[Mike Nolan]

Sounds like the kitchen would be an interesting place to work, or just watch and listen. (Might help to be able to speak Italian, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

There won't be much about baking, this was a class about making chocolate candies, not baking with chocolate. I do have a few pictures of some of the fancy desserts we had at lunch that I'll post in part 3. I'm also going to talk a bit about spending a week eating in Chicago. (It's never been much of a 'fancy restaurant' town but it's well-know for 'good food'.)

I think nearly everyone who works at the Chocolate Academy has attended cooking school, most had a pretty solid work history in food service, too. So there's probably more cooking talent there than in several high-caliber restaurants combined. Since their primary mission is to develop recipes and convince restaurants, bakeries and chocolatiers to use their products, being able to speak to a chef on a professional level is highly desirable.

[Mike Nolan]

All flours will compact as they sit, and it is always a good idea to loosen it up before measuring flour. Weighing flour is always more accurate than dry measuring, but if a recipe doesn't give weights or doesn't say what it assumes a cup of flour weighs, you're going to have to figure it out by trial and error. That's why I take careful notes on any new recipes I try.

Things like sugar and salt that have a more defined crystal shape will not compact very much, so powdered sugar will compact more than granulated sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

It was an interesting 4 days, and I'm completely worn out. I'm going to drive out to visit my brother in NW Illinois tomorrow and will get home on Saturday, so the first report will probably not be until next week. I took a lot of pictures, most of which show details of specific techniques, but I have some good pictures of the various goodies we helped make and some of the pieces our instructor made while we watched or worked on other tasks.

The Chocolate Academy lab is incredible; they have a machine that cuts things like cake and chocolate with high pressure water. It costs over $100,000, but a large production bakery can probably make it back in cost savings (faster cutting and less waste) in a couple of years. We didn't get to use it, but we saw it in action several times by the other chefs on staff.

[Mike Nolan]

We know someone who lives in the outer banks, I suspect they've headed inland already.

[Mike Nolan]

As flour sits in the container, it tends to compact. The dip, scoop and level method can also compact flour.

To make matters worse, many measuring cups are not very accurate.

So when you scoop out a cup of flour, you could get anywhere from under 4 to over 5 ounces of flour.

Sifting the flour, stirring it before measuring and shaking the container all uncompact flour, so there's less flour by weight in a cup.

I tend to weigh any amount of flour over a quarter cup. If a recipe doesn't say what it considers the proper weight of a cup of flour, I assume 4.25 ounces. Interestingly enough, the USDA database assumes 125 grams in a cup, which is about 4.4 ounces.

[Mike Nolan]

We have several cabinets full of Tupperware (my wife is a former dealer) and Ikea containers, and that's what I freeze stuff in. Last week I froze 18 small containers of beef stock, ranging from 2-4 ounces. That should keep me in beef stock until after Christmas.

[Mike Nolan]

They make rings and simmer plates for gas burners that can help you control the temperature. I use one when making stock, because I want it to simmer for 12 hours, not get up to a full boil.

[Mike Nolan]

One of the web site I visit periodically is the London Guardian, just to get the British perspective on things. (I used to use the Times, but they've installed a paywall with no freebies.)

Anyway, the Guardian has several stories running about the announced move of GBBO to Channel 4, apparently this is somewhat controversial. At least one critic has said it will kill the show. I tend to agree that losing Mary, Mel and Sue will be a problem, Paul Hollywood may be a great baker and a fair but not great cookbook author (I have one of his books, I'm not in a hurry to get others), but he has most of the personality and warmth of a lump of bread dough.

[Mike Nolan]

You've hit on the main reason I haven't made cinnamon rolls in about two years, we'd wind up eating them all ourselves!

However, I did print this recipe out and it's in my 'to try' folder for the next time I want to send something in to my wife's office.

[Mike Nolan]

Frozen commercial cookie doughs are likely to have all sorts of things that won't be in home-made cookie doughs.

[Mike Nolan]

Another thing you need to be absolutely clear on is what expenses you'll be charged for. Ads, tables, staff, photography (where applicable), handbills, sound equipment all get priced in--usually at premium rates, too.

When my wife's step-mother died, the auction company that handled the auction billed the estate for something like $50K in expenses, plus their sales commission.

[Mike Nolan]

I know there are several companies in my town that do tag/estate sales, I suspect most communities have similar companies. Perhaps the best way to find one is to drive around on weekends looking for tag sales, then go talk to the people running them.

[Mike Nolan]

Great, now you only have 2299 other recipes to try out! 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

Several years ago one of the winners on the Food Network's 'Next Food Network Star' series posted his recipe for Chicago-style Italian beef, one of my favorite foods from the 10 years we lived in the Chicago area.

I've made it several times.

It uses bottom round though that's not the cut that most restaurants that make Italian beef use, and I had to slice it by hand because I don't have a deli slicer (and one recipe isn't quite enough to justify buying one), but it was pretty close to the Real Thing.

I did, of course, leave the garlic out.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Mike Nolan.

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