pastrygirl

I love sour cream in mashed potatoes!

Ooh, that's not good. Try to get your freezer down to 10f or below if you want things to stay solid. Even if you could make ice cream, it won't stay ice cream at 31f due to the sugar content. It will be soupy

You should be able to sear the skin to crisp it up. Works with moist-cooked chicken, salmon, duck confit ...

Weird. Is it possible that there is a crack in the bowl and some of the liquid has leaked out? 20 years is a decent life span, for small appliances though.

Any updates on the heated mixing bowl? My mom found it in the Williams Sonoma catalog and thought it might be a useful thing for me as a chocolatier, and my birthday is coming up... Reading through the thread, it sounds like it's probably too small to do much with if it only holds 2 quarts. But did anyone ever figure out how to temper chocolate with it? If so, how many lbs or kg of chocolate will fit? Would anyone recommend it for anything besides small batches of ice cream? I have a 6kg mol d' art melter that I use for chocolate when I feel like letting it melt overnight, but in practice mostly I use a pretty big bowl (about 12" diameter) over hot water so I have room to dump molds back into the bowl, and I've gotten used to polishing molds and otherwise multi-tasking while I wait. Thanks!

I guess you're the only one staying cool enough to make anything! I'm pretty much taking the rest of August off - temps in the high 70's to 80'sF and a shared kitchen with poor ventilation make me more inclined to sit around eating ice cream than struggle with chocolate

All three of those links say the muscle has a longer shelf life, and I would certainly hope that a commercial seller is not harvesting from waters where PSP is an issue. I do remember seeing scallops in the shell with roe once in restaurant kitchens but I don't know where they would have come from or recall how they were stored. If Dennis lives through tonight, I'd love to hear how dinner turned out!

I don't see the point of freezing them overnight. Yes, you may want to shuck them and trim off the roe if they are not still fully alive, but scallop meat should keep (well chilled of course) for a few days. Why spend the money on fresh if you're going to freeze them and potentially affect the texture?

In the bag, I'd say a 6 quart with the red lid. I don't recall whether my flour is in a 6 or 8 quart square, whichever it is holds about 10# of flour out of the bag. The 8 qt holds 12-1/2 pound of sugar (I get 25# bags and divide it into two cambros).

Probably sugar, you'll know if you scoop a little out and feel the texture.

Which is why, as a chef, I'm surprised you went there. I know I'd rather blame FOH! It does sound like it was actually a salmon dish, not cross-contamination. So do you think the restaurant is liable? Negligent? I mean, I try to keep my peanut butter and my wheat flour away from other ingredients, but I've had cases where people put a sample in their mouth - that had a sign saying 'contains gluten' - then asked what that crunch was and spit it out when I told them it had wheat. One would think that people with severe allergies would have had enough bad experiences to trust no one, but also hope that telling someone twice was enough to protect yourself. And who knows, maybe the diner was drinking too and didn't pay attention to the food when it arrived. There have been similar lawsuits, haven't there been some involving peanuts resulting in jail time, like a recent one in the UK involving curry?

In what scenario would the kitchen be ON the hook? Server ordered salmon, kitchen made salmon, server served salmon = 100% server error. Server ordered beef, kitchen made salmon, server served salmon - it is still the server's job to match the plate with the ticket and catch an error, whether it was supposed to be sauce on the side, extra cheese, or a different protein or dish. If the kitchen did make a mistake and the server didn't catch it, the server still bears at least half of the responsibility, especially if he was the only one who knew of the allergy. Unless the kitchen was out of beef and substituted salmon without telling anyone ... Unfortunately, I've worked with some servers whose knowledge of food was embarrassingly poor. It's possible the guy was just too dumb or drunk to know he was serving the wrong dish, but I still can't blame the kitchen for that! Should the server be held criminally responsible? I don't know about jail time, but I think some community service and education about food and allergies would be appropriate. And hopefully the restaurant has liability insurance that will cover medical bills (if, despite being Canadian, that's an issue). Sad story, but happy that the diner pulled through. It must have been a horribly traumatic evening all around.

Where are you finding the info to blame the kitchen? If the server put in the order, did not mention the allergy, and picked up the order, it seems all the kitchen did was their job. Get ticket for salmon tartare, plate salmon tartare. If it was cross contamination and the kitchen had been informed of the allergy, different story. But it sounds like the server either put the order in wrong or grabbed the wrong dish off the pass. The dining room may be dark but the kitchen should have been well lit enough to see salmon vs beef color.

That is standard procedure for shared kitchens here. It's partly about the facility and partly about what you're doing in it so each company is inspected separately. Plus, we have three levels of risk, I'm approved for moderate level which means I use eggs and cream, the higher level is for cooking meat and comes with a higher fee.

That's too bad. Is there a chance to use a restaurant kitchen in their off hours? Some dinner-only places don't start work until around noon, if there are any you are friendly with or convenient to, consider making them an offer to use their kitchen in the morning hours. Or a coffee shop that is closed in the evenings (though there may not be much in the way of kitchen equipment in your typical espresso place) . Many kitchen don't have much extra space for storage, but it could be worth a look. Good luck!

I've seen plenty of skin-on salmon swimming in sous vide in restsurant kitchens.

I don't know. I definitely sympathize with not really using cookbooks anymore but I do like having them for reference and as a reminder of what I've learned. I've sold a couple of more rare ones and wouldn't mind getting rid of my 12+ years worth of Art Culinaire. But used cookbooks don't fetch much and they aren't taking up too much space so I'm mostly happy to keep what I have and not buy more. OK, so I did pick up a used chocolate book today in trade and got another one last month because it was on sale, but those are the only cookbooks I've bought in a long time!

Buy an EZtemper, of course! Sadly, dropping my name won't get you anywhere, they are more focused on bean to bar than chocolatiers, but it is a large and fun event. We Seattle-ites do love our chocolate. Hope to see you there.

Oh boy! Have you been before? I might have to actually pry myself away from my booth this year if you're presenting. This'll be my third year as a vendor, haven't been as a visitor in quite a while. Oh yeah, better get my fee paid soon

My parents always had a big garden when I was growing up. Beet greens were cooked simply (probably either boiled or saute'd) and we'd each have a small bowl of them on the side so they could be doused with red wine vinegar.

Have you looked at whatever shared kitchens or commissaries there may be in your area? Here in Seattle i was in a shared kitchen run by another pastry chef. It was very clean and well organized with about 15 different companies sharing 5 work stations. There was separate refrigeration for savory and sweet companies, which I really appreciated, and everyone scheduled their hours so there would be no overlap on each station. Any time you have shared space there is going to be a bit of the tragedy of the commons, and the larger catering companies did tend to monopolize the dish are a after events. Sadly, that space got sold and the new owners weren't interested in that level of organization. I've since moved into the kitchen of a restaurant for whom I used to work. It works OK, I just try to get in early and make chocolate while its cool, but I wish they'd organize better, by which I mean listen to me when I tel them how nice my previous commissary was Their catering cook acts like the other companies are in his way and doesn't seem to understand that the priorities of the owner-operators are different from the guy getting paid to dick around making hummus. So that might not be very helpful, I'm just saying that while renting kitchen space is far easier and cheaper than building out your own, make sure the other tenants are compatible. Will you have time to make chocolate when other people aren't in there with all the ovens on high, or the flattops and fryers, or huge kettles of jam? Can you negotiate enough space for all the bread? How are work areas and times managed? How is the ventilation, and will you have refrigeration for your sweet ingredients that won't be tainted with onions or other savory smells? We have two different regulatory agencies, the county for restaurants and caterers, and the state dept of agriculture for wholesale producers. They have different standards, so make sure whichever kitchen you find has already been approved by whichever agency will be signing off on your permits. Each company is usually inspected separately, but for example the restaurant I'm in has always passed county inspections, but a company that moved in and needed the state inspection had a much harder time meeting their standards. good luck!

Not spicy red peppers make me think sweet paprika - so maybe something like Hungarian goulash or paprikash.

So we call you the Chocolate Doctor and others call you Doctor Feelgood?

Do you pressure cook the tamales? Never knew you could do it that way! But in truth, pressure cookers kinda scare me

lemon juice instead of vinegar is fresh and bright