I'd left it that long I'd end up with pho.

I bought a bottle of Spanish brandy just to make this. Wonderful drink, Rafa. You're an artist.

The piggy burgers are very good. I'm sure I can find another use for the sun-dried tomato ketchup. I suspect it'd be nice in chicken or beef burgers, too. I didn't have or feel like making any pork crackling so I used a slice of leftover char siu. I cooked it in the pan until crisp. Different, yeah, but the flavour profile worked with what the burger already offered. I'd make these again, altho' next time I reckon I'd make my own patty from a mixture of freshly minced pork shoulder and pork belly rather than buying pre-minced pork.

Sierra Nevada's rye beer. First Sierra Nevada I thought was truly excellent.

This is very good.

A couple of good ones from New Zealand brewer, Tuatara: their Aotearoa Pale Ale and India Pale Ale. Both are excellent. Worth us annexing New Zealand for. If you're Stateside or wherever and someone local stops NZ beers--I suspect it's hard enough to get Australian ones, so I doubt you'll be in luck--then you want both of these.

Usually water. Occasionally wine, beer or whisk(e)y. Rarely: a cocktail of some description.

Keith_W is the man to speak to about this.

Buffalo Trace and Nikka from the Barrel.

The miso-braised chicken is very good.

Oh yeah. Gets to the point where slicing limes is a serious OH&S minefield.

I made the 'darkly braised lamb shoulder' today. It is braised in a mixture of bourbon, chicken stock, black bean sauce and ketchup with a little soy sauce, dark chocolate and balsamic vinegar. A variety of vegetables--onions, carrots, celery, garlic and button mushrooms--are cooked in the same pot as the lamb. It is very good.

Fresh ginger.

I made the pork rice bowl. The pork patties are very good.

I liked the hot brown, altho' I put the braised turkey in a sandwich rather than in a bowl full of croutons.

I think in The Fat Duck Cookbook or maybe one of his television shows Blumental mentioned how, when he first tried to make a 'sardines on toast'-flavoured icecream he kept missing the mark. He eventually realised the flaw in what he was doing: he wasn't using the canned sardines and mass-produced white bread of his childhood.

I've just put a pot of the hot brown-style turkey drumsticks in the oven. I've never had hot brown before so I don't really have much to compare it to.

I made two dishes tonight Lamb shanks braised w/ cashew gravy. Very good. You start w/ the gravy: a mix of chicken stock, beer, spices (garam masala, smoked paprika, turmeric, cumin), garlic, ginger and onion. This is cooked for a while then blitzed in a food processor. It is poured over the seared lamb shanks. I'm guessing he's drawing on the idea of a korma here. Whatever. I liked it.Bourbon/ginger carrots. He uses baby carrots. I sliced some normal carrots, purely because the supermarket was all out of babies. I liked this a lot ... altho' it's very sweet. He suggested 1/4 cup of sugar for about the same quantity of bourbon and a half kilo of carrots (there's also some butter and, yeah, ginger going on). I used less. Even then, the resulting sauce is syrupy and sweet.I like the three dishes I've made so far.

The T-bone steak hit with a habanero (I used bird's eye chilli instead) and lemongrass marinade is very good. Will make this again.

We shall see. At a dollar a pop for hocks I am prepared to experiment.

Still terrified of the idea of cooking with cola. I imagine it would be cloying. Especially the ham hocks.

This landed on my doorstep today. It was a blind buy. I had no idea who Edward Lee was. The book was an Amazon recommendation, not that I purchased it through them, based on the fact (I guess) that I like Momofuku and Eat With Your Hands. I read the description and a couple reviews and knew right away that, at the very least, I'd get enough enjoyment from the book to justify the price of admission. Never mind who Edward Lee was. Anyway. The book itself. Yet to cook anything from it but ... More accessible than Momofuku. I loooooove Chang's book--it's maybe one of my favourites--and have cooked from it a lot but I guess I didn't realise until I picked up Edward Lee's book that Chang assumes you're familiar with the basic ingredients and flavours that he works with. Lee, on the other hand, figures it's possible you've never bought a bottle of fish sauce before. He doesn't assume you're a total nuffy, tho'. He instructs you to and encourages you to make a stovetop smoker to prepare pulled lamb, for instance.The recipes, while they have kim chi and whatnot here and there--and there's a rice bowl recipe for each of the meat-based chapters, too--are really southern. There's probably more Americanness to this book than Koreanness. I mean, fried chicken and waffles?A very meat-heavy book. The link w/ Chang, Bourdain and Pelaccio isn't just an attitude/Asian-American fusion thing.There's a lot of recipes that use a lot of bourbon.This is a cups and tablespoons book and not a grams book.Lots of bold flavouirs. Mushroom jerky. Jalapeno (a favourite ingredient) pickles jacked w/ bourbon. Braised lamb shoulder. Lamb bacon. A bourbon-and-Coke meatloaf sandwich. Chicken and country ham pho. Ham hocks braised in cola. Pork burgers jacked w/ hoisin and sauced with a sun dried tomato ketchup. Pickled corn and bacon relish. You get the idea.Flipping through the book, there are a lot of things I want to cook. That's always a good sign, yeah?

Bump. Saw a blog post somewhere the other day about this book and figured, hey, maybe someone else is planning on buying it. I've cooked a few recipes from this book and, to be honest, have had mixed luck. The green papaya salad and beef rendang are very good. I've made the rendang a couple of times: as it should be made, not modified into a slow cooker bullshit recipe. The beef cheeks, braised with approx ten thousand ingredients, are great. There are a few duds, tho'. The master stock (used in the beef cheeks and the braised pork belly) is very good but the braised pork belly, which I just made tonight actually ... isn't.

Suspect, still, that Shel_B's onto something w/ the size of the prawn playing a crucial role in all this. Larger prawn = larger poo tube = larger quantity of poo. EDIT And, yeah, totally agree. Shelling and cleaning school prawns? Forget this.

La Molisanna or Dececco. Of course, if it's a work night and I finish after my local Italian deli has closed I defualt to what's avaliable at the supermarket: Barilla.