Ajl92

Lindacakes-- Would you mind sharing the process for these cherries? Did you start with fresh or dried? They look good and I would like to try making some for a last minute chocolate fruitcake. Thanks.

I can recommend Assouline from personal experience. I have ordered some of the E Guittard line from them on multiple ocassions and it has been very good, especially for the price.

If you are looking for a French brand, try Tesseire. I enjoyed it in France and was pleasantly surprised to find it available online here in the states from "The Frenchy Bee" -- they have an amazon store, an ebay store and a stand-alone website. I have tried the Orgeat which is good, but really enjoy the Peche sirop with soda water.

I'd be interested if anyone knows an online source for the tiki glasses also. I picked up a few at Disney's Polynesian Resort during my last visit, but they were 10.00 bucks apiece-- a bit expensive and too bulky to buy too many to fit in the luggage. If no one knows another source, the resort does accomodate phone orders for anything down there if you want em real bad, but hopefully someone knows where to get them online...

inspired by the homemade limoncello thread which recently rose to the top again I wanted to post a new thread about homemade aperitifs, or "vins maison" before a third search brought up this thread. I just recently purchased the Aperitif book by Georgeann Brennan and found it quite interesting, especially for the price, on ecookbooks.com when I ordered a bunch of other great books for a song. I actually assembled a half-batch of Vin Marquis which has been macerating for about a week now and was hoping to revive a discussion of homemade aperitifs to get some insight into what else I can start up. With as much time and patience that is necessary to make these right, and for the fact that oranges and citrus abound in the markets, now really is the time to start the infusions to be ready by summertime. I can't wait to see the fruits of waiting when I finally bottle and cork this in february, but I need more ideas for things to make! I am thinking of bottling these in 375ml icewine style bottles and corking them either with fullsize corks using a corker or just some "t-corks" like these. Will I have problems with longevity if I only use tasting corks? Hopefully I can at least use this method for liqueurs such as limoncello.. Cheers

I'm jealous. I started a thread about a year ago after I returned from France to find that it is not available ANYWHERE in the US. It is great on its own, neat, chilled, or over an ice cube. I tried it as an aperatif, and with the drink left in the glass enjoyed it immensely with a piece of Bleu D'auvergne. I recall searching online to find one page about a trip to Marseille that included a note about a drink with Noilly Ambre in it, will have to do a quick google search to find it again. Congrats on the great find.

I actually just assumed that it should be 4 cups and added another 3 plus a little extra to the dough when I saw that it was thin. I should have just looked at recipe gullet, but the dough is fine and is resting in the fridge. Thanks again for posting, I can't wait to bake some off.

Thanks for the recipe. I just made the filling and dough. The filling is great, but the dough appears to be more like batter, not something that I will be able to roll out. Is it supposed to be very thin before refrigerating? I weighed out 4 oz. of flour and it was not much more than a cup, should there be more flour or less liquid? A cup of flour to a cup of butter and 1/2 cup milk does not seem right for a dough to be rolled out. Thanks, Adam

sure. shipping clothes would also work, but I imagine the price to ship a box of clothes would be comparable to that of foods other than heavy bottles.. my main concern would be the timing of my trip and how long I'll have to carry things in my luggage before returning to the states. If I arrive and spend my first week loading up on goodies I just couldn't pass up, I'll have to either carry them with me for the rest of the month or so in luggage or store them somewhere and return to get them before departing.. Of course I will try to save most of the "loading up on goodies" until the end of the trip, but this time I intend to spend time in more different areas, ie Paris, Hte Savoie, Lyon, Provence, etc.. If I learned anything from my last trip, it is that I DO NOT want to take two large suitcases onto the TGV and attempt to stow them anywhere overhead when the other compartments fill up. I hope I can practice a bit more restraint when packing for my next adventure I also hope to plan my trip to coincide with the Soldes in Paris (that would be a different thread, I know) again as that was a lot of fun regardless of the oppressive heat and droves of wall-to-wall people..I could easily cheaply buy an entire new wardrobe at H&M if I pack too light Hmmm, maybe I should just take an empty suitcase and fill it with wine, cheese, and french clothes when I get there

for those who have checked out CAM, would you say that they have a wide enough Japanese food selection to make them the best choice for a purveyor of ingredients for that cuisine? if not, which market is your choice for japanese items? and where can I find a good selection of sashimi grade seafood? i'm living in akron now for school so cleveland area is close enough to drive for good food and ingredients... thanks, adam

I definitely understand what you are saying Dave, and the same kind of foolishness applies to sending home bottles of that great yet inexpensive (in France) wine and eau-de-vie with alcohol importation regulations. I don't think I would try shipping sausage and cheese (though I suppose I could try if they were packaged sous-vide), but was thinking more along the lines of sealed and non-perishable foodstuffs like snacks, sirops, chocolate, etc... But how I would love to be able to ship wine and eaux-de-vie home that I cannot find here or are exponentially more expensive in the states. Funnily enough my last trip back through customs in New York was quite painless as I was not questioned a second about what I was bringing into the country, I just walked right on through. I am not worried so much about carrying products in my luggage through customs as I am concerned with not wanting to weigh myself down with two suitcases to bring home a couple bottles of wine, pastis, or eau-de-vie or other interesting foodstuffs. Frankly I wish I could tranplant the entire Galeries Lafayette gourmet food department (or heck, even a small Champion supermarche) to my back yard and stop worrying about shipping regulations!

Bonjour tout le monde I believe this is my first post in the France forum.. Spending this summer stuck in the US after last summer's months abroad has put me in full planning mode to get back to the Hte Savoie, Paris and other parts of France (and Suisse, Italia, and Espana) next summer.. I can't wait to revisit my famille d'accueil in Faverges and actually eat well again! Anyway, with other friends going abroad to all corners of the world (as far away as Japan) and offering to send me back packages of local delicacies, the cost of shipping "un colis" back to the States has become an issue. Last summer when I returned home from France, I had to purchase another valise to carry all of the food items I had emassed (thank God for the Soldes, I was able to get a good deal on a suitcase). My French family told me that it was "tres chere" to ship items to the US, but I never verified this at the Poste. I saw "colissimo" service at the Poste, but never inquired about the price of shipping to the US. Having purchased items from ebay that were shipped second day air from Singapore for only $25US, I can't imagine it is completely cost prohibitive to send back a package of some of the things that don't fit in my suitcase when traveling for extended periods abroad. Does anyone have experience with which services are best and most affordable for shipping non-perishables across the globe to the US? Merci, Adam

Well, I guess I can almost answer my own question here. As I am oft apt to post a question just before reading further to find the answer, I was reading John Palmer's "How to Brew" online and read a few recipes where the level of DME is easily within this range. I am surprised that the online store for my local brewshop said to only use 1-3lbs for a 5 gallon batch. Thanks again for the course and inspiration Chris.

Having been inspired by this course to get into home brewing I have been looking/shopping around online for the past few days for ingredients and toys (I can't help but buy toys whenever I find a new hobby:-) The one question I had about the beginners' batch you are using in the course of 2 gallons. Your recipe calls for 3lbs of DME. When I see the notes for DME in the online stores it says that that amount is enough for a 5 gallon batch (in fact one site says to use 1-3lbs for a 5 gallon batch). Will the 2 gallon batch you are demo'ing in the course be heavy or stronger? BTW I am really enjoying reading the classes, thanks for taking the time to make it happen. I have learned a lot already and was inspired to read some other brewing forums and it seems very accessible, but also something that I can buy a lot of toys if I want. I already roast my own espresso and enjoy things I can tweak and experiment with.

Prices are in Hong Kong Dollars..there are about 7.8 HK$ in one US$ which means that those bitters are still about US$21.78. They don't deliver overseas.

Okay, I wasn't certain in which forum to post this, so I'll start here (since vermouth and the like are discussed in this forum) and ask again in the France and Wine forums later on... When I was in France last year studying abroad, staying with a family in the Alpes I truly had the (culinary and otherwise) time of my life. I remember one particular aperitif (other than the daily Pastis) that I enjoyed very much called Noilly Ambre. One evening the young lady who I traveled with neglected to finish her drink and I offered to finish it off with the cheese course, and I can still taste how wonderful this matched with the bleu cheese at the sugestion of my French host father. The family explained that they picked it up on a trip to the south (?) of France at the source where it is made, by the same maker of, I am assuming, Noilly Prat. They explained that the wine was left in large vats outside through summer and winter and the sugars caramelized and the wine becomes concentrated. I wasn't able to find a bottle before leaving France and I'm afraid I won't find something like this in the US. I was wondering though, if any of you have tried this or if this sounds similar to Madeira which I believe is made through a similar process, which I have yet to try. cheers

I had a great dinner at a local upscale Italian restuarant with family and a friend who had come into town for the holiday and ended the meal with a snifter of Grand Marnier Centcinquantenaire (150) and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it almost as much as the duck breast with fig and port reduction and walnut risotto that came before it.

Do you really only bake these at 275?! One of the recipes I tried at 320 gave me such a dry product I can't imagine how crispy these would be after baking for probably a half hour at such a low temp.

I would like to add a very big endorsement for this exceedingly simple recipe. I tried once again this afternoon to make the Healy and Bugat chocolate macarons I had success with on my first and second ever attemps last february, but they failed miserably once again, regardless of how long I let them sit to form a skin. They looked more promissing in the oven, but they shriveled, deflated, and are too chewy again, with no delicate crust I guess the kitchen may be A LOT more humid? Anyways, the first recipe I made with whites that have been sitting out for a couple days, and then I remembered this post about the macarons that don't sit out to form a crust and I tried them, and I have to say that I have never had such an easy time getting near-perfect results!! I mean, I was just mad that I can't get these things to turn out and I whipped these up, grinding the cocoa, sugar, and almonds altogether without sifting and just took two whites from the fridge and beat them over a flame and they cam out almost perfect, with a nice crust and I didn't let them sit AT ALL. I notice a trend, however that the sweeter (the more sugar and less almonds) the macaron is, the easier it is to get a crust. I liked the taste of the Healy&Bugat macs just a bit better, but these are so easy and such great results that I don't know if I'll ever risk wasting the almond flour again with anything but this recipe. P.S. I had a similarly easy time getting perfect-looking results for non-chocolate macs on the NYTimes recipe I posted earlier, but they are just TOO sweet and sugary tasting and not nearly as tender as I would like. If looks were everything I would go for them everytime, but I think there has to be a happy medium here. Using italian meringue sure does speed up the drying process though!

Regarding the Italian Meringue version as opposed to the classic way I have done them in the past I can definitely agree with a previous poster that those babies dry fast! I was amazed how there was a skin almost instantly after piping and they were feeling really dehydrated less than 30 mins. after piping so much so that I felt rushed to get them in the oven before they became almond meringue bricks. As far as the NYTimes recipe that I tried last night (I actually colored them red and filled with raspberry) I will say that I preferred my Healy and Bugat chocolate macarons just slight over this recipe, though I can see that it would be much easier to get more consistent results using the hot meringue that forms a perfect skin so quickly potentially eliminated cracking and wrinkling altogether. I baked mine at 330 for under 20 minutes and they did come out quite dry, though the interior was almost wet when I took them out. After a day they were nice and chewy inside, but the flavor tastes a lot sweeter than some of the others I've tried. I'll have to try a cocoa variation tonight on this recipe and see if I get a more tender result from the addition of cocoa powder (also I imagine the bit of brown sugar may also keep them more moist for the chocolate?) because I really liked these as a sort of fancy brownie. I may post a picture of my pink (wanted a christmas red color) raspberry macarons later on.

Hey Marty, It's my understanding, when French liqueurs are named "crème de", it just means they are more heavily sweetened. I think, typically served after dinner, instead of before. -Erik ← Yes, this is true. The distinction here is between "sirop de" (the "p" is silent) and "crème de," where sirop has no alcohol and the crème does, and yes, both are sweet. Liqueur is a term that describes any flavored or slightly sweetened alcohol which may also be called a cordial (eg Grand Marnier or Drambuie);crème is generally a fruit syrup fortified with alcohol at relatively low strength compared to a liqueur such as Cointreau at 80 proof. When I was in France last summer we had many a Kir made with Guyot crème de cassis to start our weekly community dinner. I would say buy what you can find readily and if you like it go with it. Guyot, btw, was terribly inexpensive (like $5US) at the local Champion grocer in France but retails for something like 20 bucks a bottle over here at a local gourmet grocer. It makes me want to return so badly, there was so much great food at less than half what we pay in the states to import the stuff.

Just as a side note, for those of you who use iTunes or have a new video iPod, this is available as a free subscription Video Podcast which can be viewed in iTunes or on the video iPod. cheers, adam

-snip- I will begin by agreeing that Ti Punch on ice is a great drink, but I do have one question. While in Paris this past month I saw Ti Punch available at a couple of places and tried it twice, and neither time did it include ice; this definitely changes the refreshing dynamic of the drink. The first time I had it, I had ordered a Caiparhina and a friend ordered Ti Punch, and was surprised to have received it without ice; I had a taste, it was good but without ice I found it a little rough. At another bar I ordered it again, but this time it was a clear gomme sirop instead of the demarera sirop, but still no ice. From a quick google search, the recipes I have found (all in french) make no mention of glacons (ice). I definitely agree that the addition of ice would make this a terrific, refreshing drink, but what do all of you think, would you enjoy this as a straight up, unchilled mix of sugar, lime and rhum? cheers

Plunk, I used a small coffee grinder and did it, I would say, in probly 10 batches with the powdered sugar. I would say that you would run a greater risk of making paste grinding a larger batch in a food processor because it would take much longer for every little bit to get ground fine enough and the heat of the machine would be a lot greater. Also, I prefer the coffee grinder method better because of the overall fineness you can get from it. Just listen to the grinder and when you stop hearing bits of almonds tap against the lid or sides, stop. A couple times I ground a little too long and there were "chunks" of almond and powdered sugar that stuck to the sides, but I just knocked them out and ran everything through a seive anyways. -Adam

Yeah, the grinding defintely made a huge difference. And as for the tip, the first time I had a small round tip (approx. 1/4 in) this time I just used a plain bag, the opening was about a half inch on the bag without the tip and it worked fine with the more flowing batter. It was a lot faster and easier to pipe, as well. -Adam