McDuff

I've been making raspberry buttercream at work lately using Rose Levy Beranbaum's suggestion of zapping the puree in the microwave. For 28 oz of swiss meringue b/c, I use 10 of puree that is reduced on hi power on three 5 minute cycles, or whatever it takes to make it thicken. Don't forget the lemon juice. the buttecream has an astonishing color and a really nice taste.

Look around for a cartridge case cleaner, brand name Lyman I would think. Nimrods use them to clean brass cartridge cases. They have a big bowl on the top to which a piece of plywood could easily be fastened and the molds fastened to that.

"And while you're at it, why don't you bring along some chicken skins and lobster shells."

If you overshoot the temperature for the kind of chocolate, it will go out of temper. But if you can bring it up to and not exceed that temperature, it will stay in temper. It's easiest to do in the microwave. Trouble is, you can't do a whole lot of it this way. I've been using Mycryo from Barry Callebaut to temper chocolate and it works pretty well. edited to add, referring to point #2 of the instructive post above...I once worked at a country club where I had a small warming cabinet to use as a proofer. It took so long to warm up I would literally turn it on in April and off in November. I used it to melt big big bowls of chocolate and found out that if I put them on the bottom shelf, they would melt to exactly 90 degrees and never go out of temper.

← I've read Ricki Carroll's book, bought her mozzarella kit and made some, spent beaucoup bucks on a couple of vintage cheesemaking books, found a source for raw milk ( guy also had a whole cheesemaking suite in the barn for lease) but have nowhere to ripen the stuff, so I'm interested to find out about the wine refrigerator, because that's exactly what I thought would work.

I read the above-referenced article about mangosteens in the nytimes last year and was dying to try one. The fruit guys at work hadn't even heard of them. I was in Harrod's a year ago and in the fruit display there was a sign that said Mangosteens. I told the lady I wanted one perfect mangosteen, and she said, reaching into the case and grabbing the sign, I'm sorry, we don't have any today.

I love this book. The whipped cream pound cake and Marie's rich gingerbread are two items I've made multiple times.

Or you could buy a couple of cases of Orbitz, if they even make it anymore, and strain the little fruity balls out of it.

This is interesting because I just bought an old soapstone sink out of the back of a guy's pickup truck for $150. It's three feet wide, 21 inches deep and 25 inches tall with a backsplash. I have to remove an 8 foot formica counter, dishwasher, and two cabinets to install it. I already have the big plumbing problem of the drain hookup solved. And I have priced out faucets, which are not going to be cheap, like $228. The problem is going to be the two small pieces of counter material I am going to need to go on either side, about 24x28. Soapstone would be $330 apiece, plus shipping from Green Mountain soapstone, unless I want to drive to the Saratoga area to pick it up. Lowe's not only won't quote be a price because it's less than 25 sq ft, but they won't sell me the corian, Bill Shea's corian hasn't responded to a quote request. I went to a local granite place and they can do two pieces of black or ubatuba for about $225 each. The sink must weigh 300 lbs. It's going to be fun to move off the porch. Once it's installed, the bottom of the sink will only be 23 inches off the floor, about like reaching down to the bottom of a garbage disposal. And who knows when this will get done?

Guy gets into a cab in Scollay Square in Boston, (a long time ago) and the cabbie turns and affably asks, "Where to, buddy?" Guy says, "You know where a fella can get scrod in this town?" Cabbis shakes his head and says, "I've heard that question asked a million times, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive."

Living in the same city/province/country as Sam ... *sigh* ... he's right. Most of us are pretty laissez-faire. Although, there was this one time ... True story: Had dinner at a local "greek" restaurant with a friend. Usual fare - tsatziki, hummus, spanikopita, etc. My dining companion was an excellent greek cook, and commented to me the tsatziki tasted kinda wierd. I tasted ... it was Kraft "Creamy Cucumber" dressing with some shaved cucumber!! In addition, the spanikopta was soggy and chewy ... crap by any standard. Except the owner's apparently. We told the waitress we didn't want them as they were inedible and to please remove them from the bill. Yet when the bill was presented, the aforementioned items were still there! We brought this to the attention of the waitress who informed us the owner said we had ordered the items so we had to pay for them. We asked to speak to the manager. He repeats his point. We repeat ours. Nobody's moving, so I say "Fine, just give us the items we returned and I'll take them home for the dog" (over the top?? ). He says they're already thrown out. "Then we're not paying for something we didn't receive" and we go to leave. He screams out "THIEF" and yells at the waitress to call the cops. We sit down on the couch, not wanting to cause a further scene, and wait for the cops. While we're waiting, anybody who comes in asks us if we're waiting for a table. We politely inform them why we're waiting. Two couples leave. The police arrive. Manager explains his side. Cop takes my dinner companion and I outside and says "Simple contract law ... you ordered, you pay. The fact that it wasn't any good doesn't play here. If you want to sue him later for failure to deliver, different story. Bottom line, pay the man". So we did, and I never returned. And I told everyone I know this story. He went out of business less than a year later. A. ← As the estimable Burma Jones used to say, "Whoa! Intimidatia!" That's unbelievable.

I always liked the old Persian version...."A man has a wife for duty, a boy for pleasure, and a melon for ecstasy."

We went to the chain with the big buffalo head and the grinning animated raccoons the other night because my wife wanted red meat and we were in the neighborhood. Ordered the lobster fritter special app, caesar salad and prime rib med. rare with smashed spuds. Salads came first, no silverware, no bread. Then out popped the lobster things, overfried with lots of little frialator crunchies in the basket. They were awful. Right in the middle of that came the dinners and my wife's was clearly not mr. She flagged down the hostess, who got the manager, who made everything right, comping the fritters and a couple of drinks and got her a nice new rib. The waiter was not up to it, but we still left him almost 20%. I'm a pushover. It's not a lot of money, a couple of more dollars than the nominal tip he really deserved, but he's working for a living and it's not easy work. It might be a while before we darken that joint's doors again. Very amateurish work by the waiter, but a nice recovery by the manager. I did walk out on a check once in a now long-gone deli in Copley Sq in Boston when I found french fries mashed into my reuben. But I was probably being obnoxious. I got into trouble there more than once for tying the lights over the table up on it's cord because it was right in my eyes.

I worked the 5:30 shift today and did the morning bake. We have two rack ovens and one is normally pushed up to 480 to do all the breads during the day and needs to be reset to 360 to do all the morning pastries. Well, I didn't check and rolled a rack of scones, biscuits, puff pastry items and such right into it, set the timer for 18 minutes and went away. Toasted. The only things I could salvage were the puff pastry stuff. And then I had to crawl into the freezer and make another complete setup and then bake it right. I eventually went home early not feeling well, forgot my bp pill on the way out the door this am, and the last time I did that I wound up in the emergency room.

I was asking the produce guy at the earthy crunchy groceria where I work why we didn't have passion fruit and he said they're $2.50 apiece for him to buy.

Ok, I just have one question..... if one takes care to have all their ingredients at room temperature when mixing a cake batter, then why would one want to put the batter in the refrigerator before it's baked? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of "room temperature"....whatever that purpose is? Does anyone have a definitive answer to the "room temperature" thing? What's it supposed to do, exactly? I've never been sure about the exact reason.......... ← Part of the answer is that butter creams best at about 70 degrees. And just like a bread dough, a cake batter has an optimum temperature. We all know that egg whites separate best when cold, yet beat up better when warmed. Probably you get more elasticity from eggs when they are at room temp when added to a batter. As far as putting the batter in the reefer, I've never heard that advocated, but double acting baking powder releases 25% of it's leavening power when moistened and the rest when heated. So letting a batter rest in the pans for 20 minutes or so should encourage a lighter more evenly risen cake. I think the fallen cake may have too much sugar.

I was reading a book the other night and in the chapter on James Beard it mentioned that he once told the story of a monkey table, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that's where it started. That and Indiana Jones.

I had to go to an internal "pastry summit" at work yesterday, and wanted to hurl out the car window on the way home. What amateurish dreck. So when I got home, I made some nice chicken wrapped in pancetta and thrown in tomato sauce, served over farfalle with some nice stravecchio, an angel food cake with strawberries, and coffee gelato, using a CI recipe and my hand cranked Donvier. I can now give the authoritative answer for how long one must keep the can in the freezer in order to get to back-to-back batches of ice cream.....8 years!

I once made passionfruit gel inserts for a wedding cake that worked nicely. You freeze them in the same pan the cake was baked in, then pop them out and add them as a layer.

Why not make beggar's purses? We used to make them by the thousands at a country club. Even dessert sized, with cake and ganache and heat proof jam inside.

Heard someone at work the other day refer to a wide load as a "porchetta."

I'm wondering if the rising loaf was moist enough. If it had started to dry out, any gas accumulating might have made a bubble under a too-dry-skin, and then when it baked, you got you a little blister with a crunchy top. I always do as Reinhart suggests and use cooking spray and plastic wrap.

Now, wasn't she something? How could you resist anybody who described a properly domed muffin as "perky." And that collection of rancid fats and flours? Did you ever......?

In the Time Life series called The Good Cook, in the volume on cakes, there are pictures and a description for making ice cream cakes, which I have adapted to use at work. I put a parchment round into a 9" cake pan, line it with an acetate collar, drop in a layer of cake, then I use a big muffin scoop to put in half a half gallon of ice cream which I have softened in the microwave briefly. I spread the ice cream smooth and then put in a layer of an oreo like cookie run through the food processor and mixed with warm caramel sauce until it's like streusel. This goes into the freezer until it's hard enough to spread with another layer of a different flavor of ice cream. Then I freeze the whole thing till rock hard, then unmold, peel off the acetate and ice it with Diplomat cream rather than whipped cream. I press these things called chocolate blossom curls into the bottom border, pipe on some gay rosettes, slap it into a dome, label it, and put it in the freezer on the sales floor. The all natural ice cream cake, and if you've ever read the ingredient label on any other commercially produced ice cream cake, it will give you nightmares.

To follow protocol strictly, there also has to be a Swiss Army knife in there somewhere.