WhiskerBiscuit

So, while looking up Pommes Duaphine, I discovered Pommes Duchesse. I’m off to buy a piping bag, because those look awesome!

This might be it! It’s been so long since the crazy guy told me about it. All I can clearly remember is that everything sounded sinful about it. Adding “fried” to the prep would certainly be a plus.

It’s been so long. Maybe it was starch, fat, sugar? The holy trifecta.

A long time ago a friend told me about this mashed potato-like dish. And it had a French name. He said it was heavenly. I’ve been searching for it every now and then for the past few years, to no avail. Then I just realized if anyone on the net knew what this was, it would be an e-gulleter. No, I can’t contact the friend. He’s kinda insane.

Old topic, but here’s a top: make sure to remove some bread to form a long shallow hollow so you can fill that bastard up with more filling

I’m using this recipe to try and make a perfect rice pudding. Ingredients: 1-2 Tbsp medium-grain white rice, such as arborio (often called risotto rice), calriso, or another california-grown rice--do not wash! 2/3 c additional long-grain or short-grain rice to make 2/3 cups rice total 4 c milk (skim, 1%, 2%, whole, or a combination) 1/3-1/2 c sugar, to taste 1 tsp pure vanilla extract Recipe: Place the rice and milk in the rice cooker bowl; stir to combine. Close the cover and set for the Porridge cycle. When the machine switches to the Keep Warm cycle, open the rice cooker, and add the sugar and vanilla, quickly stirring it into the rice milk mixture. Stir until combined. Close the cover and reset for a second Porridge cycle. Stir every 15 to 20 minutes until the desired consistency is reached. Warning: cooking the sugar for more than about 1/2-hour makes the pudding difficult to clean from the rice cooker bowl, so don't add sugar at the beginning of cooking (although the rice pudding comes out fine)! Rice mixture will thicken as it cools. If it comes out too thick, just add more milk. I initially tried it out using all arborio rice (because that’s all I head on hand), but as the recipe noted it came out too starchy. However it was really good, but not what I was looking for. The second time I used the suggested rice mixture. But looking at other recipes and Kozy Shack’s ingredient list, I decided to add a couple of egg yolks. At the end of the second porridge cycle (total cooking time 90 minutes) I added two coddled egg yolks (I almost pasteurized them with my sous vide, but that was a little overboard even for me). The texture was a little too thick, so I added a tablespoon or so of milk and then thought it was too thin so I kept with the porridge cycle. I checked about 15 minutes later and my thick porridge all of a sudden became a liquid soup. I kept cooking and after an hour it reduced to the thickness I wanted, but the rice broke almost completely down. What I want to know is what happened to make it go from a thick porridge to soup in a very short amount of time. Was it adding the egg yolks? There has got to be some science-y reason behind it.

Several years ago I bought one of those fancy electric rice cookers (Panasonic) that supposedly uses fuzzy logic to make perfect rice every time. Since it has has a porridge option, I looked to see if people used it for making rice pudding and tapioca. Sure enough, there were plenty of recipes and I aim to try some soon. But what about chocolate pudding? There are a lot of insta-pot recipes, but I can’t find anything for the American school box dessert staple.

I bought a Frieling press from BBB (yay 20% off) but I was a little disappointed with the results. Compared to a cone juicer, it left a lot of unpressed flesh in the rind. Plus it the juice was bitter compared to the cone. I want a juicer for both fresh OJ as well as pomegranates in the fall. Has anyone used the Hamilton Beach 932 for pomegranates? Does anyone know of a place with lifetime guarantees that sells the HB 932? When I plunk down $200 on a piece of equipment I try to buy from BBB or Costco, like I did for my KitchenAid mixer. I read a lot of reviews about the KitchenAid having plastic gears that break down after a while, so buying from a store with lifetime returns adds a level of comfort.

I ordered a case of Valencia oranges to satisfy a craving for fresh squeezed OJ. I used a traditional electric juicer and it was fairly decent. Not great, but I suspect it is a bit early in the Valencia season. However it does take quite a bit of time using this method. So I bought a pomegranate press. Reviews of various presses said it gets all of the juice from the fruit. Not really, quite a bit is still left over after pressing. But even ignoring the inefficiency, I noticed the juice was bitter. I’m assuming the press is getting the bitter oils from the peel into the juice. How do stores/restaurants that sell fresh juice do it?