culinary bear

kids! play nicely.

Interestingly, wine sold 'by the glass' in the UK must be sold in measures of 125ml, 175ml, or multiples thereof, which realistically means 125ml, 175ml or 250ml.

You have to leave room for the wine to develop bouquet in the glass. The vast majority of places I know sell by the bottle (in which case you're open to the pratice of topping up to get you to buy another one) or by the glass (topping up? what topping up?)

No urban myth, I can assure you.

I've just stumbled onto this thread... We use a red wine pate de fruits in the kitchen at work; basically a gelled red wine poaching liquor that's been used to poach figs (the pate accompanies this). The pectin we buy is French, apple-derived, and costs well under US$20 a kilo. For a beginner, the boiron charts are very useful, as is the 'peanut butter and jelly' recipe from the French Laundry cookbook - the basic measurements are spot on, and it's a pate de fruit by another name. I've made turkish delight with pectin, and have to report that the texture differs from gelatine-set. Just doesn't have the same mouthfeel. You'll find that pectin requires acidity and a certain sugar concentration to work properly, whereas gelatine can work independently of these two requirements.

Should be okay - the important bit is that the fat is the relatively impermeable layer. Imagine the fat as the lid on a tin can - as long as the duck was hot (i.e. beyond bacteria-growing temperature) when the fat layer went on, it should still be relatively sterile, and safe. Let me know how it goes. :)

Brown meat, sometimes called mustard, is the darker meat from the body of the crab, as ooposed ot the fibrous white meat from the legs and claws. I appreciate the effort involved in cooking your own crab, but there is, in my opinion, a huge difference in quality between buying prepped crab meat and doing it yourself.

The quartered (and now soft) onions are fanned out into a rosette and not so much broiled as just heated up undr the grill. I'll take a photo of what I mean later...

milk reduced down into granules, and fried?

CaliPoutine - the crabs were just under US$20 each. John - that's a sculpture given to my flatmate by his girlfriend for christmas. :) an hour from corn field to boiler? I am jealous... then again, we get phenomenal asparagus over here, and one friend of mine has a pot of boiling water on a primus stove at the end of his garden so it's seconds from cutting to stomachs. :) fifi - Dungeoness crabs? the Dominant species in the area, no doubt. :p I didn't realise there was an O in there.

Red onion quarters, blanched in boiling water and then placed into a hot vinaigrette of 1/3 balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and 2/3 olive oil... cooled, and then fanned out, flashed under the grill with a pile of shredded duck confit... The confit then placed on top of the pickled red onion rosette, with a small rocket and manchego salad, and the reduced vinaigrette around the plate...

Fraiche got 6/10 in the 2005 Good Food Guide, and chaf-patron Marc Wilkinson has the right ticks in the box, with stints under Germain Schwab at Winteringham Fields amongst others. The food looks pretty, technical, and sound. but... but... Birkenhead? Is this a brave venture into the cemetary of Merseyside, doomed to fail in a masive sea of local apathy towards good eating? Will he prosper?

Less my home city of Edinburgh, and more Scotland in general : The deep-fried battered mars bar. With chips, salt and brown sauce.

Is anyone else thinking of John Hurt in 'Alien' when they see photos 3 and 4? The resemblance did strike me.

I'm happy to eat beef - of course I am, I'm a penguin. Seriously though, I'm with NulloModo on this one - I think the small potential risk is worth it. Sheep do suffer from Ovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, called 'scrapie' - it's hypothesised that this might have been the origin of the disease in cattle. If you're worried, insist on the proper husbandry of your meat - organic herds and flocks are far less likely to pose a risk.

Thank you - I really enjoy writing these. These are fairly hefty for British C. pagarus, but I have seen up to 7lb specimens. I've found the penetration of spices is minimal with C. pagarus, perhaps because of the thick shell and generally large size, but I imagine it would work well with the smaller blues. Regrettably, we don't get softshell crabs easily over here.

This is the third in an occasional series (read: whenever I have the time and something interesting to share) of illustrated techniques, showing the methods I use to prepare and cook certain foods. Note that these aren't the only ways; the primary function of these is to educate and share, but also to encourage and stimulate debate over the differences in the various techniques people use. This time, we have the common edible crab, Cancer pagarus. So, without further ado : 1) One edible crab, very much alive. Never buy raw dead crabs, as, like lobsters, the flesh undergoes a process of autodigestion a few hours after death and this ruins the texture. Buy cooked by all means, but do try and buy live if at all possible. Unlike lobsters, killing the crab before boiling is a good idea as otherwise they tend to shed their claws in the water, allowing the water to penetrate the body cavity and make the body meat watery and insipid. 2) Flip the crab on its back. Note that the claws of the crab aren't secured; personally I'm confident enough to use a crab like this but if you're at all wary, please ensure the claws are bound with stout rubber bands. Crab claws can crush fingers causing serious injury. 3) Peel back the ventral flap. You might need to use the point of a knife to get leverage, but once you lift it up do be warned, the crab will not like this and will wriggle around somewhat. 4) Take a thick skewer, and with the tip, find the vent at the base of the flap. Drive the skewer all the way through the crab to behind the eyes. 5) Rotate the crab around so that the front end is facing you. Again, beware the claws. 6) With the skewer, find the mouth of the crab and stab through the body of the crab to the vent end, mirroring your first stab. 7) Wait a moment or two, and your crab should expire. It will go limp and the legs and claws will droop if you pick it up by the vent end as shown. 8) Weigh your crab. Cooking times are around 18 minutes for your first kg, and another 5 minutes for each further 500g / approximately 20 minutes for your first 2.5lbs, and a further 5 minutes per lb. It's not a very exact science, I'm afraid. This crab took 26 minutes. 9) Bring a pan of water to the boil. I use 200g/7oz sea salt per 4 litres/1 gallon of water. 10) Drop the crab carefully into the pot, legs down. Start your timer. 11) When cooked, put the crab in running cold water and leave for five minutes to cool. Assemble your crab picking kit : a steel or rolling pin for cracking the shell, a skewer for picking meat out, and (not pictured) a stout-bladed knife for prising the body off the shell. The forceps are just my backup for nibbling away at shell fragments, and the poultry shears are useful for breaking open legs, but you can do without them. You'll also need a tray and two bowls. 12) Twist all the legs and claws off as close to the body as possible. 13) The part of the crab where the legs joined should now be separated from the main carapace of the crab. Using you knife, slide the tip between the two parts and twist to loosen it. Grasp the leg-joint assembly and lever it away from the carapace. remove the grey feathery gills (called dead man's fingers - you'll see why) from the carapace and from the leg-joint assembly. These are inedible. 14) Using your knife or poultry shears, cut the leg-joint assembly into halves. 15) Using your skewer, pick out the white meat into one bowl, and the brown into another. 16) With your fingers (they have a better reach) scoop out the brown meat from the carapace into your bowl. 17) Place the claws against a hard surface, and tap with the steel until they crack. With the claws and legs, try and strike along the length, not across it; this tends to reduce the chance of fragmenting the shell into lots of little pieces which are then a pain to remove from the picked meat. Use the skewer to pick the meat out, paying attention to the hard cartilaginous 'bones' that reside in the claws and upper legs. Repeat with the legs. I don't bother picking the meat from any apart from the largest piece of each minor leg - it's too fiddly unless you have a lot of time on your hands. 18) This shows the amount of meat gained from one crab. It's good practice to manually pick over your white crab meat at this stage to remove odd bits of shell and cartilage. 19) The detritus from the picking process. 20) White meat - 250g, brown meat - 130g, and it took me 20 minutes to pick the crab apart once cooked and take the photos. So, your thoughts? Does anyone's technique differ markedly, and for what reasons?

Italy invaded Ethiopia, Eritrea, and parts of Libya and Somalia in the mid 1930s during the rise of Italian fascism; relinquishing them in the early 1940s as part of the general defeat of the axis powers in Africa. Might go some way to explaining an Italian influence...

Fisherman - Which Ch. Musar was it? I too have difficulty passing it up on a list, and had the pleasure of seeing an '81 on a list for 46.00 recently!

hot, with a thick skin... oh, the skin... :)

You know, it's funny you should use that word. I know that Brittany is an area rich in Celtic heritage, and in Welsh 'crempog' means 'pancake'. 'crempog geirch' is an oatmeal pancake and 'crempog las' is a more egg-rich pancake, so perhaps 'krampouz' is a more generic term?

The pappardelle sounds like a very good idea indeed - In London I had a dish of pappardelle with a rich hare sauce (a traditional pairing, I was told), and I imagine that the braised rib-meat had a lot of the same unctuous quality to it. Short ribs aren't a popular cut over here, which surprises me... is it a similar cut to the jewish flanken? If so, there are a couple of Kosher butchers here in Manchester where I should be able to source it. Using braised brisket, I've used dried butter beans, thyme, bay and garlic together with the braising liquor and a macedoine of vegetables, and come up with a very nice winter casserole - should work with the ribs, too...

Ble noir is indeed buckwheat, which is rather misleading as it has more in common with rhubarb than normal wheat. It has very little gluten content, which is why it's sometimes used in coooking for people with a coeliac condition. If you try and cook with 100% buckwheat you'll generally find that your goods are tough and have a texture not dissimilar to sliced bathroom sponge; 50:50, or even 30:70 with white flour, will give a better result. Using bread flour is a good idea if you want to compensate for the lack of gluten in the buckwheat flour. I've never teasted buckwheat beer, but I imagine it would be very nice indeed - what's it like?

Pate de fruit is really simple in concept - it's merely a pectin-set fruit/sugar syrup. If you can get your hands on commercial apple pectin it's very easy to make.

ecstatically, thank you.