alexw

have you tried just a plain water based recipe with some pectin boiled through it out of a canister, we sometimes do this then squirt into a container and quenelle the foam onto the required dish. still acts heavy but tastes quite light if you omit dairy from the recipe.

Easiest one I know and produces great results every time 500mls lemon juice, 10 sprigs thyme, salt, sugar, lecithin simmer lemon & thyme for 5 mins, pass and allow to cool. pinch of salt, pinch of sugar to taste (needs to taste sharp) 2-3gm Lecithin, add to the liquid and blend. when you do it I find that if you can use a longish container where the liquid can come about 1/2 way up the container. wrap very well (at least 3 times around) with cling film, and cut a small hole at one end no more than a 1/3 of the way along the container, but big enough to get your hand blender into. blend quickly and allow foam to settle for 1-2 minutes, spoon the foam off the surface sparingly on to freshly fried fish. if you need more just re-blend we use 1/2 litre per day for 150-200 covers. We use this on a scallop tart dish with creamed leeks, wild mushrooms and caramelised scallop the base minus the lecithin can be made ages in advance with no problems, add lecithin the day you want to use it, you may need to adjust seasoning. blooming strong but very effective. Alex.

Interesting comments here. easiest warm foams are as philadining says, steeping or blending flavours into milk is the best bet. as long as the milk doesn't exceed 80C then your foam should be quite stable, just check how long your foam holds out on a capuccino. boil it though and all the natural lecithin in it breaks down and the bubble surfaces just won't hold. Taubear, there are so many ways to make a cold foam, my basic favourite is to flavour a simple water based liquid and blend in powdered lecithin, the lower the pH number the more stable and volumatic the foam, as for airs, from what I can gather it is the blender that is most important here and the space blended in so that larger bubbles can be formed, also your recipes need to be more exact with airs as the larger the bubble the more prone to bursting it is. Bryan, you can make foams with NO2 chambers (a la Ferran Adria the Daddy of the foam), generally you will find recipes using the canisters stabilize the foams with anything but lecithin, I don't know why this is, but gelatin and pectin are good for increasing the viscous surface of the bubbles, and these foams turn out very firm and long lasting even if extruding a bit violently. if you haven't used one before, make sure you have enough cleaning materials to hand the first time you press that button, cos I promise it will get everywhere, a favourite trick on inquisitive commis. Only problem I find is that you can achieve volatile natural flavours using foams and i struggle to not foam everything when designing my menus, just written my summer menu and managed to keep the foam count down to 2 in savoury and 2 in pastry, my lowest for a while. Alex.

sounds interesting, look forward to hearing if it works, I blend my xanthan into the perre juice and the air disperses quickly, we then vac it in portions and freeze it, there is no loss of stability and we produce 8-10 litres at a time and it holds in the freezer for a month with no noticeable deterioration. it then has the consistency of a jus lie with no trapped air. Alex.

my home kitchen is pretty pants for full on playing, but have to do most of my fun research at home cos work is too damn busy and the boys just whinge when I get in the way too much. but at home I keep getting the kids trying to help me, and when my backs turned I find them dusted in TG, or vac packing my recipe notes and other fun kid stuff, so have to also select kitchen time to when they are safely in school. my point being, your kitchen sets the boundaries of your imagination, and I'm sure you could start glueing things straight away, one thing I did for the family the other week, was get a couple of chicken breasts, glue them together, thin end to fat, pulling the skin so it joined, wrap in cling film and vac. poach @ 63C for 1 hour. rest for 20 mins, (the chicken not me), then sear the skin in a non stick pan cut and serve as a chicken "fillet" with traditional steak garnish. Alex.

I am using lecithin mainly for my foams, but am cold foaming for a little temp contrast on hot dishes. as for supply, we use wild harvest for our basic chems, as MSK prices are through the roof, their agar is 4 times the price (or was) that it is mail order from the spice shop in notting hill. Alex.

Have sucessfully made fluid gels with a hand blender. As Moby said it is basically a nearly broken gel. Make your main flavour ingredient, set with the gellan, then blend with a baa-mix or similar every now and again as it cools (around every 5 minutes or so), don't overdo it, just enough to break the setting of it. I have found no discolouration, but naturally can be a little frothy. also what I have found the lower the pH the easier it is to bugger this up, flavoured milks are more foolproof then a strawberry or tomato fluid gel, and when you get to lemons or limes then it goes south very easily as the gellan loses hold on the liquid and you end up with lemon water with the odd lump in it, not quite the effect I was looking for!! !!

have been using xanthan now for some time, primarily as a thickener, I use it for red pepper jus, which is pepper juice, reduce witha spoon of multidextrin (this helps with the shine and keeping a clean frsh flavour). pass then cool down. blend a little (very little) at a time, until consistency is achieved and that's it. don't put too much in though, or you will have one bowl of red snot, minor drawback to not watching what you are doing as i discovered some time ago. as for the activa (TG), as far as I am aware, you don't need a licence in the UK for it, I just googled till I found a supplier in my country, have to buy it by the KG though, a bit rough at £75+ per KG, they will sometimes send samples though. if you can get hold of it ask for the EB and not the SB for general glueing, I found the SB too fine a powder and a little easy to mess up then breath it in, dodgy.

the mayo is a clasic recipe, the stabilizer used is Gellan, which is can survive some crazy temperatures, the Fat Duck use it in their pigs head terrine to hold it when fried. personally loved this dish, seemed to come together like a deconstruction of a toasted sandwich. Alex.

You can dry all sort of things out in low ovens or dehydrators, then grind them these can be incorporated into basic tuille recipes by often just omitting a little flour for the flavour powder. I play with lots of tuilles and as a rule of thumb use a basic sweet tuille recipe and add flavours to it, if I need a savoury tuille then I substitute multidextrin for sugar in my recipes. you can also reduce stocks for intense tuilles, the batters for these can be slightly wet so you need to dry out in a very low oven rather than bake as a normal tuille. also another method, as in el bulli is to make a flavoured caramel (cep for instance), then set and grind the caramel, this can then be sieved onto a baking sheet and melted in a warm oven to give interesting flavoured sugar crisps

a simple one if not quite a casserole, is to take all the ingredients of a full breakfast and slowly fry them in cooking order (sausage first, then mushrooms etc), then when everything comes together crack a couple of eggs into the pan (a non stick will help a lot here) the eggs should happily go around everything and you can turn the pan straight onto the plate, not great for large parties though unless you have a small army of omelette pans but very successful for a couple of you.

personally I like to make a quick jelly (or jello) with my Sauternes, set it in the fridge and chop it up just before you need it, devour with some polaine toast

why don't you thinly slice the pancetta, wrap the scallops with it, maybe with a coriander leaf, then put you rocket in a bowl in the fridge and the dressing in a jam jar the night before, then when you want it, heat your pan, cook your scallops, quickly dress the rocket with the balsamic then plate, unless you are cooking for the masses should only take a maximum of 10 minutes.

Pass - Me just for the opportunity to bin stuff back at!!! hot starters - GR Fish - Charlie Trotter Larder - Thomas Keller Meat - Ducasse Pastry - Sam Mason and Jocky from FD Veg - Roxanne Klein If I am not allowed to be the loud one at GR then would ask for Ferran or Veryat

quite possibly, wasn't aware of their menu contents back there. howeve when I staged there in January 2003, scallop was marinated then fried traditionally, and probed to a core of 50C then served immediately. could be totally different there now, I haven't been over there for a good few months now.

generally you would think that as soon as the check comes on the scallops are taken out of the fridge and placed on a tray (sometimmes pre-seasoned tray), then the rest of the kitchen gets to work preparing the rest of the order, an amuse would be served normally at this level I would think which buys time for the kitchen, then when the pan is suitably hot enough, start cooking and as basildog says you can hold for a couple of minutes under the grill or even perhaps the oven, we colour on one side, then as we flip the scallop over then it goes under the grill to get the pan heat colouring the 2nd side whilst the grill works on the whole temp, (I use much smaller scallops than the michelin boys), then for the last 30-45 seconds finish with soft butter and lemon juice to impart great flavour and also add that final heat. at the FD they use the huge scallpos and probe each one before serving it, keeping it gently on the edge of the range until perfect (one item they don't, or at least when I was there didn't, sous-vide) this sounds like a severe dans la merde moment and tony was just unlucky. Please mention it next time though cos we are all human and are perfectly capable of buggering up even on a good day, if we are not told then we get no chance to correct and a mistake that early on in a meal put you on a bit of a witch hunt which magnified any further mastakes you may have forgiven, even if they are 2 star.

Staging is when you go into a restaurant on a trial for a job, or just because you want to experience the place, el bulli for example takes stagieres for up to 6 months. I will not employ any chef that is not willing to stage as it gives both parties a chance to check each other out. Alex.

sorry should have said that the fennel needs to be finely shaved on a chinese vegetable slicer, dont try the whole bulb cos that will take weeks and probably blow up your microwave.

Hi, firstly, stop panicking, botulism will only occur if you are flippant about your sous vide cooking, and if you are excited then you should be focussed about the things you are about to try. rule number 1, do not vacuum anything to stop it from going off if it is whiffy in your fridge, it will only get worse. rule number 2, when cooking meat or fish, buy quality, prep clean keep it cold from store to bag. cheap supermarket meat is not the thing to muck around with. I don't mean for you to speand the earth but try and find a butcher you can trust, and also make sure he is a busy one, so you can ensure his stock is turning over well. same goes for fish. rule number 3, have fun and experiment, don't be afraid to pick up the phone to dominos pizza, no-one gets everything right every time. first things I ever did with vac-pac was to portion up my braised dishes in them before time and then boil in the bag for service (or dinner parties), this seals in flavour fabulously and with dishes like lamb shanks or osso bucco you can also add vegetable garnish (cooked) with the meat and the sauce and allow you to fully focus on your guests during a dinner party. DOWN SIDE- food saver and other vacuum packing machines just suck air out of your bag, they will also draw out all of your liquid into the pump and ruin your machine before you begin, my tips are if your sauce is a meat glaze reduction (jus) then fridge it and allow it to set, doesn't matter if it covers the meat or the garnish as long as it is solid when you press the start button. otherwise freeze it and vac it frozen. some vegetables vacuum really well, 1kg fennel, 250gm butter. cook in the microwave. carefull as your microwave will get really hot so do it in burst allowing your machine to cool inbetween, blend well, pass and season and a beautiful veloute is born. pumpkin or butternut also works really well (would recommend double bagging though as the corners can pop the bag,) simmer until tender and then puree with shallots garlic etc, whatever takes you fancy, I crush some amaretti and cream into mine then blend pass and churn into ice cream. hope that's enough to get you started. Alex.

to maximise our puree soups at work, we blend with a stick blender and then when we fill the conical sieve we then put the stick blender in the sieve, the guard keeps the blade away from the egde and blitz, this works the soup through the sieve with extremely little waste. Otherwise, take the soup you have and simmer with some stock and cream to bulk it out, the flavour should carry if you don't over do-it and you will end up with a nice creamy veloute of mushrooms. Alex.

you should be able to use exactly the same recipe, you just need to measure how much each individual mould takes and make sure that a batch will fill all the moulds you require, as individuals can (sometimes) use more mix than one big one. If it is a baked cheesecake just remember that it is going to take far less time to cook them than your recipe dictates, so keep a close eye one them. as for any more detailed advice, need to see your original recipe. if you are unsure PM me and I will check it with my pastry chefs for you. Alex.

Not so much as a meal but a kids birthday party, when the rice krispie cakes were handed out much to the young ones glee, my 8 year old took 1 bite, tried to swallow and chucked up all over the living room carpet. she had made a basic ganache about a week before and stored it in a cupboard, rank beyond belief. not the brightest bulb in the box and certainley a house we won't be re-visiting.

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! at least Heston can cook, sure he must use fairy too.

I have cooked for 16 years, and smoked for more. the main answer for you many questions, as a smoker in a kitchen, I have found my palette more sensitive than most non-smokers I know, maybe this is just blind luck, but my job has never been affeced as a cause. Also when working as a junior chef, if a smoker went up to the chef and asked to go for a cigarette, even the hardest of chefs coldest answer would more often than not be, "yes but be quick about it", non-smokers may ask to go for a 5 minute sit down and a coffee and this would be laughed at and they would be told to merely bring the coffee back to their section and get on with it. harsh but true. as long as you remember to wash your hands when returning to a kitchen then I see no problem, as a Head chef I do feel the necessity to carry breath mints also, as I am quite likely to be requested into my restaurant to discuss my food with one of my guests on occasion and feel I shouldn't breath stale smoke on them, not really proffessional in a 5* environment.

personally, I would merely say. "if I wanted your company for the whole meal I would have invited you instead", when they look a little dumbfounded at you, then request the floor manager and not leave it until your way out. Alex.