mkayahara

Although dougal's point is well taken, I think there's a difference between books that feature professional-level techniques and books that are written to actually be used in production environments. But I still think they can both be characterized as "professional" cookbooks.

Yeah, no reason Activa wouldn't work on cured meat. A friend of mine recently bonded prosciutto to I-forget-what-kind-of fish. (I realize prosciutto isn't cured with nitrites, but still...)

Actually, I found "pan size" to be a problem with the Guinness pâte de fruit from Modernist Cuisine as well: it says to cast the gel base into a mold, but doesn't indicate how big the mold should be. I used an 8" x 8" baking pan, and I'd say it ended up a little on the thin side. In any case, the big adjustment I make when cooking from, say, Alinea is a temporal one: I almost always spread the work out over several days, rather than trying to get through all of it in one and have the dish on the table in time for dinner. Often, dishes like that have so many components that you can't possibly get through them all in one day by yourself, and many of the components will hold just fine for a few days.

Second try at making tortillas went much better. I added a lot more water this time: 400g of it to 230g of masa harina. That, combined with the tortilla press, made it a little harder to remove them from the sheets of plastic, but once I got the hang of it, everything went great, and I got significant puffing on most of them. Thanks for all the input here: I feel like I've learned a new skill!

Funny, I actually think that a touch of diacetyl, deftly used, is a great flavour. (Mostly in microwave popcorn.) It is easy to overdo it, though. My guilty confession is artificial "sour apple" flavour: I grew up eating sour apple gummy rings, and when I discovered you could get that exact same flavour in "Martini" form... wow! I've outgrown the Appletinis, but I still crave the gummy rings every now and then.

I recommend finding a child: they're often willing to work for peanuts cookies!

Yes! Although I'm not sure if it's the plastic--but definitely there is a bad taste that goes away when you rinse them. It seems to me like the air in the bag is foul. As I understand it, salad greens are often packaged in a modified atmosphere to keep them fresh longer. I'm not sure what the gas mix in question is, though. Aren't the lids for home canning coated with a BPA-containing plastic? I guess there's always headspace, though.

It's funny, to my mind, the best way to "plate" a cookie in a promotional photo would be to show it in someone's hands.

So, so true. I'm always amazed at how strongly scented some soaps are in restaurant washrooms, too, such that if I use the facilities in the middle of my meal, I can't smell anything but hand soap for the next course.

Ditto that. There's a local cheese shop here in town that keeps all their cheeses wrapped in plastic wrap. They're very willing to offer samples, but it's an empty gesture, because the samples always taste like plastic and very little else.

I'm looking at making the pad thai on page 3•385, but I'm confused about one step: one of the garnishes is "pressure-cooked peanuts (see page 3•303)." That recipe, for "crispy boiled peanuts" is seasoned with dried laver (I assume nori?), MSG, sugar and chili powder... so is it the whole recipe that should be made for the pad thai, or should it just be followed up to step 5, with the seasoning omitted? Any thoughts? I don't know a lot about Thai cuisine...

I was in Toronto yesterday and today, so while I was there, I hit La Perola and bought myself a brand new cast-iron tortilla press. Looks like I now have to get serious about this, to justify the expenditure!

I'm a fluent French speaker (I'm a translator in my day job), and I always pronounce it AB-sinth when I'm speaking English. I reserve the French pronunciation for when I'm speaking French.

Brilliant.

Knife skills aside, I'm sure you'll find plenty of uses for a $20 Benriner!

Yeah, there are special tools designed for this procedure. Modernist Cuisine suggests using a Dremel, which I'm planning on trying. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. Edit: To clarify, they suggest using a Dremel to cut through the shell, and then a scalpel to cut through the membrane.

Last night I made the Guinness "pâte de fruit" (page 4•145). I made a couple of (I hope minor) substitutions: I used the apple pectin I normally use for fruit jellies; I assume it’s an HM variety. The recipe specifies DE 40 glucose, and I’ve been unable to confirm the dextrose equivalence of my glucose syrup, but I used it anyway. Finally, the tartaric acid I bought from a local brewing supply store is labelled “acid blend,” although the store employee assured me it was pure tartaric. Never having worked with tartaric before, I have no way of knowing whether it's pure or blended with citric or malic acid. Does tartaric acid have the same kind of "brightness" that citric does? I also don't have a refractometer, so I just cooked them to 110°C and prayed. They came out a little soft: firm enough that most of them held their shape, but I still lost a few while cutting, and they're very soft to the bite. The flavour is good. I think you'd be able to identify it even if you weren't told in advance what it was. But I think there's too much tartaric acid for my taste (assuming it was actually pure tartaric I was using), because they're a little more tart than I would like. A pastry chef friend agreed with me on this point; he cut it down to 4g from the 10g specified when he made it. In any case, it's a playful way to present "beer and pretzels," so I can definitely see making it again!

What? They're easy on the feet, easy on the back, easy on dropped items, and they take a bit of water much better than a lot of people worry about. Sure, but my point is that all of those things are as true or truer of other flooring options, like rubber. So the only reason that wood is an advantage over something like rubber is that it looks nicer. Of course, Steven's point may have been that, once you put enough coats of sealer on the wood floor, you sacrifice those benefits, in which case I withdraw my comment.

Is that a bug or a feature? As far as I can tell, the only real benefit to a wood floor in a kitchen is that it looks nice. I've been considering both cork and rubber for my putative kitchen reno. I've seen some very nice-looking cork floors lately, and I imagine they'd be quite comfortable underfoot.

Thanks, Brian, that's great input. I used about 1.25 cups of water to 200 grams (a little under 1.5 cups) of masa harina. The dough was definitely not sticky, so I suspect I need to add more water. As for the cast iron pan, it was definitely smoking up the place - it even set the smoke detector off. I wonder if I'd be better off using stainless steel?

Thought I'd pull the discussion back over from the thread where I picked it up. I made tortillas tonight, but they never puffed at all. Also, when they came out of the cast iron skillet, the weren't pliable at all... is that normal? They softened up once they came out of the oven, where I'd been keeping them warm while I made the taco filling. I guess what I'm wondering is, how moist should the dough be before it gets cooked?

Kerry, do you happen to know whether there will be a refractometer kicking around as part of the pâte de fruit demo? I'd love to see how to use one.

Thanks, Darienne!

That sounds good, too, Dan. What temp is it baked at? I've had trouble getting similar tarts to come out anything but soggy.

Is a tortilla press really a requirement for making tortillas? If you don't have one, but wanted to make tortillas oh, say, tonight, what would be the next-best way to form them?