Tri2Cook

I think there's a chance we may be looking at this from different views. Maybe every professional chocolatier/confectioner you know tempers the chocolate for their ganache, but I'd be willing to bet every pastry chef you know that is only using their ganache for tarts and cakes and things of that nature doesn't. I don't do chocolates as a general rule and have no need for extended non-refrigerated shelf life so why would I want to bother doing extra work that provides no benefit that is relevant to what I do? To suggest someone is not a professional at what they do unless they do it the way you do it with the same equipment you have is silly and completely untrue.

I like them best just like you did them. Sometimes with a cajun kick for a change of pace. I've done the Paul Haeberlin Mousseline de Grenouilles recipe a few times just for fun and it's tasty but fried is my favorite. Unfortunately, I've been completely unable to source them where I live now.

You're welcome... but I'm not a she.

The plastic wrap I use is pretty hefty, not the "user friendly" stuff that's so flimsy and lacking in cling that it's almost completely useless. The idea was that you could dump it over onto a board or the back of another pan, peel off the plastic or parchment, cut and toss the whole thing back in the freezer to firm up again. Then you can just take them from the freezer a couple at a time, assemble and pop them back in the freezer before moving on to the next couple. That way they never spend more than a couple minutes out of the freezer. But I didn't actually say all of that... which I should have done. Sorry about that.

Not necessarily a bad recipe, just maybe not the right one for what she's trying to do. Some mousses are intentionally very light and delicate (I'll even go so far as to say those that are not very light and delicate are taking liberties with what a mousse is supposed to be... I usually take those liberties in favor of stability for what I do). She could up the amount of chocolate if she's trying to avoid gelatin or other stabilizers. I don't know the recipe she's using but she can add chocolate until it does what she wants it to do. Personally, I just add a bit of gelatin when I want firmer mousses that can be molded and hold their shape after thawing or need them to support some weight. It doesn't take much and is way cheaper than mycryo.

Awesome stuff everybody. This was fun! It never occured to me to take pics of the process... that would have been a good idea. I did enjoy eating it though it was a bit much for a cold, jelly-covered-food plate. Smaller molds would have been more portion-appropriate but would have made lining the mold and still having room for enough filling difficult. If I did it again, I would mold the fillings then dip them in the jelly a couple times to coat rather than doing it all in-mold. I'll use the excuse that it's portion-appropriate for the era it's from. The main reason I included the "I hope she would approve" is because of the my-way twists I added to it.

Summer Surf and Turf a la Julia poulet en gelee a l'estragon (p. 549) - mousse de saumon (p. 562) - concombres a la grecque (p. 538) - pate brisee (p. 139) nuggets For the chicken, I arranged alternate slices of the poached chicken and blanched tarragon in the gelee-lined mold then filled in the mold with more gelee. The salmon mousse is encased in a gelee of lemon zest infused creme fraiche (would that technically be a savory panna cotta?). For the pate brisee I took some liberties and subbed rye flour for part of the white flour and added caraway seeds. On the plate is the liquid from the cucumbers refreshed with a bit of lemon juice and some pink peppercorn skins. All recipes are from Mastering the Art of French Cooking vol. 1. I hope Julia would approve.

Nice one Lisa! A bit of malic and citric acid at the end just before molding might bring back some of that fresh apple tartness. I did that with a caramel apple consomme I made a while back and it really helped bring back some of the fresh apple thing that was missing after all of the cooking and sweetening. My project is done and ready to plate and take pics but I have to head out to work soon so I'll probably wait until I get home to finish up.

You don't need any of those things for a chocolate mousse unless you're wanting to mold it (and not even then if you wanted to serve it frozen).

I'm doing a theme-thing Julia style as well. I got an unexpected last minute "please, please, please" call for a small catering job for this evening so it may be late tonight or tomorrow before I actually get a pic posted but it will be done today.

Straight out of the machine before going into the freezer if you're going to spread it between the cookies (unless your machine leaves it really soft and it would melt faster than you can work with it, then you may want to let it firm up a bit in the freezer first). Or you could freeze it in the same pan you baked the cookies on (I'd line it with plastic wrap or parchment first) and cut it into rectangles the same size as the cookies, in which case you would freeze it until solid first. The second method would be cleaner, the first method faster... both will work equally well.

I watched it again and still don't have any issues with Chef Chiarello's approach. It wouldn't have been my approach but I'm not him. I think maybe he was just getting the point across that, yes, you may be an accomplished chef, but, for the purposes of this challenge, you are working for me. Dale going into full schoolyard gangsta-goober "Wachoo gonna do about it? Wachoo gonna do?" mode over being called "young man" by someone probably nearly double his age was much more ridiculous than anything Chef Chiarello said/did. I thought Chef Chiarello showed great restraint by not stuffing Dale headfirst into the nearest garbage bin. Of course all of the above is based entirely on what we got to see which may or may not be the entire story in proper chronological order.

I hope not, I don't want to temper the chocolate every time I make a mousse. Seriously though, I have no idea. Never tried it. Then again, I don't temper chocolate for ganache either.

Nice preserves, awesome story. Has me thinking of the peach preserves my grandmother used to make. After my grandfather passed away, she got tired of cleaning up the peach mess in the yard (I live much too far away to have been able to do it for her) and had the trees removed. So there's no chance of doing what you did but it was really cool to read about it.

I went with Chef Keller again this week and will be next week as well. I'm less than thrilled that they felt the need to do the drama thing for this. It was going just fine without it. Dale is a clown... regardless of the edit. The whole gangsta chef thing is a joke. Shut up and cook.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I was thinking of the chops, not the ribs. You mentioned trying to come up with a sauce with what you could find on hand. The mushroom soup sauce isn't the best sauce but it's quick, easy, inexpensive and familiar to many. Probably familiar to your group unless it's a regional thing. I know my grandmother used to make at least a couple times a month when my grandfather was alive because he liked it.

That or the ol' dump some cans of mushroom soup over 'em thing. Mushroom soup + pork chop pan deglazing liquid + generous with the black pepper = not bad. Not as good as a fresh-made sauce... but I'm not too proud to eat it.

I did a variation of the rice milk sherbet in Frozen Desserts by replacing the cream and part of the rice milk with coconut milk for a vegan friend and she was very happy with it. I like the original version better but it contains heavy cream so I couldn't use it for her. That's about the extent of my experience with vegan ice cream.

I enjoyed the street food episode. And it had the added bonus of bringing back one of my biggest laughs the show has given me... "Sqweasel? What's sqweasel?"

I'll be joining you with that book since it's the only one I have other than the three ...with... books. Should be fun.

Vegan + no soy + gluten free... $%#&. All she needed to complete it is a nut/seed restriction. It was a good wake-up episode for me because I've never even thought about cooking in such a restricted manner and it could happen someday with catering. I went with Chef Keller this week. Partly because I'm hoping he'll win it and partly because almost everybody else jumped on Chef Lo. One person went with Chef Chiarello. She's been picking him from the start and never varies, so I got second this round. Chef Smith was going home about half a second after he put that store-bought rice cream in the cart as far as I was concerned. It's easy to make a rice-based frozen dessert that actually tastes good and that kitchen has the equipment to make it fast as well. I'm not at all happy about that teaser. They managed to get through 8 episodes without throwing the drama card but they just couldn't resist. It was just too big a temptation to overcome.

Chadzilla's Fried Egg and Johnny Iuzzini's Chocolate Doughnut are great moments in deep fat frying for me.

So it appears the vanilla cakes are just a vanilla version of the chocolate cakes being discussed here and I found plenty of information on the Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes with google. Now that I know what I'm looking for, I'm not sure I care enough to make the homemade versions on the web to do the recipes and the commercial versions aren't available where I live. I'll have to dig around the snack aisle at the store and see if I can find anything similar. P.S. I'm not trying to disrupt this thread with my own agenda, just trying to save someone the trouble of having to merge two tastykake threads.

Thanks. The catnip I used is nepeta cataria (commonly known as catnip, catmint and field balm). I have no idea if it's the same as the one you're refering to. My research assures me that it is safe for culinary use, it just doesn't appear to be very widely used other than as a tea. It is used relatively moderately in the pesto. Instead of the traditional all-herb pesto, it is a blend of equal parts catnip and fresh peas. The reason I wanted to moderate it was strictly for culinary reasons, I have no safety concerns. Eating fresh catnip leaves on their own seems to have a very mild mouth-numbing effect similar to menthol but much less powerful so I didn't want to go too heavy with it. The noodles were a little less than perfect texture-wise with the tuna. It was a better idea than result. The taste was fine. I infused the milk with lemon zest and seasoned it with salt before setting it with agar, LBG and xanthan. It made for flexible, stable, warmable noodles that needed more body for this dish. They disappeared too easily in the mouth and were buried by the other ingredients. So basically, they fit the theme well and in a different setting I would probably have been very happy with them but they just weren't quite right for this one.

I've been tossing this idea around in my head for a couple weeks so I thought I better try it... Meow yellowfin tuna - catnip pesto - milk noodles - peas - catnip flowers - olive oil - sea salt