teonzo

So that's a tri-dimensional chess table! Trekkers will rejoice! Teo

I suppose you used essential oils, right? If so, can I ask how much lavender did you add? I go crazy each time I use lavender essential oil, most of the times 1 drop is few and 2 are too much (or 2 and 3, or 3 and 4). Lavender oil (the ones I tried, at least) is really strong, next times I'm considering to add it to a part of the batter, then add parts of this to the rest to be more precise, only problem is that I end up with waste which doesn't make me happy. Dried blueberries are something I'd really love to find here. Teo

On average, in western Sicily (people in Palermo are the most taleban on this) it's called with the female name "arancina" and it's a sphere, in eastern Sicily (with Catania the most taleban) it's called with the male name "arancino" and it's a cone. Those are the 2 main "schools", but there are lots of little variations on details, especially the filling. I underscore "on average", you just need to tell a Sicilian that the correct name is the opposite of the one he/she is using to get a LONG and heated explanation on how his/her version is the ONLY correct one, with all the infinitesimal details on the filling, cooking method, rice type and so on. If you keep contradicting then they start steaming from their ears, that's why it's fun as a trolling argument. Teo

That's my favourite argument for trolling Sicilians, 100% success. Teo

I agree 100% with @jmacnaughtan: classics are classics for deserved reasons and call for classic aesthetics. I would choose your riz à l'impératrice over anything by Bachour and Grolet. One of the most frequent choice for home-made tiramisu is a product similar to graham crackers, they are thin as you'd like, but probably are too dense. I would not underestimate the use of stale bread, it's perfect for soaking with flavoured liquids. Teo

You can go the tiramisu way: use ladyfingers (or whatever) and soak them with strawberry puree. Teo

Great stuff, especially the chicken card! Teo

I could exceed in all my pedantry and reply with something uber annoying like "so Yoda said". Politeness would suggest to delete what I just wrote, but I can't resist Star Wars jokes. Teo

There's a way to save it. You just need to add the right amounts to get a double batch. Which is pretty easy since you don't need the stabilizers (assuming you agree it's better to cut them in half). This is what you have now: Heavy Cream 520 g Pistachio Paste 140 g Sugar 100 g Salt 3 g Locust Bean Gum 2 g Lambda Carrageenan 1.3 g Polysorbate 80 0.5 g Glycerol Monostearate 0.1 g This is the "correct" recipe (cream at 35% fat), doubled: Heavy Cream 380 g Water 660 g Pistachio Paste 280 g Sugar 200 g Salt 6 g Locust Bean Gum 2 g Lambda Carrageenan 1.3 g Polysorbate 80 0.5 g Glycerol Monostearate 0.1 g So you need to add these amounts to what you already have: Water 520 g Pistachio Paste 140 g Sugar 100 g Salt 3 g Just add all these ingredients to the base you have in your hands, homogenize and it should be ok. Better using superfine sugar to dissolve it more easily. No need to cook anything. To be precise you should make it triple and not double since you started with too many cream for a double recipe, but you would end up using a lot of pistachio paste which costs a fortune. If you want to do things properly then add these amounts for a triple recipe: Water 1040 g Pistachio Paste 280 g Sugar 200 g Salt 6 g The big difference here is given by the pistachio solids, which change things A LOT as far as balancing ice-cream. It's not just a matter of high fat ice-cream, it's a matter of high fat ice-cream containing tons of pistachio solids. If pistachios and raspberries were less expensive (or if I were rich) then I would eat them together every day and in huge amounts. Teo

You can cut them by half. From what I understand the pistachio sorbet by Modernist Cuisine is intended to be processed with a Pacojet, not a standard ice-cream machine. Pacojet allows a much wider balance for ice cream formulations, especially about viscosity. Ice-creams made for restaurant service (plated desserts) call for high quantities of stabilizers, that's because 99% of ice-creams are served as one spoon quenelles (I'm talking top restaurants, which are the ones Modernist Cuisine was aimed for), they must keep their shape for long. Beware you did not keep the correct fat ratio. You are making 2/3 of the recipe you linked. This means you would have 453 g of water and 68 g of pistachio oil. 520 g of cream should have around 182 g of fat (this considering you are using 35% fat cream, which is the standard here, don't know about there in the USA). So you have 114 g fat exceeding, a bit MUCH. You should use 190 g of cream (35% fat) and 330 g water. High viscosity is given by the excessive fat too, not only the stabilizers. Teo

The pool effect is unavoidable when you pour more chocolate than optimal. If you pour the correct amount of chocolate, then after the first spin (the one to cover all the mold surface) there is not much chocolate left fo flow around. If you pour much more chocolate than optimal, then you have a big amount of chocolate free to flow. As you keep spinning that chocolate will become less and less fluid, at the point that it will stop moving, ending up making a pool no matter how much you spin the mold. Teo

Way too thick, at least for the standards here. Besides that, a well done egg: almost no bubbles in the section, no visible defects (the pool is unavoidable with that much chocolate). Teo

We are still waiting to know how a duvai tai tastes. Teo

I know, shame on me. Even more shameful is that I don't have any Duvel bottle here, finished the last one some weeks ago. That bottle was around 15 years old and still in great shape. Teo

This is what the producer says, so it should be respected with a tolerance of 0.2°C. Personally I'm heretic and prefer it around 8°C. Teo

If you ever decide to buy a funnel, then absolutely don't try to save money. Buy a solid one with a good choice of nozzles of various sizes. Go only for stainless steel, forget about the plastic ones: sooner or later something you are pouring will gel and clog the nozzle, you want to be able to heat it without damage. Teo

You lost some eG credit here. Next time you should buy all of them, or at least lie and claim you did so. Teo

There's a detail that nobody points out and I think it's dreadful. Sugar is an addictive drug in all the senses as crack is an addictive drug. The consequences of sugar addiction are much worse for society than the ones for crack addiction (or heroin or meth or all that $h|t). I suppose people in the USA should know this pretty well, since it's the country where sugar gives the worst consequences to the health of its inhabitants. If we talk about "crack pie" then the word that refers to the worst addiction is not "crack", it's "pie". All this is said by a pastry chef (aka sugar dealer). Teo

No failing, no learning. A failure is a chance to learn something you could never learn if you did it right from the beginning. So it's better to keep this attitude. By the way, you should be proud to be able to do this kind of things as an amateur, it's stuff most professionals never dared to touch. I would insist in suggesting to contact Greweling himself and pointing out these troubles. He won't be offended by this, I'm pretty sure he much prefers to be noticed about these mistakes. And I'm sure he would be delighted to see that an amateur is making his most difficult stuff, that's one of the most rewarding things for a cookbook author. First of all, I agree with @Jim D. that milk chocolate is a better choice for pecans. I really like the shape you chose (square with a single dome), I'd keep out the ground pecans on top and add a single linear colored brushstroke. For the smoke flavour, I would avoid smoking the pecans and use a peaty whisky like Ardbeg. Not in the sense to use only Ardbeg as the spirit, just sub around 5-10% of your preferred whisky with a peaty one. If you use 100% Ardbeg you'll end up thinking you are eating a fireplace. About spicing, my favourite choice with peaty whisky is nutmeg. Shortbread would cover the pecan taste, it's a side effect of all the butter. I would suggest a dacquoise made using pecan flour and the spices of your choice, then adding ground pecans (not as fine as flour, say like 1/8") for additional taste and texture. You spread the dacquoise batter on a baking sheet at about 1/8" thickness, then cook it to tender texture (not crispy) as all dacquoises should, let it cool, cut the squares, put them back in a low oven (around 180° F) to get them dry and crisp (you need to cut the squares when they are tender). After the squares are dried and cool, brush their top and bottoms with milk chocolate (or dark chocolate if you want to keep with that), if you have the equipment for spraying then that's quicker than brushing. This way you'll get a much cleaner pecan taste than with a gianduja. You'll have some added texture due to the pecan bits. A dacquoise is always seen as a really sweet component, that's true, but you add pecan bits and spices (this cuts the sweetness); a dacquoise has similar sugar content as a gianduja (around 50%). I have a bit of job experience as pastry chef. You need to attach multiple models (domes in this case) to a bar that's as long as the pan containing the starch, then press the bar (models side down) on the starch. This way you get the exact same thickness for each cavity, assuming your models were all the same. @minas6907 is the expert on this, maybe he can chime in. That's something to plan on week-ends. Teo

These are wonderful, especially when in group, compliments! Teo

Don't worry about me, you have much much more important things to care about in the next month! Have as much fun as you can! The opening weeks are super hard work, but can be fun if faced with the right attitude. There aren't many openings in a chef's career, so get the most out of it! Teo

If I were Tosi, I would make a new pie with a deliberate crack on top, say I was inspired by Lucio Fontana's cuts, then call it Crack Pie. Just for trolling reasons. I lost a cousin to heroin overdose, saw other bad stuff with people I know, but I can only say this story is completely absurd. Teo

What if a pie has a crack on the surface? Teo

For the bonbon, probably not. For the bar / snack, most probably yes. Teo

Did not notice this, thanks for pointing this out. I checked the 1st edition and it's not there, so it's a new addition too. I always thought the only new content in the 2nd edition was the snack / bars section, so that assumption was wrong. There are various details that lead to think it's a faulty recipe. First of all the cream content: it's way too high even for a standard ganache, more so for a ganache that includes a nut paste; when you add a nut paste to a ganache formulation then you need to lower the cream content, otherwise you'll end up with something much softer. Second, the working method. It has no sense to temper the gianduja until it's 18°C then add the cream+glucose when they are at 40°C, too big a difference. Third, some misprints. In the bonbon recipe it says to temper the gianduja to "84°C/183°F" (totally off track), in the bar / snack recipe to "29°C/85°F". If you temper the gianduja then you need to go lower than 29°C, you can get tempered gianduja at 29°C if you add the nut paste to an already tempered chocolate, if on the contrary you add the nut paste to untempered chocolate then you need to go lower (the usual reasons). Then it says "checking to see that all of the chocolate has melted": if you add cream+glucose to a gianduja then there's no need to check if all the chocolate has melted, you are already sure since you tempered it by the tabling method. Fourth, it has no sense to use a ganache base in that bar / snack. A gianduja is a much better choice, both for handling and shelf life reasons. A ganache base would be much less firm than a gianduja base, the structure of a bar / snack calls for the firmer base you can use with the flavours you are planning, plus it's a really thin base, a ganache would risk to break when hand dipping. Bar / snacks call for long shelf life, a gianduja is shelf stable and would make that whole bar / snack shelf stable. All these things point to a copy-paste fault. Which is totally understandable, since this is a 2nd edition, hard to imagine the editing team was the exact same as the 1st edition. Such things happen anywhere anytime, we are humans. Just think about the 1st edition of Modernist Cuisine (well, that's on the other end of the spectrum, that was a really shameful case). Teo