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Recently I’ve been corresponding with a gentleman from Memphis, Tennessee, who asked me: “Why are there no restaurants with Scots cuisine?” It’s a good question, but one which can be quite easily answered. Americans reading this might want to have a go themselves. Would you ever go to one? Haggis and oatcakes and porridge aren’t particularly exciting. Most people, when they go to a restaurant, want to eat something that tastes nice.

There is, of course, a lot more to Scottish food than offal and cattlefeed. We have some of the best beef in the world; excellent lamb, game, and seafood; more fresh vegetables than you can shake a green leafy stick at; and there are more things that can be done with whisky or redcurrant sauces than you can imagine. But the popular perception is that we’re all a bunch of skirt-wearing haggis-eaters who can’t talk properly (thank you, Robbie Burns), and popular perceptions are what keep restaurants open.

Incidentally, for the benefit of anybody who hasn’t tried it, haggis is fantastic. It’s just a spicy mince made with the cheaper cuts of meat. There’s nothing wrong with it unless you look at the ingredients list.

I was in Linlithgow yesterday, and it reminded me that the last time I was there, I made a fool of myself in a pub. Not in that way. I’d ordered the chicken Balmoral, which was listed on the menu as “chicken breast stuffed with Chieftain haggis”. “Chieftain haggis” doesn’t mean anything, but the haggis in question was delicious—rich and moist, perfectly complementing the chicken it was served with.

So naturally I’d asked the waitress who their supplier was. She ummed and ahhed for a while and tried to avoid the question before admitting that it was Grant’s. That’s the cheap stuff that you buy in cans in lower-end supermarkets. And it makes perfect sense—for stuffing into a chicken breast you want something reasonably cheap and filling, with some added moisture to make sure that it fills all the gaps. Using artisanal haggis from an upscale butchers would have been a waste of time. The most expensive haggis in the world is still composed of the bits of pig’s lung that nobody else wanted to eat. It doesn’t help to get pretentious about it.

Sometimes there’s a case for splashing out on the expensive locally-sourced foodstuffs, and sometimes there isn’t.

I’ve waxed lyrical in the past on the value of locally sourced food. I like it because it tastes good, but I’ have no illusions that it tastes good because it’s local. The air in Scotland doesn’t magically turn cheap pigs into premium specimens. We don’t have special soil. And it’s not as if the farmers have been trained from birth with specialist farmers’ knowledge, any more than anywhere else—half the people at the Edinburgh Farmer’s Market are accountants from Milton Keynes who woke up one morning a few years ago and, faced with the prospect of another daily commute, thought “fuck this, I’m going to run a farm instead”.

I’m pretty sure that the difference is that local producers actually give a damn about what they’re producing. They’re smaller companies run by people who eat food, not by Human Resources and Marketing departments. (Marketing employees don’t eat food. They’re fed a rudimentary bio-nutritive paste that sustains their organic systems during the company-sanctioned maintenance cycle.) As a result, you’re getting food from someone who cares, which is far more important than where it’s come from.

Or have I missed something?

We’ll be talking a lot more about local-sourcing over the next couple of weeks. Wednesday’s episode covers Part One of our epic journey into the Fife Diet. What will we find therein? Find out on Wednesday.

I saw a news article recently that the London borough council of Waltham Forest is planning to restrict where fast food outlets (including smallholder kebab and fried chicken shops) can open.

They want to restrict it so that there can be none within 400m of parks, or schools, presumably so that schoolchildren don’t really have the option to buy fast food at any point. They also want to restrict opening hours.

It’s being quoted as “one of the first” authorities in Britain to propose such restrictions and the Government’s children’s secretary supports it, all of which suggests that it’s the first of many. The media generally seem to agree that this is a good thing, but is it?

Well, the local businesses aren’t happy, they say it will hurt night time business (which is probably mainly non-children). They also say that this is really a consumer choice.

I think they’re right. The reason so many fast food shops are open there is that so many people buy fast food. If you don’t want to eat unhealthily, don’t buy crap food. If you don’t want your children to eat unhealthily, teach them to eat healthily. You can’t just say, “we’re acting badly, please Mr Council, come and take away our temptations”, that’s just shit.

The council state that “… at the moment residents simply don’t have enough choice because of the amount of fast food takeaways.”. Maybe there’s too many, but arguing that not allowing any fast food restaurants to open within 400m of a school is “improving children’s choices” is patent doublespeak. This is an attempt to eliminate a food choice, rather than increasing the options.

We’ve got to educate children, and healthy food in school canteens is an excellent idea (vague kudos to Jamie Oliver).

Working with takeaways and restaurants to try to get them to provide healthy food is also a pretty neat idea. Perhaps tax breaks should be given on healthier food shops to help them open and stay open?

But restricting what sort of food is available isn’t okay. It’s a person’s choice what they eat, not the Government’s, and if they suffer from it, that’s their problem.

OK, a week or so I promised some sensible tips on how to eat more frugally whilst a) actually saving significant money and b) not depriving yourself unnecessarily.

In fact, it turns out I have rather a lot of tips, so here we go…

Freezer-Fu

• Buy frozen meat and fish. Freezing is actually an excellent way of preserving food, and it has the advantage that the supermarkets can keep frozen food out for much longer than chilled. That means cost savings, which they can pass on. For example, frozen tuna steaks cost £8.30 per kilo at Sainsburys in the UK, as opposed to £14.99 for fresh.
• Figure out what you can cook from frozen Canonically, you’re meant to defrost all food beore cooking it, but bollocks to that. It’s perfectly safe to cook appropriately-stored sous-vide food from frozen, so that implies that similarly reliable methods – like slow cooking and stewing – should cook fine straight from frozen, although of course browning will be harder. (Anyone?)
• When you cook, do a fridge audit. If there’s anything freezable in there that goes off today or tomorrow, unless you know for certain you’re going to be using it, stick it straight in the freezer. This saves me about £4 a week, because my schedule’s unreliable and my memory’s less than perfect…
• Catering pack + expensive stuff + small quantities = win My best food purchase by far this year, cost-wise, has been a big bag of frozen king prawns from a huge Chinese supermarket. It cost about £5, and contained an absolute ton of frozen king prawns – I don’t know how many, but I reckon about 2kg. I’ve been using half a dozen as the meat in a dish at least once a week for the past month and a half, and haven’t run out yet, working out at about £.50 per meal.

Putting the “Special” in “Special Offer”

• Visit the supermarket at odd times And keep a note of the special offers that are out. Supermarkets have varied schedules for discounting items, and there’s often one “God time” per week when they suddenly massively discount a pile of stuff. Try Friday about 4pm.
• Raid high-end supermarkets for special offers In the UK, Waitrose is an extremely expensive supermarket, the equivalent of Whole Foods in the US, I think. Even I would think twice about doing my weekly shopping there. However, several of my friends have noticed that they discount about-to-go-off items very, very heavily – to 20% of their cost or less. See if it’s true where you live, and if it is, go on a raid.
• Don’t buy me because I’m special Before you buy a non-freezable special offer, check that you haven’t already filled up your needs for the next day or so. It’s easy to get carried away. If I did this every time, I’d save pounds on stuff that I buy in a fit of enthusiasm.

Taming the Shopping List

• Snack before you start The oft-repeated advice is “don’t go shopping hungry”. However, sometimes Mr Life doesn’t help with that. You’ve got nothing in the fridge, you’re starving, and you’ve just left work? You’ve got to go shop. However, in this case, do a quick shop for something you can eat right now, eat it, THEN shop. Buying food for the week when you’re ready to chew on the shelves gets expensive.
• Keep a count This one’s only for people who can hold numbers in their head. However, if you can – keep a running total of your spend in your head as you shop. That’s it – don’t try and optimise, don’t try and hit a fixed total – just keep a running account, and if you lose it, go through your basket and add it all up again. I don’t know quite why, but this massively reduces my bills.
• Consider value over time Buy the expensive rice or the cheap rice? Well, how long will it take you to go through a packet? I never buy anything less than the top-quality rice, for example, because a 500g bag will do me for a month, and the extra 60p is worth it over that duration.
• Keep high-quality essentials You can save a lot of money by making sure you never run out of certain things. For example, bread is about the cheapest snack-producing substance there is. If I’ve got bread – even really nice, artisan-made, expensive bread – in the flat at all times, I save a fortune on snacks at the shop. And if it’s really nice bread, I’ll not buy a sandwich whilst I’m out, because I know I can have a much nicer sandwich if I wait until I get home.

Random Stuff

• Buy expensive lunches Pre-made sandwiches consume cash like you wouldn’t believe. If you don’t have a subsidised canteen at work, you’ll save more money by making up your own lunch than you will by cooking your own dinner a lot of the time. To help with that, buy Nice Stuff that you can assemble, meaning that your lunch isn’t just cheaper than the local Tesco Metro’s offering, it’s nicer too. (Yeah, this takes some time. However, it’s a lot less than a lengthy cooking process.)
• Ramen FTW Start with a decent ramen packet – Indomie do fantastic Nasi Goreng and other Indonesian noodle ramen bases. Fry some onions – spring or regular – garlic, ginger, chilli, and a bunch of other veg, plus half a dozen frozen king prawns, scallops, regular prawns, or something similar. Fry or boil an egg if you can be arsed and it’s appropriate to the type of noodle. Prepare noodles as per the packet. Mix together, add the egg, and bingo, instant, lovely noodle dish, cheap, fast, tasty. Total cost? 1 egg (about 30p these days), 1 pack of ramen (30p), some prawns or whatever (20pish), some cheap veg (20pish). Meal for a quid.
• Essentials Try and find a meal that you like that doesn’t cost much or require anything other than canned, frozen or long-lasting food. My staple is pasta with onions, garlic, sweetcorn and canned tuna. Gorgeous and cheap. Keep the makings of that in at all times, in case of “oh, shit, I’ve run out of everything” emergencies that would otherwise send you running to the takeaway.

There’s probably more, but that’s all I can think of for now. Think there’s something on there that’s not very helpful? Got a tip I forgot? Any favourite cheap+easy+tasty recipes? Comment below!

The episode more or less says it all, but I thought I’d just clarify a few things for you, my adoring public. Our adoring public. Something like that, anyway.

The Kitchencraft™ “cook’s blowtorch”, advertised as lasting for sixty minutes, actually lasted more like sixty seconds. This was a pretty pathetic showing. That said, it had been quite a while since it was bought, and it’s possible that it was a leaky model, or something. People in the comments have reported no such problems with their own torches, so maybe we were just unlucky. Also it’s worth observing that it gave a reasonably nice, even, caramelized brown top to the crème brulée, and you’ll notice that Alex was able to talk with a measured tone of voice while operating it—as distinct from Hugh, who was yelping like an abused puppy. As we found with blenders, sometimes MOAR POWERRR isn’t necssarily a good thing.

Hugh’s crème brulée was completed in a third of the time, which is something important to consider if you’re having a dinner party and you’ve got twelve of the things to do sharpish. And “sharpish” is an appropriate word to use, because the caramelized sugar on top of Hugh’s brulee was like shards of glass with a hint of propane. We found the same thing when we used the Bernz-o-Matic™ plumber’s monstrosity to finish off the Perfect Steak": the result tasted slightly of blowtorch fuel. This might be okay in a MAN’S KITCHEN, when you’re roasting whole cattle in leftover engine grease and you use an oily rag to lift the hot dishes out of the ironmonger’s furnace you’re using as an oven before you sit down to play poker with cards made out of chainsaws. On the other hand, it might not be quite the effect you’re looking for at your dinner party. The choice is yours.

With the Perfect Steak, as I’ve mentioned previously, we found that we got slightly better results from searing the finished product in a pan, the old-fashioned way. This had the added benefit of imparting to the steak any flavours you might get out of whatever oil you use—my personal preference is for peanut oil. With the crème brulée, no-one can deny that the MAN’S BLOWTORCH worked, but it lacked a certain degree of the finesse and elegance you should expect from a crème brulée.

You couldn’t use the tiny blowtorch to sear a steak. You wouldn’t use the big blowtorch to light a cigarette, not if you were remotely sane. Maybe the true answer lies somewhere in the middle: in the meantime, neither of them are particularly expensive, and it might be worth investing in both.

The hairdryer, by comparison, is utterly useless. Don’t even bother.

(Having said that, I know that hairdryers are recommended all over the place for caramelizing sugar—if anyone has ever had a good experience with one, or even an amusingly bad experience, please let us know in the comments.)

I’d also like to observe that the pink hairdryer isn’t mine, and that I am perfectly secure in my masculinity, thank you very much. I dry my hair with a towel, the way that REAL MEN do.

It’s here! This is one of my favourite episodes, as well as possibly our most Top Gear moment to date…

What do you think? Personally, I still prefer my big blowtorch. Have you tried blowtorching in the kitchen, and if so, what’s your preference?

If you want more KKC, the Kamikaze Cookery Season 0 Part 1 DVD is available from our shop now.

Great post over here at the SF Chronicle on “10 techniques every cook should know”.

OK, the title’s a bit Digg-baiting, but there’s some good stuff in there – how to fold, how to make a roux, how to make a pan sauce, and more.

My shiny new oven (which has a light in it and everything, and a door you can see through) comes with a manual. Nineteen pages, with pictures and diagrams. I’m pretty sure that nobody ever reads these things, so I thought I’d take a look and see what pearls of wisdom are contained inside.

First up comes the safety page. Always good advice, this one: “Keep children away”. This is generally useful information for most areas of life, and I don’t know why they don’t print it on more things. Then comes “Take all of the styrofoam packing-stuff out of the oven before use”. Somebody, somewhere, has decided that people need to be told this, and that they’re not going to work it out for themselves. Presumably, they’ve also decided that those people who need to be told this are subsequently qualified to use an oven all on their own without any adult supervision.

Just in case there was any doubt, the next one is “Caution: during use, surfaces get hot”. I’m glad to hear it. That’s pretty much the reason I bought the oven in the first place. If they didn’t get hot, it would be a shitty oven. This is a safety warning? It should be on the advertising.

I don’t think anybody pays attention to these things. Most of the information has the distinct air of something that somebody felt it was necessary to say, despite the fact that no one was ever going to notice. “Close supervision while cooking is essential at all times”: no, it isn’t. It’s an oven. You put it on, put stuff in it, then go and watch TV, or read things on the Internet and help stimulate the economy. “Never use when judgement or co-ordination is impaired by the use of alcohol and/or drugs”: but those times are when I’m at my most hungry!

Then we get to the slightly interesting, unexpected ones. “When using a grill, the oven door must be closed”. Then it goes so far as to say the same thing in bold. “Grill door must be closed during grilling”. Apparently it can cause heat damage if you leave the door open. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of it, and I’ve certainly never seen any heat damage on any oven I’ve ever used, but apparently I’ve been doing it wrong all this time. I grill the top of my omelettes (yes it’s cheating, but it works), and to do that you need to leave the pan handle sticking out, so it’s impossible anyway. On a subsequent page the Mysterious Dictator of Oven Usage (MDoOU) mellows slightly, and allows that you should close the door “on completion of grilling”, which is much more reasonable—but then they go and ruin it in the following paragraph, with another insistence that “the door must be closed during cooking”. Since they don’t seem to be able to make up their mind, I’m going to choose to do it my way, instead.

Somewhere in there the MDoOU manages to fit in some actually useful information about how to use grills on different settings, and for different thicknesses of food: you start off at a high temperature, and for thicker stuff, you turn the grill down once it’s seared on the outside, so that it cooks through. It’s odd that this had never occurred to me, since that’s what I do when I’m frying. I suppose it didn’t help that every other grill I’ve ever used had two settings, “on” and “off”. So far that’s the most practical part of this entire nineteen-page document.

And then finally, hidden on page thirteen in the section on fan-assisted cooking (which isn’t relevant for the model I’ve got): “…preheating the oven is often unnecessary. However food such as bread, scones, Yorkshire pudding, do benefit from being placed in a pre-heated oven”.

I wish I’d known that a few weeks ago, before we performed extensive testing on that very subject.

So, does anybody read these things? Has anybody ever found them helpful? Or does everyone just guess?

Also I’d like to offer my services as copy-editor to the white-goods industry. It seems that somebody needs to do it.

More Foodie Gifts – The Hardcore Foodie

Yep, it’s that time again – time for part 2 of Kamikaze Cookery’s holiday gift guide.

This time, we’re looking at gifts for the hardcore foodie. This is serious stuff, for borderline obsessives like, erm, me. And indeed, I’ve tested all the stuff I’m recommending here, with the lone exception of the Sous-Vide Magic, where I built my own.

Big Fat Duck Cookbook

It’s big. It’s fat. It does have, I think, a recipe for duck. But most importantly, it’s the most beautiful, inspiring, extreme cookbook I’ve ever seen.

Heston Blumenthal runs the Fat Duck, which most people would consider to be, alongside El Bulli and The French Laundry, probably the best restaurant in the world, and certainly the best example of molecular gastronomy anywhere. He became famous for the Fat Duck’s tasting menu, a 15-or-so course tasting extravaganza including mousse flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen at your table, tea that’s hot on one side of the glass and cold on the other, and similar amazing things. I’ve eaten there, and it literally changed my life – it’s the reason you’re reading this now.

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook contains most of the recipes from those tasting menus. Not simplified for home cooking, not with some of the ingredients removed (at least, I’d be really surprised if that was the case) – the actual recipes. Plus, a lengthy discussion of Heston’s life and inspirations in cooking, which is a truly fantastic read, and a whopping great big appendix at the back with tons of information on scientific cookery (worth the price of admission on its own).

It’s a very expensive book, but the reason why is immediately obvious when you see it. The book itself is a piece of art. It’s gigantic, it’s filled with illustrations from Dave “Sandman” McKean, and it really does feel like some kind of spellbook, brought down from musty top shelves to be consulted for cookery incantations. I’m considering buying a second copy, so that when I fuck one copy up by cooking from it I have another one that’s still pretty.
Just awesome.

• US – The Big Fat Duck Cookbook – $157
• UK – The Big Fat Duck Cookbook – £80

Bamix Hand Mixer

It’s That Blender.

And all I can say, once again, is yes, it really is that good. It’ll foam things that nothing else can foam. It’s easier to use than any blending device I’ve ever encountered. It works just as well as a spice mill. Or a whisk. I believe it makes a tolerably good mincer, although obviously not ideal. It’ll even – and I just tested this – puree sprouts (with a bit of encouragement).

If you know a serious cook, who could use a serious handblender, this one’s more serious than a Financial Times special edition. And also less boring.

• US – Bamix Mono Hand Blender 14-in – $139

• UK – Bamix Deluxe Blender White – £89

On Food And Cooking

Yes, I’m going on about On Food And Cooking again. Seriously, this is The Tome. If there’s one book any serious cook should have – before Larousse, before Escoffier, before Elizabeth David, before Delia – this is it.

There are no recipes. There is just Knowledge. Hundreds of pages of Knowledge.

Want to know how and why stews work? Want to know what’s gone wrong with your souffle? Want to know the way your steak changes with temperature? Want to know everything you can do with eggs? Want to know about stocks, herbs, vegetables and the aromatics therin? Want to make your stuff work right? Want to invent new recipes?

It’s all here.

If the foodie in your life doesn’t have a copy, he/she’s probably been meaning to get around to it.

• US – On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen – $26.40
• UK – McGee on Food and Cooking – £21

Sous-Vide Magic

We’ve been going on about sous-vide a bit, and we’ll probably do so more in the future. It’s fantastic. But there’s one problem for most people – the fact that lab water baths are really, really expensive, and keeping water at a constant temperature on the hob is, as Alex would put it, a total pain in the arse.

Enter this little box. Attach it between your rice cooker or crockpot (aka slow cooker, British people) and stick the probe in the water inside it, and it’ll hold any temperature you want. Sous-vide on the cheap. Ish.

It’s only available in the US, sadly. Find it Fresh Meal Solutions ($129). You’ll probably also want a FoodSaver ($144)

In Search Of Perfection

Heston Blumenthal produced a series of programs on the BBC last year in which he attempted to create the “perfect” version of various well-known dishes – Spaghetti Bolognaise, Pizza, a burger, Chilli Con Carne, and so on. The cookbooks contain both a story of his travels, and the recipes for each dish, which are likely to do two things. Firstly, they’re very likely to be the most complex meals you or your foodie friend have ever cooked.

Secondly, they’re likely to produce the best food you’ve ever made.

It’s another Heston book, and I make no apology for that. I’ve cooked several meals from these books, and in addition to being enormous fun if you enjoy cooking (this is serious restaurant-style stuff, but brilliantly explained so that virtually anyone can follow along), the results were truly sensational. If your intended present-reciever doesn’t enjoy long recipes, then these books ain’t for them, but if they like nothing better than a day in the kitchen, this is cooking Nirvana.

• US – In Search of Perfection – $38
• UK – In Search of Perfection – £12
• US – Further Adventures in Search of Perfection – $23
• UK – Further Adventures in Search of Perfection – £10.53

Honourable Mentions

El Bulli’s various Molecular Gastronomy kits are good fun if a bit expensive (I’ve got their Sferification kit) – I’m not sure where to get them in the US. The Sferification kit does produce good food, although it could have done with more description.

The French Laundry Cookbook (US – $31, UK – £20) is an absolute classic. The food’s extremely difficult to cook, but possible, and it’s an inspiration to read. I don’t own it, but I’ve looked through it a fair bit. Sadly, I can’t recommend Thomas Keller’s latest book, on Sous-Vide – it’s a bit rubbish.

Finally, of course, the Kamikaze Cookery Season 0 Part 1 DVD ($17 – US, £9 – UK) is an excellent gift, guaranteed to provide hours of amusement for children and adults alike. Or something.

Christmas is coming, la la la. Personally I don’t celebrate Christmas, for a number of reasons. I object to the crass commercialism of the season; I’ll buy presents for people when I feel like it, not when I’m told to, thank you very much; and, for the non-religious, Christmas is supposed to be a “family time”. If you’d met my family, you’d understand.

That said, I have no problem with a slap-up dinner shared with people I like, and I’m quite happy to co-opt someone else’s festival to give me an excuse to have one. So much of our shared cultural experiences are based on food anyway. I’m merely eliminating the window-dressing and concentrating on the main event.

Christmas is a brilliant time for food. The German Market here in Edinburgh is selling mulled wine, mulled beer, mulled juice, and mulled punch. Basically, if anything can be mulled, they’re mulling it. And there’s stollen and gingerbread and bratwürst and marinated pork steaks and bratkartoffeln and leberkas. Leberkas, for those of you who don’t know, is a sort of square luncheon meat that’s sliced and lightly fried, served with a sweet mustard. It’s nice, but it always amuses me that, every year, the Germans come over here and sell us spam fritters. It’s their fault we had to invent them in the first place.

Outwith German cuisine, there’s turkey—or goose if you can afford it—and stuffing, and mince pies and jam tarts, and roast potatoes (universally cooked in goose fat since Nigella took a stand a couple of years back), and little sausages with bacon wrapped around them. I’m a professional cynic, and I’m getting a bit excited about Christmas just writing this. Perhaps there’s something to this whole winter-festival thing after all.

And then there are sprouts. You can always tell when it’s Christmas, because there are sprouts. We never eat them at any other time. I firmly believe that nobody likes sprouts. All the people who commented otherwise on the Gordon Ramsay debacle are either mistaken or, hopefully, figments of my imagination. Seriously: people who like sprouts. People who like sprouts. No, it’s simply impossible, the product of a diseased imagination. What had I been smoking?

And then, once Christmas is over, there’s four days of turkey sandwiches and another week after that of turkey soup. People deride this, and it’s treated as if it’s a standard hilarious thing that happens at Christmas. I’ve got no problem with it. I just find it odd that people know how to save food and use leftovers for one week of the year, and then forget all about it for the other fifty-one.

I’ve just taken delivery of my shiny new oven, which has a light in it and everything, and a glass door that you can actually see through (for now), so I’m thinking about baking a ham this year. It’s not exactly high-science cookery, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I have fond memories of childhood Christmases, sitting in front of The Philadelphia Experiment, carving off great chunks of clove-studded pig and smearing them with some sort of port-based sauce. That, for me, is what Christmas is all about.

Freestylin’

Ever thought that the whole restauranting culture is a bit stuffy?

I’ve been out to countless restaurant meals where everything is terribly formal. Courses are in a strict structure, no-one has a starter unless everyone does, going out for a smoke is verboten, you only drink if everyone is drinking, waiters are treated as if they weren’t there, and a plethora of other social restrictions. It all adds up to a pretty naff night out.

It’s a fairly British thing, the Europeans seem to have much more fun than us at meals. I think the formality centres around puritanical Victorian values and the idea that a meal is in some way a solemn ritual which under no circumstances should be enjoyed. Well, we’re not Victorians any more, and I can see no reason why we in Britain (and possibly in America) should continue to allow the Euro’s to enjoy themselves more than we are. So… I give you Freestyling, eating the meal you’ve paid for, in the manner you want to eat it:

1) First up, don’t worry about course order. Maybe you don’t want a main meal, but would prefer 3 starters. So order that. Hungry for more savoury stuff at the end of the mains? Order more. Yeah, sometimes restaurant’s ordering systems can’t quite handle it, so pay ‘em a bigger tip if they’re willing to give it a go, and be nice to them if they get it wrong.

2) Don’t worry that everyone arrives at exactly the same time, if someone has to be late, let them come along and just eat a dessert or something. It’s not as if you’re saying grace¹.

3) Smoking, drinking? They’re okay! It’s your night out, so do what you enjoy!

4) Take your time. You don’t have to hurry a meal, and it’s probably better for you if you don’t. Eating at restaurants is as much about the company as the meal, so don’t be afraid to drink and chat between courses.

5) Be nice to the staff, they’re people, not servants. If they’re up for it, ask about the food. Much more important, if the food’s good, enthuse! It’s makes their job more enjoyable.

6) This one’s very important: Obey the Golden Rule; don’t be a dick. If you’re being an asshole, everyone around you, friends, staff, and other customers have a more stressful time, so quit it!

7) If the food’s a bit naff, constructive comments to the waiters are okay, but please, don’t loudly comment about it to your friends so everyone can hear.

8) If people don’t like you having fun, screw them, but if you’re shouting so loud it ruins their meal, well that’s a Golden Rule violation there.

9) Finally, remember to relax, enjoy yourself, and shrug off the ceremony, having a meal is a celebration, not a ritual.

(PS Thanks to A & G for opening my eyes)

¹ If you are saying grace, the person who comes later could always say grace later, I’m sure God wouldn’t mind.

The DVD temporarily disappeared from the shop – epic web caching FAIL, basically. Sorry about that, but it’s back now!

Enjoy!

(DVD: $17.00 in the US, £9.00 in the UK/EU)

It’s up! Yes, now you can see Alex test out the calming powers of Camomile against the aggravating powers of World of Warcraft Warsong Gulch, see if Ginkgo makes him RAWK more on Guitar Hero, and, erm, see if Valarian makes Final Fantasy X put him to sleep any faster…

Enjoy!

If you’re interested in aquiring the DVD, you can get it from the Kamikaze Cookery shop

I must admit, I was pretty surprised by the results – I was expecting camomile to work for sure. What do you think? Do you mainline camomile for its soothing properties? Are there teas we should have tested?

It’s here! Head over to our newly-slightly-refurbished shop now to buy the first ever KKC DVD!

Featuring:

• The first six episodes of the series at top quality – see more accidentally-in-shot lighting rigs than you’ve ever seen before!



• Full commentaries on all six episodes from Hugh, Paul and Alex. Learn what happened, what went wrong, and what episodes Alex was hung over whilst shooting.


• Over twenty minutes of deleted scenes from the series, including more of Alex and Morag on the couch, the unexpurgated Jamie Oliver rant, and Alex and Paul on Heston Blumenthal


• Bloopers reel – you’ll be amazed to hear that we get it wrong sometimes. Including Paul’s uncanny Jeremy Clarkson impression.

Apologies for the slightly late episode today, by the way – I’ve been setting up the shop for the DVD, but it’s going up now.

(DVD: $17.00 in the US, £9.00 in the UK/EU)

It’s that time of year again. Yes, the time of year when all websites everywhere put up a list of things that you could potentially buy for your nearest and dearest, linked to their Friendly Local Internet Retailer. Far be it from us to buck the trend.

No, but seriously, folks. There aresome great, great things that you can buy for the foodie in your life, or possibly the person you’d like to turn into a foodie! Between new cookbooks (that actually work), technology to make your life easier, and old favourites, there’s some really good stuff out there. I’ve tested all of this stuff myself (except when the stuff I have isn’t available, when I’ve found the closest and most recommended alternative), and it really does improve your cooking.

Today, I’m recommending smaller gifts for the new to fairly serious foodie. If you’re buying for someone who isn’t already dropping the names of starred chefs left and right, and who hasn’t tried to persuade you that the Fat Duck tasting menu is an excellent investment, these gifts actually do, like Windows 95, make everything you do faster and more fun:

Digital Thermometer

I’m not kidding – for a novice cook, an accurate digital thermometer is close to the Best Thing Ever. I’ve heard so many people who aren’t very experienced cooks say that cooking meat, particularly stuff like chicken or pork, gives them The Fear – “ohgodisitdonewillIpoisoneveryone”. With a decent list of cooking temperatures, you can cook with certainty. I love ’em.

The model I use isn’t easily available globally, but both of these come highly recommended:

• US digital thermometer: Polder Classic – $24.95.
• UK digital thermometer: Meat And Jam Thermo Sensor – £19.99

Real Fast Food by Nigel Slater

The book that got me cooking back when I was a student, and needed to expand beyond what my mum had taught me. Forget Jamie Oliver’s overcomplicated Ministry of Food recipes (seriously, Jamie, 4 hour recipes for new cooks?), Nigel Slater’s stuff starts from about 2 or 3 ingredients, universally tastes gorgeous, and is stunningly well-written in a clear, informal, gorgeous style that communicates not only how to cook, but why.

• US: buy Real Fast Food for $12.21.
• UK – buy Real Fast Food for £6.74

Health Grill.

Like we said in the episode, they’re not very exciting, but they’re awfully good. Particularly for someone who’s short of time (like, say, me), health grills are fantastic – they cook in about half the time of frying or conventional grilling, and do a really good job whilst they’re at it. Particularly good if you use them with a digital thermometer – you can literally stick the thermometer in your chicken breast, wander off, and come back when it beeps.

I’ve got an enormous monster grill (as well as the cheap crappy one you saw in the episode), but for a new griller, I’d recommend:

• US – Hamilton Beach HealthSmart Contact Grill – $29.95.
• UK – George Foreman Big George – £33.00

Don’t Sweat The Aubergine

No, really, don’t. Rather like a lighter companion to On Food And Cooking, Don’t Sweat The Aubergine is a wonderful practical guide to virtually every home-usable cooking technique. The author knows his chefs and his food science, and worked from that basis to test out recommended ways to cook just about anything. The two pages of detail on rice cooking techniques and his personal experience with them is worth the price of the book on its own. I refer to this book as often as I refer to “On Food And Cooking” – and it’s a lot more accessible for less hardcore cooks.

• UK – Don’t Sweat The Aubergine – £6.99.
• a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1904977782?ie=UTF8&tag=kamikcooke-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1904977782”>US – Don’t Sweat The Aubergine – $14.86

Coffee Grinder.

Just about everyone likes coffee – but shockingly few people seem to know how rubbish ground coffee tends to be. Because it’s ground, massively increasing the surface area, ground coffee goes off really, really quickly. For me, buying a coffee grinder and beans has been a revelation – coffee tastes are much more distinct, much more vibrant, and I’ve really started to appreciate a cup much, much more. One of the best small purchases I’ve ever made.

I use a tiny cheap grinder, but more serious coffee-drinking friends use a slightly larger model:

Cheap and easy (the one I’m drinking coffee from right now):

• US – Krups Fast Touch Coffee Grinders – $17.99.
• UK – Krups Twin Blade Coffee Mill – £19.99

A bit more serious (but still really good value – used by a close friend):

• US – Krups GVX114 Burr Grinder – $49.99.
• UK – Krups Expert, GVX231, Burr Coffee Grinder – £39.99

A Really GOOD cook’s knife.

On the “single biggest improvement you can make in your kitchen” list, a really good knife comes very high up. Suddenly just about everything’s easier to prepare – it’s faster to set up a stirfry, it’s easier to cut and bone meat, it’s easier to quickly chop some parsley or garlic, and you’ve got much less chance of cutting yourself. I bought a £150 Japanese steel knife a couple of years ago, and whilst I was a bit uncertain about the investment at the time, these days I’d rate it as one of the best investments I’ve ever made. Not only does it let me do stuff I couldn’t before (like really fine, accurate julienne or meat prep), but it speeds up all my cooking.

I’ve got a lovely knife from Kin Knives, but £150 is probably a bit much for most people. The brand that gets recommended a lot these days is Global, and for bloody good reason – a friend of mine has a Global chef’s knife, and it’s a thing of beauty. So:

• US – 20cm Global Chef’s Knife – $89.99.
• UK – Global 20cm Cooks Knife – £50.80

Honourable mentions

A couple of other things that we should mention – Nigella Lawson’s “How to Be A Domestic Goddess” turned out to kick ass when we tested it, and it’s a great read to boot (US – $13.97, UK – £11.64). Microplane graters do exactly what they say – all they do is grate, but if it’s grating you need, these are the tools to get (US – $13.99, UK – £17.32). And of course, we should mention the fine range of Kamikaze Cookery mugs ($13.99 / £9.43), bags ($15.99 / £10.77), T-Shirts ($19.99 / £13.47) and aprons ($19.99 / £13.47 also) available for the geek foodie in your life.

Finally, stay tuned, because there’s one more gift coming – the Kamikaze Cookery Season 0, Part 1 DVD, containing the first six episodes of the series in DVD resolution, with commentaries on each episode and a whole pile of extra material that hit the cutting room floor. Assuming no delays, it should be with us… tomorrow!

Enjoy. I’ll be back on Thursday with gifts for the hardcore foodie, plus of course Alex is testing herbal teas tomorrow. Enjoy!

I went hillwalking yesterday. It was -6° a mile above sea level in Dunkeld. I was wearing a space-age thermal underlayer and a fifteenth-century woollen cloak, and I had a lunch made of stuff from the Farmer’s Market and a thermos of miso soup, so I survived.

Back at the bottom of the hill, it was time for dinner. We got looked at funny in the snooty hotel in Dunkeld, so we opted for fish and chips. One of the things I learned very quickly when I moved to Scotland was how seriously they take their fish and chips. For one thing, it’s called a “fish supper”, and saying “fish and chips” will get you shunned. They’ll charge you a fortune and give you fish in specially-constructed cardboard boxes. Chip shops in Scotland turn into community centres, general stores that sell pet food and cigarettes. And that’s without even getting into the east coast–west coast sauce wars.

While I’m on the subject, let me just deal with the salt-an’-sauce issue once and for all. Chip sauce is disgusting. Fact. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for drenching your supper in purple crap. The only possible reason that any sane human could enjoy that stuff is if they were brainwashed from an early age, which I gather is what happens pretty frequently on the east coast.

In the chip shop in Dunkeld, we got talking to the manager. He’d had the place for about two months and he was in the process of making some changes. That’s what I thought he said, but I was concentrating on this fantastic, moist, flaky fish with a delicate, crispy batter and chips cooked to perfection. I’m originally from Hull and I know my haddock. This stuff was great.

Apparently the fish came from Arbroath, which is about as close to Dunkeld as you can get while still being on the coast. The haggis, black pudding, and white pudding all came from the local butchers. The potatoes were English, but he said that they were the best ones available. About the only thing that wasn’t locally-sourced was the smoked sausage, which was Mattesson’s®, but as he said, “they’re the best ones”.

This was a guy who runs a chip shop in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t exactly trying to compete with the Starbucks down the street, because there wasn’t one. And if there had been one, their fish and chips would have been awful.

Fish and chips is supposed to be cheap, drunken fodder for people who are too lazy to microwave a ready meal, not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Chilly hillwalkers who have just come down off mountains and want something hot, quickly, are given a free bye.) And here it had been elevated to restaurant-quality status. I would happily have paid fifteen quid for this if it had come on a plate, with cutlery made of metal, on a table with a tablecloth.

I’m not convinced about the business case for buying expensive ingredients in a chip shop, of all things. He’s the only such business in town; he’s not competing with anyone. But I’m very glad that’s what he’s doing. I’d spent the day gawping at scenery, enjoying the best of what Scotland has to offer, and he managed to make my day ten times better.

Is local-sourcing appropriate when it’s not strictly necessary? What does everyone else think?