jackal10

Richard Ehrlich, in today's Independent, under the title "Too darned hot" comments that it is a very patchy vintage, much depending on the skill of the vinyard and the winemaker. Northern Medoc: St Julien, Paulliac, St Estephe, Sauternes and Barsac have promise, but southern wines, such as St Emilion and Pomeral have a hard time. This confirms what I have heard from merchants and shippers. There is a lot of flabby, sweet, low acidity, untypical wine about. Given ten years, the wines may balance, but many don't have the structure to age. Of course, some may like high alcohol, the big simple fruit and low acidity, and I'd expect some high Parker scores, but to me that is not what Claret is about. Its Bordeaux, not a hot country quaffing wine. Buy with extreme caution. Ehrlich says "buy carefully, taking good advice with this inconsistent vintage"

As I mentioned further up, in polite society sex, even obscure practices is perfectly aceptable dinner conversation. Attributing those practices to named individuals is not. That rules out, unfortunately, the fascinating topic of who is sleeping with whom.

Its more about looks than taste, so presention is essential. Hollywood mega stars don't really eat, they just inhale near food...Finger food makes life easier. A few tricks: Shelled king prawns (I've forgotten the US name) plus mange-tout on sticks (use kebeb skewers) in a vase - they look like exotic flowers Quail eggs in a chinese seafood nest. Can be marbled. Lots of edible flowers

Even Escoffier said "The hour is not too far distant...when a roux will not be made from flour but from a pure starch....This sauce will be clearer, more brilliant, and better than that of the old procesess.." This raises two questions in my mind: a) Will starch thickened sauces (Veloute, for example) ever make their return, or are we faced with an endless sucession of over-reduced glazes as a legacy of the nouvelle movement? b) Does it matter if cooking becomes akin to an industrial or chemical process, not only for volume production but also for restaurants? The romantic notion is that the chef personally prepares the dish for the diner from raw primary ingredients. The practice is often different. There have been, for example, experiments by the Roux brothers with sous-vide meals prepared centrally and reheated. Industrially prepared pectin seems to be used a lot as a thickener currently. How do we draw the line? Should we require the majority of the ingredients be prepared from raw or fresh, a minute? Should we expect the Chef to personally be in the kitchen, cooking?

Black and Tan is orginally Guiness and Porter. Since true Porter is hard to obtain people use Guiness and MILD, or Guiness and Bass Pale Ale or Guiness and bitter. Porter and mild are quite sweet, not gassy beers, which is important for the taste. Some layer the Guiness by pouring it carefully over a spoon or down the side of the glass over the mild beer. Guiness and Harp is a "Half and half"

Thanks! Look forward to hearing how it turns out....

At a wine tasting with Pierre Rolly Gassman last night he explained that the 2003 depended on whether it was chalk soil or not. Favoured vinayerds produced exceptional wines - and there have been only two hotter recorded years. Almost most all of his wines will be SGN or VT, 15% potential alcohol or more and designed to keep for ten years or more, by which time the sugar level will match the acidity. BTW the 1996 Gewurz showed exceptionally well

What woud the servants and the poor eat if you did not leave food? Meaning that I think you can trace the custom back to where the Lord would dine first, and what was left over go to the commoners, and then as alms to the poor..

Test half-wy through. If the collagen is not breaking down how you like, then crank up the heat a little... Some people do this very long cooking with the food sealed in a cry-o-vac (sous-vide) bag. You kinda need to seperae the browning/smoke flavouring phase from the cooking phase. Sealing the meat, once its smoked to our desire, will help stop the dehydration

Should be...150F/65C for 6 hours plus. Heston Blumenthal cooks his for 72 hour sealed in a cry-o-vac bag (sous vide). Pork is traditionally served more well done, although I don't think it needs to. The old argument was that you needed to kill parasites, but that is not really a problem for the majority of the western world

Don't try - these people have no sense of humour, and with the current paranoia the chances of detection are high. You will meet strange new people and change your life, not for the better... The detectors are especially sensitive to things with the radio opacity of typical explosives. Unfortunately that cheese and is most solid foods. They are also sensitive to nitrate and nitrite residues - ham, bacon, preserved foods, but also almonds etc. A friend had a really hard time with a piece of wedding cake with marzipan icing. They get excited about metal or radio opaque objects, not normal in luggage - tins or cans of stuff, or anything wrapped in foil.

Dan Lepard suggests pre-cooking and soaking the whole grain before adding them to the dough. Boil for 45 mins, then soak for 12 hours. Gives "wheat berries" a whole new meaning - they really are like berries.

No American macro brew is worth drinking. Gassy weak stuff. Guiness (but only from Dublin) Original Budvar Pilsner Chimay Double Newcastle Brown Greene King Abbot Ale Cobra (with Indian food)

I'd love to see the tester's comments on the recipes...pix even....

I'd advise enjoying it while here and taking back the memories. Stays special that way longer, and besides the customs people have no sense of humour, and are not nice to know! If you are in Cambridge stop by and say hallo! What are you doing here? Special things are I guess quite ordinary: good cheese, beer, Marmite, digestive biscuits...

According to the article referenced below freshly milled flour contains a fraction that attacks the sulphide bond of gluten, weakening it and hence reducing the dough volume. Staling, or the addition of Vitamic C (Ascorbic acid) oxidises this fraction. Staling may affect the taste of the flour as well. Journal of Cereal Science 29 (1999) 1–16 Article No. jcrs.0218, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on Redox Reactions in Wheat Dough as Affected by Ascorbic Acid W. Grosch and H. Wieser Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fu¨r Lebensmittelchemie and Kurt-Hess-Institut fu¨r Mehl- und Eiweißforschung, Lichtenbergstraße 4, D-85748 Garching, Germany Received 12 August 1998 ABSTRACT Ascorbic acid (AA) is used as bread improver, as its addition to dough causes an increase in loaf volume and an improvement in crumb structure. To explain these effects we review the stereospecificity of the improver action and the properties of ascorbate oxidase and glutathione dehydrogenase and the occurrence of low molecular thiols in flour and their concentration changes during dough mixing in the presence and absence of AA. On the basis of the results the improver action of AA is explained by a reaction sequence leading to a rapid removal of endogenous GSH, which otherwise would cause dough weakening by sulphhydryl/disulphide interchange reactions with gluten proteins. To test this hypothesis the binding sites of endogenous GSH in gluten proteins have been determined by the addition of 35S-labelled GSH as a tracer to flour before dough mixing. The distribution of radioactivity in the gliadin and glutenin fractions of gluten obtained from dough indicates that the major portion of GSH is bound to glutenins. The isolation and sequence analysis of radioactive cystine peptides from an enzymatic digest of glutenins demonstrates that GSH is almost exclusively linked to those cysteine residues of LMW subunits that have been proposed to form intermolecular disulphide bonds.

Wing rib on the bone is my favourite cut of beef.

The fat is soft and delicious, despite the food police discourraging eating animal fat. Beef fat melts around 70C/150F, so most of it will still be in place, unlike cooking, say pork shoulder to a higher temperature where the fat melts and lubricates the rather well cooked meat that is pulled into shreds for serving...

Slightly larger than golf balll, but smaller than tennis ball Fluffly, not cannonball, but *essential* with fried onion and chopped parsley, salt and white pepper Should have discernable bits of soaked Matzo in them for texture - not just matzo meal. Plenty of them, not just three as a garnish bobbing in a sea of soup

The old college sconce rules of etiquette (now only practiced in Oxford) were to avoid discussing - The food (usually institutional) - One's work (boring) - Politics - The mention of a name when discussing personal relationships - Religion - the portraits hanging in the Hall

The key is what is the market. a. Location b. Location c. Location The location must be such that there is enough traffic and people who will want breakfast. If it is out of the way you won't get the casual traffic, and no matter how good it is reputation takes time to spread. Do the sums. In the West it goes roughly 30% cost of food 30% overheads (rent, taxes, power, water, insurance, capital etc etc) 30% staff costs 10% everything else Can you make enough money just on breakfast? How many do you need to sell to break even? Will you have take-away trade? Besides location and word of mouth, how will you advertise, especially in the early days?

I received another reminder. Ther is a tasting in Oxford as well. Please feel free to pass on this invitation to friends who may be interested. Next week's tasting is going to be quite an awesome event - the first time all the major Port houses have agreed to show their wines together. We still have some places left. And here's the invite... Ladies and Gentlemen, The Directors and Company of Cambridge Wine Merchants cordially invite you to join us this St George's Day for our first annual Grand Port Tasting - the largest show of this kind to occur in the UK.. LONDOn - Friday 23rd April 5:00pm-8:00pm City University Club 50 Cornhill EC3V 3PD Tickets: £5 (redeemable against orders of a dozen or more bottles) CAMBRIDGE - Thursday 22nd April The Hall, Wesley College, 11am-3pm and 5-6:30pm OXFORD - Friday 23rd April The Hall, Wadham College, 11am-3pm with a light lunch being served from 1pm. On show will be the wines of Croft, Delaforce, Dow, Fonseca, Graham, Krohn, Niepoort, Quinta do Noval, Quinta do Passadouro, Quinta do Vesuvio, Romariz, Smith-Woodhouse, Taylor, Warre and more. The tasting will be focusing on the rubies, LBVs, single quinta vintages and superior tawnies/colheitas of these houses, along with several recent full vintage wines. The wines will be arranged by type allowing you to make a meaningful comparison between the various producers. Throughout the event, the staff of Cambridge Wine Merchants and the will be at hand to talk to you about the wines. For reservations, enquiries and details, please contact the Tasting Coordinator, as below. Places are limited so please reply early. Please feel free to forward this email to interested parties. RSVP Luke Webster - luke@cambridgewine.com Cambridge Wine Merchants 32 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UJ Tel: 01223 568989 Cambridge Wine Merchants is a dynamic independent Company and for over a decade, a major supplier the Cellars of the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges- this role gives us exceptional access and buying power in the fields of premium Port, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Rhone, Germany and Alsace. Consequently, our retail, wholesale and en-primeur prices in these areas are some of the very best in the Country. Contact us at info@cambridgewine.com for further details, we can email you a full list of all the Ports to be tasted, or an even fuller list of all the ports we sell.

That is true, but most fish poaching is in a court-bouillon, which is acidic. If the fish is whole, with the skin unbroken, ther will be very little bacterial contamination of the flesh. I'm not a micro-biologist, however. Any experts out there? If the fish is not overcooked, then it cannot have gone over 41C (McGee gives the shrink temperaure of fish protein as 105F)

McGee's Curious cook is a lot more practical than "On food and Cooking". For some reason I did not like the Barham as much - I think his target audience was more like catering students, and I was not sure about some of his recipes. Wolke "What Einstein Told his Cook" is also good (apart from the title) as a collection of essays, more like Steingarten. Corriher's "Cookwise" is also good, but mostly recipies rather than science

What a fascinating post! I'm sure slow low cooking would improve many a burger. Your question as to how to achieve 140F consistently is a good one. Unfortunately many dometic ovens are jsut designed for re-heating or for browning Maybe we should campaign to have the white goods manufacturer's include this as an option. Some ovens I have seen do this on "warm", or if you leave the door ajar a bit. However some cut out automatically after 4 hours, as a safety feature. I have a combined microwave/convection oven that just manages to go to 120F, but the temperature control is a bit erratic. Some of the better crockpots allow you to set the temperature. You may be able to use "hay-box" style - heat a large pan of water to 140F, with an internal basin like a double boiler or bain-marie, and then surround it with a lot of insulation, for example put it in a one of those insulated picnic carriers.