TheTInCook

'It's ________, with a twist!!!'

Funny you should mention it. I consider myself a tea loving guy, but I usually drink Lipton yellow box and 'Chinese restaurant' green tea (though I think my current box of tea is of Japanese manufacture).

I was looking up the Chinese characters for it and I thought it was funny that 面疙瘩 is the name for the dumpling (google translates it to 'gnocchi'), but if you flip it to 疙瘩面, it means pimple face.

It works! I made a small batch along with dinner. I just cooked them in salted water and drained them, then tossed them with a little oil. They had a pretty nice texture. I didn't test how long they would hold up in soup, I just tossed them into our dinner pasta. The only problem was that they were inconsistent in size. From cracked pepper, to peanut. So when I drained them, a lot of "glue" stuck to the little bits. Some sort of sieving might be in order. I did break up the larger clumps with my fingers. Also, you cant just dump the water in and stir. It's more like a dribble, stir stir, dribble. All in all, I think they would make a very good, very quick soup dumpling. I also think they would stand up well to parcooking and draining(letting them dry a little them seemed to help them, if anything), but honestly, they are pretty fast if you just did them a la minute. Not worth the trouble to hold them in raw form, I think. Pics later. I forgot to take a pic of the dumplings when I had them drained, lol.

Thanks for the tip! I've bookmarked that blog. The technique in eating Asia is slightly different then what I had in mind, that's how I make spaetzle since I don't have a colander with good holes. The technique I was reading about is where you stir just a little bit of water into the flour until it makes little clumps. It never has a chance to reach a dough/batter state. I believe the process for making couscous by hand starts the same way.

I think I might do a pictorial of this, since I couldn't find one on egullet. It's too cool a technique not to publish. *needs to get in the soup mood, and soon!*

I don't believe that capsicum distills. I was reading on the FCI tech blog about how they make a habanero distillate using a rotovap, that has all the flavor, but none of the heat.

It's times like this I wish I had kept my highschool chemistry notes. I could have a phase curve out in no time, lol. Yah, you have to cook to a lower temperature at altitude, because of the relationship between air pressure, boiling point, and solution concentration. IIRC the recommended fix at a website I was looking at this morning was -2 degF per 1000'. Textures would be off in candy, because if I cooked a mix to 250 deg F in Boulder, and one in Death Valley, the one in Boulder would be more concentrated, giving you more risk of crystallization and a harder texture. Caramels are a different matter, because they depend on thermal degradation of sugar and dairy compounds for flavor, so you could hit your temp for texture before you hit the temp for flavor development.

Hobart is my shorthand for a big mixer. Like 10 to 20qt, (I've even used a big 50is quart, that had to be floor mounted). I've used them a lot for both savory and pastry. Pretty sure you can get good deals on used and refurbished ones. They are like tanks. Speed racks are way useful for more then just pastry. They are shelves where ever you need them. To give you one example, I needed to grill off a ton of chix breast and veggies for a party. I got my handy speed rack, put my two cambros of marinated airlines and veggies on the bottom. I put the rack next to me and the grill. As I seared off the breasts and veg, I'd load them on a sheet pan and into the speed rack. It saved me a ton of time, space, and movement. Think if I had to make all those trips to the fridge and/or find table space for all my pans of chicken. The cheapest ones on the website I saw were around $200. Even if they save you just 1/2 man hour per event, that is still a great ROI.

Sure you can do pastry in the same kitchen as savory. Heat and humidity can be an issue for some things, which is why you'll never be doing a run of intricate chocolate work while your hotline is going full blast. A few things that came to mind looking at your pics: 1) Oven space. It might not be the most efficient setup. Not saying that you should go out and buy a steam injected rotating oven or whatever, at least until you get a better feel for demand and your intentions. Just be aware the it could result in more work and time then you expect. 2) Why u no buy hobart? /trollface 3) I would die without speed racks.

Elevation will mess with your candy making for sure. The higher you go, the lower the boiling point of solutions. So if you cook it longer to get to the temp needed in the recipe, the solution will be more concentrated then at sea level, so your texture will be off. I'm not sure what the workaround is, as I've only worked at around sea level. I guess cook to temp for flavor, then add water, then cook for texture.

Here's the blogpost I was talking about! http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2009/09/chinese-spatzle-soup-gedatang.html Thanks again Liuzhou!

Yes! That's it! I remember that the post talked about how they were named after warts and such. Thanks!!!!

I'm trying to track down more information on this food. I came across it on a blog post, but I forgot to bookmark it. The recipe is simple, just drizzle a little water into a pile of flour, and stir it around until you get little lumps. Just like making struesal (crumb topping for coffee cake). You then cook them directly in the soup. The original blog post had them cooked in tomato soup. The tomatoes were diced. Does anyone know the name of the dish and where it comes from? My memory of the pinyin must be really bad, because I can't find it on google. Searching in English just leads me to jiaozi type stuff.

They also got burned by that Sasha Baron Cohen guy and his gay german guy movie. They filmed part of it at Birmingham High, my almamater, and used the school's football team in the shoot. There was some gay sexual innuendo or something involving the player that riled the parents up.