Corinna Dunne

Oops… forget turkey torture. Here’s the problem with the F Word… it went out after the watershed last night… and food wasn’t the only F word. Which isn’t normally a problem. Except the 5 yr old wanted to see Gordon cook the turkeys… Nigella et al (and do a bit of Hugh spotting). So I recorded it and now I have to be extra careful to fast forward at the more passionate bits, because in her little world, so far so Food and none of the late night F. By the way, the winner of the trainee position in one of GR's restaurants is a female. And no, it wasn’t a token thing. She's called Camilla, and is clearly consumed with passion, determination and effort. Good luck to her. Really looking forward to the next series. Now, that’s what I call entertainment!

After missing “Slasher Jamie in Italy” I was determined not to miss “Gordon’s Christmas Massacre”… and I invited my 5 year old to join me. “Would you like to see the turkey’s being killed?” I asked, and she said “Yes”, followed by, “Oh there’s Hugh” (meaning Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall) and of course she knows Gordon well. So we watched a very sensitive and responsible piece which showed the turkeys first being stunned, and briefly saw one getting its throat slit. Her comments were “Does the blood stay in the bag?”, “Is that the way geese get killed?”, “Oh yes, they do get hanged” and “Can I watch Gordon cooking them next week?”. She popped back off to bed, had sweet dreams and as far as I can see, is most definitely not ruined for life.

Tinned foie gras has a long shelf life, so you should be fine. I just checked some that I have and it's marked 2007. Have a close look for a best before date.

What a lovely present! The foie gras you have has already been cooked, so there's no need to saute it. If you turn it out of the jar or tin that it is in, you can cut it into slices and serve it like a pate. If you dunk the container into a little hot water before you tip it out it will help melt some of the fat around the edge and release it. Traditionally it is served with brioche, which is a light sweet bread from France, and Sauternes, a French botrytised (sweet) wine.

Me too... in fact I prefer this way because you are less likely to get lumps when the liquid you add is hot.

It's not the fat per se, it's the fact that a cup of whole milk is nearly double the calories of a cup of skim milk. That's a lot of calories, particularly given that you're drinking them. Whole milk is a very efficient way to get calories into people that need them, like infants. Very few of the rest of us need to get so many calories so easily. ← Therese, I take your point, but I really think that this is picking the wrong battle and missing the big picture. It is perhaps not so bad if the switch is to vitamin A enriched low fat or skim milk, but I have now reached the point where I prefer minimum intervention with food... so leave the fat in and look elsewhere for the real culprits. The trouble is - at least this side of the ocean - when you give milk a bad name (which is unfair, because 4% fat is considered to be really low fat for many food stuffs), many parents give their kids "Actimel", which is a yoghurt drink that is low in fat and high in sugar and of course has the all important live bacteria in it (which is the emotive selling point). But in reality, if you mixed a few spoons of full fat live yoghurt with some pasteurised orange juice from a carton, you would have a much better product at a minimum cost with no unnecessary packaging. Yes, it infuriates me... I admit it's one of my major gripes. End of rant!

Is this good advice? Is it intended to help reduce calories or are there real nutritional issues at stake here? Low fat food products should be put under serious scrutiny for sugar content. I am convinced that the early onset of diabetes is related to these low fat sugar infested products in unnecessary packaging which parents give to their kids thinking they are doing something good. Transfats were meant to be wonderful... but hey... guess what, natural fats are now acclaimed to be much better. If governments are going to interfere, I think they should first take a look at the foods we ate before all of these problems arose. Yes, good basic food. And of course, exercise and personal responsibility need to be factored in to the whole equation.

This sounds pretty high. So a dairy drink with 0% fat and 35% sugar is considered healthy? As far as I know, the natural fats present in milk are actually good for growing children.

Hi atlanta cook. I look forward to following your progress as you work through some of the techniques in Roca's sous vide book. I'm afraid, I can't answer your smoke infused oil question... but, if it doesn't seem too cheeky... I have a question for you. Is there a recipe for sous vide/slow cooked egg in the book?

..... wow!

Jack, thanks for this. It’s helped spark my memory… and as far as I recall, the egg was “egg shaped”, so presumably cooked in its shell. Thinking about it, I can’t imagine that there would be any advantage in vacuum packing it (is this a correct assumption?). The egg white was indeed “jellyish” as you suggest and the yolk was set although not “powdery”. It was a vivid yellow. I just checked what I posted on the Can Roca thread, and apparently the egg was slow cooked for three hours at 63 C (145.4 F). I had a look at McGee, and I see what you mean about the different coagulation temperatures for the various protein types. He states that the whites begin to thicken at 145F and become a tender solid at 150F, but interestingly, “the major albumin protein, ovalbumin doesn’t coagulate until about 180F/80C, at which temperature the tender white gets much firmer.” He also mentions that the more heat resistant protein in the egg yolk is the last to coagulate, and its protein begins to thicken at 150F and set at 158F. So, I’m puzzled as to why the egg I had was solid in the middle, given that the temperature should not have been high enough to set the proteins in the yolk. Surely with sous vide, the egg would “hold” for a while and not overcook? As mentioned earlier, I think that a soft yolk would have made for a more pleasing result. So U.E., it was an interesting dish that worked as a whole, (the butifarra oil was inspired) but not the most exciting example of sous vide cooking in my opinion.

... Oh, I loved the Sacher torte, the great tea and the sheer refinement of the whole experience.

Jack, I'm interested in this comment. Have you tried this at home or did you have it in a restaurant? It's just that I had a sous vide egg (cooked for about three and a half hours and served with sea urchin and oil of black sausage) in Can Roca earlier in the year, and this was one application of the technique where I just didn't see the point. That said, the egg was cooked right through, and I felt that it would have been much better ir it had been soft in the middle, but I'm not sure I "got" the advantage of sous vide over poaching. I am curious though about how to vacuum pack an egg without sucking the liquid out. Would it first need to be partially frozen? U.E. did you go to Can Roca when you were in Barcelona recently? If you are doing a return trip and looking for an enlightening sous vide experience, I suggest you try the red mullet with couscous of its liver. The fish is cooked sous vide and the skin crisped separately, the couscous is practically the texture of caviar... it is a truly wonderful dish.

At the top end, Santi Santamaria at El Raco de Can Fabes, a Michelin 3* restaurant in Spain is a wonder with fish. On the more casual end, you can't beat Rafa's in Roses (Spain).

Words: Food, in my world, is NEVER divine. Nor is it sinful. I dislike yummy. I loathe eatery. Actually, I'll ask Larry (our managing editor); he keeps a list of words that drive me crazy. ← Oh yes... please ask your managing editor if you've got a chance (and if he's got a chance!). I'd love to see your list. Thanks again.

I think you've hit on another important point here: feeding children when they are hungry and not insisting that they eat when you want them to. It's amazing what a little hunger can do and I suspect that no child will intentionally starve itself to death. Thankfully, I've been very lucky with my 2 kids, but when I felt the younger one was getting over zealous about her likes and dislikes, I stretched out the length of time she had to wait for her dinner... and surprise, she ate it all up with relish. Her foraging skills have improved too as a result, so she will automatically reach for a banana or piece of fruit if she has to wait too long.

Writers specifically, and yes, also words... the things that really get up your nose ("timeless elegance" was one of mine in the 80's, and I'm also alergic to penultimate, although admittedly not a foodie word), or things that make your job less enjoyable. Would love you to recount the "hundreds"... but that would be greedy. And I have to add, I really love the moral of the food warrior.

That was great! Count me among the insane. Thanks, and thanks Lesley for posting the question. ← Thank you so much for all of this insight. I think you can safely assume that your audience is riveted, hanging onto your every word and only too eager to suck you dry. I’d be interested to know what qualitites you look for in a food writer, beyond the obvious deep knowledge of the subject and the ability to write. And do you have any pet peeves?

Great. Stick to your guns, I banned the little blighters a few years ago! I've no real advice on the stuffing... except that my gut instinct is that a simple bread stuffing with onion and perhaps some apple through it might be good... and very simple too.

Hey... you just reminded me of a time when I had blini with sour cream and beetroot in a London restaurant. I think it was Polish, it was about 8 years ago. There seems to be an age old affinity with beetroot.

This is an interesting finding. I don’t know much about BPD, but as I read the book, I was struck by how much of what was described could also be attributed to a “type A” personality. I don’t mean to make light of the disorder in any way… it’s just, as mentioned upthread, we all know people out there with similar personality traits, and maybe even recognise a bit of ourselves too, if we’re honest. And perhaps, this is what makes the book so haunting.

It seems that no one has mentioned blini yet. Delicious little pancakes made from buckwheat flour, yeast and a bit of sour cream/creme fraiche for added taste, which can be cooked either on their own little blini pan or a few at a time on a larger pan. Traditionally they are served with sour cream and caviar on top, but smoked salmon is popular too (a bit of horseradish in the sour cream for the smoked salmon gives an added kick). They are also extremely good straight off the pan with butter. As far as I know, they originate from Russia.

I think it also acknowledged the fact that he was a truly charismatic man and a “ground breaking” chef. The passages in the book describing the food can only achieve so much, because the reality is, when you are cooking food with such a tight focus on taste, the only way you can really understand and appreciate it is if you taste it. And in a way, because Loiseau couldn’t move on, you somehow get the sense from the book (certainly towards the end) that this food could have been staid. But when he started out, it was truly revolutionary against the backdrop of what was going on in other restaurants at the time. I had dinner at Le Cote d’Or about 16 years ago in the beautiful old dining room when it was still a 2*. It was an inadvertent stop (I’d taken the wrong road), I had not heard of Loisseau and had no preconceptions at all about his food. As far as I can remember, I had his truffled chicken, but what I vividly remember is the taste of the vegetables. He was after essence, and he achieved it heroically. He was standing at the door as I left the room after my meal and I was caught unaware when he asked me what I thought. He looked at me with eyes that suck you up; there was a huge need to be loved in them, an intense passion and naive insecurity mixed in together. I looked at him and spluttered effusively that the vegetables really tasted like vegetables and I thought they were wonderful. It sounded inane at the time, but it was an honest response and his eyes filled up with delight. When I read the book, I was so amazed to realise that I probably couldn’t have said anything better. Chelminski clearly has no time for what he describes as “cuisine tendance” but I think the point could be made that much of the avant garde cooking that is popular (or scorned) at the moment has its roots in Loiseau’s search for purity and taste, and in many ways he could be considered to be the father of it. As for Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word… I think he argues his point against “theory” and painting more convincingly than Chelminski does in relation to food, and I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever see the culinary equivalent of a blank canvas, however much Chelminski would like to imply that we've reached this point already.

It also appears that there are just 7 inspectors in the US. See this interesting post below from chef John Malik in Greenville, the Michelin US HQ, who cooked for them recently: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=78102&hl=

Hey PoppySeedBagel, this is the recipe I was referring to upthread. It's great, you should give it a go.