DianaB

What an amazingly inspiring thread! I really enjoyed reading about how you fed your parents back to health. Husband and I picked up coronavirus from our first restaurant meal in 2 years but being a little younger we were able to recover at home. We did try to register our positive test results online but the government website told us that it wasn’t interested, no services offered beyond the usual emergency care if needed. i am sure that in addition to the delicious food prepared for your parents, they were helped by being served on decent (pot) plates and with use of metal cutlery. Nicely presented food can make all the difference and you are clearly a star on that front.

Very sorry for the poor child! Hope parents are permitted to supplement the hospital provisions.

Many French diners eat their main meal at midday and there are plenty of small bistros offering prix fixes “Les routiers” style menus for those with a 2 to 3 hour lunch break. 3 courses for between 15 and 20 euros seems to be the average price. Best to go for the dish of the day. These places won’t be open in the evening but if you can adapt your eating habits they can be extremely pleasant ways to observe ordinary life. Out of Paris there has been a resurgence in roadside bistros, thanks in part to the popularity of Top Chef etc. Décent 3 course menus with wine for 12 to 15 euros (many French diners will have a “ticket restaurant” as an employee perk that covers the first 10 euros). Of course one can eat extremely well in the evening but those on a budget might find more choice at lunch time.

We have a Magimix mini which is small enough to sit on the worktop (next to the far larger Kitchenaid stand mixer and its new friend the Ninja Creami 😁). We bought the Magimix simply because the motor is rated sufficiently to turn pistachios into pistachio paste, likewise hazelnuts etc. I wouldn’t give it up because making one’s own nut pastes is so much more economical here than buying ready made. The Magimix also makes great pancake batter and similar; it slices potatoes for gratin dauphinois and grates carrots etc for salads. All parts go in the dishwasher as needed. Perhaps much depends on what one likes to create but I don’t regret the Magimix despite numerous less expensive and larger options.

Not sure about Switzerland but in France one would use a 35% cream for flan, very similar to concoctions above.

So glad that you are home! It seems that Canadian hospital food is similar to that in England. In recent years I have needed 2 brief hospital stays and after the first day I resigned myself to these stays having weight loss as a secondary benefit. Room temperature water was available on demand. I would have been happy with a decent coffee to start the day but that wasn’t an option, a concoction based on a powder was the offering. The bread was probably stolen from a museum exhibit somewhere and I don’t eat cornflakes so breakfast was just the water. For lunch we were offered options, day 1 I was down for surgery so no food for me. I was horrified to observe my fellow inmates receiving their meals one by one, served in a plastic tray and with plastic cutlery. Each dish was microwave heated in turn. Don’t recall what the meals were supposed to be but they all had the same smell. Dinner was similar. Cups of brown liquid known as tea or coffee were served mid afternoon. My total food consumption across the two stays was a pot of yoghurt. Thankfully husband had stocked up on tasty treats for when I was released, also my neighbour baked me enough cakes to fill a patisserie counter. Of course we are hugely fortunate in having health care free at the point of delivery. That said I am certain that a properly motivated manager could transform the catering without increasing the budget.

I wonder if whiskey is one of those things that taste different to different people (like coriander). I love a small measure of Laphroaig in a cool glass; add even a small amount of water and the drink is ruined for me. I do enjoy less distinctive tasting whiskies as cocktail ingredients so not sure why the addition of water alone makes such a difference for me. Curious to know if this is just me or an effect recognised by others.

Hello from England Tim, looking forward to learning more about your sweet making through future posts. 💐

Looks to me as though the recipe is largely an advertisement for Valrhona and similar products. Opalys and Dulcey chocolates are made by Valrhona, not sure if they sell cocoa butter but wouldn’t be at all surprised. I buy mine from Caillebaut, a Valrhona competitor. Perhaps Boudina was a spin off company? Only guessing here but it does seem odd that the ingredients are so specifically defined.

Exactly the same here, chillies are easy to snip into a dish straight from the freezer. We probably have enough for a couple of years after a good crop in summer 2022. Growing milder chillies this year but hope to do the same with these.

After years of bread baking with both sourdough and a small amount of dried yeast I am delighted to report that I managed to generate sourdough sufficiently active to make the bread rise without any added yeast at the start of January. The results were far better than I had dared hope! The bread certainly had a more distinctive sourdough flavour, more planning was required to keep the sourdough going and of course proofing took much longer. I used 30% sourdough and 65% water, based on 500g flour. More recently Bruno Cornerais advised French boulangers that 20% was usual for “levain liquide”, I wish that I had heard that advice before I started. Still enjoying La Meilleur Boulangerie- as it works its way around France, easy enough to watch with the assistance of a VPN if not in France. There are clips on YouTube, eg There are only 2 of us to feed and so I can’t justify baking everyday, as a result I ended up disposing of significantl amounts of discard making the pure sourdough option both costly and wasteful of flour. I have reverted to my previous method of less strong sourdough that sits in the fridge ticking over most of the time. This works fine alongside 2 or 3 grammes of dried yeast per 500g flour. I’m writing here again to ask if anyone has tried 100% hydration Spanish glass bread, as demonstrated in this YouTube video I wonder if this is what @Ann_Treferred to a few posts back? I’m thinking that bread like this might be great with butter and scrambled eggs, or butter and bacon. So many cavities for the butter to fill!!! I plan to have a go in the coming week, probably using half of the recipe described in the video. Has anyone tasted such bread? Tried to make such bread? I will be grateful, as always, for any thoughts or advice.

Although I have baked bread for a long time I have never before attempted a sourdough loaf without the addition of any yeast. In recent years I have followed Eric Kayser’s recipes from the Larousse book, these work well but I do want to attempt a loaf minus the small amount of yeast usually added. A new series of Le Meilleur Boulangerie de France has just started providing additional inspiration! As I write I have flour and water doing their autolyse thing, planning a 70% hydration with French T65 organic bread flour. i have used the fold technique in the past and it has worked well. On reflection though, I find it more demanding than letting my stand mixer do the work to get gluten working as suggested by Eric Kayser. Once the dough comes out of the mixer bowl I plan to give it 4 hours in my proofing box at 26c (as recommended by Brod & Taylor who produce the proofing box); then refrigerate overnight. Tomorrow morning I plan to preshape at room temp then leave 30 minutes, lastly final shaping and back into the proofing box at 26c until it is ready to bake in a preheated “Dutch oven”. Does anyone predict any particular problems with the method planned? Any hints or tips will be much appreciated.

There are some amazing dishes in this thread but this pasta/truffle concoction has got me lusting after similar. It’s a while since we had truffles but I can sense an order about to be placed…. Many thanks for the inspiration, hope that it was as good as it looks.

While my mother in law was the trifle Queen (no driving after a portion of her rum soaked délice) I use the following recipe for lady fingers (biscuits cuillère) in a number of desserts. Should be fine for trifle if fed with sufficient liquid, rum or of your choice. My recipe is half of the original but gives plenty for a dessert that will serve 6 to 8 portions. 2 eggs, separated 60g caster sugar 45g plain flour 15g corn flour whisk egg whites adding caster sugar little by little as they firm up, continue to stiff peak meringue stage. beat yolks together and then fold into meringue mix (about 15 seconds should do the job) sieve flour and corn flour together and add to egg mixture in 2 batches using a spatula to fold the ingredients together transfer to piping bag and pipe to the shape you want using parchment on your baking tray. I usually make a disk for the centre of my tiramisu cake and then pipe any left into “fingers”. I think that I got about a half dozen fingers in addition to my 20cm disk last time bake at 180c for 15 minutes. leave the biscuits on the parchment to cool, they will then peel away easily. They freeze fine and have a multitude of uses. I certainly found this recipe on the Internet but the only note made says “Chef Sylvain”, unfortunately I have no memory of who this person is! I do make better notes now including a full URL where relevant! Not eaten trifle since we lost my mother in law some 15 years ago but her version was more than appropriate as a way to end a celebratory feast; she detested cooking but would produce a trifle for us every year. Happy days!

Timut pepper is a recent discovery for us, great with all kinds of fruit, it has an intense but pleasant flavour well worth trying. Otherwise we generally use black pepper. Green peppercorns in brine make a good addition to a sauce for a steak. Mashed potato has to have white pepper from a Saxa shaker or it’s not mashed spud according to my DH. 😁

My sourdough has really enjoyed the last few days! Came down to the mix pictured this morning after mixing 150g sourdough; 150g flour and 150g water. Usually grows nicely but never before at this rate! Looks like more bread making this afternoon….

Many thanks for revealing what the tool is used for, I very much doubt that I will find one in England. We are very much appreciating new to us fruits at the moment, having discovered a shop selling online at reasonable prices. Will have to look out for caltrops, never heard of before today….

I realise that this is going back awhile but I can’t find a response to this conundrum, have I just missed the relevant post or are we still waiting to discover what this strange device might help with?

Gardener’s Delight were the first tomatoes I grew, seeds are still readily available in the U.K. and to my knowledge they have not changed. Send me a P M if you want to try these again. Compared with Ferline Gardener’s Delight are smaller and not quite as tasty but these things are very personal. I’m sure that we will find the right variety for us eventually, just annoying that we were there and now we start again…

We grew a variety called Ferline F1 for years, seeds couldn’t be found last year and on one gardening forum I read that the license holder (or whatever the correct term is called) had withdrawn them from the market. I guess that it is possible to find out who, or which company, developed the hybrid and I hope that they might have a replacement to suggest. One of those things that I need to get around to….

In the past we have enclosed tomatoes very similar to yours with a banana or 2 in a paper bag. They have ripened well (I am not a fan of green tomatoes so happy to wait for the necessary time for ripeness). This year we had a really bad storm a couple of weeks back and this brought down many of the not yet ripe outside growing tomatoes. I didn’t have any bananas so I just brought them into the kitchen, wiped them dry and set them aside on plates around the kitchen. They have ripened fine without any additional fruit to give off ethylene. This has been a happy surprise since I don’t like over ripe bananas, or tomatoes with a banana element to their flavour. Won’t be growing this variety next year, we need something that ripens sooner in the season, that said I am delighted to have found that (to me) giant tomatoes will ripen eventually on or off the plant. San Marzanos in the unheated greenhouse continue to ripen, most are now sauce or dehydrated. Again not sure that we will grow these next year. So sad that our tried and tested favourite variety appears to have been pulled from the market. Research in attempt to locate the creator of that hybrid continues.

Interesting. On one occasion I discovered tiny shavings of plastic in my ice-cream, husband said nothing but I did notice more (very small) shavings in the mixture clinging to the lid. Hasn’t happened since so hoping that this was an isolated incident because I had positioned the “pint” badly. More recently, no problems and still amazed at the finished dessert coming out of the NC.

I came across an online retailer of unusual fruit and veg willing to deal with small orders (others are trade only with large minimum spend requirements). Having great fun trying new to us fruits and attempting to put them to good use. My most recent order brought us 3 sudachi - not sure if there should be an s at the end 🙃. Any suggestions as to what we might use these for? Have tried one and can see that it sits somewhere between lemon and lime. We are a no fish or seafood household but otherwise open to trying most things….

I find that a respin is almost always necessary when preparing a dessert based on tinned fruit. Yesterday we had pineapple that came in its juice from a can, I didn’t open the contraption before setting it going for a respin, it was perfect in the end and the respin is quite fast. I’m wondering if the newest NCs have slightly longer spin cycles because people reported doing this regularly. Not seen many reviews as yet but pictures seem to show timings of 4 or 5 minutes, significantly longer than my older (bought not very long ago) machine.

I have done as Smithy described with ‘custard’ based ice-cream and while I didn’t progress this in any scientific way I am confident that there was no difference in texture when the re-frozen dessert was finished with the NC when compared with the original batch. Defrosted overnight in the refrigerator and then refrozen during the following day combining vanilla with chocolate.