ChrisTaylor

I just made the Negroni too. I couldn't catch the kind of sherry he uses so I (dangerously, yeah?) decided to use what I had on hand: a random Pedro. It's ... okay. Presumably not what he had in mind. Anyway. That third cocktail, I know that the unnamed ingredients (Google powers) are maraschio and absinthe. Now, the absinthe is obviously just a rinse/couple drops but how much cherry liqueur does he use? Anyone know?

In my context--and I suspect this is fairly common--it's been a life saver. Even with a heat diffuser, my gas stovetop (lowest setting, smallest jet) couldn't maintain a simmer. A slow-cooked dish such as a ragu had to go into the oven, for instance. Something like the pork abodo from Modernist Cuisine at Home would wind up with half of the sauce caked and blackened at the bottom of the pressure cooker. The portable induction top has solved these problems. Other uses? Well, you know that Tetsuya recipe (the basic idea also appears in Heston Blumenthal at Home) where he poaches a fillet of salmon or ocean trout in ~50C olive oil? I suspect that'd be a lot easier to do with an induction cooktop than your average domestic gas stove (altho' I suspect you'd also be able to do it with a shitty old electric stovetop--they have their uses, right?). With my NewWave cooktop I've found the temperature settings are only relevant if I'm 'cooking' water. If I set it to 80C I find that the water hovers somewhere between 80 and 85C. 100C will bring it to the boil. I suspect that's what the temperature settings are 'designed' for, for want of a more accurate word. The moment you use another cooking liquid (i.e. oil) or start adding things to the liquid, the temperature settings cease to have any relevance to reality and you're best off just using the wattage adjustment. Maybe it's just because my cooktop is new but I've found it's significantly easier to clean than my gas stovetop if and when things spill on it.

I'd be interested in some nZorbit, altho' I don't want a gigantic tub. Is it too much of a pain for you if I mail you, say, a little plastic tub and you fill it? If it's (understandably) too much effort I'm happy to let someone else take it.

How much rooibos did you add to 750ml brandy?

That looks awesome! I have never heard of this, had to Google it. Fortunately, the web abounds with recipes for this. Something I have to make. You have a smoker, right? Can it maintain a high temperature (i.e. ~225C)? If so you might want to cook the chicken in there (with a very small quantity of a mild timber--nothing so strong as, say, hickory) as the recipe mentions that the chicken should have a slight smokiness to it (I think they cook it in a wood-fired oven at the restaurant). My smoker can't maintain such a high temperature so I only used my oven. I used rosemary, sage and marjoram.

The Zuni Cafe roast chicken with bread salad. I was surprised the meat turned out as juicy as it did, given the very high roasting temperature and the fact I didn't manage to take it from the oven until it as a good 5C above what I'd take it to if I was cooking it sous vide. EDIT If you're wondering where much of the chicken's skin has gone (which is the selling point of the Zuni chicken, supposedly) I ate ... some before taking the photo. Self control is something that happens to other people.

I don't think it's so simple as to say, oh, you're engaging in risk-taking behaviour so we'll exclude you from the public health care system (or universal health care system if, you know, you're residing somewhere that has one or a subsidised medication scheme or something similar). Sure, private insurance companies, they'll charge you based on a number of risk factors. If you smoke, for instance, you pay more for insurance. And that's okay. That's private enterprise doing what it does. If a private insurance company (and do they do this already?) wanted to say, hey, if you're above a certain BMI we'll sting you an extra $x per year, I'd have no problem with that. Find another insurance company if that's really so offensive to you. When it comes to healthcare that's paid for at least in part by the state, tho', no, that's the state's responsibility. I mean, you could drive down the cost to the state by saying to people that, oh, if you live within 2 kilometres of a train station or bus stop you're not allowed to drive. And, too, you're not allowed to drive interstate: you need to take the train or plane. Air travel and rail travel are, after all, significantly safer than driving. Driving when you don't have to is engaging in what is measurably excessively risky behaviour. It really is. And yet it's not up to the state to either disallow driving for certain portions of the (sub)urban population or turn them away/charge them more when they're carted into the emergency room after a car accident. You could also level this against people that, say, own firearms or opt to live somewhere unsafe (high crime rate or some sort of environmental issue, such as prone to bushfires or extreme heat) ... but you shouldn't. They're all behaviours that are bad for your health/maybe bad for someone else's health but none of them justify the state cutting you off. If you want to think of it another way, people that eat poorly also (probably) pay tax. Yes, they might use the system more than you do, but you probably use the taxpayer-funded road network or library or some other taxpayer-funded service/facility a whole lot more than other people. It's no justification for regulating behaviour. EDIT And no, it's not confined to Americans. In Australia we've had (altho' not lately) calls from various 'interest groups' and whatnot to regulate what McDonald's and other fast food chains can sell, when/what they can advertise (i.e. not during times when children are likely to be watching--because we all know how many six-year-olds independently jump in the car and go through the drive thru to load up on cheeseburger happy meals) and how many 'healthy alternatives' they need to include on the menu. Because, you know, it's Ronald's fault that you're fat and you have no control over your own behaviour or what your children eat.

Having Arrack and S&C and IC Green, I suspect that you could sub in .5 Arrack and 1.5 S&C to achieve something approximated IC. If you wanted that result, I mean. It's noticeably funkier than S&C. Incidentally, if anyone Stateside really, truly, madly wants some IC Green (or Red or Black [black is the highest proof variant avaliable]) and is happy to deal with the rather unfriendly postage charges, er, something can be arranged.

No one 'needs' a double bacon cheeseburger or even a plain old 'cheese and beef puck between two slices of whitebread' kind of cheeseburger. No one 'needs' cheesecake. I mean, a slice of cheesecake every now and then--or, yeah, a bacon burger--isn't going to ruin your grand plans of not dying at sixty years of age, but maybe you'd be best off not having it at all. Ever. Drawing a line in there somewhere, where, oh, now it's just become excessive, we can't let people do that ... I'm not a fan of that. You draw the line there but plenty of people would draw it at the cake. I get where you're coming from. Especially in lower socioeconomic areas, some people do make poor choices. They'll eat poorly and smoke and take a significant portion of their limited income and 'invest' it in gambling. And yet, even so, I think the role of the state is only to educate (and to ensure companies are honest enough to make readily avaliable information about ingredients, calory counts, et al) and not to enforce diet plans. On a similar note, I don't think people should be able to come back at McDonald's/Cheesecake Factory/KFC later and attempt to take legal action on the basis of, well, I got really fat and then got really ill. Keep in mind that a fine dining degustation (or meal in general) probably also includes an excessive amount of fat, salt and other 'bad things'. Depending on what you order, a steakhouse or BBQ joint might also cross well over that line of horrifying excess. Sure, there are restaurants that really do make an effort to serve very healthy food (or are serving something there's pretty much good for you to begin with) but it's often very much a 'treat', whether you're paying $10 or $200 per head. Incidentally, in the States are sweet potato fries typically billed as a more interesting and 'healthy' alternative to regular fries in the way they often are here?

The gong bao chicken is very good, altho' the only thing that has changed from Dunlop's original recipe (from memory, anyway) was the length of time the chicken spends in the marinade and maybe the inclusion of a gram of baking soda.

I'll try a finer grind then. I simply went with the advice I'd received elsewhere. Very fine? When I say that it cleans itself it means that I can just rinse it and leave it on the counter to dry. If I was to get another toy, tho', well, I've been coveting a siphon setup ...

After a few half-arsed attempts at using a French press and a 'coffee/tea pot' from the supermarket I've quickly achieved success with the AeroPress, a burr grinder and a pid-controlled kettle (prior to getting the kettle I was using my induction cooktop to quickly and reliably bring the water to 80C without me needing to stand there with a probe, something that's just not any fun at all early in the morning). Measure 20 grams of coffee beans (of late I've been trying different varieties of single origin from Jasper's, purely because one of their larger outlets is close to home. Once I exhaust their range of single origins I'll look into ordering coffee from elsewhere. Grind in Sunbeam conical burr grinder. I tend to grind it coarsely, altho' I'm yet to settle on a specific setting. At some point I might make a few cups, each ground on a different setting (there are 24 or 25 settings all up, iirc) and see if one is noticeably superior to the others. Spoon into Aeropress and operate according to the instructions (which are exactly the same as the Modernist Cuisine ones: it's just that the MC guys measure their coffee by weight and the Aeropress booklet speaks in terms of volume). Compost the grounds. Consume coffee. You are now ready to fight gorillas. Or teach grade ones. For me this meets, exactly, the requirements I had when I wanted to make my own coffee at home. Namely I wanted it to be very good (equal, in my eyes, to what I'd get at my old regular) but not involve too much fucking around, either when brewing or cleaning up. The Aeropress basically cleans itself. The burr grinder, which is easily disassembled, is also very easy to clean. You hit a button to drop the burrs out and then the rest of the unit can be washed normally.

That's horrendous. I thought the V8 was extreme... Hey, when I was last up in Sydney there was a massive queue outside of one of Adriano Zumbo's shops. And this was late afternoon on a regular weekday when there was only a small range of products (mostly terrible ones and crunched up macarons) left. So I guess his pornographic approach to pastry tickles some fancies.

http://www.masterchef.com.au/recipes/zumbo-chocolate-mousse-cake.htm I've seen the combination done before. With that, actually. Might be a starting point.

Something I've been doing of late that most people in my situation (i.e. using a slow cooker/rice cooker/etc as a ghetto sous vide setup) probably already do. You know how when you get the water to, say, 85C or 65C or whatever the intended cooking temperature is and then you put your bag of food in and the temperature drops right down? Well, if I want to cook carrots at 85C I'll set the temperature to 90C. When I drop the carrots into the bath the temperature of the water will drop down to something close to 85C, at which point I'll actually adjust the pid unit. I suspect I'm the last person on eG to figure that one out but, hey, maybe I'm the second last ...

A Daiq using Appleton 12 and Jeffrey Morgenthaler's recipe. Nice choice for a summer evening, right?

You're an artist, Paul Bacino. Painting and sculpting and crafting with a canvas of beef.

It's fairly common, unless you go to a place that bills itself as making the big classics, to go to a restaurant or bar, even, and find that they can make a dozen or two dozen sickly sweet 'originals' but cannot make anything so simple as an Old Fashioned or Negroni without having to look it up in one of those counter-top flip books. That said, I've been surprised at places I really didn't expect to be able to make Old Fashioneds the old way (right down to using a cube of sugar instead of simple).

Nice choices.

Dogfish Head's Theobroma: an ale jacked with chocolate and ancho chilli and a few other things. It's not one of those chilli beers that's actually hot, but at the same time the chilli flavour just runs all over everything else. Interesting for a sip and then not entirely enjoyable. Texture was slightly off, too. I've yet to find a 'flavoured' or gimmick beer I've enjoyed, actually. I suspect that part of the issue was they seemed to be using powders. Cocoa powder. Ancho chilli powder. I think that might've been part of the problem.

I realised at maybe 3am that I forgot to actually take a photo. Anyway. I had no plans to serve the dish as it's described in the book--I was going to serve it and a couple sides and leave dinner at that--but I wanted to retain most of the elements in some form. I prepared the ragu as it was detailed in the recipe, altho' I did have to braise it for the best part of three hours before the meat was happy to part from the bone. Altho' that sort of variation is normal: could be, the (wild) hare I had was a just that little bit older and tougher than whatever they buy in for the restaurant. I didn't use any pig's blood in the sauce. The only butcher I know of that sells the stuff has plastic tubs of 'blood jelly' sitting around for very long periods of time (it's not a popular item, as you can imagine). I wasn't too confident about using such a product. Next time I'd probably make up for the lack of blood flavour in the sauce by maybe buying some nice blood sausage or something. For the torchon I used a bloc of foie mousse I had sitting around. It did the job. In place of the truffles I had a side of nice mushrooms jacked with a little porcini powder and in place of the potato mousse I made some retrograded mashed potatoes (purely because I don't have a siphon). I was happy with the dish overall, altho' next time I think I'd lose the corn starch from the chocolate sauce and sub in some xantham gum or something. Or, you know, just allow the heavily reduced chicken stock to do its thing and thicken the sauce without any added ingredients. One thing that drives me nuts about the book, and possibly prevents me from using it more often, is the cups/tablespoons business. Who the shit measures currants by volume?

How'd it work out / what pasta did you add it to? Octopus tentacles are one of my favourite ways to use my sous vide setup. They were very good but the last time I made them they were better. I should've fought against the vacuum to ensure the tentacles formed a single, very flat layer. I served the octopus with spaghettoni. If you don't happen to have a decent fishmonger around that actually sells adult octopus tentacles, hit Oakleigh. Opsara's always stock it. The tentacles are frozen and then thawed, which supposedly tenderises the octopus somewhat. Ask them to clean (i.e. skin) the tentacles for you. Bag them with some seasoning and a bit of olive oil. And, yeah, 77C for 5 hours. You can then finish them in a frypan or on a BBQ.

What do you think of the Banks 7? I ordered some of the 5 from overseas and really like it. Tempted to put in an order for the new kid on the block.

The carnitas are good but next time I'd give them an extra couple of minutes in the pressure cooker. The meat didn't shred as easily as I would've hoped.

If you like Campari opens up wonderful drinks like Negronis and Americanos and, further down the line, can go into lots of wonderful things like a Bitter Mai Tai. You want sweet and dry vermouth. You'll want a rye and, at the very least, some Angostura bitters. They'll open up so many possibilities. I came into cocktails a big fan of neat whisk(e)y and cognac, too. Why not go out to a nice bar, one you can trust to do this sort of thing right, and try a Sazerac? An old school Saz: bassed on cognac. Or DeGroff's 'New York' variant, which uses equal parts of rye and cognac for the base spirit. If you like cognac stirred then perhaps 'brown and stirred' is a good starting point. Also, you're the bartender. A drink is as sweet (or sour or bitter or etc) as you make it. Obviously with something like peach schnapps you're working yourself into a corner but a lot of popular cocktail recipes are easily customised to the drinker's preference. Take the mojito, for instance. If you add, I don't know, a full ounce of simple to the two ounces of rum then it's probably going to be too sweet for me. I go easy on the sugar in Mai Tais, too. I might follow the recipe I saw on CocktailDB or in the PDT book or wherever when I make a cocktail for my partner but when I'm mixing my own I'll put maybe half an ounce, if that, of simple. A cocktail is balanced if you're pleased with the sweet:bitter:sour:etc ratio. It's also easier to make a cocktail that's a bit too dry and then jack it with a little extra simple than it is to dial back the sweetness once the damage is done. Furthermore, once you get more experienced you'll gradually realise that different sources of recipes (whether it's a Gary Regan book or the brilliant Kindred Cocktails) all reflect, on some level, the author's bias. Some authors, you'll find, prefer drier cocktails. Others prefer sweeter things. Once you're familiar with their preferences (just like a wine reviewer or anything else of that sort, right?) you'll know whether you need to adjust their recipes or can just follow the steps verbatim.