jackal10

Adapted from Dan Lepard's recipe. Makes 24. Sponge: 200g strong white flour 200ml water Yeast ( I use Tbs sourdough starter, but can use packet) Ferment until bubbly (4 hours at 85F for sourdough) Dough 870g strong white flour Pinch vitamin C 230ml water 25g skimmed milk powder 100g caster sugar 15 g salt 85g butter 1 egg 40g mixed sweet spice Saffron (optional) 100g raisins 70g chopped dried apricots 80g chopped candied peel Mix dough; bulk feremtn (4 hours 85F for sourdough), turning at intervals; divide, scale, shape; prove (1 hour) or retard overnight in fridge; Piping paste 4 Tbs white flour 1 Tbs caster sugar 1 Tbs water Mix to piping consistency Mak a cross on the top of each but with a skewer or chopstick or the back of a knife; brush with egg glaze (egg yolk, milk); pipe a cross Bake 30-40 mins; glaze with syrup (100g sugar 50g water) while hot

Happy to send out starter to those in need. - IM me. See the eGCI sourdough course for instructions. It costs me around $10 in postage, so rather than send money around I suggest you make a donation to your favourite charity...

Apple frangipane tart? Alternatively cheat and cold assemble: bake the shells blind, make pastry cream, and precook the apples (butter, cinnamon). Fill shell with cream, top with apples...

Commercially they are made in a heated double screw extruder that kneads and heats to gelatinisation at the same time. The home version is a little less exact, but works well enough. Making at home allows other flavours - smoked fish, or spiced for example If there is enough demand I suppose I could make some and photgraph the process..

Potted Prawns Potting was an old method of preservation, cooking and then sealing with fat, usually butter. Traditional with small whole shrimp, for prawns just use the shelled tails. Mace is a favourite spice with this. 75g / 3oz butter 1 garlic clove (peeled and crushed) (optional) 2 tsp. fresh lemon juice 225g / 8oz peeled prawns salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper, mace Melt the butter, optionally with the garlic Stir in the prawns, salt and pepper, lemon juice Put into ramekins. CHill. Top with fresh melted butter. Serve with plenty of good bread. Home made prawn crackers These are amazing, and a good demonstration of the amazing properties of starch. Unlike commercial shrimp (US) crackers you can put a decent amount of prawn in them. You can make nice variations, for example by including shredded Nori. Its a lot of work, but the chips keep for a long time. and make a novel nibble. 1 lb shelled and minced prawns (or any fish etc) 1lb Tapioca flour (often available in Asian grocers) 1 oz salt 1 tsp ground white pepper 1 cup water. Bring salt, water, pepper to the boil. Pour the boiling water onto the tapioca flour and stir quickly. Add the minced prawns and knead as you would dough. If its too stiff add more boiling water, but it should be on the stiff side. Roll into a cylinder about an inch in diameter. Wrap in cheesecloth, if you have it, or put a cloth under and over the cylinders. Space them at last an inch apart to stop them sticking together. Steam in a bamboo steamer, or on a cake rack over a pan of plenty of boiling water at high for 45 minutes. After steaming, unwrap and cool the dough on a rack. Re-wrap and keep in a cool place or the fridge to dry - maybe 3 days, untl you can cut very thin slices with a sharp knife. Don't hurry the drying process before you cut the chips. Lay the slices on a piece of cardboard and dry in the sun or a low oven until brittle. You can store for a long ime in a n airtight container. To use deep fry in hot oil at 360F. They will puff in seconds.

I think you have it backwards. Nobody makes that claim. Good cooking is at least as much about inspiration, feeling. Its like having good ingredients; a bad cook willstill spoil them. What I think is claimed is that by understanding the molecular basis of the process you may get additional insight which a good cook can use to their advantage.

Sad. I was at the Universit of Sussex in the 60's and remember the market as vibrant then. You could also buy fish straight off the boats, if you got up early enough. Are there still day boats operating, and do they sell things like small slip soles locally still? These were fish that were not economic to transport, but cheap, very fresh and delicous.

I should declare bias as list manager of the Molecular Gastronomy mailing list. There seems to be some confusion between Molecular Gastronomy as the science and understanding of food and its perception, and a gastronomic style. MG as a science is I'm sure what Nikolas Kurti has in mind when he coined the name, and what Herve This teaches and holds seminars about. Knowing more about the how food cooks is something useful to all. The better understanding leads to a new range of techniques and dishes. These techniques can also be used to re-create or create classical inspired dishes - lighter mousses, for example. However like any technique they can be applied with skill and imagination by a talented chef, or misapplied or used out of context by a poor one.

Don't know about Kansas but I would have though that shade would be better. Tomatoes need a lot of water. Asparagus is a permanent crop. You need to prepare the gound well, and the main problem is keeping it weedfree. I doubt if they will transplant well. I'd buy new crowns from a reliable supplier Here are notes from the University of Kansas http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/hort2/MF319.pdf

I've started taking my own. Better wine and even at $10 corkage a lot cheaper...

In the UK the last couple of weeks have been really cold and snowy - unusually so, and the first proper winter weather this winter. Before that everything was about a month ahead - outside there are snowdrops, aconites, iris stylosa and daffodils all at once. The shops are begiining to get their gardening stock. I've ordered seeds etc. I guess I'll do most of the sowing when the weather warms up towards the end of the month - pointless now with snow on the ground. In the vegetable department the purple sprouting broccoli is just beginning - such a treat. Leeks continue. I've set potatoes to chit (Arran Pilot, Pink Fir Apple and Blue Salad) Sown some lettuce (indoor) Planted out overwintered broad (fava) beans.

Soup Souffle (capture that taste) Pickle (dill, mild vinegar)

Steak in Europe is different in amy ways: the cuts are different (except maybe for filet), and the meat is mostly heifer not cow; enphasis is more on flavour than butter tenderness. As always, if you order steak well done you will get what you deserve...

My family (Ashkenazi anglo-jewry) always served fish for Friday night supper. It is a custom peculiar to some London Jews. Sometimes cold poached salmon but usually cold fried fish - fish dipped in egg and matzo meal and deep fried, then eaten cold. There is a reference to it in Thomas Jefferson's cokery book. Jefferson, the third President of the United States and a famous epicurean, discovered "fried fish in the Jewish fashion" when he came to England. When his granddaughter Virginia put together a collection of his favorite recipes, she included a recipe for fried fish in the Jewish manner to be eaten cold.... I beleive it was a legacy of the Portuguese Marranos (crypto-Jews) who came to England in the sixteenth century, many of them via Holland. Manuel Brudo, a Portuguese Marrano, wrote in 1544 that the favorite dish of Marrano refugees in England was fried fish. They sprinkled it with flour and dipped it in egg and in bread crumbs. Lady Judith Montefiore, the anonymous editor-author of the first Jewish cookbook in England (published in 1846 - I have a copy) referred to the frying oil as "Florence oil," meaning olive oil. At that time an important community of Marranos in Livorno (where her husband came from) exported olive oil to England. SOme claim that this is the origin of fish and chips as a national dish.

Just to re-iterate, you will need some suppport for the dough, or they will spread out. 10C is a bit hot, 10F a bit cold. Can you improvise with a bucket of ice, a large cadboard box and some insulation, like a spare duvet or towels and blankets? Cooling the dough first in the real fridge for an hour or two before putting in the makeshift cool box helps as well.

I'm not sure if its more gas production, or just straight physics. PV=RT, so going from roughly 4C instead of 20C to 100C gives and extra 20% or so expansion

Yes you can. You may need to proof them less, as they will contiue to rise, although slowly in the fridge Try it and let us know how you get on

This is from my foodblog http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...foodblog&st=120 Salmon en croute. Good easy party dish Can make individual portions instead on one large one Cheat by using shop bought puff pastry, but given a couple of turns with more butter. Roll out the pastry and put the skinned salmon fillet on it. Make forcemeat stuffing with breadcrumbs, parsley, rosemary, onion, salt, pepper, bound with an egg. Make it quite green with lots of spinach or parsley or other soft herbs to give a colour contrast. Layer the salmon with the stuffing, and lay the other salmon fillet over the top. Cover with more puff pastry, cut into the sahpe of a fish if you like, eggwash, and decorate - scales made with a small pastry cutter and a head and tail are traditional. Bake for twenty minute or so. Unfortunately I wasn't paying enough attention, and the brick oven was much hotter than I expected, so it burnt. Artistic slicing saves the day (colours are a bit washed out) Lots of variations: ginger and raisin is a tradtional stuffing. Hot or cold, or make individual ones

Have you considered salmon in puff pastry? Its my standard hot salmon dish for large numbers. You can do it whole or individual. Makes the salmon go further as well, and a whole one looks spectacular

I'd take it all the way, and put the formed loaves in the fridge. They will need some support, like a banneton or a tin. They will sit there happily for 24 hours or so. Personally I bake from cold. I think it does increase the oven spring You need to slash well to cope with the oven spring. Others let the dough warm up, but I think that tends to overprove the outside, You could bake the bread the previous day, and then just warm it though before service

Thanks. Its very different here. The legal age is 16 for beer and 18 for everything else. My college has about 25,000 bottles laid down in its cellar (for 500 or so people). The college has a student run bar. I get an entertainment allowance for students that I am tutor to. I well remember my tutor, when I was a student, used to hold a blind wine tasting once a term, and the student who most correctly identified the wines won a case.

Countertops: Like: Granite Hate: Marble, Corian or any artifical surface Floor: Real linoleum (e.e Faber-Nairn marmoleum) Hate: laminate, tiles, stone unless has underfloor heating

No alcohol? What kind of education is this? What do the girls do when they want to impress their friends with their cooking, or hold a dinner party? I seem to remember that was an important part of my student life, at least at grad student level.

London is also in a unique position for the excellence and selection of fine wine, despite the tax, which mostly affects the cheaper bottles. Because of the UK's geographical position in Europe, and that it has virtually no indigenous wine growing of its own, but was a trading nation a wide range of wine is available. Wine has always been drunk, without hang-ups like the prohibition era. Wine merchants and auction houses still trade today that were founded in the seventeenth century

It also acts as insulation. In the days when ovens had poor temperature regulation it was one way of slow cooking.