Blether

Yes, nice job on the pepper-clovers and the Irish colours, dcarch. Patrick, I don't even what what wotsitsname-seur is, but put me down for some of that and some of the dahi murgh. Jenni, I'd like to eat some of your food, too. Here today, though, comfort food hit the spot: - roast loin of pork. Salted for 60-odd hours, studded with garlic, peppered and roasted on a rack. Roast potatoes aren't so easy with loin because of the 'low & slow' - I opted for mash, which meant I could skive on peeling, too. Gravy from the roasting tray, revved up with a splash of balsamic and, on the spur of the moment, a blob of bitter marmalade just big enough to add character & sweetness without making you think "fruit sauce". This morning, with a bacon sandwich, I finished off the pack I had of imported bacon, leaving me with a pan full of bacon fat & fond. I finished the mash not with butter & milk, but first of all with the roasting fat left over from the gravy, then with some bacon fat and the deglazed bacon fond. Steamed sprouts. The bacon-y mash works well, the smokiness is a nice twist.

Scraaaape (sound of chair being pulled up). Hi, Rhonda. I'm looking forward to this. PopsicleToze - isn't that the secret, little-known sugar present in popsicles ? Like maltose or dextrose. PopsicleToze. Nothing to do with body parts, which are spelled differently, anyhow.

Ha ha ! OK, and on the size / loading of your freezer (and I find smooth, soft pates lose some of their texture after freezing).

Like Jenni, I find the canned coconut milk & cream I buy (mostly from Thailand) is usually already separated in the can. I'd describe it as separated into solids and liquid, and I'm pretty sure the coconut oil is part of the 'solid' part - coconut oil's solid from somewhere around room temperature (I've a bottle of that on hand, too). Anyway, the solid part melts pretty quickly once I put the 'milk' or 'cream' in a hot pan. I'm intrigued as to why you want to separate your coconut milk. D'you mind explaining ? I'm often using it in a context where I cook it till the 'fat floats free' on a sauce, just the same way we often do with a tomato sauce, and I think that means I'm seeing the oil separated. It's not clear to me how your 'oil' and 'solids' correspond to the (clear, watery) liquid and the 'solid' puck I find when I open a can.

Yes, and on your typical # of table settings. If you're a couple, do you make a loaf of pate and eat a lot of it for a week ? Or buy the odd quarter-pound ? Will you use up that home-made mayo before hygiene concerns overtake it ?

Soba, that Amatriciana looks great - and by the appearance of it, even features the uber-authentic Bucatini. Cali, Nitrate-free ham... will they accept any pork you have salted yourself ? Does it have to be a product you've purchased as 'bacon' or 'ham' ? Building on Soba's Lyonnaise inspiration - if the former - you could salt & use a pig's head to make a fromage a tete, or salade de tete de porc (salted, cooked, the meat broken up and dressed with vinaigrette). Japan doesn't have its own pork-curing tradition, but the salted belly used in ramen means you could play with that, if you think that'll win you points. Again, it depends how the boundaries around 'ham' are drawn - it's dead easy to choose an excellent piece of belly and salt it. Of course "ham" the word comes from "leg", but shoulder ham is ham now, right ?

Yes to subsequent sauces, soups & stews. That fat & juice is just what you need to make a gravy. Also of course great mixed into mashed potatoes, or (reduced and) used to dress noodles / pasta. Teriyaki flavour suggests ramen ? Again, you might try mixing it into a pancake batter.

Oh yes, and an effective way to a soft crust is, once the bread has cooled completely, to keep it in a closed plastic bag. Moisture equalisation will do the rest. If you keep the bread wrapped in cloth, or in a non-airtight bread box, then (at a rate depending on ambient humidity) the crust will get harder.

Look up 'CBP' or Chorleywood Bread Process - in summary, aeration is created not by yeast activity over a long rise, but by effectively 'whipping' a wet dough. Quicker, therefore a more efficient utilisation of plant.

Syrian meat loaf ? And I second Shepherd's Pie, though roast/grilled and broken up to serve in pita breads, with salad & chilli sauce, is calling out to me too.

That sounds fantastic.

Raspberry jam takes the prize, on balance, I think. Blackcurrant has its moments; marmalade, of course. Recently I've been making some citrus curds - lemon curd that was going to be the sauce for a steamed sponge, but ended up displaced by yuzu curd after a well-timed gift; and finally a fruit sauce for a further steamed sponge that I made up out of the yuzu curd, juice & zest from a natsumikan, and some honey. It's hard to beat the flavour of a good homemade lemon curd. I've been making my own marmalade for a few years, from natsumikan, but I credit Marguerite Patten's Basic basics: jams, preserves & chutneys for the fruit curd recipe. It covers everything from jams & jellies to fruit butters, cheeses & syrups.

... They used every bad pun you can think of! I'm certainly interested (and simultaneously disconcerted) to hear how they're prepared.

I don't have family living with me, it's just me. I think that Tokyo'll be a pretty desperate place to be if it's badly hit. My 'plan' has been to get out if it's really bad - I have an offroad motorbike parked outside, and even if the building lands on it and I somehow don't, I figure I can improvise. Maybe that makes me irresponsible. In the vast scheme of things, even in earthquake country, earthquake disaster remains a small possibility. I don't have detailed plans for what I'll do when I take a heart attack; what I'll do when mowed down by a drunk driver; what I'll do when a serial killer gets me in his sights. You can never know what'll happen tomorrow, you can only hope you'll deal with it gracefully. I spent five minutes this afternoon sitting under the heavy marble dining table that I'd always seen (but never resorted to) as my earthquake shelter non pareil; in the end I was (a) trying to figure out whether I should be sitting up or semi-prone when the building came down on it, and (b) holding on to the top with both hands in an effort to keep it in place on the legs (the top alone weighs like 100kgs), all the while watching with dismay as my bookshelves gradually unloaded themselves everywhere and listening as one piece after another of ceramic or glassware came to its end. Things reached a crescendo and there's a point where I can't make out distinct memories of shaking, bouncing, shattering or thumping. And we weren't even in the thick of it, here. If I'm going on a long hiking trip, or long-distance sailing, I'll take stores-planning seriously, but for earthquakes ? No. Which isn't to say that it's not a good idea for someone else in a different situation. Having said all that, I typically have on hand cans of tomatoes & beans, plenty of rice & flour, a Japanese-style tabletop gas burner and cans of fuel, barbecue charcoal and whatever starts to defrost in the freezer... even stuck here with broken legs, I can get along just so long as the roof and the floor keep themselves apart.

Dejah, did you click through to my older post in "Roasting a chicken" (I linked to it in the post I linked to (puff, pant)) ? I described my approach in detail there - fridge-drying is one part of it, the other big point is roasting back-up for 2/3 of the time, then finishing with breast uppermost. It was hard to resist eating at least some of the skin while I picked the meat off. So I didn't Thanks, Bruce. It remains really, really good today, which is good because it was just the thing to zap in the microwave (rice too, done separately) after spending three and a half hours picking the kitchen up off the kitchen floor:

What a great series of dinners, from MiFi's right down to yours, Dejah. I turned over this idea in my head for a week or more: curried chicken, starting with two pre-salted roast chickens (you can see them here), raw weight 1.1kg each (so about 5lbs bone-in chicken). The meat & skin from these picked off & torn up by hand. The carcasses used to make a stock, and this reduced to ~150ml (solid like a hockey puck after chilling). The fat from roasting reserved, and the roasting tray deglazed with the juice from 2 cans of tomatoes. This mixed with the hand-crushed tomatoes, one more can of the same (tomatoes & juice). The roasting fat (augmented with a little butter) added along with salt & three onion halves, all brought to a simmer and cooked for 45 minutes. I derived this tomato sauce from Marcella Hazan's "tomato, butter & onion sauce" for pasta, making up the fat quantity with butter, and of course chicken-ising it. The onion halves are removed after cooking. Two tablespoons of cumin seed dry roasted in the saute pan, and 1tbsp coriander seed, the same, for grinding later. Two and a half onions sliced & brown-fried in 5-6tbsp homemade ghee, adding over the last 10 minutes: (1) a 4-inch cinnamon stick; (2) 2.5tbsp knife-minced garlic, 1.5tbsp knife-minced ginger, and 1 large mild and 3 cayenne chili peppers, chopped; (3) 3 bay leaves & 1tsp whole cloves; (4) 1tbsp turmeric powder, 1/4tsp fresh-ground black pepper, & the roast cumin & coriander, also freshly ground. Added the tomato sauce, stock and shredded chicken, and heated through. I was exclaiming "that's good" when I was tasting this, even in the apartment by myself. I'm really pleased with the spicing I put together here (the meat & stock & roasting fond were a doozy from the start). I'm calling it Murgh Shahi Masala, because I don't know any better. If I were to change anything, I'd make more sauce, or hold back some of the chicken for sandwiches, rather than just piling the whole lot in, regardless of proportions. Served with saffron rice and diced swede / white turnip cooked in a frypan in butter with some kalonji / onion seeds and black pepper fried in it, and topped with a blob of Augusts's lemon chutney.

#2 on the Together Menu. Or choose your own favourite.

I still like Broody Merry (near the bottom of the linked post) - but in Asia, the howlers are a dime a dozen.

No, no butter. Ingredients: chicken, salt. These two are labelled as weighing 1.1kg each.

Yes, pre-salting and fridge-drying. Here are a couple I did here: - other things distracted me and these sat out of the fridge for several hours before I got them in the oven, rather than one, hence the wrinkling on top of the breasts. I roasted them at 210C for 1 hour 10 minutes, turning at 45 minutes. Note the fond for gravy:

Ha ha, Shelby ! In this context, I don't think it makes sense to talk about diet without talking about exercise regime. Live long by eating alone ? Nah. Then if you believe what's said about the present long-lived Japanese generation, the key is deprivation: so the best diet is "quite a bit less than you want".

My gravies use about the same proportions as a veloute - I pour off (& save !) excess fat. Gravy's water-based, flour-thickened and flavoured with cooked meat & bone juices.

That looks delicious. And sunshine too ! Here at Blether towers we celebrated this morning's snow with a dinner of leek gratin & grilled beef. The latter because last night it had to be salty, browned meat and it was too late for roasting. The Aussie sirloin looked so good and the price was so keen that I bought over a kilo of it in a piece, and cubed & salted the lot - that's last night, tonight, and more in the freezer. Last time I made a gratin, I saved a couple of containers of mornay sauce in the fridge, so this was a 15 minute meal - 6 minutes for 3 chopped leeks in the microwave, 5 or so to heat the cheese sauce, these mixed in the gratin dish, and grilling all round. Served with a slab of toast (not shown):

Great work ! Enjoy the rest.

I should say here that Japanese 'kara-age' (most commonly of chicken) uses a seasoned potato flour. Traditionally the flour is 'katakuriko', which strictly speaking is from the root of the 'dog-tooth violet', but nowadays most of the katakuriko that's sold is in fact potato flour / potato starch. Kara-age (literally 'Tang (dynasty) deep fry') is usually nicely crisp but I've never noticed it tasting of potato.