ChrisTaylor

I have shotglasses that not only have the 1/4, 1/2, etc oz measurements on them, but also mL. Meaning measuring out 1/3 or 2/3 of an oz is not a problem at all. You should see if you can find such glasses. I stumbled on them at random in a junk shop and bought a few. I mean, if you lived locally and all, I'd pad a few with newspaper and box them and post them your way, as I too have stumbled across recipes with unusual measures (i.e. 5mL of something).

Someone who is used of working with the metric system, I suspect. 1 oz is close enough to 30mL to not matter a whole lot (28.somethingsomething mL). 1/3 and 2/3 of an oz are 10 and 20mL--very sensible and nicely rounded metric measurements.

Went to Attica, #63 on the list, tonight. It was my second visit. It being (well, the day before) Mother's Day, I took along my dearest mother for her first degustation experience. Apologies for the quality of the photos--I was using an iPhone in the corner of a dark room. Along with the obligatory housemade butter, the sourdough rye is served with a smoked olive oil emulsion. Thanks, xantham gum! The powder, in case you're wondering, is black salt. An appetiser of walnut puree with walnut oil. There are, as you can see, two versions of this dish. My mother ordered a vegetarian degustation without mushrooms (she disagrees with the texture of mushrooms) so her walnut was topped with, well, walnut. Mine was topped with shaved pine mushrooms. The mushrooms were the strongest flavour and for a good couple of moments I thought that maybe they had stolen the show, but no, the flavour of walnut crept up, ninjastyle, and eventually made itself known. Two different takes on a theme. A rye-crumbed shallot (part of the vegetarian menu, obviously) and a rye-crumbed mussel (which was steamed at some point, I think). The crust was very crisp and the contents very soft. No chewy shellfish here. A shiitake and bonito dashi jacked with licorice flowers. The mushroom-less alternative was based on a vegetarian dashi but was otherwise the same. The first course of the standard degustation: tomato with 'eleven basils' (all grown, I was told, in the restaurant's garden) and smoked black seasame seeds. The strip of red capsicum was slow-cooked in olive oil. There are also a few stray hazelnuts loitering about. The smoke/sesame element was really subtle, avoiding the trap of being too strongly flavoured. 'Textures of cauliflower', inspired by some mountain in New Zealand (the chef is originally from New Zealand) and not some scene from Scarface. At one point, a fixture of the menu was a similarily presented dish of 'snow crab' (the 'snow' came from powdered horseradish and, yes, the crab underneath the mountain was snow crab). This was the first course proper for the vegetarian degustation. The tomato/basil/etc course would come later on the vegetarian menu. Marron, leek and native pepper with a surprisingly subtle mussel and prosciutto broth. Marrons, by the way, are native freshwater crayfish and are a fixture of Australian degustation menus. The vegetarian version of this dish arrived at the same time. Seemingly unchanged since I was last at Attica was the 'simple dish of a potato slow-cooked in the earth in which it was grown'. Inspired by the hangi of New Zealand, potatoes are cooked in, well, dirt. This is a very, very, very nice potato. The sour cream-style base is a nice nod to the baked potatoes sometimes sold as fast food. This dish appeared at the same time on both versions of the menu. At this point, my mother's tomato/etc dish arrived (unchanged from the standard menu) and I got 'Meat from the pearl oyster.' Not being a fan of many forms of cooked oyster (I really dislike the texture) I wasn't looking forward to this dish, but I started to calm down when I was told the shaving makes the texture a bit more like scallop. I don't know if that's quite true, but it certainly had lost the ... unpleasant texture that, say, poached oysters can have. We were both served the sweet potato with almonds, egg yolks and cheddar. The sweet potatoes were slow-roasted in a salt crust. This was, as you'd expect, a very rich dish. Wallaby fillet, served rare. Nice to see this on the menu--much more interesting, to me, anyway, than yet another wagyu course. An even more interesting choice than 'roo, which I also would've been happy with. The vegetarian alternative: it should be mushrooms with mulled wine and pearl onions, but instead my mother was given Jerusalem artichokes prepared in the same fashion. Silly me, I got so caught up in noting down all the elements of the first dish that I didn't actually take a photo of it! Instead, here's a photo of the decoration on the table. Why did I get a photo of it? Those little pods, they're quandong, a native fruit. And quandong (in their cooked form--those little pods weren't in an edible state) was part of the dish (entitled 'native fruits of Australia'), as was lemon aspin, rosella, 'emu eggs' (not eggs, but the nickname for some sort of berry-like fruit), rye berries, native lime and a wattleseed custard. There was also a granita made from some sort of native berry I didn't catch the name of: just imagine a big serve of granita atop the custard with some different poached fruits floating around. Nice. Basically a sexed up fruit salad. 'The plight of the bees' arrived in a little hive, on top of which sat a rock. This many-layered dessert included mandarin, fennel and lemon thyme granita, thyme honey, Jap pumpkin (it formed the 'skin' you can see being peeled back), apple and some sort of honey (a name was kicked out and I failed to catch it) that is made not by bees, but by aphids. The petit fours arrive after you've had time to look at print of a painting by the chef's father. On the reverse is an essay that talks about birds and foraging and cooking. Why would something like this be sent to the table? Because the petit fours are salted caramel-filled white chocolate 'Pukeko's eggs' (a species of bird from New Zealand). Attica serves an excellent meal. If/when you're down in Melbourne, it's worth the detour and the 'effort' (i.e. booking a couple of months in advance and then actually leaving the confines of the CBD) to get out to the 'burbs.

What I understand is that I can't get S&C in Australia. Sad story. I've heard such wonderful things. What rum could I use in its stead in cocktails and such? A few recommendations would be ideal, I guess, as the selection of rums here is a sad, sad story.

I made three loaves this morning. Or, rather, I mixed the dough over the weekend, boxed it up and baked it this morning. -- Deli rye. I used a bit more rye and a bit less regular flour than what the recipe said. Bad idea, I guess. It tasted good but didn't rise much at all once shaped. -- Smoked bread. Took the base recipe and parked 1/3 of the flour in the smoker for one hour. -- Olive bread. Worked from the base recipe, too. Next time I'd just use the olive oil dough, but people still seemed to like it.

So lots of people (say, even in Vietnam) are allergic or at least 'intolerant' to it?

What can I do with Perique? Any suggestions? Recommendations? Is this something I want to have?

What about a regular portable electric stove? Would that work?

On the recommmendation of a whole bunch of people in this thread, I used Keller's Laundry recipe as a starting point. Some modifications, tho': -- the base was all flour as pine nuts are v. expensive here too (as is almond meal, for that matter) -- I decreased, somewhat, the amount of sugar and increased the amount of juice -- used a stupid amount of zest The result: a very tart tart. Which is exactly what I wanted.

Another weekend, another Momofuku recipe. This time I prepared the pork buns. Or, rather, I roasted the pork belly, tipped some hoi sin sauce into a bowl and steamed some store-bought buns. Oddly, I found the grocer stocked buns in damn near every shape and size other than what the ones in the picture. I could've travelled further afield and maybe found some, but the idea of getting in the car and messing around when I could just buy ... different ones didn't appeal to me. The ones I bought were more like football-shaped dinner rolls. I sliced them in half, pretty much as you would with a normal roll when making a hot dog. It was nice and all, altho' true to form the steamed bread left me cold. Maybe it'd help next time if I just caved and made the buns, which seem to be a whole lot thinner than the ones I used. A higher pig-to-dough ratio sounds like a plan.

I'm keen to hear more about 'apple snails.' My go-to eggplant recipe is one of the holy trinity of dishes I lived off as a student: you saute some sliced eggplant (the 'regular' kind, although I'm sure it'd work just as well with those long thin ones or even the golf ball-sized varieties) until it browns and softens. Add some garlic and chilli then hit the eggplant with some dried oregano. Give it another couple minutes then add some canned tomatoes--for ~500g eggplant, I'd use a 400g can. Cook until the sauce reduces and thickens--10-15 minutes. This is a pretty simple dish, so don't use shit tomatoes or sad eggplants. You can add some nice feta, if you like, although by all means experiment with the cheese ... or use whatever is floating around the fridge. Some parm-reg could work. I even used bocconcini once, purely because they were there.

Another attempt at slow-roasting beef. This time it was two and a half kilos of beef shin (in a single piece, as opposed to the more usual 'osso bucco' slices). I served it with risotto Milanese and some slow-roasted tomatoes--a nod, I guess, to osso bucco. A smarter person than me would've realised 12 hours at ~70C would mean that the meat would become very rich. Very rich. Think trying to eat more than just a few slices of tongue. The meat was tender yet retained some chew to it--think fillet.

I have to bake some bread for work. Purely because it's ideal for the situation, I want to make dinner rolls--perhaps small enough to fit on the palm of your hand--instead of regular-sized loaves. The recipe I'm working from is the base recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (altho' I'm making some small modifications to a couple of batches). Aside from reducing the baking time, is there anything else I need to be aware of or modify (i.e. more/less moisture?

Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva. Holyshitfuckingamazing.

Quay and Tets maybe shouldn't be there. Cutler and Co should be there. Marque and Attica should easily be in the 50. Maybe even Vue. Sepia? I thought it was nice enough but I was really surprised to hear they got 3 hats.

Yeah. The price. There's that. Black and Green are quite expensive--certainly more than your entry-level Angosturas, etc. I guess maybe I'll look into it. Or maybe I'll just revisit Morgan. Any other rums I need in my life? Think of what I'd maybe be able to get through Dan Murphy's or Nick's. At the moment I have: * Green Island white rum. Almost done. Will maybe replace with Havana Club or something of that nature. * Mt Gay Eclipse. * Angostura 5. * Ron Zacarpa GR.

Thinking on the chicken some matter--not because of this thread, but I was kicking around plans for turkey--I'm considering roasting the breasts on-the-bone using Blumenthal's method but reserving the legs for a small chicken pie, which could be served with the breasts to provide a more interesting contrast of flavours/techniques.

Aside from the apv%, is there any difference between the red and green Circles, haresfur?

Why not adapt David Chang's wing recipe? You could do all the advance prep on Sunday or something and then just saute them on Monday night, say.

At 8AM this morning I seasoned and seared some 'asado' ribs and then put them in a 70C oven for a few hours. I then wrapped them in foil, along with some truffle-infused olive oil and cranked the oven to 90C, then gave them a few more hours. In total: 10 hours, plus a hour-long rest in foil while the vegetables ticked away. The pan had a bit of grease in it from when I initially seared the ribs so I used that to roast the potatoes and parsnips.

I went for 1 oz of Ron Zacarpa (I haven't seen anyone sell Smith & Cross in Australia, so I just decided to go for a nice dark rum) and 1.25 oz of Campari. This I like a whole lot.

I have a pot of lamb, barley and lentil soup ticking away at the moment. I started with Fergus Henderson's recipe for lamb necks with barley. Stage one: Lamb necks, lamb shanks, mirepoix, tomato paste and vegetable stock. Obviously homemade lamb stock would be a superior choice. Stage two: Remove mirepoix and lamb bones. Add pearl barley and split peas. When they're about half done, add black lentils and whole peeled shallots (a nod to one of my favourite aspects of classic braises like coq au vin: the pearl onions).

I'm revisiting Blumenthal's rib eye recipe today, only with 'asado' ribs (http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/95697/95697,1192301853,1/stock-photo-barbecue-argentine-style-pork-ribs-and-asado-6070924.jpg) instead of, you know, a rib eye roast. I'll cook them longer than I would a rib eye, given there's all that connective tissue and such to break down, but other than that I'm staying true to the recipe--the ribs were dry-aged in the fridge, hit with salt, seared assertively and then placed in a low oven.

Probably. The Thermochef, tho', now there's a home cook's machine. At the demo I saw, it was openly billed as a sort of all-in-one, jack-of-all-trades, one-appliance-band gift for people who dislike cooking and want to be able to simply dump some chunks of pumpkin in the bowl, add some store-bought chicken stock and tune out and turn on the TV while a pumpkin soup doubtlessly superior to the canned alternative is produced in the background for no more effort than opening a can.

At ~$5000 wouldn't that make it more expensive than the Thermomix?