jmacnaughtan
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Posts posted by jmacnaughtan
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I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned Bordier yet. It's good, probably the only butter I can eat without bread - I believe it's from Saint Malo, but according to their site you can get it all over France. No idea whether it's exported though.
Last Saturday for a party, I took 1.5kg of it and bashed it into a single pat. It's been a dream of mine for a while to just serve a huge mound of good butter, and it went down well - between about 20 of us, we got through more than 600g. Needless to say, I'm now pretty good for butter
I'm not entirely sure I'd have the nerve to host a purely bread, butter and wine party, but I still think it would be an excellent thing to do...
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So, the second attempt was a little better than the first - the set jelly actually unmoulded and had a good wobble. It seemed to hold the coaster OK too.
Unfortunately:
- It was still cloudy, and an unappealing yellow colour (you can't see it too well in the photo, but think weak urine). I think my kilo-tub of gelatin is garbage, at least for anything clear.
- After a minor amount of poking and turning the plate, the jelly swiftly began to break apart.
- After trying out @teonzo's suggestion with the phone on top of the jelly, the results were disappointing. On full vibrate, the jelly didn't move at all.
So:
- I need new, leaf gelatin. I could pick up some pro stuff, but it's the same producer as this garbage, so I may try supermarket (even though it's probably going to be gold)
- I'll probably need to up the percentage from 2.7% to 3-3.5%. The jelly's going to be spending time at room temperature, and there will be plenty of poking and prodding.
- I think I'm going to have to scrap the idea of wobbling the jelly with the vibrate setting - it's doing nothing at all. If I can get clarity and some wobble, that'll have to do.
Also, I'll probably scale it up - this was a 1L basin, and I think my next size up is 3L. This is clearly going to screw with the structural stability, but would 3.5% gelatin be enough/overkill? This one had a fairly firm set - probably the most I'd want if I was going to eat it. Something like the jelly you get at kids' birthday parties. But I think, especially with a large basin, that it'll just collapse too quickly.
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10 hours ago, cdh said:
Why not get a a spray can of PlastiDip and spray a layer of rubberizer all over the cling-film wrapped phone to seal it up? Then drop it in the gelatin. Or does it have to visibly be a phone trapped in jello for the effect you want?
I've never heard of PlastiDip - is it fairly transparent? The idea is for it to look like it's just suspended in jelly, at least with the screen lighting up and being more or less visible. It's why I'm having trouble with cling film - to get enough protection, you're sacrificing transparency.
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7 hours ago, teonzo said:
My apologies for leading you to damaging the Nokia. Did you use a professional cling wrap that really clings, or a supermarket one with average cling? I've sealed and poached various stuff in professional cling wrap without troubles.
The suggestion to use a condom is still valid, a double knot on the bottom should be enough. If a knot is enough to keep water inside a balloon, then it should be enough to keep jelly outside of a condom.
No problem, it was going to the dump anyway. The film was apparently a decent professional one - I've poached in it before, but always very well wrapped. If I'd done the same here, you wouldn't have been able to see the phone.
I might try a condom - I hadn't picked up on that before.
7 hours ago, teonzo said:Leaf gelatin gives clear results, it must be clear to be sellable (nobody would buy a cloudy gelatin sheet). Don't buy the supermarket stuff, usually it's gold gelatin.
About powder gelatin, it depends on the producer. Last week I made a sake jelly with powder gelatin that came out completely clear and wobbles a lot.
Regarding resonant frequencies, I would keep really far from that with a weak jelly. Resonant vibrations would lead to cracks in few time, most probably the jelly would break and collapse with the first call.
For your next step I would try this. Make a jelly block that satisfies you (clear and wobbly enough), without enclosing any phone in it. Then enclose the phone with whatever method you decide, lay it on the set jelly (no risks for the phone), then try calling the phone and see what happens. Worst case scenario the jelly stays firm and you wasted some time, but I would bet it's enough to make the jelly wobble noticeably.
I've done a second run, and it seems to be clearer (maybe I had starch residue in the bowl for the other one). It is an unappealing yellowish colour though - is leaf gelatin colourless as well as transparent?
For this run, I've embedded a slate coaster which seems to be the approximate shape and mass of a smartphone, but square. I'll unmould it tomorrow and try buzzing a phone on top of it. Thanks for the idea!
8 hours ago, dcarch said:1. Resonant vibration is very powerful. Many major structural failures, bridges, towers, etc. had been due to resonant movement.
2. Do not use vacuum on a cellphone. Vacuum can destroy the microphone's and speaker's very thin film diagram. Possible hazard with lithium battery's thin film electrodes
Even at the resonant vibration, I'm not entirely sure a small vibro-motor has enough power to collapse a jelly, but I'll take your word for it anyway. In any case, I'm very unlikely to achieve it without a lot of legwork.
And I can't pull anything like a real vacuum with my set up, so it shouldn't be an issue.
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30 minutes ago, keychris said:
Leaf gelatine should give you a very clear jelly.
I honestly don't think that a phone has enough vibration to make a jelly wobble back and forward, I feel like the frequency is too high, I have no proof other than a gut feeling!
I think you're right - maybe if it was an extremely hard-set jelly in a thin layer. I imagine something along the lines of a slow, steady pulse would work.
ETA: Steve Mould looks at the resonating frequency of a water balloon here, and it's really slow. I imagine jelly would be at least fairly similar.
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Well, the first attempt went about as badly as possible. I was going to do photos/videos, but there's really no point.
- My crappy off-brand food-saver didn't recognise that it had pulled enough air out, so kept sucking and wouldn't seal with any kind of vacuum (but I'll probably use this anyway, see below)
- Cling film is, apparently, laughably poor at keeping liquid jelly out (at least if you want it to look discreet). I think I have destroyed my test phone.
- A thicker layer of jelly would probably have been better, but not enough
- 1.8% gelatin is not enough. I should clearly have listened to @teonzo and not used crappy internet guides. The jelly collapsed immediately under its own weight, but still left the phone in a chunk of it.
- Surprisingly, the alarm I set for this morning on vibrate still functioned, even though the screen is KO. Unfortunately, the vibrate function had zero wobbling effect on the chunk. I blame the cheap first-generation vibro-motor in the Nokia, but I'm not sure a newer one would be much better without adapting it perfectly to the resonant frequency (thanks for the head's up @dcarch and @KennethT)
- My gelatin is, apparently, nowhere near pure and was unpleasantly cloudy.
So:
- I'm going to upgrade to a smartphone in the jelly, but probably in a terribly loose (but fully sealed) food saver type bag. It will dampen the vibration, but I honestly don't think this is going to matter much anyway.
- As it's fully sealed, it probably won't need a thicker jelly layer around it.
- I'll ramp up the next test to 2.7% and see if it still wobbles.
- I don't think I'll have enough time to order anything from eBay and expect it to actually arrive in time. The party's on the 2nd.
- I might see if I can find a way to make the base move and wobble the jelly. I get the feeling that suspending the vibrating motor is counter-productive, and just bouncing around inside the phone rather than moving the jelly. A vibrating phone is louder on a hard surface than in your hand, so I'd imagine the vibrations would be amplified through the base.
- Would leaf gelatin give a clearer result? I always thought it was basically identical, but it might be purer.
- In the worst-case scenario, I'll still have a phone people can call which is suspended in jelly.
This project is harder than I thought, so all suggestions/advice/hoary anecdotes are welcome.
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46 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:
This guy put his wife's iPhone in Jello and it still worked.
1. That's a really unpleasant thing to do to somebody.
2. iPhones are, clearly, waterproof with cling film
3. It turns out you do get network coverage through jelly.
I didn't think his one looked that good though - it looked pretty hard too. I'll see if I can do better.
I've got almost two weeks, so why not?
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3 hours ago, teonzo said:
Chapeau for the idea, fantastic!
I would keep far from a chamber vacuum machine, the pressure shock while releasing air inside the chamber would risk to detach some electronics, ruining the cell phone.
A food saver should be fine, the buttons on the Nokia are dual not single, so it's pretty hard that the bag would press one side more than the other, pressing both sides together does not activate anything. At least if your model is like mine (I'm an old dinosaur and still use my 15 year old Nokia but can't remember which model it is). The problem is that the bags for the food saver are not flat, so people would see the bag and all the ondulations.Avoid freezing too, not a good idea.
You can use a double layer of plastic wrap, if you pull it carefully you won't be able to notice it from the front. If you cut it carefully (exact dimensions) you should be able to put the closures on the sides of the phone, so they will be really hard to notice. It won't be completely water proof, but if you use a very viscous first layer of gelatin then the risks are almost zero (Nokia phones are famous for surviving all kinds of hardships, mine included).
For the first layer of gelatin you just need to use a high ratio of gelatin per water, for this use going for a technical recipe with glucose and glycerine is overkill. Just use 1 g gelatin (powder form I suppose since you work in a pastry shop) for 10 g water: dissolve the powder gelatin in 10 parts water instead of the usual 5 parts, then melt and use. Make this layer the thinner possible, few millimeters.
For the final block of gelatin the lowest ratio is 24 g gelatin per 1000 g water, so if you use powder gelatin you dissolve 24 g gelatin in 120 g water, then melt it and add to 880 g water. Go for the lowest bloom possible, bronze gelatin usually in a professional setting (140 bloom), if you can find the 100 bloom one even better (should be a special order, never seen any professionals using it).Remember that you must wrap the phone when it's on, even Nokia batteries have their limits.
Teo
Thanks Teo, I'll give that a shot.
I'm currently trying one with a 1.8% gelatin ratio - according to a couple of sources, this is what you'd normally use for a wobbly dessert jelly. Doesn't 2.4g make it a bit "hard"?
I also wonder what the vibration will do to its structural integrity.
15 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:I wonder how reception through jello will be ...
what if you made two blocks of jello then carved a cavity for the phone and sandwiched them with the phone in the middle? While the phone would still be touching moist jello, it wouldn’t be submerged in liquid while the jello sets.
It should be OK, but I'm not sure it's been thoroughly tested
I'm not sure I want to monkey around building jelly blocks. It will not go well.
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9 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
So here is a link to a molding material that you could use as the first layer around your phone.
here are the ingredients in metric
2040 g gelatin
2115 g water
4086 g glycerine
454 g glucose
30 g etoh
Of course you won't need a batch anywhere near that big. This molding material I believe will be less likely to damage the phone because it's not terribly wet. (I may be totally wrong on that) I think I'd then encase that in a much jigglier jello for the effect you are after.
Thanks for that - I'll give it a go if I can get my hands on the glycerine and denatured alcohol (shouldn't be too hard). The only issue is that I've got essentially one shot - if the phone gets fried, I don't have another on hand immediately. I'll try this if the vac packing doesn't work out.
I think that freezing the phone would help set any jelly instantly, preventing it from getting in. But would freezing it damage the phone?
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4 minutes ago, liuzhou said:
In 15 years on Egullet, this is probably the craziest discussion I've taken part in! I love it.
I'm waiting for the video!
You shall have one! I just need to pick up a pre-paid SIM and set the jelly
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1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
Aren't the current iPhones water resistant?
I don't have an iPhone, and I'd be worried about encasing anything that expensive in jelly...
1 hour ago, liuzhou said:I'd have thought the power of the vibration more of an issue. Only one way to find out. Try it.
I shall! But I put the odds at 50/50 that someone on this forum has actually already done something this pointless
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16 minutes ago, Anna N said:
I think my concern was that a powerful vacuum might crack the screen. I wouldn’t be a bit concerned if I was just using a food saver type vacuum but some of these chamber vacuums can be pretty powerful.
Mine's a cheapo food saver type, so it shouldn't crack.
I'm more worried about the plastic pressing all the buttons all the time (it's an old-school Nokia C2 01 with physical buttons. Remember real buttons?). Also, I'd rather the plastic was as unobtrusive as possible - ideally, it should look like the phone is just suspended in the jelly.
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Hi,
This is a slightly odd question, and I think this is probably the right place for it.
As I mentioned previously, I'm hosting a failed selfie exhibition and will be doing food and drink to match. One thing that I thought would be fun to do, however, was encase a functioning telephone in a set jelly/jell-O and have people call it. It would be set on vibrate, obviously
Anyway, this is not something I've done before, and the logistics are a bit interesting:
- How can I stop the jelly destroying the electronics? Would a phone survive being vac-sealed?
- Which proportion of gelatin to water do I need for structural stability, but maximum wobble?
- Would a larger jelly wobble more satisfyingly?
- Is a phone's vibrate setting even strong enough to wobble jelly?
- Fully transparent or coloured?
I don't intend to serve this as food, so food safety and flavour are not an issue.
All suggestions welcome.
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On 10/5/2019 at 4:00 AM, MetsFan5 said:
Raw oysters? Or broiled oysters?
Oysters could be a good option, but shucking enough for 30 people would be a chore.
And I can see nothing good coming of letting drunk people try and open their own...
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@teonzo I'll generally try anything, but I draw the line at serving people eyes.
The idea isn't to shock really, it's more the idea of it being unpolished, unfinished, etc.
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10 hours ago, Kim Shook said:
Ok, now I"m ready to book a trip to Paris (actually I'm always ready to book a trip to Paris). This is sounding like an incredible spread. The only suggestion that I have is something like the soft boiled eggs in warm olive oil with rustic bread to spread it on that we ate at Cave a’ los a Moelle when we went to Paris. Of all the incredible food we ate, this dish is the one I think about the most.
I like the egg idea, but I'm not sure how it would work as a buffet dish without covering everyone and everything in yolk and oil...10 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:Sounds divine! Go to Monoprix (or most any ordinary grocer) and buy several pots of Rillettes de Porc by Prunier, under 4€ a pot. Oh, and a jar of cornichon. Empty the rillettes into a bowl and people will think you are Escoffier. Will go great with everything already on your table.
\
Er, what was the date again? And time?
Rillettes are always a good option though. Hey, if you're in Paris on the 2nd of November, feel free to drop by.
@Kerry Beal Those little dacquoise cookies aren't ugly - they look pretty cool to me
But ugly stuff does certainly fit with the theme.
@Margaret Pilgrim There will of course be a lot of brut champagne, but the theme of the evening is failed selfies or selfie brut if, like me, you enjoy being pretentious. I try not to do things by halves, so it will actually be an exhibition, with artists present, champagne, and a press release
In fact, here it is - this is the level I'm going for:
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25 minutes ago, Duvel said:
Indeed ... the green tarragon mustard is great. The honey & fig one might work for this idea as well !
Enjoy (and post pictures 😉)
I'm a huge fan of their green peppercorn mustard. But it is to be approached with caution
24 minutes ago, gfweb said:Maybe a few types of gravlax with different cures?
I'll probably end up doing two big fillets, one traditional and one less so. I've done a bergamot zest cure before, and that worked. Would other citrus work as well?
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1 hour ago, liuzhou said:
I'm sorry, but the first thing that came to my mind was the aftershave, the smell of which I've always hated.
This may be involved, but it won't be my doing.
30 minutes ago, Duvel said:Rillons would come to mind, maybe with some sort of “unusual” mustard.
A raw meat preparation - beef with spices, tuna with spring onion, ... - to be eaten with the bread as you proposed.
Fresh fatty goat milk cream cheese with some green allium; also with the bread.
I do love rillons. I can imagine just a big pile of them, served slightly warm. Also, as it happens, I'm going to Dijon on Friday. Are you familiar with Edmond Fallot?
Not sure about raw meat, as it will be hanging out on a buffet table for a while.
And the goat's cheese is a winner.
12 minutes ago, chromedome said:The term "brut" is also used for high-grade cocoa, which opens the door to some dessert possibilities.
I had not thought of this. Something simple and rich for sweets would probably be best - so I don't have to spend much time on them or make too many. Aside from brownie bites (meh) or truffles (also a bit meh), I'm not really sure which direction to go. Possibly some kind of financier?
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So, I thought it would be funny to turn my apartment into a gallery space and throw an opening party for a failed selfie exhibition. It started out as something of a joke, but has since snowballed and there has been a selection process, the photos are currently at the printers (60 x 40cm...), I'm going on a champagne road trip this week and there will probably be around 30 or 40 people turning up.
I have pretentiously labelled the movement as selfie brut and the space itself as galérie brut. I thought it would be fitting to have food to match (obviously, the champagne will be brut), but I'm running out of ideas and I thought you all would be the perfect crowd to ask. In this case, I'm interpreting "brut" as raw/unfinished/brutish/unrefined.
Here's what I'm thinking so far:
A huge pat of excellent salted butter, with good bread to match.
Thickly cut chunks of gravlax salmon.
Some charcuterie of some sort.
And that's about it so far.
All suggestions are welcome!
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A chunky côte de boeuf, for sure.
For pork, it's cheating, but jamon iberico wins every time.
Chunky, half-kilo-minimum duck breasts.
For offal: veal sweetbreads, duck hearts and foie gras escalopes.
With a bit of rearrangement, that would actually make a pretty good dinner all together
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You could try pairing the rowans with raspberries. Scottish raspberries are excellent
Maybe treat them like a crabapple and make a sort of jelly? I don't know about their pectin content, so you may have to experiment.
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16 minutes ago, RWood said:
I've always loved them too. Used to crack them at my aunt's house around the holidays. Now I just buy them shelled.
Here is a cake recipe that's pretty good. I never layered it with the dulce, just used it as a single layer. The creme de cocao and coconut were added to the original recipe, or kind of a combination of two recipes. It's been awhile since I made it.
This looks pretty good - I shall give it a go. From the ratios, it looks like it'll be a bit similar to a brownie in texture. Am I right in this?
13 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:Hint: Brazil nut pieces are just as tasty but are a fraction of the cost.
If you have excess Brazil nuts, NY Times pork satay is a good way to use them up.
Good to know on both counts, although I've only ever seen them whole.
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Apologies if there's already a thread here, but I couldn't find it.
I have recently been enjoying Brazil nuts. They seem to get no respect whatsoever, but are clearly the King of Nuts:
- They only seem to come out at Christmas
- They always rise to the top of the bowl
- They are big and brutish.
More importantly, they are the only nut big enough to be satisfying when you eat just one of them. Anything else must be shoveled mouthwards.
Anyway, I'm having trouble roasting/toasting them effectively - for some reason, the inside browns before the outside and I don't know why. This generally leads me to overdo them, which is terrible given their price tag. Any recommendations?
Also, I'm looking for things to do other than just eat them. I picked up a half-kilo bag of pretty beefy ones, and I've got around two thirds left.
All suggestions are welcome
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There's no reason you can't use gelatin - just hydrate powdered gelatin in six times its weight of water or purée, then microwave it until it's melted and stir it into the bulk of your fruit.
ETA: A ratio of around 1% is generally pretty good.
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Ahhhh Wonderful butter ... different foods / different butter?
in Cooking
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Well, after this weekend I should probably go easy on all three for a while
I haven't seen Beillevaire around - is it Norman? And a pot-luck would be good, but you'd need a way of stopping everyone bringing the same baguette and butter.
I think I would potentially upgrade to a bread, butter and champagne party. Butter and champagne work surprisingly well together.