
Just aded this pic: Journal Canteen
Okay. I
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Three years ago I went on a boozy winery tour with a busload of artist mates. Somehow along the way I managed not only to buy two small olive trees, but also two magnificent French oak wine barrels to plant…
There’s a rumour that Melbourne hospitals lay on extra staff in the Emergency Department at this time of year. Yes, it's tomato season and given our vast migrant population, there will invariably be a few home-bottling and canning disasters. Every Italian…
Making yoghurt at home is really simple and doesn't take much science. Here we make two different styles of yoghurt using both cows' and goats' milk.
It took four hours of a Saturday afternoon to construct this gigantic pie.
The recipes available are all pretty similar, three different types of pork with herbs and spices surrounded by jelly and encased in a hot water pastry. This one…
There's a lot of meat and fat in a pork pie including the hot crust pastry which is made with lard and butter.
I bought a whole tub of dripping, which is basically like lard (pig fat) but from beef, as…
Five days later and the bacon is cured. Salty and sweet, with a hint of juniper and sage, it was worth it.
Nothing is ever easy for me. Frustrated by the poor quality of filling and pastry in local pork…
We don't see much innovation in cookbooks nowadays but The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria is as you'd expect from one of the world's most innovative chefs.
What most…
Consult a financial adviser before drinking from a Riedel.
Dishwasher tablets erode your glasses and crockery. Use liquid instead.
Decant heavier reds at least 8 hours before drinking.
If you want to drink…
Three years ago I went on a boozy winery tour with a busload of artist mates. Somehow along the way I managed not only to buy two small olive trees,…
There’s a rumour that Melbourne hospitals lay on extra staff in the Emergency Department at this time of year. Yes, it's tomato season and given our vast migrant population, there…
Making yoghurt at home is really simple and doesn't take much science. Here we make two different styles of yoghurt using both cows' and goats' milk.
One of the most exciting chefs to be in town for the Sydney International Food Festival was the witty and erudite David Thompson. If you aren't familiar with Thompson, the…
I recently had a non-brush with death while eating what turned out not to be my last meal.
It made me think of all the meals I'd wasted. A bad…
Neil Perry (left), Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal (bald). Courtesy of the Melbourne Wine and Food Festival.
On the SBS Food site you can see my story on meeting Thomas Keller…
Typical. Just as the world peaked Paul Levi, the man who had no small part in bringing us the slightly dubious word “Foodie”, launches the Gastrosexual, a man with more…
With thanks to the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
It's 3.50 on a Friday afternoon. I've just finished a great meal cooked by Scott Pickett at The Point in Albert Park…
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Death to grizzle…
Ouch! I’m now grizzling over gristle…
I am reminded of the time a certain chef told me that a dish I had negatively reviewed was meant to be rustic. Rustic is fine, I thought, but this thing looked like the Battle of the Somme.
Not sure what has caused this peasant food thing, I’m seeing the word peasant on a lot more menus these days. I love the way you can eat peasant food with a ruling class (aka $15+) glass of wine…
Gristle and bone make you know that you’re alive. At least, alive enough to know that you’re not keen on choking to death.
Dave, LOL!.
Phil, thanks for reminding me how vital I still am.
Over bridge of sighs
To rest my eyes in shades of green
Under dreamin’ spires
To Itchycoo Park, that’s where I’ve been
Sorry, just a little ‘ol flashback. Trim those cheeks, rattle those pots ‘n’ pans. Oh hell, I need another tablet or something.
“At Yarck it was a slow-cooked cheek with all those fatty grizzly extras that took me out (as well as some pretty offhand service but I guess they weren
Lol! again.
Cin maybe they thought I was trippin’. It shouldn’t matter but …
Dry your tears, princess, and go eat some foam if real food scares you. No-chew dining gets tedious fast.
Ed, your scaring me. Cooking on the bone, pork fat, duck fat,- all I am seeing is flavour. I really like a lot of the avant garde cooking with its use of more modern chemical compounds (all cooking is chemistry) but I can’t help wondering if it is an extension of the food that has been produced by MacDonalds all these years. To my mind it seems that one of the big attractions of MacDs is the softness of it all- no real chewing required, no texture(well only one texture). Perhaps given time we will will lose our teeth through evolution. By the way I wonder if there are a lot of food technologists out there looking at the new wave of cooking and its use of various vegetable gums and salts thinking, “I have been doing this for years and noboby thinks I am a genius”.
Snacker, tried foam. Prefer air.
Michael, no need to be scared. I love meat cooked on the bone and all that fat and, importantly, texture. When I pay for food in restaurants I don’t want to find the fish full of bones, the meat full of gristle or great, unexpected hidden lumps of fat that nearly choke me and that I have to spit out.
Perhaps you are right that many want the texture of McDonald’s burger. Me? I just want their chips to go with my home chopped steak tartare.
Couldn’t agree more on the acid, nobody wants to have dinner with a person who’s nervously looking at his hands and saying wibble.
Isn’t the point of slow cooking that the gristle, eventually gets broken down. But yeah there’s some responsibility for chunks that make the guest go gack! I mean it’s not fricking Endurance.
Veins freak me out – I got taken to an offal restaurant and the welcome snack seemed to be a bowl of chopped up major arteries and ventricles.