http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/

They’ve been featured! I hope you don’t mind and I hope you realise that your photos are art in their own right, let alone that you’re talented enough to make this beautiful food.

A long term fan!

Anyhow, thanks again for such an amazing blog, a work of art! I heard of you from a friend that mentions she visits your site quite often and has posted a few questions for you, Norma.

Best of luck to you!!

Crap, I’m so sorry for my delay in responding; I got my puree from Marky’s Caviar, which I think is in NYC. I chose it only because it didn’t have a 4-kilo minimum shipment, and the puree is a little cheaper. I ordered 2 1-kg tubs and they showed up the next day totally fine. I can’t bring myself to buy that Napa Perfect Puree stuff; it’s way more expensive and they enforce that 4kg minimum, which I don’t think is terribly justifiable.

The brand Marky’s sells is Boiron. I haven’t tried ordering similar stuff from L’Epicierie yet, again just because of the shipping charges. Both of the Boiron purees I’ve ordered from Marky’s have seemed totally fine to me.

Cheers!
–a

As for the cylinder dimensions; I can only really guess, but for me, the length of the acetate strips leads them to double up quite a bit as you form the tube, the tension of which helps the tube keep its shape. You might get away with shorter strips, but if they’re only the exact circumference of the final tube the tube itself will have a little crease or lopsidedness to it from the way the acetate’s tension works. So, yeah, I just wrapped them around and around themselves…when you try it a couple of times it’ll make sense.

As for the length, I too found the recipe’s instructions to result in tubes that look quite a bit shorter than the photos in the book. I don’t think there’s harm in making the width of the strips longer at all; had I not already cut up all my acetate I would have tried to make a few strips that were wider myself. Your guess is as good as mine re: the visual discrepancy there though!

I’m so glad that you liked Consider the Lobster. I think that the eponymous essay is my favourite of the collection. DFW’s bewilderment over what to think about lobsters gets it right, I think, in the sense that the question of animals, whether to eat them or not, is a hard subject matter, and he’s sensitive to that.

Out of curiosity, where did you get your passion fruit puree from? I’m actually going to need some this week for a Milk Bar cake. I’ll probably just track down some Goya stuff locally, but I debated for a while about ordering some fancier French stuff. I was only deterred because the vendor recommended buying at least 4 1-kilo tubs of fruit puree to make sure that they all stayed frozen during shipment. I didn’t really feel like spending $80 on frozen fruit plus overnight shipping.

Though, seriously, that’s rad! Thank you! And now I kinda want to get another lobster and try this. I wonder how it affects cooking times.

If you aren’t completely traumatized by killing your first lobster, as a New Englander I do have some tips for more humane killing of crustaceans. They do have a more primitive neural system (although I don’t know how this affects their sense of pain) but this, combined with their sensitivity to cold, means that lobsters can be easily anesthetized in the presence of extreme cold. If you put them in the freezer for a short period of time (you don’t want to freeze the meat) they fall into a kind of catatonic state. You can actually check their status by waving a hand in front of their face – an awake lobster will wave it’s claws back at you, a sleeping one will not. Once you have put them to sleep, it’s don’t flail disturbingly in hot water.

This trick also works with other crustaceans, and amusingly, with cockroaches.