Tere

I went to a cooking school Tom Kerridge did at a local flower show where he thought you could do Steak without the water bath (he just chucked the steak in for some time in the oven iirc).

I really enjoy the presentation style of Chefsteps and have read plenty of their intro articles. There's a lot of useful stuff on sous vide with lots and lots of pictures. Enjoy! https://www.chefsteps.com/classes. Also http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html was my bible when I first started, but I am sure those far more experienced and knowledgeable than me will chip in

I'm not a fan of lager full stop but Heineken isn't a particularly interesting example of the genre. And Anna is right, the amount of soy and thyme would kill it anyway. If I was going to use beer as a marinade I would use a good sweet heavy malty one and make it the star. I could see Titanic Plum Porter (which I was drinking on Sunday) being useful for a marinade ingredient, for example. What about a dark honey infused beer with a touch of soy? A Scottish 80 shilling? (Caledonian is good). Stout? Guinness even? Something with a bit more body, most definitely.

D'oh. yeah it might have been St. David's Day.

It was mostly British cheeses but not all Welsh (and some cheese from other places too). I'm not sure why the flags were displayed if I am honest, although it's only about 10 miles from the border there. Someone was feeling Welsh I guess!

Do they ever offer that? I know it was available in beta from this thread, but I presume not since the monthly / yearly sub started? $30 membership is still a bargain though, I've subscribed to lots of the mags because I know so many of them have recipes online anyway, and it's vastly expanded my effective recipe collection without having to buy All The Books. Although I'll probably do that anyway *cough*

Bumping this to say thank you to whoever it was I saw mention this in passing recently. It's my new favourite thing, and I've spent a happy weekend entering my cookbooks (119, argh!), being pleasantly surprised that 50% were already indexed, and organising and entering my chaotic reference collection of bookmarks. I can see this being a game changer, and I am a happy Tere

For more on the subject I also bring you http://wewantplates.com/

Wow at that mark up. I have a ceramic mandolin kicking about somewhere but it doesn't have a great guard and having taken the top of my thumb off once, I refuse to use it and delegate it to my sous chef. I use my standard ceramic Y peeler by Kyocera for a few small slices and they also do a ceramic mandolin with a better looking guard which is quite similar to what I own. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kyocera-335100-Slicer-CSN-202-Black/dp/B000KKNQZ6/ref=sr_1_2?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1456668834&sr=1-2&keywords=kyocera+mandolin If I sliced things more I might look at their large Y peeler, that's quite nifty. But it's not something I do enough to really bother with additional kit. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kyocera-Ceramic-Mega-Peeler-CWP-N/dp/B000FUJ5CO/ref=sr_1_4?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1456668941&sr=1-4&keywords=kyocera+peeler

I saw this and thought of you all. Contains mild British swearing. Very funny though. The visuals are good too #wewantplates

I would say if you can grow regular cabbage you can probably grow them, but I am emphatically not a gardener

sartoric, explain the greens and I will try to help? At a guess without more info some kind of spring cabbage? e.g. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/glossary/spring-greens ?

Toasted sourdough with copious amounts of Ludlow Food Centre rinded but soft cheese "Cheese with no name" melted over it. Sorry, no pics. I had forgotten dinner and was hungry

as one of the lurkers, I have to say I am not really feeling the concept. If I go out, I go out with an agenda.

This is a bit naff but it looks like Japanese oak (Lithocarpis edulis) is among the list of distillable things. http://sakeshop.chefsarmoury.com/shochu-101/shochu-a-beginners-guide There's a Japanese site at the bottom that might yield more? If I played I'd be soaking due to fun UK regs and no kit.

The Bisto comment made me laugh. I don't remember ever having it neat, but I can't remember a time when it wasn't used as the thickener for gravy in place of cornstarch. I still do this (my gravy is basically the large amount of wine poured in when the roast goes into the Aga, simmered down, then reduced on the hotter plate, with a teaspoon or two of Bisto added). It would feel wrong somehow if I didn't do it that way. Your Yorkshires look great BTW! I do an eggier mix for the Aga.

An interesting read! I have an enormous English oak (Quercus robor) not far from the house which yields acorns. I'd not thought of making a spirit with them. Do you think it will work? Willing to offer up some cheap vodka for the experiment :D. I've not heard of acorn spirits before. (n.b. we can also access sweet chestnuts - Castanea sativa). Sounds like an interesting experiment! I made hazelnut spirit last year and it came out quite well.

As an aside, I'm skimming through a couple of pressure cooker cookbooks at the mo, and the BBC Good Food Easy Pressure Cooker Favourites looks like it has some stuff well worth trying, and has several game recipes. It suggests pot roasting a pheasant for 20 - 25 mins with natural / slow release, so 9 with quick release may not have been the way to go. No partridge left now, but I do have a couple of pheasants....

It didn't want to come up to pressure but went on strike and said "Ovht" instead. I reckon the chili was just too thick for it, it's a function designed to stop the food burning once it senses it's beginning to stick. The instant pot FB community seems to suggest that if you are doing pasta in sauce or something you dilute the sauce by the same amount of water to get it to work, and put the water in first without stirring. I might try the water first option next time. Ah well, all a learning curve

Ahhhhhhh (or naruhodo as the Japanese would say :D) That makes sense. Thanks!

Update to my grocery list with our Ludlow Food Centre adventures! It's a very well regarded farm shop selling products from a large local estate, as well as other local produce. http://www.ludlowfoodcentre.co.uk/Content.aspx?ID=1 First stop was the cafe, since it does a mean burger and fish and chips, all set in a big open plan green oak building. It was full but thankfully we didn't have to wait too long. We shared the burger (Hereford beef from the estate, Gloucester Old Spot bacon from the estate, Shropshire blue cheese and the usual pickles and relishes) and fish, chips, peas and home made tartare sauce. Shop entrance. They have these cute little baskets but we were hardcore and found a trolley just in case Kamado firelighters for scale. The cheese counter. So good, and they have cheese fridges showing them maturing. Some is imported, but there's plenty of local stuff, and they make cheese on site. Local rapeseed oil. I use this as my day to day cooking oil. Local counties are well known for their cider, and there's several cider makers not very far from the centre. Here's some of their wares, along with local bottled beers, and local spirits. Chase is probably the best known and there's quite a story attached to it. Basically the local crisp / potato chip is Tyrrell's and this is the company the founder built after he sold the business and had a falling out. He started off as a potato farmer and when they fell out they wouldn't use his potatoes, so in a "If life gives you lemons" he decided to make vodka with them. It's pretty good. All the sausages! We like the Cumberland ones the best, and bought a big batch for the freezer. I like the salami hanging up behind. Chatted to the butcher to see if they had a means to obtain fresh blood for black pudding and discovered they used dried. If I ever need pig's trotters I can get them here for free if I give them some notice. The cold section has black pudding and the like, and also excellent pasties and pies. I've also included a veg shot to prove there was some! I didn't bother taking a photo of their excellent bakery section as we got there quite late and they were basically sold out. Our haul: Cumberland sausages, unsmoked back bacon, two bottles of their excellent tomato ketchup, local muesli for hubby, Great Ness rapeseed oil, two bottles of a new cider to try, 4 cheeses (Cheese with No Name and Monkland cheese made on site, Hereford Hop, and a local Cheddar style cheese), and some freezer stuff, two good size pheasants from their shoot, diced game, diced venison, ox cheek, and duck legs. Not cheap but worth it once in a while, and actually the sausages and bacon are cheaper and better than supermarket premium brands.

I've been crazy busy this week but here, finally, is an update to this post. I tried doing the partridge for 9 mins on high, similar to the quail, with the idea that it's a slightly bigger bird. It was a little on the tough side on the legs although the breast was fine, so I am wondering if I should have done it longer? The tarragon sauce was a bit of a fail - I did stare hard at the instructions to add a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, all I can say is that the cook in question must have used a much milder mustard than best Maille Dijon. A quarter of the mustard would have been better. Still, I can eat Dijon straight from the jar so I didn't mind too much. Served with Anja potatoes and steamed runner beans that I should not have let my hubby watch as his idea of cooked and mine aren't the same The chili on Sunday was also a bit of an adventure. I was really happy with the quick soak beans done for 2 mins. I then cooked them for 7 mins as the review suggested, rather than the 15 in the recipe, and they came out really well. I added a couple of teaspoons of cocoa but other than that basically stuck to the Australian recipe. Gave a nice smoky taste. The only issue was when setting off the chili, I kept on getting the dreaded overheat, and on poking the internet, chili and other tomato based sauces are notorious for it. Even after adding another 300 ml or so (almost doubling the quantity of liquid) it still wasn't playing ball. Thankfully I had time before dinner so I just set it to slow cook, which worked nicely. Served with my first cornbread, very easy and tasty. I'd do that again Definitely a learning curve but I think the versatility is worth it. This weekend I am rescuing some waifs and strays from the freezer so no cooking apart from the roast for me As a side note, the plastic cup measurement which comes with it appears to be 160 ml, which I can't equate to anything. American cups are 250 ml, right? (At least that's what hubbys cup measurement set is). It just seems quite bizarre that it's so different. Any ideas?

I am actually looking at this wondering why I've bought 2 lemons! I know I need one for tonight's meal, no idea about the other. Oh well. It's not like they don't keep.

Trip to Ludlow Food Centre planned for tomorrow (we need sausages, bacon, rapeseed oil and cheese) so I thought I'd show my Sainsbury's shop. A bit of an outlier because I bought All The Beans In the World to try out, and I was planning to make prunes in Armagnac but didn't buy enough Armagnac so that's postponed for a week. Not much weekday food as I'm away for a couple of days and out with Mum for lunch on another day. Chicken breast fillets to sous-vide for weekday lunches. Best of British tomatoes - usually good and sweet. Half a cucumber Cut runner beans from halfway across the globe no doubt. 2 lemons Beef tomato Cat food Orange juice Preprepped cauliflower cheese for roast beef. I could make my own but to be honest this one is cheap and tasty and means I am not swimming in leftovers in the week. Custard for ice cream - I am swimming in egg whites in the freezer as it is. I'm going to add some cream saved in the freezer and some Provencale milk jam I found in my fridge clearout to make dulce de leche ice cream. Two tins of tomato puree for Sunday's chili. Brandy for consumption, Calvados because we have none and my husband likes it and I was poking through the brandy section looking for the Armagnac Prunes for prunes in armagnac Buffalo mozzarella. One of my go tos in the week is a simple tomato and mozzarella salad. Sour cream for chili Single cream for tonight's partridge dish and to go with the frangipane pudding I am making from some plum jam that needs using up and apples from the freezer, treat for husband as he is at the tired and grumpy stage of busy season. Bag of ground almonds for same Pancetta for chili as speck is not available Roast beef topside. This may go in the freezer if we see something nice at the Food Centre. Chorizo for chili Portabello mushroom for cooked English breakfast on Sunday (eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, (store bought) hash browns, tomato, mushrooms) Eggs for same Shallots Chestnut mushrooms for tonight's partridge White wine vinegar as we are low Anya potatoes Polenta because I'm going to try making cornbread for the chili All the beans and legumes - I think there's kidney, black, pinto, butter, cannelini, red and green lentils and green and yellow split peas. Forgot the chickpeas but we still have a couple of tins to use up anyway.

I think Indian subcontinent food (or rather for most people the British version that very little resembles home cooking from that area) is still very popular, but it's not cooked at home very often from scratch unless you have that cultural heritage. Popping a curry made from a jar of sauce on the table more so, but often it's a takeout. I started learning in part because I have one decent takeout place 12 miles away from me and that's pretty much that. Less effort to learn to cook it yourself! I buy semi skimmed because I drink very little milk on its own anyway and find the taste of full milk too creamy. I also buy filtered because I get through so little so it keeps longer. Given I only use it in tea that's not really an issue. I'm not a fan of plastic bread but most of the in store bakery offerings at the supermarkets are pretty decent. If I ate much bread, which I don't, I'd probably bake it. But for half a loaf a week it's a bit harder to get motivated. As everywhere there are different food cultures based on social class, access to fresh fruits and vegetables (either because your budget allows it or because you grow your own) and skill set when dealing with it. Families with a non cooking culture might live off oven chips and ready meals, but most of my friends are interested in food and cook themselves. And I think there is more interest in food in general, certainly since coming back from Japan 5 years ago.