teonzo

Great, thanks a lot! Teo

I would try this experiment: caramelize some white chocolate then mix it with some dark chocolate. Teo

Some interesting books coming out before the end of the year: "Chocolate to Savour" by Kirsten Tibballs "Zumbarons" by Adriano Zumbo "Origin" by Ben Shewry "L'Astrance: The Cookbook" by Pascal Barbot "Fäviken" by Magnus Nilsson "Bouchon Bakery" by Thomas Keller Teo

Kudos for realizing the V8 cake at home, nice job! Teo

I've talked about "Perfection in Imperfection" by Janice Wong in the past: Various high end restaurants self published their books. The firsts that come to mind are Alinea and Le Calandre: http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/ http://www.calandre.com/ Teo

Can you point to some books/websites/others that deal with this kind of studies? Thanks! Teo

Can't comment on brands since I live in a different country. Paste is much better than liquid. Add the food color to the tpt together with the albumen, before mixing with the meringue. It depends on the food color you are using, but usually nothing changes. The only problem you can face is if you are using really few color (for a light result) and a high oven temperature, in this way you risk to get some brownish shades. Teo

I really hope you will publish a volume (or more!) on pastry and baking. Teo

To re-balance the recipe in the correct way we should know the exact percentages of the white chocolate used in the original recipe, plus the percentage of condensed milk of the one you are using. I suppose the original recipe asked for a commercial type, so the % of cocoa butter would be around 25%. I would suggest to try to use 70% (25/35) of the original amount of white chocolate, and then see what you get. For sure the result will be less sweet since the total amount of sugar will be lower, but this should affect more the taste and less the structure of the cake. The remaining problem is to balance the amount of condensed milk, but since you say it tastes better than the other white chocolates you used, then I assume it has also a higher % of condensed milk, so using a 70% of the original amount of requested chocolate would fix this. If you try to use 70% of the white chocolate then you should be near to your goal (maybe you can try to add even some sugar, if the requested amount was 100 grams of white chocolate then try using 70 grams of chocolate and adding 15 grams of sugar). Well, I can only agree, and to be honest I still have to find a chocolate lover that prefers white to dark. Teo

Usually the cocoa butter ranges from 25% to 30%, with exceptions below (low quality industrial stuff) and above (for example I'm using a new product by Valrhona which has 33% cocoa butter). But it seems that the problem here is due to a higher amount of condensed milk. The taste of white chocolate is given mostly by condensed milk, cocoa butter gives a greasy feel in the mouth but it's almost tasteless. If you say it tastes the best white chocolate in your experience, plus this cake resulted more yellow than standard, then I can only suppose this is due to a higher amount of condensed milk.. The list of ingredients of your chocolate seems totally misleading: sugar is not named and it can't contain cream, the water content would ruin its shelf life. Teo

Sosa has a good variety about gelling agents: http://www.sosa.cat/textures.php?idfamilia=gelificantes&idgrup=texturas&idgama=ingredients-gastronomics&PHPSESSID=b3c8ca75a363d9945299949ef5c7c591 Elastic and Metilgel seem to be an help for you. I suppose Sosa has a retailer in Brazil, since some Brasilian high end restaurants use their products. If you contact them then they should be able to give you some technical support. Teo

This is my last experiment, the layers are: pistachio croquant, rose mousse, chestnut honey jelly, ginseng mousse, rose glaze. The decorations are white chocolate with ground pistachio on the sides, dehidrated rose buds on the top. This cake took some efforts to get the correct balance, the chestnut honey tends to overcome the other flavours and destroy the whole effect, it just needs to be a "soft" background. Similar thing about pistachio, if it's not on the secondary level then it ruins the balance. I'm satisfied with the final result, and I love the ginseng-rose match, as usual I haven't invented anything new since I just discovered this match is well established in the soap industry. Teo

I'm not good in giving tasting notes about wine. What I can tell is that fragolino rosso can recall a mix of lambrusco and moscato with strong strawberry notes, while fragolino bianco can recall moscato with strong strawberry notes. As far as I know it was banned in the 80's after that huge methanol mess that happened here. Since its production was limited, I suppose nobody had the economical reasons to try to reintroduce it. I don't know of any place in Venice that is still selling the true fragolino to their customers, since after the internet boom almost all bacari stopped being totally traditional. Besides that, I suppose that they would give it only to trusty customers, if a foreign tourist asked them a glass of fragolino then most probably they would serve the legal version (cheap crappy wine with added strawberry aroma). The only place I know where you can find the real old fragolino is this osteria in Treviso: Osteria Muscoli Via Pescheria, 23 31100 Treviso it's one of the few traditional osterie remaining in this region, they are still true to tradition and serve even the rare fragolino bianco (if you ask them, it's not on the list of course). This osteria is just in front of the fish market. Treviso is a really nice city and deserves a visit for its art. If you go there I can suggest also this pastry shop: Pasticceria Cioccolateria Max Via Sant'Angelo, 75 31100 Treviso and this gelateria (hoping it will remain open, the owner wants to retire): http://www.ilvecchiogelatiere.it/ They are both outside the city walls, so you need a car or a long walk to reach them. Teo

You're welcome! Uhm, no, the effect is quite different from licorice+chocolate. If you have some eucalyptus and some tobacco at hand, then you can try to smell them together and get your idea. I'm sorry, but I'm totally ignorant about cigarettes. I'm asthmatic so I've never smoked anything in my life, I can't stand any kind of smoke in any form since I immediately have troubles about breathing. I don't know what smokers taste in their mouth while smoking, I'd like to know but the thought of how I could feel really scares me (I must admit i'm a bit envious, since I can't try something a lot of people love). I tried to eat something tobacco flavored years ago, since all my friends were praising how good some tuilles tasted. I liked it a lot, to my surprise, but I still can't stand smoke and am ignorant about tobacco types. To decide what tobacco to use I went to a store specialized in pipe tobacco and asked for help. They suggested me some samples to smell, after trying some I decided to buy a can of Rattray's Highland Targe. This is what I used for this cake and this is all my non-knowledge about tobacco types, sorry to disappoint. If there exist some cigarettes flavoured with eucalyptus then I need to ask for more infos to my smoking friends, guess I can find some inspirations. Teo

The whole idea started because I wanted to try a cake with eucalyptus. My only experience with eucalyptus in pastry was when I tried to make a praline years ago (it was promising, but I used too much eucalyptus in the cream infusion), so I had to start from scratch. The first pairing that came to mind was tobacco, can't explain the mental reasoning behind it, it was an immediate association. Eucalyptus and tobacco have various things in common: strong aroma, a bit pungent and bitter. So I decided to try to structure this cake by similarities and not by contrasts, and thought about what could go well with tobacco and could also go well with eucalyptus. Something alcoholic was the first idea, I was undecided between rum, peaty whisky and sherry/port. The problem with using rum and whisky was that they have strong aromas too, so this would have made the final result a bit too strong for my tastes and I would have been forced to use another strong aroma as 4th (otherwise it would get submerged). I chose to go with 2 main aromas and 2 secondary aromas in the background to create armony, so I picked the sherry (a Pedro Ximénez). Then remained to find the 4th component, I thought that tobacco and alcohol were related to vices, so coffee came to mind and it sounded good (I made the bavaroise substituting all the milk with coffee made with moka, not espresso or lyophilized coffee). About how using the eucalyptus, I thought that it would have been better to use it in something really airy to avoid the overpowering effect. I had to decide which kind of airy recipe use, trying to keep in basic stuff since it had no sense to experiment both on flavours and textures. I thought that yolks would not be a good match, so remained whipped cream and meringue. I thought some sugar was needed to balance the "balsamic" side of eucalyptus, so meringue was a given. Then I had to choose how to make the eucalyptus infusion, in water or in cream. I opted for the water, it gave me much more odds to balance the flavour at the first try. So I tried this recipe: -------------------- 80 g egg whites 40 g water 160 g sugar - 150 g water 10 g eucalyptus (dried leaves) - 6 g gelatine sheets - 250 g cream (35% fat) Make an Italian meringue with egg whites, water and sugar. Store in the refrigerator. Make the eucalyptus infusion: bring water to boil, add the eucalyptus leaves, simmer for about 5 minutes, then filter and weigh 100 g. Add the gelatine to the infusion and let cool down. When it reaches about 40°C pour the infusion on the meringue and amalgamate using a whisk or a spatula. Whip the cream to soft peaks and add to the eucalyptus meringue using a spatula. (I'm not good in writing recipes in English, sorry) -------------------- I'm satisfied with the result, the eucalyptus really cut out the sweetness, I've been really lucky to find a good balance at first try. The texture is a bit firm, if you want it to be really soft and airy then I suggest to use 5g or 4g of gelatine. But it depends on where you want to use this mousse, in a cake like this it's better to keep it a bit firm otherwise it will be difficult to cut and serve it without making a mess. Teo

This is my last experiment: sponge cake + coffee bavaroise + sherry cremeux + eucalyptus mousse + tobacco glaze. The decorations are macaron shells, white chocolate ganache and coffee beans (the first things I had at hand, cough cough). I did not focus that much on the look, I was interested to try the flavour matching and the balance, as this was a first try. I'm really satisfied flavourside, now I need to work on the apppearance. Teo

As the others pointed out, there are various troubles due to the square angles and the complicated shapes. You need a tempering machine and keep it in the high temper zone, plus a vibrating table. If you work manually (none of the two), then you'll regret buying those molds. Remaining in the Pavoni products, I much prefer the silicone ones. They are intented for dipping (you mold only the ganache) and are expensive, but they work perfectly. Teo

For the Migoya fanboys like me, his third book appeared for pre-order on Amazon.ca: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Elements-Dessert-Francisco-Migoya/dp/047089198X Teo

I second the Mugaritz, Marque and Sat Bains books, and add "Pastries" by Pierre Hermé, the third book by Francisco Migoya, "The Square Cookbook" by Phil Howard. Teo

We have a couple of TV channels that focus mainly on food stuff, they are: Gambero Rosso Channel Alice TV where some chefs have their own series presenting their recipes. The best one in my opinion is Luca Montersino (Alice TV), he is a pastry chef and explains professional recipes (pastry shops items) quite clearly. Another pastry chef is Maurizio Santin (Gambero Rosso), he is focused more on plated desserts. About savory dishes, there are the series by Laura Ravaioli and Massimiliano Mariola. Both of them are at Gambero Rosso, and their recipes are mainly for amateurs. Laura Ravaioli makes some cakes too. If you search their names on youtube, you can find a lot of videos. But to be honest I can't say if they are easy or difficult to understand for a person starting to learn Italian language. I suppose the easier should be Mariola, then followed by Ravaioli. There are some little series of few episodes dedicated to famous chefs, but they are short (2-3 episodes), so I can only suggest to search the name of the chef you are interested, and hope he went on TV. Teo

I've never said you can found a lot of written parolacce here and there. Besides that, it depends on the zone where you live, and the social extraction of the people you frequent. Living in Milano is quite different from living in Veneto. Frequenting religion professors is quite different than frequenting port workers, and so on. If you never ecountered people with love for parolacce and bestemmie, then simply it means you never frequented the zones where those people live, and not that those people do not exist. Try to come here in Veneto and conduct a normal life for a couple of weeks (living in a village and not a city full of tourists, going to stores, bars and so on), then tell me if you spent a hour without hearing people saying bestemmie. Or even other zones (Livorno, Maremma, Salento, some parts of Sicily, and so on). The "tradition" is on spoken language, not written, and, honestly speaking, denying it seems really strange to my eyes. I know pretty well it's not common in every part of Italy, but if you travelled enough in this country meeting common people, then this should be a consolidated fact. Nothing to be ashamed or proud, just a fact. But as I said, I simply can't believe that if you've ever been in Veneto then you could not have noticed that half the people here say a bestemmia or more every 100 words. Living here I know it for a fact. Teo

Thanks for pointing out about the existence of this book! I think I'll order a copy in January or February. Teo

I didn't know this, so I apologize if I seemed pedant. Uhm, this fact changes many things... I assumed the owners were from Italy. Teo

I don't know the owners of this brewery, but I can try to explain the "reasoning" behind giving that name. Some Italians, not all but a good amount of us, like cursing and have fun doing so. It's quite difficult to explain why it's funny, because it's something you are immersed since you are born. Here in Veneto we say a lot of "bestemmie" (insults to divinities) and feel they are funny, not because they are blasphemies and we are evil bastards that hate religion with full force, but because they became part of our culture in the past centuries and now they are just seen as a simple interpose, like a "crap" or "damn it" in English. For people that are not used to this, it seems really weird and of bad taste, because they associate this kind of cursing to bad offenses, while we just look at these light-hearted. Truth be told, I heard even some priests saying bestemmie, just to point out how much common they are here, and how low importance we give to the literal meaning of them. Once you are raised with this way of thinking, you tend to look at words with bad meanings with a funny eye. This leads some people to think that it's funny to induce foreign people to say these cursings without knowing what they mean, or to hide some cursings in professional papers and so on. You can look at it as a strange case of goliardery. Just for example there is an Italian restaurant in Japan which name is a bestemmia. It's a weird, maybe wicked, sense of humor. So I suppose the owners just thought "let's call it Stronzo so Danish people will start cursing in Italian without knowing they are doing so". As I said, many Italians don't see dirty words, swears and cursings as bad things, but just only as a way to joke. Personal example: my nickname is "teonzo", which comes from "Teo" (my real first name) + "stronzo" ("stronzo", as you pointed out, has various meanings, in this case it's like "asshole", my friends call me so because I always tell what I think directly and without diplomacy). They don't call me "stronzo" to offend me, just to make fun of me. And I find it funny too, at the point that I chose to keep this nickname and I'm using it from more than 15 years. Teo

Please pardon my ignorance, but I've never been in an English speaking country, so I lack in too many things about English language. I thought that "ice-cream" was the English translation of the Italian word "gelato" (a term that, here in Italy, indicates that generic kind of frozen preparations), so I always assumed "gelato = ice-cream". Which kind of particular preparation do you refer to with the word "gelato"? Thanks. Teo