Chris Hennes

For Christmas dinner I did the herb-brined smoked turkey breast. While it tasted OK, it did not taste like turkey! I think adding the pink salt is overkill, and just makes the turkey taste like a ham (and not even a particularly *good* ham). I have made the recipe in the past without the TCM, and it was delicious, so I guess I'll go back to that. Anyone else object to this recipe for "hamurky"?

Is there a new edition coming out? I have the first, and it is excellent.

Certainly, but some degree of uniformity in shape makes them look "professional" without also looking machine-made. And I think the shell thickness is a balancing act: in my opinion, one wants the textural contrast of the crisp outer shell combined with the creamy ganache - I think my shells came out too thin, and I ended up with a shell that almost disappears, with only the slightest snap (so I can tell they are properly in temper, but that's about it).

So I had a go at the Chai tiger truffles (photos of the process): These were somewhat successful, anyway. Most of them were not very spherical, and the chocolate coating was too thin, but they taste good anyway . I need much, much more practice with the piping bag, and with the whole rolling and coating process. Which is to say, about 95% of the production process for truffles. My wife was crushed to hear that I would have to keep trying...

what would you put inside? I'm trying to think of booze that would taste good with a marshmallow? ← Godiva chocolate liqueur springs to mind... maybe a dark chocolate coating, plain marshmallow, small chocolate liqueur center...

I had the same problem with the Buckwheat Beehives. I solved it by making sure my ganache was tempered. ← I followed his suggested technique of pouring the just-off-boil cream mixture over the tempered chocolate, waiting a minute, then stirring to emulsify. I didn't even think of checking the temperature of the ganache at this point. If it got too warm and brought all of the chocolate out of temper so there was nothing to seed it as it cooled, maybe that would cause this.

A truffle question - in the book he says to allow the ganache to set for 20 minutes after piping, but I found that after 20 minutes the ganache for the Chai Tigers was still too soft to handle without making a mess. Elsewhere on this forum times as long as a day or two are recommended before rolling. Is this a difference in how much the ganache is agitated, or whether the chocolate was still in temper, or what kind of chocolate, or something else? Or do I just need to work on my truffle skills? They were set fine after an overnight rest on the counter, so I just rolled them this morning and will coat tonight, but for the future I'd like to get the timing right.

I always add additional milk or cream when re-heating mac and cheese because so much moisture gets absorbed by the pasta as it sits and cools down. Maybe if you undercook the macaroni and make the sauce extra liquid it would work better?

I had the same problem here in Pennsylvania - I ended up having my mother, who lives in Minnesota, ship me a few containers . Apparently it is still commonly stocked there...

Having never worked with chocolate before, I learned (last week!) how to temper it and make a pretty mean rocher . I got 10kg of chocolate via FedEx on Friday, so I'm hoping for some more learning before the year is up! Next stop, truffles...

I'll bet *this* is a point of contention on eGullet . If I'm making a delicately flavored omelet, there better be no browning of the eggs! A big American-style filled-with-everything, on the other hand, I am less particular about. Regarding pans, I thing nearly anything can be made to work, but I prefer a nonstick for omelets. I'm not real hard on the pan when I'm preparing eggs, and as far as I am concerned inexpensive non-stick pans are nearly disposable (well, Goodwill-able anyway).

Ah, I understand. You are right... if I took the 16oz of water in the bottle sitting next to me and added enough ice to get it cold (if it came from a regular tap), and then wanted it in a relatively spill-resistant, but standard-shaped drinking class, as opposed to a tapered-neck bottle, I may need something like that... But why the attachment to the "standard-shaped" glass? While I wouldn't want to serve company in recycled iced tea bottles, for my own private use it is ideal. Keep two or three in the fridge and you don't need ice.

If the jar says "Peanut Butter", chances are I will like it...

If, like me, you looked at the title of this post and went "taramasa-whata?", here is the wikipedia article about it. Hopefully the article is accurate . Sounds good, but I can't say I've ever tried it...

I really can't connect with this... I very, very rarely want anything larger than 16 oz. I guess I just don't drink that much. Plus, when I need to pace at the office, a trip to the drinking fountain to refill my water bottle is just about right.

Is there any reason you would need to use a truffle grid, as opposed to a standard wire-mesh cooling rack? Are the holes on the truffle grid smaller? I was hoping to try out this technique without having to buy any more stuff for my already-overflowing kitchen!

For me, having a reference shape makes all the difference. When I got one of those pastry boards with the circles on it my crusts suddenly went from sorta rounded squares to being near-perfect circles.

Not in my kitchen, that's for sure. I must admit to being a bit of a slob... I'd have that thing destroyed inside of ten minutes. Plus, I never liked clean cookbooks, anyway. Their state of disrepair proves (at least to me!) that they actually get used and aren't just there to look pretty.

I don't think I buy that - I stretch a roasting pan across multiple burners all the time. Maybe not on high heat, but I've got a mega-cheap range, too. I think the enamel on most ranges is probably pretty temperature resistant. Aren't there cheaper solutions that this, though? And non-stainless-steel? As mentioned above, Lodge makes a cast-iron plate that spans multiple burners, and I bet there are others out there as well, in various, better-conducting materials.

What if instead of using the "average" (which is skewed by outliers), you used the price of the most popular entree? Dunno how you would get the "most popular" but it seems like some asking around would get that more readily than expecting a manager to give you the full breakdown of the statistics. Of course, this doesn't help with restaurants where the bulk of the price is not in the entree, or where you may not get it (for me, this is anyplace with a tasting menu - I nearly always get that instead... and the upcharges on those can be unpredictable).

I will eat more sugar (seriously... I am not a sugar kind of guy, and my wife wants me to make candy! Can I put salt on all of it? And pork?) I will make many things from Chocolates and Confections I will find a new city to live in. A real city! Yes! So long, East Nowhereville! I will learn how to make a killer ganache I will teach my fish to do tricks. OK, this is a stretch... I will read "Chocolates and Confections" over and over again And the most important one: I will finish my degree so I can have more time to cook!

Can anyone explain to me why the guitars are so expensive? They seem like such a simple gizmo... is it really just supply and demand for this niche market, or is there something unique about them that justifies the price? I could see hundreds of dollars, but thousands? Wow... (edited to add some respect for the gizmo... I just checkout out the thread on the homemade cutter and there is more to it than I had guessed...)

I was actually thinking of something along the lines of a marshmallow that had been filled with a liqueur. Sort of a shooter in an edible glass... you'd need a way to prevent the marshmallow from just dissolving, though...

Same here - I'm a chronic hand-washer (knives, too) and if I have long sleeves rolled down I just end up soaked. I generally wear long sleeves that get rolled up most of the time, but let down when I'm frying (if I think of it...).

All of this talk about looking at the menu seems to miss the point -- it would be great if there were some way to construct a representative cost number for a given restaurant. Yes, I agree that a simple average or entree price range does not cut it: that does not automatically imply that a meaningful number cannot, at least in theory, be developed. Th trouble seems to me to be that every eater is different, so a number that may be representative of the way I eat may not be useful to fatguy, etc. I agree that some sort of "average bill" is more useful that a straight average, but I would bet that an average "eGullet" bill does not correspond to an average non-foodie bill. Maybe not always higher, but I bet they aren't the same.