Blether

Anna, I have a hand-cranked grinder from Porkert of Prague (I have one of their hand-crank meat slicers too, for my bacon). It's their #5 model, and I have several different plates for it and the simple sausage stuffing attachment. I think the casings *are* collagen - the butcher was kind enough to give me a a pile of them when I was last in Scotland, and I was too grateful to remember to ask. They look like these (thanks, Google search), so I guess so. Grinding stuff's easy enough, but be aware that stuffing single-handedly with a hand-crank machine is slow work: one hand to wind the crank, one to push mixture into the hopper, and one to guide the casings as they stuff. Of course you don't *have* to put it in casings. For reference, my notes: 1453g pork belly2139g pork shoulder=3592g meat Minced the meat, each piece half standard die, half one size coarser 12tsp black pepper6tsp salt325g crumbed home-made white bread

Wash and save some of the 200g jars and portion out the dijon when it's new? Then it can only oxidise as much as there's oxygen, until you next open the jar. Or you could give away the extras to some of your favourite cosmopolitan friends.

Hey, Smithy, drop by any time These are very much economical everyday eating. Especially considering the markup on commercial sausages, oy vey! I get the belly for about USD9-10/kilo. The shoulder has normally been USD12-13. This was a big piece and came priced at about USD10/kilo. USD10/kilo is what, $4.50/lb? You should see the price of fruit & veg round here, though. Frightening. For example: *a peach*, three dollars; *an apple*, a buck fifty. *A stick of celery*, three dollars. Tell you what, you bring the salad & I'll meet you in Honolulu.

Beautiful setting, too, RRO. Yesterday I made up some pork sausages. 40% belly / 60% shoulder (total 3.5kg), each meat ground half through a standard plate once, the other half through a semi-coarse plate, once. 10% crumbed homemade white bread by weight, and lots of pepper. Twisted into links: Can anyone guess what I had for breakfast this morning ? Yes, that's right, I had sausages for breakfast:

And having read the rest of the thread: on the British market, yes, the tomato paste that you squeeze from a tube is called 'tomato puree'. To me the difference between an absolutely basic tomato sauce and the range of tomato-only products from paste through puree and passata to juice, is that I expect it to include onions and simple seasoning, and to be cooked "till the oil floats free" as the recipes say, 45 minutes of simmering or thereabouts. Indian cooking also widely uses a similar fry-onions-and-simmer-down-tomatoes sauce base. Onions too will moisten your keema. Onions will sweeten it and tomatoes sour it. If you want there to be more liquid, you coiuld also add some breadcrumbs to the mixture. They will thicken the extra liquid so you can retain it when you make up the samosa etc.

I feel nervous when I see Marcella's Tomato-butter-onion sauce being called "Marcella's Tomato Sauce". In her books Marcella gives a number of different tomato sauces. I've waxed lyrical about the T-B-O myself on these pages, but it's a very specific and, in the normal run of Italian cooking, an unusual sauce. I sure wouldn't recommend it as a generic tomato sauce for recipes that call for one, even though it might work as a substitution.

And I just finished baking some 'Fig Oaties'. I planned (some time ago) to make these to use up some of the little desiccated figs I used with the plums, above. It became obvious these weren't what the Oaties recipe has in mind: I picked up some that looked more like it, only to notice later that I'd bought glace figs. I used them anyway: otherwise ingredients per the recipe, but cut down to 175g of sugar, and i omitted the cinnamon and the garnish (didn't have enough figs). These are good! I think I'll give 'em my official seal of approval.

I spotted these beautiful plums at the store: I thought I'd stew them, then I thought I'd use the microwave, but in the end I baked them in the oven. - some prunes (1 for every two plums, IIRC) - some small dried figs - a handful of raisins - a glass of orange juice - a tablespoon of that Colintreau again - these soaked overnight, covered, in the fridge, then infused vanilla, 3 drops of orange oil and 4 of lemon oil stirred in. The plums cut around on the midline, just to split the skins; sliced almonds and bashed up cashews toasted for 5 mins in a 200C oven. I was going to stir in the nuts, but in an unfocussed moment I'd already poured the soaked fruit over the fresh. So the nuts sprinkled on top, (a few dabs of butter) and a baking temp of 170C to avoid burning them. 30 minutes did a nice job. Ready for the oven: and baked and cooled to room temp: No sugar added at all: the dried figs have a great caramel flavour, and with the other dried fruit are just right against the tartness of the plums.

Thanks, CatPoet. No need to go digging - to be clear, the sauce is the poaching stock thickened with the egg/cream? I would have guessed bechamel/veloute method from the photo. I'm glad I asked.

Clafoutis is good cold, if you can cope with some whisking of two whole eggs. Would you say it sounds too heavy?

What's the walleye like to eat, David? That's not a fish I've tried. CatPoet, how do you go about making your salmon and sauce?

... from here. So in this case at least, using nitrate.

Franci, smoked salmon and trout are always good anywhere, but where you said Mediterranean, I think of them as cold, northern-waters fish. Can you get a good smoked roe to make taramasalata? How about some smoked tuna for a carpaccio, or some good tuna home-smoked in a covered pan with a piece of hot charcoal in a metal cup covered with onion skins?

Ha ha! I just read their "About Us", and I still don't know what it stands for. I know what it is now, though. Thanks, Anna.

What on earth does NSF stand for? "Not safe for Frangipani"?

Rotuts, me and Booker T love and will shamelessly copy your green onions caper.

A picture's worth a thousand words. This second rack is a minimum-effort-and-expense knock-up that I made myself. One plank for the two backing boards, and the rest is thin wood strips in two different widths. The wood's unfinished: The first rack has more to it: and I've mentioned it on eG before. My concept, built for me very kindly by my friend, a former cabinetmaker - build photos are here.

It's just me living here, Porthos. In fact this side of the table is quite open space. Three of us managed to cook together the other day. My next dream is some actual worktop that isn't either the sink or the table. Thanks, gfweb. I'm attaching some 'upskirt' shots, since I know that's the sort of thing you raunchy young fellas like. Let's see how this works... Bottom half of top right is spices; most of the space under the chopping boards is cans & jars - in the back are my meat grinder and a couple of pickling boxes & a food mill, all of which that I don't use so often. Under the kitchen side of the table are oats, a bottle of oil and some rices (tucked into the table leg centre-left). Bags of flour have migrated from here to the drawer of the breadmaker cab. Stepping back from the table, this wooden stand used to have another level and sit where the new fridge is. I've another (simpler!) unit to build once the old fridge is gone, something that has to go down before I'm tempted into an orgy of meat curing.

My whole kitchen gets into one shot - I caught it this morning with a loaf coming out of the oven: Just last month i finished building the breadmaker cabinet on the left, which i dubbed 'Apollo 18', what with it consisting of several stages and being on a mission to reach the kitchen ceiling (partly so I could anchor it against earthquakes). Completing the cabinet meant I could fulfil a dream of a bigger fridge. Now I have to get rid of the wee one... There's a whole series of cabinet-building photos here (click the photo):

I bet that cheesecake is fantastic, Kim. Over here, we made a chocolate orange cake that I've been dreaming up for a while. 30-odd years ago, and once only, I made Delia's Squidgy Chocolate Log, a South Park episode-in-waiting if ever there was one. The chocolate flavour was too strong for my tastes then, though it did make a lovely cake. I wanted to borrow her sponge, but to use almond powder in place of the cocoa, and flavour it with some of the vanilla essence I've been infusing. I love chocolate and orange together - who doesn't - and I thought, triple sec (Cointreau) in the whipped cream, chocolate mousse for the filling, and poured chocolate and candied peel ribbons for decoration. The juice of the orange made a light syrup that started with the leftover syrup from candying the peel, and I poured that over the inside of the sponge before filling it. I subbed the two ounces (~57g) of cocoa in the sponge with 10g cake flour and the weight made up with almond powder. It worked so well in the end, that I'll use almond-powder-only next time. I went with the suggested 20cm x 30cm tin. Next time I'd go bigger. Without looking back in detail at Delia's recipe, I'd decided to use a standard chocolate mousse - an egg per ounce of chocolate - for the filling. Reviewing afterwards, I'd go back to Delia's chocolate, water and less eggs. Particularly as I seized two batches of chocolate for the filling, trying off-the-cuff to incorporate Cointreau into that, too... Probably less melted choc for covering, next time, too! We're all about the organic presentation here at Casa Blether.

Welcome, Emeline. What's the linguist's take on gfweb's point about normalisation of loan words? If I remember right, "en route" and others are recognised as standard English now, and included in the OED (for those on the right-hand-side of the pond). PS did you see the last few posts in the Dinner! 2014 (Part 3) thread ? The proper use of sucs and fond is being questioned, along with the reputation of the CIA.

Patrick: soury. Yes, it's a word I envy you that beef stock!

Saag Gosht. Or, beef curry a la shortcuts. I couldn't resist the nice-looking blocks of chuck at Hanamasa. It's been a while since I cooked many curries and beef curry had the air of a plan to it. I've been toying for the longest time with the thought of neri-ume (ground up Japanese pickled plums) in Indian curry. You're always salting and souring, and the ume has its own distinctive flavour that feels like it can fit too. I have a tube of neri-ume with shiso in it, so step one was to guess at 10% salt content (I think I was a bit low, probably more like 13%, but it worked out in the end) and calculate out for 0.5% of the meat weight. It looked like this: Next up, shortcuts 1 & 2: I've also been eyeing the slabs of sauteed onion that are sold frozen round here. 1kg of 30% sauteed onion was 6 bucks 50, so I picked that up. That's a whole lot of slicing and a fair bit of frying & stirring avoided (note: checking the store that carries more varieties of pre-sauteed, I see I can get 1kg of 70% sauteed for 13 bucks - that's like free money, and is right in the crosshairs for next time). Shortcut #2 is I took three big ice-cube-tray cubes of onion confit from the freezer. Well, it's a shortcut if you spent the time confit-ing onions and still have some left. The next picture shows these, which have been frying while I prepped, along with about two and a half heads of garlic, peeled, 4" of ginger and 2 of fresh (well, taken from the freezer) turmeric, all chopped together (there was 1.75kg of meat): Fried till I judged right. For the last few minutes, I've added half a dozen hot chillis (again from the freezer): Starting to brown the meat: And ready for the oven, with shortcuts 3 & 4: in the oil after browning the meat, fry up shortcut #3, about half a jar of Sharwood's mild curry paste. Not having been in the curry groove, I'm out of homemade. Return the sauteed veg mass and the browned meat, and an appropriate amount of water (about a litre). Spike with shortcut #4, 1.5-2tbsp of Bovril - I didn't measure, just scraped all that was left out of a jar. This isn't available locally, so bought in Thailand and hoarded against rainy days of various sorts. Cost: about a hundred million dollars for a 4-ounce jar, as I remember it, but what a shortcut! Who keeps beef stock on hand? A taster after 2 hours in the oven. Washed, dried, de-stalked, cut up and added a bunch of spinach for the last 30 minutes: ... and after 40 minutes more: Damn good. You can make out the plum flavour, if you know what it is; the whole thing's sweet, sour, spicy and savoury, savoury, savoury.

I don't remember the season, or the temperatiure, or the explanatory cirvumstances. I deep fry stuff in an open pot of oil on the gas hob. One day I found myself standing in front of said pot with a mesh ladle, waiting for something to fry up, and musing idly, "Deep frying. Naked.... in an earthquake zone". I decided not to do that again.

Ha ha, the flour I use for bread is weaker than that. I think 12% is heavy for a soda raise.