teonzo

Thanks! I haven't counted the jars, should be in the 250-300 zone. Sizes are 0.5 litres on average (0.7 l, 0.5 l, 0.25 l), about 200 kg of jam in total. I'll keep one of each kind to taste the result after some months. The rest are meant to be gifted, I already gave away about 80-90 jars (I made these at home to try new stuff, I don't sell what I make at home). Teo

This summer I went mad, foraged lots of fruits and made TONS of jams. No photos, I'm a neanderthal without a camera. These are the flavors: strawberries strawberries + elderflowers strawberries + black locust flowers (robinia pseudoacacia) wild amarene cherries black mulberries black mulberries + lychees + hawthorn flowers purple mulberries white mulberries apricots apricots + lavender wild cherry plums wild cherry plums + fennel seeds wild elderberries wild elderberries + elderflowers wild elderberries + juniper berries wild elderberries + chamomile wild elderberries + mustard seeds wild elderberries + cucumbers + sichuan pepper zucchini + mint wild pears wild pears + cassia wild pears + ylang ylang wild pears + red wine (Valpolicella ripasso) yellow peaches yellow peaches + ylang ylang + ginger yellow peaches + cassia wild blackberries wild blackberries + orange zests wild blackberries + cinnamon wild blackberries + chamomile wild blackberries + rose wild blackberries + ginger wild blackberries + black locust flowers (robinia pseudoacacia) wild blackberries + lavender + tonka beans pineapples pineapples + carob pod + ginger watermelons watermelons + parsley wild cornelian cherries wild cornelian cherries + savory herb wild cornelian cherries + cumin wild cornelian cherries + fenugreek wild grapes wild grapes + bay leaf wild grapes + juniper berries sangue di drago (dragon blood) plums sangue di drago (dragon blood) plums + tarragon figs figs + anise figs + saffron figs + cinnamon figs + pineapples figs + savory herb figs + rosemary + chestnut honey prickly pears prickly pears + pumpkin seeds I strained so many seeds out of fruits that I see them even during sleep. I'm over 20 kg of figs now and my tree will produce even more. Not counting about 30 kg of blackberries, 20 kg of cornelian cherries, 20 kg of elderberries, 20 kg of mulberries. Teo

Yup, but once you get used to a type of setting, then it's really hard to adapt to a new setting. This goes back to the discussion about sweetness perception: it's pretty subjective and depends on a person's background. Someone who grew in Turkey will have a much different sweetness perception than someone who grew in China. I notice this with my (non professional) friends: when eating ice-cream with them my comments are really different than theirs, it's almost impossible for me to get out of the restaurant pastry chef shoes. Teo

You should consider the background by the authors too. People like Dana Cree have most of their experience in restaurants. Making ice-cream in a fine dining restaurant is a totally different thing than the other settings. Your ice-creams are not meant to be stand-alone, they are meant as part of plated dessert, so they need to be in balance with the rest. Most of the times the ice-cream is the sweetest component in the dish, the other components are there to contrast it (bitter, acidic, so on). A really sweet ice-cream can be "wrong" as stand-alone but "correct" as part of a plated dessert. Similar considerations for the texture: when you work in a fine dining restaurant you use a Pacojet, not an ice-cream machine, and you pacotize just before service (or to order if you are lucky). With a Pacojet you are always going to get a silky smooth texture, no problems of iciness and so on... unless you totally screw the recipe balance, but you don't reach fine dining levels if you make those simple errors. These are factors to remember when discussing recipes by people with a background in restaurants. Teo

I'm really glad you liked it! I was really surprised the first time I tasted it, I wasn't expecting something so good. If you want to try other pairings with figs: rosemary; chestnut honey (add it with a light hand); savory herb (tried this the other day just for curiosity, loved it). Teo

The old saying "the bigger the rifle the smaller the zucchini" isn't true here. Teo

Try here: https://forums.egullet.org/topic/161017-confectionery-technology-university-of-wisconsin/ Teo

Why not? Teo

In this case I don't cook the pineapple, I like it raw. I cut the pineapple pulp, blitz it with an immersion blender to get a puree, strain it with a food mill / whatever to eliminate the fibers, then add the syrup. For the star anise I grind it with the sugar before making the syrup, it's easier to get the desired intensity, plus I like the color, but you can infuse the whole spice in the hot syrup. Pineapples (and figs) pair well with everything anethole related: anise, star anise, fennel, liquorice... For example you can add fennel fronds to the popsicles, they make for a great visual. Most people here in Italy discard fennel fronds and it's a crime. First time I found this pairing was at my favourite restaurant here in Italy. I thought it was an invention by the chef, then I discovered it was traditional in the banquets of ancient Rome. So decadent seems like the perfect description! In this case I prefer to cook the figs. I cut the figs in half to check if they are good or not, keeping their skin on (lots of people here discard the fig skins and this is another crime). Then I blitz them with an immersion blender and strain the pulp to eliminate the seeds. Then add water and sugar (no sense in making the syrup in advance) and bring to a boil, mixing constantly with a spatula since it tends to stick to the bottom of the pan. Then add saffron to taste. Better using the green figs instead of the dark ones, both for taste and color. Teo

I suppose you forgot to translate this from your native language and it should be water, right? When writing a recipe you should write not only the list of ingredients, but everything, including the method you use for making the dough. You are asking for help, it's your interest to put the other people in the best conditions to help you. First of all, you are not using a chemical leavener, this is a good start. If your dough rises a lot during baking then it means there are lots of little air bubbles in the raw dough that expand during baking and traps the vapor that forms during baking. The most probable causes are: - wrong mixing method, you are overworking it (if you are creaming the butter even worse); - almond flour, it helps a lot to add air bubbles since it's much coarser than the other flours; - too much water that becomes vapor; - xanthan gum, gluten free flours usually include xanthan gum, if you overmix it with water then you end up with lots of bubbles. My suggestion is this one. Take out the almond flour. Put the gluten free flour with cold butter in a food processor, blitz to get a fine powder (no butter pieces), it takes less than 10 seconds. Add sugar and salt, blitz for a couple of seconds. Add water (the minimum possible, 1 tablespoon is about 15 g, for that amount of flour 10 g should be enough) and mix until a dough starts forming (10-15 seconds). Done. If you have a vacuum chamber machine, then put the dough in it (no bag, just the dough) and run a cycle to get out all the air bubbles. If you want thin crust, you need to roll it thin. Teo

If you are open to experiments then I would suggest to try pineapple + coconut + star anise. Since we are in figs season, figs + pineapple is great too. Figs + saffron is even better. Teo

Seems like you are using the wrong recipe. If you post recipe and cooking method (temperature and time) then it's easier to try to help you. Teo

If these guys are persevering, then you should contact the copyright owners of those photos and point out what's happening. There is a bit of difference between receiving an e-mail from a customer saying "guys you are using photos from other sources" and receiving an e-mail from the copyright owner saying "I own the copyright of that photo, I'll contact my lawyer". Teo

You can give away canned stuff: jams, preserves and so on. That food has been pasteurized (or sterilized) inside the jar, so the risks are infinitesimal. If people are skeptical they can sanitize the outside of the jar before opening it. Teo

You need to consider many more factors. Spraying colored cocoa butter in your kitchen means everything else in that room will need to be cleaned. You could get a spraying booth that works fine (other money), limiting the clean-up, but you would have to give a thorough clean-up to your kitchen no matter what. This means time, this means money (other added costs). Sprayed cocoa butter has the tendency to go anywhere, with the risk of ruining other appliances, especially if they are the cheap models. If sprayed cocoa butter ends inside a motor of one of your appliances, then there is the risk that this motor is going to break. Time ago I witnessed the maintenance of a depositor, it had cocoa butter inside everything, and that place sprayed cocoa butter like 2 hours per week. Within that price range you will always have to face one trouble or another with your set-up. You won't have enough pressure reserve to do your experiments. You will have to wait some time between each mold. You will start cursing with the cocoa butter getting cold while you wait. So on. No matter what you choose, you will end up unsatisfied. Simply because when you will learn a technique then you will want to pass to another one. Which is the reason why you are looking for an airbrush: with your current tools you are limited, you want to do something else. You will always have these limits, unless you get the big tools, which are well above your price range. So you should ask yourself if you are going to keep it as a simple hobby or not. To answer this question you need to consider millions of factors that only you know. If you want to keep it as a simple hobby, then my suggestion is to buy the cheapest solution, then be patient. Which you already are, since you are doing chocolate bonbons by hand at home. Get the solution with the smaller overspray, so your clean-up will be limited. If you are aiming to get more serious, then wait until you are confident about spending more money, then spend it once for the correct set-up that will satisfy your needs for more years possible. Or you spend the less money possible, or you spend the money to get the best set-up possible. Better avoiding in-between choices. Teo

No, I don't make charcuterie, I heard some discussions by people who make them and tried to learn something. When you deal with microbes you need to be really really cautious. Risks can be very troublesome. The major risks are in the short term: food poisoning, meaning you risk to go to the hospital or worse. But there are long term risks too. You risk with spores, toxins, filaments and such stuff. You don't realize they are there, you don't even get sick if you eat them, but they lead to health damages in the long term. There are toxins that can lead to liver failure in 10-20 years. If you eat food with those toxins you don't get sick immediately, everything seems fine, but you end up paying a huge price after years. Better avoiding this! This to say that when your result is different from what should be, then it's always better to be skeptical and taking the safe way (throwing it). In your case it seems like your biltong experiment was contaminated by some microbes you used in a previous experiment for another product. This leads to 2 questions: 1- are you totally sure those microbes are only the good ones and there are not stuff that can be harmful in the long term? Personally I would not be sure and would prefer to throw it, I value my liver much much much more than $50. 2- why was that biltong contaminated by those microbes? Most probably you did not sanitize your cooler/chamber before putting the biltong in that, which is a mandatory thing to do for safety reasons. So I would suggest you to get more informed about these sanitation issues, the risks at stake are really high. Teo

You can make a jam without reaching gelification point. Throw 1000 g of blueberries and 800 g of sugar in a pot, cook until 104°C, wait until it cools and then pipe it in the shells. I'm talking wild blueberries here, they are very small, so you can keep them whole for texture. Do not reach gelification point, they have TONS of pectin, so you would end up with a brick. You will not get 3 month shelf life with this, but this should not be a problem in your case. Teo

The big question here is not what it's best for you now, but what your future plans/hopes are. Where do you think you will be in 2023, 2025, 2030? Are you keeping your chocolate making as a little home hobby, or do you plan/hope to turn it into your main job? If you plan to go bigger over time, and hopefully make it your main job, then it has no sense to save money now to buy something that will be useless in less than 2 years, it would be wasted money. If this is the case, then you need to start making a multi-year plan and see what your hopes are. If you want to keep where it is now (a weekly home hobby) AND you worry so much about spending $300 instead of $200 (worrying about money is always a good thing), then just buy the cheapest alternative out there. Whatever you buy in that money range will leave you unsatisfied, you will always want something better/quicker/bigger. You just need to consider that you are already spending a lot of patience doing chocolate, you will still need patience, just a little less than now. If you want something really effective then you need to raise you budget considerably. Teo

Personally I would be more cautious with this stuff. Better throwing some money than risking your health, unless you are 111% sure. Before making biltong again you should sanitize you cooler/chamber with a bleach solution, especially if you made other stuff like salami before that. Teo

Seems like a case where static electricity is of help. Teo

Agostoni is a new line by Icam, created few time ago. So Icam is the producer that has been around for decades, Agostoni is the name of a new subset of their products (and it's the name of the owners). I never tried any Agostoni chocolate, so I can't comment. It's supposed to be their top line, how much better I can't say. I know only one guy working with it, but he does demos for them so the only answer he can give is "they are superb". I tried some Icam chocolates in the past, no problem about workability, taste was good but nothing more, not on the level of the usual suspects (Valrhona, Barry and so on). This is why no one of the top pastry chefs in Italy uses that chocolate. But I don't know if they reached higher levels with Agostoni. Teo

Filled with octopus ganache? Teo

I would suggest to freeze vanilla beans next time you'll be able to get them, they can last years in this way. Teo

Unfortunately now I'm facing some personal troubles, so I can't be a good host. When I'll open my own pastry shop I'll be sure to write a post here, so any eGulleter visiting Venice will gladly be my guest. But I'll have to find a new source for raw milk. We have some raw milk dispensers around here. They are a wood box on the side of a street/square. You put your money, open a small door with a nozzle, put your bottle under the nozzle, press a button and get the raw milk you paid for. After you finished you close the door, so a vapor jet will sanitize the nozzle and everything inside the door after each use. The farmer (owner of the dispenser) goes every evening to collect the remaining (day old) milk and add the new one. A month ago I got 2 liters of milk, since I wanted to make some hand churned butter made from raw milk (you know, when you wake up with a strong need and decide to fix it). I was unable to skim the milk to get the cream. Same the 2 times I tried again. Don't know what the hell they changed, but this isn't the raw milk I'm used to. When I was a child one of my duties was to go to our neighbour and buy 1 liter of raw milk each evening (they had a farm with cows and so on), then help my grandmother churning butter. Another piece of my youth that's gone with industrialization. Teo

I know the theory behind ice-cream. But I talk from first hand experience. The 2 times I made fiordilatte with raw milk/cream were by far the best ones ever. Absolutely no troubles about texture. We did a blind test and people recognized the difference between raw, no cooking from pasteurized, cooking from pasteurized. Probably we are starting from different stuff, every professional I know that worked in the USA said that milk and cream are noticeably different there. Teo