jackal10

There are many successful restaurants (and institutions) that serve nursery food for desert - sponge pudding with custard, jellies, tapioca and the like. Childhood memories, even without the erotic overtones...

I know a restaurant like that in London... However I think the notion of food as reverting to a safe, cared for infantilism has merit. Your needs catered for, food chosen and made safe, experience guided.

OK, who else has a well thumbed copy of Peg Bracken's "I hate to cook" book?

Lovely...peche Melba for the breast. Figs are traditionally associated with a different part of the female anatomy - press a ripe fig with your thumbs so it splits and reveals the red interior through the split...

Twix bars are even better battered and deep fried (hint: use the snack size) And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet Act 1 Scene V

Jello salads Fish and chips (in Scotland haggis and chips; deep fried pizza; deep fried Mars or twix) Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Baked Beans The full fried Breakfast (and still excellent) Donar Kebab (how times change) Chcken Tika Biryani

How does if differ froma Kit Kat? http://www.nestle.com/Our_Brands/Chocolate...tionery/KitKat/ Virtual oyster? Would not the watermelon have the wrong texture? Dimidium facti qui coepit habet; sapere aude, incipe. To have made a start is half of the business; dare to know, so begin! (Horace: Epistles I, 2 Line 40)

Cambridge is an hour by train for Midsummer House, and a tourist destination Otherwise try Modern British style: St Johns, Lindsey House etc for experiences you won't find elsewhere.

Chip butty (french fries, white bread, ketchup)

Bread doughs with yeast, especially instant yeast, behave differently from sourdoughs. You won't get the sour taste, as there is little lactobacilli present. Since there is little acid, the gluten doesn't degrad as much with time. Hamelin's recipe adds more yeast at the dough making stage, bulk ferments for 2 1/2 hours and proofs for 75-90 mins He says "The dough should be supple and moderately loose". If you follow these instructions, you should get OK bread even with wholemeal flour, but it will have typical wholemeal texture, rather than the open texture you get with white flour. It will also take more water to get a moderately loose dough. You might want to follow Henelins whole wheat bread on p 122. However he uses 50% white bread flour to lighten the loaf. Sourdough is a complex symbiosis of a yeasts and lactobacilli. If you want sour then you need to start your own starter. Its easy. Just take equal weights of flour and water mixed to a batter, and leave covered in a warm (30C) place until its bubbles, about 3 days. Then throw out 2/3rds and add equal quantities of flour and water again and leave until bubbly, about 8 hours. You can use it then, or refresh (add more flour and water) a couple of times more to ensure you have the right culture. Once ready, it will keep in the fridge almost indefinately. Dan Lepard's book "The Handmade Loaf" has good pictures of this process. Do not be tempted to add yeast, grapes, sugar or the like as they will encourge the wrong culture. You can add some rye, but it is not strictly necessary. Sourdough works much more slowly than normal yeast.

Most flour here, that is not bread flour is all-purpose 9%-10% protein. Don't think I've seen anything lower. Should work fine. What may be important is how finely the flour is ground, and that varies from brand to brand.

a) To autolyse you need the yeast - autolysis refers to yeast breakdown products. I'd need to know exactly what you recipe and technique is - sounds like you may not have enough hydration, if its that stiff. 50% preferment is also high - most formula are 30%, as too much will affect the rise, since the acid weakens the gluten. The temperature you ferment at also affects the sourness, as will the ash content and alkalinity of the flour. Hotter (around 30C) will give sourer bread. Whole wheats flours will always have a denser texture (and adsorb more water) since the bran particles puncture the gas cells. Some artisanal millers also add extra bran sifted from their white flour to bulk out their whole wheat flour. You can get in France whole wheat flour that has been very finely ground so that the bran particles are as fine as the flour particles, and they give a better texture. If you have access to a home mill, run the flour through it a couple of times before use. The protein content on wholewheat flours can be misleading, since the bran adds to the protein percentage. Today's baguette a levain, that I'm developing. Still a long way to go before perfection. Somewhat overproved, and the dough a little wet to handle easily, but not too bad a texture for a sourdough. Shaping is lousy - the dough stuck to the couche, and the narrowness of the grigne would indicate over-proving. Soft flour (9% protein) 75% hydration 12 hour preferment (30%) at 30C/85F

The Chemistry of Baking Powder http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/learnnet/k.../docs/SS08c.pdf From Heston Blumethal's excellent school series on Kitchen Chemistry for the Royal Society of Chemistry http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/learnnet/k...istry/index.htm Ordinary flour (that is flour not labelled Strong) sometimes labelled pastry flour is the equivalent of US cake flour.

Its double acting, sort of. The diphosphate is slow to react until heated, so most of the rise is in the oven, not in the mixing bowl.

Corian is for looking at, not using. It marks if you so much as touch it with a sharp metal tool, or put anything hot on it. Think of it as having countertops made of candle wax. Granite is for using. Looks great as well. Lasts forever. Many high end restaurant kitchens now use it as the surface of choice. Only disadvantage is that things break if you drop them on it, and knives blunt if you cut on it a lot without a chopping board. The granite is much harder than the knife. The black granite I use is impervious and doesn't need sealing. A qick wipe and its clean and shiny. Marble and the like do need sealing and also stain. If you use thin granite (1/2 inch) supported on marine ply its not that expensive or heavy.

El Santa strwberries are known as "the bouncing strawberry" You can drop then on a hard surface and they bounce. They are indestructible, with a long shelf life, which is why the supermarkets love them. Unfortunately they have almost no flavour, and a texture more like an apple. Roasting with vanilla sugar is a good way to go, and El Santa will even stand up to the cooking.

It woyld be bribery if you paid it at the beginiing of the meal. At the end its begging. Reminiscent of pre-war restaurants in Berlin that allegedly kept a resident beggar/artist exhibited a glass case so the diners could experience Schadenfreude and a sense of their superiority and apparent generosity.

It is sad that the US has institionalised what anounts to begging by waitstaff (smileys and the rest), and makes the customer connive in a semi-officially sanctioned tax avoidance. Much better (and to my mind more dignified) to pay the staff proper wages, and to charge what it costs, rather than indulge in a pretense that the food and wine are somehow 20% cheaper than they really are. Its not as though I can elect to receive less service (I'll pour my own wine/ fetch my food from the kitchen/ stack dishes, thanks), and pay less tip.

Exactly the same as making puff pastry. A double turn (sides to middle and top to bottom) about four times though initial bulk fermentation phase. Don't prees down too hard. It doesn't deflate the dough a lot, since the gas cells are not big at this stage

Most home-brew shops and healthfood stores carry diastic malt. You don't really need it, expecially if you are using whole flours - just leave the dough for an half hour or so before adding the salt (salt blocks the enzyme). Rye flour also has high levels so adding 10% rye flour may help. Ascorbic acid is Vitamin C, which most chemists/drug stores/health food shops will carry. Again, not really needed unless your flour is very fresh. It inhibits by oxidising an enzyme that attackes the gluten. To slash the bread you need a very thin knife, like a razor blade. Bakers use a lame or gringnette (lame means blade, grigne means snile and is what the slashes cause). Typical brands are Matfer and Scaritech (www.scaritech.com) . Matfer are distributed in the US (do a web seach for Matfer Lame), but for Scaritech you will need to go to a professional baking supply of direct from the manufacturer. I prefer the green Scartech professional ones. The technique is to cut at about 45 degrees into the bread, not straight down,. You are cutting a flap, not a slit. Do it fast in one motion, don't go back and fuss it.

Unless you have opened the door a lot, or the oven is well ventilated, then the air will be close to the wall temperature. Air has very little themal inertia, and in an oven radiation plays a big as part as convection.

Err..unless you have discovered some new principle of thermodynamics, I would suspect the thermometer . If the oven genuinely maintains 140F, then there is no way a pot can cool to below that (First law of thermodynamics: heat flows from a hotter body to a cooler body). Either the cycling of the oven means that it spends a lot of the time below 140F, or the oven has lots of cold spots, or one of the thermometers is wrong.

The pea soup I am familiar with in the UK is a smooth puree, maybe with sone croutons for texture.

Pea soup is well known in the UK. Called "London Particular" since its about the same colour as fogs used to be in London. Conversely a thick fog is described as "a real pea-souper" Greatly improved by thowing in a ham bone in while boiling. A tsp of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) helps the dried peas breakdown.

Its no bad, but its nae haggis