Tri2Cook

The sugar is a nod to modern palates, I get that. But where did you come up with putting Chartreuse in this? Not that it sounds bad, I've just never seen a Bennett quantified that way. I don't know anything about it but it sounds mighty tasty to me so I'm going to try it.

Dredging this up because they just showed the episode with the school lunch ladies competing and, although it's not new, I'd never seen it before. I have to say this was probably one of the finest moments on the show in my opinion. Yes, it was edited towards trying to tug at the heartstrings because there was an agenda behind the theme but it was awesome to see these ladies who do what they do for little money and pretty much no thanks or recognition compete with no snarkiness, no whining, no excuses, no complaining, no ego. Just big smiles and kind words for each other. They all seemed genuinely happy to be there even as they were eliminated. I found myself not even caring that the dishes weren't on the same level as what I'm generally used to seeing (when it goes well) on the show. They were giving it their all. Anyway, this can return to the depths now. Just wanted to say I enjoyed it.

Way too much agar. The recommended amount of agar on the package is too much for what you're wanting to do. The package is assuming you want a nice, strong result typical of agar gels, you don't. You want a very light, easily damaged gel structure. Go with .2% agar by weight to the total amount of liquid, 1 gram agar to every 500 grams liquid. You should be much happier with your results. Also, check out the post on Cooking Issues regarding agar clarification... it eliminates the freeze thaw cycle completely.

Actually I very rarely drink Negronis but it was the gateway drug that sparked my love of Italian bitters and fueled my search for drinks that make use of them.

No problem. If you decide you'd rather experiment with it, please do and have fun with it. That's always a noble use for ingredients. The offer stands just in case you don't find something that makes it work for you, there's no hurry at my end. I'm just going to be doing some experimenting of my own and there's no particular timeframe involved.

The Negroni is evil. It's almost singlehandedly responsible for my cabinet going from "I'll get a bottle of Campari because it seems to come up in recipes somewhat frequently" to "what other Italian bitters can I get my hands on if I really try"...

Are you back in Canada? If so and you'd rather get rid of it then disguise it, pack it up and I'll buy it. I have a non-work-related project coming up that I'm going to have to order some for anyway.

It's not warm enough to really get into tiki mode yet but I decided to venture there for tonight with the Trader Vic's Nelson's Blood... 2 oz dark rum 1/4 oz brandy 1/4 oz falernum 1/4 oz lemon juice 1/4 oz blood orange juice 1/4 lemon 1/4 blood orange 2 oz ginger beer Squeeze 1/4 lemon and 1/4 orange into shaker, reserve rind for garnish. Shake with ice: everything except ginger beer. Strain over ice and top with ginger beer. Garnish with reserved lemon and orange rinds and mint sprig. I only have the ingredient list, not instructions, but that seemed like a logical approach. I've seen pictures so I know the garnish is correct.

I generally assume that kind of measure means the recipe was either scaled to fit a different quantity than originally specified, or converted from metric measures. Though I have seen 1/3 oz on a jigger before, I think maybe the new OXO conical jigger? Based on this conversation, I'm assuming it's a bit strange that I keep a set of measuring spoons with my other measuring devices in my home bar. "You can take the cook out of the kitchen but you can't take the kitchen out of the cook..."

If it seized we wouldn't need to make suggestions for making dipping easier/cleaner, we'd need to make suggestions for ways to make it possible to dip at all. Starting with "chuck it and try again". That was my point. In which case, the fact that dipping was still happening, albeit with unsatisfactory results, was the first clue that it wasn't seized.

If it seized we wouldn't need to make suggestions for making dipping easier/cleaner, we'd need to make suggestions for ways to make it possible to dip at all. Starting with "chuck it and try again".

I'm not familiar with this but our first clue that it isn't just a multi-seed brittle is that you listed cream as an ingredient. I'm wondering what cooking something like a New Orleans style praline base (which includes butter but you could use the oil you mentioned being in their ingredient list) to a higher temp would lead to. That type of praline is in the "crumbly tenderness" range when done traditionally but they're not cooked to a very high temp. They get the opaqueness from the stirring as the base cools before depositing. I'm actually curious enough to try cooking a base to a couple higher temps and see what happens. Maybe stop the stirring process after it begins to go opaque but before it starts getting too much of the grainy-ish texture of the pralines and pour.

I have an Atlas and the motor that attaches in place of the crank so I can use it either way. I already had the machine (it was a gift) so I just bought the motor for it. Sometimes it's nice to have both hands free to work with the dough so I would probably buy the attachment for my Kitchenaid if I didn't already have the other. The Atlas, with or without the motor, is obviously much more portable than a Kitchenaid but I don't know of any other advantages it would have by the time you buy the motor too.

I haven't tried it. I got excited about the product initially but kinda lost interest because it's not only going to kill the perception of sweet in the target item, it's going to kill it in everything else for however long the effect lasts. I don't know how long that is and wouldn't want it carrying over into other components or courses. Even in a savory course, sweetness plays a role in some ingredients so I'd need to play around and see what the cumulative effect on a meal would be.

Tonight I went with the Cat's Pajamas... gin - campari - green chartreuse - orange juice - maple syrup - shake, strain, flame orange peel. Tasty.

Hmmm. The recipe I have calls for campari but I'd certainly be happy to try it with aperol. In fact, I think I will.

Thank you sir. I did some digging through my bookmarks in my "tiki" folder and tracked down where I found the recipe. It was on the Imbibe website and does indeed include a credit to Yao Lu.

I've worked through a fairly ridiculous amount of unflavored pop rocks in the past few years. I always toss a few in my mouth when working with them, mainly just because it's fun. They are sweet. Just to be sure it's not my imagination, I just grabbed a bag of neutral pop rocks I have and tossed a bunch in my mouth, ignored the popping and paid attention to the sweetness. I then drank some more of the tea that I had been drinking before starting this experiment. After that I popped some sugar right out of the container in my mouth and took my time tasting it. If the pop rocks are less sweet than the straight sugar, it's by a very fine degree that I might attribute to the fact that they're not truly neutral. I don't know if you've tried them before but they actually have a slight caramelized sugar taste I'm guessing happens as a result of the cooking process when making them. They're pretty much sugar having a wild party on your tongue.

I liked that one. I can't remember where I found it but I remember the campari being the clincher for me wanting to try it. I've been trying to think of ways to incorporate some of my other favorite cocktail ingredients into tiki drinks... I'm sure I'll end up offending the tiki faithful at some point.

The first difficulty could arise depending on your definition of savory. The pop rocks, neutral or flavored, are made of sugars and they are sweet. I'm not sure you'd get sufficient powder to cling to them to overcome or at least balance that just by tossing them with a powder. You could do a savory "soil" type thing that incorporated the pop rocks (they can be ground with other ingredients and, as long as you don't get them down to a complete powdery dust, they'll still pop) but that wouldn't leave them identifiable as a savory popping candy if that's the goal. They would just be a little surprise in the component. You could spray them with cocoa butter (deodorized might work better for this purpose depending on the flavor you're going for) and immediately toss them with a powder. Coating them does change the overall texture though. I've sprayed them for protective purposes with the intention of using them as a component in something where moisture would be a problem and wasn't really happy with the result. Even with a very light spray it added a bit of a chewiness/guminess that made me decide against using them. Anyway, really just brainstorming more than offering advice... best of luck.

Exactly right. Thank you. So if, just to play devil's advocate, 9 food critics ate the same dish at the same restaurant on the same night and 3 said it was perfect, 3 said it was over-salted and 3 said it was under-salted... which direction would you suggest the chef steer the seasoning? You don't need to tell me I'm being a bit facetious, I'm aware of that. My point is that personal preference does play a role from the diner's end of the deal. I agree the cook should trust his/her palate when sending the food out but it's still a crapshoot on how the diner will react to it. If the entire kitchen and majority of customers think a dish is perfect but some guy at table 7 thinks it needs more salt and he just happens to be the one person in the building who is going to write about the place...

Gelatin clarification should do that for you: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/dining/05curi.html Yep, that will leave the gelatin behind and clarify the stock all in one shot. Be forewarned though, the yield may be a bit disappointing if the gelatin level in your stock is relatively high. If it's much more than a very light gel consistency at fridge temp you may lose more volume than you'll be happy about. If yield isn't a big concern, you can pull the filtered stock before the frozen block completely thaws, once it starts looking lighter in color throughout, and end up with a more concentrated stock than you had going in which should help with flavor in a foam.

So what do you think of the Luxardo compared to the Di Saronno?

For the first time in the almost 11 years I've lived here, the local grocery had fresh tomatillos. I don't trust that to continue to be the case so I grabbed a few pounds, roasted them until the skin was nice and charred, sealed 'em up and tossed 'em in the freezer. Superbowl Sunday is going to be chile verde for sure... haven't planned beyond that yet.

During a good season, I have a friend who can go out for ~5 hours and make $150 or more. Sometimes I go out with her after work and we can double that. There are also seasons where you can go out for 5 hours and be lucky to make $50. She can do that as many days a week as she's willing to go out and obviously staying out longer than 5 hours would mean more $$$. She does it more because she enjoys it than as a business so she isn't out there every day but most years it could be quite lucrative for someone really dedicated to it. There's no danger of hurting anyone with her foraging though, she picks blueberries.