tsp.

Calf's liver is delicious too.

I'm putting it out there, and this is going to be controversial, my immersion circulator. I can prepare large amounts of meals in one hit and just reheat.

Is ras al hanout strictly vegetarian if it includes cantharides? OK, I joke. Do you know what is really good from Plenty, that bean, tarragon and nigella seed salad. It will provide the crunch you're after and tarragon is a nice match to pinot noir.

Most people would eat Beluga by itself on toast. The good stuff usually receives very little embellishment.

I seriously don't know anyone who has left Hanoi without one. I have another thing I like: The Opinel mushroom knife is the ideal companion for my favorite pastime, foraging in the woods. Its pruning blade and boar bristle brush are perfect for cleaning my foraged mushrooms.

This thing does it all. Sure, it lacks the distinctive wavy surface pattern of a Damascus steel blade, but hey, it can julienne, grate, shave, peel.

How about the trend of reproving foodies now taking pictures of people taking pictures of food, I've written a bit about it here. I have to admit, it's quite funny. I'm now starting the trend of pictures of people taking pictures of people taking pictures of people taking pictures of food.

Very similar to a phin, used for Vietnamese iced coffee, there's a bit about them on my blog in the signature.

Ha, I recently wrote a post on food souvenirs. Enjoy the holiday.

I read that book. Probably the most interesting thing I learned from it was very close to the beginning of the book: Wherever she went to culinary school didn't pay close attention to details, as she apparently graduated without ever being taught how to properly hold a knife! There was always at least one person in love with her in each kitchen too. And we get it, you drink scotch.

I've also recently read Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey, I was standing at the airport about to go to Hanoi for work and I saw it there with "Hanoi" and a kind of culinary cover, so I quickly bought it to read on the plane without reading the blurb. It wasn't bad, young girl stages at four kitchens across the world including a stint at Dewey Dufresne's wd~50. Wasn't bad.

I'm reading The Saucier's Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe. Bob Spitz. It's not bad, I found it at a second hand store for next to nothing.

You could smoke the butter even, perhaps some cardamom smoked butter in a lemon syrup type cake. Could be really good, or really bad.

Slightly OT, but can you hack together a PID temperature contoller like the SV guys do for a small induction cooktop? Have the temperature probe in the pan and cycle on and off?

Cacao smoked marshmallow - I think I've seen that done before, otherwise I just made it up then. You could also try something with tobacco? Maybe a bourbon and Cuban cigar ice cream. Smoke the bourbon and go for a Bay of Pigs conflict food pairing.

So does Ben Shewry, but I'm all for foraging. Especially nettles, it's an underrated weed.

Without sounding incensitive, was the recent bus crash in Hong Kong? Absolutely terrible news.

I have a copy of India: The Cookbook: Pushpesh Pant, and while I like it, do a search on here as after I bought it a lot of people pointed out duplicate ingredients / missing ingredients and a whole heap of other errors. It's probably not so bad given the massive ammount of recipies. I would still recommend it as a gift, it's so nicely published as most Phaidon books are and Pushpesh Pant is an noted Indian academic / food critic.

I'm not the only one? I didn't list it because I can't actually afford to eat them. Give me a macaroon any day of the week.

Macaron, all puffed up with vanity and no substance.

Agreed.

That's very true. I'm sure we grow a lot of galangal, tumeric and stuff too. I forgot we were one of the largest ginger producers - being from Melbourne.

Cheerios.

Wow, I recently ate at Nahm at The Metropolitan in BKK and it was amazing. It's quite funny because on that same trip I went to a cooking school with a whole heap of colleages from the UK and was surprised at the comments regarding the availabilty of ingredients back home. In Australia - with our very strict quaranteen laws - we can pretty much get most things...

I know this topic is now quite old, but I noticed that the City of Darebin Libraries are running a 'free greens' edible weeds workshop in Northcote, Melbourne. Doris Pozzi, author of the book Edible Weeds and Garden Plants of Melbourne is speaking. I was going to register myself, unfortunately it's sold out, but you can join the waiting list online here.