A miraculous discovery...

Little packets of silica gel - those things which one always finds apparently uselessly loitering inside the packaging for new computers, and phones, and associated kit. And sounding as though really they ought to be fruit-flavoured, and generally more interesting than they appear to be.

I've always inderstood that their purpose is to absorb moisture and thereby to prevent the sensitive equipment from becoming damaged while it sits inside its airtight packaging, at risk of sweating its way into rusty decrepitude. But I've never really thought the silica gel was actually doing anything very much. Well....Ha! In fact, these things are quite incredible.

Several weeks ago, Technical Dept thought to put a couple of them into a plastic box, in which were stored some chocolate 'crisps' - circles of chocolate tuile,  which were leftover from a napoleon-style dessert. As is their wont, these things were starting to become soggy, in our humid summer atmosphere (in which bowls of salt or sugar always turn claggy, after exposure to the air for only a short while...I presume it's from being so close to the sea) and TD thought to halt the process while it was still possible. Except that when I went to use them, several days later, I found them not only not to have got any worse in their descent into sogginess, but in fact to have become completely bone-dry crisp, and if anything, more so than they had been when they started out.

So, I thought I'd try with some meringues, which - if I'm lucky - might stay 'dry' here if kept in an airtight box for a day or so. And, lo and behold, after several weeks, out they emerged in perfect state.

But, there's more. Yesterday evening, dessert was to be vacherins with vanilla ice cream, creme chantilly, and raspberries from the garden (the crop this year is excellent). The (italian) meringue nests were piped in the morning, and although left to dry in the oven for four or five hours, they were still not entirely as I would have wished when I took them out of the oven an hour or so before dinner. Foolishly, I left them on a rack, thinking they might dry properly if left there - and, of course, when I came back to them half an hour later, they had kept their shape perfectly, but on touching them I realised that the texture had denatured to something akin to marshmallow. Necessity being the mother of invention, half of them were placed in a plastic box along with half a dozen little packets of silica gel, and a certain amount of hope, while the other half went back in the oven to continue drying in the traditional way. Well, in practice, I didn't even bother to check on the meringue nests in the oven, as I discovered that after only half an hour with the silica gel, those meringues were dry as dry, and exactly as the doctor ordered. After half an hour! I knew from experience that the process worked, but I'd had no idea it was quite so effective quite so quickly...an amazing discovery!

The packets of gel are readily available for twice-nothing online (ebay, for sure, if nowhere else) and the only maintenance they require is to be dried out for a few minutes in the microwave after they've been used a few times.

Tonight's Dinner:

Fennel sformato, with basil sauce.

Curry of Gamberi, with Basmati rice.

Tarte aux Pommes; Vanilla ice cream.

Recipe: Soufflé base (sweet)

Completely different from the usual method for soufflé base, this version comes from Gaston Le Notre ( the late, and very great), and is one of the 'basic' recipes to be found at the front of the wonderful pâtisserie book he published in the seventies. The flour-to-milk ratio is very much higher than I've  found anywhere else, and in fact the process is more akin to making choux pastry than to making a custard. The result is much more robust than a soufflé made using a creme patissiere base - although not noticeably denser in texture, to the palate of the unwary diner - and will make the journey from oven to table with much less risk of deflating en route. Casting around, I find that the identical approach was suggested by Madame Saint-Ange, when she was publishing recipes around the end of the 1920's...so Le Notre wasn't making it up!

The first time I tried this method, it was a disaster, and the soufflé came out with the density of a pudding. I was tempted to think the method was wrong, but decided that it was worth trying again, on the basis that Le Notre was a fantastic technician, and it made no sense that he would have been advocating a process that didn't work. The trick is at the 'boiling' stage (see below); if you cook the flour too much, it produces a dense cowpat of stodge that will resist any attempt to rise in the oven. When I tried it again, and was much more careful, the result was perfect ....as it has been every time subsequently.

For enough soufflé base for two individual sweet  soufflés: half a cup of milk, 30g Sugar, 22g Flour, 2 medium Eggs, 10g Butter.

Method

1. In a bowl mix the Flour and Sugar with about 3 tbs of the Milk. 

2. In a saucepan, bring the remaining milk to the boil, add it to the Flour/Sugar/Milk mix and stir well, then return all to the saucepan.

3. Stirring vigourously with a whisk, bring the mixture to the boil, and cook until it visibly thiskens - probably about thirty seconds. Remove from the heat, stirring for a further ten seconds or so, then add to this the Butter; cover the pan with a lid, and leave for ten minutes.

4. After ten minutes whisk the melted Butter into the base, along with the 2 Egg yolks.

5. Add whatever flavouring ingredient you want to the base, and leave to one side until time to cook the soufflés; then whisk the egg whites and fold in as usual.

6. Cook the soufflés in a 180 degree C oven for fifteen minutes (no need to use a bain marie with this method)

Serve.

Breadmaking - a tip....

I'm making bread again. I'd stopped, for years, on the basis that I wanted to avoid getting fat. But on the, probably spurious, basis that I can offset the effect by all the strenuous labour in the garden, I've thrown caution to the winds and got stuck back into bread dough. Which is wonderful stuff!

My problem, though, was for ages that I didn't know how best to create the right environment in which to leave the dough to rise. It wasn't a problem I'd ever encountered back in catering days, when the ambient temperature of the kitchen was always perfect for leaving bread to rise (but generally lousy for tempering chocolate). 'Leave it on a shelf in the airing cupboard'  suggest some books - I don't have one - or, 'it's best in the oven, with just the pilot light on', say others - fine, except I've never actually had a gas oven. Playing around with pre-heating the oven to a low temperature and then turning it off, in the hope that it would be about right, was very hit and miss...and I mean very.

And then, I thought to consult Elizabeth Luard, who is not only splendidly no-nonsense, but has loads of experience of cooking in kitchens of varying levels of lack-of-sophistication, as outlined in the period that went towards her masterwork on 'European Peasant Cooking'. She suggests putting a roasting pan of boiling water at the bottom of the oven at the start of the rising period, and then leaving the door closed (temperature off) until it's time to knock the dough back and get on with the next stage - and if you're following a method that has multiple risings, then replenish the boiling water in the pan at the start of each new rising period. It works. It's wonderful. I've tried it three times in succession, now, and had a perfect result each time...

Tonight's Dinner:

Pan-fried Foie Gras, with Wild Mushrooms and Rocket.

Fillets of Sea-Bream, sautéed with Tomato, Basil, Rosemary & Lemon.

Limoncello Panna Cotta, with Fresh Raspberries.

Making Pasta - a revolutionary tip...

I've discovered a new trick in making pasta (instructions for which can be found here) which infinitely improves the quality of the finished product. The result of a malfunctioning food-processor, when making pasta dough several weeks ago, I had to remove the mixture from the bowl of the machine before the process was finished and then knead it by hand for several minutes until it appeared to have achieved the desired texture. I was slightly nervous when it subsequently came to rolling it out, half expecting it to be full of holes and next to useless. Far from it. The process of rolling was problem-free, and the texture of the cooked pasta afterwards was positively silky. Not just slightly better, but a whole step-function upwards in improvement...as pointed out by enthusiastic consumers.
I tried it again on subsequent occasions, to see if it had been a fluke. And, it isn't. After the dough has done its thing in the food processor, the trick is then to knead it for perhaps 20 - 30 seconds on the work surface, before storing and subsequently rolling out as normal. Such a small addition to the process, but the result in the quality of the pasta is phenomenal. (One note of caution, though - this works when using flour made from durum wheat, as is the case with italian flour in general; flour from the US, though, is different and might not react in the same way - it may even be that the process of kneading the dough with american flour actually makes the finished product tougher than otherwise)

Try it...

Tonight's dinner:

Taglioline with veal & lemon sauce

Pork chops braised with sage & white wine; Fennel gratin

Andalusian Tarts

How to de-seed grapes

We have a glut of grapes, both white and dark. In the fridge currently is of a box of about ten kilos of the things which the Technical Dept harvested from the garden in about three minutes, at the start of the week, and I've been working my way through relevant recipes ever since. A white grape sorbet was pretty good, frothed with some beaten egg white and enlivened with a glass of vin santo, and last night's Duck, pot-roast in white grapes also got significant points. I've tended to stick with recipes where the process of crushing or liquidizing or sieving eliminates the need to deal with the seeds, since de-seeding grapes has always been for me one of the most thankless of all kitchen chores. Until now. Research has unearthed this elegant version of keyhole surgery which is both quick and efficient:

1. Take a standard paper-clip and unfold it into a 'S' shape.

2. Insert one end of the 'S' into the end of the grape which was where the stalk had previously been, and bear down into the grape.

3. Bury the clip into the grape to the depth of the first arm of the 'S', and then invert it, so the bit you first inserted is now pointing back up in the direction whence it came, and you have the curve of the clip in the centre of the grape, positioned to act as a hook.

4. Twist the clip slightly, to loosen the innards of the grape, and then carefully pull the clip out of the grape, bringing the seeds with it.

5. Once the seeds reach daylight, discard them and move on to the next grape.

Couldn't be simpler!

Tonight's dinner:

Celery Risotto (with stock made from last night's Duck)

Sausages of Wild Boar, with a Potato and Shallot Gratin

Clafouti of White Grapes, baked in Lemon & Cognac Cream

Two tips...

Both born out of laziness (or good household management - which are often the opposite sides of the same coin; it's a matter of perspective how you choose to understand them! )


1. Having made crab tarts for starter on Sunday, I had some leftover dressed crab, and decided to use it in Lamb Mentonais for dinner last night in place of the more usual salmon. Excellent! And in fact a distinct improvement on the normal recipe, as the strongly favoured brown crab meat plays very well against the flavour of lamb. Definitely a modification that will be my preferred method from now on...

2. And, the height of laziness, last week I had leftovers of both puff pastry (from making a Pasqualina at Easter) and shortcrust (following both Lemon and Tomato Tarts, earlier in the week). Not enough of either to make an 8" shell, which was what I wanted for a Tarte aux Pommes. So, I combined them (giving exactly the right amount for one tart shell), by putting the ball of shortcrust on top of the ball of Puff, pressed down with the rolling pin and rolled them out together. As long as you remember to keep the shortcrust pastry on top when rolling out the pastry and lining the tin, then the result is splendid. I had my doubts that it would work, but in fact the result was probably some of the crispest pastry I've ever tasted, with the puff pastry layering nicely on the bottom, and the shortcrust on top keeping it under control and not losing the shape of the tart shell. It even remained beautifully crisp after 24 hours with the apple filling sitting inside it. Try it!

Tonight's Dinner:

Frittata in Tomato Sauce

Lamb Mentonais (leftover, reheated); with Lemon Spinach.

Chocolate Tarts with Lime Cream.

How to de-bone a Chicken...

Or a Duck, or a Guinea-fowl, or a Poussin, or indeed any kind of poultry whatsoever; there are some minor internal differences between each of them, but nothing that need get in the way of this process, which is actually quite straightforward and is well worth mastering.
A de-boned bird goes much further than one which has been cooked bone-in ( a medium-sized Chicken will feed six people with ease, treated this way) and a bird which you buy whole and cut up yourself comes out to be much cheaper than the aggregate cost of all the parts, were you to buy them all separately. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a whole Duck, which I then de-boned, and used the carcase for stock, the breasts for a main course for four, the legs for confit, and the fat was rendered down into a generous amount that should last me several weeks at least as a delicious cooking agent. Bought separately, that lot would have come to around £18 - which was almost twice what the duck had actually cost me.

I can't remember when I first de-boned Chicken, but I certainly associate it with a Paul Bocuse recipe for boned-and-roast Chicken, which I first started to do sometime in the mid eighties (I think I saw him demonstrate it on a programme on the Food Channel in the States...) and it's been a standard in my repertoire ever since.

Two points to remember in de-boning a Chicken:

1. Make sure your knife is very sharp! In fact, I tend to use a vegetable paring knife rather than a proper boning knife - it's up to you to use whichever you find most comfortable to work with - but whichever it is, make sure you sharpen the knife freshly before you begin.

2. Always work the knife towards you when de-boning. And as I'm right-handed, I always start with the left side of the bird, freeing the rib-cage from the flesh, and then, when I've done that side of the bird, I turn it round, so that the side to be worked on is once more on the left side of the bird, which means I can continue working the knife towards me. Were I left-handed, then I presume I'd start with the right side of the bird and reverse the process, in order always to be working towards myself.

Anyway...the method:

1. Place the bird breast-down on the work surface, and cut through the skin just to one side of the back-bone. Then slide the tip of the blade under the flesh and free it up between the leg and wing on the left-side of the bird.

2. Keeping the knife blade as close to the rib-cage as you can, free the meat away from the rib-cage for about an inch or so, and then turn your attention to the leg and the wing.

3. Carefully, cut around the top of the leg, freeing it from the carcase, and find exactly where the leg joins the carcase. Sever the tissue that connects the two, and then cut down to free the leg completely from the main part of the bird. Repeat this process with the wing-joint.

4. Once the wing and leg joints have been severed, free the breast meat from the rib-cage in its entirety with a couple of good cuts (try and make your cuts as clean as possible, and as close to the ribcage as you can manage, to avoid slashing the breast meat as you do so - at first it's inevitable that the breast will emerge looking a little 'ragged', but in practice this doesn't matter, and your technique will hugely improve once you've done this a few times).

5. Once you've freed one side of the bird entirely from the rib-cage, turn it round, and repeat the process with the other side. At the end of this stage you'll be able to extract the entire rib-cage and drop it into the waiting stockpot.

6. Next, remove the lower bone in each leg, by cutting down and around the bone and severing it at the 'knee' joint (this is essentially common sense, and needs no special explanation). Unless I need the bird entirely boneless (for a galantine or a ballotine, for example) then I stop at this stage, and either roast the bird in this state (with a butter and herb stuffing pushed generously between the skin and the meat) or else cut it up into its constituent parts to be used in either sauté or fricassé dishes.

Once you've tried this a few times, you'll find you get very quick at it ( I find a decent sized bird takes me about five minutes to de-bone, these days) and the result is well worth the effort.

How to Carve...

Even people who cook regularly have a tendency to brick out when it comes to carving. Was it the first glass of wine? Or the second? The fear of failure? Or just the 'I've been on my feet in the kitchen all day... I've had enough!' moment. Hence, the image of the roast being presented for carving to the paterfamilias, who has never actually made its acquaintance until then, but will nevertheless proudly set-to.

Well, whether you're the cook or the stand-in, this is what you should do:

Rule #1. Heat the plates to at least 70°C. By the time you have carved enough for four, the meat is bound to be nearly cold. Use the old restaurant trick of a decently hot plate to put the heat back in. If you put the plates in the oven at 70°C just before you start to carve, they will be hot when you need them.

Rule #2. Cool the meat until it's barely warm. Sometimes you read about 'resting' meat - what they mean is cooling it. Not only is it difficult to carve hot meat, but all the fatty juices pour out making a terrible mess and leaving slices of dry fibre. Tepid is ideal. The combination of hot plates and hot sauce will re-heat the slices as they are served.

Rule #3. Remove some, or all, of the bones before roasting. A sharp knife and some of the elasticated netting from the butcher does the trick ( the latter to keep the thing together, post-surgery). Slice to the bone from the point with the least meat, cut round as best you can and remove it. If it's a bird, just removing the wishbone makes life infinitely easier, and boning the whole thing is better yet.

Rule #4. If you weren't in charge at rule #3 stage, but were roped in later, remove the bone if you can. Easiest is a large T bone or rib roast (aka Fiorentina). Just cut all the meat off the bone in the largest possible pieces and lob the bone at the bin, or the dog. If it is a chicken, take the breasts off in one piece - use your fingers to help if nobody is looking. If the joint is a shoulder of lamb, the carver's nightmare, it's the same method. If you are not sure where the bone actually is, prod around a bit with the tip of the knife - or better a skewer - until you have the anatomy worked out. Don't worry if you leave meat on the bone - you will probably leave less than you would have done if you had tried to carve it on the bone.

Rule #5. Take a boneless piece of meat and slice across the grain - never along the grain. Meat fibres are tough and long fibres are tougher to chew than short ones.

Rule #6. Unless the piece of meat is large, do not slice vertically, slice thinly at 45°. The slice will be longer and look better on the plate.

Rule #7. Rule's 3-6 are easier if the knife is properly sharp.

Rule #8. Slice all you need before getting the plates out of the oven. It is better to keep people waiting rather than serve them in dribs and drabs.

Making Caramel

People have been making a version of caramel pretty much since the advent of refined sugar, I would think - so, you'd expect the process would by now be well and truly sorted out. But, it seems not. No two versions that I've ever come across agree with each other - and the rather vague language the writers generally use makes me suspect that they've all had a nasty experience with the stuff at some point in the past (and which experienced cook hasn't? I know I have - it's almost impossible not to!)

Over the years, I've tried all sorts of different methods - the one where you laboriously brush the sides of the pan with cold water as the sugar bubbles...or the version where you dunk the bottom of the pan into iced water as soon as the caramel starts to colour - and the method given below is the only one I've tried that I really like and have found completely reliable. It's also the only one which uses lemon juice within the mixture, and although I have no idea structurally what difference it should make, it certainly seems to make the process much more straightforward. It comes from Anna del'Conte's 'Entertaining all'Italiana'...a book which briefly saw the light of day towards the end of the eighties and then seems to have sunk without trace.

The quantity is sufficient to use in six ramekins for either panna cotta or crème caramel.

Ingredients: 75g sugar; 3 tbs water; 1 tsp lemon juice.

Method:

Place all ingredients in a pan, and bring slowly to the boil, stirring gently with a wooden spoon. It will take some time to start to colour, but will then turn first a pale gold and then dark brown. At that point, remove it immediately from the heat and pour it into the containers. (NB: if using the caramel to line ramekins, it is best to heat them first in a 170 degree C oven for five minutes - this will prevent the caramel from 'seizing' when coming into contact with cold porcelain.)

Recipe: Flourless Chocolate Cake

Not so much a cake recipe, as a fantastic construction device for use in chocolate tarts and soufflés. Following on from techniques used by - amongst others - Ducasse, Senderains, and Hermé this is a method for introducing into these sorts of dessert a wonderfully concentrated flavour bomb. The 'cake' is in fact a thin layer of very porous chocolate sponge, which acts as a container for strongly flavoured liquids (generally, but not necessarily alcoholic). The degree to which the sponge sucks up the liquid prevents it from leeching out into the surrounding mixture, and at the same time, the cake itself somehow dissolves, so that as you bite into it there is no obvious sense of a 'cakey' texture - just a very intense flavour hit. At the same time, the chocolate sponge is effectively invisible within a chocolate-coloured soufflé or tart filling, and so there are no visual clues in advance which might spoil the surprise..

This sponge layer when cooked is not a thing of beauty, but since it ends up concealed within whatever dessert you're making, it doesn't matter. The quantities given here are sufficient to make discs of sponge for use in half a dozen or so individual desserts; any leftover sponge can be readily frozen for future use, although you have to defrost them very thoroughly to make sure they are decently porous again after freezing.

Ingredients: 80g Dark Chocolate (Felchlin, by preference); 5 Eggs; 190g Sugar.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 170 degrees C.

2. Melt the Chocolate in a double boiler or zimmertopf. When melted, allow to cool slightly.

3. Beat the Egg Yolks with half the Sugar, until thoroughly incorporated. Stir into this the slightly cooled melted Chocolate.

4. Whisk the Egg Whites until they form soft peaks, then add in the remaining Sugar and continue whisking to make a meringue.

5. Fold the meringue into the Chocolate mixture and spread this thinly (about 1/4 inch thick) either onto sheets of Silpat, or onto baking sheets lined with greaseproof paper.

6. Bake in the pre-heated oven until done - this can take about fifteen minutes, depending upon how efficient your oven is. To test for done-ness, press with a finger, and if the dent springs back and leaves no lasting impression, the sponge is done. It should be very dry.

7. Leave to cool on a rack.

To Use: Cut the sponge into discs, the correct size to fit into the ramekins (if making soufflés) or tart shells, if making tarts.
- If making chocolate soufflé, half fill the ramekin with the soufflé mixture, then place a disc of sponge on top; carefully soak the sponge with half a teaspoon or so of your liquid of choice (Cherry Brandy or Cointreau spring to mind) and then cover with more soufflé mixture. Bake the soufflé as normal.
- If making a Chocolate Tart (or a variation, such as Pear and Chocolate, or similar), place the sponge disc in the tart shell and add the liquid of choice, before proceeding with the tart recipe on top of the sponge disc, entirely as you would do otherwise.

Recipe: Lamb Shoulder stuffed with Salmon

I've been trying - completely without success - to identify the origins of this dish, in order to understand whether the unexpected combination of ingredients sprang from decadence or necessity. Was it as the result of lackadaisical boredom with all other options that somebody came up with the idea of lamb-with-salmon, or did they simply have no other raw materials to work with? (Shades of Alan Davidson's story where he once apologised to some hill-tribesmen for having tried to replicate one of their traditional dishes, when he'd been back at home, but had been forced to use peeled prawns in the absence of the more traditional ingredient, which was the inside of an Ox cheek; the tribesmen's enthusiastic response had been that they only used Ox cheek because they had no choice, and that peeled prawns would be a much better idea, if only they could ever get hold of any!)

The late great Julia gave this dish the name of 'Mentonais', although without explaining why, and for no readily apparent reason; whatever connection it was supposed to have had with Menton is unclear. In any event, the combination works wonderfully, and is all the better for using well-flavoured good-quality lamb. It's often the case that a particular dish will have a particular association, and for me, this one is of a perfectly-cooked version, pink and succulent, served at the Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, only a few months after the place had first opened...which rather dates the experience...

The recipe I use is an adaption of that from the Comtesse de Toulouse-Lautrec. She appeared to have an aversion to anchovies. I don't. This dish is all the better for their presence!

Serves Six.

Ingredients: 1 boned shoulder of Lamb; 125 g of finely chopped (or minced) lamb; 125g tinned Salmon; 4 Anchovy fillets, chopped; 1 medium-sized White Onion; 2 cloves Garlic, finely chopped; 1 small bunch Tarragon, finely chopped; 50g Butter; Salt and Pepper.

1. Fry the chopped Onion in the Butter over low heat, until completely wilted. Add the chopped garlic and cook for a further minute. Allow to cool.

2. Combine the Onion and Garlic mixture with the chopped Lamb, Salmon, Anchovies, and Tarragon. Season generously - if anything, this stuffing should be a bit over-seasoned. (Test a sample by sautéing a teaspoonful of stuffing and taste- if necessary, adjust and test again)

3. To stuff and roll the Lamb:
Unless you are used to tying up meat, it is easier to tie up a joint like a boned shoulder if you use clingfilm to form the shape of the final joint before actually stringing it. To do this:
- lay the meat skin side down on a sheet of clingfilm. (If you are not using the wide rolls of clingfilm used in catering, use overlapping strips of the narrower variety.) Trim any excess fat from the joint and butterfly any section which is much thicker than the rest. The idea is to end up with a reasonably flat piece of meat which can be rolled up into a cylinder.
- Spread the stuffing over the central part of the meat. As you roll it up the stuffing will be squeezed to the edges anyway.
- Roll the meat up as tightly as you can and overlap the cling film to hold it all in place. Use more clingfilm to form the meat into an relatively even cylinder, 4 or 5 inches in diameter. Twist up the ends by holding each and rotating the joint - somewhat like a candy wrapper. If there is any air trapped inside, prick the film with a needle in order to let the air out before you do the final twist.
- Refrigerate until the meat is cold and rigid. (If you are in a hurry, an hour or two in a freezer helps. )
- Tie the meat in the usual way, with the strings about an inch apart - you can leave the cling film in place, and pull it out afterwards, if you are worried the joint will unravel before the string is all in place.

3. Roast the stuffed shoulder at 200C for 50mins, to an hour. If you're uncertain if the joint is sufficiently cooked, test for this temperature using a digital thermometer - when done, the inside should be at a temperature of between 145 F and 170F (ranging from medium rare to well-done; 'medium' would be around 160F).

Allow to rest for 15mins, before carving. Meanwhile, remove the fat from the juices, and de-glaze the latter on the stove with some red wine, to use subsequently as a sauce for the lamb.

NB: Carve and plate the meat carefully! Stuffed joints have a tendency to fall apart, particularly when warm, unless handled with great care.

The interpretation of Recipes....

...from recipe books is a process every cook needs to learn, if they want to work to good effect and with optimal efficiency. The fact is that all published cooks - without exception - when they commit recipes to paper, do so with a specific set of circumstances in mind, and more often than not those aren't the same circumstances that apply for the cook-hopeful who is reading the recipes at some later date.
In many instances, the disparity is because the writer comes from the environment of a restaurant kitchen, and so includes steps in their recipes which are irrelevant for domestic cooks: even Bruno Loubet is guilty of this on occasion, when, for instance, he will needlessly include directions for laboriously making italian meringue as part of a particular dessert - a good idea in a commercial kitchen when the dish has to sit around for half a day before being cooked, but completely unnecessary for a domestic dinner party, when the same effect is achieved by merely whisking egg whites and incorporating them at the last minute, just before baking.

Or, sometimes the unnecessary step is a reflection of the age of the recipe book - for instance, the fact that Julia Child carefully protects all of her custards with a film of melted butter is for the simple reason that when she was writing those recipes Cling-film hadn't yet been invented! Other steps that can be filtered out as part of the interpretation process are often a reflection of the received wisdom from the period when the recipe writer learned their trade, but which subsequent analysis has shown to be entirely without basis or value - marinating meat, is a good example of this (see below for more on this subject).

And then, finally, there are those steps in a recipe that should be excised from the process on the basis that rational analysis clearly indicates that they are completely bonkers: Stephen Bull, in his otherwise generally excellent book 'Classic Bull' is occasionally guilty of this where, for example, he wraps haddock fillets in cling film along with a couple of slices of lemon (the latter to be discarded before cooking) or again where he 'marinates' salmon fillets with orange peel for half a day in the vain hope that the fish will take on any of the scent of the fruit, before he then chucks away the orange and cooks the salmon.......Madness!

Very, very rarely is it the case these days that I find myself following a new recipe exactly as written (Bruce Weinstein on Ice Cream being a definite exception; this man knows his stuff!). More normally, the course I follow is the result of a process of rigorous interrogation, and ruthless editing, of what is on the page even before I've begun.

The following are some pointers where there are generally opportunities to save time and trouble when addressing a new recipe for the first time:

Italian meringue. Typically made by drizzling hot sugar syrup at 116°C into well beaten egg whites. This meringue while raw keeps its volume for hours and so it is ideal if you think you may need some meringue in, say, 6 hours time. Perfect for a dessert chef who may, or may not, be required to produce a Grand Marnier souffle at short notice 15 minutes before the end of his shift, but no earthly use to a home cook who can make French meringue by beating egg whites and sugar as and when needed.

Repeated Reductions. It is very common to come across recipes for sauces where something is reduced by 1/3 and something is added and then reduced again by 50% and something is added and then reduced again. Who can tell by eye if it is reduced by a third anyway? Of course this is all totally dotty unless each step is separate and the intermediate result stored for future use over the next few days, as is the case with, say, shallots cooked in wine, or stock reduced to demi glaze, or other sauce components. If you are just making a single sauce then just ignore the steps, fry what has to be fried, add all the remaining ingredients and reduce until the end volume is correct. It makes no difference if the water is boiled off at the start, in the middle or at the finish. Remember 2-3 tablespoons of sauce per person is enough.

Marination. Another complete waste of time and irritating too since it usually means one should have started the recipe two days previously. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his book 'Meat' has exposed the simple truth that soaking meat in wine or vinegar can only toughen it, thus the main reason for the process is at best unwise. The secondary reason - imparting flavour - is also somewhat dubious because the uncooked vegetables and herbs don't lose much if any of their flavour to the completely cold liquid, let alone pass it on to the equally cold raw meat. The truth is that the process, which was traditionally used for game such as venison or boar, was firstly, before refrigeration, to protect the freshly killed meat as it relaxed and aged a bit, and secondly to make sure that any external bacteria or - worse - infestation was drowned in a mildly acidic dunk. Bathing perfectly hung beef in a vinegar solution for a day or two can only ruin it.

Blanching. True blanching - the whitening of meat or the par cooking of vegetables to mute the flavour - is almost never necessary. Sweetbreads, if you ever cook them, can be blanched if you like, the principle advantage is to be able to press them to a useful thickness as they cool by placing a heavy weight, such as a large brick, on top. As for vegetables, par cooking them for a few minutes doesn't mute the flavour: why would it?

This is different of course from par or completely cooking vegetables in advance so that they can be quickly reheated when needed. In fact there is a lot to be said for doing this, particularly for green vegetables, and it is best done just after they have been bought since they don't improve through storage, rather the reverse.

Rubs, insertions or stuffings. If left for a couple of hours or so, none of these change the taste of the meat or fish one jot, although they might flavour any juice which runs out. The flavours don't infuse the flesh at all. Nine times out of ten it is all just a fiddly waste of time. Better to save the flavourings to make a sauce or just to sprinkle on the dish when cooked. If you want garlic lamb it is better to make a garlic flavoured juice to pour over the freshly sliced meat than to abuse the guiltless beast by stabbing it all over and pushing garlic cloves into the open wounds.

Sealing meat. This is really a misnomer rather than a mis-step. Frying meat all over doesn't stop juice falling out of it and makes not the tiniest difference to the juiciness, or not, of the end result. Nothing is being sealed. Frying meat does develop some useful flavour by 'caramelising' the outside and can give the joint an attractive colour. However, usually the real flavour hit comes from the sauce which is often made of much more than just the cooking juices. If you want juicy meat, buy well and let it cool down a lot before you cut it.

Soaking Vegetables in water. This is a favourite of Giuliano Bugialli for whom I have a lot of respect, but every time I read 'soak the beans/carrots/etc for 30 minutes in cold water' I ignore it. Yes, give them a rinse but frankly the soaking does absolutely nothing, sorry Mr B. If you are worried they are impregnated with a vile insecticide then throw them all away and shop for your vegetables somewhere else!

Tonight's Dinner:

Terrine of Chicken Livers and Veal

Fricasée of Rabbit, with Yellow peppers and Chili

Oranges in Caramel

Water, Water, Everywhere.......!

And I'm not referring to the various recent meteorological events that have left people around the globe paddling knee-deep through their homes. I'm talking about ingredients - and more specifically those things that come to us via some kind of industrialised treatment and packaging process. Almost without fail, they are all full of water....

You'd think that when a recipe calls for 4oz of raisins, nothing could be simpler.

Actually...... it isn't.

If the recipe dates from before the introduction of plastic-packed food - and many of them do, even if they have been recently churned out yet again and glossily photographed by the latest TV celebrity cook - the chances are that the original writer meant 4oz of bone dry raisins of the sort I can remember being sold from jute sacks, along with apricots, prunes, rock-hard salt cod, and salt anchovies that had been preserved so that you could stand them on end. All these things were stacked together on the floor of the Aladdin's Cave that was Zani's, the local grocer in Greece in the '70's, who sported a handlebar moustache and a grizzled expression that came straight out of Zorba. The raisins he sold were tough, leathery and definitely chewy: you couldn't have used them without a good soaking first. The pre-soaked raisins generally available today are about 25% heavier than the original .........so, you need to increase the quantity of any dry fruit by about a third if you want the result the original recipe-writer intended.

And it's the same with meat. Bacon, ham - in fact, most meat - has a much higher water content these days than used to be the case. The reason is simple: it's all sold by weight, so the heavier the better - at least, from the grocer's point of view. Most fresh meat is 'hung' sealed in a plastic bag, and modern bacon is better described as 'sodden' rather than 'leathery'. The practical - and damaging - result of this is that with any cooking treatment other than roasting, the water merely gets released in the process, and seriously dilutes the flavour of the end result.

There are ways to address the problem, however.............My rule of thumb is to increase the quantity of flavouring ingredients in most recipes such as lardon, pancetta etc. by 25% and either to go easy on the liquid in stews, or else - more often - to plan to reduce the sauce at the end of the process to the absolute minimum needed for serving, and thus remove the excess water.

Pomiane's recipe for Beef with Peppers is a good example. In the good Doctor's day, the air-aged beef would have been dry to the touch, browned easily in a little fat and have given off little to no water during cooking. The root vegetables he used would quite probably have been in storage for half a year in sand and would have been getting a bit gnarled. Added to which, his earthenware casserole, with its inevitably ill-fitting lid, would have ensured that the end result - even with the addition of wine - would be tender meat in a very little unctuous sauce.

When you read these days of having to seal the lid of the daubière with flour-and-water-paste 'to keep the precious liquid in' remember this has become completely redundant - with modern equipment and modern ingredients, you could leave most stews in the oven all day and you'd still end up with the meat and vegetables swimming around in a complete soup!. Following most recipes to the letter, particularly if you are using a spanking new Le Creuset, you'll find you end up with pints of insipid liquid which need reducing in volume by at least 3/4 in order to get some flavour back.

Here's how to do the reduction:

1. Strain all the solids from the stock while still warm. A large coarse sieve is ideal but failing that a colander will do. Wait a few minutes for all the liquid to drain through.

2. Degrease the liquid. Either by leaving it over night in the 'fridge and removing the solidified fat or, if you are in a hurry, using a fat separator or, if you have plenty of ice cubes, pouring the cold stock slowly over a colander full of ice: the fat will stick to the ice and the liquid will fall through.

3. Boil the de-greased stock in the widest pan you can lay your hands on - a sauté pan is fine - until it is literally syrupy. You almost can't go too far - well, don't go on until it burns - you can always add a bit of boiled wine if there is too little juice. Scrape down the sides of the pan which will have a film of concentrated stock and then return the stock to the solids. It won't nearly cover the solids but there only needs to be just enough juice to serve.

4. Reheat carefully when needed, check the seasoning before serving

Tonight's Dinner:

Salad of Endive, with Roquefort & Walnuts, in a Sherry Vinaigrette

Raie au Beurre Noire, with Puy Lentils.

Baked Raspberry Creams.

More de-boning....

This is by way of being a corollary to the post recently about removing the wishbone in order to make life much easier when dealing with poultry. In the same way, this is a brief description of how to fillet a cooked fish, so that you don't have to watch your guests fighting with mouthfuls of bones, and, worse, having to concentrate on the mechanics of rendering their fish bonelessly edible to the detriment of their enjoyment of food, wine and conversation!

The process for a flat fish, like Sole is as follows:

1. With a couple of forks remove the fin edges which run along the sides of the fish, there's little meat in these and a lot of bones. Remove and discard them.

2. Again with two forks, start at the tail end. Push the tines of the forks one left and the other right of the spine and ease the flesh away from the centre. Work towards the head, pushing the fillets to the edge of the plate until the spine, tail and head are completely exposed.

3. Remove the spine, tail and head - you should be able to do this in one go - and there you are, push the fillets back together and the fish is ready to be served!


For a Bass or similar non-flat fish, proceed as follows:

When the fish is cooked, it makes life easier to transfer it to a large flat hot plate or tray. It also helps to have a plate for the bones you remove.

1. Remove any fins from the sides, and the dorsal(back) fin by dragging it and any bones attached to it away from the body with the edge of a knife. Put the bones on the debris plate

2. With the fish still on its side, find the join between the upper and lower fillet. If necessary remove a little - or if you prefer all - the skin to find it. Gently run a blunt knife along the join. Slip a knife or pallet knife under the upper fillet and gently ease it off, turning it skin side down. There may be some bones attached to the upper, dorsal edge. Remove them. If the flesh does not come away from the bones easily, the fish could do with a couple more minutes cooking until it does.

3. Run the knife under the lower fillet. More than likely the long rib bones which form the stomach cavity will be attached to this piece when you turn it skin side down. Pick these bones off with the point of a knife or fork. Remove the exposed backbone, head and tail in one piece. Remove the stomach bones as before and check the upper edge for remain dorsal bones.

4. The fillets are now ready for serving. Even if the fillets have cooled, serving them on very hot plates will heat them up again.

My preferred way of cooking Sea Bass, as long as it is very fresh, is merely to make a parcel of baking foil, buttered on the inside, with the fish sealed inside the parcel, and bake it for exactly half an hour in an oven pre-heated to 180 degrees C. This is a method I adapted from Prue Leith, but I don't bother with her addition of fresh rosemary and slices of Lime - completely pointless, in practice. What does work well, though, is to let a large Anchovy fillet fall to pieces in a couple of ounces of butter you have warming gently on the stove, and then spoon this over the fillets once they've been plated. The flavour-hit is excellent!


Tonight's Dinner:

Risotto of Red Onion and Sage

Rabbit in Garlic, served with braised Lettuce

Fresh Figs in Cointreau, with Vanilla Cream.

Removing the Wishbone....

Poultry suffers from a severe design-fault, in the form of the Wishbone. Whether spit roast, oven roast or pot roast, when it comes to carving the bird, the process always involves a feat of manual dexterity which is both time-consuming and fiddly, and generally involves a lot more meat being left attached to the bone than is necessary. The solution is to remove the wishbone while the bird is still raw - thereafter, once the bird is cooked, you can either make clean slices from the breast as you would normally, or else remove the breasts in one go and slice them on a board. It sounds like a minor difference, but the first time I saw a de-wishboned chicken being carved I was deeply impressed. Suddenly, the task is clean, efficient and quick....

The process of removing the Wishbone:

1. Stand the bird on its rump end, push the skin covering the neck cavity aside and locate the V shaped wishbone with your fingers.

2. Using the tip of a small sharp knife, score the flesh either side of the middle of one branch of the bone until you can grip it with your finger tips. Use the tip of the knife to free the 'top of the V' end from the carcase. It is attached to the skeleton with a little bit of cartilage. If you put the tip of you knife into the join and twist, it will come free.

3. Work on the other branch in the same way.

4. Gently holding both branches - be careful they snap easily - work the tip of the knife towards the base of the V until you can free the whole wishbone. This sounds more complicated than it is. With a bit of practice the whole process only takes a couple of minutes.

5. When you come to carve you have two choices. You can make long cuts parallel to the back bone in the classic way or you can remove the entire breast from the carcase by cutting along one side of the breastbone and running the knife along the ribcage until the whole breast can be removed. This can then be thinly sliced on a board like a grilled breast. (The latter method is definitely better for Duck, if you like your bird on the pink side). Whichever method you choose you will find it much easier without the wishbone getting in your way.

Saving Time..........

Three ways to save time on regular kitchen tasks. Pomiane would have approved.

1. When making mashed potatoes, don't peel them before you boil them. Boil them in their skins, then, once cooked, cut them in half; place the potato half in the ricer, cut side down, and push through the ricer disc as normal. The cooked potato goes through the holes, and the skin stays in the ricer. Dispose of the potato skin, and then Da Capo with the next potato until all have been efficiently processed, ready to have milk, egg, seasoning and butter beaten into them (which is how mashed potatoes are made in this house, at any rate). Simple, no?

2. Never wash a roasting pan or baking tray again! Always line them before use with a piece of aluminium foil, which you then treat as you would the base of the pan or tray, and once you've finished cooking, simply throw the foil away, and put the cooking utensil back in the cupboard.


3. When a recipe calls for freshly-squeezed lemon juice, rather than faffing around with one of those fiddly citrus presses - which have teeth designed to catch the pips and a bit where the juice is captured, with a spout for subsequently decanting it into a separate container - simply cut the lemon in half, hold a hand sieve over whatever it is you're cooking, and squeeze the lemon half by hand directly through the strainer and into the bowl or pan beneath. Much less trouble, and much less time.

Tonight's Dinner (post Cinema):

Asparagus, with Hollandaise.

Lamb Steaks, grilled, with Mushrooms and Shallots.

Posset of Apricots and Sherry-infused Cream.