Food & Drink Who knows what "Rarebit" is, and your recipe, please.

You see, if I had you then those sacks would have emptied much faster

 

I use half Caerphilly cheese, half cheddar, a dash of worcestershire, a decent seed mustard and beer (hand pulled keg bitter) and sell tons of it on toast which is traditional but it also goes well on Gammon and smoked haddock too !

 

Not bad, not bad at all. I used pretty much the right measures of ingredients (bar the cream of course) and it was very tasty. The cream probably would have made a nice change to the consistency/texture. The cheese I used, for the record, was M&S Cornish Cove mature number 6 - one of my favourite cheddar cheeses at the moment

 

What this malarkey about peeling garlic? Smash the whole clove skin-on with the flat of your knife. Skin comes right off afterward.

 

This +1 most of the time.

On a side note, this will be tried... soon... albeit without the egg, thanks to allergies...
Sounds like a great finger food while drinking.

 

Simon Hopkins made a good alternative to this on his The Good Cook series. If your able to watch the video JJ you will see how tasty they look!

 

Ha true but sometimes I don't want smashed garlic so I get rid of the ends and skin quickly I was lucky enough to receive a set of global knives for my 21st birthday, oh my science they are good!

 

Globals are ok, trust me, it can get a lot better.

The fastest way to peel garlic is to simply rub a clove between your palms a few times. Zip, zip, and the skins fall away. add a pinch of salt and use the flat of the blade, boom, you have paste with out ever touching a blender. 45 seconds start to finish.

 

I have like a little garlic ricer? I dont think that is what it is called. Its like a potato ricer, just mini, for garlic. Is like crushing it.

I love garlic. i also like my kitchen and the stuff in it way too much!

 

I got a cheapish set of sabatier knives. My parents have a huge block of wusthof knives. Wusthof's are sublime, I am going to buy a set as soon as i can waste that amount of money.

 

What makes them so much better? I have yet to find anything to cook that my globals can't handle!

 

I would guess that the grade of steel, grind and possibly even quality of the handles is superior on Korin blades.

 

Honestly, they are good knives. I have had my Globals since 1998. My concern with them is that they are made from molybdenum/vanadium stainless steel. They come razor sharp and stay that way for a long time in household use. But when the time comes to sharpen them, most people don't know how to handle them and they lose their edge quite fast. You really need a diamond steel to touch them up, and fine water stones to sharpen them. Both of which are usually more expensive then the knives themselves. Not to mention, few people are bothered to learn how to hone knives on water stones.

As to why the Ittosai is better...well it's a hand forged, laminated steel blade (stain resistant, the carbon content is too high to be stainless); which allows a thinner blade and one with a more shallow grind (mine is also RH single ground, which changes the pressures the knife puts on the things you slice, allowing far thinner slicing). The blade is harder, which is good and bad. Good because it holds a sharp edge longer, bad because it's more brittle. But I don't open cans with it like you can with a Wüsthof. It's higher maintenance, but the keenness of the edge is quite noticeable. It's subtle, but handle one for 16-18 hours a day for a few years and it's like night to day. They day my Ittosai arrived, I left all of my other knives in my box, save for my Masamoto butcher knife (which can carve through a frozen lamb leg). It's also the knife that led me to bladesmithing and making my own knives.

TBH, once you get past the basic knives (Wüsthof, Sheffield, and Sabatier), the differences are subtle ones of personal taste.

 

Have you ever tried a Kyocera ceramic blade?

 

I have noticed my favourite global is getting blunt after 3 years of hard chopping! Will have to get it professionally sharpened as I can't afford the correct tools to do it myself.

 

Newer globals seem to be using a much softer steel than say the ones JJ probably has from 98. I personally cannot stand them as they just feel unsafe with wet hands, but their handles do seem to be a very marmite thing.

Me personally - I have an Shun Ken Onion 12" chefs knife which I use for everything. See here. A lot of people seem to hate the ken onion shun knives but I like mine.

Also have another japanese steel, a Sushi knife which is a bit like a baby santoku knife but only sharpened on one side. I use for very very fine work. Lovely handle on that - can't find a pic online though. because I can't remember the name of the manufacturer!

 

Smashing the garlic with the flat of your knife is all well and good, providing you don't mind standing around finding all the little bits with skins still clinging to them and peel it off, garlic skin can be incredibly sticky. We used to get our garlic from different supplies and it varied but any off cuts of garlic that had skin on them got swept in the bin rather than wasting time getting skin off. Serving a customer a meal with bits of unwanted garlic skin in or on it just isn't an option. Don't get me wrong it wouldn't have bothered me but that's just the way it was.

I'm a little saddened by the fact I have so much to say about garlic, I don't even like it that much o0

 

A long time ago. It was odd and, like many things ceramic, was prone to shattering. Not good.

If this was @me, I peel my garlic first and don't whack it. I place a blade over it and bear down. It all stays in one place and with the right motions, the blade edge mushes into a paste.

 

try olde Welsh recipe- Kebab Large on Garlic Nan
They swear by it after 15 lagers in Cardiff

 

Oh no, in reference to this,

If already peeled then it's a good way of doing it, just depending on how you like it. Even more so if you don't have a blender to hand or just couldn't be bothered, I have to say, at home I wouldn't bother blending it so much.