Shalmanese

It's highly unlikely that theres going to be any health risks from frozen chicken stock. The only thing worth worrying about is the taste. My guess is that it should be fine. I've had stock in for longer but in reasonably well sealed containers.

My guess is that once the alcohol gets absorbed into the meat, it doesn't get cooked off which means that the meat has a sharper, bitter taste which can work well with some things but poorly with others. I guess if your worried, you could just marinate in grape juice. It has the same acidity and none of the alcohol. For marinating, the effects should be pretty much the same, marinades are not a subtle affair.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the master recipe for Creme Brulee.

Does basil not usually survive freezing for 3 months? It seems to me that if it's in a ziplock bag, its not going to pick up funky odours and it's not going to oxodise since it's in oil so what else can go wrong with it?

Nope, 100% natural insomnia.

Yes, dont ask me how my mind works. I wanted garlic and I wanted something sweet. refer to chocolate omlette above for further inspiration. The first time I tried it, I just sliced some garlic and candied it but it was far too bitter and far too sweet. Second time, I added the balsamic and cored it but it was still to bitter. Third time, I got something acceptable with the blanching in milk then coring. I haven't tried it again because it runs through garlic so quickly and I need it for other stuff :D. When I can be bothered, I'll go buy 10 heads of garlic and make a big batch keep.

My latest creation: Garlic Candy 1 head of garlic milk 3 tsp of balsamic vinegar 1 tsp of white sugar 1 knob of butter pinch of salt 1 large box of breathmints Can be scaled up as desired. First, seperate the head of garlic into individual cloves, using only the large/medium sized cloves and remove the hard bottom bit but do not de-skin. Put in a small saucepan and pour enough boiling milk in to cover (boil the milk in the microwave to save time) and simmer the garlic for 3 minutes. Remove garlic cloves from the milk and discard the milk. De-skin the cloves and cut each in half along the axis(ie: cut the long side) and remove the center heart. The heart also contains some bitterness and is best removed. Once you have achieved this, set a non-stick pan on the lowest heat setting and have your knob of butter gently bubbling and toss the garlic cloves in with a pinch of salt and allow to brown. You want this to go as slow as possible to obtain the best tasting end result so put it on the lowest heat you can get so it's barely bubbling. Once the under-side is brown, flip and allow the other side to brown. Meanwhile, dissolve the sugar in the balsamic vinegar. I find it's a lot easier if you heat the vinegar in 10 second intervals in the microwave and then stir until fully dissolved. This is the crucial bit: Once the garlic is nice and golden brown, pour the balsamic mixture in the pan and swirl around until you have the vinegar and the garlic evenly distributed and no garlic is overlapping. You need to be relatively quick about doing this because very soon, the sugar mixture will get very sticky. Once it becomes sticky, DONT touch the pan. Anything you do will just make the entire mixture roll into a ball. Leave it on the heat until the sugar mixture turns to candy. It's kind of hard to tell this and it involves a certain bit of trial and error but your basically looking for colour and bubbles. The colour should lighten from black to a medium brown and the bubbles should get progressively bigger until they are abut 3 cm across. It's more of an experience thing but it's pretty tolerant to error and if you dont get it hot enough, you get toffee which is still pretty good. Once it's reached candy stage, turn off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature (If you have so much candy that it covers more than a thin layer of the pan, you might want to empty the pan onto a sheet pan covered in wax paper to cool) and then stick it in the fridge to cool to fridge temp. Once it's cold enough, break it up into individual chunks and then either eat straight or serve atop something else.

Where does the name Alinea come from? Is there a story behind it?

I like Peters of Kensington for big budget, higher end items (knives, good pots etc) but I really want to discover a place that has middle price, no-nonsense high quality wares. Stuff like pots & pans that can take a beating or miscellaneous bits of kitchen doodads. What are some of the places you've found? PS: The Kitchen Supply store on George St is rubbish, old, moulding stock at ridiculous prices. I found a Lodge Pro Logic pan there selling for $90 when Amazon.com has it for $16 USD :o.

The proper way, of course, to clean the brown, stuck-on bits at the bottom of the pan after roasting is by using your tounge.

No, I was still up. Just about to go to bed when the cravings hit.

Well, it's 4:25 am and the steak is made and eaten with a few minor hiccoughs along the way. The first being that I needed to pan-fry the steak and I couldn't really pan fry the steak seeing as doing so would create copious amounts of steak smell that would wake up everyone in the house. Thus is created Steak a la outside. Heat your heaviest cast iron pan until it starts smoking copiously. Meanwhile, get a stick butter and take of shavings with a potato peeler. The aim is to make the butter light enough that it will instantly melt in the pan. I tried grating it but it clumped together too much. Move the steaks outside and get ready to move the pan. As you move the pan just outside the doorway, throw in the butter and then swirl rapidly before dropping on the steaks. Allow the residual heat from the pan cook the steaks for 60 seconds on one side and then flip. Allow to cook 30 seconds more and then bring the pan back inside and on high heat. Once the heat reaches back into the pan again and the steaks start smoking, the insides should be around medium rare so remove to a elevated serving platter and cover with al-foil while making a pan sauce. Serve, eat, enjoy then fall into bed exhasted, needing to get up in less than 5 hours :(.

Well, as I write this, it's 3:45 am and I have an intense urge for steak. I don't know why, I don't really think I need steak, but I know that if I don't get steak before I go to bed then I'll lay awake for at least an hour thinking about it. So what am I doing? I'm not really set up for steak so I wing it as I always do when I get hit by inexplicable midnight cravings. Right now, I have two pieces of mystery meat marinating in a bag. I know they're beef and they're flat but thats about it. If I'm lucky, it'll be rump and therefore edible, oh well, the mystery cravings demand supplication so what can you do? The marinade is again, something very crude, made on the spur of the moment. EVOO, cheap red wine, red wine vinegar, coarse peppercorns and some of my frozen herb mix (blend 4 random fresh herbs + copious amounts of garlic with enough evoo to moisten then freeze. Keeps up to... well, this ones verging on 3 months and still has a lot of kick. Perfect for freshening flavours when you can't be bothered with fresh herbs). Of course, this isn't the first utterly bizarre midnight craving. There was the choclate biscuit omlette. Don't ask me why, I needed chocolate and I needed eggs. There was my craving for fettucini alfredo... made with fresh fetucini from scratch, started at 2:30 am and eaten at 4am. There was fritattas and foccacias and even deep fried scrambled eggs (don't try this at home unless you like eating what tastes like a sponge full of oil). What are some of your particularly inspired midnight creations?

I eat cherry tomatos like popcorn (but not with any butter or salt :P). Just grab a big bowl of them and a good movie and munch away.

There a specialised shrimp de-shelling tools that can strip the shell, legs & vein of a shrimp in one action. Takes maybe 5 seconds per shrimp. I've never used one since I can't justify the cost but I know they exist.

The common mantra about roux's is you need a 1:1 fat to flour and then top it up with liquid. However, I fail to see the significance of the 1:1 thing, surely, the thickness of a roux depends on the ratio of flour to liquid and the cooking time of the flour rather than the proportion of fat. While not enough fat might stop it from coating every grain of flour, I fail to see what excess fat could possibly do to a roux. Is the 1:1 thing just a passed down bit of folklore or is there a reason to it?

Ah, I never considered that fat might act as a flavour enhancer for vegtables. Does this mean that when I make vegtable stock, it would be a good idea to throw in some chicken skins?

I would think spreading it over parchment paper and letting it dry out in a very low oven would work better than the stove-top if you've already got it to that stage. A food dehydrator would work better but it's not worth it if your only using it for stocks.

Sydney, Eastern Suburbs

Yes, but for over an hours worth of work, your making just above minimum wage making these skins.

I'm going primarily by the eGullet Culinary Institute lesson on stockmaking here for background info, I usually just boil my chicken for 3 - 4 hours but the bones are still firm which indicates they still have gelatin. My next goal is to either try letting it sit overnight or letting it sit in the oven. To know when a stock is finished, all the bones should crumble easily between your fingers. in one of the Q&A's someone mentioned that a stock with a tiny bit of salt tasted markedly different that a stock with salt added later in a blind taste test. I've never added it to mine but something like 2tbsp in a pot of stock is enough to draw out the flavour. Assuming you don't have an absurdly large stockpot, I always find that the amount of stock I make is limited by the pot. Instead of making two batches of chicken+veggie, why not make 1 batch of all chicken and 1 batch of all veggie. This way, I can use just vegtable stock if I only want vegtable or I can use it with beef if I want beef. Also, I would only use 4hrs + 1hrs worth of cooking time instead of 4hrs + 4hrs worth of cooking time. I think you lost me on this one. To adjust the level of meatiness, simply change the ratio of vegtable stock to meat gelatin thing so you could get a stock that is predominantly meat or just has a hint of meat in it. Eg: I would imagine a big roast would benifit from a stronger pan juice gravy while a delicate chicken soup would work better with more vegtables. I often find that my stocks are either too sweet and light for some dishes and too heavy for others. Since stocks last practically forever, you might as well go on a big stockmaking binge when a certain vegtable is in season or especially cheap. Thats another thing, I generally only make stock when I've accumulated enough bones to fill a pot or when meat happens to be especially cheap. This often does not correspond to when good vegtables are in season so it gives me a lot more flexibility to make them at seperate times. Well, no. You need at least enough water to completely cover all the solids. If you halve the solids by removing all the veggies, you halve the liquid while still having the same amount of gelatin extracted. This means that you get twice the amount of gelatin so it's already twice as reduced as a normal stock. Anyway, I'm going to give this a go. It's verging on winter here in Aus so some nice root vegtables should be in season. I'll go the farmers market on Wednesday and pick up some fresh veggies and give you an update on how it goes.

Hi, I'm an amatuer stock-maker. I've made stock about 4 or 5 times now and I've read the eGullet stock course which has helped me a lot. One thing I couldn't help wondering about is would it be possible to make the vegtable and meat parts of the stock seperately and combine later on to get the same results as a normal stock. I mean, unless there is some chemical interplay going on in the pot that I'm not aware of, I don't see why this would be a big deal. So, instead of: 1. Chuck Mirepoix, herbs and bones in a pot 2. Boil for 12 hours 3. Strain and reduce to demi-glace It would be: 1. Chuck finely diced Mirepoix and herbs in a pot 2. Boil for about an hour or when the vegtables have lost their flavour 3. Strain and reduce to a vegtable demi-glace 4. Chuck bones in a seperate pot with a bit of salt to aid the leeching of gelatin 5. Boil for 12 hours 6. Strain and reduce to a meat demi-glace This would seem to have many advantages to me over the traditional stock making method. 1. You can cook up bigger batches at once 2. You can have beef, chicken, vegtable, beef & chicken etc. stocks just by combining different glaces together 3. You can adjust the level of "meatiness" in your stock 4. You can make a variaty of vegtable stocks to give different base charecteristics to your meal, eg: a white mirepoix for earthier stocks, more carrots for a sweeter stock. 5. You don't lose some of those delicate flavours in the vegtables that get broken down by prolonged heat. 6. You have a greater water/bone ratio so you don't need to reduce as much to reach demi-glace as you would a normal stock. 7. You can puree the vegtables for a tasteless but fibrous filler which can provide body to some dishes It seems to me that this would be an awesome way to make stock so I'm a bit puzzled as to why it's not standard practise.