Be Excellent To Each Other

I have grown to <3 my electric hob, having grown up with CalorGas. Mine is the old kind with spiral-y element. OK, it takes half a minute to heat up compared to gas, but then it's *thermostatic*. No messing about adjusting it every 5 seconds. You know exactly where on the dial is Fry / simmer / keep warm, no fuss. Gas burners are a baffling, archaic nuisance to me now.

I agree that the more modern solid plate ones are much much slower though, too much thermal mass, I wouldn't want one of those.

That's fine if you want thermostatic, but I typically want to vary the heat at various times during cooking, and gas gives me the ability to do that quickly.

Induction hobs are sci-fi aceness. I remember watching a demo of one on some awful TV shopping channel where they had a cutaway half-pan and cracked an egg across the pan so some slopped onto the exposed part of the hob element. The egg on the pan fried; the bit on the hob stayed cold and raw. Which, if you must have something other than gas, is awesome.

I still prefer gas though.

I like gas n'all. It's so much more responsive. Fortunately, where we're moving has gas hobs. It seems to be quite a rarity in rented property, so we struck gold.

They had a single ring one of those in Lidl, for about £20. I was sorely tempted.

Admittedly for stir-fry prowess you're not going to beat a decent gas burner.

The hobs are cheap, the pans aren't.

Ideally, a double-ring burner driven by commercial gas pressure, of course.

I hate my electric hob, but have no gas in the flat so no other option.
I console myself with the fact that it isn't an induction hob though! Pain in the arse.

I have a halogen hob. How to they rate on the foody scale?

Thats what I have. Halogen=Electric in my tiny brain.

I have some shorthorn beef ribeye for tomorrow and neck of salt marsh lamb for friday... Mmmmmmm!!!

Aw. I was expecting some detailed information on hobs.

http://www.gq.com/food-travel/alan-rich ... rentPage=1

This is an interesting piece by Alan Richman. I won't spoil it for y'all, but it's worth a read if you care about service in restaurants and... stuff.

I wouldn't recommend an induction system. I seem to remember my father having to be quite careful about which saucepans to buy because of them. That aside they don't seem to be anything more that more expensive and more gimmicky. I found them to pain to use.

I love smoked food. I've looked into buying a proper smoker but haven't done so far.

Has anyone got one, or used a substitute like Stubbs Liquid smoke?

I hot-smoked two briskets last weekend! I thought it went rather well.

I want to be able to cold smoke too though, so I've been looking at one of these:



http://www.bradleysmoker.co.uk/

The liquid smokes are OK - but you don't get any penetration into the meat.

Too easy...

how did you hot smoke them Craster? What did you use? I need details!

I can vouch that it made the pork taste amazing.

A friend of a friend has one of these because he runs http://www.uptonchilli.co.uk It's awesome, apparently.

I can't decide if this is a good deal or not, but thought I'd let some of you foodies know about it.

http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/national ... 232&a=1664

Is that the meat deal from allens in Mayfair? My phone won't let me view the link, I thought it was still v expensive for what you get.

Anyone got amy ideas what I can do using some smokes mackerel fillets I have?

Yeah, it is.

Smoked mackerel? Go lovely with some boiled potatoes and a bit of horseradish sauce.

I got a groupon offer through the other day and it crossed my my mind that we should set up an online listing of restaurants that have had groupon or similar offers so that we know to avoid them. I've never seen a "good" place come up.

Groupon restaurants are always terrible, but Allens is a decent butcher.

Yes, but I don't know how good a deal it is;

• £31.75 instead of £63.50 for a regular gourmet meat selection including a sausage selection, burgers, sirloin steak, pork loin steak, chicken legs, pork belly and a tea towel

• £49.50 instead of £98.50 for a medium regular gourmet meat selection including a sausage selection, burgers, sirloin steak, pork loin steak, chicken legs, pork belly and a tea towel

• £67.75 instead of £135.50 for a large regular gourmet meat selection including a sausage selection, burgers, sirloin steak, pork loin steak, chicken legs, pork belly and a tea towel

Serving the finest carnivorous Michelin-starred establishments, Allens of Mayfair is often found lurking at the top of the food chain. For over 120 years they have maintained focus as a bastion of traditional butchery with a modern approach. Keeping the shop open for twenty hours each day allows them a chance to proffer local, ethically-sourced meat of provenance to renowned institutions including The Connaught, Claridges, The Dorchester, The Berkeley and The Savoy. A favourite of top chefs including Marco Pierre White, Michel Roux Jnr and Nigella Lawson, this butcher has restaurant-style cuts, hard-to-find game meats and gourmet, traceable, and freshly cut produce available each and every day.

Nigella Lawson is a chef?

Sorry, I've been trying to post that for the last hour.

APOD, we've had some good deals on there, can all of the restaurants really be that bad?

From what I've read, Groupon is a terrible deal for the restaurant, which means the restaurants participating in it are usually desperate or stupid or naive. Which means they will usually be terrible, although not always.

So, still undecided then.

My comments are based not just on groupon, but also email offers through travelzoo, toptable etc for London which offer what appear to be ridiculously good offers, but tend not to be as good as the restaurant shows on their own site. It tends to also be restaurants with extravagant interior decor,poor (if any) food reviews and chefs/patrons trading off reflected glory of where they worked/owned, not what they are currently achieving. Also, Dr RG comments above.

May be different in the provinces though, the london foodie market is different to the rest of the country.

Shame really, but I see your point.

The London market being different full stop was why I wasn't sure how good the deal was, some aren't all that, got to know what things usually cost and how good they are.

In honour of our Santorini honeymoon, I made Greek food last night:

• french fries seasoned with a little Cajun blackening spice.
• lamb Σουβλάκι / souvlaki, made from meat marinated for 24 hours in oil, wine, oregano, garlic, and a little paprika and cayenne. (Brits call this a shish kebab. Greeks also call a doner kebab "γύρος" or "gyro", pronounced yee-row.)
• homemade πίτα / pita bread. (Brits spell this "pitta".)
• homemade fava dip, which is nothing to do with fava beans but is made of boiled and puréed split peas. This is one of the signature dishes of Santorini. Here, I’ve served it with caramelised onions.
• homemade τζατζίκι / tzatziki.

Americans, interestingly, use the Greek words for these things. Apparently Britain was introduced to these foodstuffs via Turkish Cypriot immigrants, so we use different words and pronunciations.

That looks spuffing tremendous. Though I'm intrigued as to how you made your homemade pittas and how they turned out. Were they easy enough to do?

I made Jambalaya last night. It wasn't incinerated. That's about as good as it gets with me.

Thanks! It was really good.

We used this recipe. They were pretty easy and turned out very nice -- far nicer than any store-bought ones I've had. Plus I wanted them as flatbreads, rather than with the characteristic "pocket" (which is why you can see they've been pricked with a fork).

Great, now I want Jambalaya for dinner.

I'm making spanish pork for tea.

Pork fillet, chorizo, corn, kidney beans, smoked paprika with chilli and garlic. Sounds nice enough to me!

Bangers and mash for me tonight!

Doc! Have you booked my French Laundry table yet?

We (very) briefly considered trying for a table, but changed our minds. For the same cash we could drive to L'Enclume and back and have two nights up there, including its 8-course tasting menu one night and a three-course dinner in its sister restaurant the next night [1].

We might have felt differently if we'd never eaten in the French Laundry, however.

Edit -- I mean, they are probably planning to cook lobsters in a butter-filled sous vide the size of a swimming pool.

[1] http://www.lenclume.co.uk/offers.html

With a broken oven, I am mainly making phone calls for junk food

*whimper*

Have you booked it?

The booking number isn't on the website yet.

It had to be the week when maria is away with the baby and I'm free to do what I want, didn't it?

*whimper*

I have a real quandrary. French Laundry+Divorce+losing access to my son vs Not going to the French Laundry.

Bloody foodies. You'll have dry toast and LIKE IT!

That seems very good value....I wish I wasn't skint. And had the time to do it.

The wife just signed off on the FL.

If a Beex Gastronauts thing is proposed, you can take my wife and I'll babysit *sob*

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