Blether

Robenco15, did you get that what you have is bacon made from the loin, i.e. the back of the pig ? It's popular with people who like that big chunk of lean meat (the eye of the loin) in their bacon, and as in yours, there isn't so much meat between the layers of fat in the fatty part. From the narrow band of pink round the eye and the pink in the thin strip of meat, it looks almost as if it has been quick-cured, so the cure didn't seep all the way in. Sodium Nitrite in particular, is the curing element that preserves a pink colour (and it's not really an optional ingredient in bacon).

I hope they'll get something up and running again quickly. In the meantime, i just read through the thread for the first time - great stuff ! Thank-you. I couldn't find Rayado Grande, but I think these two are Palma and the not-Chinese fellow. (Other common name searches are here).

Juicy !

I think dcarch is right that a wrench on each part will work better than just wrenching the inner one.

That looks good ! I found that i like French Toast best when I've an open-grained bread, and I soak it long enough in the egg that it's wet through. I can then cook it hot enough to brown but stay moist in the crumb.

The domestic microwave has changed things. Before every house had one, a pot of soup was the most conveniently reheatable home-made hot meal, bar none.

I made a simple meat sauce at the weekend. I'd a portion of Marcella's Tomato-butter-onion (TBO) sauce on hand, so I did a 50:50 mix and called it a pasta dinner (so enticing I didn't stop to steady the camera):

Lentil soup, "staple of a country upbringing". Shown before and after microwaving: A good chicken stock (particularly concentrated, this time) PC'd from water, chicken and a few black peppercorns. Plenty of onion & some carrot, sweated, and deglazed with a single glass of half-sour white wine. Red lentils - I ran just short this time and made up with a small amount of yellow split peas. Salt & pepper to season. This far into the winter I've had so many things tasting of bayleaf that I left it out entirely, stock & soup both.

Thanks, Rod. Thanks, Ann - yeah, I don't usually cook them quite that long ! Steak and eggs is a class act at any time of day, and you have me looking longingly at yours.

I've never heard anyone voice concern about the accuracy of tsp & tbsp measures generally in recipes - as opposed to measurements for more esoteric chemical ingredients, like nitrites in meat curing. You probably know that (1) British imperial tablespoons are a different size to the 15ml standard (it's 18 or 18.5ml, IIRC), and (2) that the British custom in recipes is to use weights for non-liquid ingredients - in particular, never cups of flour, sugar or fats. This is kind of a general thought, but Amazon UK ships internationally. Would you like specific British titles ? It wouldn't surprise me if even American titles are converted to weights in their British editions. Some years ago I learned the hard way to buy my own cookbooks (for shipping to me here in Asia) from Amazon UK, not Amazon US.

Coffee. Then tattie scones, eggs & collapsed tomatoes: Then more coffee. No music. Nice work with the re-purposed meat, basquecook. We don't see much (if any) beef carpaccio in Tokyo any more, since a couple of years ago when a yakiniku joint poisoned some customers with their yukke. I hope the day slows down for you later on.

Thanks, Liuzhou. I posted the pie in Dinner! when it was newly-baked. Yes, mizuna is how that's read in Japanese - 'na' is the native or kun- reading, 'sai' as in yasai 野菜, vegetables, is the on- or (Japan's) Chinese reading.

Today, the last piece of chicken pie. Mizuna with garlicky vinaigrette.

On Wednesday I mentioned the local Italian place, Il Mondo. Of course I had to have lunch there: Five assorted appetisers and small salad. The pink/purple one is delicious pickled onion: Tomato/cream/prawn pasta: - and coffee, JPY1,200 total, about twelve bucks. There are cheaper courses, but I though I'd push the boat out.

Hi, Heidi. It being breakfast, these are (previously) steamed spuds, shallow-fried. These have been exceptionally floury: "the luck of the shop", if you like. You know how you buy 'floury' potatoes and sometimes they're more so than others ? That's what's happened here. You steam or boil them (I've done both, my steamer was too small for the first batch), and when they're done the sides are just naturally flaking.

Fishcakes, because it's what I grew up with, and lorne aka square aka sliced sausage.

(Microwave & grill) reheated pulled lamb, and taters, precious.

Thanks It's been so long since I had blackberriy anything. These appeared frozen & (of course) imported in the supermarket. I mostly expected indifferent fruit in uninspiring condition - I thought I'd have something like a jam, texture-wise. I couldn't believe it when I opened the bag after defrosting (in the fridge), and it was like you'd come back from the hedgerows and hand-picked the absolute best berries of the crop and kept them aside. Really beautiful fruit.

My local Italian restaurant (the chef's *very* talented) does a dish of pasta with "beef in red wine" ragu. It's very good, in the way that beef cooked well in red wine always is.

... and you're such an expert. You mean, it really is you ?

What's the difference between Hershey's and Lindt 85% ? They're both chocolate. I'd say the main difference here, as a panade ingredient, is flavour. Whether or not you see that as important to the recipe you have (and which I haven't looked at) is up to you. Whether it was actually important to the recipe writer or whether it was knee-jerk food-quality-ism, is for the writer to know. You look much nicer in that red pinafore, by the way.

You can use panko, but generally they're just slightly dried CBP bread - the cheapest, most basic loaf in the supermarket. You can make a panade with good white bread or with cheap white bread. But it would be a mistake to think that a panko panade equates to the former.

Thanks. Kim. It's good to see you posting again.. You know, in the tart recipe with the almond pastry it says "this is a good dessert to feed a crowd". It was with the first servings that I realised what that meant - that thick layer of rich almond pastry is filling ! It's about the quantity of pastry you'd normally use for a double-crust pie just a fraction smaller. There's nearly half a pound of butter in there. So I'm glad I saw it coming and cut way down on the sugar in the fruit - it's still rich, but there's something to cut through all the sweetness.

I'd a hankering for fruit pie-filling, American style (thickened with cornflour) and cherry-picked from three different recipes - this one for a tart case, this one for custard and this one for filling - to make a blackberry custard tart. I cut back on the cornflour for the custard by almost half, only used three heaped teaspoons of sugar for 500g / a pound-and-a-bit of blackberries, and just cooked them for maybe 5 minutes at most. Assembled with everything at (cool) room temperature.

This roast chicken, complete with drippings, and this ham: Made into this pie: Something in the filling threw off water during the day it spent held in the fridge, and thinned out the sauce. Some adjustment needed. Blackberry & egg custard tart: