Niall

One of the pubs in sydney does some nice beer batter chips.

Have you had your mammogram yet tommy?

I haven't been there yet.. but we feel an extreme need to go to Ducasse while we are in Paris, and have booked lunch there..

So is there some Irish in there to go with the Canadian?

In KL, one of the good ways to choose a stall vendor is to pick the ones that give you a bowl of freshly boiled water to wash your chopsticks/ plates etc. Although it didn't really bother me either way.

I'm afraid it's green. It may have to be a donation to the local Rugby club...

Street food can be a fantastic experience. In Sydney there is a regular hawker market in a Park in North Sydney, and it is great. Once a year a Sydney Newspaper persuades some of the good Asian restaurants to participate in a hawker market 3 nights a week for 4 weeks; and it's a different perspective on their cooking. But the best Street food I have had is Penang, at gurney drive; those satay sticks are bloody great. We did have someone with local knowledge there which helped. When we were in KL we did ok without local knowledge.

We inherited a bottle of creme de menthe at a cocktail party we had about a year ago. I say inherited because the bottle looks rather old as if it has seen quite a few parties without ever being opened. 2 questions: 1: Does it ever go off? And if it does how do I tell if it has? 2: If it doesn't go off, what are your favourite Cocktail recipes?

we too keep peas, stock and parmesan in the freezer; we also keep a bit of gruyere for grating, breadcrumbs, Home made Apple sauce, tomato puree, garlic butter, various meats (Chicken & pork fillets, bacon, mincemeat). I even think theres some hungarian sausage in there at the moment.

I was just wondering whether anyone has tried Becasse yet? How does it compare to Bistro Lulu, Moncur, Balzac and Tabou?

I think thats just Brisbane. I spent a day there and was bored by lunchtime. Apparently its a really good place to go and get hammered on tasteless XXXX beer. I am assuming the reason for the lack of anything in brisabane is the closeness of the tourist dollar in the Gold coast and Sunshine Coast. It does have a reasonable Chinatown though; it is small but I remember eating some good dessert stuff there.. that sweet ginger tofu stuff with some green and red jellies... Yummy. Can't remember where we got it; I went there 3 years ago and haven't felt the need to return.

It all comes down to how much your drink, how often you buy and how much you age them... I used to work with a mathemetician who had decided to figure it all out and came up with an equation that supposedly took into account the percentage of each variety he drank, how long he thought each variety at each pricepoint he purchased would need to be aged, how often he purchased wine, how often the wine clubs he was a member of delivered. It was all very complex until he came up with a number and said "And I'll add on 20% just in case". He moved jobs, and he wasn't really an interesting enough person to stay in touch with. I would suggest that you fill all available space. And then write me into your will.

Theres a couple of useful sites for this Chinese recipes... http://lifestyle.ninemsn.com.au/aww....e_1.asp This one is a bit commercial with product recommendations etc..http://members.ozemail.com.au/~vego/chinese.html Wait 'til you hear this.. http://www.sh.com/dish/delicacy.htm Full of instructions like "Kill and clean the chicken, cut off its feet".

This reminds me of my trip to gurney drive in Penang. Fantastic food. Amazingly cheap. In fact that pretty much describes the entire trip to penang. 1:Get up. 2:Decide where to have breakfast. 3:Eat. 4:Decide where to eat next.5: Decide what to do until the next time we were eating. Do it. Go back to 3 and continue until bedtime. go to bed. Go back to 1.

Just did the cauliflower thing.... fanbloodytastic. It was one of the few veggies I had never considered roasting. It and cabbage. Anybody got any roast cabbage recipes?

Have you ever written a cookbook? If so, which one. If not, why not? That is probably the best description of basic but fantastic risotto I have seen. On the risotto though. This fantastic recipe can be made even more fantastic with the addition of some fresh portobello mushrooms... And I had never even considered the raw egg... that will definitely be going in next time I cook risotto.

Last night I realised that our local Thai place in waverton does a pretty good laksa...but that was after a few beers..

We are currently renting what at first seemed like a reasonably sized kitchen; about 2.5 metres by 4 metres. Then we realised that the planning in the kitchen is terrible, with 2 metres of useable workspace, which only just does on those occasions. The worst thing about our kitchen is the 3, and only 3, power points. One for the dishwasher. We don't even use our electric kettle anymore. Our juicer is always plugged into one, and the other one gets to swap everything else around. Cooking that meal was hell until we got to eating it. Then we started drinking. I think we averaged well over a bottle of wine each. It was worth it in the end. Usually when I plan a big meal it involves getting our butcher to get us a large hunk of good pork for the weber.

Most of the chinese greens are just fantastic with garlic and oyster sauce. If you toss in a few shitake and oyster mushrooms that have previously been fried in butter it just gets better & better... On a more european front, when I'm feeling lazy I just throw a load of veggies into one pot, boil and puree. The veg do have to be added at different stages, but its still nice and easyto cook, and good with a pork chop and apple sauce. Its even easy to eat.. sometime I even skip the pork and just fry up some eggs with it..

That would have been when my girlfriend decided what we were cooking for 12 people for christmas dinner last year.... She decided that it would be fun to have a degustation, with small quantities of each course for everyone... 1: Sweetcorn and basil soup 2: Starters mezze plate with: Duck Terrine, bbq duck rice paper rolls, verjuice prawns, mushroom pie, rice noodle pancakes, stuffed cabbage and Kumera and Ricotta tart. 3: Chicken Ballotine with Potato puree, wild mushrooms and mushroom and port sauce. 4: Pork Cutlet with sage and corn fritter and bacon and onion roesti. 4: Veal roulade Palette cleanser: Sauternes Jelly with Granny smith sorbet. 6: Frangelico Bavarois 7: Chocolate Semifreddo, Raspberry Semifredo. It all turned out well. Wine matching with the Mezze plate was a bastard though, and some of my 1988 lesnik port went into the sauce. That hurt most until I tasted the sauce. Next year we will probably try something a bit simpler.

Just befor Christmas we serve dinner for 12 of our best friends and find that planning, precooking, and re-heating have to be done. We usually plan around what we know we can do.. As to manners, I have no problem with people leaving stuff, and if asked why, saying "thats not my thing" or even just "I don't like it". To graphically portray those feeling is severely bad manners, and should have ellicited an elbow in the ribs from the diners next to her.

I'm not sure if this explains what they were thinking but.... they basically found someone who was supposedly good looking (obviously not jamie oliver) and tried to teach him how to cook. It seems that someone has let the himbo think for himself.....

A friend of mine told me a humorous story about her Hindu mother; she ate veal regularly for quite a large portion of her life believing it to be from a sheep. As to Vegitarians missing out, I believe they are. But it's all about taste buds. My girfriend doesn't like the taste of lamb; being Vietnamese, it wasn't a flavour she grew up with, and now doesn't like it. You could taste any meat and not like it, or love all of them.

While the old world/ new world wine bias may not be completely justified.. the breakdown between old world and new world beer should also be looked at; compare the beers of Belgium and Germany against the beers of the US and Australia... But as to the cultural impact of wine vs beer; it all depends where you are. Beer has definitely had more of a cultural impaqct where it is more common, and easier to grow; think England, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands etc. Wine has had more of a cultural impact where it can be produced, in France, Spain and Italy.

The best bit about this is that Altlantic Salmon is not genetically a member of the Salmon family, but a Trout. It was first indroduced to Tasmania in 1864, and was actually first released in NSW in 1962. Quite a few crops are introduced in oz.. William Bligh of the Bounty planted the first apple tree in the Southern hemisphere in Tasmania.