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alanamoana

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Posts posted by alanamoana

  1. Tammy, you did a great job! Congratulations!

    Based on some of your comments with regard to the pear and gouda: shave raw pear and shave the cheese, toss with a little bit of the sauce (unreduced) and serve along with the gouda frico. that way you get flavor layering with the uncooked cheese and the frico. the freshness of raw pear and the cooked sauce. sort of like a pear and cheese salad.

    overall, i think you really took the idea and ran with it and it came out well. the fun part of these challenges (for me) has been seeing how someone interprets the dessert and then when they're done, the way they (and everyone else) analyzes it and how they'd do it differently. somehow, coming up with even more ideas for something they might not have tried had they not been challenged to do so in the first place.

    have a happy holiday and pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

  2. :laugh: i love the pile of seeds in your colander...and then looking at the already juiced halves of the yuzu, there are still tons of seeds inside of them! :shock:

    hiroyuki, do you know if the little bottles of yuzu juice are, in fact, yuzu juice even though the english translation is citron?

  3. i would think that it has something to do with corn syrup or invert sugar added to the recipe.

    but, we'd have to see the recipe.

    10 minutes seems like an awfully long time. unless the ganache was broken and you were trying to bring it back together, you should just mix it (even with an immersion blender) until the entire batch is glossy and smooth...then stop.

  4. I'm so glad I found this topic.  I had this experience with a can of Eagle sweetened condensed milk last night.  I called my source for all baking related answers (mom) and she said she's had this too, used the can anyway and we've all lived to tell. 

    But then she asked me a question.  Is there any difference between the Eagle Sweetened condensed milk and the Magnolia?  Magnolia is usually cheaper.  Is Eagle better?  So, now I'm coming to my other source for all baking related answers.  Tell me -- what have your experiences been with the two?  Do you have a preference?

    some of the cheaper brands of scm have other ingredients besides milk and sugar. check the label. in the general food topics, a fellow eGulleteer donbert did a side by side tasting of scm and dulce de leche he made with 24 cans of various brands cooked to varying degrees of darkness. check out his food blog for results and an answer to your question as he gave results of a blind tasting as well.

    edited to add link to donbert's blog: here it is

  5. I never juice a fresh yuzu and never use bottled yuzu products. I only use the zest for sashimi and other garnishes. I don't know what is actually in those bottles but I suspect its very little yuzu.-Dick

    the ingredients are listed in english as: "citron juice", but in japanese as "yuzu no sui"

    this could be a mistranslation as the japanese clearly says yuzu juice. citron is a different animal. however, based on flavor alone, i'm pretty confident it is yuzu juice. there are bottles that are sold that have salt added to them. i wouldn't buy that variety because i'm sure the salt is added as a preservative.

    based on the cost of the small bottles of juice that i do buy, i think it is actually yuzu juice. and relatively decent yuzu juice, at that.

    i use it to flavor desserts.

  6. my question is always "why didn't i think of that"...that is, if they are really making money. but my mind isn't that devious. i don't think i could ever try to pass off someone else's product as my own, nor would i want to!

  7. well, i for one am exhausted by your trip! i don't think i have ever done that much in 66 hours in new york...when i lived there! but i guess that's the luxury (or demand, depending on how you look at it) of being a tourist.

    thanks henry and ling for a look into your great adventure!

    p.s. when are we going to see 66 hours in paris?! :blink:

  8. AnnaN, i think your efforts are great. for a newbie, you've done a lot more experimentation than i have (as a professional) and it is great to see. it is also fun for me to see how much fun you are having. i guess it is helpful to have someone so skilled and giving with their time as kerry around to dispense advice and molds!

    lexy, you can also use cellophane which you can buy easily at craft stores. make them look like a big piece of candy by twisting the ends, or even tie the ends with ribbon after wrapping around the nougat.

  9. hey ling,

    check out the chocolate bars when you open them. i bought several when i was there last and all of them had tons of bloom. also, i got an assortment of ganaches as well and most of them were sort of "eh". disappointing, considering the source. maybe this is what happens when one gets too big.

    from what i understand, all of the enrobed ganaches are made at the brooklyn shop. the manhattan shop makes all the "non-skilled" things like panned nuts, chocolate covered cheerios, etc.

    it is a pretty impressive shop though, isn't it (i mean the kitchen, not the store).

  10. if you don't know anything about tempering chocolate, i might suggest using chocolate chips (the kind for cookies) so that you don't have to hassle with it.

    otherwise, you might want to look at the demo on tempering (milk) chocolate here. the only thing different is that with dark chocolate, you can take it a degree or two higher as your working temperature.

    good luck!

  11. ... I would have been delighted with cutting-edge food that tasted good, but I didn't feel this was the case with a few of the items we chose. If you take away the beautiful presentation on the plates (and the "coolness" factor from certain ingredients/techniques), the taste of the food overall left me underwhelmed...

    ...I thought the plating was very creative and beautiful, but unfortunately I didn't enjoy the food as much as I hoped I would.

    ling, i could not have said it better myself. this is how i felt the desserts were as well.

  12. I have never done one nor ate one, as we have no gingerbread house traditions here in Portugal. Anyway I'm trying it for the first time this week as I've bought one ready to assemble gingerbread house at IKEA (and no, this is not a joke!) I hope to do something really kitsch. Do you think buttercream will work for gluing the pieces?

    filipe, buttercream will probably be too soft and won't set up enough to use as glue. the standard "glue" is royal icing. powdered sugar, a few drops of lemon juice and egg whites. a couple of egg whites to a pound of powdered sugar. after it is mixed, either thin it out or thicken it with more egg whites or sugar. it needs to be pretty thick.

  13. cool! i thought tien had gone back to cafe boulud after cafe gray...i know that david is his friend (probably worked at daniel/cafe boulud together). nice to see a familiar name!

    to be honest, on my most recent trip to nyc (in september) i was rather disappointed with desserts at wd-50. i ate every one on the menu at the time and they just didn't satisfy me in the way that i think desserts should satisfy. this is hard to describe because i don't want to discount the very modern approach that alex and wylie have with food. but to compare, the duck app that lorna and henry ate was one of the most delicious things! none of the desserts were as flavorful and exciting in the same way.

    lorna and henry, great report so far. can't wait to see the rest of your trip. i'm in awe of both of you with how much you accomplished in such a short time (and how much you ate!!!) :smile:

  14. We forgot to take a picture of our xiao long bao from Joe's Shanghai, but we were both excited to try them since we've read quite a few good things. To be honest, I thought the xiao long bao at Joe's Shanghai sucked. They were filled with soup--but it was very mediocre chicken stock, not the fatty porky broth that I love. The skins were of average thickness. I wouldn't recommend them.

    i agree with you lorna, i don't love joe's shanghai. i prefer "new green bo" for xiao long bao. very divey and in chinatown, but veeeerrry good! almost sticky broth (from the pork fat), always hot and fresh.

  15. Klary! what a beautiful dessert. i'm so impressed with what you did with this challenge. maybe it will make you want to make more plated desserts in the future?!

    all of the different textures, temperatures, flavors on the plate, but all tied together with a unified theme. that is exactly what a plated dessert should be. you're a natural!

    congratulations on a job well done. now go walk off that sugar high!!! :laugh:

  16. Is it easier to decorate the pieces first and then assemble?  Also, is there a trick to the Royal Icing--is it supposed to be like a paste?  I am making my first gingerbread house with my daughter today and am a little nervous.  The last time I made one as a child, the roof caved in!

    it is much easier to decorate when the pieces are flat. let the icing set and then glue it all together. having said that, it depends on the house pattern you're using. just always keep in mind where your seams are and how you are going to glue it together once the candy is in place.

    you'll have fun! don't worry too much, half the fun is being with your daughter eating the candy!

  17. We had baklava.  In addition to the traditional ingredients, the filling also included chocolate and chopped dates.

    gallery_23736_355_14092.jpg

    Beautiful, Patrick! Minus the dates (or not), but with the dark chocolate, I bet this would be wonderful with pistachio paste, too.

    Thank you, Pontormo. Baklava is really one of my favorite things, and I'd love to try more variations on it. Now that you mention it I'm kinda curious how nut paste-based filings would turn out.

    hey patrick,

    i made a dessert that was the cigar style baklava (i'm sure it has another name, i just don't know it) and my filling was a combination of chopped gianduja, chopped hazelnuts and some other stuff. the soaking syrup was flavored with a bunch of stuff that i can't remember right now, but it was a very nice dessert.

    i'll check to see if i have the recipe somewhere.

  18. i ran out of steam and haven't bothered to finish my house (or doors!), or make a nice base :sad: ...

    it was my first gingerbread house and to me, the fun was in baking the pieces and gluing them together. i was amazed that it all, for the most part, fit together. and besides, i love the gingerbread dough and ate way too much of the stuff to bother with finishing :raz:

    i got the template from this website.

    gallery_10108_3240_764070.jpg

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