ahpadt

Pretty certain that it'll overcook if you leave it warm for a long time. Risotto is only good when made ala minute imo.

How do you get nice bacon from an animal that barely has any fat (I've never had poultry bacon)?

'Umami: The Fifth Taste' sounds quite interesting...

Depends on how you cut them, obviously. Sometimes when I make carbonara, I add thinly sliced leeks or asparagus when the bacon is nearly done.

Are you sure the veggies they had there weren't pre-cooked (blanched)?

Recently bought 'In the Kitchen with Alain Passard'. Didn't know what to expect but it looked somewhat interesting when flicking through it in the bookshop. I have to say that after reading through the whole thing in about 2 hours last night, I think it's great. Unusual, but it really taps into how Mr. Passard thinks. I think that a cartoony book like this could really take off if more chefs were portraited for them.

Would you consider looking at dessert or sweet applications of for example brioche? Still keeps it somewhat within the bread topic.

Surprised Lucky Peach hasn't been mentioned? I guess it might not be the most relevant if you're after recipe ideas and the like, but I enjoy the articles in them.

Recently bought my first Japanese knife, followed by another. A Mac Pro 10" slicer and 6" utility knife. A big step up from the Global and Anolon knives I've tried.

Cooked untill soft. My idea is to cook it whole SV, then char it slightly on the barbeque.

I'm interested in trying to cook a whole fennel bulb SV, as I find that blanching makes it a bit watery. I understand Keller's book recommends doing most veg at 85C, but how long will it approximately take?

While on the subject of Michel and Albert Roux: French Country Cooking

Unfortunately I havent had much luck in finding a 1k/3k combi stone. I've had a look around the web and my local kitchen supplier. The only thing I found on the web was a couple of noname stones. Also being an electronics enthusiast, I am very sceptical about 'brandless' items. Do you have a specfic combistone or brand to recommend that is somewhat easily available? I am located in the UK.

I want to get this out of curiosity and nothing else. I would almost certainly never cook anything from it, probably because each dish requires elaborate techniques and a lot of time. It's pretty expensive for something you buy out of curiosity, but I think it should be in the collection of any culinary enthusiast. Phaidon has a 20% pre-order offer by the way.

As long as you wash it properly I don't see why you wouldn't eat it. I love fries with the skin on. Hardly any restaurants do it...

Probably a good idea. Should I just get a 1000 grit? Are there any major differences from brand to brand? My local store sells MinoSharp and a few other brands.

Im looking for an all-purpose 8-9" chefs knife. Been reading around all sorts of forums. In my local kitchen supplier store I saw an extremely handsome Miyagi 600D knife, but the general reputation of this brand seems to be not good value for money, although they look really nice. On forums a lot of people seem to recommend Mac knives, as they supposedly are good value and have a good structure. Im not very family with Japanese or Western-style Japanese knives. At home I use a generic Global chefs knife. It's okay but I hate the handle. Should I immediately assume that I must get hold of 1 or 2 whetstones if I buy a knife like this? Spending £100-150 on just the knife is already quite enough, although I understand a good knife should last forever. I understand that the best way is to go to a store and hold the knife, however I am only able to do this with the Miyagi's, as I cant find any retailer except online that sells Mac's. I am based in the UK. Is chipping an issue with these knives?

It has now arrived. To be honest I am a little disappointed. It's poorly translated and the layout isn't very inspiring. Just pages and pages of recipes with little text. Maybe I am too used to the high quality of books that are released these days? Don't get me wrong, the ethos of the book is great, but it feels like it was made on a shoe string budget. I can however now see where Rene Redzepi got a lot of his inspiration from.

A few weeks before Christmas I got Martin Picard - Sugar Shack Au Pied de Cochon. I like it a lot. Delicious sounding recipies and really cool photography (included the half-naked girls covered in maple syrup - lol). The mille-feuille in it looks outrageous. For Christmas I got: Lucky Peach #3 - #9 Tom Kerridge - Proper Pub Food Daniel Patterson - Coi: Stories and Recipes Philip Howard - The Square: Sweet Magnus Nilsson - Fäviken Pascal Barbot - Astrance: A Cook's Book Rene Redzepi - A Work In Progress Alex Atala - D.O.M. Harold McGee - McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture I'm still very new with collecting cookery books. I have 20-30 in total now, but I'm only in my mid 20's so space is an issue. Michel Bras - Essential Cuisine is on it's way.

I unfortunately don't live near any good Asian supermarkets. Where can I get hold of decent (I've heard the quality can vary a lot) kombu and bonito katsuobushi online?

^ The sprouts look really good.

I can vouch for this technique, although I don't think you even have to cook the skin before you cook it in the oven like that. For my Christmas dinner I put raw pieces of turkey skin (from the breast), seasoned, between two oven dishes, with parchment paper, and cooked it at 190c for ~30 minutes. Turned out like crispy crackers. Delicious. I find that by cooking the bird with the skin on, once fried, the steam from the flesh tends to ruin the skin quite quickly. I would SV the breasts at 59c and do the legs to your liking. Either ~68c for "tender/juicy" or 80c for "confit-style". Both methods with duck fat of course. I like to debone the thighs and cut them into two. This yields very nice portions.

The turkey breasts turned out amazing. Brined in a 7% salt, 2.5% sugar, peppercorns, coriander and dried thyme for 6 hours. Bathed at 59c for a couple of hours with duckfat in the bag, then seared well in duckfat. Highly recommended. Didn't use the thighs, which was good because even with just the breasts we had leftovers. And the leftover turkey is still quite delish...

If it's already precooked, isn't this a lot of faff just for the sake of reheating it? I would just glaze it and stick it in a hot oven. It's probably been brined to every inch of its life, so I doubt it'll go dry.

I will often buy organic or free range, but quite frankly I don't care overly much how something was raised or grown as long as the end product is good.