93 replies to this topic

[jamesglu]

I think I am the only person spending part of the holiday on this board while everyone else enjoys time with friends and family! But I shall carry on, fulfilling this community service of preparing menus from this incredible book and reporting on the results. The red cabbage gazpacho with mustard ice cream made for an incredible presentation to two guests the other night; they took a look at the odd sight of a ball of ice cream sitting on a bed of diced cucumbers, and were bemused when they read the description of the dish on their menus--then when I poured the purple liquid over the ice cream they were clearly impressed, but also a bit unsure of what lay in store for them. But when they tasted it their faces beamed with pleasure, since the combination really does work well!

The next thing I prepared was the brulee chicken liver parfaits. The preparation of the ingredients is a bit time-consuming (no surprise), especially the cooking down of the wine, madeira, port and shallots, and the end result is so minuscule that I wondered if it would really have any impact on the final dish. But indeed, despite it being a couple of tablespoons of winey lusciousness swimming in a murky sea of chicken livers, eggs and butter, you can indeed taste it. The recipe calls for passing the pureed liver gunk through two layers of muslin and a fine sieve, but I found that my sieve was fine enough on its own and did away with the muslin, other than for squeezing out the last remnants of liquid from the solids before decanting into my ramekins. The cooking process was simple enough, but a bit of water condensed onto the tops of the ramekins in the lidded pan, though this water poured off easily enough when the parfaits had reached 62C. The end result, with the bruleed sugar topping, made all the work worthwhile--this is a real show-stopper dish, even without the date-fig chutney (which I did make, but didn't want to open for my taste-test). Definitely a winner for the New Year's Eve menu I'm preparing for more guests!

Edited by jamesglu, 28 December 2011 - 02:31 PM.

[Keith_W]

It seems as if I am the only one who has cooked the caramelized carrots from this book. I made up my own spice mix which included powdered cumin, fennel seed, and chopped parsley tossed in at the very end. It was simply a beautiful dish - I was surprised to see the carrots get mopped up at the dinner party ahead of the french fries and meat dishes!

[jamesglu]

Thanks for the tip, Keith_W, I just might use that as a side dish for New Year's Eve!

[Markm]

I'm making the Whisky Ice Cream New Year's along with the Carrot and Beet Lollies. Anyone tried those and have any tips? I'll report back later.

[olicollett]

Well I have to say I think you would struggle to find a better pork belly than the one I cooked with this recipe last week.

The meat was incredible - tender, the fat almost dissolving on your tongue.

The Pea and Ham Soup was also great with the mint oil. One thing was I wasn't sure what temperature to serve it - I ended up settling for ambient temperature (I know Heston serves most food like this). Some people commented suggesting it was a little cold but I wasn't so sure, I thought that if it was too hot you wouldn't have the same refreshing feeling from the peas.

I served the pork belly as a main on a bed of Choucroute (I used leftover gammon instead of smoked bacon) with the crackling on top, pomme puree with truffle oil and glazed carrots. Rich? A little, but very good indeed :)

Finished off with the Lemon tart served with creme fraiche and some rosemary infused meringue. I was a bit unsure about the tart recipe - For the filling, it suggested just mixing together the egg, cream, sugar and lemon juice mixture before pouring into the tart case. The problem I found was that when I tried to mix the ingredients together it didn't really work, the eggs didn't really mix in properly. I ended up giving it a bit of a whisk before heating it up and pouring it in.

[jamesglu]

Olicollett, would you mind expalaining what is meant by "gammon" in a British context? I have had gammon steak in Scotland, but I am not sure what a NZ butcher would know it as, or indeed whether I'm likely to find it here.

[Mjx]

Olicollett, would you mind expalaining what is meant by "gammon" in a British context? I have had gammon steak in Scotland, but I am not sure what a NZ butcher would know it as, or indeed whether I'm likely to find it here.

Ham I'm guessing that the word has some connection to 'jamón'.

[jamesglu]

Thanks, Mjx, but is it just a slice of any old ham, or smoked ham, or cured ham, etc?

[Mjx]

Thanks, Mjx, but is it just a slice of any old ham, or smoked ham, or cured ham, etc?

I've always thought of it as smoked, but apparently, that is not necessarily a given: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/gammon.

[olicollett]

As the link explains, we tend to refer to an uncooked ham as a gammon joint in the UK :)

[jamesglu]

Thanks for the link, it's very helpful! One of my pet projects is to write a glossary of British-American-Kiwi-Aussie terms for meats!

[olicollett]

Thanks for the link, it's very helpful! One of my pet projects is to write a glossary of British-American-Kiwi-Aussie terms for meats!

That'd be very useful... but extremely time consuming!!! :)

[Markm]

I ditched the Carrot Lollies, but made the Whisky Sour, Red Cabbage Gazpacho, Salmon in Bourdain Sauce, Crushed Potatoes and Whisky Ice Cream. I've also made the Carmels in Edible Wrappers.

Having never tasted any of these, I wasn't completely sure what I was aiming for, but they all turned out great and the guests raved about them.

The whisky sour needed some doctoring to balance, and the men liked the Laphraoig Ice Cream, women not so much.

For the Gazpacho (which didn't get as thick as I'd hoped it would be) I served it in testubes with a cucumber stick for a garnish and skipped the mustard ice cream.

Heston's recipes scored for me, can't wait to try more. I even riffed off his pumpkin soup recipe to make a butternut squash soup that was incredible compared to other attempts.

[jamesglu]

Glad your results mirror mine, Markm. The gazpacho has been a regular feature as a starter for us for a few weeks now, and all but one pair of diners have loved it (the exceptions were a pair of diners for whom the very concept of 'cold soup' was anathema). I want to try the lemon tart and the whiskey ice cream soon, and the chicken with sherry.

[Keith_W]

I made the ribeye with bone marrow sauce yesterday. I ignored Heston's recommendation to slow roast the ribeye and used my usual method (sous-vide followed by grill). I followed the bone marrow sauce to the letter, down to using his exact recipe for the beef stock. The sauce was a real knockout - unctuous, gelatinous, beefy, multiple layers of flavour, and had a real mustard and tarragon hit. My only criticism is that it was too rich. It calls for 100g of butter, and 100g of bone marrow (which itself is very fatty!). I think it could do without 100g of butter, perhaps 20g would be more appropriate.

[jamesglu]

I agree about the sauce; I could not get the bone marrow (the butcher in town gave "my" bone marrow to someone to give to their dog), so mine was not too too rich, but just rich enough. I also think that I would not bother with cooking the beef along Heston's method again, preferring instead to sous-vide it (I have not sous-vide'd a whole rib roast with bone in before; is that what you did, Keith_W?).

I made the lemon tart the other day and found that I had WAY more filling than my shell would accommodate, so I made a few extra tartlets with the leftover pastry and filing, and still had more filling to bake in ramekins. The tart is quite sweet, but has a lovely flavour and the texture is excellent.

[Keith_W]

Hi James, mine was not a bone-in ribeye roast. It was deboned and cut into 2cm thick steaks.

[olicollett]

One thing I do find with a lot of Heston's recipes is that he does often call for a lot more butter/oil than you can get away with. It's usually beaten in towards the end though, so I usually cut down on it a bit.

[Xilimmns]

Roast Chicken with Wild Rice and Crispy Kale

I like the final result as far as seasoning of the chicken and level of moisture. The mustard reduction with tarragon and parsley also pairs very well with the chicken meat. One thing I may try to do different next time is the chicken temperature for roasting where Heston recommends 60C for the thickest part of the breast. Turned out I had a few red spots on my chicken specially near the bones. Next time I will try to bump it to 65 or 70C.

[EnriqueB]

Hi, the Marmite Consomme recipe has as first ingredient 750 gr of brown butter, used to sweat the vegetables. 750 gr is as much as the amount of liquid being used for the consomme (500 gr reduced wine + 250 gr water). This seems like a typo to me, even though there are a lot of vegetables to sweat (2,5 kg), in fact I did it yesterday using only 150 gr of brown butter. Anyone has made this recipe? How much butter did you use?

[Keith_W]

This was the chicken tikka masala from In Search of Perfection, not HB at Home. But since it's close enough, I thought I would post it.



Unlike some of the other recipes in this series, this one is do-able. i.e. it does not have multiple layers of insanity, like the black forest gateau or the baked alaska. These are the steps involved:

- brine the chicken in 8% brine (6 hours)
- soak the chicken in water to remove the salt (2 hours)
- marinade the chicken in ginger and garlic (5 hours)
- make the garam masala
- marinade the chicken in yogurt, garam masala, and kashmiri chilli powder (10 hours)
- make a tandoor by stacking bricks in your Weber kettle then cook the chicken (2 hours heating and messing around)
- make the cashew nut butter (20 min)
- pressure cook tomatoes with coriander and cumin (20 min)
- make the sauce (20 min)
- bring the cooked chicken and sauce together and adjust (5 min)

Some comments:

- ignore the book's recommendation for salt. I did my usual thing and seasoned at the end, and I was glad I did. The thing was salty enough, and only needed a pinch to finish it off.

- the suggested amount of chilli powder was nowhere near enough. While I was cooking I had my suspicions and doubled the amount called for in the recipe and it still wasn't hot enough. It might be that my chilli powder was insipid compared to his ... but make sure you check.

- following the recipe as published gives you a very thick sauce (see photo). I diluted it with some water after the photo was taken.

- I ignored the book's suggestion to make a tandoor. Instead, I grilled it over an open flame on my kamado. Bad idea - the marinade sticks to the grill and a lot of flavour was left stuck behind. Don't mess with tradition - do what the book says and build yourself a tandoor.

- instead of metal skewers I used soaked bamboo skewers. Bad idea - soaking them doesn't stop them from catching fire.

[Xilimmns]

Ham and Pea Soup.

This recipe is very straight forward and the result was great. The soup was very creamy in the end without any addition of cream and the texture and flavor were incredible. The key on this recipe for me was to take the time to develop the ham and vegetables broth from scratch which was the major flavoring agent. Two things that I noticed:
1. Using the exact quantities called out in the recipe, the quantity of soup was enough for 2 people instead of 4 as the recipe says. It could be that my straining techniques were not as productive as the book.
2. The grapeseed mint infused oil I did not care for and could barely taste the mint so I will probably skip that the next time.

I have a good amount of leftover ham that will be used for sandwiches and salads this week :-)

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[ChrisTaylor]

In the recipes involving booze--the ones I've looked at in detail, anyway--Blumenthal 'burns off' the alcohol by bringing the wine/spirit/etc to the boil and then lighting the fumes with a match. He does this when adding, say, a fortified wine or brandy to a braising liquid or stock that's going to be cooked for a long time.

If you were making, say, Madeira sauce, which is basically demi-glace jacked with a little Madeira and then, pretty much, served (the Escoffier version still contains raw booze--he doesn't leave it simmering to cook at least some of it away and he certainly doesn't take to it with a match), would you still go through the process of burning it off?

[Belgian Blue]

Did anyone here make the Szechuan broth with duck dumplings' recipe?

I have the stock freezing in ice-cube trays at the moment but there's one element of the recipe that perplexes me, and that's the type of sesame oil HB intended.

When I went to the Chinese market to buy the Shaoxing wine etc., I saw different brands of roasted sesame oil everywhere - lots of it - but no unroasted oil, which leads me to believe that is what HB intended when he wrote '35g sesame oil'. To me, that looks like an enormous quantity of roasted sesame oil.
I'd therefore be interested to know if anyone has made the recipe and their feelings on the sesame oil question.

BB

Edited by Belgian Blue, 21 April 2012 - 08:55 AM.

[Belgian Blue]

In the recipes involving booze--the ones I've looked at in detail, anyway--Blumenthal 'burns off' the alcohol by bringing the wine/spirit/etc to the boil and then lighting the fumes with a match. He does this when adding, say, a fortified wine or brandy to a braising liquid or stock that's going to be cooked for a long time.

If you were making, say, Madeira sauce, which is basically demi-glace jacked with a little Madeira and then, pretty much, served (the Escoffier version still contains raw booze--he doesn't leave it simmering to cook at least some of it away and he certainly doesn't take to it with a match), would you still go through the process of burning it off?

I don't know Escoffier's recipe so cannot comment on it but whenever I use alcohol in dishes I always cook or burn it off.

BB

[nickrey]

Burning off or boiling, you're not really removing all the alcohol (check out this link for eGullet discussion of this issue). I've always considered flaming a bit of showmanship in cooks who like to make things catch on fire.

[Belgian Blue]

Burning off or boiling, you're not really removing all the alcohol (check out this link for eGullet discussion of this issue). I've always considered flaming a bit of showmanship in cooks who like to make things catch on fire.

I can only go by personal experience here and after reducing or flaming off the alcohol I add to sauces, etc. the end result has a mellow depth of flavour that is far removed from the raw alcohol initially added.

BB

Edited by Belgian Blue, 21 April 2012 - 04:28 PM.

[Pilori]

When I went to the Chinese market to buy the Shaoxing wine etc., I saw different brands of roasted sesame oil everywhere - lots of it - but no unroasted oil, which leads me to believe that is what HB intended when he wrote '35g sesame oil'. To me, that looks like an enormous quantity of roasted sesame oil.
I'd therefore be interested to know if anyone has made the recipe and their feelings on the sesame oil question.

BB

I haven't made the recipe yet, but that does sound like a lot of oil if it is indeed supposed to be roasted, which leads me to think that what he is calling for is un-roasted.

Edited by Pilori, 21 April 2012 - 04:46 PM.

[ChrisTaylor]

Today I made:

- slow-roasted leg of lamb
- pommes boulangere
- potato and leek soup

The leg of lamb was okay. I think I'll revisit it w/o the anchovies. At 60C, the anchovies do not melt as they do in a leg cooked at the more usual 160-190C. Well. To a point they do. But nowhere near as much as you maybe want.

The potatoes were again, okay. I used chicken stock as I didn't have any lamb stock on hand.

The soup was nice enough, altho' out of the (two) soups I've made so far I think the mushroom is vastly superior. Will get around to the marmite consomme soon enough.

[Belgian Blue]

When I went to the Chinese market to buy the Shaoxing wine etc., I saw different brands of roasted sesame oil everywhere - lots of it - but no unroasted oil, which leads me to believe that is what HB intended when he wrote '35g sesame oil'. To me, that looks like an enormous quantity of roasted sesame oil.
I'd therefore be interested to know if anyone has made the recipe and their feelings on the sesame oil question.

BB

I haven't made the recipe yet, but that does sound like a lot of oil if it is indeed supposed to be roasted, which leads me to think that what he is calling for is un-roasted.

Initially when I got to the market I felt elated as there were lots of brands of oil all simply labelled 'sesame oil'. It's only on close inspection of the label that you find the word 'roasted'.

I think that when I get to the point where this has to be added I'll do the 'mise en place' with both types of oil and (try to) apply a 'sanity/taste' test to the ingredients for the mix. However I'm hoping someone here has done the recipe and can throw some light on it.

Thank you.

BB