Tri2Cook

Looks good to me. I don't know what's "too symetrical" about it. There are plates that look good with that super casual "I just sorta tossed everything towards the plate" paint spatter thing going on... but not often. Usually they either look like a train wreck or they look like they were very carefully arranged to not look like they were very carefully arranged. I still think some ice cream in that glass under the fruit and a piece of some sort of meringue/cake/biscuit or something taking the mango's place would be nice but that's just my opinion, not criticizing.

Tell the other member of the team to wipe that d@#n plate! Seriously though, grilled fruit in ginger glaze sounds tasty to me. I think I'd rather have it with ice cream than angel food cake personally but it still sounds good.

I don't get why there's so much hate for Cat Cora. Mario whips out the Italian, Flay does the Southwestern, Morimoto doesn't battle often but, obviously, leans in the Oriental direction. They all have their "thing" they do. I finally got to see the Cora/Stupak chocolate battle. Granted, Stupak is primarily a pastry chef but he's a damn good one and Cora held her own and came very close to beating him.

I worked on a hog farm. I worked in a poultry processing plant. I built houses for a couple years and then did 12 years with the power company putting in new power lines. Oh... that's not what you meant. You meant food-related. Ok. I did a year in a mom and pop pizza place. I did 2 years in a hospital kitchen. I've spent the past 5 years in a "family restaurant" type place. We do pizzas there as well. I make the sauce and dough from scratch, cut the fresh veggies daily and grate more cheese than I want to talk about in addition to the prep work/cooking for the rest of the menu. Most shifts are me and a server (we bring in an extra person on friday nights). It's a small place (22 seats) sitting right on the beach of a really nice lake so the view is good... in the summer anyway. We also do catering which allows me to get out my "fancier" side now and then. That breaks up the monotony of doing the same stuff over and over. I have no professional training whatsoever, I jumped in with both feet and managed to keep them under me long enough to learn the ropes. I'd like to expand my cooking horizons beyond what I'm doing now so I plan to talk to the people at one of the "fancy" local places and see if I can weasel a shift or three a week this summer (they're seasonal, they just open during tourist/fishing season) even if I have to do it sans pay.

Sooo... has anybody who downloads tv stuff seen the Stupak vs. Cora battle chocolate episode available to download anywhere? You can PM me the information to keep it from being part of the forum. I missed it and I want to see it.

Cool Rob! Looks like you're getting really close to what you're after.

Awesome as always Mark. Some nice flavors going on there and it looks great.

I can walk out in the woods here (at the right times of course) and pick morels, chanterelles, lobsters (ok, so it's not technically a mushroom... close enough) and matsutakes so they have become my favorites but I can't say that I've tried a mushroom I didn't like. We also have honey mushrooms but I haven't tried to find out if I'm one of the people who doesn't tolerate them yet. Maybe ths year. After all, what's a little gut-grumbling in the interest of new food experiences?

After a night of getting the steaks wrong, you'll figure out really fast how to tell if they're cooked right.

I've never helped someone else with that, I figure they can eat what they want, but my usual method with my own dislikes that I have an interest in getting over is to just keep eating it anyway. Sometimes I have to cook things I don't care for. If I have to cook it, I have to taste it so it's easier in the long run to try to get over the dislike if possible. I'd say nine times out of ten I eventually end up at least being ok with whatever it is, often I actually learn to really like it. For example, I was never a fan of raisins. Now, I still wouldn't say I love them but I won't turn up my nose or pick them out either. I used to hate raw onions, now I eat them all the time and enjoy them. Liver/foie/pate/etc. isn't going to happen. I tried. I tried again. I made yet another series of attempts. It's not happening.

Sam Mason and Alex Stupak do sliceable curds but I've never read specifics on how they do it. I know the Ideas in Food folks were excited about it and did their own version, a sliceable grapefruit curd, with gelatin and it didn't look gummy at all in the pictures (probably has to do with the amount used). I can't imagine they'd be excited about a curd that was more like jello so they must have worked it out. I have no idea if it could be quenelled, looks like maybe it could though. I wonder if something like a little ultrasperse would do it? Hmmmm.

The soy sheets can be ordered HERE. You can probably find it cheaper, this just happened to be a place I already knew had it.

That's just too cool. I love it.

Cool stuff! Thanks!

Well, according to...

The technique schneich mentioned works very well if you want a coffee aroma without an assertive coffee taste. I've been using that method for quite a while to aromatize chocolate (got the idea from The Art of the Plated Dessert, there's a recipe for white coffee ice cream that uses aromatized white chocolate). It doesn't add the strength of flavor that a ganache with coffee gives, it's more in the nose, but it does have the benefit of not altering the structure or shelf life of the chocolate. The technique works with any fat (kinda like the fridge flavored butter you get if it's not wrapped well, fats latch on to aromas). My favorite use of it is for my white caps. I aerate coffee aromatized white chocolate, break it into pieces, then cover them in tempered coffee aromatized white chocolate. They're irregular shapes and sizes and very unstructured, which is the way I want them, but they could be cut for a more consistent appearance.

I know where you're coming from, we don't even have Applebee's here. The closest McDonald's is over an hour away. People here are used to (and relatively happy with) the same old thing they've been eating for years. I really wasn't criticizing what you're doing. I just saw chocolate caramel oreo last year and chocolate caramel samosa this year. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing, it got you an award last year. I have a bad habit of saying "screw what they want to taste, I'm giving them what I want them to taste". Probably not the best way to win the awards. It sounds like fun, best of luck!

Disclaimer: this is not criticism, just my personal thoughts. You got your People's Choice last year, don't do the same thing with a different crust this year. Step outside the safe zone. Add some "wow" factor. Do something unpredictable and risky. But that's just me. If I was going to do the cheesecake I wouldn't attempt to downplay what the cookie is all about on the assumption that "people don't like coconut". If the cookies are popular then people like them, I doubt they peel off the coconut. Some people don't love the texture of shredded coconut but that's easy to get around if that's your concern.

Talk about the understatement of the year. "The award for most modest cake artist goes to...". I think making nice flowers from gumpaste, fondant, pastillage, etc. is a certain level of natural talent combined with a lot of skill. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. There's a basic skill level to making passable simple flowers (the basic, not overly detailed rose for example) but making realistic flowers of the not-so-simple variety is hard. If it's not hard, I'm going to keep telling myself it is... 'cause otherwise it's just my incompetence and we can't have that.

Fusion is on my short list of books I've wanted for a long time and can't believe I don't already have. I'm going to have to remedy that situation soon. I have both of the Duby's books and love them. The first one isn't focused entirely on chocolate (but it shows up fairly often despite that), the second one, Wild Sweets: Chocolate does indeed incorporate chocolate in some form in every recipe in the book including sections on fish, shellfish and meat. I've been having a lot of fun with both books.

I don't have a thing to add, cake decorating is not an area of skill for me, just wanted to say have fun and I hope you'll share the end result with us.

As a person who did some time in a pizza place (not a chain, a mom and pop place), I think I can field that one. The other 25 min. (or 35 min. or whatever) is generally because, fortunately for the business involved, you are probably not their only customer. Your pizza may take 10 minutes or so to pan, top, cook and box but it probably has to wait it's turn behind the people who called before you.

Agreed. At work I'm obsessive with cleanliness and sanitation but in my day to day life I touch doorknobs and elevator buttons without running for a handwash. I use and flush public toilets (a handwash is mandatory then but that's the case even using my own toilet). I eat bread from the bulk bins. I've eaten a lot of fruits and vegetables without washing them throughout my life. I've also never had a flu shot. I very rarely get sick at all, maybe something mild once a year at most. I've only been sick enough to admit I needed to stay in bed and miss work twice in the past 16 years (not including a brief hospital visit to say goodbye to my appendix) and only sick enough to go see a doctor once in that time period (due to illness, hobby related injuries are a different story ). But that's the illness factor, I never really gave thought to the nasty factor... kids, (and adults for that matter) grubby hands rumaging through the stuff, dirty tongs, etc. Hmmmm.

I'm not a lover of buttermilk on it's own (although I'm now training myself to get around that) so I'd never played with it much until I started hitting Ideas in Food on a regular basis. They use it to provide balance to sweet things (like their white chocolate consomme they were kind enough to pop in here and share the recipe for) and it works really well in that role so I keep it around now.

Is this what would happen if Ferran Adria had a pet chicken? It is kinda cool.