culinary bear

isn't that funny - I've always found that unsalted (UK) butter has a more "buttery" taste, even comparing the same brand of salted/unsalted butter. for that reason I much prefer unsalted - at least spread on bread rolls or biscuits. ← nooo! heresy. :) de gustibus non est disputandem!

Make sure you possess a sense of humour - you will need it. At the moment I'm running the pastry section at a 4* hotel restaurant in manchester with nearly 200 rooms. It's, erm, fun. :)

(jealous) you bastard... it's hard to eat out often on a chef's wages... :( (/jealous) I'm seeing a lot of Tatins kicking about these days, and rightly so.

You'd have to increase the yeast quite a bit to overcome the effect of the alcohol on fermentation. Better to flame the port off first and then add to your normal water.

I think this is a salient point. Twenty years ago, this was definitely the case; now, alas, no longer. Perhaps because of the increasing propensity of customers to dictate on a whim, chefs are beginning to mount a backlash.

We don't even have salted butter in our work kitchen... I'd have to order salted butter in specially if I wanted to make shortbread.

I'm happy, we kept our Bib Gourmand. :)

How the hell else do good things happen? :) give it a go and see what happens.

*laughing* I know what you mean; cuts from oyster shells are a similar level of nastiness. I'd be wearing latex gloves, probably doubled. The reason I want raw crab meat is not to eat raw, but to utilise the meat to make a classic mousseline, which involves pounding the flesh and passing it through a sieve before mixing with cream and egg to use as a stuffing - this will then be cooked thoroughly. Cooked meat won't give nearly as fine a texture to the mousseline, hence my dilemma.

Slow and tedious is something I can probably cope with; shelling any cooked crab is relatively slow and tedious work at the best of times. I'd rather not heat the crab at all as I want to preserve the quality of the finished mousseline, but it's something I'm willing to consider...

why help? is the meat horribly difficult to extract when raw?

As a very rough rule of thumb, I'd say that most (UK!) salted butters have a more pronounced buttery taste that most unsalted butters. I'm presuming that's due to a higher level of ketones and butyl- derived compounds in the salted butters. I can detect the difference in sauces monteed with salted as opposed to unsalted-then-seasoned butter. Am I missing something here regarding moisture content? Every butter I've ever used has been 80-82% fat, 0-3% salt, marginal protein and other bits, and the remainder of around 18%, water. Is this not the case elsewhere?

an erratum, then : In this country, salted and unsalted butters are inherently different.

Most salted butters hover around the 2% mark. Interestingly, most Welsh butters I've seen have 3% salt. What I find amazing is that in this thread, no-one's brought up the fact that salted and unsalted butters are inherently different; it's not merely a question of the presence of absence of salt. Most European butters (including Kerrygold) are cultured with a lactobacillus starter, giving them a pronounced buttery taste particularly attractive in baked goods. When I visited the US, I found most of your butter to be very tasteless compared to the butters I was used to; presumably the reverse of the "cheesy butter" of Anthony Bourdain's childhood visits to France. Personally, I never substitute one for the other - I always make my shortbread with salted butter, though :)

How much of the cooking wine went into the braising pot as opposed to your glass? :) I've had a similar thing happen; I shall mull it over and see if my brain copes.

Right... I'm looking to make a crab mousseline, and I need to know - can you extract crab meat from a crab in its raw state? You can with lobster, of course, which leads me to think that it can be done with crab; I've not seen any references to this, though. Has anyone tried this? If so, what were the results like?

If we lose our Bib Gourmand (okay, laugh, but it's all the infrastructure of the hotel will allow us) there's going to be a riot, followed by a war with the waiting-on staff; the service in our place is shocking, horribly shocking, and I fear it's going to mean losing our entry. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have wished the Maitre d' dead. Gruesomely. If RHR goes down to two stars I shall eat my hat... *prepares marinade*

See the Confit Duck thread for food-porn pics of my trusty Le Creuset in action. It's truly a thing of joy.

The newborn won't feed many people. :) Congratulations! A good way of reheating that's kind to stews is to put the whole bag into a chauffon of simmering water - it'll reheat gently, there's no danger of overcooking and you can leave it in as long as you like, within reason. Takes longer than microwaving, I admit, but you get what's probably the best result. I assume ziplock bags are fully waterproof?

Excellent research, thank you! I must admit, I never thought a simple post about confit duck would generate this sort of response; I'm heartened.

Same here. Every time I follow that recipe I decide that it's too heavy on the cloves (in the quatre épices). But I always seem to forget by the next time. Oh well. I'll try Allan's citrus-based flavorings some time soon. (flavourings?) ← flavo(u)rings; I'm bilingual... metric/imperial, american/other people... I tell you the fact that the US pint is only 4/5 the UK pint caused havoc for me until I realised. I guess I've always added at least half a lemon to confit; the orange mellows it out somewhat, gives it a warmth. If you're worried about the slightly acidic undertone, then use the zest only.

erm... erm... I don't quite know what to say - it's like being commended by Ghandi for your advice to him on non-violent protest. I actually never thought about pureeing the fat and skin before rendering - usually (shamefully, one might say) i just detail the task to a commis with the instruction to chop until their hands are sore.

Moby, if I really want a crisp even result I take the skin off, salt it, place between two baking sheets and bake until set in shape before removing the top sheet and baking until crisp and brown. What you then have is a perfectly flat sheet of duck crackling. Colour - white to pale-straw. You should get enough fat from the 4lb of raw fat, but I can't give you any guarantees. As a guide, I used a shade under 4lb of rendered fat for the 10 duck legs I made at the beginning of this thread. You could probably get away with slightly less, especially if you took care to pack the duck intelligently. I've always rendered on a lowish heat for a couple of hours; not a very scientific approach, I grant you. Probably best to render it the day before. Good luck!

Interesting to see that the AA have released details of select upgrades well in advance of the release of the 2005 guide... Also interesting to see that Martin Wishart's in Edinburgh (1 michelin star) have been booted up from three to four rosettes. Maybe an indication of a second star in the Michelin guide? I wonder if this is the AA trying to steal some of Michelin's thunder, as it were. Do we have a firm publication date for the red guide this year? Waterstones says 21 January.

It's been announced that Martin Wishart will be upgraded from three rosettes to four in the 2005 AA guide... Second star, anyone?