pastrygirl

Hmm, may or may not be relevant, but thanks anyway. The supplier is in Bangkok, don't know where she'd be sourcing the chocolate from, I did send her an email but the chef says she doesn't speak much English so I won't hold my breath for an answer from her. The other chocolates have a picture of the bags, but the satillia only has a picture of feves, so it is possible that the spelling may be off, but everything else is spelled correctly so I wouldn't assume that.

It is time to stock up on chocolate, and I have a purveyor who lists Valrhona Satillia Lactee milk chocolate and Satillia Noir 62% in 20 kg boxes of feves for a much better price than the other Valrhona flavors in 3 kg bags. I can't find any further information and have grown impatient with the Valrhona website and all of its slow-loading flash. Anyone familiar with these chocolates? What percentage is the milk chocolate? This purveyor also has jivara lactee 40% and tanariva 33%, I'd probably go with the 40% unless this Satillia stuff is darker than the 33%. Thanks!

I just received this last night and I have to say I am a little surprised by how much I like it - ordered online so was not able to preview. I'd had two disappointing desserts at Jean-Georges when I was in NYC two years ago, he does have the rhubarb-mustard jam which I found extremely unpalatable (because I find the taste of bile unpalatable, go figure) so I won't be making that. I feel like Johnny has gotten a lot of hype in Food Arts and such and oh look at the young hipster tattoo guy who is so successful, but luckily the book doesn't come across that way at all. I hate how self-congratulatory Claudia Fleming is in 'Last Course' - all the intros describe the recipes as so perfect and delightful - and I will not buy the Citizen Cake book because it comes off as 'look how cool I am' and I hate the 'punk rock/graphic novel' design - so I was sort of afraid from the type of media coverage I've seen on J.I. this book would have the flaws of those two. Not so! He comes off as humble enough and straightforward. And finally, a book with pictures of EVERYTHING. Can't wait to try a fluid gel - sounds so simple and light.

Johnny Iuzzini's Dessert Four Play has a gram conversion for everything. Thanks, Johnny!

Your purveyor is correct, the difference of 4% is going to be pretty much insignificant. The cake calls for 6 ounces of chocolate, or 170 grams. The 4% less sugar in your 58% chocolate is going to be about 7 grams, or a bit more than 1-1/2 teaspoons. The frosting calls for 24 ounces of chocolate, or about 680 grams, there you will be missing about 27 grams of sugar, or just over 2 tablespoons. Also, if one chocolate has relatively more cocoa butter, going by the percentage alone to decide the sweetness level will not necessarily be accurate. The percentage is cocoa solids plus cocoa butter, so you could have a 54% chocolate with 30% solids and 24% fat or vice versa. So given all of the variables in chocolate, I'd still say the difference between those two percentages will be insignificant for most recipes. If you were trying to substitute 70%, then you'd want to make some adjustments.

Which, if anyone is not familiar, is honey that is allowed to crystallize then is whipped or beaten to a creamy, spreadable consistency.

He might think he knows what he wants, but after you show him a bunch of amazing options he might change his mind and want them all. I sometimes add a good portion of honey to my english toffee and the flavor comes through nicely, would be great dipped in dark chocolate and have a long shelf life. Could you add gelatin or agar to the honey to thicken it up enough for a molded shell?

Low blow, Katie, low blow. Not necessary. Maybe she got a speeding ticket on the way to work. Maybe she had cramps. Maybe she didn't have cramps when she should have as of a week ago. Maybe she just found out about her boyfriend's kid. Maybe her cat just died. Maybe those new shoes were not ready for work yet and the blisters had all just popped. Maybe she forgot to take her meds. Maybe her cell phone bill was freakishly higher than she thought and she was stressed about it. Maybe...maybe she was just in a really bad mood and couldn't control it.

Greweling has the beehives, which are a honey ganache piped onto a chocolate disc leaving the center hollow, then liquid honey is piped in to fill the center and more ganache is piped on top to seal it, then the whole thing is dipped in thinned milk chocolate. They look pretty cool in the book. I've also been contemplating substituting honey for the jam in one of his butter ganaches, he does have one with some honey and some reduced passion fruit concentrate, so it seems like honey alone should work fine. It seems like if you were filling a molded shell the main problem would be trying to get a bottom on to the liquid honey without it squishing out. Creamed honey would be more solid, but maybe not the vision your honey producer is after? Or if you have truffle shells they might be easier to seal. I've seen honey powder in stores, granulated like coarse sugar but never used it - could be of help if you could find it. Mmm, honey, I just made some milk chocolate honey ganache bonbons today!

I'll put anything in creme brulee...chocolate, spices, tea, flowers, bacon...ok so the bacon was a bit OTT. For coconut, you can either infuse toasted coconut or use coconut milk in place of the liquid, or both. For milk chocolate, decrease the cream and increase the milk a little so you have the same fat proportion overall, maybe a little less sugar b/c milk chocolate is so sweet. Custards ares so versatile, any flavor that can be hot or cold infused is fair game. I've also infused ripe pear w/ skin then strained it out - the possibilities are endless.

I ate parmesan marshmallows at el bulli in 2005 that were really light and melt-in-the-mouth and way cool. They might be in the cookbook. Otherwise, I'm thinking a foam (via isi NO2 canister) might be a good direction, maybe with dry ice involved? If you have a reasonable amount of gelatin, you can get a moderately stable foam, but then you'll have to set it quickly. Too much gelatin and it sets up in the canister, or you can play with the canister temp I guess. Chocolate goes with almost everything, haven't tried it with salmon but now of course I have to. First thing Monday morning! I did make a salmon ice cream once, served with candied salmon skin and a bit of roe. The guy I made it for liked it, but then again, he'll eat anything.

I just took four days of chocolate classes from a chef who was very adamant about not relying on thermometers, they only tell you what the temperature is, not whether the chocolate is in temper/properly pre-crysatllized. I am motivated to try to wean myself off the thermometer - the two I bought today are for other candy, I swear! You do have to get to know your chocolate, how it looks when it is right, and test very frequently. Having nice half hotel pan melters and a heat gun really helps with the whole program, it gets to be such a bigger pain to keep it in the working zone without proper equipment. I dream of proper equipment...

Or instead of worms, a candied violet or rose petal or even a little white chocolate flower for Easter (maybe not a big holiday in Israel?), May Day, Mothers' Day or whatever flowery spring holiday you can convince people to buy stuff for.

Meat grinder = genius! I recall you mentioning putting your candied ginger through the meat grinder also, do you have a dedicated pastry grinder, or do you just clean it really well between meat and sweets? Great, another piece of equipment we're all going to want to buy

Copyright 2008. You are correct about his career path, also was at River Cafe but now at the CIA. I picked up a copy in Bangkok last week; haven't had a chance to get into it yet, but it looks like a great resource.

It seems like if you are going from an 8" layer to a 10" layer, the larger cake will take longer to bake, and evaporate more liquid in that time, so more liquid needed makes sense. According to RLB: the larger the pan size, the less baking powder is used in proportion to other ingredients. This is because of surface tension. The larger the diameter of the pan, the slower the heat penetration and the less support the rising cake receives because the sides are further from the center. Baking powder weakens the cake's structure by enlarging the air spaces, so decreasing baking powder strengthens the structure and compensates for retarded gelatinization and the decrease in support. Hmmmm, so what about baking soda? Same rule?

That IS good stuff. Sneak pinches and eat plain (or combined with a few chocolate chips) every time you go into the storeroom good stuff.

Have you tried making your own? You won't get quite as smooth a consistency, but it may be worth it to be able to control what goes into it. You need a good heavy duty food processor, like a robot coupe, almonds, sugar, maybe a touch of almond extract. If you consider glucose and invert sugar artificial, you could try honey and a thick simple syrup. I've made decent marzipan, it's not too hard but maybe it depends on what you want to use it for?

Rolled buttercream? As in meringue buttercream? You chill it, roll it, cut it out and put it on top of the cookie, or how does that work? As for the glitter...it does look fun, but probably has limited applications. I'd eat it at least once. I've used luster dust on chocolates and some cookies, nice for holidays or in a mix of less sparkly things, but best when not overdone.

You can have some of mine. I tell ya, hanging out in the office all day surfing the net and huddling under blankets at home all winter trying to stay warm - meanwhile munching on cookies and Toblerone bars - is a really good way to cultivate the belly fat. The Japanese are going to be hunting me for my toro any day now. But seriously, a high performance machine needs high performance fuel. If I'm busy (not so much these days), I don't want to take the time to stop and eat, but it is true that you'll be better off for the rest of the day if you take 15 minutes to have a burrito than if you take 2 minutes to grab a piece of fruit or a pastry. It sounds like you have plenty more food available than those perfect, non-selling croissants, so you really have no excuse. I don't see anything wrong with two or three pastries a day, but you do need a few other things to round it out.

I own my condo, actually. At the time that I bought it, I was a server and my (then) boyfriend was a line cook, which was just a little before the time that I did my foodblog on eGullet. After that, I took a job as a pastry chef and he got promoted to sous chef, and we were still doing OK. When we broke up, I was down to one income and went back to waiting tables, but I've still been able to manage. Of course, I do work an average of about 50 hours per week, and I've been serving for a long time at one of the busiest restaurants in Atlanta, so I plan things very, very carefully. I don't go out drinking with my co-workers and I work hard and watch what I spend all the time. Still, I don't feel like I do too badly, even when I do a lot of cleaning and extra work for my $2.13/hour wage. Now, I did take an intense beating in the stock market last year, but that's entirely another topic. . . ← Aha! a relatively financially successful server, great to know it can happen. So would you attribute your success more to: A) working 40+ hours a week at a busy place and being careful with your income or B) chasing down living-in-the-'50s-octogenarians, clueless foreigners, and the unrepentantly cheap to try to get an extra six bucks after they left only 9%?

I'm actually shocked that this statement could be made in response to something that I wrote more than anything else in this thread. I mean, wow. ← I am befuddled by your shock, but upon further reflection, I don't think my statement was true, and I would like to apologize for upsetting your equilibrium and issue a retraction. I will say too many can't be bothered to remember the sorbets du jour, a personal pet peeve. I think what I meant to say was that I am disheartened when servers don't seem to care as much about the food itself as I'd like them to, meaning care about eating it or have a deep understanding of the processes. When a server at a French bistro looks at a dessert that consists of a chocolate bombe sitting in a pool of creme anglaise and asks, 'so...which part is the creme anglaise?', that only proves his individual boneheadedness. When a server at a different place asked me what is the difference between baking powder and yeast, I appreciated his curiosity, even though it was a very basic (to me) question that indicated he might not have ever baked anything in his life. That is OK, but somehow it still confuses me when people who don't cook make their living (even though sort of indirectly) from food. Service is customer care and sales, the kitchen is where you go when you want to geek out over micro chervil and rare citrus crossbreeds and such, I'll try to keep reminding myself of that

I was referring to the information shown on this chart. Keep in mind that this site is trying to lure people into the Philadelphia area, so if anything they would want to underestimate the cost of living. Of course, it would probably be easy to find a different chart that showed something completely different. The ACCRA estimates come from this organization, and are for 2008 3Q. ← Two places I've lived and worked - a studio apartment in Seattle costs around $700-$900, depending on the age & location of the building (my last apt (2 yrs ago) was $635 in a convenient for me but not super hip location). A one bedroom is around $800-$1000. A line cook with a few years of experience might make $12-14 an hour, a pastry chef in a restaurant is lucky to get above $30 - 35k (not a whole lot of full time pastry chef jobs there), sous chefs generally make about 25% more than pastry chefs, but also work longer hours and have more staff to manage. If you head south, add 30% for East Bay/SF 'burbs and 50% or more (at least for rents if not wages) for San Francisco proper. Unfortunately this industry is not one in which you can expect a super high standard of living. You should be able to hope to get beyond the collegiate-style sharing a house with friends or strangers, but the hope of owning your own home is a distant dream unless you have a spouse in a much more lucrative industry.

If you're hourly and you go home early due to no business, it doesn't matter what side of the pass you're on. Not sending cooks home but cutting servers instead is just an oddity of your GM, and I agree that it doesn't make sense. Although from your earlier post on a good night vs a bad night, it does seem that you are not appropriately rewarded for your efforts, I have a hard time with people who seem to want a full time income from part time work. Sure, if you were promised 32 hours and you got cut a shift and only worked 25, and the tips were lousy to boot, that's really going to suck. But the usually less than 40 hours a week is another of the trade-offs, and what makes serving attractive to students and the stereotypical starving artist/actor, or a good second job for people who are particularly ambitious. The trade-off I'm making right now was to leave my home, friends, family, and a good job when they were about to open a 2nd restaurant (could've meant a nice raise) to come and live in fucking Bhutan so I could save more money so I can either hope to retire in 30 years or maybe be an investor in my own place someday. The retirement plan of 'marry up' that one chef suggested doesn't seem to be happening. This can be a really hard place to live in myriad ways, but it does make you realize how little you need to survive, how little these people need to be happy. The per capita income is around $2000 and the King's mantra of Gross National Happiness (instead of GN Product) is for real, these people are poor rice farmers with nothing, but are very happy. Admittedly, I prefer and enjoy indoor plumbing and hot water, and I know that trying to live on less than about $25k in a US city is truly a struggle. Money sure comes in handy, but it is not everything, and if it is important to you to have more, sometimes taking a huge risk and doing something way outside of what you know can pay off. Sorry, we already have an F&B manager, but I'd be happy to forward your resume to corporate headquarters in Singapore.

Boy, I never worked at a place -- from saloon to formal French -- where the wait staff didn't work clearing tables, serving coffee, fetching drinks until long after the cooks had gone home, one by one, as the last orders passed from salad to dessert (or, in the saloons, the last bacon cheeseburger went out). There also those slow shifts designed entirely to have the waiters come in and make $20 in tips while cleaning the glass and mirrors, scrubbing the bar coolers, spritzing the chairs etc. Better to have the waiters clean up at $2.85 than have to pay a dishwasher actual minimum wage. ← I worked at one place where the servers came in in staggered shifts, so the opener who comes in at 4 does the opening sidework, gets the early tables and leaves at maybe 10, the closer comes in at 6, probably stays until midnight doing closing sidework. All of the servers there seemed pretty happy, check average was around $45 and we were busy, 90 seats and my last year there we didn't do less than 100 covers for months on end, usually 150+ on Fri/Sat. My first restaurant job was two blocks away from an arena, and we would get swamped for the two or three hours before professional basketball games. Not a normal situation to be sure, but that was where servers would come in at 4, make a wad of cash, and be out early. Oddly, I think that was also the only place where some of the servers had day jobs. Isn't part of the tips-as-wages deal that the restaurant is responsible for making up the difference between you $2.85 an hour and minimum wage if you don't get the tips? So they are counting on you making just enough in tips to make minimum while you clean? Yeah, that's shifty.