MobyP

I thought it was closed in 2006.

If you look in this month's Food Arts mag (if you're in the US), there's a piece on Heston which includes a discussion of fluid gels. Basically, he uses a product called gellan gum to create a solid or set gel, and then uses an overhead lab mixer (which works at much slower speeds than a regular mixer, and so doesbn't incorporate any oxygen) to break up the gell into so many pieces, that it takes on the characteristics of a fluid, without actually becoming one. You can restrain the process at the point where it will behave like a puree, or continue until it's actually pourable.

They must have really botched their recent expansion to have been taken to the cleaners like that. A real shame. They were much too expensive, but they seemed to fill that 'Sur La Table' slot.

Walking down Westbourne Grove between (I think) Hereford Road and Newton road, I came upon a kitchenware shop. They were selling 4 inch Global pairing knives for 20 quid as part of a 20th anniversary thing. And very nice it is too.

Of course, when there's something you absolutely must not do, someone figures out a way of doing it regardless. A california chef (who you are famiiar with Andy) actuallly cuts the liver into tranches, and then pulls out the veins (identified by the blood spots when they reach the surface) with tweezers, thus preserving the structural integrity of the tranche whilst having a vein-free piece of seared foie! Can we get Stephen's comment on this, btw?

AGA Foodservice buys cookware company Divertimenti for 1.4 mln stg What does "1.4 mln stg" mean? 1.4 million pounds seems insanely low. stg - stock giveaway?

Adam - you're some kind of evil genius. You need to be stopped before more people fall under your spell.

I was talking about pan seared foie. It's very difficult to pan sear tranches of foie if you devein it first. They fall apart into their component pieces. As to previous threads - I know I should go looking. There were several conversations between me and Mr. Tseng a while back about this. In the Robuchon recipe I have, served with lentils (from the Patricia Wells book), the liver is steamed, not seared. Once deveined, the pieces are wrapped in damp paper to preserve their shape, and then processed. In 'La Cuisine De Robuchon' under 'warm foie gras with Lentil cream sauce,' it is also steamed (and wrapped in cling film this time). And in the photo, you can see a cut tranche which notably hasn't been deveined. In other words, when Wells isn't around, the Robuchon recipe isn't deveined before steaming. In the foie which I had at Robuchon's L'Atelier, which was seared/pan roasted, there were veins. I don't know about Ladenis. As you note, the lobe with Keller is whole roasted, not cut in tranches and pan seared. Again, the roasting it in the oven as a whole allows the cook to preserve the foie's shape (although "roasting is a little more tricky than poaching because the lobes can fall apart if you're not careful" p105). And I think you'll find a comment in one of the per se or FL posts about someone finding a version of the pan roasted foie stringy. It doesn't say in the book that for pan seared versions, the deveining applies (it doesn't say not, but if you look through the book at the pan seared version - p133 - it merely says cut tranches 3/4" thick, rather than referring back to p104 for preparing instructions which all the other foie recipes have). The Ramsay pan seared foie wasn't deveined. Neither were the Bras or Blumenthal versions for that matter. I was wrong though. There's no reason Moir should have known it necessarily. I was just disappointed that she thought the exact opposite to be true, and pronounce that as a piece criticism, when in fact the opposite tends to be the case.

Good review. But considering Moir is an occasional (though pseudanonymous) Gulleteer, she should know that no one deveins foie gras before searing (Keller, Ducasse, Ramsay, Gagnaire, Robuchon, Bras etc), only when making terrines. If you did remove the veins, it would fall apart in the pan. Unfortunate that she was given an overly-veiny piece though.

I think mine have slightly less air around the filling, so the seal around the edge will do that kind of thing. Also, perhaps, less cooking time. Yours look great, btw.

Adam - that looks fantastic.

Dan - I think this is just the feeble excuse we were all waiting for! Do you have a puff recipe you can share with us? Possibly with glossy photos and free samples upon receipt of a s.a.e? To your question, I have to say my knowledge of flours is miserable, but the pastry definitely improved once I started using the Doves organic all purpopse (after reading that Sean Hill used it). Something that intrigued me: I saw a video of a pastry chef preparing puff in a Parisian 3 star (L'Ambroisie) and his uncooked pastry was the most beautiful creamy white. In contrast, mine tends to have miniscule specks interlaced throughout the dough. I don't know whether it's ash or some other contaminent. What's the secret? Is there a better combination of flour to use in the UK, and would it be different in the US?

What recipe did you use for the pasta? I also use the Atlas, and level 8. In fact, here is my version of the short rib ravioli using exactly that... I was actually thinking that I should move to level 9. The only thing that I have found with the Atlas is that you should run your finger underneath the rollers every now and then. Small grains of flour tend to build up, and you have to clear them out, or they can tear the pasta as it rolls through. I wouldn't worry about a few tears. You're learning more each time you make these things, and you'll improve as you go along. When I first started, I would lose 1 in 5 or 6 to rips, or falling apart in the boiling water, or for some other reason. Now it's rare if I lose 1 in 20 or 30. As I said before, it's only experience.

I wouldn't freeze it - but I don't know that you couldn't. It would just take much more time to defrost the dough, than it would to make another batch, and I'm lazy enough to go for the quick option. You know, I haven't found a city in the states (or at least on the two coasts where I lived) where I couldn't find '00' flour. Any self-respecting Italian deli should have it, though sometimes you need to track them down.

I'm sure Adam will have the answer, but if I can ask, what do you do to the squash before using it? It would seem to me that you would really have to slow roast it for a while, well seasoned with maybe a little balsamic to glaze and a little thyme, to concentrate the flavours. Then, you can't use too much in the pasta mix without causing damage to the final texture. So probably 1/2 or 2/3 rds of a cup of puree at the outside per 400g flour. What proportions were you using?

Hey Smithy - before I give your answers a try, and as you uploaded good pics of your process, I thought we could be nit-picky and see if we can come up with anything to help. By the way, your finished dishes look great. In the first picture, I notice your dough is looking really soft, almost damp (and I'm not talking about the liquid brushed around the filling, but the dough itself. What recipe are you using? If mine (god forbid), you might want to ease back slightly on the liquids (eggs/oil), or incorporate slightly more flour into the mix. There's a balance to be reached between over-damp and over-dry. You'll find it easier to work with if the dough is a touch less damp. You can see in the next picture how the dough surrounding the filling is slightly flaccid. What happens (and I used to do this all the time) is that if you have to leave the pastas sitting for an hour, the filling will 'melt' through the pasta, or turn the pasta to mush before you can cook it. Also, because you started with such a damp dough, the pastas will over-cook much faster than otherwise. I'd say in the picture below (which if placed before me I'd eat in a second, btw), you could have pulled them out 30 seconds or a minute sooner. Fresh pasta, when you over-cook it, can get water-logged. But you have to really over cook them before they become unservable. Jonathan Day insists that an Italian chef gave him a demo, and said it was impossible to overcook these things, but I'm not so sure. I think they can get pretty mushy. Allegedly. It happened to a friend. No, really. Experience. It took me much too long to figure out that I was overcooking my pasta. Now, as I said in the cook-off thread, it can be as short as 2-3 mins, depending on how thin the pasta is, and how long ago I made them. What is almost always the case is that if I think they could use another 30 seconds, I pull them out immediately. They will keep cooking out of the water, and absorb the sauce. You should still get a little bite from the pasta. Not much. But I think you'll find with experience that less is more. You do need to be a little careful. Also remember, never let the water boil when you're poaching them. That will cause the worst damage. But I do the same as you. Fishing - well - sometimes 2 or 3 out of a large pot, and placing them directly into a warmed bowl, or the pan containing the sauce. When you leave it to rest, you're allowing the gluten to develop; those gummy, elastic bonds that hold your pasta together. Presumably, 2 days of rest will encourage a greater amount of gluten than 2 hours, so you'll find that springiness in the dough. I've used dough as old as 2 days. It does change the characteristics a little, but so long as you roll it thin enough, and perhaps cook it for an extra 20-30 seconds, you should get a good result. No. This might have a difference, but I'm not sure what. . The only person I know of who regularly cooks his pasta in broth (other than every Northern Italian in anolini in brodo) is Ducasse. There are precedents, of course, but they only exist to be ignored. The most scientific approach, and my personal recommendation would be: cooking and eating them all, and saying, "I like that one!"

I used to pull one out after a couple of minutes, and nibble a corner to see - but no matter how I judged it, at the end I wasn't getting the mouth feel I was looking for. This was solved by almost halving the cooking time. If they're fresh, and thin, it's sometimes as little as 2 or 2 1/2 minutes. My basic rule is to pull them out at least 30 seconds before I want to. Also, I lift them out with a spider and place them straight into a warmed bowl, or into a saute pan with the melted butter. What you should never do is drain them like regular pasta in a collender - they're too fragile, and you'll end up covering them in the left over semolina flour which you used to dust them after construction.

You guys are doing great stuff. This is really riding a bike. It seems ridiculous and impossible at the beginning, but after 2 or 3 tries, you just won't remember what all the fuss was about. I've played the "chasing the Steve McQueen-like egg as it makes a break through the neutral Switzerland-like mounds of flour while being chased by the insidious nazis" many times. Nothing quite like cleaning eggy-dough gloop out of the cracks of your wooden floor. Then I realised that I wasn't an italian grand mother, despite my penchant for sack cloth, facial hair, and over-sized black dresses, and these days I use a big bowl. As for dough thickness, with experience you can start setting the machine to increasinly thin settings - but don't be too hard on yourself. Or, alternatively, go and buy some industrial 'fresh' ravioli from the store and place it next to your own. It will taste like shoe leather, and be at least twice as thick. Really, you'll feel good about what you're doing, and it will save you hundreds of bucks in psychoanalysis.

I went today, and the pastries were superb. The croissant were certainly better than anything I've had in France for a very long time.

My money's on sweetbreads.

Dan - what a fantastic explanation. Thank you. Though how is the butter content in my recipe only 6.25% if you're excluding the water content from the recipe as a whole, and it's still, in weight at least, the same as the flour (500g)?

Thanks for the pics, Molto.

Bapi - you move any further north, it'll be reindeer kebabs for you, my son.

Bapi you rogue. Shame on you. You should have gone for the mountain, tree-swinging veal. It has much more flavour. It's really a happy piece of meat. You can practically feel it smiling at you. Especially if you use a sharp steak knife. Glad Pudding-Boy (does he have a super suit yet?) liked the lobster. Yes it was at a 3 star restaurant, but it's much cheaper than private school fees. (And anks-thay for the ousers-tray...)

In the L'Atelier du Robuchon book, the cooking suite is in the middle, not along the wall. I thought that kitchen had been in Jamin. Was it elsewhere?