ChrisTaylor

In the recipes involving booze--the ones I've looked at in detail, anyway--Blumenthal 'burns off' the alcohol by bringing the wine/spirit/etc to the boil and then lighting the fumes with a match. He does this when adding, say, a fortified wine or brandy to a braising liquid or stock that's going to be cooked for a long time. If you were making, say, Madeira sauce, which is basically demi-glace jacked with a little Madeira and then, pretty much, served (the Escoffier version still contains raw booze--he doesn't leave it simmering to cook at least some of it away and he certainly doesn't take to it with a match), would you still go through the process of burning it off?

I'll report back after tomorrow's dinner, I guess. I've decided to try slow roasting, just because.

At the end of the cooking he rests the chicken until it's cool then places it in a very hot oven for ten minutes, so the skin crisps up.

My oven can sit at those temperatures. I've tested it.

Bitter chocolate, guajillo and pasilla icecream Spiced icecream--cardamom is, at the moment, the dominant flavour, altho' I'm keen to see if that'll change as it 'matures' Raspberry lambic sorbet

Today it's prawn and grits, altho' I'll be using polenta instead of grits.

It's very good. I've played around with it every so often, but to be honest if I'd only been using it these past couple weeks I'd still feel that I've got my money's worth.

I'm not cooking the meat sous vide. It's going in the oven. He argues that it dries out less than it would in, say, a 180C oven.

Am in the process of preparing an oxtail soup. The end product is to be a very intense soup served in a very small glass (say, 50mL liquid per person) with a dumpling filled with the oxtail meat. I have already purchased glasses of a size and shape that will allow me to place a dumpling in there and then mostly cover it, alligator-in-the-swamp-like, with the soup (which, incidentally, is based on Escoffier's oxtail soup). I have picked the meat off the bones, along with a bit of the fat, and flaked it and put it aside. I don't want the dumpling to be just oxtail meat. What would some sensible pairings with the meat be? Things that have popped into my head include something very loosely and generically Chinese--napa cabbage--or perhaps just some herbs (parsley and chives, say). But other things have popped in. Some kind of mushroom, maybe, altho' the soup is very intense, so I don't know if a big earthy hit of mushroom would help matters. I guess what I want to do is have a nice foil for the richness of the soup and the meat (the soup, by the way, started as a brown stock made from pork neck and beef shin, the meat included in the case of the shin, and was then loaded up with oxtail), but at the same time not take away too much from the intent of the dish: it's a small serving because it's meant to be a big gutsy beefy soup. Thoughts? Theories? Suggestions? The 'theme', if you must call it that, of the dinner is Escoffier. Altho' as you can tell by the idea of throwing in some cabbage and using store-bought dumpling wrappers, I'm prepared to slacken the leash I gave myself when I came up with the theme. I'll be making the dumplings in advance, freezing them and then, on the day, steaming them at the last minute. I considered maybe doing some sort of filled pasta instead, even tho' I have no truck with pasta machines, but given I have numerous other things on my plate, such as knocking out some Espagnole and then demi and then Madeira sauce, plus a few other dishes, I want to keep things reasonably simple.

The chicken wings are my favourite recipe so far. Tempted to cook either the pork buns or bo ssam tomorrow.

I just tried this, subbing a tiny splash of Heering for the brandied cherries. It's not bad. Certainly I enjoyed it more than the standard.

Today it's the chicken wings. I don't have a cold smoker, so I parked them in my gas-powered hot smoker for about 30 minutes (as opposed to the prescribed 45).

I'm going to say no. And I'll apply this as a blanket statement to all bloggers, even the ones who act try and report or comment on 'real' news. Why? A journalist, as has been pointed out, whether they write for a paper or a website, has their work pass through an editorial process before it reaches the reader. A journalist follows, in theory, a code of ethics. I mean, really, a reviewer shouldn't be getting freebies. And if they do, they should be very open about it. John Smith was a guest of ACME Hotels and Mohawk Airlines. And even then I don't think it's okay. Behaving this way is a professional obligation, even though, yes, some professionals don't always behave this way and will use their position to scam all kinds of nice free shit in return for favourable comment. A blogger should follow a code of ethics that is understood by people other than him/herself, and some crtainly do, but there's no professional obligation there. With a newspaper or magazine or a website that's, er, not a blog (such as, I don't know, the New York Times website), it's clear--usually, hopefully--where news story and reviews end and where advertorials begin. That distinction has to be clear. With a blog post it may not be. In Australia, at least, some new restaurants (particularly those that are the second or third place an established chef has opened) may invite a whole lot of bloggers in for a meal and meet-and-greet-type thing. As a way of generating publicity. It's advertising. Yes, the blogger might go away and say, oh, it was mostly okay food but the oxtail ravioli was pretty shit, but it's so obviously cash-for-comment it's not funny. And there are no ethics written down anywhere--it's a bit of a wild west situation on blogspot or even in eGullet threads--for those bloggers to be open, when they write up their review later that night, that the expense of their meal and plonk was covered by the Swedish Chef. There's perhaps, and this is me being super cynical, no obligation to be honest if you figure your readership is large enough and your comments favourable enough to maybe get a few more free meals around town. There's no real process, no editor or legal guy to say 'reign that shit in', to prevent a blogger from saying something inappropriate. I'm thinking of the eGullet thread about Sat Bains' restaurant. There was an interesting and increasingly personal exchange between a blogger and Mr Bains--maybe not-so-hot PR on Bains' part, but there's no way an editor would allow any sort of 'didn't you know who I am, Mr. Swedish Chef? I'm an important reviewer!' challenge to a chef who is obviously very proud of his business and food to make its way into a respectable paper. Of course, me, I'd even be tempted to argue, depending on my mood and the day of the week and the alignment of the celestial bodies, that anyone who isn't covering honest-to-God hard news or serious investigative reports--a food writer, a columnist, a sports reporter, the guy who answers readers' questions about which car to buy their 18-year-old daughter----isn't a true journalist and is, instead, a food/opinion/sport/auto/etc writer. Maybe. Which is perhaps very silly of me, given people reviewing restaurants and cars and videogames and opera performances should be adhering to the principles of being unbiased and objective as possible (even tho' many established food writers/guidebooks have very obvious and clear and well-known biases and sacred cows).

Calling him right at that most perfect moment was a nice touch. I liked that.

I've watched and read a lot of Blumenthal. As you're probably aware, he advocates low and slow roasting of cuts such as rib eye or even whole chickens. Low and slow in the 90*C or even 60*C sense of the phrase. Now, I have an oven that can go down to 50*C quite happily--no need to hold the door open or anything else. I also don't have a problem, on weekends at least, with having to wait 3-4-5 hours for my roast dinner. This is all good, good, good. But I'm wondering if it really is significantly better. Has anyone compared a brined roast chicken cooked at, say, 160*C to one roasted at 90*C or lower? Is there really a noticeable improvement in quality? What about the rib?

Just ordered one each of the Westvleteren range. Hope I don't open a soaking box to find expensive shards of glass.

Steak saam tonight with one significant difference. When I poked around the shops the lettuce was all very sad-looking. I opted to forgo the lettuce in favour of some homemade flour tortillas, playing with Chang's constant comparisons between the early days of saam bar and a buritto bar.

Yeah. I get that. But I'm looking at a beef stock that is finished. As I type this, it's in the fridge, in the form of a frozen block, straining through a (clean) towel and strainer, Hestonstyle, into a plastic tub. I don't want to boil it while it's still 'cooking'. I want to take ~2L of beefy liquid and turn it into 500mL--or possibly even less--of concentrated bovine essence. It'd be really nice if I wasn't going to ruin the quality of this (which, once I'm done fiddling with it, will have involved a lot of work) stock by boiling it during the reduction phase. What I'm actually doing is taking a modified version of Escoffier's brown stock (based on beef shin and, in a deviation from his recipe, pork neck bones) and then clarifying it. Then using that as a base for his oxtail soup. The liquid will be clarified and then reduced until I have just enough soup to pour into shotglasses--the idea being a very rich, very intense, very beefy soup. And then I'll add the meat from the oxtail meat back in.

This is breakfast? You're a goddess, munchymom. A goddess.

Lunch (or brekfast, even) of champions. Perhaps especially because you're eating off a shopping bag. Awesome journey so far.

I've been told that bringing stock to the boil is a Bad Idea. That all the fat and shit, it gets churned back into the stock and you end up with a sad, cloudly thing. But what if I clarify it first? Can I then boil with abandon if I want to reduce it quickly? Is there any reason, even then, to reduce it with a slow simmer as opposed to a rolling boil?

It's also maybe a little disturbing to sort through all the different creams and find only one, maybe at most two, that are just cream. Not cream loaded up with bone goo or vegetable gums or any other things. I understand that these additives are not the devil, but maybe I just want cream.

That is some amazing-looking pizza.

I just placed a piece of brisket in the smoker. I'm following Adam Perry Lang's recipe for 'get a book' brisket. The smoker has become, I think, my favourite toy. Various things I've done in the smoker since last this thread was active: * Pork and beef ribs. Had success with pork ribs, but still unhappy with short ribs. Got to get around to putting a rack of lamb or goat ribs in there at some point. Even bought a cheap rack of goat ribs, but they looked a little sad so I fed them to stray cats. * Rabbit confit in olive oil. The only thing I could fault with it was that I didn't take the extra couple of minutes to sear it on the grill before serving. * A whole duck. Used a fairly mediocre battery-farmed bird but it was still good. I have to revisit this with an expensive or, if I can get my hands on one, wild shot duck. * Chicken thighs and legs. Other people have liked the BBQ chicken (I've only used a couple of recipes) but I'm yet to find a recipe I'm happy with ... and I need to fine tune the cooking temperature a bit, as the flesh is cooked nicely but the connective tissue in the legs is still a bit antisocial. * Potatoes. Twice. Had most success with the batch I first boiled then placed, with a little bit of oil, on a tray in the smoker. They were a bit soft, tho'. I'm wondering if a smoked potato mash/crush is the way to go (playing off the softness) or maybe a third cooking stage--say, a final 30 minutes in the oven. * Roo fillet. Pan-seared and then finished in the smoker. Didn't take on enough smoke flavour. Will maybe reverse the process next time. Maybe see if I can hold the door open to get the temperature really low and smoke it for a good hour. * A large piece of beef chuck. One I've gone back to a few times. Things I mean to get around to in the near future: eggs, lamb and veal shanks, 'roo tail, beef cheeks, a whole chicken ... a crab. Anyway. The question I had in mind when I searched this thread out again. Lang's Serious Barbecue is fun and most of the recipes I've tried have been good. But I want more books. Or maybe just one. You know, if there's something extensive enough. This time what I'm interested in: * Something that covers one or more 'styles' of American BBQ--i.e. Texas, Memphis, et al. What inspired my interest in this is I was flipping through the Modernist Cuisine kitchen manual and it featured recipes for maybe 3-4 different BBQ rubs, each of which associated with a specific US city/state. I was struck by some fairly significant differences--and I tried (and really liked) the sugar-free Memphis-style rub on some pork ribs. If one book covers a couple or more of the different contrasting styles of US BBQ, providing recipes for region-specific rubs/sauces/etc, that'd be very cool. * Something that explores interesting possibilities with smokers. I mean, as much as I want to try all the traditional stuff--specific cuts of ribs prepared with traditionalish rubs and glazes and such--I also want to keep playing and experimenting with this brilliant toy. Anyone know of a book with lots of recipes for game and other nontraditional things?

If you manage to get a booking on a Saturday, and I've got enough notice to get together enough cash to jump on a plane, I'm happy to be your wife for an evening.