papalolo

They use chocolate to keep the macaron stuck on a piece montee. You make the stucture out of foam and cover it in tempered chocolate and stick the pieces on with a good ganache. The piece montee looks like it held together with hopes and daydreams but it just good old chocolate. If you want to try on a smaller scale just use a mixing bowl as a demo...

I make gnocchi parisien all the time, and here is my suggestion...pipe long strips of the choux dough onto a sheetpan, then half freeze so that you can easily and cleanly cut through the dough with a knife..then you parboil...you should get the same results.

Dear Currypufff, since you are wavering on the full year commitment and just going into the business and learning, why don't you check out NWCAV on Main St and 27th across near Aurora Bistro. NWCAV is small enough so you get alot of one on one time and the head pastry instructor there is more than talented and well connected in the pastry world... I can tell you that the schedule and the learning time is intense but the program is short (15 weeks) and you dont get out with just the basics...you graduate ready to take on anything a kitchen can throw at you. I am an alumni of the school and I got a job 1 month before graduation based on my ability at one of Oregon's most exclusive restaurants...progressed to executive pastry chef and am now opening my own patisserie...thanks to Chef Marco. Do yourself a favor and check out the program. Most cooking schools are led by people that burnt out in the industry and NWCAV is the only school I found where the coooks are so passionate about food that the only way they could express it was teaching right at the height of their careers...If you have any questions email me at papalolo@gmail.com and I can answer any questions from the students perspective and on to building a career.

Having worked in Fenouil, I can without a doubt say that no matter what they serve there, it will be good. In regards to the Spanish only doing the whole paella thing. Its actually a mediterranean dish that is more Catalan than anything else and Catalan people can be found from the south of Spain to the South of France and all of Andorra. As far as where the best place to have dinner , I would go for Olea hands-down...It is the only restaurant in Portland where you would be hard pressed to have the same thing twice since they change the menu so often (except for the fish in salt crust and the lobster pie). And everything I have ever had there is both delicious and inspired...buts that's just me. I am a Spaniard and the food I have had in Portland that claims to be authentic Tapas has been consistently dissapointing and terribly overpriced...but like I said that just me...

In my opinion and experience the best way to tell if a flour is soft (low gluten content) is to simply take a fistful and squeeze it. The more compact a ball you make, the softer the flour, with good bread flour you actually can't squeeze a ball at all. When you read the protein content on the side of a bag of flour its kind of hit and miss. protein content is sort of an arbitrary marker since there are alot of other proteins in wheat...gliadin, amino acids, etc... that can affect the percentage. Best bet is get a litteral feel for your flour and then look for something that has the same feel.

I have had excellent succes with King Arthur Artisan flour. The gluten problem can be solved by simply not kneading it as much as you think you need to. If you just let the dough hydrate on its own, gently...your gluten content shouldnt be too excessive. Remember that gluten is not necessarily inherent in the flour, It has to be developed through kneading, so if you take it easy on your dough you should have great results. What I do it I just let my somewhat clumpy dough rest for 20 minutes or more so that it can absorb the water from the formula, when its hydrated you dont really knead it so much as fold it a couple of times...you should see it already has some nice elasticity, but the gluten at that point isnt developed to the point where it tears your dough when you roll it in to batards...it also produces a wetter dough, so you need to get used to that for good results (don't overflour you bench)

I had the advantage of doing some research before I went to culinary school. I finished a graduate degree in management before so as any type A personality I researched the crap out of my next move. I went to Northwest Culinary Academy in Vancouver BC. Not only is Vancouver a food lover's Mecca, but the chefs there told me straight up before letting me apply that I was going to spend years working in the kitchen before I got anywhere with my career. One of them even suggested I sork in a restaurant kitchen before considering applying. I already had kitchen experience during college, so I knew what I was getting myself into, but it was really cool that they were trying to weed out the candidates with stars in their eyes from the get go. The school has aroun 30 students and 5 instructors and is more than anything affordable. If your average schmuck thinks that anything with a Cordon Blue logo on it has to be good, I think they kinda deserve shelling out as much as you would for an Ivy League education. If you wanna go into the culinary profession you have to know what youre getting yourself into, how much money you'll be paid, how many years you'll be doing a job that gets you zilch in terms of respect and more importantly....You will see how worth it this whole culinary education thingy is. When you walk into a 15 crew kitchen and 13 of them are Mexicans that agreed to work and learn for next to no money, are very talented and basically run the kitchen and 2 of them went to culinary school and are doing prep at a snails pace, have band-aids on their fingers and look miserable earning 8.50 an hour...All I'm saying is it makes you think- you cant make a career decision based on a seeing a chef on TV and thinking you'd look cute in a chefs tunic...If that was the case, I'd be an astronaut.

I will never again brine and then salt meat when I cook it...been true since culinary school (when I did it) and will be true to the day I die.