jackal10

I've heard three reasons for adding stock slowly to risotto a) Tradition b) Texture: You need to keep the texture fairly thick so that the rice grains rub against each other as you stir, shedding starch into the liquid c) Control of hydrocolloid chain length: Starch, when heated, forms long chain molecules trapping and gelling all available liquid - think of making a bechamel (white sauce) or a veloute, where it is easier to make a lump-free sauce by adding all the liquid at once. By adding a little liquid, the starch gells that, then adding more and stirring breaks up the gell, and you get a creamier result. I don't believe the temperature difference is significant.

Salt doesn't kill the yeast, except in high enough concentrations to dehydrate it, and then it would be so salty as not to be easily edible (Marmite, maybe). What salt does is jam the amalyse reaction that breaks starch down into the sort of sugars that the yeast can feed on. So adding salt to normal flour will reduce the rise, and it is why many bread recipies leave the dough for half an hour between adding the yeast and adding the flour, so that enough sugars can be produced. However many bread flours, or sweet recipes, and instant yeasts have enough amalyse (often as diastatic malt) or sugars to overcome the usual amount of salt, so for many domestic recipes it doesn't matter.

ME!! Lou: some dispatches and hints from the gastronomic front-line would be great! I thought the article excellent. I'm inspired to try some more dehydrations..

After Asparagus and Strwberries, comes Samphire Greengages off the tree, then Damsons, then Victorias, then its apple season Not forgetting the Glorious 12th, and ths start of the game season...

I've not found dehydration a problem - maybe for the outside slice but not beyond that. SInce the moisture is not squeezed out from the cells, the meat stays moist. Also a gigot is surrounded by fat, which acts as a seal. The restaurant answer is sous-vide, sealing the meat in a plastic bag, once browned. Since the temperature is low, the plastic does not melt.However I use a convection oven, but if your oven is not vented I can't see it being a problem.

As an exoeriment I tried cooking a standing rib roast for 24hours at 60C/140F. The result was amazingly tender. I thought it perhaps even too tender, loosing some of its essential nature and becoming almost like felt in texture, My dining companion loved it, however. It may be better with other meats, pulled pork for example or brisket...

Forks are a comparatively recent invention. Before that you had a knife, and you used the point to spear food to carry it to the mouth. Forks replaced that. Originally with two prongs, then three, now four.Since in the English tradition a fork is thus primarily a spearing instrument, not a shovel or a spoon, you use it tines down. It is regarded as bad, or at least juvenile, to use a fork like a spoon. Use a spoon for that. Some faddish people lay their forks tines down on the table, so that people can see the hallmark on the back to show it is real silver. This is as vulgar as inspecting the hallmark, or even the makers mark on the bottom of the plates. Even more vulgar are those who use hallmark the face or bowl so that the hallmark is visible when in use or laid the correct way. I suppose you can have cutlery hallmarked on the wrong side and then laid upside down, but that is just perverse.

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...