tammylc

I have one or two nights in El Paso for a business trip. Where are the good eats?

I'll be in Norwalk for one evening on a business trip in December. Apparently Renu Nakorn is closing for 6 months for remodeling. Any other recommendations for Norwalk, or something a not-too-onerous drive away?

I must be slow today, because I think it took me a full minute or more to process that sentence and figure out what the heck you were talking about! Doh. Hi! Looking forward to dinner! Wherever we end up... And thanks for the lunch recommendations, too - that's a great list. I'm leaning towards tacquerias and the Mexican Fine Arts museum, but I change my mind nearly daily...

I'll have to give that praline idea a try! Have you checked in with E. Guittard to see if they are using bone char free sugar? I've started using E. Guittard for my regular truffles, but not for the vegan ones because I wasn't sure of the sugar. Also, it is manufactured on the same equipment as their milk chocolate, although it seems like most vegans don't mind that. (People with dairy allergies would, though.)

Thanks for the report. I'm eagerly anticipating my visit (October 19!). Did you bring wine? Do they still only have tumblers, so we should bring our own glassware?

Your square and rectangular plates are great. I adore square plates. Where did you get yours? Anybody have any reasonably priced suppliers? Great blog, BTW - I'm so full from dinner I could burst, but you're still managing to make me salivate...

I've been working on coconut truffles myself, using coconut milk. I find a straight up substitution for cream has worked quite well, but since I'm aiming for vegan, I haven't played around with cream or butter in addition. The coconut flavor is very subtle, so I added a little bit of coconut flavoring too.

Thanks for the report, Edsel. Everything looks great. I can't wait until the 2007 Heartland Gathering in Cleveland, so I'll have an excuse to come eat at Lola!

Thanks, all. Please keep 'em coming, if you think of anything else. I'll forward them the link to this post to check out.

The last batch I did I cooked to 252 and they were too hard. But that was a weird extra small batch, so the temperature got up too quickly. This time I cooked them to 149.5, I think. I have yet to actually cut them and try to do anything with them, so we'll see what happens.

I had a busy confectionary day yesterday, testing some recipes for a "Halloween Candy for Grownups" truffle sale. One of my ideas was to do some vegan/non-dairy truffles for some friends who requested them. Thanks to discussion here on eGullet and searching the web I got some good ideas and decided to use coconut milk instead of cream. Technically, this worked very well. But the first vegan chocolate I tried (Green&Black 72% baking bar) was quite unpleasant, so yesterday I tested out a couple of others, first plain, and then in actual truffles. They were both much tastier chocolates than the Green&Black. The Endangered Species bar was slightly better for eating on its own, but the Terra Nostra made MUCH better ganache and truffles, so we finally have a winner! (These will be called "coconut ghosts" in the Halloween collection.) One of the other recipes I'm working on is a pumpkin seed praline truffle. Yesterday's version was much closer to what I'm looking for than my previous attempt, thanks once again to eGullet! In the thread on keeping praline crunchy in a ganache center I found out about using an all-butter ganache. But I wanted to use dark chocolate instead of milk, so I had to make some changes. At Kerry's suggestion, I started off with equal parts butter and chocolate, but that was too buttery and never firmed up. So I added another part of chocolate for a 2:1 ratio. Much better. Perhaps a little too firm, so I'll probably settle somewhere around 1.75:1 in the final version. I dipped them in 72% chocolate and sprinkled a little bit of praline powder on top. Sorry no pictures, but they were tasty and pretty. The other flavor I'm expermenting with is an apple caramel. I made the caramel yesterday and let it set up for a full 24 hours as Kerry suggested in her confectionary thread, but I'm worried that it's still going to be too soft to dip. Anyone have any suggestions for chocolate coating caramels - I've never tried it before...

Hadn't really thought about how to get from place to place yet. I need to get a Chicago map and figure out where everything is. The problem with a burger at Naha will be sticking with just the burger! The rest of the menu looks soooo good. I've been to Soundings, back when Eric and I were visiting the field. Good food is more important to me than a good view. Where/what are Chicago's interesting ethnic areas? I could see myself wandering around Chinatown or whatever before lunch, getting lunch there, then heading over to the Field after lunch.

I want one of those eclairs NOW. Wow.

I'm coming to Chicago for several days next month. I have most of my dinners planned, but still have a couple floating lunches. I arrive via Amtrak at lunchtime on Tuesday. I think I'm going to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art that afternoon (it was going to be the Museum of Science and Industry, but I didn't realize that was so far out, so that's not going to work). So I'm looking for lunch recommendations around or between Union Station and the Museum. Friday afternoon I want to spend at the Field Museum, so I need lunch before that too. I'll be staying at the Hilton Chicago, which I believe is very near the Field, but I'd be happy to venture a little farther afield if there's nothing nearby. I have a couple of expensive dinners planned, so I'm mostly interested in cheap but interesting lunches. Ideas? Any kind of food is good. I have a visit to Hot Doug's already on the itinerary. Thanks!

I've offered to find some dinner recommendations for some friends who are heading to Chicago in a couple weeks. Many of the places I would normally point people to are at least a little outside their desired dollar amount, so I thought I'd solicit input. They are looking to spend only about $50/couple, NOT including wine or cocktails. This is a getaway weekend for parents to leave kids at home, so ideally it would be some place with a nicer atmosphere than the places you tend to go when you have kids. But it doesn't have to be fancy. They might be interested in one splurge meal up to say $60 or $75 per couple, especially if I can offer a corresponding cheaper but also good meal for another night. They are staying downtown, I can't remember exactly where.

Thanks, David. I think I'm going to do a small test batch tonight. How much praline did you use relative to chocolate/ butter/ etc?

I like ludja's format suggestion.

Kerry (or anyone else) - you give the ratios for a milk chocolate all-butter ganache. What ratios/amounts would you use for a bittersweet (probably around 60%) ganache? David J - did you ever try this? How did it turn out? How fine/coarse did you process your praline?

Thanks for all the suggestions. I should clarify that it's not chopping chocolate for *melting* that was an issue for me - it was trying to get even pieces for ganache making that I was talking about. But I'm thinking that I'll just make my next ganache out of melted chocolate instead of just pouring hot cream over chopped chocolate, which is what I've been doing up until now. Now I just have to figure out which big bars of chocolate I want to buy.

Great idea for a thread! I'm surprised you're practically the only person posting to it so far, so I'll add one. A couple weeks ago I made a pork chop dish with smoked paprika, sherry vinegar, tomatoes, potatoes and whole peeled shallots. At my wine seller's recommendation I bought a Porteguese wine to go with: Escanção Dão Reserva 2001. Made from the same grapes as port, this Portuguese red wine opens with lots of the fruit flavors you get from a ruby port. But instead of turning sweet and alcoholic on the finish, it's fully dry, with a great acid backbone, making it a great food wine. It matched the big flavors of the pork blow for blow, without overwhelming them. It was just as good the second night with ratatouille and lamb. And at $10 a bottle, it's an absolute bargain! I'll definitely be buying a few bottles to have on hand - I think it's one of those wines that will go with nearly everything.

Glad to get some confirmation that it's not just me!

The discs I'm using are between the size of a nickel and a quarter. I didn't try making them into ganache as is, because they just seemed too big. I've never tried making ganache from melted chocolate, but I was just reading a long post Steve Klc wrote about it a couple days ago, so perhaps I'll give it a try.

When I first started playing around with truffle making, I was using the Michel Cluizel pastilles. These are a dream to work with for making ganache, because there's no chopping required and all the pieces are the exact same size. But, the store where I buy them sells them for nearly $17/lb retail. Looks like I can get down to about $13/lb buying online in bulk, but then there's shipping too... My other quibble with the Cluizel is that it's actually a little too high in cocoa butter, I think, as I was having a lot of cracking and leaking problems with my truffles, even when the centers were not too cold. So I've been looking for alternatives. Right now I'm trying the E. Guittard wafers. These are fine for melting (although I have yet to try tempering any of it), but the wafers are not small enough for ganache making, so I'm stuck with the chopping thing again. Are there tricks for easily chopping large quantities of chocolate and getting a consistent size so I don't end up with unmelted lumps in my ganache? Or is not chopping worth the extra money per pound to buy the Cluizel for my ganache making, and I can use something else for couverture? Thanks.

Thought I should report back on my first experiment. I used the Green & Black 72% baking bar referenced below. I did not like the flavor at all on its own. Very green tasting. Blech! But I soldiered on. I don't usually add sweeteners to my truffles, but I really thought this chocolate needed *something*. I used 144 g chopped chocolate, 96 g coconut milk, and 1 tsp of corn syrup. They turned out pretty well. The texture was great - the ganache firmed up nicely and was very easy to work with. I coated them in a bit of untempered melted chocolate, then rolled half in cocoa powder and the other half in shredded unsweetened coconut. As for flavor, I thought they were much improved over the plain chocolate, but still not great. I could taste the coconut milk when I went looking for it, but it was a pretty subtle and generic base. I sold off my test batch at a discount to a friend. She mostly likes them, but agrees with me on the chocolate. I'll have to look for another vegan chocolate that I tastes better. (She only needs non-dairy and not super-strictly, so I can just use proper chocolate and coconut milk for her in the future.)

I've used an 8 inch pyrex before. I line it with two pieces of parchment paper (one in each dimension with excess spilling out over the sides) and oil that - then I can easily lift the entire slab out of the pan for cutting.