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Boiling potatoes in their skins

Boiling potatoes has given rise to two sayings: 1) You should not peel potatoes before boiling. 2) You should not leave potatoes to cool in the cooking water. The first suggests that potatoes should be always cooked in their skins, to prevent water penetrating and making the potatoes go soft and break up. The second suggests that if potatoes cool in their cooking water, they will absorb some of it, which will give them an unpleasant flavour. True or false? Let's try the...

How to prepare carrots

Here's how to prepare carrots, from the simplest way (peeled then rinsed) to a more sophisticated version where only the very best ofthe vegetable is kept.

Prawn salad with a crunch

This salad combines contrasting crunchy ingredients (radish, cucumber, gherkins, onions) with the softer textures of cold rice and tomatoes. The oven-roasted prawns are addded hot. The salad is brought together with herbs and a vinaigrette dressing.

Melt-in-the mouth meat and vegetables in a sealed casserole

In this recipe a good joint of beef is slow-cooked, surrounded by an assortment of vegetables in small chunks. To concentrate the flavours, the cooking time should be long at a moderate temperature and, most important of all, the dish should be sealed. By the end of cooking, the vegetables will be meltingly soft and the meat can be pulled apart with a fork. This is an appealing dish to serve and share,...

How to rehydrate dried mushrooms

Rehydrating dried mushrooms restoes them to something like their fresh texture, ready to use in a recipe. You will see that there is more to it than simply leaving them to soak in water. At the same time, we can also make a delicious mushroom "jus" to use in recipes. Throughout the recipe, I have used morels as the example, but the same applies to any other dried mushrooms.