ChrisTaylor

Had hamburgers tonight. Freshly minced chuck jacked with some bone marrow, a fair amount of salt, pepper and a tiny sprinkle of cayenne pepper. Froze them for about a half hour before cooking, which seemed to help hold them together. The bone marrow idea is excellent.

Tried duck confit using the Modernist Cuisine curing mix. No extra fat added. 80C, 12-14 hours-ish (didn't keep count, but it was a bit more than 12). Nice. I mean, me, I could smear this on toast--possibly buttered with, I don't know, pate de foie gras--and be happy. Dead. But happy. Maybe with a fried egg and all. Madness. Coming soon to a 'breakfast--most important meal of the day' thread near you.

I'm following a recipe from the Alinea cookbook. The pork belly w/ 'BBQ sugar' and assorted other elements. Anyway. On the sugar front, there's a smoked paprika tuille made with fondant, isomalt and glucose. Now, I can't get isomalt (or, rather, I can, but not by the time I need it). Anyway. The idea is that this tuille, you place it over the piece of pork and then hit it with a blast from the butane torch, melting the 'biscuit' over the pork, creating a sort of sugary wrapper. Will this work without the isomalt? If I'm just using, say, regular caster sugar in addition to the fondant and glucose.

I will. But what are chicken oysters? Are they chicken parts or a type of oyster? mm84321 that iberico bruschetta looks fantastic. The part of the chicken, especially juicy but with kind of a weird texture I personally don't rate highly, that's sort of kind of near the top of the leg, right near the backbone. Easy to miss if you're speed-deconstructing chickens.

All the big supermarket booze chains here, as well as the supermarkets themselves, sell cheap cleanskins. $5-10 per bottle, which maybe sounds expensive in US terms, I know. I know about two buck chuck. That's a price point that for a while, at least, those big outlets didn't lower themselves to. I mean, wine, normal bad wine, the real entry level stuff, starts at $7-10. I mean, we've come along way, as a civilisation, from mostly drinking goon (Australian to non-Australian translation: cask wine). But at some point one of the big chains decided they'd roll out a range of $2 clean skins. Now, I mean, booze in Australia is expensive. I say this again and again but I really need to make this clear. So on top of the usual production costs associated with a $2 or $200 bottle of wine--the cost of the bottle, shipping, grapes, wages, etc--there's also the fairly steep tax we pay on booze. Plus the store's profit margin. And we have a fairly small population--I mean, I'm sure chuck in the States is a bad wine, but you have a really big population, so I can sell something at a low price and kind of bank on sales figures getting me over the line. You can't do that in a gigantic island populated by about 20,000,000 people. Not going to work. Especially not where you can buy drinkable wine for not much more per bottle. So just think on that for a moment. Anyway, at the time I was running a cooking class, sort of, for a bunch of kids. We were steaming some mussels and I was a poor student and this was all coming out of my pocket, so the $2 Chaaarrddee (at a certain price point, it stops being Chardonnay and gets said in the worst kind of Australian accent you can imagine) sounded like a plan. And, sure, it worked for its purpose: pouring into a scalding hot pan with $5 worth of shellfish. It worked for that. I mean, so would water. And this stuff was cheaper than bottled water. That in itself was a bit controversial, even, with the supermarket chain in question being told they were encouraging drunks. But, the wine. Once the children left, a couple tutors and I decided to try it, mostly to see what $2 wine tastes like. The same kind of novelty value, I guess, you associate with a really old whisky or expensive wine. You want to know what's special about it. Why it's all worthwhile. Tasting notes: urine from someone who doesn't drink enough water, who places said urine in a manky old plastic bucket and leaves it outside pn a summer's day until it's mostly evaporated, mostly concentrated, then ages it in old socks, like he's in prison.

Maybe. I'm fresh out of Ritt, tho', and until I get through the Old Van, Turkey and Sazerac ryes I can't really bring myself to buy another bottle. Especially given the price of rye--well, other than Jim and Wild Turkey--in Australia. I also have a suspicion, probably unfounded, that the flavours of sweet vermouth and Averna mightn't play nice.

Made steak ssam last night. Used a slow-cooked (real sv, not ghetto--56C, 40 hrs) blade steak instead of the skirt. I think it's a nice enough dinner, sure, but it's lacking something. Consider that the pork ssams have some kind of sauce or condiment (i.e. pickled mustard seeds come into play). I think it needs something might that. I had a tub of the mustard seeds in my fridge only the other week, even, and really wished they'd still been loitering around next to the pecorino last night. I don't think reducing the marinade and using that is a good idea, but, yes, it needs something. Octo vin?

Caught mention, here, of someone making a Manhattan w/ Averna instead of or with the vermouth. Googled around and stumbled on recipes for Black Manhattans. My attempt ... - 30 mL Averna - 60 mL Saz rye - dash each Angostura (standard) and Regan's orange - no cherry It was okay. I think, rather, that the Averna dominates. And I like Averna, I mean. But I like rye, too. And I want to be able to taste it. Experimentation is in order. Half Averna and half vermouth? Possibly something with a stronger flavour profile on the whiskey front? Maybe a ratio of .75 to 2 instead of the more usual 1:2?

After eating a terrible burger the other day I've been thinking on this one. The patty, the texture was very much akin to sausage. And I'm not talking about some gourmet, coarse ground pure pork sausage here. I'm talking about the mystery meat type of sausage. Really cheap. Really nasty. I should've known, should've foreseen bad things coming, when the burger was marketed as being made from 10000% lean beef or something absurd. Fat, of course, is an important part of keeping the patty juicy. I admit to not going all out, Heston's perfect burger-style, and carefully lining up the strands of meat as they emerge from the mincer. I know why he does it but I'm usually more inclined, because my mincer is hand-cranked, I guess, and not very good--to just ask the butcher to freshly mince a piece of chuck for me. In fact, if you can't/don't want to go to the effort of buying skirt, chuck and ... the other cut he uses (shin? rump?) then that's the road I recommend. If you wanted to make an especially large batch of burgers, and usually I'm just cooking for two and have limited freezer space, so I don't, then maybe you could go a 50:50 blend of skirt and chuck. But I find that freshly minced meat binds better (without the use of eggs, etc) and, for some reason that someone can probably explain, tastes better. And while, to some extent, you need to work the meat to blend the salt in and shape it, keep this to a minimum--otherwise you end up with sausage. And that's just a sad story. I'd also be wary of adding too much seasoning (exc salt, of course) to the patty, as I feel to some extent a strong pepperiness in the meat itself can accentuate the sausage-like qualities of your patty.

The 'chilled' corn soup is very good. Even when you don't quite follow some pretty important instructions. For example: -- Corn juice. I don't own a juicer and, yes, I know, I know, I could just blitz a metric shit load (or perhaps imperial, given Humm's favouring of an uncivilised measurement system) of corn kernals and strain the resulting pulp, but I didn't. I upended a bag of just-thawed frozen kernals (decent quality, sure, but still) over the pot and, at the end, made sure I blitzed extra well. It seemed to work. I can understand why the recipe specifies juice--they're shooting for a fine, smooth, silky, high-end restaurant soup texture, but for home use, in impolite company, it worked well enough. -- The heat factor. It's a chilled soup in the book. And yet, right now in Spring, it's still cold. This soup is as nice hot as it is cold (I tried both). I'd make the soup again. I made a couple of the other elements--the lobster, the pickled baby corn--and made half-arsed subs at a couple of the others. The carefully-made discs of toasted brioche sounds simple enough, but if the only brioche you can get your hands on locally, without a car ride that's very much out of the way when talking about a couple dollars worth of bread, comes in the form of a tiny muffin-shaped thing, well, you improvise. So croutons it was. I also didn't want to travel to find quail's eggs, so I just poached a couple of chicken eggs and artlessly used those. I also didn't make the bavarois, even tho' it's simple and I probably should've. I'll make this again in summer, when I can maybe actually serve this chillied, and then I'll try it with the bavarois, which I suspect will lift the soup to the left level. I'll also sub the lobster out and replace it with, say, yabbies or marrons (the Australian crustacean, not the nut). EDIT Has anyone dove into that (brilliant) section at the back of the book, with all the gels and everything?

Maybe for a whole lot of sensible reasons, there's not a whole lot to be found on sous vide lobster. I mean, yes, sure, on one level there is--go to Google or whatever, type in 'sous vide lobster' and hit the necessary button and, sure, you'll find results--but it's not like, hey, when you search for 'sous vide [otherfoodstuff]' you find lots of recipes to real honest-to-God cookbooks and lengthy eG and Chowhound threads. With a sv lobster search you get lots of blog posts ... and, as you can imagine, a very large range of ideas--none of which you're quite sure can be trusted at all--on how to approach the task. 59.5-60C, like a couple of the entries in the SV Index thread suggest, is mentioned here and there, but for how long? Focusing on recipes that specifically talk about small lobster tails from small lobsters, you'll hear mention of bathing them for anything from 5 minutes to about a hour. Then there are a whole lot of guys who reckon it's all about the 45-46C range, altho' there are fewer in this camp than the ~60C mob, seemingly. I caught a reference to something in Modernist Cuisine but as I don't have that, well, I was on my own. With my haul of blog posts. So I rolled the dice. 59.5C, 20 minutes. My girlfriend seemed to like it well enough but me ... well, I'm not a lobster fan on any level at the best of times. Another vote in favour came from a cat: he darted, unfinished piece of lobster in mouth, under my car to enjoy some alone time. I'm unsure if it was a success or not. It was the first bit of sved seafood I didn't enjoy (but even at really nice restaurants, I might eat the lobster course, but it's bound to be my least favourite). But still, I guess someone, at some point, who doesn't own MC or doesn't think to refer to it (and I would refer it over me or any of those random bloggers if I could), I'd suggest ~60C for ~20 minutes as a starting point. I suspect lobster wouldn't stand up too well to being held at that temperature for a long time. I'd be curious to know why there are two temperature camps--~45C vs ~60C--when no one seems to be suggesting to cook it, ever, for more than a hour. I mean, even some of those 45C guys are pushing for something in the 15-20 minute range. And, yes, I did remove it from the meat from the tail using the Keller method: bring 7.5L water/110g white vinegar (or, you know, 3.75/55, etc) to boil then pour over lobster. Sit for a couple of minutes then plonk the lobster into ice water. He suggests twisting the tail ... feathery bit ... thing off and poking a finger into the resulting hole, pushing the meat out through the fat end of the tail, but if you're using a ~500g tail like me that hole is going to be small. Careful work with kitchen shears on the shell does the trick.

Maybe. I probably shouldn't have played along with the recipe when it said to drain the fat from the pan before flipping the pork over and roasting it.

The Quay method for crisp-skilled sv pork belly didn't work for me. The pork itself is very nice but the skin didn't crisp up, even when I gave it more time in the oven than stated in the recipe. I suspect using the broiler might be a better idea.

So. Blade steak, at least as Australia (sometimes, in some places) defines it, at 56C for 40ish hours is nice. Tender without being too tender. That bit of connective whatsit seemed to have broken down nicely, altho' there were a few decent-sized pockets of fat I fed to the cats. I suspect it might stand up to a full 48 hours. I sliced the steak, which was really a small roasting piece (~1kg), acrossways, into 2cm thick steaks, which I seared individually and sliced further (as I was serving them in Momofuku steak ssam form). I just put some pork belly w/ olive oil (I just used plain oil--didn't infuse it with spices) in the bath.

I took the beef out of the bath after ~40 hours. I'll see what it's like tonight, I guess. On the pork belly note, I just opened up my copy of the Quay book. The recipe nickrey refers to has a number of elements--the pork is served with cuttlefish, abalone, tofu and some other elements--but the pork seems simple enough. I haven't tried the recipe yet, but here's a summary of the way Mr Gilmore approaches pork belly: infuse 250mL olive oil w/ cinnamon and star anise by holding it (with the spices) at 70C for 10 minutes then letting it sit for 2 hours before straining vac seal infused oil and 1 kg boneless pork belly in bag 90C, 12 hours (he uses a combi oven) cool slightly, then press between two trays in fridge overnight cut pork into 2.5cm cubes, season with salt, sear cubes on all sides except skin drain fat from pan then return the cubes to the pan skin side down, place in 200C oven for 5 minutes

Man, that personal space thing, 'I'll stand over you until you order', is a pet hate. I'd rather wave you over. Generate smoke signals by setting a chair alight. Actually approach the counter. But seriously ... and maybe especially so given I have a social disability ... It's one of few things in life that truly angers me.

I saw blade steak--5-6cm thick--on sale and did a quick Google for sv recipes. I got 'a long time' and 30 hours/higher temp than what I am doing, with the author of the latter recipe saying not all of the connective tissue had broken down. We'll see. You might be right: I might be eating kim chi and the cats might be eating well.

Will have to look for that in the Quay book. Weekend project. Just bought a thick blade steak. Thinking 48 hours, 56c, steak ssam marinade.

As well as all the social media stuff--the democratisation of food criticism, Facebook posts, eG threads--isn't it also a natural response to how food is presented (which in turn feeds off the increasing number of shutter-happy diners)? Look at cookbooks from Noma, French Laundry, Marque, Quay, Fat Duck, 11 MP and so on. It's not just neat and uncluttered: at it's best it can serve as a very temporary form of visual art.

Just put some beef cheeks in a 70C bath. Will revisit them in about 30 hours. The cheeks are bagged with a marinade based on a recipe in Brent Savage's Bentley cookbook: dark chicken stock (the recipe, which is actually a braise, uses a combination of veal jus, which I don't have on hand at the moment, and white chicken stock--a smaller quantity of dark chicken stock seemed a sensible substitute), soy sauce, honey, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, chilli, coriander seeds, star anise and cinnamon.

Do you mean a national dish or something that sums up the diversity of influences on your national cuisine?

-- it wasn't pre-brined (so far as I know, most Australian meat isn't--altho' there are some products in supermarkets fairly clearly marketed as pre-brined) -- the meat was cooked through, but yeah, I guess that's the first thing on the list: pre-portion it -- I have another purpose in mind for the dark meat (specifically a smoked pork and turkey sausage) -- will try your technique for crisping the skin--I removed it from the bird and then tried to hit it with a butane torch, but my butane torch is terrible and kept running out of juice

Intending to take over my family's Christmas dinner this year. The limitation I face, tho', is that I need to cook turkey. I'd prefer to cook goose, but the family likes turkey, turkey, turkey. So, mostly because I stumbled on some turkey breasts at the poultry store the other day, I decided to cook a single breast and see what sous vide turky was like. Breast was brined overnight then vac packed and put into a 60C bath for 2.5 hours. Quickly seared it in the pan. -- a little tough, altho' this beats a soft, pappy texture -- juicy and such, but really, really, really bland (I know, it's turkey breast--I wish I was cooking goose!) Any suggestions on how to improve it? Aside from .. buying goose?

Diplomatica, haresfur. Nice rum.

Combine the occy stock with chicken or fish stock. Occy paella (sv occy as per Keller's method).