Edward J

Gave up on TV about ten years ago. Think the remote got tossed out with the couch, when we got new furniture about 4 years ago. The kids still need the TV to play thier x-box and wii on though....

Lindt uses it in some of their couvertures, but not all. The big one, Callebaut uses it in some of theirs, all couvertures with the letters "NV" on the packaging use natural vanilla, those that don't have it on the packaging, use vanillin. Vanillin was discovered by German scientists in the late 1890's I believe. A "Natural identical" substance, that is usually derived from wood chips. China is now the largest mnfctr of vanillin. Not much vanilla/ vanillin is in chocolate. If you read the ingredient list, "Soy lecethin"is added in amounts of under 1/2 of 1% (0.5%) and vanilla is usually the next igredient after it.

Jell-o, has a loooong history, going far back to Peter Cooper (of the trans-atlantic cable, and price-waterhouse-cooper fame) who developed processes for making glue (very simiiar to food grade gelatin) which he later let his sons and sons in law run. Jell-o was--and is a fruit flavoured dessert. Aspic is almost always a meat flavoured item, usually involving the use of gleatin and collagen rich items like pigs/calves feet, poultry wing tips, and the like. But jell-o got a bad rap as far back as the 1980's when it appeared on virtually every picnic table and pot-luck table. "The Simpson's" managed to spoof it and get a few laughs with it as well. Aspic, if properly done, is wonderful.

Yes, a frozen towel would work. K.A. also makes an "outer bowl" to slip outside of the regular mixing bowl, and this can be filled with ice or hot water. Don't kow if Poon Huat is still around, or even Win-Sin, used to be a place (a loooong time ago) on Upper Serangoon Rd. that sold K.A. stuff. Another trick is to use slightly chilled butter, not quite room temp. butter.

A big THANK YOU!!! I'm going to be candying a lot more now.

I'll second the water melon. However, there is another one that does a good job of cooling, yet is NOT gourmet. The slurpee...... Best thing in summer, cools you down, gives you a brain freeze, and then you drink some more.

Yup, F.C. #2 or #3, I have both. This is regular candied ginger, which I will be doing next batch. Right now I have about 2 days left with lemon peel in my "state of the art" candying equipment (1/1 full depth hotel pan with a s/s screen and two dinner plates) Don't know why I haven't done this before, everywhere I see "crystalized" ginger, which is the method I described above, except with the use of heavy sulphiting--which isn't neccesary when candying in heavy syrup. Yes, I can buy candied ginger, but that's not "me". I do my own candied lemon and orange peel, dry my own cherries and blueberies, freeze alot of the stuff when possible, make my own marmalade (of which the extra orange peel gets candied) and generally try to do as much work in house as possible. Am I crazy? Maybe. My logic is, that if I make everything I sell, no one can compete with me because they don't have the same product, and I don't have to play the "how low can you go?" price war. This logic has kept my doors open for the last 4 years now, it's sent several salesmen away muttering curses because I won't carry the same line of chocolates and confections that every drugstore and supermarket carry.

Ahh! S'pore, no wonder you couldn't get unsalted butter, it's a wonder that NTUC even stocks butter at all. No, whip your eggs until cold, around 20-25 C. If they are too warm, the butter will melt, and once butter is melted it won't whip well.

Yeowwwch, all salted butter? That stuff usually has 2-3% by weight salt content. It's not the salt in the butter, nor the whole eggs, it's the beating and the temp of the syrup. Usually the temp is 118C (have absolutely no idea what that is in F), or a sneaky trick is to dip a reugular fork in the syrup, and when you can blow bubbles from inbetween the tines, it's ready. Beat, beat until it's cold, then add your room temp butter in stages. Beat, beat untill it comes together again.

For the past while, I've been crystalizing my own ginger--with mixed results. There is a lot of it available, but almost all of it is heavily sulphated--whihc gives me rashes. "The ginger people" in Australia make a fantastic product, but at $4.00 for 150 grams is a bit too much for me. Hence my making my own. After searching for various recipies, I came up with the following: -peel ginger and cut into 3/8" cubes -Simmer until fork tender -weigh the ginger and add equal amount of sugar, plus a little water. -Simmer until all water has evaporated and sugar crystalizes. It's my understanding that this recipie would be shelf-stable. I've done it twice before with no problems, then did a big batch (1 kg), and within a month the ginger had gone moldy. Am I doing something wrong, or would I be better off candying it?

Pre-sliced smoked salmon..... Every package I've encountered so far has the living (deleted) vacuum sucked out of it. And guess what? The pre-sliced salmon is welded together. Of course you can get interleafed smoked salmon, but this never comes in the smaller sizes that most home users buy. I used to slice my own salmon, more sides than I care to remember, but finding a whole, unsliced side of cold smoked salmon is virtually impossible to find. End of rant

5 Pages and still going strong. One point ot ponder on, the flimsy produce bags serve two purposes: Yes the cutomer has a bag for his/her stuff, but more importantly for the grocer, it makes check-outs much faster. Prouce is sold by weight, and grabbing a bag or, say, oranges takes second, as opposed to rooting through a pile of vegetables, selecting only the tomatoes, then the shallots, then the... Samples, for me is another story. Spend too many long days at trade shows giving away samples, and swore that I would neve accept a sample about 5 years ago.

Mmm.. that might explain my lack of, uh, "enthusiasm" to entertain the l;arge chain's demands for local suppliers. I do supply chocoaltes and confections to smaller grocers and retailers, but not the larger ones, for the following reasons: The larger ones want from me: -minimum of 35% markup -vendor to provide at least 12 hrs of in-store "promotion" per week -vendor to stock shelves -vendor to supply display units -vendor to present acct. dept with monthly invoice -90 days payment terms Needless to say I don't "do" the larger chains, but many do, although they might negotiate better terms. These include bread suppliers, dairy, soft drinks, potato chips/snacks, confections/chocolate, and many branded dry goods. Produce is another story, and I understand that this is a high cost sector with higher labour and wastage, as is the deli, butchery, and bakery. But still....

My thoughts on this are almost the same as Chris's--you'd be better off with a larger melter. I have the small rev. machine, probably one of the first (back then it was chocovision)and it works good. O.T.O.H. it is too small to cast shells for bon-bons, too small to dip anything more than a dozen or two of truffles. The mol'dart's are robust melters and are quite good, big enough to cast a few trays of bon-bons, and accurate enough to hold their temperature for a few hours. Currently I have two 20 kg water bath type melters at work, and am quite happy with them. Here's where you have to bit the bullet. If you do get a fully automatic temperer without first learning to temper by hand, you will be in for a "surprise" in a year from now if the machine breaks down or whatever. With a melter you temper by hand, and gain the knowledge and experience needed.

Lets look at it from another point of view...... As a shop owner I don't begrudge anyone an extra paper carrier bag. If I knew that customer had a closet full of them at home and just collected them not using them, I probably wouldn't. When I owned a dog, I did help myself to extra bags, but never more than 4 or 5. I help myself to twist ties, usually 20 or so, and I use them at work all the time. I feel this is stealing, but I also feel somewhat justified knowing that I do use these items, and my check- outs are usually well over $120.00 per trip. Cheap produce bags and twist ties are cheap, deli take out containers-with lids- can cost as much as 35 cents or even more for larger containers. If I was the produce mngr watching a customer help themselves to containers, my thought would be on how much the customer is spending--for large amounts, a few extra containers should be factored in the cost, for a 12 measly olives sans brine, one container is already a lot of cost.

Thanks for the link, and yes the video was great! However both the egg and the bunny mold had lips on them, and could have been clipped together, although both were "closed base" molds, so I guess mold would have to be rotated constantly untill the chocolate sets. For mega- large pieces like on the video (12 lbs!!!!) it is indeed practical to "glue" two halves together. I have a few bunny and Santa molds, all around 5-7" tall, polycarbonate and cheap thermoformed, and I find it soooooo much esier to clip the thing together. I was doing 7 or 14 bunnies a day, every day in March, to build up for Easter and have worn out the thermo-formed molds. I want to be prepared for Chritmas and get some molds that will last me for years instad of weeks. Here's my process: -"Makeup", ie ears, tail, beard, eyes, etc in white or other colour of chocoalte. -Brush on a thin layer of the desire base couverture. This ensures a good gloss -Clip mold together. -ladle in a small amount of couverture, ivert for a minute, turn righ side up again and drain, and pop in the fridge. -Repeat as neccesary, building up to the desired wieght you want. -Unclip, and the deed is done. No glueing of halves, no possibility of the two halves separating either. So for me and for small pieces, (5-7" tall) the clip-together version makes the most sense.

Thanks for the websites and tips. No, silicone molds are not ideal, since I usually decorate (ie white beard, dark hat or toy sack, etc.) and because I always brush the mold with a thin layer of couverture first, ensuring a good gloss. If you did this with a silcone mold, you have to very carefull not to disturb or crack this layer when pouring succesive layers. Silicone molds are not ideal for large figurines or even filled bon-bons because of thier flexible nature.

This christmas we will have a booth at the Vancouver Christmas Market, and will be selling chocolate santas. I'd like to start my production by late Sept./early Oct., but the hard part is finding molds, and I'd like to get at least a dozen or so. Currently I have 1 (one) polycarbonate clip-together mold, a bunch of thermofomed disposable ones, and two forms of the highest form of stupidty where the back and front of the figure are in one square mold, which I believe is called a "double mold". And yet, on most of the websites, the double mold is the predominate form of figure mold. As most websites show the cast chocolate figure and not the mold, I have to play detective and really study the description and figure for information on the mold. I have a sneaking suspicion that "double molds" are "economically engineered" for making the mold mnfctring process cheaper and easier, the end user is stuck with a piece of, well..., uh garbage. As these double molds are invariably white or opaque polycarbonate, it's harder to decorate them, but joining the two halves is the hardest part. You have to run a bead of chocolate around the lip, then pop out the back and stick it on. In order to have a lip to pipe chocolate on, you have to build up the walls. Even then, when you "glue" the two halves together, the seam is not attractive. So my question is, is there some trick to joining these figurine halves? Better yet, is there a website that carries the "real" clip-together molds? I have located one source in Montreal that has clip-together molds, but only has one or two of each variety, and can't guarantee me delivery of a dozen by August. I guess in the worst case scenerio I could get the despicable double molds, slice off the edges on a table saw, drill locating holes, glue in studs on the the one half and use office paper clips to hold it together. but it's a lot of work, and the molds aren't cheap either, I'd really like to take the mold mnfctr's to task on this one.

Yup, have several, and there is no difference. But don't stop there. I use pieces of PVC pipe for many purposes, notched plastic glue trowels (new ones) for various purposes, etc. Then again, I've been known to take the sun pinion (toothed gear ring) from a 3 spd bicycle hub, and attach it to a handle to use as a rolling pastry crimper.....

Nope, I've got a Home Despot $300.00 GE special. On the one hand it does get dishes clean, and it does get them dry. My list of hates is long however.... The racks... Placement of the wire separators is, at best, just wierd, on both the top and bottom racks, can't get more than 4 dinner plates in there, no more than 4 cereal bowls, etc, large bowls won't fit. The racks... Wheels kept popping off the wire studs. After finaly giving up on reattaching the wheels after every time you move the rack, I went down to a GE distributer and got replacements. $10.00 a wheel. For 30 cents of injection molded plastic. I feel loved, respected, and appreciated by G.E.. Cultery bin. Fatigued after 2 months. Cheap plastic, the bottom literaly fell out. While walking my dog, I happened upon a wreck of a dishwasher tossed out in the back lane, circa 1980's, I cracked it open and took out the cutlery bin, still solid, and it's being used now in my p.o.s. dishwasher.

I don't think this is correct. At boiling the amount of heat in the water is essentially constant so any additional heat from the burner either goes into boiling the water faster or is lost out the sides or top of the pot. When you add a given amount of pasta it takes a fixed amount of heat to bring it up to boiling temperature (or if you prefer it saps a fixed amount of heat) no matter how much water. So no matter how much water, the stove has to add the same amount of heat to bring it back to boil except for the fact that a larger pot will be losing more heat to the environment. It seems to me the smaller pot will drop to a lower temperature but return to boiling faster. So, the question is, does a 1 qt pot of boiling water have the same thermal mass as a 4 qt pot of boiling water?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Calvados an eau de vie? Is it not a fruit wine made from apples and then destilled? Is Kirsch not made from destilled cherry wine? Williams from destilled pear wine? Pfluemli from plum wine?

The reason for so much water was stated above--better recovery. Think of a pot of water as a battery, but instead of storing electricity, the water stores heat. The more water you have, the more heat is stored and when room-temp dry pasta is added, the water quickly comes back to a boil. The same principle is used for commercial deep-fryers. You also have to bear in mind that it is only in the last 30 or so years that we have "faster" stoves. A typical "top of the line" restaurant range had 17,500 btu burners or about half of what is the normal 30-35,000 btu burners, household stoves had burners that equaled a Coleman Campstove burner, and many households still had wood burning stoves.

Both styles of torches Rock! The hardware store torches are great at most things, but they are hard to light, bulky, and the propane can get expensive. (and yet, I still have a ----_eating grin every time I watch Ratatouille when all the cooks pull knives on the rat, but the pastry guy ignites his torch...) I use the butane torch for many items: For creme brules and "sunburned" lemon cheesecake, for "hotknifing" my chef's knife to cut though items, for heating up my mixing bowl when making italian buttercream, italian nougat, or just warming up butter in the mixing bowl, for heating up metal cake rings on frozen or chilled items to remove them easier, and... on more than one occasion, to ignite stubborn sparklers on b'day cakes.

Interesting thread......... For one, I would kill for an "intelligent well built, house hold dishwasher", say with a 5 yr warranty? Look, the Euros have us beat when it coems to large appliances. Ture, trye are expensive, but they are well desinged and well built, and they tend to last. Sadly, this isn't the case with N. American appliances. You can design all you want, but will the mnfctrs build it? Why build a $2,000 dishwasher that lasts for 15 years when you can build and sell one for $200 one that needs to be replaced every 2 years? My background is professional, I think nothing of forking out $6,000 for a Hobart 30 qt mixer, $7,000 for a Swiss Rondo dough sheeter, $3,000 for a commercial two door freezer, $9.00 a piece for vitrified commerical 10" dinnerplates, etc. etc. etc. I am comforted that thse items are well designed, well built, and will last me-- provided I do due diligence and take care of them--- form any, many years. But the $500.00 N.American dishwasher? The impellor will melt and distort wihin a year, the racks will bend and sag with the wieght of 12 dinner plates, the cutlerly bin will disintegrate within months, the door hinges will bend out of shape. Where's the money in designing well built, lasting appliances?