Be Excellent To Each Other

I did trim for excess fat, although perhaps not aggressively enough.

I bet it's nice with beef actually.

Yep, that's next on the list. Lamb is a definite success.

What cut of beef would you use?

I'd say brisket?

Not sure the Pringles would go so well with that myself.

I was thinking the same thing.

Did anyone try the pulled pork in a conventional oven? Anyone want to guess at a temperature? Presumably "very low" and "in a casserole" would work, but how low is very low?

Hrmn. 110 or so if your oven will do it. Problem is that you need a fully airtight casserole, really. Try using a pastry seal.

C or F? Hel's oven goes down to 50 in new money. Coincidentally, there's some leftover pastry in her fridge that was defrosted at least a fortnight ago which probably isn't going to be used for anything else.

She says she has got a slow cooker, but it's a one person one. Tut.

Oh, well if it does that, then whack it down. Mild research suggests that a slow cooker on low runs to about 80C, so go for that.

Cheers.

How odd. I appear to have a kilo of brisket marinading in my fridge.

Your face is a kilo a brisket.

I have made Thai hot and sour chicken soup VERY successfully this weekend. Twice.

Recipizzle, pleez.

Dead easy.

For 4 bowls worth you will need:

2tbs Tom Yum paste
1.5tbs Lime juice
1tbs Fish Sauce
3 Lemongrass Stalks
1 finely chopped clove of garlic
1 finely chopped de-seeded birds eye chili
2 chicken fillets
4oz mushrooms
1 jumbo spring onion
4 cherry tomatoes
1 carrot
750ml Water
3 chicken stock cubes
1 bunch of Corriander
Sprig of Basil

Throw the stock cubes, chopped lemongrass and Tom Yum paste into the water and bring to boil. Chop the chicken into small slices and add to stock. Once the chicken is cocked through add the lime juice, fish sauce, shredded carrot, garlic, chili, tomatoes and spring onion. Simmer for 20 mins or more. Throw in the chopped coriander and basil in towards the end.

Then make another batch, as you'll eat it all in no time.

You could use prawns instead of chicken if you're a sea insect consuming freak.

Fuck this iPod touch and it's shitty way of not being able to edit long posts!

EDIT fixed post above now.

Heh, cocked through.

So, 'pulled brisket'. Well, that's clearly a misnomer. The beef never gets to the sort of texture that pork or lamb do, I'm pretty sure that's a function of the density of the meat. However, it is fucking delicious - chewier than the pork, but it's beef after all, and still tender enough that it's no effort to eat. I sliced it when it came out of the slow cooker rather than shredding it.

BBQ Braised Brisket with Homemade Gnudi

Gnudi!

I knew somehow it would be you that commented on that.

This is awesome. I'm definitely trying this. The meat is cooked to perfection as well. What sort of sauce did you use, if any?

For anyone who has wanted to try fresh pasta but hasn't quite dared, I highly recommend making gnudi. They're like gnocci, but a little heavier and using cheese instead of potato. They're about halfway between gnocci and dumplings, and really easy.

250g ricotta
1 egg yolk
125g plain flour
125g grated parmesan
Good whack of salt and pepper

Mix it all together, it should form a fairly dense dough. If it's a bit too sticky, add some more flour. Dust a board with flour, then roll out the dough into long sausages about 1" thick. Cut the sausages into 1" lengths, and put them on a tray to go in the fridge for half an hour.

Bring a pan of salted water to a boil, and drop in the gnudi. Boil for about 4 minutes - they're ready when they float to the surface. Lift them out with a slotted spoon. Melt some butter in a frying pan, and fry the gnudi for 1-2 minutes each side, so they lightly brown. Done!

I'll give them a go.

GNUDI!!!

They're pretty easy to cook, very exotic (no-one I've talked to has ever heard of them), and visually impressive. Perfect cooking-to-impress food.

Thanks, it really was. First time I'd done lamb rump, that was also easy to cook. Expensive though -- my butcher charges £5.50 for a 10oz joint.

None. I tried to make some balsamic syrup (vinegar+sugar+heat) but it went wrong and turned into balsamic black toffee treacle gritty pan-wrecking goop. Toby ate some anyway. Second time I made this I tried mixing mint jelly with pre-made balsamic syrup after discovering I had no fresh mint; it tasted good but the texture was off because it was mint jelly. I'll get this figured out at some point.

I hadn't heard of these but googled them last night. They sound interesting, I'll try these.

FTFY

Bollocks, Welshie.

I made mozzarella-stuffed beef meatballs on Friday, a ragu-with-vegetables thing to go with it, and boiled some fat egg tagliatelli (I don't remember what its real name is).

It was alright.

I'm considering buying a slow cooker purely to try the pulled pork, because it turns out they're not expensive at the Sainsburys near work. Is there anything particular I'm looking for, feature-wise? Apart from "big enough for a trimmed kilo of meat and the saucy bits?"

Nope. Mine was £15 from Sainsburys.

A removable crock is actually a good thing - because it's easier to serve from and to clean. I think most of them have that though.

Yeah, ours has a removable crock. I think it was £20-25. Well worth it.

Nah... too easy.

So was Crasters.

And your Mum.

My dinner plans tonight started with a google search for "gnudi craster" and are going downhill from there.

Everything's downhill from nudie Craster.

Shallot, chorizo, and shiitake risotto!



Serves 3:

• Finely chop two shallots
• Melt about 30g of butter in a heavy pan
• Slowly fry shallots for 10 min
• While that's happening, make up 750ml of stock (Oxo chicken, for me) in a second pan and keep it warm, just under a simmer
• Add shiitake mushrooms, cut into quarters, to the main pan. Fry for a couple of minutes.
• I found the mushrooms soaked up all the butter, so I made a little well and put another 30g or so of butter in the well. Waited for it to melt. Then...
• Add 250g of risotto rice, stir to coat the rice in the butter.
• Add the chorizo, stir, add a glass of dry white wine.
• Simmer (quite low) until the pan is almost dry.
• Add a ladle of stock, simmer until the pan is almost dry.
• Keep adding stock, a ladle at a time, until the rice is cooked with just a little bit of bite left in it. Should take 15-20 minutes.
• NOM NOM NOM.

Nice. I like my risotto about 80 bajillion times more wet than that, but that's a personal taste thing.

That looks and sounds delicious. I might make that, not made risotto for ages. Although I read the recipe as

Fixed for me.

I made chilli bread! It was awesome, but the bits of chilli were too big. I'm shit at "finely dicing". Are there any tricks too it?

@Doc I'm interested in that toast. It looks fried-with-something?

Also, you need some silicon around the worktop.

@Grim... Use a processor thing for fresh chillis. Or smash dried chillis in a pestle and mortar then partially rehydrate them.

I'm going to make garlic, parmesan, chilli and seeds-of-many-kinds bread. Garlic-and-parmesan bread using roughly-chopped ("rustic") garlic is veh nice, so how can adding chilli and seeds be wrong?

Well, by using my dried nagas obviously. But apart from that.

Good plan!

How about something like this for chopping things small?

http://www.scotiatoolsupplies.co.uk/chr ... -688-p.asp

Just brushed with garlic salt, parsely, and (plenty of unsalted) butter. It was too salty though -- I need to find the right balance between garlic powder and garlic salt.

Yeah, I know.

There is a school of thought that food processors can alter the taste of some things. They make onions taste weird in my experience. I remember when I was a kid working in my uncle's butcher shop that I found the mincer gave a particular taste to meat and still notice this on all commercial mince meat. Citations may be required but I always put this down to energy and heat generated by the speed these machines work at. Maybe if you put the food processor on a slow speed. Some vegetables, carrots being a classic example, taste different depending on how you cut them.

Ideally, a decent 8-10 inch very sharp chef's knife with a broad profile — i.e the distance from the sharp edge to the top is at least 3cm — is best for dicing finely and a bit of practice will have you chopping very quickly. The only tips I can give are these with chillis. Slice them in half length ways, de seed them, then finely and carefully slice them lengthways. Then, the reason for the broad profile on the blade will become apparent — basically hold the sliced chillis flat on a chopping board with three fingers with your finger tips slightly bent under use the knuckles against the flat edge of the blade as a guide, chop and move your fingers slowly along the length of the chilli or push it forward with your thumb. Bit of practice and you'll look like a veteran dicer.

This is why I have a mini cleaver for veg chopping, although I'm not exactly expert at it.

The flat nature of the blade helps here as well, I find, though my Global mini cleaver really isn't a cleaver in anything other than shape — in fact I think they're actually called vegetable knives. Proper cleavers weigh >5lbs and are used for chopping through bones. I have no need for one as I don't chop bones very much — I have used a hacksaw on a leg of lamb before now though

I wouldn't recommend using a hacksaw to finely slice chillis though

I've also used a stanley knife blade on a couple of occasions to very finely slice garlic when at my mums and discovered yet again her knives are so blunt you might as well try and use a steel ruler to slice things. I am a good son and do sharpen all her knives when I get a chance though

I'm not very well up on breadmaker etiquette, but are you supposed to slice the bread horizontally?

Also, I've just read the discussion on top-posting, agreed with it, then came to write this and realised that I always bottom-post on forums and top-post on emails and couldn't be bothered to change it.

ORLY?
How come?

Horizontal slicing is ace if you want a mega bacon sandwich.

I prefer a nice juicy vertical bacon sandwich.