ChrisZ

For something a bit lighter, try Anthony Bourdain's "kitchen confidential". You won't pick up any techniques, but the early anecdotes give a different type of insight into being a professional cook / chef. It was such a hit it should be easy to find a cheap paperback copy.

I haven't noticed this thread before so it was interesting to read through 18 months of scrambled eggs. I never thought much about scrambled eggs until I bought a box set of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and noticed that in 2 separate James Bond stories Fleming detailed the recipe for James Bond's scrambled eggs. I did some quick maths and figured that Bond (Fleming) used 15g of butter for every egg, which seemed like a lot. It certainly looks like a lot if you go to the trouble of accurately measuring it. I was curious enough to try the recipe and found it absolutely delicious - soft and incredibly buttery - the flavour is as much butter as it is eggs. It's now my go-to recipe for scrambled eggs, and telling someone you're making them "James Bond's recipe" gets a better reaction than telling them it's a Jamie Oliver / Nigella / Gordon Ramsay / Heston Blumenthal recipe :-)

Thanks for posting the photos, I think those cakes look amazing. I especially like the 'old' one, and I'm just as impressed that they responded to your email. Kudos to Betty Crocker! To me, it looks like puff pastry. Regular shortcrust pastry will not have any structural strength and flaky / filo pastry is also going to be too weak. Puff pastry does have some structural strength, and it's common to bake it weighted down to stop it from rising. To me, it has to appearance of pastry that was baked inside a tin and turned out. So if you're using a dutch oven, I would use the INSIDE, as if you were blind baking. If it doesn't have to be edible you can probably fit some smaller tins inside the dutch oven to pack out the empty space and then fill the gaps around the edge with rice. I think that using the inside of a tin, and not draping it over the outside, is the key.

I use almond meal all the time, I love the stuff. It has the benefit of being gluten-free, which suits some members of my family, but that's just an additional bonus. I like the heavier, moister texture it gives cakes. In cake recipes that use normal wheat flour, I substitute the same weight with a mix of 75% almond meal and 25% cornflour. Although gluten development in cakes is usually a bad thing, most cake recipes rely on starch to help hold the structure together, so substituting 100% almond meal for wheat flour isn't a guaranteed success. The cornflour helps in this regard, but it does depend on the recipe. Almond meal pie crusts / tart shells are also great - plenty of recipes available if you google for them.

I don't have an android phone so I haven't checked it out, but just wondering if you have included common allergy information? Amongst my friends are people who are lactose intolerant, gluten intolerant, allergic to dairy, allergic to soy, and allergic to peanuts... Including basic allergy information, for example if something contains gluten or lactose, would be a useful addition.

Good coffee + good gelato = great affogato! I don't know what the climate is like in your area, are gelato sales likely to drop off in winter? If they do, you could use your farmers market contacts to add soup or something else more seasonal to your winter menu to help even out the takings...

When I was 15 I spent 2 weeks doing work experience in a high-end French restaurant. I was given the opportunity to make a chocolate cake, which didn't go so great and turned out a lot like that one. However the flavour was fine, so the chef trimmed it into little cubes and served them as petit fours with coffee.

Vinegar is commonly used in pavlova recipes (which are just giant meringues). According to McGee, the effectiveness of an acid on egg whites depends on the age of the eggs. I can't recall whether it's very new or very old eggs, but one of them will whip better without the acid.

We're all patiently waiting for the 230v version... no use ordering from the US when the electrical standards are completely different.

Try it and let us know what you think! Osso Bucco is something I tried sous vide, for 24 hours @ 58C I think, and I found the result a bit underwhelming- meat was fine but the sauce seemed to lack flavour. I recently bought a pressure cooker and tried osso bucco, and had a pretty amazing result in less than an hour - the sauce was rich and dark. It made me think I should try it sous vide again to compare the difference, maybe I need to do it for less time at a higher temperature.

Why don't you want flour or almond meal? Are you still after a soft cake-like result? From what I can tell, when people deliberately want a flourless cake it's because it's gluten free. So the wheat flour is replaced with either a nut meal or a naturally gluten-free flour such as corn flour, rice flour or potato flour. I've also seen gluten free cakes with chestnut and hazelnut meal used instead of flour. If you don't want any flours or nut meals at all in the cake at all then you could try using layers of meringue instead, this would add a crunchy texture as well. The filling would need to balance the sweetness of the meringue but it would work.

She's just released a new book, "every grain of rice", which sounds as though it's designed to be simpler and more accessible. I was just reading an article by her and found it an odd coincidence to see her mentioned in this thread!

Here are my own personal notes on xanthan gum, compiled from khymos, MC, wikipedia and others: Xanthan gum is a thickening / emulsifying agent produced by the fermentation of carefully grown bacteria. Xanthan gum is especially valued because only very small amounts are needed to thicken a liquid, but the viscosity decreases if the solution is mixed / stirred or chewed. From a practical point of view this means a sauce can appear thick on the plate but will not feel thick or gummy in the mouth, or a smoothie can have particles suspended in it (eg fruit, spices, muesli) that won’t fall to the bottom but can still be easily drunk though a straw. Xanthan gum does not change the colour or taste of food. Xanthan gum is used to stabilise sauces or dressings that contain small particles (eg herbs, spice powders), and can help prevent dairy sauces from curdling without dulling the flavour in the way that starches can. It is also commonly used in ice-creams, as it prevents ice crystals forming when ice cream is melted and re-frozen. Usage guide: .2% to .5% by weight, very rarely more than 1%. Too much will produce an unpleasant slimy texture.

It's possible that no-one else has extensively tested different variations of sous vide lamb shoulder chops, so if you were serious about this and set up an experiment comparing different times and temperatures then you'd probably become THE lamb chop expert. In general, you'll find two approaches to cooking red meat sous vide - less than 60C (140F) for a few days, or more than 75C (167F) for a few hours. There's a no mans land in between those approximate temperature ranges, which others can explain better than I can. The different approaches result in different textures and can come down to personal preference and practicalities - it's not practical to cook everything for 3 days :-)

In the UK they're lucky enough to have cheap scampi (langoustine). It still amazes me that scampi are an expensive luxury in Australia, but in the UK they're considered cheap pub food. I've read some reports that populations off Scotland are booming, there have been attempts by leading chefs to improve the public perception of scampi and increase consumption levels to try and take the pressure off endangered fish species. I don't know why it's a struggle, I'd rather eat scampi than cod any day...

I thought I'd chime in and say that this is what I've been using too, although mine is an earlier model that is less precise and not a true PID. When I became curious about sous vide I didn't want to spend a lot of money just to experiment, so when I saw their original model on sale for $100 and I found a vacuum sealer for $44, I plugged in our rice cooker and had a home rig up and running for less than $150! That's a lot, lot less than any other home brew sous vide rigs I was looking at. It's worked well over the 18 months I've used it - it's a simple, low cost rig that has produced many excellent pork bellies and salmon fillets. My earlier model isn't too precise (my guess is +/- 2 degrees C), so I won't be joining in the argument about whether the perfect egg is 63 or 63.5 C, but it's certainly good enough for everyday cooking. If my model is a guide, they're not re-branding an overseas unit. It looks like they've found a suitable temperature controller from China and they've designed and assembled everything themselves. At this price, good on them - their website is here, for any other interested Australians.

It's shelf-stable. Just to clarify, the sous-vide rig is used to sterilise/pasteurise the oil, you don't need to do it sous-vide but it's a pretty easy way of allowing time for the flavours to infuse but not have to worry about the oil getting too hot or even too rancid. I strained the oil afterwards, so there was no visible residue left. I used it all pretty quickly, but I don't see why it wouldn't last for a year or so in an airtight bottle. BTW I also remembered that I made a Thomas Keller pie crust using pine nuts, and I added a load of finely chopped rosemary to it. I was expensive for a pie (I think about $15 just for the pine nuts alone) but everyone loved it, as it wasn't too sweet and the rosemary was subtle but very complimentary. Well worth a try, although you'd have to bake a lot of pies to make a dent in 5lbs of rosemary.

Oil infusion. Based on suggestions in Modernist Cuisine, I tried a few olive oil infusions - roasted garlic, lemon, rosemary, oregano & thyme. I made 250mls of each as I had some spare 250ml glass jars. I followed the guidelines in MC for a safe infusion - I think the oil and flavourings were heated sous vide at 80C overnight (would have to check), the results are wonderful. I've been amazed how quickly I used them all. I love roasting potatos with the roasted garlic oil, I love a dribble of lemon oil on beans and broccolini. With so much rosemary, you could probably buy 4 litre can of olive oil, infuse the lot (heating everything for a long time to keep it safe), and then pour the result back into the same can. 4 litres might last you years...

Just following up with yet another SMH article, this one about Pilu. Pilu is at the end of my street and is considered to be one of the better restaurants in Sydney. I've eaten there a few times- unfortunately it's too expensive to be considered our 'local'- and I have always loved the food. It appears to be busy and unlike the restaurants mentioned in the articles above, Pilu does not seem to be in any financial difficulty. I recall reading that a very general rule for restaurants is that the cost of the raw ingredients should be about 1/4 of the menu price - with the difference representing the cost of rent, wages and other overheads. The prices listed in the article above suggest that is (roughly) correct.

In one of his 'perfection' shows, Heston Blumenthal slices up blue cheese and butter and stacks the slices alternatively, leaving them in the fridge for some time. The butter absorbs the flavour of the blue cheese. Then he separates the cheese from the butter and uses the butter with the steak, but not the cheese directly. So presumably you get hints of blue cheese flavour without it dominating. (Just checked on YouTube - you can jump to 7:25 on this video to see him demonstrate.)

A few days after Nick posted this, a number of articles on the same topic popped up in the Sydney Morning Herald. The links are here, for those who are outside of Sydney but interested: Restaurants in recession More to a restaurant than a chefs hat Wahu I've never worked in a restaurant - let alone run one - so I can't make much of a comment. I can suggest that being a great chef doesn't make you a great businessman, but I can also suggest that Australia's economy and wages are different enough from other countries to make comparisons difficult. An earlier article features comments from one of Australia's celebrity chefs on staff wages in Australia. My interpretation of his comments are that even the cheapest workers (ie wait staff) on a Sunday get paid $40 per hour. I'd be interested to know how that compares to other countries...

I find this curious, as I haven't noticed a problem with re-heating mashed potato in a microwave. Are you talking about a rich Robuchon-style puree or the more normal home-style fluffy mash? I have experimented a bit with retrograding mashed potatos, thanks to Chris Henne's great posts, and the process seems to produce a drier, lighter mash (because I don't load it up with 50% butter). Perhaps a suitable analogy for skiers is that the difference between regular mash and retrograded mash is the difference between skiing on powder and wet slush. But although retrograding produces a different style of mash I haven't noticed if it reheats any better or worse than conventional mash.

Thanks guys, appreciate the info. I'll check it out next time I'm down in Melbourne.

There's a chocolate museum in Bruges, and judging from the website there are a few others around Europe as well. I wouldn't say the museum alone makes it worth the trip, but Bruges is such a lovely city that I'd use any excuse to go there... Bruges is full of chocolate shops but according to "The chocolate connoisseur" they don't manufacture any chocolate there, they just use couverture that is delivered to their door in a tanker truck. London has the Vinopolis, a museum of wine. According to the website it's currently closed for a major rennovation and will re-open in October. I went a few years ago with a free ticket and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and how educational it was. Edinburgh has a Scotch Whisky museum, which I was convinced to visit by some entertaining spruikers during the comedy festival. It was a little bit kitsch but I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot about whisky. I especially appreciated the way that they ended the tour with four tastings of different Scotch whiskys, which allowed you to appreciate the variety and regional differences. If nothing else, I can now look at a list of whiskys on a drinks list and understand the terminology. And I realise it's not in Europe, but Japan has a somewhat famous museum of tobacco and salt.

Oh I also agree- I often pick up the volumes and re-read chapters. I've attempted less than 10 recipes in the whole series, yet I read and re-read it more than any other "cookbook" I've ever owned. Volume 1, which doesn't contain any recipes at all, has possibly been the most influential for me with the way it covers hygiene. There is no doubt that the original 5 volumes have been a huge success - I think they've sold more than 10x the number they thought they would, based on their initial print run of 5000 vs current sales figures close to 50,000. So I would hate to be mis-interpreted as suggesting the books are not successful because not everyone is attempting every recipe. My point was that the caramelised carrot soup recipe (and the mac & cheese recipe) show a lot of demand and interest in recipes that are more accessible. I can't wait :-)