Lisa Shock

This is going to be great! (emailed the producers a suggestion for this back during season 1 of TC.) I imagine that they'll intersperse basic techniques like making puff pastry with pulling sugar for showpieces and making bread sculptures.

You could add it to cocoa butter with a little salt, then temper it, and make a savory confection, or a bon-bon -perhaps filling it with a savory ganache center....

Metal heats faster but also cools faster. In a traditional oven, with heat on the bottom this can mean that the bottom of something will cook/burn before the top gets up to temperature. (if the oven is not preheated) It's probably not microwave safe. It may be teflon coated, and, not suitable for high heat applications. If the teflon is scrached, toss the pan out -you don't want to eat that. Dark materials cook things faster than clear/light materials. I recall seeing some study back in the 1970's showing that smoked glass cooked a casserole 15 minutes faster than a clear casserole pan. Glass and ceramic hold heat better meaning that they work well for long and slow cooked applications. I prefer them for pies, they don't burn as readily. These pans also help a lot if your oven has cold/hot spots or any uneveness issues. They are also possibly microwave safe -check the bottom to see or run a quick test. Clear glass is pretty for showing off a finished product at a potluck. Multi-layer dips, gelatin delights, layered salads, etc, all get a bigger wow factor in a clear pan.

I have the Grand Diplome Cooking Course (20 volumes), 1971, edited by Ann Willan, published & re-published several times by both Danbury Press and Grolier. It is a solid series of books, my only criticism is that each volume represents a couple of meals, so the subject matter is scattershot throughout the volumes. It does have great photos and detailed diagrams, and takes the reader through the basics of French cuisine. (edited to add the date!)

Good point, part of the reason why I use a screen is the fact that I prefer dough with higher hydration levels. I like the bubbly crust.

I tend to make thick crust pizzas with a lot of toppings, so I use a pizza screen. I learned to do it this way back in high school when I worked at a pizza place. I build the pizza on the screen. I do spray the screen occasionally with non-stick spray, but maybe once a year or so following an intense cleanup where cheese stuck to it.

Some fruit can be good with both mint and chocolate. Red raspberry comes to mind immediately, but I know there are others. (grapefruit and mint is a classic...)

In some places, the staff might understand some English, but, judging from the number of times my husband and I wound up getting the wrong thing, it's not very likely. (He tried asking for what I was having once and wound up getting a fork and empty plate to share mine instead of his own plate.) And we can manage a bit of Japanese -well, my husband can watch the TV news and understand it. I have a friend who will take you around and help you figure things out. He just started a tour business, but he has lived in Japan for quite a while and is married to a Japanese woman. Try visiting: Nama Japan

Take a look at RLB's Cake Bible. The measurements for each recipe are side by side, so volume people have one column and weight-based have another column.

Are you looking for a classic version with all of the stringy portion of the celery removed? If so, a mandolin may be helpful in making the initial cuts on the top and bottom of the stalk (horizontally) to remove the stringy parts. But, that's only if the mandolin is easy to set up and you are dicing a lot of celery. Other than that, it's (in my experience) a knife skills speed test. You can also try using a peeler, larger, flatter stalks will be ok this way. Just take care to peel away from yourself and avoid injury. I like my ceramic peelers because they easily take on hard-to-peel items like this. That said, I am quicker with my knife, so... Remember that any time you will be straining the final product, you can leave the string part in and just slice the celery.

Try using puff pastry, it increases in size but rises differently than yeast dough.

If you have room in the fridge, pot de creme are made the day before in ramekins and chilled. While the most famous of these is creme brulee, you can make them with seasonal fruit/jam at the bottom or make them chocolate flavored.

Depends on how much sugar you cut. The soda is a mechanical leavener in this case, since the recipe is a riff on peanut brittle, it will cause the sugar to become foamy with air bubbles. If you use a lot less sugar you'll need less baking soda. If you cut the sugar by a couple of ounces, it probably won't need adjustment. The additional corn syrup goes hand-in-hand with the additional sugar. It's a fail-safe for the boiled sugar, to help less experienced cooks cook the sugar and not have it crystallize. I would reduce its amount by the same percentage that you reduce the sugar. I do have one suggestion, having recently made peanut brittle and done a little experimenting. Try putting some kosher salt, or other large crystal salt, on the product at the end. (or in the pan before adding the product) I made some peanut brittle with and without coarse salt and people really liked it and preferred it to the traditional batch.

Thanks! Please keep us updated on how long it lasts, since some guides say two years tops.

I found this article to be of interest: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/health/article-1200993/Why-calorie-counting-makes-fat.html Looks like the texture of food affects the calories expended to consume it. So, look for more whole foods and less processed foods. If you eat meat, get a steak, not a burger. Eat a salad made with carrot slices rather than grated carrot.

My Delonghi stand mixer has a juicer attachment which works well. It's the sort that you'd use to make carrot juice, with a rotating screen inside.

We have friends who moved to one of the swingin' retirement communities in Phoenix - and there they have Charles Chips! My friends are in heaven! My folks never subscribed (in Florida), but my friends' folks did, and my friends shared. Charles Chips were wonderful! Not sure they're worth moving to Sun City for, though. Ask me again this winter. I live in Phoenix, but a ways from Sun City. Are these chips also sold in stores? If so, do you know which ones? I'd like to try them.

I'm catching up with this online. Tennille got a set of knives designed by my favorite Iron Chef: Michiba! The show has been fairly unremarkable, I doubt that I'll watch another season.

It may also be the breed of cow. I recently bought some heavy cream from a local dairy called Milk Thistle that uses Jersey cows instead of the much more common Holsteins, and it was another thing entirely. It seems to have a higher fat content. My parents live next to a dairy farm that only has Jerseys. They do produce a higher fat milk. IMO, It's also better tasting. (although food can affect flavor as well) Jerseys aren't as large as Holsteins, so they don't produce the same volume, but it's definitely a case of quality over quantity. Once, when I was a teenager, the dairy that buys the milk from the farm had a power failure and couldn't take any milk, so the farm gave us large amounts of raw milk. (normally, their contract does not allow them to sell/give milk to anyone but the dairy) We made butter and fresh cheese from that milk and it was amazing. I have never had better butter. Also, we had several pounds of the butter in the fridge (we should have frozen it) and, oddly enough, it had a cheddar cheese flavor after a couple of weeks' time.

I'd bring back the idea that snacking spoils ones appetite for dinner, and the idea that no dinner is complete without dessert. IMO, dessert should be the spectacular finale to every dinner, at home or in a restaurant.

I have 78 home type cookbooks and I have used all but 5 of them. (one is a 1930's celebrity cookbook with glamour shots of movie stars, another is an 1811 receipt book that I just got) So, that's an unused 6.4%. I'm a vegetarian and have found that I'm not interested in a lot of vegetarian books because they aren't very good, and there are a lot of meat related books which are also of no interest. Of the 78 books, 9 are vegetarian. I really like books with a lot of story, like Scheherazade cooks! by Wadeeha Atiyeh or Caramel Knowledge by Al Sicherman. I do own 211 vintage (pre-WW2) professional baking & pastry books. (recipes make large volumes, all weight-based measure, require equipment to produce some items, etc.) Some of these are problematic because they don't contain recipes; they are piping guides or guides to making sugar flowers, etc. Many of these books also contain similar recipes for basics like royal icing or devil's food cake. But, I'll admit that I mostly by these books for design ideas and have only used two of them to make cakes. So, in those I am at 99% in terms of cooking. I have used at least half of them for their designs and decorative motifs, though. I also own some reference books, food history books, and cocktail books. The cocktail books have a 100% usage rate.

I hope the patient is feeling better by now...

Actually, the most recent recipe that I downloaded from the Cook's Illustrated website (crumb cake) actually had two sets of measurements weight and volume, so kudos to them!

This is also the perfect time to give people a sample and a bit of education. Prepare some small thin squares of your chocolate, hand them out and tell people to snap it in half and to look at the texture. Note how well tempered chocolate snaps. Then ask them to hold it in their mouth and let it melt on their tongue. Tell them about how real cocoa butter melts at body temperature. Also mention that natural chocolate contains hundreds of different flavor compounds and, of all the foods in the world, is second only to wine in flavor complexity. You can additionally mention that like wine, when paired with other foods the flavors can be transformed and elevated. Keep your chin up! There will always be people who cannot taste a difference, or, who actually prefer the colored shortening. I can't tell you how many times I have made something with high quality dark chocolate and maybe 1/3 of people (non-foodies) trying it have said they don't like it. Your niche is the person who can tell the difference and wants the experience. Those people may only represent 2 out of every ten who walk past your stand. But, those people will be loyal to you if you serve them well. I agree that excessive signage will work against you. A small, elegant plaque stating something like 'genuine pure chocolate' might be the only one I would use. -Only because the oil-based stuff cannot be labeled as pure chocolate (yet) in the US, it has to be labeled as chocolate flavored.

While I really like the idea, I think that people are distrustful of online petitions because of the potential for abuse. If you can figure out how to do it, I'll sign. That said, another idea would be to comment about whether or not a book has weight-based measurement in amazon.com reviews. Something like, 'great book, but I'm only giving it 3 stars because it uses volume measurement' or 'perfect guide, and it uses weight-based measurement, bravo, 5 stars!'