Re: Food Thread : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:26 am  

Can anyone recommend anything special I can do with brown rice?

Bored of eating it with tuna all the time

Re: Food Thread : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:29 am  

There are a few suggestions here.

There are a few suggestions here.

Re: Food Thread : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:38 am  

Mintball wrote: There are a few suggestions here. cheers Minty!

Mintball wrote: There are a few suggestions here. cheers Minty!

Re: Food Thread : Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:50 am  

A pleasure.

Re: Food Thread : Sun Jan 19, 2014 8:20 pm  

2nd Sausage making attempt this weekend, nice improvement but not quite there yet.

Changed a few things, used pork shoulder only. Minced after a short time in freezer once on coarse plate to start with then mixed in rusk and seasoning with ice cold water. Put back in freezer to keep the temperature down and minced again half on coarse plate and half on finer plate, then chilled it again and stuffed into collagen skins after frying a bit of the mix. Texture was much better mincing this way and as advised, keeping temperature down helped with stopping the fat emulsifying.

Left them overnight and tried them now after brushing with olive oil , skins shrank and burst during cooking but the taste and texture was pretty good but a little too dry.

Next time I will go back to pork trim as I think the fat content of the shoulder was too low. Will also go back to hog casings, even though the collagen was much easier to use they split during cooking. 3rd time lucky hopefully.

Re: Food Thread : Sun Feb 09, 2014 10:14 pm  

Well things have taken a quite dramatic change in my diet regime.

For the past two weeks, I've stopped eating any flour products (bread, pastries etc), no rice, no potatoes, no pasta. The only meat I've eaten was a ribeye steak last night, protein has consisted of 200 grammes of fish daily.

The day starts with breakfast of porridge made with water and salt added towards the end of cooking, then a grapefruit. Lunch is a big salad with lots of cabbage, carrot, celery, cucumber, grated beetroot and tomatoes. Dinner is steamed or grilled fish (usually from my freezer or my stock). Between-meal snacks consist of apples, pears, grapefruit, carrot, celery.

But probably the most momentous change has been knocking the booze on the head. Apart from the odd bottle of 0% Becks or Bavaria Wheat Beer, I drink only black coffee and water. I'm currrently drinking 6 litres of water a day and pissing like a horse, I was also farting like my dog but my gut seems to have settled down now. I've lost nearly 14lb since new year and now seem to be dropping around 4-5lb per week. A pair of moleskin jeans I bought before christmas and struggled to fasten, can now be taken off without undoing the buttons.

I'm going to carry on until I hit 12st and then I intend quitting tobacco too. I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy it's been so far, my energy levels have increased, I now no longer need a nap after my lunch. I'm sleeping better at night and waking refreshed at a normal (for most people) time.

If I can do it, there's no reason any other bugger can't

Re: Food Thread : Thu Apr 17, 2014 5:44 pm  

Just to revisit this on the off chance anybody is interested, we've had a couple of goes at sausagemaking since the last post - with mixed results. Everything has been kept ice cold, grinding has been various consistencies and I have used both home made seasoning and also a pre purchased butchers seasoning mix. Effort before the latest one left a nice flavour sausage but the texture was terrible - far, far too dry and crumbley, on blooming they lost some water and on cooking they seemed to lose whatever was left. The mix was also far too 'rusky'. http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/home Today I used the seasoning mix purchased from this website, but rang them before starting for advice. The guy on the helpline said I wasn't mixing the meat anywhere near enough after grinding and adding the seasoning so as a result the salt didn't have chance to breakdown the meat and the water wasn't penetrating the fibres or something - so when they were left to bloom or cook the water escaped - result: extremely dry sausage with crumbly texture. What was also making it worse was in an attempt to keep some texture in the final sausage I had mixed it less than the previous time, mistakenly thinking that I was overworking the meat loosing texture - this was making it even worse. Latest attempt today is a much, much better effort. Again have kept everything ice cold to stop the fat emulsifying and mixed for much longer - grinding again after mixing. have tried the sample patty and it seems very tasty and much better texture, more like butchers sausages. They are currently blooming so will try them tomorrow.

Just to revisit this on the off chance anybody is interested, we've had a couple of goes at sausagemaking since the last post - with mixed results. Everything has been kept ice cold, grinding has been various consistencies and I have used both home made seasoning and also a pre purchased butchers seasoning mix. Effort before the latest one left a nice flavour sausage but the texture was terrible - far, far too dry and crumbley, on blooming they lost some water and on cooking they seemed to lose whatever was left. The mix was also far too 'rusky'. http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/home Today I used the seasoning mix purchased from this website, but rang them before starting for advice. The guy on the helpline said I wasn't mixing the meat anywhere near enough after grinding and adding the seasoning so as a result the salt didn't have chance to breakdown the meat and the water wasn't penetrating the fibres or something - so when they were left to bloom or cook the water escaped - result: extremely dry sausage with crumbly texture. What was also making it worse was in an attempt to keep some texture in the final sausage I had mixed it less than the previous time, mistakenly thinking that I was overworking the meat loosing texture - this was making it even worse. Latest attempt today is a much, much better effort. Again have kept everything ice cold to stop the fat emulsifying and mixed for much longer - grinding again after mixing. have tried the sample patty and it seems very tasty and much better texture, more like butchers sausages. They are currently blooming so will try them tomorrow.

Re: Food Thread : Sun Apr 20, 2014 11:35 pm  

Have you tried hand for the sausages, maybe 50/50 with shoulder, I haven't read upthread on your efforts?
I've not made sausages in a donkey's age but I used breadcrumbs not rusk.

Some older chefs I worked with as a young un swore by natural gut casings but tbh it's been so long I couldn't say which works best.
Personally I couldn't be arris'd with filling anyway, I've done it like a Lorne sausage with the mixture packed into oiled plain sided ally scone cutters to keep the shape (or whatever shape open ended tin you've got) & fried in a cast iron pan/skillet. flip then remove cutter.

Is your full recipe further upthread?

Re: Food Thread : Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:40 am  

knockersbumpMKII wrote:

Have you tried hand for the sausages, maybe 50/50 with shoulder, I haven't read upthread on your efforts?
I've not made sausages in a donkey's age but I used breadcrumbs not rusk.

Some older chefs I worked with as a young un swore by natural gut casings but tbh it's been so long I couldn't say which works best.
Personally I couldn't be arris'd with filling anyway, I've done it like a Lorne sausage with the mixture packed into oiled plain sided ally scone cutters to keep the shape (or whatever shape open ended tin you've got) & fried in a cast iron pan/skillet. flip then remove cutter.

Is your full recipe further upthread?

Yes bud, have tried 3 or 4 times and posted each result in this thread. Really happy with the latest effort, think I am getting somewhere. Still over filling the casings (using natural hog gut) - forgot to allow for them to expand when blooming so they are bursting when cutting but the flavour (despite being a touch peppery for my taste) is almost where I want it to be and once I stop them busting the succulence will be just right.

Made various mistakes the first few times, not keeping the meat cold enough, under mixing being the main ones, but feel like I have got somewhere now.

I make sausage meat balls (just rolling in flour and baking in the oven) and will try making like a lorne sausage - thanks.

Re: Food Thread : Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:32 pm  

Yeah, persistance and trial and error...I'm more critical now of my cooking than I was when I still did it for a living..lol. It's nice to hear though of someone going to a fair bit of effort. I always said I'd get a mincing attachment for the Kenwood but never did.

We have one decent butcher in Hitchin the next town to me but isn't cheap by any stretch even for affluent Herts(though it's always busy) Our last real butchers in Letchworth dissapeared a few years ago, the Heritage foundation (owners of the majority of the town's land) ousted them from the indoor market (moving Argos there..grrrrr) and by charging massively high rents on the high street which effect the shopping here hugely.
I found a nice butcher in Hull when visiting the folks who'd do me a nice course sausagemeat but then they packed up too. There's a few up there still dotted around and think there is a little bit of a resurgence in places..
I realise that the supermarket giants have a draw for those on more modest incomes but they have almost killed off the high street grocer/butcher..shame really.
Luck with the perfect banger