nickrey

Strangely Dave, that's what I thought many of us were saying. It's just that you need to use appropriate amounts of salt to make it safe. Any drop in the salt levels and you'll need to can or freeze the confit.

The boiling point of alcohol is 79C, of water 100C. It seems easy: boil the mixture and it goes away. Unfortunately, this is very wrong. Check out this document from the USDA. Retention codes 5001 to 5010 look at % retention of alcohol across different cooking methods. Basically flaming it leaves behind a massive 75% of the alcohol, simmering it for 1 1/2 hours leaves 20% of the alcohol, and so on. It takes two and a half hours of simmering to remove 95% of the alcohol. Bottom line, you will have to cook for a very long time to remove all the alcohol. At a simmer, which is below boiling and should have less effect on your mirin and minimise water loss, it will take around 2.5 hours to remove 95% of the alcohol. Hope this works for you.

The vapour coming off that water when he puts the scallops in suggests to me that the water bath is much hotter than 55 degrees. I suspect what he's done is used a higher cooking temperature and uses his probe thermometer measuring actual meat temperature to choose when to take the meat out. Also looking at the colour grading of the beef when he cuts it, it is much better cooked on the outer layer than in the middle. This again says cooked in a higher temperature bath.

Confit is a method that was created to preserve meat. If you follow traditional methods of brining, cooking, and storing covered in fat, it should last around six months in a dry, cool place. If you want it to last longer or wish to reduce the salt content, you will need to pressure can it.

Great stuff Chris, looking forward to the rest of the week.

And now for the next method. Heston Blumenthal went through his recommendation on his new show (How to cook like Heston). His method? Invert a plate in your saucepan so the egg never touches the bottom of the pan. Drain membrane by putting cracked egg on slotted skimmer. Heat water to 80C (176 F) and hold it at this temperature. Add egg. Leave cooking in water for four minutes. Remove, serve. Perfect white, perfect runny yolk.

I'm tending towards Chris as well. Just waiting for the shot of pure malt whisky.

It sure does look like Vegemite. The bits at the front look like dried ginger or galangal and the availability of such a wide ethnic range of produce seems Australian as well.

I believe your roommate is never going to move out!

They're starting to build in popularity in Australia, perhaps they've emigrated.

My Danish-made Scanpan does 4-5 psi with the low pressure valve and 15-17 psi with the high pressure valve. This may be a bit too much of a sweeping generalisation to be of use.

Love the picture ScottyBoy. Think I'll take a picture...cook cook...that looks good...eat eat...damn, forgot the picture...oh well at least there's some green there as a garnish...

My bet is that it's rice paddy herb, which has a cumin like taste but is nothing like cumin, which is quite feathery in appearance. Try checking out Vietnamese cooking sites to see how to use it.

This dish is basically layers of salt and chili accompanied by olive flavours and umami from the tomatoes. Using anchovies gives a fishy, umami and salty layer that complements other components of the dish. Marmite is salty and has even more umami than anchovies so it may fit in with the dish. My suggestion would be to make some without anchovies, which is quite acceptable to serve as many versions of this sauce don't use anchovies at all. Put a bit aside and add marmite a little bit at a time and check the flavour profile. It may work as it shares many of the characters of anchovies but it also contains some additional ones that may not go. Worth a try.

A lot of the cheaper induction cookers seem to have a smallish range of fixed temperature settings. With the one you referred to, for example, the website says that they have twelve fixed keep warm settings 100-120-140-160-180-190-210-230-250-280-300-350-390°F. Of these, I'd probably only use the 140F and 160F for sous vide cooking and only then if it could hold the temperatures stable. My feeling is that the induction cookers are far better at keeping consistent cooking temperatures than is a gas burner but they would be far less consistent than dedicated sous vide cookers. I'd possibly use one of these in preference to a hotplate for emergency sous vide but wouldn't use it as a matter of course.

I've also used a probe thermometer for this purpose. Found out my oven thermostat under reads.

I am an Australian. I wonder how can an aussie not have tried vegemite? And to add further insult to injury, to suggest that star anise...... to 'spag bol'..... I am in shock. Maybe with the 26th of January around the corner, you might consider lashing out a little, and head for a jar of Vegemite from your local grocer, rather than the imported jars of other condiments from Jones the Grocer or Simon Johnson. Happy Australia Day (26th January), and long live the 'mites' in all their glorious forms. Joel As a flavour booster in cooking, which I thought was the subject of the post. I have it almost every morning on toast for breakfast.

If the texture is as you said and you are having problems with pita, try some of the indian flatbread recipes such as chapatis or naan.

This is exactly the same dough that is used in making focaccia.

David Thompson recommends brisket or cheek with long, slow cooking.

As (a somewhat relevant aside) when I was younger and a regular at a bar when the noise got too loud, they'd go over to the dimmers and dip the lights slightly. This resulted in an audible drop in volume in the bar. Seems we whisper when it gets dark. You may find this useful if you want to manipulate this effect.

I always treat recipes as a guide rather than a straight jacket. Likelihood is that the chef grabs a handful of this and a handful of that and then adjusts to taste anyway. This leads me to distrust any amounts given as they are probably only best guesstimates based on an intuitive reduction of quantities for the home chef. To add to Shalmanese's point, a lot will depend on the size of the cooking vessel as well. It pays to think about the effect that the author is trying to achieve (are the spices toasted to give a more robust flavour, is the sugar caramelised, is it fried or stewed, etc) because all these factors are going to have an effect on the taste. Also bear in mind that commercial ranges put out an incredible amount of heat that you are unlikely to achieve on a home cooktop anyway: you may not easily be able to reproduce their flavours at home with the equipment you have. If you can, experiment with preparing different amounts of the spices/ingredients involved, cook them to different levels of doneness, then combine and experiment. Eventually you will be able to mentally combine ingredients and their flavour profiles in your head. Admittedly, this is a highly analytical process but ironically it is the only way that you will get to be a truly intuitive cook. And to qoute every David Thompson trained-chef I've ever talked to: taste and adjust; the balance should be sweet sour, salty, hot with none shouting out louder than the others. It's the goldilocks principle of cooking.

I subscribe to the notion that "cheap" wine or sherry serves tends to have lesser flavour and is typically used more as an alcohol delivery device. In cooking you are going to, mostly, be removing the alcohol. All that you are left with is the flavour. My recommendation would be to stay away from anything that has obvious flavour faults such as being corked, containing sulfides, etc. I wouldn't use anything in cooking that I wouldn't drink outside cooking: it wouldn't be my preferred tipple but at least I know the flavour is something that will add to the dish. It should be emphasised that unlike winemakers, you have free scope to add other components such as sugar, salt, and acids that can do a lot to correct the base flavour of the wine/sherry. You could thus take a sherry that is slightly too sweet for normal consumption and us it as both flavour component and a form of sweetness; similarly, you could take a too acidic wine and add it towards the end of cooking as you would a vinegar. If you're into sherry flavour have you considered sherry vinegar? It gives the complex flavour plus an acid burst that really brightens up dishes when added at the end of cooking.

In my local experience it is quite often the more expensive "organic" or "free range" chickens that often go unsold and are price-reduced. This is typically where I get the raw ingredients for my chicken stocks. After all, if they're going to be pressure cooked to extract any last vestige of flavour they're going to be safe, plus you get the added advantage of real chicken taste.

It has multimedia embedded Mark. You not only read the words but also have the benefit of accessing videos of techniques, In the early sections, such as on food safety; meat, poultry, and game identification; etc it also has quizzes so you can test your knowledge.