Paul Stanley

It always separates when you add the egg at first. It looks like bits of brain floating in egg. If you keep beating, it magically re-forms.

Looks fantastic. I really like baba au rhum: it seems like a nice old-fashioned adult sort of dessert. (Though I confess I think it's improved by a healthy slug of pure rum just before serving ...)

I'm no expert, but I can say that when I've done them I've put cool babas into hot (60c) but not boiling syrup, and soaked them for about 10 minutes. This has worked (which doesn't mean that other methods wouldn't work too): I think I'd be skeptical about cold/cold (I don't think much syrup would soak in, if only because it's quite viscous). I've often read that soaking a hot sponge in hot syrup doesn't work, and I've noticed this myself with cakes, but I don't know why it should be. I've never pricked or fiddled with them. I would avoid boiling syrup because the texture will change, and I don't see that it needs to be so hot. If you are heating it as you soak, you probably need to make sure you adjust the concentration if you are doing lots of batches because it's bound to thicken (even if held below boiling). Obviously if you are working with hot syrup you don't put rum in the syrup, or you lose the alcohol. I've never done them a day ahead, but then I'm just a home baker so I reckon more or less the only thing I can definitely supply is something spanking fresh. If you do them ahead, I definitely wouldn't hold them in syrup, because they will become too saturated (you can have too much of a soggy thing): about 15 to 20 minutes soaking seems right to me, followed by a chance to drain, and I think if held in syrup for hours they would become rather unpleasant. They need to be thoroughly soaked, but not utterly denatured.

I live in central London. We shop every 2 days or so, and I often pick up odds and ends for something I feel like making meanwhile, so overall I'd guess some shopping gets done most days. We have a good range of shops within easy reach of home and work, and the only problem is really when they are open. Local shops, except supermarkets, shut by the time I get home. And though I don't mind taking a couple of pork chops home on the tube, I can't really do much more. Main factors behind frequency etc are: 1) I don't like planning, and tend to think only a day or two ahead; 2) I'm usually on foot, so smaller shops are easier; 3) we don't have much space to store stuff; 4) I can't bring myself to believe that fresh vegetables, meat and fish last more than a day or two without serious loss of flavour ... or, in the case of much supermarket stuff here, such as they ever had. I'm not very cost conscious; not that I buy tons of luxurious cuts of meat or fish or enjoy being ripped off; but I'm a poor seeker of bargains. A subsidiary factor is I make a concerted effort not to buy meat, fish, fruit, veg, or bread from the supermarket. I hate British supermarkets with a sort of visceral passion, and will spend some extra time and money minimising (though not eliminating) my use of them. It is a losing battle, though. I do best at weekends, when I have the time to get to the local outdoor markets. So actually a bit more planning might help me do better with that goal, because it's weeknight suppers that are most likely to see me grabbing stuff from the supermarket.

I don't. I think it loses it's flavour. I make it in the bowl I'm going to toss the salad in, then put the leaves on top. Then toss at the table.

I don't have a "go to" recipe exactly, because so much depends on what I'm dressing. To my taste a dressing that is perfect for bitter greens like endive will overwhelm a mild lettuce; sweet things like beets or carrot need acidity or mustardiness that would be totally out of place on tomatoes. And so on. That said, I guess I have some likes and dislikes. Never garlic, in any form. Never balsamic vinegar at all. Usually mix strongly flavoured oils like walnut or olive with at least some neutral oil, which for me usually means a neutral groundnut or grape seed. Not necessarily mustard, though often a tiny bit -- but taste is more important than emulsification. Since I always make the dressing immediately before I use it I don't worry about it splitting, and truth to tell I dislike thick dressings. And very rarely any flavouring at all, except pepper (salt of course, but that's hardly a flavour) and occasionally a teaspoon of minced shallot. Herbs, if I use them, go in the salad not the dressing. Acid/oil ratio varies depending on the salad and the acid, from maybe 1:6 if I was dressing fennel with lemon, to maybe 1:3 if I was dressing endive sherry vinegar.

Anne Willan in French Regional Cooking gives a recipe. I haven't tried it. But it seems to be a pretty "standard" sort of pork sausage: 750g lean pork meat (shoulder, eg), 250g back fat, 12g salt, seasoned generously with white pepper and parsimoniously with nutmeg, and enriched with a couple of tablespoons of cognac or port, and 30g peeled pistachios. Optional extra is 30g truffles. The meat is ground fine, and she specifies a "large" sausage casing, but without being more specific. My recollection was that lyonnais sausage tends to be a bit garlicky too, but there's none in her recipe. I also have a recollection that I've seen them (when cooked in brioche) still pink, which suggests that one might need to replace a bit of the salt with pink salt if one cared about the colour and knew what one was doing; it's not surprising that should be missing from a recipe firmly aimed at the home cook.

I recall the clementine cake being a serious disappointment. YMMV, of course. Sorbet sounds a much better option!

Eek, yes. I have a dreadful microplane grater which produces big shreds. It manages to combine the propensity of a blunt knife to slip with the propensity of a sharp knife to cut. It is an effective shredder of skin and flesh. It leaves a deep, uneven and shaggy wound. It is a hateful pig of a device, and I have given up on it entirely. (Not a fault with the microplane, by the way -- just the inherent danger of the tool.)

I have white plates, because I happen to like them and think that they are generally a reasonable match for most food. If I had space for lots of different sets of china I would get some patterned ones, but white plates seem neutral and will go with everything. To my way of thinking a white plate will do for almost anything, whereas a patterned plate with, say, flowers and fruits on it that looks fabulous for pasta doesn't look so fabulous for steak and kidney pie. Serving dishes are a different matter. I have all sorts of those, including coloured and patterned. That works for me because I can have enough to choose what seems the right size, shape and design for the particular dish. (Almost) everything gets served family style because I like feeling that I am sharing food, not just serving it. But even that's not set-in-stone, and there are a few things I prefer to do individually. Steaks obviously. Souffles and mousses.There's not much logic or consistency to it. EDITED TO ADD: There are two things that I really care about being white, though: napkins and tablecloths. Not sure why, but I like the crispness of it. Coloured napkins and tablecloths make me feel like my mother.

I never refrigerate eggs. They aren't (as others have pointed out) refrigerated in stores in the UK; I buy small quantities (half a dozen at a time usually) often, so they are fresher, and for most purposes they work better when at room temp anyway -- not just boiling, but in cakes or mayonnaise for instance. Quite a lot of other things I don't refrigerate. The fridge kills some vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, onions e.g.). To me, fridge cold berries lack flavour (though they may unlike tomatoes recover when warmed) and decent cheese also suffers, sometimes irreparably.

I've been wondering about this myself... as the nostalgia for hand-me-down recipes has worn off since I now have access to a wide variety of recipes online and on tv. I tend to be skeptical about any recipe that wasn't published by a noted chef or America's Test Kitchens. I don't know if this is a good thing or not and irritates my wife to no end when I start critiquing a family recipe. The trouble is not with information that can be written down -- it's the information that can't be. The sense of how things should look, feel, smell, sound. That sort of thing is hard to communicate in writing, and for which many of the time-honoured expressions (dough "doubled in size", fat rubbed in so pastry resembles "crumbs", things baked until "golden brown") are rather imprecise, and can even be misleading. Another example. Try writing instructions for boning or carving anything of any complexity. Far easier to watch and learn. New technologies (things like youtube videos) may help with some of those things ... but only to some extent.

That's a fantastic idea. I think chestnut pasta with a gamey filling or sauce would be absolutely lovely. I'm definitely going to try it.

I'm sorry to see Jerusalem artichokes getting bad press. Although it is true that they are without doubt highly wind-inducing ... they are good. The problem I think is that their flavour is delicate. Put in something like a daube they will be overwhelmed. But as a soup, or a puree, or in a gratin, they have a quite delicious taste. Nothing like artichokes! Peeling can be a pain. I generally just cut off any annoying lumps. I don't know why they are so expensive -- they are reputedly very easy to grow. My most recent experiment was with pearl barley. I thought of it as an ingredient of lacklustre chicken soups. But there was some hanging around (from a chicken soup my partner's mother made). This weekend I made a salad (I found the recipe in a NYT article online I think, googling for recipes). Pearl barley with peas, mushrooms, red onion and radicchio, in a walnut vinaigrette (made with sherry vinegar and shallots). It was outstandingly good -- just the right balance of chewy and yielding, sweet and bitter and earthy. I'll definitely make it again, and as a "salad grain" the barley was outstanding, because it keeps some texture and taste. Another ingredient I want to try playing around with is chestnut flour -- before winter ends. It somehow feels like a winter ingredient. But I'm not sure what to use it for. It somehow just sounds interesting and unusual. Finally, to finish my grainy plans, I want to learn how to make good polenta. Whenever I've tried to make it in the past, it's been a terrible disappointment. I suspect I don't cook it long enough, salt it well enough, or butter it assiduously enough. So that's a third project. First thing I need to do is score some decent polenta -- not instant!

I'm not a professional, but I agree with you it's a puzzle. However, there are (I think, based on my own enthusiastic amateur experience) a few reasons for this being said. 1. It's not just that baking must be precise, it's partly that non-baking cannot be. Things like meat and vegetables all vary in size, quality and so forth so much that in many cases if you were to cook them "by the book" the results would be pretty poor. You have to use common sense to decide when a roast is done, or how to chop an irregularly shaped piece of chuck for braising. Whereas a sugar syrup heated to a particular temperature (for instance) will more reliably behave as it should. So precision is possible. That being said, I think experienced bakers would say there are also many areas of baking where precision is impossible. One common example is deciding when something is cooked: timings and temperatures cannot be exact. Another is rising times for bread, at least in a domestic kitchen. Another is the exact quantity of liquid to be added to bread doughs and pastries. But I still think that at least relatively speaking the (largely industrial and highly processed) ingredients that bakers rely on are more "uniform" than the semi-agricultural ones that are used in much other cooking. 2. In pastry work it's often difficult, especially without deep experience, to make corrections "as you go along", because baked goods often undergo a "transformation" during which they cannot be altered. If you are cooking a sauce or a stew you can taste and (within reason) correct as you go along. But a cake batter or pastry before it goes into the oven is quite a different thing from what it will be when it comes out, and you can't make those sort of adjustments as it cooks. This means that for the inexperienced corrections are not easy. Of course, the experienced, who know what a batter or dough should "feel like" can and do make corrections, because they can predict the results. (In some cases, such as choux pastry and bread, such adjustments are actually rather important to the quality of the finished product, which is one reason why these apparently simply mixtures have a reputation for being hard.) So, at least for the inexperienced, the best advice is often to "follow the recipe" rather than make what may turn out to be ill-advised adjustments. 3. Coupled with this is the fact that some of the changes the home cook might feel tempted to make to a recipe are hard to predict. Reducing, say, the sugar in a mixture will not just make it less sweet, but will alter its characteristics in other ways too (drier, for instance). Rather small quantities of ingredient added to a dough or batter can have quite significant effects on the final product, which the ordinary cook may find it difficult to predict. So too can alterations in technique. The difference between an egg white whipped to a soft peak and an egg white whipped to a stiff peak might seem footling, but can dramatically affect the overall success of a dish. 4. Maybe there is also an element of "attitude" here. Precision in the sense of neatness, even size and colour, tidy lines and absence of mess is maybe something we look for more in baked goods than in many other foods, and emphasizing the need to be neat and precise might just be a way of trying to inculcate this attitude. I don't think that variation in ratios between different pastry chefs tells us much. They may well have different preferences about the finished product. Tastes differ, between individuals and nationally. This is not inconsistent with trying to be precise about each recipe. In the end, I suspect, the alleged distinction is -- as you hint -- slightly mythical, in that I suspect the best cooks are neat and precise (where that counts) whatever they are cooking, and equally ready to make sensible adjustments to the particular qualities of their ingredients, equipment, environment and so forth (where that counts) regardless of what they are cooking. But maybe when you are writing for the domestic cook, it's important to emphasize (in meat and vegetable cookery) the need to make constant small adjustments and equally valuable to emphasize (for pastry work) the need to be rather careful about making changes, since it takes a professional knowledge and experience to do so successfully.

Well, I do do something like this from time to time. I doubt it makes any difference to one's health. But it's like any other sort of variation from the norm, if nothing else it makes one appreciate things differently when one is de-cleansing. And it surely can't hurt. It's a bit like eating seasonally. It's not just that spring asparagus and summer berries taste better than the jet-set fruits of winter, but that the absence of these things for large parts of the year somehow makes the heart grow fonder.

I doubt it's the flour. It could be insufficient liquid, yes. That tends to make for very crumbly pastry, which breaks easily. It could also be that you are just over chilling a bit, and then rolling rather too aggressively. Especially if you have an all butter dough, with no lard or shortening, and a cold fridge, this can happen I find. Try (1) forming a flat disk, rather than a ball, before you wrap well and chill, which makes rolling easier. (2) If you are chilling for more than about 40 minutes, remove it from the fridge at least 20 minutes before rolling, to let the fat soften a bit. (3) Make sure you have a well floured surface, so that it doesn't stick, and roll gently at first, with downward pressure, not stretching. Turn the dough often to stop it sticking. And remember that SOME cracking is to be expected, and that you can always patch. It's better to have pastry that is too short than pastry that is too wet ... Certainly don't go crazy adding extra liquid: no more than an extra teaspoon or two at most. You might also try using some fat which doesn't harden as much as butter, such as some lard in the mix. When it comes to lifting the crust, make sure to do it by rolling the pastry round your rolling pin. No lifting of a sheet! In extremis, with very crumbly dough, roll out between sheets of wax or greaseproof paper, or cling film.

I don't have the same problem Chris Amirault has with the idea that authenticity is a "fiction". I think Chris is thinking of "authentic" as tantamount to "original". That works in a few cases (Caesar salad, perhaps; tarte Tatin). But in many cases there is no (discernible) "original". I don't think that makes it impossible to think or speak of the authentic. I think of authentic along the lines suggested by S L Kinsey in the post I linked to above. It's essentially a term which describes fidelity to the basic principles followed by those who regularly make and eat the dish in question in its "home territory". As such it's always a relative term (so, perhaps strictly, one should speak of "authentically Roman carbonara"). And it may allow for degrees of variation. But for all that, there are often some things which "native speakers" would definitely regard as "wrong" -- variations which make the dish in question practically unrecognizable. And, although part of me dislikes the prescriptivism, I'm inclined to think that these instincts deserve more respect than the iconoclast in me wants to give them. At the very least, I think it's worth trying to understand the "authentic" dish before starting to make changes.

An exchange of views on this thread about carbonara – as well as various comments on some other threads, including one on the choice between pecorino and parmesan cheese – has got me thinking about “authenticity”, what it means, and whether it matters. As far as “authenticity” is concerned, I like this definition by S L Kinsey: I’d only add this: Sometimes it’s not very easy to work out “what is currently being done in the cuisine’s culture of origin” – because there may be quite a wide variation of practice. (To take an example from the carbonara theme: I was taught to make carbonara by two Italians, one of them Roman, from a very old Roman family. The version they used, which they called carbonara, included both cream and onions, and by conventional standards would not be regarded as “authentic”. But it undoubtedly represented “what [was] currently being done in the cuisine’s culture of origin.) Some dishes, even in their “culture of origin” involve (sometimes notorious) “contests” about authenticity. Now the main question I have is this. Apart from intellectual curiosity – either “grand” curiosity such as that of the social anthropologist, or “pragmatic” curiosity such as that of the person who would just like to taste a dish “as it is made where it comes from” – does authenticity matter at all? On the thread which started me thinking about this, Maureen B Fant commented. She said she: My immediate reaction to this was rather negative: that this involved a highly conservative “mystification” of food – that, as S L Kinsey put it, authentic does not necessarily equal good. The question should be “what tastes good?”, itself always a rather personal matter. But on further reflection, I’m not sure I agree with my own initial view, though I don’t think I agree with Maureen either. I still don’t think that authenticity is valuable for its own sake. But I think experience may teach that all too often fine traditional dishes are “taken over”, and that in the process of playing “variations on a theme” they are definitely debased, so that inauthentic does (in practice) come to mean worse. The pattern seems to be depressingly familiar: the dish becomes overcomplicated and its subtleties are lost, all too often by the removal of “challenging” ingredients (anchovies, recognisable fat...), and the addition of “non-challenging” ingredients (extra cheese, sweet tomato sauces) or simply by loading so much into the dish that it becomes a sort of garbage bin. And thus we arrive at such dishes as many kinds of commercial pizza, or compost-bin “quiches”, or “chicken Caesar salads” which are just salads with creamy cheesy dressings and a hunk of chicken dumped on top. This makes me think that there may be some value in trying to maintain knowledge about what is “authentic”, and at least to be both cautious in departing from it and clear about when a departure has occurred. A custard-based tart with cheese, onions and bacon may be worth eating, but it is not a “quiche Lorraine” – or even a legitimate variation on it. A pasta sauce with cream, chicken, bacon, mushrooms, cheese and eggs may (or may not!) be worth eating, but it should not bask in any reflected light that the word “carbonara” could offer . A gelatine-set mousse on top of a cracker crust may be a fine dessert, but it is not a cheesecake. A concoction of vodka and fruit liqueur is not a “martini”. Or, to take an example close to my own culture, a ring of poached sweet dessert apples with sandy crumbs sprinkled over the top does not deserve the name “crumble”. Whatever the (sometimes dubious) merits of these dishes, they should not be permitted to trade on the reputation of quite different recipes. Perhaps we need authenticity police, not to prevent innovation, but to insist on keeping the innovation honest, because all too often bad food uses familiar and reputable names as a disguise to insinuate itself onto our menus. Or is this simply reactionary nonsense?

Count me as one of the fans. I used not to like them, and tended to leave them out or substitute. But I have come to the conclusion that, where they are called for, they offer a particular flavour -- an undertone of gentle rich bitterness -- which cannot easily be obtained any other way, and I miss them if they are absent. The only time I don't like them is if they have been only partly cooked. Raw is fine. Cooked to melting softness is fine; but I'm not too keen if they are mid-way between the two. I find stuffed peppers, of which I am not very fond, tend to suffer from this problem. But perhaps I just haven't had good ones. I have some very bad memories of a deadly dish of warm hard peppers stuffed with a tasteless mix of rice and tofu which made frequent appearances at a particular stage of my life!

I think one reason people may mix them is that the pecorino romano that you get outside Italy (at least, the stuff we get in London ...) tends to be rather thuggish. My impression is the pecorino one gets in Rome is often rather milder -- still with the acidity, but with more buttery notes and a bit less saltiness -- somewhat closer to Tuscan or Sardinian pecorino. Perhaps the mixture is an attempt to house train the stuff that we can get outside Rome. I use pecorino over parmesan when I want its bite. I don't think it has the same "flavour enhancing" properties of parm. But I tend (more and more) to go easy on the cheese. Too much cheese (of any kind) can easily overwhelm.

I think the idea may be that you want to have the long part a bit thinner, so that when you roll it up it doesn't get excessively thick about the midriff. If you just started with a bigger triangle you would either get a too-fat croissant, or undesirably thin points which would scorch too easily. At any rate, I've never had trouble with it, and if your dough is delaminating I'd be inclined to think there is something else wrong with it. Edited to add: Having said all that, I wouldn't want to swear it's strictly necessary. There seem to be a variety of ways of shaping them (including the "notches" and the "slug of dough in the middle"), and I'm not 100 percent convinced they matter. Why not try experimenting?

1. Roast meat (except very small roast birds). They take to long to cook to order, and if cooked in advance and in any way reheated they are grim. I daresay in theory a busy restaurant dedicated to the art might make a go of it, but my experience is not good. 2. Risotto. I think this one might be controversial, perhaps -- and it's certainly possible to get good risotto in restaurants. But the *best* risotto takes just too long for restaurants to produce. I think home-made is usually better. 3. Meat pies (of the steak-and-kidney variety). Again the problem is cooking time. A hot pie wants 45 minutes or so cooking, and doesn't benefit from reheating once cooked. Too long for a restaurant. The result is short-cuts, such as "faux" pies which are really just splashes of stew with a pre-cooked top popped on later. A nicely garnished braise, but not a pie. 4. True saute dishes, the sort that take around half an hour to 45 minutes to make (such as chicken with morels, or with bacon onions and mushrooms). The point of these dishes is that plenty of chicken cooks with the other ingredients for just long enough to meld them into a dish (about half an hour, probably). A restaurant is almost bound to produce something which cooks chicken and sauce separately, and that (while good) is not as good. 5. Almost anything involving really freshly cooked eggs, because the timing has to be so spot on and then they need to be served at once. (That's why a diner breakfast is so often better than breakfast in a grand hotel.) I'd agree with toast as well, for more or less the same reasons. These dishes have one of three characteristics: (1) they require split-second timing and instant eating (eggs and toast) which most restaurants can't do very easily or (2) they have a cooking time from start to finish of 20+ minutes and require constant attention (risotto, saute dishes, pies) but don't reheat well and/or (3) they benefit from being cooked in "family-size" quantities (saute dishes, roasts) and can't be reheated in smaller quantities. The limiting factor on restaurants in other words is not so much equipment (which tends to be the problem in the household kitchen), but more whether the timetable for their preparation fits restaurant conditions.

I really like Lords of the Manor. We stay there quite regularly, and the food and atmosphere are excellent. It's a while since I was at Lower Slaughter Manor, and I wouldn't feel able to give a reliable comment on it. When I did stay and eat there (several years ago) it was good, but not (for me) quite as charming as LOTM. But I'm sure either would do you proud.

Me too -- minced fresh garlic, crushed dried chilli and olive oil. I don't really saute the garlic and peppers, just warm them very slowly while the pasta cooks: the garlic shouldn't colour, I think. Not too little oil. O, and I think it helps if you only use part of the oil to warm, and add some cold oil as well, because the flavour of the oil tends to get lost in cooking. I don't salt the sauce. I will usually add parmesan, but only a little, and it's not essential.