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Savoury recipes will show little sign of the champagne to all but the most sophisticated of palates. But you can make a jelly with it, and done carefully the gel will retain the bubbles. You can also add gold leaf flecks to the jelly and it looks pretty spectacular.

If it's nice quality oil you can boil some potatoes, let them get cold and slice them about 1cm thick. Add a few drops of truffle oil on top and some sea salt - delicious! If not quite so good you can make some tagliarini (or tagliatelle if easier to get) and toss with butter, parmesan and some cooked porcini mushrooms (or lesser varieties). At the last minute add the truffle oil and some chopped parsley. Very nice. Basically goes very well with anything earthy (potatoes, mushrooms etc.) or starchy risotto and pasta etc.

This topic looks great. Already some excellent tips. This is one of the few cookbooks I don't have yet (eyes Amazon furtively...) but I can't wait to see what else other people can glean from the books.

I believe that Busaba's menu was designed/consulted by David Thompson (of Thai Food fame) - so perhaps check his Street food books?

I brought back lots of professionally made whole salami, coppa, bresaola etc. from Italy. The idea was to cut them as needed on my meat slicer and enjoy piles of fresh charcuterie. However I find cleaning the meat slicer each time a real pain so I've gone ahead and sliced everything into the appropriate cuts. I've then packed the meats into separate vacuum bags. Each one weighs about 200g. The salamis were about 3 months opened at the point where I sliced them, and in good condition. I was wondering what people thought would be the best way to store them? I was thinking of freezing them in the vacuum bags but wasn't sure how well they would freeze. Anyone have any practical experience or tips?

Guy - I have tried this method. It is good but, like many of Heston's roads to "perfection", a more expensive method. You do this because the original ingredients have yielded all/most of their flavour to the stock and are a little tired. When you add the new batch of ingredients you get fresher top notes since the second batch of ingredients is not being cooked as long. To my mind this is a great procedure if you have plenty of ingredients to spare but it's not generally required for a good stock.

Guy -the WMF pans are good. On a par with the KR ones. Though KR are widely held to be the best. In my opinion you should go for the largest size since for stock you want a reasonable sized pot. As regards not making the stock cloudy that comes for free when using a Pressure cooker- it's one of main benefits together with less loss of flavour components deeper flavour and quicker production. No brainer really - get the pressure cooker...

Congratulations Pedro et al on the PID guide - looks like an interesting read. I am planning on buying the higher accuracy 1500D soon. I have a question that you may be able to answer - in the meantime I use a commercial pid controller to control the temperature of my large pot sitting on a hotplate. I've noticed that once my pan has come to temperature and I add my protein (steak, fish etc.) that the temperature will often jump up a good few celsius more than the set temperature, vacillate around a little, and become stable at the right temperature after some time. Is this a common situation with this type of controller? Do the Auber Instruments controllers do this? Is there any way I can avoid the temperatures spike after I put the food into the pot?

I concur with the efficacy of the Cooking Issues method - I just tonight sauteed some mushrooms that I'd thoroughly soaked in water. They didn't achieve a golden brown crust that I can get on non-soaked mushrooms but they really were less oily and full of good mushroomy flavour. I've always not cared about wetting mushrooms to clean them but this time I thoroughly soaked them. It wasn't necessary to crowd the pan to get good results.

Sorry Holly I was only joking by prefacing your name with Blogger.

Outrageous - no, necessary - doubtful... To be clear I make a distinction between the use of the simple noun "Chef", especially by professionals in a kitchen situation, and the to me artifice of some non-kitchen professional using the clumsy combination of the word "Chef" and then the Chef's name in the manner of Chef XXX or Chef YYY in a post or article.

Blogger Holly that's spot on... And Rickster I completely agree on the respect angle. I'm talking to people I respect enormously, and have accomplished plenty, and I don't feel the need, or the social obligation, to preface their name with a title.

Nobody in this country would say Chef Ramsey. I knew a woman who was head of pastry in one of his kitchens. She called him Gordon, as did the rest of the brigade although sometimes they'd use just "Chef" alone, and I assure you there was plenty of respect there. I call my boss, and my bosses boss by their first name and I respect them immensely. It just sounds odd to me to add the sobriquet "Chef" in front of their actual name. I can't think off all that many instances were we do that type of thing in modern society anymore.

I see your point but why not say "I made a batch of Michael Laiskonis's chocolate ice cream last night". I'm not saying just use the first name I'm saying why add Chef in front of it. After all you wouldn't say I got a great haircut from Hairdresser Barbara last night or bought a lovely painting by Artist Picasso... And shouldn't your signature quote be attributed to Chef Heston Blumenthal?

Although I live in the UK I've worked predominantly for American companies. And something I love about this is the refreshing meritocracy and lack of formality compared to more traditional British companies. So I find very perplexing the pretension of prefixing the name of just about any cook or chef in these forums with the moniker "Chef". It's alway Chef Keller or Chef Achatz why not Thomas, or Grant Achatz? Why do some people, and civilians at that, feel the need to stick "Chef" in front of it? I can understand a brigade member in a traditional French kitchen saying "Oui Chef" but a member of the public using it seems a little pretentious to me and well, un-americanly formal. Can anyone enlighten me how this came about? Obviously it's a respect thing but it seems so awkward. We Brits have no problems calling our chefs plain old Heston or Gordon and we're normally painfully uptight and formal!

Andy- I agree with Dave's point above. Although to me there is no need to store at cellar temperature after all France gets pretty hot in the summer and if it is cured sufficiently it's cured suffficiently. In general I'd stick to the accepted salting levels - the people who do it have been doing it for generations and pretty much know what they're doing. Sufficient salt equals less bacterial growth and that's what you want. I think it's easy to get paranoid about some of these preservation methods but after reading 50 pages on how to safely preserve vegetables and meat, and then watching some 90 year old family members do it with happy abandon and no scales or special equipment it helps one get it into perspective. I like to say that I know plenty of people who've died of stress related illness but none that have died from botulism. So follow the rules but don't stress about it...

Douglas - I'm pleased to hear that you're considering writing a book. Your generously free first pdf pamphlets have been tremendously helpful to many of us on this thread since the beginning. It will be nice for you to get some pecuniary recompense for the work you've done thus far. Good luck with it. Please don't let it take 3 years to publish (hint, hint!)

On the subject of Nathan's book - I will buy, probably regardless of the price as I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it. And all that research has to be paid for. My El Bulli and Fat Duck cook books have given me hours of pleasure. The Alinea book was actually a bargain price and generously done. I really enjoy a good book and a good book on cooking doubly so. So to me it's a worthwhile investment. The above notwithstanding I'd strongly advocate the publication of an electronic copy that could be priced much more accessibly. After all it's nearly 2010 I think it's time to leverage the benefits of the electronic format. For example the El Bulli books are works of art but to cook from them the DVD based recipes are easy to cross-reference and to search - the flash based menu system excepted. More and more often I put my most used recipes onto my computer and use them from there. These big books are great to read and to enjoy but they're pretty much no go actually in the kitchen. Those without computers in the kitchen can print the recipes out and use them without fear of ruining their expensive tomes. So by all means produce an expensive, hard copy version but remember your roots and give us a nice electronic version too. This could be accessible to all income levels, and would undoubtably be more useful in both the amateur and professional kitchen.

Here's the link for the NYT Sous Vide Supreme article...

Some more on the topic from Dave Arnold at Cooking Issues. In precis Pressure Cooking can be better but you need the right pressure cooker. The Kuhn Rikon ones I recommended earlier seem to work well.

Looks like we all do something similar. Personally I don't find the gelled stock too hard to work with but I know what you mean. I just take a large spoon and scoop it into individual containers. If you haven't tried it I'd recommend leaving it in the fridge because all (or much of) the sediment just falls to the bottom and can be left in the bottom of the pan without any straining. It's an added bonus that the flat solidifies as you say. I normally scoop it all straight off with palette knife and selectively add a little in to enrich soups etc.

KennethT - pour your stock into a large container and let it cool, then put into the fridge overnight. Next day it will have gelled. On the top will be a layer of fat that is easily scooped off since the main body of the stock is now gelled. Clouding sediment in the stock will have fallen to the bottom of the container and can easliy be left behind as you remove the gelled stock from the container into a fresh container. I find that this gives a more than adequately clear stock. Not "consomme at Alain Ducasse" clear but clear enough for most everyday uses. This is what I do with my everyday stock making and it saves me so much time normally that I don't mind undertaking the extra effort now and again to produce really clear consomme when it's called for on the odd occasion. When I need a really clear consomme I generally employ the egg white raft method but I'd also like to try the gel filtration method at some point also.

If there's one thing that the whole current "MG" inspired type of cooking has done it's make some of us question the old ways of doing things. I'm not saying that you do or do not need a perfectly clear stock. In some cases that is cosmetically desirable, in others it is not a requirement. The point is that if we want to make a quicker, fuller flavoured and easier stock the way to do it may be to dump it all in the pressure cooker, save yourself the chore of skimming and have it ready for use in 4-5 hours less than traditional methods.

Vindicated! KennethT - thanks so much for doing this experiment. I find all the skimming at the start of the process to be a real bind. On the negative side I was reading Heston's Big Fat Duck cookbook and he does blanch the chicken pieces to "remove blood and impurities". Normally he's pretty thorough but maybe he missed this one...

Ken - Science, and more importantly eGulleters in search of the perfect but least resource intensive stock, salute you!