TheSwede

Making Salsiccia? I realise salsiccia is a generic italian word for sausage, but when I buy it here, it refers to short chubby fresh pork sausages. Usually unflavoured, but sometimes flavoured with porcini or truffle. The fat content is quite high and they have a wonderful porky taste and a coarse and firm texture when cooked. I'm guessing there is only pork, salt and perhaps extra fat in the filling, but I don't really know. Does anyone know more? Pointers to a recipe? Is there a similar sausage in the book?

Interesting. Does he explain why it works? ← He certainly does. But I'm not biochemist enough to quote him on the top of my head. Will look it up when I'm in front of my home computer next time.

Would a liquer work for flavouring "solid" chocolate (ie. not a ganache) without making it grainy or too soft? Because then we are onto something, a liquer beeing essentially a alcohol/water/sugar solution.

Just started rereading Molecular Gastronomy by Hervé This. He says that just "a pinch" of flour in your creme anglaise will stop curdling and will even allow boiling without any problem.

Just an idea: Could you use alcohol extracts to get a fruit flavour into solid chocolate? Infuse berries/fruits in alcohol, then distill (perhaps by freeze distillation) to get rid of most of the water.

Ideas In Food is a good place for that kind of stuff: http://ideasinfood.typepad.com/

Thanks. Too much time in the blender I guess. ← Redid the truffle infused custard with black truffle ragout this weekend (with real black truffles this time). Now I got the texture perfect, exactly like creme brulee. The custart base rested for several hours in the fridge and I skimmed of any trace of foam before using.

I belive most German wine producing regions also produce sweet and semi sweet wines. In particular "Trockebärenauslese" (dry berry vintage would perhaps be a litteral translation) is a German version of the French Sauternes which are made on grapes infested with botrytis mould. You find those frome Rhine districts. However since it is obvious that you want to up the alcohol content here for the extraction, a semi sweet wine might be the best since generally the higher the sugar content the lower the alcohol. (Sorry for going OT here...)

That is pretty cool! It is actually a quick freeze distillation to get higher alcohol content for the extraction liquid. The salt is used to lower the temperature of the melting ice, like in old ice cream machines.

I used diced pork rind (and shredded oven baked pork belly, ginger, some soy?) as a filling for duck leg roulades. There was no particular though behind that but rather what I had at hand. Worked great though, the pork rind melted and gave a nice taste/texture to the filling. Duck leg roulades: Debone a duck leg (tricky to do without holes!). Wrap around filling. Wrap tightly in cling film in a sausage shape, twist ends hard, tie off. Poach in water, cool. When serving, saute the whole roulade (without cling film! ) and then slice on the bias as a garniture for something other duck-ish or as a course on it's own.

I recently went out and bought an ISI whip too. Played around with it during the weekend. I made a chorizo créme with potato foam (foam recipe in PDF above) and also a Créme Catalan foam (recipe in The Cook's book, maybe in the PDF too?) Here is my chorizo créme with potato foam (cell phone photo, colors are off):

Thanks for the advice! I've found myself suddenly doing a couple of Creme Anglaise -ish sauces the last couple of days (a few ice cream bases and a Créme Catalan foam ala el Bulli) and I belive I'm starting to get the hang of it. I still do it the careful way though, low heat, long time and digital thermometer.

When making a Creme Anglaise and similar egg/milk/cream based sauces, the heating phase is obviously the critical. You heat slowly, stir, stir stir (to avoid sticking and burning in the bottom of the pan) and wait for the magical thickening to happen. Once it happens (is it thick enough?) you need to remove from the heat to avoid boiling. This is actually quite tedious! You definitely need to devote your full attention to the process, it takes some time and a mistake can ruin the whole process. Straining the sauce afterwards is an easy way to remove small misstakes (ie particles from coagulation in the bottom of the pan). Since I'm quite inexperienced I also use a digital thermometer to avoid overheating (80C/176F seems to be the magical temperature). Does anyone has any other tricks or shortcuts to make the process any easier?

There is good preserved black truffle out there. Otherwise we would only be eating black truffle when it was in season. The problem is separating the good product from the masses of bad products, imitations and outright frauds.

An update on Matthias Dahlgren: The dining room was reviewed today in Dagens Nyheter, Swedens largest newspaper. They gave it a 10 out of 10, a grade they have never given any resturant before!

Truffles are expensive, but when you buy them in small jars packed by "gourmet" food companies they tend to so expenisve it is almost silly. Add to that companies that try to pass of summer truffles (Tuber Aestivum Vitt) or Bourgogne Truffles (Tuber Brumale or is it Uncinatum?) as real black (winter/perigord) truffles (Tuber Melansporum). Or companies that sell substandard products that smell yeasty or doesn't taste anything. Unfortunately, I've had dealings with most of the above. It is a (truffle) jungle out there! So, has anyone good experience with an online retailer (preferably in Europe) that is reliable and reasonably priced (which means expensive but not silly expensive)? Feel free to add your own truffle misfortunes here... Edit: When Googling around in preparation for the post, I found this company: Truffles They seem alright and their prices seems pretty ok (assumed they are in Euros - their french homepage give the same prices).

I just made soy "caviar" just for fun, boiled pearls infused in little japanese soy, rice vinegar and a pinch of sugar. Drain well just before plating. Beautiful light brown color - easily mistaken for some sort of fish roe. I think it would work great with a slice of raw tuna. Another use for tapioca pearls is of course Thomas Keller's "Oysters and Pearls": Oysters and Pearls

The classic way is to store it in a thermos flask/container, although there are probably some food poisoning aspects if you store it too long. Otherwise you can put your sauce pot over another pot containing boiling water and whisk. Note that you want the steam to heat your sauce pot, it shouldn't touch the boiling water. That will gently reheat the sauce and hopefully (no guarantees..) prevent it from splitting. Check the temperature frequently, you want body temperature, not much more. Someone with experience from resturant kitchens will hopefully come in here and tell us how it is really done.

Isn't that a dishwasher's jacket? If that is the case then it is either studied anti-snobism (the dishwasher being notionally lowest in the kitchen hierarchy) or actually a habit that has stuck.

I made my terrine during the weekend and it turned out very good. This is what I did: Marinated foie overnight in fridge in a plastic bag with cognac, white port and "nitrite salt" (salt with 0.5% sodium nitrite - we don't have your pink salt over here). Brought to room temperature. De-veined, cleaned. Put back into the same plastic bag with marinade, into 45 C (113 F) water bath until completely soft (5-10 mins?). Discarded marinade. Put foie into clingfilm lined mould. Pressed overnight in fridge. I'm very happy with the result. Good texture. Nice subtle flavours from the marinade. Beautiful light pink/yellow color with no gray oxidization. I'm pretty sure I wont be buying anything but raw foie in the future. Since it is so easy to make a very versatile terrine (better than most store bought) and the price for raw foie is approximately half of any processed variant there really isn't any reason.

I had dinner at Bon Lloc a very long time ago when they were in their old venue in Kungsholmen. That was good, but nothing near what he does today (but I believe BL got more sophisticated when they moved the restaurant downtown). I'm guessing he is now shooting for two Michelin stars. BTW, if anyone is coming to Stockholm feel free to PM me for information. I'm in no way an expert on restaurants in Stockholm or elsewhere, but I try to keep reasonably up to date with what is happening.

I recently had dinner at F12 and Matthias Dahlgren (the dining room), same week wednesday and friday. Full tasting menus etc. While F12 is good (eaten there quite a lot of times), MD is fantastic. I didn't take notes, photos etc so I won't even attempt doing real reviews. However, MD served what probably is the best fine dining meal I've had in my life. BTW, Mistral is closing its doors 22nd of December. I don't think it is lack of success, rather the strain of running a top "boutique resturant" with a very small staff.

You can make your own baccalau. Not that I have tried, but the receipes in eg Charcuterie or Fergus Hendersons book doesn't look too complicated.

Or you could pickle them as in the The French Laundry Cookbook. But maybe that was the wrong kind of preservation. (Actually, I don't even know if that pickling is strong enough to work as a preservation or if it more is a kind of flavouring.)

For "real" cooking I was thinking of a bain marie with the terrine mould. I was wondering what internal temp I should be looking for to get the foie to set. The sous vide I was referring too was just for heating the foi gras to 37C/100F for curing and easy moulding if I would go the "raw" route. Not that I have any real sous vide equipment - was just thinking of immersing a food safe plastic bag with the foie, spices etc inside in a approx 37C water bath.