kutsu

Looks great Jack. How did you find the truffles? Any sort of good truffle flavour comming out of them, and did you order direct? Cheers John p.s - Happy Birthday!!

I had a fantastic meal at Claridges last year, well worthy of 1 star.

As someone who is not from New York, but understand the importance of Bruni - has he reviewed Gordon Ramsay yet?

Thanks for all the info guys. Yeah Nisbets is down at the moment, and I'm looking for an in-oven probe thermometer, that I can read with the oven door closed, so I take it I should avoid the cheapest one on Nisbets when it's back up?

Can anyone help, I'm to pickup an oven thermometer and a probe-in, meter out thermometer, but no where near me has either. Can anyone recommend me a cookwear shop online?

Well the best two meals of the year for me were Gordon Ramsay at Claridges (*) and Jesssica's in Edgbaston (*).. overall? Jessicas has the edge, fantastic meal.

Well, the deed is done and eaten. The verdict? Hmm well, the sauce was nice, but I didn't especially like the meat being cubed, as opposed to my usual mince. It was good, maybe next time if I was to mince the oxtail and pork as opposed to chop, it would be "great".

Well, Heston's spag bol has been cooking for about 2 and a half hours so far, another 6 to go. Looks pretty nice, but I'm a decent amount of time away from it being ready so anything could happen!

I have the heston one and the locatelli; my favourite being probably locatelli but not by much.

Well, having just returned from the butchers with lots of oxtail, I shall cook the bolagnese this weekend, it looked pretty fantastic though.

Just realised, I'm not actually sure that I mentioned the restaurant I went to. We chose Jessica's in the end.

Well, the deed is done, and this report is written after a lovely conversation with the british transport police because two pricks decided the train I took back home would be a fun place to assault people. Huzzah. So sunny edgebaston, for my 9pm reservation. Taxi troubles meant we got there JUST in time, to be greated very warmly by the excellent FOH team. Cut to the chase, champagne aperatif along with olives, choux pastry with parmesan cheese baked into it, and popcorn covered in sugar and smoked paprika. The choux pastry was incredibly moorish and rich, my girlfriend didnt rate the popcorn, but I thought it was the epitome of bonfire night, a mixture of smoke and sweetness of cotton candy. Fantastic. A la carte chosen, we were presented with our amuse, a veloute of butternut squash, coriander seed oil, feta cheese. Like a deconsructed curry almost, very Indian tasting, but really really nice. The gf hated it on first taste, only to be found slurping the shotglass at the end, the feta giving a rich salty taste at the back. My starter was a hamhock terrine, plum puree, micrgreen salad - as descirbed, but like the best pork-pie filling you can imagine, salty, wobbly and sweet with the sauce at the same time. GF had lightly cured salmon, japanese mushroom salad, green mustard. Woolfed this down without giving me a taste, which means it was very good indeed. She left the unnanounced caviar, which I lapped up. Mains for me were Balmoral Venison, beetroot puree, lentils with balsamic vinegar and beetroot, salami of venison. Sweet and earth from the vinegar/beetroot, rich with the venison and then salty from the salami. Hit really high on the Umami-scale, as it was literally moutwateringly delicious. GF had confit cod, chorizo, tomato jelly, chilli sauce. Looked fantastic as ever, but we were slightly dissapointed to find on it being served.. no choriso. Oh well, she attacked the fillet of cod and.. chorizo was "studded" into the cod flesh, invisible until it was eaten into. She adored this dish, one of her favourites ever. Only criticism was the tomato was slightly too sweet, but she said it could be her palate. We naughtily had a cheese course thrown in here, highland cheddar, gorgonzola, epoisse - fantastic ripeness on all of them. Desserts were deconstructed banana cheesecake; a quinelle of creamcheese and biscuit, a quinelle of banana sorbet, a perfect cube of banana jelly and swirls of pineapple sauce. Mine was a trifle; blackberry sorbet, whole blackberries, bay leaf custard, apple jelly. I was dubious over the bayleaf, and on the GF's try she said it was actively offensive. I however adored it, my favourite course of the night, the whole thing tasting like the perfect blackberry crumble, the bayleaf custard being the "slightly sweet/slight savoury" part in place of the crumble topping. Petit fours were a lollipop of chocolate, fudge and peanut butter; a jelly cube of cassis and a lemon and thyme marshmellow. All fantastic, but the lollipop a clear winner. Total bill for two, with a £35 bottle of wine, 2 glasses of champage and an extra cheese course, with coffees, was £155. A bargain, and if I'm honest, EASILY the equal of the Claridge meal I ate a short while ago. Highly enjoyable, and credit again to the fantastic FOH team, very fun!

But in fairness, not much was changed as rice flour and corn flour aren't a million miles apart, and the vodka is tasteless in the recipe anyway. The soda syphon would make it more crunchy if anything, so no taste imparting there either. Try a few of the other ones Norman, that treacle tart is fantastic, although I didn't try his ice-cream, sod that!

First off, welcome Norman! I've tried several of the recipes and whilst there ARE bits over the top (I'd disagree about the sausage, but agree with the vacuum cleaner) all the ones I've tried were very very good indeed, and worth the effort.

I love Giorgio Locatellis "Made in Italy" - it's huge and I'd say that, as a result of the recipes and some of the principles involved in it (make the most of what you have, best ingredients all the time etc) I'd say I cook using the skills gained from it 90% of the time. I adore it.

Deconstructed fishfingers, chips, mushypeas and ketchup?

Well, I made the ~"best ever" sausage and mash - well, that is to say, I didn't make the sausage, - I just used a top class butcher one. The sauce is a hell of a lot of work (smoked backfat, sausage trimmings used to make a smoked stock, add confit of onion, pressure cook for 45 minutes, reduce, add more onions, reduce, eat) but, along with the mash, heavenly. Much like my treacle tart I made last week, lots of work, but yes, it was the nicest bangers und mash I've tasted. Next time, I might try making my sausage by hand to see if it's worth doing. Yet again, pretty damn fantastic.

I make my stock in a pressure cooker, I'm a heathen! And (AND!) I press all the solids. Yoinks!

This is the best thread on egullet ever. Actually, this is the best ANYTHING, ever.

Congrats Gary, I was thinking of taking t'other half over to your place for a treat early next year, can't wait!

What shape is it? Loved the rectangular Black Forest Gateaux, round cakes are crap. Genius! ← It's uh.. round! sorry. Well, in fairness, it was absolutely stonking, very rich, but very very very good. Easily the best I've ever had, let alon made (I suck at baking). 4 of us (two adults and two kids) have eaten about half of the cake we mad, and I actually only made a half recipe, so I think its under-estimating that the recipe itself say it feeds 8-10. More like 12-14, I'd guess. Christ, I need to sleep this off I think. Then, time for more. Cant wait to try another recipe, but I will need to go to the gym I think, its very very calorific.

Well, looks like I'm the first one of us to try and make something from the book/show. I'm making the perfect treacle tart. It's so far taken me 48 hours (I don' remember this being covered in th show, but in the book, he realises that the older the golden syrup used, the better the flavour. Therefore, he advocates buying the syrup and "aging" it in a very low over for 24-48 hours. Having tested before and after, it is definitley a more complex flavour. The tart has just come out of the oven, looks pretty fantastic, but I'm not attempting the ice-cream, I just bought some super-premium vanilla ice-cream - fuck using dry ice. Oh well, an hour till lunch (mm daube of beef) and I will report back to tell you if it was worth the effort. Or my waistline.

Fuck me, I don't especially care about the program, but arguing about blue screen or tan colours is pretty fucking pernickity.

It shows the layers in the book; and to be fair, it looks freaking fantastic. Lots of stuff I wouldn't want to do at home, but a very entertaining show, and a fantastic end product. Good TV.

Just watched the show, and I thought it was pretty fantastic. It's brief in certain sections, probably because the book picks up the slack, and the sausage and mash looked fantastic. One thing I would have liked was to see a cross section of the finished sausage to see the texture.