Kerry Beal

Here's the butternut squash - 3 hours in a 2% solution of Calcium hydroxide - rinsed well - 2 hours simmered in a sugar syrup - heated up and served with salt. As you can see little squares just aren't in my repertoire.

Azeri mushrooms with egg - Naomi Duguid's Taste of Persia

So apparently it's the calcium in the CaOH that is responsible for the effect. Alex and Aki at Ideas in Food use a different source of calcium for the same effect mentioned here. Working on the Concentrated Apple and the Pumpkin Bonbons - just blew the apples apart with too much heat - they were simmering so nicely - I couldn't have just let them do it!

We went to Molly Moons when I was in Seattle 2 weeks ago - had the Salted Caramel - binned it. Too salty actually. Will have to try this place if it's still around next time we return.

Well you do have Ganong.

Here's mine - cost $3.50 US on eBay. Going to weight out enough for a 2% solution to play with over the weekend.

That sounds like fun. I know I've got some pickling lime around here for changing the pH in fermentation. A nice sweet squash maybe.

Is this person thinking butterscotch or butterscotch sauce? Cause for sauce I happily add a couple of jiggers of whatever flavourful booze I've got around to make it tastier.

Scales from MyWeigh - here on amazon.ca - I have a number of the 7001DX.

You could always get something like this - it's made for candy melts (compound) so it runs a little warm - but if you attach it to a dimmer switch you can reduce the temperature quite nicely. I got a bunch of them for our first eGullet Chocolate and Confectionery workshop - so we could set up some stations for people to dip. Might still be a couple of them around if you want me to check.

From the website - Calx Mugartiz is ideal to "petrify" or "fossilise" fruits and vegetables containing Pectin. Calx is used at Andoni Luis Aduriz’s restaurant Mugaritz to make its "concentrated apples". Make a bath with 2% Calx and bathe the fruits or vegetables for approximately 3 hours. After this you can either bake the ingredient to crate the fossil effect or poach to create the petrified, aged appearance. The shell or skin may vary depending on how the fruit or vegetable has been cooked, soft or dry to rough. The mineral calcium is obtained by calcimine pure limestone at temperatures of 900-1200 ° C.

If the dessert would lend itself to a creamy topping - why not whip some cream, fold together with some curd - and put a nice big dollop on each serving.

Doing a locum for the first time in ages - they know I make chocolate so have expectations! Grabbed some Oreo thins and some Trophy brand Butter Toffee Peanuts at the Giant Tiger this am - it's an interesting shop that Anna and I frequent when we are up north but rarely down here. But they sell Sterling butter for about half the price of the grocery store and today it was $1 less. Dipped cookies and clusters - should keep my reputation intact. And of course it took me less than an hour to temper, dip and cluster with the EZtemper! Couple of eG'ers that didn't have one before - who have one now - be interested to see what they can do with it and hope they report here.

Shai, Olive oil in the dough?

Ah yes - our thanksgiving is long gone - so it never occurs to me!

In bunny - out santa?

I have both in my possession right now as you noticed. Pros for the Krea Swiss - fast melting, small footprint, fully stainless steel, smaller surface area of chocolate exposed, love the handles on the sides. Cons for the Krea Swiss - slow to cool down, smaller area for dumping molds back into the pool (6 kg size - 12 kg would be fine), the probe - it goes through a hole in the corner of the melting pan so has to be wrestled with and when you dump chocolate out of the pan invariably you pick that corner to pour. You can take the pan out to help the cooling time - but then you do have to wrestle the probe out to do so. You still need to stir to determine what the temperature of the entire mass is - and it's not always the same as what it was reading before stirring (it is reading one point in the mass and it's in a corner). Shorter history - one of my units was not working properly and will need to be replaced - that being said - they are very responsive to my concerns. Pros for the Mold'art - ease of dumping molds back into it, no probe to wrestle, long history of trouble free function. Cons - large areas of the chocolate that is not exposed directly to heat - so over crystallization seems to happen more quickly (this is an impression - not sure if it's truly true), slower melting. Is digital necessary - I don't really think so (but others do which I why I have these units) - I would be thrilled to have the Swiss Krea without the probe - or with a probe that didn't have to go through the melting pan - just a nice long probe that comes over the side and could be put in the middle of the mass and moved out of the way easily when you want to muck with the pan.

Indeed - I've often pulled one out of the fridge when I am without. The european aseptic cream is so much more liquid though.

Noooooooooooo.........

I've tried it - tasty! I think that they conche the non oil parts of the hazelnut with the chocolate

I use it as is - it gets softer with different chocolate and proportions of nut paste. With white chocolate I use less paste - dark - more

They tend to get lumpy - I'd like to be able to pour out just part of a container at a time and it's hard with the lumps.

I use purchased hazelnut paste (Cacao Barry) with milk chocolate. Actually I make 3 different giandujas, one with milk, one with white and one with dark. With milk chocolate I use 350 grams of chocolate to 150 grams of hazelnut paste. I don't use praline paste because I find it too sweet. If I want to grind my own hazelnuts to make paste - I do so in my Sumeet spice grinder or the Thermomix - a food processor never got it smooth enough.

Had a good read through Dories Cookies on the Kindle on the way to Seattle. Saw a whole lot of cookies I'd like to try. Kept noticing Dorie's mention of the name 'Mardi Michels' - who writes eatlivetravelwrite. Mardi is the teacher who invited me to visit the school at which she teaches in Toronto - to show the Cooking Basics boys and the Tinkering Club (who had made molds) how to play with chocolate. Mention here. The boys had more fun with the IR thermometer I brought than anything else we did! Pleased to see Mardi is working on a cookbook herself. I'll be first in line to get one.

So today I am attending a retreat for the shelter health network in Hamilton. We are a bunch of docs who services the homeless population. Lunch is being catered by the 'butcher and the vegan' I was a little late taking pics