Mjx

Try a decent-sized health-food store: I'm fairly certain I've seen elderflower sold as tea in these shops.

:smile: Thanks guys, this was a major worry of mine... I've had several dreams in which I was racking my brains, trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of freezer-burned venison, and came up with various freakish (from a waking perspective) solutions.

I used a brand called American Spirit; I don't smoke, so I don't know much about tobacco, and I don't know whether pipe tobacco would be safe to use in food. Incidentally, you can grow tobacco yourself; apparently, during WWII, many Danes did so in their backyards, so it must be fairly hardy/have a short growing season.

Hm. I have a friend I get together with every time I come back to NYC, and lunch at Viceroy, on 18th and 8th. I'm not entirely certain why (we discuss that topic every time we get together), but it has become somthing of a ritual: I get a burger, every time. Usually, so does he. Quite good burgers, actually. He flirts with the waiters, I leave him to it, go downstairs to take photos of myself making faces at the mirror in the loo.

It's an excellent idea, although I haven't had much luck with pomegranates in Denmark; about 4 out of five are all seed, with a thin, pallid veil of 'flesh' on them, not the juicy, ruby-red loveliness I'm used to. Still, if I get half a dozen or so, I might get lucky..? Certainly seems worth the trouble. No sausage maker, however; our kitchen has almost no mechanical appliances, apart from the hand-held mixer and the scale, so there's going to be a lot of hand mincing involved (we blew the kitchen budget on the Gaggenau oven and stovetop) Thanks for mentioning a specific cookbook author who's actually trusted! I was wondering about the reliability of some of the recipes I was browsing. I'm actually in NYC for a few days, so I can browse Barnes and Noble's cookbook section to my heart's content. The carcass is frozen like a rock at -15C at my boyfriend's parents' place! I'm actually rather nervous about the effect the freezing may have had on the meat, and how it will affect the final results. I agree, rare is the way to go... unless the meat has been made mushy by the freezing. Don't quite know what I'll do, then.

Certainly, it's very simple to do: I used a standard cream and bittersweet chocolate truffle recipe, but added a pinch of organically grown tobacco shreds to the cream before heating it over an extremely low flame in a very heavy pot (it took about half an hour for bubbles to start appearing around the edges of the pot). Once I took the pot off the heat, I let the tobacco steep for about 2 minutes longer in the hot cream, then strained the cream to remove the tobacco shreds, and proceeded as usual for truffles. The tobacco was noticeable, but very subtle; I feel that it enahanced a note which is present in some chocolates. The effect was very elegant and smooth, not at all harsh. My research on tobaccos's toxicity, in case you're interested: I found this monograph: Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 9: Chemistry and Toxicology (see chart, p 61 [7th page of .pdf file]). Nicotine was my primary concern, owing to its immediate toxicity (as opposed to the cumulative/long-term effects of other compounds), but nicotine appears to comprise between 0.6 and 2.9% of the dry weight of tobacco (p. 7 of the monograph), which means that an entire 40g (1.4 oz) packet of the brand of tobacco I used would contain between 0.24g and 1.16g nicotine, well below the median lethal dose, even for children (no children ate these, but it seemed a good idea to use as stringent a standard as possible: IPCS: Nicotine). I'm not certain how much the pinch weighed--my scale doesn't measure under a gram/fractions of grams--but it was certainly under a gram, meaning that, on the outside, there were 0.03g of nicotine present in the entire batch of truffles.

Thanks for getting back to me! This is is occupying my mind to the point that I've begun dreaming about it, so I really appreciate feedback. budrichard, thanks for the heads-up on the CWD, I clean forgot about that, and looked into it. Apparently, CWD has not been detected in roe deer populations in Northern Europe. Yet. Still, this adds a bit more weight to my going for an off-the bone preparation. Yes, it's a roe deer (which explains its size), the only species that I've seen served here. That presentation would be gorgeous, and roasting the vegetables with the meat would give them an incredible flavour, but I don't think I could pull it off with such a small animal; the meat is so thin that it would be really difficult to not over-roast unless it was protected from direct heat. This also sounds delicious! Roe deer loins are generally small (on this one, probably tiny), so I wouldn't be able to butterfly them properly, and I can't quite make out what the deal is with the flaps, either (the venison is being held in someone else's deep freeze, and when I looked at it the other day, I couldn't make out the details through the plastic). There doesn't seem to be much flap meat, but what you describe has me thinking that if I did grind the flaps, then combined that with chestnuts and bacon, it could be served as a side dish.

Thanks budrichard! And yes, the backstraps and tenderloins are there, along with the ribs, and you've confirmd my initial sense that that the various cuts present would be best if prepared separately. It was just that I'd been urged to take a 'one big roast' approach by the hunter who brought down the deer, and I figured that perhaps my lack of experience with cooking nearly-whole, large mammals might mean I was ignorantly overlooking a potential winner. Is there any good reason to leave the spinal column attached? It doesn't seem as though it would add much, but as I said, it isn't something I've ever thought to try before (I've only worked with boneless cuts of venison, up to now). I'm also trying to figure out what to do with the ribs, since the animal was a really small one, and the layer of meat is very thin. Given the small amount of meat available, and the fact that this is supposed to serve six, I'll probably go with my initial idea of searing the meat, then taking the en croute + bacon route. Think I'll pass on this approach! The ground here in Denmark is already frozen hard enough to require a jackhammer to break the surface!

My sense is that attempting to roast an entire deer torso (all that attaches to the thoracic and lumbar spine, but nothing else) in one piece wouldn't yield particularly good results, but I've never tried it, and realize I may be completely mistaken; I'm being urged to do this for the upcoming, major holiday dinner. The venison I'm supposed to be preparing is from a small deer (the entire piece is 2.5 kg/5.5 lb and about 55cm/22"; yes, it was an adult), and I can understand the appeal of presenting it whole, but the cuts of venison I've worked with previously tended to demand very different treatments, so I just can't see how this would work (leaving aside the logistics of fitting the whole thing into the oven, never mind finding a roasting pan to hold it). I've looked at some of the existing venison threads, but the approaches described seem to focus on individual cuts; I'm guessing that there is an excellent reason for this. I had hoped to be able to do a trial run on this, but it didn't happen. Has anyone here roasted this large of a section of venison, and if so, with what results? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

I have to agree, die-cutting looks like the way to go; searching online, I haven't seen much that's under 3" across in any direction, and nothing at all that size (UK or US).

I forgot to mention fondant: I love working with the stuff, so I make it every year, but since I don't have a marble slab, things can get a bit... overwrought. I've had really good results blending in lemon and ginger (combination of ground, and bits of crystallized ginger), vanilla bean seed and cayenne, and almond extract with small pieces of crystallized fruit. I've throught about trying peppermint extract and... something, but so far that 'something' eludes me. Chocolate is good with it, but there is so much mint-chocolate stuff about, as it is, that I'd rather not go there.

If the pursuit of Michelin stars pushes chefs to shelve their awareness of the spectrum of possibilities of food, then it does suggest that it could ruin meals that should have been enjoyable. Taking a strict line with any culinary approach quickly becomes empty and tedious, because the thought and imagination go out of it. Nouvelle cuisine seems to easily degenerate into a charicature of itself, a would-be intellectual and aesthetic exercise, or worse, pure performance art; when this happens, it fails even as an exercise, because it becomes uninteresting and disappointing. The best meals I've had have inevitably been prepared by chefs who were free of the tunnel vision caused by embracing a single approach, and who took an ongoing, active interest in the overall effect, combining solid and ephemeral, humble and luxurious, homey and exotic, flavours and textures that set one another off, and both traditional and new elements.

I'm doing the cooking for my boyfriend and his family (I like to cook, no one else does, it all works beautifully), and this year I'm slated to prepare a chocolate torte (to go with coffee in the afternoon), some ambiguiously identified part of a deer ('deer back') in an as-yet undecided style, 'brown potatoes' (please don't ask, but it involves a lot of butter and sugar, and is a traditional Danish thing), some other sort of potatoes (I'm planning latkes, if no objections are are raised), an as-yet-undetermined vegetable or two, ditto salad, chestnuts poached in a chicken broth that is then reduced, and crêpes Suzette. I'm probably going to have several surprise requests at the last minute, so I'm not thinking about it too closely. Oh, and I'm planning to make tobacco truffles again (nobody crucify me for this: there is only a tiny bit of tobacco involved, all are informed of its presence, all are adults, no ex-smokers). I usually make a Christamas pudding, but have dragged my feet on it this year, and am running short on time...

Ravioli. No, wait, I'm not out of my mind: If you think about it, wrapping cubes of the (marinated or otherwise seasoned) beef in the ravioli format is a variation on Beef Wellington (and gives you your starch; you needn't confine yourself to wheat flour, either). You could include other traditional components, or variations of them; you could poach them in a very reduced, deeply flavoured broth (depending on how elastic the definition of 'sauce' is, you might be able to use the reductin as a sauce). Something humble, but not too familiar, for a vegetable (some crucifer or bean, perhaps) would make a nice contrast to the central, 'luxury' ingredient. (If nothing else, you now know my plans for the next beef tenderloin I get my hands on.)

I think her approachability, and her way way of making more complex cooking approachable were extremely important; she seemed to take would-be-rarified things out of the rarified realm. I only saw her once on TV, when I was a child (I wasn't born early enough to see the larger part of her TV work, and only got to watch TV at my grandparents' homes). It sure wasn't Sesame Street, but it held my attention to the end: I recall that there was some sort of moulded gelatine thing involved. Her appearance, delivery, and relaxed attitude when the unmoulded dish slumped, all combined to imply that I too, could do this, and you weren't an incompetent yob if you failed: these things happened.

When I'm feeling exhausted or run down, I will never [again] do anything in a kitchen that involves equipment more dangerous, fragile, or complex than a spoon. When I first went off to university, I got a job working at a diner. Originally I was supposed to wait tables, but after half a day of serving families whose children had apparently been raised by wolves, and which left religious tracts as tips (yes, really), I asked the manager whether I mightn't fill the currently vacant position of busboykid. The manager agreed reluctantly (it meant paying me minimum wage, instead of two dollars an hour), and said the position was mine, if no one else came along. The diner was a busy one, and that afternoon I didn't once stop clearing tables, or loading and unloading the dishwasher until nearly 23.00. Have I mentioned that this wasn't an exciting job? Also, I didn't want too look like a baby or a whiner, so I didn't ask for a break at any point, and after an hour or so, I was running on autopilot, my mind far, far away. As a result, I brought my first day to a dramatic close when, near midnight, I went into the back, opened the dishwasher, and began unloading it, starting with a full tray of glasses, which I set down on the top of the machine. The problem was that while I was out front bussing, someone had dumped a large heap of plastic spoons onto the top of the unit. I saw the spoons, realized the problem, but was still in Stepford bus-kid mode, and, with my brain saying 'OHnononononononoooo...' somewhere off in the distance, I precisely placed the tray on the heap of spoons, stepped back, and watched the whole thing crash to the floor in an avalanche of smashing glass and bouncing spoons. To make things worse, I reflexively dropped to the floor in a crouch, and brought my hand down on a spike of glass. The racket brought a rush of staff to the back, and they found me still crouching on the floor, surrounded by broken glass, plastic spoons, and arterial spray, too tired to be upset, or even think of anything more than 'Huh, that's a cut artery, it's squirting rhythmically.' The lesson about not doing things in the kitchen when fatigued was reinforced (I tend to need reinforcement, evidently) some years later, when I was way too tired to tie back my long hair, but was good to bake bread. Using a mixer... Ouch.

Before committing to a new bottle, try Mozart Black liqueur: I find it much more complex and intense than Godiva, which I find insipid, flat, and aggressively sweet. Mozart also makes a clear chocolate spirit, if you want something potent and sugarless to flavour sweets. I'm afraid I can't remember what it costs in the US (it runs the equivalent of about USD20 in Germany, including tax), but I don't imagine that it would cost more than the Godiva, since both are imports. I also have a bottle of some Italian stuff called 'Plaisir Noir', which is fine if you like your chocolate liqueurs on the thick and heavy side. I'm not a huge fan of creme de cacao, but that may be because those I've tried were not necessarily intended to be sipped straight (I don't just use my chocolate liqueurs in baking, I drink them, too).

I don't think even quite violent arguments among people who know each other well (as, say, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley did) would come under the 'bullying' heading; that's more something I associate with the random shopper at Whole Foods who begins haranguing you over the animal product you're eating (yes, that's happened).

I've never tried this, although I've reheated and fortified other gelatine-based desserts, so it should be doable. Your panna cotta will probably be fine, although the result may be on the soft side (I use 6 g. gelatine--three 2 g. sheets--for a half litre of cream/milk). Unless it seems unmouldably soft, it may be best to stick with whatever you get; just make sure you give it plenty of time to set up.

I'm experiencing a bit of a rush! Only disappointment is that I did not get to do a trial run on the 'deer back', and am still in the dark as to what it even is.

So pretty! I'm not being sarcastic, either. But those are some wee portions, and several look more like garnishes than full servings. I'm all for beautiful food, but it's a shame when visual aesthetics kick the actual experience of eating to the curb. If this is what the hunt for a Michelin star is bringing about, I have to agree with your subtitle.

I bully bullies. Only occasionally, but I have been known to snap. I'm perfectly okay with orgasmic raving, meltdowns over something not meeting precise expectations, and maddening food restrictions... as long as it doesn't get mean. Everyone has their own code of ethics, their own set of tastebuds to consider, their own way of prepping, their own aesthetics. I read 'chop finely' as 'Reduce to tiny pieces'; my boyfriend interprets this as 'Reduce to the smallest pieces possible before losing interest'. I leave the kitchen when he preps, and usually throw him out when I do. I could try pushing him to see things my way, but it seems pointlessly dictatorial. If I must have something done a certain way, I do it myself. I was raised in Italy, which tends to be a great place to acquire a taste for craftmanship, and the best the table has to offer: I adore exquisite ingredients, sensitively composed into breathaking preparations, assembled in menus that that appear to have been designed by particularly thoughtful gods. On the other hand, as an undergrad. I went through several rough patches that forcibly brought home the fact that in the complete absence of food, you starve, and 'tough luck, Mjx, you're lucky you have those instant mashed potato flakes and (on a good week) instant coffee (ooh, it says 'great with milk', too bad you hate dairy in you coffee) made with hot water from the tap.' Nothing like starvation to give a girl perspective, but I'm afraid it made me militant about keeping a grip, and not harassing those do not (or cannot) appreciate the nuances that make the 'best' (an arbitrary designation, after all) foods and beverages so special. I too am fed to the teeth by those who try to cram their ethics down other people's throats, not least because it actually undermines the very issues being raised. I like my food animals humanely treated, my produce grown organically and locally, and do my best to not use disposable packaging, but much as I'd love to see everyone doing this, I have no intention of forcing this stuff on those who aren't interested, and hate it when I come across those who feel that they must make a convert of every person they meet. However, I must confess to having taken gross advantage of several caffeine-innocent people in their moments of weakness, and having introduced them to espresso. All are now hardcore junkies. But I didn't bully... I just said, 'Here, try this...' and they were lost.

I tried the wet method of caramelizing sugar--I'm fairly certain that this is what you're talking about, not making the sweets known as 'caramels'--once only (the recipe stipulated it, but did not indicate why), and it called for an amount of water that just made the sugar wet, but not soupy (I'm sorry this is imprecise, but it's been a long time, and I never revisited the method). It took longer than the dry method, and the end result was identical, so it doesn't seem to have anything to recommend it. If you aren't comfortable with the dry method (which only requires you to use a pan with a heavy bottom, and not get impatient and crank up the heat), I'd add just enough water to make the sugar look thoroughly wet, or you'll be hanging over the pot for ages, muttering at it to hurry up.

Have you tried adding a little pectin? Or a couple of ounces (about 60 g) of chopped cranberries? Apples, particularly those that are on the underripe and tart side usually have a decent amount of pectin to begin with, but perhaps the ones you have are not as pectin-rich as would be useful. The golden delicious apples may be the problem; they always strike me as lacking in crispness, and I'd expect them to cook up mushy/runny. I think flour, corn starch, and even tapioca would sort of dull the flavour.

For up to six people, I simply pick the biggest bird I can find, since two of these people are guaranteed to include my boyfriend and his brother, who eat like they have holes in their necks. For eight or more people, I'd get a second bird, and not worry about what to do with leftovers (they'd be gone in under three days, thanks to the same two chow hounds). I learned this the first time I roasted a large bird (that one was actually a goose) for six, using a recipe intended for eight to ten people: there was nothing left but the skeleton, which was being picked apart and by gnawed at by the carnivore brothers. From then on, I went with the biggest specimen available.