Simon Rumble’s blog

Yesterday I asked about this bulk poaching method in McGee. No responses so I had to go with it anyway. Turns out I was cooking Eggs Benedict for eleven people. The bulk method worked beautifully, as did the Hollandaise. The tricky part is getting the ham on the muffins in time to grab the eggs as they bob to the surface.

That method, in case anyone's interested, is this. Use a tall stock pot, for every litre of water add 8g of vinegar and 15g salt. I used four litres to get enough liquid. Once it's on a gentle boil, you drop the eggs in. When they're done (about 3 minutes) they float to the surface and you scoop them out with a slotted spoon.

This technique works best with very fresh eggs, which have more thick egg white than thin. You'll still lose some thin white, which will end up floating around the water, but that's fine. You also end up with lovely, boobie-shaped eggs, as the outside of the white hardens slightly as the egg falls down through the boiling water.

I need to buy a suit for a wedding I'm helping MC. I've got some cheap, nasty suits, including two I had made in Vietnam, that tend to come out for weddings, funerals and occasionally job interviews. I don't wear a suit to work, and my rates get very high for companies that expect me to wear one. Even so, I think I probably need a nice one.

So I type How to buy a suit into Google and, whadaya know, there's a great article about just this task. Brilliant!

I'm cooking breakfast for our little food co-op tomorrow. Once a fortnight, we send someone out to Flemington to buy fruit and veg for the 11 households. This means we get a staggering quantity of stuff for about $25. Bargain! Then we meet up at someone's house and have brekkie before divvying up the loot.

I was planning to do an ordinary fry-up on the BBQ, as that's an easy way to cater for the crowds. The weather looks like it's gonna be shite though, so I've changed my mind and I'll do Eggs Benedict. You might think this is a bit ambitious for a crowd, but I actually think it'd be easier to coordinate than most other dishes.

Hollandaise, despite its temperamental reputation, is actually dead easy to make, now that I have the tip given to me by the main dude at my favourite cafe, Martini. All the recipes you read talk about complicated strategies involving double-boilers and simmering over boiling water. Turns out that's the bloody hard way. Instead what you do is heat up your butter and dribble it into the mixture while madly whisking. The butter's heat cooks the mix enough for my tastes, and you still get the nice thick sauce (which is caused by emulsification just like mayonnaise, not protein coagulation). It's always worked perfectly for me. Probably not hot enough for the food hygiene nazis but fine for me.

Now the tricky part of my plan is getting that many poached eggs out without there being quite a delay between each person. I'm planning to try the method given in McGee that is supposedly how it's done in restaurants. You salt the water to a fairly precise ratio, bring it to the boil and then just drop your eggs in. When they're done, they float to the top and you scoop them out. I haven't got the book to hand so can't tell you the secret ratio.

Has anyone used this method? How'd it go?

It's almost ten years after the Bringing Them Home report about the Stolen Generation. The report has been mostly ignored.

I will preference Labor as number 2 on my ballot if they make a clear statement that they will formally apologise to the Stolen Generation. Right now, there's nothing since 2005 on their web site, so I'm not too hopeful.

Nowhere near as good as the one anomalous did, but here they are.

George Michaelson has thrown down the gauntlet for aspiring Photoshop/GIMP manglers with this photo taken from the Smage.

Anomalous has already responded with this great Mad Max III one.

We want more!

I'm very upset about this. My favourite radio station, The Global Pop Conspiracy has shut down. It was such a brilliant station, always playing new and interesting music.

I discovered a few really great bands through them including controller.controller and Immaculate Machine.

They were always a bit mysterious, so I'm hoping one of them will find this post and let me know where I can get my fix from or perhaps you know?

If you're not in Sydney you probably don't know this, but it's been raining solidly for the last 36 hours or so. Of course none of this rain is going to reach the catchments of the dams that supply Sydney's water. The big problem is our dams are in the wrong place, or the city is in the wrong place. So I have a solution to our water problems. It will require a small adjustment to the Constitution and will be acceptable to the cast majority of Sydney people.

Here it is: bulldoze Vaucluse and build a big dam. There's always loads of rain on the Eastern Suburbs, even when it's not reaching the dams. And there's nobody interesting living there. Only rich nobs.

The constitutional change required? We need to amend paragraph 51(xxxi), otherwise known as The Castle clause to "the acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws, except for rich nobs who get no just terms."

Simple really. You gotta wonder why someone hasn't come up with it before.

My OpenGuide site, The Tourist Engineer is finally working again. Thanks to Kake for prodding and fixing the database format. That made all the difference!

The site is a tourist guide for geeks, looking at architectural marvels, giant infrastructure, geeky historical sites and the like.

I'll continue maintaining this site, but I'm also thinking of starting an Open Guide to Sydney, in the mould of London and Boston. These are open Wiki guides to cities, and when they work well they're absolutely brilliant. Sydney doesn't have much in the way of free, open guides to things. Most seem to be search-engine-harvesting "guides" with plain listings and no real opinion. There's nothing as good as the ever amazing Beer In The Evening. I think we need to harness some of this user-generated goodness for Sydney.

In the meantime, please check out The Tourist Engineer and feel free to jump in and add new sites.

Holly and I ordered a new mattress for our bed last weekend. We've not been sleeping well for a month or two now, due to the crappy, saggy old mattress. The new one arrived on Saturday and it's amazing. We've slept like babies the last two nights, and both of us feel a whole lot more alert.

Quite amazing the impact of a mattress eh? Maybe we're getting old...