pastrygirl

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

Fresh herbs and herbal infusions or house made infusions of spices (i.e. a couple of cinnamon sticks thrown in a bottle of rum) and trendy right now. Mint, basil, thai basil, sage, rosemary, lemon verbena, even tarragon can work in cocktails. One of our signature cocktails is a margarita with muddled fresh sage. With how freakin' HOT it can get in the Sacto valley - well I'm sure you have air conditioning but still - I'd want something really light and refreshing for summer, like a mojito or something else lightened with a splash of club soda. I also enjoy tequila cocktails that go beyond the margarita, I've had a couple with tequila and honey and don't remember what else that were really nice. What I don't like is saying something is a deviation on a classic then taking that more than a few steps beyond. If something is 'our version of a french 75', it will still be recognizable if there is a yuzu-lemon blend instead of straight lemon and the garnish is orange peel, but if it's vodka instead of gin, pomegranate instead of lemon, hard cider instead of sparkling wine, and garnished with mint leaves its not a French 75.

300 people is going to be a lot of pieces. If you want to offer more variety and make it easy on yourself, you can do things like have cupcakes all the same flavor but with different frostings - like chocolate/chocolate and chocolate/salted caramel, or tartlets filled with the same base, but different garnishes. This way you can get the appearance of having 8 items when you really only have 4, and it's a little more work than 4 but not as much as 8.

I have and use silicone molds for other purposes, bombes and such, and I actually do have some nonstick flexible florentine molds that I use for making chocolate mendiants, just can't imagine trying to do filled pralines in them.

I've been shaking it pretty well, but I suspect the liquids gain viscosity very heavily when setting. Maybe I should shake during the cooling process? I'm hoping for a very stiff texture, not unlike the traditional gelatin/egg white mousse made in a mixer. I might actually try adding a bit of gelatin to the ISI recipe and see what happens. The cooling process? AFAIK, you want your mix to be well chilled before charging it with NO2. And it does need some time to rest before dispensing. A little gelatin should help, as long as it's not so much that it solidifies in the canister. I use the ISI a lot and I'm not sure I've ever gotten a really stiff foam like a traditional chocolate mousse. Right now I'm doing a chocolate mousse that is a creme anglaise in the ISI. The first few batches were not stable enough, so I added some cocoa butter, and it is more stable now but still very light.

Catering is one branch of my job and mini desserts are in the $2-$2.50 range (per piece) depending on complexity. The most popular ones are mini chocolate cupcakes, lemon tartlets, and cream puffs. I'd say most parties we do that include mini desserts offer between 1 and 3 pieces per person. It just depend how much other food there is, and how much focus the hosts want on dessert. If it is an all dessert reception, maybe as many as 4-5 pieces per person, or $8-$12 a head. Someone else sells the menus so I'm not sure how she calculates it, I just get the orders and deliver them. edited to add: Let's see... coming up I have a wedding reception for 130 that is heavy apps and 200 pieces dessert, another reception for 70 that is family style dinner and 80 pieces dessert, another wedding for 65 with 130 cream puffs (I think all the weddings also have outside cakes being brought in), a party for 35 with heavy apps and 70 pieces dessert, and another heavy app party with 2 desserts/person. Hope that helps.

Hey! I'm not a bad cook, I just get too ambitious about buying vegetables and then end up going out to eat all week. Finally threw away what were lovely organic green beans I got 2-1/2 weeks ago in the CSA I realized wasn't working for me, and picked through the yellowing kale. I'm a good cook when I'm not too lazy to do it! That's definitely not a sign of a bad cook. I can't speak for everyone but I quite often come home from the restaurant with no desire to cook something for myself. I have good intentions when I buy stuff for the week but it doesn't always happen. I wonder how common it really is for restaurant cooks to get home and say "screw it, I'll just make a sandwich". Very, very common! I'll cook something more elaborate on my day off, less so after all day in the kitchen.

Hey! I'm not a bad cook, I just get too ambitious about buying vegetables and then end up going out to eat all week. Finally threw away what were lovely organic green beans I got 2-1/2 weeks ago in the CSA I realized wasn't working for me, and picked through the yellowing kale. I'm a good cook when I'm not too lazy to do it!

I hate those! They are not so bad if you are weighing and weigh very carefully and don't have to put any back in the carton, but forget about dip and sweep measuring by cups. If you pour it into a measuring cup, how are you supposed to level it off? I prefer to either keep my sugar in the 5# bag inside of a gallon sized ziploc, or transfer it to another container with an airtight lid, like a cambro. The bag is only a pain when it is first opened and full. I should admit that my house is plagued by tiny ants, who will occasionally appear in one room or another and I've thrown too much food away already to not keep my dry goods airtight and ant-proof.

It's been 2 years, but looking through the guidebook a few things stand out. Agreed on Blue Pumpkin in Siem Reap, and check out Sala Bai, which is a cooking/hospitality school for young Khmers. Try happy pizza if you're into that, but know that it will not be great pizza. In Phnom Penh I stayed at the Bougainvillier Hotel, which was a lovely splurge ($60ish a night) after a month of much more budget accommodations elsewhere. The attached restaurant was very good French, nice cheese and sometimes you do need a break from local food. I do recommend eating in the markets, and being adventurous to just point to things and smile when lacking language skills. Although I was unwittingly served durian for breakfast that way, as one of the toppings on sticky rice, the woman who sold it thought the look on my face was hysterical, so we shared a laugh. If you have a local guide for the day, definitely express your interest in going where the locals go. I had a tasty lunch that i honestly could not figure out what it was, and my guide also convinced me to try one of the charcoal grilled curry-stuffed frogs on a stick that were at many roadside stands outside of Phnom Penh: It was pretty tasty.

I snack all the time. It's kind of a problem. Cheese, peas, bits of chocolate, slices of prosciutto, more cheese, fruit, pastry, bread, dried fruit, spoon full of peanut butter, mini cupcakes....

Glad to hear I'm not alone in thinking these things are ridiculous.

Lately I've seen silicone chocolate molds on a few sites and I just can't figure out why anyone would think this was a good idea. Maybe people who have never worked with chocolate and think silicone makes everything easier? Even the manufacturer's demo video shows chocolate escaping as the mold is lifted by hand and messy edges on filled pralines. Anyone have anything positive to say about these?

They should shout "Froid!"?

coffee beans treated like cacao to make coffee bars: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/a-new-kind-of-coffee-bar/

At the extreme they would be, but that's OK because you don't need both fat and gelatin to stabilize. Gelatin binds with the water in a liquid and not the fat. You can set whipping cream with gelatin to make panna cotta, but you probably don't want to go much higher fat than that. As a pastry chef I almost always have something in my isi canisters, right now I have a thick milk chocolate malted creme anglaise that comes out as a very light mousse. I've done sabayon that has only a modest amount of heavy cream, so the egg yolks are probably equally responsible for foam-ability in that one. Also vegan chocolate mousse, essentially chocolate and water stabilized by the cocoa butter content. I once did a rose gelatin mousse that was a little tricky to keep at the right temperature, no fat in that just gelatin. Too cold and it didn't want to come out (solidified), too warm and the gelatin melted and the foam was too soft/unstable. I have not tried agar for isi foams, but that may have potential. You can make agar fluid gels by setting a liquid with agar then pureeing it, the result is a nice nape' consistency (or as thick as you like) that does not re-solidify (unless you re-melt it), might be able to stand up to the charger.