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I’ll do the Tandoor post another time – for now, here are some of the pics and videos from Day 2 of KKC Live:

So, Day 2, and the actual cooking.

(If you’re just joining us – we were attempting to cook two horrendously complex dishes from three Michelin star chefs in two days – Heston Blumenthal’s Perfect Chicken Tikka Marsala, and Thomas Keller’s Cream of Blueberry Soup.)

Probably the most pressing question – did the recipes actually work? Can two geeks in a rather bizarrely-equipped kitchen actually manage to cook either of these incredibly complex, three-star meals?

I was pretty confident at first. After all, I’ve cooked several Heston meals before, admittedly with a lot of planning and a very well-equipped kitchen (and mostly with either a fair bit of alteration or some careful choice of recipe). And I’ve cooked one thing from the French Laundry book before, although it didn’t go entirely perfectly.

The first day left me a bit less confident, to be honest. The frog/hemisphere Charlotte mixture worked fine, but some experimentation made it look very unlikely they’d ever leave the mould again. The Dacquoise biscuits just worked by the skin of their collective teeth. On the tikka marsala side, there hadn’t been many major disasters, but I was extremely not confident about the creation of a tandoor oven in our hosts’ back garden on Day 2.

Day 2 did not open well. My attempt to produce the pepper sauce ended up with about twice as much sauce as I’d expected. Alex’s naan dough, meanwhile, spent a considerable portion of the day masquerading as wallpaper paste, mostly stuck to Alex. And then we actually built the Tandoor, which was such a catalogue of, erm, challenges that it deserves, and will get, a seperate post.

My creme anglaise didn’t thicken – at least, I didn’t think it had. When you don’t even know if what you’re producing looks like a finished product, you might well be in trouble. The bottle we’d been using to crush the cashew nuts, after our “blender” (smoothie maker) failed, had proceeded to leak sweet chilli sauce all over them.

Oh, and we had realised that we didn’t have a vital cooking ingredient – the pressure cooker for the Masala sauce. Or a grill at the top of the oven for the naan. Or pizza stones.

But we managed to cobble something together in the end. And what was the end result like?

Stunningly awesome.

We’ll have pictures in the next day or so, so for now you’ll just have to take my word for it, but both recipes came out close to perfect.

Tikka Masala

The tikka masala was one of the best curries I’ve ever had – rich, complex, incredibly creamy. The chicken was just stunning – chicken is one of my favourite meats, and the irregular, charred, moist, earthy flavours, the little crunchy bits and the multiplicity of texture and flavour made all the enormous effort and occasional pain of the tandoor worth it – for all participants. The naan wasn’t browned (because our oven wasn’t hot enough), but it tasted great for all that – thick, rustic, clearly home-made, with a lovely chewy texture. (Phil and Alex were a bit less keen on the naan, but I really liked it).

Our only criticisms were that the sauce could perhaps have been a little more multi-flavoured, and, although I hesitate to correct a three-star chef, there was maybe a bit too much butter (100g) added right at the end.

Overall, Heston Blumenthal’s hideously complex and extremely expensive recipe – does indeed produce a result worthy of it. Fantastic stuff.

Cream of Blueberry Soup

As for the French Laundry – we will add the pictures as soon as possible, but for now, just take my word that the soup came out looking almost exactly as it did in the book’s pictures (except for the frog-shaped Charlottes, which we all agreed rather added to the effect).

The Charlottes I was so dubious about slid neatly out of the moulds when heated, just as Thomas Keller said they would.

And yes, it was staggeringly good. The texture of the soup and the Charlotte blended into one another like nothing else I’ve tasted, except possibly some of the dishes at the Fat Duck. The soup was incredibly complex and utterly, utterly gorgeous, and richer than the guy who told Sergey Brin that sure, he could invest a thousand dollars in this “search engine” thingy. The charlotte was creamy, ultra-smooth, like the best Muller Thick Yoghurt ever created. And the Dacquoises were gorgeously crunchy, nutty and a perfect contrast to the meal.

Perhaps I would have liked it a bit less sweet, but if I’d been served that dish in a top restaurant, I wouldn’t have been complaining.

So…

Again – neither of us are expert chefs. I’m pretty good at savoury courses, but I mostly cooked the sweet, which I was near-totally ignorant about. And the kitchen we had certainly wasn’t restaurant-standard, nice though it is. And of the tasks presented to us, we reckoned we’d screwed at least three quarters of them up.

We, apparently, was wrong.

Particularly when contrasting to our other Normal Person vs experiences, I’d have to say – skip the easy stuff, go straight to “this is how we cook it in the restaurant” books.

So – if you’ve always wanted to try some massively ambitious recipe from a top chef, but are afraid you don’t have the cooking skill, the equipment, the talent – odds are, you can do it. Even if it looks like it’s gone horribly wrong half-way through.

So go give it a go.

And let us know how you do.

We’re live on Day 2 of the KKC Live experience – watch at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kamikaze-cookery-live, or follow along on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kamikazecookery

And if you’re just joining us and want to know what the hell’s going on, we now actually have something resembling an explanation:

So that’s about where we are so far. I’ve skipped lightly over the epic struggle to remove the Dacquoise circles from the greaseproof paper (hint – greaseproof is NOT non-stick unless greased first. Oops.), and sidestepped the mild anticlimax that was the chilli (heat. heat. heat. Cough a bit. Done.), but, basically, we’re now up to date with the KKC Live experience.

So what do we have to do tonight? Well, we’ve got to build a tandoor, of course, out of a bunch of bricks and Tina’s Dad’s barbeque. We’ve got to cook the masala sauce, which we haven’t looked at too thoroughly, but boy it’s a long section. We’ve got to cook creme anglaise, we’ve got to finish shelling and cooking the fava beans, and we’ve got to roll out the pasta dough sans pasta machine. And we’ve got to make up and cook naan breads in the oven, using our pizza stones. Why, no, we don’t have any pizza stones.

Tune in tonight at 7pm BST, or perhaps a little before, as we get started. It’s emerging that most of the action will be on the live ustream feed, and the associated chat channel – now, hopefully, with a better angle and slightly less clattering on the keyboard (we’re upgrading the mic). We’ll also be Twittering regularly, and we’ll have pictures and audio updates going up there regularly. And of course we’ll round the entire thing up with a Great Big Blog Post and more video on Thursday.

See you tonight!

A few more videos and pictures that typify the entire experience:

I’d combined the meringue and the almond mix, spread the result on greaseproof paper, which I assumed was the same thing as baking parchment, (nope, it’s not). Meanwhile, Alex had combined about 1/5 of the original intended quantity of Garam Masala, and stuck it in the oven. We were sitting pretty.

Which was, of course, when our evil viewers decided that we should commence the Emergency Ravioli.

We were terrified of the ravioli recipe. However, I’d cunningly stolen a march on the entire thing by agreeing with Alex that I would, later on, fry the chilli, a process almost guaranteed to result in my choking my lungs out on capiascin fumes. In exchange, he’d agreed to undertake the – apparently less lethal – pasta making.

I am The Cunning.

See, the pasta-making recipe isn’t your regular pasta. This is super-pasta. Uber-pasta. Holy-crap-that’s-going-to-take-a-while pasta.

Whilst Alex continued to very slowly move his hand in a circle, I got back to my Dacquoises, which had by now nicely cooked.

I cut out little circles, stuck ’em back in the oven, and read some Twitter replies. Alex continued to move his hand in a circle.

I ate a kit-kat, captured some video, looked through the rest of the recipe.

Alex continued to move his hand in – yes, you’ve guessed it – a circle.

Feeling rather smug, I decided to start on the agliotti sauce. I’d had a quick look over the thing, and it mostly seemed to be a rather relaxed process of heating and blending a mixture of marscapone and beans.

And then I realised I’d failed to read one key line.

“First, peel all the fava beans.”

kamikazecookery http://twitpic.com/6i165 – Sisyphus had it easy

http://twitter.com/kamikazecookery/status/2010379340

Oh, cock.

(part 3)

Meanwhile, Alex had started his garlic roasting, peeled a million garlic cloves, and started work on the garam marsala. All was going well.

I had now started on the next stage of the blueberry soup – the Dacquoise. First problem: We had NO CLUE what the hell a Dacquoise was when it was at home.

kamikazecookery Anyone know what a “Dacquoise” is?

http://twitter.com/kamikazecookery/status/2008533013

Our viewers soon put us right with the aid of Wikipedia – but unfortunately the description was a bit, erm, confusing (“A dacquoise is a dessert cake made with layers of nut meringue and whipped cream or buttercream” – but we didn’t have any whipped cream!), and we didn’t have time to look at the pictures. Nuts to it, said I, and plowed boldly onward.

Next, we needed to blend some almonds, sugar, and various other things. The only problem? You guessed it – no blender. However, we DID have a smoothie maker…

Amazingly, 100% success.

The same could not be said, sadly, for Alex and the Garam Marala, through no fault of his own. We’d simply underestimated the massive, massive quantities of spices Heston needed for the spice mix – 75 grams of pepper turned out to be about two jar’s worth, whilst 120 grams of Coriander Seeds would have cost about as much as an entire meal out. We were in serious trouble.

And then, Alex noticed the comment that we would have a bit of Garam Masala left over at the end of the recipe. Maybe we had hope. And a little while later, flicking through in a panic, he realised just how much “a bit” would actually be…

Meanwhile, I’d started whipping some eggs and adding in sugar. It may be noted that amongst the things I direly suck at, whipping eggs is high on the list, not helped by the subtlty of the tools I had to work with:

However, we knew that this wasn’t true of our viewers, so we started on a bold new experiment: egg whipping, directed by Internet.

I whipped. I stopped. I held up to the camera. From next door, our host/assistant Tina shouted through that there was a massive delay on the video, and I appeared to still be whipping. Eventually, the collective intelligence of the Internet came to a conclusion on the whippiness of my egg. I whipped a bit more. Repeat.

Remember, many eyes make eggs frothy.

(Part 2)

We’d gotten back, and we had ingredients. A LOT of ingredients.

Job #1 for Alex was to brine the chicken, a task basically consisting of making some salt water, then putting the chicken thighs in it. What could go wrong?

kamikazecookery http://twitpic.com/6hkvb – As Alex put it, “It’s an Archimedean problem. Chicken go in, water go out.”

http://twitter.com/kamikazecookery/status/2008363342

Meanwhile, all I had to do was heat some cream and mix some sugar in. Of course, Thomas Keller lists all ingredients in cups, which those of us in the Old World don’t use, but a bit of ingenuity plus a hundred-million-dollar emergent artificial intelligence solved that problem.

At the same time, I realised that I’d been cooking on induction for so long that the concept of using actual flames in cooking gave me the Fear.

But my colleagues coaxed me out from under the sink, persuaded me to stop gibbering about the blue dancing burning fairies, and I got to work – until I hit an unusual snag with live-on-the-Internet cookery.

I was so busy Twittering I forgot about the cream, and it boiled over.

Leap, grab, cool. Aargh, aargh, aargh. But I seemed to have saved it – provided I could whisk the cream and get it into the mixture, fast.

I turned around to our host, Phil, and asked where the whisk was. He, to my abiding horror, pointed me to a hand whisk.

Toy game soldiers of to that nuts. It was time to unleash… our secret weapon.

Some say that he can maintain a 58 degree water bath – with the power of his mind. All we know is…

The cream was perfectly whipped – of course. We listened for the sound of the Not-Stig roaring away on his way to another cooking emergency, then mixed in the whipped cream, and poured the result into hemispherical moulds. well, the closest to hemispherical we had, which turned out to be cute little frog moulds. Less yoghurt Charlottes, more yoghurt McCartneys.

(Part 1)

So, about 6pm, we fired up the live stream, got a’twittering, fired up the TwitPic, and … promptly went shopping.

kamikazecookery Got to the supermarket. Realized we didn’t have a pen with which to cross off our million purchases. Job 1 : buy pen.

http://twitter.com/kamikazecookery/status/2006656847

Meanwhile, our charming viewers, bereft of our presence on the live chat, started a lively discussion as to which of our many ingredients we’d forget on our return. We scoffed, and headed deeper into the cyclopean expanse of the local 24-hour Tesco.

A sudden win – half-price blueberries – was followed by a loss – Tesco being out of all other soft fruit. Warning: Out Of Fruit Error. But everything else fell before the swathe of our mighty shopping prowess – until we hit the Fava Beans.

First question: WTF is a Fava Bean when it’s at home?

We assumed it was something terribly sophisticated, and possibly found in the “To Eat With Human Flesh” aisle. Our viewers quickly put us right.

marcmagus @kamikazecookery wikipedia says: Broad Bean, Fava Bean, Faba Bean, Field Bean, Bell Bean or Tic Bean

http://twitter.com/marcmagus/status/2006966296

We’d found ghee. We’d found chickpea flour (tip – also called “Gram Flour”, found in the speciality baking aisle). How hard could a feckin’ broad bean be?

Well, we checked the canned beans. No juice. More surprisingly, also no broad beans. We checked the dried beans. We checked the fresh beans. How many goddamn bean sections does this supermarket have? We checked the OTHER dried bean section. We asked a member of staff. She asked another member of staff.

And then Alex shouted “AHA!”, and it was indeed a mighty “AHA!”. See, it turns out…

Broad beans are in fact peas. According to Tesco.

So, one day down, and where have we got to on our live cooking extravaganza?

For those of you just tuning in: for our first live streamed event, we’ve decided to attempt to make not one but two massive three-Michelin-star style recipes, in a normal kitchen, using the full power of Alex and my Mad Cookery Skillz. AND we’ve decided to do the entire thing live on the Internet – for all of the ways you can watch the second half tonight, see our earlier post.

The US contender for our recipe is Cream of Blueberry Soup with Yoghurt Charlottes", from Thomas “I was the cooking consultant on Ratotuille, you know” Keller, maestro of the French Laundry, regularly rated as one of the best restaurants in the world. We’re cooking from his "French Laundry Cookbook.

Meanwhile, in the blue corner, the plucky contender is Perfect Chicken Tikka Masala" from Heston “I once cooked an entire pig sous-vide” Blumenthal, ex-repo man and proprietor of the "Fat Duck, which is not only another contender for the best restaurant in the world but also more or less the reason Kamikaze Cookery exists. This recipe isn’t from his restaurant, but from his book Further Adventures In Search Of Perfection.

As a backup, in case we found both recipes too easy, we also had the “Emergency Ravioli”, aka the “Fava Bean Angolotti with Curry Emulsion” from Thomas Keller’s book. We were going to leave it up to our noble viewers to decide if we needed to undertake that additional challenge. Guess what they chose, the bastards?

We’re off to shop right now, but we have the … IPHONE!!!!! … so if you comment here, we’ll pick it up and reply either then or later.

So, we’ve assembled our shopping list for the KKC shopping trip in about two hours’ time. And it’s, you know, nice and short…

We’re a bit worried about a couple of things. So, rather than do our usual thing of making it up and then having a million people tell us that no, it isn’t a blender, we’re going to get all KKC Live and ask!

1) 1.5 pints of blueberries – how many blueberries is that? This one’s from the French Laundry. I mean, I guess we could take a pint jug along to the supermarket, but I can’t imagine they’ll be too happy with us opening packets of berries up and pouring them in…

2) Chickpea flour looks like it’s going to be a pain in the ass to get. Should we just get some chickpeas, something heavy, and a hairdryer?

—-

160g Table Salt
8 chicken thighs
6 bulbs of garlic
250g olive oil
200g root ginger
100g Coriander seeds
100g cinnamon sticks
75g black peppercorns
25g cloves
20g mace
5 dried bay leaves
450g greek yoghurt
50g whole cashews
1 kg vine-ripened tomatoes
2 large onions
40g tomato puree
Fenugreek
Tumeric
1 tin coconut milk
1 green chilli
750g self-raising flour
20g sugar
6g baking powder
1l whole milk
100g whole eggs
12 more eggs
8 oz all-purpose flour
2 lb fava beans
100g marscapone
Curry powder
8 spring onions
Fresh veg stock
600ml double cream
100ml Creme Fraiche
Unsalted butter
Pack of sugar
Gelatin
300ml yoghurt
Vanilla bean
1 pint raspberries
1 pint strawberries
Mint
3 oz blanched almonds
Cornflour
Small bottle Sav Blanc or similar dry white
1 unwaxed lemon
1.5 pints blueberries

65g green cardamom pods
35g black cardamom pods
130g cumin seeds
200ml ish ghee
25g chickpea flour
10g Kashmiri Chilli powder
20g dried melon seeds
5g coriander seeds

We have the technology! Here are all the streams that we’re going to be using to communicate tonight:

Twitter: Follow kamikazecookery on Twitter. This is going to be our main feed for the entire thing – if you want to know everything that’s going on, check here. We’ll be highlighting our blog posts, our pictures, our vids, our audio and everything else, as well as posting whenever anything interesting happens.

YouTube: Video pieces will be going up on the Kamikaze Cookery YouTube Channel , straight from our exciting new solid-state camera. Don’t expect fine editing, but it’s the best way to get a look at what we’re doing, live (well, almost) and in colour.

UStream: If you want the full-on Big Brother experience, we’ll be attempting to run a live Webcam stream over at Ustream. We understand you can comment live on it and all sorts of other interesting things.

Audioboo: Probably a lot more frequently than the video, we’ll be recording little audio clips of our progress with the stonking new audio-miniblogging device Audioboo. We’ve already started, so go check us out!

Blogging: Whenever we get the chance, we’ll get out of the micro- and into the actual-blogging on this very site.

Pictures: Our Special Mystery Guests will be taking pictures throughout the evening – we’ll be posting them on the Twitter feed via the miracle of Twitpic

This is very much an experiment, so we don’t know quite how it’s going to go or what will happen. But it’ll be fun finding out!

Join us in just over two hours… and counting!

And of course, this is an interactive event – indeed, that’s the interesting part for us. So, please do blog/comment/twitter/pic right back at us, and we’ll respond … in real time.

OK, now I have an idea for a cooking show featuring Jack Bauer.

Yep, we’ve planned our first Kamikaze Cookery Live event, and we’ll be pitting two three-star chef recipes against each other and Alex and I as the normal (ish) people.

We’re going to be attempting to live-cook Cream of Blueberry Soup with Yoghurt Charlotte (from the French Laundry Cookbook) and Perfect Chicken Tikka Marsala (from More Adventures in Search of Perfection) over the 12 hours of our Live adventure. So tune in here or on Twitter tomorrow (continuing Wednesday), as we start what’s sure to be a series of misadventures and mishaps.

We have to build a home-made tandoor, for pity’s sake.

What could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE – We’ve also decided to add another possible dish, just in case there’s not enough going excitingly wrong. So, be sure to watch for the appearance of the Emergency Ravioli (as it has been christened).

If you’re interested in starting cooking sous-vide, and you’re in the UK, you might find this new offer from bargain supermarket Lidl interesting.

It’s a vacuum-sealing device for £19 – a lot less than the £60 or so you can expect to pay even second-hand for a FoodSaver.

No word on the temperature-stability of the bags, sadly – anyone know more?

Thanks to friend-of-the-blog Nojay for that one.

OK, the Kamikaze Cookery Live Event is coming to an Intertube near you, soon!

Yep, a week today, Alex and I will start on our first live test event. We’ll be taking a semi-Normal Person Vs format, as we attempt to cook a recipe from either Heston Blumenthal’s In Search Of Perfection series, or something from the French Laundry cookbook, and we’ll video, Twitter, blog, live stream, and Flickr our way through the entire thing.

More details soon! So, join us next week, on the evenings of the 2nd and 3rd as we boldly venture into new territory of ambitious-but-rubbish cookery – LIVE! Any questions or suggestions, ask ’em below!

KKC Live #1 – Tuesday 2nd of June and Wednesday 3rd of June from 7pm BST (1pm EST, 10am PST) until about 2am BST (8pm EST, 5pm PST). Be there!