Blether
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Posts posted by Blether
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Sounds like a recipe for having the beams running the other way / the processing deck on the other side
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Thanks for the tour, Johnnyd. Fantastic.
A question - what do the mussels eat ?
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Blether what is cherry salmon? never heard of it!
Hi, Wendy. Neither had I ! So I went to Fishbase for a 'common name' search on honmasu. Oncorhynchus masou masou, it said. Then I chose 'common names' under 'more information' for the big list.
Eating it blind, I'd have guessed 'sea trout' - it was like a very trouty salmon. It's the first time I'd ever seen it in a store - and for the record, it didn't have the fancy tiger stripes - just black & silver like a typical salmon. I'm assuming it was a female.
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The game seems to be at a standstill.
If you've posted a movie that remains unsolved, consider adding more clues.
New movie - sushi, including 'masago' and 'amachi' (posted by Blether)
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... why my close ups are all so blurry. I hold the camera completely still and they are still blurry.
Kim
Hi, Kim. Great looking cauliflower, even if it isn't sharp
We're all ignorant, but have you asked yourself the following:
- what is the minimum focusing distance for your camera ?
- does the camera have a 'macro' mode, and are you using it ? What is the minimum focusing distance in macro mode (it will be different) ?
- are you standing back and using the zoom to get back in and fill the frame ?
I can't be sure, but in your last picture, is the table just behind the plate in focus ? That would suggest you're just too close. You're not using flash, but the other common major issue would be shooting in the dark, or with a very dark or shiny subject, when the autofocus has trouble sensing the distance (that's not your problem here).
Dinner tonight - I scored a couple of sides of honmasu ('cherry salmon'), so one of those baked in foil at 130C/279F with butter, fresh bay, salt and pepper. So good !
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Nice work, Matt
I'm intrigued by your idea of a very sweet brine.So, the questions. Any ideas about the brine solution? Should I adjust the dry cure in any way? I'm happy to go by feel at this point, but would the total amount of time curing be reduced because of a more efficacious brine?My contribution, FWIW: I've never tried (nor heard of) using both dry and wet curing on one piece of meat. I'm scratching my head and thinking, "why ?"
I've made a fair amount of bacon at home, all wet-cured, in a brine based on Keith Erlandson's Sweet Pickle recipe from "Home smoking and curing" (with additional input on techniques from Dubbs & Heberle's "Quick and easy art of smoking food"). It's an 80% brine (80% saturated), which apparently is just enough to float a raw potato. Of course if you own a scale you can measure it.
For me, wet curing is just infinitely more temperature-controllable, particularly in a domestic fridge that's being opened regularly.
2litres Water (bottled if your tap water isn't appealing) - refrigerate / chill to 1-2C
10.5oz pickling salt
3.5oz soft brown sugar
For flavour, I coat the meat with a dry rub of black pepper and fresh bay leaf, ground together, before submerging it.
You can get excited about adding sodium nitrate and/or nitrite: I just use an unrefined salt, like they did in the old days. It's vital to keep the brine cold while curing - around 1C is ideal; over 2C is no good - and the meat must be weighted to keep it submerged. I find 3.5 days in the brine is about right for bacon-level saltiness. This doesn't give an even cure (less salty in the very centre), but that evens out during the drying period that follows (a week, still in the fridge). In deference to the neighbouring apartnments, I don't smoke it.
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The standard I remember from the UK is Elizabeth David's "English Bread and Yeast Cookery". Only you can tell if it'd suit you, but it's certainly worth including in your options.
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At 70F you'll spoil your pancetta with rancid fat flavour: I'd say go with the fridge (a naturally dry environment) even though it's probably below 50, but beware of picking up flavour from other foods. If you're getting into charcuterie regularly, consider a second fridge for it (or a cave in the mountains).
(I dry my home-made bacon in the fridge).
Edit to ask, where did you do the curing ?
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I'm one of them, yes. I went 林道ツーリング (rindou tsuuringu / off-road touring) a lot. I've probably been to Yuzawa more times for ski-ing, though - and these days I prefer the Chuo Expressway area for that.
Thanks for the identification
and I hope you're having a great day out in the sunshine. -
Alps no sato (アルプスの里) is in Yuzawa Kogen (湯沢高原).
It makes a great escape from the summer heat in the valley (edit to add: please choose the link for June (6月) on the left) - and the 'bobsleigh' is, what ? More than 1km long ? Or 600 metres or something ? (Please consider these questions rhetorical. I can't remember. It was almost two years ago).
(I know it's nothing new to you, but) further down in that series of pictures is a typical meal at an onsen yado (温泉宿) / onsen inn, with salt-grilled fish (trout, I think) and tempura of (mumble) greens. (Someone please help me identify it !)
Sorry to interrupt !
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Summber bobsleigh in Yuzawa Kogen??
Oh. In the meantime, I remembered the name, 'Alps no sato', I think. Did I get it completely wrong ?
Wasabi nuki... whose choice is that ?
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Mmm, bacon... with bacon. Mmm !
Hello again, everyone. Great cooking !
Tonight - tarragon chicken and 100% wholewheat no-knead bread (baked yesterday night).
I'm not sophisticated enough for side bowls, but I'm now enjoying a raw carrot from the fridge, to parody James Bond, "washed, not peeled".
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We are running out of milk and natto. I must go shopping today. But, don't expect to post obligatory photos of Pocky... (helenjp aka Helen can clarify why I say so.)
That's an impressive sky in today's pictures. Thunder and lightning have just begun here, preceded by a microburst wind. The Shinjuku Gyoen announcement has begun: "it's dangerous... "
Regarding your area, off-topic do you have time to tell us about 'summer bobsleigh' and hana-batake ?
(Your curry looks great - lots of 'guu' (I can never think how to translate this expression). It's nice to find someone else who appreciates "oyaji gag" (old guys' jokes).
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Tried 100% Kobe (chuck) ground 1x and 2x; 2:1 Kobe to Hanger steak ground 1x and 2x; 100% hanger; and 1:1 Kobe to Hanger ground 1x and 2x.
I'm with Chappie on salt: and a very little grated onion makes it for me.
May I ask - when you say '1x' and '2x', do you mean 'once' as in 'one time', and 'twice' ? Or is this some designation of grinder plate (and if not, what is your grind size - my plates are 3/32", 1/8", 3/16" &c) ?
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... using a regular saucepan, not a heavy-bottom one...
Please let me say something about saucepans.
When you're boiling sugar, for me, the ideal is something with copper in the base. I believe it works like this: copper conducts heat best, then aluminium, then cast iron. What that means is that you can get even heat right over the base of the saucepan with only ~2mm thickness of copper. To get the same with aluminium, you need ~6mm thickness (in the sizes we're talking about in cookware).
When you switch off the heat, the base continues to release the heat it is holding. (The sides of the pot do, too: particularly with cast iron pots ('All Clad' too)). Typically in saucepans copper will cool (pass on the heat) quickest, then aluminium, then iron. With sugar, ideally you want to be able to stop quickly - so, you want copper.
This doesn't mean you need mega-expensive all-copper kit. Stainless steel with a copper-disk bottom (of sufficient thickness: 1.8mm or 2mm ?) will be fine. In inexpensive stuff, Cuisinart's stainless copper-bottomed stuff, for example, is perfectly practical.
Any thinner base will result in 'hot spots' as you experienced: fine for boiling water, not so good for sugar. Yes, you can compensate by stirring but agitation affects crystallisation, and who wants to be tied to the saucepan anyway ?
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However, depending on what you have to hand, there is no reason not to mush the stuff, mix it with sodium alginate and squirt it drop-wise into a calcium chloride solution to get salmon roe caviar elBulli-style! It works with apple juice (honest!).
Indeed
Sodium alginate plays a major part in the making of artificial salmon eggs in Japan. (SA gel for the skin, seaweed extract for flavouring, salad oil for the embryo spot).
Commercial processing of salmon roe into 'soy pickled' salmon roe - pictures - using mesh screens.
Amateur's method using hot water at 40-50C. You can use a 3% salt solution to preserve the texture, or plain sweet water to give the eggs more crunch. After the eggs are separated in the hot water, they are rinsed several times with cold.
"As an alternative, set a fish-grilling mesh (barbecue mesh) over a bowl of 3% salt solution, place the roe on the mesh and use both hands with a motion as if drawing a circle" to drop the eggs into the bowl. Again, rinse several times.
You can apparently freeze the separated eggs very successfully (for a long time if first vacuum-packed), but shouldn't freeze the unseparated roes.
Edit while we're here to add: how to make your own soy sauce, complete with detailed temperature graph, no less.
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I grew up in Scotland. I prefer grass-fed beef. (Doesn't make anyone else a bad person
) Now in Japan my favourite steak comes from NZ (via Higashi Azabu). -
You want a medium-coarse grind: and purists say it's past it if left sitting in the jug for more than half an hour or so.
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Hi, Hiroyuki. Please let me also express best wishes to your wife. You are doing a great job here.
I think my friend here in Tokyo just bought one of those fridges, too. We are planning using the 'partial' drawer for making bacon (he took a foreign trip that's delayed that for the moment).
I love my Iwatani millser, too. May I confirm, did you mean 'thermos', or 'kettle' ?
Your kids are lucky that o-tousan is so able in the kitchen
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They sound large, the Messrs...
"Latin American meat-packing glitterati", maybe ?
Roast pork. From a roast made *with the ribs left on* (a thing becoming more and more difficult to find, here
). On one of those rolls you made. With some nice meltable cheese layered in. With some Better than Branston pickle. Heated in the oven.Leg gets my vote. Let them try and get the bone out of that !
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I don't have a stone, but I'm in Japan and bake pizza. I like the typical Tokyo Italian restaurant, thin crust / sparse topping style, and that's what I make at home.
When I read up about them, it seems one main point of the stone is that it doesn't get as hot as the temperature in the open oven. So, you bake with high temp above the pizza and a significantly lower temp below. You've probably noticed that if you simply bake on a plain metal tray, the bottom of the crust gets too crisp and your pizza's more like a big cracker.
My oven is a National dual microwave / electric oven with a big internal space and two shelf positions as well as the turntable at the bottom. It will preheat to 300C from cold, then maintain 250C. If the oven's already in use, the highest temperature you can select is 250C. For pizza, I gave up on the 300C as I wanted a set method that I can use for repeated bakings.
I don't have a stone. To keep the tray temperature down, I use two baking trays, one on top of the other, so that there's an air space between them (in my case about a quarter of an inch / 5 or 6mm; this has worked and I haven't tried other spacings). I preheat one tray, lay the pizza on the other (cold) using a sheet of baking paper to avoid any sticking problems, and when the oven is hot, simply lift the pizza-on-cold-tray onto the other tray, close the oven and hit 'start'. At 250C, seven or eight minutes bakes it beautifully - lightly browned round the upper, outer crust; lightly crisped but not hard, and not coloured, below; nicely cooked through.
That's my story. If you read around in eGullet, you'll find people pre-heating their stones for an hour and a half. Elsewhere I've seen 30 minutes suggested as sufficient.
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I have been making turkey nuggets lately...
Hi. I have to ask - why fry twice ? I do raw chicken pieces, a wash of egg & mustard, coating of breadcrumbs, and deep fried for about two and a half minutes.
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When I make corned beef...
I was of course referring to the wonderful corned beef of Messrs Libby, McNeill & Libby
Or cold roast pork. Or...
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Oh yeah, and it's a good way to make a corned beef sandwich interesting. Thanks for the inspiration - made up in today's (sponge-and-dough method) home-made rolls:
- but with my own fruit chutney that's very like (but better than !) Branston
Using Lard in Pastry
in Pastry & Baking
Posted · Edited by Blether (log)
Yeah, I wonder about this. Sometimes
Butter is always going to have a certain amount of water in it, so replacing it with anything that's pure/purer fat - lard, duck fat, Crisco - will have the same effect as increasing the overall proportion of fat - shorter, flakier pastry.
Has anyone tried clarified butter in pastry ?
(Edited because 'r' in brackets becomes ® )