pastrygirl

Well it's been a few years, and I doubt I could explain where that great place for bun cha gio was even if I remembered, so I'll just say eat as much as you possibly can, eat street food any time you see it, have pho for breakfast like its meant to be. And the water puppet show in Hanoi in the old quarter near Hoan Kiem lake was really quite charming, as were the lacquer etchings (an art form that seems unique to Vietnam) in the fine art museum in Hanoi. I found the food in Vietnam great across the board. There may have been some mediocre western food in there, but that's what you get for ordering pizza in Asia. (People who say there is no such thing as bad pizza have never been to Asia. ) Some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11037087@N02/sets/72157619833647972/with/3618110120/

That's terrible. But doesn't it make you want to see the recipe?

For this bread she is baking in a pullman pan, which is covered, so I don't think steam would have much effect. http://www.amazon.com/Paderno-World-Cuisine-13-75-Steel/dp/B0026RHW0Q Isn't longer kneading time supposed to give a finer crumb?

Nyesha now has the jacket.

Supposedly the pastry chef this other chef worked with used it. It says to blend the butter in while the custard is still warm, chill one day then freeze in paco jet beakers. You want lower fat ice cream when using the paco jet, because the more fat you have the greater your risk of it getting overspun and buttery from the high speed of the rotating blade. When I make brown butter or butter pecan ice cream I adjust the milk:cream ratio to account for the added fat. I hadn't considered it as a flavor enhancer, never thought of butter flavor as particularly desirable in ice cream. Does butter really make everything better?

I've made ice cream bases with butter before, either intentionally to make brown butter ice cream, or out of desperation when there was no cream to be found. My usual recipe is cream, milk, egg yolks, sugar, salt and flavors. Today our new chef gave me an ice cream recipe from one of the high end restaurants he had worked in in another city. It is for 'neutral ice cream base' and is something like 5 liters milk, 1/2 liter cream, egg yolks, sugar, milk powder, atomized glucose, stabilizer, salt, and 325 g butter mixed in with the immersion blender at the end. This strikes me as odd. Why would you opt to add butter rather than just use a higher proportion of cream? Dairy fat is dairy fat, isn't it, and why add an extra step? I'm not planning to adopt this method, just curious what the reasoning behind it might be.

:laugh:

Good to know, I'll give it a try. I wouldn't be able to use milk chocolate because of a dairy issue. I'll just have to advise her to eat them quickly, and not worry about fat bloom if it does happen. Thanks!

I think it is a little harder to break into a new town, but I don't think Seattle chefs particularly discriminate. If you can get in to stage or work a trail shift, they will judge you on your performance then. It might help to give a little description of the places you've worked on your resume, rather than just your station. Cuisine, seats, average covers, awards, etc. Good luck!

I got some kaffir limes in at work and ended up giving them to the bar. The dark & stormy with a slice of fresh kaffir lime was delicious. The limes are pretty bitter, and it doesn't take much.

Anybody have experience with the meltaways? I made a tiny batch once and liked them, now I'm wondering if the meltaway base can be dipped or used as a filling, or if the coconut fat would bloom through the chocolate coating. The meltaway recipes in the book specify to be rolled in powdered sugar or cocoa powder. A soon-to be family member can't have any dairy, so I'm trying to think what I can make for her without getting too involved with substitutions. I don't have to dip them, just thought it might be fun to do a bar with a creamy meltaway center if it would work. Any ideas?

In my experience, the biggest problem with multiplying candy recipes is not having a big enough burner for the pot. If the burner is too small or the pot is too large you don't get even heat, and some candies don't work - I'm thinking of pate de fruits that gets weird if it doesn't all boil rapidly enough, and caramelizing sugar and getting crystallization around the edges even though it seems to be boiling in the middle. So the candy burner and copper pot set-up should be ideal for a larger batch. Let us know how it turns out.

I thought it was confetti. Weren't they still at the party venue?

From the bookmark, I must have bought it in about 1997 from a used bookstore where I lived then, in my early years as a baker. If it's been around 40 years and also in paperback, we must not be the only ones.

I don't think I've baked from it much, and it's older than I am, but if you can find a copy, The Viennese Pastry Cookbook by Lilly Joss Reich (1970) looks pretty comprehensive and traditional. Voila, Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Viennese-Pastry-Cookbook-Lilly-Reich/dp/0964360055/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

Jeanne, I've been in baking and pastry for 15 years (like your employee), and here is how I roll: when I drop something, I pick it up. When I spill something, I clean it up. When I screw up a recipe, I make it over (unless it can be salvaged in some creative way). If I feel like I was super spacey or not very productive, I may clock out for the last few minutes while I'm cleaning up. If I drop the lid to the robot coupe and it cracks and has to be taped back together, I fess up. If I have down time waiting on something in the oven and someone else is shelling peas, I'll shell peas with them. If the dishes are piling up in the dish pit, I'll run a few loads. Some of this was learned over time, and by working for a strict chef. Some of it is the fact that I do all the pastry, so if the macarons are ugly and cracked, it is obvious who was responsible. Plus, I am a lousy liar and have no respect for liars and lazy slobs. I take my job way too seriously and am rarely happy with anything, even as my coworkers are raving and scrambling for scraps. I always want it to be better, so I'm going to do my best not to serve crap. And on those rare occasions when I make the wrong choice and let something slide (like not properly re-spinning some ice creams after the freezer had been left open all night) I beat myself up about it for days. And you know what? Chefs are sad to see me go, and the restaurateur I currently work for has lured me back twice after I've left town and done other things. During one absence of about a year and a half they went through FOUR pastry chefs, either incompetent or crazy or some combination of both.

I totally agree. Having to clean up after someone else's mistakes is much more frustrating than just having extra work to do. If you have other staff that can put in a little more OT for the next three weeks, they might be happy to get some extra money and relieved the problem is gone. Your labor cost will go up, but waste will go down, and you'll be saved any damage this person is doing to your reputation/equipment/happiness.

Seriously. My fingers are usually freezing! If women all had hot hands, we wouldn't be suited to pastry either. There are a lot of things in pastry that you don't want to warm or melt when you touch them, like buttery doughs and chocolate.

A sushi bar near me has a woman who works behind the sushi bar. Does anyone who makes sushi qualify as a sushi chef, or only the head chef?

Don't worry, you haven't. See above Whew!

I'm in Seattle, and I think there are probably plenty of sources, but I'm looking for something pretty big, probably about 30 x 48" for the restaurant kitchen. I actually do have a smaller square of granite left from a friend's kitchen counters that I had trimmed up to about 18". Not big enough to temper any real amount of chocolate on. So... granite is fine if I can't find marble?

Right. Note to self. If you're trying to come up with a clever and attractive and appetizing food dish, probably best not to fashion it in the shape of something that's already pretty disgusting all by itself. Like a half-smoked cigar butt. Plus, it seems like more appropriate after dinner than as an appetizer. If he was on the dessert team it might have made more sense.

Does granite serve equally well, or is there something magical about marble? It seems like there are more granite odds and ends than marble out there.

Follow up... they are pretty intense and tricky to use - just hard to find a balance with the unique flavor. I used the zest of two in a 3 quart batch of lemon curd and that was about right. Both the chef and I tried passing them off to the bartender, who also found them too strong in initial experiments. But he tried again today, and made me a dark & stormy with a wedge of kaffir lime in it - maybe muddled? - that was quite nice. The flavor was there and added a nice limey bitter component to the drink, but it didn't overpower or linger beyond its welcome.

That's funny, I don't trust the vast majority of recipes on the internet. So much wrong "information" and how do you know whether you can trust peoples' taste? I only trust epicurious and egullet.