Tri2Cook

I think Kerry's suggestion was a good one unless it's not the sort of thing you want to do. Some melted mint flavored chocolate blitzed with tapioca maltodextrin would give you the texture of malt powder and it reconstitutes in the mouth but is dry as sand (and will run through your fingers like sand without melting or sticking) until it contacts moisture. I did the same thing as part of my almond joy panna cotta I posted in the "dessert" thread. I used chocolate and almond butter instead of mint chocolate but the flavor's irrelevant to the process.

Awesome! GTO's suggestion sounded like a really good idea to me too. How's the taste?

Just for the record, this is not meant to imply in any way that women have inferior palates. My most reliable tasters are generally female, it was just an observation on one particular item. The topic title was changed to "gender differences in taste" instead of the original "an interesting observation" when it was pointed out to me that my original title wouldn't provide much information about thread content for the search engine to work with. I agreed completely, thus the title change. I had two more people taste it yesterday. One male, one female. The results this time threw a small twist in the numbers... both just said "mmmm, chocolate". Neither tasted anything else. That gives me six "mmm chocolate" and four "nutty taste" replies. So I'm going to bump up the hazelnut a bit and try again.

Good point. Now I'm going to have to find out if that was the case. Should be fun explaining why I'm asking that question.

I made gianduja ice cream this week to use as part of a dessert I'm working on and got a few people to taste-test it for me. Four male and four female tasters. All seperate from each other so I could hear their uninfluenced opinions. All four male tasters immediately identified that there was a "nutty" flavor. A couple even said "tastes kinda like nutella". All four female tasters said "mmmm, chocolate". I prompted them to elaborate with "anything else?". "Nope, but it's really good." "You don't taste anything other than chocolate?" "Ummm, no. Should I?" "Hmmmmm." Now three of the four female tasters are people who taste things for me quite often and have always done a great job, I trust their palates, but they couldn't identify anything but the chocolate. It wasn't due to the formulation, the guys all tasted it immediately.

I can. Split them puppies, butter 'em, put them in a baking dish, layer on some caramelized apples or pears, pour on your favorite custard mixture, let stand a few minutes, spinkle with course sugar and bake. I haven't actually tried it but I can imagine it and it sounds good in my head.

I spent some time in the southeast U.S. and that was one of the great things I was introduced to while there. I learned about cornbread (the straight stuff, crispy on the outside and tender and moist on the inside with no veggies, cheese, etc. mixed in to step on the corn flavor). Cornbread with collard greens (and pot liquor!) that were slowly simmered with ham hocks then tossed in a hot iron skillet with a little bacon grease and a pinch of sugar at the end. Cornbread in a cup drizzled with a little sorghum then drowned in buttermilk (Alabama Pudding? ). Cornbread with fresh purple hull peas. I don't have a particular favorite recipe though, it never seems to turn out as good as what those southern ladies were putting on the table.

We're usually so buried in local wild blueberries here that I've always used them in anything that calls for blueberries, saskatoons or huckleberries (it just seems to make sense to me to use a local resource rather than buy something less fresh from somewhere else when the end result is so similar). I recently made the Carrot Cake with Peach-Ginger Cream and Saskatoon Berry Compote from "Wild Sweets" and used some of last years blueberries for the compote instead of the saskatoons... it was tasty. If saskatoons were local instead of blueberries I'd do the same with them.

Looks good to me. Being able to get live crawfish is one of the main things I miss from the time I spent in the southeast U.S. I'd give a big pile of prawns for a fresh, spicy crawfish boil right now. Good friends standing around a picnic table covered in spicy mudbugs, potatoes and corn on the cob with a beer in our hands. I'd trade many a "fine dining" meal I've had for it.

Thanks GTO and nice first shot at eclairs. We won't discuss what my first attempt at them looked like. It was a long time ago (I think I was about 14 or 15) and I still remember them down to the ugliest detail. Nice profiteroles jumanggy. Actually the lychee doesn't really stand out all that much in the puree, I probably should have used more (or just left them out but I wanted to represent all of the flavors of the original). gfron1, those look great... and probably taste even better. I may have to check out that book.

I'm not as brave as you. I've found cream in that condition, poured off the liquid (smelled fine), poked and prodded at the solids (smelled fine too) and said "interesting" as I tossed it in the trash can. I'm curious to hear what you think about it (and curious to hear what you think about it the next morning as well ).

Ode to Ispahan. Inspired by the flavors in Pierre Herme's beautiful creation. Almond milk anglaise, raspberry-lychee puree and rose petal ice cream (made with rose petals from my neighbor's garden)... I really have to pick up some nicer looking plates one of these days.

I really like ye olde fondant potatoes. The unadorned version... just water, butter, salt and pepper and a little patience. I make 'em with stock instead of water sometimes but I actually prefer the water and butter version most of the time. Gives a nice pure potato flavor with a little sweetness from the butter. Modified tartiflette... so I guess technically it's not tartiflette. I like to make it with stilton instead of reblochon. Not that I mind the original version of course, good stuff. Big, thick-cut fries with malt vinegar. It's not particularly one of my favorites but I sometimes cut potatoes, dip them in sea salt, seal them in a ziplock and take them with me as a snack when I'm doing long bike rides (anything over 100 km) on hot days.

I love spicy and even sweat-causing, sinus-dripping foods but thinking about the amount of cayenne that would translate to in some recipes... ouch.

"Duxelle, use a bunch in cooking, a very intense mushroom stock, frozen slices"... 8 portabellos aren't going to go that far I don't think. Unless those are some seriously huge 'shrooms. When the matsutakes are in here I usually collect and freeze some and they hold up really well. I've never stored portabellos before, they're pretty much always available, so I don't know how they behave with freezing. I don't like to use only fresh mushrooms for stock, maybe if you use a ridiculous amount of mushrooms and reduce it way down. A relatively small amount of dried mushrooms alone or in combination with fresh launches the flavor and aroma to the moon.

I will never again continue to slice anything while they're showing the really cute new waitress the kitchen... and that's all I got to say about that. On a different note, one that involves a different kind of pain, not the pysical kind, I will never again do an onsite cooking job and forget to test the oven that I've never used before.

I'm not really a cake experimenter. Cake just isn't generally one of my favorite desserts except for the heavy, dense types that aren't what people usually want. For that reason, most of the cake recipes I use when making cakes for others come straight out of The Cake Bible. I'm sure that book isn't the complete gospel on the subject but it hasn't steered me wrong so far. The experimenting (which is something I usually enjoy but not so much when it comes to cake) has already been done for me. I pretty much always syrup my cakes. For strawberry cakes I use the strawberry sauce from the same book thinned with simple syrup to moisten the cake. I haven't found a recipe that produces that cake mix texture that most people seem to equate with "good cake" but a little syrup helps steer them in that direction and with a little creative addition to the syrup it can boost the flavor as well.

Me too. Thanks to you both.

Take a bite. If you like it on it's own you'll (probably*) like it in a ganache. There's not many things cream or butter make taste worse. *I'm not familiar with that chocolate so I'm adding the "probably" disclaimer in case it's a really low percentage milk that completely washes out in the cream.

That makes it easier. Anything that can sit on a nice platter/stand/etc. and be sliced will work for that so it's just a matter of ruling out what they've said no to. I'm not really familiar with OA but everybody is talking about avoiding sugar, flour, bread, etc. and using sour cream, cream cheese cream, etc. Is OA like Atkins and you have to avoid the carbs but can munch all the fat you want? I'm not trying to sound rude, I know a lot of people who've done really well on Atkins, I'm just trying to figure out what we're after.

Nope, I make ice cream pretty often during summer. I just haven't been making ice cream from the book this thread is about. I have the custards for a rose ice cream (made with rose petals from my neighbor's garden, she also gave me a big pile of rhubarb a few days ago so I've been busy with that as well) and a pomegranate ice cream chilling in the fridge right now.

With absolutely no intent to offend, that doesn't really sound like something that would say bacon to me. It sounds like something similar in appearance to bacon but I don't see the flavor saying bacon. I'd ease up on the spicy elements and work in some smokey. Maybe even a touch of maple (some of that smoked maple syrup might be awesome if you could get it). It will also be difficult to mask the egg-y taste, egg manages to jump through almost anything, but I don't know what to suggest as an alternative off the top of my head. Of course, in all fairness, you didn't actually say you were going for a traditional bacon flavor. I just assumed that.

I don't make or eat biscotti all that often so I probably don't qualify as knowing what a good one is but I really like the orange walnut biscotti from In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs. I don't remember who did them, I haven't had that book out in years, but they were always very popular with anyone I shared them with as well.

Actually that would be his finger, just thought I'd mention that. Best of luck with this, definitely an interesting challenge.

I guess I need a little clarification on what "no sweets" means. Do you mean no added sugar or nothing that's even remotely sweet (like fruit)? If fruit's not off the list you could do a little experimenting with bread substitutes to eliminate the white flour and do some type of summer pudding. With the right fruit choices you could eliminate the need for sugar or sugar substitutes.