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Cheryl, they look amazing, I think I'm going to try them this weekend. Chris, what temperature do you aim for with this method?

Hi Rob, could you share a link to who you got this from on ebay? What, specifically did you order? How has it been since you got it?

Thak you! Can't recommend it highly enough, there's a fair bit to read through but it all makes sense and the recipes really do work well. It's the details like the precision of measurement and the steam generation that set it apart from all my other baking books. Let us know how you get on!

Only that I used a mix of chillies instead of straight habaneros. The end result has a really, really good flavour and has been used on everything I've eaten today (ham sandwich, cheese, new bread recipe, steak sandwich, pancakes...!) I think I may try a bit more chilli powder (or possibly just more habaneros) next time as I could take it a little hotter. I'd be interested to know how hot the original is as I've never had the pleasure of it, what does it compare to?

I got this book a few weeks ago and have been absolutely loving it. I've never really made bread that I've been happy with before but it's made all the difference to me, it feels like I've still got a long way to go but things are finally starting to click - I love the attention to detail, the way that the whole process is discussed at such length, it makes it a lot easier to understand what matters and how to control things. So far, I've made a sourdough boule, some pretty rough baguettes and today a bâtard. The flour I'm using seems to need a little less water than the recipes suggest as the baguette/bâtard doughs have been quite hard to handle, but the taste has been a world away from the usual stuff I've made. The main difference seems to be the tiny amounts of yeast used compared to recipes I've used before. Bread finally tastes like "proper" bread rather than the strange approximation I'm used to. I did a search to see if there was a thread on this book already but couldn't find it, mods feel free to merge it if there is.

I've been growing some chillies on the kitchen windowsill for the last few months and today made Chris Amirault's version of Inner Beauty. Wow! What an amazing sauce. I had one habanero plant, one with some generic finger chillies and one with some Numex twighlights (not heard of these before, nice little purple/orange fruit, pretty hot). Kitchen smells great, and now I've got three bottles of really tasty hot sauce

Hi John The Andrew James one looks like a rebranded version of the one I used to have. It only cost about £35 but died fairly quickly. I'd look elsewhere. The one I got as a replacement is the foodsaver model from Lakeland: http://www.lakeland.co.uk/15349/FoodSaver it's a similar price to the one you linked and is much much better than my first one. A lot more robust, pulls a better vacuum and can even vacuum seal canisters. With any of these generic channeled bags will work fine, I get mine off eBay.

I made the chefsteps thick cut fries last weekend and they were amazing. Have to say I was skeptical about the benefits of triple cooking prior to doing these, no longer! Well, well worth the effort (it's not that much in reality, just an extra step in the sous vide). They were far an away the best fries I've ever had.

Have you tried olive oil instead of the butter? I've recently made an orange olive oil cake which has an amazing texture/flavour.

Nice What dough recipe are you using there?

Definitely more like charred meat than just a smoke flavour... Maybe I'll try getting some meat scraps really charred then infuse them in oil... Will try this too, cheers EDIT - found this description which I'll give a go too:

I ate at Simon Rogan's new restaurant in Manchester last week and had an amazing dish of ribeye tartare. What I liked most about it was that the meat was cut fairly large for a tartare and had been dipped in charcoal oil so it had an almost grilled flavour. I'd really like to try this but a google search doesn't seem to turn anything up. Is this something that can be bought or can anyone suggest how to make it?

My first stab at SV corned beef was WAY better than I'd ever managed with traditional methods. I did the equilibrium brining method from modernist cuisine, 7 days in brine with no possibility of over salting. Followed by 15 hours at 79.5C. It was perfect, really moist and tender but sliceable. Very happy with it.

it means no worries...

I love the fact that in safari the back button now makes an instant jump back to what I was viewing, no pointless reloading of the page. Much better.

Mike, I hope I'll be in the position of doing the whole "dream kitchen" thing in a few years, what things do you find work really well with a combi?

Get yourself an overplay DNS account, dead simple to setup and gives you access to most any country's region locked content. Best thing about it is that it doesn't throttle your connection like a VPN account does and it doesn't need to be switched to each new country you want to access. Just set up once and you will be able to get anything you need. I use it to watch US content on ABC, Netflix, etc.

Or how cliched and grating the pointless filler will be, "these people have given so much over the years, I just want to cook something worthy of that, to give something back" - bleuuuurch! I'm sure the five minutes of cooking each episode will be as good as ever, but if it follows the trajectory of previous series the rest of the shows will be nauseating.

+1: I definitely remember they did a blog where they concluded that the best result was had from pre- plus post-searing.

thanks both of you, breasts (un-brined!) are now in the water bath at 60C, I skinned them and just lightly seasoned before bagging with a tablespoon of butter. The carcass from the crown is in the oven roasting ready to make some gravy from it. Will post results later...

lol - good call. Will do it as is. Last thing, do you SV with skin on and brown it after or remove the skin and crisp it separately? I've heard a lot of people say they struggle to get it evenly done if left on the meat but have to say I've found this fine on chicken breasts and find the flavour it gives the meat to be a bit lacking if I take it off before sous vide-ing.

So it looks like the turkey is "basted" with the following ingredients: Though the overall sodium content is only 0.1g per 100g of the product which doesn't sound much, should I still brine it?

Cheers Rotuts, 60C (140F) for 4 hours is what I'll try, have a crown defrosting now so can get it cooked tomorrow (still time if it all goes wrong!). Will definitely check what the brining situation is, thanks for the tip. Bit despondent about all this as the confit I've made with the legs is pretty damn salty and a bit "firm". I used the duck confit recipe from MC but left it 12h instead of 8h as the turkey was a pretty big one. Hey ho, every day's a school day!

OK, so the stuffing is alright actually, I think the bread has combined quite well with the sausagemeat and the texture is passable. It's like a pate really. The turkey meat is a bit disappointing though, when I've done sv chicken before its been revelatory, this is just "OK", a bit drier than I'd hoped. I might change the plan and do a brined breast without stuffing at 60C instead... Glad I did this so far in advance!

The sous vide dash alarm has just gone off so I'll let you know!