dougal

Started with an S ... ? Silform? Silicon Flex? However, I think Elastomoule and Flexipan are the big names. Anyway, here's a French toyshop (in English) with a vast range http://www.cuisine-french.com/cgi/mdc/l/en/boutique/produits/_moule_silicone/index.html

Then we have this insane home cook http://carolcookskeller.blogspot.com/ http://www.alineaathome.com/ Indeed so. Self-confessed on carolcookskeller ...

Ummm. You have about 35 books, and want to pare down, yet fill niches? Honestly, 35 isn't "many". You don't have the same problem as the rest of us! I think you need to choose a destination before the guide-book. I'm not sure whether you are saying that you'd like to work on the baking area. If you were looking for a seriously accessible bread book to work through, Bertinet's "Dough" springs to mind, but Dan Lepard's "Art of Handmade Bread" (its original UK version is called "The Handmade Loaf") would be a much more demanding, broad-ranging and worthwhile project. (And, in paperback, its easily affordable - as are the ingredients!) Mary Berry's (BBC-published) "Foolproof Cakes" strikes me as the sort of cake book that would be helpful (IF ONLY it were easily available in the USA!) Shortish, with lots of helpful process illustrations (not just of the ideal end-product) and yet covering a fair range of different home-achievable cakes, pastries and biscuits. And incidentally, Ad Hoc is surely the ONLY Keller book that any sane home cook might ever, even for a whimsical moment, consider cooking from cover to cover. If you are looking to improve daily eating and move away from recipes as straitjackets, then I'd suggest having a look at Nigel Slater's "Appetite". Relaxed, simple and yet far from ordinary. Me? I'd quite like to work right through Bertolli's "Cooking by Hand" ...

Late on this but maybe able to help a little. Checked an alternate recipe. Basic modus operandi as follows - bung the ferment in a covered bucket for the first week, then transfer, via a fine strainer, to a demijon capped with an airlock. (Thus it does not ferment out 'sur lie' as the French term has it. More fermenting with the pulp usually means longer to clear and persisting hazes - and yours does sounds distinctly murky.) Allow it to ferment until the airlock stops bubbling. Leave it to settle for a while, then "rack" (syphon) off the clearish liquid. Repeat the process of standing (days, weeks?) to settle and syphoning until clear. Then bottle -- and leave for several months !!! to mature. The normal wine/beer syphoning kit has its inlet off the bottom of the source vessel. A 'glass' U-tube is one method. A blocked end and an inlet half an inch up from the end is another. And there's a (fairly) sterile method of starting the syphon. http://www.brew-it-yourself.co.uk/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3441 (ignore the stuff about priming sugar, you aren't dealing with a keg-ful of beer) I gather you have used an instant-mix bread yeast. Three things regarding that. Bread yeasts don't generally like high sugar concentrations (working slowly, if at all - "hard to start"), and get killed by fairly low concentrations of their own "waste product" - alcohol - so better for weak beer than strong wine. Wine (and beer) yeasts also have properties that promote clearing and forming a stable sludge sediment or lees. People do brew with bread yeast ("turbo" cider perhaps), but specialist yeasts have been developed to do a better job ... and "better" from plural standpoints - including product flavour! My presumption is that your spirit addition would have been intended to make sure that the yeast was dead - and so not going to continue fermenting, carbonating the drink and then risking popping the cork or bursting the bottle I reckon that you need to be racking or even straining yours, maybe filtering it, (got access to a Buchner?) and adding some sort of finings (gelatine? egg white?) and anything else you can lay your hands on (pectolytic enzyme?) to try and get it to clear. Remember to keep everything that contacts the product properly sanitised! Or else enjoy it 'the old-fashioned way', a bit cloudy? You could taste/drink it now. It shouldn't actually be at all harmful. But it might be more attractive once cleared, and time may smooth off any rough edges ...

There are various different things happening when bread goes stale. Its not (only) drying out. Bread that is not loaded with preservatives will go stale faster. Especially in the refrigerator. Wrapping loosely in paper and storing, away from draughts, at cool room temperature and non-extreme (either way) humidity is about as harmless as treatment gets. A wooden box can be a good substitute. Plastic is bad for home-made (or other 'real') bread. Without chemicals to hold the moisture, it sweats more. This gives high humidity inside a plastic bag. And lacking another set of chemicals to control/kill fungus, it'll go mouldy quickly in those humid conditions inside a plastic bag. There is however another aspect. Bread made with 'lots' of yeast goes stale quicker. Bread machine recipes tend to use quite a lot of yeast (compared to most manual bread making). So bread-machine bread (despite additions of sugars and milk powder, etc) will tend to go stale VERY much faster than preservative-loaded plastic-wrapped commercial pap. Doing the bread making by hand, and flexibly controlling the timings yourself, allows you to use less yeast and to allow the dough to rise more slowly (like overnight in the fridge). That will give you a tastier bread that goes stale more slowly. "Sourdough" bread, made with a 'starter' rather than commercial yeast, goes stale really quite slowly - and its flavour actually strengthens over a few days.

The round bottles (as used for fizzy drinks) are extraordinarily strong. I think that they are good up to something like 100 psi. When they get seriously pressurised, the base distorts, so that the bottle is no longer happy to stand upright unsupported. (Sound familiar?) My elderflower champagne has often got to distortion pressure, but never (so far) to bursting point. PET bottles are much safer, if less visually appealing, than glass bottles for 'live' homebrew. The next thing would be for a supplier to offer "beer gas" (CO2 plus Nitrogen) in the small bulbs for a creamy head.

Oh .... WOW !!! Nothing like THAT on the UK market, yet. Wonder who one has to lobby ...

Here you go http://forum.downsizer.net/post-756522.html&Cuisine=&Course=&Special1=&search_text=merguez

Doug - I note from your "Practical Guide" that you have a reference on egg pasteurisation. The suggested conditions are 57C for at least 1 hour 15. Seems to me that it might be practical/convenient to do some alongside when doing beef at a standard 55C. Any suggestions for duration to equivalent pateurisation at that temperature? (From Schuman or yourself.)

Perhaps I should have said "its not the way the vast majority of people feel about politics in Britain". (Particularly at this election, after the scandal of MP's expenses.) In the UK, its simply not something widely celebrated with flowing food and drink, public rejoicing, etc. No question, it can be different if you happen to be a politician or activist. But for the general public, no, not really. Hey, I was in San Francisco when Willie Brown was elected Mayor. There was an organised public celebration. Everyone, even if foreign, was welcomed to the party. Restaurants ran booths handing out tasters. There was drink too. Carlos Santana, John Lee Hooker and many others gigged in celebration. But in London, Boris's 'do' was private ... As MacD says, there is indeed much more "atmosphere" associated with football ('soccer'). And if Eastgate is still in London on Sunday, the neighbourhood of the Chelsea ground should be 'atmospheric' after about 6pm on Sunday, when Chelsea might have won the Premiership, or not. I suspect very many more pubs are publicising that event than election-night-opening. But the celebrations will be in either Manchester, or Chelsea. Not both. And definitely NOT in Liverpool! In Britain, we do riot very very very occasionally, and about both politics and football. This election might see some disturbances around some of the East London declarations. The BNP and Respect both attract active 'controversy'. But regarding celebration, and particularly excessive and enthusiastic consumption of food and drink? Come back when the World Cup is in progress and make your own comparison!

Interesting question. But it does pre-suppose that there is much "election night atmosphere". You could be disappointed. I was in Paris when Chirac was elected President. The 'result' was announced on tv, barely seconds after the polls closed. And the Champs Elysée was full (as in impossible to drive down, even though its a wide road) with celebrating crowds in a matter of minutes. We don't do things like that here. I was on a Greek Island for one of their General Election days. (Vote where you were born, I believe.) They celebrated with cars screaming round the streets, horns blaring. And fireworks. Not the British way. Our results come in through the night and the following day. This year there are more than 20 constituencies predicting that they will declare after 12 noon on Friday. With the result likely to be tight (or at least tight as to whether there's an overall majority), it would be surprising if there's a clear resolution much before lunchtime. (Got to maintain the food theme...) Interesting central(ish) London constituencies include Battersea (if the Conservatives can't take that one from Labour, then they are going to be very disappointed) and Islington South (LibDems expecting to take it from Labour). Battersea should be an early declaration, about 1 am according to The Guardian. 4am for Islington South. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/29/election-2010-constituency-declaration-times Holborn & St Pancras (convenient for Clerkenwell but about 6am) could give Frank Dobson a famous opportunity for retaliation or schadenfreude, however the general population will be fast asleep. Clerkenwell (where Eastgate is staying) is partly in Islington South, and partly in Holborn & St Pancras. Incidentally, if Harters wants to see whether Mr Clarke can defend Norwich South against the LibDem tide (24th target seat) he'll probably have to stay up until about 2am. There's a bit of a buzz at the various counts and declarations, though admission might be difficult. And the weather outside will be cold. Food is highly UNlikely to be attractive. Drink may have been taken. (Beforehand.) And bought at a supermarket. Best to make sure of a comfy chair, a warm blanket and a TV set or perhaps two (to appreciate just how good the BBC coverage is - apart from some silly computer graphics) and maybe even a radio (sparing you the graphics). A few bottles and the menus (with phone numbers) for some local ethnic latenight takeaways should complete the picture. You might want to have a look at Downing Street, College Green outside Parliament, LibDem HQ in Cowley Street, Tory HQ in Smith Square and Millbank for Labour (all within about a 400 yard walk) on Friday, to see the media scrum in action. But again, food and drink are not included.

Ummm ... if it contained Gelatin, real Gelatin, then you should be careful about feeding it to veggies. They might get VERY upset if they found out!

Aaaah, but that number would refer to the ideal situation where the sphere floats 50% submerged. Ping-pong balls float much higher than that, and so the reduction in free surface is very much less. But they will also tend to act as condensers, further reducing evaporation. A metal lid (ideally with a good heat sink) acts as an even better condenser. Think tagine! (Or le Creuset Doufeu.) Maybe its also worth mentioning that cheap all-silicone flexible baking sheets are not hard to cut and safe to oven temperatures. Thus they can make a nice material for conformable seals ...

You should indeed be able to use that space. I wouldn't use it for anything that minded the possibility of being warm occasionally, or of obstructing the airway. So, chocolate or a springy pile of towels would be bad choices! I kept cooking implements in a drawer close under mine. The requirement is just for a little bit of air through-flow. Like breathing, its ventilation rather than space that is needed. Some small rubber bumpers kept the drawer from closing completely, allowing some air in without visible impact. 1/10 of an inch gap all round a 19 inch wide drawer is almost 5 square inches of vent hole ... And a little work on the rear of the cabinetwork allowed any warm air to exit upwards, by sharing the worktop venting for the under-counter fridge in the next module. Not at all hard to do, and fully explained in the installation instructions. (As was the fridge's ventilation need.)

I have to say, it sounds pretty awful from the point of view of good food. From the link given - Sounds like a caterer's dream and a customer's nightmare. Is it supposed to be pronounced "gimmick" ?

Would someone explain to me what a "thermocouple IR" thermometer might be? Infra Red provides a non-contact means of measuring temperature - which is very convenient for very high temperatures, but the actual accuracy of measurement is not very good (not least due to assumptions about the emissivity of the surfaces). Thermocouples are sensors which produce a small voltage difference when heated. My understanding has been that Platinum (electrical) resistance (varying with temperature) thermometers are more accurate overall (though more expensive) than thermocouples. Hence generally, for accuracy, Pt100 is better than thermocouple, is better than IR. Specific products in specific situations are likely to be different, but as generalisations go, I think that's the way things are. I'd be cautious about assuming that because two (or more) examples of the exact same product agree, that their reading is 'accurate'. Consistent, certainly, but that's a rather different matter. The current Thermapen (as linked by PedroG) is supplied with its own individual traceable-calibration certificate. Its accuracy is quoted to be within the specified tolerance over its entire range. It is capable of (lab) re-calibration at a chosen single temperature (like 55C). As such, I'd say it should be very much more trustworthy than un-certificated, un-calibrated products, whether they happen to agree or not.

Which was precisely the distinction that I was pointing up to nbaines who fancied "dabbling with some Elder". I'm looking forward to the elderflower season. My favourite forage. For elderflower 'champagne' there are two important caveats. - don't follow HFW's tv recipe. (Too much sugar, leading to too much gas.) - don't use glass bottles. Especially not the flimsy Ikea flip-tops as employed by HFW on tv. They explode. Glass shards are sharp. Flying shards of sharp glass add nothing to my happiness. Big plastic ("PET") lemonade bottles are much better - and massively safer. But Waitrose 1 litre Tonic Water bottles are my favourite. Plastic, strong enough, reasonable size - and they don't fall over as they fully pressurise - the snag with the PET bottles is that the base can distend, and so the bottle won't stand up. The drinker's ability to stand up is a different matter!

The Elder season hasn't started yet. Elderflowers are still a few weeks away. The berries months away. Ground Elder is nothing like the Elder tree. Internet foraging is a recipe for confusion! There are masses of Alexanders shooting up now. There are lots of poisonous things (including Hemlock) that they could be confused with. Take care! Unfortunately, though I am confident I can distinguish them, I don't really like the strange perfumed flavour of the raw leaves. A little goes a very long way! Roll on the elderflowers!

The bacon slicer for ultra fine slicing of whole apples was at the end of Kitchen Secrets programme 6 (on bread and pastries) - not the apple programme. Though RB is "off games" for a while to recuperate from what seems to have been a very nasty accident indeed, he has been taking a break (from trying to write another book), and visiting family and friends in Europe. But according to his Tweets, at this very moment he is en route back towards the UK.

Many marketing terms used for yeast (like "rapid rise") are pretty meaningless. What you are looking for is a yeast that is designed for use by mixing it (dry) with (dry) flour, before adding liquid and mixing to a dough or batter. The best way to tell is to look at the packet instructions, not the name or claims. I'd call such yeasts "instant-mix" yeasts. Bread-machine products are generally instant-mix. BUT those instant mix yeasts intended for use in bread machines tend to have LOTS of additive 'improvers'. And that's not so good for 'arisanal' baking. If possible, select one with a very short additive list. Ascorbic Acid (or Sodium Ascorbate) is just ordinary Vitamin C - and good for you and your bread, despite the scary sound of the name. Instant mix yeasts all have a tiny proportion (way less than 1%) of a 'rehydrating agent' - usually a soap ("stearate"). Apart from those, you are into the territory of commercial food additives - which are best avoided unless you are calling your efforts 'molecular gastronomy', and charging accordingly!

Don't have that Blanc book, so cannot comment specifically on that photo... HOWEVER, did you notice on 'Kitchen Secrets' the slicing of whole cored apples to rings on a bacon slicer? AND - why not contact the man himself? This would be no bad time, since the poor chap is still laid up, having broken a leg in five places by falling down stairs almost two months ago. He is constantly soliciting for feedback on his blog and via Twitter. http://twitter.com/raymond_blanc http://www.raymondblanc.com/blogs/kitchen-secrets-the-final-episode.aspx Give it a go!

There's something appropriately illogical about asserting that banning a product (and its importation) would lead to its production going offshore, to unregulated China. Almost as illogical as suggesting that 'artisan' bread is a comparable product of cruelty. The "shrill" nonsense seems to be from the consumers of foie gras. Personally, I'll continue to quietly avoid foie gras, crate-raised veal, and battery-farmed eggs and poultry. Make no mistake, I'll continue to enjoy meat from sources where the animals are well-treated. While continuing to avoid foods where an animal suffers throughout its life, to give a few minutes pleasure to its consumer. But I am not campaigning on the subject.

Polypropylene (PP) and Polyethylene (PE, polythene) are examples of "olefin polymers". Trust that's the bit that was confusing you!

PP is itself pretty inert. Its the standard material for washing-up bowls, for example. However, "food safe" concerns more than the bulk material. Other stuff like colourings, mould release agents and even fillers come into safety. These shouldn't affect recyclability, but could impact food safety. Maybe a silly suggestion, but plural smaller containers are more easily lifted and transported (full), stored (empty) and more likely to be used more often, than one giant one. For storage, I'd be fussy about "food safe". But for mixing up a large batch of something, where (not hot) food is only going to be in contact with the material for a very few minutes, I'd be quite relaxed about using any nice clean PP vessel. The hotter the food contacting the plastic, and the longer the contact, the more I'd be concerned about the possibility of tainting or more insidious contamination.

Free range is the humane way to keep hens. But very few 'free range' hens are 100% forage-fed. The colour of the yolks depends on what the hens have been eating. Maize (US "corn") chicken-food makes for very yellow yolks. Naturally. Harold McGee says the same Xanthophylls can come from Alfalfa. And that some producers add Marigold leaves to the feed to get even more colour. He doesn't mention that some processed feeds may contain yolk-colouring dyes as additives ... But the easy (commercial) way to get yellow pasta is simply to colour the pasta!