Oxtail Tea, Shin and Kidney Pithivier

Stockyard 150 Day Grain-Fed Certified Australian Angus Beef Oxtail
Stockyard 150 Day Grain-Fed Certified Australian Angus Beef Boneless Shin
Australian Milk-Fed Veal Kidney

Tongue and Cheek

Stockyard 400 Day Long Grain-Fed Wagyu Cheek
Stockyard 150 Day Certified Australian Angus Beef Tongue

Beef Sampling Plate

Slow Roasted Peppered Rib Eye

Braised Wagyu Rump

Sticky Brisket Cottage Pie

Stockyard 400 Day Long Grain-Fed Wagyu (BMS6-7: Silver Label) Beef Rump
Stockyard 250 Day Long Grain-Fed Angus (BMS2-4: Gold Label) Beef Rib Eye Roll
Stockyard 150 Day Certified Australian Angus Beef Point End Brisket

Milky Valrhona Finish

I am not a big meat eater; there was a time I was pure vegetarian in my teens. I was just not able to eat any meat nor seafood even if I was trying I was not able to eat it. Much later in life, when I started my apprentice ship and was around sweets all day I naturally started first to eat chicken, then beef and last seafood. Nowadays I do eat all kind of meats and seafood, had Kangaroo, Snake, Turtle, Crocodile, Emu, Bore, Shark and Wale for the unusual kind of meats. However I love ribs and Chilean Sea bass and had many different variations from around the world.

Beef Ribs may not get the kind of respect that pork ribs do but these giant sticks of meat are great barbecue. Smoke them low and slow and you will get a plate full of good food. Like pork ribs you need to do them right to get them tender, juicy and flavorful.
You want to start by cleaning up your ribs and by removing the membrane from the bone side. Removing the membranes from beef ribs is very important. Beef ribs have a thick and tough membrane that will block out the smoke and the flavors from rubs. Fortunately the membrane is very easy to remove. With a blunt knife, start in one corner and gently lift only the membrane from the bone. Once you have a good start, grab it with a paper towel to get a good grip and pull. It may take a bit of strength but if you are careful and pull evenly and firmly you should be able to lift it off in one piece.

Chilean sea bass (Dissostichus eleginoides), a large, vaguely cod-shaped fish found in cold, deep waters of the southern hemisphere, has been one of the most phenomenally successful introductions of a fish into the North American market in our time. Where this fish was virtually unknown here fifteen years ago, today you can hardly pick up a restaurant menu or shop in a fish market without coming across it.

The reasons for its popularity are clear. Chilean sea bass produces good-sized fillets of white meat with a mild flavor, a pleasantly firm texture, and a high fat content that makes it almost impossible to overcook. It has remained relatively inexpensive, especially in the frozen form, and for much of the year it is also available fresh, by air freight. Despite its common English name, Chilean sea bass is unrelated to the true sea basses (many of which go by the name “grouper”) nor to other saltwater basses like striped bass. Instead, it belongs to a family found only in the higher latitudes of the southern hemisphere.

With its high fat content, Chilean sea bass is well suited to dry-heat cooking methods such as broiling, grilling, and sauteing. One variation on the last technique that shows up a lot on restaurant menus is searing — cooking thick cuts in a hot skillet to crust the exterior and finishing them in a hot oven, where they cook by radiant heat as well as conducted heat from the skillet.

As popular and widely available as Chilean sea bass is today, one has to wonder whether the current level of fishing is sustainable. Because this is by all accounts a slow-growing species, the tremendous quantities caught over the last ten years probably include a good share of fish that have been growing for fifty years or more. The fishing fleets of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and other southern nations continue to explore new fishing grounds and turn up more stocks; still, the experience with orange roughy and other “new” fish suggests that at some point there won’t be many older, larger fish left.

Even if there is not a major crash in the Chilean sea bass population, I can’t help feeling that we are seeing as much of this fish now as we ever will. I imagine that sometime early in the next century, some filmmaker will set a scene of a stylishly dressed man and woman in a restaurant, finishing a meal of Chilean sea bass and both lighting up cigars. I hope the cigars will seem hopelessly dated, a throwback to the late 1990s — and I fear, so will the choice of fish.

The holy month of Ramadan for Muslims just finished today and tomorrow the Islamic calendar is marking “Eid Al Fitr”.

Like other fruit, dates are a seasonal product, therefore the supply of fresh delicious dates is always limited. Processed dates (Tamr) and dried dates are available all year round. Dates can be classified as soft, semi-soft and dry dates. Chewy dry dates keep longer and can be used for ’survival food’ on long trips or on hiking.

Dates freeze extremely well, so you can put them in your freezer and enjoy them year round.

Dates are oval-cylindrical, 2.5-5 cm long, and 1.5-2.5 cm diameter. When dates are unripe, they come bright red to bright yellow in color, depending on the type of dates. Dates contain a single seed about 2-2.5 cm long and 5-7 mm thick.

Three main Cultivable Groups of date exist:

Soft like Khalas Qassim and Khalas Kharj
Soft or Semi-Dry like Ajwa , Anbara, Mabroom, and Barni
Dry like Ruthana, Nabtat Ali, Segae and Sukkari
The type of fruit depends on its nutrition, shape and taste. Dates ripen in four stages, which are known throughout the world by their Arabic names kimri (unripe), khalal (full-size, crunchy), rutab (ripe, soft), tamr (ripe, sun-dried).

Dates come in the following four forms in the market:

Press Pack such as Khalas Qassim
Plain Dates when they are fresh
Dried Dates such as Sukkari
Date Paste such as Soft Date Paste