pastrygirl

The percentage on the package is the total amount of cocoa solids plus cocoa butter. The rest is mostly sugar, plus a little lecithin and vanilla. 70% can mean 40% solids and 30% fat or 50% solids and 20% fat. Against the same 30% sugar, those two 70%s will taste very different. Not many manufacturers list the cocoa butter content separately. Callebaut has many many formulations and uses a 1 to 5 drop system to indicate the fluidity of each formulation. 3 or 4 is recommended for dipping and molding, 5 may be too fluid to get a thick enough shell. Anything sold as couverture should have 30% cocoa butter or more. The working temp of your chocolate and degree of precrystalization will also affect fluidity. If you have a chocolate whose flavor you like but that is too viscous, you certainly may add cocoa butter to thin it down. I would not add sugar, because what sugar would you add? I suppose you could use powdered sugar, as the particles are too fine to detect and it is used in Greweling's gianduja recipes, but I haven't tried that with straight chocolate. You definitely do not want to add granulated sugar, because it will not dissolve in the cocoa butter but will remain gritty. To adjust sweetness, I would find a different chocolate or do a blend of sweeter and darker until I was happy. Chocolate is one of those things you can work with for years and still keep learning and exploring. Have fun and be sure to post some pics when you make something that delights you.

A fellow chef who had been living in Bali wrote this to me: There are some really cutting edge restaurants as well in Singapore - I went on a food trip in February and went to Waku Ghin and it was unbelievable. Andre Chiang also just opened a restaurant but there is a 3 month wait so book now but he is doing the best food in Singapore. Aside from the hawker stands of course.

Nikkib, when will you be in SIN? I'll be there at the end of the month, then flying out in late Sept, and will do my best to report back here.

I'm not crazy about the chalkboard, LCD, or other ideas where there is only one menu in a fixed place. I don't want to have to turn around in my chair or squint across the room. I've also seen smaller chalkboards with the specials carried around by the servers to each table, and that is just awkward. What is wrong with a paper menu? I like clean modern design, even that industrial/reclaimed aesthetic. If a place has great wooden beams from a century ago and vintage brick I enjoy seeing them exposed. There are a lot of newer places with too many hard surfaces that bounce sound around in an unpleasant way, so if you do go industrial, pay close attention to acoustics. Seems like a big trend is lots of super low wattage retro-style lights, either in big chandelier-like clusters or lined up along the bar. I like the look but I wonder if it is going to look dated in a few years.

Darker chocolate is always going to be "snappier" than chocolate with milk fat. The milk fat has a softening effect. I like the contrast of a brittle shell on a soft center. More cocoa butter increases fluidity and will give you a thinner shell, while more cacao solids make it stronger (as far as I know - at the world pastry forum a few years ago the chef doing the showpiece demo said to always use dark chocolate for structural strength, and to spray it white if you want the look of white chocolate). The best chocolate to use to enrobe your caramels is the chocolate that tastes best with your caramels. Sorry, probably not the answer you were looking for You can blend the 53% and the 72% to make a 60% if neither is perfect for you.

You might try a cold infusion, more sugar, or a little mini airline-size bottle of liquor.

Hmm, too close to bedtime to check references now, but I thought 'invert sugar' was a more general term referring to a variety of products - glucose syrup, corn syrup, honey, atomized glucose, trimoline, sucralose - with a variety of practical applications. Still so much to learn...

I usually use glucose syrup, which is similar to corn syrup but much thicker. This is what Peter Greweling calls for in many of his recipes. I get it from one of my restaurant suppliers, $10 for a 2 kg tub. Another chocolatier, either Ewald Notter or Jean-Pierre Wybauw often uses dry powdered sucralose, available from Chef Rubber or probably other places. In short, corn syrup is the cheapest and most accessible liquid invert sugar, or you can also use honey if the honey flavor works with your other flavors. There are dry invert sugars and liquid invert sugars, and I don't think they are all necessarily interchangeable. P.S. where do you live? Someone here or on a regional cooking & baking board might be able to recommend good local chocolate sources.

Maple syrup as well. According to the University of Maine extension, it takes about 10 gallons of sap boiled down to make a quart of syrup. Unless someone has been doing some serious low-temp dehydrating? (Anything's possible!)

Agreed on the Greweling book recommendation above. He covers many types of both chocolates and confections, explains the science of how things work, and has troubleshooting guidelines for when things don't turn out as hoped. Since Chef Rubber is in Las Vegas, you will need to pay high $$ shipping via next day air with ice packs for anything perishable - unless you really want to re-temper all your chocolate once you get it after it's melted in the 100+ degree heat that is summer in the desert. Or wait until winter. Check with specialty wholesalers in your area to see if they will do a will call order for you. If you can find Callebaut, Cacao Barry, or Felchlin at wholesale prices (Valrhona is still more than $10/# wholesale) it would be worth buying the 5kg/11# box. Polycarbonate molds are around $25 each, which is a big investment if you only use them once or twice then give up, but will last for years if taken care of. JB Prince has good prices on molds (better than Chef Rubber), as does Design & Realisation in Toronto (although shipping to the US makes up for most of the savings, or at least shipping to the West coast does ). Chocolate molds make a great gift, if you can drop hints around your birthday or other holidays to people who might benefit from encouraging your chocolatiering.

You usually want to keep the alcohol because it is a preservative. If the truffle is too soft, you can replace some of the cream with butter (therefore making the cream + butter + alcohol combination about the same fat:water ratio as cream alone), or just use less cream.

Well, Obese-wan, I'm at a loss. You gave an example above of using 1 cup cream in a 500ml dispenser, maybe it works better when full? Things can get weird in there with too many no2 charges, so maybe one charge for only a cup of cream is too much and one charge per two cups would be better?

You need to churn it somehow to incorporate air and produce the smallest size crystals of ice. If you just make the base and stick it in the freezer you will get a hard, icy block instead of scoopable ice cream. By specific container to put in the freezer, do you mean the Donvier/Cuisinart type where you freeze the bowl then churn your base in that frozen bowl? There are small machines available that have a compressor and are able to freeze batch after batch with no frozen bowl, but those tend to be much more expensive than the frozen bowl machines.

El Bulli, June 2005. Blown away - everything I'd hoped the experience would be. Here are the notes I scrawled afterwards, that don't come anywhere close to describing the food. I have pictures, but not digital. pina colada - dissolving foam w/ rum balls parmesan marshmallows "olives" olive oreos mini baguette (crispy & hollow) wrapped in yogurt croquant pumpkin seed oil caramel drop frozen (liquid inside) pistachio truffle sea bean tempura w/ saffron, oyster emulsion gazpacho - dissolving tomatoey 'cone' w/ frozen gazpacho, cilantro sprouts steamed brioche bun w/ truffle slices, butter consomme de 'tucapi' - brazilain thing? - w/ frozen passion fruit air yogurt w/ butter, geranium, capers mussels w/ assorted seaweeds walnuts w/ brown butter, pickled tiny daisy heads mushrooms w/ dashi cloud, sesame thai soup w/ coconut tofu white asparagus w/ olive oil gnocchi, lemon foam mackerel w/ chicken foam/jus, chinese vegetable w/ vinegar prawns w/ 'lentil of jamon' boneless chicken wing burrata - cottage cheesey balls w/ maple syrup, apple, pear, apricot frozen peach schnapps w/ peach coulis the desert - cinnamon ice cream, yogurt, strawberry, instant coffee, chocolate guanabana foam 'teppan-nitro' w/ caviar (fruity seeds)

I agree. Put them in a lovely bowl and use them as a centerpiece on your table.

Not really. If I ever have very little appetite I know I must be either sick or very very stressed out. What surprises me is how much frying people in some tropical places do, for example all of the fried chicken stands all over Bangkok. Green papaya salad and ice in your beer I can understand, but fried chicken?

Very strange. So you release the pressure and nothing comes out, then open it up and cream that went in liquid has solidified? Does it seem aerated at all, or just dense like sour cream? Why would liquid solidify just by being in the canister? How much fat% in your cream, maybe that is a factor?

How big is your ISI and how many NO2 do you add? And did you strain to remove all large particles of pepper? When I've done either vegan chocolate mousse - essentially chocolate and water - or a gelatin mousse the temp was crucial. Too cold and it wouldn't come out, too warm = too runny, room temp was just right. Sometimes needed to run the canister under warm water and shake to get the desired temp/texture. Of course heating the canister while it is under pressure is not recommended unless you have the thermo-whip, but a little warm water to bring the temp up a few degrees seemed safe enough.

Low tech: string High tech: meat glue

Honey.

What is the shiny thing on the right over the (is that?) rhubarb? Is it edible, or metal? Thanks.

Smoked paprika and smoked salt are options too.

There's a learning curve, for sure. But if you can make meringue you're halfway there.

When I went vegetarian in college c.1990 it was more for environmental reasons than about the cute little animals. I started eating meat and fish again about 10 years later because I was tired of being so limited, plus I started working in a restaurant and the salad prep station next to me was always cooking bacon. Lately I feel I have become lazy about cooking, it is so easy to saute a piece of fish or a pork chop instead of do a bunch of veg prep and I do aspire to cut down on my flesh-eating, again primarily for environmental reasons. I tend to eat more wild fish than land animals, so the factory farming is less of an issue there. In my mind I value the whole local and sustainable thing but in practice I am lazy about it. I do my best to stick to sustainable seafood, as defined by Monterey Bay aquarium, go for the local 'natural' chicken but not necessarily organic, and the pork I buy doesn't seem to have any distinctive label so it must be industrial. I keep telling myself I need to buy more organic everything but price is a deterrent. I don't care much for beef, and so only eat it when I go out for pho. I do believe our food animals should be as happy and healthy as possible, free range, no unnecessary antibiotics, not sure I could kill one. I guess I don't worry about the killing aspect so much, it is what it is, as long as someone else does it. Sustainability is more important, and i think humane treatment of animals is part of that. But I did just have some foie gras at dinner, so apparently I don't care much about ducks. I lived in a primarily Buddhist country for two years and it seemed like at least half the people ate meat, despite the belief in not harming another sentient being. There were guys who would do the slaughter, then once the animal was dead people figured it was OK, no blood on their hands. Maybe hypocrites or maybe just poor people eating what they could find. I watched a yak get killed and it was not as dramatic as I thought it would be.

I'm sure you've read the various macaron threads on Pastry & Baking - the troubleshooting thread should be especially helpful. Low humidity, aged egg whites, fine dry almond flour, knowing how far to mix, baking on a silpat...as long as you get every aspect perfect, they are really simple