JoNorvelleWalker
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Posts posted by JoNorvelleWalker
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I've been looking for a thread to share my ignorant noob questions: where to begin? Kerry talked me into trying the KitchenAid Precise Heat Mixing Bowl for tempering chocolate. After a couple false starts I anovaed up some silk and managed to achieve tempered chocolate that was still fluid enough to ladle. Very pleased with the results.
Question 1: What temperature is ideal for adding silk to the melted chocolate? When I removed the silk from the water bath it hardened quickly. Didn't seem to matter to the tempering but it made a powdery mess. Can silk be made in bulk and cooled for later use?
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Almost wish I had ordered more.
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2 hours ago, kayb said:
FYI, there is a recipe online for "Good Night Waffles," in which one makes up a yeasted batter the night before, lets it ferment countertop overnight, and in the morning adds egg and baking soda. Lightest, most ethereal waffles I've ever had. I make them in an el-cheapo Belgian waffle maker. The kids clamor for them.
Indeed Cunningham's batter is a yeasted batter begun the night before. I had no strength to do it. Last night I was freezing on cold high school bleachers till 11:00 pm, got home at 12:30 am -- and the day before I fell in the cold, wet mud. Thought I would never again get warm. Tonight I am suffering an overly strong and unbalanced Mississippi punch. Takes much out of one.
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Tonight I forgot what I was making and added too much Smith & Cross to my Mississippi punch. This threw the sweetness off so I garnished with a couple Luxardo Maraschino cherries. Am resisting the urge to prepare up a proper batch.
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26 minutes ago, catdaddy said:
Darto just sent out an email announcing delivery of pre-order pans by the end of November. And improved design (rounded edges wherever there is an edge) will make them easier to use.
Thanks! I just checked my email and there it was! I'd even forgotten that I'd ordered.
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I stopped reading at "big and heavy".
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5 hours ago, KennethT said:
There are also different structural differences to waffles - the standard US waffle is maybe 1/2 inch thick and has 1/4" indents, while a "Belgian waffle" (not sure if it actually comes from Belgium, but that's what it's called) is maybe about an inch thick and has 3/4 - 1 inch indents.
Some waffles can be quite dense, while some can be super light and crispy - Modernist Cuisine dispenses the batter from a nitrous oxide canister which makes the result extremely light and crispy.
@Chris Hennes, if I remember correctly, did a whole thing on waffles, including the modernist version - maybe you can do a search for that?
I just restudied the waffle thread and could find only my own post about charging Cunningham's batter in the iSi. No mention I could find of a modernist waffle version. I don't own a copy of MC but I have read it.
Any more information?
As it happens I really wanted waffles today, after essentially not having eaten dinner (not sure two cookies count). I dug out Cunningham's recipe before bed. But sadly I could not summon the energy. No waffles today for me.
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3 hours ago, suzilightning said:
@Ann_T NOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Cubes of a sharp cheddar cheese and that is what's for BREAKFAST!!!
I know I've told this story here before, however I believe it's been a while...
When I was little I once demanded pie for breakfast. After a firm "no" my mother elaborated: "Actually I am from New England, and in New England people do eat pie for breakfast -- but this is not New England."
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Sweetzels and milk, hold the peanut butter. Long day, incredibly tired.
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My chocolates were a success at work. One friend said till now she'd never liked dark chocolate. The difficulty was convincing folks I made them. I'd say the Precise Heat Mixing Bowl was a success for tempering. I was working with 600 grams of chocolate though a kilogram at a time seems not out of the question. I wouldn't want to try much more than that. Obviously a kilogram limitation is a disadvantage for commercial chocolate makers. But then one can melt batch after batch.
The downside is that if your Precise Heat Mixing Bowl is full of chocolate you can't make ice cream or yogurt.
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This morning (OK, granted I keep oddish hours) another Simple Curry -- Yogi Vithaldas' term. As I was enjoying my dinner I was perusing VIJ'S at Home. Wherein I stumbled upon Yogurt Curry (pp 92-93). Same recipe, except Dhalwala and Vij grind their fenugreek and Vithaldas omits the garlic and onion.
For most of my life this was the only curry that I knew.
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8 hours ago, thatothercook said:
I wrote about this years ago but still relevant:
cheers!
But we can have fun all day arguing about the temperature! I do 55C, 131F myself.
On the subject, I was wondering earlier today how long pasteurized eggs can be kept. But the store had no decent looking broccolini so the point was moot.
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After my disappointing results two days ago I decided to borrow a leaf from Kerry's playbook. I was facing a deadline that had to do with grand kids. So I anovaed up some cocoa butter(and congratulations to @Artisanne for choosing the correct color of anova, it makes all the difference). I added what sure looked like silk to my melted chocolate at about 1 percent, with the chocolate at about 33.5. Hopes of an instant solution were dampened by a temper test. I cooled the chocolate down to 31 and did another temper test with similar result.
At this point I was cooling the chocolate down to 29 to see what might happen, but between 31 and 30 the chocolate went in temper. I don't know if it was stirring by Teo's method or if it was the silk, but the chocolate was in temper and still fluid. Fluid enough to ladle into molds! The mass was thickening with time so I scraped the last blobs I could gather on the spatula into a lovely heart mold that Kerry sent.
This sure made an incredible mess...or possibly a quite credible mess for some of us:
My Thermoworks is waterproof, not sure if it is chocolate proof. Any suggestions for cleaning molds without washing them would be most welcome. Licking doesn't count. No picture but my kitchen floor looked like I'd stepped in dog poop.
I have a cooling cabinet that fortuitously accepts quarter sheet pans. Six bars just fit on a quarter sheet pan. Sometimes one gets lucky.
As hopefully will be my coworkers this afternoon. Thanks again for the help and encouragement!
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If an Indian curry recipe calls for yams, is the ingredient genus Dioscorea, or what we in the US call sweet potatoes? Wkipedia tells me yams are eaten in Asia. Yams here are hard to come by but they are available.
Unrelated to the above I made a batch of "Simple Curry" from The Yogi Cook Book by Yogi Vithaldas and Susan Roberts. I've been making this recipe for close to fifty years. My rice ended up rather dry and this time it was not the greatest.
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Thunderstorms tonight: rain, heat and humidity. Not nice weather, a front is passing through -- so I dared not take up my chocolate. But for a sanity check I gave a second look at my thermometers. The meter and probe I've been relying on are reading a little low, but I believe close enough for chocolate work. With my anova bath set at and reading 33.4, the thermometer measured 33.3. Whereas my reference instrument measured 33.42.
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How is Ozark cooking different from Appalachian cooking? (Serious question.)
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Much as I read and enjoy The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, The Economist is my newspaper of choice. This evening I perused a serious report on the difficulties faced by small, artisanal cheese producers in the Congo. Excellent cheeses are manufactured on small farms in the face of low wholesale prices and ethnic and tribal hatreds (i.e. the militia comes to kill your cows).
The last sentence of the article: "Not all cheese makers are blessed."
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I wish I liked chocolate ice cream.
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21 hours ago, CantCookStillTry said:
I picked a pot of pickle and a pot of pork but alas no pickled peppers for the picking.
Say that ten times fast. And a fast is related to food.
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My vote is aluminum.
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5 hours ago, Toliver said:
It looks like all of the recent sale cookbooks are no longer on sale.
I found this one this afternoon:
"Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking" Kindle Edition $1.99US
Use the "Look Inside" feature to see the list of recipes.
I am a US Prime member and the price you see may vary.
Opps, it seem I already own it. Now if I could only use a donabe on my electric stove...
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5 hours ago, teonzo said:
I can think of 2 possible explanations on why it wasn't in temper with the method I suggested:
- insufficient agitation (if the temper test fails, then agitate more);
- wrong temperature (don't know how precise your machine is, maybe try to check with a thermometer that the chocolate really is at 31°C and not more).
If you want to use the down-up method (go to the lower tempering window temperature then raise it to the high tempering window temperature) then I would suggest to go down to 29°C and not 27°C, since 27°C gives you a block of solid chocolate.
Teo
One of my vices is collecting thermometers. The probe in the picture has been checked against my precision reference thermometer. And the Precise Heat Mixing Bowl is surprisingly accurate, though not a substitute for an external thermometer.
What I haven't tried is using the PHMB for mixing. I've just been stirring the chocolate with a spatula. The machine will happily stir for hours, day and night. And I ended up with horrible hand and leg cramps.
Unfortunately I doubt I will have a chance to experiment for the next two days.
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5 hours ago, keychris said:
You can test and see if it's overcrystallised or moisture effected: just heat it back up. If it becomes nice and fluid at 40-45C, it's fine, but if it stays gluggy and thick it's probably cactus and only good for baking now.
I've remelted the batch a couple times. It remelts beautifully. I'm about to head into work. I'll see if my boss has an opinion.
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I think I am about to cry.
My temper test turned out lovely. Could all 2 Kg be ruined? It sat in my cool bedroom only a few days.
Chocolate making: Things I learned in my early months
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Silk had been silky in the bath. I dried the bag and by that time the silk was cool and powdery. PHMB runs for ten hours at a time. Maybe continuously if you don't set a timer...have not tried.