paulraphael

The best ways I've found to keep a board from warping: 1) put feet on it. All wood boards will warp if they spend any time in puddles or sitting on damp counters. 2) when you oil them for maintenance, use the same amount of oil on both sides.

I don't see a need to change mess the water. I'd work to eliminate added water entirely, but it often helps the fruit blend to a nice puree.

I wrote a brief, maybe usable passage on how to use brix at the bottom of this article. That will probably be most helpful if you're using software to calculate your recipe. If you aren't, a shortcut that should work: 1) calculate the amount of sugar in the fruit that the recipe was written for [eg; 100g fruit at 15°B = 15g.] 2) calculate the amount of sugar in the fruit you've measured [100g at 18°B = 18g]. 3) calculate the difference, and us this adjust the sugars in the recipe.

2nd thoughts about the seed hypothesis: I just made strawberry sorbet. 750g strawberries / kg, blended to a smooth puree while frozen. No heat in the process. There is no bitterness. I'm thinking the heat and the enzymes are the most likely offenders here. The strawberry ice cream I made with the method described earlier was outrageously bitter. This was about 350g berries / kg.

The green one's become my favorite. Followed by the standard red hot sauce. I haven't tried that garlic pepper one ... how is it?

Welcome back, Teo. I think you might be right about the seeds. And I think an additional problem is that I pureed in the berries when the mix was still cooling from pasteurization—probably not hot enough to deactivate the phenyloxidase enzymes, but plenty warm enough to accelerate their action.

Not new, but classic: Portlandia / Mixologist It's got egg white, egg shell, egg yellow ...

Microplanes, all day. In the past I had a few of the flat ones (rectangular grater with a handle). Mostly marketed for home use. When I wore those out I got one of the long skinny ones, because everyone I know who cooks professionally uses them. I think you can go with either. The main advantage of the long ones seems that they fit easily in a knife roll. The flatter ones are easier to use one some things. Their protective cover design annoys me.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm interested in the Penzy's that everyone likes, but will try that later. Very expensive right now. For the near term I grabbed some spice Lab tellicherry from Amazon for a good price. Probably not as good by I'm hoping it's decent.

Around 10 years ago I bought some tellicherry peppercorns on Amazon that were amazing. Spicy, floral, pungent, 3-dimensional lingering flavor. After that pound ran out, I looked again, couldn't find the same brand, and tried another that looked similar. It tasted like ... plain old boring pepper. I've tried a few others in the ensuing years; some were better than others, but nothing great. What have I been missing? What's available that you love?

Oh, man, I didn't realize they replaced the Rivington location with that. Too bad. I'm in that neighborhood more often than the w. village.

Although Jo likes ice cream that aims for 110% milk fat, so VL might be more her style. I'm with you on Il Lab. But also Morgenstern's a few blocks away. Seriously good stuff.

By one on the other, you mean the different types of berries? I hadn't thought of that. It definitely spent enough time at warm temperatures for enzymes to go to work. Takes a while for 1kg of goop to drop from 70C.

The thing is, the berries weren't bitter on their own. The ice cream mix wasn't bitter in the hour after the berries were added. The bitterness showed up the next day in the finished ice cream.

Or to punish children.