Anna N

I’m not a huge fan of chilli so can’t say that I have much experience eating it but I have never known it to be served with anything more exotic than some toasted bread. Or before the demise of a particular very local restaurant, over french fries.

Click. The Thermomix has survived a safety scandal, resulting in user injury and multimillion-dollar fines, and been the subject of parody (The Katering Show ran a long segment on the product/“hot wet rice” that has been viewed north of 2.7m times). The latest version Phelps is demonstrating is wifi-enabled, connected to a global repository of recipes which users are guided through via the device’s step-by-step digital interface. In addition to the heating, blending, milling and steaming, it can generate shopping lists based on meal plans and directly order delivery from Woolworths.

You might have to manipulate them map a bit but it is in the bottom right hand corner in LaSalle Park.

Beautiful and let me say how happy we all are to see you safe!

Little guilt about what I eat; much guilt about how much of it I eat.

I obviously don’t know much about the place except for some rumours. But I’ve passed it many times when I was in the car with @Kerry Bealand not once did she suggest that we stop for lunch. That was enough for me. 😂

Never had the (dis)pleasure.

Thanks. Nice to know. There really was nothing wrong with the food I had that could not have been fixed by being fresher!

Thanks! Find it hard to resist anything that will amuse me and only costs $1.99 (which is still part of a Christmas present!)

While the idea of ladies’ menus raises my hackles, the concept of guest menus without pricing seems not quite so out of place. I don’t know how much to trust my memory on this but I do believe the faculty club of my University offered menus without prices to guests.

These ladies planned to enjoy lunch together on Wednesday but the crush of work of one of us, and it wasn’t me, precluded that. So lunch got pushed to Friday. We decided on a place that @Kerry Bealhad driven past on a number of occasions. The Rose Garden Restaurant It’s so named because it is located very close to the actual rose garden of the Royal botanical Gardens. This restaurant has the most eclectic menu I think I have ever seen. It is basically a diner that has segued into the 21st-century. However, we both stuck with pretty standard diner fare. Since Kerry was at work I called in the order so she could pick it up on her way over to my house. All seemed well until I received a phone call from a very frazzled restaurant employee. “She has got the wrong order!” I was asked to call Kerry and tell her to return the order she had and pick up the right order. From the sound of the employee’s voice she was bracing for a shellacking. I reassured her that Kerry was not the kind of person who would do that and she should just relax. As both Kerry and I suspected our food had been sitting there now for far too long and although it was edible it did not really do justice to its potential. Oh well there are bigger worries! Kerry’s beef dip with fries, coleslaw and the requisite jus. My garden salad to accompany liver and onions. I had lots of leftovers and must say that the salad was very fresh. The fries suffered the most from the long delay.

Since the discussion of canola oil was first re-activated as a reaction to Eric Ripert’s use of it, I am making a small leap about the seafood restaurant mentioned in this post— Le Bernardin?

I believe that Jacques and I concur in what we mean by perfectly cooked. Eric, in his new book, calls for the beans to be cooked in boiling water (for about 5 minutes), drained and dressed with butter. This is an even simpler method than offered by Jacques. The timing In my experience would produce perfectly cooked green beans (the operative word being “about”).

We seem to have beaten the whole canola oil controversy to death. This is just one of four threads that I was able to find. I was amused when I went through the link that I posted about the posh oil. I wondered who would be anxious to cite its use in a restaurant called The Petroleum Club. Back to Eric Ripert and his new book. Perhaps it is a reaction to a plethora of books that in attempting to promote vegetables manage to bury their true character in a jumble of flavours. Perfectly cooked green beans dressed with butter can be sublime and perhaps that is the message of the book.

I hated cilantro. Hated it. Hated it. But as I learned to eat banh mi I gradually overcame at least some of my hatred. Now while I will discard much of the cilantro on the sandwich I find I have to keep some just to make it taste the way I want. Weird. For anything but the sandwich I will dig out and discard any cilantro. No accounting for folks as they say.

It might be a Spain versus France thing but I don’t think so somehow. As for high quality canola oil Here. I know nothing about it. I just grabbed this from Google.

I did try to do a bit of research on why he is so into canola oil but I didn’t come up with anything. I am not opposed to canola oil but it’s a curious choice for a restaurant of such stature. As an aside, I also had a look at Jose Andre’s vegetable book where he insists that olive oil is the only oil for everything.

Even though I did not expect to be cooking from the book I could not resist and did buy the Kindle edition. It’s very strange to me. But I think that one should have some realistic expectations from a book with “simple” in the title. It’s just hard to put simple and Ripert together. But there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind about his intentions. The head note for his recipe for stuffed cabbage reads as follows: There is an exception to every rule, and this recipe, contrary to the title of the book, isn’t actually that simple. In fact, it requires quite a lot of attention. This classic French stuffed cabbage is a staple in the winter. Here, the obvious twist on the classic is that there is no meat. However, it’s packed with flavor and making it comes with the added bonus of mastering a complex recipe—your guests will be dazzled!

That would’ve been a bridge too far!

Why don’t you tell us how you really feel about canola oil?😂 But if you can get over the canola oil you are still going to have some challenges with this book. I don’t know quite where I stand. The title is Vegetable Simple so should I be gob smacked when one of the recipes is for green beans with butter? It is almost vegetables 101. Is it just me that thinks popcorn is a stretch for vegetables? Hoping somebody else offers their opinion of this book.

Thank you. Thank you. I used the same basic “treat it like a mini mango” method and enjoyed an abundance of cook’s treats.

Having dealt with these particular olives I’m having a hard time imagining how any of these methods would actually work.

I have sometimes fantasized about all “recipes” being written as salt/soy sauce/fish sauce/anchovies sugar/honey/maple syrup lemon juice/vinegar/tamarind/lime juice beef/chicken/rabbit You get the idea. Many cooks mentally make this adjustment but I think it might do more to teach the rest of us (yes, I definitely include myself) that a recipe is a suggestion not a prescription.

I know. I know. I try hard to forget.

On the ingredient page of the link it does say “contains pits”.