Edward J

Been fighting this one for almost 20 years now. When an employee comes up with this one, I hold my breath and keep calm, then ask them a simple question: "A riddle for you, when you dive into a swimming pool, what's the very first thing you do? Ya get wet, that's what you do. The first thing a piece of food does when it hits the ground is pick up bacteria. Never let me hear you with that line of garbage again."

Thanks for the replies. Satr down with a tape measure, paper and a coffee, and had a good long think. The melters are 8" high and sit on my counters. My counters are about 35" high, a height I am quite comfortable with. Most of the mess--drips along the rim of the melter, occur when I'm molding. It finally occured to me that i'm holding the molds un-naturaly high. So on my "Round-to-it" list, I have decided to chop off the short arm of my "L" configured work surface. I will make custom tables to fit the melters which are on wheels. The height of the melters will be the same as my work surface. The melters will be wheeled into a "docking station"--only one at a time, and wheeled out to the kitchen when I need to change the water or for a good clean down.

Interesting topic, all comments duly noted..... I spent the early 90's in Singapore, which has a good reputation for a clean city. The western hotels and restaurants had very stringent health codes and inspections--to this day I still don't know why the health dept requested a 2 hr rated fire wall around my walk in cooler and freezer, but I digress. As a westerner I was shocked, thrilled, and held in awe of the "wet markets", the local markets that sold meat and produce. Gloves? pffft. Pork was sold fresh, hanging up under a tin roof in the hot sun. A meat grinder was always at the ready, being used every now and then, and also kept in the hot sun. The fish guys were always friendly, cutting and cleaning fish to order, shoving money into their crusty aprons, smoking and scratching their legs where the rubber boots chafed on the calves. The Halal guys wasn't much better, selling semi-frozen goat that was hung up next to naked 100 watt lightbulbs... Produce? Trucked in fresh from the airport, mainland Malaysia, or the seaports. Trucked in via open flat bed trucks.... And yet.. And yet no one died. No one got sick. I never got sick. My parents ame and visited us, and they never got sick. Tourists "in the know" came to S'pore to get healthy again. Oh there were outbreaks, some eejit putting in 20 times the amount of sodium benzoate needed in fresh noodles, bad milk powder. Stuff like that. You get grossed out in Mom and Pop delis? Then don't go. Everyone has eyes. If there's only one guy behind the meat slicer and cash register, then you know what's going to happen.

Just winding down from my Valetine's day rush and I'm trying to fnd a better work flow and ways of working cleaner and neater. Currently I work in a 6' x 8' room, have a 6' table with a marble top running along one wall with an additional 4' marble clad table joining it, forming an "L" shape. On this I have my two melters, 20 kg water bath types. These take a full size deep hotel pan, one is full of dark, the other split with milk and white. I do have a dipping wheel, but find it a real hassle to clean up at the end of the day unless I'm doing very heavy production. Along one wall I have a standard baker's rack with fiberglass "cafeteria trays" for my bon bons. One small probelm with this is that you can place two trays on one shelf, but no one really wants to pull out the first tray to see what's behind it. I have a little Chef rubber vibrator on the main table (oh dear, that doesn't sound right...) that I operate with a foot activated pedal. It makes a heckuva racket and the FOH girls hate me if I run it when customers are around. No matter how hard I try to keep clean it still looks like a pigsty. I cling film up the melters every day, but after the first half dozen molds they are full of drips. I'm too small to be thinking of those 30-50 kg molders--the kind that resemble a sink on wheels complete with a wheel and vibrator, but I can still dream. Would my current melters be at an ideal height if the top of the melter was at table top height? I've been thiking as well about making a "collar" to sit around the edge of the melter. This would be angled out like a hopper, so that it could catch drips and funnel them back in, and still keep the outside looking clean. I was thinking of making this out of nylon nylon cutting baords are easy to come by, easy to mchine with regualr woodworking tools, and the whole thing can be scraped down and tossed into the D/W at the end of the day. Any ideas or suggestions out there?

I learned to cook with electric ranges, gas is very expensive in Europe, and most restaurants use "french top" electric stoves and even electric deep fryers and salamanders. There are pros and cons to both gas and electric. Some of the pros of electric are: -When sauteing, the oil mist won't ignite and cause flare ups -No flame that licks and wraps around the sides of the pot scorching everything, as Shalmanese notes. -Clean ups, spills, overboils, etc, are VERY easy to clean on smooth top electrics. I think any pro cook can appreciate this, as every pro cook has either "burnt" an entire gas burner over another one in order to burn out crud in the gas jet orifices, or has labourously picked out crud from the burners with a hair pin or bamboo skewers. -No need to replace piezo-electric sparkers or pilot lights.

With acetate sheets, the easiest trick to is lightly mist a surface with water, then rub on the sheet with a dry cloth--the sheet will stick for quite some time. For the curls you want, I was thinking of 4" or 5" water pipe or something similiar, mist it with water, then wrap your already chocolate clad strip on it and pop it in the fridge. S'pore? I remember that place vaguely....Lived in "oolu" Hougang in the early '90's. No MRT then, no libraries, no nothing. Took me almost two hours to get to work on Boat Quay--one way!. NO MrT, late

From another point of view..... Once you do achieve a 4 or 5 star rating in uh.."certain" websites, it's time for someone to cash in. Either it's the website looking for advertising, blooggers looking for freebies, or "customers" who, by their descriptions, make it clear they have never been in the place, make vague complaints with absoluelty no descriptions to back them up in order to drag the point sytem down. DAMHIKT...................

Nice stuff! If I'm not mistaken "ras al hanout" is Arabic for "everything in the spice store".....

Ahh, but where's the fun in NOT trying to sleuth out the ingredients? I know there is some carmelized sugar in there, everyone uses it--even the big-boy destillers do to "add depth and colour". Once you burn sugar that black, not much is needed I know there is some form of vanilla in there. A huge portion of Madagascar's GNP comes from vanilla, and Coke is one the biggest buyers of vanilla. I know there is nutmeg oil in there. What isn't very well known is that Coke is the one of the bigger purchaser of "BPW nutmeg", as in Broken, Punky, and Wormy nutmeg. When nutmeg is this far deteriated, it makes it soooo much easier to destill out the essential oils. I know there is caffiene in there. Worked for a coffee trader in S'pore who also ran a chain of coffee houses. He also had S.E. Asias's only decaffienation facility. Sold the decaf coffee at a premium and sold the caffiene to the pharmaceuticals and to Coke. Legend has it that Coke was seriously considering using caffiene derived from bat guana during WW2, but decided against it for obvious reasons. I know there is phosphoric acid in there. I know there is co2 in there. Most brewers in Europe are closely linked to either Coke or Pepsi, co2 being a natural by-product of brewing, and it doesn't get wasted. Don't know if there's much Kola nut extract in there, and I doubt if there's any Cocaine in there.......

Does anyone remember back in the early 80's when sodium was the "big evil"? Campbell's soups came out with new labels for thier soups boldy proclaiming "NOW 1/3 LESS SODIUM!!!!" And if you looked at the label, you saw that they changed the serving size from 12 fl oz to 8 fl oz..... I don't see why you couldn't express fats, sodium, etc in percentages of the entire product. Maybe it is assumed people want to know how MUCH fats/sodium/etc they are consuming per product, i.e x mg of this, and x mg of that. Can't be done--it all depends on how much of the product you consume....

Used to get in a case of fryers a week and break them down--boned out brsts, drumsticks, b'less thighs, etc. I'd portion up the bones in bags and freeze them, every day the cooks would pull out a bag, use the last days (now thawed in the cooler) to make stock for daily soup. All the skin, and visible bits of fat went for "Schmalz". I'd grind up the skin and fat with aromatic vegetables in the meat grinder, toss the mix into a pot with water and herbs and render it down. This got used for many purposes, but the main one was sauteing soup vegetables in.

Who, me? No tats, piercings, nose rings, studs, ear plugs or even a soul patch. No cook book to my name either. Fahgettaboutit.....

Ummm.. on a side note, did anyone notice the ker-fluffle between "Bob the Trainer" (Tv personality) and a small restauarnt in, Minniapolis, I think it was. Back to topic... As ohters have said, 99% of most reservations are made with Visa or other credit cards. Should a restaurant want to stop "scalpers" or "Touts" messing with their reservation system, it would only make sense to take credit card information from the one who made the reservations and only accept payment for the meal on that date from said card. Perhaps this information would be given prior to accepting anyone making reservations? Contrary to JudyB, If I found out that someone was making over a hundred dollars off of the sweat of my and my employee's respective backs, either I 'd want it to stop immediately, or I'd want over 65% of the scalper's take.

Welll...lets just say a repair company will try to sell me a new oven, and failing that, offer to rebuild it. My goal is to milk out as much time as possible from these ones. And you know, other than no vents in the ovens, I've been pretty pleased with them for last couple of years.

I have two 2-pan deck ovens with 8" crowns, and for the most part, they work quite well. Problem is rust. Both decks have NO steam vent, and the doors seal quite well. I bought them used, but from the looks of them they were not used much-if at all. So I know I have to attack the problem in three ways First I'm using the top deck which I hardly use since it is a bit more awkward, but it is the same oven type and will eventually develop the same problem. Ovens are chinese, and there actually is a importer/distributer here in Vancouver, so I am making inquiries to aftermarket steam vent kits. Doubt if they will have them, but I will ask. If and when that doesn't pan out, I'll try to introduce a 1/4" gap inbetween the oven door and frame so that I have some venting, albeit mickey mouse. But the rust, how do I stop that? I know there are automotive anti-rust products that convert rust to black and comprised mainly of phosphoric acid. If I remember my Gr. 9 teacher correctly, phosphoric acid is an ingredient in Coca-cola, so if can't be that toxic. Engine paint might form a new barrier on the metal, and I guessing a good bake at 450 F might get rid of any obnoxious fumes. Reluctant to start heading out to the automotie supply store just yet. Any bakrs out there have any ideas?

Don't quite follow you. Why weigh the gelatine? If the previous recipie called for 4 leaves, then 4 leaves it is, no matter what the colour.

Nope One leaf = one leaf whatever the colour. They are interchangeable "Gold" sheets are the smallest, right? One sheet of gold will do whatever one sheet of "bronze" or "silver" will do. So, "gold" is the purst and strongest form of geatin, less is needed. "Bronze" is a little weaker so more is needed This also explains the price differene between the varities. Here's a "3rd year apprentice's" question: Where does the diamond pattern on the sheets come from? Answer? It comes from the wire nets the soft extruded gelatin lies on while it dries

Sausage stuffer for extruding logs of cookie dough. Dough sheeter for rolling out caramel, marzipan, fondant etc. Electric blankets as chocolate warmers/melters

Shredding chocolate is not really a viable option with many food processors or mixer attachments. As others have said, it tends to melt on the discs, and the shreds tend to pick up humidty very quickly, which wreaks total chaos on the chocolate when melting or tempering. Chocolate is, by nature, rock hard and wears the blades of food procesors and the chopping/cutting discs very quickly.

Q: If the waitress memorizes the whole order, how does she communicate to the kitchen?

Pretty much what I said in post #4.......

If you can filet a salmon and at the same time remove the whole rib cage and belly, well then, I know of about a million restauarants that want to hire you....

Beans are probably the most important factor, followed by water quality, followed by water temperature, followed by the grind, followed by the filter. With drip, I tend to go low tech, and my favorite grinder is the old fashioned hand cranked grinder-in-a-box-with-drawer type. No shrill universal motor whine early in the morning, no more grinder dying on me after 3 mths and then haunting the Mal-warts or hardware stores for a new one to break down again. Truly European style is to have a wall mounted hand crank grinder, nicely fixed to the wall. However, these are virtually impossible to obtain in N. America. I "Improved" on my grinder by adding a simple piece of wood. In order to hand crank, you need one hand on the box and one hand to crank. I screwed on a small piece of wood--about 4" wide by 16" long, to the bottom of the grinder, and---- I sit on it. While listening to the news, I pull out a stool, stick the board on the seat, sit down, and crank, and when done, empty the drawer and hang up the whole assemby.

For certain things, yes. A dull knife is perfect for stripping the skin off of salmon sides, where the knife acts more like a wedge than a sharp edge. And for fileting sides of salmon off of whole salmon--however I need a sharp knife for removing the "rib cage" off of the sides once they are separted from the carcass. On a completely different topic I keep a dull beast of a Henckels around to chop couverture...

How old are the transfer sheets? Sometimes, especially in warm climates, during shipping, storage, etc., the cocoa butter can get out of temper. If you have any other/newer transfer sheets--even used ones, try molding a few shells with that particualr mold to see if you get the same problem.