jackal10

The classical way is to add vegetables and aromatics, although in quite small quantities Escoffier, the ultmate authority for classical cuisine advises for Brown stock or Estouffade For 4 Quarts 4lbs Shin of Beef (flesh and bone) 4lbs Shin of Veal (felsh and Bone) 1/2lb raw , lean ham 1/2lb fresh pork rind (!) 3/4lb minced onions browned in butter 3/4lb minced carrots browned in butter I faggot (parsley, celery,thyme, bayleaf) For White Stock (and Chicken Stock), 4 Quarts 8lb shin of Veal or veal trimmings 1 or 2 chicken carcasses, raw if handy 2 Old Fowls (for chicken stock) 12oz carrots 6oz Onions (stuck with a clove) 4oz leeks Stick of celery I faggot (1oz parsley, 1 bay leaf, 1 small sprig thyme) He cooks the bones for 5 hours, then adds the veg etc and cooks for another 3 hours. Since veal is hard to get now, modern practice is to use chicken wings. In the recent Mad Cow scare making beef bones hard to get, Pigeon was found to be a surprisingly good substitute

I'm a purist: Fresh tomato juice Good Vodka Lea and Perrins Worcestshire Sauce (lots) Few drops Tabasco Salt A little sherry NO ice, lemon, pre-mixes

Depends on what is available. If you use meat, it should be meat with a large proportion of connective tissue, usually the cheapest cuts. Fillet steak, for example, besides the expense, would not make good stock. If you use bones don't cook for more than 12 hours, or at anything except the lowest simmer, or you will get "bone taint" - off flavours as the bones begin to leach. Also if you boil the stock too fast you will emulsify the fat into the liquid, and get cloudy off tasting stock that will not clear easily.

In ancient times the meat from the stockpot was used or sold for making meat pies. For brown stocks I roast onions with the bones, and personally don't use tomato You haven't discussed basic aromatics. I like adding a few peppercorns. Heston Blumenthal advises adding a small amount of star anise - he claims it is a (Umani) meat flavour enhancer. I offered to do a cream soups, potages etc unit. I'd be happy to add clarification, consomme and soup garnishes to that.

Cut the stem itself off, but leave the baby zuke on the female flowers.

St John Bread and wine?

Pastry Cream (Creme Patissiere) As basic to pastisserie as stock is to cooking. You are basically making a thick custurd. In emergency substitute thick custard made with custard powder. 6 Egg yolks 125 g sugar 40 g Corn flour (or ordinary flour) 1 vanilla pod split 500 l milk 1. Put the egg yolks and about a third of the sugar in a bowl and whisk until they go pale and form a ribbon. Much easier to do this using a food processer or an electric hand whisk. 2. Sift in the flour and beat well. 3. Put the milk, the rest of the sugar and the split vanill pod in a saucepan and bring to the boil. For a coffee cream substitute the vanilla pod with 2 tsp instant coffee, or even better infuse fresh ground coffee in the milk and strain carefully. For a chocolate cream use a Tbs of cocoa instead of the vanilla pod. 4. As soon as the mixture boils, pour 1/3rd into the egg mixture and stir well. 5. Pour the egg and milk back into the rest of the milk, and return to a gentle heat. Stir well until it begins to thicken. Boil for 2 minutes. 6. Take off the heat and continue to stir. Put some knobs of butter over the surface to prevent a skin forming. Let cool. ( RG585 )

Choux pastry Serves 22. Basic pastry for eclairs, cream buns, profiteroles, croquenbouche, gateau St Honoure, decorative swans etc 125 ml Water 125 ml Milk 100 g Butter, cut into dice 1/2 tsp Salt 1/2 tsp Sugar 150 g Flour, sifted 4 Eggs 1. Put the water, milk, butter, salt, and sugar into a large saucepan, and heat until the butter melts, then boil for one minute over high heat, stirring all the time to prevent it boiling over. 2. Take off the heat and stirring all the time, add the sifted flour. Stir like crazy to smooth out any lumps. 3. Put it back over the heat for one minute continuing to stir well. This process is important for good pastry. It dries it out a little, and partially poaches the the paste. 4. Take it off the heat and let it cool a little, until you can touch it comfortably. Beat the eggs in, one by one. 5. If you don't want to use it immediatly spread a little beaten oegg over the surface to stop it drying out. Otherwise fill a piping bag with it. 6. Line a baking sheet with non-stick silicon paper or use a silpat or other non-stick surface. Pipe out the shapes you want - buns, eclairs, rings etc. For swans pipe a bun of appropriate size, and seperately pipe a thin S-shape for the head and neck 7. Pre-heat oven to hot 425F. 8. Bake for 4-5 minutes until puffed, then reduce the temperature to 350 (or prop open the door a crack) and bake 20 minutes until dry and golden. Do not underbake, or they will collapse. Remove to rack to cool. For decorative swans cut the top off the bun part, and fill with whipped cream or pastry cream. Split the top into two and position as wings. Push the head and neck part into one end. Looks good as a fleet of swans served on a mirror, or a dark glass plate. Keywords: Easy, Cookie ( RG584 )

I have a robot coupe Gelato Professional. Makes great icecream, but very noisy and hard to clean as the bowl is not detachable.

Over-prooving will reduce the oven spring a lot. I assume the dough is supported during proof by a banneton or equivalent. I find it much easier if I retard the dough overnight in the fridge and bake from cold. The dough is stiffer when cold and doesn't slump as much.

Bottarga di Muggine is dried salted pressed tuna roe, not cheese

Maccaroni, cheese (grated framhouse cheddar), Heinz Tomato Ketchup

The slashes sound fine. If you get enough oven spring they should open and grin. I assume the oven is hot enough - 440F/220C or more, and has been on long enough to heat the pizza stone and stabilise. The technique water sound just fine - that is similar to what I do. Maybe the dough is a bit dry and stiff? Why do you say they are not right?

How much oven spring are you getting? Are the slashes deep enough? The dough before you slash should have a sort of taut skin from moulding and the slight drying effect during proof

Use the sourdough in the sourdough bread recipe. Stretch out very thin Bake very hot.

But the fruit sinks... There are many pancake and batter recipes that do not need eggs: Very low fat pancakes or indian jalebi (sweet pancake spirals) or tempura batter (flour + fizzy water) or yeast-raised pancakes or chinese pancakes and wrappers or tortillas...

Where is the bacon of yesteryear?

Eggs are good, and should be used, However I think the current definition of Clafoutis extends from the baked custardy sort to the ones with a crisper batter, more like a fruit version of toad-in-the-hole, with fruit instead of sausages.

Make basic vanilla first to get used to it... Savoury icecreams are the lastest fad, easy and delicous Avocado icecream Roast Onion Icecream Grain Mustard icecream (with cabbage dishes especially) Tomato sorbet

What is your authority for that? The original Limousin dish may have been cherries in a flan custard (with or without a pastry base), but modern usage (e.g. Larousse 1984) defines it as "[fruit] arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a fairly thick pancake batter". No mention of eggs, and I submit fairly close to Larousse goes on to say " The Academie Francaise, who had defined clafoutis as a "sort of fruit flan" were faced with protests from the inhabitants of Limoges and changed their definition to "cake with black cherries". Never the less there are numerous variations using cherries or other fruits. The word comes from the provincial dialect word clafir (to fill)" Yorkshire puddings always have egg in the batter - that is what gives the rise. Maybe the pudding described would be even better with an eggy batter...

Shaker Tomato Jam (adapted fro, "The Best of Shaker Cooking") 4lbs tomatos 16 cups sugar 4 oranges 8 lemons 3 sticks cinnamon Peel the tomatos. Add the grated rind and juice of the oranges and lemons [with the pith and pips in a muslin bag], and cinnamon sticks. Cook until thick. Add the sugar and boil rapidly until it gells on a cold plate. Remove the pips etc in the muslin bag. Remove the cinnamon. Pot into sterilised jars. Makes a bright pink confection. JL notes: Tomatos are low in pectin and acid. The pectin here is being derived from oranges and lemons. You might like to add commercial pectin, and some citric acid, for a more reliable set. Nero Wolfe's cookbook has an interesting recipe for Green Tomato Jam Tomato Curd (adapted from"Farmhouse Fare," 1946) 1lb Tomatos 6 oz sugar 3 oz butter 1 lmon 2 eggs ( I use 4 egg yolks) Stew the tomatos until tender. Sieve. Return the puree to the pan and add the sugar, butter and the grated rind and juice of the lemon. When the sugar has dissolved add the well beaten eggs, and cook over gentle heat until thick. Do not allow to boil. Pour into warmed pots and seal. Will keep 2-3 months

I think this stuff ( I'm growing some) i closely related to Samphire. Boil briefly, butter, suk the flesh off the stems..

I have the same problem with excess tomatos: I make tomato base for pasta sauce and other uses in the winter. You can just boil the tomatos, sieve, reduce, bottle, sterilise. I rather like Elizabeth David's recipe (from Summer Cooking) - I've just made a batch. I paraphrase, and halve the quantities, and have added garlic and sugar. Get the original, as her writing is wonderful Tomato Sauce to store 8-9lbs tomatos 6 onions 2 cloves garlic head of celery 2 carrots 8 oz butter ( a stick) 1/4 cup EVOO salt, pepper, sugar Chop the onion, celery and carrot. Heat the butter and the EVOO in a large pan and soften the chopped vegetables, until the onions turn yellow but do not let them brown. Add the tomatos and garlic, salt and pepper (about 1 Tbs salt), and 2Tbs sugar. Herbs if liked, but they reduce the uses of the finished puree. Add the tomatos, roughly cut up. Cook until the whole is reduce toa thick mass. Blend with a stick blender. Sieve. Reduce to desired consistency. Check seasoning. Bottle ( I use "Le Parfait" preserving jars - easy and elegant). Put the jars in a large pan up to their necks in water (Ms David reccomends standing them on newspaper, and putting newspaper between them), bring to the boil and simmer (Ms David says 3 hours, but HMSO advises 50 mins at 190C, or 15 mins in a pressure cooker). I boil for an hour. Cool label. You can rpeserve by drying, but I don't use nearly as nuch dried tomato as tomato concasse.

In Scotland it wold go nicely with the deep fried pizza (dip in batter first to keep the topping on) and the deep fried Mars bar..

From "Notes on a Cellar Book" Saintsbury 1923 The recipe intended for real punch is as follows:- Three parts rum Two of brandy One of lemon juice and six of hot water. I never knew this mixture found fault with by respectable persons of any age, sex or condition from undergraduates to old ladies, at any hour between sunset and sunrise.