gfron1

I forgot to mention Iuzzini's Sugar Rush which I think is really good.

Two of my latest: North: Iceland cuisine - love it a lot; not as inaccessible as I expected, but fun voice. Dabbous - too skimpy for what you get...really!? a recipe for peach in its own juices.

We know that we don't want a DJ. The cover is being designed to stand alone.

Proof reader just sent back the manuscript, and man o man, was that useful. He caught so many small errors! I can see how another proof reader or two would be helpful as well.

I got to pick the wood. Its actually the reason I bought another knife - I really didn't need one - but when I bought my last knife (photo upthread) I immediately had buyers remorse because I didn't pick this specific piece of wood, and then there was the "sale," and it had to happen.

For my dry method I never have washed the sides - the sputtering and color coincide.

I do it in a pot and because you add gradually, it melts faster, so its no slower than wet. Grab a pot and a cup of sugar right now and go try - you'll see - super easy and fool proof. And before you ask, its just a regular old stainless pot...nothing fancy - sometimes there's even crud stuck in the corners.

Side stepping the question because I don't have issues with dry caramel...When I do my dry, I sprinkle a little in until its melted, sprinkle a little more until its melted and so on - maybe 5 additions for a small batch. With that method I never have issues. I do stir fairly aggressively using that method to make sure its all melted. Once its all melted I take it to my desired color.

My latest - Konosuke Fujiyama White #1 Kiri/Gyuto 240 with custom handle from ChefKnivesToGo.com. Beautiful work as always and love the extra length on this one. My only negative comment is that I bought it on their Closeout page only to find it back on their regular page two weeks later at the same price.

My designer and I have been struggling with the back cover. We both want it classy designed - simple and elegant. It has to have the ISBN and bar code, but the rest is superfluous...or is it? There's great marketing stuff on the cover - quotes, photos, brief description, but is that necessary? Latest stats I've found show that 50% of books are purchased online - back cover isn't important there, but that means 50% are bookstores - and we all read the covers when we're browsing. Up until today we were leaning toward nothing on the back except a design and isbn, but today I got a copy of Dabbous (which is beautiful btw) and they had a printed sheet inserted into the cello wrap for the back cover. Perfect solution. Marketing info is there but one you've bought the book then you can get rid of it and have a beautiful cover.

yes, but the Southern half of the state is very different than the northern half. With the exception of the balsamic, we're pretty barren down here.

I'm visiting Helsinki in a few weeks and going to 4 different Michelin starred restaurants. I want to take gifts for the chefs. The gifts need to be high quality, but also something that will have some frame of reference. I'm already planning on taking them a bottle of our world-class organic balsamic, but I'd like to take some other stuff - maybe things available up in the northern part of the state that I'm not familiar with. What would you give a Michelin starred chef(s) that's from New Mexico?

Just sent my designer a gazillion photos of Fluidita and Too Many Chiefs. Both are high design books, the latter moreso. Not sure if I can post any here with copyright issues - if I can please PM me so I can show these design ideas. Both have a photo Index which is a neat idea - showing the dish with description and page number. I think this in combination with a regular text index could be fun. Too Many also has a seasonality chart to go with its dishes - love that, but not sure if it works since some of my dishes are year round. If you get a chance to put your hands on Too Many, do. The box, the cover stock, the paper...its all so beautiful.

As of 1:45 pm MST I finished writing. Then I headed into a massive weekend at the restaurant, so its just this morning that I am feeling some of the months of stress fall away. Feels good to relax for a while. I've hired a local baker to do a consistency check on my recipes - making sure that every time I give a measure for oil it is the same. 1 C = 220 g and not 224 g. I had to do this because early on I was measuring for every recipe, and here at the end I was pulling old recipes from my blog and file and they had slight inaccuracies. I also was approached by a recipe tester who wants to charge me $50-80 per recipe. I can't afford that - around $3000. But she said that other books she's worked on the publisher has fronted that money to make sure it happens. I have a lot of trust in my consistency checker so I may ask him to do the recipe testing since he would do it for free or cheap, but he's a baker so he's accuracy driven. Tomorrow I'll do another round of cleanup on the whole document, and figure out what we still need for pics, line up another photo shoot or two, and then we just wait for the editor to do her job before I go at it again.

Thanks guys. Ruth, I'm trying to recreate JMA's system which was to leave it at 34º non-stop, but I can't get it to melt that low. I just checked (9 hrs) and at 40º I am melted and have dropped it to 32º, but that's not how I understood that they did it. Why wouldn't the CB just melt given enough time at 32º?

There's a lot of info about using dehydrators in the various chocolate threads, but I'm running into recurring issues so I thought I'd focus the topic a bit. I bought a new Cabella's large dehydrator with digital control and glass door. Seems perfect except for it is in Fahrenheit only and can't be switched to Celsius. This is the second time I've used it in preparation for spraying my molds. I turned it on last night at 32ºC and ran it for 12 hours. The cocoa butter was rock hard - all of my bottles and custom mixes. So I turned it up to 40º and its been running 6 hours, and they are half melted. I thought I just needed to go long enough at 32 to have it be perfect and ready for spraying. I have tested the temperature with my infrared and the temp is reading as accurate. Am I doing something wrong? I don't want to have to re-temper my CB every time.

you can buy candied petals. In fact, Fresh Origins I know makes them. Just poke around

no, most extracts are water based. you want an essential oil that's food soluable. That said, many of us have found rose to be too perfumey to use in chocolate. I still think the candied petals are the way to go.

you can work water into chocolate in the right proportions for ganache, but you'll lose that rose flavor so fast that its not worth it IMO. Consider using a rose oil or candied roses for bark. I think candied rose petal is the way to go since you're going to have things in the bark anyway.

Well...I checked the box on their submission form that said the manuscript was complete. I didn't expect an immediate response. I'm really like 2 hours from being done done done! So once I have finished (hopefully this afternoon), I will send him the manuscript with links to a few exciting things that he should like to see - like the Gastronomica article.

Agent who said he gets 800-900 proposals a month must have liked what he saw...45 minutes later he asked to see the full manuscript!

I've been working on getting an agent since so many publishers won't even accept a submission from a non-represented author. One agent told me today that he gets 800-900 submissions A MONTH! Holy crap!

I'm looking forward to seeing where my designer puts all the b roll pics. Ha! Just noticed that my penis lamp is in the background

I had really poo pood the idea yesterday but woke up with a new perspective. Of course I should ask if I can use the article - not sure who has final rights at this point, but if I can use it I can already see the sticker on the front of the book "Best Food Writing 2014 Essay Included." And, since I don't have a publisher locked in yet here's a foot in the door with the publisher of BFW to talk about my book.

Looks great! So did you re temper or just melt?