Editing Power

It's now commonly accepted that you can no longer trust what you see in the media. Whether it's Gordon Ramsay spearfishing in Cornwall, Culture Secretary James Purnell being photoshopped into a hospital photograph or the Mirror's hoaxed pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqis, decisions are being made by editors on whether duping the public is an acceptable thing to do. Much of it comes back to money again.

The Gordon Ramsay brand is about machismo, and spear fishing certainly helps to make him look like "fucking action man" as he so eloquently described himself at the time. Sensationalist photos on the front of the Mirror are there to sell more copies of the paper and nothing more. When Purnell himself was caught out, it exposed his own hypocrisy on the matter, as he had only recently told broadcasters to "put your house in order" over the recent string of fakery rows and phone-in quiz scandals. Yet it seems nothing really changes. Piers Morgan is still free to make millions from his books and TV deals, Ramsay carries on building his empire, compensating for his fishing failure by swearing even more. Purnell keeps his job in the cabinet. We accept it and maybe even begin to expect it. Don't even get me started on advertising imagery.

So if you can't beat them, join them.

With a bandaged thumb and limited movement at the joint, I was potentially out of kitchen action for a few days. However I'd already bought the ingredients for some beef wellingtons I'd been planning, and not wanting to waste the fillet steaks I decided to soldier on anyway. The Wellingtons were pretty tricky to assemble, with the steaks being wrapped in parma ham, a mushroom duxelle, a chive pancake, and then a final layer of puff pastry which has been rolled and kneaded for 10 minutes to break down the layers. As I couldn't get my thumb dirty or wet, this was a hugely tricky procedure.

I served them with fondant potato "chips", sauteed brussel sprouts with garlic and bacon, and a madeira reduction.



See that? That's tough cooking that is. Not for wimps. I can hang with you, Gordon. Next time you want to spear some fish, call me on 0800 TOUGH NUTS. Want to know how I managed to keep my bandage dry? I removed it. In fact I removed the rest of my thumb too because it was getting in the way. Because I'm hard. I'm action man. Thumbs are for chimps and hitchhikers, and I'm no hitchiking chimp.

Allez les Rosbifs!

Following England's defeat of the French on Saturday night, it seemed only appropriate that we cook a huge hulk of British Rosbif for lunch on Sunday. It was lovely to get out of London for the weekend and my parents took us to a fantastic butcher in the Staffordshire village of Alrewas to source the meat. As urbanites, we Londoners forget how local you can really get when you move outside the M25. The pork at the butchers was all sourced from Packington Moor farm, a few miles down the road in Lichfield and it was clearly in demand as a queue snaked out of the door on Saturday morning.

But for us it had to be beef and we left with a nice rib on the bone. It was a pretty weighty piece, although admittedly it was probably only they size of Sebastien Chabal's thumb.

One of the things that made most sense to me when I read Heston Blumenthal's Family Food was his thinking on optimum cooking temperatures for meat. To quote the book:-

- From 40 degrees, meat proteins begin to contract until by the time they have reached 60 degrees, they begin to force moisture out and by the time they reach 70 degrees most of the precious meat juices are gone, leaving a grey, dry piece of meat.

- At 100 degrees, the water contained in meat (up to 75%) evaporates. This must be avoided as the meat becomes totally inedible.

Now this makes absolutely logical sense to me, and I think there is nothing better than a piece of beef cooked evenly pink throughout, without a thick brown/grey ring around the edge.

I was torn between cooking the beef the conventional way and getting a cracking gravy or choosing the low temperature method to keep the juice in the meat itself. In the end, science won out and armed with a new thermometer I started the joint off at 75 degrees at 9.30 on Sunday morning aiming for a 1.30 lunch. Unfortunately this was pure guess work and I had no idea how long it would take the internal temperature to reach 60 degrees (medium rare). In the end, it took about 4 hours with much nervous prodding of the probe and changing of the oven temperature. Still, the result was the desired one with perfectly pink slices from edge to edge.

I think I will continue to cook beef in this way and maybe even try the 50 degrees for 24 hours approach if I ever have a good enough oven. The major issue is the lack of pan juices so it is vital that you have a gravy already made from a good reduced beef stock.