Tiny

Ipod dock in our kitchen....take turns plugging our ipods in, it creates a wide varity of tunes to work to ranging from Britney Spears to hardcore house music and everything in between....usually we can all agree on radiohead, sublime, weezer and the beastie boys...

overproofing during bulk fermentation will also affect the flavor of your bread...it can give it an over fermented taste and throw the texture off........lost a couple points on my practical challah at school for this

So my $.02 I'd use a circle cutter to cut the cake, slice the quince thinner and fan it out on top of the cake, mix in some pistachio paste with your marscapone, add some heavy cream and whip it, then you could quenelle it on the side of the cake. Your sauce is a little thin, so I'd add just a touch of xanthan gum to thicken it up...or better yet, add 1% agar and let it set, then blend it to make a fluid gel, you could put that in a bottle and then pipe little pearls around the plate...it's not that hard to do, trust me...don't fear the agar... And instead of putting raw pistachios, you could put a few drageed pistachios on the plate.....add some crunchy texture to the dish just my opinions...

I am a pastry cook at Jean Georges in NYC and of course we have recipes (being in pastry and all that jazz)...but the cooks have a master recipe book also, each station has their own recipe book and there are quite a few digital scales floating around....do they always follow their recipes to the T, probably not, but close enough that most people would be hard pressed to notice any subtle differences between cooks...

Dry, cured meats more than likely (if cured correctly) dont fall under the legal definition of "potentially hazardous foods" since a food must have a water activity greater than .85 to be considered a PHF.... Also not a PHF would be anything that has a ph less than 4.6...like mayonaise...not a PHF....that fact blew my mind when I got serve safe certified.... here is a link to the legal stuff from the FDA http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/ift4-2.html

agar weeping is not that big a deal when you have blended it into a sauce (we call them fluid gels at my restaurant) we try to make them in batches where they will be used within a couple days, but have kept them for a week or more if a particular dish isn't being ordered as much as expected. Since the agar is in a fluid/gel state any syneresis can be taken care of by simply mixing the liquid back in. You have to worry more about weeping when you are keeping the agar gel whole such as a hot gelee type aplication, and yes, LBG does prevent weeping.

agreed.... While we are talking hypothetical, impossible scenarios....I wish that 100 diners would show up at the correct time, the reservationists will have spaced them logically and they all order the tasting menu....there problem solved.... I also wish that the FOH would fire their dishes correctly every time and that I never get a hold fire ticket after I have already scooped all the ice cream and finished plating the entire table.....I also wish that the FOH could spell better, most of the notes they send on their tickets are jumbled hooked on phonics type attempts, that waste time and ruin plates in some instances...how hard is it to spell Vacherin or pineapple, really? If you are looking for "hidden costs" there are plenty out there, but serving a table correctly at the same time is not one of them.

I know this is a little late for the super bowl, but a couple years ago for another super bowl party I made some blue cheese gougeres and filled them with a buffalo chicken mousse....they were delicious and the hit of the party....

you can use it for most anything you'd use regular coconut for....I much prefer it btw, it doesn't get stuck in your teeth and packs a big coconut flavor. My personal favorite, toasted it and make a semifredo with it...some pineapple and tropical friuts...some sort of crunchy cookie-ish base....delicious!

you could do the whole isomalt/oil bon bon thing with pop rocks in it...sorta spherical

you cant put them in anything that is spherified (sp?) b/c they are made out of sugar and sugar dissolves in water. All the spherification that I've seen is water based as the various hydrocoloids have to be hydrated in water..... Unless you know how to encapsulate an oil or fat (which if you do, I'd love to hear the process please!) Maybe you could use the chocolate coated one though since the chocolate would create a barrier...

The squab dish at corton...I could eat that for breakfast lunch and dinner for a solid month and still enjoy it...

In my kitchen we keep them on sheet trays on a speed rack organized by type and size....but we have a ton of them.

basic cooking fundamentals the ability to work clean the ability to multi task the ability to organize and stay organized the humility to call for help if you start to get in the shits and go down the ability to put out your last plate and make it look just like your first and all the ones in between a sense of urgency even when it is slow a thick skin and the ability to take criticism even when it gets personal knowing key phrases in both english and spanish the ability to work with others as a cohesive unit an appreciation for caffeine an appreciation for jagger a slight dose of insanity

I am a CIA graduate and I can vouch for the school...I was there when the whole "Fire Tim Ryan" thing went down and while there are issues with the administration and some of the food network star wannabe students, as a whole the chef's there rock and if you go there with a passion and desire to learn, you will get great things out of your time there. I finished my 2 year degree, did my externship at Jean Georges (pastry) and now I am a full time employee at JG's. The school will teach you the basics, if you are interested in the tech food science stuff, take an externship at a food sciencey place. I learned everything I know about hydrocolloids and modified food starches while on my externship at JG. CIA got my foot in the door and gave me the basic know how so I didn't totally eff up everything in the kitchen when I got there. But most importantly, work at a restaurant (preferably a busy one) as soon as you can (once you turn 18, work somewhere for free since you have no experience...very few chef's will turn down free labor) The restaurant industry is not for everyone, you will never be rich, never be famous and you will work long hard hours, work holidays, not see your friends and family, not have time outside of work to do much of anything else...you might hate it....but on the other hand, you might love it, I do and I couldn't be happier with my path. P.S. I would steer clear of the CIA bachelors program...have friends that did it...said it was good for the paper, but not good for the actual learning process....do the cornell thing they have a collaborative degree program with the CIA now and will give you a much better education in the mgmt aspects of the business.