teonzo

Agreed 200%, that's one of the reasons why I rarely follow them nowadays. As @rotuts pointed out, there aren't many reasons for a restaurant to buy this new pro version. For the same price you buy multiple units of the home version. If you need extra power then you just have to use 2 home units in the same water vessel. Same if you need extra caution to avoid troubles if a unit breaks overnight. The 10k hours warranty is nice, but it does not imply your pro unit will absolutely never break before that time: defective units are behind the corner, human errors too. If you have only 1 pro unit and it breaks, then you are screwed for the day (or more), if you have multiple home units then you face some delay at worst. With multiple home units you can make different tasks at the same time, with 1 pro unit only 1. Can't see good reasons for a restaurant to get the pro version. Teo

Now you can even sniff them. Seems philological, I agree with you and support you now. Teo

If you are interested in restaurant books then these ones come to mind: Tim Hughes + Allan Jenkins - "J. Sheekey Fish" This is a London (UK) restaurant specialized in fish. Style is classic (what you could find during 1900-1950), explanations are really good, recipes are solid and adapted for the home cook. Solid book if you want classic seafood dishes. Nathan Outlaw - "Nathan Outlaw's Fish Kitchen" Another British seafood restaurant. Dishes are modern and inventive, especially in pairings and composition. As for the previous one, explanations are really good, recipes are solid and adapted for the home cook. Solid book if you want modern creative stuff. Shinzo Satomi - "Sushi Chef: Sukiyabashi Jiro" This book was written by one that was considered to be the best food journalist in Japan. He made various interviews to Jiro Ono (considered the best sushi master in the world) and transcribed them here. Ono did not hold any secret and talked in full details on what he does and why. This book is not useful in a direct way (the difficulties to recreate his stuff are really high), but it's a great read if you want to understand fish as a whole and how to deal with them, how to appreciate all their nuances and respect them as living beings. Teo

Is it made from salted duck egg yolks (the ones used in traditional moon cakes), or is it a standard ice-cream (made from crème anglaise) with added salt? I would try this, especially if it's the first case. Teo

From fishmonger to shrimp dealer, better call Saul. Teo

Good question, never looked for this info, I always assumed they were only in the food market but it's just a personal assumption. Teo

The big problem is that the taste of the top stuff is not given by only a handful of molecules, it's given by hundreds / thousands. Knowing what are the main molecules responsible for a given taste is not enough, you get an approximation lacking all the complexity. People who are willing to spend big money for top spirits do so for their complexity, I doubt they would be inclined to spend few money for a simplified clone. I certainly wouldn't. Difference would be similar to tasting pure vanilla powder and vanillin powder: main taste is the same, what's lacking is the complexity and so the real pleasure. If I don't have money to spend on expensive spirits or foods then I much prefer a top quality beer than a bad clone of Chateau Margaux, or a perfect fruit to a pastry cream made with vanillin. Teo

So up to now we know these things: - those spots occurred only on the indentation side of the bar, in correspondence of the bottom of the indentation and on a crispy bit (not on chocolate); - those spots are all circular, dimensions vary depending on the dimension of the crispy bit on which they generated (at least judging from the photo); - they come off with a wet brush and some work. The fact that they happen on the bottom of the indentations leads to a sort of compression during crystallization (chocolate shrinks and compresses the bread during crystallization, happens there for geometrical reasons). The fact that they are circular leads to a sort of nucleation, they should start as small dots then expand. The fact that they come off with a wet brush leads to think they are made by something water soluble (not fat, unless you noticed something greasy on the bar surface after brushing it), but I don't think it's the case. It would be useful to know the humidity levels in the room you made and stored them. My actual guess is that those white spots are bloomed cocoa butter, due to two concurring events: chocolate was not perfectly tempered (first photo shows some defects on the indentation side, while the photo of the flat side does not show those defects) and cocoa butter bloomed in those spots because a miniscule drop of olive oil was squeezed temporarily out of the bread, acting as bloom nucleator. Those white spots happened on the zones where the chocolate was not in good temper, since untempered cocoa butter blooms much more easily. Starting from a nucleation agent (the tiny drop of olive oil) that soon after disappears (gets re-absorbed by the bread) should explain the circular shape. One good way to know better is if you still have some bars, then you cut away a little piece with a white spot and submerge it in water. If after some hours it has dissolved, then my proto explanation is wrong for sure (if it dissolves by itself then it's sugar or salt). If it's still there, then probably it has some sense (it's cocoa butter). Teo

From what I hear most restaurants that bought a circulator in the past few years went for the Anova (many cases more than 1), not PS. I wonder if any Anova made its way in a lab. Teo

Can you try to taste a little bit of the bright white part (only that) and report back please? To try to understand what happened the first step is understanding what that peculiar bloom is made of (if it tastes mainly sugary, mainly salty, if you detect olive oil / cocoa butter, whatever). Teo

Are you preparing each drink from scratch for each party (a party of 4 reaches course #3, so your Bev Mngr prepares those 4 drinks from scratch at the last minute), or are you working on a whole batch basis (pick the bottle and pour it in the glass at the last moment)? Since you are a perfectionist aiming for top quality then I assume your goal is to make everything from scratch for each course for each party, but working with a ready-made batch is not a compromise by default, there are cases where the drink matures and gets better. So I would try to work more on that side, given that with your business model you know in advance what customers will be getting at your table. When you will have high turnover at the bar you'll be "forced" to hire another person, so things will get smoother. Maybe you can try saying something like "the Ozark winds are blowing behind the trees, where you will find rivers and crops" and point to the bar area behind the stylized trees. Put it like "we have other things for you there", not like "get out of here", of course. If my memory is right you are giving the printed menu on the Chinese takeout box with some goodies inside, so you are really giving something else to your customers if you do that at the bar and they do not order anything more. Seems like a normal thing, since you built the hype on the tasting menu and the bar clientele is a different one to target. I wouldn't see this as a negative things, you have more room to fine tune your service pace. If you are facing some service troubles now, then those troubles would be much bigger had the bar been full. You have great value for price at the bar, so it's just a matter of time and word of mouth (which is the best advertising). Give a couple of months to the casual clientele to come and spread word, then you'll be full, so you will face the exact opposite problem. And that's the time when the second restaurant bug will start to grow! Teo

If the temperature is around 30°C (and not above) then tempering is not a big issue. You just need to melt the chocolate with a good advance (say about a couple hours), let it rest at your hot working temperature (30°C) until it reaches it, then temper it via seeding or agitation. Checking temper is mandatory (using a fridge). A cold water bath (water with some ice cubes at about 8-10°C, not iced water at 0°C) can be of help in case the party day will be hotter than 30°C. Beware of thermal inertia: if you cool a bowl with chocolate in a cold water bath, then the chocolate will keep cooling after you take the bowl out of the bath (the bowl reached a lower temperature than the one you are measuring inside the chocolate). This should cover the tempering part. The big problem is on the rest. Making decorations / sculptures I would say is out of question, too many obstacles. Hand dipping would be a nightmare, since you would need to stop every few pieces. Molded bonbons are doable, you need to put the molds in the fridge before pouring the chocolate to create the shell, but you need to use the molds when they are around 20-22°C, if you use them at fridge temperature then you get a THICK shell. To do so you need to open the fridge and check the temperature at close intervals, but I suppose you will be using a portable fridge (since it's an outside party) dedicated to only this purpose, so you don't risk to ruin the other food in a normal fridge. For the filling, just use a gianduja and forget about the rest to avoid troubles. Capping is the crucial part, if you start with the mold at a low temperature then you ruin everything (chocolate will set immediately and you won't be able to scrape the mold). I would suggest to limit the number of molds to 4 and not above, since you will loose a lot of time cheking their temperatures (this is the case when an infrared thermometer is your best friend). Carry plenty of ice packets inside the portable fridge, put the molds in a single layer without overlapping them, so check your fridge size (in case ask for a second portable fridge). When talking to party girls don't be chocolatey technical, keep it simple and pretend to be a magician not a technician. Teo

If you look close there are a lot of inconsistencies: pairings suggested under one ingredient but not under the other; pairings in normal font under one ingredient and in big bold under the other; so on. Another example is the pairing lychee + raspberry + rose, the foundation of the Ispahan by Pierre Hermé: it's considered the best pairing in pastry of the last 30 years, so a cookbook writer should know about it, but you don't find those couples in big bold font. Editing that kind of book must be a nightmare, not just for the single task, but because there are miriads of things to cross check. It's pretty human to slip errors in that huge volume of work. Besides that, pairings are subjective, so they are faulty by nature. Such a book should be seen as source for inspiration, not as a real bible to follow blindly. I'm not a big fan of the Page + Dornenburg couple, the thing I really can't stand is their continuous search for a formula for creativity. But I can only admire them for having the idea of putting out "Culinary Artistry" and starting the research for written pairings. Teo

Just checked, it's under the pistachio section, not under the strawberry section. Teo

Knowing where you live would be of help, since things are pretty different from the USA to Italy to India, especially about couriers. If you are an online business then you can't reason "locally", your products are available to people living on the opposite side of your country. Unless you live in a small island or limit sales to 50 km from where you are based, but in these cases it would make no sense to open an only online business. The most savvy way to run a business it to run some market researches, it has not much sense to open an online business without knowing how to ship your items during half year, then going to an online forum and hoping to get the answer. You had to ask yourself these questions before opening for business, when you open for business you need to already know these answers in the full details. Teo

When talking about taste most things are subjective, so there's nothing to worry about if someones says the opposite of what you like. Personally I think that a bit of salt and white pepper (other peppers are fine too) is mandatory with strawberries. This view depends also on what kind of formation someone had, this kind of seasoning is much more used in restaurant desserts than in standard cakes shops. Another weird thing in The Flavor Bible is that they say to avoid pistachios and strawberries. That's one of my favourite combos, it's widely used by tons of pastry chefs (see Montebello by Pierre Hermé). The first rule is: "if you like it then you are right". All other rules are secondary. Teo

You can place a couple of orders from other competitors in your area and see what solutions they use, then start from there. Teo

That's because the usual instructions are to add the "seed" just after melting the chocolate, so when it's around 45°C. In that case most of the "seed" has the function to lower the chocolate temperature quickly. It's meant to minimize the time between when starting melting the chocolate and when you finally have tempered chocolate. You can melt the chocolate, let it rest undisturbed until it's around 32°C-34°C, then seed it. It takes more time overall (from when you start to when you have tempered chocolate), but takes less active time. You can use a single block (something around 200-300 g, obviously it depends on how much melted chocolate you are tempering) as seed instead of the usual little pieces, so you don't risk to find small pieces of unmelted chocolate (you just need to take out the big piece). Teo

Cheer up Anna! You are there with a great friend, I'm sure I can talk for anyone here on eGullet and say we all love you and your road trips, so please be positive! Teo

Some more considerations. When someone write a book to teach something, then his goal his writing a foolproof method, something that works for the novice. A teacher needs to adjust his lessons to the level of his students. When teaching the tabling method to someone that has no chocolate experience, the teacher needs to give him a method that works for a student with no knowledge. There are many things that can go wrong during the tabling method, the only correct way that gives consistent results is the old traditional method: if you follow it that way then you get the correct results almost immediately, because it's intended to correct what could go wrong. The method I suggested needs more knowledge and more equipment (you are forced to have a thermometer). McGee wrote that book in 1984, when chocolate knowledge was scarce, plus his book was aimed to the home cook. It's been revised, but it's been revised keeping in mind the home cook. Besides that, there are no perfect books out there, each book has its flaws. Julia Child said she was correcting errors in her masterpiece for her whole life. The more advanced a book is, the easier for errors to slip in. So never think that what you are reading is the bible: it's possible that there are some unseen errors (even the most skilled scientist is a human); it's most probable that what we know now will be considered utter crap 200 years in the future. It takes time for knowledge to be transferred in books. If my memory is right I've seen only one book that talks about Mycryo. Same with EZ Temper (ok, this is younger than Mycryo, but it's been out there for some years). If someone wants to teach tempering, then he should name all the possible methods, including these 2 even if they use patented products. Still hasn't happened, at least to my knowledge. Another very important thing: never take tempering temperatures as a supreme rule. Thermometers are not perfect, they have an error margin, so if you read 32.0°C you can't be sure it's really 32.0°C perfect, the real temperature can be +- the error margin. Thermometers can break too and give false readings. Besides that, each chocolate has its own working temperatures, not just dark - milk - white, I mean each singular rìproduct and each singular production lot. Working temperatures depends on how each product is formulated (ratio of cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, whatever else is added). You can find different temperatures even in 2 different lots of pure cocoa butter: cocoa butter is not formed by a single molecule, it's composed of a class of different molecules, each one with different features. Cocoas harvested at different latitudes give cocoa butters with different features: the nearer to the Equator, the higher their working temperatures (small differences, but they are there), this is a general approximation and not a supreme rule. It's important to follow the rules and the thermometers readings, but they must be considered as guidelines, not as rules to be followed blindly. When working with chocolate your best friend is your guts, not your thermometer. You need to develop the "feel" for tempered chocolate, it's just a sum of the sensations you feel while working with it: how it shines, its viscosity, how it smells and so on. Tempered chocolate gives a different set of sensations than untempered chocolate. You don't notice this consciously, it's your subconscious that notice this stuff, and that's the beauty of our brain: there are a lot of things working and that we do not notice because they happen out of our conscious. But they are still part of our brain, so they have the same intelligence level as our conscious side. If your guts say the chocolate is untempered then try trusting this feel, it comes from the same brain you use to read the thermometer. Teo

Correct, but better going to 32°C for dark chocolate, not 34°C. You can even use a simple method like this: melt the chocolate in a bowl, leave it there to cool to 32°C (if you have a thermometer with an alarm that rings when the temperature goes below a set one then it's perfect), then agitate it with a spatula (beware to not add too many air bubbles, you need to keep the spatula at around 45°, not vertical, and make circular motions). You need to agitate it for enough time to promote the formation of enough crystals, so if you don't have experience then always make a temper test before using this chocolate. I used this method various times when in "emergency" (needed few quantities without using a tempering machine and without having time to loose), always worked fine. I agitated the chocolate down to 31°C (started manual agitation at 32°C and ended at 31°C). Some tempering machines work this way: there's the huge tank (40 kg or more) of melted chocolate at around 45°C, some of it gets sucked up by a screwpump and cooled down while in the screwpump. When it gets out of the screwpump it's tempered. If you set the machine at 32°C then the chocolate never goes below 32°C, the agitation during the cooling process from 45°C to 32°C is enough for tempering it. Teo

There are various things to consider, especially about the evolution of how artisan chocolatiers work. The tabling method is a tradition that's really old. It was the standard method for all artisans during most of the 20th century. Up to 1980-1990 there were really few artisans that knew how to work chocolate, they knew what to do but not why. To learn working with chocolate you had to go to an artisan and hope he was willing to teach. He taught what he knew: how to do it, not the scientific whys. Books on the subject were really few, you needed to know they existed (really difficult without internet) and where to find them (even more difficult). So it was just a matter of word of mouth: you do it this way because yes, repeat it. Chocolate knowledge became readily available only recently, now you only need an internet connection to get to know everything. At the same time, technologies evolved: artisans could afford buying tempering machines, so the tabling method was relegated to emergencies, everyday production was relegated to tempering machines. In the past decade things changed again, due to the explosion of the small scale artisans (here we have many examples), but they use other tempering methods (seeding, now the EZTemper, so on). This to say that when the tabling method was the standard one, then the needed knowledge was almost impossible to find (it was a prerogative of the few chocolate industries). When knowledge became more readily available, then people had more convenient methods at their hands. So why did the tabling method spread in that way? because of reliability. They needed a method that worked each and every time without failures. They did not have instant read thermometers of infrared thermometers (they costed an eye), they just had to go by feel (literally, they used to put some chocolate on the lower lip and feel with the lip if the chocolate was tempered). Going by feel they were not able to tell when the chocolate was at 32°C, they had the "feel" when it was lower. So they had to heat it again to melt the bad crystals. There's the additional problem that the chocolate continues to cool while it's on the table: if you stop tabling at 31°C, then when it will be in the bowl its temperature will have lowered below 30°C (it takes time to collect the chocolate, while you collect it you continue tabling it and it continues to be in contact with the marble surface). It developed this way because it was an empyrical method, based on limited technologies (almost none) and limited kowledge (almost none). It remained that way because it's outdated, nowadays there are really few cases when it's used in the professional world. Teo

What thread do I need to open to see how you cooked that friendly specimen? Teo

https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/ Just found about this site, it's full of what the thread title says. Should be appreciated by all the cocktail aficionados here. EDIT: it's a collection of old cocktail books, free from copyright and free to download. Teo

Thanks for the info and for the link, really useful. The essential oils I find here are generic, never seen the differentiation about origin. So I assume English lavender should be milder than the French one, good to know for the next time. They have great prices too, I was asked 120 euro for 5 ml of chamomile essential oil, here it costs $17.40, just a liiiiiittle difference. They have stuff I've never seen too, like magnolia essential oil: I knew they make magnolia pickles in Japan, but never seen this flower used anywhere else. $1 samples are a great idea too, wish more sellers had them. Only problem is that I'll go through import hell if I try to place an order. Teo