Jay - The cooks pocket bible: every culinary rule of thumb at your fingertips

RoniJAY

Editor Richard Craze

The Cooks Pocket Bible

Roni Jay

This first edition is published in 2008 by Crimson Publishing, Westminster House, Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 2ND

Roni Jay 2008

Epub edition 2012 ISBN 978-1-907087-37-0

The author Roni Jay has asserted her moral rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library cataloguing in Publication data

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of reprographic reproduction a licence issued in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA Ltd.

Epub file created by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay

I would like to thank my father, Tony Jay, for his excellent help with the wine section of this book. My lack of enthusiasm for drinking fine wines must be a great disappointment to him. However he has never complained, and generously and resignedly consumes my share for me.

I would also like to thank chef Matthew Lamb for reading through the entire manuscript for me to make sure that it all met with his professional approval, and for adding a couple of clever tips that I hadnt known about (such as how to peel a kiwi fruit).

The milk is about to boil over, your guests are turning up in half an hour, the oven timer has just gone off, and youre damned if you can find the answer to a simple question. What are the quantities for a crumble mixture? Or can you put the skin of this fancy fruit youve bought into the fruit salad? Or is it OK to serve this cheese to a pregnant guest?

The Cooks Pocket Bible is here for all those moments. And even when youre not in quite such a rush, it can be impossible to find out what you want elsewhere. Can you freeze hard boiled eggs? How long will this joint take to cook? What does the American recipe youre using mean when it says heavy cream? Thats why Ive brought together all the information into one book. Its not a cookery book its full of useful information for novice cooks but it doesnt contain instructions. You have recipe books for that. This book contains the supporting information that you wont find in the recipe book.

As the subtitle of this book indicates, it contains plenty of rules of thumb. These can be extremely useful especially in the absence of more specific information however since I dont know the vagaries of your personal taste, or the idosyncracies of your particular oven, I cant guarantee that every one of them will hold true every time. Nevertheless, most of them will work for you most of the time, and those that dont shouldnt be far off. If youve lost the instruction book, or the recipe doesnt tell you what you want to know, or your meat came from the butcher without the fancy labelling you get in supermarkets, this book will be exactly what you need.

Because exact equivalents of weights and measures involve unnecessary decimal points that you dont want to bother with, conversions are always approximate. As some cookery writers round up and some round down, they dont always tally with each other. So the chart here is as accurate as others, but not necessarily identical. The important thing is to make sure that you use the same version throughout any given recipe.

O UNCES/POUNDS TO GRAMS/KILOS

Rule of thumb

A flat tablespoon of sugar weighs an ounce.

A rounded tablespoon of flour weighs an ounce.

1 tablespoon is equivalent to 3 teaspoons.

Rule of thumb

A pint of water weighs a pound and three quarters.

Rule of thumb

A pinch (if in doubt) is less than 1/2 teaspoon.

A dash is a few drops (sorry I cant be more specific).

Ive included range cooker ovens here as I feel sorry for them they usually get left out. If you own one, however, youll know that they all have their own personalities, and this is therefore only a rough guide.