pastrygirl

Good start. What is the difference between Asian food and Chinese food? Maybe you could say Asian cuisines including Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese, or whatever is relevant. 'Chinese' is a pretty big category, depending on the job you may want to be more specific.

She was really sweet, and seemed to take great pride in her product. I haven't tried them, it was JeanneCake who had just ordered some. Will look forward to Jeanne's report!

I've heard - and in my limited experience tend to agree - that dust in the mold sticks to chocolate better than dust applied afterwards. The stuff I have is CK products, non-toxic that I get from my local cake supply shop. I met a woman at the World Pastry forum who makes powder colors and seemed very passionate about having them all be non-toxic and food grade and all that. Her products are Crystal Colors, IIRC.

I get ticked off over the slicer; it seems no one ever cleans it when they're done with it. Ditto for the wall mounted dicer- every time I close it has tomatoes all over it. Gross. ← Word. Clean as you go, mo-fo!

Ever since a neat freak chef chastized me for leaving a bit of marzipan on the robot coupe, I have been careful to leave equipment clean after I use it. My current kitchen seems pretty neat and tidy over all, so I can't understand why the robot coupe, cuisinart, and vitamix are all exempt from being cleaned. The splatters of basil oil and beet puree all over the equipment are starting to bug me. How hard is it to take a towel and 30 seconds and wipe the thing off?

Accepting a salary that is what I was making 8 years ago, MINUS health insurance, and still feeling lucky to be the one who got the job.

Can't you boil it anyway, a la pastry cream? I've long wondered about the minimum amount of starch required in a pastry cream or sauce before you can boil the eggs. I really need to get McGee out of storage, but the starch interferes with the egg proteins somehow and they don't curdle. I have made ice creams/gelatos with cornstarch, and had worked out a coupe of recipes which were then lost with my previous hard drive , otherwise I'd share. If you are concerned about over cooking the eggs and undercooking the starch, why not cook the starch with the liquid as much as you like then temper into the eggs? Nick Malgieri has gelato recipes that are basically milk, milk powder, sugar, and a little gelatin - no eggs or starch, but when I made one I ended up adding some cornstarch because the base looked so thin. I may have added too much, I did detect a slight cornstarch-iness in the dish I had last night. Mark Bittman has played with cornstarch too: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/dining/0...%20cream&st=cse The recipe is linked to the article, and the linked McGee article is also pretty interesting.

Leoni, if bugs are a problem, maybe cheesecloth would be a good cover for your aging whites to let some air in and keep bugs out.

It was green cocoa butter then white chocolate.

Of course it is an attempt to turn the table. I see the problem as the server mishandling his directive to get orders in. He should have asked if you were ready to order your entrees or urged you to do so in some other non-pushy way. If the restaurant has allowed 90 minutes per reservation - pretty standard for a party of 2 or 4 - it IS going to mess with their system if you order each course after you've finished the last. It certainly seems reasonable to order the antipasto and get it underway while you continue to look at the menu and decide on your entree. But, as you know, food takes time to cook. Your risotto, pork chop, many entrees will have a 15 to 20 minute 'fire time', which is why it is helpful to the kitchen to have advance notice so they can get it started and it will magically appear moments after you have finished your first course. Desserts are not cooked to order - unless it says so on the menu in which case there is probably also a note that it takes 15 or 20 minutes and you need to be prepared to wait or else pre-order that souffle. Desserts are more often warmed or finished - the creme brulee is sugared and burned, sauces and ice cream and cookies are added to whatever, and it should take 5 minutes or less to get a dessert on a plate.

Have any of you developed a preference for baking macarons on silpat or on parchment and why? I had a recipe that I used to bake on parchment and was happy. I've been given a new recipe and told to bake them on a silpat and they stick. Is it the recipe, the sheet liner, or something else? Cakedecorator, I've used convection and not had problems. Don't know if I'm making the perfect macaron, but they are good enough for me.

Cafe Stellina had been for sale on Craigslist for at least a few months. I was near there last week and it looked like there was some remodeling going on, so maybe something new is coming.

Doesn't the high amount of sugar in dessert sauces change the rules a bit? Or can botulism still survive in caramel?

It may depend on your method. I've made the warm agar dripped into cold oil method, which were solid little balls that held for three or four days. Don't know about the calcium chloride/sodium alginate (?? or whatever) version.

Driving down Denny today, noticed a 'space for lease' sign in the window at WHYM on 1st & Denny.

I can't see that pectin and chocolate will be a good combination - although someone's gotta try it! ← I was thinking of a 'black forest' dessert I had in Sydney that was a parfait with chocolate gellee, kirsch chantilly and cherry granita. I imagine the chocolate gellee used gelatin instead of pectin. Kerry, do you think the heat required for pectin would ruin the chocolate, or does the texture just not appeal to you? Does fat interfere with pectin?

Could you do something like a pate de fruit except with chocolate? I have no idea how the pectin would work with chocolate, but if it was possible, it might be non-melty and still chocolatey.

Can't get enough cherries, at least until the local peaches come in, then peach fever takes over. They should be here by now. Made cherry cordials today (chocolate shell molded) but have to wait a week for the fondant to liquefy. I couldn't find a commercial brandied cherry so I just took some dried sour cherries (montmorency) and soaked them in some kirsch. Can't wait to try them. Edited to say: I did get the job from the tasting and chocolates I posted a few days ago. Will start on Friday, hope it works out and I'll have more luscious pics to post!

Thanks to you and all for the kind words. I haven't heard from the chef so I think he might be going with someone else. That's OK, maybe it will motivate me to get my business plan together, otherwise I will remain bored but make my brothers happy with experimental chocolates. The speckles were flicked on with a small paintbrush, let set then I brushed gold luster dust on the back before filling the mold with dark. I was a little surprised at how much the gold showed through the red cocoa butter, I had used that batch of color on some other chocolates and it seemed more intensely red, but I thought they looked cool and was happy in the end. I've done rosemary-infused ganache before and thought the olive oil would add a nice flavor component. In truth, it didn't really come through over the rosemary, but I think a really fruity green olive oil with some salt could be good with a milk or white chocolate. Oilve oil ice cream/gelato has been a little trend in the past few years, why not with chocolate? It was to replace the butter - the ganache was 60 g cream steeped with a couple of sprigs of rosemary, 10 g honey, 90 g milk chocolate, 10 g olive oil, and a couple of pinches of kosher salt. Came out on the soft side but I like soft ganaches for a nice contrast with the crisp shell, shelf life be damned!

The opening poster is asking about a specific brand of chocolates...See's. Their buttercream centers are most definitely NOT actual buttercream. There are also different kinds of buttercream (setting aside semantics) than meringue based ones. pastrygirl, I live near the See's factory and several stores if you'd like me to get you some . I'm pretty sure some of the other replies are closer to the point...fondant. ← Oh I know where to find them, it was more of a curiosity of what is that stuff than wanting to eat it. My grandparents used to always give each of us kids boxes of See's at birthdays, or gift certificates for boxes so we could go and pick out the flavors we liked. For me, mostly dark, extra marzipan and toffee, no maple or marshmallow. I'm crashing at my parents house for a while between jobs, was doing something with chocolate and my Mom thought I might know. My guess was fondant, but I wasn't sure if it could be mixed with butter without breaking down or what. I like to fill my chocolates with more chocolate, not fondant! If someone wanted Italian meringue buttercream coated in chocolate, shell molding might work. Wonder how the shelf life would be.

If things are getting soggy over time, maybe a light coating of cocoa butter would help waterproof them to maintain crunch.

Tasting for an interview today. Bonbons: green = rosemary milk chocolate with a little olive oil & salt, speckled = strawberry apricot white chocolate, both with dark shells. http://www.flickr.com/photos/11037087@N02/3719508160/ Dessert tasting: chocolate mousse with raspberry center, vanilla-star anise creme brulee, cherry almond cake, key lime-lemon verbena gellee & sherbet with shiso, apricot coulis. http://www.flickr.com/photos/11037087@N02/...in/photostream/ The chef and I both liked the rosemary bonbons and the shiso on the key lime sherbet the best. Unfortunately there are a lot of good unemployed pastry types right now, the competition could be tough. I seem to have forgotten how to use imagegullet, too tired to figure it out right now

That's so funny. If you aren't being ironic, it was the hot gossip of the year. Here's one account and lot of comments: and do read the comments! ← Not ironic, I had been in the Himalayas until several weeks ago, may as well have been on Mars. I guess I do recall reading something about the sale, probably here but it hadn't registered as 'closed'. So is the restaurant still open, open as something else, or closed completely? The Leson link suggested the new owners would try to keep it open - did they try or was that just talk?

I was making chocolates in my Mom's kitchen this afternoon, which somehow prompted her to ask me what is in the 'buttercream' centers that some See's candies have. I have no idea, so now of course I am curious. Haven't had any in a while, but I recall they are very creamy and awfully sweet. Is there fondant involved? Is there any butter in the buttercreams? Do I have to go buy some to find out?

Nancy Leson gives the tally of '09 closures: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/ally...s_seattles.html Anyone know what happened w/ Cremant and when they closed? I've heard Madrona is a tough neighborhood to survive in, but I at least used to be willing to make the trek from Queen Anne. Bummer.