gfron1
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Posts posted by gfron1
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I love fruitcakes and my theory is most of the people who don't have only had those dry ones with neon fruit. Last year I summarized, "The Frog Hollow cake is great - sort of like a black cake, meaning boozy soaked cake with just a bit of fruit. In the more traditional camp I still prefer the Robert Lambert cake from last year which is not fruit packed either. I guess that means I just don't like fruit packed fruit cakes." I also tried and liked Collin Street and Bien Fait. Other suggestions from friends that I haven't had yet: Assumption Abbey and Claxton. So for 2020, here's my question: Small, truly artisanal fruitcakes that ship? Suggestions? Here's some I'm eyeballing for this year: Date Lady, Ackroyd's, June Taylor and Red Truck. Surely eGers know of some small town bakeries that are off-radar.
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Yes to those three, plus...I've found that my eyes have gotten so bad that I can't see any peaks, so while the filling is freshly piped, I very gently run my scraper over the cavities which shows me any peaks that need to be knocked down. I've been working really hard on my formulas to achieve what Kerry mentioned and that is keeping the ganache fluid enough that it settles on its own.
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On 10/22/2020 at 7:41 PM, sharonnorthwoods said:
30 minutes? seconds?
seconds. Sorry for the slow response.
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21 hours ago, Jim D. said:
@gfron1, beautiful shells and very intriguing flavors. For the elderberry, did you use elderberries or elderflowers (or elderflower liqueur)? I don't know if the berries have the same exotic flavor as the flowers do. I tried a ganache with St-Germain liqueur, but the elderflower taste got lost somewhere.
And finally, your shine, the equal of Andrey's, for sure, even down to the light from the windows reflected in the shell.
Berry for sure. I don't go for perfume in my chocolates very often anymore. I want the tart sweet thing going on. And thanks about the shine - if I learned nothing else form Dubovic (which I learned plenty) it was about staging for photos 🤣
20 hours ago, AAQuesada said:Pretty sure its not legal to use them -OTOH i've seen them on menus enough to figure no one it really cracking down on illicit Tonka bean use. *shrug*
Yes, pretty easy to source - I may have even bought mine at Rare Tea Cellar years ago but I honestly don't remember anymore. They aren't that exceptional - I was trying to clean out some of my pantry and that's how they ended up in this collection.
6 hours ago, Muscadelle said:If Tonka bean is too difficult to find in the US maybe you can try your luck with sweetgrass, that's what i use. The smell and the taste is divine and similar to tonka!
Don't use too much though because, same as tonka bean, it contains a lot of ''coumarine'' which is molecule that can cause your blood to thin too much is ingested in big enough quantity it can cause serious health problem. 2g for every 100g of cream in a ganache.
Had not thought that about sweetgrass. Fascinating. I had someone trying to sell that to me last summer and opted not to, but I'll have to look into it. There's lots of interesting flavors out there which need to be used judiciously. I'm thinking of how I used to use Ephedra viridis before I really understood what it was. Those were my early days
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On 10/3/2020 at 2:13 PM, teonzo said:
If you want to make a mushroom caramel then you just need to add ground dried mushrooms to a standard caramel.
Just catching up to the conversation thanks to Jim for the tag. When I make mushroom caramel (cut, not pipe) I do absolutely nothing different than my vanilla caramel - except making sure the solid whole mushroom is cleaned with my airbrush to remove all dust. Just as I would drop a split and scraped vanilla pod into the sugar water, I do the same with whole mushrooms. They get pulled out right before pouring. That said there are some tricks - pick the right type of mushroom (porcini is more pungent than say a Lobster mushroom), use the oldest mushrooms - the ones that have started to break down or are on the edge of breaking down, then dehydrate them to concentrate the flavors.
On 10/3/2020 at 2:58 PM, Jim D. said:@Muscadelle, I think I have waited long enough to ask this: It took a while to reveal that it was mushrooms you were candying. I for one was thinking of pears, apricots, peaches, ginger, etc., certainly nothing we think of as savory. What in the world do you do with candied mushrooms?
What would you NOT do with candied mushrooms!? We crush them and add them to other things for savory streusels. We crush them and rim our cocktail glasses with them. We use cinnabars (because they're so damn cute) and a finish garnish on salads. We tend toward the smaller mushrooms for this but for years I've worked on mushroom glacé (not sure if that's the right technique name) - where we take larger mushrooms and slice them and then very slowly candy them to make them translucent - you can imagine the dramatic effect. It's hard though because they want to go to mush.
23 hours ago, Muscadelle said:Unless we're talking black garlic which has a nice balsamic vinegar taste.
We've spend much of the past year blackening all sorts of vegetables because we're trying to grow our vegetable charcuterie. All of them have that similar flavor profile that would be fun to incorporate in this way.
1 hour ago, teonzo said:Sounds like a lot of fun! And ethical too. You have lots of buds, resins and leaves to play with.
Knowing this, I would say that you can try a pine needles ganache. After all pine needles and chanterelles are already paired in nature, since you find a needle in most chanterelles when you clean them.
Resins and pine will give you fits. There's something about that resin that I don't understand the science of yet, that will simply cling to your pan and only come off with highest caustic things like fuel. Even steeping the needles will release them causing havoc on any cookware. We've gone to distilling when we want that flavor and making essences and essential oils, in small part, because our still is durable and easier to clean. I do want to add that we rarely use pine, and NEVER with citrus, because it just reminisces everyone to floor cleaner no matter how good it tastes.
Well, sounds like a super fun project, and if the world can ever safely travel again I would absolutely love to come see what you're doing.
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I struggled to get this set out, but they're done. And I've upped my production so I don't run out so soon. It seems to me that when I have trouble, 9 times out of 10 its because I let my shelling chocolate get too cool and the cocoa butter doesn't adhere. And all I can do is hear Melissa Coppel's voice repeat, "Respect the temperatures."
Bourbon Honey
Kumquat cream ganache with hazelnut crunch insert.
Elderberry tarts
Fig with rum & tonka honey
Espresso & single origin Mexican
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I know many people love them but I forgot my readers when I went shopping this year and came home with an expensive box of durian. They got properly gifted.
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8 hours ago, lironp said:
Did you ever figure this out?
At the suggestion of an eGer I bought mine from silvia@alagobox.com. Easy to work with. The shipping is a slow boat from China but I haven't worked through my old ones yet anyway. For 1000 boxes not printed, came out to about $1.40 per. Just a few pennies more than what I had been paying. These boxes come assembled (I have to insert the tissue), whereas my old boxes required full assembly.
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That didn't work for me. Devil is in the details I suppose. I'm not sure the swirl is relevant to the effect but I tried a number of different swirls both just on top and over the whole mold. His white spray seems like it was only along the sides so I did some where I only sprayed the edges and others only spraying straight down from the top with a focused nozzle. Maybe viscosity or saturation plays a role.
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Fascinating.
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@Margaret Pilgrim Looks like a perfect one! Nice and thick. Not overcooked. Silky smooth.
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Yeah, I remember a little blip where things got way over-zealous. But as others have said, generally, everyone is super friendly and helpful. I know when I hosted I had a tendency to merge, merge, merge...which appealed to the clean desk club. But the messy deskers were not as happy.
eta: Had to look...Joined December 29, 2005. And I know why...fascination with this place in Chicago that had recently opened on May 4, 2005...Alinea.
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6 hours ago, liuzhou said:
Are we talking fresh peppercorns or dried? I've only had the green ones fresh, but coincidentally bought a small packet of the dried ones yesterday. Haven't used yet, but will report back.
These were dried on the shelf next to the regular ones.
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Okay, what about these green szechuan peppercorns I found at the store recently?
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Does anyone else watch these guys? I've really enjoyed their channel and have been teaching myself Sze chuan cooking using them and Fuscia Dunlap's book. Their written recipes need a hard edit but the videos are great. And contrary to their recent plat list, they have all the classics in addition to the more esoteric. I also like how they'll often create mimics of their favorite restaurants' specialties.
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I may not make any this year. I have yet to make any that are as good as the boxed...and anyone who has had the boxed knows that isn't really saying much.
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2 hours ago, TdeV said:
Rob, this looks enticing. Since I, and maybe others, have no idea what's refrigerated and what is not, could you please say?
The BBQ sauce and ketchup need refrigeration since we don't can them. Anyone else who orders just needs to know that we're not set up for this so it will come in a second hand box with second hand wrapping
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On 8/10/2020 at 9:21 AM, Kim Shook said:
Rob, this is amazing and truly thinking outside of the box. A good friend of my daughters has a FB page for sharing information about local restaurants that my daughter is helping him to administrate. They get posts from the public and from the owners/chefs also. As far as I know, no one is doing what you are doing. We've avoided some restaurants because we are not ready to dine in, but feel like the food wouldn't travel well to get home. And eating in the car has always meant getting things in take out containers, which can be awkward to deal with. Your solution seems so perfect. I hope that you have great success with this to carry you through until things are safer. Would you mind if I shared your story and perhaps links to your videos with the folks in the FB group I mentioned?
Please do. Time will tell if this will work. We've had a handful of people unequivocally state that they are not interested, which is disheartening. Y'all know I'm always about doing things that are novel and I've never had such direct dissent. Normally people are polite and just keep their mouths shut, but not this time. As I have reminded my staff from day 1 - we only need a small handful of guests to pay the bills and we're in a metro area of 2M.
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18 hours ago, Alex said:
Ah, I see it now. However, the delivery option still shows as unavailable when I go to check out. Is there something else I need to do?
That's delivery as in a car drives it to you
Since you want it mailed just do it as a carryout and leave a note in the comment section with your mailing address. And remember, we can't mail refrigerated items (cocktails, ketchup, BBQ sauce). But all the others are fair game.
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3 hours ago, Alex said:
Rob, I don't see a link to order from the pantry. I assume it's not up yet, correct?
The pantry is in the carryout delivery button
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1 hour ago, FauxPas said:
There are tray tables made for steering wheels, not sure if this would be useful for you or not.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=steering+wheel+tray+table&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
I saw those and debated. We decided not to when my sous said they wouldn't fit in his steering wheel
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Here's our first. They decided to eat out of their hatchback.
And here's some pics of details
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2 hours ago, Jurjen said:
I wouldn't know how they got that black border on the white splatters though. I feel like the pink swipe type of thing does look kind of off.
The black rings is exactly what I can't figure out. I vaguely remember someone somewhere doing an alcohol cocoa butter thing. We discussed it at length here in eG. In that technique it had to do with spraying through the cocoa butter while it was dripping. I could see that possibly creating that effect.
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1 hour ago, heidih said:
@gfron1 Sure you have seen this - thought it interesting - and a distraction in these times when cooks get bored https://www.allorafarmflowers.com/wild-box
When I saw that I immediately thought of our Historic Seed Project. Unfortunately this year has been odd for growing so none of my farmers have large enough harvests to share outside of the restaurant.
BTW, all of videos are up for the tasting menu. You can find them HERE.-
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Starting a high profile new restaurant (after closing another)
in Restaurant Life
Posted
Can I just say that running a restaurant during a pandemic certainly teaches you to not cling on to anything. Open today. Closed tomorrow. Sorta open the next.
But we keep kicking:
Unplated podcast
Smithsonian magazine