nightscotsman

When I get to work in the morning at about 1:45 am the previous day's breakfast pastries are just making their way to the employee dining room from the various hotel outlets. I sometimes grab an apricot danish (with apricot halves and pastry cream) or an apple streudel, though the blueberry cheese danish are really good (round, with wild blueberry filling in the middle and cream cheese filling hidden in the crust around it - sort of like those Pizza Hut "stuffed crust" pizzas with the cheese in a ring inside the outer crust). We make all our croissants, danish and brioche in-house from scratch - come to Bellagio, we'll make a danish believer out of you.

we strain during the process of making pastry cream, but certainly not after it's cooked. Here's our process: bring milk and vanilla beans (yes, we go through a LOT of beans) to a boil. Turn off, cover pot with plastic and let steep for at least half and hour. Mix egg yolks, sugar and pastry cream powder (a product consisting mostly of corn starch, non-fat milk powder, vanilla, and a little yellow color). Temper hot milk into yolks. Strain though a chinoise back into another pot and bring to a full boil whisking vigorously. Be sure to keep at a boil for a minute or two to cook out the starchy taste. Dump into Hobart bowl and beat with a paddle on low speed for about 15-20 minutes to smooth out and cool a bit before chilling. There is one mistake that can make your cream turn out grainy: when you add the sugar to the yolks and don't whisk right away. The sugar will "cook" the yolks and you'll get little rubbery grains that will never cook out.

Neil, My guitar came with such a metal sheet. Are you cutting first, then sliding the sheet under the product, rotating it and sliding the sheet back out? I can see how that might work with temper coated ganache, but what about pates? Cheers ← Yep, that's the way it works. For pate de fruit you coat the bottom with sugar, and marshmallow is coated with starch/powdered sugar.

I love JB Prince. Thier prices are usually fair (though not cheap) and they have a great selection. However, for some things I like DR in Canada. For the smaller selection they carry - such as chocolate, ring, and silicone molds - most of their prices are way lower than anywhere else.

Like somebody said earlier, mostly guitars are useful to save time if you need to cut lots of stuff very precisely. For many professionals, it's worth the hefty initial price in time savings alone. If you're doing very small batches only occasionally, I don't think it's worth buying one. However, a guitar is almost essential for cutting sheets of cast ganache for dipping. When you cut the ganache with a knife, no matter how thin the blade is you will get raised edges that will cause the chocolate to pool on top when you dip the squares, so you wont get a nice thin coating. As for turning the sheet of product after the first cut, what we used in school was a piece of thin sheet metal used sort of like a pizza peel. For this to work with ganache, you need to make sure to coat one side of the cast ganache sheet with a thin layer of tempered chocolate. We used a paint roller to do this, but you can also use an offset if you're fast enough. The chocolate will keep the ganache from sticking to the bed of the guitar, as well as giving a base layer so that when you dip the squares the bottom will have an even coat.

Not sure where you read that, but I personally always use the mixer to add the eggs.

I LOVED the uniforms we wore at the French Pastry School. The label says "Clement" and I don't know what company they came from, but I think they were probably special ordered from Europe. The jackets were beautifully finished, short sleeve, made from a cotton/poly blend that was soft, smooth and never wrinkled, and the closures were snaps that stayed closed, but were easy to pop open. The pants were ultra soft with a wide elastic waist-band covered with terry cloth, adjustable with velcro, and a zipper fly. I'll bet if you called or emaile the French Pastry School in Chicago, they would tell you were they get their uniforms.

If you're watching the battle on Sunday, be sure to stay tuned for the Food Network Challenge: Chocolate Competition right after.

At home I want: a sauce gun (why are those things so damned expensive?) a guitar and every silicone mold known to mankind At work I want: more speed racks more employees so I can have my two day weekend back and FLAT SHEET PANS! "mise flunky"? That would be me.

When we did ice cream in school, I brought home lots of it in those cheap, "disposable" Ziplock containers (I prefer the Ziplock to the Gladware stuff). Worked just fine. It does really help to put a piece of Saran wrap (yes, the original stuff that's thicker than regular plastic wrap) directly on the surface of the ice cream before replacing the container lid. The less air contact, the better.

Please, go right ahead. What did you have and what did you like best?

Air conditioning actually removes moisture from the air, so there is actually even less humidity inside the casinos.

Excellent tutorial and wonderfully exact detail in the steps. Thanks for posting . By the way, what we used in school to smooth the surface of peeled apples and pears was an abrasive green scouring pad used for scrubbing dishes (new and never used for washing dishes, of course). Very fast and easy to "sand" off a perfectly smooth surface.

Yep, that's how it works - just like a regular water fountain. In fact, we were told it's designed to operate continuously for over a year without having to change or replace the chocolate. Since chocolate contains no water, there's no evaporation. Basically it's a fat fountain, and cocoa butter doesn't actually spoil, unlike butter for instance. Sorry, I don't know what brand they use for this thing.

The problem is cocoa, while having almost no fat, does have some fat, and fat as you know is the enemy of meringue. Instead of trying to whip it in, I would suggest sifting the cocoa with some powdered sugar and gently folding it in. There will still be some deflation, but it should still be pipeable.

Here it is, in white, milk and dark - the now operational chocolate waterfall:

Try here. I'm sure they can ship to the UK.

We use both of these products at work as well. The Trablit is an especially nice extract.

I suppose it's possible - not sure what the taste and texture differences would be, though. Why don't you give it a try and report back?

Thanks very much, bleudauvergne, for posting the great photos. Much better than the official site. The South Korean showpieces are aMAZing. Looks like they are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Looks like the Netherlands took second place. Interesting... Any shots of what their work looked like?

My fall back is a crisp served warm using whatever fruit is in season and looks good - apples, peaches, nectarines, blueberries, cherries, blackberries, etc. It's fast, fresh, nice contrasts of texture, open to endless variation and garnishes/sides, and the only real tool you need is a knife to slice fruit if required.

Recipe here. It is best to let the batter chill overnight to let the starch cells in the flour and ground nuts absorb moisture, but if you're in a hurry, resting for an hour or two at room temp is almost as effective.

I think I have seen these molds in the PCB catalogue. If you follow this link http://www.pcb-creation.fr/2k3/catalogues/...accessories.pdf and scroll to page 122 you will see a few small pictures. In the one picture with the orange colored pastries you will see a small white pillar just by his left hand. It is a little hard to see, and in their 2005 catalgue the pix are a little bigger, but you can enlarge the PDF for more clarity. They now also have a plate that can be used to make little cone shapes, very cool. It must be new for 2005 as I don't see it in their on-line catalogue. ← Yep, that seems very similar to what we have.

We just lost our chef in charge of the chocolate team to Wynn. Damn it.

Uh... New Zealand. Actually it's more of a Vegas/big resort/catering-to-rich-people thing. yeah, the strawberries we get are pretty and have very little flavor, but the other stuff we have flown in is the best - great raspberries, huge blueberries, ripe cantalope and pineapple. I'm actaully proud to say that the restaurant team never, ever uses canned fruit of any kind. The fruit tarts are made with all fresh fruit (though I had to laugh at the little tag that labels them "seasonal" fruit tarts ), and during the summer we had to peel and slice fresh peaches every day (what a pain the ass!) for the Fix fruit cobbler (which was actually a crisp, but you can't tell French chefs anything about American home-style desserts). Even the fruit fillings for the crepes in the new shop are made from fresh, including mangos, pineapple, papaya, blueberries and strawberries. We are using IQF sliced apples in the cobbler for winter now, but the quality is very good. If I were a chef working on a smaller scale, my preference would be for fresh in-season fruit. Someday I'll be back in the NW and have access to beautiful local produce, but of couse Vegas is in the desert and nothing is grown locally, so it has to be shipped in from somewhere. Does it really matter if it's from California or Peru if the quality is good?