The taste was pleasant, sweet, sweet with a little spice, more sweet. A little contrast of texture an density between the powder, gelatin, and frozen cake. People seemed to like them and I only heard good things, but I don't know how much of that was just people being nice.

For me, there were issues with the texture and mouthfeel depending on when they were eaten (the gelatin started to become unappealing imo). Another mistake I made was with the size, probably a little too big for how cold it was. You couldn't eat it all in one bite (at least at first) because it would hurt your mouth.

I'm making 12 courses for 8 people next Saturday, so I may try to take some pictures if I can, but I have a feeling it's going to be too frantic, especially since I may not have the thermal immersion circulator from Anova that I was expecting to have at the end of October.

Very interesting feedback, thanks falzure

I wonder if the jelly coating would set up better with agar agar?

It's certainly something I could try, agar tends to be a bit more firm/stiff, I'm not sure it works cohere as well, and it begins to set at a higher temperature, which might melt the surface of the cheesecake making it harder to coat as well.

Anybody have any good resources for growing herbs outdoors? I moved to the PNW and am thinking of doing some on my balcony. Good/bad idea?

oh dear god, how did i miss this thread!

some serious browsing and drooling to be done over the next who knows how long

Growing herbs is very easy. Get a container, some potting soil a small plant of your choice, transplant the small plant in to the big container, make sure it gets enough sunshine and water. If you want to grow for decorative purposes then a small container will suffice, if you want to use the herbs then get a bigger container to give the plant's roots room to grow. Different herbs grow at different rates, for the winter I'd recommend hardy herbs like rosemary and mint (which grows super fast).

You could also plant garlic (as simple as planting one garlic clove 10 centimetres deep in the container). You just leave garlic over the winter and in early spring you'll see the shoots, a few weeks after that you'll have an entire garlic bulb. Garlic might be the easiest thing to grow.

Hopefully people took some pictures they can send me (was way too busy to take any myself), but this is what I made tonight for 8 other people (and I've taken pictures of other iterations of a lot of this stuff before anyway).



Spherified olives definitely turned out better this time around as far as not falling flat. Marinating in EVOO seems to be the key.

I didn't get to plate exactly how I wanted because I had to move so quickly (especially because Anova didn't come through and I cooked the salmon in my sink) and I don't have that much room, but here's the first few pictures someone sent me.



Wish I had gotten a better sear on the scallops, but was cooking 4 at a time in a crowded space.



The bleu cheese was initially a foam I had made the day before and hoped by some miracle it would hold up, but it fell flat after a few hours and I needed my isiwhipper for a different foam. I would've rather had the borage blossoms more prominently display here too, maybe it was better on other plates. =/ This was also from one of the 3 pescetarians, so no bacon powder on this one.





This was the aforementioned bleu cheese foam initially:



Calm before the storm:

Nice work & presentation Fal

That many courses for that many people is mind blowing!! Just having the plates alone on hand is impressive!

Falz,

Wow!

Falz,

You make it sound like a lot went wrong, but I didn't really understand what you were saying most of the time anyways and everything looks delicious

Nothing went terribly wrong thankfully, I just wish a few things went a little better (no orchids shifting place in the dashi, more uniformity with some things). Going from cooking and plating one or two things for one person to 12 for 8 was a big step up.

As for the sheer number of plates, that's why some things, like the parmesan foam were served in an espresso cup holder or Yuba in a small rectangular looking plate meant for holding napkins.

i think the fact that you have 8 small rectangular plates for holding napkins is just as impressive!

Here's one of the only other pictures people took (only other ones I got were an already half-eaten parmesan foam and a wide shot of someone else's). I suppose it's good they were more interested in eating than taking pictures, but I'm a bit surprised (I was also really surprised I had 0 questions about the 8 bags of salmon I had cooking in my sink). Still have 2 others that haven't gotten back to me, but I'm pretty sure one of them didn't take pictures and the other was a date of a guy I work with that I've only met once before Saturday, so I'm not sure I'll get those.



In my defense of this plating, I let someone else put the olive pulp on the toast while I retrieved the spheres to put on the spoons. I would've gone with a thinner, uniform layer.

i have a **** load of lemons



way too many if you ask me. Wasn't sure if they were all ready to pick but we had a couple below freezing nights so I figured we would be better safe than sorry. Not quite sure what were going to try but so far I'm thinking:

-Lemonade (freezing excess for summer)
-Infused vodka.



Having a hard time of thinking of much else since I'm not much of a lemon eater. Suggestions please!

Lemon Jelly?

Definitely lemon curd, its ****ing delicious!!

Also, lemon tarts!!

Preserved lemons

Limoncello - takes a little time, but it's freakin' awesome.

But then I guess you need to find a use for the fruit as it only uses all the zest.

That sounds like a great thing to do with the squeezed lemons. Thanks for all the suggestions. Also thinking lemon candies though I don't trust myself with a pan full of molten syrup.

Lemon tart is an absolute must.

Lemon confit AKA "cured lemons"