Kerry Beal

Found a package of turkey dark meat, no skin, in the freezer last night. Decided to bring it along with plans to have it as my lunch and use the remainder to make turkey vegetable soup for dinner. A handful of RG Christmas Limas went in the pot for 20 minutes. Perfectly cooked - awaiting their placement in the soup later today.

Found these lovely little silicone cups made by Danesco in Steel City Surplus for 49 cents each. They have a flat bottom that means I can just sit them strait down without having to worry about jar rings and such. Not sure they would hold a big double yoker though. After 3 minutes and quick release still a bit undercooked. Back in for one minutes they were a bit over cooked. I suspect 4 minutes from the start would be fine. Had already put the eggs in the cups before reading Anna's instructions to grease the cups well (she actually said I should grease the cops but none have shown up here at work yet).

My aquavit experiments involved first the herbs which didn't result in the flavour I was after (Taffel) - then with essential oils. To 100 ml of 45% ETOH I added 15 drops of a mixture of 120 drops caraway, 10 drops dill, 2 drops coriander, 8 drops bitter orange. Aged in nuke with a couple of sherry chips.

I make purees when the fruit is in season and keep in my freezer.

It's just a recipe I put together - it's a butter cream so contains fondant which I rarely use any more in fillings - Pear Almond Center 125 grams butter 375 grams fondant 375 grams almond paste 50 grams pear william liqueur 50 grams pear puree 1 teaspoon pear compound Mix room temperature butter and fondant in food processor. Add almond paste, and remaining ingredients.

Roasting rhubarb certain does concentrate the flavour and sweeten it up. I add some freeze dried fruit to boost the flavour as well (of course not everyone has freeze dried rhubarb floating around). Also I tend to add a bit of of booze when I do fruit flavours - if I'm using red fruit I add some lemon vodka or a citrus liqueur of some sort. Rhubarb alone though I'm not really a fan - I prefer my rhubarb with strawberry! Never made a pear alone ganache that I've been happy with - they simply do not have a distinct enough flavour - but pear almond - that's a great combination with a bit of Poire William in there to bump it up.

Gotta agree on the microwave - when I was down in Utah in November, I went to visit a new bean to bar manufacturer to show them the EZtemper. They didn't have a microwave so it was a bit of a challenge to melt some chocolate for the demo. After fiddling with heat guns for a while we finally set up a pot of water on an induction burner and put a stainless bowl over it. I can have chocolate tempered in less than 5 minutes with a microwave and the EZtemper.

Recipe to share?

Shipping to Canada is a bit dear! I've seen them in thrift stores - and resisted - one day I'll give in. Had one when I was a kid.

That would be a good sub for a Mold'art for him. And welcome Je33 if we haven't already welcomed you.

It is above - posted Jan 19th

I would love to find an old Ktel Dial 0 Matic - it slices, it dices - made great waffle chips.

Steve - Martin is in the UK - so I suspect some of the vendor choices for him will be different. Mold'arts will probably be less expensive where he is. Not sure what is equivalent to the Chocovision in the UK. I too like my aluminum bars more than the stainless - I like the idea of stainless but the weight and cost is a huge issue.

Go to a metal shop and get them to make the caramel rulers for you - much cheaper and if you take goodies along you usually get an additional chocolate discount I have found.

Certainly enough of each mold that you can make a decent sized batch in one go. One or two 6 kg Mol'dart melters, perhaps a 3 kg if you are going to do a lot of dipping. The guitar is going to make cutting quick and dirty - the rate limiting step is going to be the dipping! Frames for the ganache for the guitar. Caramel bars. Stainless tables, rolling racks, sheet pans. Fridge, freezer, 3 compartment sink or dishwasher and smaller sink. Heat gun, microwave, various offset spatulas, scrapers, microwave safe bowls, dipping forks, scales, thermometers Packaging. Containers for storing finished product. Airbrush if you are going to do any painted items. There is truly no limit!

Speaking with Renee at Chocolat-Chocolat in Montreal today - she will be again sending us wonderful stuff for the workshop as she has every year - and I will contact her the last week of April to let her know final numbers. It occurs to me that if people want to order from CC that they do so before the last week of April and ask them to put it in the shipment to me - I'll then bring it along to the workshop. Will save on shipping especially for those coming from across the border.

They have even more expensive ones than that!

Is this the sort of thing you are looking for?

Todd Wilbur - Top Secret Recipes.

I'm seeing it on Amazon.com

So a couple of months ago (when the weather was still warm) Alleguede has his assistant drop off some raspberries that he wanted me to freeze dry for him. Since they were IQF raspberries I assumed that they would be individual - but apparently when you leave them in the trunk of your car long enough to thaw, then put them back in the freezer - then take a couple of days to get them over to me - they are no longer going to resemble individual raspberries. So they have been sitting in my freezer awaiting a time when I was prepared to deal with them - I've told him several times that he isn't going to get usable raspberries out of this - just raspberry powder. I don't think he believes me! I started by removing the 3 grocery bags that were holding the 2 thick bags that had at one time held the berries. Struck by how much it looked like a placenta - bag and all! Of course the bags were frozen right in to the mass of berries so it was quite a painful struggle to get the mess to the point where I could hack off slices of the berries to put on the trays. So divided into 4 trays - couple of days from now we'll see what we get. Raspberry juice everywhere!

Think Anna N and I saw a few pieces of Brooklyn Copper at Homesense (like Marshall's) a couple of weeks ago. We were struck by how beautifully heavy the copper was - but I do recall thinking that it appeared to be tinned instead of lined with stainless and that would be an issue for me. Anytime I've tried to get something re-tinned it's been a huge problem. Toronto416 - are you aware of any re-tinning places in the GTA?

Definite RobertM Sue Casey Chocolot curls MelissaH Gwbyls tikidoc Robyn sarahdwyer Dilittante + 1 YetiChocolates dhardy123 Tentative gfron1 - not seeing a commitment to come above but seeing an interest in Morato! lambrecht gourmet prabha Mark Heim (strong tentative!) patris and sib Lurking waiting to decide DianaM

Making ragu in the Fagor pot tonight - not the infamous Kenji recipe though. Interested to see how it turns out.

We've found that adding it cooler means you can pipe it pretty much right away and you are ready to back off sooner than if you add it at 33.5.