Lisa Shock

Softer white breads tend to have some fat in them: butter, oil or shortening. Each type of fat gives a unique kind of crumb/crust. Milk solids also give a unique flavor to bread. I'd look for a formula like one of the basic rich white bread recipes in Wayne Gisslen's Professional Baking, the CIA Baking & Pastry book, or Bo Friberg's Professional Pastry Chef book. Then, I'd make the formula several times, each time with a different fat and see how that works out. Is there any way to contact the previous people?

I liked Jeffrey's pilot episode best. But, he's not a perky blonde.... Oh well, this competition is pretty pointless. The committee of judges chooses someone to fit their pre-existing mold, it's a formula for blandness. Judging from several challenges over the years, it's clear that the winners are simply destined to be presenters of material created for them in the FN kitchens. They are not being looked to as a source of unique recipes or techniques. They are simply there to lull the viewer into accepting more non-challenging pap. Melissa's show Ten Dollar Dinners begins airing on Sunday at 12:30pm. (I notice that she wastes money on plastic bags for her breading station.) I was surprised to see that Scripps has started another food website called Food2. They are currently featuring Kelsey from Season 4 along with Spike from Top Chef.

Off the top of my head: egg salad Mediterranean platter: hummus, tabouli, stuffed grape leaves, etc vegetable sushi pasta salad with lots (at least 50%) of veggies plus beans couscous salad wheat berry salad (I have a recipe someplace for a curried one with soybeans) gazpacho or other cold soup Pack sandwiches with the bread and toppings separately to avoid sogginess. -Unless you want that, like on a cheese & veggie muffuleta. Extras like carrot and celery sticks -my mom added cucumber spears, cherry tomatoes, and bell pepper strips. The bento thread in the Japan/Asia section is a goldmine of ideas...

Plated desserts are exciting and interesting, I think there are several categories from ACF competitions which would be fun to watch: cake decorating of various types, showpiece (sugar, marzipan, pastillage, chocolate) making, petit fours platters, bon bons, and frozen desserts. They do cut away a lot from the culinary competitions on the existing Top Chef shows. We didn't see all 3 hours of the preparation of Elk in episode 14 of season 3 -it was cut down to fit in the one hour along with the quick fire and other things. They already edit out hours of braising, baking, and slow-cooking. On one level, yes, bread baking might seem boring, but, it could be a valid challenge and interesting if edited to be interesting. In culinary school we produced several types of bread every day during a 5 hour class which also included a lecture. For some breads, we made them over several days, retarding the dough in refrigeration, but many breads were easily produced in under 5 hours. (we made 4 breads on the day we made challah and braided it with a 6-braid) They just need to get clips of contestants talking about why they chose various flours, hydration levels, and add-ins and then show what comes out of the ovens. And, in many ways, bread is a far more forgiving product -unlike anglaise or tempering chocolate, where you need to be spot-on with temperature and technique.

don't kill me...but what's a nut spike? and painting....just doing some brush strokes for texture on the plate? and a chocolate piece....that's would have to be something substantial to hold the weight of a brownie, yes? thanks for the cool ideas! ← You can see a nut spike in my avatar pic. You make some caramel boiled sugar and pull a toasted nut through it so the nut is coated and the sugar pulls to a long spike. Once you have made the sugar, you can also pull lots of other garnishes like spirals and ribbons. Generally, what people do with sauce on plates is apply with squirt bottles and maybe manipulate with a tooth pick or skewer. You can get cool bottles with small tips at Sally Beauty Supply. Here's a link showing some simple basics. In school we were taught to look at the whole plate as a work of art and to use the sauce as the background structure. You can do something as simple as making rings of various sauces and drag a skewer through to make a simple flower, or go much further with lines and different sized dots. That said, we were never allowed to just slap a zig-zag down like the culinary people do so often. The brownie could lean on something that wasn't necessarily huge, like a chocolate spiral made with acetate -if the chocolate piece is attached to the plate first with a dab of chocolate. You can also present a dessert inside a molded chocolate bowl or tulip made with a balloon. Hope this helps!

There's always ganache....

Nut spikes add height and crunch and can be made several hours in advance. You could make a shaped chocolate piece and balance the brownie on it, for interest. You can add oil based flavor to chocolate, if you want it to be raspberry. You can also paint the plate with sauce. You could do a chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and berry coulis.

I'd just treat them like polycarbonate: gentle soap, water, 100% cotton to dry. You don't want to risk scratching the inner surface, although there's a good chance they already are pretty scratched. For outer surfaces, I'd use Bon Ami, it doesn't scratch and I use it on my collection of old kitchen appliances. I'm just not certain how much it affects surfaces on a microscopic level.

I make old-fashioned boiled dressing for slaw. I prefer the fruit juice sort, my husband prefers vinegar so I make two batches of dressing and save them vacuum-sealed in the fridge and re-seal after each use. I use an adaptation of Boiled Salad Dressing, Method III from the 1953 Joy of Cooking. For the juice type: 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon paprika ¼ to ½ cup sugar 2 tablespoons butter 6 tablespoons fresh juice (I prefer lime, but orange and lemon are tasty) 3 eggs ½ teaspoon dry mustard 6+ tablespoons fresh lime/lemon juice and/or cream Heat the first seven ingredients in a double boiler and stir constantly until thick. Remove from heat and add additional juice and/or cream until you get a good consistency and flavor. I like adding just a touch of cream to balance the tartness. You can always thin this out later with more juice. The vinegar type is Method I, on page 498. I tend to just hand-cut fresh cabbage and maybe grate in carrots. Doing it yourself costs about 1/3 of the price of bagged cut cabbage.

Now THAT, Sir, would make for a good spin-off show to watch (unlike FN's cheesey 'challenge' shows). I'd love to see the likes of Charlie T, Susan Wallace (a magnificent P-chef here in DC) and Elizabeth F go head to head. ← Or how about Francois Payard, Jaque Torres, Bo Friberg, Gina DePalma, Fancisco Migoya, etc... Given how often the chefs on the show choke when it comes to dessert or pastry work, this could be really cool. Dan ← After season one of regular Top Chef, I emailed the producers suggesting a Top Pastry Chef show. It would have to be structured a bit differently, if you want to see quality artisan breads, for example. But, I think it would be do-able and interesting.

I manage on about $150 a month for two on just food -not counting non-food items bought at the grocery. But, both my husband and I are vegetarians. I try to make a pot of dry beans each week in the slow-cooker, so that I have them on hand to add to salads or make main dishes. I make bread from scratch. I make almost everything from scratch now. (especially since Breyer's changed their ice-cream formula) We have pizza about once a week, the same with a bean night with Indian Dal or bean burritos. The rest of the time, I try to cook with mostly vegetables and a little starch and dairy. I'm lucky to have a produce-focused store called Sprouts nearby, so I can get reasonably priced seasonal produce. I also live near a dollar store that sells a lot of food. I make snacks, like popcorn and potato chips. I try to make extra portions of certain meals so that I can freeze them for later. This helps the husband when I am not at home. We keep salad fixings and fresh fruit on hand at all times. We make salad dressings and mayo from scratch. They taste better and cost a LOT less. I buy dry grains and beans in bulk, when they are on sale. And, I try to have a variety on hand. (5 kinds of rice, 6 kinds of beans, couscous, pastas, etc.)

Brown butter has a ton of uses in the bakeshop, most cakes (especially the nut flavored ones) will benefit from its use. If you are substituting it for regular butter in a recipe make sure to adjust your liquid amounts since regular butter is about 20% water and brown butter has no water. On the savory side, it can be used very effectively in sauces or is delicious as a simple sauce on its own. It's my favorite dressing for a baked potato, along with some salt. I find that it adds richness and depth to Alfredo sauce. You can make a batch and store it in the fridge for a few days or freeze it.

Philadelphia style is my favorite type of ice cream. I love the smooth, light texture and find the chewiness of other ice creams made with eggs and/or gums to be annoying. (why, oh why, did Breyer's have to change their formula?) I have been working on a butter-almond flavor but trying to get the butter to be noticeable flavor-wise without actually being tiny chunks in the final ice cream. I'll post a recipe if I get things worked out....

Last night Bobby Flay gave some really poor advice while judging a contestant. In noting that Jeffrey only used about 1/3 of the money allotted for his meal, Bobby said that what he personally would have done was buy about 5 lobsters and use their broth to run fragrance everything, like his risotto. But, not actually serve them. We've seen this on the original Iron Chef, Battle Asparagus -the judges kept complaining that they wanted to eat the lobster. In short, this method does not respect the ingredients and won't get high marks from judges who know what they are doing.

There IS whole wheat pastry flour, which should help the texture. I'd use that or King Arthur's White Whole Wheat, and a regular brownie recipe from, say the Brownie CookOff Thread. Since you are already adding butter, the oil seems unnecessary. If it needs more fat, I'd up the butter or chocolate parts. I agree that the coffee is adding water, which is an ingredient not usually found in brownie recipes, and which will negatively affect the texture. Cake has water content, not brownies. I am also, personally, of the opinion that one shouldn't be masking the flavor of good chocolate. Are there faults with your chocolate that you feel need to be corrected with instant coffee of all things? If so, I'd use a different chocolate, or more of it. If what you want is a coffee flavored cake with a cocoa butter structure, then we can get you a recipe for that -one that uses better coffee that instant granules.

I use this little plastic egg timer gizmo, and my eggs are always done just right with no green on the yolks. You can find it with the name Burton (just saw it at Sur La Table), LUX, and Norpro. I have had mine for years, and love it. As for filling, I always liked making variations on the Brandied Stuffed Eggs from La Cuisine de France by Mapie, the Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec -page 123. Essentially, she used vinaigrette, brandy and a tiny dab of prepared french mustard to moisten the yolk then added capers, minced olives, tuna (which I omit), and allspice. -And served the eggs on a vinaigrette dressed salad of fresh tomatoes and green beans. It's a fairly unique and fancy appetizer with or without the salad.

I have owned one of the plastic egg devices for years, mine is marked Norpro brand, but it's the same thing. It works wonderfully well every time. I even took mine to culinary school and my instructor ran it through a barrage of tests when we were studying eggs. It worked every time. He liked it so much, I gave him one. Some amazon reviews talk about a bad smell, I have never experienced that, nor have I had one fall apart.

I just found an article in the Baltimore Sun about the various ways people use Old Bay. I like the Macaroni & Cheese suggestion, gonna have to try that...

I'd just like to second 'Something From the Oven' as a fun, informative read.

Are you painting a light coat of chocolate in the mold before pouring the bulk of the couveture in? I was taught to always do that after cleaning them.

I was able to buy a copy from Chef Rubber's booth at the World Pastry Forum for $10 cash. It has a substantial hard paper cover, lots of photos plus in-depth interviews and recipes. I like it. Dunno if I can afford to subscribe at $22 a pop, though. My guess is that CR is shipping in special padded envelopes, thus the handling fee. I was lucky enough to get my copy autographed by Albert Adria, with whom I had several interesting late-night conversations. So, my copy has special meaning to me and I will admit a bit of bias.

Might be a difficult bar - essentially you melt away the surface so I don't think it would be practical for production. ← But, you only need to melt the outer surface. I think if you had a long log of it you could just slice it with a good result.

I saw this demoed at the World Pastry Forum two weeks ago. Vincent Pilon showed it as a showpiece base. It's pretty easy to make. You take some chocolate chunks or discs in several colors and toss them into a blender for just a few seconds to break them into smaller, random bits. You place them within the borders of a mold which can simply be some silicone strips laying on parchment on a sheet pan. You then pour some tempered chocolate or plain colored coca butter (we saw red cocoa butter used, this was for a showpiece) over the chunk mixture until it's covered. Allow it to cool. At this point, the melted chocolate/cocoa butter will have obscured a lot of the pattern. Then, finish the edges by rubbing lightly on a heated surface like a warm sheet pan to reveal the inside pattern. Presumably, one could make a log or big bar of this and slice it with a hot knife or wire to make individual confections. I have not tried it, nor seen it done, so I am not certain. It does seem like a good way to use up odd bits of chocolate.

The challenges are often ridiculous on this series, and last night's episode was a great example of it. I realize that they were trying to add some sort of Iron Chef twist to things, but, these people were trying to make something to get on Red Lobster's menu, and they had plans. (not that it's such a great honor, really) Aside from showing demeanor, what was this really about? Do FN shows start taping on-script about one topic and suddenly lose a bunch of ingredients and the host has to make a new menu up on the spot? Does the network change the star's recipes in the middle of taping? Is this really how Bobby Flay's shows are taped? I suspect that Bobby would explode in a violent fit of anger if someone strolled by his set and took half of the spices for a dish. (I remember how ticked he was that the cameras showed his girlfriend during the Iron Chef rematch in Japan.) I'll also bet that that the camera operator probably knows how to turn the camera off and wait until more product is sourced before re-starting the tape. And, although they don't care to admit it, they apparently do have an editing crew. I actually only watch any food network shows occasionally now, because the content has been dumbed down to the point of celebrating ignorance in the kitchen rather than attempting to give any real education of any value. And, most importantly, they have lost sight of the real food network star: FOOD! The casting call for next season is out there and casting is happening right now. I find it ironic that they say they are seeking chefs and culinary school instructors, when they refuse to provide a venue for substantial content.

You can also brown a vegetable like mushrooms, onions, shallots, etc. and make a vegetable sauce to go with an item.