nickrey

Nice looking food.

They partially froze it.

When visiting Woodstock winery once, they let us taste some Rose slushie that they had made. It works a dream and is very refreshing.

Given your needs, I'd do French Press as well. I'd recommend bringing water to the boil then adding a bit of cold to it to take it off the boil. Then pour water over coffee. Next stir gently to extract flavour (some do, some don't but given your preference in coffee, you will probably enjoy this better). Press, then serve. Easy, no froth, bubble, or expensive gizmos.

Newspaper journalists and many other commentators will take a small foible, exaggerate it, and talk about their extreme reaction to it. This is a standard practice to get people talking. It also tends to polarise people either in support of (those who agree) or against the author (those who disagree). Seems Jay Rayner has done his job well.

I've seen pictures of your food Keith, you are too modest.

It was cooked sous vide.

Oops, typo. It was a prawn terrine. The prawn was finely chopped and then bound with transglutaminase. Cooked sous vide.

Dinner party for six. Started with appetisers of squid terrine with romesco sauce, arancini balls, and chorizo stuffed squid. Appetiser of foie gras cappuccino verrine toppped with enoki mushroom bird's nest cradling quail egg. Soup was strawberry gapacho. Main of poached zucchini salmon with saffron nage and stuffed zucchini flowers. Dessert of vanilla panna cotta with cherries drizzled with saba. The soup and salmon were from Daniel Humm's new cookbook Eleven Madison Park.

I just deveined some large, relatively freshly caught prawns this morning and had the same thing. In my experience, it always occurs in high quality product. Let's just say that finding this means that you've got the equivalent of free range rather than battery prawns. Relax and enjoy the taste.

I freeze left over ragu and it seems to survive remarkably well, making a very quick and easy weekday evening meal over some freshly cooked pasta.

I love Laphroaig, hospital bandages smell and all. Currently I've got a Triple Wood, a Quarter cask, a Cairdeas and a 20-year old single cask bottling from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society that they have poetically called "The Dark Edge of Saturn."

Stacked smoked salmon frittata with horseradish creme fraiche. Served with fennel, orange, rocket, and pine nut salad.

I have a bottomless that I used only every so often because of this problem. Since adopting the new method, no channels.

Prior to this, I filled basket then levelled in four different directions to even up the fill. Then straight down tamp and spin and clean off edges of basket before putting on machine. The missing piece was the nutating motion. You must have been either taught well or discovered it by yourself because I have not seen baristas here doing that type of tamping and since looking it up it seems to appear only on coffee-obsessed web sites.

Wasn't standard for me prior to a few days ago.

My daughter, who estimates that she has made well over 100,000 coffees at work, showed me a new tamping method last weekend. Basically, you dose the basket as usual and then do a normal straight tamp (doesn't need to be high pressure). You then roll the edge of the tamper around the inside lip of the basket - I looked it up and this is called a nutating motion (think how a coin rolls around its edge before it settles flat). Then polish the top with a rotating tamp motion, brush off any residue, and start the pour. It seems to give a nice even pour, good crema and, if you drink ristretto, seems to accentuate the sweeter notes. It's also fixed a problem that I was having with uneven extractions (more coffee coming out of one spout than the other). Interested to see if anyone else uses this or if you have a method that gives you a good result.

For it to be effective, you'd have to have a matrix of ingredient x cooking technique x time x temperature. Sounds complex.

I've got two 2mm Mauviel saucepans and one frypan of the same thickness and find them perfectly suited to my needs. They are light and highly conductive of heat, which is the main advantage of using this type of cookware. If I want to cook something using a different approach that requires thick cookware, I'll use my Staub cast iron.

Looked fine to me too. If it were a restaurant-presentation dish, however, I'd trim it to make it more even. The comment is probably related to the skin coverage of the fillet. I'm not necessarily sure that it is a problem of the filleting but rather an interaction between the filleted fish and the cooking process.

At one of Melbourne's top Spanish restaurants, Movida Aqui, they grill the oiled sardines from the tin over a charcoal fire for a few minutes each side and serve them with fresh curd, chives, and a slow cooked egg.

Around 150 million years apparently.

I've never subscribed to the grandmother principle. Everything I recommend is done for a specific reason. Adding ingredients at different times means that they will cook differently and have a different impact on the taste. You add cream or butter to a dish as a finishing element after it has finished its key cooking, otherwise it splits. Same thing applies to vinegar, which loses its volatility and the sourness that you want it to achieve if you cook it. You can cook and reduce cream, which I do in one of my pepper sauces. This reduces and caramelises to provide a counterpoint to the heat of the pepper. But I'd never do this in a Bolognese as it would detract from the meat profile with an unnecessary sweetness.

As you imply, "liking whisky" is likely to be different from appreciating some of the more complex single malts. I'd try a Glenmorangie Original, which is probably the easiest transition from the blends you mentioned into the world of single malts: sweet, smooth and light (because of the height of the stills).

If you are using milk, add it early and cook it off. If you are using cream, add it at the last minute to enrichen the sauce.