Tri2Cook

I melted my soy marshmallow with a little butter then stirred in some puffed barley* and toasted sesame seeds. A nice saltiness with a little sweet, a bit of spice and a nutty background from the sesame seeds. *Puffed Barley - Cook 1 part barley in 8 parts water with a little salt for about an hour. Drain, rinse in cold water and dry on a silpat lined sheetpan at 150 f. until completely dry. Flash in 425 f. oil until puffed (it puffs very quickly). Drain on towels.

I agree. I spent part of a night tossing pieces of puff pastry in the microwave at different times and power levels a while back just out of curiosity and it puffed very nicely. Unfortunately, it didn't cook evenly that way so it always left undercooked parts or, if cooked until there were no undercooked parts, then there were overcooked parts. Hadn't thought of tossing it in the fryer though.

That's a cool link. Thanks! I'd prefer not to incorporate any gelling agents if possible but it's a good idea. Basically, I just need it to hold it's shape well enough to drop them in a -100 f. bath to finish freezing hard. After that, they will be dipped in chocolate and stored in the cooler to thaw so that there is a liquid center in the chocolate shell.

Has anybody worked out the maximum amount of alcohol you can get away with incorporating into a sorbet or ice cream base and still have it freeze enough to temporarily hold it's shape? Let's go with your basic 80 proof or lower alcohol range since that's common. Solid freezing isn't necessary but it would need to be able to hold it's shape enough to scoop out small balls that would maintain their shape very briefly. Once they're scooped out, holding ability isn't a factor. Texture isn't a factor either, ice crystals and all of that sort of thing are irrelevant.

I don't think agar would survive a journey into the deep fryer unless it's really quick. It's somewhat heat stable but not at those temps. Even if it did, I think you would have to instantly pop it in your mouth straight from the fryer. Once the agar began to melt, your breading wouldn't last long. Maybe you could try something with gellan.

That's such a great idea, and so simple too. Thanks! ← Yep, it works great. I have a locking metal box with shelves I keep on the deck in the winter for quick cooling/freezing. It's usually much colder than my freezers from mid november until late march. It's cold enough to serve as a "normal" freezer from late october until late april most years (global warming my arse ). Just last week I baked a couple cakes as a test run for an idea and sat them out on the deck to quick cool without bothering with the box since it was just a test run. Went back out less than 10 minutes later and the ravens had already had their feast. I knew better.

Assuming we're being told the whole truth as relates to challenge rules, they do get stuck in some difficult situations at times. Planning, prepping and cooking a great meal with the ingredients they had to work with is easy. I'm guessing doing it under a fairly tight time constraint where the reward for failure is "game over" is a different story. I'm sure you could. Anybody can get the bones out of anything. But, if you've never done it before, you might not find it as easy as you think to get a result that would make an experienced butcher happy. Despite popular belief, not all chef's are a master of everything the title encompasses. You may learn all of the essential skills to some degee at some point but if you spend 5 years as a chef at a vegetarian restaurant or a restaurant where the meat is bought in ready to work with you may find yourself with rusty butchering skills. There shouldn't be any prizes except the big prize for the finale winner. That should be inspiration enough without having to toss them scooby snacks every time they do something good. Immunity/advantage for the quickfire winner is more than enough reward. Don't take this the wrong way, I've been as disappointed as anyone with the relative lack of creativity and risk-taking this season. I just see a lot of people assuming that if it's easy to spend a saturday making dinner for the family, it would be easy to do it in 15 minutes without recipes and knowing you're going to be judged by people who really don't care if what they say about it makes you sad.

Everything is deadly. Food is deadly, water is deadly, the air is deadly, sunny days are deadly. We have to eat, drink and breath and most of us can't entirely avoid the sun so we might as well enjoy it all while it lasts. Sometimes I think technology has allowed us to know too much for our own good. If I find out when I'm 70 that I'm dying from accumulative peanut mold syndrome and could quite possibly have lived to be 72 if I'd avoided it... we'll, I've had a few really tasty PB&J's along the way.

Isomer - those look really tasty. Rob - great stuff, as always. That ganache-filled candied kumquat is cool. I've been planning to do these for a while, finally got around to it. The Johnny Iuzzini chocolate doughnut. Basically, a stabilized ganache that's breaded and fried. Fun and tasty. Crispy on the outside. Creamy on the inside. apologies for the blur I was having so much fun that I decided to plate them. Johnny Iuzzini's chocolate doughnuts - coffee ice cream - toasted cinnamon caramel - chocolate mousse powder

Hello everyone, newbie here. There's a recipe for "Food Processor Poured Fondant" in The Cake Bible by Rose Beranbaum. Other than glazing petits fours, I've only used it to make the centers for chocolate covered cherries (which everyone in my family loves except me - I'm a caramel and nougat junkie myself). Just got Greweling's book about a week ago, and am eager to try the food processor method with his fondant. Meanwhile, here's the Rose recipe: 500g sugar 118g water 82g corn syrup Cook to 238F. Immediately pour into food processor bowl, insert a clean thermometer, allow it to cool (uncovered) to 140F, add flavorings, process a couple of minutes until it's opaque, pour it into a sealable container, cool completely, seal it so it's airtight, and let it rest at room temp for 24 hours. To use, heat the fondant over a water bath, and thin it to the required consistency with a warm stock syrup (i.e., 30% - 1 part water to 2 parts sugar by volume). ← That must be where I got it. That or someone posted it online and I stumbled across it. I have it in one of my notebooks anyway. I have that book but I haven't had it out in a really long time so it's possible I wrote it down from there at some point. I have glucose wrote down instead of corn syrup but it's possible I made that alteration myself. I keep a large pail of glucose on hand so I rarely use corn syrup for anything.

I'm with you on that one. Oh well, it was still an interesting episode compared to some this season. We got a look into what the contestants will do when they can do whatever they want... for better or worse. I'm undecided on the new judge at this point. I was fine with his style, I'd much rather someone be brutally honest than condescending when critiquing me, and one episode really isn't enough to see what he's about. I'm sure he was prompted to come in with guns blazing for his first appearance.

Yep... but the only thing they took out of the kitchen was the sugar so the rest was fair game. It's a lot easier to compensate for sugar in a dessert than fat. Despite the pretense at the challenge being about low calorie desserts, the only criteria for the judging was taste and appearance. No attempt at calculating calorie and fat content played into it. With that being the case, loading up on the fat helps distract attention from the missing sugar. So knowing that adding 2000 fat calories wouldn't count against me as long as I left out the sugar, I'd have piled it on as well.

No you won't. eGullet is about food. Food is about eating what you like... not what someone else says you should or shouldn't like.

That's awesome Rob. Feel good to finally get to see it on the plate?

That's cool Rob! I like it. The cornmeal cake is relatively moist but I didn't want it too sweet or too moist because the ice cream is quite sweet and needs to kinda meld with the cake to seem well balanced. I don't know if you've experienced southeast U.S. sweet tea or not but it can be a shocking experience for those not expecting it. 1 1/2 - 2 cups of sugar per gallon is average in most areas.

I created these last night after work. I'm going to do a little tweaking (they're a bit more sticky and soft than I was going for) but I'm pretty happy with the result. Soy marshmallow: In mixer bowl: 2 envelopes knox gelatin powder 1/2 c. soy sauce 1/4 tsp. ground ginger 1/4 tsp. garlic powder 1/4 tsp. cayenne 1/8 tsp. black pepper cook... 1 1/2 c. sugar 1/2 c. + 2 tbsp. dark corn syrup 6 tbsp. water ...to 238 f. Add syrup to soy/gelatin with mixer on high, whip ~10 min. I found it to be a nice balance of sweet and salt but I'm going to try a batch with isomalt just to see what it's like with the balance a little more to the salty side. Of course the spices can be altered and/or adjusted to taste. The piece in the picture hasn't been dusted with starch, that's straight from the pan.

That's a really nice looking tart. sweet tea ice cream - lemon cornmeal cake - sweet tea caramel - pecan praline powder - lemon sugar

My one and only daily food habit is a bowl of oatmeal with a scoop of psyllium all bran buds added. I eat that pretty much every morning for breakfast so I'd probably start adding a scoop of oat bran to it as well... but it would take a really long time to use up 50 lbs. that way. I suppose I might switch to an oat bran porridge instead of the oatmeal if I had that much of it sitting around. Probably not though, I like a little chew to my oats.

Wow. Didn't know about this thread. Way too long to read all of it in one go but what I did read so far is pretty impressive. My contribution to this one is the memory of two dishes from my youth that will haunt me forever. Tuna ring: some sort of tuna mixture rolled in a dough made from bisquick, formed in a ring and baked then served with some kind of cheese sauce and... ...the worst of the two by far, shortcut tuna noodle casserole: you're basic tuna noodle casserole but, in the interest of saving time for the busy cook I suppose, instead of wasting all of that time cooking noodles the recipe instructed one to "layer the tuna mixture in a casserole dish with layers of crushed potato chips". Disgusting mega-salty glop. My stepmom was/is actually a good cook but for some reason she latched on to those two recipes from somewhere and they would show up now and then in the meal rotation. Unfortunately.

There are cooks that only have to be on their feet 8 hours a day? I'm jealous. My entire cooking career has been in a kitchen either alone or with one other cook to do it all so, even with experience, I would probably struggle for a bit on a line until I got the hang of it. Never done it. So I would agree with Dave. Having the ability to listen and process what you're hearing without interrupting the flow of production seems like it would be a big one.

http://www.foodpairing.be/ Click on "what fits well with..."

Seriously?

Yep. I used pulled pork hocks for an app for a high-end dinner I catered and they loved it. Thought they were eating "high on the hog" when, in truth, they were almost as low on the hog as you can get. Lot's o' flavor in those cheap bits.

Very true. Since I use that type of cooler for letting the skin on poultry air dry, I tested the drying power a while back by placing a shallow pan of very soft (wet) gelee in uncovered and within less than two days it dehydrated to a thin, rubbery sheet. In not much more time, it became a dry, papery layer that crumbled to pieces if moved. Something with less water content wouldn't last long uncovered/unwrapped.

Ouch!