teonzo

A'Qi: A Kitchen Dialogue is the book of a Belgian restaurant with 1 michelin star. It seems like Amazon mispriced it for only $3.41 (original price was $70 if I'm right), quite a steal and better hurry up if you are interested. Teo

Wow, they look totally smooth! No added cocoa butter, ground with blades and no mills? Impressive. Can you break one of the bars and post a photo of the section? Thanks. Teo

If you look only about money, then it's almost impossible that this deal will give you a better perspective than the DIY route. Teo

Can you give more infos about this, please? I tried a quick google search but didn't finf anything. Thanks. Teo

I wish I would be able to make such great photos! Thanks for your post! Teo

Here in Venice "goto" is the dialect word for "glass", if we say "goto" without specifying then we mean "glass of wine". So this name seems even more appropriate! Teo

I can talk from experience, never tried to look for scientific explanations. If you are trying to get nut pastes with home processors/blenders/whatever then it just depends on the kind of nuts. If you use hazelnuts or macadamias then you just need patience: run the machine for 4-5 minutes at full speed, stop it for about 10 minuts (to cool down the nuts), then repeat until you get a smooth paste. It can take 20-30 minutes of grinding, it depends on how well the blades are sharpened and the machine speed. If you use walnuts, then you need to add some oil, but you get a smooth result. With pistachios and peanuts there is no hope, you will end up with a grainy paste unless you add a boatload of oil (pistachios always need added oil). If you want a really smooth pistachio or peanut paste then you need to use a professional machine like a "refiner" (don't know the correct English name, it's the machine with 2 granite cylinders) or the other ones you mentioned. But if you want to make gelato, then you can use to your advantage the fact that you can blend the whole gelato base, not only the nuts. If you blend the nuts with the hot syrup and the oil, then a home blender works fine. You just need to run it for 15-20 minutes, at the end your gelato base will be pretty smooth. You need to take advantage of all the water included in the recipe. Teo

A strong taste of pistachio. I used rice oil, which is almost flavorless. The resulting gelato had a strong pistachio flavor, much stronger than the classic recipes. It's quite obvious, since the pistachio ratio is higher and there are no milk nor cream (which tend to cover the taste of other ingredients). I suppose using pistachio oil would give a bit stronger pistachio taste, but not much: the majority of the aromatic compounds are included in the dry parts of the nuts, not in their oil. For example I tried two versions of black sesame gelato, one with sesame oil and one with rice oil. You could notice there was a difference, but nothing big. Teo

I tried both. You can get fine results if you use a powerful blender (like Thermomix for instance). Best choice is blending the gelato base in the blender, not only nuts (or nuts + oil). In this way it's much easier for the machine. I pour nuts + oil in the blender, cook the syrup (water + sugars + salt + stabilizers), pour the hot syrup in the blender and then turn on the machine. It must blend for some minutes, but you get a fine result even with difficult nuts like pistachios and peanuts. About neutral oil, it works just like the original nut oil. Texture is almost the same, of course taste is a bit milder, but not that much different. If you use neutral oil with pistachios (instead of pistachio oil) you get quite a strong taste. The nuts ratio in this modernist version is higher than the one of the classic recipes. Teo

(sorry but my memories about physics terms in English are a bit nebulous) If you add the sugar to the milk and not to the eggs, then you have a bigger mass at high temp and a smaller mass at room temp. This means that the final temp when you mix both components will be higher, so you may risk to scramble the eggs. Just a basic example. Suppose the recipe calls 200 g yolks, 200 g sugar, 40 g starch, 1000 g milk (just random numbers). First case: you add the sugar to the yolks, so you have 440 g at room temp (say 20°C) and 1000 g at boiling temp (100°C); when you mix them you get a final temp of (440*20 + 1000*100) / (440 + 1000) = 75.5°C (this is just an approximation). Second case: you add the sugar to the milk, so you have 240 g at room temp (say 20°C) and 1200 g at boiling temp (let's say 101°C due to the added sugar); when you mix them you get a final temp of (240*20 + 1200*101) / (440 + 1000) = 87.5°C (this is just an approximation). The higher the final temperature, the more risks to scramble the eggs, you can't be sure you will or will not scramble them, it depends on if and how you mix the yolks while pouring the milk, on the pouring speed, on the termal mass of the bowl and other factors. It's mainly a matter of the balance of your recipe (the ratio between room-temp mass and hot mass), room temp and yolk temp (you can start from fridge-cold eggs). Teo

I would try a fluid gel made with agar agar. Teo

Arzak Secrets I've never seen the original Spanish version, so I don't know what to expect. Atelier Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste This is a must buy for me. Benares: Michelin Starred Cooking I bought the Rasoi book years ago (the other British-Indian restaurant with a michelin star) and was disappointed. Hope this one will be better. Jean-Francois Piege I'm not a big fan of this modern French style, but Piege remains on the top so I'll probably end up buying it. La Maison Maille A book focused on a mustard an vinegar producer. Maybe I'll buy it just for curiosity. Mexico from the Inside Out The original Olvera books are quite expensive so I still haven't bought them. I'm glad he is publishing something in English and easier to buy, but I'm a bit skeptical since it's a Phaidon release, I hope it will be much better than the Atala one. Obsession New book by the Spanish master Oriol Balaguer. Must buy for me. Perfection In Imperfection I bought the original, self released first press for a much higher price. This new release is much cheaper, if you are interested in modernist plated desserts then this book delivers. Peru: The Cookbook Acurio + Phaidon about Peruvian home cooking, I think I'll pass. Tacos: Recipes and Provocations I guess I'll have to wait for the WD50 book if I want some Stupak desserts, but this should be fine enough. The NoMad Cookbook Being the "little brother" of EMP this should be an interesting release. It includes a second book with their cocktails. The Nordic Cookbook As far as I understand this new book by Faviken's Nilsson is about Scandinavian traditions, not about the New Nordic Cuisine movement. 960 pages for $50 seems a nice deal. Teo

If you really want that boy to be happy, then remember the saying "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". It's great that you want to make the best dessert you can for him. But it's quite strange that his parents only let him eat fruit as dessert in the past 3 years. These restrictions are heavy but not impossible, they could make some fine and simple desserts just with a bit of creativity. If they talk about that kind of low quality chocolate (never tasted it since I live in Italy) and haven't figured out what kind of desserts they can prepare for their children, then most probably they are not that savvy about food. Trying to explain them that they can prepare good desserts with those restrictions and giving them some basic recipes and informations (just as a start) would make that boy more happy than serving him the best dessert in the world just once and then returning to fruit everyday. Teo

Gfron, have you ever tried decorating those molds like pacman ghosts? You could sell a collection of pralines including the 4 colored ghosts plus the magic pill (to be eaten before the ghosts, of course). Teo

The pastiera taste is given by the balance between many ingredients: ricotta, wheat, candied orange peel, candied cedro (cedro is the fruit of the cedar tree), orange flower water and cinnamon. The filling includes also sugar and eggs. If you want to be traditional then you need to make the pastry using lard instead of butter. You need boiled whole wheat berries. To prepare them you need to soak whole wheat berries in water for 3 days, changing water every 12 hours. After soaking you have to boil the wheat until tender. Since it's a time consuming process now you can find the canned stuff here in Italy, really few people continue to soak their own wheat. Since you can't find the canned stuff then the only way is the traditional soaking method. If you want to use something else instead of wheat, then rice is a better choice than farro (there are various families that prepare pastiera with rice instead of wheat). Sorry but I have no experience about casatiello. Teo

The link provided by Mjx is a good resource to extimate how safe you can be. Remember people eat just a fraction of your batch, this comes in your favour. For example if you make 80 pralines from 2 g of tobacco, then each praline will contain the nicotine extracted from 0.025 g of tobacco (and it won't be ALL the nicotine included in that 0.025 g of tobacco). I used tobacco in various desserts, including a praline. The recipe was 200 g tobacco infusion (220 g cream, 2 g tobacco, cold infused for 12 hours), 320 g dark chocolate 70%. They tasted quite strong, you can halve the tobacco. Teo

Sean Brock published his book tour: http://www.husknashville.com/book-tour/ Maybe you can find some useful addresses. Teo

Another thing you should start to consider now (1 year passes quickly) is planning your "release shows". Things like combining a book presentation (with signing session) in one of the major cookbook stores (like Kitchen Arts and Letters) and a guest dinner in one of the good restaurants in that city. You seem to have an open and funny personality, so those kind of events are really good to capture the attention of people living far from your restaurant. If you end up self-releasing your book (or signing a contract that will force you "buying" a good amount of copies of your book) then start considering some trades with other "small" cookbook publishers. With "small" I mean publishers which books aren't sold on Amazon or similars, like Montagud or Face. This way it will be much easier to sell a huge amount of copies in your restaurant, since the choice will be much broader and people will be able to get hard-to-find books. Plus your revenue will be much higher since you get full retail price and not wholesale price. Gaining less money per book but selling a higher amount of books may give you a smaller income in the short term, but it will pay in the long term. Teo

I would try to make a fruit flavoured meringue and then I would try to FD it instead of dehidrating it in the usual way. I'm pretty sure commercial powdered albumin is FD-ed, so your albumin should work. I would grind it to powder, weigh 20 g of albumin and 180 g of fruit puree (whatever you want), mix a bit and let it rest for about 1 hour. Then make a French meringue adding 200 g of sugar, form some meringues and then try to FD them. Teo

Can you try with fresh albumen? Thanks. Teo

I suppose it's a problem of too high tension between the 2 thin layers of chocolate, combined to the refrigeration. If you let set the first layer then the second layer will get attached to it while fluid, expecially with inclusions such in this case, then during cristallization it will shrink, creating a tension of the first layer (already set) and making it crack. I would suggest to pour the second layer when the first one just started to cristallize (same viscosity as when you close easter eggs or when you score chocolate plaques with a knife) and to avoid refrigeration (quick cristallization = more tension). Teo

I made a bunch of stuff with saffron: Entremet with apricots, saffron and pistachio http://www.teonzo.com/immagini/torte/albicocche_zafferano_pistacchio.jpg Plated dessert with white asparagus, saffron and hazelnuts http://www.teonzo.com/immagini/dessert/asparagobianco_zafferano_nocciole.jpg Pralines with saffron and porcini mushrooms http://www.teonzo.com/immagini/ciocc_conf/praline_zafferano_porcini.jpg Plated dessert with saffron, orange and basil http://www.teonzo.com/immagini/dessert/zafferano_arancia_basilico.jpg Macarons with walnuts and saffron http://www.teonzo.com/immagini/biscotti_mignon/macaron_noci_zafferano.jpg Entremet with figs, saffron and almonds http://www.teonzo.com/immagini/torte/fichi_zafferano_mandorle.jpg Figs and saffron is a great pairing now that we are in figs season, it was traditional for ancient Romans. If you are interested in some recipes I'll try to translate them. Teo

I would add La Boulangerie par Veronique Mauclerc if you want some viennoiserie cooked in a wood fired oven. Sugared and Spiced is a great blog where you can find tons of reviews about Paris. Teo

Another one: Ollie Dabbous - "Dabbous: The Cookbook" Teo

Other releases coming out in the next months: Martin Benn - "Sepia" I'm really curious about this top restaurant in Australia, I hope this book will be on par with the one by Ben Shewry. Alexandre Gauthier - "Alexandre Gauthier: Chef, La Grenouillère" This is in the bottom of my want list of all the restaurant books coming out this fall. Nicolaus Balla, Cortney Burns - "Bar Tartine: Techniques and Recipes" The previous Tartine books were winners, hopefully this one will be on the same level. Vincent Lemains - "Ladurée Chocolate" Don't know what to expect, the previous Laduree books left me a bit cold. Johnny Iuzzini - "Sugar Rush: Master Tips, Techniques, and Recipes for Sweet Baking" This seems about basics so I'm not that much interested, but Iuzzini is always top class. Jean-Pierre Wybauw - "Fine Chocolates 4: Creating and Discovering Flavours" A must buy for me. Brooks Headley - "Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts: The Recipes of Del Posto’s James Beard Award–Winning Pastry Chef" Must buy too. Antonio Bachour - "Bachour Simply Beautiful" And another must buy. Ecole Grand Chocolat Valrhona - "Chocolate Master Class: Essential Recipes and Techniques" I'm not a fan of books aimed both to professionals and amateurs (as were the previous Flammarion/Valrhona books), so I'll wait to find this for cheap. Dave Arnold - "Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail" This seems to be a must for cocktail lovers. Teo