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Considering the cost, getting a Thermomix for home use has not much sense, unless you are full of money. It may help advanced amateurs in some things, but for sure it won't help average amateurs to get any better. In a restaurant setting things are completely different. If you need to make creme anglaise (for an ice-cream base or what else) then it gives you a good help: you can weigh the ingredients directly in the mixer, launch the program and the machine does the work on its own. Nothing impossible for an inexperienced amateur with a pot, a spatula and a thermometer (all tools that one should have at home before splurging for a Thermomix). The difference is just in the saved time. At home saving 5 minutes every other week is not a big factor. In a restaurant, saving 5 minutes many times a day is a big factor, the machine pays for itself pretty quickly. Plus it helps for other advanced uses. There are purees/similars that give a better result if mixed while being cooked, something you can't do with a standard blender. Not a sensible problem at home, but in fine dining you alway try to raise your quality for small percentages. If at home your soup is at 90% quality then you are happy, if you are in a restaurant that asks $50 for that soup then 90% is not acceptable. If you want a really smooth nut paste that's freshly made (bought ones are always old and you risk rancidity) then the Thermomix is one of the best mixers out there for this job. There are other powerful blenders that can take care of this, but they cost much more than a standard blender. So it's better spending a bit more and get the Thermomix, for all the other advantages. In a restaurant you aim to save 1 minute every time possible, and to raise your quality of 1% every time possible, so the Thermomix is really useful, so much that most michelin star restaurants in Europe have one (or more). At home? Better spending that money in ingredients. Teo

You can donate them to the Internet Archive: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360017876312-How-do-I-make-a-physical-donation-to-the-Internet-Archive- so they will be digitized and made available for everyone to borrow online. Teo

I'm just reporting all the infos that were published in the food media in the past years. There was a big fuss about this, because well, for many people saying that carbonara was created with American war food supplies is like killing your grandma. But all researches point in that direction. That is the story for gricia, mainly. It could be a good explanation for carbonara too, but there are no real proofs for this. Nothing was ever recorded or mentioned anywhere. No people recalling eating that before WWII. If it was a traditional recipe originating before WWII then it would be easy to find a mention here or there, but nothing, absolutely nothing. Teo

Where I live, if you go to the butcher and say you want to make carbonara, then he will give you smoked pancetta. That's the "tradition" here in Veneto. In Lazio they switched from bacon to guanciale because that's what was common there for pasta (gricia and amatriciana). There are absolutely no records of something similar to pasta alla carbonara before WWII, lots of people spent lots of time researching and found nothing. There are/were living witnesses of people making that pasta using the American food supplies at the end of the war. So it's almost impossible the name came from the secret society or from the charcoal makers. Teo

There is no clear explanation for the name of this pasta. "Carbonara" is an adjective that can have these meanings: - related to Carboneria, a secret society that was created in Naples a couple centuries ago, some people say that some old Neapolitan recipes are the ancestors of the actual pasta alla carbonara, since they used an egg sauce; - related to "carbonari" (= charcoal makers), some people say that pasta alla carbonara was created by the charcoal makers in central Italy (copying the story for gricia and amatriciana); - related to "carbone" (= charcoal), referring to the lots of black pepper. I would vote for the third. Teo

People going purist with carbonara is a puzzling thing. There are no written records about carbonara before WWII. The most accepted version of its history is that it was born as emergency food during the end of WWII: people had few food to eat, mostly stuff given by the American troops. So they made a pasta using dried eggs and smoked bacon. It tasted good and they kept doing it after the war, with some changes out of necessity (plenty of guanciale, not much bacon, after the American troops went home). Claiming you absolutely need guanciale is a non-sense, since it was born with smoked bacon. Claiming it's an old old old tradition is non-sense, like for tiramisu. It's something that had instant success and got widespread because of its ease of execution, then people started to think "if everyone is doing it, then it must be an old old old tradition". Not that much. The guys at the NYT should answer with this link (1.900.000 pages talking about "carbonara vegana", most of them in Italian language). Teo

Judging from the photo the galette was underbaked. Top and bottom layers are underbaked, that's a common problem for the bottom layer but not for the top. The filling is too thick, it should be about half. Next time you should reduce the filling to 50% of your current amount, then try baking it at 160°C convection. Much depends on your oven, your ideal temperature could be 150°C as well as 170°C. Baking times change from oven to oven as usual, if in doubt bake it 5 minutes more. Remember that frangipane is cake-y, not custard-y. Teo

How much the puff pastry will rise depends on many factors, width is not the first. It depends on the shape of the piece of dough you are baking, if it was docked/scored or not, if it's in contact with a filling / something else. Besides that, don't expect a 4 mm thick pastry will rise the double of a 2 mm pastry, it will rise about 50% more. And don't expect a 8 mm pastry to rise more than a 4 mm one, it will rise less. The thickness should depend on the size of the galette you are making. Really small galettes (single serving) call for thin pastry (3 mm), big pieces call for thicker pastry (4 or 5 mm). With puff pastry you have 2 roads: or you give a huge kick from the start, or you bake it long enough to get it cooked through. To give a huge kick you need to bake it at 200-220°C, problem in this case is that the temperature is really high, so it will tend to burn the surface. If you are cooking thin pieces, then this is not a problem. For a galette des rois this is a problem, because the surface will start to burn before the puff pastry layers are completely baked, same for the filling. No matter what you do, you will alwats end up with a soggy unbaked bottom. In this case it's better going for a medium temperature and long times. So go for 160°C and 40 minutes or more. Better using convection (fan running). Uhm, frangipane is a mixture of almond flour, butter, sugar and eggs. No pastry cream is involved, if you add pastry cream then it's not frangipane anymore. Probably they say to use more filling if you add pastry cream just to get the same almond intensity. But if a source calls frangipane something with pastry cream then I would mark it as unreliable. If you want a good almond taste then you need to use some bitter almonds. If you grind your own almond flour then you just need to use about 5% bitter almonds (remember to not eat them raw and to not exceed). If you use store bought almond flour, then add some bitter almond flavour (oil or extract). You can add amaretto liqueur too. Too much filling will kill the baking of the bottom, and even the top if you don't bake it right. Teo

Definetely this. All those veggies seem to be cooked properly. In such settings, receiving broccoli that were not overcooked to death is like winning the lottery. Teo

I tried them to bake macaron shells, they worked fine but they did not tolerate much of professional kitchen abuse. Meaning the dishwasher handled them without much care, so they came back with many folds and could not lay perfectly flat anymore (becoming useless for macaron shells). The only improvement over parchment paper is that you can reuse them, so it's more of an environment choice (if at all, since you need paper to clean them). Most of the reasons why you choose silpat are absent with these sheets. You choose silpat over parchment because it's much thicker, it adheres to the pan without moving when you form something over it, it keeps its shape with runny batters. This is the view from a pastry side. Teo

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever calculated how much money it costs to pre-heat an oven at maximum temperature for an hour and with a heavy stone / metal sheet inside? Teo

I frequently check Amazon to be informed about new releases of professional books, I use their lists for what was released in the past 90 days and what will be released in the next 90 days. All these fake books are a plague, there are TONS of them. Fake authors like Thomas Kelly (Thomas Keller) and Christina Tosch (Christina Tosi) that release like 10 books every month. You like a film or a tv series? Try looking for "______________ recipe book" (insert the name of the show) and you'll find some crap release. Everything is worsened by the fact that Amazon started letting people voting for an item without writing a review and without verifying they really bought it. Up to a couple years ago I was able to surf through the lists of new releases in less than 15 minutes, now it would take hours. I switched to "high to low price" listing, to keep out most of that crap, but it's not enough. There are people selling their grandma recipes for like $200. Teo

Make a strong infusion (highly concentrated) in cocoa butter, then add a bit of this infused cocoa butter to the chocolate. Teo

The general rule for being safe when doing simple canning is to be over a certain % of sugar content and below a certain pH. If one of these conditions (or both) does not apply, then things get complicated. Besides that, each place has its own different rules. As @pastrygirl wrote, the best thing you can do is asking to the local authorities, they are the ones with the better knowledge on what you can do and what you can't. They are not there to harass you, they are there to help you. And they are required to help you, since they are paid with your taxes. Teo

Chapeau, vraiment chapeau. Teo

I would suggest to buy neroli essential oil instead of orange blossom water. Better taste, less expensive overall (a drop goes a long way). Be careful as with all essential oils (always dilute, never ingest pure). Teo

Why not? They have a great return over investment. From what I understand you produce some chocolates at home, so covering their cost should be pretty quick. And you make happy a lot of people. Teo

After reading the title I was hoping for something more adventurous. Teo

Videos or it didn't happen. Teo

It's a technique called "pasta risottata" (pasta cooked like risotto). You can use almost all formats, even paccheri if you move them frequently in the pan. You get better results if you boil the pasta for 3-4 minutes (as usual, just less time), then drain it and move to the pan with the cooking liquid. This is a mandatory step for long formats like spaghetti. The plus of this technique is that the pasta will absorb the liquid you use for cooking, and you need just that small amount. So you can cook pasta in a prawn bisque, in clam juice, so on. You can use flavored water, for example water + saffron, so the pasta will have a pronounced saffron taste. You get the best results when starting with the exact amount of liquid it will take to reach the final texture, so it takes a bit of experience. If you start with too few then you can correct by adding more, but you risk uneven cooking. If you start with too much then or you overcook the pasta, or you need to drain it, loosing lots of flavor. Cooking pasta in this way means that all the starches released in the liquid will remain in the pot, this will lead to a better mantecatura (don't know the English term, it means the sort of cream that surrounds the finished pasta), the difference is much more noticeable when you use olive oil instead of butter+parmesan. If you like linguine allo scoglio, spaghetti with clams and similars, then this is the best way to go. I like this technique a lot, but I use it rarely. For everyday cooking I go with the traditional method, which requires much less active time. Teo

This just shows that the Romans of 2000 years ago were much more organized than the Italians of nowadays. Better to not think about how Pompei was managed in the past decades. Since we are on eGullet, a visit to Ristorante Gellius is more than suggested: the only restaurant to be located in Roman ruins, with 1 michelin star too. It's about 40 km from Venice. In this area you can also visit Altinum, a totally overlooked archeological site, even by the locals. Teo

You could go the Hermé way (raspberry + rose): - make a thin outer shell with Valrhona's Raspberry Inspiration (you can mix it with some white chocolate, to make it a paler pink and save on costs); - add a second layer of dark chocolate to the sphere, because yes dark chocolate for hot chocolate; - include rose-flavored marshmallows inside the sphere. Do it with heart shaped molds, instead of spheres, and you are game for the 14th February. You can start producing at the beginning of January if you like your bed and you bank account. Teo

Very interesting, thanks! Please continue posting your results! Teo

If bacon works, then why not duck? I'll put "roast duck skin + milk chocolate" in my list of things to try. That combo sounds really delicious! Teo

I read "roasted duck" and thought I really wanted to taste it. I swear. This is the other one that intrigues me most. At least I suppose I read this right. Teo