McDuff

How about mangosteens?

I made a couple of jars last summer and they look exactly like yours. So much salt that it won't dissolve and at this point, after they got forgotten behind the bread box for months, I won't eat them. Way too scary looking. I looked at a bunch of recipes before I made them and they varied wildly in the amount of salt to use. Don't know what's a happy medium on the salt.

I didn't cruise through the Julia recipe as I already made my apple tart, but I'm intrigued by the shortening and the ledge. I am at a distinct advantage with the shortdough shells I use at work, but trust me, I've made a few from scratch. Stretching yourself is what it's all about. Develop your instincts for discernment...is this a recipe I want to bother with? Does this seem complete enough to give me the desired result? And I agree with the writing thing. Some recipes are just impossible. I just bought Peter Reinhart's Pizza book, so I will be making pizza this weekend.

I tried the Champagne Fingers in Nick Malgieri's cookie book last week and I bet they would work for you in this application. They could have been drier, but that's easy enough to do.

You're gonna wind up smelling like a pound cake.

There they are. Always find things in the last place you look.

I thought I broke something once when this happened to me.

Never heard of paprika pests before. I am going to check my new jar of paprika, also the decade old can that sits decoratively in the spice cabinet. I have made bread more than once that turned out to have critters, and once started stirring risotto that began waving back. As for garbagey stuff, if I can rinse it down the drain I do, otherwise I freeze it and it goes out with the trash on Mondays.

I just did a web search for Kidde gel and got a hit. But the site tried to download an excel file to my computer and the firewall blocked it, and then the puter froze. I don't care for the newer "safer" apple peelers. If you look at a vintage hand cranker and a modern one, there is a fundamental difference in the blade. I used to use one that had a springloaded arm with an angled blade that had a little chipbreaker like a wood plane. The spring held the arm against the apple, the chipbreaker rode against the skin and the blade peeled the apple. I was able to disable the slicing function. On modern "safety" peelers, the blade is rounded and at least on the few I've examined, it looked to be hard or impossible to disable the thingie that slices the apple into spiral rings. You can always tell fruit or squash peeled with one of these as the surface will have a narrow concave spiral carved into it. The old ones can be expensive if you find them in antique stores. The one I used my boss had bought for 75 cents at a yard sale. He didn't deserve it.

Actually it's called Kidde Gel and I doubt that it's available retail. Apple jelly gives a nice shine. The Kidde Gel smells like apricot sours. To me, the smell of hot apricot is the smell of the bakeshop. I get the same reaction from smelling red wine being boiled down to make bordelaise sauce.

The odd thing is that I don't feel any more competent, or professional, than anybody else. And by cheating, I mean we buy the tart shells already made and baked, and the pastry cream, which is as good as anything I can make, comes in a 20lb pail. The apples I peel and slice by hand. My big boss was around at Christmas the day I made 15 of these and told me to get a slicer, but nothing beats a sharp paring knife. It's nothing but short dough, pastry cream, apples, butter, cinnamon sugar and apricot glaze. Who couldn't make it? Even if an "amateur" took it on as a Sunday project, it's all building blocks of French patisserie. Make these things enough times and it becomes second nature. In order to standardize things, the earthy crunchy grocery store I work at has bakehouses all over the country that ship us premade high quality components. The creative part of my job is in finding things to do with all the bought components. We obviously get more profit out of items made inhouse. I've been trying to post a picture of some small tarte aux pommes and some lemon curd tarts, but they got sent to me embedded in a Word document, as did this other pix, and I can't remember what sequence of programs I used to break it out and save it as a jpg. We have caramel sauce, all natural, good stuff, which I mix with walnuts, spread into the bottom of a mini tart shell, pipe with frangipane, bake, glaze and garnish with a walnut, and bingo..Francois Payard's caramel walnut tart. I spread peanut butter into a chocolate tart shell, fill with ganache, then mix equal parts of pastry cream, caramel sauce, and whipped cream, pipe that on, drizzle with a thread of caramel, and I've got a 5 dollar dessert. I'm slowly being very subversive and changing our pastry case to a French look. Anybody can master this stuff. I'm certainly not trying to intimidate, but encourage people. If I can do this, anybody can. My obsession maybe struck harder and earlier, I've been at it (and cooking on a professional level) for 30 years. I get a huge kick out of fixing someone up with a good dessert. I watched people looking at our self serve pastry case at brownies and stuff today, and I went over and said, you want chocolate, try this. Jivara milk chocolate pot de creme. We're undoubtedly the only store out of almost 150 who sell it. I think it might be Pierre's recipe. I use Jacques Pepin's creme caramel recipe. My big bosses don't even know where I get these ideas, but my wife does, because she trips over the pile of books next to the bed every morning. btw, the apples are granny smiths.

This is jumping ahead, and cheating. I make these every day. People love them. The one in Julia's books has apple compote on the bottom. This has pastry cream.

I made it today also. I made one change..used 1/3 cup honey, plus the tablespoon rather than the white sugar. It's chilly in the house so I put the dough in a big bowl with a cover and set that into another bowl full of probably too hot water. Pretty straightforward. Made one 4 braid, one 6 braid and two little teeny 6 braids for the kids. Had me wishing I had a digital camera so I could pose the terriers behind these 4 inch long braids with a caption "No oven bang here. Note giant Westies in background about to pounce on warm bread." The kids actually asked if the stuff was edible because I've been known to leave little knotted rolls on the table at Bertucci's.

I bought my brother in law a Vic Firth for Christmas a year ago, not knowing he was a pepper junkie, and he was still talking about this year at Christmas. Apparently they also sell salt mills as someone at work had a catalog. We have cinnamon mills, nutmeg mills and all kinds of pepper mills at work.

Some sugar notes from school Here's some notes from the sugar and chocolate artistry class I took at J&W. It's a little more involved than just boiling sugar and water. I used to look at stuff the fulltime students were making and despair that I would never be able to do it. But when my turn came, my sugar stuff came out pretty good too. But you need to follow the directions.

Very nice indeed. That stuff is better looking than most of what I saw at Johnson and Wales, sad to say. You look to be the guy we ought to be asking about the macarons.

Cocktail sauce served as gazpacho.

I haven't cooked in a restaurant for a while, but yeah, Saturday night could get me scared. I liked to have all the prep done, everything put in place, the counters wiped down, everything nice and neat with a couple of minutes to spare before we opened. My last restaurant job, two guys, with another guy making salads and handling apps, would pound out 180 dinners. I usually handled saute, which was by far the busier station, and the other guy handled the oven, the minimal broiler work, and worked the wheel, we called it. He was driving, he knew where we were going. We could work without talking, which was a good thing, because we hated each other. I would be hyper before service. The waitresses used to keep mini snickers in their freezer, knowing chocolate would tame the beast. And the nerves weren't because I was unsure of my skill, because when I could do it, I really did it well, but because if the two guys in the kitchen can't keep up, it slows everything down. I was always very conscious that there were actual people waiting for my food. (Big Sigh....) I was younger then...I eventually found working in that environment to be a drag after I had to start wearing glasses at the age of 38. They would get so greasy after 5 minutes I couldn't see. I eventually turned to baking fulltime because of it's contemplative reflective nature. I find there are very few people who have similar varied experience. I really don't understand why, if you are interested in food, you don't learn how to do everything.

A two braid is rolled into two ropes and then placed in an x on the bench with the piece that runs from 7 o'clock to 2 on top. Then take the ends closest to you and do a right over left, left over right and repeat. Note that you will be braiding the loaf right at your belly and working into the smaller diameter end. This one confuses me the most. The three braid we all know, I hope. The four braid is 4 over 2, 1 over 3, 2 over 3. Repeat till done. The five braid is 1 over 3, 2 over 3, 5 over 2. Repeat till done. The six braid is 2 over 6, 1 down the middle, 5 over 1, 6 down the middle. All except the two and three braid start with ropes of equal size and length pinched together at one end with the ends of the ropes facing you. You can start a three in the middle and flip it over to finish, or just go from one end to the other. I rarely ever make a three braid. If you dust the ropes with light rye they won't grow together as they proof and you get nice separation of the ropes in the baked loaf. Biggest one I ever made was a five pounder for a bat mitzvah. Six braid with a long skinny three braid running over from end to end. I usually use the challah formula from the bakery, which is a three hour sponge loaded with honey, but no milk and only yolks, sugared yolks at that and at 20% by baker's percentages, but I also use Bo Friberg's. I fixed my 20 yr old range today so I'll bake Julia's on Sunday.

I saw Pierre on the Food Channel recently with platter of pinkish macaroons with rose petals and raspberries. They looked wild. I've tried French macaroons a bunch of times with limited success. I can never seem to get the almonds ground finely enough. And the instructions to mix the batter just till it deflates...I don't know...seems simple enough but I find these hard to make the way I want them to look. Used both Pierre's recipe and Healy and Bugat. And I tried the thing of pouring the water under the paper...totally unnecessary in my opinion. Certainly don't need it with parchment. A quick rest in the freezer and the cookies pop right off. I used to have to make almonds macs every day, the almond paste kind, and would often do coconut macs for parties. Alive Mederich has a good recipe in her little book that uses sweetened coconut and I have a formula from school that uses dessicated. Both involve heating the mixture I suppose to tighten up the egg whites, but letting it sit overnight is a new one on me.

I bought the Bread Bible solely on the looks of the cover and on Roses's reputation. I've only tried a couple of things, notably the Levy rye, and once you discover and fix the misprint in the formula, it's actually an unbelieveably good bread that will have have you running for nitrate laden fatty meats, sharp cheese, and spicy mustard. I've made it several times, but always add a minced onion to the sponge. I like making challah. Used to work at a small bakery where we made them every Thursday and Friday, all 6 braids, and then worked at a Jewish country club where I could make whatever size and shape I wanted. So I've made New Year's challah, 2 braid, 3 braid, 4 braid, 5 braid, and 6 braid. I have the braiding routines in a little table that to me is a lot easier to follow than some instructions in some books. For instance, a 6 braid is 2 over 6, 1 down the middle, 5 over 1, 6 down the middle. Repeat till done. I'll dig them out if anybody wants them. I find the 2 braid the most confusing. But if you have enough dough to make one of each, they look cool side by side.

I have that issue kicking around the house. I made the lemon curd caramel thing on a hot day at the country club during a tournament. Next day the cooks hooted at me for making a "Hollandaise" cake. Recipe needs tweaking, I think. We're renovating the bakery at the earthycrunchy grocery store and we're getting a self serve freezer case and I have in mind finding some icebox cakes for it.

Cook's Illustrated Double Chocolate Pudding, made with Callebaut and Schokinag cocoa, rather than the usual Manjari and Valronha cocoa. Not as good, but still wonderful. My daughter had two.

A cold beer I could drink without worrying about being home for Christmas.

I mean I wouldn't dip it out of the rain barrel on the back porch. Or slurp it off a cupped hosta leaf in the garden. And as far as the water in the pond down the street, W.C. Fields said it first and best. I like a little chlorine and whatnot, make that stuff inert if you don't mind.