ChrisTaylor

Doing a bit of research I see that silkie is much tougher than regular chicken and requires a low and slow cooking. I don't intend to deviate from roasting--I'll just roast it at, say, 60 degrees and then finish it off in the pan with butter.

I bought a silkie on the way home from work today. At the moment I'm pretty much settled on the basic method of cooking the beast--brine and then roast the breast on the bone, salt and then confit the legs--but I'm at a loss for what to put with the dish. A strong chicken jus wouldn't go astray, of course, but I'm talking in terms of vegetables. Think winter.

I'd braise it on the bone, as the bones and various other bits and pieces will add to the flavour of the sauce. I'd let some (but not all, obviously) of the fat stay in the sauce.

I wouldn't call it extreme. I would call it awesome, tho'. I think what would possibly be more awesome, in an obscene pornographic way, is a ghastly burger that combines rare duck breast with crispy skin, a smear of foie gras parfait and some confit duck.

Never been to the restaurant or heard of it before Amazon.uk recommended the book, even, but I blindly bought BOCCA upon its release after reading about some of Kennedy's signature dishes. Very nice book--sits nicely alongside my copies of Locatelli's Made in Italy and Hazan's Essentials. I don't know much about the regions of Italy or Italian cuisine, but I think the book (and the restaurant too, right?) focuses on northern Italian food. Yet to make anything from it--it landed on my doorstep this afternoon and all--but I reckon I'll start with the pigeon ragu that pretty much sold me on the book in the first place. Will poke through the freezer section of my local Asian grocers to look for some old boiler pigeons (supposedly the best sort of pigeons for the sauce--and more economical, too, which is always a nice thing).

What is charcuterie sauce - that looks great..... There are a few variants but I used the one in Justin North's Becasse book: pork jus (well, I used chicken stock which I boosted with a little bit of Vegemite), parsley, pickled onions, cornichons, capers, whole grain mustard and diced tomato.

Roast rack of pork with roast potatoes, sauerkraut and charcuterie sauce.

That's beautiful, David Ross.

Is it a good idea to brine veal schnitzel?

Last time I was at the Asian grocer I spotted a can of some kind of larvae. Korean-branded yellow can. Maybe see if you can find something like that if you're keen to sample bugs.

Being unable to tune out any background noise at all--ever--I find loud restaurants physically uncomfortable. 'Loud' even in the 'fun and lively' sense. Or 'loud' in the sense it attracts noisy groups of diners. I'll tolerate it for good food but I won't want to stick around.

It's probably something to do with preventing people from tampering with the contents. Down here companies did basically the same thing with paracetamol and some foodstuffs. I'm sure every big company that sells stuff on supermarket shelves has the odd idiot ring up or write in saying, Hey, I've just gone to a supermarket and contaminated some of your product.

Kennedy's Bocca and someone else's Basque Table push my total to one hundred twentysomething.

For me it's a good knife or two. Cast iron or, at least, heavy cookware. These changed everything for me.

Maybe it's just a cultural change, but to me fish and chips lost soul the moment they stopped giving semi-regulars an extra potato cake (potato scallop in non-Victorian) or dim sim or whatever.

The main thing isn't 1 cup or 2 cups or 2.83 cups: it's if all of the meat is in contact with the marinade. I certainly wouldn't marinade the meat in vinegar for too long, tho'.

I don't remember this episode but I do have a Sri Lankan cookbook handy. No promises if this is the same dish. Coat some thinly sliced sirloin in ground pepper. Marinate for 30 minutes in salt and white vinegar. Quickly sear beef in pan. Then add a sliced red onion and continue to cook for 5 minutes. Add a couple of sliced chillies and serve. Adapted from Peter Kuravita's Serendip.

You've bought the meat already? Why not sacrifice a piece of pork and a piece of bird and do a trial version?

Flake (shark) is the business, tho' whiting, flathead and other nice white-fleshed fish are all pleasant. So long as the fish is moist and the batter light but crisp, I'll accept any species and enjoy it for what it is.

Danes and others may be able to access umami paste, tho'. In the 'epicure' section of yesterday's paper I saw a write up on umami paste (not sure if it's a local product, but presumably the same sort of thing can be found elsewhere). Umami paste is made from tomato paste, garlic, anchovy paste, parmesan, porcini powder and Lord knows what else.

Ad Hoc is home style food. I think Keller's books in general are nice, tho', and pretty much what you want--those box sets that pair French Laundry with either Bouchon (my favourite) or Ad Hoc are reasonably priced. Grab Cuisine de Temps by Australian chef Jacques Reymond. Press Club by fellow Australian George Calombaris is nice, too. Neil Perry's Rockpool. Doyle's PIER. Savage's Bentley. Morimoto by Morimoto is mostly accessible. Tetsuya, too, if you can find a copy. Marco Pierre White's White Heat is older than these books but still very good. Noma, Fat Duck, Alinea, Quay, Bras' Essentials are all lovely books but generally inaccessible--altho' not impossible, by any means--if you're intending to make faithful renditions of the restaurant dishes. Nothing is stopping you from stealing small ideas here and there, tho', and sticking them into something else.

My students (8, 9 and 10 year olds) are very liberal. A couple of them seeing me eat a lunch of leftover rabbit stew: 'Mr Taylor, do you eat dog?' 'Mr Taylor, you had mouse? In Vietnam, my uncle, he hunt for mouse.' 'You eat the goat brain?' 'The baby duck inside the egg?' 'Eat the spider?' 'In Vietnam, my dad and me, we eat snake. But I don't have the heart 'cos they put it in wine.' 'In Vietnam, my uncle, he kill the dog and we eat it. Then the next day we go to McDonald's.' 'In Vietnam, my uncle, he eat the rude part of the goat. I don't want to say. You know. The balls.' Or today: 'Hot dogs have dog in them.' 'No, not really. That's just the name. They're made from beef or pork or both.' 'Dim sims [an Australianised version of a steamed dumpling, kind of] have cat. And dog sometimes.' 'No. Dim sims are maybe mutton, maybe pork. Whatever's cheap.' 'I've always wondered what my dogs would taste like.' 'Crocodile/kangaroo/anything that walks/slithers/flies/swims-with-its-back-to-the-sun is good with special Cambodian sauce. So nice, man. So pro.'

I'm going to go the other way and nominate modern shows like Unique Sweets, Marcel's Kitchen, Top Chef and even Zimmern's Bizarre Foods. Shows that a lot of people here enjoy. I find the style of these shows too visually and aurally busy. These shows are probably put on endless loop by dodgy third world militaries to torture autistics. A lot of the personalities on these shows rub me up the wrong way. I want to like Zimmern's show because he covers some interesting foodstuffs but the guy gives me the shits. Altho' nowhere near as much as some of the people on Top Chef and Unique Sweets (not all of them, but certainly the people these shows seem to focus on--the 'colourful' personalities and obnoxious food writers). There's a certain charm that dodgy, no-budget day-time cooking shows have that these shows don't have. I find it far easier to endure the culinary crimes and lame attempts at entertaining the audience than the sensory overload of a lot of modern American food shows--especially those produced by Food Network.

Cracked open one of my new books, Abla's Lebanese Kitchen. A chicken casserole--very simple, just chicken thighs (the book says breasts ... but I say no), onion, lots of garlic, tomato paste, allspice, black pepper, stock and parsley. The green beans were slow-cooked with onions, tomatoes and allspice in olive oil. I then poured off the old olive oil and served it with a fresh drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

I ended up abandoning the idea of a spit-roasted lamb as I don't think such a night is a good time to experiment. Anyway, the night is set for next Saturday. Here's the menu so far: 'Bean soup' from Roden's New Middle Eastern Food. Basically a big pot of beans, lentils, split-peas, vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, onions mainly) and lamb. She uses lamb shoulder in the recipe but mentions that the real deal is usually made with the lamb's head and trotters. I can get lamb trotters locally and intend to use them--both in the stock, which I'm making today, and in the soup itself. The butcher reckons he can probably get one or two lamb heads for me in time for the big day. I was surprised at how much they charged me for the lamb trotters. 'Orechiette with lamb neck sugo' from Adrian Richardson's Meat cookbook. Made this a few times and really enjoy it. Easy to prepare for a crowd. I'll also prepare some lamb ribs--seasoned with little more than salt and pepper and maybe a good squeeze of lemon juice to cut through the fat. Considering possibilities for side dishes. My oven is largely going to be taken over by these dishes so my go-to sides--roast potatoes and other roast vegetables--are off the menu.