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So yesterday I thought I'd try my hand at cheese making... How hard can it be??? Well, if you buy the wrong ingredients, very hard is the answer. I got a copy of Ideas in Food a week or two ago and read about how easy mozzarella was to knock up at home so I duly went and got 8 pints of whole, unhomogenised, organic milk, some citric acid and what I thought was Rennet. Turns out it was "Essence of Rennet" which is a world away from what you need for cheese making (massively diluted, no use at all). A gallon of wasted milk and a lot of dirty pots and pans later I gave up. After a quick internet trawl I found a health food shop that sold proper rennet nearby and went along there earlier today. Chastened by the mess I made yesterday I tried it with a half quantity from the Ideas in Food recipe. Also, I omitted the Lipase as couldn't find anywhere nearby to pick some up: 4.5g Citric Acid in 120ml water 1893g whole milk 35 drops of VegeRen This time things worked MUCH better, after the 30 minute rest I got a nice clean break in the curds: And after cutting the curd and warming it to 43C managed to strain them easily: A brief warm up in salted whey and they came together beautifully: So, how does it taste? Well, unfortunately I don't know yet! I am under pain of death not to try any till the family return home, and as I only made a half quantity I definitely won't get away with it... I'll report back later on how it is. Have been pretty busy today (have a look in the Sous-Vide thread for another long winded post describing my first attempts at water bath cooking). Really wish I could give up the day job and do this fun stuff ALL the time, rather than just when I'm off work!

I’ve got some time off work this week so have been going mad trying out new cooking things. Yesterday was a bit of a disaster: apparently “Essence of Rennet” is NOT the same thing as “Rennet” (it’s a rubbish, watered down version for making puddings, not the sort of thing to be adding to 4l of really nice organic milk when attempting my first go at homemade mozzarella). Any way, undeterred, today saw the arrival of some proper rennet and, far more excitingly, my Sous-Vide Supreme! I think the cheese making might keep till tomorrow... Having spent the last few months desperately waiting for my copy of Modernist Cuisine to arrive I finally bit the bullet and got a water bath. Am really looking forward to some of the things I’ll be able to cook in this contraption, off the top of my head: scrambled eggs, perfect poached salmon, mi-cuit salmon, slow cooked short ribs, beef cheek pastrami, pigs cheek anything, Onsen eggs, foie gras, twice-cooked scallops, duck confit, egg custard, brisket... I’m giving up work, I won’t have time for it with all this nice stuff to make. So, what was I going to do for my first ever sous-vide meal? I hadn’t really planned on having the SVS for a while so had to just wander around the supermarket looking for inspiration, I wanted something that would be fairly quick to cook (the 72-hour tough cuts will have to wait) and I knew I wanted to do some mashed potatoes with it. So, in the end I came up with the following: Chicken breast with tarragon and butter, retrograded potatoes and chicory with orange and thyme. Not the most adventurous first foray into sous-vide but hopefully achievable and it will give me a good idea where to start from with simple things like lean meat/vegetables. So far the potatoes have been peeled, sliced into thinnish sections, vac-packed with a little water and put in for an hour at 66C. After they finish I’ll chill them in an ice bath and fridge them till later. Their peelings have been fried in a good chunk of butter (probably about 100g) until they looked (and tasted) like posh crisps. I love it when cooking stuff gives you a tasty by-product! The butter was then strained and fridged, ready to be added to the mash later. The chicory have been sliced in half lengthways and sealed in a bag with some thyme and a little bit of orange juice, some agave nectar and some salt and pepper. Similarly the chicken breasts are sitting in the fridge sealed up with some butter and tarragon, having been brined for about 45 mins in a 5% salt solution. I’ve gone very sparingly with the fresh herbs in both of these as I’ve read that they can easily overpower things when cooked this way... we’ll see whether I’ve gone easy enough! More later... (I hope!)

Any news on the arrival of the second edition in the UK? I have one on order from Amazon but not heard a peep from them yet. I'm amusing myself with the excellent Ideas in Food right now (can't believe I haven't bought this book sooner!).

I love cheeks, pork, beef, whatever - had some nice cod cheeks the other day. for ox cheeks it might be worth having a go at the catalan beef stew from ad hoc at home. The recipe uses braised short ribs but was great last night with feather steak braised with onions, fennel and carrot then incorporated into the catalan recipe. I'm sure cheeks would be even better. I really like Keller's way of cooking the main veg (in this case baby leeks, fennel and my addition last night some sweet summer carrots) separately from the braise - they end up perfectly cooked and a lot fresher and more distinctive than they do when braised for hours with the meat. The olives and orange give real interest to the dish. Perfect with some nice white bread with loads of salted butter.

Gary Rhodes has had a couple of places in manchester IIRC. Nowhere current. And yes, Andrew Nutter was a bit tongue in cheek, though he did do a fair bit of tv a few years ago. Not sure why any of this matters though, why a James Martin branded restaurant should necessarily lift the pretty dismal standard of Manchester dining?

Michael Caines? Gary Rhodes? Andrew Nutter?

I know exactly what you mean, I often wonder how much I would enjoy repeated visits to this sort of restaurant. there has to be something special about the trip to put it up there with the most memorable experiences. I think I get quite easily accustomed to things and after few trips would probably be a bit blasé about things - in a way I'd never want to be about a $800 meal. I've got some friends who have been to the Fat Duck a couple of times and they found the second trip slightly disappointing for exactly this reason, the food was just as good but the surprise value had taken away some of the magic.

Don't mind it so much for that sort of course, really it's just something to stop the waiter from having to carry five lumps of cheese in his bare hands, but for a main or starter where you are eating with cutlery it's pretty horrendous.

We did! And so did a fair few of the other diners. The staff were great though, they just dealt with it like it happened every night (though I did wonder if the waiter fell on his samurai sword when he returned to the kitchen). I think one of the things that impressed me most was that such a high end restaurant was as relaxed as it was, we felt completely at ease from the moment we walked in. I've eaten in plenty of places which couldn't get near producing the sort of food we ate there but which were far stuffier and less welcoming.

We went to the French Laundry about 6 years ago and it is a memory I will have until I die. My first time in a 3-star restaurant, during the time when it was rated as the "Best in the World" (whatever that really means). Every part of the visit was brilliant and truly memorable - the ability to bring ten successive courses that each seemed better than the last was truly astounding. We had a great waiter who put us completely at ease, talking knowledgeably about not just the food but films, our home town, music... Even when things went slightly "wrong" it made us smile: they momentarily forgot to bring my glass of sweet wine to go with the foie gras course, cue fresh piece of brioche toast arriving just as the wine did (less than a minute after the mistake was noticed), just so I didn't have to suffer the imperfection of eating slightly cooled toast. They also managed a moment of comedy: bringing a $3500 lump of alba truffle to the table next to us, much pomp and ceremony, hand carved hardwood box, two wait staff, big fanfare then watching as the most expensive piece of food I've ever laid eyes on got fumbled after being grated to roll along the floor and under the table! I've enjoyed a lot of meals since then but this one really set the standard for uber-high end dining for me.

I agree, that revised version looks a lot better. Better contrast in visual apperance as well as flavours. Onion soup and osso bucco are two of my favourite things in the world to eat. But both end up being pretty brown and meaty. I'm not sure that they'd be awful together, just that something like the second menu would give a lot more interest.

Really simple this but it surprised me how nice it was. For a dip with middle eastern food just mix in some dried mint (which seems to work a lot better than fresh for this) and some really nice olive oil, possibly a little salt. tastes far greater than the sum of its parts.

We're over in NY for a long weekend and had lunch at del posto today. It was fantastic, truly memorable - great service, beautiful room but above all some really really good food.

Argh!!!!! I just can't take it any more, the pseudo-competetive crap is doing my head in. The cliches are just getting ridiculous. In fact I even came up with a drinking game while watching it today: down a shot every time we hear about a chef being "at the top of their game", "really feeling the pressure now" or (my favourite) "knowing that one slip now and the competition is wide open". I don't even remember the end of the episode and now my head hurts... SHOW ME SOME COOKING!!

I'd say that you should just choose based on which crystals you prefer the shape/feel of. The salt in them is NaCl whichever way you look at it, the crystal shape/size can make quite a difference though.

Surely this is the correct answer - everything else about the recipe is likely to be slightly different to how the original one was, the ingredients themselves will have different salt contents. So there's not likely to be any mileage in getting the amount of salt in the bouillon cube right to a tenth of a gram, just add it until it's right would be my suggestion too.

I've got all three of the Thomas Keller books mentioned (ad hoc, bouchon and french laundry) and love each of them. they are nicely written and give a lot of good background information on what goes into the dishes. ad hoc and bouchon are perfect for everyday cooking but for what you want the french laundry one would be prefect. It will keep you happy for months! Ingredients-wise I've not had any problems with getting hold of things in the UK, it's all pretty standard stuff. It's a bit of an annoyance that everything is in cups/tablespoons when we all know that weights would be better, but hey.

I'd say that the thickness of the rim of the glass has a far greater effect on my enjoyment of the wine than does the shape of the bowl. I love my Reidel glasses, but because of what they are made of not because I have 8 different types for different grapes. In fact, two types would do me forever, a flute for fizz and a nice generous large one for everything else.

Ok, so I thought I'd give this a go. I've got a molecular gastronomy kit that I'd been given as a present last year which I thought had the right stuff to use here. I say thought as now I've tried it I'm not sure if something might be wrong! The carageenan isn't labelled as iota, just vaguely says "carageenans". Also, dumb question time, is citric acid the same as sodium citrate? I hope so because that's what I used. For the cheese I tried a combination of cheddar and pecorino. The mixture is currently cooling but it's really grainy and tastes pretty salty, any ideas which of the various things I might have messed up is likely to be the key here?

It's basically full of MSG. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2005/jul/10/foodanddrink.features3

Interesting, i made some ny style pastrami before Christmas (standing outside in the snow, tending the BBQ was good fun!). Turned out very well but I was only able to get brisket rather than the navel plate they use at places like Katz's. What cut did you get from your supplier? Be interested to know how it turns out.

ok so nearly 8 hours in the oven steaming and it's been stuck in the stall at about 170F for at least 4 hours... glad the oven will cook to a certain temperature and turn off - need to drive tomorrow morning and think I might be up till sunrise if I had to babysit it!

Interesting stuff this and seems to make sense, how do you know when equilibrium has been reached though?

I seemed to find such differing amounts in the various recipes on the net for this - Chef Fowke's recipe earlier in this thread called for THREE POUNDS of salt for a 7lb brisket which seemed like a mountain to me (what's that, like nearly 43%?). Does the amount in the dry cure matter as much as how long the meat is in there for? Not sure. Guess we'll find out soon... internal temp is upto about 180F right now, still feels very tight when I fork it so guess I'll need to wait a bit longer yet. Will report back later

Happily smoking away in the snow (useful stuff, snow. piled some on the lid when it was getting a bit hot ): So, after four hours in the Weber (really can't do any more as its dark and about -7!) I've pulled it out: And brought it inside to finish cooking in the oven, its encased in a foil tomb, on a rack over some water, oven set to 250F to bring the internal temperature upto 185-190F over the next few hours.