jackal10

I need to prepare some chicken pieces for a picnic to be eaten cold, as finger food. They should not be sticky, oily or messy to eat. My current plan is to brine them overnight, then roast off long time low temperature (65C) with soy, garlic and maybe a little honey and chilli. Suggestions and comments please.

Thanks! You can read my stuff on eGCI. The oven is a AGA - lots of solid cast iron. I do find baking books intended for professional use better. "Baking, The Art and Science", Schuneman and Trey, Baker Tech Inc, ISBN 0-9693795-0 is excellent with very helpful diagrams and pictures, not only of things going right, but also various defects and how to correct them. Also good is, of course, Professer Cavel's "The Taste of Bread". And no I wouldn't move to Illinois, especially with the current politics Why not move to Europe? The environment is more benign, climate better, Gastronomy is held as a key value, and the bread is often more interesting.

As I quoted on the cricket thread: Of course, while in the Pavillion they will need something to drink...

Pea soup or pease pottage (with dried peas) Other things traditionally made with ham stock, such as persille, or aspic on terrines

Grinding up the meat and the veg will certainly make more area available. I'm less certain about grinding up the bones, as this will tend to release more calcium to give a distinct "bone taint". Also very small particle of bone are hard to filter out, and give an unpleasant texture.

Do you mean Herve This's Chocolate Chantilly? Take good chocolate with a little less than its own weight in water, melt the two together, then set it over ice and whip with an electric whisk until thick and creamy. http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,...,663413,00.html

Horseradish: Doesn't get too out of hand as we dig it each year for Passover. Also I use the young ferny tops (before the coarse leaves come) as an early salading. They are not hot at all. I imgaine (have not tried, but will) if you cut off the leaves of some of your patch (use for compost), new growth will come that you can use this way. It really won't matter that you weaken the plant a bit... Usual uses for the root: grate and make horseradish and turnip or beet chrain, horseradish potatoes. Otherwise compost. Its traditional to pinch out the tops of broad bean plants; this discourages the blackfly since you remove the young tender growth, and encourages better setting of the beans. You can use these bean tops that you pinch out as a bean-flavoured spinach: wilt in a pan with some butter or bacon

I like the recipe from Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking" Wonderful texture and a fine flavour. She crushes coffee beans in a mortar before infusing in the cream. I cheat and use fresh coarse ground; I like the fine flecks of coffee bean left in the ice cream after straining theough a fine sieve. My adaptation: Mix together 4oz coffee beans, coarse ground 1 Pint cream 3 egg yolks 3 oz soft brown sugar (cassonade) strip lemon peel Gently bring to the boil, remove from heat, let get cold, strain through a fine sieve Fold in 1/4 pint heavy (double) cream lightly whipped with a tbs white sugar. Freeze and churn

From the UK (East Anglia) Now: herbs, lovage, radish, lettuce, arugula, last of the overwintered swiss chard, last of the purple sprouting broccoli, broad (fava) bean tops (like beany spinach), sorrel, horseradish, asparagus, strawberries (greenhouse), cut and come again stir-fry mix Coming soon: Currants (red, white, black), New potatoes, purple mange-tout, purple broad beans, green garlic

If I, as a food writer, accept a freebie from a restaurant or supplier - an invite to a launch party, for example, or a free meal, am I duty bound to write it up? Most food journo's I know seem to write up maybe one in ten free meals or even less, which seems to me to have an element of free-loading. I feel that if you accept the invite, you should have the intention of writing it up. If you don't intend to write, then refuse the invite. Not that foodie journos would ever freeload...

Thanks. I'm confused by cheesecake. I think the problem is that there seem to be two, if not three (or more) traditions: a) The one I grew up with: heavy, dense, baked brown on top, cream cheese and lemon, about an inch of filling. Eggs not seperated and beaten. Pastry or cracker shell. Heathens add raisins, which sink to the bottom. b) Light and fluffy, baked, eggs seperated and the white beaten stiff like a souffle. About six inches of filling - same as the heavy version but inflated with beaten egg white. c) Uncooked, but set. Mostly commercial. May have a seperate layer of fruit or chocolate. I believe version (a) to be the only true cheesecake, and there is no need to speak softly when it is cooking. I deduce you are making (b) the souffle version, which needs to be treated like any souffle.

I think the brining experiemnts was in the context of brining pork to make ham, so the brine would be the usual strength, and the meat would be ham size. I guess the dye was fluorscene (not edible). However I guess this would apply to any meat. Prof Hall's MRI results indicate very different rates of penetration along or across the muscle fibres.

I've set up www.moleculargastronomy.org which has a link to the mailing list. Actually that's all it has at present. Admission to the lsit is moderated. If you want to join the mailing list please PM or email me with a short description of yourself and your interest, mainliy to keep random spammers out.

I have to say I don't terribly care for the Reinhart books, or the Silverton. I love "Bread Builders" and Joe Ortiz's Village Baker, but the one for me is Dan Lepard's Baking with Passion.

Last year I made a Tomato Curd from a recipe sent into Farmer's Weekly sometime before 1946, the date of my collected recipes. Interesting but mild. 1lb tomatos 6 oz sugar 3 oz butter 1 lemon 2 eggs Stew the tomatos until tender, then puree and sieve. Add the butter, sugar and lemon juice, then add the well beaten eggs and stir over gentle heat until hick. Don't overcook. Put into warmed clean preserving jars.

Hard winter pears - called Wardens - are a very old tradition. Medlars are a very slow growing tree, but make wonderful gnarled architectural forms.

I was asleep - it was night in the UK. Bletting is a form of fermentation. "Time is like the medlar, it is rotten before it is ripe" The fresh medlar is tough and woody. Its (I think) a member of the Rose family, but with three big seeds. You leave them in a heap to ferment (a week or so) and they get soft. A real taste of autumn - they are brown and taste "brown", like an old sherry. They are still tough to eat, beacuse there is mot much flesh to seed, but they make wonderful jam or jelly. The tree is also decorative and long lived. I have a feeling there are other foods which have to undergo this process: persimmons and tobacco come to mind..

Good thought but my oven will not cooperate at such a low temp. Best I can hope for is 170F. 170 F is probably OK, so long as you have a thermometer in the meat and watch its temperature like a hawk It will only take 3-4 hours or so to get up to 130F, which is the temperature to take it out. Double wrapping the joint in tinfoil will slow the heat adsorbtion some - brown it first. Cracking the oven door open a bit will cool the oven as well, but maybe too much.

I'm never sucessful with freezing yeast, at least not without refreshing it a few times after thawing. Yeast takes time to wake up. I wonder if that is what the trouble is?

6+ hours at 60C/140F

It isn't the gluten. A woods said, the yeast might be old - they have a very limited shelf life. Try fresh yeast You may not have developed the gluten enough first. Did you knead until the dough was smooth and soft? You may have overproved or under proved. I guess about an hour or two at 85F for first proof, and an hour (or overnight in a refrigerator) for second proof. Dan Lepard's method of folding the dough, like making flaky pastry every hour for four hours during the first proof stage works well. Making the dough wetter, so it only just holds together will give a lighter texture.

Most beans are poisonous from raw. Ricin, for example, is derived from kidney beans. Meat benefits from hanging, and is not good fresh. Game especially. Most grains are not nutritious raw, or without at least threshing and grinding. Others, such as Quinoa have bitter saponins that must be washed away. Some fruits, such as persimmons, have mouth puckering amounts of tannins raw. Others, such as medlars need bletting first. Many products need a period of fermentation. Even tobacco is fermented and then dried.

I think you may be taking the statement too literally. In general, the longer the time and distance from the source, then yes, there used to be more chance for staling, loss of micro-nutrients, and spoilage from oxidation, enzymatic or micro-biological action. However with modern packing, processing and controls this is less true, and otherwise unpalatable or unwholesome food is made edible. For example is properly treated frozen and defrosted food worse nutritionally than the fresh equivalent? I doubt it at any level of significance, although the freeze and thawing may wreck the texture. I think what concerns most people about food additives or GM crops are the "unkown unknowns" - side effects that may become apparent over the longer term. However that is not so say natural food is necessarily good, we've just been eating it for a long time, so havge some idea what to eat and what to avoid. As was pointed out earlier, many plants protect themselves with toxins, which if eaten in excess or untreated can cause harm. Just because its natural, doesn't meant its good. Lettuce, for example is high in opiates, especially near the stalk.

All the the above are at best unproven, and in my view untrue. Arguing from what we were "meant" to eat is difficult = there is some argument that we were probably carrion eaters with occaisional fruit as a feast, and hence our reaction to carbs is to convert them to fat for future use. I agree with Fifi above. People who eat only raw food or fruit are nutritionally challenged. There is no reliable evidence that I know of to show that eating the same weight of whole grain or of processed grain plus the approriate amount of seperate bran has any noticable effect. The major effect of eating whole grain foods is that people tend to eat less total weight of carbs, since the food is tougher, and since they are catering to the health lobby they tend to be cooked with less sugar and fat. Sprinkling bran on their food would have the same effect. However some "health" bars and cereals have high sugar, salt and fat. Just for interest I have taken out of the cupboard a box of Kellog's All-Bran Bran flakes, and a bag of the processed white flour I make bread from. Reading the small print on the packets g per 100g Bran Flakes White Flour Energy kcal 324 346 Protein 10 11.7 Carbs 67 71 Sugars 22 1.4 <- Lots more sugar in Bran flakes Fat 2 1.4 Sodium 0.75 0 So bran flakes and refined white flour have virtually identical nutrients, except the bran flakes have a lot more sugar. If I make the flour into bread, with water, yeast and salt, the main change is adding about 1% salt, so even the sodium levels will be similar. I think I'll stay with my morning white toast, rather than switch to bran.

cockie leeky One of the Japanese noodle soups I'd also vote for Borscht (or schav with sorrel)