Sticky Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce

Sticky Date Pudding with a not so good but acceptable Butterscotch Sauce (almost going to split if pushed), with a ring of contrasting Brown Sugar Sauce Ingredients: Sticky Date Pudding (Yield 6x Dariole moulds)

• 75g Dates, coarsely chopped
• 75ml Water
• 3g Bi Carbonate Soda (Proper accurate weighing scale needed)

• 1x Egg (55g standard)
• 100g Sugar, Caster

• 115g Flour, Cake and sifted
• 8g Baking Powder
• Sensible pinch of Salt

• 30g Walnuts, coarsely chopped
• 75ml Milk, proper full-cream please
• 30g Butter, Unsalted and melted
• 3ml Vanilla Essence

• Oil Spray

Butterscotch Sauce (3 ingredients- Fat, Sugar and more Fat... Yum. Yield 300ml, plenty)

• 60g Butter, Unsalted
• 120g Sugar, Soft Brown
• 225ml Cream, Whipping (35-40% fat content)

Optional Brown Sugar garnishing sauce

• 1 part Butter, Unsalted
• 3 parts Sugar, Soft Brown
• Water (I used Cream but I think water will work better to emulsify the sugar with the butter)

Equipment:

• Stove
• Saucepan depending on yield
• Cooking spoon
• Steamer oven (Or a stove top steamer)
• Roasting/baking tray (Can be substituted with a flat plate)
• 7x Dariole moulds
• Cling Wrap
• Sieve
• Mixing Bowls
• Knife (At least a paring, plus a proper chefs knife if the nuts and date aren't already chopped up)
• Cutting board

Optional equipment:

• Large piping bag (At least 340mm long)
• Plain piping nozzle (wide enough to allow the chopped nuts and dates to pass easily, but can still be covered with your thumb/finger. I use a No.11 but still depends on how coarse you process you nuts and dates. You too small a nozzle without and quick interchange unit and the mixture jams in the nozzle, you lose yield cleaning out the bag)

Cooking: Sticky Date Pudding 1. Preheat your steamer. 2. Heat the 75g chopped Dates with the 75ml Water in a saucepan to soften and until almost all the sitting water is gone. 3. While the dates are heating up, Cream together the the Egg and the 100g Caster Sugar until smooth and light... creaming until white is optional. 4. Sift together the 115g Cake Flour with 8g Baking Powder and add the sensible pinch of salt. 5. When the Dates are dry enough, take the pan off the heat and add in the 3g BiCarb Soda and mix together. 6. Mix the Egg-Sugar mix into the Cake Flour Mix, add in the Milk and Melted Butter into help thin the mixture as you combine everything together including the Dates and Walnuts. (You don't have to be gentle with folding the mix together, the bicarb and baking powder are your rising agents) 7. Spray generously with Oil into your Dariole moulds. (Generously, not deep-frying) 8. You can spoon or pipe into the mould 1/2 way up. HALF WAY UP! Too much and you get a muffin base when you invert it for serving. 9. Place the mould onto a roasting dish/tray or a plate, and cling wrap the whole assembly with slack tension but fully covering the mould tops. 10. Make sure the mould tops are sealed and you can pierce holes in the cling wrap surrounding the moulds to give the cling wrap more chance to relief tension as it shrinks in the heat and not vacuum down onto the moulds. 11. Steam for 30 minutes or until it probe tested clean. Butterscotch Sauce 1. Place all sauce ingredients in a saucepan, heat up then simmer for 2-3 minutes. The more you cook it the richer it gets, then splits if pushed too far. Optional Brown Sugar garnishing sauce 1. Melt the Unsalted Butter in a saucepan. 2. Add the Brown Sugar. 3. Reconstitute the Sugar and Butter together with Water or Cream, and simmer together to melt the sugar completely(as the sugar will not melt naturally into the butter without burning.) 4. Use immediately as it's more or less just brown sugar liquid paste and will set if left to cool. Soft steamed pudding, chew of the dates, bite of the nuts, moist warm sauce. Add in praline snaps for added crunch. Plating: 1. Butterscotch Sauce base on a Warm Plate. 2. Optional Brown Sugar ring drizzled on. 3. Pop on the Pudding by inverting it from the mould, then placing it on the place. Another nice garnish is a nutty praline snaps or nut brittle, both sugar and nut snaps. Since it's a warm dessert, garnishes like chocolate motifs will not work since they will melt on the pudding. Over vibrant Technicolor jpeg picture.

Fujiwara Kanefusa 150mm Yo-Deba

The performance just isn't there, the blade height is too short to use useful and the steel is still too soft to perform up to standard. Such it's a deba, being that it has a thick spine to provide some weight behind it.

Fat santoku with minimal belly, or faux deba with no substance.

Here I'd polished the back bevel to a mirror finish with a King 6K waterstone, but not completely flat.

Sold the knife off to someone else to make god use of it, not me.

Original post:26DEC07, Updated:16OCT08

Waterstone holder from Carba-tec

Bought on special from Carba-tec for $30 but the design lacks a centre block to support a thin stone from possibly slitting under pressure.

I like this brand of rubber waterstone holder stocked by Carba-tec mainly because it has good rust resistance since oiling the stone holder can lead to stone contamination.

Original post: 26DEC07, Updated: 16OCT08

Dexter-Russell 6" Sani-Safe stiff curved boning knife

Bought it for the shape of the blade and handle for a good price on eBay, but I don't like the roughness of the handle and the shiny smooth pinch grip area which gets slippery when coated with fat. Good for functionality but the blade is surprisingly flexible for "stiff boning knife". Replacement will be a Swibo with a straight handle.

F. Dick-Johnson and Wales Knife Case Set

I bought this Johnson and Wales 'Light series' knife kit on eBay back in July this year, costs a fair $207 including shipping. It was sold without the 8" Chef's knife. Most of the knives are from the stamped Superior series made by F. Dick and specially marked for the Johnson & Wales University (J&W) and some other stuff that's I think is not really part of the original set, personally don't care about J&W but I do like the F. Dick because of the stamped blade without the bolster return and the riveted handles. The case is really quite gimmicky and horrible waste of space especially compared to for example a simple Victorinox case, I could use the case a really bulky knife block... The kit includes:

• 10" Superior Chef's knife

• 12"regular cut steel (Regular cut by F Dick standards, fine by say Mundial standards)

• 10" Superior Serrated Slicer

• 9" Palette knife

• 8" Superior Slicer

• Boning knife

• 7" Carving fork

• 3" Superior Paring knife

• 2.5" Superior Bird's Beak

• Zester

• Channeller

• Fixed peeler

• Melon Baller

Out of the whole set, I've used the serrated slicer and chef's knife the most, as well as other nice items like the boning knife and bird's beak. Nice set, probably not worth the retail price especially

King S-45 4K 'Home' waterstone

Not so good for value, $35 for this stone that's size is similar to the Masahiro stones.

Very irritatingly narrow stone to use especially with the bonded plastic base. Glazes over easily but provides a bright near mirror polish with some scratches especially with stainless steel knives. Very soft and dishes easily.

I’m about to use it up all the way down to the plastic base soon, and since the base is getting in the way of easy sharpening knives, I’ve reserved it to sharpen with woodwork chisels and plane blade.

 

Being replaced with the Shapton Japanese GlassStone 4K, big difference jumping to that high density, ceramic sharpening stone.

Original post:26DEC07, Updated:16OCT08

King 1200x medium Deluxe waterstone

Another purchase during the Carba-tec sale, again $35.

Good size, decent cutting, ok finish, good price. The biggest positive point of this stone is the amount of feedback you get without the stone being too soft.

To be superseded from Japan Tool in the form of 1K Sigma Power stones to replace both the 800x and 1200x King stones.

Original post: 26DEC07, Updated: 16OCT08.

King 800x medium-size Deluxe waterstone

Another King stone from Carba-tec at the special price of $35, this is a medium size Deluxe stone in 800 grit.
Good value compared to the smaller King Home stones sold at certain kitchenware stores that sells for more or the same money.

Similar to the King 1200x but with a little more bite.

Being superseded with a Sigma Power 1K from Japan Tool.

Original post: 26DEC07, Updated:16OCT08

King S-3 6K waterstone

Neat price ($35 on special) for a 6000 grit waterstone of this size in Perth. Sure as hell beats the $116 for the larger S-1 stone sold at Wellington Surplus which you can get from Japan Tool for $46.

I hate bonded plastic bases for sharpening stones, they don’t easily fit most rubber stone holders and they flex under pressure.

I like this stone, very easy to use. It’s soft but it cuts even at its 6K level, and depending on how much you soak the stone you can achieve different cut-polish results.

On single bevel Japanese knives, it can achieve a foggy (kasumi) finish depending on the softness of the jigane.

This stone will be superseded by a medium finishing natural stone sourced from So at Japan Tool.

Original post:26OCT07, Updated:16OCT08

Carba-tec Economy Large Diamond stone set

I think I got a little impulsive when I bought these diamond stones.

Sure they're neat long 300x and 800x equivalent diamond stones, but they're quite low quality compared to the DMT, Eze-lap brands. They are not accurately level, the yellow 300x is noticeably concave when used as a stone flattener; the hollow dimples in the diamond plate seemed like a good idea to speed up cutting and clear swarf but more or less just scratched knives or stones. I use the 800x orange stone since it's flatter than the yellow one and leaves less scratches as well.

This stones have been replaced with DMT D8XX and D8C for heavy stock removal and stone flattening (more of the latter). I killed the yellow bench stone flattening a Imanishi ‘Pink Brick’ 220x.

If you’re looking for good quality diamond stones in Australia, Everten Online stocks a lot of DMTs and Japan Tool carries the more expensive but very advanced design Atoma diamond plates.

Original post:26DEC07, Updated:16OCT08