pastrygirl

Agreed that 75 cents above minimum wage is really, really low for even the most basic kitchen job. There is some skill involved, isn't there? Even if legally you can't FORCE people to share tips, you can sit down with the bartenders and explain how far a little sharing would go to making the whole place run better. Its not forcing, its encouraging. Isn't it standard for servers to tip out the bar and their bussers? Why not the pizza guy? I have worked a few places where the kitchen got tips - a very small portion, maybe 3%? - usually ending up at around $100 a month per cook. Even that little bit goes a long way towards diminishing resentment. Encourage your bartenders to throw a couple bucks a night in the pizza guys direction and to stop talking about how much they made. A little discretion really helps too. The kitchen DOES NOT want to hear that the bartender is walking with $200 on a saturday night. Keep it quiet, share a little, and do give that guy an extra dollar an hour (at least) if he is doing a good job.

If you have professional experience, get in touch with the various international culinary recruiters. They mostly offer hotel jobs at management level (chef, sous chef, pastry chef) and a 2 year contract is typical. If you can get a job like that they will take care of your visa.

I generally agree with parchment over silpat for cookies, but with macaron I find they spread more evenly and stay rounder on silpat. Parchment seems to wrinkle and buckle while the macaron are resting, giving me mis-shapen cookies.

Surface was covered directly with plastic. That night I re-melted the batch and it set up smooth the next morning. I'm imagining that if I had stirred after an hour as directed, the seed crystals would get more distributed and maybe this was the result of seed crystals gone wild and allowed to grow in place? Gremlins, definitely gremlins

I made a batch of ganache (greweling's liqueur cream ganache with honey instead of glucose) on Tuesday and left it out at room temperature overnight. Wednesday when I wanted to scoop it there was a bit of fat bloom on the top and stirring turned up bb-sized lumps. These are not pieces of unmelted chocolate, it was totally smooth and I even used the immersion blender to emulsify. Obviously there is some kind of crystallization issue, but I would like to understand what is going on and why. I didn't agitate as directed after it cooled to room temperature, but that has never seemed necessary before. Insight, please!

Don't know about sharps but have used maida as an all purpose flour for general baking. It is a bit on the low gluten side but otherwise pretty much all-purpose. It is not particularly coarse, so I don't think the granular sharps you have would be a very good equivalent.

ahhh, but of course.

Sort of related question I was considering recently: why are there different tempering temperature ranges for different chocolates? If the cocoa butter is what is being tempered to begin with, why does it matter what other stuff is in there, and whether it is milk, dark, or white chocolate?

I had an avocado mousse at Cafe Juanita near Seattle that was pretty good. It reminded me of cheesecake. Avocados don't have much flavor of their own, they are just creamy. Might as well be creamy and sweet.

Along these lines, I've been making mousses this way but in a whipped cream canister charged with no2. I use about 150g chocolate to 120g water and usually add a little sugar or flavor of some sort. Right now I have one infused with fresh ginger.

Genius!

I've used it with lemon extract on french macarons. I'm sure they softened a tiny bit, but the extract evaporates really quickly so it doesn't have much time to soak in (it is more alcohol than water). You get a MUCH more saturated color using extract - otoh, you also use a whole lot more luster dust.

I'm wondering if you could use cocoa butter instead of dairy butter and temper it into chocolate bars by mixing the green cocoa butter in with dark chocolate. Would prolonged heat ruin the cocoa butter, or could you do it at a low enough temperature to not burn it?

I agree. Egg whites are deflated by mixing with fats. I'd use brown sugar and a little vanilla or dark rum.

I've got a feeling that a lot of these products have probably been heated somewhere in their production to make them what they are. Also they probably don't fit in with the 'spirit' of the raw food movement - but I could be wrong. You're probably right.

One of the guys at work has some ultratex 3 http://www.le-sanctuaire.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ls&Product_Code=4MUltratex3&Category_Code=Thickeners I haven't tried it myself but it thickens without heating.

From the sugar all over the parchment, it looks like the sugar was just sprinkled on. Would especially make sense if they had been piped in place.

When one was flirting with the cute line cooks or otherwise being inefficient, one chef always warned "you're going to need those two minutes" meaning don't slack now or you'll be in the weeds later. Of course he was always right.

There was a similar thread about whipping the eggs and sugar for ice cream several months ago. I believe we finally decided that the whipping was not necessary. Even if that wasn't what we decided, that is what I strongly believe! Why whip in bubbles if the heat is just going to pop them, or they are all going to rise to the top and annoy you? I whisk my eggs and sugar just until combined. As for putting everything in the same pot and heating it up, that is probably possible, but would require constant stirring/vigilance. I was trying to make pastry cream this way and had more issues with scorching. I think it is a little less work in the end to do it the traditional way by heating the liquid alone first - less active time of stirring and only one more bowl to wash.

rabbit guinea fowl yak. I know there are people farming yak in Colorado but don't know if the meat is available commercially. I guess if buffalo is a no-no yak would be too.

Considering that butter itself is around 80% butterfat, that seems like the way to go. Or you could whip it up a bit and go ahead and make butter with it. Edited to add: if you can't whip previously frozen cream, could you still make butter out of it ? Is the cream solid enough to seem like it really is that high, or is it more liquid?

Spatulas...leaving the spatula or wooden spoon in the pot of boiling sauce. Is that for extra flavor?

Well I don't qualify as big or successful, but there are things I don't like that I cook with anyway. For example, I'm not a big banana fan, but I know that banana desserts are usually good sellers, so occasionally I'll put one on the menu. I can still recognize what might be good to someone else, even if it is not what I would order.

There is more than one way to make a ganache, Greweling's butter ganache for example uses tempered chocolate and soft butter. I agree with your point about using warmer chocolate for mousses to facilitate folding in the other ingredients.

Continuing on the subject of glucose: I inherited a few pounds of atomized glucose from the previous pastry chef at my new job and am not sure where it is best used. Ice creams? Chocolates? In combination with regular sugar or alone? I do have the Migoya book and Greweling so I'll look at those some more. Also, if a recipe calls for glucose, do you think they mean the syrup or atomized? In Ducasse's Grand Livre, he calls for glucose as part of the syrup for Italian meringue. In other recipes, atomized is specified, but this book seems oddly written (or translated) at times so I kind of don't trust it. Thanks!