Tri2Cook

Yeah, I didn't run into any real trouble with the caviar either. My first ravioli was with peas because I didn't want to worry about PH adjustment and all that while learning the technique. I figured the less potential for trouble, the better in the beginning. I remember very clearly looking at the green tadpoles floating around in the rinse pan and thinking "not as easy as I assumed it would be". I was happy that it worked though. That pea formula is apparently pretty solid (so I'd recommend it as a great starting point) because I remember the very first try working perfectly, they just weren't pretty and round. So, just to make the best of the situation (always remember to laugh, it makes the experimenting and learning process much more fun), I put 'em in a bowl of consomme, floated a couple chive blossoms on top and told everybody it was Pond Water Soup.

Maybe I'll be ok then, although it was a very, very delicate gel. A good breath or two on it probably would have melted it. It's in the fridge now so I'll know in a day or two.

I finally had some free time to play last night. I roasted ~500 g of strawberries sprinkled with a little sugar and salt at 300 f. for an hour, added 17 oz. water (~5 dl as called for in the recipe) and moved it around a little to pick up all of the syrup. I dumped it in a pan, added a few shreds of lemon zest and a vanilla bean and simmered it gently for an hour. I then strained it, passed it through a coffee filter and added soaked gelatin (1/200 by weight, didn't seem like enough but I'm following the process as written first time through), chilled it and put it in the freezer. I'll dump it in a filter-lined strainer today and leave it in the fridge for a day or two and report back on what I end up with. The flavor was very nice before it went in the freezer. I still have a feeling it needed more gelatin, it didn't set very well, so I may have to do the filtering part again. I probably should have went with my gut on that one but we'll see.

I can't claim to be a "mg type" but I did go through a flurry of experimenting with some of that stuff a while back and some of it's pretty cool. Some of it is more interesting as an idea (How the heck did they think of that one?) than as an actual culinary experience but even those can open your mind to other possibilities. For example, I remember not being too thrilled with the methocel "hot ice cream" thing. The thought process of someone coming up with it is awesome but eating it didn't remind me of ice cream in any way. But by doing it, I learned the process and tried my own experiments with it. Many went in the trash but a few I was actually happy with. One that went over well with friends was when I took a batch of Moto's donut soup recipe, flavored part of it with cinnamon, swirled that into the base soup and used the "hot ice cream" technique to poach a cream cheese icing disc that I floated on the soup. Cinnamon Bun Soup. Not my creation, just a variation on what others had already done, and no real point to it (there are tons of easier ways to add the cream cheese element that would have been just as good or better) but it was still fun. I think that's the key, just have fun. If you have an idea, try it. If it sucks... laugh, toss it in the bin and figure out what went wrong.

I recently came across a strawberry consomme recipe (on a blog I think) that, if I remember correctly, used freezing as part of the clarification process. I didn't try it but had intended to give it a try at sometime just out of curiosity. Unfortunately, I either forgot to save the link or have no idea where I saved it and can't find it. I've been considering ordering the lab equipment (vacuum pump, filtration flasks) like the Duby's use for clarifying "consommes" that won't get any real benefit (or may even suffer) from the traditional long cooking process just for fun and experimenting but that doesn't help with your question either so I guess this is just useless rambling unless you have better luck than me searching out that recipe I mentioned or someone else that has seen it get's their memory jogged from me mentioning it. EDIT: Found it! It has some savory components you may not want for what you're doing but they could easily be left out and sugar/vanilla/etc. substituted in with a little experimenting. I haven't tried this yet but it sounded interesting to me. Freeze Filtered Cold Strawberry Consomme

Sometimes you feel like a nut... A play on the candy bar. Almond Joy Panna Cotta. Two layers of bittersweet chocolate panna cotta with a layer of coconut panna cotta, almond syrup and a "soil" made with bittersweet chocolate, almond butter and maltodextrin. The chocolate layers need a bit of tweaking, I wasn't completely happy with it, but otherwise it turned out ok.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I've been doing a bit of experimenting lately but I keep forgetting to take pictures. Not that they're all that interesting but I feel funny posting about them without pics when everybody has the nice pics with theirs. I worked on something tonight that I'll finish up tomorrow so if I remember to grab a picture I'll share it here even if it isn't very exciting.

It may be more simple than what you have in mind but the recipe for chocolate jelly from khymos can be modified to feature your chocolate instead of using the cocoa it calls for. I did it with 85% and gelatin sheets instead of the agar (because I didn't have agar on hand) and was happy with the results. On the site it's paired with caramelized cauliflower but I'm sure you could find another way to use it if that doesn't sound interesting. I didn't use it for anything, I just wanted to try it, so I cut it into cubes and we munched 'em with various things sweet and savory just to get some ideas of what they worked with. Maybe someday I'll think of something I want to use it with. I have a bad habit of having to try everything that sounds interesting to me even if I don't have an actual use in mind for it.

Thank you very much! A demo of this would be a cool thing to have on here but I understand what you're saying. I already planned to remove it from the cake before cutting so I guess technically I could just leave it on the plastic for that matter, that honestly hadn't occured to me until now. Anyway, I'm going to give it a shot. I'll let everybody know how it goes.

Thanks everybody for all of the ideas. I'm going to do some trials with the various suggestions (doing something much more simple for now but similar in size). I didn't try parchment, I just assumed it wouldn't be transparent enough, but I will. So now I'm wondering if edible wafer paper or the edible paper used for printing pictures to put on cakes is transparent enough for tracing? I've never used them before so I don't know anything about them.

Thanks for the ideas. I've never worked with the sugarveil icing but it looks interesting. The plastic wrap might do the trick, didn't think of that one. I don't know if I could pull it off freehand which is why I was doing it over plastic but I could give it a try. I don't do very much cake decorating, it's not something we do at work and I'm not particularly good at it, but when your 83 year old grandmother says she wants you to make her cake, you make her cake. Of course she didn't ask me to do the artwork I'm doing for it so that little difficulty is my own fault.

I know that's a confusing thread title but I couldn't think of a good way to word it. My mom was a really good artist, she worked as a pastry chef but spent a lot of her free time drawing and doing large, extravagant embroidery panels based on her drawings. There was one particular drawing she did (I'm not sure if it was her own or her version of something she'd seen) that my grandmother loves. I want to recreate it in royal icing to put on my grandmother's 83rd birthday cake. I succeeded in doing the artwork by putting a copy of the drawing under a sheet of clear acetate and slowly over the course of a couple days tracing it with royal icing. It was very time consuming because there are a lot of colors involved and I wanted to be sure they didn't bleed into each other but it turned out pretty nice... until I tried to get it off the acetate once it had dried. Then pieces began to break so I said a few less than polite words and tossed it in the trashcan. The only cure I can come up with is to make it thicker next time but I'd be very appreciative of any suggestions or ideas from the cake decorating experts. I plan to place it on a matching sized slab of royal icing to make it stronger but I have to get it off the plastic first. I want to do this with my own hands so "copycake" and things of that nature are not an option I'm willing to consider and I'd prefer not to do it with airbrush either (I guess I'm a glutton for punishment but my original idea was to do it in royal icing and I liked the look that it gave the first one, it gave it some depth which fits with the picture I'm doing). Thanks.

Two bowls is definitely an advantage, they can take a while to freeze completely and if they're not completely frozen your ice cream won't freeze. I have a one-bowl freezer of that type at home and if I couldn't use the freezer at the restaurant I would already have replaced it with one that doesn't require freezing the bowl. It's annoying to me to make a small batch of ice cream and not be able to make more until the next day.

I don't know if these would help for ganache, haven't tried it. They're not cheap but they pack a lot of flavor in a very small amount so that may help with the moisture problem. If you look through all 7 pages (not sure why they didn't just put them on one page but that's a different topic, "annoying website design"), they have a pretty good selection of flavors.

I do the same thing but with fleur de sel instead of sugar. Makes a nice finishing salt, haven't really done anything else with it so far. I have a container of the coarse salt with pods in it and a container of the salt that I ran through a processor with some dry leftover pods that I'd used the seeds from. The processed salt/pods is more aromatic at this point but the other has nicer texture for finishing.

If you're just trying to learn some of the basics and play with some of the ideas, you can find lots of information online with a little effort. There are tons of blogs out there on the subject, many with step by step instructions and discussions about any difficulties found along the way. The spherification stuff is actually pretty easy with all the information that's available about it. Lots of very curious people worked on figuring it out so the learning curve was practically eliminated by the time I got around to trying it. Find one of the online pages with the technique explained using the peas, that one isn't troublesome because the peas work as is without having to worry about PH levels. After you see that it's not all that scary, go to town on everything you can think of. That's what I did anyway but take that advice for what it's worth because I'm no expert on the stuff.

I do a cookie bar in which I use neutral flavored shortbread-ish cookies (that way I can bake off a bunch at a time and use them for whatever flavor I need) that I brush with liquor infused syrups and glaze with various cocktail themed glazes. The syrup contains whatever liquor is appropriate for the cocktail. I use a tequila syrup with agave nectar for the margarita cookies. I'm not a fan of tequila personally but I can't send them out not knowing so I taste 'em and it's definitely tequila. If you're just going for a tequila shot thing maybe toss a bit of lime zest in the cookie dough (or not if you want just tequila as the flavor), leave off the margarita glaze and sprinkle a little salt over the syrup.

Just out of curiosity, not trying to start an argument, what's your personal criteria for that? What determines if a chef is just doing what they want to do or being pretentious? I just wonder how others draw their personal line on things like that. I don't have a line in that area but maybe I should. Is serving 25 appetizer sized courses using expensive ingredients and leading edge techniques being pretentious or is serving meatloaf and mashed potatoes so that I won't be considered pretentious being pretentious? Would some of the "famous" chefs that get a lot of criticism be considered good or great chefs if it weren't for the fact that they happened to get a tv show? Just stuff I wonder about sometimes.

I have the Rick Bayless book and remember it being pretty good, haven't looked in it for a few years. Never seen the others so I can't comment on them.

Get rid of cookbooks? Nope. In general I'm not a pack rat, I hate clutter, but cookbooks are an exception. I rarely use them beyond browsing through them to be inspired (pronounced: steal ideas) but I frequently buy them which has resulted in a pretty large collection. On top of that, I inherited my mom's even larger collection when she passed away a few years ago. I've slowed down a little but I have a long-time battle going on between my cookbook collector side and my cheap side over whether or not I'm going to buy the El Bulli books. I really want them but don't need them and they aren't cheap.

Make a real entrance... do your own interpretation of The Naked Chef. When we do catering jobs I wear whatever I'm working in if it's backdoor delivery, chef coat if I have to set up where the guests can see me. I've never done a cake delivery, cake art is not a skill I'm in great supply of, but I guess I'd do it the same way.

Thanks folks. I don't want to make artificial body fluids and don't know anything about making paper but I'll find something to do with it. Edit: Actually, after giving it some thought, I have an idea I'm going to try. It would belong in the pastry forum if it works out though, not here. If not, I've received a couple private messages offering to take it off my hands.

I have my mom's book of notes, recipes and ideas from her years as a pastry chef. That's my most coveted item, she's a large part of why I cook for a living now. She told me to always play with my food and never accept that there's already a "best" version of anything. The book was found while my sister and other relatives were sorting out the house and a few other family members tried to get their hands on it. My sister and my grandmother told them to f@#% off... that it was going to me. My most used book? I don't think I have one of those. My mom had the theory that you make it their way once... then you fix what should be different from then on and I've kinda adopted it. Most of the baking and pastry books she owned (which I now have) are filled with notes in every available blank space where she altered things the way she thought they needed to be. When I'd ask her for a recipe, she'd usually give me a generic one that I already knew/could find myself. I'd say "I want the one you make". She'd say "create the one you make". It was really irritating sometimes. Of course I have all those recipes now but I try my best to not use them... I get it now.

A few months ago, in a flurry of excitement after reading the various threads here, I ordered a bunch of the cool chemicals/additives for doing various food science experiments. I was thrilled with the spherification, I don't/didn't use it at the restaurant but still play around with it occasionally at home/for private jobs/etc. I still make some use of the tapioca maltodextrin, carrageenan and a couple other things as well. The methylcellulose (E50 if I remember correctly), I bought to try the "hot ice cream" thing with. After a little learning curve, it worked great but I wasn't too thrilled. I thought it was "neat" but it didn't make me think ice cream in any way other than appearance. So, after the initial fun of learning something new, I was no longer interested in that particular idea which left me with over 400 grams of the stuff. I was doing an inventory of the toy chest recently and almost tossed it when it occured to me to ask here about things to do with it other than trashcan it. Any ideas? If there's nothing that sounds interesting to do with it I'll send it to whoever wants it/asks first rather than throw it away. It's been kept in a tightly sealed glass jar in it's original, resealable bag in a dark, cool cabinet so it should be in good shape.

I threw some nice, thick ribeyes on the grill and served them with polenta with garlic and chives from the garden, blanched some asparagus, wrapped it with prusciutto and tossed it on the grill and did some fondant potatoes with olive oil and butter. Nothing ground breaking or earth shaking but everybody seemed to enjoy it. I didn't get pics, I had some friends over and wasn't really thinking about the camera.