Darienne
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Posts posted by Darienne
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I store mine in the syrup in the fridge. A couple of days before I need them (usually to dip in chocolate) I take them out, put them on a rack to dry. I don't bother to sugar them unless I plan to use them as a garnish.
In syrup in the fridge they tend to last indefinitely.
I haven't kept any of mine yet long enough for this to be a consideration, but I will no doubt follow Kerry's plan.
However, I have dredged mine in baker's sugar lightly, very lightly, even though I am dipping them all in chocolate. It's been fine so far.
None has lasted more than a week...all eaten, every one
...or given away at this point. -
I had the same problem with a "brand new KA handmixer"
The old one had a much faster speed than the new one.
I called KA and asked why the new one had lower rpm than the old one...
got questionable answers. but after I said it would not work they said You should try the whisk beater. (its a single whisk beater rather than two individual beaters). I said "I don't have one" lady said, give me your address and we will send you one. It was No charge, and it works perfectly on cream and egg whites etc.
As usual, KA customer service , which is, in my humble opinion, the worlds best, came thru again....(no I don't work for them , I just have lots of their stuff and they are amazing , at least for me..)
Bud
My KA handmixer came with a balloon whisk. Glad you received one for free.
I now have the new whipping cream. Alas! I have no use for it for days.
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The one thing I was raised making at my Mother's knee was salad dressing, so I have never been able to understand why people buy it in bottles. For one thing, most of it is full of sugar.
Italian dressing especially, which we used to call French dressing, oil & vinega...I use lemon juice because I cannot cope with vinegar... takes only a few seconds to make even with its additions, and so why on earth would someone buy it premade?
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DH has just entered the fray and wants to know about the stainless woks by Cuisinart and others? Do any have aluminum bottoms? Are they useful?
Thanks.
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DON'T.-Dick
Great, but why?
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For wok cooking, electric just doesn't cut it. Look, a proper Kwali range has gas jets, not only aimed at the bottom of the wok, but the sides too, heat is almost the same on the sides as the bottom. This basically doubles your cooking surface, which is why wok cooking is so fast.
With electric, you'll only get heat on the bottom.
Now, how about getting one of those outdoor propane gas stoves. You see them at CDN Tire and Costco sometimes called Turkey fryers or camp stoves, single burner jobbies, albeit with close to 60,000 BTU's, and they put out some serious heat. A wok will fit on it, and I wouldn't worry about all that piping in of gas and ventilation and stuff in your home--Wok outside!
What about a barbecue outfit? We have one of those outside.
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Please note that your qoute from on food and cooking says "for best results", not for, "if you don't do this it won't work at all".
The cream didn't have enough butterfat. end of discussion. Stop talking about putting the beaters in correctly, or using foaming agents or a cream siphon or aging and temperature changes. I can make whip cream for you with a spatula, mind you it would take much longer than with a whisk and I would have to keep refrigerating it, but still it is possible.
What aerates the cream is the proteins and what makes it happen is the fat. After agitating the cream enough the proteins get pushed apart and the fat starts to find partner molecules to buddy up with. Once enough fat has come together in thousands of larger particle pieces they are able to lock air within the fat globules. the proteins help the fat sit tight long enough for this to happen. Eventually enough air has been incoprorated that it is a homogenous mix and the air can be distributed evenly through the cream giving you whipped cream.
there is not enough fat, the company botched the batch, go get some more.
I think I like this answer best of all. Makes my life simpler. I'll get back with what the store/company says and does.Thanks, Chiantiglace
***Just phoned the store and the manageress says to get right down there and she'll replace the cream. Yay team! and thanks to all.
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OK. Another tangent.
Lacking an ISI gas whipper and some gelatine, is there any other way that the situation could have been retrieved?
Or, to put it another way, how could one 'whip' cream that doesn't want to whip?
Could one mix in a little beaten egg-white? What could one do to 'stabilise' the foam with things that might be to hand?
I am no expert, but I thought that gelatine was simply a stabilizer and not to be used until the cream was already whipped.
I don't have an ISI gas whipper although I shall begin to think about getting one. Thanks for the help.
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Just to complicate matters a bit more...
I know there can be seasonal variation with milk used for making froth for coffees. This is due to variances in fat, protein, and mineral concentrations. In your neck of the woods, they are likely to use grain feed during winter and then change to pasture feed in spring, leading to large variances in composition.
What you may have had is cream that had poorer properties for whipping than normal because of seasonal variances. Add to this the leaving in the car episode, which would accentuate the effect, and hence floppy whip.
Thanks Nickrey, that is a new consideration for me. I must go and taste it straight and see how it stacks up to the usual taste as I recall it.
I just came up with another possibility.
This cream could have been inadvertently frozen before I received it on the truck, in the store cases.... That would do it. I had ordered this cream over a week ago and apparently the dairy shorted the order. Then it unexpectedly arrived to my confusion. Could there have been some problem of that nature. I know that you can't whip pre-frozen cream.
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This is the only whipped cream recipe that I use:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Extraordinary_Home...ed_Cream_Recipe
I once used a different one from a cookbook and it practically fell. I have never had a problem with this recipe, though!
Thanks for your input. Interesting link.
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I think if I learn one more thing today, my brain will burst for sure.
Not to mention my DH who said...'don't tell me that you actually told everyone what you did? 
' So the half-whipped cream went back into the bottle and will do nicely for ganache or something else.
And I'll buy another bottle of Cream of Weber Whipping cream and see what happens, and then follow up on this thread.
Thanks for the additional information. I knew about egg whites and cleanliness and somehow thought it was true of whipping cream...which makes no sense when I think about it, because it is fat you are trying to avoid with whipping the egg whites.
And if Alanamoana could heat the cream and then cool it and beat it satisfactorily ...it means the mystery remains unsolved.
The cream I used is, of course, of a slightly lower fat content than the specialty heavy creams which the professional chefs use, but it has always worked before. Fascinating.
I cannot believe the sheer weight of the stuff I have learned since joining this Forum in August. After a lifetime of avoiding cooking as much as possible, I am almost drowning in a sea of information and new experiences.
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In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee says that for best whipping, the cream should not only be cold, but it should be "aged" in the refrigerator for 12 hours or more. That is, if the cream sat out and warmed up for a while and was chilled just before use, it wouldn't whip well. Maybe it sat out for a while in the car while you were shopping, and then you chilled it quickly and tried to whip it?
Can you see my face, how red it is?
I forgot all about it. I actually left the cream out in the van overnight. That's from about 5 pm until some time the next day. Put it into the fridge and forgot all about it.It was in the fridge for several hours before I tried to whip it, but I guess that the damage caused by however much heat there was in the van was too much.
Oooh, I am embarrassed.
But hey! Life moves on.I am indebted to you for your post.
I received it before I made a total idiot of myself publicly.(Talk about your learning experiences...)
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For an electric stove, you can pre-heat one burner to high, one to low or medium, and switch the pan back and forth as needed for rapid temperature control. If your stove is weak, your best recourse is to strictly limit the amount of food added at one time when stir-frying.
A flat-bottomed pan is best for an electric stove. Ah Leung (hrzt8w) used an ordinary frying pan to produce an amazing array of Chinese food – see Chinese Food Pictorials (click) .
I think I have died and gone to food heaven. I downloaded all the photos and I see that they each have recipes to accompany them.
Thank you for this wonderful boon.
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Still no answer. DH was a witness to the controlled whipping session.
Everything was scrupulously clean and in the freezer at the start. New cream from the same quart. Used balloon whisk. It was much cooler today also. Low desert humidity.
As in the first two attempts, the cream began to thicken somewhat after a few minutes. Aha! I thought. This time it works. Wrong.
It never got any thicker. Just a sort of a medium thick and that was it.I phoned the market from which I got the cream and am to call back tomorrow. I might also just mail the company with my predicament and see what they say...or if they replace my defective/? cream.
Thanks for helping and listening.
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The problem with electric stove tops is similar to that seen with commercial household gas rings; they do not get hot enough to properly stir fry. As a consequence, food is quite often steamed rather than fried, which gives a very different outcome from commercial wok burners.
A free-standing wok burner that has large pipes (see here for an example) is a satisfactory alternative but it is a very high heat product that can be dangerous if misused. In Australia we often have wok burners on our gas BBQs that put out a more respectable heat than domestic range wok burners.
For an electric range if you have to use it, it is likely to be preferable to get a flat bottomed rather than a round bottomed wok as more of the heat can then hit the food at the same time. It is also more stable than the round based ones. Keep your range on extremely high heat all the time and keep the food moving.
Another thread on eGullet has talked about cast iron woks. The link is here. These may be preferable to carbon steel as they are likely to retain their heat more and it is heat control that you are looking for. I'm not sure if they come in a flat bottomed version.
Thanks for all that information. It gives me something to think about.
Added: I think I'll just let it go until we get home. We're only a couple of hours from Toronto and our daughter lives in the Chinese section so perhaps we'll go to Toronto to find a thinner cast iron wok.
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We, OTOH, used crock pots to dump our finished dishes into to keep them warm and it worked well.
Still, what about the wok on the electric stove problem?
It was great last week, we cooked on gas, but in my Moab house we have only electric and at home in Ontario we have only electric. Can't even get gas.
Is there some method which makes cooking on an electric stove more satisfactory?
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Thanks to you all for the input.
Answers:
- yes, the beaters were in correctly. I checked.
- no, it was not ultra-pasteurized milk. Cream of Weber is a great dairy. And I beat their whipping cream with excellent results just two weeks ago so I don't think they have changed their formula. I am going to write to them.
- I tried first with the KA balloon whisk. It felt strange, in that there is only one whisk and I was used to two. Gave up and put in the regular beaters. No better.
We have been out all morning and right after lunch, I am going to attempt to beat the cream one last time with all new and spotlessly cleaned and freezer-cooled stuff. We shall see what we shall see.
Thanks again everybody.
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Last night we had one of our dinner=dessert events, a very simple one, strawberry shortcake, more or less. The problem was the whipping cream...it simply wouldn't do its thing.
OK. the cream is from Weber which is a good dairy, its expiration date is March 29. The bowl and beaters...my brand new KA handmixer...were in the freezer. The ambient temperature was probably about 80 F and the humidity was probably about 20 %or lower. It tried to whip, but it was taking forever, the guests were assembled, etc.
I thought...well, perhaps the bowl was not scrupulously clean. I took a second bowl, scalded it, cooled it, put it into a bowl of water and ice cubes, all the good stuff, and began again. No difference. We used half-whipped cream. And sour cream and yogurt.
Could it be the cream itself? What have I missed? 80 is not that hot and I've whipped cream at home in hotter kitchens and with 95% ...our summer-long humidity.
All input gratefully received.
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My "favorite" cookbook changes from time to time, according to what my current cooking craze is. Currently I'm exploring different ethnic/national cuisines, and enjoying cookbooks that focus on different regions. But I'm also learning about new ingredients and techniques, and I like cookbooks that have an educational component; Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything and Shirley Corriher's Cookwise are a couple of my favorites.
And as many other posters have mentioned, an easy-to-read ingredient list, a book that lies flat when opened, and an index that can be easily read -- with the main ingredient in bold or larger type, and the permutations of it it in lightface.
Stories and anecdotes are great, too. Make me WANT to try that recipe! And if a specific ingredient is absolutely essential to a recipe, let me know that (I'm fond of tweaking, and appreciate being told if something's just not subject to a tweak).
I second all the above!!! The Cookwise book is a delight to read. I want to try so many of the recipes. Alas, I am in my 'Chinese' mode. My DH wants Chinese food and here we go. The old Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook is much in use. Its recipes are very basic and that's good, although it was written in 'pre-Chinese greens in the supermarket' days.
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Add 13 more for me. Most from a second-hand $.25 sale.
Others include Corriher's Cookwise and an old, but wonderful, Chinese cookbook, The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook.
I like The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook but her recipes call for CELERY! (yucky face here). Not cooked celery in my Chinese food, dammit. It's too easy to find Bok Choy! Maybe this is just a factor of when it was published, but it's just WRONG!
I think you are correct about the date of publication and the ingredients called for. 1981. You probably couldn't even buy Bok Choy anywhere in North America except for a few cities in which there was a sizable Oriental population. And then only in an Asian grocery store. Now it and Lo Bok and Lychees and so on are available in mainstream markets...except in Moab, Utah.
We are off to Grand Junction...two hours away and where many folks from Moab go to buy 'stuff'... to pick up a friend at the airport in April and will stock up on Chinese goodies.
Meant to add that several of the new books are Sainsbury cookbooks. They seem wonderful...I have a few at home...but I still don't know the relationship between the stores and the books.
2nd edit: found one more Sainsbury cookbook today...missed it yesterday. Also four of the books fit into a little box and are from Bon Appetit. Someone was clearing out their life for sure.
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They are not worth it. They cannot generate enough heat to wok properly. You'd be better off without it.
Many thanks.
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I must make a late New Year's Resolution in order to become a real eGulleter: to take photos of my culinary successes...and occasionally failures I suppose
. Lots of those.Recently I have made a lot of firsts for me: wonderful shaped candies for the children to decorate, Valentine lollipops, and recently Almond Cookies and a steamed Chinese sponge cake. Nothing on the scale as the rest of you whip off, but still, it's a start.
And who knows, I might encourage some of the other lurkers and newbies to post their food events.
Still, I had never taken photos of food that I had made, and the concept is slow in setting in. Now I resolve....
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Add 13 more for me. Most from a second-hand $.25 sale.
Others include Corriher's Cookwise and an old, but wonderful, Chinese cookbook, The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook.
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(I tried to search a dozen different ways and found no such topic.)
I missed buying a second-hand electric Wok the other day and then wondered if they are really worth buying anyway. I have a regular wok...back home...of course...but none here. And you can't buy one here anyhow. This is Moab, land of red rocks and blue skies. Actually mountain bike capital of the world.
Comments about electric woks most appreciated.
Candied Citrus Peel - The Topic
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Aha! I have not tried coarse sugar yet but will.
Today I dipped the results of a few batches of candying: ginger, lemon and oranges. Ginger because I was trying to make ginger spread and failed and had all this ginger. Lemons because they were so cheap one week and then I had all this juice and all those peels. And oranges because we go through oranges like crazy. I found this recipe for the old time Montreal orange Julep that I had as a kid. Modified it, of course, and now have all these lovely orange peels just begging to be candied.
So now I have enough dipped peels to open a very little store. Very little. For a couple of hours only.