ChrisTaylor

Roast, rolled lamb shoulder. Roast potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, capsicums, onions and garlic.

Prepared two of the dishes so far: the red beans and rice and the 'Grandma's rabbit'. Both were pretty good. No photos, tho'.

I've yet to sink my teeth into a lot my new books but of the old ones I really like Bourdain, MoVida, Thai Food, Land of Plenty and 50 Great Curries. Of my more recent purchases--these have caught my eye but haven't stood the test of time yet--I am most attracted to Bras' Essential Cuisine (flashy restaurant food, mind you, not home-style), Art of Mexican Cooking, Catalan Cuisine, My New Orleans and Keller's Bouchon. Dashi and Umami is really interesting, too. Haven't had any of the Culinaria tomes arrive on my doorstep yet--I chose them because they were extensive, cheap and reasonably well-regarded. And, too, it's not like there are that many English-language Malaysian, German and Hungarian books to choose from.

As a teacher I'd recommend a bottle of single malt inside a cake box.

Oh, yeah, I have an Afghan book too. It's pretty dodgy tho'. And, too, on the Vietnamese from, Luke Nguyen's Red Lantern. Too, Please to the Table covers a bit of Central Asia as well as Eastern Europe. Basically the old USSR.

Orange-flavoured chocolate and its evil side kick, mint-flavoured chocolate, are an abomination unto many gods and all right-thinking people alike.

I don't read Spanish, no, but if the Spanish-language books are much better than what's avaliable in English I guess I'd buy an Oxford English-Spanish dictionary and deal with it. EDIT Snadra, if you're into this kind of thing, here's my list Pan-African: Taste of Africa - Hafner West African: My Cooking - Ogunsanya South African: Complete South Africa, Cape Malay Illustrated, South African Illustrated (hoping the upcoming Springbok and Spice will be good) Middle Eastern: Arabesque - Malouf; Middle Eastern Food - Roden Eastern Europe: Please to the Table - von Bremzen South America: South American Table - Kijac French: Wolfert, Bourdain, Bras, Escoffier, Le Repertoire, Ducasse, Larousse, North, Pepin, Keller, Reynaud, Robuchon, Au Pied de Cochon, Gagnaire Hungary: Culinaria Hungary German: Culinaria Germany Italian: Made in Italy - Locatelli; Essentials - Hazan, Jamie's Italy, Italian Local - Puttock Jewish: Roden Morocco: Wolfert Sri Lanka: Kuravita's Serendip Argentina: Seven Fires Japanese: Dashi and Umami, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art Nepal: A Taste of Nepal Turkish: Turquoise - Malouf Greek: Press Club - Calombaris; Culinaria Greece Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore - Culinaria SE Asia Korean: Korean Table - Chung New Orleans/other US: Jamie's America, Creole Gumbo & All That Jazz, Real Cajun, My New Orleans, Ad Hoc Portugal: Piri-piri & Starfish - Kiros Chinese: Simple Chinese Cooking & My China - Kwong; Land of Plenty - Dunlop British: Nose to Tail pts 1 and 2 - Henderson; Black Pudding & Foie Gras - Pern Iran/old Persia: New Food of Life Australia: Floyd on Oz, Matt Moran, Quay, Pier, most of Neil Perry's books, Lake House, Cuisine de Temps, others Indian: Jaffery's Curry Bible, 50 Great Curries of India Spanish: MoVida, Catalan Cuisine, New Spanish Table, Basque Table Thai: Thompson's Thai Food Mexican: Kennedy's Art of Mexican Cooking and Essential Mexican Cuisines Pan-Asian/SE Asian: Perry, Liaw, Floyd Burma: Taste of Shan Cambodia: Food & Cooking of Cambodia Laos: Traditional Recipes of Laos Filipino: Filipino Cooking

I'm interested in collecting books that feature good recipes for home style dishes from around the world. I have a fairly extensive collection, ranging from fairly broad Eastern European and South American books to region-specific titles such as The Illustrated Cape Malay Cookbook and Catalan Cuisine. I'm missing some, tho', and I'm looking for recommendations to fill the gaps. I'd like recommendations for ... Nordic (I have Noma, of course, but I'm after the sort of food normal people cook at home and traditional dishes) Hawaii and other Pacific islands Caribbean (all I can find at the moment are the Levi Roots books--and I'm not sure if a series of books by a very rich musician with a side line in hot sauce is what I'm after) African (I have a few African books, actually, mostly South African, and most of them are shit) Polish Indigenous Australian Irish (looking at the Coleman Andrews one at the moment--thoughts?) US--beyond New Orleans/Cajun/Creole (already have a couple of good books on that), ideally including something about the Texan/Mexican border area Mongolian Arab (think Saudi Arabia/Kuwait/Yemen as opposed to Lebanon/Syria/Israel) Croat/Serb/Bosnian Belgian Dutch Chinese Islamic Macanese

I'd have to go for really cheap milk chocolate. Not the cheap, mass produced Cadbury kind ... but the stupidly cheap stuff made by companies you've never heard of. That. Criminal.

Fried chicken. I followed, mostly, the Ad Hoc recipe although I finished the chicken pieces off in the oven--I was concerned that due to their size, the crust would burn before the meat cooked through to the bone.

The life of kings.

I don't know how much lobsters cost in the US or wherever, but in Australia lobsters are stupidly cheap when they're $55 per kilogram at retail. Our lobsters also don't have claws large enough to extract much meat from. And the ones in the local fishmongers always tend to be large. If I wanted to spend $70--by the time I get a lobster and other ingredients--on a meal I'd go to a restaurant.

Do you have a (sanely priced) way to measure the humidity?

I've been looking at a set of instructions for a DIY curing chamber. Reckon a 50L bar fridge would be big enough to contain the humidity gadget (I've no idea how big that gadget would be, exactly) and a piece of meat? Obviously we're not talking about a whole leg of whatever here, but a salami, a 1-2 kilo pancetta, etc. EDIT Actually reading the topic now, I've eBayed around and seen I can get new wine coolers for a reasonable price--probably about the same as a bar fridge and temp controller. How easy, without expensive equipment, is it to keep a wine cooler at the necessary humidity?

Red beans and rice c/o Besh's My New Orleans.

Culinaria Hungry Culinaria Greece Culinaria South-East Asia: Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia Taste of Nepal - Pathak White Heat - White Cooking of South-West France - Wolfert Moroccan Food - Wolfert Book of Jewish Food - Roden Tetsuya - Wakuda Real Cajun - Link Ad Hoc at Home - Keller Formulas for Flavour - Campbell Indulge - Clark

Sorting things into bowls, ramekins, plates and other vessels of appropriate size before moving them to the saucepan appeals to my autism and is a nice way of handling my shitty hand-eye co-ordination--multiple trips from here to there, ferrying onions on the side of a knife blade, is just asking for woe.

Bought the German, Greek and Hungarian 'Culinaria' tomes. It'd be nice to get a Culinaria South Africa. I have a few of the South African books avaliable in the West--a couple of them are cute, illustrated-with-water-colours numbers, but all of them suck to varying degrees. Or focus too heavily on, say, Cape Malay or 'Indian' cuisine at the expensive of Xhosa or Afrikaans or whatever else.

Seemed like ages ago when I posted this thread but now it's not too far off. Bookings are finalised and everything else. The final list: Guillaume Four in Hand Marque Aria (lunch) Quay Bentley (lunch) Becasse est (lunch) Sepia Berowa Waters Inn (lunch) Pier

Winter lobster casserole c/o Greg Doyle's Pier book. Too poor to buy whole, live lobsters so I bought frozen lobster tails. It was okay. Would be much better with fresh lobster, I'm sure. But I'm also sure it'd be much better if teaching paid twice as much as it does.

Bolognese sauce. So much debate on the vegetables you use (type and quantity--onions, leeks, celery, carrots), the amount of tomato (or whether you include any at all, whether you use homemade sauce or store bought passata or canned tomatoes or concentrate or fresh), other cooking liquids (red wine? white wine? milk? a combination thereof?), the kind of meat, the presence of cured pork products (bacon, pancetta, mashed up sausages, even salami), the cut of meat (finely ground, coarsely ground, roughly chopped, cooked as a whole joint [shank, say] and then shredded), other additions (mostly umami boosters--Vegemite, mushrooms--but I've also seen people add things like fresh chilli and curry powder before).

Really? 'Simple' is asking for no dressing on a salad. I wouldn't expect them, at no extra cost, to prepare a different side dish. Assuming that side isn't served with something else on the menu.

Dinner the night before at Embrasse. My dearest mother is only just starting to develop a taste for nice food so I wanted somewhere interesting but conservative. She won't, after all, eat anything even kind of resembling exotic ingredients such as prawns and scallops.

Drew from Dashi and Umami and Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art to make a kombu risotto with Yuan-style grilled chicken.

Maybe no one cares any more because of how old it is, but if anyone is interested in Campbell's Formula Amazon.uk have it on special for 7-8GBP. Picked up a copy because nice cookbooks are my cocaine.