Lisa Shock

I found THIS bit of news at Science Daily. Turns out that the pancreas' of some people with type 2 diabetes, all of the tested samples, contained crystals of titanium dioxide, while samples of pancreas' from people who did not have type 2 diabetes did not have the crystals. This brings up the possibility that the disease might be a crystal induced inflammatory disease. The sample size is small. More work needs to be done. I just thought I'd post this as a timely news article. I suspect that public awareness will spike for a while, and it could affect those of use producing/using certain foods. (white colored cocoa butter comes to mind, along with some powder colors for cake decorating)

Noted, will put something in the Recipe Gullet soon.

I try different bakeries. Last year, I had a really big cake, so I cut it into slices and individually double wrapped them in plastic wrap, foil, and then plastic wrap and foil and froze them. I took most of the slices to work, maybe 75% of the cake, and stuck them in the freezer there. The freezer was mostly empty, and had plenty of space. Three days later, the teenager who cleans the fridge out once a week threw them all away because, "they were wrapped in foil, ew!"

You may be able to save the bottle. I was originally taught to do a mini temper on the colored cocoa butter. Warm the bottle in a bain marie, off the heat, where the water is at 105°, let it sit in there for a while. Pour out the amount you wish to use into a tiny bowl or directly onto a silpat. Use a small offset spat to stir/table it until you can tell that it has cooled but is still liquid. If it gets too cold, you can reheat for a couple of seconds in a microwave on very low or by using your torch with a very light hand. Always make a test strip or two before investing in a project. You can also temper the whole bottle.

Maybe you should call the health department and ask them for clarification...

Thought everyone might enjoy THIS VIDEO of real Italian chefs watching the top carbonara videos on youtube.

If the place really looks like that, I'd be willing to bet that someone swipes a fingerful of icing off a cake about 20 times a day.

Weird photos. They're clearly not professional pictures. (I dabble in photography, and I know I have a lot more to learn, but...) For publicity photos, it's always best to have establishing shots showing the inside as it looks to customers, complete with smiling staff. (not disembodied limbs and torsos) Then, you go for food porn: closeups of items or the bounty of the cases. I know that the NYT food section has been using a photographer & stylist for the past couple of years have been using a style that it reminiscent of the early 1970s: overexposed, wide shots, flattened perspective, overhead viewpoints, garish plates. But, I am not fond of that. And, I think it does not encourage appetite. Ironically, if you apply the Fibonacci spiral in the first photo, starting at the sweet spot on the upper-left and rolling out horizontally, you notice a sequence of flaws. The employee's crotch is (very unfortunately) in the actual sweet spot. Just a little off from that (starting a theme of 'just a little off') is a drooping red and white flower. This mirrors the broken and drooping carnation in the middle of the arrangement. Leading us to ask, why are these sad flowers here at all? Are they a metaphor? As one draws the imaginary spiral outwards one's eye is drawn to the sad, leaning cakes and unevenly frosted cupcakes. The viewer then realizes that the wooden table underneath it all is more precisely made, and at the same time the wood grain is more visually interesting, than any of the baked goods. All of the food in that picture is tired and drooping. To paraphrase Elliot, "This is the way the bakery ends, not with a bang but a whimper." And, yeah, clearly none of the staff there worries about cross-contamination and how it might affect allergy sufferers. And, I am guessing this place is in a state which allows wood in a commercial kitchen -some do not.

Honestly, if you have a garden, all you really need to do is make a 2 foot diameter cylinder out of something like chicken wire and tall stakes, anchor it in the ground, and toss things into it. Occasionally, it helps to keep tabs on the ration of brown/green stuff you're adding. Tossing a little soil on top with a shovel helps keep flies away. And, lining it with some plain newspaper can help keep stuff in, but that's about it. Do it for a couple of years, then move the cylinder someplace else in the garden and use the compost. All the other stuff you see online is generally about speeding things up or optimizing for pH or other content. My parents did it this way and we never had a problem. They live out in the country and we never had any issues with wild animals, at least none that we noticed.

Some people I make cakes for really like the Hellman's mayonnaise cake. I converted it to weight based measurement for the dry ingredients because I use the recipe fairly frequently. The cake does not have much structural integrity, but, it's moist and light.

The peppers belong in Tortellini Pavarotti. (with dill, oddly enough)

I have experience making extracts, particularly into butter. You can get excellent results using stems and leaves, parts which some producers discard. You wind up with infused clarified butter which can be used in almost anything. It has a mild spinachy taste and pale green color, both of which disappear in baking. Anyway, welcome aboard!

Yeah. the Hardees biscuits I remember from 25+ years ago were square and cooked in a grid. You could buy a slab of 9 (I think?) of them in a box. The raisin ones had icing poured all over them. Both the plain and regular biscuits were very moist inside.

I saw firecracker oreos in the store the other day, wasn't inspired to buy them.

Sure thing! I used to be really bad at making falafel, it always fell apart when I fried it. This was before the internet. I started asking people about making it, and discovered that it's different throughout the middle east. In Saudi Arabia, it's made almost entirely from stale bread. In other areas, it's raw or cooked fava beans, in other's it's raw garbanzos, in others it's cooked garbanzos (generally further north.) I suggest reading THIS Serious Eats article. I myself like the falfel made with cooked beans, added flour, and a little baking soda/powder. That said, it does explain what's going on. I like to add a little freshly ground cumin, to me it makes beans taste more 'beany'. I also like adding a tiny amount of allspice and something hot like pimenton, cayenne, or chipotle.

I have only lived near a Carl's for a few years, about a decade ago. And, being a vegetarian, I don't often go to that sort of fast food place. But, when the merger happened, I recall checking about the biscuits and did not find any. And, I know that right now Carl's does not have them. My family used to like picking up the box of cinnamon raisin biscuits on road trips to snack on them throughout the day.

Carl's doesn't have the biscuits, no plain no cinnamon raisin.

I am surprised that no one here has mentioned coconut. When I was in culinary school we learned that a goodly slice of the population (including me!) does not like coconut, and it's thought to be genetic, like cilantro soapy-flavor dislike. The number cited, but I cannot find a scientific paper on it online, was approximately 20%. I agree with the genetic part, because even as a small child, the smell of coconut has made me nauseous and I have no recollection of any negative associations. (it's hard for me to go to the beach sometimes because of all the coconut tanning oils) I can choke down toasted coconut to be polite, but I would never voluntarily choose to eat it. Obviously, this whole topic is important for anyone entering a cooking competition.

Beano used to make a liquid you could add, I guess it's no longer on the market. You can still take their tablets, they are an enzyme.

Here's a discussion of making your own.

I agree that Bloomfield is also a problematic actor, although she is divorcing herself from the situation and has not been seeking publicity. But, that's off-topic for this thread. Go back, read the title here. Hamilton compared her bailout and re-elevation of rapists to Jose Andres' work in Puerto Rico with hurricane victims. That's what we're discussing. There are millions of bad actors out their, and enablers. And many of them undoubtedly have worked in the foodservice industry. Feel free to start a separate discussion about them. This thread is about Hamilton's interview.

I read quite a bit of the twitter posts including linked articles. And, yes, it can be difficult for criminals to find work, particularly non-famous ones. No, I don't think they should all be executed, and yes, there may be a glut of them in the next few years. We cannot just pass the problem along, as was the case with many college professors who were fired but not charged -they would up at different schools and re-offended. What people need to remember here is that the damage done to their victims can be permanent and profound. Our focus should always be on the victims first. If the perpetrators need jobs, let them work in areas with minimal human contact like commercial laundries, appliance repair businesses, automotive repair and maintenance, etc. They certainly should never, ever be supervisors again. What Gabrielle Hamilton is doing is re-elevating criminals to their prior job status, which they originally achieved through crushing the spirits and skills of others -because, presumably, that's all they know. What Hamilton ought to be doing is partnering with some victims and elevating them to upper level management, where they have belonged all along. THIS is my favorite TED talk, about the pecking order at work and how it does not work. These people ran a business based on pecking order and it needs to be smashed apart and replaced with fair equitable collaboration.

Steel is fine, unless the table is shared with some sort of hot cooking like sugar work. The main difference is that steel is pretty conductive of heat and stone is not. I'd worry more about maintaining the room temperature than anything else.

Here's a photo of Les Halles in Tokyo. I wanted to take pictures of our dinner but the people I was with were uncomfortable about it, so, it's the only photo I have. Sorry, not incredibly exciting.

I cannot believe that comparison. She's bailing out men from their own 'man-made' disaster, where they indulged themselves in criminal activity by abusing people -and she's looking to profit from it. She's rewarding them! These men should be working their fingers to the bone to make their victims something like whole again: jump starting and elevating the victims careers, paying for their pain and suffering, doing penance in a meaningful and significant way -as in being stripped of their wealth and vacation homes, etc. To compare herself to a chef selflessly working (without pay, on his own dime) to help people whose lives were upended by a hurricane, is beyond the pale. I don't care how good the food is, I'll never eat at Prune or any of the 'second marriage' places either.