nickrey

Interesting questions. Consulting flavor-base (website for this resource here), the flavor profiles of limes and lemons share many aspects. It is the differences between the two that contain the source of where their varying taste affinities sit. Paraphrasing their descriptors, lemons differ from limes in being floral, mossy, waxy, fatty, and herbaceous. Limes, on the other hand, differ from lemons in being minty, pine, woody, camphorous, spicy.

Classifying food for canning involves measuring its pH. Food is classified either as low-acid (pH>5.0), medium-acid (pH 4.5–5.0), acid (pH 4.5–3.7), or high-acid (pH<3.7). For canning, one of the main concerns is Clostridium botulinum, which does not grow at pH less than 4.5. Taking the opposite view, you need to be concerned about Clostridium botulinum growing at pH levels above 4.5. For acid or high acid foods, you can use an open water canner (immersing the cans, bringing the water to boiling and leaving the temperature at this level for the recommended time). The lower acid foods you are talking about require a higher temperature than can be achieved boiling water. The only way to do this at home is to use a pressure process. This same process is used in autoclaves for sterilisation of medical equipment. You will thus need a pressure canner, or pressure cooker (which does the same thing). The times taken are determined by the nature of the food itself and the temperature used. Details of this are too complicated to put into this reply. Suffice it to say that safety requirements for low acidic foods require longer periods of exposure to high temperatures. Bear in mind that heating the foodstuff to these high temperatures will cook it at high heat, hence you could end up with a bacteria free but taste and texture spoiled product. In summary, if you want to do low acid foods, you need to be able to heat to temperatures higher than the temperature of boiling water. At home this can only be achieved in a pressure canner/pressure cooker. If the food will be spoiled for eating if heated to high temperatures, you can't really do it and be safe.

Top restaurants putting on cheap prix fixe lunches to keep the money flowing.

Egg white can be used to clarify juices but is most successful with juices such as red grape. It has been used traditionally by many makers in France to clarify wines, which are in essence fermented grape juice. Orange juice is not particularly stable and much of the flavour resides in the pulp so I'd suspect it would not be a good candidate for this process. That is, it would go clear but may lose much of its orange flavour.

Isomalt is a sugar derivative without some of the bad effects of sugar. Of course like many sugar substitutes, it has its own problems such as causing flatulence and diarrhea if eaten in large quantities. It is used in food sculpting in preference to sugar because it doesn't crystalize, which makes it easier to shape. Typically, tuiles are made with sugar so if you can't get isomalt you can substitute sugar (equal in volume to the isomalt), you just need to work faster and cook more carefully as a glucose/sugar mix will also caramelize significantly more than the glucose/isomalt mix.

Just a simple omelette. This one had cheese, tomato, onion, and ham as a filling. It was served with home-made savoury bacon and toast from home-made bread (the latter two not in picture). Thought I'd post this because the fold looked good and it's hard to do well

Sweet Treats Cafe Delicious Decadence Chocolate Box Cafe?

If you're concerned about using ball bearings and want to save money, use the old standby of (uncooked) rice in water and detergent. Swirl it around and you'll clean away the stains.

You could start at the Scotch Whisky Research Institute website. They only give a small bit of information on the website but the most benefit derives from the categorisations that they use for different areas of research into whisky. As you will see, the list that you give in your statement of being interested in everything about whisky misses some of the key research areas. So I'm sure that the site will help you to both broaden and focus your investigations. As a PhD perceptual psychologist, my scientific interest tends to sit in what they term the "sensory services," which links science to flavour; after all, once you get over the techniques of distilling this is where the fun is. I remember being very amused to read an article in Applied Statistics in 1994 by two Canadian researchers titled "A Classification of Pure Malt Scotch Whiskies." They used multivariate techniques to analyse taste profiles, create clusters of whiskies, and determine which whisky was most typical of each group. Any researcher who can get funding to pursue a passion is alright in my books! More recently some researchers have been exploring neural network models to model this issue. Hope the search for science goes well but my suspicion is that making whisky is about 10% science and 90% art. Don't neglect that side and taste some whisky on the way

My wife, god bless her, had a business trip to the UK. Foregoing the temptation to eat at the Fat Duck, she had lunch instead at Heston Blumenthal's gastro-pub, The Hind's Head. She got the meal, I got the picture of the triple cooked chips. Thought I'd share the joy. Yes, one has a bite out of it to show the centre.

I love making fresh bread at home but for various reasons need to make it low GI. The commercial bread mixes available here don't fit the bill so I'm going to have to create my own mix. Does anyone have a good, low GI, bread mix recipe? Thanks

With all due respect to Australia's pizza community -- whose hospitality I hope someday to enjoy -- a quick glance at the America's Plate websitesuggests that the America's Plate honorees do not specialize in the "American pie" Richman finds superior. Not to mention the fact that a cook or two able to churn out overdecorated yupppie pizzas ("squash cream made with buffalo milk ricotta and topped with buffalo milk smoked mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and zucchini flowers filled with zucchini, gorgonzola, fontina and mascarpone cheese") does not necessarily indicate a broader culture of quality pizza. Or are we seriously suggesting that China and the Czech Republic are now global contenders? ← Perhaps they should call it the "World's Plate." If you're ever over here, I'll shout pizza

I suspect it was put there to cause controversy but the statement in the article that the best pizza on earth is made in the USA tends to be unsupported by the America's Plate Award for best pizza, which in recent years has gone to: Italy France Spain Australia (twice) Notice any country conspicuous by its absence?

This is the traditional method for making crispy skin chicken. You bring the water plus aromatics to the boil and then place the chicken in it long enough to blanch. The chicken is then dried for at least an hour (traditionally on a rack near a window or hanging, but I'm sure a rack in the fridge would be more than adequate). The chicken is then deep fried. I suppose the question is would this work as effectively with roasting. My assumption would be that yes it would as the blanching allows for removal of fats as well as providing a medium for the heat to crisp the skin. For interest's sake, you can use a very similar procedure to make excellent crackling on roast pork without resorting to large amounts of salt. This is done by pouring boiling water over the skin before putting it in a high heat oven.

This technique was shown as part of the Australian Masterchef series. Click on the poached egg salad masterclass recipe video in this link to get some professional tips on how to do this to get the best result.

They certainly are good looking Oggies.

I must confess to a cheat when boiling eggs. Simply slip the Burton egg-perfect egg timer in with the eggs in the water, watch it gradually change colour and take the eggs out when the indicator reaches the desired level of doneness. Some of the reviews on Amazon talk about a plasticky taste in the eggs when using the product but I've never experienced this. Someone also commented that it doesn't work at high altitudes so it may not suit if you live in the mountains.

Australian? Figures; it's to stop the bottle being used as a weapon later in the evening

I've never seen or heard of bitter eggplants, either. In Japan, it is a common practice to soak eggplants in cold water for "aku nuki" (lit. harshness removal) after cutting. ← I'm assuming you're not getting the ginourmous eggplants that we get in the US. I assume you're getting the long slender " japanese eggplants". ← We get both here in Australia and neither are really bitter; go figure.

Lycopene, it occurs in cooked tomatoes.

I must add when I tasted the sauce, I did think it would be very good with gnocchi but yesterday's sauce was destined for spaghetti. My most simple spaghetti sauce consists of very finely diced garlic (a little only and I tend not to use it much in tomato pasta sauces), butter, and salt. For a very simple tomato-based sauce I use olive oil as a cooking medium and a sofritto of very finely diced onion (softened, not browned) followed by very finely diced carrot and celery (again softened). The fine dice is very important as it not only releases more flavour but also clings to the pasta when it is cooked -- I'm talking around 3mm dice. Then add the canned tomatoes including the juice. The sauce is then cooked at a medium heat until the tomatoes break down. It is approaching being cooked when the whole mass starts spitting tomato upwards (sort of like a bubbling tomato volcano and note this is on medium heat, not high); this continues for a while as the caramelisation progresses. To serve I add chopped fresh basil (if using dried, I'd add them earlier). The tasting then occurs in which salt, pepper, and sometimes a small drop of balsamic is added to achieve balance. For a normal sized can of tomatoes, I'd used half a medium sized onion, half a medium sized carrot and an amount of celery equalling the amount of carrot. That's it, it takes around 40 minutes beginning to end. edited to add quantities.

on ps, my mistake, sorry. No offence taken at all. I just felt the discussion was closing off when it needed to be open. Seems to have had the desired effect.

Well we know it's not water soluble as we rinse our products off in water. Sodium alginate is also a compound in Gaviscon, which creates a raft of material stopping acid from causing reflux. My bet is that it won't dissolve in an acid. Sodium alginate is extracted from seaweed by the application of an alkali, normally sodium carbonate which makes it water soluble. The alginate gel seems to have done what fat does when blocking pipes and has become caught on the rough surfaces of your pipes, hence the blockage. We can leave it to the chemists to tell you what to do and there are a number who read and respond to the forums. But why not try an experiment (carefully)? Try using some alginate solution that you have solidified in calcium chloride. This is likely to be the solid that is jamming up your pipes. Next take a strong alkali (Drano is an alkali, look for sodium carbonate or the like on the label) and add it to the solidifed mass (carefully, a bit at a time, and wearing protective clothing and safety goggles). If the mass dissolves, which is likely, you have the way of cleaning your drains. If not, wait for the chemists to respond or call a plumber and they will use one of those drain cleaning attachments that will physically clear the blockage. Good luck.

Dear Erin, Thank you for your concern that I am missing out on the wonderful sauce. First I should add that I used around four tbsp of Lurpak and used the cooking time that Sam gave in his original blog. The assumption that there must be something wrong with the way that I cooked it is one assumption that could be made. Those who have seen my cooking posts may not come to that conclusion. The other conclusion is that not everyone sees this as the tomato sauce to end all tomato sauces. Does it taste of tomatoes? Yes. Does it have a nice mouth feel? Yes. Is it simple? Yes. Is it a "wow" sauce for me? No, sorry.

Reading through this thread, I thought this is it: the uber tomato sauce. Prior to cooking anything, I always do a mental combination of flavours. Let me see: tomato, sweet and acidic; onion, some subtle bite adding a dimension but not necessarily sweet as it wouldn't have time to change in this way. Salt, which is a flavour intensifier. Butter to give mouth feel and depth as well as a gloss on the sauce. So far so good, but where are the extra flavour notes: the heat from a bit of chili, the sweetness and texture of carrots, the bite of celery, the roundess and olfaction of herbs? These are elements of a tomato based sauce with complexity. But we have a recipe from the temple of Hazan. So I decided to try it. Well, the flavour matched exactly what I thought it would be. To venture an opinion, however, it is pretty bland. Perhaps the code word for this should be subtle and I'm sure I'll come under fire for this but it was not to my taste. To save it slightly after the recommended twenty minute cooking period, I fired the heat up and worked to caremalise the sauce. This worked to some extent and added an additional layer of sweetness but still it was not what I'd consider to be a "wow" sauce. It is a pity that the strong advocacy of this sauce so early in this topic has almost shut the thread down. I'd really like to see what others have to offer. Hang in there project, yours is the next one I'm going to try, Please let me and others know about what moves you in a pasta sauce. It may not fit into the canon of sublimely simple recipes. However, as someone who sees sense in Heston Blumenthal's introduction of ingredients at different times during the cooking process to add novel flavour notes, I'm not sure that this will be a bad thing.