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Lisa Shock

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Everything posted by Lisa Shock

  1. Yeah, you could. Honestly, nowadays the better doughnut places are experimenting with all sorts of toppings, ingredients, and flavors. (Violet ganache? Yes, please!) The exterior part of this is pretty minor. Working out functional glazes would be pretty easy but only worthwhile if the actual doughnut was fabulously delicious and structurally sound. Part of the issue boils down to a discussion we encounter with all kinds of foods: when does adding a 'twist' to a dish push it outside of the definition of its name?
  2. They aren't usually dipped, the glaze is poured over them. There's a special device for it. The 'honey glaze' needs hot doughnuts. They are cooled for about 30 seconds after coming out of the oil, but, they are still MUCH hotter than a baked good which wasn't in oil. (go look at threads here about baked potatoes with and without oil rubbed on them, the oil-rubbed potatoes will get hotter than non-oil rubbed potatoes in the same oven because the water inside turns to steam at about 212°F and oil stays put and can get to be significantly hotter until it burns. Doughnuts do get hand-dipped dipped (with triple gloves) in chocolate fondant to make the chocolate sort and they can be a bit cooler for that, although I think bigger restaurants also have massive applicators for it. But then again no one completely enrobes them in the chocolate glaze. Sprinkles will not adhere unless the doughnuts are very hot so that the glaze is also hot and fuzes to the sprinkles. I spent a summer during my college years working for a mom& pop doughnut place right before they went from making the cake batter and lean dough from scratch to using commercial mixes. You have to be very quick to get everything to come together. I certainly messed things up often enough to learn what happens when you don't do it right.
  3. I just realized that there may be some misperceptions about your equipment. Are you using an oven and doughnut-shaped pans or one of those electric doughnut makers that are similar to a waffle iron? The pans were covered in another message thread here, where a woman was having trouble using them to make doughnuts for an office party. She was under the impression that they were the industry standard for making cake doughnuts. They're not, cake doughnuts are extruded/piped directly into hot oil. They never came out like doughnuts. I would also suspect they might not hold together as well as a real doughnut, as the fried exterior provides structural support. When you bake in a pan like those linked to above, the final product will have a soft bottom which is very much like the interior of a regular cake. However, the tops will always be a bit flat and will have a leathery top layer like the layer that bakers trim off cakes before frosting them. It will be ring-shaped cake, not a torus, and just as soft and crumbly as a slice of cake. Picking them up, either to decorate or eat, will be difficult. The electric machine, when loaded with waffle batter, will produce a hard, cracker-like crust. Because 'doughnuts' made with either system lack an outer layer of fat, which holds heat very well, they will cool rapidly as soon as they are removed from the oven/machine and you will have problems with glaze and/or topping adhesion. For the most part, you need the doughnuts to be screamingly hot, straight out of the oil to make the toppings and glazes work properly. I hope this helps! If you need clarification, just ask.
  4. Doughnuts in general fall into two categories: fried lean bread dough and fried rich cake batter. Note that many traditional toppings for doughnuts rely on the doughnuts being 375°F hot (hotter than a toaster) as they come out of the fryer. They won't spread well or adhere at lower temperatures. Flavor-wise, well, how would you react if you asked me to make a delicious birthday cake for you and instead of a rich, moist cake batter, I baked waffle batter in a cake tin and frosted it and served it to you? You should check out where the world of doughnuts is at right now. A good example of what you should be doing if you want to make good doughnuts, not some pale imitation of a doughnut, can be found on the Ideas In Food blog. Alex and Aki have a business called Curiosity Doughnuts and their blog chronicles their work on various formulas. Waffle batter is too dry, has too much chewy gluten texture and too little flavor to make a decent doughnut. Your toasting machine along with waffle batter will create a crunchy exterior crust, essentially be making very, very thick waffles. The whole joy of waffles is the outer crust. Adding 3cm+ of depth will not improve them. Nor, will making a waffle thicker turn it into a doughnut. In my fairly-well trained opinion, changing the ingredients and the method of cooking means that you will simply not be making doughnuts. Your end product will be bland, dry and crunchy. -And icings, toppings, glazes, etc. either won't stay on the finished product or will soak into it making them have an undesirable texture. (the deep-frying gives doughnuts a fat shell which protects them from sogginess which would otherwise result from the water in glazes) Generally, baking is more of a precise science and there are reasons why various batters are formulated differently from each other. The one exception is crepe batter which does triple duty as popover batter and Yorkshire pudding batter. If you aren't willing or able to get a small deep fryer and make either cake batter or lean bread dough as a doughnut base, then IMO, doughnuts shouldn't be on your menu.
  5. Don't forget that scoring or docking the dough is important. Take a look at Ramsay's finished Wellington. He egg washes the exterior of the pastry twice and scores it. Notice how much expansion happens with the scoring, creating those light colored spaces between the dark, egg washed original surface.
  6. A video on how to make black onion powder. Check out the comments on THIS recipe. It's sometimes, in some households part of hawaij, a spice mixture used in many dishes such as mareg.
  7. Kohlrabi is generally peeled and can be cooked like its relatives: cauliflower or broccoli stems. I really enjoy it cut paper thin, or into matchsticks, and tossed in salads. It has a slightly sweet flavor and a good crunch. (quite a bit less dense and crunchy than a carrot, though)
  8. I'm thinking about experimenting with using my vacuum sealer to macerate. I have a FoodSaver and the wide-mouth canning jar attachment. Gonna just partially fill a jar and see how it goes against a test jar without vacuum.
  9. I developed this recipe for a friend who wound up with many cans of Solo brand apricot filling and was wondering what to make with them. I adapted this recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Sour Cream Coffee Cake, found on page 90 of the Cake Bible. The apricot filling works it way down through the cake and winds up near the bottom of the pan, making an attractive top later when the cake is inverted. Please use some sort of ring pan that holds at least 9 cups. You may substitute butter for the toasted almond oil, but remember that the oil adds flavor. I specifically developed this recipe with the home cook in mind, regular salted butter, and AP flour work well here. To reduce the sodium, use unsalted butter. Ingredients 113 grams (1 stick) salted butter 26 grams toasted almond oil 200 grams sugar 6 grams vanilla extract 4 egg yolks 160 grams regular sour cream (do not use low fat or fat free) 50 grams almond meal 175 grams all-purpose flour 2 1/2 grams baking powder 2 1/2 grams baking soda 12 ounces (1 can) Solo Apricot Filling 12 Servings Preheat the oven to 350° Spray a 9+ cup tube or Bundt pan with non-stick spray or grease with an oil & soy lecithin blend. Lightly toast the almond meal in a frying pan on the stove top until it has a light beige color and has a mild fragrance. Allow to cool. Cream together the butter, oil, and sugar. Add the vanilla and egg yolks, mix until the mixture is even and creamy. Add the sour cream and mix well. Add the cooled almond flour and mix well. Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the liquid mixture and mix until it everything is evenly incorporated. Do not overmix the batter. Place 2/3 of the batter evenly in the prepared pan. Place the apricot filling in an even layer on top, keeping a small space between the filling and the pan's edges. Place the remaining batter on top and smooth to create a relatively even surface. Bake for approximately 50 minutes at 350° or until the top is dark brown and springs back to a light touch. Allow to cool for 15 minutes. Invert the pan onto a serving plate. Cool and serve. Be cautious about serving this hot, as the apricot filling can cause serious burns. When fully cooled, cover or wrap in plastic wrap to store. Will keep for several days in a cool, dry place. Nutrition (thanks MasterCook!) 324 calories, 15g fat, (7g sat fat, 6g mono-unsat fat, 1g ploy-unsat fat), 5g protein, 43g carbohydrates, 175mg sodium, 101mg potassium, 58g calcium 42% calories from fat, 52% calories from carbohydrates, 6% calories from protein
  10. Dried Anaheims are red. They get strung on risitras and turn orange then red as they dry. I really like the orange ones. So, when in Santa Fe, the red enchilada sauce and green enchilada sauce are made from the same peppers dried and fresh.
  11. Lisa Shock

    Breakfast! 2018

    Today, I made toast with some sourdough bread I made yesterday. Put some sliced avocado on it, and sprinkled the top with Penzey's 'Sunny Paris' seasoning. It was remarkably good. Sorry, no pics.
  12. There was a huge fad for this dish when I was a kid. I saw dozens of terrible versions, including ones made with rolls from a tube and canned cream of mushroom soup. Helped my mom make it a few times, no recent experience, but the Julia Child recipe was very good. Good luck and bon appetit!
  13. Wikipedia says that it's a very similar species to North American wild rice. Looks like some of the Chinese variety made its way to New Zealand and is considered an invasive plant there.
  14. Do Chinese people pickle burdock? One of my favorite commercial pickles from Japan is burdock root.
  15. Check out THIS advice. That said, deep frying is a lot of work and means you won't have gravy unless you roast the neck the night before and make gravy from that. I have seen a lot of overcooked fried turkey and feel that either the parted-out method or sous vide is a better way to go. I also think the low and slow method used in barbeque places has merit, especially for the breast. 3-4 hours at 190°F and the breast meat is really moist and almost unrecognizable. I was at a barbeque place with someone who thought the sliced turkey breast was some sort of moist ham like luncheon meat.
  16. Remember that many bread stuffing recipes are essentially savory bread pudding. Maybe Keller serves it in fancy ramekins with every slice of bread arranged beautifully, it's still stuffing.
  17. There used to be a chain of 5-and-dimes in the US called Ben Franklin.
  18. Lisa Shock

    Thanksgiving 2018

    Make sure to have a bottle of hot sauce available. IMO bread would be a good idea.
  19. Shouldn't this be in Recipe Gullet? The recipe is clearly a modern fantasy. Graham Crackers originated in about the 1880s, long after Franklin's death. Cream cheese is also a product of the late 1800s and wasn't commercially available until the 1870s. There were recipes for similar cheeses with different names in England starting in the 1500s. Sour cream dates to the first half of the 20th century. White sugar as we know it was not available until the late 1880s. In the 1700s sugar was a brown color and sold in loaves. It was also terrifically expensive and kept under lock and key. Lemons were very expensive and seasonal even when I was a child on the East coast of the US. Ovens of the period did not have thermometers. Also, None of the measurements given above were in use for recipes in Franklin's time, or they had different meanings.
  20. Writing an ebook is relatively easy and you can put it places like Amazon yourself without having to try and sell the book to a publisher. This is probably easier than monetizing a blog, I have a bit of experience here and there just isn't the money in it anymore. The great part is that you get to determine the price and I know that e-cookbooks under $15 sell well. -If you're willing to do under $5, you'll move a lot of units.
  21. To me, the white appears to have been spattered on first, then black painted on. It's just filling the spaces left by the white.
  22. That restaurant was terribly mismanaged. Filthy, vermin-infested, no written recipes, no effort to eliminate cross-contamination, and apparently nothing like a HACCP plan. It's horrible that they weren't shut down by the inspectors before they killed that girl. I have no sympathy for the restaurant at all, it was just a matter of time before they killed someone from allergies or foodborne illness.
  23. Make chocolate ice cream and banana sorbet. Both will keep for 6+ months if need be
  24. @blue_dolphin Is it a bit like soft pretzels?
  25. I am among those who need special accommodations in the kitchen. I also have taught cooking classes to people with a variety of conditions. I have a big bag full of gadgets which I purchased to demonstrate how to perform certain tasks in alternative ways. I have contemplated starting a website with reviews because I have found that some items did not work as well as I had hoped. I got sidelined once I realized that I was going to have to purchase 4-5 items a month and realized how expensive the proposition was. Whether for cooking or other chores, a goodly percentage of the gadgets available just don't work as well as they should. Anyway, I look forward to seeing your observations and questions.
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