culinarian ask the chef - by David John Burke

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culinarian ask the chef - June 2007

hedonistic pork

June 6th 2007 03:54

once a month i say screw all dietry requirements and invite some of my mates over for a feast. the centre piece for this months offering was a crispy skinned braised pork belly with garlic mash and rocket.
Ingredients
800gms pork belly or pork rashers
1 cup salt
i cup sugar
four bay leaves
a table spoon of junnipper berries
cracked pepper

method
crush togeather all the dry ingredients in a mortar and pestle.
rub evenly over the pork cover and refrigerate for three days.
part two
on the third day make a stock
ingredients
one stick celery

one onion
one carrot
blacken these ingredients lightly the ad to three litres of water.
bring to the boil and simmer for one hour.
bring out the pork which is now partially cured, and run under coldwater til the curing mix is washed off. place the pork and enough stoch t just cover it in a braising dish in an oven on 140 degrees celsius for around 7 (seven) hours. once done place the mat in one container and reserve the stock to make a sauce.
the next day cut the pork into five cm cubes and crisp it up in a cast iron pan on all sides
once that is done keep it warm while you make a reduction with a little orange liquor and some of the stock.
serve with mash and rocket and sauce and make sure you seat are water proof as guests may wet themselves.-dave

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answers for a copper

June 5th 2007 01:15

i recently found some extraordinary copper pans in a 1 dollar shop and decided that i would restore them the following is annecdotal accounts of people who have done this at home so i iam asking for answers now( i never claimed to know it all) firstly i want to know more about retinning copper pans. secondly i want to know about cooking with these pans and last of all is there any in this wide brown land of ours who does repair copper pans???

thats my questions now i will show you the gold i have found-

"Before trying to re-tin a copper utensil or vessel, it must be chemically clean. To remove all the oxides, you can immerse it in a solution of 10% sulfuric acid in distilled water. Use only copper or plastic tongs to handle the item in the pickling solution. The copper will develop a pink color when all the oxides are removed. Following the pickle, scrub the surface with a clean felt pad and 4F pumice. Rinse with distilled water and a clean brush and you are ready to re-tin. Flux with rosin or tallow and use the purest grade of tin you can obtain. The tin is best pre-melted in a tinner's pot, and the work piece pre-heated to around the melting point of the tin or just a bit more. The flux will be merrily smoking, but should not burn. Pour a bit of molten tin into the pot and quickly wipe it around with a clean cotton rag saturated with flux. Dump out any excess tin and wipe with the fluxed rag until the piece cools enough that the tin has fully set. This should result in a nice shiny tin coating.

It's been more than 30 years since I did this, but that is my best recollection.
My father was a sheet-metal worker; he showed me how to retin. One flux he learned to use in trade school is powdered rosin, but he preferred powdered sal amoniac (ammonium chloride). When we needed it, I made it by filing the tinning block until the heap of powder was big enough. "Killed acid", muriatic acid with an excess of zinc, also works. We tinned pots on the stove top with the help of a blowtorch for the sides, or over the plumber's charcoal stove meant for the lead pot used for joints in cast-iron pipe. We used "block tin", that is to say, pure tin, in the form of tubing salvaged from an old beer distribution system. Now, I use lead-free solder consisting of tin-silver eutectic, about 4% silver, the rest tin.

I clean the copper with muriatic (commercial-grade hydrochloric) acid and rinse with soft water or not at all, then heat the pot as quickly as reasonable so there's not much time for oxidation to build up. I rub the solder on the pot with plenty of sal amoniac powder. When the solder starts to melt, I wipe with cotton rags to get a smooth coat. Mostly, it's easier than it sounds. If a patch won't wet, steel wool fixes that. Keep some handy.
People had it rough in the old days. I never saw that process, but my father was a plumber and he had to be able to "solder-wipe" joints in lead pipe to pass the licensing exam. He melted iron pots of solder on a propane stove, probably preheated the lead pipe (although I don't really recall that part), then he ladled molten solder out of the pot and poured it onto the pipe joint with one hand while wiping it in with an asbestos pad with the other hand. The wiping process made the joint very smooth.
Unless I hear otherwise, I'd assume that retinning of pots was similar except that lead-free tin would be used.
Copper pans are tinned with tin. Anyone thinking of tinning a pan with a tin
& lead based solder would do well to study the fall of the Roman empire, and
their fondness for cooking in lead pots. The world's first artificial
sweetener (whose latin name I have forgotten) was made by boiling grape juice
in thick lead pans, until it was reduced to about a quarter of its original
volume. The active sweetening ingredient in this stuff was lead acetate,
which is undeniably sweet..... Cynics would argue that the artificial
sweetener industry hasn't changed much since (except that Searle Monsanto
have bigger lawyers than I do, so I won't)

Back to the pans.... Re-tinning is a fairly simple process, although you may
need some sizable heating equipment.

Wire wool

Tinning stick

Flux (zinc chloride / killed spirits / Bakers fluid)

Moleskin (This is a cloth pad, made of layers of denim or cotton corduroy
stitched together and wiped with plumber's tallow)

Brazing torch (gas & blown air, or a big petrol / paraffin blowlamp. Don't
use oxy-acetylene, as you need a lot of heat, but not a high temperature)

Brazing hearth (A pile of broken firebrick. Pans are big & shiny, and so
are difficult to heat in the open)

First of all, check that the handles are heatproof. Some pans (i.e. Ikea)
have cast "brass" (sic) handles that are actually made of some sort of
cheese. Get these hot and they'll crumble ! It's perhaps safer to drill their
rivets out, and replace them later.

Clean the old tinning with wire wool, until the surface (tin or copper) is
bright & shiny. Coat with flux.

Arrange the pan in the hearth so that you can heat it up easily, get to the
areas that need work, yet aren't losing too much heat to the surroundings. If
you can work on the whole area at once you'll get a better finish, but if
your heating gear isn't quite big enough, it's better to finish it in stages
than to try and work on the whole pan when it's not hot enough.

Heat the pan, trying not to oxidise the tinned side. It's best to heat from
the outside. As the pan gets hot, apply the tinning stick. Then use the
moleskin to rub the molten tin into the surface until it is well covered by a
smooth layer. Keep the moleskin slippery with tallow, just enough to stop it
sticking and burning. If you need to, heat the tinned side directly, but try
not to oxidise the tinned surface or you'll get a dull grey finish.

Allow the pan to cool naturally. Rapid cooling or quenching runs the risk of
distorting the pan. There shouldn't be any need to acid pickle the copper (as
for brazed or silver soldered coppersmithing), as you shouldn't need to heat
it that much. When cold, polish the copper up again, using your favourite
polishing rouge."

any one got a better idea well post me and we'll all be happy.

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