Edward J

I am reading this thread with great interest. My experiences with caramels has been a fairly new one, but I make "Grewling's" recipie about once a week fo the last two years. This summer I wanted to try fruit caramels. I made the mistake of using Fachschule Richemont's recipie--not enough glucose, and as a result, the caramels crystalized within a week. Next attmept was "Grewling's" recipie, but his uses condensed milk--a flavour that I can't stand, so I subbed coffee cream (10% bf) and with the fuit puree (I used blueberry) I also added dried blueberies). The flavour was so-so, BUT...... Within 3 weeks the caramels had crystalized I've never had "Grewling's" recipie crystalize on me yet, and his fruit carmael had similiar sugar to glucose ratio. What am I doing wrong here? I must admit, that I am subbing corn syrup for gucose, and while I do have a (rather large..) apil of 42 DE glcose, I take the lazy way and use the more liquid corn syrup. I also find if I do use the glucose, I have a "weird, stale" flavour as opposed to corn sryup. I also cook mine to 115, which I find is firm enough to cut (I use a large kife and friction--always a clean cut) but soft enough to enjoy. Schneich, what's the sodium bicarb. for in our recipies?

No experience with the appliances. I do, however sit up and take notice of the 5 year warranty, and I have seen the appliacnes in situ at the stores. The gas appliances I find interesting because they "break through" the N.American mindset of either: Total garbage for under $800, OR Residential versions of commercial stuff for over $2,500, and nothing inbetween. What I like abut the Ikeas schtuff is 1) The grates are cast iron, non of this porcealined crud that will chip and flake off after 6mths of uses. and 2) Tstefull and practical use of stainless steel. I have also noticed on the Ikeas fridges, albeit rebranded N.American products, they have "forced" the mnfctrs to give up on that 'orrible wrinkly-cheap-$5-chinese-shoes-like surface texture that fills up with dirt and crud immediately; and instead go back to smooth exerior surfaces. While I many not agree with a lot of the Ikea practices and marketing ploys, I highy congratulate them on "forcing" the N.A. mnfctrs to give up on the 'oribble finish and provide a decent gas range with a decent price range. Yes it is badge engineering, but at least it's intelligent badge engineering.....

Hey!!!! I got my comment posted on the "the moment" blog. I have always maintained--and still do-- that it is the media; the publishers, the editors, and the TV editors who simply refuse to acknowledge the existance of the scale. If an e-mail/snail mail campain won't work, perhaps invite them (media) on this site as a guest to "support their views" on why they don't include weight measurements? Say, Chris Kimball? Don't get me wrong, I like the man and his magazine, love the food science, effort, and research that goes into each edition. Just want to ask the man, "Why measuring cups?" Kinda like wearing rubber boots with a $5000.00 Hugo Boss suit, somehow it just doesn't seem right......

Sign me up! Tried the link to themoment.blo, but couldn't access it. Tried(unsusccesfully) to comment on Chris Kimball's blog where comments are accepted, but that didn't pan out either. I have, in the past, e-mailed and snail-mailed editors of "Fine Cooking", " Cook's Ill", "Pastry and Baking N.A." and "Gourmet". Only P&BNA has replied to me.

Who "owns" the recipies? One question: Did you invent the recipies at home, on your own time, with your own ingredients? Or did you invent at the work place, on the employer's time, with the employer's ingredients, and as part of your daily job duties? Let it go, just let it go. You are unique, you methods are unique, your choice of ingredients are unique and your management/supervision skills are unique. Give the same recipie to another cook and it will be different. Let the owner run the kitchen and more than likely he'll try to cheap out on ingredients or labour steps. Let it go

That's a good question. Most would efer to it as a "Butter ganache"

For piping into shells: 1000 butter 1000 dark couverture For slabbing: 1000 butter 500 fondant ( I substitute equal weight of good quality jam) 2000 dark couverture OR 2500 milk or white couverture. I just subtract any alcohol weight from the fondant/jam weight PVC pipes are available at any plumbing supply or home center-type place. They can be easily cut into 30 cm/1 ft lengths. Tape up one end and put in a acetate sheet liner. Pipe in the ganache, tapping vigoursly or fill in while using the vibrating table. Let harden. O.K. now, when it comes to slicing I cheat a bit, I have a quasi/sort of "Guitar". This was a garage-sale find, but none-the-less a commercial quality instrument made for slicing cookie dough logs. It is made of cast aluminum and is robust, but only has one (1!!!!) guitar (the musical instrument kind)-type key, that is responsible for ALL the tension on the frame. The wire is one continious piece, threaded through about 50 posts, resulting in about 25 slices. The spacing on this contraption is about 3/8" or 7mm wide. In goes a ganache log, push the top wire strung frame down, remove the slices. I still have to "paint" on a foot on each slice though. The ganache is firm enough to slice, but if there's no foot, I get "fang marks" from the dipping fork when I slide off after enrobing. Hope this helps

Breasts. Brine 'em, smoke 'em. Start em off on the char-broiler and finish in the oven or if time allows, on the cooler part of the grill. You can also do a rustic style redwine type braise with the thighs in batches, Pull out the meat after cooling in the sauce. Heat up the sauce a'la minute, then heat up the meat in the sauce--makes a decent lunch special. Wing tips are nice, but necks have more meat. Turkey wing tips have more gelatin, as do calf's feet or heaven forbid, pigs feet.

I took my recipie from Richemont's Confectionary school (Luzern) I take room temp butter, jam, some booze(Kirsch for cherry b/cream, Williams for pear, etc.) and tempered liquid white chocolate. Slab it, crystalize overnight, flip it over, paint the bottom with tempered couverture, flip it back and then cut into 1" squares with a warm/hot roller-cutter (my interpretation of Matfer's $400 roller cutter, albeit only 6 cutters wide salvaged from oversized pizza wheels and wooden (oven proof--to some extent)handles. I've also piped liquid buttercream into 1" PVC tubes and then sliced when crystalized. However I have to "paint on" a foot by hand, although I've always wanted to ty out "spraying" them with a couverture filled paint sprayer. Caveat: Not a big fan of fondant. I grew up in a time of "Black magic" boxed chocolates and really cruddy wine like "Lonesome Charlie" and "Moody Blue". Won't go near either of the above mentioned items......

Thanks for the explanation. So much information to read

There are manual European style rotary slicers for bread--resembles a meat slicer but with a circular serrated blade. BUT you still have to turn the crank.... Do NOT use a meat slicer. Beleive it or not, the crust on bread is very hard on knife edges and dulls them quickly, and once you cut throught the crust, the blade grabs the soft sticky interior and mushes it up. Serrated blades are the best for bread. If you don't want to bite the bullet and get a slicer, a bread knife and elbow grease are about your only option. There are cheap bread slicers (Taiwan, China) and expensive ones (European, American i.e "Oliver"). I used to keep mine( a cheapy) on a trolley and would wheel it into a closet when I didn't need it. These are mechanical devices and rely on mechanical movement and lots of bearings and bushings. The cheap ones wear out quickly. If you buy used, buy it from a Bakery Supplier, NOT a Restaurant supplier or auction house. Restaurant suppliers don't/won't fix them or stock parts to fix them, Bakery Suppliers will. Hope this helps

Sebastian, From the literature I've read, it is my understanding that when lecithin is added in amounts of under 1%, it increases the fluidity of the chocolate, and in amounts of over 1% it increases the viscosity. Can you confirm this? There are high quality, albeit expensive couvertures out there that have no lecithin added. May I assume that lecithin is an "economical" additive in that it mimics the addition of more (expensive) cocoa butter? Are ball-bearing type conches popular? How effective are they?

This is probably the most intelligent and practical way to go about it, most of CIA's pro books use this method. The American public is used to "Shock value", and I think it was Bourdain's brutal honesty that made him famous and that people would actually listen to him. One of my biggest fantasies (the biggest one is to have a law put in place to have no Unions allowed to garnishee paycheques, love to see the Shop Steward with an empty coffee can in front of the lunchroom on payday....) umm, where was I? Oh yeah, one of my fantasies is to have a renowned, respectable cooking magazine like, say "Fine Cooking" or Cook's Illustrated" do a double page spread on how to actually use a $25.00 electronic scale. The merits: Speed, accuracy, no plethora of measuring instruments to clean up, ability to multiply or reduce recipies easier, etc. Once one mag does it, the others will have to follow suit. Will this ever happen? How much "Clout" does e-gullet have? Can we do a saturation snail-mail/e-mail lobbying of the top 5 cooking mags? Standard boiler-plate letter based on the "manifesto"? Leave the TV guys alone, they'll only notice when the mags have success......

Yah-butt..... Metric is a system of weights and measurements based on units of 10, NOT based on some long-dead King's uh,...appendage length or a series of units of 12 or 16. The foot is divided into 12, then into fractions, the pound is divided into 16 then into fractions, give me a fraction in decimal form, and I'll walk off, far, far away, I'm a cook, not a machinest or mill-wright. Temperature in metric is based on 10's as well. The first celcius thermometer was a blank one, immersed in boiling water (at a sea level), a mark made on the themomter, then immersed in ice-water, and another mark made. The space between the two marks was divided by 100, or, if you like, in 10 units of 10. Thus, water boils at 100 and freezes at "0". Folks, it don't get much simpler than that. What really burns me up is the cooking mags. On the better ones, the content, thoughtfulness, and pure intelligence is fantastic--except for the quantitites given of ingredients. The magazines make statements identifiying that weighing out flour is far more accurate, or weighing out chocolate chips/ coins, but then give amounts for sugar or butter in volume.

Me? I just hose them down with the spray-gun at work, lay them intoa clean sheet pan, and pop the sheet pan into a hot oven, "bake" it 10 mins or so, and remove the sheetpan with the sil-pat onto a speed-rack to cool down. I let the oven do the "sanitizing" for me, and at 350 F for 10 mins, it does a pretty good job.......

Amen, Amen, Amen. True, scales make the most sense, especially with baking, but also with expensive items, like meats and cheeses. Did you ever stop to think that everything you buy at the supermarket--other than liquids--is sold by weight? Problem is, there's a conspiracy here, and it's the Media who are guilty. How many top-name N. American cooking magazines can you name that list ALL of the ingredients by weight? How may cooking shows give the measurements by weight? Newspapers? Either the Media think that N. Americans (Canucks are just as guilty, ever try to weigh out 250 ml of butter?....) are just not able to comprehend weighting out ingredients (totally false, you weigh every time you're at the Dr.'s office, at the Airport, and at the Supermarket....) or they feel, in their estemed opinion, that weighing out ingredients is just a passing European fad that will go away. Problem is, the Egyptians did their graffiti thing over 3,000 years ago depicting bakers using scales--albeit beam scales--but scales nonetheless. I have writen letters to editors and movers and shakers in the Media about using scales for over 10 years now. Never even recieved a reply yet. I have been hard-nosed on this subject in several cooking and Chef's website forums, and for every poster arguing against using scales, I give 3 logical reasons for doing so. They keep confusing it with the Metric system..........

Big fan of Lindt "Blancor", but as Sebastian says, best look at the production date. White choc will also take on weird flavours quicker too as it gets older--it's just ilk powder, cocoa butter and sugar. When I need to really thin it out, I add more cocoa butter.....

Candied ginger is much more mellower, but beware many brands use sulphites. Ginger is best used in a combination of other flavours: Mollasses, cinnamon, clove, brown sugar, even coocnut work well. Experiment, experiment, experiment.........

Thanks for the links, looks like I'll be reading some of that stuff....

Actually, I use a table-top dough sheeter at work...... At home though, there are two trick I always use. The first is, when making the dough, divide it into pieces you need, then, when still fresh and wet, shape these into discs as flat and round as possible. Refigerate. I never bother with flour or marble or whatever, I just sandwich the discs inbetween silicone paper, and roll away. My favorite pin is the one I made on a wood lathe-- a very simple cylinder slightly tapered at either end--"French style" I believe it's called.

Sebastian, could you point out some of the books on this subject? I have learned to live with a 2-3 week shelf life on cream based ganaches, but my two biggest challanges in this business are packaging and increasing shelf life. I am constantly developing newer items with longer shelf life--nut bases, PdF bases, butter ganaches, caramels, nougats, and composites, but the holy grail is cream ganaches. I'd like to read all I can about this. Regards, Edward

Your concern is duly noted. 1) As a parent, I learned that to get what I want involved some serious in-advance warnings, ie: "In ten minutes you have to turn off the TV and go to bed", and then a subsequent 5 minute warning, then a 1 minute warning. 2) All my staff have been informed NOT to have cellphones on thier person while at work. They can call all they want to on lunch breaks, but the phones must be in the locker while on my time. Most readily accept this, some hard won converts even actually realize that their phone bills go down. But the hard cases? In spite of multiple warnings, they refuse to accept my policy. Some have even gone to the Labour Board to complain, and wonder of wonders, the Labour Board does not wish to investigate. So, it comes to a point where you see an employee sneak behind the walk-in or go to the bathroom, to have a long conversation or text session. They get their required breaks, and like I said, they can call or text all they want to during their breaks. But on my time? So as an employer, I have given fair warning, and now my choices are either to fire or to remove the battery. I choose the battery first, then if that doesn't work, to fire.

My peeves are pretty mundane. Can't stand call-in-sicks. When they do, and show up next day, I insist on a doctor's note. If they're that sick and make a miraculous recovery, it must be something serious, and I, my staff, and my guests want no part of it. Not even the most militant union shop steward can argue against such logic..... What really gets me red hot is cellphones. I have been known to ask to "See" a phone (after an elaborate series of questions about it's particular features) only to remove and pocket it's battery, hand the cellpone back and tell them the battery is avialable after shift. Most usually smarten up, the ones that don't, quit. And that's not such a bad thng afer all.....

Thanks. It's not the internet security that bothers me (although I once attempted to get paypal and was refused because I didn't have an American mailing address or bank--but this was a few years ago) No, it's all the "baggage" that the magazine or the agent/company the magazine uses puts out: "Automatic" supscription renewals, automatic subscriptions (and billings) to sister publications, lots of junk mail, and of course the fact that many such publications or their agents sell your information/particulars to other, less reputable publications or mail-order companies. It's not the internet security, it's trusting someone with my Visa #.