Grilled Tuna, stir fried vegetables and rice vermicelli.
4 Likes
Chicken and monkfish paella cooked on my Kamado Joe - was very good, just probably needed another 5-10 mins, I was worried about it burning on the bottom but instead it didnāt quite get the crispiness I wanted.
7 Likes
Burned bottom is the best part!! That looks delicious, BTW.
its tuna night because I just got a 2lb hunk of yellowfin and so I decided to make 2 dishes tonight - a tartar and a simple grilled dish
Firstly - I aged the tuna in my fridge for a little over 24 hrs. A few years ago I became obsessed with the Australian chef Josh Niland and his book āThe Whole Fish Cookbookā Josh uses a professional Dry aging room with full humidity control, but a commercial fridge can yield a similar but less intense version of his process. The idea here is the same with meat - slow breakdown of muscle tissue, loss of water content, more concentrated flavor
dish 1 - tartar with strawberry, raw asparagus, green garlic tops and shaved cucumber
dish 2 - flash grilled tuna (on the other side) grilled asparagus, grilled sprouting broccoli, grilled green garlic with black pepper tamari from Noma Projects
special shoutout to my wife who thrifted the first plate and my neighbor / friend who made me the second plate
9 Likes
Thanks for this 
Itās great, changed the way I think about cooking and handling fish, I highly recommend
2 Likes
I love this book. Itās a prime example of why I shake my head at the folks who proudly claim they never use cookbooks. If you never use cookbooks, youāre limited to your own imagination and experience, and that is, well, limiting.
5 Likes
I think the stigma for cookbooks stems from the time some years ago when many of them were mostly to show off how amazing some chefs are (Im looking at you, Thomas Kellerā¦ theres a funny YouTube series from a guy cooking the book and its so hilariously out of touch from reality its funny).
There are also many where pretty pictures are a priority and you can tell the recipes dont actually work, or are so subjective they are worthless.
But, thanks for the recommendation. Im ordering this one.
Itās funny, I donāt think Iāve ever cooked an actual recipe from the book but Iāve read it cover to cover multiple times. I also have a decent cookbook collection and love buying and reading them but when it comes time to make dinner I almost always just wing it lol. I think to think those things Iāve read make their way into the food one way or another
1 Like
I have no cookbooks but there are a lot of good YT/vimeo videos with people following recipes step by step from books like this for reference.
Agreed on the limitations. It wouldnāt surprise me that many people look at a cookbook as a collection of recipes. Whereas if you look at it as a way to learn about new cuisines, ingredients, techniques, etc, itās then a way to extend your understanding of food, and a way to increase your overall capabilities as a cook.
I reread my favorite cookbooks again and again. At the most basic level Iāll try a new recipe from time to time. Or Iāll find a recipe that excites me, but perhaps thereās limitation in ingredients or technique, so I need to modify it. Or maybe I get an idea for how to build on a recipe that makes it more my own.
Exactly, Yes, recipes or concepts pop into my head. Not all the time, though it happens. Now, more often than it did a couple decades ago when my exposure to the culinary world was so limited. Part of that was based on eating out, part of that was due to proliferation of food on TV, but way more was due to reading as widely as I could on things food related.
1 Like
I agree on many of these points. I use cookbooks as much to learn about cuisines and techniques and combinations as I do for following recipes, but I assuredly do that, too. Even Jonathan, who was a chef, has many well thumbed and annotated recipes he follows (or follows and improves). I know enough about fitness and exercise physiology to design my own workouts, but I still sometimes follow a program I come across from a coach I respect, and there are some favorite workouts Iāve thrown in the mix now and then for years. Same with cooking. Iād say almost every new cookbook I buy gives me a recipe or two that becomes part of my cannon.
2 Likes
Iāve learned way more from high level cookbooks than from any tv program or YouTube video. For me, I want to learn from actual experts and the internet is a total crapshoot these days as anyone with a knife and a pan can make a YouTube channel (true of many fields these days). Something like the Niland book is so filled with well researched information I canāt think of a better resource out there. Same with books like the Noma guide to fermentation, new Korean cooking by Jp Park, the TFL book, etc. these people are true experts in their fields and I trust them
Also an amazing book that Iāve used in so many transformations.
1 Like
Starting with a BMS 8 Ribeye. Over charcoat
plated with a greek salad with feta and dill
and drank a delicious sake Eikun Murasaki Junmai Ginjo
6 Likes
Now Iām curious. What part of the TFL book you found useful? I find it excessively self-gratifying and convoluted and simply impossible to follow, where it bounces back and forth between recipes 200 pages apart.
This condenses well what I dislike about that book.
Knowing nothing about sake, was this drunk chilled or room temperature?
Just the techniques within the book, not the actual recipes which Iāve never made - things like herb oils, seasoning powders, veg prep and butchery - Iām not a professional or have any formal training so reading that stuff helped me understand the ārightā way to do things before I started breaking rules and making my own dishes
Iāve seen that video and itās entertaining clickbait but not really fair to the point of the book existing
Ok. I lose interest with the commentary which makes no sense and is factually incorrect. Too many āwater should taste like the oceanā things there for me.
The video is entertaining, the title might be clickbait, but it does make some good points about where the book simply falls short. The guy is actually a very accomplished cook if you watch his other videos. You can tell from his techniques he has been around a kitchen for quite a long time.
If the book was about recipes you should do, they could have simplified that by 90% and come up with a dish that was probably 90% as good.
I can see one taking inspiration from the book, but my earlier point was that the general ādislikeā for cookbooks comes from books like this, where the recipes themselves are so complicated they are useless per se
(see what I did thereā¦)
1 Like
I appreciate and support your per se pun 
Right, but thatās not what the book is about and thats kinda my point. Dont get me wrong, itās one of the densest and least practical cookbooks ever written, but it contains an immense amount of technique and information within the recipes themselves. It also eschews the traditional cookbook demographic intentionally
Also important to remember that (at least in the US) this kind of book didnāt really exist before - that being an actual step by step guide to creating (at the time) the most polished and innovative cuisine in the country. Now, every famous chef and restaurant does this with varying degrees of simplification for the home. Id say a good 2/3rds of my cookbook collection are these types of books vs books from ācookbook authorsā as traditionally they have been 2 separate industries. However there is a market for these professional cookbooks from (mostly) other professionals and the small portion of nut job hobbyists that would gain something from it. Imagine being a young fine dining chef in the early 2000s and suddenly you had access to a step by set guide to Thomas Kellers recipes? The book was super influential in that realm. That fish cookbook thats being discussed here - it contains all Australian ingredients and fish ive never seen or eaten before (holy hell do I want to try coral trout though haha) but its one of my favorite cookbooks ever despite having never cooked a complete recipe from it because all of the techniques contained within are applicable across a broad spectrum - so in this sense the recipe isnāt at all useless to me
But yeah, its super esoteric and therefore an incredibly easy target - Completely understand your point and where youre coming from!