Tri2Cook

Maybe I misread his post but I don't think he's looking for a ganache. I think he's talking about chocolate, temperable and able to be used anywhere you would use any other chocolate, that has a caramel flavor. Maybe make a caramel, bring the temp down, work it into some melted chocolate then see if you can temper it? I have no idea if it would work but I'm willing to give it a shot. Worst case I'll have some caramel flavored chocolate I can't temper. I'm sure I can find something to do with it.

Good point. I honestly wasn't criticizing, I love trying to do unusual things with no real purpose other than the fun of doing it as well (For example, I made a fried egg consomme. Weird and didn't have a single practical use for it in mind but I wanted to try it and, after a few not so great attempts, succeeded). I was just thinking if we could find a way to make what you were going for more obvious in the end result it would be kinda cool (other than the general scariness of deep fried beer in the first place but that's beside the point). Maybe with the above suggested idea from magictofu but sub in gellan for the gelatin, coat in pretzel crumbs and freeze before frying quickly. Then your fried beer could potentially be crispy and hot on the outside and still have nice, cold beer on the inside.

That's really nice. What's going on in there flavor wise?

That's interesting in a scary sort of way but, ummm, with no offense intended, isn't that actually deep fried beer batter? It sounds a lot like beer battered fish minus the fish.

If you're right about that then I can't play in this thread. None of my books that were new when I got them are beat up. Not even books that I've had for 20 years and used a lot. There may be a few small smudges in some of them but not many and most of those came from loaning books to others. Yes, I get called a picky b*st*rd all the time. I'm fine with that.

It's actually not all that bad for a book from 1936 that appears to have seen a lot of use but it's the worst I have. It has the original owners* names handwritten inside: "Ressupe book: Alain McSwain and Mae Bell McSwain" and a clipping from an old Tractor Farming magazine with a couple recipes (stuffed green peppers and Mrs. Gilmore's Lemon Custard Pudding)and an add introducing the new International Harvester Farmall Cub which "will replace 2 or 3 horses or mules". There's no date on the clipping but that tractor was introduced in 1947 (I was curious so I looked it up). *I know this because the lady that gave me the book said it belonged to her mom, Mae Bell McSwain.

Hmmm. I wonder if simply combining the two would have the same end result once dissolved in the liquid being worked with. I'm converting something that I already do without spheres to something involving spheres for a V-day thing I have going on. I'll probably just order the Calcium Gluconate Lactate and be done with it.

The mole paper was inspired all right... inspired straight out of the Duby's latest book "Wild Sweets: Chocolate". They use it with a pork dish. Which processes are inaccessible to you? Maybe we can find a way to help make them accessible. The pearls are juice + agar at 1% by weight boiled, sieved, cooled just slightly and dripped into a bath of neutral oil that was kept in the freezer for a day. They don't have that burst of liquid you get with alginate "caviar" but are still full of flavor. They could be done with gelatin instead of agar, poured thin and cut into tiny cubes. The foam can be done with gelatin and a cream siphon or (for a lighter version) blitzed with lecithin or even egg whites. The xanthan and methylcellulose (at .4% by weight each) just make a thick, creamy foam. For the soil without maltodextrin you can pulverize chocolate, cinnamon and chile powder in a processor. Or, if there are no legal restrictions where you live, you can PM me an address and I can probably hook you up with a few things to play with.

...does anybody know if there are specific proportions? I have ~450 gr. of each on hand from some experimenting and want to combine them into "Gluco" or "Calcium Gluconate Lactate" (depending where you order it) but I can't find any information on proportions. I assume there's a reason the two are combined as the gluconate is more neutral tasting than the lactate but I've never seen mention of using the gluconate alone.

Yeah, it's a long wait and the difference in shipping between the U.S. and Canada was pretty steep but that's often the case so I just quit thinking about it and hit the "order" button. Now I have to wait (im)patiently. The website is supposed to launch in may so that may help make the wait a little easier.

I didn't get to see this one and haven't been able to find it online yet but I'll keep searching. I have the BBC broadcasts of all of season one and half of season two downloaded. I'm persistent so I'll get the rest of season two and the christmas dinner eventually.

Thanks! It sounded like you were all having a huge amount of fun and it inspired me to play with some southwest flavors. nopales and new mexico chile sorbet: pureed and strained nopales (unfortunately, from a jar), new mexico chile powder (I would have prefered to use fire roasted new mexico puree but no fresh new mexicos available here), agave nectar, a bit of lemon and a pinch of salt prickly pear foa... errr... froth: prickly pear juice, xanthan gum, methylcellulose mole paper: wonton skin painted with a mixture of ancho and poblano chile oil, cocoa, melted chocolate and a bit of cinnamon, baked until crispy passion fruit pearls: used the oil spherification technique for these, just passion fruit juice and agar dripped into freezing cold oil mole soil: the paint for the "paper" powdered with tapioca maltodextrin

Really awesome stuff everybody. Fanny, you can send a box of those my way if you need to get rid of them. Inspired by following the adventures of Kerry, Rob and Verjuice in the Silver City Culinary Extravaganza thread... Tres Amigos nopales and new mexico chile sorbet prickly pear foa... errr... froth! (that was close, I almost said "foam") mole paper passion fruit pearls mole soil

Wow. Just f'ing wow. Beautiful meal. Rob, we're gonna have to do some forum brainstorming one of these days. I love unusual inspirations and incorporating unexpected ingredients for desserts (which has resulted in some messes along the way but it's fun), the celery soap theme is awesome.

Thanks! Their shopping cart won't let me check out (says UPS ground doen't deliver to my address but they do, I get stuff that way all the time) so I'm going to drop them an email and find out if they accept orders from Canada.

This is cool! Sounds like a lot of fun and the food is making me drool. I love chiles. Fresh chiles are hard to get here (I know all about being in a remote area) other than standard grocery store jalapenos but I grab whatever dry chiles I can find and I keep about 15 or so chile powders on hand. Looking forward to seeing what you three get into once you're all together.

That's really cool jumanggy. Looks great and I bet it tastes awesome. Thanks for the compliment. My inspiration was a song title. The band NoFX did a punk-ish, rocked up version of the song "All of Me" and titled it "Olive Me". I always thought that was kinda cool. The candied olives are just sliced black olives that I soaked overnight in sugar syrup and oven dried. They have a crunchy but not hard texture and taste sweet with a light olive flavor and a distinct background licorice/anise taste that I didn't expect to find. I did the cake like a pineapple upside down cake but used a lemon-olive oil cake and candied olive slices instead of pineapple and plated it with a bit of olive oil. The nibs are just chopped up candied olives. The mousse, I shaped into "olives" then drizzled with olive oil and a bit of sea salt.

Awesome jumanggy! I forgot about this thread, I think I'll add my latest plated dessert here as well. It's not as pretty as yours but it's plated. I call it Olive Me (the band NoFX did a rocked up version of the song "All of Me" and called it Olive Me, I always thought it was pretty cool). Lemon-Olive Oil Cake with Candied Olives Olive Oil Ice Cream Candied Olive Nibs Chocolate-Olive Oil Mousse

That's the prices I found as well. I was hoping they might carry locust bean gum, no such luck. That stuff's a pain to find in smaller quantities.

Awesome Lior! I'm inspired by your determination. I took a stab at molded chocolates a while back and basically said "(insert expletive that begins with "F" here) this mess". I was working with some old, floppy molds that belonged to my mom and it was a pain. I really wanted to work with them since they were moms but I finally gave up on the sentiment crap and bought a couple decent molds and things went much better. I'll never be at the level of the chocolate artists here though.

I'm planning a multi-course V-day dessert as a thanks to some of our best catering customers (with the side benefit of generating some advertising) but most of what I'm doing is plated stuff so I'm no help. Interested in hearing what you're doing though if it's not a secret. For mine, chocolate will be everywhere with each course focusing around a different fruit (except for one, which will focus on the chocolate) and I'm working on some to-go containers of flavored chocolate "paints" for... ummm... whatever they decide to do with them after they leave.

Olive Me: lemon-olive oil cake w/ candied olives olive oil ice cream candied olive nibs chocolate-olive oil mousse

Nice Rob! I think I want pistachios now.

I agree with Kerry. I kept a small bowl of citric acid dissolved in a little water handy and just added it to taste early in the beating process. I used malic acid for the apple batch as well. It makes a definite difference, the fruit flavors maintain there brightness (and in some cases, tartness). Not that they're bad without it, but it is a nice addition.

I think that would work great. Probably better than the way I did it. I'm not completely happy with my caramel batch, I shouldn't have deducted the caramelized sugar from the total for the syrup and I was a little too heavy with the salt. As for subbing the syrup, I wouldn't be too worried (with the disclaimer that I'm no expert, just basing this on my experimenting). I subbed a blueberry syrup I made with wild blueberries, sugar and citric acid for all but 2 tbsp. of the corn syrup in the blueberry batch, I subbed honey for half the corn syrup in the mayan chocolate batch and I subbed honey for all of the corn syrup in the honey lemon batch. They all worked just fine. I didn't think of doing maple, which disappoints me a bit because it's one of my favorite flavors in the sweet world, and molasses would be cool too. I started out with the plan to avoid using extracts and oils but wound up using vanilla and rosewater. I did manage to stick with my plan to not add anything for color other than what I flavored them with so it's not a visually exciting array.