Edward J

For me: Dried cherries and couverture as a filling with absoluelty nothing else, 9 mths. That's my shelf life that I stamp on the packaging. But then... I have had stores "request" for a refund with my product that sat on shelves in a warehouse for well over 6 mths past the expiry date, so well over a year and a half. I was curious, HAD to see how it fared after a year and a half. Filling was fine, a little dried out, but fine. And no, I didn't give them any refund... Remember, with booze at 40 or 50% alcohol content, only 40 or 50% is pure booze. The other half is water.....

Two questions.. 1) What's it taste like? 2) What kind of texture does it leave in my mouth? Answer those and you can write the book

Just a quick question... Is there any other option to purchase "E-books" besides using a Visa/M/C via internet?

Oh there's lots of differences, you just have to be aware of them. Take fat content for instance, or more properly speaking, cocoa butter content. Theoretically you can have 70% cocoa butter and 30 % sugar, and call it 70% couverture. While many European mnfctrs will list the cocoa content, they might not list the cocoa butter content. Callebaut uses the "raindrop' system of one, two, and three drops on their packaging, with three drops having the highest butter content. With higher cocoa butter contents, the couverture is "thinner" molds a lot easier, molds with thinner shells, and melts much faster in your mouth. What I don't understand is the mentality to use a good quality "Character" couverture for ganache, and then enrobing with a medium quality "blah" couverture. It's kind of like mixing a single malt high quality Scotch with fruit juice or ice, and the chasing it down with a blended Canadian scotch. I just don't get it.... Use the high quality stuff for the shell, as it is the first thing that hits your mouth, and the plain-jane stuff for the ganache, where you can let your featured flavours (passion fruit, Orange, Chai, etc) really shine through.

Couvertures have varying amounts of cocoa butter, this does affect the way ganache behaves and more importantly--how ganache feels in the mouth. Usually the cheaper the chocolate, the less the cocoa butter content. Couvertures also have very different flavour profiles, from bitter to acid, fruity to coffee, and everything in between. The flavour of the couverture has to be taken into consideration when making a coffee ganache or one with a high tannin content like Earl Grey tea ganache. Again, the cheaper couvertures tend to have a "Stock-pot Royale" mentality, where many different types of cocoa beans are blended together.

I work with chocolate and molds every day, right now I'm winding down my Easter bunny/egg production. Here are a few ideas on molds in general: -I loathe, hate, detest, want to do terrible things to the people who make/sell molds where you have to "glue" or melt the halves together again. It's a cheap cop-out, it's sloppy, and the joint is weak and prone to cracking or failing once packaged. Ironically enough, Callebaut sells these molds, and I have a pictorial on another website showing how I band-saw the mold in half, cut some bottoms into it, and drill some locating holes into it to make it into a practical, two piece, clip together mold. I've done this with about half a dozen molds now. -Not much of a fan with the cheap thermo-formed molds, but they do work well for the first dozen or so times until the plastic cracks and fatigues. Bear in mind that you will always get a rougher seam with these, because the plastic is not capable of bending sharp 90 degree or even sharper angles--this is usually where the the side of the mold meets the lip of the mold, and the effect is doubled when both sides of the mold are clipped together. -Even with the best rigid molds you will still get "flash" or minute feather edges of chocolate leaking out of the seam, regardless of how many clips you use. This is easily trimmed off with a sharp, cold knife.

You don't need to soak dried fruit with water, there are a gazillion other liquid options. I believe I mentioned a few in my post.

I'd roughly cut the cherries in half, then "massage" in Kirsch. To "massage", I put dried fruit and liquid into a mixer, put in the paddle, and let 'er rip for about 15 minutes on very slow speed until the fruit has incorporated all the liquid. I do this all the time for fruitcake. Cherry juice would work, as would pomegranate juice, maybe even apple juice. Kirsch is, of course a cherry eau de vie, which is very nice but might be a bit over the top for brownies. HTH...

The pitting in s/s cookware needs 3 elements in order to appear. They are: -Salt -water -heat And by heat, we mean heat of around 25,000 btu's which is what typical commercial ranges put out. It is the combination of all three, salt, heat, and water that pit any kind of metal in cookware. I gave Mr. Carch a few days to research the use of s/s in hvac systems. A simple google search with a common brand like Carrier would reveal that s/s is used in: -Drain pans a.k.a. condensate pans -heat exchangers -hoses -and with larger units of 50 tons and above, s/s cased booster coils. Also remember that air conditioning is not just about blowing around air, it also is about removing moisture from the air. Anybody who's ever had to deal with a leaky air conditioner or deal with soggy, stained ceiling tiles would have figured that out by now

Thing is, cookware mnfctrs have been warning consumers about putting salt in cold water and then turning on the heat for quite some time now. As a second year apprentice, back in the early 80's, we got new s/s pots and pans at work, each one had a warning sticker about this. We were also informed at school about this. Then again it wasn't Germany, but Luzern, Switzerland.

Well, then do the experiment as described above for yourself. Many other posters have described this, or quoted from well known cookware manufacturer's websites on avoiding it. We're still waiting for you do do simple experiments with cooling down stock in water baths, and experiments if refrigeration uses less electricity to maintain cabinet tempertaure when fully loaded vs. totally empty. I know, I know, it's just eaier to argue moot points than it is to actually do the simple test. Hey, the Germans call stainless steel "Rostfrie", or "rust free".

Yeah, I know, still unwilling to do a simple test. Maybe if I mail you a couple of bucks so you can buy the s/s cookware and try it yourself? There's a lot of theory and scientific data to prove that a bumblebee can't fly, but it does. Read some of the posts by others who've copied and pasted information from high quality s/s cookware manufacturers about undissolved salt, heat, and metal, hey maybe they're wrong too. And for what it's worth, in my original post I wrote nothing about rainbow stains. I specifically wrote a spiral pattern of pitting that matches the spiral pattern of the electric element on my Mom's stove. Not only does s/s corrode in marine enviroments, s/s is used in hvac systems and it corrodes as well.

Please, pretty please. Go to a dollar store or Ikea and pick up a cheap s/s pot. Fill it half full with tepid water and thow in a good tablespoon of salt. THEN set it on a burner, turn on the heat, and obsereve. Then report. I do agre with s/s not being "stainless" I have had metalurgists (sp?) tell me that s/s is "Stain - less" but not stain free. I also agree with aluminum cookware pitting very easy. It also warps faster than than the USS "Enterprise"

Fat, or fat and moisture trapped between the bronze bushing and the auger. The only way to avoid this is to tighten up the cowling/cover so the gap between the two moving pieces is minimized. It's 10 times worse with the larger machines.

I can verify this. Not only with s/s but all kinds of cookware. It's the action of heat, undissolved salt and metal. My Mom used to have a set of s/s cookware with a spiral pattern of pitting on the inside--to match the spiral of her electric range element. Many cookware mnfctrs will include some kind of literature about this pitting in thier packaging. S/S is not bombproof. One place I worked at had a s/s drawer that was divided into 1/9th s/s inserts full of pickles, cornichons, etc. The inside of the drawer and the cabinet--all s/s, had corroded to the point where metal flakes were falling into the food. Many commercial electric meat slicers will develop deep pitting on the s/s blade and s/s sharpening equipment from tomato seeds and tomato juice if it isn't cleaned immediately And finally, the "kitchen trick"... No I know can explain this freaky occurance, but it's easy to do at home. Perhaps someone can explain. -Get three dishes or bowls, one s/s, one ceramic, one aluminum, copper, or cast iron. -Fill each one with a bit of tomato product--ketchup works well, as does tomato sauce. -Stretch a piece/strip of auminum foil across the bowl, ensuring it touches the ketchup and the sides of the bowl. -See what happens to the foil after 4 hrs, after 8 hrs and after 12 hrs.

No, there aren't. Not even with the big meat grinders for the 30 qt and up grinders. There are only 5 parts (well, 6 if you count the feed stomper) They are: The main body. This has a bronze bushing or washer molded into it. Other than that, it's all plastic. The auger, or worm. The end is s/s, and this fits inside of the K.A. hub The knife, or blade. S/S The die S/S And the cowling or cover that screws onto the housing. All plastic.

What FeChef says.... Wings are expensive (Bar-food) but have a lot of natural gelatin. Chicken feet are somewhat expensive here, compared to backs, as many Asians consider them good eating, but they make a decent stock. Backs are a different story. There is a lot of fat on the backs, and tails are almost always attatched. Usually I strip these off before making the stock (I render down the fat for other stuff) Backs usually contain kidneys or parts of kidneys as well, so some care has to be taken to remove this. But the good stuff about backs is that there is a fair amount of meat on the backs, and tey make a flavourfull stock--not much gelatin content to it, but very flavourfull.

Been using a K.A grinder for many years now, I don't know of any lubricant that comes with it. There is a bronze bushing where the auger meets the housing, but that's about it. Cheapest option is buying a hand cranked item, you'll find hand cranked grinders at every hardware store and flea market. For some reason the K.A grinder atattchment is well over $80.00 anywhere here in Canada, but everywhere in Wash.State it's $50.00 US. They do come in handy.,

What others have said.... Please bear in mind that an IR thermomter will only measure surface temperature, not what's under the surface. Also, cheaper units are affected by reflections from S/S cookware

A very old fashioned stright razor works well for me

None at all. I use the scale. Usually when I "adopt" a recipie, I do some/a lot of tweaking to it. Most of it has to do with measurements. Everything by weight, including liquids.

This is an interesting thread! The Chinese technique of blanching bones first has been adopted by the French and is pounded into the brains of every cook's apprentice for the last two centuries..... The gospel according to the French (and the Swiss as well) for this technique is as follows: When you blanch bones, you will get a scum forming. The older the bones are, the more scum you will get. Remove the scum in as large pieces as possible, because once it breaks up it is virtually impossible to filter out. The scum forms as the stock comes to a boil, once it comes to a rolling boil, the scum cake will break up. The scum is dead protein. It contributes nothing in terms of flavour or nutritional value, but it does impart a certain grittiness. If you have bones that have no gelitanous matter to them (i.e. rib bones) a fairly common trick is to toss in wing tips from chicken or turkey, or better yet a split and blanched pig's trotter or calf's foot into the stock. Split pig feet are dirt cheap in virtually every Asian supermarket, but wing tips are at a premium (Beer n'wing pub food...).

If you refrigerate it immediately afterwards, it will. You can also get a milky or cloudy stock with just vegetables if you allow it to boil, as there are natural starches and fiber from vegetables that will bind the stock.

Yes there is fat. "Milky white" tells us that it is an emulsion--fat and water blended to gether, like mayonaise. "Boil" is a word that, for me, should only be used for pasta and potatoes, stock should be simmered and never boiled. When you boil a stock, the fat is mixed into the water, if you simmer, the fat floats to the top, and can be skimmed off. You can simmer a stock for 24 hours or even longer and not have it "milky white", but once you boil for 15 minutes or longer, you emulisfy the fat into the stock. Hope this helps

You can process in a food processor, but it tends to get oily very fast. You can usually cut the almonds 50/50 with powdered sugar and process that way with acceptable results, or sub flour for powdered sugar, but you will never get it as fine as the big-boy bakeries do. "It used to be".... that every bakery prior to the late '80's in Europe had a roller. What this is, is two marble rollers rolling in opposite directions and a hopper ontop of the rollers. Almonds or whatever is put in the hopper and the gap between the rollers adjusted to finer and finer sizes. The result is superfine pure almond or nut flour without any trace of oily-ness.