Yes. Cookeryslutz.

OK so obviously the focus is on the gear; ovens, refridgeration, tools, furniture, storage, kitchen gadgets, etc, - as well as food, nutrition and technique.

I'm a ex pro-chef (damn it feels good to say "pro" at last) and enabler/facilititator of good food. This is in the engineering section as I do see cookery as a science and engineering method as well as an art. I learnt about science and biology via cooking; also, economics, human relations, psychology.

A great dish is like a great mix: take best quality possible raw ingredients and combine them to produce something greater than the ingredients alone. The greatest chefs often enjoy the simplest of foods, letting the flavours of the earth and sea speak for themselves; conversely, they realise their livelihood depends on a little confection and showmanship...a gastronomic dream for the sleepy audience.

My favourite kit consists of 1 or 2 knives: Sabatier 11 3/4" and 71/2", a peeler and a steel to sharpen the knives - with these I can do most anything. My favourite powered tool is the hand-held blender which saves so much time over the manual method (my job as an apprentice).

As I write this I have a loaf of home-made bread rising and ready to go into a hot oven; I like the baking process as it creates chapters in my audio day, I get exercise kneading the bread, the smell permeates my studio and neighbourhood. It tastes good although it's a lifelong quest for the 'perfect loaf.'

What are you cooking and eating? What gear do you use?

Currently have my coq au vin in the oven, traditional recipe but with a brace of pheasant whole instead of chicken joints. Its out of season but I reckon it cooks better if hung for 7-10 days then frozen.

Robert Welch kitchen knives, a 4" paring and 8" cook's covers pretty much anything. And no steel for me, I have one of these bolted down:



Most useful gear? Herb garden just by the back door


Edit: If I had to pick one recipe book ... easy! Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbooks (either, I prefer the 2nd.)

Cheers Lumbergh
Smoked pheasant is good too...nice with apricots and watercress in a salad. The herb garden sounds cool; I rely on the market but we have a good choice.

Thanks for the book recommendation: Marcella Hazan; great tradition. I was fortunate to work with Italian chefs in London; there was a lot of emphasis on good raw ingredients and simple, rustic techniques. Lots of prep too: picking roquette or de-germing garlic.

Nice sharpener BTW

Yup, peasant food - my favorite I earnt my first les paul and marshall by working pot wash and veg prep in a traditional french style hotel kitchen - demi glase in everything ... so I do appreciate the classics, but the rustic stuff is so much simpler when you get the basic techniques down, and it does force you to!

That said its hard to beat a coupla ribs of Welsh Black roasted so its rare and the fat renders to that lovely buttery colour ... yum


From last year: a single pheasant, agreed on the sweetness, this time from the carrots and shallots.

Excellent glaze

I did my potwash days too (and the chip shop): beers, tabs and vinyl. You must have earnt that LP and Marshall!
As every potwash knows: a good chef never burns the pan.

Thanks! I reckon it was 250-300 hours of sweat and a lot of searching for a good used deal ... worth every drop.

All this cookery is making me very hungry!

Unfortunately, I don't do much cooking. I mainly throw stuff in the microwave, it's fast an easy. Once in a blue moon, I'll cook up a full fledged breakfast or cook a box of P.F. Changs frozen Chinese food on the stove.

I'm ridiculously bad with knifes, bad as in "I need to handle myself like a 6yo or I'll be missing two fingers before dinner".

That said, tonight is mushroom night. Easy to cut and I can use my "safe" barely sharpened knifes!

Here goes a tip for something quick and mostly effortless: you'll need some fresh mushroom (any other strain you fancy), two small cubs of butter (salt or saltless depending on your taste/health), some light shoyu/soy sauce (watch out since there are some spicy ones out there) and a bit of chive and/or parsley. I like the mix of sh1take and portobello/paris/common mushroom but you can also go with shimeji or even with a single mushroom of your choice. Key in my opinion is to mix a stronger tasting mushroom like sh1take or hiratake with a lighter one like the portobello or shimeji. Feel free to mix them at will, can't really go wrong with that!

Get a frying pan, melt the butter, add the mushroom, mix them up for a 3-5 minutes on a medium/high temperature. Three minutes if you the mushrooms to be a bit more firm or five minutes if you want them soft. After that add shoyu to taste, turn the fire off and finish by adding the chive/parsley on top and that's it, you're set. Goes well with bread but wife loves it with pasta - she loves this recipe with "solo" shimeji but I like to mix!

I'm a big fan of 'mushrooms on toast' - tonight it's home-made oven chips. I don't have a microwave but do use them when available. Usually I make a big tagene or tomato sauce and split it into portions then reheat from frozen. It fits in well with the workflow...best for video-editing breaks.

I'm big into sugar, butter and cream; it's probably more important to be in a good mental state when cooking and eating...and salt was once worth something for a reason.

Superfood of the day: The humble anchovy.

By Ivo Chiappello (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I can confirm Arthur is a great chef !

He also knows good fish & chips.

Cheers CP. Always an honour to host a fellow gastronome. Good times.

Better post some gear pics too: Sakai Takayuki 45-Layer Damascus Chefs Knife (Gyuto) 210mm

Time to Light My Fire and dig out the old the old recipes for Peace Frog and 20th Century Fox.

What's your favourite food Brent? LA is inspiring for chefs...lots of fusion and fresh ingredients. Do you homecook or eat out?
BTW your forum photo reminds me of a time when beer was my major food group.

We have a terrific Mexican supermarket very near our house, El Super. A lot of what I cook comes from there. Incredible dried beans -- pinto, black, peruano -- all remarkably fresh. I realize that "fresh dried" seems like an oxymoron, but it's not. Amazing produce, too, and herbs you may not see over there, like epazote.

And I don't know about in the UK, but here there are two kinds of pigs, really lean ones that don't taste like anything, and the old fashioned kind. El Super has those, and they cut them (and their beef, too) in ways that are a bit different from what you'd find in the fancier parts of town.

In general we cook at home, but when it comes to anything Asian we're completely spoiled for choice and the prices make a home attempt pointless. You guys have us beat by a mile for Indian, though.

And yeah, that photo sure does look like a good English bitter in a good English glass. My fave is Young's Special. Can't get it here, but we do have a new local brewpub started by some expat CAMRA disciples. Casks, handpumps, the whole deal. What CAMRA would call "Real." Yum.

I decided to investigate 'chefs/cooks in the audio industry' and my first thought was to type "keith richards food recipes" into Google. I think Keith was a good choice: he's an articulate, well-travelled guy, probably seen some gastronomic highs and lows during his adventures. Probably has an interesting story or two; but what would Keith be cooking inbetween sessions?

This was the first result from Google: https://lazycookcrazycook.wordpress....-bangers-mash/

It's a food blog by lizbarrett and she is referring to p.525 of Keith's autobiography Life:

I usually avoid fried foods but I must admit that looks mighty tasty!

The fish for sure. Chips look a bit floppy.

Yeah, frying is tricky as the oil must be right type and temperature; also there's 'the hidden knowledge of the friers' techniques passed down through generations. Frying is the best way to preserve the nutrients and flavour inside the food.
Usually, fish and chips is served with salt and vinegar, sometimes Heinz tomato sauce and/or mushy peas. A wedge of lemon works good too.
In the 1960's and 70's fish and chips was served wrapped in sheets of unused newpaper; it was considered sterile enough for food use...and you could read the paper whilst eating.

Was the Guardian was the first paper in London to switch to soy-based ink? My first "inkling" of the switch was when I saw the black streaks running down my arm.

Around here all we have is Arthur Treacher's Not quite as good as good as the local versions.

Lol. Yes. I remember...just before they switched to styrofoam. I worked in a chippy as a kid: we used to put sacks of potatoes into a rumbler which removed the skin and then into a slicer. We part-fried the chips then let them rest and reheat to serve. Busiest time of day was 10:40pm when the pub shut.

Don't know where you are, but in LA there are British(esque) pubs all over the place with decent fish & chips. One of the best is literally around the corner from where my kids took Tae Kwon Do, so they grew grew up on the stuff.

I'm in South Wales UK; it's an old fishing village that became popular as a tourist resort - Mumbles (or Oystermouth). Due to religious law all the pubs shut on a Sunday apart from Mumbles area so it grew popular and the punters needed to be fed. There used to be a stretch of pubs called the Mumbles Mile and the challenge was to have a drink at each one.
This is the local chippy that Cozmik Producer and myself tasted:

Forwarding that lovely photo to my wife, who's visiting friends in S. Yorks (where they don't Mumble but I still can't understand them). I reckon it's right around suppertime!

That looks very familiar - is there a park area between it and the channel? If there is we used to detour there on the way between Brizzle and Cardigan just for their fish and chips

Make sure she doesnt show your friends that or she'll be subjected to a long rant about how Yorkies make 't best fish n chips in't world, and 't best cricketers, and 't best beer, and 't best beef, and ... you get my drift

We've already heard that plenty. They do have good fish n chips. Don't understand cricket, Sam Smith is okay but not the best, their general take on beef and pork pies and such is baffling to me, and the air still smells like coal, decades after Thatcher shut the mines. But I love the place -- wish I was there right now.

Best fish and chips I've had was in Torquay, by the harbour.

On a side note, I love cooking but I I'm not a cookerygearslut really. I just use basic tools tbf.