tammylc

So, now that that's decided, anybody have a favorite puttanesca recipe to share?

You didn't ruin the squash. Stop worrying about it. It was very tasty! I think the latter approach is the way to go. Said vegetarian has in the past knowingly eaten a tapenade containing anchovies, so maybe she'll be willing to look the other way about the sauce anyway...

I should have been more clear... A non-anchovy including puttanesca sauce could be more easily adapted to a vegetarian alternative for this course - so she gets tofu instead of fish, for example, but we can use the same sauce.

I'm putting together a dinner party for my wine club, and for one of the courses I'm planning to serve fish with a puttanesca sauce. For a fun plating idea (and to get around the problem that one of our members is vegetarian) I had though of perhaps doing a deconstructed version. A roasted cherry tomato, a whole olive, an anchovy filet, etc. But does that just miss the point of them all coming together into something better than the sum of the parts? If I give up on the idea of accomodating the vegetarian, I had thought about make a puttanesca sauce, pureeing and straining it, then using that as a base with the deconstructed elements on top. Thoughts? Ideas?

When I toured the Fruit and Spice park in Miami, the last thing we got to sample on the tour was a red lime, before and after a miracle fruit. However, the next stop on my tour that afternoon was a tropical fruit winery, and then dinner, so I didn't want to mess with my tastebuds. The park guide let me take my miracle fruit with me, but then I forgot about it in my purse and it got all shriveled up so I didn't get to try it out. I'm so bummed to have missed it. But I have a friend who's been talking about ordering some and having a tasting party.

Okay - good to know that infused creams will work for caramels too. I'd been wondering. The Chocolat Moderne "caramel" that I mention doesn't have an opaque brown creaminess to it that I think of caramel having. It's very light in color, very soft, and flavored with pear puree and Poire William. Any guesses on how something like that's made? A very lightly caramelized sugar, with the puree and Poire William taking the place of the cream, maybe?

Over in the thread on interesting flavor combinations, Truffle Guy gives this list of fascinating sounding caramels: I've had a variety of "very fluid" caramels as centers in bonbons. Many of them - like the pear filling in the "Caramel Caresse" from Chocolate Moderne in NYC - are not what I'd necessarily think of as caramels. How does one make something like this?

That's the best thing about the bars, Vanessa - the size is totally variable. And you can adjust it on the fly if you discover that you made your opening too large. Just nudge the bars over a little bit until you get the size you need. They've made my life so much easier, I can't believe I went so long without using them! I think I'm going to make some caramel this weekend, so I'll have a chance to see how well the aluminum bars will work for that. (Although I think my 3/8 inch height will probably be too short.)

In order to give some extra weight to the aluminum bars, I went with a rectangular rather than square cross section - 3/8 by 3/4. Many of the commercial caramel rulers have a rectangular cross section as well, so this isn't unusual.

My other problem (not with Chef Rubber in particular) is that no one store has everything that I want. So I end up having to order things from 3 or 4 places and pay shipping for all of them. That gets frustrating. Tomric is the only place that carries chocolate cutters. Chef Rubber has the best selection of colored cocoa butters. DR has cool molds and cheap transfer sheets. Etc. I want one-stop shopping!

Thanks all! Every time I ask a question on eGullet I get great answers, and this time was no exception. With my new bent fork and all the tips you all posted here, I got all 120 eggs dipped with greater speed and way less feet than ever before! Thanks to some last minute orders, I have another 50 or so to do today, but I'm no longer dreading the idea!

Thanks for all the tips. I have to enrobe 120+ egg-shaped ganache centers today, so I'll definitely have an opportunity to try them out. Trying to figure out if I can rig up a wire somehow. A while ago I added some random dipping forks on to an Internet order for something else. They turned out to be the Ateco forks, which have solid stainless steel handles. So all this talk of bending wasn't, I thought, going to work for me. But I mentioned it to my husband as I was getting ready to go off to the kitchen yesterday, and he said "I have a vice grip downstairs." So now I have a bent fork. I'm not sure the bend is in the right place, and I think I'm going to wrap the top of the handle in tape or something, because it's not a very good handhold. But it gives me something else to try, anyway. I'll probably bring along a couple plastic forks too, a la Desiderio.

I'm happy to report that Aluminum 6061 bars work great for ganache! I put them on a Silpat to create some friction, and had no problems at all. I called up my local metal supplier yesterday, and they had 3/8 inch by 3/4 inch bars in stock. The cheapest way to buy it was in a 12 foot length, then I paid them to cut it up. Because you have to allow 1/4 inch for cuts, I asked for 12 11-inch bars, which should have left me with 9 inches extra. Well, somehow I ended up with 13 bars, one of which is longer than the others. But that's okay, because that one acted as a good scraper for leveling off the top. Once the bars are put together I get about a 10 inch by 10 inch opening, which is plenty big for me. Total cost, $38 for enough bars for three frames.

Thanks all for the ideas! Very helpful. Can anyone point me to a picture online of the actual dipping fork you like? They mostly seem to be straight - is everyone just bending their own?

That's very interesting Vanessa - as you know, I have cold working space issues as well (although now that it's spring, my temperature problems are going to start shifting the other direction). Plastic forks. Hmmm...

My enrobing technique sucks. At least partly because I don't have any dipping tools that I like. So I'm in the market for something better. What do you like to use when dipping things in chocolate?

Thanks for the link, Kerry! That looks very intriguing.

I think a reduction would be great for most maple syrups, but because this one picks up so much flavor in the aging process, I worry that it would lose those nice bourbon notes in a reduction. I probably just need to try it and see though...

Custom House is way high up on my list for sometime when I'm in Chicago for dinner, but as nsxtasy points out, I do need something for 11. Transit issues are less of an issue for us, as the people I'm going out for lunch with (just two others in addition to me) are coming in from out of town and we need to kill time before the meeting starts anyway. But it will certainly be more convenient to walk. I've made a reservation at Park Grill Chicago, because the location is right and the menu looked good, but I'm still very open to changing my mind if a better suggestion comes along. Thanks!

I just got a bottle of BLiS maple syrup. This is really awesome organic maple syrup that's been aged in used Bourbon barrels, so in addition to the maple flavor, it's got subtle bourbon and wood notes that really push it over the top. Knowing that I make chocolates, everyone around me is asking when I'm going to put it into a chocolate. I'm trying to think of what a good vehicle for the flavors would be. I'm familiar with ganache centers and caramels, but it seems like the flavor would get overwhelmed by a chocolate ganache and cooked out by the high temperatures needed to make caramel. I know that fondant and creme centers exist, and it seems like one of these might be right, but I know nothing about making them. My husband has suggested putting a few drops of the maple syrup into a shell before filling it with something else, and that sounds like a great idea, although I wonder about crystallization or shelf life in doing that. Thoughts?

Sadly, they don't serve lunch until 11:30, and 11:00 would really be better (although it looks like their bar may open at 11, so I suppose we could start there...)

Totally OT, but OMG, I've been waiting for Google Maps to let me do this for a million years. Thanks!

I'm in Chicago on Monday for a meeting. But it doesn't start until 1, so I'll be meeting my colleagues for lunch at 11. I was planning to take them to Aigre Doux because I wanted that sticky toffee pudding, but I kept putting off making the reservation, and now there's no 11:00 am slot available. Any suggestions? We'll be planning for our session over lunch, so not anyplace too noisy. Walking distance to the meeting at the Aon Center (200 E. Randolph Street) would be great, but a short cab ride is fine too. Price and kind of food are flexible. Thanks!

Those are gorgeous! I love the paint splash effect on the big egg!

I've done chocolates with a layer of jam/jelly in them, just by piping a layer of jam into chocolate shells, and then piping the ganache on top of that.