alanamoana

vanessa, here at sea level, i just made a recipe and cooked it to about 246 degrees F...they seemed to set up pretty well. soft enough to be chewy, but firm enough to hold their shape for enrobing. let me know if you need me to pm you a recipe.

i bet it would be good baked into a baklava type dessert as well. wrap in phyllo with some chocolate or gianduja and make a tasty syrup to pour over it. sounds like good stuff.

it's a potato, but the shape is the same. you cut out little blocks of carrot or potato, keep the ends flat and cut around the sides to creat seven sides. it is narrower on towards the ends. edited to add: borrowed this photo from another web-site, and these are not perfectly turned.

Count me among them! Can anybody explain what those are and for what they're used? ← take a look at this website to get an introduction. then you can check out this thread to see what the laymen of eGullet are doing with some of the stuff. of course there's more...

okay, this topic has really hit the gutter now...

before i had a kitchenaid, the cakes i made were more european torte-like in method. it is a little easier to manage when all you're doing is whipping egg whites and whisking sugar and yolks instead of beating butter with sugar. i hope your cake comes out delicious. let us know the results please.

one thing i love about the food blogs, and phlawless' bog was exemplary of this, is how it makes me want to move to wherever the blogger lives! it is such a great introduction to another area in our extremely diverse country. what a pleasure to see how you live, phlawless. i was constantly amazed at how much you accomplished each day, especially with the eating local challenge and your little peanut M. congratulations on surviving your first foodblog!

holy cr@p! 1) nyc restaurant week 2) our second (in a short period of time) youngster blog 3) hapa blogging (that'd be a half asian person for you haoles) 4) road trip 5) molecular gastronomy experimentation that's a mighty tall order bryanz, but i'm sure you can fill it!

man walks into a psychiatrist's office wearing nothing but saran wrap... doctor says "clearly, i can see your nuts!" ba-da-bing!

ling, it seems to me that at every canadian restaurant you eat in, they garnish so many of the desserts with gooseberries. are they indigenous to the western regions? i'll never understand why people garnish with ridiculous items that don't add anything to the dish/dessert...unless of course with the chocolate sushi it was the only decent thing on the plate the baked yogurt sounds good...can you describe it a little more please?

also, when you first show up, get the lay of the land. find out where everything is through good observation. that way you don't have to ask someone every time you need something. like, where's the flour? where's a spoon? where's a bowl? etc. drives people nuts.

i had a bunch of cherries, blueberries and strawberries...so i made a sauce with some which i then poured over the fresh berries. layered that with sponge cake and some pastry cream lightened with whipped cream and had a berry trifle!

from another thread, it looks like alex stupack from alinea is moving to new york to work with wylie at wd-50. if he's settled in, you could also check that out. also, why not some traditional stuff at the highest level...check out sebastien rouxel at per se. maggie, don't be shy...have you checked out the cooking with alginate and transglutaminase threads on the cooking forum? bryanz is 19 years old and a college student and he's forging ahead experimenting with all this stuff. you've got all the tools and such at hand...just go for it.

ling, your pecan bars look lovely. i like that there doesn't seem to be as much syrup in relation to nuts (unless it's hiding underneath!). i like it nuttier (like myself) and don't always love how sweet pecan pie is...although i looooove pecans. did you use a recipe from recipeGullet?

kerry, that's very cool. thanks for the demo on using that type of silicone! nice "groundhog"!

so last night i tried to make a small quantity of cole slaw...was nearly there until i dressed it and realized i had used too much dressing. so, i shredded the other half of the cabbage and now i have enough cole slaw to last until next week... so much for good intentions!

blodgett, fox, wolf, viking...i'm pretty sure they all make commercial convection ovens. didn't mean to assume you'd know what i was talking about. most convections as PamR mentioned hold at least five sheet pans on the adjustable racks. as i mentioned earlier, they can come in gas or electric some with options that allow you to turn off the fan while cooking. here's a link with a picture of one type of convection oven. i hope it works. this web site has a bunch of commercial stuff and you can get a good idea of what is available.

i too have the disease! is there a twelve step program? i blame it on working in restaurants and not understanding the concept of only prepping for two people... what's worse is my husband doesn't really love leftovers so i end up eating most of them.

i feel like cookies bake much better in a convection oven. but maybe that's just me. i'm used to working in restaurant kitchens and that's just what we have. maybe you could find a stacked convection oven to use for cakes and cookies. especially if your client base is building, you could probably justify the cost. convections can be found in electric and gas varieties...again, i would recommend that at least one of them have the option to turn the fan off if needed. mostly that doesn't matter, but i have had it happen with thin sponge-type cakes that the fan fluffs the batter before it sets and you have funky looking cakes (but this isn't always the case). even with convection, you'll have to rotate your product during cooking as i've yet to find any oven that cooks totally evenly... of course, if you buy a deck, if your bread production expands beyond the capacity of your wood burning oven, you can always do some loaves in the deck... again, i'm creating more questions for you!

i never take what i read (especially from the new york times) at face value. of course you can spin just about anything said, read, in print, on the radio etc. any which way you like. that is what is so deceptive about statistics...they can be used by anyone to say completely different things. i found myself avoiding products which contain hfcs because of some vague sense that it is "bad". i end up choosing things which are more natural in general, but sometimes also do contain sugar. of course this article does nothing to address the environment with regard to producing hfcs...but that isn't the point of the article, so it doesn't need to address that fact. it does point out that the corn used to produce hfcs can already be genetically modified...so where you go from there is almost moot if you're concerned about that aspect of food in general. i guess, i just like to see more than one side of the story.

habit...in restaurants we call just about anything a tuile that is crispy and is a component of a dessert...hehehe but i will pm you for the recipe!

What chances are you talking about? I'm confused by this post.... ← Keeping a raw custord mix carries the risk of bacterial growth. The ingredients are an ideal culture. The risk is small, but present even if you are careful about refridgeration. ← most ice cream bases are cooked to a point that bacteria should be killed. also, proper cooling and storing should make it okay to store for about three days (usually a little longer) brulee is raw, but then cooked...again, to the point that bacteria are killed. shouldn't be a problem unless you're using old or already rotten ingredients.

gfron1, those mousse (meese?) look delicious and your tuiles are beautiful! great job. p.s. i love how you're always finding cute things which aren't normally dishes on which you plate your desserts! are those coasters?! they look good and match the dessert as well.

oh...then maybe you do need a deck. most convection ovens can't really handle that many cakes too well...i'd say you could bake six at once efficiently. more than that and when it comes time to rotate cakes it could get messy. but even in a deck oven you'd have to shuffle them around front to back etc. and that could be a problem... i'd also recommend if you bake in a deck oven to put overturned sheet pans on the bottom of the oven to give some insulation to the bottom of the oven. most decks have temperature controls for the top and floor of the oven, but usually the point of a deck oven is the nice hot stone floor for baking bread. sorry if i've made it more confusing...the better decks that have more delicate temp controls, etc. are not usually american made. the europeans make great decks, but i don't know the name brands.

i agree. sugar sweetened coke is better! and i do believe that supersizing has as much to do with obesity as anything else. i doubt one ingredient can do as much damage as people say...but it goes along with the trend in the united states of people not wanting to take responsibility for their own actions. if they can find a scapegoat...so much the better. psychologically though, i'm still tempted to avoid food items which contain hfcs.