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JoNorvelleWalker

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Posts posted by JoNorvelleWalker

    Local vs. national ice cream brands: Which do you choose? Any favorites?

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    Tonight it's a bowl of McConnell's.  My impression continues that it's really good stuff.  The ingredients include no gums.  Nonetheless the texture and melting characteristics surpass Graeter's which relies on gums.  McConnell's (lack of) sweetness and it's subtle flavor is much more to my taste.

     

    I couldn't even find the waxiness that I complained of the other night when I was testing both ice creams together.  Graeter's is a few dollar's less expensive per pint but it's still no contest.

     

    • Like 2

    What Are You Cooking Sous Vide Today? (Part 3)

    in Cooking

    Posted

    10 hours ago, iggiggiggy said:

    The hair dryer is a novel idea! That should cut down on the amount of paper towels I usually use. ha ha ha

     

    Let me attempt the next one using your approach. It sounds good on paper, now time to put the hair dryer to it :)  :) 

     

     

     

    I'd wipe with paper towels first though.

     

    Cuisinart Combo Steam/Convection Oven (Part 3)

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    45 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

    Cool.  So, can you alternate between hair and chicken, or does this need to be a dedicated dryer?  'Cause I can just imagine Mr. Kim's reaction when I say I need a blow dryer for the kitchen.  He still hasn't bought the little heater I've requested for turning our kitchen half bath into a proofing room.

     

    Multifunction product.

     

    • Like 2

    Chocolate making: Things I learned in my early months

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    1 hour ago, sbain said:

    When you say "spatula" I am assuming you aren't using a regular 'ol spatula (offset or otherwise). I don't think that will give you good results. get yourself one of these scrapers (or something like it) that can do the whole mold in one go. And If my scraper gets dirty I simply wash it (hot water, then completely dry) before scraping. It's got to be clean if you want a smooth surface. And I second what others have said: press down firmly and evenly and try to do it one smooth, fast, hard swipe. going back and fussing over each one will lead to problems...

     

    Good luck!

     

    Thanks!  This is what I'm scraping with:

    http://amzn.com/B00076R2R6

     

    The width is just right for the molds.

     

    Cuisinart Combo Steam/Convection Oven (Part 3)

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    Last night I prepared perhaps the best chicken I have had -- or best CSO chicken (which is pretty much saying the same thing).

    https://forums.egullet.org/topic/156030-dinner-2018-part-1/?do=findComment&comment=2175137

     

    Nothing special in the settings, just steam bake 20 minutes at 450F.  What I did differently, after salting the bird for an hour or so I directed my new hair dryer on it for about half an hour.  Cold air at maximum fan speed, till the skin appeared translucent and quite dry.  I claim no originality for this, just google "hair dryer chicken"*.  But the combination of dry skin and steam was something to behold.

     

    A few days ago I got the new dryer motivated by chocolate work.  So far it's been great for surfaces of sous vide steaks, skin of chicken parts, and under breasts (my own).

     

     

    *Marcella Hazan has an old recipe for hair dryer duck.  However Hazan boils her duck then blasts it with hot air.

     

    • Like 4
    • Haha 2

    Local vs. national ice cream brands: Which do you choose? Any favorites?

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    5 hours ago, MelissaH said:

    I've tried a few flavors of Graeters, and was not impressed, especially at $8/pint. I was especially unimpressed by the flavors with chocolate chips, as the chocolate seemed to be gathered into a few very large chunks rather than well dispersed throughout.

     

    Around here, I'd just as soon save my pennies and get ice cream from Perry's or Byrne Dairy. Maybe Graeter's tastes better in Cincinnati?

     

    I would not go out of my way to buy Graeter's again but it was on sale, and I wanted to see what the hype was about.  The ingredients include carob gum and guar gum, and with that help I would have expected the texture to be better.

     

    Anyone else have opinions of McConnell's?

     

    • Like 1

    Chocolate making: Things I learned in my early months

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:


    Heston Blumenthal does that with chocolate he sprays into the molds from a cream whipper with a couple charges shaken into the chocolate. Makes the aerated chocolate that can be found in Greweling's book but with much bigger bubbles. He leaves it under vacuum until the chocolate is set.

     

    I've now read much of Greweling but I forgot to look for that iSi technique.  When I wake up a bit I'll go look for it.  Is Blumenthal's vacuum method documented in a book someplace?

     

    Still trying to figure out how to keep the spatula clean each time for scraping molds.  I suppose one could use a fresh spatula for each mold.  I'm not filling a lot of molds at one sitting.  Any other methods for insuring a beautiful smooth surface for the backside?

     

    Dinner 2018

    in Cooking

    Posted · Edited by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

    This was supposed to have been duck...

     

    Dinner10222018.png

     

     

    CSO chicken, blood orange sauce.  Sauce recipe from Girl & The Fig Cookbook.  Half recipe.  I'd heard dark rumors of blood diamonds out of Africa.  My first time dealing in blood oranges.  Blood oranges:  7-8 oranges @$3.99...you do the math.  Sauce said to last 10 days, hardly made it through the night.

     

    Served with wild rice and barely blanched Brussel's sprouts.  Methode rotuts ad libitum.  Blood orange sauce went particularly well with sprouts.

     

     

    Edit:  I forgot to mention pomegranate.

     

    • Like 15

    Chocolate making: Things I learned in my early months

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    More chocolate experiments.  Slight horror when I couldn't find my chocolate notes.  (Located them in a Time Life volume denoting the location of how to truss and spit a duck.)

     

    Now that I have tempering down pretty well I can tackle other problems.  Melted 500 grams of chocolate overnight at 50C.  Next day dropped the PHMB to 33.  After a few minutes, quick temperature check.  Seeded and stirred a bit.  It's subtle but evident when the chocolate comes in temper.  Did a temper check anyway but it was redundant.

     

    A vibrating table is one thing I don't yet have.  I was looking for a better way of ridding my bars of bubbles.  Glancing around the kitchen I fixed on the chamber vacuum sealer.  Set the filled mold in the chamber and pulled a vacuum.  Lots and lots of pretty bubbles!  Not quite what I'd expected.  This may be a promising technique for something.  Surprisingly the mold side of the bar was smooth and lovely.

     

    Next I filled another mold.  I wanted to find out for myself what happens if you don't refrigerate your chocolate.  Stuffed the filled mold in my 17C cooling cabinet.  And then ran off to the store because I wanted to be home through the wetlands before dark.  (Made it just past the end of Civil Twilight.)  These bars were not bad but a couple squares exhibited fat bloom.  Not enough to melt down but not as perfect as I'd like.

     

    One outstanding issue:  if I scrape a spatula that has hardened chocolate on it over my mold it looks like I took a rake to the surface.  How does one deal with this?

     

    Amazon buys Whole Foods

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    WF through Prime Now is certainly convenient.  It is hard to believe they can fill an order and deliver so quickly, without even using drones.  It may be difficult to keep track of stock if customers are pulling things off the shelf at the same time I am purchasing online.  I know in the library biz we have the same problem.

     

    Though I somehow find it hard to believe someone scored the last duck just as I hit the order button.

     

    • Confused 1

    What Are You Cooking Sous Vide Today? (Part 3)

    in Cooking

    Posted

    4 hours ago, iggiggiggy said:

     

    Urk.. searing can be hit or miss sometimes. To crust or not to crust? to butter-torch or skillet bla bla so many choices.. ha ha ha

     

    That older deckle thread seems to be more on a debacle on what to call the deckle--but a rose by any other name..

     

    The ribeye cap is quite popular on the reddit sousvide channel, but please read these with a grain of salt; they have plenty of newcomers, but also some experienced folks:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/sousvide/search?q=ribeye cap&restrict_sr=1

     

    You can scroll down to see what these folks has done, quite a range of different temps, but they seem to do it at ~57-58C for a longer period of time.

    I dunno--me and my wife like our prime ribeye caps prepped at 54, and not for long as well, so YMMV, and please let me know, interested in your results.

     

    I did the deckle 55C and seared all sides quickly* as hot as I dared bring the pan, maybe for a minute or a half, no more.  I was very pleased.  Perhaps contributing to the success, after I unbagged and wiped the meat I set it on a rack and used a hair dryer on it for several minutes.  I used a hair dryer (yes, I just got a new hair dryer, particularly for chocolate!) on the eye I cooked the other night, but for the eye I had only dried the surface briefly.

     

    Of note with the drier meat surface I achieved a lovely crust without spattering grease all over my stove.  Makes me want to start a thread on hair dryer cookery.

     

     

    *after disarming the smoke detector.

     

    • Like 4

    Local vs. national ice cream brands: Which do you choose? Any favorites?

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    On ‎8‎/‎10‎/‎2005 at 4:43 PM, Brad Ballinger said:

    From the CNN gallery part of the article:

    My other point about being sold more broadly also included price. A pint of Graeter's will cost incredibly more than a pint of anything else in the store. Yes, it will be worth every penny. But, the brands in the article that I've seen in the stores are priced much more competitively.

     

    I did an experiment tonight.  A pint of Graeter's vs. a pint of McConnell's.  Both vanilla.  Both arrived from Whole Foods frozen hard.  Being from New Jersey I have no regional bias toward either brand.

     

    There was no competition.  The Graeter's melted poorly and was over sweetened.  It was slightly icy -- to me a fatal flaw.  McConnell's possessed better texture, much better texture, and was better balanced.  Not as sickeningly sweet.  Both were a little waxy on my palate but both had good vanilla.  (There is no excuse for waxy ice cream.  All you have to do is homogenize it properly.)

     

    Granted the Graeter's was cheap compared to McConnell's but even with the price premium McConnell's was a better buy.  I have to say I was disappointed.  I was hoping I would like Graeter's.  I would not buy again.

     

    Is there any other brand I should test against McConnell's?  If it were not for the waxiness McConnell's would be close to perfect.  Here in New Jersey there is a brand called Kwality but to my knowledge it is not found in any supermarkets.

     

     

     

    Amazon buys Whole Foods

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    42 minutes ago, BeeZee said:

    @JoNorvelleWalker, is there an option to select “no substitutions if item is out of stock” or something like that? And I would definitely complain to customer service about the incorrect weight charge on those figs. Strangely enough, one time when I stopped in WF near my office around 8:30 am, there was something from the produce dept that they hadn’t gotten coded in yet so the cashier gave it to me at no charge.

     

    Yes, there is such an option.  I specified no substitutions for all items except the Brussel's sprouts.  I notified them immediately of the problems.

     

    Is your Whole Foods the one on Route 1 south of Princeton?  For many things (OK, some things for which I remembered) I noticed WF prices were less than Shoprite's.  The one exception was pomegranates but then pomegranates are Shoprite's loss leader for the week.

     

    I just wish they had had the duck.  Seriously there should be some way of verifying what's actually in stock before the order is finalized.  Prime Now is not yet quite like amazon.  And now I have to get myself to Shoprite tomorrow after all.  Dinner was supposed to be duck with orange pomegranate sauce, wild rice, and Brussel's sprouts.

     

    Amazon buys Whole Foods

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Here's the deal:  Katherine arrived here promptly and my ice cream was rock hard.  I amended my order to include a tip.  But all was not beer and skittles.  For one thing all but three figs were missing from my little box of figs.  I was charged $5.52 for 0.79 "actual" pounds.  I measured the figs as 0.15 pounds.  I don't believe my scale is that far off.  But that was just as well because the sour cream I intended to serve with the figs was out of stock.

     

    Also out of stock was the duck.

     

    And then there was the broccoli that they sent in place of "baby broccoli".  It wasn't even a replacement.  I think someone who had not been studying @liuzhou's vegetable thread carelessly grabbed the wrong brassica.  And on that subject, the Brussel's sprouts were not ones I would have chosen in a store.  Although they had been suspiciously inexpensive I must say.

     

    But that aside everything else was perfect and well packed.  And the ice cream was rock hard.

     

    • Like 1

    DARTO pans

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

    You guys are all making me think I should get around to opening the box of Darto pans I tucked away in the spare room after it’s arrival last year some time. Don’t even recall what’s in there!

     

    Wish I had a spare room.

     

    But now you'll need some of the new design Darto pans to compare.

     

    • Like 3
    • Haha 2

    Amazon buys Whole Foods

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Well I took the plunge.  Not without some problems.  The primenow website seemed OK but I wanted to try the iPad app.  Search as I might I could not find it.  I called customer service and was told to search as I had been searching: "amazon prime now app" (in almost every permutation).

     

    What finally worked was searching the iOS app store for "amzn mobile llc".  In hopes this information may assist some other poor desperate, hungry soul.  However the app is designed for a phone sized screen so I went back to using the primenow website.

     

    Then I spent several happy hours meal planning and shopping!  All was well until I went to check out.  The checkout process froze.  After repeating this several times I called customer service.  The representative suggested I check out with the app.  Once I got the app configured and myself signed in I was able to check out easily.  I was relieved and delighted that my shopping cart from the PC appeared in the app.

     

    Within about 15 minutes I got a notification that someone was working on my order.  Another 15-20 minutes and I learned my order had been filled.  But it's been over an hour since then and the order is still sitting in the store.  At least I've had no further notifications from Whole Foods.  The order includes two containers of ice cream.  I shall be most interested to see how they arrive.  Ice cream, I figure, is pretty much the acid test.

     

    I am still troubled by the idea of tips on amazon.  The suggested tip for my order was $9.00.  I chose not to include a tip.  If my ice cream actually makes it here still frozen I may be inclined to change my mind.

     

    Not related to Whole Foods as such, but on the subject of amazon and groceries -- yesterday I purchased a bottle of Dawn dish detergent from the shelf of my local Shoprite.  When I next logged on to amazon they were recommending Dawn to me.  Pretty scary.  I fear most of us have drunk the Kool-Aid.

     

    • Like 1
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