Adam Balic

Exactly. Sutter Home White Zin. is inherently more sophisticated then a Burgundy, due to the more refined techniques used in the making of this wine. I mean you should see how some of these guys in Burgundy make their wine. Basically a wax lined concrete tank and a bunch of mushed up grapes. No Technique, no refinement and no product placement. Burgundy is for tourists. At least this is what I have learnt here.

Went to a friends house after work. She and my wife had decided that I was cooking. Made a bastardised Persian chicken thing: Chicken quatered and browned in butter and oil. Covered chicken with stock added one can of chopped tomato. Made a curry powder of Black mustard seeds, coriander seeds, cardamon, nutmeg, cinnamon. Added this and a cup of yellow split peas. After half an hour I added chopped carrot, sweet potato and cooked chickepeas. In the last ten minutes I added the juice of two lemons and then tossed in the lemon skins. Added coriander juice before serving with cous cous.

Depending on room temp. etc it should be fine. The point of this way of preparing the fish is to preserve it for the short term. If it was in a cool part of the home, then I can't see that it would be a problem. Many older (eg. 1970's!) recipes say not to put it into the refridgerator. Having said this I wold have put it into the refridgerator, as modern homes are quite warm, due to central heating.

Well yes, no red colour in Mirabelles and if you can be bothered you can make yellowish preserves from purple plums if you remove the skins (the come off easily after an initial poaching, it takes time for the colour to leach into the liquid). Just like making white wine from red grapes. I believe your jam would be an example of how more refined the French are, then anybody else in the world when it comes to anything to do with food (or at least this is what I have learnt at egullet ).

Yes, it is like red wine. The red colour of the preserves comes from the skin, not the flesh. Damsons are fantastic to cook with because of their flavour (plum + bitter almond if you leave the pits in during the cooking) and colour, which is an intense deep magenta/scarlet. In the case of Asian plums which have red flesh (mostly), colour also comes from the flesh.

I was refereing to Fergus Henderson's "Nose To Tail Eating:A kind of British Cooking". But I guess that would have been a little bit to witty eh?

Anna - out of curiousity, does your family eat smoked salmon? I have see exactly this reaction before in people, even when you explain that gravalax is as cooked as smoked salmon (if it is cold smoked that is), some people still feel that the gravalax is more icky. The use of the word "Cured" most likely doesn't help either.

Very witty. Is this what would be a publishers joke?

Irishcream - here is a link to a site that has much information about onions (and much else). It covers all the questions that you sked about. Onions

Ah, I see. THey must be trying for a star then. I wouldn't wnat a sucking pig to be over five kilos in weigh (live), and would prefer under five kilos.

There is no way that a suckling pig will feed fourteen people. It may just make a banquet dish for fourteen pixies. Did these other diners have pointy ears and speak with cornish accents? A suckling pig should be just that, "suckling". In most commercial piggeries this will mean removing the piglets from their mothers at about four weeks of age. I can imagine that St, Johns uses the best meat it can get and that the piglets are left on there mother for considerably longer then four weeks, but they should still be small enough that they are not eating solid food or mash and this means that they will be quite small, not enough for fourteen people. Tony - how big was this piglet? No wonder the butcher tried to charge me eighty quid for a suckling pig last year, prehaps the UK idea of a suckling pig is rather different to mine. My idea of a suckling pig is something that I can eat by myself in one sitting.

Mamster - we even have then up in Edinburgh, very commonly infact. I'm very surprised that they haven't turned up in the USA, some type of restriction on importing them maybe. They have a nice fruity hotness, but often I find them very bitter (when eaten raw), prehaps cooking mellows this bitterness. Tip: They don't freeze well, you end up with mushy black peppercorns.

I believe it's quetsche, which I also believe we call the damson plum. Both mirabelle and quetsche are delighful in the 750 ml bottle as well. In terms of portability there's a great econony in distilling the essence of a fruit that way. Damson and Quetsche plums are both types of Prunus domestica (eg. European yellow fleshed plums derived from the wild sloe), but belong to different groups. Quetshe belong to the Quetsche group ( ) and are known as "German prunes" in English. Damsons belong to the Bullace group and in French are known as "Creque" or "Crequier". The taste similar after cooking, but Damsons have a lot more acid (try eating a raw one) and colour after cooking. I like plums.

Yes Eating rubbish quality jam is not high on my priorities of life experiences, but sometimes you have no choice in these matters (30 minute drop into work has turned into ten hours, no food avalible except for scavenged bread and jam). Tayberries are grown in Scotland, I believe that they are a new breed/variety produced from crossing a raspberry with a blackberry (could be incorrect here). Rather nice flavour, sometimes a little sweet. I always bring back far too much food from holidays. This includes jams. I bought some excellent jams (Mirabelle and queshe (sp?) in Paris last year, from a very sweet little shop that look like it hadn't changed from the 19th C. Amazing looking jars, well worth only bringing back 10 bottles of wine and a madoline in my hand luggage to get them!

Bux - for you I just went through my rubbish bin contents, to find out the origin of the jam . Origin: UK. Could indeed be a BSE thing I guess. Gelatine set jam sucks. Texture is all wrong, sad little pieces of fruit trapped in a un-spreadable matrix of jelly. Jam bounces of edge of toast and escapes, rather then spreading .

NZ SB 2002 drinking very well at the moment. In some cases (mostly Marlborough wineries) it tastes like a somebody has added passionfruit flavout to the wine. I can't agree that the vintages don't matter as much. In some cases the wines are very disapointing for the usual wine making reasons (in this case often over ripe fruit with little acid). With NZ SB there seems to be a great deal of case variation, I have especially noticed this with Cloudy Bay, which is annoying given how hard/expensive it is to get this in many places. In general, the nice things about NZ SB don't improve very much with age and they often don't develop interesting secondary flavours (an exception to this would be some back vintages of Cloudy Bay ('92?) which I drank, they had developed the most amazing cassis/blackcurrant flavours, but this is a rarity), so it is best to stick with the most recent vintage.

Delights - some information about pectin for you. Pectin All jelled jam will have pectin as it is a natural componant of fruit. It is a type of sugar that when exposed to acid and water turns into a gel, so it is the perfect setting agent for jam. Many comercial jams add pectin to aid in the gelling process, as the fruit they are using may not have enough pectin (tends to be more in unripe fruit). This added pectin is what is listed on the list of ingredients. Some commercial jams use other setting agents. In some cases this may be gelatine (have just seen a jar of cherry jam that contained pork gelatine), most people would prefer added pectin as the texture is much better with the use of pectin, rather then gelatin. People preference for "no pectin jam" is clearly not related to no being able to eat pectin as all jam will contain some pectin. It could be due to confusion of gelatine with pectin (one is an animal product etc) or a preceived idea that jam without added pectin is "better".

My favorite: Alternate-history-time-travel-toaster Marge:"Oh it's raining again".

I think that Demi Sec and other sweet champagne were produced for the Russian market. Roederer Cristal was made specifically for this market. Czars to rap, who would have guessed?

I was thinking about this Ocean trout thing. It is a farmed fish, which would normally mean that it wasn't as prized as the wild version. Yet this type of fish doesn't really exist outside of farming (yes, the steelhead is a ocean going rainbow trout, just like the Ocean Trout) could it be the first example of a true fish made for the restaurant trade? The flavour of salmon, with the texture of trout (flesh of any colour you should desire). In season all year round.

I don't really like their products either (especially, the naming system for the different sizes of coffee cups), however, for many people I have spoken to in Edinburgh it would seem that Starbucks did represent an introduction to coffee-other-then-instant. There tastes in coffee have changed dramatically. Several years ago one person would drive into the centre of town to pick up peoples orders of lunchtime coffee. Now these same people have bought a bean grinder and expresso maker and order in their own blends of beans and discuss why they cannot get a decent mousse like in Italy. I cannot be entirely sure, but this would seem a likely history in many British cities that have hitherto lacked an extant coffee drinking culture. As I said before Starbucks is the Jamie Oliver of Coffee suppliers.

Hey, I like almond milk. Especially in Spainish cooking.

Have seen it mentioned under that name in several sources, but this example comes from Jane Grigson's "Good Things", no information as to history (apart from similar recipes from the 16th C. book by Robert May), but on the balance I am guessing pre-reformation to Medieval, so not such I surprise that it resembles Persian recipes really.

As part of my lone struggle to revive tradional British recipes I made a Devon Squab Pie. This is a single crust pie containing layers of lamb, onion, apple and prunes, all spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon and mace. It was very good, but I did laugh as while the result looked and tasted almost exactly the same as the Moroccan and Persian fruit and meat stews that I have been making (almost an identical recipe to a Persian recipe) it felt different to eat it as we were eating a British recipe. All agree that what it really needed was a pint of stout or porter, but I'm very sure that this would not have been that case if we were in a "We are eating Moroccan tonight" frame of mind.

Yes, BYO only.