Lisa Shock

Various savory pies are designed to be served cold. Pizza rustica (the Easter pie type) comes to mind as well as quiche.

It might be possible for you to ship some candy to yourself, perhaps using a hotel business center. If all else fails, take more pics and we'll figure out a way to make those candies here.

Beautiful, and very realistic!

The tiny rice is called Kalijira rice and I have made tiny fried rice appetizers with it by trimming the very tips of broccoli florets, cutting carrots and other veggies very small, and then serving it in crescent standing spoons. People are amazed at how small this rice is; each grain is less than half the size of small, short-grain rice. If you did deviled quail eggs, you could also do a contrasting dish of deviled ostrich egg, if you can source one or two. Just remember to time the cooking time carefully, and have tools to get into the shell. Tiny seafood may be available, you could have fun doing mini versions of classics like shrimp cocktail in a small 2 ounce disposable martini glass. I have seen 'champagne' grapes at Trader Joes, they may be good for dressing the table, or making something if you trim the stems so the bunches look like mini versions of larger grape bunches. Crepes are easy to make tiny, and are easy to transport and keep cold. You could then make anything from mini crepes suzette to mini seafood newberg crepes. You could get cornish game hens, roast them, carve like a turkey and then serve tiny plates of it with teeny mounds of mashed potatoes and gravy. -Maybe make a tray that has a tableau of a doll-sized holiday meal.

Mayhaps you can get a small souvenir item to auction off as an eG fundraising item...

There's always the option of using things of unusual size, like deviled eggs made from quail eggs or a salad of microgreens. Once, I found a tiny grained basmati rice that made great tiny appetizers. And, maybe your produce people can source those tiny pepquino watermelons -they taste like cucumbers. In the fake egg category, there's always blown mozzarella with yellow tomato puree/salsa/sauce poured into the cavity. And then, there are the foods that play with our sense of order like fried ice cream, fried mayonnaise, savory sorbets, etc.

You could call and ask.... +34 972 150 457

I don't think you need it. Buy your url -cost is about $10. Get a basic 5 page, template type website at a place like GoDaddy for $50 a year and build it yourself -it's easy. Set yourself up with a Yelp listing, a Google Places listing, a Bing Local listing, a Yahoo Local listing, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. It takes a couple weeks for some of these to go live, but, once they do, people will find you. Make sure to announce your opening and events in the New Times online calendar section, and put something on Chowhound. People will find you, really. And, I've seen way too many people trying to sell themselves as professionals at this stuff when they themselves just got into social media a year or two ago.

I'm just chiming in to second the 'no' vote on the autograph on the laptop. Not only does it have nothing to do with the people or place, but, it's a highly ephemeral item. It might be cool to walk around with for a year or two, but, twenty years from now, when you tell the tale of your trip, I think you'd be happier being able to pull out a book, or point to a framed picture or something. I have Albert Adria's autograph on his photo in a magazine article about him, So-Good #1 which I got him to sign after a long night of drinks and shop-talk at WPF 2009, and I am still kind of kicking myself that I didn't get an autograph on something I can frame. (I don't want to destroy the magazine.) So, every time I want to show someone the autograph, I wind up slowly degrading the condition of the magazine.

Oh! Don't forget that El Bulli sells their books at the restaurant. (they don't make much money on the food, they support themselves on book sales) Anyway, there are books available there which you may not have access to otherwise, and the opportunity to have them signed.

I would like to point out that some rice recipes do use a bit of science to manipulate texture in the opposite direction; making the rice have more of the firm characteristics of very long grain rice. A good example would be Persian steamed rice where vinegar is added to the first stage of cooking before the steaming. (My go-to recipe is Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. -Or Persian crusted rice, to which many cooks add yogurt, which is acidic.

Congratulations! Don't forget to pack your camera!

I like red cargo rice and jasmine brown. I like flavor of black, but, am not so fond of the way it colors your mouth. I've also gotten some good unspecified short grain brown rice at an asian market here (LeeLee) that's from Japan. This rice is very uniform in size and has a pleasing plump shape.

I have a question for the staff, is it possible for you guys to edit the original recipe posts to add the weight measurement ingredient list? That might be a cleaner solution for the end users of the recipes. Obviously, you could add a notation about the edit, and perhaps the author of the conversion so we know who to ask questions of if a formula doesn't work.

Thanks for posting this! You just reminded me of a couple of posted recipes that I have tried and wanted to convert and never got around to actually writing the info down! Here's my current fave: ElfWorks' BLUE CHEESE AND PECAN CRACKERS * 4.5oz crumbled blue CHEESE, chilled * 4 oz (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature * .04 oz coarsely ground black pepper * 5 oz all purpose flour * 2.25 oz pecans, lightly toasted, coarsely chopped * Pecan halves for topping crackers, about 3 oz edited for completeness, hit the wrong key on my keyboard!

Don't forget the wonders of Oregon Pinots!

I make my own nowadays, but, I can always find room in my life for Thomas Haas' chocolates. *** I grew up with Despina Leos herself handing me candies in the Candy Kitchen in Hagerstown MD, and my parents ship me her son's confections on occasion. (she passed away a few years ago) Those boxes are always the most highly coveted presents to arrive at my house! Back in the 1960's and 70's I can remember both of Mrs. Leos' chocolate shops being magical places. The building was over 100 years old, and the shelves and cases were made of heavy, dark wood and thick greenish glass. At Easter, she'd have a meter-tall decorated chocolate egg on display, and bunnies made from molds dating to sometime in the 1800's. The bunnies were usually either very long, lean hares, or, very formal dressed gentlemen in top hats and tails. Some years, the Easter bunny would bring me a basket made of chocolate filled with bonbons, other years it would be a two-part egg as big as a football filled with goodies. She and her son made all the various traditional candies for Faster baskets, all from molds passed down from previous generations of confectioners in the family -or from hand pulled sugar. Every time you went in, you would have samples thrust into your hand and warm conversation. And the chocolates were always great! I remember trying Godiva for the first time and thinking that it wasn't as good as the Candy Kitchen's chocolates. Mrs. Leos and her family were really a big inspiration for me in becoming a pastry chef. Seeing the shop ceiling lined with hand-pulled candy canes every December, heart boxes in February, and hundreds of bunnies & eggs in springtime was always a big part of going on a downtown shopping expedition for me. In college, when I studied Ancient Greek, Mrs. Leos helped me with my studies and told me stories of her childhood in Greece and the tough, often violent times in WW2. (IIRC, she married into an established family of confectioners) And, she'd always have me sample the new candies. I'm glad to see that some of her descendants have decided to re-boot the business.

Yeah, baking soda is your friend here, I think....

I too have enjoyed her show. I love her enthusiasm for honest ingredients and good technique. She doesn't dumb-down recipes; she's willing to use more than 5 ingredients and can spend more than ten minutes on a dish. Her occasional shortcuts are generally solid, intelligent work-arounds that still produce food of high caliber. The only thing I'd change would be that occasionally, there's too many fingers in the food for me. -This is a personal pet-peeve, I know, I know. But, I'd prefer more tool use and fewer fingers.

On some of these shows the contestants are forced to use knives from a sponsor, not their usual set. So, it occasionally may be due to using knives of a different shape or weight than what they are used to using.

Dulling of the finish or exposed cast edges may be reasons. I always though that it had to do with uneven heating causing cracks, but that's old 1960's wisdom and dishwashers have improved a bit since then.

Do you have access to ice? If so, prepare cold meals and place them into different coolers with ice -each designated to opened at a particular time. So, for example, the small blue cooler gets opened for breakfast and another, maybe red, is opened for lunch. I'd also try to stock up on breads, crackers, nuts, etc. that do not need refrigeration.

He seems to be very enamored of agar, when, in my experience, you need to be careful about using/overusing it because westerners aren't fond of the texture. I'm still weirded out by the fact that he's working as caterer, selling clients on dishes he hasn't made or tested beforehand. I guess the cachet of tv fame overrides ordinary caution. His personality is still grating, as is the posturing. I've had enough of the 'I'm doing things you've never seen before' type comments. And, I laugh each time I see the robot coupe in the opening -presented as if it's a miracle of cutting-edge 2011 technology. I wish Heston Blumenthal were able to make more shows!

Last year, I was invited to join a local 'gourmet' supper club group that meets in a different member's home each month. I attended two gatherings and was appalled by the food offered up. Virtually everything that people brought was made from packaged mixes, frozen foods or heat n eat cold case items. -And not good things like olive-bar items, either! I'm talking about biscuits from a can wrapped around pre-cooked deli items, and, mac n cheese from the blue box dressed up with a little cheap salsa from a jar. I amazed the group by bringing real chocolate mousse the first time, although there was much consternation about the fact that it wasn't a mix they could buy and make for themselves later. Anyway, I am seeing a lot of food network followers who think they are 'into' good food, but sadly are simply trying to cook to Sandra Lee's standards. I suspect the Dunning-Kruger effect is part of what's going on.

When I toured NBC studios in beautiful downtown Burbank there was a vending machine with fresh apples in it, nice large crisp fresh ones. My dream would be an all fruit vending machine.