Tri2Cook

I think Pierre Herme's version in Chocolate Desserts is very tasty... but it's very non-traditional as well. What with all the chocolate pastry cream, chocolate whipped cream and vanilla poached pears.

There is... if you have $10,000 laying around looking for something to do.

I learned the basics and beyond from my mom (she was a professional pastry chef) but if I had to pick a book as my number one most influential book it would probably be McGee's On Food and Cooking. It didn't really have a lot to do with my overall development and didn't steer me in any particular direction but it answers most of the questions the voices in my head come up with. They're a curious bunch.

You should use the Alinea book! I'd say at least 75% of the book is doable with standard home equipment and standard home/grocery store ingredients. I've only done two complete dishes from the book but I've used tons of techniques and components (tweaked to my own purposes) from it. I wonder how that fits into the calculation being discussed in this thread? Books that I've used a thousand times but not for complete dishes. If I count the books that I've done complete dishes as written from, my number will not be good at all. If I count books that I've used ideas/techniques from but twisted to work with what I want to do, my number will be respectable. I don't mean using them for inspiration, I mean, for example, if I were to do Alex Stupak's pliable ganache from the Alinea book but in a different setting and flavor profile than the original, does that count? Or do they have to be "as written" to count? Anyway, I don't have time to do the numbers this morning but I'll get them together.

You can't find every recipe in every book on the internet. If you're only interested in using what you can find for free, then there is no reason to buy the books. If you're interested in exploring everything in the book, you'll have to buy it. Plus, I just like having them to flip through for inspiration. Even if I never do an actual recipe from a book, sometimes I'll see something that sparks an idea of my own.

For the topping, I usually mix (by volume, these ratios don't work out the same by weight but I usually don't bother weighing for this) 1 part flour, 1.5 parts brown sugar, 2 parts oats and a pinch of salt then rub in 1 part butter (example = 1/2c. flour, 3/4c. brown sugar, 1c. oats, 1/2c. butter). I sometimes add spices, zests, etc. depending on the filling involved but I prefer the plain version most of the time.

If a flavor combo works, I like to explore it. Find sweet and savory uses for the combo, find out what adjusting the balance in different directions does, things like that. There are so many ways to use an ingredient combination and so many other ingredients to use the combo with that a curious and/or creative mind can use it for a very long time without getting stuck in a rut. With a little cycling in and out of a few favorite combos, you'd never be in danger. If you're not grabbing the same three ingredients in the same proportions every time you develop a recipe, I doubt you should be too worried. I mean, red peppers, caramelized onions and aged gouda can provide quite a few flavor variations without adding any other ingredients or bringing cooking methods and textures into the equation.

I think Blether did answer that question quite nicely. If the recipe/package tells you to drop it in boiling water then it can tell you to pull it from the water in x amount of time and be sure of the desired results +/- a very small margin of variance because it knows the precise temp of the cooking liquid. If they tell you to toss it in cold water they have no way of knowing the actual temp of your cold water, the power of you heating device, the ambient room temp, etc. so they have no way of knowing how long it will take the water to heat. Without that knowledge, the best approximation of cooking time they can give you is "cook until done" which is a valid statement but not sufficient for many consumers who want to be told to set the timer for x number of minutes and go watch tv without worry.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. You can take them with you but they can still do them if they know how. The only realistic way to pull off what you're wanting to do is by never letting anyone else know how you do the dishes. Even supposing some sort of copyright, they could still do the dishes. You'd have a hell of a time proving they were doing it exactly the way you did. It wouldn't be worth the stress to me. Your best revenge, if you really want to take those dishes with you, would be to take the customers who love them with you as well. Do the dishes wherever it is you're going next and do them better than the place you left behind can do them without you.

Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, I decided to use some of the summers bounty for my contribution... the dessert. I vac-packed and froze most of the wild blueberries I picked this year. With some of the sweet corn from the farmers market, I cut the corn and scraped the juice from the cobs and vac-packed and froze it. I also vac-packed the cobs and froze them. I used some of the blueberries to make a blueberry crisp and some of the corn and cobs to make sweet corn ice cream. I then told everybody present that if they wanted pumpkin pie they were at the wrong dinner this year.

Nice one Patrick! Nice bubble sugar too.

I prefer savory in the morning. As I mentioned in the other thread, I love waffles... but I'd really rather have them for lunch or dinner than breakfast. I find with a sweet breakfast that a relatively short time later my energy takes a dive and I feel really hungry again even though I know I'm not. That never happens with non-sweet breakfasts or from eating the sweet stuff later in the day.

Yep, it was Tyler Florence. I shouldn't post my thoughts a day or two after the fact, my memory isn't always reliable when it comes to unimportant stuff.

Waffles. Specifically, sourdough waffles with butter and #2 (U.S. grade B) maple syrup.

Whenever there's an equipment problem, the judges say "What went wrong?", the chef says "this happened" and the judges say "we don't accept excuses". What are they supposed to say? "I'm not going to answer your question because you'll just say I'm making excuses." That would make them popular with the judges. Michael V's comment in the waiting room after facing the judges finally said on air what I've been thinking for a long time. Bobby Flay said if the power goes out in your restaurant, the guests won't accept that as a reason the food sucks (not his exact words but that was the point behind it and it's been said many times by many judges on this show). Michaels comment on that (which I would have loved to see him make to Bobby rather than in the waiting room) was that in his restaurant he would have backup product available and would redo it correctly rather than send it. A luxury not allowed for in most Top Chef challenges. If you send something you're not happy with, you may go home. If you send nothing, you will go home. So, while equipment trouble isn't an excuse, it has no relationship to what the contestant would do in other circumstances and is certainly a valid answer to the question "what went wrong". Anyway, I didn't find the episode overly boring. I find challenges where they all have to cook on one domestic stove in a room the size of a large closet and things like that a bit absurd for this type of show but I guess it does push them to think on the fly. I was glad to see Jennifer take an elimination win, even if it was a team challenge. She's been better than the editing shows her giving herself credit for all along, maybe it boosted her confidence a bit. I was impressed that Michael V had the cojones to do a dessert for the quickfire and end up among the 3 favorites. It was also cool to see Bryan sticking up for his brother when Kevin was trying to backseat analyze the dish. I think the key to enjoying this show is just watching it for what it is, not what we might wish it would be. I understand where you're coming from with that but if it were strongly enforced, the restaurant industry would be in very bad shape. I think it depends on the nature of the problem, which they didn't disclose. I've missed work twice in 6 years. A few days when I had my appendix removed and a week when my mom passed away. I didn't miss a single shift when I broke my ribs and dislocated my shoulder in a mountain bike accident so I'm not going to stay home because I have the sniffles or a headache or something.

I enjoy ribbing and pranks, even if it's my day to be the butt of the joke (I firmly believe in "don't dish it out if you can't take it" and have no trouble laughing at myself). Deserved verbal slamming just pushes me to do better. Undeserved verbal slamming flies right over me, I don't let it bother me or throw me off what I'm doing. When it starts getting physical (beyond minor bumping and shoving stuff), we have problems. Any chef that intentionally burns me, chokes me, hits me or shoves me down some stairs better hope he leaves me incapable of coming back at him. Screw a lawsuit, we're going to fight. Regardless of how bad a career move it proves to be. Now if he wants to have it out and then get back to the business at hand, that's ok too. But I won't tolerate bullying... a beating is less humiliating than a slapping.

Perhaps chiles affect people in different ways, and certainly different chiles cause "burn" in different parts of the mouth/throat. I know from personal experience that capsaicin is a powerful decongestant--I have nasal, lung, and eye reactions from especially hot foods. Heck, you can buy capsaicin nasal decongestant spray at natural remedy/health food stores. Yep. I know hot chiles clear my sinuses without being dispersed by cooking, accidently inhaled as a powder or as a result of touch. The first year I grew red savina habaneros, one ripened to red much earlier and while a good bit smaller than the rest on the plant. I thought maybe it would be a good test subject so I grabbed it from the plant, popped it in my mouth and ate it. Picture the small child crying fit... snot running from the nose, drool running from the mouth faster than I could contain it. It wasn't pretty. They sure are tasty though. That nice fruity flavor just before the pain doesn't seem to survive cooking or drying too well so it's a necessary occasional self torture to enjoy it.

I'm interested in seeing what eGulleters come up with here. I've never made a tofu dessert. I've tasted exactly two tofu desserts in my life and, years later, I'm still wishing I hadn't... and I like tofu. Suspect number one was a tofu cheesecake. Suspect number two was a pudding concoction of some sort. I admit that it could very well have been the cook and not the presence of tofu that was the problem. I don't know if THIS technically qualifies under the rules of tofu but I've been meaning to try it for a while now.

Sounds like a cool solution to a difficult task to me. Raw, Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free, Vegan... dessert. And you didn't polish an apple, toss it to 'em and say "dig in". I'd say you did great.

If I'm using chestnut as an ingredient in something, I just buy unsweetened puree. It may not be freshly made by my own hands but it's consistent and (this is where I'm probably going to get things thrown at me by somebody) makes for just as tasty a final result as making your own puree. In a fit of dedication, I made my own puree to use in a recipe once and could tell not at all in the final product that I hadn't used purchased puree. Maybe I'm just not a true connoisseur of the chestnut?

"Here's what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?" - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

"More please" and "burrrrrrp".

Nope. Not as a general rule. Not in a restaurant/catering situation anyway. Most people with dietary restrictions, even if they're restricted by choice, expect to eat similar to what the people sitting next to them are eating... but adjusted to fit within their boundaries. They expect all of the creativity, flair and flavor that everybody else gets. I was only mildly joking when I said that serving a fruit and vegetable tray was a surefire way to make sure you didn't have to cook for that person/group again.

That's how I've always viewed the site. When they do share a specific recipe or technique, it's fun because you see exactly how they approached the idea but it's the ideas themselves that inspire me the most. Then I think wow, that's a really cool concept... I wonder how I can twist that to my own purposes? At this point, their book is at the top of my "books to look forward to" list. The only way I can see it being bumped to #2, or at least a tie for #1, is if Michael Laiskonis were to announce a book (sorry about that Alex but I'm a pastry guy at heart).

Fair enough. I was kinda blanketing anything purchased that someone else produced as commercial. I can't fault commercial on the basis of stabilizers and things of that nature as I use those types of ingredients in my own kitchen. As for being fooled by standard grocery store industrial products, I probably have but never where it was admitted so I can't name anything specific. I have been pleasantly surprised by some industrial products but I knew what I was dealing with so there was no being fooled involved.