pastrygirl

As far as I can tell, the custom of tipping does not differ in different parts of the country, the custom of tipping 15-20% is the same across America. How would you say it differs? The custom, the expectation/obligation of the diner, not the money taken in by the server.

Are you using 'minimum wages' to mean a set hourly wage? We all agree that it would be nice if everyone managed to make a living at whatever job they choose, whatever the cost of living in a certain area is. We can't seem to agree on what a server should make on an hourly basis. And yes, I agree that servers prefer working for tips, because of the possibility of "raking in cash" in large amounts. The lack of homogeneity is indeed a problem, because the culture of tipping in this country does not respond to it. The expectation that a diner should tip 15-20% does not change from state to state even though base wages do. It doesn't change from city to rural or in any other way. Diners are trapped.

And civilization as we know it will continue to exist even if servers rake in slightly less cash. I'm sure all those unemployed servers will have no problem finding work, with their highly valuable skill sets and all. But seriously, Australia and Europe still seem to function, and the restaurant industry is alive and well in states that pay servers above the federal minimum wage. What are the people who resist change so afraid of?

I totally agree.

Halving the recipe may have been the culprit, or maybe "warming up" the liquids wasn't hot enough. I've used Francisco Migoya's perfect pastry cream recipe, which is similar, and he does state that there is a minimum volume at which the formula will work. The liquid also need to be at a full rolling boil for that one, maybe for the IIF puddings too? The chocolate pudding would thicken anyway due to the chocolate solidifying rather even if the eggs and starch didn't perform.

Would/should/do you tip differently when visiting Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada or California? These states do not allow tip credit and have minimum wages higher than federally mandated, so there is less hustle required to make a living. I love living in high-paying, dope-smoking, gay-marrying WA, but I do think that since our minimum wage is so much higher, we in particular should be able to re-think tipping, make it closer to 10% than 20% if we continue the tradition at all. http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm#.UPRYP-ivWH0 In that gig where you tipped out 52%, did you still manage to make a living? And was it cash flow alone or other factors that led you to leave?

I agree, you need more specifics on what they didn't like. Is there some ideal (probably boxed ) that they had in mind and yours is different? I'm thinking of Christina Tosi's nostalgia for boxed confetti b-day cake as described in the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook - some may be hoping for an exact replica of that. I, on the other hand, grew up on Grandma's homemade cakes, and I think Tosi's confetti cake looks gross and wonder why anyone would want to slavishly re-create boxed cake and nasty jarred icing. Do you have it by the slice/cupcake? I work on Capitol Hill, I can come by and taste it with you if you like. And, if possible, can you give them credit instead of cash so you are not out the cash and get another chance to redeem yourself?

Your "of course" confuses me. Why of course? How is the dollar value of a particular skill set determined? My baby brother and I have different careers but our salaries are the same - completely different skill sets, no income inequality. My salary is based on years of baking & pastry experience and the fact that my employer hopes to keep me forever in 'golden handcuffs' and is decent enough for my field, his is based on having gone to law school and is probably considered entry-level for his field. (Though once he has 15 years of experience his income will likely be a few times mine, mine hopefully will go up but realistically not much more than 25-50%). So what determines wages? Experience? Education? Specialized skills? Competition for skilled workers in a given market? Whatever the market will bear? I don't think tipping culture is based on any of these, tipping is an obligation, not a true reflection of a server's skills. When we tip, we have no idea how much the other tables that night have tipped, so we don't know whether that server is making $15 an hour that night or $45. We are not tipping to say, "your service was deserving of $X an hour tonight". If you knew what your server was earning on a particular night and didn't feel obligated to a certain percentage, would tipping change? Would you say, "eh, the other tables must have liked her because she's up to $32 an hour, I don't think she's all that, I'm leaving a dollar"? Or, "I can't believe that last table didn't like her, she's way better than the $14 an hour she's at tonight, let's leave extra"? Which skills are worth what? Which FOH skills are worth 2-4x BOH skills?

Ahh, well there you go Mkayahara, that's the attitude you've got change. Good luck! Well as long as no one is forcing the diner to tip if they find it distasteful, then we are all good.

Oh yes it does, big time.... Best thing for this kind of couverture is to use it in ganaches or praline pastes But you can temper gianduja....? I know chocolate mixed with other fats will temper differently, but it seems like a few grams of nut oil wouldn't be a huge deal, as opposed to if there were chunks of ganache containing cream or other forms of water. Still, i would value your elaboration on the tempering differences.

Bits of praline paste, being fat-based, will not interfere with future tempering, so the only thing you have to worry about in re-using that chocolate is nut allergies. If you have big chunks, you could strain them out. When I make praline paste, I use two parts by weight toasted hazelnuts to one part powdered sugar. It does not get perfectly smooth in the food processor, so I strain it through a fine chinoise, and there is no detectable grit. The straining is a bit messy and tedious, may not be worth the effort for everyone, but it is an option.

Dare we imagine what would happen if they tipped out 20%? 30%? 50%? One thing that makes these discussions challenging is that state policies and minimum wages vary so widely. In WA, servers make the minimum wage of $9.19 an hour. I wouldn't recommend trying to live on that in Seattle, but it would go further in Walla Walla. When tips aren't quite as crucial to a persons survival, 16-20% of my dinner check seems awfully generous. Yes, I think tipping culture does contribute to transiency. I have tried to get servers to name an hourly wage for which they would work, and nobody seems to want to name one. Nobody wants to commit to an hourly wage when they could potentially make so much more. Who would, when they might double or triple that on a really great night?

I watched that recently too. Nice to see someone actually sounding rational when talking about tipping. It does strike me as odd that the income disparity is so accepted as being part of the industry, and I wonder why more restaurateurs don't address it. Thomas Keller has policies to distribute the service charge equally between the front & back of the house (or something that helps equalize kitchen & floor incomes). What is everyone else so afraid of? The usual argument seems to be that you wouldn't be able to find good servers if they weren't taking home bundles of cash every night, which makes me sad. I would love to see things change but am not very hopeful.

This seems like a bit of selective malicious editing to create drama. John made a comment during one of his talking heads that he knew frozen tuna could be of acceptable quality and that his main gripe was that bluefin tuna can not be sustainable sourced. Is saku block bluefin? Google search says yellowfin, and Monterey Bay says there is some sustainable yellowfin (though hard to say what Stefan was actually using or where it came from). I'm sure John has talent in the kitchen, but he seems like a guy who would say anything to get ahead, I would not trust him with much. Glad to see him gone. And, as far as his BS "no-excuses" excuses about the pots available, I watched the last episode twice, and Josie was using a really nice stainless rondo. If only she had been in the bottom, she could have backed Josh up at judges table.

If you can get your hands on a reasonable amount of atomized glucose, it does act like sugar to soften ice cream without adding the full sweetness of sugar. About 15% of the sugar in my recipe is atomized glucose. Glucose syrup would do the same - think flavorless Lyle's.

After the dinner I had tonight, I have to say food that is difficult to eat. Huge whole-leaf salads piled on tiny plates or in bowls that make it hard to cut seem to be everywhere. Food that itself is hard to cut, like the roasted radicchio I had tonight. Tasty, but it turned sort of slippery and stringy, couldn't hold it down well with a fork, and the butter knife was going nowhere. Server agreed it was hard to cut and brought a steak knife, still no luck. Entree was shell-on spot prawns with lots of roe. The shells did not peel off easily at all, but in chunks and sprays, there may still be some prawn in my hair. I don't want to struggle, or feel like I am deficient in some way for not being able to feed myself, or ruin clothing. If the shells had been fried crispy I would have eaten them, but they weren't. I'm also not loving drowning everything in olive oil. A little good olive oil and some salt will elevate just about any ingredient. But oil on everything, oil on top of cheese, oil on top of butter, oil soaking through the crostino to puddle on the plate, oil by the slosh instead of the drizzle ... TOO MUCH!

My newest macaron flavor is Linzertorte. I toasted some hazelnut meal and used about 60/40 hazelnut/almond flour, plus a little cinnamon and a pinch of clove. Filled with raspberry buttercream. I love how versatile macaron is.

Me three. Save it for dessert!

I use this 8" scraper: http://www.shopchefrubber.com/Bench-Scraper-w-handle-8/ One of the more affordable chocolate tools

Could you explain a little more what you mean by "beauty coats"? I have the same goal in mind, but they don't end up being beautiful. When I add any choc. later, it just creates bumps and lumps. The beauty coat is just a final swipe of chocolate to fill in the slight concavity due to chocolate shrinkage, as well as other blemishes and rough spots. Very little chocolate gets used. I ladle a line across the end of the mold and scrape it across with my drywall tool. Make sure your tools are clean & chocolate is not lumpy, work quickly, and leave it alone between coats. I have not used acetate on molds, but have bought it at art supply stores for use with chocolate garnishes.

I'm guessing that while you 'wait a bit for the chocolate to settle into the molds', the chocolate is setting up and making scraping more difficult. You want your chocolate rather fluid, cover your bottoms, tap out bubbles, and scrape off quickly. Resist the urge to mess with it, messing with thickening chocolate is usually a disaster. The bottoms will always contract slightly, I go over mine with 1 or 2 'beauty coats' to fill in.

I have to admit I am enjoying it, maybe just because I am a Seattle native and it is exciting to see places I know. I can't say who stands out for me out of the remaining chefs. I liked CJ, hope he does well in last chance kitchen.

The confection came out fine, but today I managed to snap EIGHT guitar wires at once. Awesome!

Yeah, the chocolate is in control, there is no pretending otherwise. I think the immediate thickening must be due to over-crystallization. I get better results when my seed is mostly melted at 95, much more frustrating results when I still have significant unmelted seed at 92 and am trying frantically to melt it out and stirring a lot, inducing even more crystallization. Nothing like tempering several pounds of chocolate to do big production, filling 3 molds, then having to re-temper. A drafty room doesn't seem to help either.

Thanks for the perpendicular suggestion. I think that may help. Could you estimate how clean your molds are when you finish scraping? I've seen videos where the molds are almost as clean as they were before use, others where there is some thin covering of chocolate. Pretty clean? I try to scrape as well as possible to get nice sharp bottom edges, except sometimes when I overfill the molds and try to compensate for extra-thin bottoms by not scraping very well. I don't generally refrigerate molds unless the kitchen is particularly warm, I'm in a big hurry, or doing thicker bars (really fun when all 3 conditions apply ). I do wash my molds because, I don't know, I'm an OCD Virgo and it just seems wrong not to? I keep trying to tell myself I don't need to, but I won't listen....maybe someday! Kerry is right, it's just chocolate. My co-workers have never failed to make a plate of rejects disappear in lightening time, you have to scorch it or do something really unfortunate before most people will turn their nose up at chocolate, and only French guys and chocolatiers look at the bottoms. If you have a lot of "seconds", often you can melt the whole things down with a little extra liquid and recycle them as filling for the next batch, so all is not lost. Chocolate can be extremely frustrating, but when you get the batches with the showroom finish it is so rewarding. I have days when I feel like a pro and days when I feel like a beginner. Hang in there!