teonzo

I'm really disappointed by this book, and agree with the bad reviews on amazon.fr. I just don't get the sense behind publishing it, the only thing that comes to mind is that Herme had to fulfill a contract and didn't want to put much effort on it. The recipes are in the limbo between the professional world and the homecook world. Nothing complicated or innovative like on PH10, almost everything is too complicated for the average homecook, so I just don't understand who is the target of this book. As I don't understand the graphics of it: there are almost no photos, and half pages are simple colored pages with the title of the recipe (and here the graphics resemble more a children book than a professional book). Plus there are some "new" versions of the Hispahan concept: ok chef, we will always be grateful to you for giving us that masterpiece, but now it's enough, please stop before making a Hispahan risotto, a Hispahan cigarette and a Hispahan car. Overall it's a mediocre book, nothing really useful for the professional or for the homecook, most pages are wasted (it's ok for me to have few text, but then I want great photos). Considering that the author is Pierre Herme, this is just a huge disappointment. If PH10 was a Ferrari, then this is a Fiat Duna. Teo

I don't want to discourage you, to sound unpopular or whatever. But when you work with chocolate, it's virtually impossible to keep your table and your floor clean from drips. The important thing, as you already know, is cleaning everything between one batch and another. But while you are making a batch, it's almost sure you will drip some chocolate somewhere, no matter which equipment you have, nor how much attention you pay. Teo

Kitchen temperature is not a big problem when you whip the chocolate chantilly after having refrigerated the chocolate/water. It's just like whipping cream, not a long process, so it has not the time to go much higher than 4°C while whipping. I made it last summer while having 35°C in the kitchen, no problems at all. I don't know if this tool is sold in the USA: http://www.diunamaishop.it/catalogo/schede/13382_1257846998.jpg in my opinion it's the best for this preparation. The whip has the most thin wires of all the whips I've seen for sale, plus while whipping you can feel the changing thickness of the chocolate chantilly, so after 2-3 times you make it you just feel when it's done. If you use the kitchen-aid, I'd recommend to not make small quantities (at least 300g of chocolate). And I'd recommend to whip it at medium-low speed, and stop just while the whip starts to leave some light trails on the surface of the chocolate chantilly. Just think about the consistence of whipped cream before reaching soft peaks, while its volume has increased near the top, but the consistence of the cream is still almost liquid. This recipe has some valuable pros. For example it's good for people who have dairy intolerances, or people who follow the vegan philosophy. If you happen to have a good amount of these kinds of customers, then the chocolate chantilly is always a good solution, it satisfies almost everybody who can't / don't want to eat something. If any of your desserts are dairy-free, vegan, or whatsoever, then some chocolate chantilly plus some berries (or flambeed banana, or other fruits) is a good ace in the hole. The fact that it's not sweet like other mousses is a good help while balancing desserts with other sweet components. If you are making a dessert which include a dried meringue, the chocolate chantilly makes a better pair than any other kind of mousses. Or if you already have a sauce made with milk or cream on your dessert, then it's a good thing to use the chocolate chantilly, not to be redundant with dairy components. I think it's a good solution for a wide series of desserts. If you eat it alone, it's almost an acquired taste, because its taste is quite different from all the chocolate mousses people are used to eat (it's not "mass friendly"): the first time a person tastes it, usually he's a bit puzzled due to its "weirdness" (meaning quite different from his past experiences). But in the hands of a pastry chef, it gives a lot of new possibilities. I made a simple and basic dessert time ago (dried meringue with ground Sechuan pepper, chocolate chantilly and rosemary sauce), I could not balance it with any other chocolate mousse recipe. Plus you have a lot more possibilities (flavoured liquids, fruit juices, using cocoa butter and not dark chocolate, and so on), so I suggest to not dismiss this recipe after trying it for the first time, it can be really useful. Uhm, I think Herve This should owe me some money after writing this post. Teo

I did the chocolate chantilly various times, so I have a bit of experience. As someone wrote, this recipe works with the correct ratio between fat (cocoa butter) and water, the ideal ratio is 34%. It's important to check the percentage of cocoa butter in the chocolate you are using before making this recipe: just for example 70% dark chocolate can have different cocoa butter % in it depending on the producers. So it's always important to calculate how much cocoa butter there is on the amount of chocolate you are going to use, in order to use the correct amount of water. It's not mandatory to whip it just after adding the water to the melted chocolate, putting the bowl in an icy bath. You can simply add the water to the melted chocolate, put the bowl in the refrigerator, and then whip it when it reached the temperature of about 4°C. When you whip it, it's really important to not compare it with the appearance of whipped cream. If you whip the chocolate chantilly until getting soft peaks, you already whipped it too much. It must still have a bit of liquid appearance, because after some rest the cocoa butter will crystalize more, setting the chocolate chantilly more firm than the grade you got while whipping. If you don't overwhip it, then the result will be smooth; if it's grainy, you whipped it too much. You get the best result using a whip with thin wires. You can store it in the refrigerator up to 1 week, there are no problems about keeping the texture, once it sets it doesn't fall down. This chocolate chantilly will give a different result than any other mousses. It will be less airy, because the solid parts of the chocolate are an obstacle to the emulsion to reach the higher volume. So if you want it light and airy, you have better to use a recipe for a mousse with whipped cream or meringue. The best thing about the chocolate chantilly is that it tastes of pure chocolate, while with all other mousses you can taste the other components (cream, meringue, pate-a-bombe, and so on). So the choice between using chocolate chantilly or a chocolate mousse depends on the result you want to get in your dessert. Starting from this recipe, you can do a lot of variations. You can use flavoured liquids instead of water. You can use pure cocoa butter instead of chocolate, or even other fats (like foie gras). The important rule to remember is the correct ratio between fat and water. Teo

Hi, I'm a pastry chef from Italy, this is my first post on the forum. About a year ago some colleagues and I made something on these lines for the dinner buffet for the opening of a new art business. It was a flat and thin piece of sugarpaste, with the logo of the business on it made with sprayed cocoa butter (made with the help of a mold). The idea was this: give these white things to the guests in a room with normal lights (where they could see the logo only if they payed quite a bit of attention looking at it), ask them to move to another room with only a couple of black lights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light), so they could see the logo, and we would tell them that those white things were edible. The trick was getting something that had the same appearance with normal lights (white), but difference appearance with black lights. So we had to play with the roughness of the surface. Sugar paste is white and lucid, sprayed cocoa butter is white but rough and opaque, so the two materials have two different appereances with the black lights (sugarpaste is fluorescent, sprayed cocoa butter is not much). I can't give more precise details on how these were realized, because I gave this idea at the creative meeting for setting up the "menu" for this buffet, but I was not the one who practically realized them, I had other duties. Sorry for my bad English, I hope I've been able to explain what we did. Teo