TheSwede

Thanks for your input! I have some pink salt that I'm going to use for curing. If cooking, to what temperature?

I have half a lobe of foie gras that I plan to turn into a mini terrine. However I'm debating with myself if the terrine should be cooked (in a water bath of course) or not. My foie gras supplier told me to just de-vein the lobe, warm the foie gras sous vide style to 37C/100F, season and press into the terrine mould. Marco Pierre White (in Wild Food from Land and Sea) basically says the same, although he marinates the foie gras in white port and armagnac and puts it briefly in the oven to reach a "blood warm" temperature. Harold McGee on the other hand definitely speaks of cooking terrines (and tourchons of course). Does anyone have any insights?

Finishing with a knob of cold butter (after removing the pot from the flames, just before serving) does wonder for that type of sauce. It rounds out the flavour very nicely, takes the edge of the acid, thickens it a bit and gives a nice sheen. If you want to go the bullet proof route, thicken the sauce with a little starch (corn starch or arrow root mixed in some cold water) before whisking in the butter. Otherwise the sauce might bleed some butter fat. But it probably will be fine without the starch, especially if the base is gelatinous stock.

The standard durum flour I get here in Sweden has the same texture/graininess as ordinary flour, but it has a distinct pale yellow color.

I usually use durum flour. It will give your pasta a very nice texure but perhaps a little bit too much bite resistance. I think my next batch will have 70-80% durum and the rest AP. I always use a hand cranked pasta machine. If you have a machine and done it once or twice before, there is no problem to make a batch of pasta from start to finish in 30 minutes.

Have you tried asked your local poultry dealer for chicken carcasses? The place where I usually shop when I'm going to do some fancy cooking sells them very cheap. If he has too few in store I top up with chicken wings and perhaps some feet. First I cut all the bones into smaller pieces with a heavy kithen scissor. Then sometimes I brown the bones and veggies before cooking, sometimes not. Lastly simmer for perhaps three hours. The freeze/thaw/filter method will produce very clear stock, but it will remove all the gelatin and reduce your yield quite a bit. I think skimming and straining is enough, unless you are going to serve the perfect consommé. I've never tried the raft method for clarification, but that is the traditional way of doing it (ground meat, egg whites are added to the stock, stock is simmered, impurities form a raft which is skimmed off, clears the stock while retaining flavour).

Thanks. Too much time in the blender I guess.

I did the truffle infused custard with black truffle ragout tonight, although I switched the truffle ragout for a mushroom ragout (minced white mushrooms sweated in butter, chicken stock added, reduced and then seasoned with a little sherry vinegar, salt, papper, dash of truffle oil added before serving) and didn't do the chive potato crisps. It was very nice. However, I wonder about the texture of the result. Are you supposed to end up with a creme brulée texture (shiny and sort of firm), creamy or (like mine) more of a fluffy texture? Fluffy doesn't feel right. I did cook in a bain marie (although on the stovetop) and my dish definitely didn't break (hey, it was good!). Maybe I had too much air left in the custard base? It rested for an hour in fridge befored I started cooking it, but there might still have been a lot of air left.

I've read somewhere that Angostura is a common tableside condiment in South America. I have a bottle at home for making Manhattans (excellent classic drink btw). I will have to try it in some food too.

The pork belly (as well as two duck legs) is confiting right now. I checked a couple of sources for temperatures and times and they vary videly. The 190F/10 hours was from the Bouchon receipe for duck confit. Fergus Henderson in The Whole Beast says 325F for 2.5 hours for pork belly and about the same for duck legs. Of course higher temperature will mean shorter cooking time, but I wonder about he effect of confiting below or above the boiling point of water. I'm currently doing the low temperature version. Edit, after action report: I stopped the confiting after six hours when I thought the pork was tender enough. Very soft and succulent. Not much salt in the taste (easily added at eating time though) so I will probably go for a salt rub instead of brine next time. The result is now resting in duck fat in the fridge. It will be interesting to see how the taste develops over the next few weeks.

For easy peeling, put the newly boiled eggs in cold water for 10 minutes or so. The easiest way is to discard as much of the hot water as you can and then put the pot under the tap and let the water run until it stays cold.

Oh, I have "Charcuterie" on order! Should arrive any day now. Cured meat is gods gift to mankind.

begpie, I have have on occasions burned off the alcohol in a red wine marinade as per the French Laundry cookbook but today I was more in the mode of "if it is good enough for french bistro cooking it is good enough for me" and just poured the wine on the meat/veggies. The inspiration for the confited pork belly was a resturant dish I had a week ago (resturant "Landet" in Stockholm) which consisted of some cut of tender beef together with pork belly confit, foie gras terrine and a tradional red wine/stock reduction. Their pork belly was a little bit too salty but had very nice texture and taste. It was not done with a crunchy skin, rather the confit had almost custard like texture. I liked the idea of serving confited pork in a nice cut rather than a rilette "mush". I love rilettes, but presentation wise the cut is a winner on the plate. I will report back tomorrow evening on the end result. Death or glory!

Hi all! I'm new here. I'm an amateur cook from Stockholm, Sweden, sometimes with ideas far loftier than my skills. My current project: I'm doing pork belly confit. I have some slabs of pork belly brining in the fridge right now in a standard sugar/salt brine. Tomorrow I'm planning on slowly confiting them in duck fat. I don't want a rilette type end result, rather I'm after whole confited pieces. After maturing in duck fat in the fridge for a week or two, the confit could be carved, heated and served with...puy lentils perhaps. I could have gotten pork fat instead of duck fat (cheaper!) but it was just too easy to grab a big can of duck fat when I visited my lokal market yesterday. I've never done this type of confit before (but I have done rilettes). Anything I should think of? Temperature? Cooking time? For duck confit I've seen 190F/90C oven for up to 10-12 hours and I'm assuming the same will apply for my pork. (I also have a big chunk of tough cow marinating in red wine and and the usual aromatics in the fridge. I'm planning on braising it in it's own juices in an aluminium foil packet.)