culinary bear

Splendid... I'm somewhat Luddite in my recipe storage; 5x3" cards all the way...! Thanks for the help...

Marlene (and all the other RG staff)... Thanks for putting in the hard yards and getting RG up and running again; I'm sure it will be both a valuable resource in itself and a strong pillar of eGullet. I'd quite like to submit my recipe for confit duck, which provoked (wonderfully unexpectedly) a veritable frenzy of duck fat lubricated slow-cooked goodness. What's the best way of doing this? Just the original recipe and then a link to the thread within the recipe post? Thanks again...

1961 Ch. Cissac, shared in 1999 at an informal celebration dinner for my having managed to run the London Marathon without expiring. Amazing...

Braised oxtail, using a two-pint bottle of rather hoppy belgian beer as the braising liquor. Bay, thyme, garlic, pancetta, carrots, shallots, swede. Six hours' cooking.

approximately, yes... and as they're so rich, you could probably underfill by quite a bit and still have a satisfying portion...

Just politely point out that it's a health violation for a non-uniformed person to prepare food, even for his/her own personal consumption, in a kitchen where meals are prepared for the public.

Front of house staff allowed behind the pass? Unimaginably worse, preparing food? Unconscionable.

Of course, were I to gut him, I'd borrow someone else's knife to do it. :)

I can't remember the origin of this, but someone will no doubt enlighten me... "Stress is the confusion created when the mind overrides the body's natural desire to choke the living shit out of some arsehole who unquestionably deserves it"

I had (note the use of the past tense) a Nepalese kitchen porter who 'borrowed' my brand new shiny global flexible filleting knife, costing at the time just under 3/4 of a weeks' wages, and used it to punch airholes in a 5-gallon drum of vegetable oil. Scarily, it was the closest I have ever come to serious physical violence in a kitchen. We have a commis chef in the kitchen at the moment, let's-call-him-Tariq. Tariq he no knives of his own. Tariq asked to borrow a bread knife to cut some sandwiches. Grudgingly, but perhaps with a sense of both realism and altruism, I let him borrow it. I came in from a split-shift break three days later to find the annoying little scrote having opened the knife box I'd neglected to lock, and with three knives, total value about £150, sitting on his station. Points-downward. In soapy water. In a metal container. I don't care if he has to brunoise carrots with his teeth; if I see the hapless little fucker anywhere near my knifeboxes I'm going to gut him. ---------------- Edited to add : Fuck... it's with a sense of alarm that I realise that even a very rough estimate of the replacement value of the contents of my two main knifeboxes is positively bowel-loosening - in the region of a couple of thousand pounds.

Brilliant - but wasn't it ee cummings and not e.e.cummings? Neil - that's the best answer I've heard yet in a thread that I honestly thought would garner no more than a handful of replies.

I have a jar of confit (12 legs) in the cellar destined for my best friend - it's now three months old and waiting for the trip North. :)

For what it's worth... 520g couverture 520g butter 12 eggs 4 yolks 360g sugar 15g baking powder 320g soft flour Butter some 200ml foil pudding moulds and dust with cocoa. Melt butter with chocolate over a bain-marie. Whisk eggs with sugar to ribbon stage. Sift baking powder and flour together. Combine egg mix and chocolate mix, fold flour/bp through. Pipe into moulds - three-quaters filling them - and refrigerate. 180C oven, 9 minutes, rest for 2 minutes in moulds and turn out. Makes around 18.

If you like, I can give you the recipe for the fondants I make in the pastry kitchen at work; it's a pretty foolproof recipe, and gives excellent results.

I really love the forearm tattoo of the chefs' knives - it's got me thinking about something for what would be my third tattoo... :)

Nothing smaller than a beagle, please.

I hear that the Orrery got a dog of a write-up in one of the Sunday papers (Telegraph?) this weekend but I haven't been able to find either a hard copy or one online. Can anyone confirm or deny? Thanks.

I thought the magazine did reasonably well in avoiding having all Jamie-types in there, and there's some serious non-celeb cooking/writing talent present. I did think the dog was a bit OTT, but as I'm a Weimeraner fan they're forgiven. Paul, PM me your address and I'll send you the copy that's floating about the chef's office at work. Thanks John - I'll try and pick up a copy.

Weimeraners are lovely dogs, and the pups look endlessly comical. I pine for a black labrador, but wouldn't want the stigma of being mistaken for an artillery officer. Thanks for the heads-up on this piece, Gary. I don't normally take the Torygraph so it would have passed me by completely.

My local organic fruit and veg shop has quinces in at the moment. I'm sorely tempted.

The mustard isn't there solely for flavouring - it acts as an emulsifier and gives more structure to the batter.

It's incredibly easy to make indifferent Yorkshire pudding, but good ones take a certain tour de main... My sous chef can make them so pillowy, I swear the bastard hides baking powder up his sleeve. One that never fails : 1 cup flour 1 cup 50:50 water and milk 1 cup eggs salt, pepper, 1tsp mustard powder (important) Sift the flour and mustard powder together. Whisk the liquids together, incorporate the flour and mustard powder and seasonings. Let rest for 1/2 hour. Get the roasting tin and drippings smokingly hot in a 250C oven, pour in the batter, cook for about 20 minutes. Never open the oven door between putting the pudding in and taking it out at the end. Happily, yorkies take about as much time to cook as your roast takes to rest. Nature's kind like that.

can I have some of what you've been ingesting, please?

60 Hope Street is fairly good - Paul McEvoy in the kitchen doing some nice things which belie the 1-rosette status of the restaurant. London Carriage Works is getting good reviews, run by Paul Askew. Fraiche in Oxton (just over the Mersey) is really rather fine.

Oh dear lord. Gourmandism in its ugliest form... Trenchermania, even. Using low sodium bacon for its 'health benefits' is akin to having a can of diet coke instead of regular with which to swill the sandwich down.