tammylc

Thanks, Kerry! So good of you to do all that work for us... I'm planning to try out some colors with my next batch of chocolates, so that was really helpful for me! I assume you let each of the colors dry before adding the next swirl?

I spent the last few days eagerly trying out my new molds from JB Prince. So much fun! Ready to take to the New Year Party: Geodesic domes en masse: One of each: Fortunately, I'd read the entire "Showroom Finish" thread before eGullet went offline. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. The geodesic domes have a dark chocolate and Cognac ganache. The flat domes have a Patron XO Cafe (coffee flavored tequila - waaay better than Kahlua or equivalent) ganache. And the flat pyramids have salty caramel. Well, I better get off to this New Year's Eve party before I fall over. In the midst of doing all those chocolates (136 all told) I also cooked a five course dinner for 8 tonight. I'm pooped. If I stay here I'll totally fall asleep. Happy New Year everyone!

Seems silly to start another thread with the same title, so while you're making suggestions on that first menu, care to chime in on this one? Seared scallop with leek and golden trout caviar (Jaillance Cremant de Bordeaux) Butternut squash ravioli with rosemary oil (??) Mushroom stuffed quail with risotto and haricot verts (Rhone? Burgundy?) Cheese (leftover red - any cheeses to choose or avoid based on red choice?) Caramel-hazelnut-chocolate tart (no wine - coffee/espresso and/or Frangelico) Thanks!

That's a great looking "tasting menu." And great looking chocolates too. 500 pieces - wow! I'm very excited! My polycarbonate molds shipped from JB Prince yesterday and are scheduled to be delivered to me tomorrow. So I'll get to experiment with molded chocolates for New Year's afterall. Very cool. Couple of questions - how much tempered chocolate does it take to fill and cap a mold like this? The geodesic dome is 30x20mm and 40 cavities, and the smooth dome is 30x20mm with 32 cavities. I read the entire "showroom finish" thread last night, and can't wait to try out some tricks!

I found a passion fruit concentrate at a local Mexican grocery, and that's what I use for flavoring my ganache for truffle making. I just do a basic ganache with 12 oz chocolate, 8 oz cream, and 4-6 tbsp of the concentrate. Works great, and is very easy! And it was much cheaper than buying puree, which I could only get in 32 oz containers that had to be shipped next-day. I think my bottle of concentrate cost about $4.

I'm looking for some plating advice. As described above, I'm planning to serve some mushroom stuffed quail. The quail I'm buying are sleeve boned, which means they'll be intact when I serve them. My current plan for an accompaniment is mushroom risotto - I'll be rehydrating some dried porcini for the stuffing, so I figure that will give me some nice mushroom broth for the risotto. But I'm worried that it's an awful lot of brown on the plate - brown risotto, brown quail, maybe a nice seared mushroom garnish. Oh, and some haricots vert, so it won't be completely monochrome. I'm thinking about making a sauce with some red wine and demiglace and whatever drippings I get from the quail. Any ideas? I'm totally willing to swap out the risotto for something better if anyone has a good suggestion. And I'd also love to hear suggestions for the actual plating. I only have round plates to work with for this course. I was thinking of doing the risotto in a ring mold or inverted mold, and resting the single quail against that. Drizzle some sauce and maybe some truffle oil, do something with the haricots?

I'm buying sleeve-boned quail to stuff. I'm lucky to have a GREAT butcher to work with, who can get me all kinds of cool stuff. Not sure what cheeses I'll be serving. I have most of a round of Green Hill (a soft cow's milk cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia) in the fridge right now. If I think that will make it to Sunday, then I'll probably get a couple more soft cheeses for that course. I'm also blessed to have a couple of great cheese counters nearby. Non-scallop eating dinner guest probably wouldn't much like squid either.

thanks John. I should note that they are whole mushrooms (each variety is packaged separately, not a blend), and from what I could see some of them looked pretty shapely. Since I seem to be unable to find any fresh wild mushrooms more exotic than shiitakes around here, I guess I'll give them a try and see how they turn out!

I found some individually quick frozen (IQF) wild mushrooms at my grocery store today - chanterelles, morels, and porcini. Anyone have any experience using these? The package says you can just cook them straight from frozen. Seems like they'd be fine for something like a soup or a sauce, or even what I have in mind - a mushroom stuffing for quail. Anyone have any experience using a product like this? In addition to the above preparation, any chance that they'll sear up nicely for a garnish?

My menu's a little less ambitious - but we'll have 5 to 7 kids running around, so 5 courses is about all we can expect to manage! (We'll feed the kids hot dogs during courses 1 and 2, and then they'll run off with full tummies to play for the rest.) Seared scallops with leeks and caviar Butternut squash ravioli with rosemary oil Mushroom stuffed quail with mushroom risotto and haricots verts Cheese Chocolate-caramel-hazelnut tart with creme fraiche whipped cream I have one person who's not a scallop eater, so I'm trying to think of an easy alternative to that course for her. We were talking tonight about how much she likes beets, so maybe some kind of beet preparation. Color would be quite different, of course, but I could cut it into a round and at least have the same kind of shape for plating... Champagne with the first two course, and a Burgundy or Rhone with the quail and carrying over into the cheese.

Here are a couple shots of the dessert I made for the eGullet Baking and Pastry Challenge. I'm reasonably happy with the way the plate turned out, but the process did raise one constant issue I have, which is getting sauces to be the "right" consistency for plating. In this case, I ended up over-reducing both of the sauces, so they were too sticky. I was fighting with the port wine reduction not coming out of the bottle, so I cut a larger tip and then it came out too thick and spread instead of being the nice crisp lines I wanted. The caramel sauce was way too thick and gloppy. Other times I've tried to sauce plates, the sauce has been too thin. I just can't get it right! Any advice? And while I'm here, any advice on plating a dish that has a single sleeve boned stuffed quail, some mushroom risotto and some haricots verts? I could use a ring mold for the risotto, then lean the quail up against it, I suppose. I'll have some pan drippings to drizzle, and could saute up some pretty looking mushrooms for an interesting shape...

Those are good prices on square plates. Of course, even the largest is only 8 inch square, and I'd prefer a 10 inch plate for an entree, but for the price! My plate find was small rectangular plates and shallow oval bowls for $1 apiece at the Dollar Store near me! They're not big enough for much more than single bite courses, but much easier for me to justify the purchase of! Good luck with your dinner! In honor of my new plate purchases, I'm planning a dinner for New Year's Eve, so I'm going through many of the same thought processes. Off I go to re-read the plating and presention course...

Thanks, alanamoana! I agree - I wouldn't ever have thought of combining that particular wine and cheese in this way, and now I'm thinking of serving a variation on the pear-gouda combo as the cheese course for my New Year's Eve dinner. One of my favorite parts of the challenge was having the opportunity to play around with plating. I love the idea of all of that, but it doesn't fit into my usual routines very well, so it was great to have an excuse. Unfortunately, the finished items were too big to fit nicely on the great rectangular and oval plates I picked up at the dollar store (!!) this week. They're more one-bite kind of plates.

I wouldn't say I was disappointed with the gouda frico - they are very, very tasty. It's just that the cheese was better on its own. And as you say - it made for a beautiful presentation. Things I played around with and never got to try (I'm still suffering from a sinus infection and have had limited energy) included a gouda ice cream and a gouda foam. I like your idea of incorporating the sauce into an ice cream - I would add some butter or cream to make it more caramely. Alvear Carlos VII is a Amontillado style sherry made with all Pedro Ximenex grapes. It's really quite an extraordinary wine. Here's a piece of the tasting note given out at the wine dinner where I first tried it: This is one of the best written tasting notes ever, as it perfectly describes the wine. And, if you're familiar with aged gouda, you'll understand why I couldn't help but think of putting the two together. It's the ultimate cheese wine, pairing beautfiully with everything I've ever tried to serve it with. There's only about 200 cases a year exported into the US, but fortunately a wine seller near me carries it. At $20 for a 500 ml bottle, it's well worth the money. And since it's oxidized already, it keeps well after being opened - there's no rush to drink it up.

Thanks. I'm all about tasting, so it seemed appropriate. I should note that they were part of the development process, tasting things as I went along, as well as the final dessert. As Hope mentions below, I'd made a couple of other items as well - a red wine gelato and a Montgomery Cheddar gougere - but they didn't end up working together or with the other components. Both are tasty, however. Well, I didn't like the red wine gelato, but everyone else thought it was fabulous. My comments: I over-reduced both sauces, which made it easy to make them stay where I wanted on the plate, but made them too sticky and sweet for good eating - I'd correct that in the future. The pear-gouda-sherry combo worked as well in reality as it did in my head, so that was cool. I'm with Dave and Beth on the issue of the grapes - the Stilton did overwhelm the grape. I think because the amount of Stilton needed to wrap the grape made it too much. I probably should have done what most recipes suggest and cut the Stilton with cream cheese. If I make these for a party sometime (and I might - they are tasty and unusual), I will do that. And chill them - these ones warmed up while I was getting everything else ready. Oh, and the plate needed more of the port sauce for that amount of grapes/cheese. The two parts of the plate didn't really go together, but neither did they clash. If I was serving the pear on it's own, I would do it in a little bowl, because then I could use the unreduced sauce, and that would be very tasty. And while the crisp was fun and made for a nice presentation, I think some of the sweet butterscotchy flavor of the aged gouda was lost, so I'd just do shavings of the cheese. Oh, and given Klary's reasons for giving me this challenge, I should note that the Alvear Carlos VII was a great wine pairing for this course.

Here are the results of tonight's big push to the finish line! On the left, red grapes on the stem, covered in Stilton and rolled in chopped port-glazed walnuts. You can see some of the whole walnuts scattered around the sauce. The sauce is the reduction of the glazing liquid, and has port, sugar, black pepper and bay leaf. On the right, a Seckel pear, which was roasted in a baking dish with a mixture of Carlos VII and sugar at the bottom. That was used as a basting liquid, and later reduced to the caramel sauce. Lying jauntily against the pear is a crisp of 5-year Boerenkaas aged gouda. And a few toasted hazelnuts for good measure. I invited a few friends over to kibbitz and taste. Here are their comments, so you'll have some idea of the flavors as well as the looks! Thanks Klary for such a fun challenge!

Oh, and so far I've had no luck finding a challenger for next week. It's a really tough week, starting on Christmas and running until New Year's. Unless anyone wants to PM me to volunteer, I propose that we skip next week and I can start hitting up the "after the holidays" list of volunteers... Anyone have a strong objection to that?

I'm thoroughly recovered from the flu (although I fear I've acquired a sinus infection). So I'm back in the saddle again. On the theory that your first instinct is usually right, my plans haven't really changed from some of the first ideas I had when I read the challenge. So, on my way into work this morning I stopped by an excellent produce market to pick up some grapes. After work, I went to Morgan and York to try some cheeses. Someone upthread mentioned Zingerman's, and it is an excellent place to buy cheese. But the cheese at Morgan and York (formerly Big Ten Party Store, for any Ann Arbor alum) is as good (and sometimes better), and it's not the madhouse that Zing would be this time of year. I was looking for the best blue cheese to pair with grapes. I took a pocket full of grapes with me so I could actually taste on the fly. The service there is always excellent, so my cheesemonger totally took my grape munching in stride, and we chatted about my plans for the challenge. I tasted some Stilton, some Cashel Blue, a virgin wheel of Valdeon, and a nice Roquefort. In the end, I decided that the Stilton had all the attributes I was looking for. Then it was on to cheddars. Although I was really looking for something English, my cheesemonger couldn't let me get away with not trying a domestic cheddar that they are very fond of. If memory serves, it was the second from the bottom cheese on this page. It was really good, but not assertive enough to stand up to my plans. Neither was the Keen's Farmhouse cheddar or the Big Ten Cheddar (produced specially for them). No, it had to be the Montgomery, which has a little bit of blueing of its own, and a sharp, assertive complexity. While I was there, I tried the 5-year aged gouda, and it is exactly as reminscent of the Carlos VII as I thought it would be. So now I'm toying around with that idea again, and got a 1/3 of a lb to bring home and play with. Angling off of one of Pontormo's inspirational pics above, I'm pondering poaching pears in the sherry and somehow pairing that with the gouda. I'll keep you all posted. Right now, however, it's time to go make some port-glazed walnuts and a gelato base...

Well, you've all sucked me in. I just ordered three molds from JP Prince (Chocolat-Chocolat was cheaper, but only a little bit, and I'm hoping to get these in time to make some for New Year's Eve). I got the geodesic dome, the squared off pyramid, and a regular dome (not the demisphere, because neither of the sizes was what I was looking for). I've only been making rolled truffles up until now - what ratios do I want for a ganache to be piped into molded chocolates? Anyone have a Champagne ganache recipe they want to share?

Any recommendations on shapes that are easier for beginners? I love the geodesic dome, but I'm guessing that it's really hard to get the air bubbles out of all those corners?

Bourdain's recipe is out of control. Feeds 4 - hah! Only four people who hadn't eaten in a month, maybe. I needed two casseroles to cook it, and fed 9 or 10 adults plus a couple of kids, then sent home leftovers with people. No need to double. If you leave the duck legs whole, there will only be four of those. You can pull the meat off in advance, though, or cook them whole and pull the meat off for portioning at service.

Just an FYI - while I'm still thinking about all this, my son gave me the stomach flu, so it'll be a couple of days until I'll be up to any actual experimentation.

Anna - you are totally my inspiration for trying to do some molded chocolates. I have to wait until all these truffles are out of my house and I can stand to think about chocolate again, though! Where's the best places to get good molds?

The pastry challenge does seem fun, in comparison. High demand, but low volume! I also have a head cold and a sick child, so finding the time to actually try all the things I'm thinking about will be the real challenge!

I've never been a cheddar and apple pie person, so I'm pretty sure I won't be going that route. Enurmi - you've got me wondering if this aged gouda I've been thinking about is dry enough to turn into a crisp, like parmaggiano. I think it is. That, with caramel ice cream and Carlos VII reduction, is an intriguing idea. No idea if it will taste good, though. And then how to tie that into the other cheese/wine combo... If I have two distinct things on the plate, I need to come up with a way to tie them together.