Tri2Cook

The pork was somewhat saucy but there was also sauce on the side in case I wanted more. The extent of "eaters" was me... although, I shared a little with my daughter's cat. It was still the Rose Bowl, Cali wouldn't budge on it's zero attendance policy so the powers-that-be took the money elsewhere. They don't tell you in the brochures that those majestic California mountains, at least in the lower half of the state, are pretty much invisible from just a few miles away when there's not sufficient wind to flush out all the smog trapped between the mountains and the incoming ocean winds.

The good ol' G&T is always somewhere near the top of my rotation.

Me neither. I had it in my shopping cart from one of the online vendors I use to order chocolate. I randomly came across a bar made from it at the local store one day and bought one to give it a try. Glad I did, I removed it from my cart. It's not that I thought it was bad, it was just nowhere near good enough for me to be willing to pay what it costs. You've been spying on me! I don't have plans for rose flavored marshmallows and I had the strawberry inspirations in mind but otherwise, this very thing is already in my "maybe" notes. Although, I've been trying very hard to not order heart shaped molds so it may never happen.

New Year's Day: pork tamales, pre-steamer. Accompanied by Mexican style rice and pinto beans. Unless somebody wants to see the leftovers I'm having tonight, no plated pics. No time for unnecessary distractions during the Rose bowl and Sugar bowl.

Very nice! It's been so long since I've done those. Ridiculously long... like, I can't even remember exactly when the last time was. Definitely not in the last 4 or 5 years at least. That feels wrong so I'm hoping you just inspired me to fix that situation sometime soon.

I used ~2 tablespoons of butter and ~4 of olive oil to cook the onions. They were seasoned with salt, pepper and a little cayenne. The onions were mixed into 1 cup mayo, 8 oz cream cheese and 2 cups sour cream. If I ever make it again, I'll try throwing a little vinegar into the cooked onions as was suggested above but it won't be anytime soon.

Might be worth a shot but I don't think it applies to my situation. The recipe called for 2 large onions for a single batch, I used 2 more towards medium-sized onions for a double batch because the kid doesn't like an overload of onion pieces in her dip. Nope, they were some particularly pungent regular ol' yellow onions. Strong enough to give my eyes a little trouble which very rarely happens to me anymore, especially with my contact lenses in. There was no sugar used at all. Not for the cooking of the onions and not anywhere else in the recipe.

Does anybody else feel like it's possible to go too far with this, at least for some uses? I diced some onions, got 'em cooking in a little olive oil and butter and dropped the heat way down. They cooked at that low heat for about an hour (maybe a little more, wasn't precisely watching the clock) with occasional stirring. They were a really nice color and texture but after tasting, I was worried they'd got a little too sweet. They were for a batch of onion dip the kid requested and, as I suspected, the dip turned out almost unpleasantly sweet. The sweet is almost entirely up-front, after that initial "wow, that's sweet" it settles down and isn't bad at all. But you get that hit of sweet with every new bite so it's a persistent almost unpleasantness.

And some of us give it a place among the great reasons for cheese to exist.

If I remember correctly, the idea, at least for the Ideas in Food folks, was you could soak the pasta early in the day, remove it from the water and store it covered in the fridge so that it's a 2 minute job at service time.

Sounds tasty and just about covers all the bases for the flavors I'm after. I'll have to play around with it when I can get my hands on some cream again. I have plans to play around with your Pomona pectin pdf too, finally got some of the pectin. I would have too. I was in the store on Monday and there was cream everywhere so I wasn't concerned. Went back yesterday and it was all gone. Checked in again today just in case, still gone. So I checked the other store that carries it and they were cleaned out as well. Hopefully they'll reload early in the week.

That sounds tasty. Is it similar to the recipe Kerry posted but with the addition of banana? I have a bit of a conundrum right now, I have some extra time off work over the holidays that I want to spend doing chocolate work but several of the recipes I want to do require cream and the entire town* is completely sold out right now. I'm crossing my fingers more will arrive early next week. *which isn't as big a thing as it sounds like, it's a tiny town and only two places in town carry it when it is available.

It's tasty... needed a little honey to bring it together which surprised me a little with all the cider but I'm happy with it. Edit: I removed the spices, fruit, etc. when it reached a spice level I was happy with before everything turned to mush. It was good but a little flat. Shot in the juice from another lemon and it's perfect. And goes down a little too easy...

Christmas Eve plan: keeping it easy, cooked onions long and slow in butter and olive oil for a batch of onion dip (young'un request), made a batch of pimento cheese and a batch of deviled ham and making pecan pie bars from the LCBOs Food & Drink magazine which are basically just shortbread with a topping similar to pecan pie filling. Assorted pickles, vegetables, breads and crackers to accompany that stuff. And nope, I'm not making homemade potato chips for the dip, they're from the grocery store. Gonna freestyle mulled wine in the crockpot. Red wine, pear cider (the boozy kind), apple cider (not the boozy kind), sliced apples and pears, orange and lemon peel + the juice from both, sliced ginger, cinnamon sticks and cloves. It'll either be tasty or ridiculous, we'll see.

Yeah, I like that too. I was trying to pretend I didn't though, ideas of heart molds for Valentines and eggs for Easter were already creeping into my head and I needed to try to sweep them back out before they got too comfy.

Genuine question, not being facetious... is there any other way? I thought that was how everybody was doing it.

And that's more than enough reason for me to decide to abandon that approach. I'm not actually using a 2 piece mold, I just mentioned that because I figured people who do have a lot of experience joining 2 pieces of chocolate.

Me too but I think maybe sometimes I don't sit it down or pick it up as level as I thought I did. I just wondered if maybe touching them on the surface of the chocolate in the melter and popping them together would work but I probably need to just put my effort into being more careful with the melting.

Mainly was just curious if it was a viable option but also a little bit because if one point melts a little unevenly, it sometimes creates little gaps once assembled.

No, ma'am... was hoping I could join 'em with the chocolate in the joint and turn them in the mold like in the video above to hold everything in place while the chocolate sets. But if the junction will be strong enough putting them together that way, I would be willing to get some freeze spray.

Any thoughts from those who work with 2 piece molds (because I usually don't) on gluing the halves together with tempered chocolate instead of melting? I have a lip to work with because I invert the molds onto a marble slab after dumping the excess.

That might work without a whole lot of adjustment. Just a little balancing of banana puree and the passion fruit puree so the banana flavor holds it's own. Chocolate, banana and passion fruit are the primary flavors of the dessert this would be based on. Minus some assorted textural items, the basic dessert is a banana chocolate flourless cake with banana caramel and passion fruit whipped cream. I made it for a catering job years ago and gave some of the extra to older daughter. That was a mistake, I've had to make it for her birthday every year since. 😆

Thanks! I already discovered the benefit of the lip on my own, I started flipping my molds onto my marble slab after dumping the excess after some battles with the thin joining edge. I also assemble in mold but I hadn't thought of turning them in the mold to line things up nicely. I'm definitely going to play with his suggestion to double-coat the shell. I was also happy to hear his thumbs-up regarding the dehydrated mini marshmallows since that's what I've decided to use. I'm still not completely happy with my results so they haven't gone public yet but I'm getting closer.

That's what I was worried about... worried enough that combined with you suspecting the same, I'm just gonna leave that one in the dessert where I already use it. The older daughter really likes the dessert I use it in so I was gonna try to capture it in a bonbon but I'll explore other ways to get the same flavors in it.

I think I already know the answer to this but that's not gonna stop me from asking anyway. I make a caramel as part of a dessert by caramelizing 220 grams sugar and 80 grams glucose then adding 110 grams soft butter and 450 grams banana puree. Would this be way out of range for any sort of half decent shelf life in a bonbon? If yes, as I suspect, does it sound like something that could be adjusted to work or would I be better off looking in another direction entirely?