jrshaul

The title of this post was supposed to end "Really, really fast." Jotting out eGullet posts at bus stops is perhaps best avoided.

A friend of mine is due to receive the reigns of the family bakery in a few years. He's looking to move away from making dinner rolls towards producing for resale, and perhaps move towards a more luxuriant part of the market. I'm a longtime hobbyist with a little experience mucking about with chocolates. One of my greater successes was the time I brought ten pounds of truffles to a local event, just to see if I could. They seem to have attracted his interest - especially the vegan truffles, which went over spectacularly and have a lot of commercial appeal. He's looking for someone to help with product development and marketing. I'm going to be spending most of my time running a dog-and-pony show at bridal expos, but getting some workable prototypes is going to require rapidly improving my chops. Where do I start?

It would seem so, presuming you have a good food processor. I might try re-grinding mine in the blender. At $4/lb, it is a stupendous value.

I thought "That's a decent price for a pound of squid!" ...then I remembered that a kilo is a bit larger than a pound. Lucky you.

I made another bread pudding yesterday. It wasn't very good. Aside from using a different brand of generic off-brand almond extract (instead of the old stuff, which was generic, off-brand, and a lot better), I used Trader Joe's almond meal instead of the other stuff, and tweaked the eggs. Egg-related issues aside, the almond flavor from the original was gone. The custard was too thick, and while replacing two whole eggs with four yolks may have contributed, I suspect the real issue was an increase in almond meal. The more coarse grind also was apparent in the texture. The largest flaw, however, was the flavor; I've had good results using nothing more than Penzey's almond extract in a white cake, but this stuff was altogether nasty. I'm wondering if the almond meal I used last time was milled from toasted almonds. Toasting almond meal has been a less than satisfactory experience for me in the past, but I have heard that an alertnative is mixing almond meal into a ~250F sugar syrup. I might try another one tomorrow.

I was looking for the custard original, but I'm going to make this simply for the expressions on the recipients' faces.

I like making desserts. I just don't like to pay for them. The cost of concocting ice creams and bruless is wreaking havoc on my finances. Given that most people only put up with me due to my culinary skills, I'd like to add to my repertoire one of the great Southern classics: the chess pie. The combination of scotch efficiency and massive cardiac risk embodies everything I loved about Tennessee. However, given that I didn't much care for the other 98%, I don't live there anymore, and nobody in Wisconsin knows how to prepare them. Can anyone suggest a recipe? Bonus points if it has enough cholesterol to make it a viable method of assassination.

You'd be amazed how much occurs outside the thumb of the university proper. Professional and student groups often meet outside the bounds of the campus proper; pick the right ones, and you can get great exposure. Or you could throw a few cartons to the Rotary meeting. Couldn't hurt.

Thanks for the suggestions! I particularly like the economical options: amateur chefs on the internet tend to default to expensive ingredients, and I prefer recipes I can afford more than once a decade. Has anyone combined almond meal with hot sugar syrups to achieve a praline-like flavor profile? My attempt at a straight praline did not work well, but I'd like to try it again at reduced temperature. The marzipan formulation of hot syrup and egg whites I've seen is not so good for raw consumption, but it might make for a very effective - and gluten-free - tart filling. I've also seen several leavened sweetbreads studded with cherries. Almond and cherry is a popular combination. Are there any extant recipes along these lines? Edit: Not a clafoutis. That said - almond cherry clafoutis? Yes, please!

The almond meal cake idea is an interesting one. My almond meal is a bit on the coarse side for something described as "flour." If only I had a Vitamix... I've only really seen almond crusts used with ganache tarts, but that's not a sensible limitation. Beyond the obvious "More almonds!", a cherry or apricot filling may also be quite satisfying. Or, at least, they would be if fruit weren't so $#@! expensive. Mind you, I am due for a chess pie...

Thanks for the tip on stale bread. I might buy "semi-stale" day-olds and bake them as suggested before making the pudding, as they're more likely to be what I receive anyway and it means I can lose the bin 'o bread on top of my fridge. I've been having problems with the top singing, though I had attributed that to the Oven of Doom. I'll try this next time.

Does anyone know a way I might be able to turn one of these into an almond cake? Most seem to be based around a mixture of almond meal or almond flour and whipped egg whites. I've seen a few almond paste recipes that mix blanched, peeled almonds (life's too short to peel almonds!), egg whites, and soft-ball sugar syrup; while the use of raw egg whites in something stored at room temperature worries me, I might try it with the almond meal and see what happens.

Has anyone SV'd chicken and then fried it in extremely hot oil to crisp the batter? Rice bran oil (490F smoke point!) might be amenable to this technique.

What's an acceptable price for stales? $1 for a big baguette? The only reason freevegans do not terrify me is that they're liable to perish before causing any serious headaches.

I make a lot of bread puddings. They're simple, they're easy, they taste great, and I can crank them out in autopilot mode. They're technically cheaper than a lux-brand "Thank You" card. Problem is, I seem to run out of stale bread before I run out of need for puddings. I don't eat a lot of bread, and the cheap Italian from the supermarket decomposes in custard like so much toilet tissue. While I do have a curiously successful recipe with stale hot dog buns, I need some more of the good stuff. Is there a way I can finagle stale loaves from bakers without being rude? I'm on a student budget, so price is paramount.

Unlike prepared almond pastes, almond meal is extremely cheap (Trader Joe's specs at $4/lb) and keeps pretty much indefinitely. I recently had great success using it in bread pudding, where combined with a bit of extract both thickened the custard and provided very good flavor. I have, however, yet to find much else do with it. My last attempt at ground almond praline didn't work so well, though I may try it again after allowing the sugar syrup to partially cool. I'd like to use it in a tart in lieu of almond paste, which within the confines of my budget means a can of 40% high fructose syrup - perhaps someone can suggest a recipe?

Ingredients: Corn Syrup, Wheat Flour, Citric Acid, Artificial Flavor, Red 40. I guess the first order of business is heating some to form a syrup. I'm not sure if the colors or flavors would be modified by the heat. You'd also start to cook the wheat flour. An easier option may be to add citric acid, red #40, and artificial cherry or raspberry flavoring to the meringue. Corn syrup is a very popular ingredient in chocolate ganache, frequently used to decrease viscosity. Forming a red vines syrup by boiling in water and mixing with cream and white chocolate might be an option. To be honest, though, I find most artificial flavorings taste appalling when diluted. It might be easier to add a gelling agent and use it as a glaze.

Dairy Queen. Once a year.

Bugger all if I know. Most restaurants in my area under $25 an entree serve a culinary Chrysler Sebring - adequate, safe, and disappointing in every conceivable way. I suspect that a large percentage of diners treat restaurants as conveniences, whether due to travel, lack of time, or simply needing a venue for group activity. The actual food is only significant as a part of the ambiance. Sort of like the carpet. I'm considering picketing outside Coldstone with a sign proclaiming "BETTER LOCAL ICE CREAM ACROSS THE STREET."

As far as I can tell, 90% of restaurant bloggers can be divided into: a. Useless "Squee!" bloggers that will give five stars to a soggy boot b. Limited eaters who reject anything different from what they were raised on c. Self-entitled little gits. d. All of the above. I'd suggest putting up a "Please review us on (blank!)" sign next to the cash register.

When producing seasonal goods using ingredients with short shelf life and highly variable cost, keep accurate metrics of all inputs. A seasonal good does not have established sales patterns, making it very easy to lose big money on overproduction. The margins on donuts are not large to begin with, and the inputs to a Krispy Kreme are a lot less variable than farmers' market produce. Where I live, this very regulation has resulted in a significant takeover of food carts by established restaurants - the campus donut cart is now owned by a large casual restaurant & caterer. The certifications have become so stringent as to be prohibitive to anyone not owning a private kitchen. Keep an eye on the news. It's also worth considering product to major events on campus. Professional conferences are an awfully efficient way of gathering huge quantities of potential donut buyers into one location. A local start-up accelerator event seems to have no trouble with sponsorship from caterers; perhaps you can look into something similar.

I have a really strong dislike of cornstarch. There's no rhyme or reason behind it, beyond that I can taste it faintly in most applications where it has been used. I might try reducing the tapioca and see what happens, or steaming the custard a la' creme brulee.

Scoop is right. I did my first two years of undergrad at a tech school with a strong culinary arts department. Half the students were working at least thirty hours a week in a kitchen. It's a gruelling schedule. I certainly can't do it myself. But it makes a good litmus test to see if you can keep up with the load.

Wow, you guys are more evil than medical staff. Lots of practical jokes take place on slow nights in the hospital. This thread has been a fun read. Not a professional kitchen story, but I did something similar when I was an intern (medical). One of the chief residents kept raiding the fridge in the call room and eating my lunches (generally very tasty ones, if I do say so myself), but as the lowly intern, I couldn't really complain. So I baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and put a fairly large dose of powdered habanero in a portion of the dough, and put the cookies in my lunch bag. I tasted one, the heat does not register immediately because of the sweetness, easily allowing someone rapidly snarfing cookies to finish at least a couple before the heat starts. He never stole my lunch again. Someone's been stealing my lunch. Where do I get the habanero powder??

Things I have learned: 1. Eggs don't work all that well on their own to prevent big ice crystals. Maybe I could make it thicker if I cooked the custard longer? 2. Anything short of 100% dairy cream will have some crystallization without the addition of a stabilizer. 3. Swapping corn starch for tapioca starch will produce silly putty, not ice cream. 4. 1tbsp of xanthan gum in a quart of ice cream is a horrible, horrible, horrible idea. I don't really like the taste of corn starch, but I'll likely stick with it for future batches. Still beats ice crystals or silly putty...