manjari "torchon"

manjari "torchon"
Originally uploaded by fuzzzycatt

this has become my signature dessert. it's very versatile to every season and it satisfies every chocolate lover. thank you wiley for the foie gras torchon!

like the others, the center of this "torchon" is a liquid. cranberries to be exact. cut the torchon right down the middle and await a glorious red sauce ooze out.

my favorite part about this one is the cocoa nib brittle. as you masticate the brittle, your teeth grind together the sugars and the cocoa nibs creating chocolate. while you chew you make chocolate in your mouth. how cool is that?!!?!?!?!!

a question ...

i was making ice cream bases today. i use the same recipe for vanilla and burnt caramel. the only thing i do different is caramelize the sugar until its almost burnt. it tastes amazing, trust me! oh, its also salted.

as is my habit (and every chef in the world) i taste my food as it progresses. when all the bases where finished and cooled, i stirred and gave them one last taste. i noticed something different.

the vanilla ice cream was sweet. the caramel ice cream tasted like caramel, but it was no where near as sweet as the vanilla. how could this be (aside from the salt)? its the same recipe. its the same amount of sugar ...

does sugar loose its 'sweetness' as it caramelizes? why? what happens?

who likes corndogs?

tried this tasty treat while at americas, but it wasnt the right venue. maybe jj could use this at beavers ...

corndog batter

yields 2 quarts

3 cups Cornmeal

1.5 cups AP Flour

1.5 tsp Baking Soda

0.75 tsp Salt

1 Tbsp Sugar

1.5 cups Buttermilk

1.25 cups Water

1 ea Egg

Banana Mustard

yields 2 quarts

4 cups Pastry Cream

1 cup Honey

1.5 cups Yellow American Mustard

8 Tbsp Banana Extract

Pastry Cream

yields 3 quarts

12 ea Egg yolks

2 ea Eggs

1 qt Heavy Cream

2 cups Sugar

0.5 tsp Salt

1 ea Vanilla Bean

8 oz Butter

Banana Ice Cream

yields 3 quarts

12 oz Butter

3 cups Milk

4.5 cups Heavy Cream

0.5 cup Light Corn Syrup

0.5 cup Milk Powder

3 cups Sugar

1 tsp Xanthan Gum

2.5 Tbsp Banana Extract

flickr tag game

flickr tag game
Originally uploaded by fuzzzycatt

heres mine.

marco pierre white on the corporate world

"... it was my first experience of the corporate world and i thought it was horrible. you think blue-chip companies are run perfectly, but in my opinion they are worse than private companies. board meetings are painful. we'd have an hour-long meeting about the price of coffee, with them wanting to produce coffee for five pence a cup and spending sixty minutes talking about how every penny counts. "you can get spectacular coffee for twelve pence a cup," i'd say, and then emerge from the meeting brain dead. it was all about percentages rather than working out what's going to make the customer happy."

breakdown

after a night a drinking, whats better than a late night frito pie??

newfound respect: mario batali

i was bitter over losing to him on iron chef. i mean, mario batali?!! but really, how much did i know about the guy before meeting/battling him? nothing. absolutely nothing. all i knew is that he had 2 shows on the food network before being an iron chef. i knew nothing of his past. i knew nothing of his encounters with marco pierre white.

i am reading 'the devil in the kitchen' by marco pierre white. the more i read, the more i like mario batali. its like im being introduced to an awesome mario batali. and now i feel bad for being ignorant and not researching history on who i were to battle. why didnt i? arrogance. because ... well, what else do you learn from an egocentric chef. you learn not to be like him. i like mario batali and i feel incredibly honored to have met/battled him.

here's excerpts from marco pierre white memoirs:
'sturdy mario, whit his mass of red hair, was an interesting and special guy, but not half as interesting as he would later become. after getting a degree in sealttle, he came to london to train at le cordon bleu, but he got bored with the college course and chucked it in - cordon bleu's loss was my gain. he used to work hard during the day and play hard during the night and the he couldn't get out of bed in the morning. so he loved his sleep and he loved joy division (he'd incessantly hum "she's lost control"), but he also loved his food.

which makes me wonder ... what do you listen to in the kitchen?