Shalmanese

I have the opposite problem that whenever I give food away to other people, I WANT them to tell me what's wrong with it. No matter what I make or how much I tell them I appreciate feedback, they never say anything bad about it unless I'm first to say something like "Well, I think this batch came out a little salty".

At home, we make a traditional northern style salad which, IIRC, contains the following ingredients: cucumber strips kelp strips dried bean curd sheets bean sprouts dressing: raw garlic, minced fine chinese rice vinegar sesame seed oil and possible several secret ingredients that I'm not privy to. Tastes fantastic though.

I've heard many restaurant personalities say that to properly reduce from a stock to a glace de viande, you need to slowly simmer, But is this really neccesary? You've got rid of all the fat, you've got rid of all the protein, what could possibly go wrong if you boiled your stock? Personally, I've tried both ways and I haven't found much difference except one being 10x faster than the other.

Given that sea-salt generally sells for grossly inflated prices over here and the ocean is about 20 minutes walk from my door, is there anything wrong with just using sea-water in my cooking rather than salt? I'm thinking just go down with a big stockpot and scoop out about 20 gallons of water. Get home, boil to get rid of the bugs. then strain to get rid of the grit and store. When I need to blanch veggies or flavour soups/stews/braises etc, just use my sea water rather than salt. Thoughts?

I think our local supermarkets sell maldons for $6 AU/240gm. RooStew: My baker sells grey salt in both chunky and fine textures with the fine costing about $1 more. Personally, when I need fine, I just whiz it in the food processor.

It's the height of summer over here and sometimes my eyes get too big for my stomach and I buy way more fruit than I can eat, simply because it looks so gorgeous and it's all so cheap. So what I haven't been able to eat, I've been making into sorbet and serving after dinner. So far, I've done: Lemon Lemon/Lime Grape Passionfruit Kiwi Watermelon Oddly enough, the pineapples this year are very so-so, when it's good, it's sublime but this year seems rather bad.

I don't think pre-made vegtable stocks are really worth it. Generally, I just prefer to cook the vegtables with whatever dish I'm using. Unless you need something that is clear or non-chunky, it seems like a waste of time.

I love taking down a big chunk of flesh. Chickens I do all the time but it's rare for me to do beef or pork, usually because the pieces I want don't seem to be on sale often. It's nice to portion meat exactly how you want rather that how the supermarket dictates.

I'm currently on a batch of lime honey, very interesting, mush better than the generic supermarket stuff.

I don't get paper plates for prep. First, they're way too flimsy and, the way I go through prep, I would need 100 in a week. Ceramic bowls take all of 2 seconds to rinse quickly and they can be used repeatedly in one cooking session. I never use them just because it seems wierd but I wouldn't have any problem. Plastic cutlery is another story, refuse point blank to use them.

A few things I've found it to be better than other implements. Making croutons in the MW is quick and doesn't need a pan. Cut into cubes, put on a plate, zap for 1 min, toss around, zap for 1 min, toss, zap for 30s, drizzle with EVOO & minced garlic, zap for 20 seconds. Defrosting meat for when you want to slice it thinly. You need the meat firm but cuttable. Conventional defrosting leaves the outside too soft and the inside too hard. Reducing small amounts of liquid. You can do it in a bowl so you lose less than doing it in the saucepan.

If the water is going into the waterbath boiling, then more water should be better than less since it can buffer against temperature swings. Has anyone tried brulee where caramel is heated over the stovetop and then poured on top? supposedly it gives a thicker, but much more even layer.

IIRC: An apple is a single serving of fruit so most vegetarian dishes would contain 2 - 3 servings.

Did you use a broiler or a flame thrower? How did you cook your custard? I remember reading somewhere that custards cooked over a bain and stirred stay noticably more liquid than those which are baked in a water bath.

How would it work in a savoury pie crusts instead of lard?

Food safety needs to be put into perspective, I know that at least quite a few people, after seeing Alton's stock show, go to the whole rigamorole of chilling stock in coolers with crushed ice and ice bullets etc. yet I wonder how many of them are quite happy to leave chicken soup on the rangetop while they take the 30 minutes or so to eat dinner? Personally, I feel that if I can afford to leave chicken soup out for an hour, then I can afford to leave chicken stock out for the same amount of time. It just doesn't make sense to focus on things that only have a 0.001% chance of killing you and then ignoring things that have a 0.1% chance of killing you.

How much evaporation can there be at 60C? Can't you just put some tin foil or something over the top?

Carcasses are a nice cheap source of stock and premium meat. I can get 12 chicken carcasses for $3, made into stock, thats about 5 months worth of stock and about 1kg of perfectly good breast/thigh meat useful for soups and other dishes that call for chopped chicken breast. Similarly, with beef bones, the trimmings get used in shepards pies, lasagnas, fried rice etc.

Even if you don't use the fat, the cracklings alone are enough to justify saving it.

My WAG: The chicken you buy in stores now are pre-brined in the store. Thus, your marinade doesn't penetrate. Look carefully on the label to see if theres any sign it was adultered with.

The baker at my local farmers market sells Sel de Gurende for $3.50/500gm. It's a grey, unrefined atlantic sea-salt which I absolutely LOVE the flavour of. I also have a box of Maldons which I use for searing steaks and the like due to the flakiness of it. I also have some supermarket generic for salting pasta water or potatos. I tried some of the pink Australian salt and quite like the flavour but I've been spoiled by this Sel de Gurende and it seems way to expensive.

Isn't the stickiness of the sides of the pan integral to a good souffle rise? Which is why savoury souffles have the pan dusted with butter and parm and sweet ones use butter and sugar?

For the Record, here are the 3 pate a choux recipes: Joy: 1 cup flour 1 cup water/milk 1/3 cup butter 4 or 5 eggs Larousse: 125 gm flour 1 cup water/milk 65gm butter 4 eggs Alton: 5 3/4 oz flour 1 cup water 6 tbsp butter 4 eggs & 2 egg whites They all have 1 cup of water in common, Converting them all to a sane measurement system (;)), the butter flour ratio you get: Joy: 125:75 = 5:3 Larousse 120:60 = 2:1 Alton 160:80 = 2:1 Guh, the sooner you people go metric the better. Okay, I see now that my dough had much too much water which I failed to drive out. This, in turn meant I couldn't put as much egg in which stopped it from rising. I will try this again tomorrow.

Well, the recipes ranged from 80/40(Joy) to 125/65(Alton) flour/butter all in 1 cup of water so I figured I would take the middle figure. To my understanding, the amount of water is not as important since you are evaporating it until you reach the right consistency. I mixed until there was a thin film then allowed it to evaporate just a bit more since it didn't feel really firm. The sugar added a tiny bit of sweetness to the dough, but, IMO, not enough to be detectable in a eclair or custard puff. Maybe with a cream puff. I didn't use any egg glaze.

Do you have any agar, alginate or other funky chemicals on hand?