Lisa Shock

I saw a photo online, with a review from someone who did not like it. Looks like it might be a cheese souffle with macaroni added and topped with buttered breadcrumbs.

Avoid the Bernzomatic TS3000 (t). I see lots of students buying them because they are cheap, but it breaks really easily and the flame doesn't adjust so, it's a disappointment. I have literally seen hundreds of these break. (all plastic) The Bernzomatic TS8000 costs more, but is adjustable. (cast aluminum with brass fittings) I got mine with the Ace Hardware imprint, it was about ten dollars cheaper than the name brand version at the big box hardware store and came with a tank of gas. This is the one I recommend. The Bernzomatic TS4000 is ok, just doesn't adust. It is also occasionally available as an Ace store-brand for less. Additional uses not mentioned above: warming the sides of a mixer bowl, sugar showpiece work, and reheating candy like nougatine to manipulate the shape (think croquembouche.)

Don't forget that she won't eat anything unless it has vanilla in it.

I was thinking about this further, potatoes, right now at market should be super-fresh and halfway between new and mature, as there's another month or so of harvest left to go depending upon location. The sprouted eyes indicate that they've been stored a while... that's sort of weird right now when they should have been super-fresh and in the ground a few days before purchase. Right now is prime potato buying season. Makes me suspect bad actors, in addition to your buyer being an uninformed sucker. Every year the people who run the local organic farmer's markets where I live catch people selling conventional produce they bought from distributors -repackaging it and selling it as their own organic harvest when they live in apartments downtown. Someone has to tell this person that it's ok to buy organic, but only if the produce meets certain standards. Maybe you need to start saying that you'll only accept 70s or something. Yeah, your supervisor needs to know about this, as it affects the number of hours used to make the food. If you have to pay a bunch of people extra hours on top of a premium for the produce, maybe word will come from above to stop buying organic.

The sprouting potatoes have been improperly stored, or, are old. I would have attempted to have her return them, or at least be educated on selecting produce. On the carrots, I'd insist that she have a seller cut a sample open before she buys. If she pulls this sort of stunt again, put her on the line prepping those veggies alone -with a strict deadline. She'll get the message pretty quickly.

I've got a hand-crank metal grinder I purchased years ago, it has served me well in that its practically indestructible. HERE'S a site with great instructions on how to make grits and corn flour with one. They show up at thrift stores occasionally.

It depends on what I want to make, I like Patak and I also like Golden Curry.

I really like Nicolas Lodge's recipes from The International School of Sugarcraft Book 1 , all of the four recipes are good, my favorite is the Glace Fruit Cake. -Almond flour gives a great flavor to the cake part. I substitute pecans for the brazil nuts, and add a handful each of golden and dark raisins. This cake keeps very well and does not need fortification with spirits. I made a test batch two months ago and just finished off the last piece recently, it was still moist and tasty. (IMO, this recipe is a lot closer to being a cookie than a cake in texture)

Every time I have been encouraged to participate in something like this, it's been a scam of one sort or another. The part of the wedding business I'd focus on is the party favor type gifts for the reception. Most people look for a small token gift, is place of or in addition to, the traditional bag of jordan almonds. I have seen soap companies aggressively vying for this business at wedding shows, when, IMO, giving out soap isn't really polite. (do you really want to imply that people smell?) Anyway, I'd give out what you can as tasting samples, and show demonstration samples of small bonbon boxes like 4 packs and 6 packs, and maybe other small things like 4oz boxes of other candies featuring high end finishes like gold leaf.

Depending on where you live, there should be a used restaurant equipment company somewhere in your vicinity. Look around and ask around, they often have great deals on items that were only used for a few months. And, there's always eBay, catch is that shipping of larger equipment isn't cheap. But, you might get lucky and find a listing for something you can pick up locally.

America's Test Kitchen tested the acid issue and found that it had to be fairly high to affect the beans. I have found that hard water is much more of an issue. I used to have to cook beans for a restaurant every morning, and found out pretty quickly that filtered water worked a LOT better than our tap water, which happens to be extremely hard. Salt during soaking helps make up for a lack of minerals in the water. (see linked article about hard water & beans)

I like beer, but don't like the big hops-y beers that are so popular right now. Give me a nice hefewiezen like Altenmunster, or a dark beer like Negro Modelo or Sam Adams' 'Hazel', or Winter Solstice from Anderson Valley, and I am happy. I was thinking maybe you could use the bitters to alter a beer cocktail and replace the beer, but, then I looked at beer cocktails.....I dunno... The only use I can think of is to carry it when attending an event where you know your only beverage will be a cheap type of beer that's (stealing from Monty Python) like making love in a canoe. You'll then be able to improve your experience.

BTW, I use THIS San Jamar ice paddle because it unscrews and you can throw ice into it; no need to fill with water and freeze. This means, with big batches, you can melt a bunch of ice, toss the water, and keep refilling infinitely -or as long as you have ice on hand. They do make bigger models.

I participated in that argument, and, it's the primary reason why I stopped reading his blog. (that and the insulting, misogynist mayonnaise post which he deleted) Anyway, Harold McGee decided to use the article for one of his own blog posts, and essentially gives Ruhlman a cold, hard smackdown. Enjoy!

A few other things may be helpful for you, shop around and get a speed rack or two so you have a place to put things to cool and can move pies around easily. There are a lot of different kinds of rack, some have fewer slots (for taller items), some are open on the side instead of the end, some hold more weight, some are just for half pans. I recommend full pan size as you can fit 4-5 pies per sheet pan, thus 80-100 per rack. In a bakery, we'd put five or more pies per full sheet pan in the oven. Since you are using a home oven that is maybe 19" wide, a full sheet pan won't fit. A half will fit but will be inefficient. You're only going to get one maybe two pies per half sheet pan, so, I would not use them. I'd get some of the completely flat pans and leave them on your oven racks, do not try to carry pies around on them! I think you can get three pies per rack this way, and you should be able to get at least 3 racks in the oven, so, you'd be baking 9 pies at once per oven. (unless you're doing those super-overstuffed, tall pies) That translates to about 72 pies in 8 hours. For mixing filling, look for large steel bowls at Restaurant Depot, a local restaurant supply house, or maybe your Smart & Final has a few left from before they converted to being more consumer-friendly. For storage, look into Cambro containers. If you choose all one color, all the lids will fit all the sizes. BTW, some of the pricier pie presses also make top crusts. IMO, you should really do the math on a pie press. If you imagine that you'd maybe like to pay yourself $5/hr for your work, and a pie press saves you rolling, measuring, cutting and placing dough, you've saved about 10 minutes per pie. That's about 83 cents. Yes, it will take over a thousand pies to pay off a $900 press, but, when you're able to take 216+ pies a day (with 3 ovens) to market, it will pay itself off very quickly. You'll also be able to take larger custom orders for special events. Sample demonstration, I am not endorsing any particular brand. I used to use a manual machine from the 1930s.

You might want to look into canning, if you can find shelf space for them, quarts of sauce can be useful and can be good gifts or part of gift baskets. Pints of ketchup, the same. Realistically, a family could easily use a quart of sauce a week and a pint of ketchup a month. I am very fond of this 2008 Washington Post Top Tomato Recipe Contest winner, Mato Sammidges. I follow the contest every year, even though I cannot enter, it's interesting to see what people come up with. It won't be tomato season here in Phoenix until it cools down a bit. When daytime temps are over 100, tomatoes don't ripen.

Actually, the larger production facilities use IQF fruit or actually process their own fruit with processing machines. Canned filling, or those buckets is too fussy and expensive, -they're usually used by hotels and small bakeries. You may wish to look into getting IQF fruit, especially peeled apples as it will save you time and still have decent quality. The best part is that it's very consistent quality, meaning you get consistent pies year-round. I used to get amazing blueberries IQF. The IQF fruit is sold where you should be getting your butter and flour, a food wholesaler. (butter freezes well, stock up when its cheap) Some food wholesalers allow people to place orders and pick them up at their back door, if they are too small for delivery. Also, US foods has been opening some warehouse stores open to the public, and, there's always restaurant depot. If you plan things properly, you can buy the fruit right before you use it, so, you won't need a freezer to store it in, maybe just some coolers for transportation in the summer. (it generally comes in large cardboard boxes) BTW, unbaked struesel can be frozen and tossed directly onto pies before baking, make sure to move it around while freezing to keep it broken up. Time saving techniques will vary depending on how you make the pies, like if you pre-cook fillings or not. If you switch to clear gel, it can be re-heated well, so you could cook a batch of fruit filling and then refrigerate it it for a couple of days, then scoop to fill on baking day. Burning issues are complicated. You've got to get to know your ovens. All ovens have hot and cold spots, you can buy a bunch of oven thermometers and set them on empty sheet pans and see for yourself. At first, you rotate a lot, then, you will just get a feel for what needs to go where. Obviously convection cuts time down and lowers temps, so you're less likely to burn. Rotating ovens also work very well, things to consider for your next oven purchase. Agreed that you should be able to make more than 20 pies a day with prepped dough. Work on organizing your kitchen for efficiency, have enough pans and tools so that you can get through the day without having to wash anything til the end. Work on personal speed. The reason I suggested the dough press is that it's really, really fast. You place a ball of dough of the proper weight in its pan, press down, and in maybe 3 seconds your crust is formed. You can prep a couple hundred crusts an hour with one. Also, a larger mixer for making dough makes sense. You can get one that holds 30qts used for a couple thousand dollars.With a mixer, scale and dough press, you could easily make 500 crusts on a dough prep day. -Maybe you don't need that much now, but imagine if you just made crusts once a month, and froze them, how much time you would save. I'd also have a selection of custard pies, or something else where the filling is fast and easy to make, especially if you buy egg yolks and whites in containers ready to measure. You can blind bake the custard pie crusts the day before to speed things up. Hope this helps! I used to mass produce pies for take home holiday dinners.

You can pre-roll the crusts and freeze them flat with saran-wrap between layers. Or you could put the crust into foil pans and stack with saran-wrap in between and freeze. I'd be making a lot of pies with struesel tops, too. The easiest thing to do is invest in a pie press. (go to ebay and search for 'pie press' there's a nice manual one there for $900 right now) Once you have a press, your labor costs will go down greatly and you can make crusts fresh on baking day. I would not freeze baked pies until you experiment with your fillings, some thickeners do not freeze well. Bakeries that do freeze fillings use clear jell as the thickener. Also, check out the oven maker's website. I was able to buy extra oven racks for my oven at $25 each, and can now max out its capacity.

I know this is late, but, here's info on a patisserie tour.

Condiments: Mustard, you can make several types, and since they store well, you can make them in advance. Mayo - make a couple flavors from scratch, also can be made in advance. (lime/dill, honey mustard, basil, etc.) Green Salad/Lettuce Have a nice selection of vegetables, like cucumber slices, grated carrot, tomato slices, sliced radish, etc. They add a lot to a sandwich and give vegetarians something more substantial. Be prepared for the gluten-free folks to take a lot of salad, the rest of the crowd, not so much. Proteins: Cheeses for the vegetarians, preferably ones without animal rennet. Hummus or an Italian cannellini bean spread/dip might be nice. Hummus is very popular in the US right now.

Not here in Phoenix, at least not if you're in an income bracket where you work for a living. AC burns through a lot of money, and when we get 110°- 120°+ weather for a couple of months a year, many of us let the house get pretty warm, especially when we aren't at home (at work, out shopping, etc.)

I'm going to agree with the onions. I am also going to add that sour items like dry mango or tamarind are also important for depth of flavor.

Depends on what you call room temperature. Chocolate should be stored below 80°F, if it gets much warmer (temperatures vary by type) it will lose the temper and melt.

The removed water may be interesting, think of, say, ice cubes made from the water out of fruit. It may not be strongly flavored, but could still be useful.

You need to temper the chocolate.