ChrisTaylor

I pre-boiled the potatoes and pan-fried the eggplant.

In addition to the eggplant and potato gratin for the gratin cook-off I fired up the Weber and barbecued some goat cutlets ...

First effort: a potato and eggplant gratin. A bit boring. I probably should've used ricotta--or, at least, a certain percentage of ricotta--instead of/with the cream. Didn't have enough cheese. The crust was a mixture of breadcrumbs and some parmesan I'd been meaning to use up for a while. I'll try Fifi's eggplant gratin next. Also kicking around the idea of one with roast tomatoes and capsicums and chilli.

Depending on how they prawns are cooked, the tails aren't a huge problem for me. A bowl of small deep-fried prawns is nice, eaten whole, but I have a problem with the heads. They taste nice but the mouthfeel--all those sharp bits--really doesn't do it for me. Feels like something I shouldn't be eating. As the prawns get bigger the mouthfeel of the head gets more offensive.

Chicken sashimi? Everyone in the west has had it drummed into their heads that chicken is to be cooked. I mean, most chicken here that you buy or eat at houses has had every last bit of goodness cooked out of it because people are so paranoid about this.

Had cream on hand, craved baked custard. Made an orange and coriander custard. It's alright. Probably should've added more coriander ... or infused fresh stuff.

Wow. Every butcher around here sells them and, too, 'asado' ribs. They're $4-5 per kilogram. Try an area with lots of Asians or, I guess, South Americans.

Been braising stuff the past couple of days Short ribs:

Excellent blog. Really enjoyed it. Showed a very different side of Australian cooking and produce to what I'm used of.

Maybe for the average person it's got worse. I don't know. Then again, I don't eat that food. If you want a wide variety of stuff--and if you're prepared to pay the cost (although not all of it's expensive: hit up the Asian markets and you can find bargains, albeit the quality of fresh produce varies dramatically)--it's all there for the taking. From 'exotic' fruits to game meats. The range of cookbooks and recipes you can be exposed to is massive. For an Australian perspective, no longer are we limited to our crazily overpriced local bookshops: we can get stupidly cheap books and free shipping from Book Depository. Or we can shop on Amazon. Get stuff for free online from thousands, maybe millions, of websites. The internet has made so many things possible--sites like this, sites that sell the sort of kitchenware you're not likely to find in your local restaurant supply store or department store, easy-to-follow instruction sets for rigging up sous vide setups from a cheap rice cooker and a handful of parts from an electronics shop. It's a golden age if you want it to be.

Got to get around to having a serious go at crocodile given I can easily (and cheaply, too) get it in the Asian market. Cooked it before but never but too much thought into it. I have a few alligator recipes here--have a copy of Howard Mitcham's Creole Gumbo and all that Jazz and I was given a copy of Jamie's America--so I reckon they'd be a good starting point. I mean, the two animals can't be that different in culinary terms, can they?

I'd say a lot of Australians, urban Australians anyway, are anti-hunting. Duck season always attracts much protesting and whinging. The process of getting a gun licence is very involved and there are strict requirements about how you store gun, what kinds of guns you can have, etc. Bows are largely free of regulation, but they're not something you find sitting in the local sports shop. There are strict regulations governing what you can and can't shoot. You can't just get a firearms permit and go out and shoot a 'roo for dinner. Supermarkets sell 'roo, though. I don't know how popular it is--I don't see many people buy it--but I guess it sells okay if your average suburban supermarket carries it. Some game/'exotic' meat, such as quail and rabbit, are sold fresh or frozen at a lot of poultry stores. In areas with a lot of Asians you'll get duck and silkie. You can get a lot of game here, ranging from camel to buffalo to wallaby to possum to emu (had most of the meats you can legally buy in Australia, so I know the fun you can have getting them in), but most if it has to be ordered in. Only a couple of places stock this sort of stuff--and even then, never a huge range and never a huge quantity--fresh in-store. At least in Melbourne. If you do find something fresh, it's probably going to be venison steaks. It's expensive because demand is low and in the case of camel and buffalo, it has to be trucked in from the middle of nowhere, interstate. Quite a trip. Very few restaurants have this kind of stuff on their menu. Indeed, it's really unusual to see 'roo on a menu. I think people are reasonably accepting of the idea of eating venison, 'roo, pheasant and rabbit, although I know plenty of people who wouldn't touch any of them, but I think fewer people still would eat possum or horse. A lot of our deer and wild boar--the vast majority of it--and probably our camel and such too, I guess, although I'm not too sure about that, is exported to Asia and Europe. Demand is low here. Especially for boar. Foie gras production is illegal in Australia. You can't import anything but the pre-cooked/poached/canned stuff. The RSPCA and other animal rights movements would probably like even that to be banned but it hasn't cropped up in the media for a couple of years now--I guess they've forgotten about it and moved onto other issues. Horse only recently became avaliable in Australia--legally--for human consumption. It'd always been avaliable for pet food but never for human consumption. Some Western Australian butcher got things rolling and was rewarded with death threats and such. One of my favourite restaurants in Melbourne, Embrasse, planned a horse degustation but cancelled it when they too got death threats. I had braised horse shanks as an off-the-menu special during a degustation at La Luna (after saying how much we liked the house-cured meats, we were quietly offered something ... extra) and it was lovely. But it was an off-the-menu setup for a reason. Hope that gave you some insight. I mean, keep in mind, if you offered me a whale steak, I'd eat it, no question. I'd even seek it out.

I will. I try everything at least three times. In fact, I'll probably swing by the deli later this week and grab another 500 grams or so.

Let me know how it goes. I was leaning, initially, towards a Spanish recipe with a capsicum and paprika sauce ... but did the fritters instead because I was concerned the sauce would dominate the flavour of the cod.

Roast potatoes in duck fat and you'll be eating very well. No need to change your roasting method ... assuming your roasting method involves pre-boiling the potatoes, drying and roughing them up in the saucepan and then tipping them into a tray of pre-heated fat. Roasting a whole duck is easy enough. I personally prefer the western style of roasting a duck to the Chinese BBQ shop style.

It wasn't salty at all so I don't think that was the issue. The cod flavour wasn't offensive ... it just didn't excite me at all. It was very bland. In fact, I probably put too much potato, even though I've seen plenty of recipes with a roughly 50:50 ratio of cod:potato. That may have been part of the issue. The cod flavour just didn't stand up to the potato all that well--which is why I kicked around the possibility that maybe the cod was of poor quality. Does poaching/soaking the fish in milk give it a milky taste at all? Silly question, perhaps, but I don't get along with the taste of milk.

I've got a recipe kicking around here somewhere for smoked chocolate icecream. Can dig it up, if you care for it.

My first effort I cooked the salt cod in some light stock and then shredded it with a couple of forks and mixed it into mashed potatoes (no fat was used when mashing the potatoes, I might add). Some fried-off diced onions and garlic are in there too. This was my first experience with salt cod and I wasn't sure what to expect. When I smelt the just-cooked cod I was sure I'd hate it--there's something about that 'fishy' smell that I really don't like (see also: the smell of just-boiled/steamed crab). I kept the ratio of cod:potato pretty much on par with a few of the dip recipes I saw, although I didn't dick around with scales or any such thing. Indeed, I was in that sort of mood where a couple of pin bones slipped past me and wound up in the rissoles. Not good. The mixture seemed to hold together okay by itself but just to be sure I added an egg. It was then sticky enough to take on panko crumbs. The 'rissoles' were fried in a mixture of butter and olive oil. They rissoles are okay. I don't know if I'd run off to buy three pounds of the stuff to muck around with, not at the price I paid anyway. I'm not sure of the quality of the cod--I just bought it at the local Italian deli, haven't seen it at too many places, so I've no idea if it's good stuff or crap stuff in the grand salty coddy scheme of salt cod. If I was to do them again I'd probably buy salt cod from elsewhere, just to see, and I'd look at maybe shallow-frying them in canola oil or something. Rolling them smaller, even, and serving them with a sauce--tartare, perhaps--and they could make for a decent canape. Maybe it's just because this isn't some nostalgic childhood thing for me but I do feel they need some sexing up.

Thanks for the heads up on the cottage (and that website as a whole, even). The hotel is really expensive--and, given we're hitting two nice restaurants and I'd like to organise a couple of other things for her, it was a bit much. Especially given a lot of reviews of the restaurant comment on the quality of the rooms ...

There's a bit of nature vs nurture to it. I mean, part of what you're doing in educating kids about nice food is trying to get to make them good choices in the future, right? Feed them crap--lots of McD's, KFC, whatever--and they grow up, in theory, with the perception that that is 'normal'. There are exceptions, of course. Me. A lot of people who've responded so far. I have no doubt a strong background in food helps. Probably a whole lot if you're doing stuff that's rooted heavily in the tradition of a given food culture. But I, too, think that it's not that big of a deal. It's possible to grow up thinking a Big Mac is the most delicious thing and then, at some point in your adulthood or even childhood, stumble on the right television show, meal, book or whatever that acts as a gateway drug. Of course, I've seen people grow up around a very strong Chinese or Italian food culture, learning how to make dumplings and whatnot as a kid, and any more, all they'll eat is Chinese or Italian. Everything is is bad. If it's not done the way it was done by my grandma in her village, it's wrong. Won't eat it. Won't cook it. Don't even want to hear about it. So I guess if your education says that only this narrow subset of things are worth bothering with, that's potentially almost as bad. Too, had no idea about the Ripert/mayonnaise thing. That's hilarious. I love it when that sort of 'wisdom' pops up in cookbooks. I was amused by Marco Pierre White saying, in White Heat, that this or that dish is for men so women shouldn't eat it--instead they should eat this salad or whatever because it's delicate and beautiful and not offensive to his ideas of gender. Fruitcake.

I think it's in Eric Ripert's book, maybe, the Le Bernardin one, that he says he believes you can't cook well unless you grew up around good food. He's talking about a restaurant context, of course. And even so, I'm inclined to disagree with it. I only had 'good food'--went to nice restaurants, sampled stuff more interesting than Cantonese lemon chicken and spaghetti bolognese--when I was an adult, when I could pay my own way at restaurants and buy whatever ingredients I wanted, because I was the one cooking them and eating them. I think I do okay. I'm sure that there are plenty of chefs, possibly even a few good ones, who've come from much the same background. I mean, I haven't read too many biographies from chefs, but I get the impression a lot of the big names today, even, came from none-too-exciting backgrounds. I remember when Heston was doing the episode on hamburgers, how Thomas Keller said McDonald's was the pinnacle when he was a kid (and, of course, he grew out of it). No idea what his background was like otherwise, tho'. I'd argue that growing up around good food, in a family or culture where food traditions are important and passed on, certainly helps ... but it's not a requirement to cooking well. On one level, I get it. I see chefs like Keller and Blumenthal playing with concepts like memory and working with flavours and ingredients they loved in their childhood and I know that I could never do the same thing, given the most exciting thing I ate during my childhood was spaghetti bolognese made with Vegemite and curry powder (seriously). Of course, perhaps I'm over-simplifying Ripert's argument. I doubt he seriously denies that someone who grew up looking forward to KFC every weekend could never learn the restaurant trade ... I wonder if he means more that someone who didn't grow up surrounded by an appreciation of good food can never truly 'get' cooking or perhaps even food on a more than a purely technical/mechanical level. Did you grow up eating good food and/or in a culture/family that appreciated nice foods? When did you have your first experience with eating at a nice restaurant? If you didn't grow up around this stuff, how long did it was it before you could fully appreciate a meal at said nice restaurant? Do you think your childhood significantly influenced what you cook/eat or your ability to cook/appreciate food? If you're raising kids (or about to), what's your take on the situation? Do you/will you put thought into what foods and culinary traditions you expose them to/pass on?

Tonight I'm using Adrian Richardson's book again. For those not in the know, Richardson's the chef behind the lovely Melbourne casual bistro, La Luna. The menu--and the book, which isn't directly tied into the restaurant--is pretty much an album of stuff I hold dear. I'm making one of his pie recipes: a lamb and spinach filo pie. Haven't really done much with filo pastry. When I took the stuff out of the packet, I admit I was a bit worried: I envisioned myself making some rough puff and serving the spiced lamb filling as a pot pie or something as the filo looked so delicate. Turns out it's not that bad. Curiously, the filo took a lot longer to brown than he said it would. Aside from lamb and spinach, the pies also contain feta, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, currants, pine nuts, coriander (both seeds and fresh), cumin and mint. They came out okay. Not the most amazing pie but worth the filo anxiety. Used another one of his recipes for a side: mushrooms with garlic and sage (the recipe says thyme but I'm all out). The last was an original. I wanted to make oven chips ... and, somewhere along the line, decided to see if I could make triple-cooked oven chips. This ties into something I was kicking around after reading the roast potato thread, about maybe experimenting to see if I could create a roast potato with a double crust. What I did was cut chips out of waxy potatoes (Desiree potatoes, to be precise), boil them until soft and then gently saute them them with no oil in a fry pan to dry them out a little and rough up the edges. If I had foresight I'd have boiled them this morning and just thrown them in the fridge. I then placed them in a frypan of hot oil in the oven for ... however long I put them in there for (I was busy trying not to ruin the filo pastry). I then took them out, drained them of oil and let them cool down. They then went back into the oven. The experiment worked: the chips came out extra crisp.

It doesn't taste like chicken, that's for sure. It's the same seasoning used on the crisps, two minute noodles and such, pretty much.

Slow oven braised, uncorned brisket is the most amazing beef flavor. I have a recipe where the brisket is rubbed with ground espresso beans and ancho chili powder, then slow braised, covered in aluminum foil, with espresso as the liquid. It is simply amazing. Brisket's not just for BBQ or corned beef, although those are certainly wonderful applications. Would very much like that recipe if possible.

Thanks. I keep hearing good things about Cutler & Co. My friend, whose opinion I trust on such things, rates it as his favourite too. It's on the 'to-do' list for this year, along with Attica, Grossi Florentino, Embrasse (one of my few repeats), Rockpool (for a gift: my dad has very conservative tastes and probably wouldn't even enjoy, say, Circa) and Lake House, Royal Mail Hotel (LH and RMH for my girlfriend's birthday). Will have to fit Loam in there somewhere. That'll be quite an excursion from the south eastern 'burbs. Need to find some willing fellow food nerds who won't balk at going the distance. It'd be nice to do The Point, too--their degustation looks okay--but I think I'm going to be doing okay as is. Thank god I don't drink that much wine or I'd be living in the gutter.