Be Excellent To Each Other

New Year's Day dessert...

Chocolate cake on the bottom (leftovers from my daughter's birthday a couple of days ago), followed by a layer of scratch-made chocolate custard, chopped up pieces of milk & white chocolate and then a layer of whipped cream.
Then another layer of cake, custard and cream with some chopped up dark chocolate chips on top.
Also made a sour cherry coulis to go on the side.

Oh. My. GOD, that was good.

Did a very lazy version of pulled pork on Friday, and it was possibly the best I've ever done!

Pork shoulder marinated overnight in a dry BBQ rub bought from from the world food section of tesco.
Put it in the slow cooker with a chopped up onion, covered it in half a bottle of reggae reggae BBQ sauce, and poured in 500ml of vegetable stock. Put it on auto for 12 hours. Done. Tasted great I doubt Im going to bother doing my own rubs and sauces in future...

In other food news, mrs t and I are booked in at Apsleys for the weekend before valentines, which should be good. Might try and see if I can get a booking at le gavroche instead, if possible, but I doubt I'll get in.

Can you marinate something in a dry rub?

Good point, seasoned overnight in a dry rub is probably a better term?

Dunno. I know the rub you mean, though - I use it on my pulled pork, too!

I'm going to make pulled pork soon, but I need to make BURRITO-READY MAN CHILLI first.

Le Gavroche isn't tricky to get into. I can list you a good dozen places for a better dinner though.

Go on then

I wouldn't mind trying le gavroche for myself though

The Ledbury
The Square
The Greenhouse
Viajante
Texture
Pied a Terre
Hedone

Off the top of my head.

I'll stick with the restaurants if it's all the same to you.

Ta, booked in at pied a terre for the 10 course tasting menu with wine, and a hotel stumbling distance away

I went there with the wife for our joint 30th birthday treat a while back. I had the matching wines; she had the matching champagnes. Was awesome.

The petit fours at the end are ridiculous (in a good way).

Craster, Grim..., I have your Christmas dinner for this year sorted:

That's, like, the most antisemitic dinner ever.

So i discovered 2 things good:
1) Craster's slow cooked pulled pork in bbq sauce is delicious
2) Turning the left overs into a pizza is pretty damn good as well - used the bbq sauce as pizza sauce. Om!

Where is the "post oven" picture?

Malc

It was censored for basically depicting Pompeii.

Been down the pub for a few beers after work, now waiting for my frozen curly fries and out of date scotch eggs to cook.
Anybody would think Mrs T is away for the night...

Went into York today (day off!) and they had a huge market going on in Parliament Street. It's here quite often actually - foods of the world sort of deal. I got some lovely Moroccan grub.

More importantly, though, I bought a garlic grater plate thing. It turns garlic into mush. You also get this rubber tube thing that peels garlic in seconds. It's fucking great. There was a guy doing a demonstration and I bought one immediately. Just tested it out and it works just as well at home.

I'd seen this sort of grater before on Japanese cooking shows so I was already on the look out for one.

They're like a small plate/saucer with sharp grater "teeth" sticking out. You just rub the garlic/ginger/whatever around on it and it leaves behind perfectly smooth garlic mush. Balls to rubbish garlic presses!

edit: Just like this! http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/25119506 ... sbar&cbt=y

But not yellow.

Brilliant, aren't they?

Yup! The lady always uses one on Cooking With Dog and it has been at the back of mind for ages. Chuffed I finally have one. Our press is rubbish!

Aye, brilliant little things, picked one up at the Garlic Festival last year

In a fit of semi-inspiration last week, I decided to try to make a BLT soup, and it turned out pretty nicely. So here's the recipe for anyone who's interested.

Ingredients
6 large plum tomatoes.
Large can of chopped tomatoes
Half an onion, finely chopped.
2 cloves garlic, minced.
6-8 slices streaky bacon, finely chopped.
Couple of slices of stale bread, chopped into rough cubes.
Handful of fresh, flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped.
A dash of ketchup.
Tablespoon or so of brown sugar.
Olive oil, salt and pepper.

In a large pot, fry the onion and garlic gently in some olive oil.
Bring some water to boil in another pot and quickly blanch the plum tomatoes until the skins slip off. Discard the skins, roughly chop the tomatoes and add them to the onion and garlic.
Cook the tomato mixture gently for a bit, then add the can of chopped tomatoes.
Fill the empty can with water, then add that to the pot too.
Bring the soup to a simmer and let it bubble away gently for a bit, while you heat up a frying pan nice and hot.
Using a hand blender, give the soup a few quick blasts until it's about 80% pureed. Leave a few bits and pieces in there for texture, though.
Fry the bacon in the hot pan until cooked and just crisp - streaky bacon is best because you'll get a lot of fat rendered off, and you'll need it.
Remove the bacon from the pan with a slotted spoon and add to the soup.
Add a dash of ketchup and tablespoon of brown sugar to the soup, which brings out the sweetness of the tomatoes nicely. Salt and pepper to taste.
Take your bread and fry in the bacon fat until golden brown all over. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to some kitchen roll for now.

To serve, put a ladleful of soup in a bowl, add a small handful of parsley (you could use cress, or simply shredded lettuce if you like, but I enjoyed the extra flavour that the parsley brought to the dish). Top with a generous handful of croutons and serve immediately.
You could also add a small spoonful of creme fraiche or sour cream as a topper too.

Shrimp causitas tonight - mashed potatoes, prawns, red onion, olives, chilli, avocado, eggs, and a chilli and garlic mayonnaise. Shamelessly copied from Gaucho.

I am getting a bit obsessive about chilli now - there are four on the go now with different cuts of meat in

Mind you, I just deglazed the pans with beer

I made a chilli last night too, not quite as extravagantly as that - flat iron and rump steaks that I ground with the grinder, fresh "red" chilli, rehydrated chipotle and ancho chillis (all seeded), cayenne powder, rehydration liquor and Hobgoblin for liquid, 100% cocoa chocolate, too much honey, smoked paprika. And other more normal stuff (including cassia bark because it said 'lots of foreign' and 'cinnamon bark' on the pack in the Chinese supermarket, but that's *American* English, where they call cassia cinnamon, and it's not the same thing, doh).

It was nice. I added two teaspoons of my Gusto sauce to pep it up a bit. Excellently, there's loads left.

I will report back with my results, but I think I'm going to say "don't use a grinder". Or, at least, "brown the meat before you grind it". You can't really brown ground meat - it sweats too quicky and you just end up broiling it.

WTFF are you doing to conclude this? Or more accurately, what sort of shitty beef are you using? There's no reason home ground beef would be worse than shop ground beef.

Last chilli I made was according to Heston Blumenthal's recipe. It was excellent. Some interesting variations on the standard way of doing things, like the spiced butter, and the lime zest was a nice touch. This was using steak I ground myself (50/50 rump and sirloin; not fatty enough really, but it was all I had on hand) and the meat fried up fine.


Chilli con carne by PenLlawen, on Flickr

I'm suggesting not grinding the beef in any way until after it's browned.

Depends what you mean by 'browning' - indeed it didn't do a nice caramelised crust, but it didn't leak everywhere and did colour. I did the flat iron first which leaked a couple of tablespoons which I boiled the water off (no more than half), took it out, added the rump and it ABSORBED I liquid.

I might char it before grinding next tome though.

as always the important bit is 'stir only when absolutely necesaary'

I'm cooking tomorrow for easter sunday, but thought it best to do a trial of the desert, being as I had never made a Chocolate Fondant before.



Slightly underdone, it'll need another minute next time. but very happy with that. I thought they were supposed to be difficult

looks good mate, what time do you want me to turn up to 'test' it?

Free range pork cheeks, in a Porto reduction, with spicy slaw, in a sub roll.

Om freaking nom. Sooo gooood!

You like mini stuff?
You like toffee?
You like stollen?

Remind me when I get home and I'll post up the recipe for mini toffee stollen breads that has been turned down by all the supermarkets for their xmas range this year,the fools! A beex exclusive! Courtesy of Mrs t.

I had to go on a gluten free diet in December and since then I've not been able to get a chicken curry from the Chinese takeaway, which when you have a hangover as bad as I did yesterday, is sometimes the only thing that will help.
So, I've decided to try and recreate it as much as possible at home. Attempt one is cooking away right now and looks to be a very nice curry, but it isn't the same as my local Chinese.
Does anyone have any good Chinese curry tips or recipes? I can't use most if not all of the Chinese curry spice mixes/pastes as an ingredient is usually wheat flour or some other form of gluten.
Could someone also explain MSG to me and what flavour it is that this gives to these pastes?
Finally, when is the best time to add onions and mushrooms to a curry sauce and should they be cooked in anyway before adding, such as frying?

MSG is monosodium glutenate. It adds umami, the flavour of savouriness, one of the five basic types of taste your tongue has sensors for (the others being sweet, salty, bitter, and sour). It crops up in a lot of Japanese and Chinese cooking, as part of ingredients like miso paste and mushrooms. Parmesan is very high in umami too (it has small crystals of pure MSG in it), which is why it tastes great grated over a meaty pasta sauce.

More: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami

That's great thanks. I added mushrooms, but not until twenty minutes before the end. I think the flavour was good but it had that sort of a hint of a fruity flavour that some curries get. I couldn't get five spice at the supermarket though so maybe the addition of that would help? I also added the onions too early, I'd have preferred more crunch. Was still a tasty curry though, I'd cook it again and maybe just make a few tweaks. It was certainly a Chinese style curry, just not my locals style curry

Mushroom ketchup and worcestershire sauce are good for umami too, I used to be a snob about adding them to pasta sauces and chilli but have got over it.

It helps that using mushroom ketchup is paradoxically more snobby than not adding either.

They both go in chilli and casseroles. If I'm doing a pasta sauce I usually go with olives, anchovies, and capers instead.

Capers aren't tolerated in our house. Olives are barely tolerated on an occasional basis so long as they go directly from the fridge into my mouth and not via shared food. Though I find olives leave a metallic-flavoured taint in pasta sauces anyway.

This got an outing on Facebook but I'm going to show it off here as well. As has been demonstrated by my last posts in this thread I am missing takeaway food. Well I came home from my last 12 hour shift of the weekend last Sunday and the house smelled amazing. My girlfriend had cooked a lamb curry with chicken pakora to start. She hasn't been able to get gram flour so had used a gluten free white flour blend but that took nothing away from the flavour! Served them with cucumber raiti and a generic pakora sauce she made with spices and yoghurt. It was amazing.


On Sunday we are cooking a couple of curries for the family, does anyone have a tasty Indian chicken curry recipe? I usually make curries with lamb or beef so would appreciate someone pointing me in the direction of a tried and tested chicken curry, even a masala or something.

I'm going to a BBQ soon and need a sauce recipe, anybody got a good one?

Supper -




nom nom

Acceptable.

Parsnips roasted in maple syrup, asparagus roasted in balsamic.

Heartily recommended the both, lovely.

Isn't that the standard way to cook asparagus?

I generally part-steam/boil then grill.

Anyway, that was more throwaway, it was the parsnips roasted in maple syrup that were the revelation!