alanamoana

well, quite a few marshmallow recipes don't require any egg white at all...so there's no question about shelf life. they depend solely on the gelatin and sugar syrup for aeration. with regard to frappe, because he's using a pasteurized and dehydrated product, again there's no worry about shelf life. most nougats (either fluffy or chewy) rely on a hot sugar syrup (240F) to set them which, depending on volume of whites and syrup, pasteurizes the fresh egg whites enough to make them shelf stable. and i think you're right with regard to amount of sugar: a meringue made with different ratios of whites to sugar will give you different amounts of stability and weeping.

if a position is a tipped position, the government has now put in place minimum taxes on those employees to include assumed income from tips...not that it stops front of house people from trying to find clever ways to hide money. i find it interesting that all these cousins, uncles, brothers and stuff would protest against family?

I like Torakris' fridge! Small, but conformable to your uses. I have a cheap GE which is part of our rented apartment. They seem to buy the cheapest models of all the appliances available to stock these apartment buildings when they're new. It is a freezer on top, which is fine, but for such an outwardly large seeming appliance, the internal configuration makes it very difficult to store things. I hate it! I had a half sized fridge in NYC and it now seems bigger than this p.o.s.! Someone on the kitchen renovation thread (I think) mentioned getting a Liebherr fridge. I think they have some sexy configurations. And some American companies are coming up with some good ideas like that now.

This is quoted from "The Meat Buyers Guide" printed by the North American Meat Processors Association and I hope it helps so you can define flank steak to your butchers. I really like flank, and it used to be a cheap cut of beef in the US until people realized how good and relatively lean it is...now it is more expensive...but still tasty! And, infernooo, you're right, it should be about an inch thick (possibly a tiny bit thicker) and I've purchased pieces that were about five pounds in weight, so it can be pretty big. They sell it at Costco here for about $3.99USD/lb (but I'm probalby low on the price) and the piece is usually folded into thirds. Good luck hunting this down!

i really like that light fixture. i think the cheap and industrial looking ones don't have the color/stripe detail and that's what makes this one perfect for your kitchen. i wouldn't worry about the color. i think it looks great! congratulations on finally having a kitchen! i can't wait for the big reveal either...(do they have a waiting with bated breath emoticon?!)

with the 'slam fill' technique, JPW also specified a more liquid ganache...not very liquidy, but more liquid than the one he was using. he was using some leftover stuff from the day or so before and it was stored in the fridge and had to be warmed up so wasn't an ideal consistency. it's nice to note that when a professional does something with sub-optimal ingredients or under sub-optimal conditions, they can still somehow make it work without sweating too much . if any of us had tried that (for the first time), i can almost guarantee an unmitigated disaster! John, thanks for linking to and uploading photos from the class into imageGullet. i appreciate all the time you and kerry and everyone else has put into this thread. and can i reiterate, what a nice way to get to meet eGulleteers from all over the place?! i can't wait to travel to the pacific northwest and visit with john and mary!

What about rice krispie treats decorated with mini eggs, jelly beans, and/or seasonal sprinkles? They are popular, fairly non-food-allergy-provoking, inexpensive, and easy to transport. ← and inexpensive! i like that idea a lot.

from wikipedia. it sounds like it looks european but eats like an asian pear. often (but not always) asian pears that are grown in the united states taste nothing like the same pears grown in asia. a pale imitation if you ask me!

i might use the mini-eggs to decorate the top of your cupcake rather than placing them inside the cupcake. if you want to bake them into something, you can do a mini-egg version of the peanut butter blossom (usually a peanut butter cookie with a hershey's kiss implanted at the end of the baking process) instead of the cupcake. the concern i have is that when you place a solid object in the middle of a cake batter, the surrounding cake batter doesn't tend to bake very well because of the difference in consistency between the batter and the solid object. granted, cupcakes are small enough, but i don't know what kind of chocolate mini-eggs are made of and you might not want to experiment on something at the last minute. otherwise you throw out stuff and you state you're on a limited budget. cookies are easier to transport as well. and finally, you can always recycle a large box to transport your cupcakes. just make sure to line the interior with clean paper or foil.

I like that idea Pat - I might have to hook something up this weekend ← I wish I had a picture, but I have these nifty bowls with a lip, so i run a piece of wire around the bowl under the lip and then attach another wire to this wire ring that stretches across the top of the bowl. the wire doesn't move and it is perfect for dragging excess chocolate off the bottom of your bonbons. VERY cheap and easy to do.

are you talking about taking two identical molds and filling them and then sticking them together like the gianduja filled fruits de mer?

two words: Magic Shell! actually, i probably wouldn't use real chocolate for this. i'd probably use 'pate a glacer' otherwise known as coating compound for this. you won't have to deal with thermo-shock or tempering issues and this is what it is made for. it is much more fluid so that you won't have to worry about overly thick shells either. i just went to a restaurant that had an ice cream ball skewered and dipped in white chocolate. the shell was nicely thin, but because it had been stored in the freezer it was ridiculously hard (in other words, they didn't coat it right at service time) and it wasn't the easiest thing to eat. but commercial products like dove bars and stuff all use pate a glacer and the coating is thin enough and melts nicely so isn't too hard when frozen opposed to real chocolate. since you're doing such a large quantity, you might have to make this sacrifice in terms of quality to make your job easier. i've had to scoop (with a small melon baller, no less) and roll in nuts about 500 sherbet balls, so i can sympathize...and yes, i did it inside a freezer !

yes tammy, they're all straight and you just bend them where the stem meets the fork or whatever is comfortable for you. it's just easier to dip if the fork is angled. edited to add: just about any two or three pronged fork is fine. i got a couple of cheap ones from michael's craft store and they work fine.

Hi Kerry, I'm about 95% sure that he advised using the spatula at a 90 degree angle in order to remove more filling (leaving a concave top) and that we shouldn't scrape with the spatula either tilted toward or away from the mold. This particular technique was being used when he was filling 'fruits de mer' (tempered gianduja filled seashells) and basically just poured the filling into the cavities rather than carefully piping or filling the cavities individually. Anyone else remember this tip?

and just to enlighten us uncultured 'mericans, was tip or service charge ever brought up at any of your meals? i'm assuming it is all factored into the cost of the meal which makes budgeting for a trip like that much easier? great report and thank you bryan!

don't forget your lime juice!

i don't think you'll find any organics that have luster in them, but you can find regular organic food coloring and organic paste food coloring at places like whole foods and other on-line retailers of organic products just do a google search for organic food coloring and you'll get a decent result. i don't know about organic cocoa butters.

Now I'm picturing letting the bonbon slip off the fork at an angle, then keeping the fork off the surface let it run up the vertical side of the bonbon as you pull it away rather than pull it straight out. I suppose the little divots in the vertical side would heal before it sets. ← imagine the bonbon has just slid off the fork (slow motion)...the tines are just at the bottom edge of the bonbon, touching the paper...rather than pulling the fork directly back and away from the bonbon, you simply slide the fork to the left or right along that bottom edge, still touching the paper and the bottom edge of the bonbon so that you avoid leaving little points of chocolate along that bottom edge... hmmm, time to take pictures, eh?

This might be interesting to BryanZ and the molecular gang. I was recently googling mortar and pestle (mostly to figure out which one was which ) and they had a photo on the Wikipedia page bottom right that showed pulverized plant product using liquid nitrogen to get a powder instead of a paste. I thought it was pretty neat and it would be an interesting way (if one had access to liquid nitrogen) to make fruit dusts and stuff on the cheap. Anyone else have any ideas for this?

A Thai mortar and pestle (made of inexpensive ceramic) is what you should use for light pounding and works very well for papaya salad as it is very tall. They are available at a lot of Asian markets and are dark brown with a wood pestle. They usually run about $11USD and up. A stone/granite mortar and pestle set is what you want for curry pastes and other harder to grind items. These are a bit more expensive as they are much heavier and probably harder to carve. Again, available at Asian markets (and Latin markets). They run around $20+ depending on size. All of you are making such great food! Thai food and cookware online source. They have both kinds of mortar and pestle. They call the pottery one a Lao style mortar and pestle. They're asking about $18. I've never ordered from this site, but they look like they have a lot of good stuff.

Bond Girl, thanks for posting this...I'm bumping it in the hopes that someone will see it and participate and we'll have a Golden Scoop eGulleteer!

I think, and correct me if I'm wrong gap, but do you mean rather than pulling the fork straight out from under the bonbon that you gently let it come out and then let the tips of the dipping fork run along the bottom edge of the bonbon so you don't get any little pointy bits of chocolate sticking out? Does that help David J? I will absolutely work on a short pictorial.

a.k.a. arrozé also, financiers! only with browned butter, please.

Gastro88, you can always buy a "Benriner"! It is a plastic, Japanese-made mandolin that comes with three different julienne blades (or you can use it without for just plain slicing). They're usually available at most Asian markets...small ones are around $17 and large ones are around $25+. They're very affordable if you can splurge on a European style mandoline and they work great...so great I've julienned a thumb without feeling it until it was too late . But your idea for the peeler and knife also sounds ingenious. I rarely, if ever, use tamarind in my papaya salad and it comes out okay (but I don't always look for perfectly traditional or authentic tasting stuff...just cook to my tastes) I recently watched a demo by a Thai chef named Chat Mingkwan and he gave a really cute tip, which I thought was a fun one. Forgive me if I'm reiterating something from further upthread or if it is so simple it is stupid... You know how with asparagus, there's a point on the stalk that is right where the tough woody part becomes tender and you can snap off the ends very easily there? The same principle applies to lemongrass! You just bend the stalk around six inches or so (around that much) from the base and wherever it snaps off the easiest is where you should discard the top half. The rest, to the base should be decently tender and flavorful. edited to add: link to benriner on amazon but don't buy from Amazon as all the purveyors are overpriced. Should be much cheaper at an Asian market. These are what professionals use in restaurants too...you'd be surprised. here's another link to Korin Knife which is about the right price considering how expensive the rest of their stuff is!

i think italian meringue is a bit creamier, but it also depends on how much sugar you add to either one of them. and you're not 'cooking' the egg whites over the bain marie...more like pasteurizing them (140-160F). if you're just going to brown the top of the meringue after topping the pie, then it might be better to do swiss meringue if you're at all concerned about salmonella (rare, but it could happen). even with the hot syrup being added when making italian meringue, i don't think the syrup can sustain a high temperature long enough to pasteurize the egg whites after being added unless you're making a huge amount. edited to add: there's no taste difference, but you can always add a splash of vanilla extract or something (very finely minced candied lemon peel!) to the meringue at the end of mixing if you'd like to do more than be sweet and a textural contrast to the pie itself.