jackal10

The ones that won't fit on a normal shelf go on the big shelves at the bottom There are seperate sections for antique and precious books and books mostly on wine or gardening Then there are the not-very-good books that seldom get used - they are in the hard to reach places Then there are the ones, like Bourdain, that are mostly essays not recipes Then the are the food guides, like Michelin. Otherwise they are roughly grouped by cuisine

Couple of months ahead of us in the UK. Here are some suggestions: Eton Mess: Crush strawberries with suger to taste. Fold into whipped cream Stewed with rhubarb, a Scandinavian delight: Cook rhubarb the usual way. When hot stir in the hulled strawberries. Let cool. Strawberry kebabs. Thread strawberries on kebab skewers. Smother with rum or brandy butter (butter, sugar, spirit of choice, nutmeg, lemon juice). Grill or BBQ until hot. Serve immediately. If you like, flame with more spirit. Strawberry jam. Problem here is to get enough pectin out of the strawberries. Cheat and add pectin. Here is a mthod from an ancient newpaper clipping that I find works well: 1.5Kg/3lb strawberries 1.5Kg/3lb sugar (use Jam suger with the pectin in it if cheating) Wash and hull fruit. In a large non-metalic bowl layer the strawberries with the sugar, cover and leave for 24 hours. Next day scrape the contents of the bowl into a preserving pan, bring slowly to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Return the to the bowl. Leave for 24 hours Next day repeat. Third day boil until setting point is reached (220F, or some wrinkles on a cold plate), Stir in a knob of butter to displace the foam. Let it cool a bit before pouring into jars and covering .

Lemon Syllabub added to the Recipe Archive Forgot to add Creme Patissier to the list. Thickened with cornflour, sometimes eggs. Thick, for pastry fillings.

Lemon Syllabub Dates back to the 16th century, but most popular in the eighteenth. This from my copy of "The London Art of Cookery" John Farley (Principal cook at the London Tavern 1796) 1 pt White wine 2 lemons 1 pt Cream Rub a quarter of pound of loaf sugar upon the rind of two lemons till you have all the essence out of them; then put the sugar into a pint of cream, and the same quantity of white wine. Squeeze in the juice of both lemons and let it stand for two hours. Then mill (whisk)it and take off the froth as it rises. Lay it on a sieve to drain, fill your glasses with the remainder and lay on the froth as high as you can. Let them stand all night, and they will be clear at the bottom. Keywords: Dessert ( RG357 )

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Asparagus. First of the new season, plain with melted butter, parmesan Salmon en croute. The old George Perry-Smith recipe with currants and ginger. Still spectacular Hollandaise Baby Lettuce and arugula Salad (the thinnings from the garden) Ballontine of chicken, roast. Sage and Onion Sausagemeat stuffing New potatos Purple sprouting broccoli Jus Cheesecake with balsamic strawberries (anything to get some flavour into those hot house horrors) Cheeses with pumkin seed bread (Munster, Stilton, Cothersdale, Montgomery cheddar) Coffee, cinnamon balls

a) Plant in the garden. They like a fairly damp spot, but tolerate shade. Once established they are an invasive weed. b) Throw it away. Much easier to buy a small bottle of ready prepared c) Grate:(caution fumes!), do it outdoors, or use a food processor. The grated horseradish will keep a long time in a jar in a fridge, Once grated you can - Make Chrane/horseradish sauce. Mix with vinegar, salt, sugar, grated beet, grated turnip, cream, mayo etc as you please. The sugar counteracts the heat a bit, but taste with caution. - Use as a flavouring/condiment. Horseradish dumplings, horseradish mash, horseradish pie crust, honey-horseradish-mustard dressing - Use sparingly as a substitute for garlic. Surprisngly horseradish has many of the same flavour and flavour enhancing properties, and apparently some of the same chemical constituents in the heat. They combine well together.

Not much and a lot. Not much in that they are all milk or cream thickened, custard like, and usually with some vanilla. A lot in that they can differ in texture from pouring to solid, and in thickening agent. Stuff under the caremel for creme brulee: Usally a rich baked egg custard (eggs, cream sugar, baked in a ramekin in a bain marie), but can be anything from plain whipped cream (cream Chantilly) to fruit fool (fruit puree + sugar+ cream or custard - setting agent is the pectin in the fruit). Incidently it is claimed the dish was invented in the kitchens of Trinty College Cambridge "Trinity Burnt Cream", but probably derives form an older Scotish recipe. Creme Anglais: Classically milk thickened with egg yolk cooked over gentle heat. Pouring consistency Custard: Thickened with starch custard powder or cornflour. Invented by Mr Bird as his wife was allegedly allergic to eggs. Pouring, but some like it thicker, as blancmange Instant Whip etc: Same principles, but the product of a chemical factory. May use other setting agents, like carrageen. Zabaglione etc: Thickened with egg yolk, flavoured with Marsala, and whipped while cooking Syllabub: Cream, wine, lemon. The acid in the lemon sets the whipped cream.

Cinnamon Balls 200 g ground almonds 200 g caster sugar 2 egg whites 1 T ground cinnamon Mix together. Form into small balls with wet hands Put on silpat/silicon baking paper 30 mins low oven 300F Cool, roll in icing sugar (confectioners sugar) Keywords: Easy, Cookie, Passover ( RG356 )

Slice the potato thinly on the mandoline. Boil in the milk, with seasonings, bay leaf, garlic until the potato is almost cooked. Add Morels Pour into shallow dish, nuke under hot grill or in extremis blowtorch.

hmm... Bone and stuff the chicken leg with some of the morels, pancetta, bread, herbs; roast off; deglaze pan; edit: Adam got there first. Potato: Dauphinoise with garlic, and the rest of the morels Salad from the fresh herbs Tomato: Iced soup, with mint foam and garlic croutons (the weather is warm today) Are the morels fresh or dried? If dried use with the soaking water as a base for a sauce. A morel souffle might be an alternative

Gratins, like cauliflower cheese, Kedgeree Eggy sandwiches, with the egg mashed with mayo and flavourings Tea marbled eggs (crack all over, boil with soy, tea etc)

I guess they are looked down on as they de-skill food service. Its too easy to take a cold or even frozen pre-prepared or bought in dish, and just re-heat. The slight loss of freshness (and the too high internal temperature) won't be noticed by most diners, alas. Not that chefs don't reheat using conventional means (dump the par-cooked veg into a chinois in boiling water, for example) in the throws of service, but many have the expectation that at high level each dish is freshly prepared for them, in house. Properly used they are a great tool. I must admit to using a microwave to reheat food at home quite often, and especially to take the chill off, for example cheese or slices of rare roast beef for a sandwich. Taken out of the fridge 20 secs in the microwave makes all the difference. There are a few things that can be done much more easily, or only in a microwave. Steamed puds, for example, or ice cream with a boiling jam centre

Hot or cold? here is a basic recipe for a cold terrine: Illustrated Foie Gras recipe Main thing to remember is that Foie Gras is really just structured fat, with a low melting point. Get it much hotter than 50C and you destroy the texture. There is almost no need to cook at all - you can just clean it, brown the surface (30 secs in a hot pan) then put it in a terrine and weight it. If you want to embed truffles use the cheapest - they are mostly just decoration. Add the flavour from oil. Make a sauterne gelly seperately. Foam if you must.

Busy days in the garden The daffodils are coming to an end, but being replaced by tulips and the plum and pear blossom. Planted potatoes: Arran Pilot (old fashioned first early, does well here) Pink Fir Apple Salad Blue and Salad Red (coloured all the way through - can make blue mash or red white and blue potato salad). Planted tomatos in the greenhouse, and sowed more lettuce. Tomatos: Sungold/(Golden Cherry) (small yellow). The sweetest tomato I know. Consistently wins the local taste tests Gardeners Delight (small red) (wins the taste tests when Sungold doesn't) Fireworks II (determinate, large red well spoken of but not tried, but I liked the name) Last year I grew Brigade (advertised as the "Chef's Tomato"); good solid paste tomato but disappointing raw. Great dried and mi-cuit. Maybe one needs different tomatos for different purposes. Lettuce: Little Gem, Lollo rosso, Buttercrunch. These are fairly arbitary choices. Which are your favourite potatos, tomatos and lettuce, and why???

1/2 hour in the wood fired bread oven after the bread is out EVOO sea salt, coddled egg.

But did you strain it through a fucking chinois to get the solid bits of shallot out?

I think we should boycott the wine of the power crazed war mongerng Americans.

Can we get back to food? You'd do better with the Newburg sauce I posted above. Not as rich (1/3rd pt cream rather than 2 cups), and more attuned to the lobster. Less burnt garlic, and less likely to split (no vinegar). You can still strain the fucking solids with a chinois, and there are a lot more of them with all that lobster shell. You could even rub it though a tammy. Makes a great base for a souffle as well. I guess you could do a a modern cream and vanilla sauce for the lobster - its called custard...

Classically, Cream Sauce is 1 pt thick bechamel with 1/2 pt cream and some lemon juice, but then you knew that. For a flourless sauce, you could consider Newburg Sauce, which will highlight the lobster: I think the taste of the burnt brandy goes well. Saute the shells and bits of lobster left over in butter, flame with with 2 Tbs brandy and good glass of sherry. Reduce by 2/3rds. Add 1/3 pt cream and 1/3rd pt fish stock and a faggot of herbs. reduce to texture; strain, check seasoning, finish with butter.

Ivy leaf Damask, starched white, neatly folded (but not pleated) on the service plate. In these days with fewer staff, placing it on the left side is permitted, where the cold first course is already on the plate. For home use or for regular diners in a proper silver napkin ring. Decently large, not one of those handkerchief sized apologies.

Hope springs enternal. Planted more Raspberry canes (Autimn Gold and Autumn Bliss) in the new fruit cage. Also purple (Jaquama) and white (Gijnlim - RHS award of Merit) Asparagus crowns

There is the old chestnut about the Kosher resturant with the chinese waiter who speaks perfect Yiddish - including the repartee for which such waiters in Jewish establishments are famous. Shlomo says to the owner "Moshe, where did you get such a marvel? A chinese immigrant who speaks such good Yiddish?" "hush - he thinks I'm teaching him English!" Repartee examples include: "Waiter bring me Chicken soup with Kneidlach, and a kind word or a stranger" "Here is the soup" "And the kind word?" "Don't eat the Kneidlach"

I have much too much storage space, or more exactly I have much too much stored. Why? Almost all of it is easily re-supplied from the 24hour open supermarket 15 minutes drive away. The saving in buying in bulk is trivial - maybe 10%, and there are only two of us, not a complete tribe or restaurant. Half the time I can't find it, even if I know its there, so I buy fresh anyway. Do I really need 7 types of flour (soft white (cake) , strong white bread, granary, spelt, buckwheat, self-raising, rye) and 13 types of dried fruit going stale (small raisins, big raisins, currents, sultantas, apricots, peel, dyed and undyed glace cherries, candied angelica, dried cranberries, dried cherries, dried blueberries), just in case I have a midnight craving? The situation for spices is even worse. Most are long past there best and should be thrown out, but I haven't the heart, since each is so evocative, and I just might need them...Then there are all the flavoured oils, and vinegars and the other oddities like Australian bush foods or home made chutneys that well meaning friends have brought from afar. As for the jam cupboard - I make it religously each year when there is a glut of fruit from the garden, only to find that we haven't touched last years, or the one before that - we don't eat much jam. Hoarding must be psychological in nature. Its certainly not justifiable on logical grounds.

How thin you roll them depends on whether you like your bun mostly bready, or the dough just a partition between the sugar/cinnamon goo. Don't forget it will double in thickness as it proves and bakes, so if it starts out 1/4 inch it will end up 1/2 inch. Most people have trouble rolling dough this thin, so my advise is still roll it as thin as you can.