Ddanno

I'm a metric lad as well!

I think I'll leave them to the professionals in future. I had Kauffman's stuffed trotter many moons ago but I lack the skill and knives to debone one myself

They were fresh yes and well within the use by date. They smelt a bit farmyardy coming out of the package, but cooking them seemed to really enhance that element in spite of a thorough clean and blanch. Coupled with a very sparse amount of meat and a bit too much jellied cartilage and skin for my palate and I rather lost my appetite.

I thought I'd try pig's trotters - 2 quid for two, what could go wrong? After a 3 hour soak in cold water, a 5 minute blanch, a scrub, another 5 minute blanch in fresh water followed by 90minutes in the Instant Pot with star anise, clove, ground fennel seed, garlic, ginger and soy they still came out stinking of the farmyard and were promptly abandoned. It's duck for me tonight.

@Okanagancook do you mean green beans, or borlotti/kidney/other dried beans?

Personally I would just freeze them raw, but I like my veg with a bit of crunch. I'd imagine cooked then frozen then reheated will come out a bit mushy for my taste.

It's not sliced, which will be interesting as I (obviously) don't own a commercial meat slicer, so getting it cut nice and thin might be a challenge

Keys for scale again Two tins of confit de canard showed up today too! I shall be eating well

I'll get a better perspective later

Keys for scale. It's a monster!

"I'll buy some msg to use less salt and help lower my sodium intake" 48 hours later, in Lidl "A kilo of prosciutto ham for half price?! GIMME!"

...fail to review the substitution options. Did an online supermarket delivery. I ordered five spice and szechuan peppercorns. Both were out of stock and were substituted with garam masala. Only, I'd also ordered garam mascara, so now I have three pots of that, but no five spice or szechuan pepper. I wasn't home when it was delivered so my neighbour accepted it and understandably wasn't in a position to decide whether I actually wanted three pots of the same stuff. I feel like not making any curry for a year out of some sort of misguided spite.

I borrowed one of those rubber collared jar openers and it popped right open, then I yelled "I LOOSENED IT FOR YOU" at the gadget before returning it.

...sprain my ring finger trying (unsuccessfully) to open the world's most tightly sealed jar of cornichons

Huh, I didn't realise you could grow mayonnaise. The more you know!

What's RB40? Google just shows me light bulbs, which, unless you work at a circus, I assume you didn't add to the dish.

Should have called the thread "Let's start a war with Italy" 😁

Save the water that comes out of the salted tomatoes, it's a nice little kick to a stock.

I really want to compliment you because it looks great, but I've never been able to get over the texture of congee (and the first time I tried it, it was full of the demon herb coriander, which probably didn't help) That looks lovely though.

The Camarones Francese sounds like something you'd get at 3am in Glasgow

Purely for fibre

In my limited experience with chickens, they seem to have an extreme "GET OFF MY LAWN" attitude and will happily murder anything unfeathered (and an appropriate size). They can be right little bastards.

My ex described it as like popping candy for grown ups and I couldn't really argue.

Nah fair enough. I find wholewheat pasta unpleasantly gritty and prefer the fragrant elements of good steamed white rice over anything that isn't a risotto.

Can you maybe switch the white rice for wild or brown rice, and pasta to wholewheat?