ChrisTaylor

Brunch of button mushrooms w/ toasted ciabatta. Was hoping to grab some Swiss browns from the grocer but they were all out. Ended up jacking the buttons w/ a bit of sherry vinegar and porcini powder.

Templeton. Now that's a delicious rye. Heavy on the oak. Wonder what it'd be like in one of those New York Sazeracs: equal parts cognac and rye.

This is the type of thing that bites me when cooking for myself. Sure, making a BLT for one is accomplished easily enough, but then I'm left staring at 2/3rds of a tomato, a largely whole head of lettuce and a bunch of bacon. Okay, well, the bacon will keep ok, but the tomato and lettuce? Not so much. Some meal planning can help, but planning around a BLT? The lettuce you can get around with those bagged lettuce leaves, avaliable in Australian supermarkets and grocers at least in a very large variety. I live with one other person so we can't get through a whole lettuce either unless I buy, say, baby cos or a single head of radicchio. Mostly I've found the mixed leaves, so long as you keep an eye on the 'best before', to be fine. Sealed in a zip lock bag (I've never got around to vac sealing them to see if it makes any difference) they'll be fine for a day or two. Some supermarkets even sell 'single portions', presumably under the suspicion that not everyone needs family-sized everything.

Day one was basically a non-issue as, I mean, I have unplanned vegetarian days every day. Some bread and some cheddar. And, later, some shakshuka from Ottolenghi's Plenty. I added a little bit more substance to the dish in the form of some baby spinach leaves (stirred into the sauce and wilted slightly before I added the eggs) and olives. This is a dish that I usually serve w/ heavily spiced meatballs, which takes it firmly out of the breakfast camp and transforms it into a viable dinner. Maybe because of this I couldn't help but shake the feeling that it was lacking. Pleasant enough, yes, but I wish I'd added something to boost the umami. Apologies for the dog's breakfast quality of the image. I'm no Achatz. Today it's a vegetarian chili. I'm working from a well-reviewed recipe in the 'chili cook-off thread' but expanding the selection of beans. I have a mixture of chickpeas, black beans and great northerns.

Time to dig this up. I want to see how long I can last. No plan to go full vegetarian or, God forbid, vegan. I simply enjoy meat too much. For this week, tho', I will prepare or buy no meat. I will not be a pain-in-the-arse guest if someone is prepping food for me, tho'. Which happens rarely, anyway. And therein is the motivator for this. I eat too much meat. For the longest time I've meant to eat, say, two or three vegetarian meals per week. And I might eat one. If that. From an economic and health standpoint this isn't such a good thing. I possibly also don't eat enough vegetables on a regular basis. On some days I'll have a dozen vegetables. On other days I'll have only a couple. There's no consistency. I'm on holidays at the moment. This means I actually have the time to poke around the bookshelf and find compelling vegetarian dishes I'd like to prepare, altho' like Steve I'm also very happy to hear suggestions. Before I even get on the wagon I might already be doomed to fall off. Going out for lunch tomorrow, 'tis already booked, to a place that isn't especially vegetarian-friendly. We'll have to see if I can navigate that menu and avoid the trap of pork belly. The one vegetarian main on the menu sounds kind of half-arsed. A sort of, 'Oh, yeah, we have to cater to you people in some way, I guess.' I understand that this is something vegetarians go through all the fucking time even with fairly high-end restaurants and it's something that in Melbourne, thankfully, some prominent chefs are seeming to make an effort to combat. See also: Jacques Reymond. I'll eat basically anything but am not fond of especially 'eggy' things. I enjoy lightly cooked eggs and am leaning in that direction for tonight's dinner (a recipe from Plenty) but not things like quiche.

You have a selection criterion for friends that involves doing a stocktake of their kitchen? I think, too, what's being missed here, by both 'modernists' and traditionalists, is that for a whole lot of people on eGullet it's a case of wanting to play with food. It's no more or love an expression of the culinary arts than it is to, yeah, buy a serious wok burner or assemble your own cold smoker or bake your bread using a ghetto engineered steam oven or fill the shelves with four hundred cookbooks. Looking at the 'dinner' or 'best dishes of 2012' threads, it's obvioust that many, many, many eGulleters--some of whom are professional, many of whom do everything from surgery to teaching to Lord knows what else--enjoy 'toys'. The thread that shows many of us go far beyond what's necessary for creating a healthy, tasty home-cooked meal. I feel that working outside of the industry probably makes me, personally, more inclined to want to play with things. Buying a hot smoker, which is quite uncommon here in Australia, and learning how to use it wasn't strictly necessary but I've had a lot of fun this year figuring out pulled pork and brisket and ribs. I suppose that, yeah, I could've used an oven, right? Or just gone to the BBQ place a couple suburbs over? In my day job I'm a primary school teacher. And you know what? When I come home from a lengthy day, the last thing I want to read is a book that talks about teaching. I don't want to do any professional reading at all on those days. I don't even want to look at anything work-related. Something tells me if I'd been working as a builder all day that the last thing I'd feel like doing would be coming home and continuing work on my renovation. This isn't true of every teacher or builder--or cook, even--but I know it's a feeling that's not unique to me. Sous vide strikes me as something is a convenience tool. No more or less than a pressure cooker or slow cooker or rice cooker. For example, I might feel like coming home after fairly lengthy hours to some 'roast' lamb. Solution: seal up half a leg and place it in the bath. When I come home I prep some salad or whatever else I want to serve with the lamb, sear the lamb and then I'm ready to go. 'Roast' lamb with maybe ten minutes of prep time. And prepared in a way that doesn't involve allowing the oven to chew up power all day long. It's not a go-to method for cooking anything and everything, just as a hot smoker and a wok burner--and, shit, even a frypan on an old gas stove--all have things they're good at and things they're not so good at. Like smoking, it's also possible to get into sous vide--at least in a home environment--for a significantly lower price than the high end commercial units. I mean, saying you need to buy a $500 unit is like saying oh, to BBQ at all you need to go out and spend $1000 on kit because that's what a lot of restaurants use. It also, like that quasi-professional step of hooking up a coffee machine to a PID controller, allows a home cook--who may or may not be especially skilled--to achieve a superior result 'every time'. That fillet of poached fish, for instance. Yes, you can just nail a piece of fish in a pan or in a paper bag or wherever else. A professional, a really good one, might nail it every time. Just like someone might be able to get by without a PID controlled coffee rig. By sight and smell and everything else they and the fish guy would bang out one perfect example of espresso or salmon after another. And yet me? I'm not a professional. I don't cook fish all that often. When I want to, ~$1 for a sous vide bag and my existing slow cooker/pid setup seems to be a nice way of getting a great result every time. Just as setting my induction cooktop to heat the water to ~80C allows me to thoughtlessly prep my morning coffee. From day one I've been having consistently great cups. As good as a professional with top-of-the-line kit and years of experience and everything else? Or even someone really experienced without such 'fancy' kit? No. I'm not kidding myself. I mean, there's a reason that eGulleters are on the whole as passionate about cooking as they are about going to great restaurants. No one on this forum comes across as 'oh, Modernist Cuisine and my ghetto sous vide rig mean I'm more skilled than Thomas Keller'. As for the money thing, I'd say the spread of incomes on eGullet is fairly wide. And that, too, like any hobby, people prioritise it over other things. I mean, consider a friend that really, really, really enjoys cars. He or she might spend a lot of money buying shitty old cars and finding replacement parts. Much more time than you, someone not so interested in cars, might deem reasonable. You might just want your car to 'work': to get you from A to B and not fall apart along the way. He or she might spend a lot of free time working on cars, reading about cars, talking about cars. Those eGulleters you see with a lot of modernist additives on hand or a real sous vide rig or a serious barbecue or truffles, even, might not actually be rich or trying to convince us all they're the next Myhrvold. I mean, most people that walk into my living room are struck by the books. Shelves of books. Towers where the shelves don't hold any more. Loads of cookbooks, yeah, but also lots of history and pop sci and comics and modern lit and everything else. I'm not wealthy by any definition. It's just that I choose to spend a fair portion of my disposable income on books. Altho', yeah, I guess I could just go to a library ... As much as I really like books and as much as I direct my interest at specifc kinds of books (just like someone who might spend a lot of time reading about and baking bread but do very little with, say, sweet pastries or curries) I don't think for a moment that I can make up a statement about a person based on what they read. Oh, this person reads Janet Evanovich or Cormac McCarthy or Frank Miller, so they must be x kind of person. I can or cannot be friends with them. Or that this book or this author tells me a whole lot about this person's life or character. People are more than their toys and hobbies or convenience tools.

Odd. In Australia almost every fine dining restaurant I've been to seems to take joy in tracking down the most obscure vegetable varieties they can. Good luck finding half of the plant ingredients in the books of Peter Gilmore, Ben Shewry or Mark Best.

Not familiar with these brands but just a word of advice. My cooktop, a New Wave one, only accepts pans <22cm in diameter. Well, that part on the bottom that makes contact with the cooktop, that has to be <22cm. That's a specification I'd be looking at in future purchases yet isn't one I was thinking about a whole lot when I set out to purchase a portable induction cooktop. And given you want to drop a pasta pot on top, I'd say it's something you should be thinking about too (unless you've already considered it).

The chickpea salad. It's pleasant enough but I wish it had some fresh element. Some diced tomato? Maybe some parsley just before serving? A bit of diced red onion?

Why not do a pressure cooked vegetable stock instead?

Er, it's hardly an extra hour here or there. I'd be inclined to set an alarm for the three hour mark, wake up, chill the bags and go back to bed.

I was happy enough with the caramelised peanut sauce. It's very easy, altho' I think the recommended quantity of fish sauce is a little high. The fishy funk was felt a bit too strongly. Serves me right for not starting at 20g and working my way up to the full 40 gradually. Still the best sauce I've made from the book, tho'. I'd make it again.

Sampling the two new additions to my booze collection Mojito using PDT ratios w/ Banks 5 Island Rum. Very good. Keen to try this rum in other applications. Maybe a Daiquiri later, even. Arrack Attack. A delicious monster.

Batavia Arrack and Banks 5 Island Rum. Imports. Delicious, delicious imports. Well, the Banks is. I haven't tried the Arrack yet.

I just used a Valdespino PX I had sitting around.

Bocca - Jacob Kennedy. Made in Italy is also an exceptional book. It's my go-to Italian book.

Three fun things. An AeroPress, a portable induction stove (single 'burner') and a hardware store voucher, with which I purchased a Dremel. A power tool, yeah, that I'll be using in my ghetto engineering projects: an improved sous vide rig and a cold smoker. I guess you could also count another. Treated myself to this: http://www.redspooncompany.com/index.php/molecular-gastronomy/ingredients/packs/complete-creation-pack.html Should open up a few more possibilties from Modernist Cuisine.

Thanks for the write up, Nick. Having poked around online, tho', it's become clear that for only a little more I could ghetto engineer a cold smoker. A cold smoker would obviously be a bulky piece of kit but would probably do more of what I am likely to want to do with smoke than a gun could.

I'd also shift and rotate the roasting pan several times during the cooking process to ensure the meat roasts evenly.

http://www.redspooncompany.com/index.php/molecular-gastronomy/tools/smoke/smoke-gun-kit.html By AUD standards and by my measures, that's a reasonable price for something I want but wouldn't use frequently. Does anyone recognise this device (the website doesn't list a brand and the image shows a logo I don't recognise)? What sets this apart from, say, the Polyscience gun (also avaliable on the website for $120)? I get that this one is cheaper, but obviously it's a waste of money if the unit fails quickly.

No particular order but all very, very, very good The Pointe, Harare - Plastic chairs and a cheap table cloth and a security fence topped with broken bottles. The Portuguese fare was very simple but very well executed. One of the few places I encountered that serves beef as rare as you order it. The crumbed mushrooms were brilliant, avoiding the usual pitfall of greasy soggy sadness. 2M, from over the border, was the best beer I had in country. If only the supermarkets there (and, shit, here) stocked more beer from Mozambique. Attica, Melbourne - Second visit and exceptional, maybe even moreso, as the first time round. I think this is the best restaurant in Melbourne. It's up there, easily, with Australia's best restaurants (of which Sydney's Marque would have to be near the very top--there's a reason these two are in that San Pellegrino Top 100 list). I think that reviews and publicity overstate the foraging thing. Yes, there's a bit of that, but this isn't Rene Redzepi's kitchen. Mostly the dishes are just well executed, with the odd element here or there coming from a laneway or the beach or wherever. Cutler & Co, Melbourne - Another of Melbourne's great restaurants. This one, sadly, doesn't make the Top 100, altho' if the list had a more SE Asian/Oceanic focus then I expect it would. If you're down here for a weekend, say, I'd probably go for this and Attica. Two very different restaurants serving very different food--Cutler's fare is well-presented but rather simple--but both equally good, in my books. The Royal Mail Hotel, rural Victoria - Yes, that one that Anthony Bourdain visited in No Reservations. Not as good as Attica or Cutler but still a very nice meal. The dishes range from the rather elaborate, involving all sorts of fun modernist techniques, to the surprisingly 'basic': a very fresh piece of fish poached to perfection, for instance, with not much else. Not every dish was a winner but, still, a great meal. And Bourdain wasn't making things up: it's so odd to find a restaurant like that in a town like Dunkeld.

Pistachio nuts, expensive anchovies and chilli-flavoured Ketle crisps. Yes.

I made the tsukane with Korean wing sauce. The meatballs seemed a little moist, but I suspect that's because I used 500g of mince but didn't think--until it was too late, at least--to adjust the quantity of Wondra. On that Wondraful note, as other people have observed earlier in the thread, Wondra isn't avaliable in Australia. I purchased White Wings Gravy Flour. Someone earlier in some other thread or maybe even this one said it's the same thing. I suspect that with this recipe in particular I wouldn't be able to tell if Gravy Flour was a BAD CHOICE but I'll report back if I have any problems with it in the future. Might be, it's just a rebranded product. Rebadged. Maybe. Anyway. The meatballs are nice enough as is the sauce. 20 grams of sesame oil sounded like a lot so I cut it down to 10 grams. Tasting the sauce, it seems like I made the right decision.

The above except I deep fried them instead of torching them. I was even cooking boerwors. The butcher's packaging may/may not be heat safe (altho' I suspect it'll be okay). No need to add extra flavourings--save sauce for service, if people want it. To be honest I prefer the texture of sausages cooked slow and slow in a pan or on a barbecue. I'd slice the wors into segments as the classic coil arrangement hampers even browning.

So ... Buffalo wings -- I liked them, yeah, the sauce was merely good. I don't think it's so much a fault with the Modernist thing as it is the genre of sauce itself. Oddly I, too, like another eGer earlier in the thread, had difficulty getting the sauce to emulsify properly. I fixed it by manually whisking the broken sauce into an extra egg yolk. Pork chop -- Dead simple technique but good, even tho' I grilled over gas rather than coals (would you stand around outside lighting and tending to a fire on a 40C day? I think it'd actually be illegal, even). Would maybe deep fry next time I didn't have a coal fire going. I used goose fat in the bag and before grilling in place of plain oil/lard. Eggplant parmesan -- Made a few missteps along the way. My pressure cooker seemingly didn't seal properly so I wound up with a sauce that was a bit thicker, a bit more reduced than I suspect it should've been. Oh well. And then when I went to nuke the eggplant I realised I'd run out of paper towel and, again, on a 40C day wasn't going to go running around to buy some more. Nuked it nude. The eggplant, that is. Not me. I also finished the dish in the oven, as per the suggestion of someone here. Turned out okay but, yeah, can't really judge the recipe given the changes I made were important.