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curls

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Posts posted by curls

    Dinner 2020

    in Cooking

    Posted

    There was quite a bit of discussion about gyros and our favorite kabob & gyro place closed a few years ago so I was pushed to give this a try. Oven baked gyro loaf of lamb & beef. Turned out rather well; it is our new favorite!  🙂

     

    IMG_6327-gyros-cutting-board.jpg.77f4b5f779b68e9785021ef1dc6cae1b.jpg 

     

    IMG_6331-gyro-assembled.jpg.b50f9c079d27db4184cc9cbb6c08a8d9.jpg

    • Like 10
    • Delicious 6

    Cooking with "This Will Make It Taste Good", by Vivian Howard

    in Cooking

    Posted

    11 minutes ago, Anna N said:

    And yet…

    ”My plan for this book was only to offer recipes with ingredients I could find in my local Walmart. Not out of love for Walmart, but because I want you to be empowered by these recipes, not discouraged by what you can’t find because of where you live.”


    (Can you imagine any other chef saying somethings so revolutionary?) So she does give you some options for LGD. But like you I would hold off for the castelvetrano olives. 

     

     


    Yes, I am keeping this bit of Vivian’s advice in mind. I will be using some bulbing onions from my garden instead of the shallots that she recommends. Those olives sound so different from the ones that I have that I want to try the recipe with them before I start making too many other tweaks.

    • Like 2

    How do they do that? (the bonbon thread)

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    To add to Kerry’s advice... wait to cap your bonbons, give the ganache time to firm up or at the very least develop a skin before you cap. You can cap liquidy ganache but it is far easier to wait until it firms up. Also, if you cap a liquidy ganache and it firms up after you close the mold you may have issues with cracks in your bonbon shell. 

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 1

    What Are You Preserving, and How Are You Doing It? (2016–)

    in Cooking

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Shelby said:

    Well, dang, the link to the cowboy candy recipe that I used doesn't work anymore :( (lesson to Shelby: don't depend on the internet, write stuff down!). I'm not seeing anything online yet that looks close to what I did.  I know I didn't put any celery and I don't think I did any turmeric.....I'll keep looking.


    Have you tried the Internet Wayback? They archive websites, you may be able to find your recipe using their site, https://archive.org/web/

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1

    EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted · Edited by curls
    added topic links (log)

    Sorry but I feel the need to comment on these recent posts. Microplaning a block of tempered cocoa butter and using it to temper chocolate is a valid technique for seeding chocolate. This is similar to the use of Mycryo for tempering — not the same as using Mycryo but similar. It is not, as one would suspect from the topic it is posted in, a use of EZtemper silk. When you work with EZtemper silk you are working with cocoa butter with stage V crystals that are “liquid” and emulsified (probably not the correct chemistry description but I am not a chemist). This silk can be added to chocolate, ganache, meltaways, etc. to shift it to a tempered state quickly and easily. Having tempered via EZTemper silk, tabling, seed, Mycryo, and various tempering machines, I want to add a note to this topic to make it clear that the use of EZtemper silk is not the same as using solid shaved tempered cocoa butter to temper chocolate. Perhaps if we are to continue this discussion the alternate tempering methods should be explored in another topic or topics.


    link to general tempering topic

     

    link to Mycryo topic 

     

    • Like 5
    • Thanks 1

    Chocolates with that Showroom Finish, 2012 –

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    18 hours ago, Nickos said:

    Some of my work from last months, posting weekly new recipes on my instagram feed.

     

    www.instagram.com/nickkunstchocolates

    bonbon11 (1 van 1)-97.jpg

     

     

    Beautiful chocolates and some interesting moulds! Who are the manufacturers for the triangle and crescent moon moulds? The triangle mould looks like it could be difficult to work with and to clean. Also please share what flavors are in each piece. Thanks!

    Cookbooks 2020

    in Cookbooks & References

    Posted

    I think I’ll start with her Little Green Dress recipes. The green sauce looks like something you can easily have on hand year round. Looking forward to making the tomato based items next year (unless I can still find some good quality tomatoes).

    • Like 2

    Cookbooks 2020

    in Cookbooks & References

    Posted

    My copy of Vivian Howard’s new book, “This will make it taste good” arrived yesterday! On first glance a very different cookbook than “Deep Run Roots”. Looking forward to trying out some of her recipes and “master” condiments.

    • Like 2

    Making chocolate bars - type of chocolate to use and inclusions

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    21 hours ago, Emily440 said:

    @Kerry Beal you're right.  She has a pretty focused line based around chewy caramels with different flavor variations.

     

    Thank you for the inspection tips, @Jim D.  And yes, I'd love to take you up on the offer of me buying chocolates from you.  Thank you in advance for the trouble!

     

    I'm going to have to check out this Felchlin chocolate.  :)

     

    Sorry to hear that you've had to pause the chocolate business for a bit.  I'm in Fairfax County too - love to connect if you're open to it, @curls  :) 

     

     

    Would be great to meet! I’m just being cautious... Covid-19 is dictating my social calendar right now.

    Making chocolate bars - type of chocolate to use and inclusions

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    9 hours ago, Emily440 said:

     

    Thank you again, @pastrygirl  :)  I really appreciate all of your wisdom.  I live in a VA suburb near DC, but I just moved out of DC about a year ago.  When I was in DC, I started a cottage food business to sell chocolates (crazily enough, 1st one ever in DC!), but the DC law was such that I could only sell in farmer's markets or public events (we since worked to change it).  Anyway, I quickly learned how idiotic it was to sell anything chocolate in a farmer's market and then started moving to other products such as granola.  Then I learned all about the pain of packaging too, haha.  Weighing, sealing, bagging, stamping, stickering.  Torture.  You have to really love making the product to put up with that and I really don't love making granola.

     

    The price point can be higher in this area, so I'm fortunate.  I did costing in the market and I'll definitely do it in these instances too.  Haven't done wholesale, though, so thank you for bringing that up!  Around here there are a lot of excellent bean-to-bar chocolate makers and bon bon makers.  The tricky part for me will be figuring out where to sell it around here now that I'm not in a farmer's market.

     

    For your chocolate bar packaging, do you put the bars in some sort of plastic-y sleeve and then into a box or just into a box?  Do you mind telling me where you get your plastic-y sleeves if so, please?  I was buying my granola packaging at Uline, but obviously that's not the same.

     

    Welcome @Emily440, I am a chocolatier in Fairfax Country Virginia. I haven't set up my website yet and have paused the chocolate business for a bit due to the global pandemic but have been doing this for a few years.

     

    Sorry to hear that Bluprint is closed.  Another chocolate shop to check out is Artisan Confections. Jason has been in business for a long time and has some great chocolates.  

     

    Along with AUI you may want to check out Chef's Warehouse.

     

    Looking forward to seeing your chocolates.

    Waffles!

    in Cooking

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

    I've bookmarked this video -  báhn xèo is a favorite of ours.  I also bookmarked the website that the video references.  Lots of good looking stuff. 

    Indeed! I started looking at that website too and it includes some good looking recipes. I’ve been missing Vietnamese food since Covid-19 and will have to start trying to make it myself.

    • Like 1

    A new Stand Mixer?

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    On 9/19/2020 at 9:31 PM, dtremit said:

    @andiesenji @curls and @JoNorvelleWalker — I'm curious if any of you used your Ankarsrums to make things like cookies and cakes in addition to breads?

     

    These days I have a secondhand Bosch that I use for bread (and am happy with for that purpose) but the central shaft design makes it awkward for things like whipping egg whites. And I've heard a lot of people saying that the cookie paddles on the Bosch tend to break if you try to mix up a stiff cookie dough.

    The KitchenAid I killed making whole wheat sourdough is (hopefully) a new snap ring away from working again (I replaced the cracked transmission housing but I think I damaged the snap ring in the process). But if it doesn't end up working as desired after the repair, I'm hesitant to buy another — and it'd be nice to have one mixer for all stand mixer use cases.

     

    I have used my Ankarsrum mixer to make double batches of chocolate chip cookie dough using the stainless steel bowl with roller and scraper. Works great! Suspect it would work great with single batches up to quadruple batches of dough. Since I also have a KitchenAid, I tend to use it when doing standard recipes. If I only had an Ankarsrum, I would use it for everything baking related (bread, cookies, cakes, egg whites, marshmallows, nougat, etc.).

     

    Before making my chocolate chip cookies I watched this video from Ankarsrum USA (https://youtu.be/0yPLbE5FjP4

     

     

     

     

    Here are links to some of the other helpful Ankarsrum videos:

    Bread Beckers Ankarsrum (Electrolux/Magic Mill/Verona) Mixer Demonstration https://youtu.be/zMB4CVG5fLs

    Collection of Ankarsrum USA videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpiJ0OkURk4tD7cPgLVh3Ng/videos

    Recipes to make using your Ankarsrum mixer from Ankarsrum Assistent https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxB_n3shKBmpoNdERgAa9Xh1uZ15oAsdc

    Collection of Ankarsrum videos from Ankarsrum Assistent https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL38C789F0854F6573

     

    If there is a particular recipe that you would like to have me test in the Ankarsrum mixer, let me know. Currently I have a bit more time for baking and if it is a recipe that my colleagues might enjoy, I can share the extras with the office.

     

     

    • Like 1

    A new Stand Mixer?

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    16 hours ago, curls said:


    Indeed! I was the lucky one to buy andiesenji’s Ankarsrum mixer and it is still going strong and I love using it.

     

    13 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

     

    But what color?

     

     

    A photo for you @JoNorvelleWalker so you can see the colors... lots of metal, silver gray, and dark blue.

    617582930_mixer-Ankarsrum-DLX-AEGAssistent-lowres.jpg.ad0e9de9b035be424c0ae3ca644823f7.jpg

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1
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