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I seldom make anything with white chocolate, but when I do, I always add a tiny amount of salt (I use a mill to reduce it to really fine dust, so it distributes more quickly). It is not perceivable as salt, but I find that this really cuts the insipid and cloying oversweetness that easily dominates white chocoate. In fact, there are few sweets that I don't add a very small amount of salt to.

Just make them in advance, wrap them in paper towel and refrigerate, the microwave them a few minutes (sitll in the paper towel) before serving, which will make them crisp again (and a pleasant temperature; I find these kind of nasty when they're cold).

I'm a huge fan of braising for a number of reasons, but the payoff is not the least of them: Even when I cook for a group of people who barely notice what they're eating, braised meat (especially beef) elicits a lot of enthusiastic praise for its tenderness and flavour. I brown the meat in a Dutch oven over medium high temperature while the oven is preheating to between 250 and 300F, add enough broth to come about halfway up the height of the meat, and braise for 2 to 5 hours (I'm giving ranges for time and temperature, since I don't always have 5 hours in which to cook the meat, and I don't always truss, so sometimes I'm working with a flat piece). Make sure the cover fits snugly. When you're done, you should have savoury, moist, tender meat, and the makings of an excellent gravy. It won't be the prettiest thing, and will tend to fall to bits when you cut it unless you have a really sharp knife, but it will taste amazing (more so than many prettier dishes). If I have the time, I salt the meat for 24 to 48 hours in advance (and use a low-sodium broth); I usually add lovage and a little nutmeg to the braising liquid, and sometimes a clove or two. PM me if you'd like a hand with the search tool. It's relatively straightforward, but not necessarily intuitive.

Should be in on the spec. sheet.

That's one of the books, and, as others have mentioned, the Heavenly Cakes book is high on that list, too. The book is 592 pages, if that is what you are asking..?

Actually, you're asking two questions: 'what books suggest interesting ideas?', and 'what books offer reliable recipes?' The second question is fundamentally more important to address, since a sub-par cake with interesting flavours is not exactly 'wow', and the Berenbaum books and others that have been suggested as being in the 'go-to' category have this status for a reason, that reason being, when you follow one of the recipes in them, you know you will end up with a good cake. For a lot of people, that's a 'wow' right there, since there is a lot of crap cake to be found. I'm going to also recommend the books by the Cook's Illustrated/ATK people; their overmarketing is aggravating, but that's beside the point; their recipes are solid. Without reliable recipes, you're starting off on the wrong foot, especially if you want to experiment. The first question is very probably going to be best addressed by books such as the Migoya book, or the Zumbo one ChrisZ mentioned, or plenty of others in this vein, which explicitly focus on interesting and pleasing flavour/texture/temperature/visual combinations and contrasts, despite not [necessarily] focusing on 'entremet-style' layer cakes. To begin creating the sort of thing you describe in your OP, you definitely need to be able to see that interesting dessert ideas may be easily extrapolated across dessert types. Pastry chefs who are known for making delicious and intriguing desserts don't consult a book called something like 'Innovative, Scrumptious Desserts in Three Easy Steps' (although they may keep a notebook that amounts to this), they think, constantly. They find themselves considering what makes a combination – say, stilton, port, and walnuts – amazing or intriguing, and consider how this might be translated to a dessert, ANY dessert. They have some spectacular disasters, too, but they keep exploring. Bottom line: If you don't already have a book that reliably delivers good, standard cakes, get one. Then, consult your imagination/a work by a pastry chef whose work you admire, and find ways to adapt the ideas you generate to the cakes you want to make.

Well, this discussion mentions quite a few books that probably fall into that category, with Berenbaum's The Cake Bible getting lots of mentions. If it's simply a question of finding more interesting flavour/texture combinations (e.g. one of my favourite ganache flavour profles was inspired by the scents of the library in an old club: burning firewood, unsmoked tobacco, and whisky), in addition to thinking outside the box, you might want to look at Migoya's Elements of Dessert.

I usually picked it up at Meyers of Keswick (634 Hudson, a few minutes' walk southwest from the 14th Street A/C/E station). I've picked it up elsewhere too (Zabaar's, I think possibly also Fairway, Dean and DeLuca on Broadway, south of Houston, and Carry On Tea and Sympathy, which is pretty close to Meyers of Keswick...I burn through tins of this stuff very, very quickly, it's amazing in hot chocolate, for example), but Meyers ALWAYS had it, so it was my go-to when I didn't have time to look all over the place.

I second Plantes Vertes suggestion; gnocchi made with any sort of winter squash are really good, and quick and easy to make. I came up with this recipe (served with a duck ragu); tinned pumpkin tends to be kind of wet, so you'll probably need to add a bit more flour (the weight measures can be easily adjusted to handle the amount of pumkin you want to use): 300g roasted winter squash (roasted weight, passed through a food mill; will be quite dry) 119g (2 lg) eggs 100g [whole] rice flour (I have problems with wheat flour, but no reason to not use it, otherwise, although rice flour gives a more tender consistency) 100g chestnut flour (I've also used rice flour only, and the results are fine) Salt, pepper, nutmeg ad lib. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to eggs, beat together, blend thoroughly w. squash. Blend flours together, add to squash, tried to blend with fork, give it up and use hands. Let sit in refrigerator about an hour (20 min probably plenty). Bring salt water to very gentle boil. Roll into ropes about 1.5 cm, cut into 2 cm lengths. Cook gnocchi until they float, then 2 minutes.

Why not confit the turkey from the get-go (yeh, kind of late for that now, but there's next year, and a test run could be made on the unsold turkeys that inevitably go on sale immediately after Thanksgiving)? Plenty of people are looking for a different slant on the Thanksgiving day centerpiece, but can't bring themselves to give up actual turkey.

Putting all food items curently in your cabinets/drawers into containers will make your home far less attractive to mice (and cockroaches). I once had next-door-neighbours who routinely left food scattered all over in the hallway, and the occasional glimpse of their flat (they sometimes left their door open) revealed that this was also the state of their home, which explained the reason that my previously pest-free home was suddenly invaded by roaches and a few mice. My landlord made it clear that getting a pet would mean instant eviction for me, and clearly felt that my strong reservations regarding poisons and glue traps (the same ones discussed by others, upthread) merely confirmed the insanity already suggested by my protesting the food strewn about the hallway. Putting everything in the kitchen cabinets and drawers into glass or plastic containers, and vacuuming up any loose particles (e.g. the random escaped bean or spill of flour) made a huge difference in the presence of pests in the kitchen. By the way, many cats love to eat cockroaches, so if you do get a cat, keep this in mind when considering putting down roach baits.

Have you tried a preliminary microwaving with something beneath it, so it doesn't sit in the liquid it gives off? I do that for all sorts of vegetables before roasting them, and it not only does nice things to the consistency, but it reduces the time in the oven, and you can focus on browning the vegetables, rather than fiddling with the temperature to try ensure doneness and browning without burning/dehydrating completely.

I have to second what Ttogull said, since I've also found that when I cut most of the carbs from my diet, I don't have to think about the amount I'm eating, it self-limits (I've read a fair amount of research on this, and have a good idea of the reasons this is the case, but I'll spare you the hard-core geekery), and the weight comes off. I can eat all the greens I want, and a bit of fruit, and I'm good. If a salad is boring me, I'll crumble some bacon over it, or put pretty much anything on it that doesn't include carbs (for me, this part is easy, since I loathe creamy and sweet dressings). In a way, the fact that I tolerate many carbs (particularly tubers and grains, and anything made from them) poorly makes it easier (the followup of swelling joints/congestion and runny nose is no fun at all), but they're also my favourite foods, and the one thing I can easily binge on, once I take even a couple of bites.

We're talking a few (okay, maybe several – the moulds are pretty large) dozen pieces. Maybe a hundred or so. i really should count the wells in the moulds. I'm trying to convince my boyfriend that the Thermapen we already have, and a bain marie or microwave will really be fine, but that failing, I'm hoping to at least be able to suggest a decent unit, if there is simply no question of holding him back. My boyfriend likes quiet, that may be an useful selling point. The Mol d'Art melter looks fairly decent, and is the most reasonably priced option I've seen (although the nearly €100 shipping and handling seems kind of crazy). Thre don't seem to be that many tabletop units out there; I keep seeing the same handful, regardless of how I search (I've done searches in Italian, German, and French, as well as English, to see whether those turn up anything extra), I'm wondering whether I'm missing something.

Thanks! I'm fine with doing a lot of this by hand, but my boyfriend is experiencing a post-chocolate-workshop fever that is compounding his fondness for machinery in general. I'm trying to sort of contain the situation (I saw him gazing fondly at industrial size temperers online) by attempting to track down a reliable temperer (ideally) or melter (alternatively) with the smallest footprint and capacity available. Would a melter be a decent choice for small batches of moulded chocolates, say a few dozen at a go? The temperer (or melter) would be used primarily for making moulded chocolates, and although my boyfriend is an avid producer of chocolates, he doesn't eat that many, and virtually everyone I know is on a diet, which means either throwing away chocolates (kind of sad) or my taking up the slack (pleasant, but I'm short, and prefer to remain taller than I am wide), and I'm pretty sure that if the minimum a temperer would work with was 2kg, that's exactly how much would be put in, and I don't even want to think about how many chocolates that would yield.

My first thought was, if you have some tools and are even a little bit handy, you could go round to Home Depot (there's one on the south side of 14th Street, or possibly 23rd..? should be easy to check), pick up the materials, and put together something like this. Alternatively, Bed Bath and Beyond has sweater drying racks that go for about USD10 (not very pretty, but should do the job).

This particular nut roast may well be delicious, but growing up in a vegetarian family, some iteration of this has been the Thanksgiving centrepiece every year, and they've never been even close good; in fact, I'd describe the texture, scent, and appearance of every single one I've been coerced me into eating as being the exact opposite of festive. If something like this is being considered, a trial run is a must, in my opinion.

There is so much of it, I'm kind of overwhelmed. The average, store-bought pot of dulce de leche is no match for me and a spoon, but this is just so much. Some may end up in chocolates, and I have a friend who is a caramel fiend, so if I can get some to her, I will.

My first thought was 'Why'd they put a heat sink on the bottom of the pot?' Wonder whether this actually makes any measurable difference.

Past few days have been dedicated to using the two lurking lingerers in our stock (i.e. rice rava and powdered milk). The latter was reconstituted (it made 5.25L, way over a gallon), and cooked down to dulce de leche. I had a couple of bad moments, but all went well in the end, and I now have close to a litre of this lovely stuff. In terms of shopping, I completely lost it yesterday, when things became so hectic that I (knowingly) went shopping at the most crowded and berserk time, for 'a break'. Of course, I went without doing any sort of planning or stock-taking, and since I always lose it in crowds, I just grabbed a bunch of stuff that would yield a dinner (chopped beef, tinned beans, three tins of chopped tomatoes, sugar peas, two bags of sweets [i know, I know]) and some sandwich meat, and bolted. There is some left-over ragu in the refrigerator, and a whole lot of dulce de leche, and... that's pretty much it, in terms of food, but I think I can do something with that.

Thanks Kerry! Any idea whether melting as little as 500g/1lb would be feasible in these? I don't seen any mention of this in the specs (but I may have missed it). The Mol d'Art units are described as 'melters', 'designed for the melting and tempering of smaller volumes of couverture', and now I'm a bit confused: What does a temperer need to have that a melter doesn't? Does this amount to anything more than finer and more accurate control of the melting temperature?

Followup: Even though the dulce de leche was looking really grainy and clumpy, the immersion blender (highest speed, about 5 minutes) returned it to a silky and fluid state, and cooking it another hour and a half, to the recommended consistency, gave beautiful results. Elizabeth, once again, thanks so much. This was the first time I made dulce de leche, and for a while there, things looked pretty discouraging.

Would the e-text do for now? There seem to be a lot of options for this (e.g. http://www.scribd.com/doc/71737983/Los-Postres-de-El-Bulli), especially if you reset the language to Spanish when you do an online search.

Two big topics, to get you started: Cooking for Diabetics, and Desserts, Sweets, Baked Goods for Diabetics (there are quite a few focused topics, too).

The table-top temperers look about right, capacity-wise, and several reliable companies make these units, but are they reliable machines?