Chris Hennes

Next up, a grilled carrot with a carrot/miso mousse, sassafras crumble, and a spring herb salad: I don't think I caught anyone actually licking their bowls, but I won't say we weren't tempted...

The "menu"was projected onto the wall: no real indication of the order of things, but at least it helped me remember what it was I was eating at any given time! By and large the dishes were quite sophisticated, so it was a challenge to keep track of what all was on the plate.

We began with a very dessert-like course of pickled strawberry, yogurt ice cream, and a cherry amazake sphere. Rob promised that this was the only course he was going to give instructions with: that amazake sphere is white chocolate filled with a liquid, so you had to eat the whole thing at once. The splash of liquid was somehow surprising even knowing it was coming.

Alright, I'm home now, following one of the best meals in recent memory (or even not-so-recent memory!), starting in this unassuming St. Louis facade... and yes, I'm ever so slightly biased here. Caveat emptor!

I just checked: the eyes are open on both sides. Always watching you.

@gfron1 We are on the yellow happiness floor: here’s a shot of the room... The hotel is great: there is art everywhere. I guess there is a concert tonight, plus a wedding, so the rooftop bar was packed. We may have enjoyed some tequila cocktails 🍸 up there.

I got to St. Louis an hour or so ago, and whilst staying at the Angad Arts Hotel some pregaming is clearly in order...

@gfron1 what are your feelings on cameras at this event? I normally hate taking photos at restaurants, but was wondering if I shouldn't make an exception this time around given the eG interest in seeing what you are up to.

I don't let mine get that dry, I guess. I'm typically making it basically a la minute: once it's dry-is on the surface I take it off the rack onto a plate that I can dump into the water.

I used to have one of those, but it got destroyed in a leaky refrigerator incident. Now I use my long handled pizza peel and just let it stick out off the edge of the counter. I can’t say I’ve ever lost more than a couple scraps using either rack, though.

If you want to stick to your standard grocery-store starches then I think your only real option is to reheat the filling and add more starch. If you want to go with the Modernist modified starch route, Ultratex 4 is a corn-based cold-swelling starch that is stable at high temperatures (if you are going to be baking this later) that I think will work in this application.

Over the past several days the site has been inundated with spam applications attempting to post links to malware -- while we catch most of these before they post to the main forums, and have recently increased the posting and messaging restrictions on new members, please exercise caution when clicking on a link provided by a brand new forums member. As a general rule, if you don't recognize where the link is taking you, don't click on it. Please report any suspicious content you see or receive, and do not respond to it. We are working on a technological solution to the current generation of spammers, but as always it's a game of whack-a-mole.

I haven't had the Beyond, but I've had the Impossible a couple of times in tacos and burritos. The texture is very good, at least in those applications, and I'd say the flavor is good, though I don't think you'd confuse it for beef. It's just that it hits similar flavor notes and works in the same sort of applications. From an pricing perspective, the Qdoba Impossible Burrito is about $10 where I live, while the ground beef burrito is $8. I have no idea what their production costs are, but if they can sell the stuff here in prime cattle country (Oklahoma) they must be doing well.

I always use the same ratio and have never had it fail: no dependence on the type of cheese involved. This may mean that the amount of sodium citrate is higher than necessary for some cheeses, however.

I bet! I can't wait to come try it, that review was amazing.

I’m not sure that to my taste there is such a thing as “too gooey” for a cookie. Are you getting the centers up to a food-safe temperature?

I suspect you may be preaching to the choir here... I'd be curious to know how many people reading this at eGullet actually use app-based delivery on any kind of regular basis. A couple of times a year I get pizza delivered, but always directly from the pizza place, never via an independent app. On a whim I once had cookies delivered to a class I was teaching, but again, direct from Insomnia, not via an outside app. Does anyone here find themselves using one of the multi-restaurant delivery services?

We've just completed a software upgrade to Invision Community Suite v4.4. Try as I might, I cannot come up with a list of features you might actually care about -- it's all technical esoterica. So... welcome to 4.4! And if you have any problems with it, please post here.

Do you know the water activity of your ganache? If it’s low I don’t think you would have any problem. Do you have a freezer without a defrost cycle? I don’t think it will be critical in this application but it’s one more factor that can affect quality of long-term freezing.

I made the Modernist Focaccia tonight as a pizza: I use a slight variant on their sauce (just the quantities and ratios adjusted to use a whole can of tomatoes and a whole can of tomato paste). And as you can see I take the exact opposite tack when applying the mozzarella, not even adding it until the pizza is out of the oven. The residual heat melts it by the time it gets to the table, but it doesn't get warm enough to release all of the water that's in it. It doesn't work as well with a thin crust, but with a thick one like this it's perfect.

Better be, that's the date I bought the flights for!

There are lots of simple and inexpensive "science fair"-level things you can do with a sourdough starter. For example, if you've got a camera (or camera phone) that you can set up to do timelapse, you could experiment with how different feeding ratios affect how quickly the starter rises, and how much. Or you could experiment with different ratios of water to flour, and/or different flours, always with that same simple metric. If you do all of the tests in one go you can get some nice photos and timelapse videos and you don't have to worry about temperature control affecting your results.

Kitchen Manual. When I post page numbers occasionally I'm actually using the full volumes, but most often I'm cooking from the (much smaller) kitchen manual.

Basler Brot (KM p. 222) This is a very simple bread, leavened with a very large quantity of levain (66%), with a small amount of light rye added (17%). It's a high-hydration dough at nearly 80%, so it's a bit tricky to work with, but you get a really lovely open structure to the dough and the taste is terrific.