jmacnaughtan

Well, after this weekend I should probably go easy on all three for a while I haven't seen Beillevaire around - is it Norman? And a pot-luck would be good, but you'd need a way of stopping everyone bringing the same baguette and butter. I think I would potentially upgrade to a bread, butter and champagne party. Butter and champagne work surprisingly well together.

I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned Bordier yet. It's good, probably the only butter I can eat without bread - I believe it's from Saint Malo, but according to their site you can get it all over France. No idea whether it's exported though. Last Saturday for a party, I took 1.5kg of it and bashed it into a single pat. It's been a dream of mine for a while to just serve a huge mound of good butter, and it went down well - between about 20 of us, we got through more than 600g. Needless to say, I'm now pretty good for butter I'm not entirely sure I'd have the nerve to host a purely bread, butter and wine party, but I still think it would be an excellent thing to do...

So, the second attempt was a little better than the first - the set jelly actually unmoulded and had a good wobble. It seemed to hold the coaster OK too. Unfortunately: It was still cloudy, and an unappealing yellow colour (you can't see it too well in the photo, but think weak urine). I think my kilo-tub of gelatin is garbage, at least for anything clear. After a minor amount of poking and turning the plate, the jelly swiftly began to break apart. After trying out @teonzo's suggestion with the phone on top of the jelly, the results were disappointing. On full vibrate, the jelly didn't move at all. So: I need new, leaf gelatin. I could pick up some pro stuff, but it's the same producer as this garbage, so I may try supermarket (even though it's probably going to be gold) I'll probably need to up the percentage from 2.7% to 3-3.5%. The jelly's going to be spending time at room temperature, and there will be plenty of poking and prodding. I think I'm going to have to scrap the idea of wobbling the jelly with the vibrate setting - it's doing nothing at all. If I can get clarity and some wobble, that'll have to do. Also, I'll probably scale it up - this was a 1L basin, and I think my next size up is 3L. This is clearly going to screw with the structural stability, but would 3.5% gelatin be enough/overkill? This one had a fairly firm set - probably the most I'd want if I was going to eat it. Something like the jelly you get at kids' birthday parties. But I think, especially with a large basin, that it'll just collapse too quickly.

I've never heard of PlastiDip - is it fairly transparent? The idea is for it to look like it's just suspended in jelly, at least with the screen lighting up and being more or less visible. It's why I'm having trouble with cling film - to get enough protection, you're sacrificing transparency.

No problem, it was going to the dump anyway. The film was apparently a decent professional one - I've poached in it before, but always very well wrapped. If I'd done the same here, you wouldn't have been able to see the phone. I might try a condom - I hadn't picked up on that before. I've done a second run, and it seems to be clearer (maybe I had starch residue in the bowl for the other one). It is an unappealing yellowish colour though - is leaf gelatin colourless as well as transparent? For this run, I've embedded a slate coaster which seems to be the approximate shape and mass of a smartphone, but square. I'll unmould it tomorrow and try buzzing a phone on top of it. Thanks for the idea! Even at the resonant vibration, I'm not entirely sure a small vibro-motor has enough power to collapse a jelly, but I'll take your word for it anyway. In any case, I'm very unlikely to achieve it without a lot of legwork. And I can't pull anything like a real vacuum with my set up, so it shouldn't be an issue.

I think you're right - maybe if it was an extremely hard-set jelly in a thin layer. I imagine something along the lines of a slow, steady pulse would work. ETA: Steve Mould looks at the resonating frequency of a water balloon here, and it's really slow. I imagine jelly would be at least fairly similar.

Well, the first attempt went about as badly as possible. I was going to do photos/videos, but there's really no point. - My crappy off-brand food-saver didn't recognise that it had pulled enough air out, so kept sucking and wouldn't seal with any kind of vacuum (but I'll probably use this anyway, see below) - Cling film is, apparently, laughably poor at keeping liquid jelly out (at least if you want it to look discreet). I think I have destroyed my test phone. - A thicker layer of jelly would probably have been better, but not enough - 1.8% gelatin is not enough. I should clearly have listened to @teonzo and not used crappy internet guides. The jelly collapsed immediately under its own weight, but still left the phone in a chunk of it. - Surprisingly, the alarm I set for this morning on vibrate still functioned, even though the screen is KO. Unfortunately, the vibrate function had zero wobbling effect on the chunk. I blame the cheap first-generation vibro-motor in the Nokia, but I'm not sure a newer one would be much better without adapting it perfectly to the resonant frequency (thanks for the head's up @dcarch and @KennethT) - My gelatin is, apparently, nowhere near pure and was unpleasantly cloudy. So: - I'm going to upgrade to a smartphone in the jelly, but probably in a terribly loose (but fully sealed) food saver type bag. It will dampen the vibration, but I honestly don't think this is going to matter much anyway. - As it's fully sealed, it probably won't need a thicker jelly layer around it. - I'll ramp up the next test to 2.7% and see if it still wobbles. - I don't think I'll have enough time to order anything from eBay and expect it to actually arrive in time. The party's on the 2nd. - I might see if I can find a way to make the base move and wobble the jelly. I get the feeling that suspending the vibrating motor is counter-productive, and just bouncing around inside the phone rather than moving the jelly. A vibrating phone is louder on a hard surface than in your hand, so I'd imagine the vibrations would be amplified through the base. - Would leaf gelatin give a clearer result? I always thought it was basically identical, but it might be purer. - In the worst-case scenario, I'll still have a phone people can call which is suspended in jelly. This project is harder than I thought, so all suggestions/advice/hoary anecdotes are welcome.

1. That's a really unpleasant thing to do to somebody. 2. iPhones are, clearly, waterproof with cling film 3. It turns out you do get network coverage through jelly. I didn't think his one looked that good though - it looked pretty hard too. I'll see if I can do better. I've got almost two weeks, so why not?

Thanks Teo, I'll give that a shot. I'm currently trying one with a 1.8% gelatin ratio - according to a couple of sources, this is what you'd normally use for a wobbly dessert jelly. Doesn't 2.4g make it a bit "hard"? I also wonder what the vibration will do to its structural integrity. It should be OK, but I'm not sure it's been thoroughly tested I'm not sure I want to monkey around building jelly blocks. It will not go well.

Thanks for that - I'll give it a go if I can get my hands on the glycerine and denatured alcohol (shouldn't be too hard). The only issue is that I've got essentially one shot - if the phone gets fried, I don't have another on hand immediately. I'll try this if the vac packing doesn't work out. I think that freezing the phone would help set any jelly instantly, preventing it from getting in. But would freezing it damage the phone?

You shall have one! I just need to pick up a pre-paid SIM and set the jelly

I don't have an iPhone, and I'd be worried about encasing anything that expensive in jelly... I shall! But I put the odds at 50/50 that someone on this forum has actually already done something this pointless

Mine's a cheapo food saver type, so it shouldn't crack. I'm more worried about the plastic pressing all the buttons all the time (it's an old-school Nokia C2 01 with physical buttons. Remember real buttons?). Also, I'd rather the plastic was as unobtrusive as possible - ideally, it should look like the phone is just suspended in the jelly.

Hi, This is a slightly odd question, and I think this is probably the right place for it. As I mentioned previously, I'm hosting a failed selfie exhibition and will be doing food and drink to match. One thing that I thought would be fun to do, however, was encase a functioning telephone in a set jelly/jell-O and have people call it. It would be set on vibrate, obviously Anyway, this is not something I've done before, and the logistics are a bit interesting: - How can I stop the jelly destroying the electronics? Would a phone survive being vac-sealed? - Which proportion of gelatin to water do I need for structural stability, but maximum wobble? - Would a larger jelly wobble more satisfyingly? - Is a phone's vibrate setting even strong enough to wobble jelly? - Fully transparent or coloured? I don't intend to serve this as food, so food safety and flavour are not an issue. All suggestions welcome.

Oysters could be a good option, but shucking enough for 30 people would be a chore. And I can see nothing good coming of letting drunk people try and open their own...

@teonzo I'll generally try anything, but I draw the line at serving people eyes. The idea isn't to shock really, it's more the idea of it being unpolished, unfinished, etc.

I like the egg idea, but I'm not sure how it would work as a buffet dish without covering everyone and everything in yolk and oil... Rillettes are always a good option though. Hey, if you're in Paris on the 2nd of November, feel free to drop by. @Kerry Beal Those little dacquoise cookies aren't ugly - they look pretty cool to me But ugly stuff does certainly fit with the theme. @Margaret Pilgrim There will of course be a lot of brut champagne, but the theme of the evening is failed selfies or selfie brut if, like me, you enjoy being pretentious. I try not to do things by halves, so it will actually be an exhibition, with artists present, champagne, and a press release In fact, here it is - this is the level I'm going for:

I'm a huge fan of their green peppercorn mustard. But it is to be approached with caution I'll probably end up doing two big fillets, one traditional and one less so. I've done a bergamot zest cure before, and that worked. Would other citrus work as well?

This may be involved, but it won't be my doing. I do love rillons. I can imagine just a big pile of them, served slightly warm. Also, as it happens, I'm going to Dijon on Friday. Are you familiar with Edmond Fallot? Not sure about raw meat, as it will be hanging out on a buffet table for a while. And the goat's cheese is a winner. I had not thought of this. Something simple and rich for sweets would probably be best - so I don't have to spend much time on them or make too many. Aside from brownie bites (meh) or truffles (also a bit meh), I'm not really sure which direction to go. Possibly some kind of financier?

So, I thought it would be funny to turn my apartment into a gallery space and throw an opening party for a failed selfie exhibition. It started out as something of a joke, but has since snowballed and there has been a selection process, the photos are currently at the printers (60 x 40cm...), I'm going on a champagne road trip this week and there will probably be around 30 or 40 people turning up. I have pretentiously labelled the movement as selfie brut and the space itself as galérie brut. I thought it would be fitting to have food to match (obviously, the champagne will be brut), but I'm running out of ideas and I thought you all would be the perfect crowd to ask. In this case, I'm interpreting "brut" as raw/unfinished/brutish/unrefined. Here's what I'm thinking so far: A huge pat of excellent salted butter, with good bread to match. Thickly cut chunks of gravlax salmon. Some charcuterie of some sort. And that's about it so far. All suggestions are welcome!

A chunky côte de boeuf, for sure. For pork, it's cheating, but jamon iberico wins every time. Chunky, half-kilo-minimum duck breasts. For offal: veal sweetbreads, duck hearts and foie gras escalopes. With a bit of rearrangement, that would actually make a pretty good dinner all together

You could try pairing the rowans with raspberries. Scottish raspberries are excellent Maybe treat them like a crabapple and make a sort of jelly? I don't know about their pectin content, so you may have to experiment.

This looks pretty good - I shall give it a go. From the ratios, it looks like it'll be a bit similar to a brownie in texture. Am I right in this? Good to know on both counts, although I've only ever seen them whole.

Apologies if there's already a thread here, but I couldn't find it. I have recently been enjoying Brazil nuts. They seem to get no respect whatsoever, but are clearly the King of Nuts: - They only seem to come out at Christmas - They always rise to the top of the bowl - They are big and brutish. More importantly, they are the only nut big enough to be satisfying when you eat just one of them. Anything else must be shoveled mouthwards. Anyway, I'm having trouble roasting/toasting them effectively - for some reason, the inside browns before the outside and I don't know why. This generally leads me to overdo them, which is terrible given their price tag. Any recommendations? Also, I'm looking for things to do other than just eat them. I picked up a half-kilo bag of pretty beefy ones, and I've got around two thirds left. All suggestions are welcome

There's no reason you can't use gelatin - just hydrate powdered gelatin in six times its weight of water or purée, then microwave it until it's melted and stir it into the bulk of your fruit. ETA: A ratio of around 1% is generally pretty good.