Prawncrackers
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Posts posted by Prawncrackers
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Success!!!
The chorizo and salami have turned out wonderfully. It took only 13 days of hanging to get to this point. I've tried a few slices of each and i'm particularly blown away by the taste of the chorizo. The salami has a very strong flavour of fennel and wine, more of an acquired taste i think
Okay let's just hope now i haven't poisoned myself!
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How about a dragon carved out of a carrot!!!
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I've not cooked a Japanese meal for nearly a year. So when i found some nice big prawns in my freezer i thought bingo! Tempura, Inside-out Roll & Miso Soup:
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That parted out pig looks strangely content. I hope those big ears got used for something good!
Don't worry I have the ears in my freezer. I got my buddy to singe the hair off and scrape the wax out, first and last time he does that job (mwahahahhaha)!!! I took the cheeks home too but the rest we binned, i don't think we'll take the head next time - for us a lot of useless weight onto the price. Now what to do with the ears, WWRPD? What Would Ruhlman & Polcyn Do?
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I was a bit intimidated by the 90+ pages of that old thread and never got round to reading any of it.... but i bought the book anyway!! What spurred me on was that my buddy and i bought half a Tamworth pig a couple of months ago and butchering it ourselves we found that we had so many off-cuts. We vowed next time that we'd make our own sausages, i suppose that why they were invented in the first place. So last weekend we got half a Gloucester Old Spot and here was the result:
Half a pig!
Spanish Chorizo, Tuscan Salami & English Bangers (not from the book)
A close-up of the chorizo - beautifully ruby red:
Here is the chorizo & salami after 4 days hanging in my garage. Fingers and toes crossed that all will turn out ok in a few weeks!
I'm also curing some pancetta and lardo, and brining half a ham. I love pork is all it's forms, and butchering my own meat means that getting this book was really a no-brainer for me.
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Adrian Gill absolutely murders it in his Sunday Times review. The combinations he describes actually sounds quite tasty to me. Though i have the suspicion that anyone who uses the term "chinese salami" will just not get this type of food. It's like describing it as "Chinese Tapas".
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If you were cooking for me Klary at home then i wouldn't want you to torture yourself replicating restaurant-style dishes. I appreciate generosity rather than technical brilliance. I agree with petite tête de chou and would love a fantastic fruits de mer to start - lobster, oyster, langoustine, sea urchin, crab, prawns, mussels & clams. All easy to prepare the only caveat is absolute freshness. Then how about a whole roast turbot or if you don't fancy more seafood then i would be equally happy with a roast suckling pig. No cheese for me but a nice selection of petit-fours & desserts. Yum, when can i come round?
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No no, the ginger is finely minced not in big chunks. Here's a better photo of that dip in the Dinner! thread. I use a fine microplane that almost turns the ginger into a paste, mix with finely minced scallions & coriander in a 3:2:1 ratio. Add salt, mix well then pour smoking hot oil all over it (use a bigger bowl than that pictured!). Finish with light soy. Bird's eye chilli is also a welcome addition if you like a little heat. Simply the best condiment for poached chicken.
It's really straightforward to make, just make sure to finely mince everything and use plenty of smoking hot oil (not olive oil) to take the rawness out of the everything. The worst kind of ginger oil has big chunks of raw stuff in it.
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Success finally, I found three boxes of Kesar in Small Heath, but they were the only three boxes of Indian in a sea of Pakistani mangoes. Sad state of affairs indeed after five days of searching the whole city. One reason why they are so scarce could be the price, each box was £2.99! Unbelievable, when i've seen just one mango go for £1.79 in the supermarket. Hopefully things will improve next year. In the meantime just imagine the aroma in my house
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Ah now you see, I'd have thought that cooking sweetbreads for longer would make them tougher but you're saying the opposite is true. I'll try it with the batch I have in the freezer. Though I do suspect as these organs shrink as lambs or calves mature that they must be best in spring. Makes sense dunnit?! I don’t really know but i can convince myself it has the ring of truth about it.
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kbjesq ----
What are in the two little sauce dishes -- especially the one on the upper left?
I'm afraid i have to take responsibility for that meal jo-mel! The little sauce on the left is my standard ginger/scallion/coriander oil and the one on the right is just light soy with some sliced bird's eye chilli. Both of them for the chicken dish.
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Simply beautiful food and photos Pille, makes me happy to see your stuff.
Here are my breakfasts over the weekend. First up Lamb Sweetbreads, Black Pudding, Egg & Bacon. The sweetbreads this month were a little small and tough. Do they have a season and is it coming to an end?
Next was a poached duck egg, black pudding again and assorted fried mushrooms:
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Oooh where did you get your box of Kesar from? I get my mangoes from the Asian stores in Sparkhill as i grew up around there, though i live in Solihull now.
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Whoa, crab and chorizo quiche – man, that looks good.
Bruce, that quiche was even better the next day at room temp. I used quite a bit of gruyere cheese in it and the flavour seemed to develop and mature a little.
Yesterday, we had roasted monkfish with chorizo rice (ok it was a stripped down paella). I made a deep shellfish stock for the rice which was so tasty we drank the leftover straight as soup!
Today, with some of the leftover monkfish bits i did a frito misto with goats cheese, prawns and sprats. Served with a fat crouton, salad and garlicky mayo. It was a good way to clear the shrapnel in the freezer.
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Use the last one to grow some more!!!
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Inspired by recent quiches on the thread, here is a Crab & Chorizo one i cooked today:
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I've been wondering why there have been so few Alphonso mangoes available this season. An article in The Times explains why. Proof indeed, if it was ever needed, that climate change is a bad thing.
What's it like where you live? We still have lots and lots of the Pakistani "Honey" mangoes (Sindhri & Chaunsa) but the Indian ones are almost non-existent. I've seen one box of old Alphonso and i saw a Kessar once at Sainbury's (rare beast indeed).
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Curried potstickers or that that minced lamb filling you get in samosas, mmm.
Edited: whoops, you did say Western didn't you?! Western Punjab then...
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For the lobster dish I actually used some tomato sauce that i had cooked for pizza the day before!! It had cooked onion, tinned tomato, tomato purée, ketchup, garlic and dried chilli flakes all cooked down a little then blitzed. So being thrifty i decided to use this leftover sauce for the lobster dish. It didn't have any Mediterranean herbs like basil or oregano so it was quite versatile.
Drain and clean the lobsters then chop them into pieces saving the livers and tomalley. Coat the pieces in cornflour and deep fry in batches for 1 minute. Put the semi cooked pieces in a colander to drain the excess oil. In a clean wok start frying ginger, scallions, garlic (and more chilli if required) add the lobster and enough tomato sauce to coat everything. Add some soy and a little chicken stock (or water) and sizzle everything down for a few minutes. Near the end add the mashed up tomalley and liver, this should thicken very quickly, as soon as that's cooked through it's ready to dish up.
The lobsters were sprung upon me at the last minute and i was going to this dish with big king prawns. But live lobsters take precedence over frozen prawns any time
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Okay that's settled, i will cook the berries first. I'm planning to cook this over the weekend and will let you know how it goes. Thanks all.
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Chad, I think Gruzia means the there's a gap in tang hole of the handle. There shouldn't be a gap, it's just sloppy finishing. The only issue is hygiene, you can fill the gap with resin. Though the question of what kind of resin would probably be better answered in the Kitchen Consumer forum, maybe Chad will know or Bob (Octaveman)
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Thanks for the replies. Now I think having a layer of berry at the bottom would be a nice contrast to the lightness of the batter. In my mind if I use uncooked berries they would burst whilst cooking giving a nice effect against the boundary between berry and creamy batter – that’s how I imagine it anyway. Whether it would turn out like that I can’t be sure, maybe it’ll be too insulated and there will just be a layer of uncooked berries. Should I cook them out first therefore? Hmm...
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Hi folks, I’d like to adapt my usual baked NY-style cheesecake recipe to include blueberries in the bottom and wondered if anyone has any tips. Should I put the berries in whole on top of the crumb base then pour the mixture on top and bake. Or should I warm the berries through with a little icing sugar to make a semi-compote, then wait for it to cool before using. Which do you thing would give the best results?
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Peter that dish looks wonderful and slightly creepy... it reminds me of something i cooked last month!!
I've coined this dish Four Trotters and a Tail (and a load of tripe, chorizo & chickpea). Starts off unpromisingly but after a few hours the trotters and tripe have almost melted to give an amazing unctuous stew.
Fish Patties-Making Them Bind-Help
in Cooking
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Mushed prawn meat will bind anything (ok not anything). It's used in Chinese cooking a lot. You could mix with pork as in Sui Mai or with other fish and fry them as patties or stuff them into veggies. My family favourite is prawn and cod. Smashing raw prawns with the side of the cleaver is very satisfying indeed. Mixing with the fingers then slapping the mixture against the side of the bowl gives it a 'bouncey teeth' (transliteration) texture. No need for egg or breadcrumbs or other extraneous ingredients.