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gfron1

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Everything posted by gfron1

  1. If you ever dig them out I would love to see them. I have a few modern wooden molds, but like everyone else I've been getting into the plastic lately
  2. Based on some of the research that led to the last post I bought this book and am so happy I did. The translating is a slug, but there's such a long, rich history of baking told through the lens of molds in China. Here are just a few snips for anyone interested in seeing the beauty of these molds.
  3. I am circling back on this topic because I knew there was a culture context that I was missing between my question and Liuzhou's response. My bestie is from Shandong province and he and I have been having an ongoing conversation about this confusion. I share his response: The articles he shared are below, both of which Chrome did a pretty solid job in translating for me: http://life.51grb.com/life/2022/09/26/2024320.shtml https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_9481145 So it appears that baking has a long history and even a professionalization back to the Tang Dynasty: Now I'm more determined than ever to find the books or blogs that explore this history.
  4. I lease mine and won't every buy again. They service it monthly and that's included in the price. They'll have options of hot or cold water, and size/location. Now I have an left to right, but previousy I had a corner unit. At our bar we have a small one that's quieter but has a very small profile. A leasing agent will have options for you to consider. DO. NOT. USE. SYSCO or any other EcoLab system. They lock you into arrangements that you may not want and for a price higher than anyone else. They are trying to sell you convenience. I found a company through my commercial equipment repair company, and they have the lowest price, year to year leasing so i can bail at any time, and they do not require that I buy their chems - unlike SYSCO and many other places. They happen to have the cheapest chems so I often do, but I can also grab some at Restaurant Depot in a pinch. In New Mexico we bought, and felt great about that until we started having repairs and that happens a lot, which brings in mechanical repairs and plumbing repairs, we had to dial in our own chems which sometimes led to issues with our health inspector, etc. I think the $80/month I pay for my machine and servicing is well worth it.
  5. Wondering if anyone has ever noticed a difference to explain the price variance among these products by brand. For an example, the bag on the left is .99c US at my local store, and right next to it was the bag to the right priced at $2.19US. There's a third brand that falls in the middle at $1.79US. I've never noticed a difference but I don't use them every day.
  6. OK, it sounds like you've got things well under control then. I would suggest browsing the pastry forum which has a few topics on starting a chocolate business. Those might have what you're looking for.
  7. I highly encourage you (since you're in the US) to reach out to your Small Business Development Center. Their experts can walk you through the development of a business plan, which will cover all of these questions and more. Please take this comment in the spirit of helpfulness it is intended - your original question suggests that you have very limited knowledge of running an operation like this, and the failure rate of new businesses is so high, and in chocolate with ever rising CoDB the risk is even higher. My original SBDC consultant (which is a free service) told me that their job is to talk me out of starting a business, because if they couldn't do that then I likely had a solid plan for success. Best wishes in following your dream!
  8. A friend bought this for me. This is the level of book I'm looking for. It will help me with my Mandarin lessons, and get better with my Chinese pastry.
  9. I've noticed butter making an impact lately as well. And which pig and which level of refinement certainly makes a difference. Ours didn't have that smell or flavor at all, but I know in the past we've had some strong flavored lard. Since these were just for me it didn't really matter.
  10. We just slaughtered a pig for the restaurant so lard it was
  11. And I was hungry for something sweeter so I made the traditional Taiwanese pineapple cookie/finger. My crust was too short, but the filling is so much better than store bought.
  12. Today I played with sesame cakes - shāobîng (烧饼) Quick flaky pastry filled with Chinese sesmae paste and crushed toasted peanuts.
  13. Now is as good of a time as any to ramble on my day off. We're up for our 3rd JBF recognition this year, and I feel like I understand the process so much better than in the past. JBF has undergone so many changes in recent years, and I've got more industry supporters now than my first nom, that more of those friends are sharing with me what no one tells you about the process. Over the past weekend we served a minimum of 5 judges. I research all of our guests to know who I am serving, and how to best tailor their meal, so 5 guests were pretty obvious...who knows how many others might have come in. It's a stressful time for staff because there are no off-nights allowed. There never are in fine dining, but service is even more intense than normal knowing the consequences. They're also very aware that it will reman this way until the first week in April and so we are talking about how to best care for ourselves and each other. Last fall we missed an amazing opportunity with a national outlet because we had an off night at the worst possible time. I've beaten myself up ever since...recognizing that we're human and can't be perfect at all times. That gaff was a harsh call-back to New Mexico when I blew an opportunity to be a Best New Chef for Food and Wine when they asked me how long I had been cooking, and I gave them the wrong date because I didn't understand the consequences of rounding my answer. I think the JBF process still has some structural flaws (to my outsider knowledge). The biggest is that X number of judges are used to examine X number of restaurants. First, the judges have to be able to grab a seat in the restaurant (I take care of my staff so we're closed 2 weeks after NYE which means 2 weeks of not being able to seat judges; and I have private events on the books that block judges from grabbing seats), and then if they CAN get seats judges don't necessarily go to every restaurant on the semi-finalist list. And I assume they have to pay their own way so a higher ticket restaurant like mine may not be in the budget of all judges (I would suppose JBF would offer scholarships for some judges). The point being, I know I have a smaller group of judges visiting me than some of my peers. My guess is then that restaurants with more seat opportunities, and lower price points are more likely to get more judges. And I don't know how things are tabulated, but I would hope that the more places you visit the more power your score has, but IDK. That's not griping, just analyzing. Related to all of that, I think the more restaurants represented in one community, the worse the odds because you essentially split the vote. IDK know how the initial selection happens, but just acknowledging what seems to be basic math for those of us in large geographic regions. On another note however, I am so thankful that the judges are more diverse. I'm glad farmers, activists, academics and all of the peripheral professions related to restaurants, are now included. That certainly will help deter the old boys clubs and nepotism in awards. And I think judging what the standards and goals for restaurants can shift from the perfect quenelle to a meaningful meal. Anyway, just rambling to my eG friends since my beginning was in this forum, and my heart remains, even if my keyboard time has disappeared.
  14. Here we are a couple of months later and his channel is still silent. I hope we haven't lost him forever.
  15. It's a melon fork. You can scrape with the back tines/bar to release the melon, and then use the front to eat.
  16. Here are a couple of classics I've done recently. Pineapple buns. I was playing with patterns on these. And sesame balls - mine are filled with sweet Missouri black turtle bean - my localization of red bean filling.
  17. Last fall for Mid-Autumn Festival I made these mooncakes. One is very traditional wu ren (5 nut) and the other was my bastardized St Louis style which was gooey butter cake filling. I was playing with colored doughs on this set.
  18. I started THIS topic because I've been making more and more pastries since we only have one Chinese bakery in St Louis and I'm tired of running up to Chicago just for my fix. I've been building my cookbook collection, but mostly I'm still using YouTube channels - especially Daddy's Cooking Career which is heavy on pastry. I thought I'd share what I'm making to see who else might be baking or making pastries. There seems to be a lot of nuance as to what is from mainland China, Taiwan, and surrounding countries, so I'll do my best to be accurate in my attributions. Anyway, today I made this peanut pastry. Barely sweet, fried and crushed peanuts with peanut/sesame paste, wrapped in a traditional water and oil dough. Not sure what this one is called, if anything specific at all, but very nice with my morning tea. ETA: a friend just told me this is 花生酥餅 and likely inspired by a Shanghia-ese red bean pancake 豆沙窩餅. FWIW, here is St Louis we have: Wei Hong (Cantonese bakery and restaurant) Foundry Bakery (Taiwanese bakery) And up in Chicago there are many but I typically go to: Chiu Quon (Oldest Chinese bakery in the city) Sweet Bean Bakery and Coffee Shop (Taiwanese...my absolute favorite! Worth the 5 hour drive each way)
  19. Let me try this, because, geez, how do I summarize 5 years?! If anyone has anything specific they want to know I can easily respond to questions...FWIW, I am wrapping up a paper on 5 years of operating as a Reparative Restaurant. HERE's a link to the working doc.
  20. I'll share some thoughts shortly. There's a lot of reasons I've been silent, most of which is just ridiculously long hours.
  21. And last night I had my epipheny Of course there are culinary schools and of course they would have text books. A friend helped me with my translation search issues (I was simply using: 面点 食谱)and I have a professional pastry book shipping from baidu to his uncle in Shangdong Province who is visiting next week. I'll report back once it's in hand. He said it is a set of 4 but only got the most advanced for me so I'll be checking out the rest of the set once I see this book.
  22. I'm not using the correct terminology I suppose. I'm thinking pineapple cakes, all the various buns, taro globes, mooncakes, mochi, etc...
  23. I'm looking for books I may not yet have, and they can be in English or Chinese (I think my Mandarin skills are good enough to survive a cookbook). Youtube content has been helpful but I would prefer something more formal. I suspect there's a whole world of Chinese-language books that I am not aware of. What I have currently: Taiwanese Desserts Ideas, Ilda Eitzen (very poorly written) Mooncake and Milkbread, Kristina Cho Not exclusively pastry: First Generation, Frankie Gaw The Food of Taiwan, Cathy Erway Win Son, Josh Ku Made in Taiwan, Clarissa Wei
  24. Chef Wang is one of my favorite YouTube channels, and a few weeks ago he got into trouble with the system. HERE is the CNN version of the story. HERE'S a slightly biased video explaining the cultural implications a bit more. My 5 second summary: A long-forgotten Chinese general was hiding in the mountains during a war, and decided to cook egg fried rice, which sent off smoke plumes that alerted the enemy of his whereabouts. Stupid mistake. So, if you cook egg fried rice near the end of September, when this incident happened, you are considered unpatriotic. Chef Wang released an egg fried rice video a few weeks ago, which is now gone from his play list. I saw the video and thought it was an odd step backwards in his repertoire, but he does do quite a bit of home cooking on top of his restaurant quality dishes. Was it on purpose? Who knows, but he apologized and said he would never release an egg fried rice video again. He hasn't posted any videos since. FWIW, he lightly argued that he releases numerous fried rice videos throughout the year, so this was just poorly timed. Well, I hope he's able to come back because quite frankly his channel was a wonderful gateway to Chinese culture, and the far vast majority of the world would have had no idea of the backstory had the Chinese government not alerted us to the gaff.
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