Duvel

Some basic pantry items turned into Vitello Tonnato ...

Excellent presentation. Which is your preferred consistency for your filling - runny or more viscous ?

Thanks to Anna N I felt the urge to make significant amounts of Nikuman recently. Aside from my non-existing folding skills they turned out nice: dough was basically the same as Anna's while for the filling I used minced fatty pork, soy/mirin/sesame oil, tons of scallions and a couple of spoon full of grated ginger. Very satisfying on a sunday afternoon ...

Thank you, Anna. This is going to be my snack for the weekend ...

They look great. Can you elaborate on dough and filling a little bit ?

I regularly soak mushroom in hot cream (just boiled and removed from the heat, soaking around 30 min) to prepare the base for mushroom croquettes. A mixture of ceps and trumpets of the dead give me best results. The latter imparts a truffle-like note that I find very pleasant. After soaking the rehydrated mushrooms are chopped up and mixed with a duxelles of fried fresh mushrooms (oyster, shiitake, whatever is cheap) and garlic confit and the strained cream before briefly simmered together and then turned into a thick bechamel for the croquettes. Plenty of aroma and body ...

True. Thats where the alcohol comes in.

Lye in ethanol (~35%, both available in food grade) or potassium methoxide in methanol (the short cut) will remove any organic residue with usually a day.

Yep, that's the way to go ... goes well along some glasses of Riesling.

It's my sons first birthday today and - as requested - his grandma brought a "Smarties Kuchen". Made him and me very happy ...

Yes, Some of the more realdily available French brands (e.g. Ducros) do fold in some cinnamon. I'd stick to the classic mix, which - if fresh - does have quite the quatre epices aroma to me.

I strongly suggest "quattre epices", a classic French mixtures of cloves, macis or nutmeg, dried ginger and pepper. From my perspective it has the same earthy, warm qualities as cinnamon, albeit with a little different overall profile. Works great as a cinnamon substitute in cream catalana, which actually passed the mother-in-law test (and she is a stout traditionalist when it comes to Catalan cooking)

For steeping close to boiling point, for drinking as hot as you can tolerate (should be around boiling point minus outside temperature)

I usually make them myself (it's basically a reduced mix for loo shui - Chinese master sauce), but there are commercial options as well ...

Is that Grünkohl cooked ?

One tea bag "Chai extra" (cinnamon bark, star anise, orange peel, black tea), steeped for 10 min in hot red wine. Repeat until comfortably warm ....

Great topic. I had "Smarties Kuchen": a thick sponge cake base, topped with a layer of butter cream, then a layer of Bahlsen butter cookies and finally dark chocolate frosting in which smarties (= M&Ms) are scattered (actually, since it's a German cake, there are arrange in a neat geometrical pattern ;-) Best thing was to have so much left overs that the next day you could eat then straight out of the fridge with. The butter cream almost solid ... Yum! In two weeks it's my sons first birthday and guess what I asked my mother to bring ;-)

God ... I love his book. Still on my to do list when I visit London next time.

Interesting indeed ... Thanks!

Excellent article, thanks !

A typical german sausage ("Hausmacher" type, coarse ground) would be spiced with marjoram, macis, dried ginger, cardamom and salt. Maybe some lemon peel (finely grated, e.g. with a microplane).

For something a little bit unusual try Sadaharu Aoki ... it is brilliant!

Quatre épices could work ...

Fideuà Käsespätzle Zaru Soba

I don't think that the claims are outrageous. Its basically a small autoclave with two heating coils in it. In the CNET review the closing mechanism is described and it seems feasible to me that the chamber is in fact pressurized, giving you the same cooking advantages as in a pressure cooker (cf. the overpressure valve). So, as Dcarch has pointed out, as the cooking time of the food will depend on the internal temperature, which in turn is determined by the boiling point of the water in your food and the latter is raised due to the pressurized chamber, it will in fact cook your turkey much faster. Since you have two additional sources of heat/IR radiation (the coils) that will create higher temperatures on the surface than a pressure cooker alone would permit. I do think the turkey story seems feasible. Its a nifty idea ...