nickrey

Sam I love that phraseology. Sauce is a condiment for pasta not the central part of the meal as so many people think.

They seem to be a conventional European approach to an Asian cooking utensil: good production but they so don't understand the concept. The use of very thin carbonised steel or cast iron is so that heat conductance is at a maximum. As we all know, stainless steel is a relatively poor conductor of heat, which is why aluminium or copper sheets are used in the bottom of saucepans. You are right to ask whether the woks have aluminium bottoms but even then the conductance is reduced over traditional equipment. While I'm having a rant about this, let's have a look at "non-stick" woks. Wok cooking is meant to occur at extremely high temperatures. Non-stick coatings break down at extremely high temperatures. Why oh why would you use these on a wok? Get the carbonised steel or cast iron wok and season it well: I always do mine over extremely high heat that reduces the oil to a black goo that bakes on the wok -- this is the non-stick surface that is so prized in wok cookery. It is likely to go against your instincts but black is the best. After doing this, do not ever wash it with soap and make sure you re-season it similarly to how you would treat cast iron cookware. To season, heat to very high then put a thin layer of oil in. Be careful about this as the oil will ignite readily if it goes anywhere near the flame. Let the oil bake in and then repeat several times until the surface is black.

If you can use soy lecithin or similar to create foams in other things, why not to "foam" cream?

Great uses for it but it really makes it sort of a half spherical electric frypan rather than a wok.

Just to complicate matters a bit more... I know there can be seasonal variation with milk used for making froth for coffees. This is due to variances in fat, protein, and mineral concentrations. In your neck of the woods, they are likely to use grain feed during winter and then change to pasture feed in spring, leading to large variances in composition. What you may have had is cream that had poorer properties for whipping than normal because of seasonal variances. Add to this the leaving in the car episode, which would accentuate the effect, and hence floppy whip.

Depends on what you want you want to do with it. This is a mother base for many Italian tomato sauces. If I were cooking it, I'd add the olives and anchovies earlier so they could meld with the other flavours whilst cooking. Equally, being an adherent of sweet, sour, salty, hot mixes, I'd also add a bit of sugar and some chili (not enough to overwhelm, just enough to add a bit of heat). For an easy, satisfying, sauce for pasta add some olives, chili, some rinsed salted capers, anchovies and some drained canned salmon or tuna. At the end of cooking, which is really what you wanted to know about, add pesto and balsamic vinegar (these shouldn't be added earlier). This gives a more complex notes to a simple sauce. If you want an umami hit, you really can't go past a few teaspoons of powdered, dried mushrooms such as porcini powder or, as I use because it's cheaper, home ground dried shiitake mushrooms.

Finally did a topside roast last night. It cooked for 27 hours at 56C (133F). The meat was seasoned prior to vacuum sealing and seared on a very hot cast iron skillet after cooking. To make the sauce, I heated the juices from the bag, straining off the resultant coagulated portion. Then added a small amount of grated horseradish, sherry vinegar, a ladle full of chicken stock, reduced it, adjusted seasoning and then liaised with some butter. The meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender. This dish is definitely going on the dinner party cooking list.

The problem with electric stove tops is similar to that seen with commercial household gas rings; they do not get hot enough to properly stir fry. As a consequence, food is quite often steamed rather than fried, which gives a very different outcome from commercial wok burners. A free-standing wok burner that has large pipes (see here for an example) is a satisfactory alternative but it is a very high heat product that can be dangerous if misused. In Australia we often have wok burners on our gas BBQs that put out a more respectable heat than domestic range wok burners. For an electric range if you have to use it, it is likely to be preferable to get a flat bottomed rather than a round bottomed wok as more of the heat can then hit the food at the same time. It is also more stable than the round based ones. Keep your range on extremely high heat all the time and keep the food moving. Another thread on eGullet has talked about cast iron woks. The link is here. These may be preferable to carbon steel as they are likely to retain their heat more and it is heat control that you are looking for. I'm not sure if they come in a flat bottomed version.

Try some sherry vinegar, it not only adds a sour note but also adds complexity from the oak flavours.

See this link for a discussion of what to look for in a rice cooker and this one for a more recent coverage.

As someone who lived through those times and now with the benefit of hindsight, it was a term that was used to move people beyond the mindset that if a recipe or technique wasn't contained in classics such as Larousse Gastronomique or Escoffier, it wasn't cuisine. Once the mindset was broken, there was no need for the term. When it appears now it has the same effect as a book containing the word "modern" in the title. Normally accompanied by pictures of people in corduroy jackets with too long sideboards, it is something that creates mirth and derision. Nouvelle cuisine is an historical term covering the output of a group of food pioneers who laid the foundation for much of today's cuisine. To use it as a current cooking term is not only incorrect but risks ridiculing an admirable group of people who broke the rules and moved us all forward.

Samphire is an old British ingredient. Their chefs sometimes use it as an ingredient when they are preparing regional dishes. This link talks about how it is being used in Australian cooking and gives some tips on its preparation. It's like a crisp and salty asparagus. Interestingly in parts of Australia it is a plant that holds together sea sand dunes and prevents erosion. As such, it can be illegal to pick it.

There are some great on-line resources that have scanned out of copyright cookbooks. Examples are: Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project Historical Culinary & Brewing Documents Online The cookbooks and home economics section of Internet Archive Also, check out this eGullet link.

The bread in your pictures is called focaccia (sample recipe here) and it is made from Pizza dough with different treatment. As melamed said, let it rise before baking and spritz it with water to get a crispy crust. You can also use a spoon (or your finger) after rising to put dimples into it that will hold the fillings better. You can put all manner of sprinkles or spreads, such as pesto or tomato paste onto it (thinly and gently) to give a flavoured topping. Try it with rosemary, sea salt and a spray of olive oil as well. Or sprinkle some chopped olives over it before you bake it. edited to add links

Looking at the cover in more detail, every one of the items in the circle diagram is a baked item or something else made from dough, such as pasta. Oil/Vinegar ratios in salad dressing aside, I wonder how much content is going to venture beyond this. The other thing to take into account is that ratios can take you only so far. Differences in raw ingredients mean that even in "precise" areas like baking, you use the ratios to get you close to the outcome and then knowledge of the feel/texture/look to allow you to fine tune by adding more flour/water/whatever as required. This leads to statements in baking books such as "the dough should be moist and sticky but stick to itself rather than your hands."

Latest dinner. We had a surplus of sage on a home herb bush so did pork, sage and apple. Seasoned the pork with salt and pepper, added a slice of apple, some frozen olive oil, and three sage leaves (see picture). Cooked at 57C for two hours. Made sauce from roux, some chicken stock, grated apple, chopped sage, salt, pepper, apple cider vinegar, and a small amount of sherry vinegar. Pork came out exactly as it went in, but cooked. Put sauce under and around the pork so as not to interfere with ready made garnish design. We're just out of summer, hence the salad. The apple slice was cooked but still crisp so it added some texture to the dish. New dish, first time I've done it, needs a bit of work on presentation but shows some promise. Thought I'd put it here to show what can be done with "vacuum sealed garnishes."

This thread is getting so long details are easy to miss. Most of us freeze the liquids (including fats and oils) before vacuum sealing them, which solves this issue.

Ah the wonders of 20/20 hindsight. If we could bottle it, I'm sure no-one would ever again walk away from a situation saying to themselves "I wish I'd said..." Many Australians, like the British, tend not to complain about poor food or service, instead simply paying, walking away and then talking down the restaurant. IMHO saying something is the correct action as it gives the restaurant a chance to make amends. I do say things like "this venison, although it looks rare and perfectly well cooked, has a texture like badly cooked blade steak." In that situation, I received a replacement dish no questions asked along with many apologies after the chef tasted the dish and a warm feeling that the issue would be raised with the supplier at their next encounter. If you don't have time to stay, as was the case here, I would expect the entree (we call them mains, confuses the hell out of me when a main course is called by the French name for entry or starter) to be complimentary. That it wasn't was a failure on the part of the restaurant not, as some have implied, on the part of the customer. Having already sent back the mains, which most people wouldn't do (to the long-term detriment of the restaurant), would I then take the further step of a confrontation over the bill? I think despite the comments from our armchair critics, I probably wouldn't (and would suggest strongly that they wouldn't also if they were really in the situation rather than at their computer screens). By raising the issue here, it has led to a healthy discussion. I hope that all in the professional food game will take note of what people are saying and make it common practice to react appropriately to customer issues (barring when the situation is manifestly ridiculous like complaining that a BLT had bacon, as mentioned earlier). Now the restaurant has been named, one could suggest that common decency demands that they need to be made aware of this discussion to make a response and, optimally, recover from this awkward situation. If the poster does not do it, how about someone else from the locale doing the right thing?

The best I can find is that 5g of titanium gelatin will set 250ml of water to a firm set. This equates to the numbers given above as 2.5g of silver will do the same thing. Once can reason that the bloom strength of titanium is less than the others but I couldn't find it quoted anywhere. The one formula I found for converting between weights for different bloom strengths was wrong and using linear regression did not give a perfect fit. ← Thanks for that, confirms what I found empirically. So for making a non-turned out pannacotta would you go for 1% or 2% w/v gelatin/liquid. ← My wife likes them mousse like rather than jelly like so I'd go for the least possible to set, particularly if it was non-turned out.

The best I can find is that 5g of titanium gelatin will set 250ml of water to a firm set. This equates to the numbers given above as 2.5g of silver will do the same thing. Once can reason that the bloom strength of titanium is less than the others but I couldn't find it quoted anywhere. The one formula I found for converting between weights for different bloom strengths was wrong and using linear regression did not give a perfect fit.

This link contains a discussion of leaf gelatine. One quick answer is that it depends on the strength of the bloom: what type of leaf gelatine is it? Titanium, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum leaves all have different sizes for the same gelling effect.

The answer for me as a pretty active home cook is cuts once every year or two; burns a few times a year. A good claw grip and caution seems to help markedly with keeping cuts at bay, despite my inherent clumsiness. My two "best" cuts have come from using a mandoline, which takes a nice little slice right off the top of your finger that takes forever to heal. Just recently in a spurt of self-protection, I invested in a kevlar/stainless steel protective glove: the mandoline doesn't hold any fear for me anymore.

This question is likely to get different responses depending on the type and level of cook answering. It seems that cookbooks will always be something that novice cooks can go to, perhaps following step-by-step instructions for a recipe and comparing their output with the pictures. Intermediate and advanced cooks seem to go to books less to follow a recipe slavishly but rather for ideas or to explore a body of work and cooking philosophy (eg. Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck cookbook or, as Fat Guy mentioned, the Alinea cookbook). I think I was typing this response at the time that Fat Guy made his post so please forgive any repetition. I find more and more that I use the Internet to get ideas before cooking a dish. Once the selection is narrowed to recipes that seem to best capture the essence of the dish, I pick the best parts out of these recipes to create my approach. The Internet is probably better set up for this as you can use search engines to locate many recipes in a very short period of time. I'd also like to reinforce the key role that eGullet can play in bringing our cooking alive. Knowledge can be broken into two different categories: explicit (what is written in recipe books) and tacit (knowledge that is acquired through experience and is hard to cover in a cook book). It is tacit knowledge that takes a recipe from average into the realms of excellence. I find contributions to eGullet perfect for the acquiring the hints on making dishes that take them this extra step.

I know it's not the UK but after reading this thread I asked at one of the shops of a local premium providore whether the downturn in people going to restaurants and reported return to entertaining at home had impacted them positively. The manager told me that they had a 5% increase in business that he thinks is directly related to the impact of the economic downturn. Factor in a loss of business as a consequence of changes in circumstances and that is a lot of people moving to entertaining at home.

Tonight's dinner. Sous vide salmon (47 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes; sealed in bag with salt, pepper, sprig of fennel leaf, frozen cube of olive oil). Leftover Greek salad. Triple Cooked Chips. Onion, white wine and cream foam [floppy foam ]. I make salmon skin crackling and position it vertically in a slit in the salmon. Unlike others who say that people may dislike the salmon, I've never had a negative comment: once you prepare them for it being lukewarm, it's fine.