Paul Stanley

I was focusing more on the effort and cost of making the base, which is fairly formulaic for sorbets. That, and the fact that I find them tastier and more refreshing than rich ice creams. Ah, true, on all counts! But I do find them harder to get smooth without ice crystals, so if that's the immediate problem ...

There's little doubt I think about why it happened: unless you have it frozen so that it is nice and thick (just as you say, like soft serve ice cream) before you put it in a freezer, you will end up with crystals. The airtightness of the container it ended up into is not likely to be the issue. If you freeze chilled liquid in an airtight container, you end up with a block of ice. As to why it happened -- evidently because you didn't get the mixture cold enough while churning. That's almost certainly because either you didn't freeze the "cold unit" for long enough, or cold enough, or your mixture was slightly warm when it went in, or you didn't persevere quite long enough, or the weather was scary hot or all of the above. In my experience these units that you freeze really need to be very hard frozen first, and they like to be fed with a thoroughly chilled mix (overnight in the fridge), or they just can't cope. You may also want to pre-chill the container you are going to decant into (so it doesn't re-melt). Personally I find rather rich ice creams easier to get smooth than sorbets, so I wouldn't recommend moving to a sorbet mixture if you are having trouble with ice crystals. The extra thickness and fat in ice cream, especially a custard-based one, makes it easier to keep things smooth. So I'd try (1) freezing your churn bowl even longer and (2) chilling your mixture very thoroughly before attempting to churn.

I can't say what would improve anyone else's stock (not least because I think it's a rather personal thing), but I can say what I think has improved mine over the years. In rough order of importance: Very slow and long cooking. I aim for mine to hardly bubble at all -- just a shimmer on the surface, with a very occasional bubble. A little salt. For years, following standard advice, I didn't. But I think that adding a tiny bit of salt (half a teaspoon or so) at the start of cooking somehow improves things. Skimming. Particularly at first (which is the one time actually I will always bring it to a full boil, to get the scum up) but from time to time all the way through. I used to think "leave the scum and get it later". Now I skim rather meticulously. Plenty of water -- reduce later if necessary. Others may get different results. But I think you get better stock (and certainly better gelling) from using a bit more water than you think you need to start with, allowing for evaporation while it cooks. If the end result is insipid, it can be boiled down quickly when it's strained. Careful choice of aromatics. This is where I think things get personal. Indispensable for me are onion, parsley bay-leaf and a tiny piece of star anise (or I'll make do with a couple of cloves). Desirable are celery, carrot and a single tomato. Anathema are garlic, parsnip, potato, thyme, rosemary, citrus of any sort. Bear in mind that most of the time I'm looking for a rather neutral stock -- not something you would want to drink on its own, but a base for soup or sauce or risotto, which is going to have to play nicely with other flavourings later. It's how it performs as an ingredient that counts, not how it tastes on its own. If I want a "meat broth" I will do as others suggest and poach a chicken, perhaps with a bit of beef as well, and many more aromatics for a much shorter period.

A tribute to superior technique! I confess I had in mind pies like steak and kidney, chicken and mushroom and really deep fruit pies without cornstarch -- so perhaps more soggy-making liquid than you. And maybe "soggy" is the wrong word -- at any rate I've never found a way of avoiding having an element of pasty, custardy pastry just inside the bottom layer with that sort of pie. I tend to think of it as just part of the natural order.

I would nearly always pre-bake, if pre-baking is possible. In practice that means anything which is a "shell" (e.g. a tart case) is pre-baked, and anything that is an "enclosure" (e.g. the crust of a fish or meat en croute, or a sausage roll) is not. The reason I think is not so much wet fillings (though no doubt that is a factor) as cooking temperature. Most of the time it is better to cook the filling at a lower temperature than pastry wants -- a custard filling, for instance, in a quiche, doesn't want to be baked high; but underbaked pastry is either unpleasant or at any rate not as it should be. The fact that the second baking is generally at a relatively low temperature also helps prevent burning of the pastry. Conversely, with the "enclosures" you cook the whole thing at the temperature the pastry wants (i.e. hot), and aim to insulate the interior (with stuffings etc) so that it does not overcook, or deal with fillings (fatty sausage-meat) which can take a bit of punishment. You avoid overcooking the second time by (a) stopping your first cooking when the pastry is just fully "set" and only faintly colouring if you are to cook again, (b) letting the shell cool fully before rebaking, © rebaking at a lower temperature -- usually desirable anyway -- and (d) covering with foil if necessary (it usually isn't). In some cases you fill and do not rebake (e.g. a tart with pastry cream), in which case you must bake fully the first time. In general, recipes which produce any sort of "tart" benefit from blind baking. Recipes which don't specify it are (usually ...) taking a shortcut in the interests of apparent simplicity, but with likely loss of texture, and should be distrusted. Home cooks quite often try to dispense with the blind-baking step in the belief that it is unnecessary fuss. This is usually a mistake, though you may get away with it if the product in question will tolerate rather long and hot cooking, and is not too wet (such as a jam-filled product). But it generally manages to produce a magnificently wrong-headed combination of overcooked filling and undercooked pastry, familiar to anyone who has eaten a reasonable number of quiches at "bring and share" events. The difficult product (for me) is the double-crust pie. You could pre-cook the bottom and then add the filling and the top. I have seen recipes that do this, but I think the more standard method is to use all unbaked pastry. The saving grace is that these are usually products which will tolerate long and rather hot baking (45 minutes or so in a hottish oven) without spoiling the filling too much. But you have, even so, to resign yourself to a rather stodgy layer on the inside of the bottom crust, which is (for the double-crust-pie-lover) part of the charm of the dish, and for others an unavoidable flaw. It is worth trying to keep the bottom crust rather thinner than the top crust. I have heard it said that choice of the bakeware may also help. If you want to encourage relatively rapid browning of the bottom, use black metal or glass. If you want to discourage it, use silver metal. I don't know if there's any truth in this, logical as it may sound -- I rather suspect that in most ovens there isn't much.

I always do just eggs and flour : 100g (soft) flour per egg. Salt goes in the water anyway, so I don't see the point of salting the dough -- though I'm sure it would do no harm; and I can't see what benefit oil would give -- oil shortens a dough, but I want elasticity here. And I don't want the taste of oil in a pasta I may well be saucing with a butter or cream sauce. The "best" I think comes from using good eggs and flour, proper kneading, and thin and even rolling, not so much from fiddling with the ingredients.

I'm just an amateur home cook too, and it's hard to say much of use because everything has already been said so many times about this. I can only say that when I have had trouble it has been for one of the following reasons: 1. My butter has been too hard in the early stages. I think that getting the butter properly prepped -- which for me means in a thinnish block pressed out between cling and then well chilled, which I can bash down with a rolling pin to final size just before incorporation. I find that if I try to work up a solid store-size block just before incorporation, I have to overwork it and it begins to get oily. What I want is something that's almost the right size, but which I can bash out a bit more with minimal handling just before incorporation. 2. My detrempe has been too soft (and in particular too warm) during the early stages, or my proto-dough has been too warm at any point. Chill chill chill. It's really important to give the detrempe a good 2 hours in the fridge before trying to incorporate the butter, and to rest it properly between turns (I'd give it a good hour). It's alarming how rapidly it warms once you start rolling and working it anyway. As a beginners tip, although the recipes will always tell you to give turns in twos, I can't see any harm in chilling the dough down between individual turns if you think it's getting too hot. 3. Not enough flour on the surface. Once the dough starts sticking it becomes very difficult, and layers tear easily. Butter begins to come through and it goes from bad to worse. You have to take care to use plenty of flour on the surface as you roll, but then you also need a pastry brush or similar to brush excess flour off as you fold. If there is any sticking at all, be careful to clean the surface thoroughly before proceeding with the next turn, because once dough has started sticking it tends to go right on. 4. Not working quickly enough. This is a kicker. It means, really, that early efforts are ALMOST BOUND to fall short, because the process is unfamiliar, so one works tentatively and slowly. As you do it more, and get used to what you are doing, you can work much more quickly each time you have to handle the dough, and this is what pastry loves -- a decisive and swift hand. 5. Not getting the butter properly enclosed. This only happened to me once or twice. I know there are different methods of encapsulating the butter in the detrempe at first, but whatever method you use, you need to take care to make sure that the butter is going to start the whole process in clear layers, because if it doesn't it won't finish that way. And above all, bear in mind that less-than-perfect puff pastry is not a disaster ... it's still delicious.

.So your solution would be to NOT support the little guy in favor of the industrially produced characterless products? I’d suggest that a better alternative would be to skip shopping with the ‘sly gouger’ in favor of a merchant who provides a good quality product. Get to know the folks where you shop and you’re far less likely to be ‘gouged.’ I don't see what there is to be angry about. There is a mood about which simply equates "small merchant" with "high quality". Sadly that is not true. Consider the high street of my youth (early 1970s). My mother shopped there every day, so as a child I knew it well. There was a fish monger. His fish was very poor indeed -- a tiny selection of not-very-fresh fish. He would fillet it with a bad grace, and badly. There were two butchers. One was excellent. One was terrible. I mean absolutely terrible. So bad you wondered how on earth he stayed in business. There were two greengrocers. Neither was much good. Both of them would certainly make sure that they slipped a rotten apple into the bag. My mother went there every day, almost. He would greet her by name. But that didn't stop the undesired additions. Nor did it extend the range of produce on offer beyond dull staples. Onions, potatoes, apples. No problem. Shallots, parsley, even garlic or chillis in those distant days -- no way. There was a baker. It wasn't a real baker, but really an outlet for a (smallish) factory with a few shops. Boring dough made into a number of different shapes and the usual dull sloppy sweet English sweet things -- doughnuts, iced buns, that sort of thing. And warmed up pies, and sausage rolls. There was another baker about quarter of a mile away. No different, except that they put a different coloured jam in their doughnuts. There was a grocer, who sold little packets of plastic cheese, ham in watery packages. There was a chemist. If you wanted olive oil, that was the place to go, because people bought it to put in their ears to destroy earwax. They didn't cook with it. The mostly cooked with lard, or cheap vegetable oil. It was all really quite dreary. A million miles away from the ideal of superb artisan tradespeople. It was "local" in a sense, and it had its good points. But it also had its bad points. Now you say "patronise better traders". Easier said than done then, unless you wanted to drive miles and miles round South London. Which was hardly realistic. Of course, then as now, there were excellent places to buy food in London. If you give me enough time I can find fantastic fish, meat, cheese, bread -- and reasonable fruit and vegetables. But it really takes time and extra effort. It's worth doing for a special occasion, but on a daily basis, I'm afraid, for the average family it is simply not realistic. My harried mother, trying to look after three young children on a tight budget wasn't going to go running up to Piccadilly for cheese, or to Soho for pasta, or to Mayfair for game. She couldn't. I guess I'm trying to make three points: 1. The homogenization of modern life has its good points as well as its bad points, at least in Metropolitan England. It's not all bad. The "good old days" were not unmitigatedly good. 2. Although I dislike mega-corporate food, I highly doubt that in England (it is certainly different elsewhere) the AVERAGE quality of food -- except probably meat -- has gone down since the 1960s. It was really pretty low. Indeed, the AVERAGE quality has almost certainly gone up. 3. Sadly, small does not necessarily equal good. There used to be many small traders who did not exhibit anything you would really call pride in their calling. Please understand that I don't mean for one moment to deny the existence of many dedicated people who do have that pride. I'll support the little guy who makes good stuff whenever I can, though I wish sometimes the little guy would make it easier for me. But I don't think it does anyone a favour to pretend that small is always beautiful, or that yesterday was perfect.

A lot of what makes this stuff hard is the means by which we try to communicate. It really is quite easy to show someone how to make a vinaigrette say if they are standing beside you. It's harder to show them on a video or a film. Harder still to describe it in words. The demand for a formula gets in the way. Do you want 3:1 or 4:1 or 5:1 oil to vinegar -- that may depend on what I'm dressing, on how acid the vinegar is, on whether I've added mustard or shallot, or sugar, or honey -- there is no precise formula. Which is another reason why vinaigrette is better made at home -- because it can be tweaked subtly, whereas the stuff from the bottle is (as it's supposed to be) uniform. I do think it's easier than violin playing. But it is a set of skills that are so very much easier to communicate person-to-person than in some more impersonal way. The means we use to communicate about cooking leave out of account three (and often four) of the senses that matter most when we are cooking.

It's not just food cultures, surely ... it's almost everything. When I was a child, to visit France really was to enter a completely different world. Everything and everyone looked different, smelled different (gauloises), tasted quite different. In England you could hardly buy wine ... in France you swam in it. It's tempting to be upset about this. But consider the trade-offs. In return for our delightful experience of the "other world" across the channel, we got to enjoy unmitigated Englishness. A great deal of watery ground meat tasting distinctly of offal (which was then often included), months of root vegetables, instant coffee. Having sushi and pizza and pasta in London makes the world less varied, but it makes life generally better. Same goes for "small traders". Of course the ideal is the smiling local artisan butcher, lovingly hanging his delicious beef, or the local greengrocer carefully selecting the best of the season. The reality, I'm afraid was often the sly gouger hiding a huge chunk of gristle in his "best braising" and slipping the rotten fruit into the bag with the rest ... in the few hours of the day when they were actually open. I'm all in favour of slow food and local food, but it's easy to look at the past through rather rosily tinted spectacles.

Also, surely a lot depends on circumstances. In some places you can get such great bread that it's very unlikely that you could make it better yourself. In other places the reverse is true. I can make bread which is unquestionably better than a supermarket's ... but I simply can't make bread that is better than I can buy in any of a number of reasonably local bakers here in London. On the other hand, unless I make it myself, I can't get an acceptable stock for love or money. It also depends on the individual's eating habits. If you eat yogurt every day, it may make sense to make it ... but what if (like me) you never eat yogurt and just use it perhaps once a fortnight when you have curry. Ditto hummus. If you have tahini on hand, it's a breeze. But if you just feel like having hummus maybe once a month, that may not be a good use of fridge-space. For me there are only a few products where convenience versions are so clearly inferior to the home-produced article, and usually where the home-made doesn't really take longer or cost more than the commercial version, that I'd have thought there would be pretty wide agreement that it is "crazy" to buy them: vinaigrette and pasta sauce certainly fall in this category, for me. I can almost always make them in almost no time from ingredients I'm bound to have on hand. I can hardly imagine any scale of value on which it would make sense to buy these. Even if you valued your own labour and leisure time very highly, they are so very quick and easy to make that it's almost impossible to construct the trade off that makes it sensible to buy them. But many of the things people have identified on this thread don't seem to me to fall into this category. Bread, yoghurt, hummus -- these are all things that seem to me to fall into a pretty grey area. For my own part, they are things I would usually buy, but sometimes make. In many cases I'd accept the home made could well be better, but the commercial product is not just acceptable but (for me) pretty good, and there is a marked inconvenience factor. Note that the inconvenience need not be the actual time taken, it may the timetable required (bread), or it may be that I usually want the product in quantities that are much smaller than those that it is practical to produce (hummus, e.g.).

I'd say a lot depends on how many people you expect to feed. A duck, even a large one, can't really be stretched to more than 4 people, whereas a goose will easily do 8 (not just because it is larger than a duck, but because the meat is even richer than duck is, so less goes further. With tons of side dishes (dressing, vegetables etc) you might just about get your duck to feed 6 and a large goose to feed 10. But in both cases remember that there is a lot of fat, and relatively little meat. I'm a huge supporter of goose, which is what we usually have. It's unusual. It's delicious. It's traditional. It's not especially hard to get right. And it loves just the sort of side dishes (braised red cabbage, apples, crisp roast potatoes) that make christmas christmassy.

I don't think it's too much water for that quantity of flour. By comparison, Pepin's Techniques (which I normally use for this) has 2 cups of water for 2 pounds of flour (which would work out, I think, at about 250g water for 500g flour), and another book I regard as reliable (Willan's French Cookery School) has 250g for 500g flour. I'd say the recipe you quote is exactly in line with that (indeed, it's probably shooting for 250g water). In bread terms that's only 50% hydration, and it certainly shouldn't be a "sticky mess" once the flour has had time to hydrate. It's absolutely standard that compared to "short" pastry, puff is heavy on water. The dough (before the butter is in) should be softish, and certainly does not at that point resemble pastry. 1/4 cup water (= 75g) would be WAY less than I would expect. (Edited to add: Those are "classic" proportions. "Rough" generally uses about the same amount of water -- perhaps a little less ... but not that much less. It should be dispiritingly unlike pastry until you start to turn it.)

Sorry I missed this at the time ... but by pure chance I remembered seeing this, which seems to use raspberry jam. It's beautiful anyway: Raspberry Diplomate Cream in Tart.

Using my (sloppy) measurements, 1 c of flour is about 120g, and 1 c of water is about 220 g. On that basis, your proposed wholemeal (though hardly!) dough is (using conventional bakers percentages) 600g + 80g = 680 g flour (100%) 285g water (57%) That gives 57% hydration, which would be a very tight dough indeed. But how tight would, of course, depend on how wet your starter is. There's a lot of starter in there, and if it was good and wet, itt might be just about workable, though I would have thought still tight. (And salty?) I confess to being baffled by your "normal" recipe, though, which looks to me as if it would be well in excess of 100% hydration, and I would have expected to be batter! Why don't you just try subbing a proportion of wholewheat flour for your normal, and do what you usually do. If you are looking for something very lightly wholewheaty, you could try about 1/5 to 1/3 wholewheat. You may want a *touch* more water, but at this kind of amount I doubt it's worth fiddling.

I think I might give some thought to textures. I appreciate that this is designed to showcase your new kit ... but it all looks rather uniformly softish ...

I don't see how there is a "correct" about it. I can see that it is "incorrect" to cook chicken rare, because you don't want to poison your customers. Beyond that, I just don't see a correct or incorrect to any of this: it's a matter of taste. As it happens, I tend to agree that fish is better either fully cooked or raw, because I don't really care for the slimy ooziness of warmed raw salmon, for instance (and with tuna I'd rather have it raw or canned: I think even semi-cooked tuna is dull). But it's all personal taste, not "correct" or "incorrect", really. If I'm in a restaurant, if there is a recommended cooking temp, I will almost always (actually, I think, always) go with that temp, because part of the reason I go to a restaurant is to let someone else do the thinking about what and how should be cooked, and I assume that some thought has gone into it. And I would certainly never ask them to vary a particular preparation if that's what they specify. If I don't like, say, a medium-cooked salmon (and I don't) I'd rather order another dish; just as if a dish contains something that I don't care for much I'll order another dish, not say "O, please cook me your pie but leave out the kidneys" or whatever. Dining a la carte means choosing from among the things the kitchen produces, how it produces them, not engaging the services of a personal cook. If I don't like what the kitchen produces, I don't order that dish. And when it comes to steering people in the right direction, a lot depends on how it's done. In France, I ordered a steak. How would I like it cooked? "A point" (medium, or thereabouts). The waiter's face fell. Well, he said, on this occasion if Sir wanted it medium he would ask the kitchen to cook it medium. But he did want Sir to know that this was a VERY nice piece of meat, and perhaps better cooked bloody. But if Sir wanted it medium, Sir would have it medium. The whole thing delivered with the air of one who had just found Sir about to strangle a kitten or two. Well, if Sir wants to strangle the kitten, then very well. Go ahead, and wring the little kitty's neck. If you really want to. It was a brilliant performance. Needless to say, I had it rare. And it was a very nice piece of meat. Now if the waiter had said "Sorry, we won't cook it medium, only rare", I'd have gone along with that, but I would have felt somehow thwarted and offended. The way it was done, I felt looked after.

This has been a great thread to have, because as it happens I have been spending this week trying to get to grips with souffles, making one every day: spinach on Monday, mushroom on Tuesday, Grand Marnier today. The trouble I find is with getting them to rise evenly and not stick anywhere on the rim; this is a long-standing problem which I hope to have solved by the slightly mammoth sequence of repeated attempts. I seem to have cracked it (at last ... I hope). What works for me is: (1) really slathering the dishes with butter; (2) coating the butter with some further insurance against egg cooking to porcelain (breadcrumbs, parmesan); (3) running my finger round the edge to make sure the rim is really clear before baking (I don't think this is quite the trench described above, but it's somewhat similar and at any rate ... it works!). One other thing I've noticed. I really think souffle is improved by being served with a sauce or some other accompaniment. Even when well flavoured, a souffle is (of necessity) a somewhat monotone thing (because it is an even mixture) and heavy on eggs which dull flavours somewhat. Having a nice complementary sauce, or some sorbet, or something like that makes a big difference and really lifts it.

Well, subject to the various annoyances of (the shrieking of the bald parrot, "cooking doesn't get much better than this ... " etc etc) I quite enjoy this. The most surprising thing I think is the inconsistency, both in the quality of the contestants and the difficulty of the tasks. Case in point: on Monday a really sorry bunch were set a fairly simple task (egg florentine, rhubarb tart). Make a tart case, creme pat, poach/cook some rhubarb, toast a pre-made muffin, cook some spinach, make a mornay sauce, assemble. Not a bad test, but not very tough (I'd hope) for a pro. Quite do-able in 80 minutes, I'd think, so long as you work reasonably efficiently, and quite easy to work out what to do first. They made a fair mess of it, nonetheless! Still, one goes through. Today a much more promising set, but a MUCH harder task. Lobster bisque and coffee dacquoise. Quite apart from the fact that these are (in my opinion at least) harder dishes, the time is really tight--I think you'd be hard pressed to get hazelnuts toasted, meringues made and cool enough to put buttercream (which you have to make) in 80 minutes, let alone doing also all the steps required to make a decent bisque (deal with lobsters, make stock, strain it, concentrate it, prepare lobster meat, bring everything together). Worse than that, if it was me, I'd be struggling to work out a sensible order of play to get everything done because I'd want to get my stock started very early AND my meringues started very early if I was going to have any hope of finishing. Even so, only one of them could go through. When you put together the fact that the challenges are sometimes easier, sometimes trickier, and the fact that the contestants veer around in quality, it does look slightly doubtful that one can really expect the heats to end up pitting the best against the best in later stages. I understand of course that this is not the point ... even if "cooking doesn't get much better than this" .... One might even suspect that the groups have been "matched", pitting strong cooks against each other (with difficult tasks) and weak ones against each other with easy tasks, so that each individual programme seems reasonably fair and successful, although the net result is that the competition as a whole is not really fair. Or is that an unworthy thought?

Couldn't one approach this in a slightly different way? Surely the starting point is what sort of stuff the stuff should be; the technique to get there is to some extent secondary (though, of course, the two will be related). On that basis, as I understand it (based on reading a book, I think Anne Willan's French Cookery School, about 30 years ago) and of course on eating the stuff: Brisee ("broken" pastry) is "standard" pie/tart pastry, unsweetened. The aim (in France) is to produce a crisp (not a soft or flaky) pastry. Either method may be used to produce this depending on personal preference for the characteristics of the final product (there may be something in the idea that there has been a change over time)--and perhaps it depends somewhat on personal preference. There is or was, I think, a real difference between the "ideal" of the French crisp crust and the Anglo American (especially American) "light" crust which is supposed to be somewhat flaky--as is suggested by the idea that brisee is "broken", i.e. briefly but definitely kneaded to amalgamate all the ingredients thoroughly. Sucree ("sweetened" pastry) is a somewhat sweetened brisee. It essentially has all the characteristics of brisee, but with the addition of a small amount of sugar in order to make it sit comfortably with sweet fillings. But it is still intended, like brisee, to be a more-or-less neutral (though still delicious, of course) container for something else. Again either method can be used to produce this--a creaming method will tend to produce pastry at the crisp end, a rubbing method to produce pastry on the flaky side. Sablee ("sandy" pastry) is much sweeter. Rather than being robustly crisp it is intended to be crumbly, friable. In anglo-american terms, it most closely resembles Scottish shortbread. Like shortbread it can (and is) sometimes prepared an eaten alone (as a cookie) as well as to make cases, and is generally regarded as showcasing the butter. For that reason, and because of the amount of butter, it is not unlikely to contain a slightly higher proportion of butter than brisee or sucree too. These characteristics, and the desired final result, make creaming the pretty much universal method of choice, as it is for shortbread. In summary: Brisee ("broken") paste = unsweetened pastry; exclusively intended for use as a "container"; generally speaking the (French) objective is to be crisp and robust rather than notably flaky. Either method can achieve that result. Sucree ("sweetened") paste = same objectives as brisee but with the addition of some sugar for use in sweet tarts (and same possible techniques, possibly with slight preference for creaming to dissolve/distribute sugar better, growing stronger as proportion of sugar increases). Sablee ("sandy") paste = a highly sweetened dough, much more assertive in itself than sucree, used either as a component or on its own. Aim is to be friable and sandy. Generally creamed.

Those look great, really nice. You might try smoothing the tops a little more next time, if you want to get the classic look. But personally I hardly ever bother: I like the more homely appearance. Be very careful about greasing the moulds well, especially round the rims where they sometimes stick. I have one word of warning to add to the general advice you have been given. One trouble with souffle is that everyone thinks it's such an achievement to get the damn things to rise (though it's actually quite easy) that there's a tendency not to ask whether they taste good. And the sad fact is, they often don't really. All that egg and air, it's easy to end up with something very bland, and with a dull texture like rubbery mousse. Getting them to rise is really only half the battle. On that score, my only advice in general would be: Stick to strong flavors, and keep them strong (so strongly flavored cheese, for instance): cheese, chocolate, lemon, spinach, crab, smoked fish etc. These all work well because they work well WITH the egg OR they just cut through it. Sometimes people think that because souffles are delicate they can manage delicate flavors. In my experience at least that doesn't work, and they just end up tasting eggy. I have often been disappointed on that score, even at very good restaurants. In a savory souffle, season the base really well. It needs to be very highly seasoned, because it is about to have a load of near-flavorless egg whites dumped in it. So plenty of salt, pepper, cayenne etc. The base should be stronger in flavor than you think it needs to be! Consider accompaniments which boost flavor and/or texture. I recall having an anchovy sauce with a spinach souffle, for instance, which worked well. Or think (though, at home, maybe don't emulate) the restaurant fashion a few years ago for putting a small ball of some contrasting sorbet into the hot souffle. Some sort of sauce or other accompaniment can help, and think in terms of contrast. Be careful about cooking. Personally I think that the French style--which is to cook quite fast and hot so that the outside gets good and heated, with some color, and the inside stays almost runny is good. This gives at least a bit of texture contrast, and some flavor contrast too, since the saucy stuff is often a bit different in taste from the fully cooked mousse, and different again from the slightly singed top and edges. So for my taste, looking at yours, I think I wouldn't turn the oven down: I'd be looking for more color, if anything, and perhaps a wetter middle: I'd expect souffles of that sort of side to be "cooked" (to my taste) in more like 15 or at most 20 minutes than 25. But this is my personal taste, and I'd try them a few ways to find out what you like. It might be worth doing a batch where you extract them at intervals and see what you prefer.

I just want to say thank you, to so many of you. Not for any specific advice, but for making me aware, slowly, of just what I have been doing wrong for so many years. It's about truffles. You see, years ago (20 years ago) when I was 15 or so, I came across a recipe for chocolate truffles made with chocolate and cream in Anne Willan's French Regional Cooking. Now, and for all you experts, this is obvious. It's what (give or take) truffles are made of, right. Ganache. Dipped. Rolled in cocoa. Classic. But those were dark days for truffles in England. Home-made (and even "shop bought" truffles), except in very fancy places I suppose, were odd things. Often made of a mixture of stale cake crumbs and cheap chocolate, with plenty of rum. Rolled in chocolate flavoured vermicelli. Really, that's how we made them. And my mother used to drive over to a baker/confectioner's nearby to buy "special ones". The shop was opposite a cemetery, I think, in a part of town which seemed reserved by the Victorian planners as a sort of necropolis for South London. It was an apt location. For I remember how special those truffles were. And I'm quite sure they were made of cake crumbs, cocoa and vegetable oil. Like very sweet chocolate putty. The rum was really the only thing that saved them. So when my 15-year-old self read this recipe for truffles made of just chocolate and cream they seemed so decadent I had to try making them. What a hassle. I had great trouble getting my ganache thick enough to pipe (and as a result whipped in much too much air, supposing that this might thicken it). My piping technique was--still is, dammit--hardly precise. So I ended up with various lengths of sausage, which then had to be squashed into balls. Now of course it was too soft to do that, so I chilled it down first. Too much. Which made it harder still to produce anything that did not resemble a ganache croquette. Except when they nearly melted completely, which they often did. Then the dipping. Back-in-the-day I had never heard of tempering chocolate, or rather I had but I imagined it was some esoteric process, and had no idea why it mattered. The book said nothing about it, just melt the chocolate. In fairness to its accomplished author, I'm sure that was not because she didn't understand about it, but rather because it seemed too impossible for the home cook. Now in my innocence I imagined that the trick was to get the chocolate really hot and flowing, so that it wouldn't be too thick. So I kept it constantly over a pan of simmering water, hot as hades. Into this lava, I tried to dip my croquettes, well-chilled from the fridge. I would dump them in, roll them round a bit with a couple of forks, and try to fish them out. You could see the ganache melting into the chocolate, which would get thicker and thicker as it got hotter and hotter. Then, covered with a positive overcoat of hot chocolate, slithering off slightly as the ganache melted, I would dump them into cocoa. Then wait for them to set, which usually took a few hours. I seem to remember that only a profound and prolonged chilling really did anything at all. I can say two things about those truffles. First, they were the best I had (then) ever tasted. When you have been eating strange concoctions of stale madeira cake and chocolate-flavour cake coating for 13 years, a ganache truffle, even an incompetent ganache truffle, is a revelation. Secondly, they certainly resembled the original fungus. They were lumpy, organic, a thick layer of cocoa clinging to all sorts of bumps. Very trufflesome. But, so good. So good that it became a sort of Christmas tradition to make them. Christmas is really the only time we make any sort of confectionery ... well Christmas and charity bazaars, for (both of) which my mother makes fudge. Over the years quite a bit of it has been really rather nasty. There was a time when "peppermint creams" (really thick icing with peppermint flavouring), coconut ice (thick icing with dessicated coconut), stuffed dates (dates stuffed with marzipan and almonds) were de rigeur. I suppose it was a hang over from the war years, along probably with those cake-crumb truffles. Not much has survived. We have waved a nauseated goodbye to the peppermint icing and the coconut icing and the stuffed dates. Only my mothers fudge and these truffles survive as remnants of the mend-and-make-do age. And both of them survive because they are essentially rather good. Anyway, fast forward. I haven't made the truffles for a few years; my mother has been doing them. But this year she wanted me to do them. And thanks to people on this board--thanks really to the process of osmosis through which, idly reading threads in which one is not directly concerned, one notices things--I knew a bit more than I did then. So this time my ganache was properly emulsified. My truffles are (more or less) balls. My chocolate was (sort-of) tempered, as in first-attempt-better-than-nothing tempered. It set in a minute or two, not an hour or two. It dried somewhat glossy, somewhat snappy; snappier, anyway, than shortening which is what my previous efforts used to resemble. I discovered, in the process, thanks to a themometer, that tempered chocolate is not too-hot-to-put-your-finger-in, but rather cool; that it doesn't melt the ganache like an ice-cube in a cup of coffee; that hands are rather good dipping devices. You people would be positively ashamed of my truffles. You would be horrified that they are only more or less the same size. You would be shocked by the fact that they are only approximately spherical. You would be unimpressed, I know, by their crackle. If they were not covered in cocoa, you would be disgusted by the dullness of their sheen. You would notice some cracks, I fear. I know perfectly well that my truffles would not survive a minute in your kitchens. You would have them melted down in seconds, consigned to reincarnation in some humble and out-of-sight role such as filling a cheap cake, if they were lucky. They still too much like fungi to pass muster in polite company. But for me, they are a great leap forward. Of course, they are a completely unnecessary great leap forward, since there are any number of wonderful people in London making truffles much better, in every way, than mine. The days of the cake-crumb-"truffle" are gone. I doubt I could find them if I wanted them, but I could easily lay my hands on the real thing. And if truth be told, of course, that's what I should do, saving my talents (such as they are) for something that earns the money to pay the person who knows how to make the chocolate to do his or her job. And of course I do that, too. But Christmas tradition requires to be appeased, and has been. And I simply want to say, thank you, for teaching me so much.

To my shame I watched a TV show about Buckingham Palace yesterday. To my greater shame I rather enjoyed it ... It seems the Queen's preferred drink is something along these lines. She has 1/3 gin (Plymouth), 2/3 dubonnet, slice of lemon, 2 perfectly square ice cubes.

Since we are praising the pie, I should say I made it a couple of weeks ago for my mother's birthday party, and it was sensationally good and easy. My dough was fine. Good and soft. So soft in fact that it was quite hard to roll out those snakes for the top as my hand warmed it up. But it all worked out beautifully. I agree pennylane's problems may have been with ingredients. There are so many little differences (US flour a bit harder, US butter a bit wetter, US eggs a little smaller) that collectively can make quite a difference.

Seems as if I'm a bit of an exception to the usual views here. I tend to think that the first time I cook something new I should stick to one recipe. Mixing a bit of this one and a bit of that one is fine once you know what you are aiming for, but I think the first attempt at something new is best done using one person's cut on the thing. Now I will look at recipes in a number of different books and choose the one I like best. But first time out I will probably stick quite close to the recipe I finally go with. Once I see how one recipe comes out, I feel better able to make alterations or (in extreme cases) dump it and find another one altogether.