Good effort.



Back to basics for me tonight.





Not so bad with a cuppa and a few slices of bread and butter.

Lose the chips, swap the peas for beans and add a muffin with ketchup and you have one of my favourite meals ever.

Right now, a Lancashire hot pot is cooking away in the oven. A proper one, with lamb kidneys as well as lamb chops, carrot, onion, stock, herbs and the potato topping.

Mmmmmmm ...

Roast dinner for us - they have recently become popular in our house, so I have to do one each week. With bee tonight. Mrs D is doing the Yorkshire Puddings, me the rest. Should be ready in 15 mins!

So tb being introduced to Lancashire cuisine? Next few weeks - give him tripe, pigs trotters, cow 'eel, black pudding, neck end broth, scouse, etc. Might eventually convert him into a Lancatrian.

Money a bit tight then?

I'll have you know they are out of season and so very expensive at present.

Last nights Bonfire Night chilli for me with some rice - a bit bland to be honest, I went easy with the chilli last night and it was a disappointment.

Followed up though with last nights Birds trifle - not a disappointment.

Pleased with the hot pot – pear and blackberry crumble just finishing cooking.

I've got the Minosharp Shinkansen mentioned in cod-ead's pdf, it's very good and very easy to use. I use it pretty regularly probably about every third time on my Henckels.

I tried for ages with a diamond steel and I just couldn't master it, I'd almost ruined my knives and then bout the Shinkansen which rescued my knives.

Decent knives are nice to have and they make the job so much easier.

But, having said that, blokes (me included) are a wee bit fond of over-speccing on the knife front and love to have the top quality stuff that I term "kitchen jewellery".

I know that "chefs do this" and "chefs do that" but they are feeding the five thousand day-in, day-out.
What they need isn't necessarily what we need.
Basically, if it's reasonably well-balanced and kept sharp, it's fine for domestic use.

I know my words will fall on deaf or outraged ears because it's a bit like telling a bloke he doesn't need a Mercedes, he could get around in Cinquecento.

But I'm right, aren't I?




[size=50Lights blue touch paper ....[/size

I had a couple of Zwilling Henckels – plus my steel is from that manufacturer.

Not the most expensive knives in the world, but far from cheap.

In one case, there are little semi-circular nicks out of the blade. I really do not know how that happened. For all that I'm only now really getting used to the steel, I don't see how I managed that.

I've since bought a couple of Sabatier knives – much, much cheaper, but very, very good.

But while tools aren't everything, they can and do make a difference – as I've seen in the last couple of months as I've bought a couple of pieces of Le Creuset cast iron cookware.

It's blunt (or not properly sharp) knives that cause most cuts.

I love my knives and use each one for the purpose it was intended. I have a salmon knife and a boning knife that I bought from The Great Yorkshire Steam Fair at Haworth about 30 years ago. There used to be a bloke flogging vintage knives for very reasonable prices, he must be well-dead by now but maybe someone has carried on the tradition, it's always worth a look.

I dumped all my Sabatiers once I discovered Global and Satake knives but I'd never get shut of my carbon steel boner & salmon knife, similarly, with my carbon steel cleaver bought from Wing Yip's about 20 years ago.

We do have one strange knife which is actually a meat boning knife ... but serrated.
Now, why on earth would anyone want one of those?

Well, it was my idea.

Peter Maturi in Leeds used to (and maybe still do) offer a serrating service. for any knife.
I got them to serrate the narrowest Sabatier they had ... which was a boning knife.
Great for slicing citrus fruit and stiffer than a "normal" citrus knife.

It's my Gin and Tonic knife.


Had it sixteen years now, it's like a friend.

The others are all a mixture, some Sabatier and some Henkels.
They get sharpened with a steel but, having worn out a few steels, I bought a diamond-dusted one ... it's almost had it now but has lasted a lot longer than the steel "steels" I have had over the years.
Some of the knives will also will need replacing soon and I might enjoy browsing some "kitchen jewellery".

I was in John Lewis recently and, like a magpie, my eye was caught by some copper saucepans.
Looking closer though, it became apparent that they were not mainly-copper-with-a-steel lining (a la Mauviel) or mainly-copper-with-a-tin-lining (a la Baumalu) but were mainly-steel-with-an-encapsulated-aluminium-base-and-a-(very)-thin-copper-layer-outside.

Couldn't see the point of such a thin copper layer myself.
Can anyone put me out of my ignorance?

<Beavis & Butthead> huh huh huh huh</B&B>

We have a set of Sabatier knives at home and they are really good. We've got a steel and a chantry sharpener, I prefer the chantry sharpener to the steel.

Any decent knife sharpener will be able to grind that out no problem.



Hard to find decent Sabatiers at a good price now, far too many cheap knives with that name on them.



If you saw what chefs really use you'd lose that desire for top notch knives, the rate they ger sharpened and re-ground those Globals wouldn't last long, TV chefs use fancy knives because they get paid to, in their kitchens it is a different matter.

These were from John Lewis, so I do trust them.

As it happened, the first year that we self-catered in France, I was worried whether there'd be decent knives in the accommodation.

The night before we hit Collioure we spent in Perpignan and, on the Saturday morning, we went for a wander around Galleries Lafayette. We ended up buying a Japanese knife – it was outrageously cheap. And honestly, on the basis of what I've seen since, good knives are far less costly in France than here.

I suspect that that – in part at least – is down to good food/cooking being seen as normal over there rather than as some sort of posh, tarty thing over here.

As a slight aside, we've got a Christmas shopping trip (translation: excuse) planned in Paris at the start of next month. I'm taking a big case and looking for gourmet outlets.

Arrived at the house in France 1am Saturday morning, soaked my white beans had a sleep then made the base of a cassoulet for ten. Bought duck legs and Toulouse sausages at the market confied (not a real word me thinks) the legs. Bought salmon and made rillettes of salmon for starter. Put all in fridge. That night me, the missus and niece had moules ala crème
Sunday 4pm, neighbours arrived 7 of them and three of us, table prepped, food all ready including a plateau of cheese and my homemade tart tatin. Sat down to eat and all power went. We enjoyed a candlelit diner for ten. They left at 2am.
Tonight, crab claws, oysters and crevettes with homemade garlic mayonnaise.
Wednesday escalopes of veal, cream and morrilles mushroom sauce

What's your address in France?

I'll navigate, I'd hate us to get lost

you sir are more than welcome. Don't forget your turbot.


Had a good glass of iced kummel

Good call.
Browsing trade websites for knives seems to confirm this.


"Even" John Lewis stock two grades of Sabatier (or they did when I last bought one there).

There's the "Fully-forged" type where the blade, bolster and tang are all one forged piece. A nice modest knife with good balance.

Then there's the second type where, although the blade and tang are all one piece, the bolster is merely an aluminium collar surrounding the bit where the blade appears out of the handle and, as far as I could tell, fulfils an aesthetic function only. Still perfectly serviceable and although the balance isn't the same, most of us wouldn't even notice.

Both grades are stainless, which doesn't take as good an edge as carbon steel* but, again, as any normal person will be happy with them.



* Carbon steel can rust, of course, but not if you wash and dry them properly.

Back to gin.

The ginophiles amongst us may find [url=http://www.oldtomgin.co.uk/oldtomprimer/this primer[/url of interest, purely in the name of reasearch of course

And, given these difficult economic times, [url=http://www.homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21460a website that may prove of interest[/url

In last weeks Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey one phrase jumped right out of the TV set - it was in the scene where she was in some high mountain village on the Bulgarian border and she visited an old man of the village who made his own Raki, "He has the largest still allowable in law for personal use" is what she said.

Greeks can legally own their own stills, for personal use.

Yes, and why shouldn't they? Just because we are used to paying tax just for having the temerity to draw breath doesn't mean we should be surprised to see that others can do it for free.