Archive for the 'Best Food' Category

A Shortened History of the Chocolate Tempering Machine

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Manual tempering of chocolates was only the way for tempering before the invention of the compact tempering machine and the methods used by homemakers and hobbyists alike were tabliering and seeding. Equipment usually used included a double boiler and an accurate kitchen thermometer; or a microwave, for melting the chocolate.

Such manual tempering methods were not easy especially for relative beginners as they’re not sure if their chocolates would be properly tempered or not. Automated tempering was only for the commercial chocolate makers as they had the space and the capital to accommodate the humongous equipment.

Skip Snyder, the computer programmer from New York, changed chocolate candy making forever when he developed the tabletop chocolate tempering machine. The new tempering machine was small, fit any kitchen countertop, and produced perfectly-tempered chocolate candies every time so no wonder the hobbyists took to it like duck to water.

The temperature control on this tempering machine was the main focus of Snyder’s efforts because in tempering, if you couldn’t maintain a specific temperature, you couldn’t produce type V crystals, the ones responsible for the shine, luster, and creamy texture of chocolate candy. Other crystals had to be kept under check so that they don’t hamper the production of type V crystals.

Snyder succeeded in making the temperature control function work seamlessly and got a patent for his tempering machine. Circa 1996, his Sinsation Chocolate Maker was introduced into the market and was positioned as a “kitchen appliance” to target the hobbyists and the homemakers. This machine was being sold by the mail order route and the advertisements appeared only on cookery and chocolate magazines.

At this time, the Sinsation was originally being marketed by Chandre LLC, a company whose chairman was none other than Snyder. The popularity of this machine was so good that Indotronix International Corporation, another IT company from New York invested $1 million.
Beginning 2000, ChocoVision commenced selling the Sinsation as the “New Sinsation”, incorporating it into its Revolation product line. That Indotronix continued to hold its major stake in this company appears to be true.

The New Sinsation was sold primarily online, with eBay getting the bulk of the sales. Slowly ChocoVision started taking part in trade shows and industry exhibits to widen the tempering machine’s reach. In the year 2006, ChocoVision took part in the World and National Pastry Competitions as a major sponsor.

In other countries where the Revolation has spread, it’s being sold through retailers and other distribution channels. Currently you can find the Revolation on the kitchen countertops of chocolatiers, professional chefs, well-known chocolatiers, restaurateurs, coffee shops and small confectioners, in addition to its original market of hobbyists and homemakers.

Fun and Low-cost Themes for Parties and Festivities

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

A.k.a. the Lunar New Year, Chinese round the globe observe the fresh moon. Like any new year jubilation, it is a time to smother yourself with fabulous acquaintances, food, family, and beverages! Set up the Red Paper Lantern… it’s time to observe any joy or charming fortune, pronounced Fu (luck) in Chinese with Chinese-themed merrymaking. My Dim Sum for Everyone Chinese celebration will help to observe all the great fortune and precious ones in your life. Make certain to set up your red paper lantern and toast. And don’t forget to ship me an invite! Joy Keen! (That’s Chinese for See you later!)

The following luau party ideas are fashioned to provide thoughts for any budget. For your party menu, serve up fruit salad, (try to include some sultry yields like pineapple) vegetables with a ranch dip, crackers and cheese, and crisps and spreads. Ready these bites at a Snack Shack, a fascinating store front for invitees to get their goodies. For the youngsters, serve punch and lend in cherries with the umbrella for excess merriment! To save cash, you can easily mail an e-invitation to your celebration if your invitees have access to the Cyberspace. If budget is a condition, demand your local party shop and/or market and see if they sell any seasoned decorations, such as grass skirts, tiki poles, lanterns, that they would be prepared to pass to you for a smaller fee. Frequently major stores have seasoned decor that they would be willing to donate to your celebration. It just requires asking a inquiry.
Fortune biscuits are the complete savory finish to a Chinese meal, and they have a luxuriant account in China. In the United States, Chinese workers who built the continental railway system used to insert prosperous messages within moon cakes, which gave way to the fortune cookie that we experience today. Order up a mass of luck biscuits with your own custom-make wishes. Your invitees will value the great luck of a content crafted specifically for them. Hongbao, which are petite red envelopes full with cash, are frequently given to unmarried youngsters on the New Year. You can get these envelopes at party supply shops or on the web and pass them out to your invitees as well.

Marvelous Thoughts for Observing Valentine’s Day

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Can you really have too many standard candles when doing the mode for passion? An effortless and cut-price means to supply a Valentine touch to a casual clear glass votive is to wind it with ribbon, decorative trim, or solid rose petals.
What’s nice about setting this is that you can get a dozen or so light votive holders that you change out fitting to the function or outcome.

Share the passion!
Help your minors make cards for their acquaintances, or take festive themed singles at the food market store. Since my son is obsessed with race cars, I took themed valentines that came with tattoos for him! Remember to choose your cards out early, as fashionable modes will sell out quickly! If your youngster has a beau of girlfriend, offer to service them choose special Valentine’s Day goodies and make a precious card for them to have as a souvenir. For your own Valentines Day ideas for your remarkable other, try taking them out to a charmed restaurant, or prepare a marvelous meal at home unitedly.

Valentine’s Day cards have been around in some form or another since the 15th century. The occasion’s love letters that we exchange today have origins in the 18th century as luxuriant paper designed with blooms and hearts. People penned their own messages or they looked to a small book called the Valentine Author for a divine verse.

The Popcorn Factory: a Quick Tour

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

All it takes is a look at hard numbers to see where popcorn stands in the nation’s perceptions. Upwards of 1.000.000.000 pounds of unprepared kernels changed hands across the tills of domestic retailers in just one year. So if you want some, buy from the biggest in the market — selling over of a million pounds every year to you and people like you of gourmet popcorn balls. It’s even kosher certified.

For three decades, the firm has provided America with this toothsome treat in several wonderful flavors. Preparations start with domestic grain carefully picked out to guarantee the best possible flavor. Following that, pure corn oil pops the corn before the flavorings are infused directly into the core of the popcorn. The resulting popcorn is packaged in visually pleasing wraps and delivered immediately.

Their line with the widest reputation is their popcorn tins, with the small tin carrying 2.5 gallons and the large tin containing six. There’s nothing better for making sure your friends and family have nibbles — or even a company function. Plain, obviously, and buttered — but they’re also available flavored with white chocolate raspberry or banana cream pie. Perhaps these don’t suit your needs? Don’t worry — smaller tins are also on sale. Designed to reflect the season, a favorite sports team, or to send a message, they make excellent presents. Still not enough? You could raise the stakes, adding an appropriate image, a customized message, or the recipient’s name.

If you’re already certain what you’re after, you can always place a big order. On the other hand, samplers and assortments provide a small amount of multiple flavors so people can experiment with everything.

When you desire more, while keeping that variety of flavors, you can always put a tower together. Quickly constructed from a stack of boxes lashed together, you can choose premade combos or mix and match. So there you have it; so many flavors, such a variety of choices. And their beautiful and customizable themed packages are sure to brighten anyone’s day. You’ll find no smarter way to spread a little cheer across the U.S.A.

Superb Tips for Football Game Viewing Celebrations

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Millions of Americans and individuals around the world are already designing their Super Bowl fete. So just put on your treasured squad’s colors, crunch on touchdown goodies and get set for some football with these fete tips. By following these Super Bowl party tips, you can rest assured that long after the final football has been snapped, everyone will remember not only the touchdown that clenched the game, but likewise the charming job you did planning the party. Even if you do not know the difference between a Pooch Kick, a Power Sweep or a Punt, you can express your support and your love of the game with a smorgasbord of cocktails and playbook favorites.

Mix basic fan favorite super bowl recipes with these imaginative dishes! Stuffed peppers are getting a come back. let us face it, they are likeable to your eye as well as your palate. Try stuffing them this weekend for your football gather with a low-fat turkey chili. We serve these all the time at our household parties and they forever are big crowd pleasers. No Super Bowl celebration is good without chicken wings! This formula adds kick to a classic. White potatoes and garlic make this side dish the perfect complement to your Super Bowl main course. Be creative with this delicate crowd-pleaser by adding cut-up baked chicken, turkey, bacon, ham, pepperoni, Parmesan, cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese or roasted red peppers to this dish. Add a spin to a regular Caesar salad by using avocado and serving it garnished with Parmesan crisps.

While whipping up these treats, I learned a few hints such as how much batter to pour out into the baking cups and how to fix cupcakes that are nice and rounded at the tip. Function not 1 but 3 baking paper cups in your cupcake pan per goodie. The extra cups will help hold the cupcake as it bakes, getting it to puff a little higher and producing a nice rounded top side. Occupy baking cups so the batter line is 1/2-inch down from the top rim. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble telling when a baking cup is 2/3 full as is the wording in many directions. Permit goodies to cool completely prior to adorning and ensure the kitchen has cooled too.

The Interesting Story of Fannie May

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Irrespective of the fact that Fannie May is an easily recognizable brand all over the nation lately, the company started out small. This gourmet chocolate business first opened its doors in 1920 in Chicago, IL, and during eighty-five years of trading it has developed into one of the nation’s favorite sweet shops.

Fannie May’s talent of combining cocoa, sugar and other quality ingredients in exactly the right manner made them such a favorite with the public they grew to just below 48 stores in merely 15 years. During the second world war rationing, the business was closed, as they refused to impair the quality of any of their candy. Luckily, many of the recipes it used back in the early days are even in production and being sold nowadays.

Almost as wonderful as their gourmet chocolates are the beautiful boxes they arrive in. Stunning gift packages and hampers add that something special to make a gift anyone will be overjoyed to accept. How much you spend is altogether your decision, from just one chocolate to a basket filled with various flavors of truffle, caramels and even gourmet pretzels. It’s easy to purchase a carefully chosen variety of types on the internet or you can personalize the order with special chocolate treats to ensure everyone has enough of the ones they love best. To make life even simpler, Fannie May has a dependable network of branches across the United States and worldwide. So you can choose a gift from your PC and have your present delivered anyplace. While there are a few shipping limitations during the hotter summer months, this chocolate producer will happily deliver presents 365 days a year and will ensure the quality of the candies when they are delivered. Particular diets aren’t an issue. Fannie May’s make chocolates with no added sugar and many other treats besides. If you are supplying a large event like a marriage, tiny table gifts and wedding favors are available as well. Pick up the telephone or contact Fannie May online with the details.

It’s easy to see why Fannie May exquisite chocolates are such a success story. Indeed, with candies encompassing a huge spectrum such as white, milk and dark chocolate, fudge, and maple flavors, your most difficult task is not ordering their entire inventory all at once.

Make Your Own Mouth-Watering Chocolate Candy at Home

Friday, November 6th, 2009
There’s a guilt-free reason to your chocolate addiction. The body uses excess serotonin, produced when you’ve had too much sweets or fatty foods, like chocolates, to manage your intestinal movements as well as your appetites, moods, and rages. That’s why, in your thinking, chocolates is a crutch for an energy and happiness “fix”.
Numerous researches have shown that this isn’t really an addiction but your physiological reaction to the flavors, substances, and nutrients found in chocolate. With everything found on the Internet, it’s now easier to prepare your usual chocofix in your kitchen. Just make sure you know what the words associated with chocolate candy making are. What do you know, you may even one day make your own chocolate candy recipes.
  • In the factory, cocoa beans are roasted and grounded to distill the cocoa liquor. The cocoa butter in cocoa liquor, which is about 53% dilution, is the trademark of a “real” chocolate. Baking chocolate is derived from cooling and casting cocoa liquor.
  • What makes chocolate textured and flavored is the oil in cacao beans, called cocoa butter. Before cooling and shaping unsweetened cocoa liquor, manufacturers first remove this natural oil and return it at a later process.
  • Couverture, which is 35% cocoa butter, makes chocolate glossy and silky
  • Moisture and cocoa butter removed from cocoa liquor is the cocoa powder that’s at the heart of your hot chocolate drink
  • Chocolate that’s bitter or dark is cocoa liquor at 35% dilution
  • Cocoa liquor at 15% strength is semi-sweet chocolate
  • Milk chocolates, which is your basic cocoa liquor with sugar and milk added, is the rudimentary ingredient to mainstream chocolate bars
  • A chocolate that can be stored long-term, velvety, and glossy has gone through tempering, the last important process in manufacturing and making chocolates.
Hunt for these equipment and ingredients from your kitchen or pantry: double boiler, mixing bowl, candy molds or baking sheets, rubber spatula, and milk or semi-sweet chocolates.
Liquefy the chocolate bars in a double boiler on medium heat, taking care the mixture doesn’t get burned by stirring it constantly. Air dry the molten chocolate in the candy-molding tray or baking sheet, or you can hold it in the freezer; eliminate all air bubbles from your candy before letting it set. As an option, you can coat different fruits with the liquid chocolates for fruit-filled candies.
If your chocolate candy is dull, spotty, or crumbly, chances are it escaped tempering. Tempering allows the cocoa butter crystals to settle properly so that they don’t rise and appear as spots on your chocolate candy. When tempering, remember that chocolates have their own tempering temperatures; monitor temperatures while working. Professionals use a chocolate tempering machine to do away with the manual work of tempering.
You’ll find that, once you’ve gained mastery over making tempting chocolate candies, you’ll want to spread the cheer and possibly start earning from this addictive “fix”.

Feeding the Baby Food

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

For months now, the baby has been eating the same old nasty sloppy mush, day after day. It all looks the same, tastes the same, and feels the same. Soon after you introduce the first finger foods, around 7-8 months like puffs or mum, and teething crackers, they will start to rebel against the jarred mush. Can you blame them. How would you feel if you had to look at somebody eating a nice juicy steak, and you had to eat some nasty slop out of a jar. You just need to make sure that it is cut up into really small pieces. Anything that is bigger than the size of Cheerio can make them choke. Try to give them several options of food at a time. You want them to eat as many things as possible. It is possible not to raise a picky eater. By introducing them to many different kinds of foods early, you will increase the chances that the kid will eat their vegetable. Put all the different kinds of foods into little piles. This way the kid can pick through the stuff that they don’t like and go right to all the stuff that they do. Just be sure to choose healthful options.

Five Ways to Guarantee a Successful Party

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

The Celebrations team knows that parties can be difficult to plan. Even if you have a great party idea, a perfect party can be difficult to create.

We’ve come up with five important elements for every successful celebration:

  1. A Well-Planned Guest List
  2. Plenty of Alcohol and Drinks
  3. Delicious Food
  4. Great Music
  5. Perfect Party Ambiance and Decorations

Follow these steps to create a fabulous party that your friends will love.

A Well-Planned Guest List

Creating the perfect guest list of friends is important because you have to know how much of each personality and group of friends to mix for the big night.

Guest Guidelines

  • Make sure each friend attending will know at least one or two other people at the party.
  • If someone doesn’t know anyone else, introduce them to everyone and start a group conversation.

Alcohol and Drinks

For an adult event, we are not suggesting you have drinks just to get people drunk; but simply, every good celebration requires a good selection of drinks.

Cocktails Encourage Mingling

  • Ask your guests beforehand what cocktails they enjoy.
  • Pre-mix a few crowd favorites and keep in labeled pitchers on a table for ease.
  • When a guest arrives, greet them and get them their favorite drink. People automatically feel at ease with a drink in hand.

Delicious Food

Great food is important for a fabulous party. You don’t have to be a master chef, you just have to remember a few tips

  • Always make sure there is something for every guest
  • Simple and quick recipes can be very delicious
  • If you can’t cook well, order food in. You can’t go wrong with your favorite restaurant’s food delivered.

Great Music

The best way to encourage more socializing and less quiet moments is with great music.

Perfect Party Ambiance and Decorations

There are simple ways to create an inviting house for hosting your party:

Relax and smile

Don’t be too nervous or worried about the party, your guests will pick up on it once they walk in the door.

Add candlelight

Everything and everyone looks better in a soft glow.

Fill vases with fresh flowers

If possible, pick flowers that give off a lovely scent for double the impact.

If you follow all our handy tips, you will surely have made a big hit with all your friends and hosted a party they loved.

The Regional Cuisines of Chinese Cooking (Part 3 of 4)

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Shanghai: The Eastern Cuisine

As you follow the Yangtse River eastward out of the Szechuan region, you will arrive into eastern China, which lies on a great plain formed by the Yangtze River and ends with its river delta. The river delta encompasses some of the most fertile land in China, and flows into the sea just north of the famous city of Shanghai . The Yangtse River region in eastern China experiences a temperate climate with warm springs, hot summers, cool autumns, and relatively cold winters. It is the greatest rice-producing region in China , and you will find a plethora of creative ways that the regional cuisines use to incorporate rice into the dishes.

Rice wine is used extensively as seasoning and marinade. Rice is often used as a stuffing, or to make classic dishes such as Eight Treasure Rice Pudding – a deliciously sweet steamed pudding dessert . Lotus leaves are frequently used as wrapping material for steaming fish, meat, and rice. Paper-wrapped and cellophane-wrapped dishes are very common in the region, as well.

The eastern Chinese cuisine is basically divided by the Yangtse River into Kiangsu to the north, Chekiang to the south, and Shanghai in the delta region.

Shanghai is the largest city in China. It has been the center of China’s trade and industry for centuries. Some argue that Shanghai does not have a cuisine of its own, being the “melting pot” of the region, while others argue that exact reason is why Shanghai cuisine should represent the eastern Chinese cuisine. Regardless, it does have its own distinctive local dishes called benbang cai. Benbang cai is noted for its use of red-cooking, with dark soy sauce, and its abundant use of sugar. All of which produces rich, sweet dishes with exquisite flavors and appearance.

The Chekiang and Kiangsu are known as the land of rice and fish, and is one of the wealthiest and most heavily populated regions of China. Their cuisines feature a broad variety of fish and aquatics, such as carp, clam, mullet, perch, and prawns. Minced chicken and bean-curd slivers are also specialties of these provinces. Foods are often arranged in attractive floral patterns prior to serving.

The Chekiang province is well-irrigated by the Yangtse River, criss-crossed with countless complex system of lakes, marshes, ponds, lakes, and multiple river channels, ideal for ducks, fish, frogs and eels. Chekiang cuisine is known to be the least greasy of the three, and well-regarded for its light, fresh, tender, soft dishes, with smooth, but rich fragrance. The dishes are also the least greasy of the three. Duck, freshwater fish, and shellfish dishes are the specialties.

Kiangsu Cuisine, most likely has the longest history in the region. Numerous regional specialty dishes are know to be centuries old. Fish and rice are the main ingredients, and the freshness of ingredients is extremely important, as many dishes require them to be cooked alive and quickly to retain the tenderness and its natural sweetness. Vegetables are often cooked with the fish in the same pot to preserve its freshness. Cooking techniques consist of stewing, braising, and roasting. The dishes in general are sweeter and greasier.

In the final part of the 4 part series, we will cover Canton and Fukien : the southern cuisine.

Helen Fan grew up in a family that has owned various Asian restaurants all over North America, from Vancouver (Canada), Houston (Texas), Decatur (Illinois), to Chicago (Illinois). She, and the rest of the Fan family are now sharing their decades of knowledge on the art of Chinese cuisine at http://www.ChineseHomeCooking.Com

You can read more of our articles at http://www.ChineseHomeCooking.Com/resources/resources.htm