ChrisTaylor

Things I've tried in the past few days, scotch and bourbon and rye Springbank 18: I've heard big things about the Springbank still, so I guess I expected a lot. It was ... okay. I'm glad I didn't blind-buy it like I was tempted to only recently. Eagle Rare. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I've had Eagle Rare ... and I admit I haven't really tried any bourbon below the Buffalo Trace/Woodford Reserve/Blanton's price point (purely because, in Australia, the true entry-level stuff is ~$5-10 cheaper than these, which isn't so bad when you're talking about a $40 vs $50 bottle of something). But. Yeah. I disliked this. I mean, if someone gave me a bottle as a gift I wouldn't regift it--I guess I'd find a use for it--but it's not something I'd purchase by choice. Russell's Reserve in its bourbon and rye forms. Both good, but I'm a bit surprised that I enjoyed the bourbon version more. Which is ideal, I guess, as it's much easier to buy bourbon in Australia than it is rye. Van Winkle rye. Amazing. Truly amazing. Up there with Thomas Handy. And $110 cheaper than Thomas Handy ... meaning it's still a $190 bottle of whiskey, but hey, it's a nice $190 bottle of whiskey.

If there was only an ounce of gin in there I suspect that, yeah, the Chartreuse would've come through even stronger (it did come through, but this was less the bitters-heavy drink [non-specific--I wasn't in the mood for thinking or researching but wanted something that wasn't a Negroni or Americano or any of the other usual suspects). I can't picture that version appealing to me much more than the one I had, to be honest.

Bijou in a bar. I think 1.5oz gin is too much, esp. if we're talking Plymouth. Gin just kicks seven kinds of fuck out of all the other ingredients.

I guess I'd aim to buy steaks, fish fillets, etc locally just before I cooked them.

Jump on a tram. Sit for five minutes. The MoVidas, Cumulus Inc, Chin Chin, Pei Modern, Mamasita, etc. Good to great--and decent value--meals. Avoid the tourist trap of St Kilda's pastry strip. A shortish car trip will also get you to Attica and Jacques Reymond, both a couple of suburbs over. Local Taphouse if you like beer. Slightly longer trip, 'round the CBD, will get you to Cutler & Co, Embrasse, La Luna, etc.

Didn't cook tonight--'tis my anniversay. And so, to Melbourne's Cutler and Co, one of the restaurants I'd highly recommend to anyone visiting my part of the world. Naturally, the degustation was the way to go. And, true to form, I forgot to take my camera and had to rely on my girlfriend's camera phone photos. Most of the photos are too blurryshituseless to bother uploading. Luckily I got detailed-ish notes. Selection of appetisers: foie gras parfait cigars, Sydney rock oysters, olives (maybe it was the variety or maybe they just hadn't pickled them for as long as someone else might, but they'd retained a certain bitterness--I liked this, my partner didn't) and smoked/pickled octopus. The first course proper. Swordfish sashimi with fresh wasabi, cucumber and avocado. The avocado was a nice foil for the wasabi, but make no mistake: they didn't fuck around with wasabi. Second course: chicken broth with abalone, spanner crab and congee. The first abalone dish I've had--so far as I can recall--that I've actually enjoyed. The broth was very heavily seasoned and brought to mind pho/ramen/et al. Third: hay-baked carrots with goat's curd and puffed grain. Up to this point, the carrots were my favourite dish. They retained a nice firm texture (I hate mushy carrots) but had the sweetness of baked/roasted/etc carrots. Worked well with the goat's curd and the popcorny flavour/crunch of the grains. Four: fried duck leg (think a cube of soft, giving duck flesh with a crispy coating--a highlight of the meal [i mean, a big bowl of those cubes and some beers? Life would be good ... and short]) with smoked duck breast, a chunk of morcilla and baby beetroot. This was a step above the carrots, I think. Despite the sound of the dish--this could be a real stodge fest, as much as I like that kind of thing sometimes (especially when duck and blood sausage and root vegetables are involved)--it wasn't really that heavy, I guess because the portion was quite small. I've had a few degustations where there's, yes, that AA Gill sensation of being 'waterboarded with food'. Too much, too rich, too soon. Sydney's Quay is--or, at least, was, when I went there--a big offender on that front, but Cutler and Co.'s degustation is sensibly paced with nice portions. Anyway. The duck. Very good. The whole thing--the sweet beetroot, the crispy/soft duck leg, the blood sausage--got along famously. If anything, the slice of breast, as much as it pains me to say anything vaguelly bad about my favourite animal, wasn't really needed. But, I mean, if someone really wants to overdo it with nicely cooked duck, or duck in any form, I'm the last person who'll tell them to stop. Five: the obligatory beef course. I tend to dislike--or, rather, get bored of--the obligatory beef courses. I'm much more interested when someone decides to give me game, say, such as Attica's wallaby course, for the final savoury dish, as I think the beef thing is mostly done because people expect it from a high end meal. Anyway, this beef course offered portions of peppered strip loin and braised short rib. The short rib was, as expected, really awesomely beef and very good, whereas the strip loin was ... as much as it was nicely cooked/seasoned, merely good. But by default I always prefer things like short rib/chuck/cheek to those sorts of cuts, so I guess that's my own biases ninjaing in.The beef was served with kohlrabi (the root part, not the leaves) and caramelised onion--as in a puree of onion served inside the outer layer or two of a caramelised pearl onion. Nice touch, that. The cheese course brought together Pyengana cheddar (a mild cheddar from a place in Tasmania called Pyengana), shards of lavosh and sultanas. This course was just okay. I mean, it's a nice cheese and all, but it really needed something--maybe some creamy element, maybe some more sultanas, maybe a syrup of some kind, but something--to take it to the next level. I got that probably the intent was for the cheddar (which is presumably quite expensive if you were to go to a deli and buy it by the slice/block/wheel/crate, as it's featured on both of the nice degustations I've eaten in the past couple of months) to be the star, but ... man, maybe I'm just not enough of a cheese nerd to get it, maybe merely liking most cheeses to some extent just isn't enough. Then came a palate cleanser--sheep's milk yoghurt with a sorrel/celery granita. Dessert took the form of violent icecream with chocolate ganace, a cherry ... sauce/coulis/puree (I'm not really up on my cake terminology once you got beyond pate sucre and curd and choux) and a sponge. The sponge was, I found out, the sort of microwave-in-a-few-seconds hazelnut sponge that Albert Adria makes. Made. Maybe invented, even. Or at least popularised. Finally, the petit fours: chocolate peanut butter cups In all, an excellent meal. And no dishes or effort.

My first dish from Passard's new vegetarian book. Tagliatelle and ceps (well, portobellas and oysters) with lemon, thyme and olive oil. The pasta/portion size was Passard's own suggestion for taking the entree-sized dish and turning it into a main.

I forgot to mention that, yes, it does work very well. Too, if you haven't slow-roasted chicken before, do think about roasting it on the crown, saving the legs for another purpose. The breasts on a brined, slow-roasted bird are wonderful--and normally I find chicken but at that low temperature the legs just aren't very nice (altho' I suppose, if you wanted to be clever, you might experiment with leaving the legs in the oven at a slightly higher temperature while the breasts rest).

Books I've actually picked up so far, aside from Girl & Her Pig: Eat With Your Hands - Zak Pelaccio. I've only flipped through this one. Yet to cook anything from it. Still, it's got me in. Fun presentation that reminds me of the Momofuku and Les Halles books, which maybe isn't so surprising after all--pop culture references, slang, an obvious deep-seated love for the parent cuisines. This weekend I'll cook one or two dishes from it and report back in more detail. Cooking with Vegetables - Passard. I'm cooking the ceps with lemon, thyme and olive oil tonight, subbing the porcini (which are difficult to find--and very expensive--in their fresh form) for a mix of portobellas and oysters. I'm surprised at how simple the recipes are. It's more accessible for weeknight meals than, say, the new Nobu vegetarian book. Most of the recipes focus on 2-3 different vegetables or fruits prepared in simple ways. Some interesting flavour combinations, altho' nothing that'd scare vegetarian guests with particularly boring palates. Encyclopaedia of Japanese Cooking - Hideo Dekura. To be honest, I'm not really sold on this. If bricks-and-motar bookshops existed any more remotely close to where I live, and they'd stocked this, which they probably wouldn't have, I wouldn't have purchased it. The definitions are really lacking in depth and detail. The couple recipes I've tried so far were just okay and very simple. And ... one thing that bugged me is things that should be prepared with some cut of meat with lots of fat or connective tissue, like pork shoulder or belly, was prepared with loin. Lots of things like that in this book. Some interesting tidbits and some information I can't get from my other Japanese books. Frenchie at Home -- Greg Marchand. Ordered through Amazon.fr as there's no English version avaliable at the moment. It's short--very--but I already like this one. Need to get around to ordering some ox cheeks from the local butcher so I can try out his recipe. Again with the simple food prepared in fairly simple ways (i.e. Girl and Her Pig, Passard's Vegetables), which isn't a bad thing at all.

Art of the Choke. Nice stage for Cynar.

How Blumenthal gets around the problem of a hot oven ruining all your hard work is by giving the bird a very lengthy rest (i.e. 45-60 minutes) after the slow-roast. Might be worth trying that, if you haven't already. Of course, in one of his television shows, he did just that except instead of placing the cooled bird in a hot oven, he seared it on all sides in a pan with butter (achieving an even browning would be easier if you were roasting on the crown).

The Passard book is nice but it's just a recipe book. It isn't a guide to selecting produce at a market. Still, it's a good one to add to the collection, along with the two Ottolenghi books and Nobu Vegetarian. Perhaps look at Mark Slater's Tender books.

No, I didn't broil or torch it. The filling tastes as light as anything with 4 whole eggs, 4 yolks and 125g of butter can, I suppose.

Browsing the PDT Cocktail Book thread led to me attempting a couple of the cocktails (those with recipes easily found online). Eclipse. Used Campari instead of Aperol because I don't have Aperol. I thought the Campari dominated ... I guess this means I need to buy Aperol. Newark. Applejack, Punt e Mes, Maraschino and Fernet Branca. I like it, but I love bitters. I think the Fernet dominates, pushing the Applejack and everything else into submission like the toughest and meanest and scariest prisoner in H Block, but I like Fernet. So I guess that's really kind of acceptable.

In terms of anejo tequilas, what's the best out of what I can get? I have access to Patron, Herradura, Calle 23, El Capricho, Don Julio (in its standard and 1942 variants) and 1800.

Lemon tart. I started with the Keller recipe but after a couple of attempts have made it my own. It's a 100% flour case, altho' at some point I mean to experiment with using almond meal. It's a much larger tart than Keller's is, so I double the quantity of filling mixture. And, too, that business of 1/2 a cup of lemon juice to 3/4 cup of sugar? I reverse that. And add a few drops of orange bitters.

Final Ward -- equal parts Rittenhouse,Green Chartreuse, Maraschino and lemon juice. Very good. And as the site I visited for the recipe said, it's superior to the very good Last Word.

Tipperary w/ Jameson 18, Punt e Mes (the sweet vermouth I have on hand) and Green Chartreuse.

The Trader Vic version of Navy Grog, using Ron Zacapa in place of dem. rum, which I don't have. A DeGroff Sazerac using absinth instead of Pernod.

A few Google results for the 'New York' Sazerac speak of a bourbon/cognac combo. So I took the logical step and made a bourbon (Woodford Reserve) and rye (Rittenhouse) combo. It's pretty good.

A DeGroff Sazerac: Martell VSOP and Rittenhouse rye. Still using Pernod. And finally thinking that maybe I just need to pony up and get some actual absinth(e). Any recommendations for a reasonably priced, fairly readily avaliable absinthe (given I live in an alcoholic backwater and all).

I also only buy Italian tomatoes as they are a superior product sold for essentially the same price as the local offerings. And I agree with you: I buy good products as opposed to products that make me feel patriotic. Australian growers are capable of turning out nice (fresh) tomatoes so I refuse to pay much attention to the standard excuse of the poor state of the industry being someone else's fault.

The past week, I've been going through a(nother) phase of buying random fruits and etc just for the sake of trying them. Things I haven't had before (at least not in some heavily prepared/modified form at a restaurant) just, really, for the sake of trying something new. Anyway. Tamarillos. I've seen them around supermarkets at differrent times of the year for, well, years but I've never got around to trying them. A quick Google told me I could cook them and use them on cheese platters and etc, but that also I could eat them raw. Just spoon out the flesh and eat it straight. And that seemed like the logical starting point. But man. Maybe these supermarket tams are over or under ripe. Maybe they're just bad. And I like, I really do, things that are more bitter or sour or savoury than they are sweet. But these were unpleasantly sour. Not in that citrusy way of biting into a lemon, but there was a certain unfriendly tang to the aftertaste that I'm pretty sure would be tempered by cooking. Long, long, long cooking. Probably. But the question is are they worth bothering with? What are some nice applications for them? I mean, the official tamarillo growers' page I found (they're grown in New Zealand and imported into Australia) mentioned about ten thousand different potential uses for them, but I'm unsure if any of their ideas were good ideas. After all, these are the same guys who told me to try eating the fruit raw.

Nothing wrong with your Pork, Chris. Your camera is not the smartest. It couldn't tell that it was reading the reflection from the flash and underexposed the pork. dcarch I have a nice SLR but it was a whole room away, which in report writing season may as well be the middle of the Gobi desert. The photo was taken with my phone. No flash: that's the kitchen light.

First attempt at spit-roasting some pork. Took a piece of belly, rubbed the flesh side with a paste of olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley then rolled it, tied it and cooked it over the fire. The skin was a little sad (although crisp in parts) but the meat was nice enough for a trial run. Next time I think I'll go through my usual two day process of brining and fridge-drying.