Tri2Cook

Another fun chapter in Kerry and Anna's Excellent Adventures. Thanks for taking us with you!

Never mind. I was genuinely interested in what the common thread could be but you seem to prefer "it is because I said it is" snark over open discussion so I'll just move along.

I'm not arguing against your dislike or trying to convince you otherwise. I'm just genuinely curious as to what the connection could be when there are things under the heading "curry" that have no resemblance to each other whatsoever. Completely different ingredients, spices, flavor profiles, textures, etc. from different parts of the world but just happen to be called curry in the place they come from. I'm not trying to make anyone defensive and not trying to convince anybody they're wrong. I find it interesting and would really like to know what it could be that ties everything under the name together into a collective dislike. There has to be some common thread with more than one person naming curry in general as a dislike.

There has to be an aversion to the word going on. I'm not trying to convince you to like curries but there are so many different curries that have so many different flavor profiles and textures from different parts of the world that there is no possible way they could be lumped into one dislike category.

I thought about this topic all day and I really don't have anything to add. My dislikes are all related to specific ingredients, not cuisines or dishes. The things I don't like, I don't like no matter what dish or cuisine they're used in.

Yes, yes, no, yes. Well, maybe not "go nuts" but I'm never unhappy to see them on my plate.

Mind = blown. Not liking authentic Mexican food is one thing, personal preference and all that... but "Taco Bell is better"?

I might consider trying it for that price but, as is often the case, they apparently only ship within the U.S. There's no other option on the checkout page.

Ordering a burger without tomato is a little different than ordering the bourguignon without wine or the hollandaise without butter or some of the other ridiculous things people come up with. I don't think anybody actually has a problem with trying to accommodate allergies, the problem is people figured that out and everybody that doesn't want something in their food claims to be allergic to it. So now you get the person who doesn't like tomato on their burger telling their server they're allergic to it even though they ate all of the tomato in the salad they had to start. Makes people lean towards the skeptical. But, for the most part, I agree there's nothing wrong with accommodating sensible special requests.

On an episode of the show "How It's Made", they visited a factory that makes aluminum foil. They asked that very question and the reply was "it really makes no difference whatsoever".

Still one of my personal favorites.

Yes, please.

Thanks KD and Rafa, I'm definitely going to give that one a try.

I did some experimenting with that a while back (2008 according to my notes) and bounced some emails with Chad Galiano from the Chadzilla blog who was also experimenting with activa at that time and we both came to pretty much the same results. With immediate vacuum packing and freezer storage, 2 months seemed to be the average. I've used it past that and had it work. I've also had it not work sooner than that, possibly the result of less careful handling. When you open it, rub a decent amount of it onto a piece of the raw meat and take a sniff. If there's a bit of a funk kinda reminiscent of a wet pet, it will probably still work.

I'd drink that. Any idea of the ratios?

Since I don't have need of the types of ingredients being discussed where I work and I'm just using them for fun at home, I don't worry about the dates on the packages for the various powders. I have a couple that are probably 4 or 5 years old that still work fine and don't cause any physical problems for me from consuming the items made with them. I'll probably keep using them until they're gone. The only thing I've seen time cause problems with is transglutaminase. Storage can definitely be part of the equation though. Moisture isn't a friend to most of them, it definitely isn't friendly to maltodextrins. They can turn from powder to a lump of rock.

Nope, that's exactly the right way to do it.

You do more cooking when you're working out of town and on call than I do at home under normal, relaxed circumstances. I used to do so much playing and experimenting during my free time, now, if I'm not at work, I rarely cook at all. I really need to get back to non-work-related cooking on a regular basis.

Maybe I just need to try a really good one. I'm not a fan of gravy on fries, with or without the cheese, but there's a very good possibility that I've just never tried a truly well made poutine. I'm going to check the store for that balsamic the cake calls for but, after reading your comments on the cake, I may sub my own olive oil cake for the cake part.

That bread sounds tasty. So does that strawberry balsamic cake. I'm going to cause all of our fellow Canadians to mentally throw rotten tomatoes at me... but I'm not a fan of poutine.

I came up with a blank for this one. For the one's I've done, an idea has come to me right away and I just had to spend the available time trying to make it work. For some reason, I just couldn't come up with that starting point this time. I enjoyed seeing what everybody else did though.

I am intrigued by your idea of using cocoa butter for a ganache. I have found that in trying for flavors that would be lost in milk or dark chocolate--and somewhat in white chocolate--increasing cocoa butter has helped. But when I have added a substantial amount, the texture of the ganache has become too "short"--grainy rather than smooth. Have you encountered this problem? To an extent, yes. It was one of the kinks that needed to be worked out in some cases. In other cases, the puree still had enough texture to mask any grainy texture from the cocoa butter. It really depended on what flavor base I was working with as to how much of a problem it was. As I said above, my goals with the project were in a different direction that the usual suspects for ganache. I was interested in integrating them into savory dishes as a component on the plate.

Straight cocoa butter would probably have too strong a "fat" flavor. I suggest that you find some dried, unsweetened coconut and use it to infuse cream. This should give you a very prominent coconut flavor. If that doesn't do the trick, maybe add a bit of coconut puree to the ganache. I'll leave the choice of chocolate up to you. ;-) Yeah, I'm not sure what I was doing would be appropriate in this case but it did make for some pretty tasty carrot, butternut, corn and other flavor "ganaches" by combining cocoa butter, butter and seasoned purees. What I was doing wasn't really aimed at being part of a box of chocolates.

I use a pre-hydrated spray dried cold-soluble gum arabic from TIC gums that's no trouble at all to dissolve.

I was doing some experimenting a while back doing ganaches with straight cocoa butter instead of chocolate to get pure flavors and savory ganaches. I don't know if they would technically be considered ganaches and it would get a bit pricey large-scale but I was getting some promising results that just needed some tweaking and fine-tuning... then I kinda strayed from the project and haven't got back to it.