jackal10

Ch. Cissac, and, under the same ownership Ch. Plince

Peg Bracken's "I hate to cook book" ..." Fancy ingredients are replaced by cans of condensed soup, baked beans, and crushed corn flakes"... Sweep Steak 2-3 lbs. of a cheap roast, or blade steak 1 package onion soup mix Put the meat on a big sheet of aluminum foil. Sprinkle the soup mix on top & fold the foil, airtight, around it. Put in a baking pan & bake at 300 degrees F. for 3 hours (or 200 degrees F. for 9 hours; it doesn't matter). If desired, open it up an hour or so before it's done & surround it with potatoes & carrots. Also, you can pour 1 can of undiluted condensed mushroom soup on over the onion soup mix. Makes a nice gravy.

Chocolate Digestives (dark, not milk) Bath Olivers Oatcakes (even Duchy Originals) Jaffa cakes Ryvita Weetabix

Are you really set on doing it in a pit? Spit roasting is much easier IMHO. Protect your drive with a thick (6 inch) layer of sand first. You can then either build a southern style BBQ pit with concrete blocks(see How to cook hawgs...) or Hire a BBQ oven or Make a fire box from either half an old oil barrel, or a couple or wheel barrows (more sand to protect the bottom), A spit from a length of scaffolding, Drill a couple of holes to help secure the pig A support for the spit so it is about 4 ft over the fire - I use a pair of builders trestles. Something (like scaffolding clamps) to stop - the pig turning on the spit - holding the spit to the support. It needs to be able to support the out-of-balance pig, even when hot and greasy, but be capable of being loosened so the spit can turn. Corrugated iron, or even just foil to surround the whole contraption and act as a roof to keep the rain off, and the heat in. About 12 hours before you want to eat light two small fires at each end. Pigs have most of the meat at the legs and shoulders, and these are the parts you need to cook, without burning the bit in between.. Put the spit though the pig and wire it on to the spit securely. Everything will get hot and greasy, and you don't want the pig to slip. Rub the pig with salt, EVOO Score the skin with a very sharp knife so the crackling can be broken up. Insert meat themometer into the thickest part. Put the pig over the fire. Surround with something to keep the heat in, if you can. Its not like a grill. You are cooking in a very gentle oven, for a long time, so the heat can penetrate the thickness of the meat. It needs to be high enough above the fire not to scortch from the fat flares. Not much will happen for quite a while. Drink some beer. Rotate the pig by 90 degrees every 15 minutes or so. Check the fire at the same time. You will need about 10 sacks of charcoal for a 100lb pig. Small fires at each end work best. Drink some more beer...eventually the pig will be cooked. Remove it to a where you can carve. Serve in hamburger buns, with sage-and-onion stuffing, apple sauce, mustard, and more beer. Allow about 1lb of pig per person, as you will have a lot of waste (bones etc). Enjoy Get help with the clean-up next day.

Weasand is wind-pipe or esophogus, Used as a sausage casing, and hence the name for a type of sausage. Bring back Tripe! I bought a copy of Veraswamy's Indian Cookery on a charity stall at the weekend. He gives a recipe for Tripe Curry...

Distinguish between Sheperd's pie: Made with lamb, or even better mutton (hence sheperd), mashed potato topping, fork marks to look like thatch and Cottage pie: Beef, overlapping rounds of potatoes like tiles. While we are on the subject: Proper suet pastry based puddings: steak-and-oyster, sussex pond, kentish well, marmelade, ginger bacon and leek roly poly.. Irish stew Dumplings

Yes, that is the English edition.

You can make a Macdonalds "milkshake" palatable by starting with the chocolate flavour, and pour in a cup of the liquid they call black coffee. Stir well. (If you have to be in that establishment with young relatives and their parents, for example)

On a related topic, do you lay the table with the fork tines/spoon bowl up or down? If you lay with the tines or bowl up, do you have cutlery with the hallmark ( I assume it is, of course, solid silver) on the top surface? Personally I think it vulgar to show the hallmark, but some advocate it.

I bought my woodburning oven fromFour grandmere and it is wonderful

You can pre-order the English version from Amazon.

Midsummer House tomight for a dinner hosted by Library House and Apax Venture Partners. Lime Sour Green tea and lime foam. They should serve this with a toothbrush, not a teaspoon. Derivative maybe? Cucumber jelly, smoked salmon, cauliflower foam Foam could have been anything, a bit wasted and repetitious after the lime. How to make a little smoked salmon go a long way...Dill would have been nice. Moasaic of Provencal Vegetables and Poached Fennel, Home made Sun dried Tomatos Goats Cheese Mousseline Fresh Tapenade (and deep fried basil leaves) Greatly enjoyed, and very pretty, although I thought that vegetable terrines with two colour sauces were rather old fashioned. More gelatine, and the mousseline was nearly another foam... Steamed Sea Bass with Crab Mousse, Creamed Haricot Blanc with Chilli Chilli Syrup, Vanilla Froth Nice fish. Good presentation. Big square plate, outline of chilli syrup, then innner piping of what looked and tasted like red coloured mashed potato, but I guess was chilli mousse acting as a dam holding back the vanilla froth (more foam!). In the centre a heap of the haricot topped with the sea bass, and waht seemed to be two rounds of thinly sliced caramelised scallop. Great vanilla aroma as the plates presented. Haricot oversalted to my taste. Rhubarb and custard Tall shot glass with rhubarb cream at the bottom and a vanilla froth on top thicker than the vanilla foam in the last course. sprinkled with crumble topping. We were instructed to drink, but I'd have liked a spoon. More foam... For some reason the petit four (madeline, miniature merangue, jelly (Agar?) square, raspberry tartlet)were served at this point. Fondant of Valrhona Chocolate and Freeze dried Raspberries, Tarragon and Yoghurt Sorbet, Raspberry syrup (chocolate and caramel (isomalt?) thin) The raspberries were almost undetectable in the chocolate fondant Could have been any raspberry flavouring. - Good liquid centre, but I think you get a more intense chocolate taste if you leave out the egg yolks. Also the centre seperated out some butter on the plate. Tattinger reserve (they were city financial folk) Poully Fume CH. Favray Quentin David 2002 CH Laroque St Emilion Grand Cru 1993 - excellent Interesting and competant rather than exceptional. Profi whippers are wonderful, but it really isn't required to have foam and/or gelatine in every course. I guess it illustrates the point that one of the functions of a restaurant meal is to impress with stuff it is hard to do at home - hence foams etc. A heavy hand on the salt. I wonder if the fact that the chef smokes has anything to do with it. I notice when I smoke I salt more heavily.

I've just got some Silpat ("Silform" ) baguette moulds. Magic. No more stuck baguettes Much easier to handle and store as well

Vieux Telegraph, both red and white. However, how can you serve Asparagus and Pheasant at the same dinner? One must be frozen or otherwise preserved. Pheasant is from October to Jan; Asparagus is April-June. Serving both together is a gastronomic nonsense, or a lack or resepct for the ingredients.

Spaghetti Squash stores well: cool and dry

Yes, except that they tend to be bigger and a bit coarser. As ever they need to be cleaned well, since earwigs and others find them a handy home. They are also a feast for pollen beatles.

Lunch; because of the dietary requirements of the various guest, no meat, no fish, no onions, no mushrooms, no carbohydrates Marbled quail eggs in a seaweed nest Fried flowers (egg white tempura of nasturtiums, rose petals sage leaves, parsley leaves, red kale etc from the garden) Dipping sauce Iced Arugula soup and its foam (in shot glasses) Samphire Clear iced Borscht, sour cream, Spinach roulade, pimento cheese filling (thanks eg), yellow pimento foam Fava beans and peas, white and blue new potatos for those who could eat them Elderflower sorbet, elderflower fritters Courgete (zucchini) souffle, parmesan tuile Summer pudding, strawberries (pepper, balsamic, Grand Marnier) Chocolate fondant Cheeses (Blue Vinny, Munster, Aged Emmental), (not touched) Coffee Indian sweets (brought by one of the guests) Champagne Ch Vieux Telegraph blanc 1998 Rolly Gasman Edelzwicker 2000 Rolly Gasman Gewurtztraminer Vendage Tardive 95

Stuffed cabbage leaves, hot or cold Sourkraut Keeps frozen, shredded Soups, like gabure

Granted, but what happens when it does begin to screw up you, and your collegues work: violent mood swings, absenteeism etc, and this continues besides some friendly and not so friendly warnings. Alternative one: Your fire the employee, bad references, downhill spiral. Their family starve. Employer has to find a new person and start from scratch to train them up. Next you will say you should fire someone because they (or their wife) are pregnant. Alternative two: Offer help and support. Overcome problem, Grateful employee. Experience retained. Productivity increases. You choose.

Ahh...dripping on bread or toast, salted, another treat the food police deny us. Needlessly, according to Dr Atkins Rich, savoury, and with the jelly bits and the crispy scratchings (or grattons). EVOO is no substitute.

Marbled quails eggs A cold soup (take in a thermos) Strawberries for desert?

Well said Jaz. And remember, that after three day guests and fish stink. But do you offer to help with the clearing up (assuming there are no staff available)?

I thought Bulwer-Lytton was chiefly remembered for the famous court case, and locking his wife up unfairly in a lunatic asylum.

It was a dark and stormy night. They last man left sat all alone. Suddenly, the maitre'd appeared at last,.

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, a perpetual moonless night in the smart room, designer starless and bible-black, the empty tables now silent and the hunched, waiters and '-and- bussers limping down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, sauceboat-bobbing pass. The windows are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as the plongeur there in the muffled middle by the Profi foam pump and the staff time clock, the stoves in mourning, the prep stations in widows' weeds. And all the critics of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.