jackal10

I agree. These are for fruit, jams and vegetables. Meat and other protein are entirely different, and I would advise not to be attempted at home. Indeed, unless you raise your own animals you probably would not want to either. Well maybe one or two exceptions like mincemeat or confit but even so those are consumed fairly quickly, and proably stored under refrigeration in the interval That said, it would be great if someone did an eGCI unit on making bacon, cheeses, smoked salmon, confit etc.

I fail to see why you need to pre-sterilise the jars. Wash to remove gross contamination, but you are about to sterilise them with the contents anyway. The only reason I can see if you are intending to work in an aseptic environement, and not subsequently sterilise the jar and contents, but that is only really feasible for industrial processing.

Thanks, but wait for part 2 (Seasonal delights, including mincemeat and Xmas pud) coming soon. The water should cover the jars so that they heat all the way to the top. I think it might be the angle of the photo. Some canners are designed so that they steam the jars. However one has to work with whatever pans are to hand... In practice so long as the majority of the jar is covered and you have a lid on the pot I expect they will get hot enough

Minor typo that slipped through, despite the team's excellent work: The start of the pickled shallot recipe should read 3 pints (1.4L) of brine made with 6 oz (168g) of salt and 3 pints (1.4l) water In the bottling/canning section although the jars are washed before use, I should have pointed out that there is no point in sterilising them seperately since they are sterilised with the contents.

Pumpkin soup served in a hollowed out pumpkin... One way is to hollow out a pumpkin, discard the seed and the stringy bits and then make a conventional soup - sweat off onions. leek, garlic, lots of butter, pumpkin flesh, stock, liquidise, season (plus nutmeg), add cream. Pout into the shell and serve. Alternatively pack the hollow pumpkin shell with alternate layers of pumpkin, toast and swiss cheese. Season. Fill with cream (or milk), and bake the whole thing in a slow oven (300F) for 2 1/2 hours. Put it in a large tin in case it leaks. It will slump a bit, but should retain its structural integrity Bring it to table and serve, scraping bits of the softened pumpkin

I find it easiest to make a sort of very dry lasagne sheet with the starter and some extra flour, roll it out with a pasta machine, and let that dry. Another way is to spread it out thinly on silicone paper (or even clingfilm) let that dry, and then powder it.

My mincemeat recipe is in Seasonal Preserves, scheduled early November

There is an upcoming eGCI unit (two actually) on canning and preserving...

Those big super-light Dosa's

First a disclaimer: I am not a food scientist or a microbiologist or have any special medical knowledge. You should not rely on this advice. However people have been making and eating mayonnaise for thousands of years (there is evidence from ancient Egypt), and the human race seems to have survived. I personally think that, providing you use good fresh eggs from a reputable source the risk is more theoretical than practical. Yes, salmonella is established in the national flock. Yes, it can cross the the shell barrier. However we eat many sorts of uncooked or lightly cooked eggs. as kids we dipped our bread soldiers in runny egg yolks, that are only runny because they are essentially uncooked and emerged unharmed. I feel there ior s much more risk in eating chicken breast, expecially if it has gone through extra factory processes like skinned, or being sauced or flavoured when raw. Mayonnaise is very acid, so bugs have a hard time living in it. McGee ("The Curious Cook") and Shirley Corriher have both written about techniques for pastuerisitng eggs. To kill salmonellla you need to heat the egg to 160F for at least a minute. The trouble is that egg cooks at this temperature. However if you add acid (lemon juice or wine vinegar) the egg does not start to coagulate until 170C, so there is a slim margin of operation. Here is a method similar to Corrihers. You need a digital thermometer. 2 egg yolks 2 tsp white wine vinegar 1 tsp mustard Put a metal basin over a pan or dimmering water. Put the above ingredients in it. Stir until the temperature is 160F. It will thicken a little, like lemon curd. Use as fresh egg. If you are really concerned, use another source of lecithin, such as granules from a health food store, and omit the egg yolk entirely.

I find it easiest to roughly cut up the apple, discarding the bad bits, stew for an hour or so with about a pint of water to each lb of apple, and then sieve the resulting pulp. Add a pinch of Vitamin C powder, or the juice of a lemon to stop discolouring, and a knob of butter to keep the foam down. You may need to add half a cup of sugar or so per pint depending how sweet are the apples, and how sweet you like the sauce. Others prefer to peel and core the apples first, but since you have to sive it anyway I find that hard work. Some apple go to sauce easier than others. Bramley are the supreme sauce apple. Granny smith will need cooking for longer or action with the stick blender.

Morning all: The quote is taken directly from the International Olive Oil Council's definition. Although the oil may indeed be cold pressed, such terms do not have a formal, legal, definition, so their exact meaning can vary from one producer to another, and they cannot be relied on as a quality mark. They may have had a more formal meaning in some countries before 1990, when the current international terms were agred. Olive oil is very individual, and like wine, the taste varies from place to place depending on the soil, the microclimate and the producer. If you like the oil, stay with it. I've always used a spoon to make mayonnaise. I'm sure you can use a whisk if you want, but I use a spoon as I don't want to take the chance of incorporating air bubbles. McGee, in "On Food and Cooking" has an excellent discussion of the process, and points out that it is primarily the exisiting oil bubbles in the mixture that "mill" and break down the added oil into fine particles, with the spoon or whisk just acting to distribute the added oil evenly. As I say in the lesson there are as many version of Rouille as there are cooks. I guess it is a bit like Brandade, where fillers, such as mashed potato or breadcrumbs are added to make it go further, and make the sauce a bit milder and smoother. The versions around Nice tend to be made from powdered spices without filler, while the ones from Marseilles are made with hot chili peppers and with bread or potato - traditionally a potato that has been cooked in the bouillabaisse. The version in Larousse, quoting Raymond Oliver has potato, fish or chicken liver, garlic, chillis, and no olive oil at all (" teaspoon of oil may be added if liked, but this is not essential, and may change the taste of the sauce"). All are "authentic". 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar is the maximum amount of vinegar (or equivalent) that the oil can take without danger of inversion, and hence the thickest vinaigrette. Less water-phase (vinegar) will give a thinner emulsion. It is indeed a matter of taste. I sometimes dress salad leaves with just EVOO. The skillet is a non-stick pan made by Tefal, stainless with a copper bottom. Using a conventional pan would give more deposits, but would need more fat to cook the steak, and lead to more complaints from my partner doing the washing up. The skillet in the beurre blanc is a heavy solid copper pan I bought in France, ages ago. They cook wonderfully, but need re-tinning annually and are very heavy to lift and use. I have one solid copper pan that is silver plated - I think it was originally for flambe and use in the restaurant, and that is much easier to maintain. The pan residues, for me, are the whole point of the sauce. They add flavour, especially the elusive "Umani" or meatiness, and more importantly the denatured protein acts as an emulsifier. The wine reduces over high heat for about a minute - I guess to half volume, or until it gets a bit syrupy. Heavy cream can be used, but it leads to a somewhat different sauce. Cream and wine sauces can be delicious. You should add the cream off the heat, as the fast boiling will split a cream based sauce. Also the acid in sauce, if it is a very acid wine, or if you add lemon juice, can split the cream. Cream tends to smooth out the flavours in the sauce, so the taste is different from a butter mounted sauce.

With extra yolk you can emulsify gallons of oil. The yolks provide the emulsifier, but its the ratio of oil to water phase that determines thickness The yolks provide some water, but not much, but enough to acccount for the extra half cup of oil.

Thanks I'm honoured! * You mention the importance of temperture control in making beurre blanc. Do you find that the same 100 to 130F guideline applies when mounting the butter for a pan sauce? I think the mechanisms are different for a beurre blanc (which is mostly butter) and a pan sauce (which has a knob of butter in a pan of sauce - maybe 10%). The former maintains the butter emulsion, but the latter makes new emulsion from the vigourous boiling and the denatured protein in the pan residues acting as emulsifier. Keller says Beurre Blanc is stable up to 190C, but even so pan sauces are much hotter. * Regarding cornstarch/cornflour thickened sauces: are there time and temperature considerations here as well? I find that they separate if held too long at a simmer, or allowed to boil vigorously for even a couple of minutes. Is it me or the cornstarch? You may be right. I only really use cornstarch sauces for Wok cooking, or in special cases like Rote Grutze(sp?) - cornstarch thickened red currant puree. Long cooking can degrade the starch, and the oil or fat component starts to leak out of the sauce. However that takes more than a couple of minutes - in the old days Bechamel was cooked for hours. Maybe your sauce is high in oil or fat, and when you stop whisking, the emuslion begins to seperate, just like oil and vinegar. * Maybe you could talk a bit about flour slurries? At the Pig Pickin', we used a recipe (it was red-eye gravy, come to think of it) that called for cornstarch as a thickener. We couldn't find any, so we made a slurry of flour and tomato juice, which, along with the coffee, was the other liquid component in the sauce. Though I've read about the technique often, I'd never tried it before. I was quite pleased with the results, though it simmered for two hours, eliminating the possibility of any raw flour taste. What are your thoughts? Cornstarch is traditionally slackened with water into a slurry, which ensures quick dispersion, and a smooth sauce. Flour is usually used with a fat, such as butter in Beurre Manie or in a roux to coat the particles. I'm guesing, but htis might be because cornstrach, because it does not have gluten, does not form a dough the way wheat flour does, so can be slackened with only a little water. With flour I guess you need more water, or to work quickly before the gluten hydrates and goes lumpy. I don't see why it should not work as a thin batter, however, the amount of liquid needed might dilute the sauce overmuch.

Yes. Singapore Ailines are rally much better than most. The normal business class food looked excellent; the staff were great; the coffee good, and the seats amazing. They went virtually flat so I got a decent amount of sleep. They even had lap-top power points, and good video-on-demand. I sure the mix-up over the low carb food was accidental, and they did offer me a version of the normal food (including delicious sea-urchin salad) to compenste. Best of all was that they had their own fast-track through London Heathrow security, passport control and customs. That alone made flying with them worthwhile.

a la carte: Sauce Verte is a green, herby mayonnaise. Its used mostly as a colour contrast instead of plain mayo for cold or warm dishes.. Good, for example against salmon, or jumbo shrimp, or even lobster. I give as an example using it instead of Aioli for those strange people who don't like lots of garlic. Sauce Tyrolienne (Tomato mayo) is a Frenchman's idea of Austria. Uses might be with cold meats, or a cold salami salad, or with cold fishcakes (think gefilltefish), or as a sauce for a prawn cocktail. It is the cold equivalent of Choron (bernaise with tomato). I included it as it is in La Repertoire. Fat Guy: I find shaking the jar just as good as a whisk or a blender, and better for small volumes at home. It can then go straight into the fridge. I guess we renew it a couple of times a week in the salad season. In a restaurant setting I would either - have the wait staff whisk the sauce just before serving as part of the theatre, or - cheat and add a little lecithin or egg yolk to stabilise the emulsion, or - serve whatever it was plated and ready dressed, not forgetting the obligatory pattern drawn in drops of reduced aged balsamic on one side of a large plate or - more likely use a commercial product so chock full of emulsifiers it is stable for weeks, straight from the plastic jerrycan ...Maybe a professional chef can enlighten us as to current practice.. Skin usually forms on flour based sauces, like bechamel. A knob of butter rubbed over the durface will help. Skin should not form on vinagretes, or mayo if covered. Beurre blanc should not skin if kept covered, and pan sauces are used immediately. To remove a skin either skim it off, or pass the sauce through a sieve

Basically me and my partner, Jill. You will see most are scaled for two, except for weekend and parties when neighbors, friends and relations drop round... The Grand Aioli was eaten by about 6 people fo Sunday Lunch, with some good bread, and fruit and cheese to follow. You will see from the photo it included a boiled chicken, salted cod, tiger prawns, lettuce, beans, carrots, cauli, zuchinni, little gem lettuce, watercress etc. We drank a coupleof bottles of Mas des Brassades Rose 2002 (Costieres des Nimes) with it. Its a great summer dish. Its also why I am trying to lose some weight and cut out the carbs. Hard to do since one of the future lessons I'm writing is on potatoes. Incidently if anyone knows about US potato varieties, and any US potato based dishes (hash maybe?) could they PM me.

dulce du leche Banoffi pie I like it instead of cream for fruit fools (gooseberry, Damson etc). Just mix it with the fruit puree In some parts of the world, like India or Singapore it is essential for putting in the local version of tea or coffee. I guess as a colonial hold-iver

Thanks. I can make daubes, bourgignons, gabures etc. What I wanted to know was what made this one special?

May seem obvious, biut it depends what size bread you want to bake. I've just measured mine, and they are 25cm outside diameter, 22cm inside. If you can use linen rather than muslin. Muslin is quite a loose weave, and the bread might stick.

In Nimes (Languedoc/Carmargue) at the weekend (conference) I had the local speciality of "La Gardian", a tender long-cooked beef stew (Daube) with carrots, olives etc. The beef was fork tender, but not falling apart. Delicious, especially when washed down with copious amounts of the local Costieres des Nimes rouge. Can anyone help with the recipe in English? Also the origin of the neme. I have variously heard it translated by the natives as "Ox-keeper's stew" and "Guardian of the orphan children".

That looks great bread! The big holes do indicate a wet dough. You might get more even and rounder holes if you turn the dough (turn it out onto a board, flatten gently, and then fold side to side and top to bottom, like making puff pastry) every hour for the 3 hours of bulk fermentation. Nancy Silverton says that the bread is less likely to blow out of you let it come to room temperature before baking. I'm not sure about this - I think it doesn't rise as much.

This is about half of a draft of a section of a forthcoming eGCI topic on potatoes...comments welcome This section starts with mash, and then looks at variations. Too often mashed potato is either a lumpy or a gluey mess. What goes wrong? We need to consider the structure of the potato. It consists of lots of cells , held together with pectic polysaccaride material, like the pectin that is the setting agent in jam. Each of these cells is a bag of starch.. The trick to making good textured mashed potato to break the cells apart from each other without rupturing them and letting the starch out, to give free starch floating around in the water. When you heat starch in the presence of water it swells and gelatinises – think of making custard or wall paper paste. The starch molecules bond to each other to make a gel. That’s wallpaper paste. Overcook, and you break up the cells and get glue. Over process, such as with a blender and you mechanically shear the cells and get glue. As Steingarten says “Any cookbook that sanctions the use of a blender or food processor should be carefully shredded” If you let the starch out you get gluey wallpaper paste. If you don’t break apart the cells enough you get lumps. You are between the devil and the deep blue sea. Fortunately we can use another property of starch, which is known as “retrogradation”. If you cool a starch gel down it thickens and solidifies (think of pastry, or custard), and it retains this structure even if reheated. This property is widely used in the commercial processing of potatoes for dehydrated potato flakes (instant mash, such as the brand that was promoted with TV adverts featuring tin Martians), and has been adapted and written about for home and restaurant use by Steingarten, Blumenthal and others. The trick is to pre-cook the potatoes to about 160F/71C for about 30 minutes, then cool to room temperature or below. The starch swells and gelatinises in the cells, but the temperature is not hot enough to melt the pectic material and break or separate the cells The following cold step is essential, as it causes the starch to retrograde and fix. Temperature control is critical. Use a digital thermometer. Having fixed the starch we can be much rougher in the treatment of the potatoes. We can dissolve the binding between the cells by cooking the potato slices in gently salted water above 180F/82C and ideally below boiling so they don’t get knocked about too much – say 190F/90C or a very gentle simmer for 30 minutes, and then drain, dry and puree. This method ensures that the mash does not go gluey, but at the same time can be cooked long enough and pureed well enough to ensure no lumps. Furthermore it can be allowed to go cold and reheated without loss of quality. Before giving the definitive mashed potato recipe we need to cover some other points: Choice of variety: Floury (high starch) or Waxy (medium/low starch) variety? There appears to be a cultural difference here, with the US preferring a floury variety such as Idaho to make a fluffier mash, and European tradition preferring waxier varieties such as Belle de Fontenay, Bintje, Charlotte or Desiree. Floury potato varieties have more irregular cells, waxy potato varieties have more regular and closely packed cells. Hot or cold water to cook in: There is an old tradition of putting root vegetables in cold water and then raising the heat until boiling. Opinion is divided as to whether this is beneficial. On the one hand it ensures the food is more evenly cooked, and the slow heat rise may allow better gelatinisation of the starch granules before reaching temperatures that disrupt the cells. On the other hand some Swedish studies have shown more Vitamin C leaches out into the water because of the extended cooking times. How much butter, cream, milk? To some extent this is a matter of taste. Authorities differ, for example for 2lbs of potatoes Mrs Beeton advises 2oz, Escoffier 10% (3 oz), Blumenthal 33% (10oz) and Joel Robochon a massive 50% (16oz). Lady Clark of Tillypronie (1909) adds ¼ oz, and half a cup of cream. Personally I follow Escoffier. It is hard to lay down a hard and fast rule about how much cream or milk to add. It depends on taste, the variety of potato, how much you dried out the puree, and on the desired texture. I find a tablespoonful more than enough. Hot or cold milk, butter? Most authorities agree that one should use cold butter and hot milk. Why? Is something more going on here? I believe there is. I think what is happening is that the emulsified form of the butter is acting as a sort of butter sauce, in which the separated potato cells now float. Butter emulsions are only stable if the butter is melted at a low temperature, and not heated over 190F. You are unlikely to get your mashed potatoes that hot., but beating the butter in at a temperature that just melts the butter seems like a good idea. I am much less clear why hot milk or cream rather than cold is specified, since the amount added, compared to the mass of potato, would have no effect in terms of temperature. I suspect it is a hold-over from the days when milk may have been of dubious health. Milk first or butter first? Adding the milk after the butter is better, since it allows for easier control of texture. How to puree?: More choices. Most agree on the use of a potato ricer or failing that a mouli-legumes (food mill), since the pressing action damages the cells least. Personally I prefer an old fashioned potato masher, or even a fork, since I like the slight variations in texture. Escoffier advises and high-end establishments will laboriously rub the puree through a sieve, possibly twice to ensure smoothness. Don’t tell Jeffrey Steingarten, but once the starch has been fixed by the method here described, and if the cooked potato slices are allowed to cool to warm, then an electric whisk or even a stick blender can be used with care without the puree turning gloopy and gluey. Don’t over process, however. The Recipe This is for two people. Take a couple of spuds. These are Estima, a floury variety Peel and cut into 1cm/1/2 inch slices. The size is to allow the heat to reach the centre in the cooking time. Put into water at 160F/71C for 30 minutes. Cool to room temperature to allow the starch to retrograde. Putting the pan under a running cold tap is easiest Note how the potato have become waxy and translucent Cook them at a gentle simmer (80C/180F) for 30 minutes Drain, and allow to dry and cool for a few minutes. Mash. Here with a hand masher, or even with an electric whisk Add salt, white pepper, cold (room temperature) butter, and correct thickness with a little milk Perfect Mash Sausage and Mash with a Port and Onion confit and buttered cabbage for supper Is it worth it? Why go to all this trouble for basic mash? It depends in part on your attitude to food. You can always reach for the packet of instant mashed potato, and many chefs do. It can make a satisfactory product, but for perfection a little more effort is needed. Pre-cooking the potato has advantages for the professional kitchen and for the busy home cook in that the product can be reheated, and held cold or warm at both the pre-cooked and the finished stage, so much can be prepared beforehand Variations. There are literally hundreds of variations. Each culture has its own, depending on the local ingredients and culinary traditions. Hungarians, for example, add sour cream and paprika, in Provence they add meat glaze. There are spicy versions from India. Here are a few. For the rest you must wait for the lesson...

Fire away! 12.7% is a bit high. The flour I use is 11.7%. Also, as noted by kwillets the KA flour has malt in it. Some bakers like adding malt. No less and authority then Prof Cavel advises its use (and Vitamic C), but he does not add the yeast/sponge until after the amylisation step - the 30 minute rest time after first mixing.

Looks great bread! Well done! Good texture crumb and crust. Starter should be fine - just hungry. If you put it in the fridge it takes a while to warm up and wake up. If in doubt refresh it again