The Official Food Porn Thread

[PaintItPretty]

Do you know how awesome it is that you men cook? Your wives are LUCKY!

[PaintItPretty]

Originally Posted by hoverfly

Pleased to hear it. Can you get what in the UK is called Extra Thick Double Cream? I know that JoBleau was having bigtime difficulties and he's from Canada too. If in doubt, maybe check this Wikipedia link:
Types of cream in the UK

Even better if yo could find Clotted Cream, now that is the beez neez you might say or some call in solidified heart attack. Here is the Wiki link: Clotted Cream

This is the single most amazing stuff ever. We usually get Devonshire Clotted Cream from our local shop with a fat content of 68%, so high in fact, it does come with a golden layer of pure butter on top of it. Not for the faint hearted or those scared of suffering a heart attack but most certainly qualifying for the accolade of 'Food Porn'.

Hey Hoverfly. Well we get creme fraiche here and I use that A LOT for cooking (more than I should). Is that what you're talking about? I absolutely love it. Sometimes I'm tempted to eat it right out of the container, but I know that wouldn't be healthy lol.

This is what I use for baking. Liberte, I believe is a Canadian product from Montreal. They make yogurt and all sorts of dairy products. I am just thankful they sell it here in Newfoundland (the island I live on).



I found your tips VERY useful. I'm always looking for new ways to reuse food and save money. I'm also a bit of a environmentalist (compost, recycling, etc). I will admit though, I am a bit (okay, a lot) neurotic about germs and food spoiling. So while I don't keep food past their expiration date, I ALWAYS try to use up the food before it 'spoils'. A good way to do use of up the food before expiration date is to invite friends or family over (everyone loves a free cooked meal, right?) or I'll cook something and store in it a few separate containers and freeze it.

I'll read the rest of this later, I'm going to be late for work. Oh dear. lol


ps/ creme fraiche is amazing in banana bread!

[hoverfly]

@JoBleau: LOL. Got me there again. Remember the emails when you pointed that out to me and I said 'we've been using a vacuum machine for ages'. Just as I initially said, you end up taking things for granted, so, much obliged for pointing out this omission. With you permission, I will add a link to the index for easier reference.

Same actually applies to the shells of shell fish or chicken leftovers you mention. Just this morning I started defrosting a ton of veg peelings, drained cooking water and some chicken stock with all the bones still in. Just the smell of the slowly defrosting 'waste' was enough to make my mouth water. Good point, well put.

As for the reduction is plastic bags... What can I say? The last time I bought a pack of freezer bags (100 x 3 litres), was about 5 years ago. They've been washed and reused so many times, I lost count. Even the ones with small holes in are still good enough for freezing bread rolls for up to a week or two, which I constantly do since, as you know, I bake all our bread and rolls myself.

[hoverfly]

Originally Posted by PaintItPretty

Do you know how awesome it is that you men cook? Your wives are LUCKY!

I just showed this to my wife and she just laughed out loud saying: 'No, he's the lucky one.' LOL

No, quite a number of years ago we were watching a programme about the differences in sense of smell in women and men and one of the scientists stated that in general, women have a 100x better sense in this area. Upon which I managed to produce the Freudian slip by saying: 'See, women are supposed to smell 100 times as good as you do.'

She just burst out laughing. But seriously, her sense of smell is quite bad, she often fails to even recognise when a tomcat has come into the house and given the kitchen a good old spraying. This in turn then leads to her not recognising flavours too well, after all, both senses are so intimately entwined. They did a test with noses clamped tightly shut and found that the majority of persons tested were unable to tell the difference between an onion and an apple. Only goes to show there might be something to it.

I on the other hand, I could get a job as 'sniffer dog' any day. My mother-in-law knows her way around most of the wild mushrooms in Germany and when we used to go gathering them, I would just poke my nose in the wind and point in a direction and sure enough, there would be a patch of them.

Same applies when we walk through the town where we now live. I can tell exactly who is growing weed inside their house and who isn't. If I wasn't in favour of decriminalising cannabis anyway, I would have offered my services to the local police a long time ago. LOL.

[hoverfly]

@PaintItPretty: I am afraid it isn't and I am even more afraid that it may turn out to be a product you will not be able to get.

The main difference being, that Creme fraiche is made from pasteurised, soured cream, whereas clotted cream is made from raw milk, then ever so gently heated, evaporating water and leaving behind little but butter fats and protein. Do make a point of looking at the Wiki page, allthough their mention of a minmum fat content of 55% is regarded as a joke in the UK. Proper Devonshire Clotted Cream will always clock up an easy 66%, if not more. It is literally heart attack in a tub. Even a single tablespoon full of the stuff will give you all the saturates your body can handle in a week. You may have heard of Cream Teas. A scone with a thick layer of clotted cream and then fresh strawberry jam on top. The cream is so thick, it can only be spread with a knife. This is the way they do it in Devon, the Cornish way is different, so you might like to look at the Wiki link I've embedded in the text.

This reminds me, if you can get it, try Whey Cream Butter. Wiki has a good graphic of all the uses of milk here:
Milkproducts

To make it, the milk is first semi-coagulated with rennet, pretty much the same process that is used in cheesemaking, which adds an amazing, yet subtle cheesy flavour to the butter. It is more expensive, about 20%, but well worth the money.

I guess, apart from the Irish and those living on the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, we must have some of the richest milk in the world. Grazing in Britain is fantastic and even better in Ireland, after all, all that rain did give it the nickname 'The Emerald Isle'.

[MarkBld]

Thanks for your response. You may have somewhat misunderstood me though. Regarding how I make cakes, I've tried doing it the right way (i.e., carefully blending ingredients as per a recipe) and the result was no different from when I did it my way. The texture may have been nicer; but it's a certain taste I'm looking for and it just wasn't there. Nor does it seem to make much difference in the taste if I use butter, vegetable oil, or no shortening at all in the cake batter. Of course, I should confess I use more flour than sugar - which, I think, is ass-backwards. But since diabetes runs in my family, I'm trying to limit sugar wherever possible. I should also confess that, except for deserts (and I do make a very good cheesecake), I strive for blandness - but only because of the dogs, who I feed "people food"; I only use commercial dog food to supplement their diet. Here's my thinking: dogs have been eating "dog food" for maybe a hundred years; but they've been eating "table scraps" for thousands of years. Not that mine get table scraps: I get the table scraps.

A neighbor of mine cooks a lot - she even makes her own pasta. She can spend literally several days preparing a special dinner. I simply can't see putting that much time and effort into an enterprise that completely disappears off the face of the earth in a couple hours' time. (I may be a bit too pragmatic.)

[jobleau]

Originally Posted by PaintItPretty

Do you know how awesome it is that you men cook? Your wives are LUCKY!

Not so sure of that. I did loose some prospective girl friends over the years when they found out I cook better than they did.

Thanks for the pad thai recipe. I'll have to try that soon.

[jobleau]

Originally Posted by hoverfly

@JoBleau: LOL. Got me there again. Remember the emails when you pointed that out to me and I said 'we've been using a vacuum machine for ages'. Just as I initially said, you end up taking things for granted, so, much obliged for pointing out this omission. With you permission, I will add a link to the index for easier reference.

Sure, go ahead.

[jobleau]

Originally Posted by hoverfly

Pleased to hear it. Can you get what in the UK is called Extra Thick Double Cream? I know that JoBleau was having bigtime difficulties and he's from Canada too. If in doubt, maybe check this Wikipedia link:
Types of cream in the UK

Even better if yo could find Clotted Cream, now that is the beez neez you might say or some call in solidified heart attack. Here is the Wiki link: Clotted Cream

This is the single most amazing stuff ever. We usually get Devonshire Clotted Cream from our local shop with a fat content of 68%, so high in fact, it does come with a golden layer of pure butter on top of it. Not for the faint hearted or those scared of suffering a heart attack but most certainly qualifying for the accolade of 'Food Porn'.

I never found anything even close. The richest commercially available here is 35%. I came across some home made cream a couple of times. They were probably around 40 to 45%. But it's not easy to get unless your best friend is a milk producer.

[hoverfly]

Originally Posted by jobleau

I never found anything even close. The richest commercially available here is 35%. I came across some home made cream a couple of times. They were probably around 40 to 45%. But it's not easy to get unless your best friend is a milk producer.

Yes, the woes of living in the Third World.

I wonder how difficult it could be making your own clotted cream? I must investigate that.

+++

Update:
Just had a quick peek at startpage.com and searched for 'making clotted cream'. Jeez, tons of links just pop up and from what I can gather it is really easy to make yourself. Cream in jar, into the oven, out comes Clotted Cream. Doesn't get much easier then that, does it?

Here are a couple of links to pages mentioning different recipes:
Cupcake Project: Making Clotted Cream at Home is Much Easier Than You Think

wikiHow: How to Make Your Own Clotted Cream

There are tons more out there, so feel free to research and try other methods. Oh, and don't forget to tell us about how it went.