JoNorvelleWalker
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Posts posted by JoNorvelleWalker
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Even if we all can agree we can taste overcooked milk, we still don't have consensus on the temperature at which milk becomes "overcooked". There must be some temperature range below which milk does not taste cooked and above which it is overcooked. In the US, at least, milk must be pasteurized, so there is not much we can do about that unless one has a cow.
With regard to pistachio paste, MC@H (p13) suggests a pacojet for preparing smooth nut pastes. Not inexpensive pehaps, but a bargain compaired with the industrial colloid mill Ruben mentions on his blog.
Speaking of blogs, another site I might mention is Ice Cream Geek. I like to play with their Butterfat Calculator...
http://www.icecreamgeek.com/?page_id=817
Edit: I rechecked Migoya. He does use powdered milk in his modern method formula, however he also calls for heating the mix to 85 deg C/185 deg F.
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I'm not sure I understand the advantages of the milk heating method. I actually like to cook the milk as little as possible, in order to preserve it's flavor. I'm not fond of the flavor of cooked milk. To increase solids, just add nonfat dry milk. It's what all the pastry chefs I know do. In my own recipes I use 20 to 30g per Kg of mix, depending on the solids added by other ingredients.
I have not tried adding nonfat dry milk. As I recall Cook's Illustrated tested adding nonfat dry milk to ice cream and reported it was a bad idea. When you say you are not fond of the flavor of cooked milk, what cooking temperature are you basing this upon? The mix prepared by Ruben's method does not taste "cooked" to me. Another reason Ruben heats the milk is for pasteurization.
McGee (p43) suggests heating to 170 deg F/76 deg C improves body and smoothness of ice cream by denaturing the whey proteins. But Ruben's temperature is much lower than whey denaturation temperature.
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Thanks! Interesting to learn the history.
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Recently I have been using this method:
http://forums.egullet.org/topic/119838-the-best-way-to-cook-a-thick-steak/
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Ruben, what do you use to measure temperature? I made a batch of mix tonight, having finished my onion soup, and noticed some of the time my probe was not fully covered and the readings were low. Using a smaller diameter pot or making more mix at a time (or just being more careful) would be a possible solution to the problem.
The pistachio sounds good to me too, but my vanilla needs more work before I try it.
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What is old KitchenAid and what is new KitchenAid? Mine is circa 1985.
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Here is a thread that might be of interest:
http://forums.egullet.org/topic/44347-american-bread-recipes-with-european-flour/
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I grind flour using the Wolfgang Mock grain mill (http://www.amazon.co.../dp/B001DZ6TGA/) and sieve out the bran using a drum sieve. The Mock mill is expensive. I don't regret the expense (even if only for fresh pasta) but rather the wasted money on inferior solutions before biting the bullet. The bran makes whole wheat flour taste like a roll of unbleached paper towels fell in; after sieving the flour handles like a sturdier white. Something (germ?) remains, for this flour oxidizes and goes bad in a matter of days once ground, which store bought whole wheat doesn't. It also has a substantially better flavor.
That is a pretty mill. I bake bread often and I also enjoy Cream of Wheat, polenta, and pasta. How is the Wolfgang for milling corn? Other than the choice of wheat is there any method to control the protein and ash content of the flour?
I thought flour had to be aged. Raymond Calvel says: "Flour reaches its optmal level of maturation after a cold-weather rest period of 20 to 25 days." Do you age your flour in the refrigerator when you grind it at home?
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Could you list the recipe?
I seem to be out of the ice cream making process at the moment, as the pot I use is currently full of onion soup. Oh, one thing I wanted to mention about the munalavgekook -- I had a piece from a portion of the last cake that I had frozen, the cake I had said was dry. It was a bit dense but not really dry. I think I may have been confusing dry with stale.
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I'm not worried about too much fat. I was more concerned with being off by an order of magnitude from what Slater intended and having a strange result. When I am familiar with a recipe, like soup, I tend not to measure either.
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What percentage of water? I usually use between 60 and 66 percent total water for my recipes using King Arthur organic white flour. (That's baker's percentage, with flour equal to 100%.)
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Dinner was three bowls of onion soup followed by a salad. Quite satisfactory. I had half a beautiful baguette I baked the night before. I sliced the baguette and toasted the rounds on a quarter sheet pan under the broiler. I then topped them with cheese and placed over the soup to be broiled on the other side.
One substitution: Nigel Slater calls for Madeira. I used a splash of balsamic vinegar. Not that I don't keep Madeira in the kitchen, nonetheless finishing an onion soup with 1886 solara malmsey seems a bit excessive.
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And it would depend what shape the quarters were -- long and thin as most brands in the US, or short and squat as some. Nigel Slater loves poetic measurments. I actually weighed out 700g of onions, rather than the three medium onions called for.
Soup is simmering.
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As accurately as I can measure on my ancient analog Japanese made scale, 40g of butter is exactly 3 tablespoons. I'll go with that and see what happens! Thanks!
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Not quite the same recipe (this one uses a liter of chicken stock) but close enough, thanks! I have five pounds of onions, I may yet eat tonight. If I have enough butter.
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When a recipe calls for "a good thick slice" of butter as its first ingredient -- as one by Nigel Slater does for onion soup (Tender, p325) -- what is the equivalent in grams or tablespoons? "A good pinch" or "large handful" I can handle, but I am completely lost.
P.S. This not just of academic interest. I had hoped to have the soup tonight.
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Well, I respun the mix the third time. What a disappointment. I dug out the xanthan gum. I mixed a tablespoon or two of sugar with a quarter teaspoon of zanthan gum, and then whisked in some cream. Don't ask, I didn't measure. I then added the melted mix and hit it with the immersion blender.
It was the best mix I had ever tasted. I could have eaten it all night. But it did not make good ice cream. It was not sweet enough! Which for me is saying something. Plus it is icy. Not as icy as the last iteration, but it doesn't have the clear vanilla flavor either. I think xanthan gum is an evil ingredient in ice cream. A Band Aid as it were.
The first iteration would have been about perfect, had I not stupidly used so much sugar.
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"Rein in the sugar. Sugar can overwhelm and disguise flavors -- and mistakes too. Overly sweet desserts are not desirable."
"You will very likely make a fair amount of mistakes, but that is part of the process."
-- Francisco Migoya
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Back in the last century I decided that if I was going to eat bread at home it was going to be my own bread. I have stuck to it. (And it has stuck to me.) If I could keep only one bread book, if I could keep only one cookbook, it would be Raymond Calvel's.
Does anyone know if Professor Calvel is still alive?
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I stumbled upon this thread a couple of weeks ago. Two inch steaks are a bit beyond my means but I used this method to cook a lean Australian ribeye with very good results. Tonight I used the method to prepare a boneless pork chop that was delicious. Just the barest hint of pink with a lovely crust. I used rendered pork fat. Best pork chop, I believe, that I have ever cooked -- though that is not saying much. My pork chops are usually more like toasted wall board. While the chop was resting I sauteed brussels sprouts in the fat and garlic.
Wine was a 2000 Muscadet Sevre & Maine Sur Lie that was a beautiful nutty brown and had no flavor. My stupidity.
Seriously, though, thank you for the inspiration.
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I have a confession (not to be confused with "a confection") to make: in the munavalgekook recipe the dry ingredients are folded into the whipped egg whites and then the melted butter is folded into the resulting batter. This time I was rushing. After the egg whites were whipped in my ancient KitchenAid, I added and whipped the dry ingredients in three stages, then I whipped in the butter. Very easy. Thought I had found a shortcut. But no. Made properly and not over baked the munavalgekook should not be dry. It looked beautiful though.
A bit off topic but I'd love to hear how others fold ingedients into egg whites. I used to use my hands but got tired of the mess.
Last night's icy ice cream is melting down again.
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I made another batch of vanilla using Ruben's heating method. This time I used 750 ml heavy cream, 250 ml whole milk, 8 egg yolks, 160 g sugar. In other words a much higher percentage of sugar than before. The result was smooth, rich, scoopable -- and disgustingly sweet and sticky. The flavor was dull and I had a feeling that the total solids were too high. The ice cream melted too quickly. Not something I would have sent back in a restaurant perhaps, but not as good as I had hoped.
I melted it down, added a lot of milk and a little cream to the melted mix, and tried again. Now the sweetness is just right, the vanilla flavor is clear and refreshing. But the texture is icy. And the mouthfeel is thin.
Worse, the munavalgekook I made with all the egg whites turned out dry. I used Fiori di Scilia for citrus flavor but I think I like almond better. If only there were some way to melt down and respin a cake.
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Here is the blog and recipe that I started with:
http://nami-nami.blo...ake-recipe.html
As I recall the nami-nami author is a poster on eGullet. I've made this recipe a few times and I eventually bought a bundt pan to bake it in. Sometimes I use almond flour and sometimes I don't. I believe for the cake I was eating with my sorbet last night I used 60g almond flour and 100g King Arthur organic white flour. I'm pretty sure I once tried a bit of Fiori di Sicilia and orange flower water for citrus flavor.
I got the idea to serve the munavalgekook with my chocolate sorbet because it was in the freezer too.
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Maybe not as a main course, but Francisco Migoya in Frozen Desserts (p 340-341) has a recipe for sake and lemon sorbet with wasabi flying fish roe. You could probably substitute your caviar in the recipe, though it wouldn't have the pretty light spring green color.
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Lesson in Freezing Point Depression:
My chocolate sorbet came to a sad, inglorious end. I did defrost my freezer. Tonight is fairly cold, -4 deg C, so I dumped my sorbet and its freezer-mates outside. It completely melted.
Dessert was a warmed slice of munavalgekook (made with almond flour), a drizzle of hazelnut syrup, covered in the quondam sorbet. A fine dessert, to be sure. But not a frozen dessert.
Home Made Ice Cream (2013– )
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Last night I tried a somewhat lower butterfat version by Ruben's method but it was icy. I melted it down and respun with an added 250 ml heavy cream, 20g sugar, and about teaspoon more vanilla paste. This time not the least bit icy, and with no xanthan gum or other odd ingredients. So far I think this is the best batch of ice cream I have made. Unfortunately because it was a respin I do not have exact quantities of ingredients. The only defect is that it is rather hard to scoop.
Something I have noticed over several batches: mix hardened in my SS hotel pan comes out better than the same mix hardened in plastic containers. I believe because steel is the better heat conductor.