Keith_W

Oh yes I love Chinese hot pots but I can't resist the urge to make it look pretty

I came across a set of tin lined copper cookware at a jumble sale last weekend. I did not buy because it looked as if the tin had worn down to the copper in a few places. Can you still find shops that will re-tin the cookware for you?

Perhaps the only food I regularly cook with only water with nothing else added is steamed rice. One problem with water is that it is a solvent. It takes away flavour from anything that is cooked in it. The only way to avoid this is to make sure the water is not discarded (along with the flavour) and it is incorporated back in the dish somehow. Of course, if it was your intention to tone down the flavour of something (say, salt cod) then by all means use water.

I don't think they should be brined for the same amount of time, Chris. Using various concentrations of hypertonic saline solution to brine is a bit like cooking with different amounts of heat. If you are comparing baking a chicken at 120C, 160C, and 200C, you can not cook them for the same amount of time. Same with brining. I can tell you that none of the chickens at the end of the brining time was close to equilibrium. All you need to do is remember what the brine tasted like before you added the chicken. The 8% brine was crazy salty - so salty it was inedible. Yet the chicken turned out OK. IF I had allowed it to reach equilibrium, the chicken would be guaranteed to be inedible. Ideally, the goal should be to find out what level of salinity in the meat corresponds with the most succulence and tenderness. Unfortunately I do not own one of those meters, but I understand it might be possible to kludge one together with a multimeter. Given that I lack such a machine and the ability to interpret the result, that might be something I should leave for more advanced practitioners. Just so people have an idea, this is the salinity of some well known solutions: - 0.9%: salinity of blood and muscle - 1-2%: average salinity of seasoned foods - 2.5%: salinity of an olive - 3.1%: salinity of seawater

I have come across a number of brine recipes so I thought I would conduct a brine experiment to see how different levels of salinity affects the final result. METHOD - 6 skinless chicken thighs - 2 each soaked in 8% brine for 8 hours, 6% brine for 10 hours, 4% brine for 12 hours - all thighs were then breaded and deep fried for the same amount of time, and checked with a thermometer so that the final cooking temperature was 65C. COMMENT I had no idea what the ideal soaking time was for the different levels of salinity, so I went with two brine recipes I knew. Heston's brine recipe from In Search of Perfection suggests an 8% brine with an 8 hour soaking time, while Thomas Keller's brine recipe from Ad Hoc at Home suggests a 4% brine with a 12 hour soaking time. So I went with those, and chose an arbitrary brining time for the 6% brine exactly in between the two brines. I chose skinless thighs because I did not want the skin to affect brine absorption. Also the uniform shape and size means cooking is more uniform (as opposed to a piece of breast, which is thin on one end and thick on the other). I could have cooked the chicken some other way, but I did not want to poach the chicken since this would have affected the final salinity. I suppose that sous-vide or baking would have yielded a more accurate result, but I felt like eating fried chicken so that's what I did. In hindsight, I should have weighed the pieces before and after brining but I forgot to do so. I am aware that the volume of the brine affects the final salinity of the chicken, but I used the same volume for each batch. This means that my samples can be compared to each other, but my results might not be comparable to yours. RESULT After brining, all 3 brines had taken on a cloudy appearance but the 4% brine was the least cloudy, suggesting that less chicken juice had leached out into the brine. Sorry, no pictures. 8% brine produced a more salty chicken, but was slightly over-seasoned. I think the brine recipe works for a whole chicken but not for individual pieces. I have made this recipe for a whole chicken before, and it definitely works. The meat had a more cured taste and was less juicy than the other brines. If you can imagine what a McDonalds chicken fillet is like - that was the texture. 6% brine was more juicy than the 8% and had the right amount of seasoning. 4% brine was the juiciest of all, and produced the the most mouthwateringly succulent chicken. However, it was definitely under-seasoned and required some help with added salt at the table. Based on the result of this experiment I am wondering if I should repeat the experiment with even lower brine concentration. But before that - I was wondering if other eG'ers have conducted similar experiments and what your results are.

My weekly dinners are simple affairs that can be whipped up in an hour or less. You can help yourself along by making big batches of pasta sauce and freeze them. Something like a simple tomato passata can be transformed into so many different things, but you need to have the passata in your freezer in the first place

I think most will agree with these statements: - Italian food can be simple, or it can be complex - but it is mostly simple. - Italian food is seasonal and emphasizes the quality of the produce. - Italian food exhibits regional variations such that there might not be a definitive version of one dish

I find the roe flavourless and unpleasant to eat. The last time I made it, I separated the roe, mixed it with some butter and veggie stock, and blitzed it in a blender. Gently cook it and it turns into a spectacular orange sauce to place your scallops on. You might want to help it along with some saffron if your roe isn't coloured enough.

Merkinz I scanned through that recipe and I can confirm it does look identical to the HB recipe from "In search of Perfection".

Before you cook it, make sure that the tough fascia that runs down the middle has been removed. Ideally your butcher should have removed this before cutting the meat into steaks, but some butchers simply leave it in. The problem with this fascia is - if you cook your steak long enough to tenderize it, the rest of the meat will be overcooked. Note I am Australian, and I believe your "flat iron steak" is the same as our "oyster blade steak". It is quite plausible that butchering practice in the USA is different to here.

mm84321, I have always loved your posts in this thread ... but your pics showing the process makes me love them even more. Skinning little potatoes by rubbing them with salt, and then frying them ... it would never have occurred to me to do that! I imagine that the rough surface and the salt would make them crisp up really nicely?

Welcome Merkinz!! You should buy: - Xanthan gum. Don't buy the Texturas brand. This is available in health food shops for $5 for 100gm. The Texturas version costs 10x more, and you only need between 0.5g - 1g at a time. - Trisol - not available in smaller quantities than that 5kg tub. To use this, you blend between 30-50% by weight with flour (i.e. 100gm flour, add 50gm Trisol). I use it up 100gm at a time, and I don't deep fry that often. The 5kg quantity is enough to last me till I die, and i might die sooner if I did more deep frying. Find a friend and share. - Carageenans - these are much cheaper than Gellan, but still $30-40 a bottle. You need both. Again, find a friend and share. - Gellan - quite expensive at $150 a bottle. You won't need much. Over here they only sell it in restaurant quantities. Find a friend. - Citras - try to find a Citric acid substitute in a health food shop.

Here we go ... two days work. Egg yolk ravioli with truffles and mushrooms. The pasta was embedded with chervil. The recipe for the pasta was from Modernist Cuisine and contains 1% Xanthan gum, which really improves the texture. The ravioli cut open to show a soft cooked egg yolk. Main was a confit duck maryland, duck breast ballotine, foie gras, and potato pave. The confit was done sous-vide over 24 hours with mandarin zest. The duck breast was stuffed with the mushroom duxelles then wrapped in a crepinette and fried. It was then sous-vided until cooked (don't let the pink colour fool you) and then fried again. The potato pave was as per Thomas Keller's recipe from Ad Hoc at Home. It was served with a Perigeux sauce (not pictured).

Reading this thread inspired me to fry some chicken, but use a pickle brine. This was the result: Recipe for the brine: - 500gm jar of pickled onions, thoroughly blended in a blender - 100mL white vinegar - 50gm sugar - 80gm salt - 400mL water ... i.e. an 8% brine. I left boneless chicken fillets in the brine for 12 hours, then soaked it in water for an hour. I made up a dredging mixture as per Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home and dredged the chicken in the flour, then buttermilk, then back in the flour. I fried it up at 180C and removed when it was golden, then finished it in an oven at 180C for 10 minutes until my probe thermometer registered 65C. The result: very good! The pickled onion really permeated the chicken. But - the brine was not quite as good as Thomas Keller's lemon brine.

Beautiful looking meals, everyone! Last night's dinner - a mushroom risotto, made in a Hotmix Pro (lent to me by eGulleteer annachan). The garnish was deep fried enoki mushroom. Tonight's dinner - fried chicken, as per Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home.

You can use it to sear anything that strikes your fancy. Just remember that dark things sear faster than light things - as pointed out by McGee and MC. So once something is browned, it will then brown very quickly. This is important to know because once food turns brown, it will very rapidly progress to black. Since I bought my torch, I have found many uses for it: - popping bubbles where you do not want any (e.g. in a custard or a chawanmushi) - lighting my charcoal grill - charring vegetables - it is especially good for peeling capsicum. Unlike the conventional method, the blowtorch does not cook the veggie underneath. - starting a flambe - melting the base of candles so they sit securely in the candle holder, and lighting candles - clearing cobwebs and killing spiders (be careful that the surface you are torching is non-flammable!) - killing weeds. Direct the torch at the base of the weed. More fun than pulling it out. - opening tight jars, especially jars which are sealed from dried out sugar. A few cycles of heating and plunging into cold water usually breaks the seal, or you could try wearing a rubber oven mitt to open the jar directly after heating. You'll think of more uses, i'm sure.

I think this is a symptom of the general busybodiness of some people in the West. They see fit to lecture you on your diet, the same way many see fit to lecture you about religion, to intrude on what you do in your bedroom, tell you what computer games or TV programs you are allowed to enjoy, and so on. You even see it on the world stage, where it is the same old countries lecturing others about human rights, as if they did not have gross human rights violations of their own.

James, I reheated the eggs after they were peeled. I think it would be very difficult to peel the eggs if they were at 62C. My peeling technique involves submerging the eggs under water, otherwise the risk of destroying the egg is very high. I have seen many chefs don't seem to mind handling hot food with their bare fingers. I could never do that - I can't hold a 62C egg for any length of time, let alone try to peel it.

Nick, I did not bother dehydrating the mushroom. I put it straight into the deep fryer. It turned out really well. I imagine that if you dehydrate it before deep frying, the mushroom will puff more?

For those who have made the beet stained eggs - how do you get the colour to stay on the eggs when you rewarm them? This is what the eggs looked like after I peeled them (ignore the two casualties of the peeling process): I then rewarmed them in cultured butter held at 62C. They came out like this: As you can see, the beautiful cracked shell pattern has disappeared. I also made the deep fried cauliflower the same evening. Picture of it here: It was a real hit. In this image you can also see deep fried enoki mushroom - that is not in the book, but it is awesome all the same.

If you have a Bamix stick blender, you can buy a food processor attachment like this one. It works really well for puree'ing small amounts of liquid. I can use mine for all sorts of things, but it is also very good for making small quantities of sauces when I can not be bothered to drag out my large food processor.

Funny that, I cooked Nasi Lemak last week as well. Forgot to post pictures in this thread Clockwise from rice: Sambal Tumis, Son-in-Law eggs, Ikan Bilis and peanuts, Kangkung Belacan, Beef Rendang, cucumber. Sambal Tumis is a fiery hot condiment that is made from dried chilli, tamarind puree, shallots, garlic, onion, and ikan bilis. I made my own and gave it a liberal dose of sugar. I found that sugar has an interesting effect on heat - it suppresses the heat long enough. As soon as the sweetness disappears, the fire begins. "Kangkung" is the Malaysian word for water spinach / water convulvulus. Here it is fried with a paste made from belacan (a type of dried shrimp paste - packed with umami and very powerful), dried prawns, chilli, and shallots. There was also a curry chicken and a Sup Kambing (Malaysian mutton soup):

That looks beautiful! Where do you get large quantities of pickle brine from? Do you make it yourself? If so, do you have a recipe? I have some deep frying oil. I can see deep fried chicken on the menu tomorrow night

Thanks pasta. That was the appetizer. The rest of the dinner wasn't quite as photogenic: Grilled hanger steak with deep fried cauliflower (from MC), deep fried Enoki mushrooms, blue cheese mash potato, fava beans, borlotti beans, and asparagus.

Cooked this as my entree tonight. Soft centered nest egg: As you can see, the egg has a perfectly liquid yolk. It is sitting on a "nest" made from deep fried corn silk, seasoned with paprika, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and lemon zest. The timing for the egg came from Modernist Cuisine. The idea for the corn silk "nest" came from Ideas in Food.