fiftydollars

Dry yeast will keep for a couple of years in the freezer. Cake yeast... not so much.

Thomas Keller includes a puff pastry recipe in the French Laundry Cookbook and I have used it with good results. I have also used the recipe in Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques. They have both done a good job for me in the past. Once I even susbstituted whole wheat pastry flour in Pepin's recipe and the results were not at all bad.

But don't give up on canning quite yet. I have stone fruit from past summers that I am always happy to have when I need it. I don’t have a deep freezer (something that gets at least down to the neighborhood of -10 and isn't constantly defrosting), so maybe this is why, but frozen stone fruit doesn’t seem to hold up that well after about 6 months or so. On the other hand, my canned fruit stays great for years. This is also why I prefer to remove the skins and always pack hot fruit. In the long haul, it keeps its color and flavor a little better that way. This also goes for tomatoes.

Fuck yes, profanity has a place in food writing.

You can leave the skin, but it will turn kind of ugly.

Is Gordon going to punt again and offer to give the winner a job instead of a restaurant like he did last year?

That sounds like a good time. Chez Panisse is great and the menu changes from day to day, so even if you ate there two days in a row, you would have a different menu. However, I would probably try something else. Maybe something like Michael Mina, Fleur de Lys, La Folie, or even Gary Danko.

Thanks, Andiesenji and Scubadoo. I'm really glad I don't have to toss this out. I'll just have to be patient... I will come back and let you guys know how it turns out.

Thank you very much for your help, Jackal and Andiesenji. For the bulk of the vinegar I used Black Mountain "Fat Cat" Cabernet from Trader Joe's. It's a wine I would rarely drink, but could if I had to. Should I use something a little more expensive (bottle ends) or a different style (beaujolais, pinot, mad dog 20/20)? I also poured in some left over wine, but as you can see from the jar, I ran out of room. I originally covered the jar in cheesecloth, but even with 4 layers it seemed to leave enough room for vinegar flies to creep in, so I switched to the paper towel (Bounty). It started off in the coolest darkest covert I have in my kitchen, but I moved it to the garage to prevent it from contaminating some beer I was brewing (the beer is good). I'm having trouble letting go. I just don't want to chuck it, but I also don't want to waste my time (and barrel) or put nail polish remover in my vinaigrettes. Is there any hope? Do I have to toss out the mother? Should I learn to love the flavor of Cutex?

I made some vinegar out of red wine. I started with about 4 bottles of cheap-ish Cabernet and mother purchased at the local brewing store. It's been about two months (I started 5/20/06) and I just gave it a try. Sure enough it is acidic like vinegar, but it also has a strong acetone (nail polish remover) smell and has some bitter flavors, especially in the aftertaste. At this point it's not exactly the sort of thing I want to add to my best olive oil and drizzle over greens. Now I am told that I need to age this for 6 months or so and that during this time the harshness and whatnot will soften. Will the acetone and bitterness mellow out during the aging? Or did something go horribly wrong and I should just cut my losses and start again? My plan was to pasteurize the vinegar by heating it to 160 for about 15 minutes or so and then put it in a paraffin-lined oak barrel to age until about January. I also plan to take some of it and just age it in a bottle without pasteurizing (just to see what it's like). And of course, keeping some to start another batch. But if something has gone wrong, and the final product will be more like paint-stripper than an ingredient suitable for salad dressing, maybe I'll find myself another hobby.

iSi is a company that makes a type of whipped cream syphon (aka whipped cream dispenser, foamer, cream whipper) favored by many chefs. It's basically one of these: Liss Cream Whipper ...except it's made by iSi. Anyway, it's preferable to use one that can handle both hot and cold items. Some have plastic heads or gaskets and whatnot that cannot withstand heat all that well (really more like warm or bain marie temp.). Now I have no formal training on the use of these foamers and only recent experience using them. But I basically I just make a puree or juice that is either predominantly whipping cream or is to be set with an appropriate amount of gelatin and I dispense this mixture from the foamer after an adequate amount of cooling in the refrigerator. I bought the foamer after watching Rick "Bad to the Foam" Tramonto make a blue-cheese foam on a rerun of Sarah Moulton's show. I made the blue-cheese foam basically how he made his ( and I didn't really like it too much, but that's another topic). He just warmed some cream, added the cheese, and strained the mixture into the foamer. He then dispensed the well-chilled mixture onto a spoon and served it with a drizzle of port wine reduction. I made an avocado mixture pretty much the same way by just pureeing some avocado in a food processor with enough cream to fill the Liss' canister (of course I seasoned the mixture first). The chilled mixture dispensed into a tasty bright green product. It was a very nice addition to a tomato soup, but unfortunately did not hold up well in a cheeseburger. The fruit foams I have pretty much modeled after the recipe for mango "espuma" included in the Liss foamer. Their recipe basically calls for mango puree, orange juice, sugar, and gelatin. You simply puree some mango in a blender with some sweetened orange juice and add this mixture to a smaller amount of orange juice into which you have properly dissolved gelatin by way of some appropriate method. I don't like using orange juice as the recipe calls for because it is really quite noticeable. I tried using apple juice to make mango foam, but that was even worse. I then used the apple juice to make a foam and it turned out to be pretty good. However, it has a somewhat-less-than-appealing color... at least when compared to the strawberry, which had a very appealing color and great flavor. Although the Liss recipe calls for sheets of gelatin I have so far only used powdered gelatin (Knox). I have not yet used gelatin sheets to make the foams because I do not have a convenient source at this time. I have added anywhere from 1/4 to a whole envelope of gelatin for 2 cups of liquid. I can't seem to quite get the right texture for these foams, but I have not had very bad results either. The more firmly set foams behave almost exactly like whipped cream and they are quite stable. With a whole envelope of gelatin the mango foam stood at attention for about an hour, but it was a little stiff and it did not readily dissolve on the tongue. I have not added lecithin to anything, but I'm not sure it would help with mixtures that do not have a fat. From what I recall of an episode of good eats a phospholipid, like lecithin, helps fats and non-fats get along with each other. Do they also affect texture when there is no fat?

I just got a liss foamer a couple of weeks ago and I have been a foaming fool. So far I have made mango, apple, blue cheese, demi-glace (no additional gelatin needed), avocado, strawberry, rasperry, and blackberry. Some are made with cream (avocaco, blue cheese), but I have really been working on getting better at the gelatin foams. Sometimes there is not quite enough gelatin and sometimes it seems like a little too much. When there is not enough, the foam doesn't really hold shape. However, I find that if you freeze it, it (strawberry, mango) makes a really cool sorbet/granitas substence that I really like. I over-gelled the apple and it turned out kind of like a weird apple-sauce product. Adding just enough produces a foam that is stable enough to hold shape for a few minutes, but is tender and absorbs into your mouth almost immediately. The avocado foam made with the whipped cream is really interesting. I like it a lot. As far as making whipped cream in this dispenser... I don't think I like that too much. I feel like I can sort of taste the nitrous in the cream and it produces a slight metallic or oxidized flavor. I've tried flavoring the whipped cream (chocolate, maple syrup, caramel, etc) and although it's pretty tasty, I can still taste the nitrous a bit. I never really noticed this before, but now I can't seem to focus on anything else when I taste it. I don't seem to have a problem with an off flavor with the gelatin-set foams.

add a little (just a pinch) ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and it should keep your pesto from turning green right away. You should also boil the basil for 5-10 seconds in rapidly boiling well-salted water and shock it in ice water before making your pesto. Pine nuts. No parsley. More garlic.

Is it really? I was under the impression that bacon is cured and cold-smoked (80-100 degrees). I wouldn't think that bacon fat would hold up to hot smoking (180+ degrees). It's been a while since I gave makin' bacon a try, but from what I recall the fat seemed to object quite strongly to high heat.

You're right! It tastes pretty much exactly like a cold avocado soup. I actually put the foam over a tomato soup and the combination not only looked great, but was also pretty tasty. I've always liked putting a little sour cream on my tomato soup and the avocado foam floats better and adds great avocado flavor. Maybe later this summer I'll make an avocado soup and put a tomato foam on it. It will be like 2003 all over again...

Ok, so I was watching a Sarah Moulton re-run and they had Rick “Bad to the Foam” Tramonto making amuses. One of them was a blue-cheese foam served with a port reduction. Now I didn’t jump on the band-wagon back a few years ago when it seemed everyone was doing a foam and Tramonto first came out with his Amuse Bouche book. But watching the shiny whipped cream dispenser I realized that this was really, really cool and that I must have one, stat. Anyway, among the many foams I have made in the past few weeks, I made this avocado foam that is really, really good. It’s basically one avocado, passed through a tamis, and mixed thoroughly with enough cream to make a pint of mixture (ok, I guess you could also do this in a food processor or blender). The plain foam just seasoned with salt is pretty good. But with salt, pepper, and some lime it really gets interesting and is a pretty good guacamole-like substance.

If you tend to have a large appetite, go for La Folie. Their courses are generously sized... at least by fine dining standards.

Genius!

It's a pretty awesome experience. I am a bit traumatized, actually. I went about a month ago and I haven't really told anyone about it. This is mostly on account of not wanting to reveal that I'm the type of person that drops $700 eating by himself. But it is also because it is difficult for me to describe what happened. But the soup with the baby sardines was astounding. The grilled toro nigiri was also unbelievable. Oh, and then there were the baby scallops, the toro tartare, the sake... not to mention the impeccable service, the beautiful bar, and the experience of watching upclose as Mr. Takayama dissected a perfect segment of tuna the size of Shaquille O’Neal’s upper thigh.

I went yesterday and the only flavor they had was vanilla. All of the others had a sign reading: Coming Soon! It was good, though.

double dipping is a good move. I let the crust set by letting the chicken rest on a rack in the refrigerator for about an hour before I fry.

I really like anchovy butter right now.

I like the disposable bags, but I prefer parchment cornets. They are easy to make, cheap, and you can make whatever size bag you need (big ones for piping or small ones for writing, etc).

Here in San Francisco they have been airing it after Jeeves and Wooster on Tuesday nights at 7:00p on KTEH. It is riotously effin hilarious (Posh Nosh, that is... J&W, a show about some douche (played by Hugh Laurie... Fox TV's House, MD) and his butler, pretty much sucks, albeit in its own uniquely British way).

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