Chris Hennes

I thought last week's selection was different for HF: this week is even stranger. And by tropical ingredients, they mean Say what? Next week they promise Boer goat: maybe that will make up for this week's decidedly lackluster special... (IMHO)

Thanks, Beth: I had forgotten about that DVD set (available here). Kerry, are you out there? Any idea how your set compares to the CIA's in terms of what it covers, level of detail, etc.? It's a little bit shorter, so I'm curious about the differences. Is the extra 35 minutes the CIA set provides critical? Do I need (OK, OK, want...) both sets?

I don't, anyway... I make the pasta while the bechamel or bolognese is simmering, and just use it fresh. Actually, it's never really occurred to me to dry fresh pasta at all... for me, if I wanted dried pasta, I would buy it. The Barilla no-boil sheets make perfectly respectable lasagna, in my opinion. Is this just something you wanted to try out as an experiment, or do you have a goal in mind (i.e. mass production of lasagna, etc.)? Is this an egg pasta?

I think for a scale of those capabilities ~$200 is a reasonable price. Sure, I'd like it to cost less, but I'd pay $200 for a "perfect" kitchen scale (granted, my current kitchen scale is the annoying Soehnle mode mentioned above, which was like $30). I have plenty of crap I use less that cost more... maybe this speaks more to my kitchen gadget addiction than anything else... how much do you all think is a reasonable price for this "perfect" scale (say 5kg capacity, 0.1g accuracy)? How much if it couldn't do 0.1 gram increments? What about if it was only 2kg capacity?

I was under the impression that the MyWeight i5500 did this---if not, I guess I better take it off my wish list!

Thanks, all, for your comments. I probably shouldn't have bothered asking "is it worth it" since the answer will be different for everyone. I, too, spend astronomical sums on books (the only person I know with more textbooks than me is my wife!), but somehow spending $200 on something that is only 2 hours longs seems, well, frivolous. On the other hand, I am just getting started in chocolate and confections, and I think Greweling's book is fabulous (much better than the other two I have on the subject). There are some things where I think a video demonstration would be handy. For example, Kerry (I think) explained how to drop a truffle into your chocolate and then press on one edge and get it to flip onto your dipping fork: it took me a while to get the hang of this, and I think actually seeing it in video could have helped. Then again, maybe not! I'd love to see the texture of Greweling's nougat in video, to see how far off I was. That kind of thing.

Paul - This is great---thanks for contacting them! I hope they can come up with something useful (and sale-able). I think the ideal would just be a "Set 100%" button that you could press when you had your 100% ingredient on the scale. So the procedure would be, for example: 1) Place bowl on scale 2) Tare 3) Fill bowl with flour 4) Press 100% button 5) Put next bowl on 6) Tare 7) Weigh I personally feel like I require 0.1 gram accuracy, since I like to be able to weigh the salt and yeast as well, and these are frequently such small contributors (< 1%) to the overall weight. I am certainly not averse to paying something like $200 for a scale that can do, say 5kg in 0.1g increments (I think this is about the price point of the i5500).

Chris, I believe you are a genius. ← lol... you only think that because you don't know me very well... I can dispel that belief very quickly in person! Does your i5000 have this feature? I have only really looked at the i5500 since it is accurate to 0.1 grams and the auto-off can be disabled.

I got an ad in my e-mail today for the Culinary Institute of America's "Captivating Confections" DVD set. Here's what it said about the set: They want $200 for the 3-DVD set (I guess it's ordinarily $250, this is a Valentines Day Special). That a bit more than the latest Hollywood blockbuster... and definitely quite a bit more than I typically drop on "cooking show"-type DVDs. I understand that this isn't one of those, but still... lotta money! Has anyone seen this set, or had any experience with the CIA's other DVD sets? I don't have the time or money right now for a real class on this stuff, so if this is a worthwhile investment I would be willing to spring for it, but I don't really know what to expect.

I thought maybe this was just me... I have the same trouble. For a while I thought I figured out the "trick" but it doesn't seem to work any more. On another note, I finally managed to run the original set of batteries into the ground yesterday. I have had the thing since close to their release and have used it easily over 100 times, and maybe more like 200 times, on both bag sizes. I would say that the battery life is very good, but probably still worth using rechargeables if you already have a charger for other stuff.

You have a scale that translates percentages? What is it? ← The myWeigh i5500 has a "count" function that you can use like this, I think. You would put your flour on and tell it that that is 100 units. Then, everything else you put on will come out as a "percentage" of the flour.

As DerekW pointed out in his excellent post above, it is not so much metal that is the problem, it is the pointy metal edges. Many microwaves come with metal shelf units, after all! The sharp edges of thin metal foils cause big arcing, as can the tines of a fork, but food packaging can certainly be designed to avoid this. The metal glaze on your mom's dishes is more like aluminum foil, or possibly even worse if the glaze looks more like zillions of tiny metal shards (at the microscopic level, of course). There are other issues related to the metal reflecting some of the microwaves, and I have read claims that this can damage the magnatron, but I personally microwave my metal thermos-style coffee mug on a regular basis with no apparent ill effects.

I think the bars would have stayed put if I had not greased the Silpat . Greweling said to grease the parchment, so my thinking was, "wow, this caramel must be really sticky... I guess if he says to grease the parchment I should grease the Silpat." Note to self: don't grease Silpat. On the plus side, nothing stuck to it...

That sounds like good advice to me! Maybe I'll make the Madras next to get my confidence back up .

I'm glad yours went well... mine were a complete failure! It was like a comedy of errors. My first batch of caramel boiled over and made a mess of my stove and oven, when I poured my send batch of caramel into the mold it the bars just flowed with the caramel. I squeezed everything back into the original frame and made the nougat. I took all of your advice and made a full batch of nougat: even that seemed like very little nougat in my KA mixer. In addition, Greweling says it should take about 8 minutes to cool down to 120F: after 20 minutes I gave up waiting at 150F and added the rest of the ingredients, since the nougat was now seeming over-beaten and was losing volume. The nougat was much firmer than I expected, more like taffy: I tried to roll it out, but it was just too firm to work with reasonably, and was much too stiff to eat. So, I give up. What in the world did I do wrong?!?

I did the same thing this afternoon, except, instead of just overcooking the caramel, mine boiled over, dripping not only into he burner of my electric range, by right down the vent into my oven! No! I have no idea how to clean out that vent, and this means I can't try the frozen pizza cookoff I had planned for the Superbowl! No! I agree, bad cooking day...

I generally start the solidified stuff on the top of the can of coconut milk and curry paste in the pan, "crack" the coconut milk so that the curry paste is frying in the coconut oil (medium-high heat for me). I fry the paste for a couple minutes, until it is smelling really fragrant, then I add the rest of the liquid from the coconut milk and whatever other flavorings I am using (fish sauce, brown sugar, etc.). I let this simmer for a few minutes, then turn up the heat, add the veggies, cook until done, and voila! Of course, I have no idea if this is the "authentic" method (I think I got it from Cook's Illustrated), but it sure tastes good...

Yes, yours was the post I was thinking of. I have a couple other recipes for caramel and nougat, but I try to go with the original recipe the first time I make anything. Fortunately, I'm only making a half batch, so if they turn out to be a disaster, I haven't wasted too much. Besides, my friends have low standards... that's why they hang out with me! Greweling's recipes for each look pretty conventional: are you using recipes of your own devising, or are they from a cookbook? I've got Wybauw's first book as well as Shotts... maybe I will look through there.

It's hard to say for sure: the studies I read last night were mostly focused on the development of the fetal and infant immune system, as transmitted to them through their mothers. Taking additional prebiotics increased the beneficial bacterial activity in the mothers, but this was not reflected as a healthier immune system in the child. Granted, this is only a single study and did not focus on the mothers' health, but as usual with the sorts of health claims we see today, my feeling is that there is probably a small grain of truth surrounded by a great deal of hyperbole. My vote is to eat a balanced diet of food that tastes good. For me, that includes both fiber and yogurt, so I guess I'm covered!

Dietary fiber is the most prevalent type of prebiotic, but not actually the only one. "Prebiotic" is the name given to a broad category of non-digestible substances that contribute to the growth of probiotic bacteria. The effects are still under examination, but at least some studies have linked prebiotic intake with improved health, though the studies were not particularly conclusive, as far as I can tell. (For those looking for more detail: I believe the concept of the prebiotic was first forwarded by Gibson and Roberfroid, Dietary modulation of the human colonic microbiota: introducing the concept of prebiotics. J. Nutr. 125(6):1401-1412).

Yeah, it's a bamboo skewer---actually, it didn't work very well because the chocolate liked to stay attached to it, and then drip down after it had hardened a bit, making keeping things in temper a bit more challenging. Next time I am going to string a taught piece of wire across the bowl, somehow. Thank you for the compliments: remember when you look at the pictures that I cherry-picked the best sequence. Surely if I dipped 72 squares, one of them would turn out right? I learned so much from the demos and comments here---all of you have been a tremendous help. Good luck with your 220 pieces: I was ready to quit after 22, but made myself do all 70. Hand enrobing is a lot of work!

This looks excellent---thanks for the photos. I have a question about the salad you liked so well: I am not familiar with Scamorza. Which part of this image is the cheese? I see some melty-looking stuff in the lower left, and the red stuff in the middle: gotta be one(or both?) of those, right? If the red stuff isn't cheese, what is it? If it is, is it red because it is smoked, or from the grill, or what? I love cheese, I just don't know anything about it!

I had a bad experience last time I went "experimental" on my guests. I was making a meatloaf-type-thing from one of Bugiali's Italian cooking books which was not going to scale down well, so I invited a friend of mine and his girlfriend over for dinner. They knew what they were getting into. Unfortunately, they showed up with the girlfriend's mother in tow! I'm not sure she realized that it was OK to make cracks about the extremely flat meatloaf with the not-quite-cooked carrot strung through the middle . Tasted OK, but butt-ugly. She was so polite about it! She must think I am the crappiest cook ever (this may be true, but I would never want to be judged on the basis of that meatloaf-thing!!). So be careful what you decide to make. I'd lay off the platypus nipple.

I need to pay more attention to my pizza! (or maybe pay less---I'm not sure I really want to notice those qualities!) Sounds like a pizza comparison is in order. When better than Superbowl Weekend? Is your current take on frozen pizza the same as in this post (from 2003)? i.e. Tony's, Red Baron and DiGiorno at the top?

Awesome, thanks a lot for the advice. Some of the earlier posts in this thread reported less-than-fully-successful attempts, but I'm up for a little challenge . I always make half batches of Greweling's recipes, too, though I go with a 9"x8" frame, so if you had a problem filling yours all the way I almost certainly will, too. The 3/4 batch is a good idea, since you just scrape off any extra anyway. When you made yours did you let it sit over night? I always have before, but I was hoping to do this one during the game Sunday, start-to-finish.