Chris Hennes

Can you explain a bit more about what's in those bottles? Are you using them just for various syrups and infusions, or are you transferring some "normal" liquor to them for more compact storage?

Just a quick update to my previously-stated opinions on the Lombardia and Finocchiona I posted about: after a couple weeks tightly sealed in the refrigerator, I found the flavor of the Lombardia to be considerably improved, and the moisture completely evened out. Of the two, it was my favorite for eating raw. The fennel in the Finocchiona tended to be overwhelming when eaten raw, but sliced atop a pizza it was excellent.

Well, as long as the last thing that goes in needs at least an hour to cook, it's fine.

I'm looking for some ideas for meals that, as the final stage of cooking, require an hour or more in the oven, unattended. I would prefer things that are ready to go straight from the oven, with no additional prep: for example, braises are great, but if they are supposed to be served over egg noodles, I'd have to make the noodles. Not a deal breaker, but not my preference. Bonus points if it's a complete meal, with no need to add a vegetable side, etc. Any ideas for me? Right now I've got a few braises that I serve over mashed potatoes (the potatoes take about an hour to bake in the oven, then a quick mash and they are ready), but I'd like to branch out.

I'm in the midst of a dining-room redesign project to add a big built-in buffet/hutch whose purpose in life is to hold liquor and related accouterments, so I've been toying with practical ways to make a three-deep arrangement feasible. Here's the current iteration of the design: The liquor will go on the lower cabinets, which are designed to be tall enough so that my tallest bottle (the maraschino, I think) will fit on either the upper or the lower shelf. Glassware will go in the glass-front cabinets on top. I have no idea what will go in the drawers, they are only there for aesthetic reasons . I'm thinking of making the bottom trays pull out, but that will cost me some height and some width, so I'm not sure if it's worth it, to make the more obscure stuff easier to get at. The lower cabinets are only 18" deep at the deepest point, so it can probably hold about four rows of bottles if push came to shove.

How many bottles deep are you planning on?

A couple months of spring here, and this is what it looked like before I cut it down yesterday: I had the soil tested and I have a ton of phosphorous and potassium, and almost no nitrogen at all. So I'm hoping that between the rye composting over the summer, and the nitrogen fertilizer I put down at the recommended level, that this patch is well-primer for tomatoes this season.

Steve, does that mean more, or less, sugar?

In what parts of the country can one find Del Taco? I thought we had every chain known to humankind here in OKC, but I'm not familiar with this one.

My guess is the reason behind it is just to ensure even distribution of the salt. For this type of bread we spend most of our time deliberately retarding the growth of the yeast (using cool water, refrigerating, etc.) to give the flavor time to develop before the yeast have finished doing their thing. So I don't think that's a concern here.

I liked the salt level in Shotts caramels: it was one of my favorite ganaches of the weekend (I also loved the Caprese and the White Pepper. Turns out I don't much care for the fruit fillings.)

So I know I said I was combining both days into one post, but these posts are getting mighty long! So here we are on the last day... We started out in the classroom discussing decorating techniques, and Kelly showed us her two bon bons from yesterday: Bob has a slick device for making what he calls "small" batches of caramel: it's a deep fryer, and it works extremely well (and the caramel was damned good). Here are some more bonbons that we finished up first thing today (they needed an overnight rest before they could be bottomed). I think these are Erica's cardamom ganache, but I'm not positive on that. Lots of tasting going on today: The culinary students learn how to temper chocolate in a melter: Discussing flavors: Our very own mad scientist, hard at work: I think Eric made a dozen ganache flavors over the weekend: here he is at work on one of them: Kerry and Bob trying to decide if it's too early to start drinking. Hey, it's five o'clock somewhere! Me capping off my version of Steve's cherry ganache bonbons: We did manage to make a bit of a mess (remember, this is one of four batches of tempered chocolate, and it's the one with the biggest pan!): Prepping some molds for bottoming, I think maybe they were a little over-full: Steve getting hands-on with his lesson on bottoming bonbons. It turns out that the trick is to hold the blade perpendicular to the molds as you sweep across. Also, be sure you are holding the mold level! Once you airbrush the molds you have to wipe the tops off to try to prevent scraping the colored cocoa butter into your uncolored molding chocolate: Wilma brought some bar molds to play with: here she is checking the fill level on one of them. Mike experimenting with luster dust (no, that is not a narcotic...) Pat discussing his color application technique with Bob: Steve demonstrating the use of the immersion blender: Jim working on his technique for capping off bonbons: Eric checks the white chocolate for temper before Erica molds her hearts: Steve demoing capping off bonbons. I think he did this demo 20 times this weekend. Thanks Steve! I still suck, but I'm learning... Kerry brought her silkscreening toys: here is her setup for her "Chocolate Doctor" transfers: Making the transfer: The complete transfer sheet: Kelly hand-painting the finishing touches on her Caprese bonbons: The main thing I wanted to practice was filling molds properly, so here I am doing it again: A wide shot of everyone hard at work: Eric played around with a disposable hemisphere mold that had a cocoa butter transfer already on it. It turned out to be too flexible to use normal techniques on: Steve showing us how to play the guitar: Mary hand-painting chile peppers on her habanero bonbon molds: Damnit! I can never get all the friggin' things out! But Jim can: This is why he's so happy: one shot, one kill complete batch out of the mold. He's ready to go pro: Bob showing us how his death machine... er... caramel slicer works: See where Bob's hand is? Brave man, he must REALLY trust Art!! Kerry hand-making a transfer sheet: Here's the completed sheet: Even the culinary students pitch in to help us learn how to pipe properly: Wilma sprinkling peanuts on the chocolate-covered caramels: Bob shows the culinary students how to hand-roll the caramels in chocolate: And now applying some peanuts: Tasting continuously is an important part of the process: Still working on our piping skills, of course. How do you hold the bag again? The culinary students got more than they bargained for! They got to play in the chocolate along with the rest of us: We only did one batch of slabbed ganache this weekend: Shotts' coconut lemongrass ganache. Probably should have dipped it in dark instead of milk, but even that may not have saved it. And the transfer sheets didn't transfer right, either! Bummer. Here are Kerry's transfers on oreos: The disposable mold was tough to work with, but the shine on the resulting bonbons was impressive: And for my final shot: we made a hell of a lot of chocolates this weekend... I'd like to thank everyone who came to the event, I had a fantastic time and learned a lot. I hope I got myself "over the hump" from my last few failures at home, and I'm re-energized to get back into the confections world now. Thanks especially to Steve of course, for putting it together, and to the folks at Albert Uster and L'Academie for indulging us. Finally, thanks to my wife for taking most of these photos! I hope they helped those of you who couldn't make it get a sense for what it is like. I'm ready for next year... Niagara here we come!!!

Days two and three blend together in the photos, so here they are combined. My wife was taking all of these, so apologies if there are too many of me! On the second and third day we used the kitchen and a classroom at L'Academie de Cuisine: To start the day we had a presentation by 2 Dr. Balu M. Balasubramanian about going from cocoa beans to chocolate liquor, part of the process of going from "bean to bar": After that, Steve led a discussion on developing new flavor combinations: As you can see, we hardly had any flavors to experiment with. You know, only a few gajillion... Hardly any molds, either - To get things started, we fired up two melters and two temperers, so one white, one milk, and two dark chocolates. Chocolate was generously donated by the folks at Cargill, whose brands, Wilbur, Peter's, Veliche, and Gerkens, I was not familiar with until we started playing with them. I think we were using the Wilbur, but I'm not positive on that. Here's Eric with one of his melters: Kerry taught a beginners class while that was going on: here they are opening the box that Lior sent (very quickly!) from Israel: Now, onto some production shots: here Mary and I discuss the production of a mojito ganache. Getting the amount of lime right proved tricky... Kelly set to work airbrushing immediately for her exotic creations: Erica beating the hell out of a mold to get the air bubbles out: Steve and Jim discussing flavor development (I think... could have been Checkers Burgers, too): Kelly's class was a big hit, of course. At least, Beth seems to have really enjoyed it: Susan learning how to mold: Pat's turn: And Beth: Donna learns the finer points of smacking the crap out of a mold to get the air bubbles out: Kerry likes to teach dipping by using Oreo cookies: In the other room, Art started up the panning machine: And we batched out a bunch of shells for later filling: We learned quickly that a commercial gas burner has a little more "oomph" than the ones at home. Stir faster! Art offering our photographer a sample: Mary and Jim tasting Shotts's Salted Caramel Ganache. I believe it met with their approval (it was probably the most successful Shotts flavor of the weekend, in my opinion). Me pouring on the booze (surprise, surprise): Jim checks the fill level of the molds: Mary showing some tricks to one of the culinary students there assisting us (and keeping us from trashing the place ) -- Filling the molds: The most exotic flavors of the weekend were Kelly's White Pepper bon bons, and her "Caprese" bon bons. Here you can see the sun-dried tomatoes in the Caprese, and the white peppercorn in the others, ready for the ganache: Jim shows one of the culinary students (whose names I did not catch, I'm sorry!) how the molds get filled: Erica and Mary check the fill level on the shells: Beth standing in front of an empty bowl with a guilty-looking grin on her face. Beth, tell me you didn't eat the WHOLE BOWL!! And that was the end of day one, finishing off with a clean kitchen: More to come!

Here is a link to Steve's slides on flavor development and ganache theory. Thanks, Steve!

Darienne, are you asking about this one? In that one, she's holding a can of "cold spray," which is basically just compressed air I think, that gets cold as you spray it and helps to set the chocolate up. She's using a dab of chocolate on the end of the petals to hold them in place, and the cold spray makes it so she doesn't have to hold it there for several minutes while it sets up on its own. It's the same thing that they are using to cool down the piece in this one:

OK, back home now and sorting through the 1500 photos that my wife took. As promised, I'll try to only post the flattering ones: anyone looking for blackmail material please contact me to discuss the price 'cuz I've got plenty . (Seriously, I have a lot more photos than I'm posting, so if you have any particular requests I can dig through the files and see what I've got). OK, day one: Albert Uster Imports, where Assistant Pastry Chef Amanda Haba and her assistant Briea Nathan demoed some molded chocolates, macarons, and a showpiece. First, Amanda and Briea broke out the big guns to pulverize something for the macarons: Briea mixed the macaron batter together, doing the final incorporation by hand: Here's a shot of the texture of the macaron batter once mixed: We had quite the crowd for the AUI event, as you can see: We then got into some hands-on work as Briea and Amanda helped us with our macaron piping technique: A lot of us took turns piping them, here's Erica while others look on: Here are the macaron shells after baking: Pat and Erica watch as Amanda makes the ganache to fill them: Et viola! We have macarons, simple as... well, simple as letting the pros at Albert Uster do the heavy lifting: Next up, a quick demo of some molded chocolate decorating techniques. First, some schmearing: And airbrushing (of chocolates and lungs, as you can see: don't try this at home! Kerry points out that we should all be wearing respirators for this operation.): Amanda fills the molds: Next up, the assembly of a small chocolate showpiece. Briea and Amanda may have the coolest job ever here at AUI. Amanda started by making the leaves using an angle palette knife simply dipped in chocolate and the pressed onto parchment: The parchment is then placed in a tube that has been cut in half to give the leaves a curved shape: Once set, Briea used those leaves and assembled a small chocolate flower: They wanted to do a velvet texture on it, so they cooled it down the quickest (and funnest) way possible: Some airbrushing, some luster dust, and here you have it: This was a great set of demos, and it was nice to get some hands-on time as well, so thanks very much to the folks at Albert Uster for letting us come over and invade their space for the afternoon. Amanda and Briea were wonderful teachers and I'm personally looking forward to playing around with some of these techniques now that I'm home.

Steve, are jeans OK at all of these events (in particular, dinner on Saturday)? Or do I need to pack some slacks?

I'll have a car and room for two. ETA: Sorry, that's room for two in addition to my wife and me.

This just in via Kerry Beal:

In glancing about the internet is seems there is a new Italian place in Tulsa, Piatto Cucina Italiana that is getting some good reviews, so you might want to check them out.

I don't have any input for you, but I'll be up in Tulsa in a few weeks and would love to hear about your impressions of the places you have been to there.

I hate to get my hopes up, but: I think it's quite possible that many of us will be far more interested in these "niche" shows than in the more mainstream FN programming.

The Culinary Institute of America has just posted a YouTube video that (briefly) shows the making of fresh masa in Mexico, and then the formation of the tortillas. The first thing that struck me was how non-fragile the worker's tortillas seemed to be, and they are getting taken off the tortilla press and put on the cooking surface (whose name escapes me at the moment...)

Lee Wan Ching’s sizzling pepper and salt shrimp (p. 104) On Bruce's recommendation above I made these shrimp for dinner tonight. I basically followed the recipe, except that my shrimp were already shelled when I bought them, so no shell-on shrimp for me. I have to wholeheartedly agree with his comments above, this is a fantastic dish.

Your salami should be fine: getting too cold for a short period of time is not much of a problem, it's really getting too warm that is a bigger issue. It sounds like you caught the problem promptly, so I would not expect any adverse affects, except perhaps a very small increase in drying time.The bacteria did most of their work during the initial incubation period, and will just sort of "coast" to the finish.