Shalmanese
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Posts posted by Shalmanese
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Success! Last night, I blowtorched some cheese on top of nachos and today, I put an aged standing rib roast in the oven for 4 hours on very low heat until the inside hit just medium rare and then blowtorched the outside to brown it.
My first impressions of this thing is that it's amazingly hot, an order of magnitude hotter than anything I've handled before in my kitchen and that requires quite a bit of forethough and care. Experimenting today by making blowtorch toast, the blowtorch was so hot that the tiny tufts of bread rising above the surface were completely blackened before the rest of the bread even browned, leaving a rather unappetizing speckled black surface.
BTW: I have a propane, industrial version, not a butane one in case that matters. The flame when put on maximum extends about 6 inches out.
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I made this crust today and I was struck by how soft it was. I didn't even want to think about rolling it as it was since I was afraid it would just amount to a pile of goo so I added in another 1/2 cup of flour and it was still very soft.
Certainly not like the rock solid pate brisees I've seen elsewhere. Is it meant to be this soft or have I done something drastically wrong?
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On Iron Chef, a challenger made a dish of roasted quail stuffed with porcini risotto which I thought looked utterly divine.
Otherwise, you could spatchcok them and marinate in ponzu or any other citrusy marinade.
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Hmm... thanks everyone, theres been a lot of good ideas here.
We're having tacos tonight and I think I'm going to inaugorate my new blowtorch by filling the taco, topping off with melted cheese and then torching the top so the cheese is nice and bubbly and browned. mmm...
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In this thread, there was an excellent recipe for a passionfruit/chocolate creme brulee which looks utterly divine. The last time I attempted creme brulee was a very clear demonstration of just how wimpy the broiler on my oven was so, on a whim, I wen't down to the local hardware store and bought myself a blowtorch.
Is there anything else I can use it for apart from creme brulee? Steaks? Roasts? Could I make toast art? Anything?
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"I had a great passionfruit creme brulee a while ago. You may want to try making some. The combo of vanilla and passionfruit really works well! I presume you would just add strained pulp into the custard mix."
You do! Just stir the puree into the custard. It's unbelievably good. I took a cooking class a few years ago, where we made the signature dish of a popular Boston restaurant (name escapes me).
Not only did the creme brulee have passionfruit, but we split the custard in half, flavored half with passionfruit, and half with chocolate. Then we poured equal amounts in ramekins and lightly swirled them.
The combination of chocolate, passionfruit, and creme brulee custard, is decadent. Great for a special occasion.
:)
Oh wow, that sounds amazing. I just realised I have some leftover cream, chocolate and passionfruit sitting in the house, exactly the right amounts for this. Thank you for the suggestion. How do you pour them into the ramekins? Do you thicken on the stove and then pour or do you pour both in from opposite sides and have them meet in the middle?
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Try sorbet with passionfruit pulp and orange juice. It works pretty well.
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BTW: I managed to find some 13% wholegrain flour from Safeways of all places. So why is it that any flour other than AP is all but impossible to find in Australia? Do Australians not bake breads and cakes except from mixes? Do people just use normal flour and hope for the best? Where do bakers get their flour from?
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This is really starting to annoy me. Where the hell can you buy bread or cake flour in sydney? I don't want bread mix with Soy Lethicin and yeast and whatever else they try and cram in there. I just want honest to god flour with a protien content above 12%. Maybe 15% if it wasn't hoping for too much. And what about cake flour? Something below 8% would be nice too.
Instead, every single flour sold at every single supermarket I've ever been in is between 9 and 11%. The only things outside of that range are wierd mixes.
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I blanch them, and then stir fry them in olive oil & salt until they are well done, as in, little black spots of burnt green bean speckle them. Then, I toss in some very thin slivers of garlic, toss around until just cooked, and toss in a good healthy glug of balsamic vinegar. Reduce the balsamic down to a glaze and you have the most wonderful balsamic glazed green beans.
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My WAG is that plastic is good for whipped cream for exactly the same reason it's so bad for egg whites. The plastic molecules behave similar to fat molecules and can serve to anchor the whipped cream in place which keeps the sides nice and dry. In a metal bowl, the sides become slippery and start to break down.
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At my butcher, the butcher uses a thin plastic bag like a glove to grab the meat and weigh it. Once you approve of the weight, it then gets wrapped up in heavy duty paper for you to take.
The plastic bags are so light that the cost would be insignificant. Maybe 1000 bags in a kilogram.
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roasted bell peppers
grilled eggplants
sun dried tomatos
goat cheese
cream cheese
smoked salmon
cold roast beef/lamb/pork
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I think your slightly mistaken about your concepts. Weight is the gravitational force exerted by a mass and the formula for weight is m*g. Since g is (almost) constant, weight is directly proportional to mass and, thus, percentage by weight is almost exactly the same as percentage by mass.
eg: if you had something that was 5g/100g, it would be 5% by mass. The weight of the object would be 49.05N/9810N which is also exactly 5% by weight.
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Huh, percentage by weight and percentage by mass should be the same to around 15 decimal places or so. Perhaps you are thinking of something else.
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Cracklings. Fatty tissue deep fried in fat. With a bit of sea salt. Yum.
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I use them. Our ones have a plastic screw on the end and you screw them into the ends of the corn. It works and it was like 10c so why not.
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AFAIK, mashed potatos won't taste anywhere near as good once cold as mashed potatos but they are perfectly okay when used for other purposes. Eg, using them as filler for crab cakes or in potato madelines or duchess potatos.
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Don't forget that, depending on where you buy it from, the oil might be well over a year old by the time you purchase it. So, really, a 2 - 3 year shelf life becomes a 1 - 2 year shelf life.
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Are the gas burners all the same size? On mine, the back left and front right are simmer burners. The back right is a medium sized burner and the front left is a high heat, wok burner. I mainly use the simmer burners for stews or braises, the medium one for boiling pasta or potatos and the wok burner for high heat saute.
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My EVOO never touches a hot pan. If I want the EVOO flavour, I will drizzle some over the finished dish. Extra Light Olive Oil or canola oil for cooking only.
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if your really concerned with cutting chicken bones your knife but don't want to shell out, try using the back of your knife to smash the bone and then work around the fragments.
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Percentages are always by weight.
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I always do the simmering in cream method. IMHO, that gives the deepst, most evenly distributed garlic flavour.
So what else can I blowtorch?
in Cooking
Posted
I think blowtorches in the culinary world are in the place kitchen scales and thermometers were 20 years ago. Nobody has them so nobody writes recipes involving them so nobody has the urge to go out and buy one. But once you have one, then it changes your style of cooking so dramatically that you couldn't imagine life without one. Has anyone actually written a blowtorch cookbook yet? It seems like a quite lucrative market niche.