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Oh, perfect timing! I ordered one last week at full price. 😬

Catching up with the topic, I see some new (to me) discussion of sorbets. One of my Creami adventures was a blueberry sorbet, inspired by some beautiful blueberries at the farmers market. I used Paul Raphaelson's example recipe subbing blueberries for the strawberries. It turned out great. One of his stated goals in his recipe development is to tone down the sweetness (fine by me), and I didn't know if the blueberries would prove too sweet for the recipe. Turns out it was just right. He calls for some less-sweet sugars like dextrose to supply body without taking the sweetness too high. His stabilizer mix is something he was excited about because it doesn't require heat to dissolve. The fruit is just puréed and strained - no cooking required. I also tried Dana Cree's recipe for strawberry sherbet. I modified it slightly by subbing some dextrose for part of the sugar. She calls for three grams of (unspecified) stabilizer, so since I had the ingredients for Raphaelson's recipe I used them for the sherbet.

Yeah, the Nemox is pretty small. The biggest advantage over the Pacojet is that you can freeze the product in the plastic containers which are reasonably cheap, and get the thermal mass of the steel holder when you spin. As I recall, the Paco canisters are a bit pricey. The Nemox is relatively quiet as well, and there's a Clean cycle where you can quickly run a canister of water to rinse off the works between spins (nice if you're switching flavors). I suppose the logistics for a professional kitchen would not be that different from the Paco since the Nemox is fast (and quiet!).

I decided to do a quick comparison between the Nemox Frix Air and the Ninja Creami. I've had the Nemox for years, but rarely use it. The canisters for the Nemox are quite small and fit into a heavy stainless steel holder that you freeze along with the actual canisters, which are plastic and interchangeable, like the Creami ones but small. The Nemox is enclosed, making it much quieter than the Creami. I tried out Paul Raphaelson's chocolate ice cream recipe, but used a less fancy chocolate and good old Droste cocoa rather than the single origin ones he specifies. The Nemox buzzed through the canister effortlessly, but the Creami threw a bit of a fit and I had to run it three times to get a decent result. Eventually I ended up with approximately the same result, but with a lot less drama from the Nemox. Still, the larger quantity from the Creami is an advantage. The canisters before freezing: Nemox: Creami: The blades (for comparison):

I just came across this review on the Wired Magazine site. The reviewer, Joe Ray, struggled a bit adjusting recipes for the machine, but he seems to like it overall. I like the sound of the Campari sorbet, after he adjusted the amount of alcohol.

I dined at Bulrush again on the Saturday before Christmas. I had essentially the same menu as Chris had a couple of weeks before. I posted photos to my Flickr set if you want to see what the dishes looked like.

My dinner on Thursday was amazing. Here are a couple of courses that differed from the ones that Chris posted. Course 1 Fermented Blueberries Pickled Cucumber & Purslane Blueberry Crémeux Fermented Elderflower Honey Amazake Sphere Course 7 Juniper Pickled Blueberry Bluberry Cinnamon Pecan Praline Custard Almond Daquoise Berry Milk Crumb I uploaded my full set of photos to Flickr.

I missed you guys by just a few days! I rolled into STL this afternoon and plan to check out the bar menu tonight. I'm doing the tasting menu tomorrow. Thanks for the preview!

I have the Premier grinder and have used it successfully to make masa from freshly nixtamalized corn. Lately I've switched to using a food processor. You have to do it in small batches and let it run a really long time. the corn eventually gets fine enough and sticky enough to form a ball in the processor. That's when you know it's ready.

My first attempts at the French Lean Bread. I thought it would be quite similar to the Ken Forkish white bread with poolish recipe, but the results are significantly different. The hydration in the Forkish recipe is slightly higher, but since it calls for all-purpose unbleached flour, it's much more slack than this recipe. The crumb is OK, but not great. It might help if I had the book to guide me with more detailed instructions.

This recipe / technique isn't too different from my go-to from Ken Forkish' "Flour Water Salt Yeast". I think I can do this one!

I've bought tickets to multiple dinners at Next, Alinea, Grace, L2O, and Elizabeth (in Chicago), and Empellon Cocina in New York, all using the Tock system They all take full payment up front, and don't offer refunds. (Actually, I bet you could contact Elizabeth and they'd let you off the hook - they're such nice people. ). I live near Cleveland, and there's just one restaurant that has attempted a ticket system. Jonathon Sawyer's Trentina started out as a tasting menu only place that required purchasing the table in advance. They still offer the "Menu Bianco" tasting menu, but started offering an a la carte menu and also take reservations (for the shorter menu). I suspect that a market like Cleveland just isn't big enough to sustain a ticket-only system. Don't know if STL is enough bigger to change that dynamic. I think your proposed system of half up front, remainder day of, is much more appealing. Especially since a full refund is available if you cancel in time. I've been burned a couple of times when I had to unload some Tock tickets that I couldn't use.

This just makes me so sad.

I'm glad that you enjoyed Ravintola Olo. It's funny that I don't even recall my remark to DocSconz. The menu looks similar in style to the one I had in May, though most of the ingredients are different. I had neither Reindeer nor Moose at Olo, but I had reindeer twice while in Finland, and a customer invited us to his vacation cottage on the Gulf of Finland for Moose Stew. (It was delicious!) My photos from Olo are in a set on Flickr. As you can see from the photos, I had a lot more daylight in May than you had last week.

I noticed that the AEX10 accepts fewer dies than the AEX18. Is that because it has a smaller motor?