chromedome

Yes, I was quite amused to see that course on the CIA website. "Soy Sauce...not just for Asian foods any more!" As far back as I can remember, my father has been using soy sauce in soups, stews, and meat dishes of all kinds; and as a key ingredient in the marinade he'd use with anything he put on the hibachi (hey, it was the early 70's). I grew up thinking of soy as something one could use in any savoury dish, and was quite surprised as an adult to find that it was considered exclusively "Asian" (and downright miffed when one of my dishes in cooking school was criticised as "a weak attempt at fusion" because I'd put soy in it...).

The wife of one of my cooking-school instructors used to cadge his old, dried beans (post vanilla-sugar stage) and pulverise them in her food processor. She'd sprinkle them into her linen closet after the periodic cleanings, then put her sheets back. Of course, if you're a pastrychef, that's the last thing you'd want on your sheets! The pods will retain potency for a while, and can be re-used to some extent. Try adding a previously-used pod to your pot of milk, when you make cocoa or hot chocolate. The flavour will still come through, though to a lesser degree. I've also spoken to people who use the older pods to "stretch" their use of new (expensive) pods; ie if recipe calls for three beans, use two new and two old. Also, the used beans can be used to provide a *hint* of vanilla flavour in a savoury dish...though that would be the last use for a specific bean, I should think.

They taught us that in cooking school, twenty years ago. So does anybody do it? Nooo... I guess the restaurant I work in is the exception that proves the rule. The chef/owner is very passionate about wine, and wants our customers to drink the best available product with their meals...so we have a flat mark-up policy on our wines (ie a straight "x"-dollar markup on every bottle, rather than a percentage) so that proportionally, the better wines are a better buy. I'm in no position to tell you whether we sell more wine than our peers around town...or whether we make more profit from it...but we do enjoy some serious customer loyalty.

I've been fuming for years about the Texan company getting their basmati patent...and retaining it, in the teeth of legal challenges from India. Now, as the article says, the Indian government has decided that it simply can't afford to pursue any more of these lawsuits...meaning it's open season. What next? A patent on ghee? How about cardamoms? It makes me furious every time I see one of Monsanto's TV ads about how they're using GM technology to meet their goal of feeding the world's starving millions. Rhetorical question. If the starving millions of, say, Africa stop saving their seed from year to year (as has been the case since the dawn of agriculture); and switch to a Monsanto product which produces higher yields but demands that they purchase seed annually...who's benefitting, here?

Good grief. Is there a less ethical company than Monsanto anywhere?

<blush> My bad. Was mis-informed, and did not think to check any of my multitudinous textbooks for verification. <slaps own wrist, re-reads message taped to monitor: "Should you think about this some more before you post?">

Creme Chantilly is just lightly-whipped cream. Not whipped enough to make even soft peaks, just enough to thicken it slightly so that it pours like a thin Anglaise.

Comfort Me: There is a chance that your rice cooker is actually designed to create the crust of brown, cooked-on rice at the bottom. In Iran, Afghanistan, and other countries in that region, a cook is frequently judged on his/her ability to create just such a crust, whether with the highest or lowest of technology. In Iran, for example, the crust from the bottom of the pot ("te dig", or variations on that spelling) is the portion of the dish which is alternately served to the honoured guest or scoffed by the cook before it ever leaves the kitchen. Cookbooks of Persian recipes frequently include instructions for tarting up the rice at the bottom of the pot with yogurt or eggs or both, in order to ensure the proper consistency. Reading the cookbooks of Najmieh Batmanglij, for example, she frequently comments on how much easier a good crust is now that rice cookers are readily available. Y'know...cultural differences, sort of thing.

I don't remember any *REALLY* bad roommates...though I did share an apartment for a while with a schizophrenic Uraguayan. He was a nice enough guy, except in his taste for bad cologne and polyester shirts. Problem was, he was too macho to take his meds consistently, and began to see strange things in the refrigerator (okay, there were a few items in there that I was unsure about too...but they never moved while I was looking). I found it rather funny in the movie Moulin Rouge when the narcoleptic Argentinian crashed through the ceiling. Not quite the same as a schizophrenic Uraguayan, but it felt oddly familiar.

Forgive me if this question has been asked before...I'm a newbie here, and between work and school haven't had time to slog through the archives yet. I've recently added fenugreek seeds to my pantry, as they were called for in a few savoury dishes I wanted to try. Having used them for a few months, now, I've become quite enamored of their flavour and aroma when toasted...but I'm thinking they'd be great in pastries, too. I'm going to be playing around with this for a while, but I was curious whether fenugreek seeds are used for sweets or pastries in India? If so, are they generally combined with one or more other spices?

Cinghiale: I don't know about "straining," as such, but classically forcemeats would often have been "forced" through a tamis (drum sieve); which is the origin of the term. This has the desirable effect of giving the meat a completely even consistency, as well as getting out any fugitive bits of bone, gristle or foreign matter. That may not have been what he was referring to, but it's worth knowing. As for the rest of your difficulties, I'm afraid I have no input to offer. Jackal, Fifi, Chad: Why is consomme so rare in restaurants? I can offer a few suggestions. Although consomme is not inherently difficult, it does require a certain skill level which will not necessarily be at the chef's disposal (it's hard to keep good people). Also, although most of the cooking time is unattended, it is necessary to be fairly hands-on as the raft is forming...I answered an ill-timed phone call once, and during the moments it took to say that my wife was not home, the pot came to a boil and my raft broke. Let me say, it's a whole lot easier to rescue two litres of consomme than ten or fifteen. Secondly, consomme has a clear and rather unequivocal standard of quality. It must be perfectly clear, profoundly flavourful, and served HOT HOT HOT! How many times have you been served less-than-hot soup at even very good restaurants? In short, there is little margin for error. Consomme has to be done perfectly, or not at all. Now by way of contrast, compare that to some common restaurant favourites. Gazpacho? Dump your ingredients into the Cuise, adjust for seasoning and consistency, and serve. Purees? Screw clarifying, just simmer your main ingredient in the stock and fire up your immersion blender. Cream of whatever I have too much of in the walk-in? Chef's best friend. Thicker soups hold their temperature better, too. These are generally pretty flavourful soups, they require much lower skillsets from your kitchen staff (the new extern, rather than your overworked sous-chef) and they lend themselves to attractive presentation. A squirt bottle of herbed oil, a squirt bottle of a reduction in a contrasting colour, a crispy garnish of some sort, and you're ready for the photographers. Having said that, please understand that I really love consomme myself, and wish it was more widely offered. But I can certainly see why it isn't. Jackal: wrt vegetables in the clearmeat... Great though my respect is for Escoffier, he had his hobby horses like any other chef; and I think this is one of them. Assuming perfect stock, you're both absolutely right. There's not a whole lot of call for more vegetables. In practice, however, perfect stock isn't always a given; and the clarifying process itself inevitably removes some flavour from the stock. Sometimes I don't feel the need to add veg, but more often than not I do. When I make consomme at home it's generally for a one-meal scenario, and sometimes adding a vegetal or herbal note to the consomme as it clarifies adds some depth of flavour to the final product. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great course, though. I've had this information the traditional way, at culinary school, and I have to say the quality of instruction here at eGCI is outstanding.

A couple of afterthoughts (or more accurately, things I'd have put in the first post if I could just master the whole notion of thinking more before I hit "Add Reply"): First, thank you Chef Laiskonis for the link to the older thread. I'm new here, and ploughing through the archive will take me months...great discussion! Shame the event didn't come off. And Cbarre, there is a strong tradition in the Middle East and India of using rice and legume flours in sweet dishes. I recently made shortbread-ish cookies using rice flour and chickpea flour (two kinds, not combined in the one) for a course in International Cuisine. Both were from Najmieh Batmanlij's Iranian cookbooks.

Lots of interesting notions are out there, for sure... I've used squashes and sweet potatoes in many desserts, and certainly a creme brulee sort of thing is a good option. Or use the cooked puree in a stirred custard with citrus. One of the instructors at my school had a tart on the menu with sweet potato grated raw, then combined with chopped nuts and warm spices and tossed with sugar syrup. This was baked in a standard short dough, in an 11" tart pan. It was pretty good, though I wasn't quite happy with the spices. I plan to work on that one in the fall, when sweet potatoes are cheap again. Animal fats? Edna Staebler ("Food that really Schmecks") insists that rendered chicken fat makes the best cookies...it's a texture thing. Perhaps that could be adapted to other desserts? I've been toying with the idea of smoking half-dried pear halves for a dessert...thinking of a fresh cheese and a middlin' sweet sauce, maybe even maple or birch syrup. Still hypothetical until I borrow a smoker from the in-laws. I've just recently added fenugreek seeds to my pantry, and I'm intrigued by the notion of using the toasted seeds (ground) in cookies or pastries. They have that interesting earthiness to them, but also a note of toasted butterscotch. I suppose I should schlep over to the Indian food forum and ask if there's a tradition of using them in sweets. One afterthought...the Acadians, in my native Nova Scotia, had a traditional dessert involving salt pork. Fry slices of salt port until crisp. Place sliced apples and a piece of pork on a square of pie crust. Fold the corners up to surround (but NOT enclose) the filling; it is necessary that there be a bit of a lip all the way around the pastry. Bake in a hot oven. At about the halfway point, remove the sheet from the oven and drizzle hot maple syrup down the the opening in the top of the pastry. Return to the oven and finish baking. When you take the pastries from the oven, drizzle them again with maple syrup, this time allowing some to run over the outside of the pastry. Cool at least halfway before serving, if you have sufficient willpower. There was a recipe for this on the Slow Food website, but it seems to be gone now. Pity.

Souffles....doh! <insert sound effect of blistered hand sharply striking bald forehead> Will probably attempt macarons sometime in the near future...Feb 16 is a holiday here in Alberta, so perhaps over the long weekend. Cocktails, well...I just can't get up for mixed drinks at the best of times. I'm something of a zealot for drinking my spirits neat (if it's not worth drinking neat, it's not worth drinking mixed either...and if it IS worth drinking neat, why adulterate it?). For tonight, after I take my bread out, I'll probably throw some dacquoises together...I'm thinking I'll do something really rich with layers of chocolate genoise and chocolate mousse and the dacquoise and maybe a ganache glaze. I'll be working on Valentine's Day, so DW deserves something a little special by way of apology, no? (DW= De Wife)

The CIA course is heavily slanted to promoting California cheese, but tuning out advertising is second nature to me so I'd forgotten about that. The explanation of the process is very decent and the videos were interesting (to me, anyway) but the best part of the whole thing was the links at the end of each module. Here are a couple of them: A detailed article from a homesteading magazine Cheesenet

Speaking of Google, FFAR, have you seen this little goodie? It's a Google Hack by Tara Calishain, publisher of ResearchBuzz (a newsletter) and the recent book "Google Hacks." Cookin' With Google Limits your results somewhat, but by the same token saves you digging through a gazillion non-recipe hits.

I rather like most of the items listed (fruit, veg, offal, fish, shellfish, etc). Most of my real hatreds are reserved for various prepared foods. Leaving aside all of the evil things done to once-decent ingredients, though, the ones that more-or-less leave me cold would be 1) Cauliflower: All the downside of the cabbage family, none of the upside. 2) Avocadoes: A mouthful of lard, with a hint of clover. Or to hearken back to an earlier post in this thread, "margarine that grows on trees." Nothing really wrong with them except the seed isn't big enough...doesn't quite fill the skin. 3) Parsnips: I can choke them down if they're roasted, or concealed artfully in the rest of the dish, but there's something about them that triggers my gag reflex faster than a Celine Dion song. Couldn't explain it if I tried. There are a number of things (sushi, tofu) that I just don't care enough about to actively dislike. Remember Ugarte in Casablanca? "You despise me, don't you, Rick?" "If I thought about you, I probably would!"

The restaurant where I work generates large quantities of egg whites every week, which I am welcome to take home. I've made angel-food cakes in the standard and cocoa variations, and baked them in flat pans as well as tube pans (the better to make layer cakes with them). I've made cookie-sized meringues several times; also various takes on dacquoises. I've used them to make consomme as well, and fresh pasta. "Creative fatigue," however, is setting in. What are everyone's favourite things to do with egg whites? I have two litres in my freezer and four more in my fridge, and I'm running out of ideas. I hate to *not* bring them home (goes against my East-coast frugality gene) but boy, it's getting harder to find things to make with them. I'm open to sweet or savoury suggestions, even if they're variations on things I've already mentioned. After all, your version might be better than mine...and I won't be sick of them forever...

When I was young, and a bachelor, and frequently intoxicated, I made the Ultimate "Cholesterol Highball" Grilled Sandwich.... Fry half a pound of bacon. Drain the pourable fat from the pan. Butter two slices of bread; place them butter side down in the pan, fry until crisp. Remove from pan. Butter the uncooked sides. Place one in the pan, uncooked side down. Cover with as much cheese as will fit. Place the half-pound of bacon on top of the cheese. Cover the bacon with another great whack of cheese, then the second piece of bread. Fry on both sides until the outsides are crispy as well, and the cheese has melted. Although this recipe is peanut butter free, that's probably because I was just too ripped to think of it. This sandwich was normally consumed with the last beer left in the house, a large pickle (sometimes a large jar of pickles), and a chunk of smoked eel from the euro-deli across the way from where I lived. This is just one example of why I'm occasionally surprised that I made it to age 40.

It's part of the mallow family, same as marsh mallow; hence the mucilaginous quality. A friend of mine in another online community spent 30 years in Egypt as an archaeologist, and has accumulated many Egyptian recipes. I'll see if he has any suggestions to offer.

Semi-deboning (clearing out the cavity, but leaving the legs and wings intact) is decidedly the way to go. I'm sure I could bone out the limbs as well, if I really needed to, but I'd need to have a long walk and a stiff drink afterwards. I grabbed quail on impulse for an in-class cooking competition at school. The first one took me about fifteen minutes, the second eight, and the third (and ensuing) about four or five minutes each. I started by cutting out the backbone with a sharp knifetip (shears would be good, too). Then, opening the bird up, I broke the wishbone with my fingers and cut it out. Follow the wishbone down to the shoulder blades, and sever that at the joint where it joins the wing. Run the tip of your knife down either side of the keelbone, and pull it up with your fingers. Cut the breast meat away from it as you lift gently. If you have a thin, flexible boning knife, you can slide it beneath the ribs quite easily to cut them away; much like cutting away the ribs of a salmon side. After that it's just a matter of running a fingertip gingerly around the cavity to check for any missed bones; and then rolling the wee beastie back into shape around your filling of choice. This is probably not the canonical way to do it, but it works. As with any piece of delicate work, a sharp knife is *really* important. I prefer a flexible boning knife for delicate work, a shorter stiff one for heavier pieces. When you are sharpening a boning knife, pay special attention to the tip where the blade curves. This is your "fingertip", and with a delicate touch you'll feel the bones just as well with the knife as you do with your finger.

The CIA has a lovely little free course on their Pro Chef website: free registration, several lessons, videos, etc. I worked my way through the course during my (wry snicker) free time during culinary school. It's pretty good. Lemme dig up the URL... Geez, is it just me, or does this site get less usable by the month? Found it, eventually... Free Courses Click on the "California Cheese" course.

Well done, Neil! I'm in the midst of my <sigh> four weeks in pastry lab, part of my final semester of Culinary Arts. In fact, right now I'm nursing a handful of pretty good blisters from a momentary lapse of caution while prepping for some pulled sugar. We're required to do one centrepiece each of chocolate and sugar work (our choice; pulled/blown/gum paste/pastillage/marzipan/whatever). Although patisserie is a small part of our curriculum, we're fortunate in having a program head who wants us all to have a strong grasp of the basics. A lot of our graduates get employment at resort hotels in the nearby Rockies, and shortages of skilled hands are endemic, so the ability to jump in at the bakeshop and be productive immediately is a Very Good Thing. Although all of your work was impressive, I particularly appreciated the plated desserts. So often, those are way, waaayyyy too fussy...garnished from here to hell, and showing an obvious determination to put every technique the chef knows onto each plate. Yours were visually appealing and not overdone, obviously the product of good training and an innately gifted eye. Although I'm new here and a stranger to most of the community, I am impressed by your talent and will follow your career with interest.

Oh, and Tmnoland, you can get a good apricot glaze by going to your supermarket and buying a jar of apricot jam. Warm it slightly and push it through a sieve to remove larger lumps, then warm it over a double boiler with a little bit of water and brush it on with a pastry brush. Very traditional, very nice...

Seth: I use a KitchenAid stand mixer as well, and I find it to be rather maddening for bread dough. By trial and error, I've determined that anything more than a modest 600-700g batch of dough (about a pound and a half) tends to be more trouble than it's worth. In my case, the big frustration is that once the dough gets to a certain consistency it climbs the (pick an expletive) dough hook and gets wound around the head of the mixer. I have devised a number of methods for getting around this. One is to do large quantities of dough in small batches, and then combine them in a large bowl for fermentation. Another is to take the dough out of the mixer, hand-knead it to a certain texture (which, alas, I'd never be able to communicate verbally) and then return it to the mixer. A third is to make a lot of "rustic" breads with a rather wet dough, which is easier to mix and does not climb. Another technique, which does not cure the problem but which helps and is always useful, is to give the dough a twenty-minute rest (the "autolyse," if you're a boulanger) after about 2/3 of the flour has been added. Gluten strands don't form, of course, until the flour is hydrated; giving this rest time allows the gluten to form up without giving your arms (or your mixer) quite the same workout. After the resting period, you'll find that the dough comes to the correct consistency with much less work. McDuff, I found your comments about pastry-making quite interesting. After 20+ years as an avid home cook/baker, I am about to graduate from a reputable culinary school here in Canada. Although I've enjoyed baking for years, and have made things like brioches and puff pastry from scratch, I'm finding my time in the pastry lab (two weeks down, two to go) quite enlightening. There are just so many ways to combine the basic techniques into different products! Wrt apples, btw, have you ever tried one of those little hand-cranked jobbies that peel, core, and slice the apples all in the one go? My parents made 30+ apple pies per day at their homestyle bakery in Nova Scotia, and that thing was a godsend. The cheap ones will only last a few months, but the better ones will stay sharp for years (and are adjustable, so you don't lose half of your apple with the peel).