pastrygirl

On the olli front I think it may refer to a company , especially if you are from virginia Olli Salumeria which makes sense in the context of the menu meaning the plate has meats made by Olli and also housemade . Interesting, could be a possibility. OTOH, Seattle is awfully far from VA, so it would be odd to presume anyone would know that 'olli' meant 'salumi from the company named Olli'. I should have asked when I was at the resto, maybe I'll call if it continues to bug me.

Recently I've encountered a few culinary terms or bits of information about which I am skeptical. Of course, I don't know everything about food, but I know a fair amount and I have to wonder if these are new things I need to learn, or just BS. 1) Chocolate petit four of caramel mousse on a 'mignonette cake'. I've only ever seen mignonette used to describe a sauce of vinegar and shallots. Maybe they meant it in the 'small, coin shaped piece of meat' sense of the word? I don't recall if the cake was round or square. What is mignonette cake? 2)Local restaurant has 'assorted olli & housemade charcuterie'. WTH are olli? The only culinary term I can find that comes close is 'oli', which is Italian for 'oils', but why would you both serve assorted oils with charcuterie and mix French and Italian on the menu? What are olli? 3)On the Top Chef Just Desserts season 2 finale, Matthew describes speculoos as 'a type of cookie made with roasted flour'. The judges did mention spice, so it seems he got that part of the cookie down, but is roasting the flour really definitive of speculoos? Or was he full of it? Enlighten me! Or are they just making this stuff up?

Starch molded?

OK, better late than never, here is what I like for my version of pecan pie. At work I make these as 4" tarts with a sweet almond crust. I think it would be good with all pine nuts, too. I use 3 parts pecans to 1 part sliced almonds to 1 part pine nuts, lightly toasted. For "the goo" (makes about 2 quarts?) 8 oz butter, melted zest 2 oranges 8 lg eggs 16 oz sugar 19 oz honey 1 tsp salt 1/2 c orange liqueur (triple sec) 1/2 c orange juice The orange cuts the sweetness a bit, but you still get the honey and the gooiness.

I wonder how well that would hold. Would the sauce soak into the mousse as it sits in the freezer? I'm thinking mousse is going to be pretty porous. It would have to not be too liquid, or it could be a pain to execute. Can you make the mousse hollow and inject the sauce just prior to service? Or do something like make your dome, leave a well at the bottom, fill well with sauce, cap with a round of white chocolate, and invert onto the plate when ordered?

I don't know where the servers in Key West should live. Maybe near the line cooks and bakers?

I'd rather have the information, not some pre-digested ratings system. I can read and do math and don't find food labels confusing at all. If the average American can't compare the nutritional merits of two boxes of cereal, maybe it's time to stop cutting funding for education I'm not diabetic, but there are a lot of things that I don't like too sweet (cereal, yogurt, fruit juice). It takes very little time to check a few labels for the fewest grams of sugar per serving. Different people have different preferences and needs, a one size points system is not going to fit all.

Well - I was sort of hinting about how folks try to get away with that and it inevitably comes back to bite them. I'm glad to hear you feel that way. There does seem to be a vocal contingency - hopefully a minority - that seems to feel it is their right to under report their earnings, just a perk of the industry and don't mess with the system. I can't support that. I have to point out a fallacy in the notion that servers make $2 and hour. In states where tips can be counted as wages, if a person fails to make enough tips to earn minimum wage, the employer needs to make up the difference so the employee is making at least minimum wage. Say you show up to work, clock in and start your sidework, then there is a snowstorm and a bunch of reservations cancel and you are sent home after polishing silver and folding napkins and waiting around for 2 hours. Since you didn't earn any tips to be counted as wages, you should be paid minimum wage for those two hours, not the $2 and change. Although I imagine this is calculated by the week, so it might be wages from another day that end up covering that loss, not the employer. Not that minimum wage is enough to live on. Here is state-by-state information on tips counted as wages: http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm So yeah, you have to earn more in tips to earn a living wage, but nobody is really trying to live on $2.13 an hour. More on topic, I can imagine it is permissible not to tip in very rare extreme circumstances. I think if service is poor or great the tip should reflect that. Rewarding bad service makes it worse for all of us. I do resent the pressure to constantly tip incredibly generously. Tip 25% if you have a lot of extra money you want to give away, but don't sneer at me for tipping 18%. I think if you are in a state where the base rate is $2.13, you might want to tip a little more than when you are in a state where servers make the minimum hourly wage of $8.67 (WA). Servers in San Francisco get minimum wage of $9.92, and now they want a mandatory 25% tip? http://www.huliq.com/10061/restaurant-workers-want-25-mandatory-tip-san-francisco It's an expensive city to live and dine in, but that's ridiculous. Sorry, but not everybody gets to live in a loft in the Mission, some people can only afford Oakland.

I'd say I average between $15-28/hour in tips, not counting the minimal hourly wage. The high and low ends of that range are for when it's very slow or very busy. I generally work a seven hour shift (10am-5pm) with actual service of about 5 hours from 11:30am-4:30pm. Time before we open is spent setting up and restocking the bar, time after is spent counting my register, making my drop and doing any bar prep that needs my attention before I leave. Not sure what guaranteed hourly wage would be adequate to cover that. I like leaving with cash every day and not having to wait for a paycheck every two weeks. I have functioned in other industries on a salary and bi-weekly paychecks so I'm perfectly capable of budgeting myself to do that, but I'm rather accustomed to things as they are now, knowing what times of the month I need to deposit more cash to cover the bills that are due that week, etc. I'm fortunate to have an employer that pays for 75% of my health insurance since I'm a full time employee that has been there over one year. I pay the other 25% monthly myself. This is a rarity in my industry unless one is a member of management. Thanks for being honest about the numbers. So it sounds like despite the occasional jackass or dead night, it's working for you. The American system does seem to keep servers happy enough in mid range to fine dining. Let's extrapolate wildly and say a good server in a tips-as-wages state makes around $23 an hour and a server in a minimum wage state makes $6 more. Sounds pretty good to me, definitely a living wage. Now if you can give the rest of us some suggestions on how not to be taxed on our entire income, we'd be grateful

Question for the Aussies/non-Americans, just out of curiosity. If you live in a country where tipping is not the norm and servers are paid hourly, do you know what that hourly wage is? And how does it compare to what the cooks make, and to other service industries, say retail shop clerk? I realize that what a high end restaurant in Sydney pays is going to differ from a pub in a small town, just curious what range of hourly wage is considered livable where you are. I have often wondered if the US ever changed our system what hourly wage servers would find acceptable. It seems like the allure of tipping is that some nights you walk with $200 in your pocket, and that makes people hope every night can be like that. And as someone bragged above, if you have a talent for sales, you can do really well. I'd say in Seattle, if you are single you can live decently on $30k, and pretty comfortably on $40k (not extravagantly, but not struggling and enjoying some disposable income if you manage it right). If servers are willing to work 40 hours a week, that's $15 to $20 an hour. If they expect to make a living wage working 3/4 time (as many do now, at least in higher end restaurants), that's $20 to $27 an hour. If you work for tips now, would you be happier doing your job for $20 an hour, or keep taking your chances on tips?

World Chocolate Masters 2011 now streaming live from Paris, plus many clips for those of us not on Paris time: http://www.worldchocolatemasters.com/en/?video=6

Yes, but last season I was really impressed with what got made just from memory and feel. I guess having recipes takes it from just trying to get something edible done to having more confidence that the components will work and being able to make more complex desserts. I thought Orlando should have gone home after the carnival challenge. Carlos had more execution problems, but better ideas that actually related to the theme. Orlando's chocolate apple concoction didn't get great reviews from the judges and was lacking in carnival spirit.

Exactly. With a date or friends you can share and try several dishes. Alone, it's harder without being either wasteful, gluttonous, or taking it home. Since I'm not rich, don't want to get any fatter, and an American who tries not to worry too much about what people think, I take it home. So European kids were never entertained by having their leftover ravioli twisted up into an aluminum foil swan?

Fairly often, but I never call it a doggie bag, I just ask if I can take the rest home. If a portion is very large, I may consciously try to eat only half and have lunch the next day, instead of stuffing myself. If I didn't eat it all because I didn't like it, I won't take it home.

Do you routinely boil in the pressure cooker without the lid? I wonder if the shape of the vessel has something to do with it, assuming the pressure cooker does not have straight sides like a regular stock pot.

Last fall I did a three nut tart with pecans, almonds, and pine nuts. I used a pecan-pie like mix, but with honey instead of corn syrup and a good splash of orange liqueur. I'm not finding the recipe on my hard drive, which is too bad, because I wanted to make them again this winter. If I can find it I'll share.

Yes!!! MJX, winter in Denmark sounds even more dreary than Seattle, and being farther North, I'm sure it is. We have a large Asian population here, and pho has become hugely popular. I'm looking forward to a lot of pho this winter. Laksa is heartier and richer with coconut milk, so good. I find myself craving Korean kimchi tofu soup lately as well - really almost anything spicy and savory. And don't forget udon & ramen soups and congee (rice porridge). Another good dish for winter (just because of it being citrus season) is Vietnamese pomelo salad with pieces of pomelo (you could use grapefruit if you cant find pomelo or ugli fruit), fresh mint, crispy shallots, and shrimp. Maybe a nice bright side to a steaming cauldron of noodle soup? http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2008/02/pomelo-salad-go.html

Common substitutions would be helpful too. Don't have milk, use this, don't have semisweet chocolate, use x cocoa + x fat + x sugar, etc. I have an iphone and might buy an app like that. I have the epicurious app and use that occasionally, otherwise use bing to search for information. So your app would have to be faster & more reliable than a web search.

And the lingering scent of most cooked seafood is generally less desireable than the lingering scent of say, bacon or roast chicken. Who has ever heard anyone say Mmmm! Smells like sturgeon!

I've heard that defense a lot, but to me, mackerel tastes entirely different than salmon, which is entirely different from snapper, which is entirely different from cod, pollack, and other (in my opinion, slightly boring) whitefish, and so on. Hell, I say slightly boring because to me many whitefish have so LITTLE taste. To me it's like someone saying "I don't eat fruit." What fruit? apples? oranges? bananas? cherries? How can you make such a sweeping generalization? Exactly. There is such a huge variety of seafood, so many more than the land animals we eat, all with different flavors. I wonder which fish is "the taste of fish" that people don't like. Probably cod or pollack or whatever goes into fish sticks, or canned tuna? I can understand people not liking the oilier fishes. Mackerel is not for everyone. I can understand people not liking fish they've had that's been poorly prepared. A lot of people don't like salmon because of the gumminess it gets when overcooked, yet these same people (I'm thinking of my mother) would not be willing to try it as sushi or meltingly medium-rare. Fish does seem to inspire a higher degree of squeamishness than other dead animals, maybe because they are on display with the head still on? But to lump all seafood into one flavor and texture category seems severely uninformed at best. I grew up in Seattle, not eating much fish because Mom isn't crazy about it. We'd go out for fish & chips every now & then. If there was seafood at home it was Dungeness crab in season, or shrimp salad (with bay shrimp and vile, vile russian dressing), or a tuna sandwich. Now, I eat a variety, raw and cooked with my main concerns being sustainability and deliciousness. Salmon, scallops, halibut, trout, oysters, clams, shrimp... I've found sole to be a little too delicate (boring and mushy) for me, crab isn't really worth the work (except for softshell crab where there is no work), lobster isn't worth the money, mackerel can be good but better in small doses. Anchovies are magic and often mean I don't have to share my pizza

I vote for the eggnog.

I'm not a fan of eggnog as a beverage but I do like the boozy spicy combination. Would the pumpkin caramel be chewy, or just a caramel flavor in the ganache? Both sound great. Would these be with milk, dark, or white?

To me, Bittman comes off as more practical, looking at the big picture and trying to get to the heart of the issues. Waters comes off as more idealistic, shedding a tear over how precious the baby vegetables are. Bittman at least seems to understand the struggles and motivations of the working poor, while Waters, despite being just a few miles from really bad parts of Oakland, seems to think it should be easy for everyone to switch their diet 100% Admittedly, I haven't read anything from Alice Waters in several years, but that is because her piety turned me off. I'm sure she has done a lot for both her community and the national consciousness, and both she and Bittman are preaching to their own choirs, but the church of Alice seems a little more wacky cultish (maybe it's a Berkeley thing) and the church of Mark seems more non-denominational and inclusive.

I don't know, but have you tried looking through their recycling? Or you can always try asking The old 'I really love this, how do you make it so good' usually works.

Does zagat still make their maps? I have zagat maps of Chicago and San Francisco from c.2002 that I found very valuable way back then before smartphones. While I take their reviews with a grain if salt, I trust them more than yelp, etc and would love to have their information worked into google maps on my iPhone.