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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?

YES! I was wondering whether or not that might work, and will give that a go. Thanks

If dulce de leche breaks, is it salvageable? After reducing for about two and a half hours, water was added to it (it was intended as a favour, I don't want to go into it), and it is now has a very granular consistency. Can this be saved? This took a quite a while and is a big batch (started from 5.25L milk), so throwing it away out of mere frustration does not seem the ideal way to go.

I always head to Yasuda, the moment I get back to NYC; I literally head directly there from Grand Central, luggage in tow, and order takeaway. I haven't been back for about a year, but I've always enjoyed what I got there. I've heard a lot of enthusiasm expressed for Blue Ribbon, but have never gone there (the queue put me off). I definitely recommend hunting up some of the other discussions of sushi in NYC, too, which also give a sense of the track record of many of the best-known places.

Yesterday, we neatly ducked the entire food preparation question by dining out, after gnawing (or not) on random odds and ends before leaving the house. Today we are ducking the question in a different way, with an actual duck (one of several my boyfriend's father recently shot–while hunting, that is, not while casually strolling past a farm). I have more or less disposed of the rava. I managed to make this as poorly-planned an exercise as possible, since my mental hardware seemed to not cope well with the whole polenta concept. I began by making polenta a couple of days back. Recipes were easily found, but the stuff always strikes me as not only needlessly gritty, but aggressively bland, so I looked at spices. As usual when I'm lacking any inspiration, I grabbed numeg. Also turmeric, for no immediately apparent reason. After adding both, and mixing thoroughtly, I stopped and stared at the now-garish-yellow mass, and wondered what had possessed me to do this (the answer came unbidden: little as I care for polenta, polenta=yellow, and in my rather scattered state, I reflexively made it look 'right'). I fiddled with the lights so that the colour was less disturbing, spread the stuff on a baking sheet, let it cool, and cut it into diamond-shaped gnocchi. We had some for dinner with some of the braised duck, and they were okay. Not good, not bad, just ragingly mediocre. I ate another round of them for lunch today, then snapped. I hauled the whole mess upstairs, tipped it into a bowl, recklessly cast in a lot of sugar, black pepper, cardamom, cloves, and yet more nutmeg, and squished it vigorously (=I preferred not to give myself too much room to consider what I was doing, so I dived in with both hands). There were yellow bits everywhere. I patted the mass onto a baking sheet covered in parchment, scored it into small rectangles, baked it, sprinkled half with sugar, broiled three minutes, and looked at the results. I ran for chocolate, and went nuts with that. They're... okay. They have chocolate on them, and smell spicy, so they will be eaten. The Splendid Table has at least one recipe for really pretty, almost-certainly-tasty cookies that I only remembered when I was sprinkling sugar over my less-than stellar efforts, so i tried to not think about that. UGH. Polenta. Nyet. Next: I assault powdered milk.

What reliable, small temperers are on the market today? This would be for home use, so even a tiny capcity should be fine. We're in the EU, so European brands are definitely an option. Thanks!

Tamarind pairs really nicely with ham of almonst any sort, so if you can get your hands on some, definitely consider adding some to your glaze.

What you describe sounds a bit like what is discussed here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/101377-help-cocoa-butter-sticks-to-chocolate-molds/?p=1393641 Until one the resident experts weighs in, this may give you something to go on.

Hm. A bit hard to tell how the liquid is behaving in this case, since the Dutch oven is covered most of the time, but when I do open it, there's no apparent movement of the liquid (that temperature works out to 257F, actually a bit below the temperature recommended by Cook's Illustrated for this particular recipe). When I use meat that has at least some fat/collagenous connective tissue, the results are lovely and moist, but the big selling point for these particular cutlets is that they have next to no fat (the big selling point for me was that they were DKK40/kg, about USD3.25/lb ). That's about all that can be said for them (okay, the quality is fine), but broken up in a tasty sauce, they're excellent over rice. And that was, in fact, yesterday's dinner: Braised pork over rice, with tiny bell peppers. Not yet sure of my kitchen access today, but I'd love to have a crack at making gnocchi. Either the braised duck or braised pork would be really good over them.

Suction.

keychris, Chocolot, thank you! I'll be giving these a bash, and report back. By the way, I picked up a packet of the caramels I'd mentioned previously, and as I suspected, gum arabic is in there, so structurally, they're an entirely different sweetl. Might be worth investigating, at some point.

What sort of functionality do you need from the app? If it is very minimal, you can use the Notes app that is native to the iPhone, simply adding the items you need as you think of them.

That is an excellent idea. Not sure how much of it it will use up, but it should make a decent dent. The rest I believe will become dulce de leche, or possibly caramels. I have no idea why, but this sort of stomach upset makes me feel combative, so I've been eating the exact opposite of 'mild': broth, heavily spiked with cayenne and vinegar, and coffee, heavily spiked with cayenne. Not enormously nourishing for the offending interlopers, and seems to make a difference. I admit to not being much of a porrdge person; I don't dislike it, I just cannot seem to work up the level of enthusiasm required to actually make it! I have dug up a bunch of recipes fot rice polenta and polenta gnocchi (although no 'rice polenta gnocchi', as such), and am really gunning for those. Yesterday involved no breakfast or lunch (although there were intermittent cups of coffee and broth, used as vehicles for cayenne pepper/vinegar). For dinner, braised 8 pork cutlets at 125C for three hours, and they were still dry, which didn't matter, once they were broken up and mixed with sauce, pretty good, in fact. And now, there is shredded braised duck and pork to see us through until Monday. Today will involve vegetable shopping, and if I can occupy the kitchen for long enough, I'll have a go at rice polenta gnocchi. I also need to make bread, since we're clean out.

Thank you! David Lebovitz's caramel recipe involves first cooking the syrup to 310ºF (155ºC), then adding a cream mixture, and heating this base to 260F (127C). If the temperature is increased by 10-15F, to which step would that temperature increase apply? Possibly both? Regarding maillard caramel, how does that differ from a caramelized sugar caramel? Do you have recommendation for a reliable online source for a maillard caramel recipe? I searched in the eG database, but didn't find anything. I know I can find plenty of recipes online, but my lack of experience with candy-making means I wouldn't necessarily spot the duds, so site suggestions would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks, and I now realize that I really should investigate the sweets my friend was thinking of. The ones she mentioned are a commercial product that I really should hunt up, so I can take a look at the ingredient list. Just because they're apparently caramels doesn't exclude the possiblity of the ingredients/production having much in common with traditional caramels or toffee.

@ Vlcatko: Thanks, it could be a lot worse And yes, the rice rava is semolina, and I'm getting kind of fired up by the idea of making gnocchi from it. Although there will be an awful lot of them. @ Beebs: If you're passsing through Denmark anytime soon (hey, people do..!), I would be overjoyed to make you a gift of the milk powder (N.B. it's whole, not skim, however). Because my stockpiling chromosome is clearly a dud, I have nothing to draw on, apart from the rava and milk powder, so I've been shopping all along, but differently. Yesterday, I found frozen duck legs and pork cutlets very impressively marked down, so I got both. The duck was braised and turned into a large batch of sauce, and the cutlets will also be braised; there's no fat on them, and my experience of these is they tend to be dry and flavourless when prepared most other ways. I figure we'll have two of the cutlets tonight, and the remaining half dozen will will be incorporated into various other things. Wish I could get some chestnuts, but haven't seen any, yet.

Thanks Kerry! What I'm looking for is not toffee (as I noted, it lacks toffee's brittleness), but a very hard, yet plastic caramel. Think 'consistency of a very hard rubber' (yeh, I know, way to make it sound super-appealing), and you'd about have it.

Thanks, pastrygirl! The recipe already demands 260F, and it probably went a bit over, since I forgot to pull the pot off the heat when the syrup hit the right stage. For this recipe, the result was my idea of perfect caramels, firm and chewy, but not hard. Would reducing the relative amount of dairy accomplish the desired result?

I'm looking for a recipe that yields caramels that are chewy, but quite hard. A couple of weeks ago I was visiting with friends, and one of them was in a candy-making mood, so we decided to make some caramels and marshmallows. I suggested David Lebovitz's salted butter caramel recipe, and from my perspective, the caramels were an unqualified success, but although my friend did like them, she said 'They're good, but too soft'; she had in mind a sort that is popular in Denmark, which approaches toffee for hardness, but is still unquestionably chewy. These may have a special name, although I don't know of one. I believe that reducing the amount of cream/butter mixture would do the trick, but would prefer to start from a reliable recipe, if anyone has one to recommend. Thanks!