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This is a very nice book if you like professional cookbooks from michelin star restaurants. Lots of nice dishes and explanations. Not useful for home cooking, recipes are very difficult and involved. This is a sort of minor sister to Vivian Howard, the approach is really similar. Content is not top class like on "Deep Run Roots", but still pretty good. Photos are awesome. Teo

I don't have a favourite cut or animal. I love variety. Can't choose between chicken thighs, bone marrow, woodcock, wild boar, beef steak, pork ribs, sweetbreads, duck breast, tripes, beef diaphragm, chicken innards, pork head, all kind of livers... What I try to avoid is beef esophagus (like chewing a tasteless piece of rubber) and chicken breast (the rest of the animal is much much better). Teo

Pretty hard to know what's really local for you. Most honeys pair well with sorbus, if you can find lavender honey then I would try that. Since you talk about heather, heather honey is nice too. You need a honey with some character otherwise it will be masked by the chocolate taste. Various flowers pair well: chamomile, rose, lavender, violet (too costly though), cornflower. Some herbs: bay leaf, mint, marjoram. Seeds: fennel, sunflower, anise, sesame. Spices (not local, of course): cinnamon, ginger, mace, most peppers, cloves. It should work with most nuts (almonds, pecans, walnuts, cashews) and some roots (burdock and licorice). Teo

You can find those tanks ready-made for sale. At least it happens here, so I don't see why they should not be on sale in the USA too. You just need to plug-in the air compressor pipe/tube and plug-out the gun pipe/tube, something even a child can do. Teo

Seems like you and I are the only 2 people on Earth who never read/watched anything about Harry Potter. But I saw Barry Potter playing on TV. Teo

The ability of using a certain type of gun/airbrush does not depend only on the HP of the compressor, it depends mainly on the pressure in the whole air system (tank and pipes) and the volume of the whole air system. The needed pressure for using a gun/airbrush is reachable by almost all air compressors. The problem is for how much time you can have that pressure in your air system while spraying. This time depends both on the HP of the compressor and the volume of the air system. Here on eGullet you mainly talk about the HP of the compressor, since small compressors can't keep up with a continuous use of a big gun. But you can solve this problem coupling a side tank to the compressor, such to raise significantly the total volume of your air system. There is a big difference between having a compressed air reserve of 20 liters and one of 100 liters. If you have a first system with 20 liters, a second system with 100 liters, then turn off both compressors, you will be able to use the gun for 5x time with the 100 liters if compared to the 20 liters. The problem with small compressors and small tanks is that you reach low pressure pretty soon and the compressor can't keep up. If you couple a big tank to a small compressor then you raise significantly the time of use. When spraying molds you are not using the compressed air for 30 minutes in a row (like what can happen in an industrial setting), you are using it for few minutes, then stop for some minutes, then resume, then stop. With this work flow a small compressor has the time to raise the tank pressure during your pauses. So you just need to buy a big tank to couple with your small air compressor. Air tanks are not expensive, they are much cheaper than upgrading the compressor. Only problem is that it will take more time for the compressor to reach maximum pressure in the air system. You just need to turn it on when you reach your work place (before changing clothes and starting your work day). Teo

You just invented the sugel, or the bashi! Hurry and register both trademarks! Teo

Asking these questions on eGullet will lead you to ask a loan at the bank. Teo

Depends mainly on the company and the mood. I love fine dining in michelin star restaurants, but I had a couple bad experiences due to the wrong company. I love simple spots (panini, kebab, sandwiches, so on) where you can chat with the owner and he/she cares about what he/she is doing and the ingredients he/she is using. I would love to go to simple restaurants (like our old trattorie and osterie) where food is simple and made with fresh quality stuff, unfortunately they almost disappeared after the advent of pre-made industrial food. I would LOVE to go to ethnic restaurants, unfortunately they are few and of bad quality here. The kind of place I really can't stand is the all-you-can-eat sushi or similars, where people go to eat crap until they are sick. I saw some horrible scenes and I said myself "nevermore". Another kind of place I try to avoid if possible (but I can stand if needed) is the kind of hip pizzerie that are coming out lately, where a pizza costs the double of the usual and they try to make fine dining dishes with average results. These places are full with people who want to feel cool, unfortunately the food is not on par with the appearences. Teo

That's the standard procedure in pastry shops. Each cake (especially entremets) has a production sheet where you find the weight of each layer for each size (except glazes, that's a different story). Example: you want to produce 10 cakes 16 cm diameter, 15 cakes 20 cm diameter, 7 cakes 24 cm diameter. When you are planning how much chocolate mousse (or whatever) to produce, then you pick up the production sheet of that cake, see how much chocolate mousse is needed for 16 cm (say X), 20 cm (Y) and 24 cm (Z) cakes, then make the calculation (10*X + 15*Y + 7*Z). When you have the total weight you need, then you calculate the proportion for each ingredient starting from a basic recipe. All this is made with a spreadsheet, ideally. If you are making entremets at home, then I suppose you are using the same mold size every time, so this is going to simplify your life, you just need to know the average weight for each kind of component. Once you have the weight for a 1 cm layer, then it's easy to know the weight for a 1.5 cm layer. Teo

Then you should try to write down some overall guides for the quantities. Example for mousses: a layer of 1 cm of mousse in a 20 cm diameter mold weighs X. Example for shortcrusts: a disc of pate sablee rolled 4 mm high and cut 18 cm diameter weighs Y. A recipe for a dark chocolate mousse will have a different weight per volume than a recipe for a raspberry mousse, but the difference is not big. Same for the rest. When you have a table with these guidelines it will be much easier to catch those errors in advance. Teo

If you can find bags that are colored blue, then it would be the best choice. When you cut the bags it's possible that a piece of plastic falls unnoticed in a food preparation. If the plastic is blue then it's much easier to notice it. Teo

I don't have the book here, so I can't check. But that's a common problem on many books. Professionals don't work with recipes for single cakes, they work with big quantities, then everything is scaled out. For mousses, biscuits and so on, you pour the desired weight into the mold then proceed. For stuff like shortcrusts you sheet the dough to desired width, then place it in the mold and cut the eccess (no scaling here), when you are finishing the dough you prepare a new batch. So it all depends on the editors, not on the pastry chef. The pastry chef gives his/her recipes, then the editors work out the text that's ending in the book. If the editors are really experienced then these things are sorted out, if not then the book will suffer of a lot of these troubles. There's another thing to consider when making this kind of technical pastries. Most of the recipes are pretty convoluted, with lots of ingredients and passages. If you want to make a single cake, then you end up working with too low quantities that make it almost impossible to get a good result. If you want to make a dacquoise with 25 g egg whites, your result will be much much worse than with a big quantity: whipping 25 g egg whites will never give good results (too few for the whisk to work well), when you add the powders you are deflating the whites much more than if you worked a big batch. Similar troubles are behind the corner in each step. Personally I always suggest to avoid trying to replicate those technical pastries at home. Lots lots of time (much more than in a professional setting), for 1 single cake that's going to be a pale imitation of much lower quality than the original. It's not cost effective (you spend less money if you buy a cake in a top class pastry shop) nor ego effective (not much satisfaction in making something that's full of errors). Teo

That's one of the various little "secrets" that is taught on the job and is not explained in books. I don't know if I was able to explain what to do. If you look for some videos explaining how to make macaron shells then you should be able to see how this technique is done. Teo

If your bags have a big seam, then you can cut it: first you cut the hole for piping, then you cut the seam diagonally. You start cutting from the hole, leaving as little seam as you can (1 mm), then go up diagonally. If you need a perfectly round hole, then the only way is using a piping nozzle (which leads to some troubles with the last few grams of ganache). Another thing to add: if you want to avoid the "pointing tips" (don't know how they are called in English, the tips pointing up that remains after piping) then you need to make a curly move. After piping the desired amount of ganache almost all people raise the bag with a vertical move (that's what comes natural for everyone). If you stop squeezing, then move the tip of the bag making a horizontal curl, then you "cut" the point and end up with an almost flat surface. Difficult to explain with words, much easier with the direct example, unfortunately. Teo

Better cooking figs on their own before putting them on the tortilla, they are going to release a lot of water if you add them raw. I would add prosciutto after all the cooking. Teo

I did not open the 3rd number when I posted yesterday. I see now most pages are blurred. Oh well, it was good till it lasted, at least I saved the first 2 numbers when they were all free to read. Teo

Number 3 is out: https://issuu.com/saltymagazine/docs/salty_vol_03 Teo

First of all I must say I'm not good in giving technical/scientific explanations in English since it's not my first language, so don't expect a perfect explanation (you can find it in some technical books on chocolate). Chocolate is a suspension of dry matter (cocoa solids or whatever you call it, sugar, so on) in fat (cocoa butter). Fat is a continuous phase, dry matter is divided in small particles that are suspended in the fat phase. Lecithin is used as a lubricant / surfactant / whatever it's called, so that the dry matter (especially the non cocoa ones, like sucrose, milk powder and so on) can disperse in small particles. If you don't use an emulsifier like lecithin then it's more difficult to get small phase variations, you risk to end up with big particles in the fat phase, while the goal is getting the smaller particles possible. Since you wrote that your experiments end up with granules that are sensible in the mouth even if you start from powders which do not have granules that are sensible in the mouth, then most probably it's just a matter of not being able to get small particles in the suspension of your chocolate. If you add lecithin you should be able to avoid this effect. First pages that I found with a quick google search: https://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/news/research-science-chocolate-12-07-12 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/21/10303 Usually it's around 0.5%, almost never over 1%. I never used liquid lecithin, so I don't know how it works. If it is water based then avoid it for obvious reasons. Teo

Those are the industrial ones, there should be also the portable ones for much less money (around 300-500 euro if my memory is right). To solve the problem of loosing pressure after few molds the best solution is coupling the compressor with a side tank. It will take much longer for the compressor to reach maximum pressure, but the air reserve will be much bigger, so it's possible to spray a good amount of molds in a row. In an industrial setting there are all the pipes acting as added tank: you want a big volume of compressed air ready for use, so the pressure fluctuations are small. Teo

If you want a silent compressor then you need to search for one that is based on an endless screw and not on a piston. I can't suggest you models, since I used only local producers. If you go to an hardware store and ask for infos on compressors based on endless screws then you should be able to find the correct choice for you. For high production volume a side tank is suggested. Teo

Try adding some lecythin. You are using sweeteners with higher molecular weight than the usual sucrose, this means that if they are not "lubricated" then they will tend to clump together, forming "grains". Since you are starting from cocoa mass then you don't have enough lecythin in that (if there is any). Teo

Stabiner Karen - "Generation Chef" This book tells the story of the first year of Huertas, a restaurant in New York. It deals with the emotions by the owners and some staff members, the business side, the media side... Lots of details for the amount of pages. One thing I did not like is that the author talks about other restaurants that opened at the same time and had really few ties with the main story. Seems like the author followed a bunch of restaurants that were opening at that time to write a book "first year of restaurant X", then at the end she decided for Huertas. That's ok, but I don't see the point of adding the other references, breaking the story continuously. Second thing I did not like is that most of the dynamics are the usual ones in this business, so someone who worked in restaurants will find lots of things he/she experienced first hand. The parts dealing with the New York scene (finding a space, dealing with liquor licenses, the media impact on a business) were very interesting, all the rest was like a story I already heard / lived. I would suggest this book to people entering this business (to see that things are much more different than what TVs show) or amateurs who want to get a glimpse inside a professional setting. I would not suggest this book to professionals, it borders on the boring side. Teo

Homemade gifts are always the best received, since they show you put your full efforts in them. So I would suggest to avoid buying pre-made stuff. We are in full summer, so it's the best time for making jams and preserves of all kinds. I would suggest to make the biggest variety you can, then decide basing on the receiver. Every person has his/her own preferences, so it's better to try to understand what's best for each one. Simple example: a person who likes light tastes will get a simple peach jam, a person who likes strong tastes will get a mango + lime + chili jam. Lots of fruits and vegetables during these weeks, so better making the more you can, keeping in mind to make some for yourself too. Teo

Handling social media is an art and science at the same time, it takes a lot of time to study and master it. I asked to a couple of friends for some explanations and I got flooded with infos: just studying which is the best timing (hour during the day) for posting was full of variables. If you want to do a good job you need to invest tons of hours studying it to know the "science", then be creative for the "art" (it takes a personal style to be followed). Since social media can be of big impact on all businesses, I suggest to hire a professional to handle it. This expense usually pays for itself and more, unless you hire someone unable or too expensive. Teo