culinary bear

glad he 'discovered' it... I'm wondering about the mechanical differences in action between polyphosphates and TGA regarding water retention...

Bloody hell, seven new posts in the time it takes me to reply? I must be getting slow in my old age. Paula, where have you been all my (culinary) life? I do feel unfit to bask in your glowing culinary radiance. :)

In an ideal world, yes, you should be able to recover and use it within a short period of time. Just keep an eye out for discolouration, off-smells, the usual signs of spoilage. I like Tony Bourdain. Really, I do. I plan to buy the man prodigious amounts of Manchester bitter if he comes over to the city again. I have never heard of a recipe for confiting duck at such a high temperature for so short a time, which perhaps says more about me than that recipe. My gut instinct is that you wouldn't get tenderness cooking it at that temp for that time, but I may be wrong.

Absolutely. You wouldn't believe what nasty customers get called in the safety of the ktitchen. Instrusting the waitress to tell the chef he's an arsehole is spoliing for a fight, and steps across the line, IMHO.

Sounds like you might have missed the recent eGullet Q&A with McGee. ← I did, bollocks. I'm rather enjoying reading it.

That's not service, that's gratuitous sycophancy. Chefs are there to cook, not to swan about in an impeccably clean jacket afterward. If you need to come out to the dining room on request, do so, but we have enough primadonnas in this industry.

In the heat of service, a lot of chefs will tell you to piss off if you bombard them with arcane requests... Phone ahead either on the day, or glory of glories, the day before and explain your wants, and just about every chef I know worth their salt will do their utmost to give you something compatible, and special.

That raises an interesting point, and one I see an awful lot of : "Chef, the customer on table X is allergic to :" egg dairy products (but not butter) margarine water (!) gluten garlic, onions, tomatoes all vegetables blood Now, I'm a biochemist by original training; I know people can be allergic to all sorts of things, but I suspect a lot of people are jumping on the 'allergy bandwagon' in order to lend weight to personal whims.

regarding the chefs v customers debate - there's now a thread here for it. :)

This has kind of grown from a comment I made, and the responses to it, in the Festivus thread. You know the scenario, regardless of which side of the divide you normally see it from. A customer wants his wild salmon or his venison fillet cooked well-done, or complains that the seared foie gras isn't cooked in the middle. Marco Pierre White famously charged a customer 30 pounds for the bowl of chips they'd been cheeky enough to ask for in his michelin 3-star restaurant. At what point are chefs justified in drawing the line? Should customers always get what they want, on the basis that they're the ones paying for it? Should chefs have the opportunity to say that they're not prepared to serve tomato ketchup with their foie gras, or to cook that pigeon breast well-done? I'd appreciate your views, from all sides of this.

Dan Lepard's "The Handmande Loaf", Harold McGee's "McGee on Food and Cooking", which seems to be a new version of his 1984 classic, a mortar and pestle (that makes six in the kitchen), and a Kenwood Major old-stylee bench mixer. Oh, and a new set of digital scales.

My records say 242, but that doesn't include some I have in storage in the parental vaults. Put me down for that many for the moment. I'm only 29 - the 242 represents about five years of casual acquisition and about 2 of the serious variety. Bugger, I'm going to need a big house to retire in. Sod the wallpaper, I'll just have bookshelves!

The obvious requirement is a high level of confidence in the ability of your lid to stay on the container. The pickle jar is tried and trusted; I wouldn't like to mop up a few quarts of warm duck fat from the carpet. :)

I also got book tokens, which have just this last hour been rendered down into Dan Lepard's "The Handmade Loaf" and, wonderfully, Harold McGee's "McGee on Food and Cooking". Happy bear.

Yes, but is it ~art~...? *maniacal laughter*

you'll curse me when it comes to the washing-up.

it's a shame I react to seafood, otherwise I'd be interested in trying it...

I think you'll find the Euro's not the problem, rather, the dollar! When I last went to the US, I got 1.56 dollars for my pound; now it's nearing 2. Good for me, of course, but hardly conducive to tourism the other way around.

Oh, bollocks to it; I'm going to have to go and try Nandos now... *mutter, grumble* Frankie and Benny's needs the Betjeman/Slough treatment.

I was wondering what a turducken was; thought it sounded German! Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall made a 10-bird roast on TV the other day, and if I remember rightly, the birds were the following : turkey goose duck pheasant chicken guinea fowl pigeon partidge woodcock budgerigar okay, I'm lying about the budgie but I forgot what the 10th one was.

I disagree - the phrase "the chef has discovered an enzyme" is pretty plain and clear. hee hee... I have great fun with food; I always find it ironic that my mum told me not to play with my food as a kid, and now I do it for a living! I know what you mean though. I know what waiting staff are like, and I know they're primed to use the phrases that they do; in all seriousness (and fun) I do find it hard to accept that the motive behind that particular phrase was to do anything other than try and convince the customer of the chef's ability rather than to educate them about the food; that's something I think is fundamentally wrong. good point, well-presented... Yes though, I probably would! If you never ask any questions, you don't learn much. Hence eGullet.

Enzyme (n) - Any of numerous proteins or conjugated proteins produced by living organisms and functioning as specialized catalysts for biochemical reactions. source : dictionary.com In the original post, it was described how the waiter : No, he did not 'discover an enzyme'; he may have found a novel application for an existing enzyme (and if that's the case he's to be applauded) but it is falsehood and plagiarism to take credit for the work of another, and this is what in effect what it taking place if the waiter is maintaining, with these words, that Mr Dufresne has discovered the enzyme for himself. You may think I'm splitting hairs, but in the scientific community such apparently semantic distinctions are real, significant, and established. you'll notice I did no such thing... rather, I took pains to point out that egg white and agar-agar, as people were theorising were the active agents in the 'pasta', were not enzymes at all. Hats off for the progress of new scientific approaches to cooking and those who practise it. Boo-hiss to all those who use science as a tool to mystify rather than to explain. Allan Brown Bachelor of Science (Biochemistry, Edinburgh University) Fellow of the Royal Medical Society Fair-to-middling bridge player Merry Christmas, everyone!

absolutely... they have a taste which combines the bitterness of rocket and the pepperiness of red mustard leaf. a fairly sharp vinaigrette, well-seasoned, would be a good partner.

Is anyone else absolutely horrified at the thought of 'lobster cassoulet'? I'm almost at the stage of not eating in places that have it on the menu. My tuppence worth : lamb, confit duck, couennes, sausage, belly pork. Bear is a crumb advocate. And if you can't use your breath to defrost your car door lock the next morning, there wasn't enough garlic in it.

I like the exchanges this thread has prompted. :) For the record, my duck legs were coming in about 300g each (that's about 11oz for all you luddites). I have in the past used Reg Johnson's Goosnargh duck legs with fantastic results, but you'll never manage to get hold of them outside the UK. I usually store the legs whole; this is what I'm doing with the second batch of ten legs. The first batch I potted as the picked meat because they're going to be given as presents and some friends have an aversion to food that looks like a Damien Hirst installation... A tip I forgot to mention, by the way : when you've lifted the legs out of the pan of fat, you'll notice there's liquid at the bottom of the pan underneath the fat layer. This is a fantastically flavoursome gelatinous stock and shouldn't be wasted. It's easy to separate if you pour the whole lot into a TIGHTLY lidded jar (I use a 4 litre / 1 U.S. gallon pickle jar), put the lid on, and then store this upside down in the fridge until set. When set, turn the right way up, and your jellied stock is sitting obediently on top of the solid fat. I must admit to spreading this jelly on hot toast as a snack. Oh, okay, then. With a little of the fat too.