Edward J

Anyone ever experience this problem before? I've got a nice Matfer confectionary thermometer that isn't accurate anymore because ther is a bubble in the "bulb",and when the temp goes up past 100 C (212F) I get a gap in the thin red line. I've tried putting the thermomter in the freezer overnight, but that doesn't help, and my last option would be to go next door to a cafe with a deep frier and deep try the sucker to it's max , 200 C or +- 385 F. Any suggestions?

Actually, I have 6 varieties of bon-bons from about 25 in my showcase that use transfer sheets. In the 7 years that I've been operating, I haven't had any negative comments, rather the opposite.

It can be easier if you run your own business, kids come to work after school, hang out, do homework, help out a bit, help you cook dinner. We always managed to take 1 week off in January for our "winter escape" and a week off in August. Cooking is a lifestyle, no doubt about that.

I use the D+R panning ball about twice a month, chocolate coated hazelnuts is the name of the game. At first, I used a gum arabic sealer, but I stopped that about two years ago. If you use dark chocolate, it will bloom very quickly (even under ideal storage conditions) on account of the nut oil. Sealer will help, but the best things to use is milk chocolate, which won't bloom. So I stopped using dark chocolate and only use milk chocolate. "About 1/3" chocolate sticking to the walls of the pan sounds a bit extreme. Usually I have a "crust" of about 1/2" thick that I remove with a heat gun and scraper when I finish a batch, which is a maximum of 1200 gr of whole roasted hazels. This is what I do: -I have a cheap portable airconditioner that I fitted with a "mask", and onto this mask I have attatched a length of 4" dryer hose, with this contraption I can direct airflow into the pan. -I have a $10.00 electric heating pad underneath my bowl of milk chocolate. Don't know how warm it is, somewhere around 35-ish, never took a temp. -Start it up, ladle in some choc, and immediately throw in a handfull of cocoa powder. This helps build the first crust around the nut and helps subsequent layers of chocolate to stick. -Ladle and blow untill you get the size you want.(no cocoa pwdr anymore) If you add too much choc. in the pan, you will get a "pebbly" effect and a lot more choc will stick to the sides of the pan. Frequent thin coats are best -I dump out the nuts when they get to the size I want, take a heat gun and plastic scraper to the pan, toss the crust back into my melting bowl, and do two or three more batches. -I fill the cleaned pan with coated nuts, ladle in a half ladle of choc and throw in as much cocoa powder as the pan will take, when done, dump out into a deep full size hotel pan and repeat with the unpowdered nuts. -Then I sift the nuts* into another deep hotel pan, where they can be bagged, and I reclaim all the excess cocoa powder from the first pan. *I use a very coarse riddle or sieve used by gardeners to sieve dirt. The sieve is all s/s as are the mesh plates, I bought this at Lee Valley, and use the seive to sift off the roasted papery hazlenut skins as well.

You're right, Annabelle, you did call it first! How can it be a Saute pan? "saute" translated from the French is to "jump". With the (pictured) pan's high staight sides, it is very hard to toss/shake small items around--you need lower sloped walls to do that.

That shape of pan is called a "sautoir", and has been called that in Europe for at least a century. A "Sauteuse" has the bell-shaped sloped sides to aid in evaporation and whisking in ingredients. Why this is called a "saucier" in N.America is beyond me, and I humbly request N.American cookware companies to describe their reasons for doing so.

I don't know why you need a dolly for the mixer--18" would be a 20 qt, no? Like Chris says, a dolly used for woodworking machines like tablesaws might work better because the wheels are lowered down with a manual cam lever. With the wheels in an "up" position, the whole platform sits on four solid feet and doesn't wiggle or shake. If you have a 20 or even 30 qt on castors it's gonna dance all over the place

Pricing is always crazy, even if it's the same brand. I deal almost exclusively with a bakery ingredient supplier and his prices can get out of whack as well, usually with sugar and flour. What I was told, was that the purveyor locked in a price for a certain time frame from the mnfctr, and now has to stick with that priace. If this is true or not, I'll never know....

Never been to a T.J.'s yet, but they made the news here in Vancouver a few weeks ago. There are no T.J.'s in Canada, but there is a lot of demand for their stuff. So an upstart store called "Pirate Joe's" would go over the border to Wash. State, buy a bunch of T.J.'s stuff at their stores, and sell it here in Vancouver in thier store--pirate joe"s. T.J.'s finally got wind of it and it went through the Wash. State courts. T.J.'s lost the case. I think the point heads at T.J.'s would have been better off spending the money they did on lawyers to do a feasability study on opening stores in Canada......

Plum pits? Not cracking them, for non cooking purposes, yes, use them as pie weights. My Mom would tell us stories of how when she was a kid they would collect cherry pits, wash them, sew them up in a cloth sack, and leave them on the warming tray on the kitchen stove. They would then be taken to bed to keep warm. Commercially, an "artificial" marzipan is made using apricot kernals, called "Persipan" Don't see why plum pits couldn't be used. But that means you'd have to crack them all....

Dehydrated vinegar

Fat content of the entire recipie is too high. Best way for me to explain is with classical screw ups that I've done or witnessed myself. At one of the places I worked at, we had "chocolate sauce" in the bain marie in the hot kitchen. If it was kept in there too long, it would split--or separate. This was easily repaired by adding a few drops of coffee and stirring it in. Basically, as the sauce sat in the bain marie, water evaporated from the cream and the fat content went up. At another place we would make a brandy truffle--a very basic recipie, cream, brandy, chocolate. Made it quite a few times and never had a problem. One day we had a special order for booze-free truffles, so I just subbed more cream for the brandy. It split. Again, the fat content was too high. I repaired it by adding a shot of hot exppresso and a dollop of corn syrup.

I'm not a big fan of alumimum bars, they oxidize in the dishwasher. I've never heard of anyone dying from "S/s poisoning" maybe with fine ground s/s filings, but not with bars. Polishing or surface grinding the s/s bars would involve a great deal of labour and money. Plexi-glass.... Is not ideal. It chips easy, cracks easy, and will warp or melt if too warm. It does cut well on a tablesaw with a carbide tipped triple tooth pattern blade, but you have to "feed" it at the right speed, too slow will melt the plastic and clog up the blade, too fast will result in a very rough cut. Even so, it will still need to be "polished" with a propane torch and fine grits of sandpaper. The thicker sheets can be very expensive, and it can be glued with a very special glue. Best left to the plexiglass people, and they will charge. One option that might be workable is nylon cutting boards sliced up into strips. The boards are quite cheap, and can be cut easily (no special blade needed) with a tablesaw, and can be smoothed to a very slick surface with handplanes.

I always wondered about that too. Various recipes call for you to sauté or fry this and that in the oil with lots of stuff, then ask you to decant off the oil and throw it away. (((Shakes head))) Fats absorb and carry flavours. Think about it, why is butter wrapped in foil? What happens if you store unwrapped or poorly wrapped butter next to, say.. a raw onion in the fridge? Ever fry up an egg that tasted of celery or curry? Why does chocolate come in (or should) foil wrapped packaging?. You can use this to your advantage. Many Chefs store fresh truffles in a tightly sealed mason jar with cubes of butter or eggs in the fridge. When I make fruit cake, I cream my butter with aromatics (spices, booze, dried fruit, vanilla, etc) a day or two ahead, put it in the fridge to "ripen", and it really makes a difference. Oh, one more thing. Some vitamins are fat soluable ("B", if I remember correctly) and some or water soluable.

O.K. ............... But-tum, uh... we're burning a fossil fuel here. By burning a fuel we are producing heat, light, and spent gasses. So what kind of gas does burning natural gas produce?

Not to hijack the thread, but with pestles, you can take a cue from the Chinese medicine/herb shops. There is usually a giant brass mortar & pestle in the corner, the pestle has two leather or vinyl discs threaded on it to keep herbs/etc. from jumping out of the mortar.

I hate garlic presses mainly because it's just one more thing to wash up, and also because I feel that pressed/squished garlic tastes much more harsher than chopped or grated. In any case I've been giving my Victorinox and Henckels knives grief for years. I've broken off a few tips, but never a blade. On a curious but somewhat related side note, I have been combing through old (ca. 1840) "recipie books", the kind that gives recipies for the best soap, how to get out grease stains, wallpaper cleaning paste etc. In any case, prior to WW1 all glues were animal hide based (well, not fish glue, but I digress) Some of the "recipies" that entail glueing brass or steel to other materials instruct the reader to rub a clove of fresh cut garlic on the metal part prior to glueing. This was not meant to clean the metal but rather to "etch" it, to give the surface some tooth for the glue to grip better. Interesting.............. Some wild recipies in there about making glue to repair porcelain, china, and glass as well..................

I understand the space contstraints and sympathize with those with limited shelf space. But no, I won't be using e-books, haven't yet. My collection of cookbooks is around 50, and it doesn't grow very much. I'll thumb through books at the bookstore or take out books at the library. I am snobbish and picky about buying cookbooks. If recipie quantities are given in volume, I won't even look any further. And I have a love/hate relationship with publishers, you see, printed on the back of the each book (and magazine)in Canada is a US$ price and a CDN $ price, the difference can be as much as 25%, and for the last 5 years the CDN $ has never been more than 8 cents below the US$. This sounds like a good reason to buy e-books, but I hate buying something that doesn't exist. A while back I recieved an I-pod from my kids. Spent an obscene amount of time loading in music. Did you know that with one touch of a computer key you can delete all your music?...................The I-pod is in a drawer somewhere....

Odd you should ask, I just found a solution to a similar problem. In my pastry corner at work I have an el-cheapo hardware store two burner cooker. I use this daily to produce a 2 kg batch of caramel. Milk boils, the pot boils over, the element and dish get full of caramel, and I get a big mess. Usually the burner lasts me 6 mths before it gets so grotty or burns out and needs to be replaced with another hardware store burner. Two weeks ago I finally got a 220 v commercial solid element cooktop. Powerfull sucker, no matter how low a setting I use, milk boils over, and the caramel cooks so fast I don't get much colour or flavour when it cooks so fast. The pot I use is always the same, an Ikea 6 qt "365" cheap s/s pot with a "sandwich" bottom, recipe is always the same, straight out of Grewling's "Chocolates and confections". In desparation I tossed a really cheap wire cooling rack on top of the solid burner element, put my pot ontop of that, and set it on the lowest setting. Works well. Milk won't boil over, I get decent colouring and flavouring, and the process takes me 90 minutes instead of 3 hrs. Wire rack was from a dollar store I think, don't know what guage, but the wire is almost the same diameter as raw spaghetti

Yeah-butt... In Canada our butter comes in 454 gr blocks, that is to say, 1 lb "prints", even though Canada went metric waaay back in the '80's. Canadians will give you a blank stare when you say a "quarter stick", our butter doesn't come in sticks, just foil wrapped 1 lb blocks.

I've worked this sort of job, and at one, there was a tip jar. I always put that thing away when I was the only one at the register: all those actions you list? those were part of the job description, I knew exactly what I was signing on for when I took the job. Accepting, let alone expecting, tips for that felt like panhandling (yes, I read too much L. M. Alcott growing up). Apart from everything else, even though the job didn't exactly pay big bucks, it wasn't under the minimum hourly wage, and less-than minimum wage is what tips are supposed to compensate for in this sort of setting (did I mind if someone tipped me anyway? of course not ). It is with great, uh.. trepidation, that I comment on your post. Yes, I agree with you completely, all the items I listed are on the job description. I guess the point I was trying to make and wasn't successful with, was the point that those items are also on the full service server's job description. Now in my town, Vancouver, we have a specialized delivery service for high end a'la carte restaurants. People will pay for take out of high end food. I don't know why, I don't know the reasons, but they do. So on the one hand we have a couple who have a nice, long dinner at a restaurant, and on the other, a couple who have the same food at home. True, the restaurant couple get more service, but all of the basics are the same with both couples. So, people tip 20% of the bill because they spend more time at the restaurant? Because of the decor and atmosphere? Is the server really responsible for decor and atmosphere? I must now resist the urge to follow this thread. We will now see if my willpower holds.....

I think you've got the right attitude, Goatjunky, here's the way I look at things. -Somebody has to take the order, -give it to the kitchen, -pick it up from the kitchen, -gather all the things like napkins, disposables, sauces, condiments, etc. -package it, -give it to the customer, -take the customer's money or card, -give her/him back a reciept, and smile. While this isn't worth, 20-25% of the bill, it is worth something, say 7-10%, and it is still customer service, anyway you look at it.

Interesting responses..............

The Indonasian/Malaysain dish "Gado-Gado, and it's close cousin, "Rojak". I dunno, it's something about the combination of beansprouts and h.b. eggs with the yolks cooked to that greeny-black hue that I just don't "get"..............

I hate the word "chopping", it belongs to an axe and firewood, not with kitchen knives. Granton edges were developed for moist, sticky foods, like cheese, smoked salmon, roast beef, ham, etc. It doesn't do much for vegetables, although It might help with potatoes a bit, as the slices contain wet, sticky starch, that tend to cling on to the knife.