Tonyy13

If you are just looking for a "latte" type foam, we used to actually foam our milk with a capp machine (much to the servers' chagrin "FOAM TO THE LINE NOW!!"). We used to add about 2 sheets of gelatin to 1 qt. skim milk, and found that this made the best and most stable foam. Also have used an ISI to make pretty incredible shrimp foam, stabalized also with gelatin. At the end of the night, we would shoot it all into a container for use the next day, and by morning, once chilled, it would have this sexy shrimp mousse texture that was awesome! Think the lightest and most intense shrimp flavor you have ever tasted! Always wanted to try it with foie, to see if you could get the same effect, but never did. Good luck!

Kerry, see upthread about thoughts on the butter orb, which would linclude having to use either a powdered or liquid lecithin (we think!). No tests run yet, but I am doing a run on "real people" (my parents) when I cook them dinner this week with the apple caviar. Going to steep the juice with some fresh thyme, then serve the apple caviar with brunoise apple, thyme leaves and some Maldon sea salt. Will let you guys know how it goes!! Quick Idea.... Two flavor Ravioli!! I remember reading somewhere about Wylie trying to inject something into the middle and struggling with it. I am wondering if you use one of those oral syringes and pump some liquid into the middle of your originoal flavor in order to get a second flavor in the middle of your rav. So many ideas, so little time/product!

Oh, hey guys, forgot to mention, anyone tried using the calcium lactate? Wondering if it is worth another call to R4D. Also, I was gifted some tylose and gum tragacanth tonight, any ideas if either would be applicable here?

Ok, so quick update. I have been swamped at the school for the last few days so not a lot of time to play. We had some liquid lecithin at work, so I took some home and in between shifts today, was just screwing around to see what I could do with it. I used about 50/50 canola oil to water, added about a half a tsp. of liquid lecithin, and beurre mixed. Three hours later, when I went to work, it was still emulsified, even if the top of the mixture was starting to turn a little more yellow in color than white. I would be willing to bet that if you emulsify some melted butter with water (think Keller's butter/water emulsion that he cooks everything in) after blooming alginate in the water, that all will become very clear on the butter orb front. At least, I hope it will anyway. The only problem I see is in a kitchen, you would need to keep the emulsion warm in order to do these to order, but if you had a handy dandy immersion blender, no problem. The question then becomes, will your emulsion break within your "orb" because it is heated, leaving you with a very layered butter and water looking thing? Could this be averted by some xantham? Edited becuase I had the words "I have no doubt that..."... and to be honest, I have doubts about all of this process. See upthread about Maine Public School Science requirements for graduation!!

Bryan, another idea I had on teh way home today was to use a powdered lecithin, an emulsifyer. It works with mayo and hollandaise, so why not this? Also, I was thinking about why some liquids float, and the apple juice mixture I tried first way back when sunk, and my hypthesis is that the sugar molecules actually fill in the gaps between the water molecules (thank you Harold McGee and On Food and Cooking), so it becomes heavier than "normal water" or normal brix mixtures. Any thoughts? Also, I did some seriously rigid "scientific" testing today at work. It was nice to have the whole school to myself. Made two batches(250g. ea) of reduced apple juice (using this becuase it is the only substance I have had limited success before today), one with 2g. of alginate, and one with 4g. of alginate. I made 5 water CaCl2 baths (from 1g. to 5g. of CaCl2 to 500g. of water). If you want my table of results, pm me, I will email it to you. Found some very interesting things. Nothing earthshattering, but some good info, nonetheless....

How is the shape of you guys ravioli? Mine keep coming out flat and long, like a raw oyster almost. Any tips? I am using a half-hemisphere espresso scoop that has the final shape I want, but am having unsatisfactory results. Also, was playing more today, trying a mushroom tea, using the amount of 250g. Tea with a CaCl2 bath of 500g. of water to 2.5g. of CaCl2. My caviar were coming out flat on the top, and were floating on the surface, disallowing me to remove them from the bath effectively. Any ideas? TA

Believe it or not, they sell jowl bacon here in our Publix supermarkets!! It is about half the price of regular bacon, and it comes unsliced, so you can make lardons or whatever out of it, instead of being hosed into only using it in slices. The fat is "crisper", almost crunching in your mouth when you taste it without cooking it (again- all bacon is hot smoked, so technically, it is already cooked). I prefer it now to any brand of sliced bacon I have found, but I am not one to turn away ANY type to be honest. If I had a choice though, I would buy the jowl!!

As far as fat is concerned, we made sure to remove all fat that was visible from our shrimp redux, so that's not the deal w/ my problem. I have another question. How does one go about making olive oil or butter ravioli? is the alginate fat soluble? Wylie? Grant? Chef Cantu? Help!!

BryanZ, thanks for the help. I was playing around this weekend, trying to make shrimp caviar using a reduction of shrimp stock, here is what I found (anyone who wants to chime in, please help! ): Shrimp stock (shells, a few canned tomatoes, garlic, white wine, water, Old Bay [i know, I know], Anise seed, salt) reduced by half to make strong concentrated flavor. 250g. Reduced stock, 2 g. Alginate Water bath of 2 g. CaCl with 500g. water Found that the dripped stock mixture disolved into the water bath as if I was adding two normal liquids together. So, I split the remaining stock mixture(200g.) by half (for a total of two bowls of 100g.), and added an additional 1g. of alginate to one of the bowls (increasing the amount of alginate in that portion by 100%). No effects. Same result. I then make another water bath, seperate, doubling the amount of CaCl. I then used an oral syringe to drip drops into the water bath, using both the portion of stock that had the original amount of alginate in it, and also the portion with double the alginate. The original mixture saw no change. The "double-Alginate" batch formed small pearls with tails to them, but could not be strained out becuase they would break, even after 10-15 minutes of sitting in the water bath. Wondering out loud if the mixture was too basic (link here says that the pH of shrimp is 6.5-7.0), we added some cider vinegar to the double alginate batch, and found that the caviar formed into individual pearls now, but were very flat. We still couldn't strain due to the caviar breaking every time we tried to strain. We increased the vinegar in incriments, just tryign to see what the reaction would be, but never got beyond the extremely flat and un-strainable disks. Needless to say, discouraged, we had these questions: 1. Any ideas on a type of enzyme being present in the shrimp perhaps that denatured the reaction? 2. Looking now at the ingredients in our stock, it looks like we added some pretty acidic ingredients to it, but after redux, it didn't seem too acidic, pretty balanced actually. Your thoughts? 3. Double Alginate, Double CaCl, no luck. WTF????? Frustration is mounting, but I am gonna crack this, well, I guess maybe "we" will crack this if it kills me, I mean "us". Thanks for the help, TA

Alright, add me to the mix of fans of this process, but I do have some questions. Becuase of my lack of science ever in my life (read: Maine public schools allow for vocational culinary classes to count for math, science, and history credits. So, I can only count to 20, am not sure who the father of our country is, and don't have a clue as to what I am doing other than following a recipe!! ) 1. Does brix effect the reaction? Salinity? Viscosity of the liquid (i.e. fruit puree as opposed to fruit juice?) 2. The more the alginate, the stronger/thicker the skin, correct? 3. By adding the sodium citrate to my mix, am I lowering the ph (more acidic, right), or making the ph higher (more basic) 4. In my experiments, I found that if I let the mixture sit for an additional 24 hours, the outer shell wall was a little bit more "chewey", more rubbery, but held the liquid more firmly, allowing me to go thinner. Is the resting period helpful, or did I just have my calcium water bath too strong the second time? 5. In our experiments, we noticed that the melon caviar and the apple caviar both are too lightly flavored on their own. Do you have suggestions other than reduction of liquid to concentrate flavors? Then the question of brix applies. Just a note: We used a squeeze bottle as well as syringes, and found that the bottle actually yielded better result becuas the spheres were actually a little bit bigger, and had more liquid inside. Thanks for the help guys!!

Trust me, Disney is to blame for all things messed up here in Orlando. It is hard to run a restaurant where people demand to be treated like they are at Disney ("Yes Ma'am, you sure can have ketchup for your foie gras kobe burger topped with shredded duck confit and chanterelle mushrooms. Do you want Heinze or Hunts?") And give me a break. Lobsters are dumb. Almost as dumb as cows. That's why we eat them. From what I have read, they have no real nervous system, they don't know what is going on. They were put on this earth solely to eat shrimp and squid, and for us to eat them. Lovely, I say!!

I am pretty sure you can buy the N2O at Williams-Sonoma, you just have to show your ID (as if having a drivers license stops you from huffing the stuff or something?!)

As stated on EG before now, my first kitchen job as a kid was working at a Weathervane Seafood place in Maine. Well, we had 10 fryers on one end of the line, and another 6 at the other end. By the time a Friday or Saturday night was over (the only two nights that used all 16 fryers), you should have seen the color of the liquid on the floor when we squeegeed it all up. I would say the "color of the 'water'", but water wouldn't exactly be an accurate description. Sea snot from gallons of oysters, batter mixture, flour, grease, and thawed french fries all made up what we commonly referred to as "schmegma". Not nice. And after hosing one of the other line cooks down one night with our "dishwasher" (a maroon hose that had warm water spraying out of it; I don't know how we didnt' kill people there....) I ended up with a bucketfull of this schmegma underneath the seat of my first car (no locks). Other horrible jobs I have had were stopping the employee bathroom toilet from overflowing (or tryign to stop it), cleaning the inside of the ice machine, having to snake out the soda drain (catching little gray slimy chunks that looked like a wet squirrel tail and smelled like the business end of a Mongolian Yak), polishing the copper pipe underneath the dish sink (don't piss off the chef), and having to roll a 50 gallon drum of used kitchen grease down the street becuase the dumpster truck driver kept putting it down too close to the barrel (Mental image: fat guy, whites, checks, clogs that are worn slick on the bottom, trying to roll a 50 gallon drum of smelly grease down an ice and grease laden sidewalk in Providence whilst trying not to burn the crap out of himself becuase his idiot employees just dumped grease in the said barrel. Not fun.)

God Luck ladies and gents, those stains are actually microscopic metal shavings that have embeded themselves into your fabric. Think fishhooks with barbs that you just can't get out of fabric. No amount of bleach or washing will do, even the personal favorite treatment of chlorox pen then cascade paste.

They do, I called today. $12 for 3 oz. of alginate, $7 for 2.5 oz. of CC.

Hey guys, I know this thread is old, but where can I buy the alginate and the CC here in Florida or on the internet? Thanks... TA

Gifted, any acid will do, I prefer to use lemon juice in my court bouillon anyway usually, even if I have wine in there. I woudl stay away from white distilled vinegar, which is good for absolutely nothing if you ask me. But you will do just fine, I am sure.

My first indications were when I was experimenting with baloney melts (a slice of cheap baloney and American cheese nuked in the microwave until the meat was "crispy"), scrambled eggs, and unique matches with peanut butter on a piece of bread, although, bacon never occured to me! At the age of 12, I sincereley asked for a Ronco food dehydrator, and could recite the whole infomercial from the begining. My parents knew they were in trouble...

this reminds me of a lamb fat vinaigrette that we used to make for staff meal after we skimmed the fat from teh lamb shank pot!! Yum I teach my students to use the rendered schmaltz for making roux! Nothing tastes better to me than a chicken noodle soup made with strong chicken stock thickened to veloute with schmaltz roux, ditalini, and little bits of slowly roasted chicken thigh meat!! I suppose you could throw some vegetables in there if you HAD to...... Also, think veal fat for, well, veal flavored dishes that need to be thicker.... Here you go, those who wished for a EGCI course on rendering. Place fat (cut into pieces larger than what you could fit into your mouth, but not bigger than your head) into a pot, and place on a burner over low heat. Cook until the fat is crispy, and has shrunken to pieces that you CAN fit into your mouth. Remove and drain crispy skin, season heavily with the seasoning of your desire (old bay or simple kosher for me), grab a billy club (stun gun or tazer substitutable) to beat off anyone that comes within 12 feet of you, stopping the consumption of said crispy bits only when you can litterally feel and hear your heart beat with a few second lapse between the two. Strain the liquid fat through a coffee filter, and freeze in an ice cube tray or shallow baking dish (you can later cut into ice cube sized pieces). Buy rolaids from immense heartburn due to excessive consumption of crispy fat. Or Tums if you need calcium. Or if you are really into rolaids, get a gallon of milk too. Edited becuase I forgot that commercial where they called them "Calciums", you know, where they rolled two tablets out, removing the T from the package. Rolaids should come up with a catchy thing like that.

Same here. I saw "Kobe Beef" on a menu once, and I asked the waiter, "is that really Kobe Beef?" Waiter, with a trapped look on his face: "actually it's from a ranch in Texas, but they make it the same way that they make Kobe Beef, but they feed it beer instead of sake, and I think it tastes better." "Then it's actually (making exaggerated airquotes) Kobe-style Beef then?" "Uh, yeah." edited for clarity. ← I'm not too sure about this but I think that the breed of cattle used is actually called Wagyu beef and it can only be called Kobe beef if it comes from Kobe, Japan. Otherwise, i think that they should have just called it Texas wagyu beef. Correct me if I am wrong. I think people need to understand that before labelling everything as 'Kobe' beef. Also, Kobe beef is the most popularized beef but in Japan there are many other regions in Japan where the beef is equally as good in such places as Maezawa, Yonezawa and Iga. ← Yah, Wagyu is actually the breed name, similar to well, Angus or Hereford or Jersey or Holstein. We can no longer get actual authentic Kobe here in America becuase we have banned its import due to mad cow scares. So that means that we are going to have to be satisfied with a whiny baby wearing a #8 jersey in LA, or Wagyu cattle from Texas if we are having a Kobe craving!! I had one of my students tell me enthusiastically the other day that they serve Kobe Pork Porterhouse at his restaurant. You should have seen the look on his face when he told me it, like he was bragging that he once played James Bond or something, like it actually raised his coolness factor that he cooked Kobe Pork. I quickly corrected him, telling him that they probably serve Kurobata pork, and then put him on his way...... Sometimes, I can't believe that they let me teach....

Hey guys, I have been on curing sabatical for the last three weeks, I feel like I am going through nitrate withdrawal!! Anyway, I am just wondering if anyone has read or seen anything from John Kinsella's charcuterie book? I just orderd a desk reference copy from the distributer the other day (one of the perks of being a chef instructor... free cookbooks!!!). I know, I know, this is the thread about Polcyn and Rhulman....... just curious...

Oh yah, almond. Whole almond. Like the number is only half the usual amount becuase they are so big. And nutty. And yummy. I think Wal-Mart is open 24 hours on the drive home tonight... hmmm...... Look for the well... almond colored bag edited to add the self-explaining color of the bag.....

For time's sake, I am just going to list what I can eat a whole container of in a single sitting without even knowing it: Pringles Any ice cream that comes in a container smaller than 5 gallons Cheetos (popular on this thread) Chips with Dip Hummus Nutella Just about any type of cookie except oatmeal raisin (too healthy for me!) M & M's, any flavor, but I am particularly addicted to almond and peanut butter Snickers bars Ressee's peanut butter cups (the Easter eggs that are out right now btw rock, they have like twice the peanut butter inside) Lindt chocolate truffles (White chocolate, hazelnut, and peanut butter ones are the best. I hold them in my mouth until the center melts and is all gooey!!!) Twix Doritos Cool Ranch Those God-Awul orange cheese puff things Pink after-dinner mints Honey (As a kid, I worked on a produce farm, and would have to ride my bike home after a long day's work [my parents were just those type of people... ] and I would usually gank a honey bear out of the vegetable stand that we had for the ride home. It was a rare occasion that I would make it home and that thing would have any honey left in it. I don't know how I didn't get sick) Coke Classic (I try not to drink it, but I have to tell you, when it is ice cold, nothing like it) Roasted Chicken (I am talking the whole bird) Turkey Skin ("Don't worry mom, I will throw it away...." ) French Fries, smothere with just about anything, especially fresh made lemony mayo Come to think of it.. almost anything deep fried Man, I gotta get back in the gym....

To be honest, I usually never poach them in court bouillon. I usually just soak them in some milk overnight to remove any blood or bitterness, peel the membrane from them either with my hands, or using a flexible fillet knife, and them basically deep fry them slowly in butter, finished with a load of fresh squeezed lemon juice. My Chef at Le Manoir told me to always season heavily with kosher salt at the beginning, middle and end of cooking. Hasn't failed me yet, and I love the look on my students' faces when they ask me what they are eating, and I tell them veal sweetbreads!!

Any news on the restaurant that supposedly occupied the old Empire space for a few weeks, I guess it was called Bravo? I heard through the grapevine that it was only open for three weeks ? My source of this info was biased, so I figured that I would do some digging........