[Mike Nolan]

From the World Wide Chocolates site:

Couverture chocolate is classified as a higher-quality baking chocolate due to it containing a higher percentage of cocoa solids and cocoa butter.

I've seen couverture grade chocolate available in chip form, in callets (essentially larger chips), in chunk form, in small bar form and in large bar form. There are some advantages to each shape, depending on what you're doing with it. If you're melting them, the shape really doesn't matter except that it might speed up the process of melting them.

[Mike Nolan]

As far as I can tell, this show is only available on Philo and Sling, neither of which we have.

[Mike Nolan]

Haven't heard of it. I will say that I've read far too many articles on kitchen design that were full of terrible advice.

Commercial kitchens and home kitchens seldom share design characteristics for both practical and aesthetic reasons, and I'm trying to remember who the chef was, but he was able to help design the kitchen layout for a newly built restaurant, and he did some things that are seldom done. One of them was he put the area where dirty dishes are taken when bussing tables just inside the door to the kitchen. I've been in my share of commercial kitchens, the dirty dish area is often towards the back of the kitchen, requiring the staff to walk back and forth across the kitchen with each load of dirty dishes.

IMHO one of the worst trends ever in commercial kitchen design was the 'open kitchen' concept, where the 'pass' is little more than a half-wall or counter and you can see and hear what's going on in the kitchen. This is part of what contributes to restaurants being so noisy that people have to shout at each other while sitting across from each other. (And I don't want to hear the staff swearing at each other, either, even if it is in Spanish.)

[Mike Nolan]

I did make keto-friendly cheesecake filling last night, 11 custard cups with about 100 grams each (under 5 carbs.)

[Mike Nolan]

We had the 2nd half of the lahvosh pizza I made last night, and I also had a salad. The lahvosh reheated easily and was possibly even crisper than last night.

[Mike Nolan]

We did a lavosh pizza for the first time in several months, but because lavosh is kind of high in carbs we only ate half of it tonight, which added up to about 37 carbs.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of baked custard tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

We had leftover rotisserie chicken on the small buns/rolls from the keto ingredients test.

The base recipe, which uses vital wheat gluten, was good, it tastes a lot like a wheat bread but with far less carbs. A 25 gram roll is about 4 carbs total. 25 grams of wheat bread would be more like 12 carbs.

There are two eggs in the original recipe, which makes about 24 ounces of dough, but it doesn't taste 'eggy'.

Of the 'extra' ingredients that I tested, I liked the sesame seed and the oat fiber ones best. I wonder if they pair well together?

I couldn't find my pecan meal so I used walnut meal, and the walnut taste is a bit too assertive for a sandwich bread. Might be good in a keto-friendly carrot cake, or maybe with some cream cheese.

I didn't try the almond flour and sunflower flour ones this evening. Diane didn't like the sunflower one much.

The flax one confirmed what I have suspected about keto recipes that use flax, it adds a flavor that I don't think complements the other keto-friendly ingredients. I suspect it's there because it's 'healthy'. The whey protein isolate may also be another 'healthy' ingredient, to be honest I don't know what whey protein isolate is, other than the health food stores have a lot of it on the shelf. Maybe it has a role in baking I'm not aware of that wasn't obvious in this test.

[Mike Nolan]

Joan, I'd add deviled eggs and potato salad to your list of perfect cookout foods.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the set of keto ingredient breads.

3 of each in the pan, from top left they are:

Base recipe - Golden Flax
Oat Fiber - Almond Flour
Whey Protein - Sunflower Flour
Sesame Flour - Walnut Flour

The separate silicone cups are the extra dough from 6 of the variants.

I wrote about the results of this test on my cooking post for today:

What are you Cooking the Week of May 26, 2024?

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

We're having leftovers tonight, and will try some of the keto test rolls.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a beef and broccoli stir fry with cauliflower rice.

[Mike Nolan]

I may try to make some kind of keto-friendly carrot cake, but that could be challenging.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked up a rotisserie chicken and we had that plus some strawberries for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

We taught our other cats, most of whom we got when they were small, not to jump up on the table or kitchen counters by using a spray bottle of water.

Whether that training method will work on an older cat is uncertain. The vet said he's probably 2-3 years old.

He has apparently lived on his own outdoors since last August according to my sister-in-law's neighbors. He wants to go outside, too, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, mostly because right now we're not sure he'd come back in or even stay in the neighborhood. And my wife doesn't want him hunting her birds. (The foxes may get some birds, I'm pretty sure I heard one get a rabbit the other day, and we've seen a fox chasing squirrels. The Cooper's hawk gets some birds, too , though I haven't seen him lately.)

[Author]

Posts