pastrygirl

Pastrygirl: Now THAT's a cool idea! I do have an ISI, and LOVE making sabayon, but wrote it off completely as I'm not going to trust my babies in the hands of some college-student line cook. Any other info regarding how you did it? Or is it as simple as it sounds? ← Thanks, I was pretty excited about it when I realized it would work. I used to always end up making sabayon in the middle of summer, and whipping it over a steaming bain when it's already 90F in the kitchen is not that fun. This method takes the pain out of the process. Here's my recipe for cardamom sabayon. If you change the booze and spices and maybe more alcohol & less wine, I think it could be adapted to an eggnog foam. I've also done a variation with apple cider replacing some of the wine and a good dose of cognac. 22 egg yolks 18 oz sugar 1-1/2 tsp ground cardamom 4 c white wine 2 oz grand marnier * cream as needed In a medium pot, whisk egg yolks, sugar, and cardamom to combine. Stir in wine and grand marnier. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly with a spatula. Do not whip, that's what the isi is for. Add cream to reach 3 quarts. Strain through fine mesh. Makes 3 quarts. Store in quart containers in the fridge up to a week or so. Charge with 2 NO2 per quart. Ignore everyone's whip-its jokes. The eggs do not scramble, I don't know why, but it works.

Do you have an isi? Foam it. I used to make sabayon base - cooked like creme anglaise, stirring but not whipping - and keep it in quart containers ready to go into the canister. You may even be able to freeze the base, honestly I don't remember.

Is it out of the question to rinse the salt off and redry the nuts? ← Cookbooks often recommend doing exactly that if unsalted nuts aren't available - like if all you can find are cans of salted macadamia nuts but salty is not the desired outcome.

I'd sell a couple of staff for half and half! Seriously, you can have Leki Wangmo in exchange for about 20 liters of half and half and a bag of kumquats (I miss kumquats)... No, sadly, no half and half, no 'less conventional hydrocolloids' either. Only 1.5% fat milk, milk powder, SC milk, cornstarch, agar, gelatin, usually butter, and usually eggs. I'm really tempted to throw some butter in there and hope it doesn't separate later, or white chocolate. Time to start experimenting. Creaminess will be mine! The Lebovitz recipe and the Cipriani gelato look like possibilities, but I'm really in need of a basic recipe that can be vanilla, ginger, or whatever. I hate bananas, but the banana as thickener idea could be useful, it would go with a couple of things on the menu. If you're ever struck by wanderlust and dreams of adventure and decide to take a job in some poor, remote, developing nation, be prepared for quandaries like this. Andrea

Lisa, thanks but I am looking specifically for ice cream. Warm chocolate cake with caramel sauce and sorbet just isn't the same! My regular custard ice cream recipe calls for 4 c cream and 3 c milk, and what I have here is 25% cream and 1.5% milk. It seems like there must be some adjustment I should make if I were going to use all milk, or it would be too icy. Less milk? Boil the milk to reduce it? Add milk powder? Add butter? More yolks? Cornstarch? I want it to be as close as possible to the 'real thing'. I'm sure it's do-able, it's just the initial headache of these situations always throws me off. And of course there is probably at least one out of five lodges that is running out of eggs right this second, and sometimes there is only super salty butter. This experience is making me so much stronger and more creative

Anybody have ice cream or gelato recipes that do not require cream? Due to supply problems, I have to make do without for a couple of weeks and would welcome any recipes. The art of turning nothing into something - such is life in the middle of nowhere.

Yesterday I tried the marzipan, apricot butter ganache, and a white chocolate marmalade butter ganache of my own formulaton. The butter ganache is exciting for those situations where you might be in a developing country and not have any cream , like this week in Bhutan. I found the butter ganaches wanted to shatter as I cut them, but that may have been due to a chilly kitchen. Also not much apricot flavor, I think I need to concentrate my rather runny jam or use more jam next time. Is there any reason not to use butter ganache to fill shells? The keeping quality is attractive when thinking about doing some bonbons ahead for the holidays. I found the marzipan a little soft, I don't know if that is due to lack of glucose or what. I cooked the syrup to 215F, or 17 degrees above boiling point (at 7500 feet), which is a few degrees hotter than recommended. I liked it better with 1/2 tsp almond extract added. I ended up adding icing sugar so it was stiffer and easier to dip, next time I think I would just cook the syrup hotter and maybe process it a little longer.

First, try less sugar. If there is too much sugar it won't freeze properly and will end up as a tub of icy goo. In my experience freezers need to be around 15 to 18 degrees below freezing to keep ice cream and sorbet frozen but scoop-able, and if everything else seems frozen except the sorbet, it probably is the recipe's fault. There are commercially available ice cream and sorbet stabilizers, or you can try adding a little pectin or gelatin or an egg white. I think sorbets made from juices are less forgiving than those made from more pulpy fruits, so sometimes I'll do something like pear-lemon where the pear gives it more body and it doesn't separate like plain lemon sorbet often seems to.

A few months ago, one of our Bhutanese cooks was printing new menus and one of the items was a salad garnished with prosciutto. If there is not an expat around, there tend to be some spelling mistakes, which we had alerted the staff to be vigilant about, so he dutifully spell-checked the menu. Unfortunately Microsoft Word does not know Italian very well, so the cook went with Word's first suggested alternate spelling for prosciutto: prostitute. Yup, prostitute salad, and not even an extra service charge!

Are you pouring warm ganache over the cake as a glaze, or spreading on thicker ganache as frosting? If I'm pouring ganache, I usually do a layer of buttercream and chill pretty well before finishing, but I wouldn't do that if I'm spreading on swirls of whipped ganache. As for the band, I'd ice the cake first so the band has something to stick to. Maybe a thin layer of buttercream, wrap the band, then glaze the top?

I'm at 7500 feet most of the time and I've noticed two altitude related problems with candy. One is that if I'm making a fairly stiff ganache, the cream is sometimes not hot enough to melt all of the chocolate. It boils at 198F here, and sometimes that extra 14 degrees of heat would be really useful. The other thing is that my attempts at agar jellies/pate de fruits seem to get moldy after only a few weeks, and I am wondering if this is due to less sterilizaton happening with cooking to lower temperatures. Tempering, however, is not any more problematic than normal.

What are the advantages of the acetate? Shiny bottoms? The knife doesn't drag on the chocolate so no holes? You can keep re-using the acetate, right?

A not too sweet tuile batter might work. You could even brush them with cocoa butter before crushing.

Are there kosher versions of marsala or madiera? Or port? Another fortified wine is my first thought.

Sounds about as easy as trying to make panko. Some things just need industrial machinery.

You could probably leave the cocoa off, but it does hide the irregular surface nicely if you feel it needs hiding. I've used Greweling's method, maybe the same as Recchiutti's? (add tempered choc to slightly chilled nuts, stir. stir, stir, repeat), and it is fine for small batches, but I would not try to coat more than a kg of nuts at a time that way, as all that stirring gets kind of tiring.

Growing up, we had an apple tree in the backyard whose fruit was not great for eating out of hand, but fine for pies. Every fall, Mom would prepare several pies and freeze them unbaked. Then fresh apple pie all winter was as easy as an hour or so in the oven. If you're a canner, how about some apple chutney for something a little different?

Why intern when you can work? With 2-1/2 years experience, you ought to be able to get a hotel job. There are TONS in Dubai/Emirates, Egypt, also South & East Asia looking for Western chefs. Google 'overseas hospitality jobs' and all kinds of websites will come up. The company took care of my work permit and visa and even helped me set up a bank account. After I decided to take the job, getting things set up and getting over here only took about 6 weeks. Of course, YMMV. Or are you looking for a more traditional Western Europe type experience?

When I make coconut panna cotta with coconut milk and cream, it tends to separate, so I stir it over an ice bath until it just starts to thicken (consistency of raw egg white) then pour it into the molds. That seems to work.

Try less flour for a thinner, crispier cookie that spreads more.

I worked very briefly at a hotel where we would make huge batches of individual souffles, freeze them, then put enough for a night in the reach-in to thaw. Baked in a water bath about 20 minutes to order. I think they kept a day or two refrigerated. One particular that I remember was that after adding the egg whites, you were supposed to beat the mixture until it started breaking down a little, supposedly that was better than stopping at just folding in the stiff whites.

Welcome to the magical, maddening world of the pastry chef. Baked to order is RARELY going to fly, unless it is souffle or something else really worth putting a 'baked to order, please allow 20 minutes' on the menu. Are you doing the plating or is the pantry line cook doing it? Either way, try not to have more than half the menu served warm. The problem with baking the puff to order is that if the oven is hot enough to bake it in 8 minutes, it is probably hot enough to bake really unevenly and burn the outside while leaving the inside raw. Doughy puff ain't delicious. I do generally try to keep my crispy separate from my creamy components, as they last longer that way. Assembled things can get soggy after a day, while they may last three or four if kept separate. I don't think prebaking the pastry is adulterating tarte tatin too far, but then again I'm definitely not a devout traditionalist. If you are not doing the plating, write specific instructions, draw pictures, and come back at dinner time every now and then to make sure things are getting done the way you want. Line cooks hate pastry, they will eat your cookies, drop your tuiles, and leave your ice creams uncovered to get icy. There is little you can do about any of those things. Enjoy!

I'm making an orange flower granita to go with cardamom rice pudding, sour cherries, and pistachio tuile.

What about lunch? Gotta have a nice 3 or 4 course lunch in there somewhere. I tend to burnout on fine dining after 4 or 5 days of fancy lunch and dinner, but if you're only going for a few days, might as well cram it in!

Well, panna cotta is essentially cream, sugar, and gelatin, so I think adding eggs (in a custard base) would sort of make it not panna cotta. Likewise, I don't think you need gelatin since you're freezing it. What qualities of panna cotta are you hoping to capture in your ice cream?