Tri2Cook

John and choux, thanks for the information! I know I asked the question a while back but things got busy and I haven't got around to playing with this yet. I'm going to do an apple pate de fruit using g-pectin but I'd like to add some malic acid to the mix. Does anybody know if this will cause problems? I'm going to use this with a soft caramel to get the caramel apple thing happening so getting the pdf a little more tart and apple-y to help offset the huge amount of sweet going on would be nice.

That pretty much covers it from what I remember.

Awesome! Thanks! I'm having fun playing with it but the idea of trying to do it came from reading about it on your site so this is really cool. I appreciate it and will be giving it a shot tomorrow. I'd do it tonight but I don't have buttermilk on hand. Edit: Hey! Looking at your numbers it looks like I was pretty close on the chocolate to liquid ratio.

I got ~200g of liquid as a result but I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't weigh everything going in. I would say 75g - 100g of chocolate and probably around 400g - 450g of liquid. The total combined was just under 500g, I am sure of that because I had to weigh it to calculate the gelatin. I didn't use creme fraiche in mine, this was intended to be a control batch to work from starting with the most basic formula... water and chocolate. Test 2 will involve buttermilk as was mentioned having been done by the brilliant folks at Ideas in Food. That's going to involve some willpower during the tasting to get the balance right phase because I am not a lover of buttermilk.

Agar wouldn't work. I guess you need a gelling agent that is thermo reversible, ie melts when the temperature gets higher and sets when it gets lower. Anyone have suggestions? ← Yeah, I'm not sure about that one either. The freezing does something to the structure of the gelatin that causes it to release the liquid upon thawing. I have no idea if agar reacts the same way. I'm willing to give it a try and let you know though. That is, unless someone pops in with a definite answer before I get to it. Edit: A quick google search seems to indicate that agar is one of the things used to help combat syneresis so I'm not too hopeful... but I'll still give it a try.

I don't think one excludes the other. It's possible to use the latest equipment, ingredients, techniques, flavor combinations, etc. from the heart and it's also possible to bang out classic dishes without caring at all. Restaurants that focus mainly on the wow factor of it all may or may not fall victim to the trends but the ideas they are making happen will influence the food world for a long time to come in my opinon. Although, I sincerely hope I never see a McFoie with Cheese Caviars and supersize French Fry Consomme with Ketchup Foam.

So here are the promised pics of round 1. As you can see, "white chocolate broth" is probably a more accurate description than "consomme" at this point. The flavor is very much white chocolate and was identified as such by 3 taste testers that were not given even the slightest hint about what I was having them taste (I have brave, but brutally honest, taste testers always willing to lend an opinion ). The information about the buttermilk is interesting, I hadn't seen that so thanks! I can see where they're coming from with that, the stuff is pretty sweet. The first word out of two of the tasters mouths was "chocolate" followed by "actually, I'd say white chocolate" (the other taster said "white chocolate" right off) so I feel confident that the cocoa butter lends itself to the result and that it's not just me wanting it to be there. The little design in the bottom of the glass is under ~5 cm (2") of the liquid which gives some idea of the level of cloudiness (but not a completely accurate idea, I have a decent camera but I suck at photography and the pics turned out somewhat grainy this time for some reason). This batch is back in the freezer with more gelatin for round 2 of filtering and I'm going to get a new batch going with some of the ideas that have come up tomorrow.

Ummm... the liquid I have will disagree with you on that. I'm not sure if there is much of a point to it. I'm just having fun.

I haven't seen those but I'll throw in my 2 cents on being worth it. It's a matter of perspective. Too me it wouldn't be worth it because I don't do chocolates very often. However, I have a few pastry books that were close to that price each and they were well worth it to me because... well... because I wanted them. I know people who think what I spend on books is stupid but they'll gladly shell out 10x more for something to hang around their neck or wrist or on their wall. If they're worth it to you for what you do, then they're worth it.

Interesting. I've done regular chocolate consomme several times and I've been happy with the results but I use Sam Mason's recipe or variations on that (except that I clarify it with gelatin instead of a raft). For some strange reason, I haven't used it in sweet applications much. The last time I made it, I used it and a grapefruit consomme with fish. I have my first white chocolate consomme. The pics will have to wait until tomorrow but the first impression is both good and bad. The good: It tastes like white chocolate. Not just sweet and vanilla but actual white chocolate, the cocoa butter left it's mark. I think the one that I didn't add anything to is the better of the two. It's lighter in flavor but it's not as sweet. Maybe I'll try a batch with vanilla bean and extra cocoa butter but no extra sugar just to see how that goes. The bad: 1. It didn't clarify as much as I would have liked. There's not a lot of cloudiness but there's more than I can live with so I'm going to try a second filtration. 2. The color. It's not the greatest. Of all the colors it could be it had to go with "watered down urine sample yellow". I'll get a picture tomorrow before I hit it with more gelatin for a second filtering.

Sorry, didn't take any pics of the process. There wasn't really much to show. Toss the solids in a pan, add water, heat over low heat. Seal with plastic wrap, infuse until cool, skim fat. Soak gelatin, heat liquid, dissolve in gelatin. I cooled it in a water bath just to speed things up a little. Fridge until gelled and toss it in the freezer. The liquid in both batches tasted nicely of white chocolate before filtering with a nod to the bolstered batch for strength of flavor but maybe just using more white chocolate would have worked just as well. It seems too simple at this point so I'm not feeling confident that I'll have what I'm looking for after filtering. Then again, toast is pretty simple and I can't think of one good reason to make it any more complicated so we'll see.

Ok, I have two batches in the freezer. Batch one is at it's most basic, just water and white chocolate. Batch two is water and white chocolate that I bolstered with the flavor components of the white chocolate. I added some cocoa butter, a vanilla bean, a little sugar and some dry milk powder. Both were heated, sealed, allowed to cool, the fat skimmed off, heated enough to dissolve the gelatin, chilled then tossed in the freezer. I'll dump them in filters tomorrow and see what I get on monday.

Interesting. I haven't had a white castle (or krystal if you're down south) burger in years. There was a recipe on the web years ago that was supposed to replicate them that combined ground beef and beef baby food which seemed to be a bit weird to me so I never tried it. Might try this one though, I actually like those little gut grenades. A night of pickled eggs and beer ended with a bag of white castles was a sure fire way to keep everybody out of the room while you slept it off the next day.

I've never seen that little gem of cooking lore actually work. Does it work for others?

The Power of Passion blog is where I saw that white chocolate/creme fraiche version, I just couldn't remember the name so thanks for that. I'll definitely be using the syneresis filtering, that's pretty much the only way I've been doing clarifications since I started playing around with it early last summer. Sometimes I use a Buchner funnel and vacuum flask for small test batches but otherwise it's the gelatin every time. That HB recipe is actually a Herve This recipe that HB demonstrated in the chocolate episode of Kitchen Science, he gave HT full credit during the segment (he also did a chocolate and blue cheese ganache in that episode as well as a quick run-through of the Chocolate Delice they do at the Fat Duck). Thanks for the input, keep 'em coming!

The Ideas in Food people did it. I read about a white chocolate and creme fraiche consomme on another site. They don't give any detailed (or even vague) information about what they actually did on either site so I'm going to figure it out for myself or (even better) with some help from folks here that have already done it or have some ideas for it. I'm going to start with the most basic and obvious version, water and white chocolate, and go from there. Please join in. If you have ideas but don't have the time or the desire to experiment, throw them in here anyway.

Tuile spheres! That sounds interesting. I recently made some cocoa nib tuiles as part of my first attempt to replicate the Chocolate Delice made at the Fat Duck (without having had the original and without a recipe, just a description given by Heston in one of his Kitchen Science shows, so it's really a somewhat futile attempt but I'm going to keep working on it until I'm happy with it) but it doesn't show up in the picture because it's holding the chocolate sorbet. They were just a basic tuile sprinkled with cocoa nibs before baking. I also recently used tuiles to make little cups that I stuck on top of another dessert I made (chocolate biscuit, chocolate-raspberry mousse and raspberries layered in half sphere molds, sprayed with white chocolate, topped with the tuile cups filled with raspberries and plated with raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce). They were raspberry tuiles (raspberry puree in the batter). I haven't done much with savory tuiles and I don't really do the sweet ones all that often but I'm hoping for some inspiration seeing what eveybody else is doing.

Moderator's note: In the topic that Kerry Beal started in the Pastry & Baking forum on a chocolate course in Aalst, Belgium, she wrote, I've split off this topic in the Elsewhere in Europe forum for discussion of Aalst. -- CA Never mind the food! You're going to Belgium... beer, beer, beer! Seriously though, sounds really awesome. I love Belgian beers so, even without the course which sounds really cool, I'd be jealous.

I agree with Rob. I've even tried out some ideas on paying customers for catering jobs: "Do whatever you want, surprise us". Okay then. <insert evil laugh here> P.S. Got a recipe for that wombat milk sorbet?

I always think of the restaurant scene from The Lonely Guy. Edit: Not sure what that book it linked to at Amazon is about, I was talking about the Steve Martin movie from around '84 or '85.

Le Sanctuaire

Yeah, he mentions that gellan is used in the hot and cold drinks as well. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I plan to. I've been looking for a source for locust bean gum in less-than-huge quantities and someone here on the forums pointed me to a source that also carries other interesting toys so I ordered the gum, some ultratex and both low and high acyl gellans but I don't have them yet. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Edit: I just went through that portion of the episode again, actually he doesn't mention it in regards to the hot and cold drink so I must have read it somewhere else. I know I saw it somewhere, I just can't remember where right now.

Quick and easy last night. Caramel tapioca (I used the recipe on the box of tapioca but increased the sugar by half and caramelized it, cooked it with a vanilla bean and added a bit of butter at the end), sliced banana and some leftover cumin caramel from the chocolate delice. Not a pretty plating. I wasn't planning to take a picture but changed my mind at the last minute and tried to doctor it up a little too late.

Chocolate Delice in the style of the Fat Duck: Test 1. Heston Blumenthal gives a quick run through this in the chocolate episode of Kitchen Science but doesn't give specific recipes, measurements, etc. so I had to wing it a bit. It's a base layer of chocolate and hazelnut praline with crushed caramelized puff pastry and unflavored pop rocks. That's topped with a soft ganache of chocolate, cream and butter then wrapped in chocolate and topped with dark mirror glaze. It's plated with cumin caramel, a cocoa nib tuile, chocolate sorbet and a pulled chocolate caramel shard. I've never been to the Fat Duck to taste theirs so I may not even be close but I'm about 90% happy with the results. The sorbet was too soft and a bit too sweet (I'll reduce the sugar and user a higher percentage chocolate next time) and the caramel was a bit too stiff (which is easy to solve by warming but I'll stop the cooking a little sooner next time). Testing will continue.

A lot of awesome baking going on! I did a couple cakes over the past few days but I don't have the pictures to prove it. Cake one was what I'm calling strawberry tallcake. A good friend asked me to make a birthday cake for her husband (also a good friend) on saturday. She wanted a strawberry shortcake type cake but not the strawberries-and-whipped-cream-on-a-sweetened-biscuit type (that's not a disparaging remark, I like that type). It also had to be fairly large for the crowd she was feeding. I made two 1/2 sheets of vanilla and orange zest poundcake and halved those to make four 8x12 layers (after trimming). I topped each layer with fresh strawberry puree thickened with a bit of gelatin and stirred until spreadable, vanilla-white chocolate custard, sliced strawberries marinated in a little sugar and orange flower water and stabilized whipped cream. Then I coated the whole thing in the whipped cream and topped it with more berries. A night in the fridge let the cake pull in some of the moisture and flavor. They were very happy with it. Tonight I made cake two for her son's birthday tomorrow. He wanted chocolate and lots of it so I did four layers of chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, a disc of aerated chocolate in the middle and discs of chocolate butter ganache with unflavored pop rocks (gotta make it fun) in the other two spaces.