Carlton

I was browsing the grocery section and just noticed they carry Willpowder modernist ingredients. The 20% off works out cheaper than buying direct.

So in the last week I made both the Banana Cream Pie and the Crack Pie. Brought both in to work and the general response was "best ever." The banana cream was amazing, I'm wondering though if the custard can be made sous vide to avoid having to babysit it with a whisk. I've started making most of my custards that way. The top of my crack pie burned a little bit because my oven flared up in the last 5 minutes and got too hot but it still tasted amazing. I'm curious to hear from anyone else who has made it. Mine stuck to the pie pan pretty bad but I'm not sure if that's normal or not. I don't think its from a lack of grease because there is a ton of butter in that thing.

I buy a lot of my dry spices in bulk from Amazon, Frontier brand. They seem to be decent quality for the price. I got this email today also, I'll definitely be looking for some things to get.

I really love this book. Cinnamon Bun Pie Grasshopper Pie I've also made the Cornflake Marshmallow Cookies, and the Bagel Bombs. I think the Banana Cream Pie is up next.

I've been using oils from La Tourangelle. I switched out and used the Hazelnut oil which is much less expensive than the pistachio. When I made my pistachio gelato I was thinking about ordering from fastachi but wound up making my own butter instead. I used roasted pistachios from Trader Joes and threw them in my Blendtec with the pistachio oil, skipping a step but getting a super smooth result. In the end I wasn't totally happy with the taste but I think it was just the nuts I used. Next time I may try ordering some bronte pistachios from Sicily. It's not really a cheap recipe in the first place so why not go all out. I'm pretty sure L'Epicerie carries them. Macadamia oil seems to be readily available so I'm looking forward to trying that next.

In case anyone is wondering, the Pistachio Gelato recipe translates well to Hazelnuts. I reduced the salt to 5g instead of 7g for personal taste but left everything else the same. It's really good with chocolate sauce on top or maybe even mixed. I'm going to try macadamia gelato next.

Made the Gorgonzola Dolce ice cream the other day. Put it together with some microwaved walnut sponge cake and caramelized bananas. It disappeared pretty quick.

Well it took a fairly long time but I finally made the pistachio gelato. Twice. My main goal for this recipe was not just that I love pistachios, but my friend has gluten, dairy and soy allergies, so finding ice cream he can eat is nearly impossible unless he makes it himself (using coconut milk). We have been wanting to do this ever since we heard about it early last year but sourcing the ingredients proved to be a little difficult. Finding food grade polysorbate 80 is not easy, especially in a small enough quantity for what you really need. A small bottle will run you at least $50 and you only need a fraction of it. My friend managed to get us a free sample finally so I picked up the rest of what we needed. We made the recipe late Saturday night, but in my infinite wisdom, I neglected to check the errata page, resulting in our using 22g salt instead of the corrected 7g. The final product was barely edible and that's when I checked the recipe. I felt so bad, we had wanted to try this for 10 months and now it was garbage. At this point it was really late and we decided to just go to sleep feeling heavily discouraged. The next morning we had to try again. Since we were making our own pistachio butter for the recipe, I decided to just combine the oil and pistachios at the same time and skip a step and it worked so much faster to get the pistachios ground smooth. I got everything mixed up a lot faster than the night before and used the right amount of salt this time. Now about the finished product. I have made pistachio ice cream before with milk. The ingredients of that can mask some of the pistachio taste a bit. This recipe only uses pistachios and pistachio oil so the old saying you get out what you put in really matters here. The gelato will taste exactly like the pistachios you put in, with a little sweetness from the sugar. Make sure you use good pistachios, we used some that were ok, but a little bitter. I think I would reduce the 7g of salt a little bit next time, maybe to 5g, based on personal preferences and maybe even a bit more sugar. The gelato itself was really soft, a little more than I'm used to and nowhere near as hard as ice cream will get. I'm not sure if that's something I did wrong or not. Overall it was good and I would make it again, but not frequently as it's quite expensive at roughly $10 per pint. Next time I will certainly try to find better pistachios. I'm also thinking about adapting the recipe to make a macadamia gelato.

It's just a deep fryer, they didn't even bother to change the basket mechanism. I would think this would be horrible for sous vide because home deep fryers fluctuate a lot and could have 20 degree temp swings that would ruin your food.

Oh thanks for the reminder, I had found a place with it once before and then lost the link. http://www.auiswisscatalogue.com/622028/1-MODC.html and it's cheaper than Tienda used to sell it for too. Shipping is on the high side because they seem to only offer next and 2nd day but its still cheaper than the alternatives.

Last time I made the Mac and Cheese I used a smoked gouda and then added crumbled up bacon into it. I think the recipe leaves itself wide open to play around with.

Of course I had to cook a few things from the book for Thanksgiving. Corn Bread with Bacon Jam Thanksgiving Gravy To round it out, sous vide rib roast (the turkey was under someone else's jurisdiction.) Everything turned out amazing and disappeared rather quick. The Gravy took a lot of work. I started the garlic confit before I went to sleep, then got up at 7am to start everything else. Stripped down the chicken to put in the pressure cooker (this was my first pressure cooked stock too, turned out great) reduced it, and then got everything mixed together. The roast isn't exactly from the book but I was inspired. It cooked at 138 for about 7 hours, then got finished in a 500 degree oven for about 15 minutes. The bacon jam is really good and easily the least healthiest thing I've eaten in a long time.

I just got this book last week. The first recipe I made was the Roasted Pistachio. IT came out really good though I will probably follow chriscook's suggestion of reducing the sugar as it was a little sweet for my tastes. I used cornstarch but have tapioca, will try it in the next one.

You can probably find isomalt at a restaurant/baking supply place but I've never seen it in a Whole Foods or other market. I haven't tried making the cornbread without it, it's just about perfect as is so I'm scared to change it.

I'm a big fan of Lawry's seasoned salt. I use it a lot on burgers and sometimes a bit on steaks. I've got the big container form Costco. If you live in a city with a Lawry's restaurant you can sign up for their rewards system or whatever and they will send you a small jar on your birthday for eating there.