Clockwise from top left: duck rillettes (detail pic below), curry sugared cashews, sweet potato rolls (who am I kidding; these are for sandwiches tomorrow), Margarita pâte de fruits.
Rillettes were smashing. SV-confit a couple of legs with juniper and black pepper, pull the meat (an annoying 30 minutes per leg, worth it), and mix it with the jellied stock in your stand mixer until you reach your preferred consistency. Pack in ramekins, seal with duck fat left over from the SV confit.
The rolls were proofed and cooked in the Cuisinart CSO-300 steam-toaster-oven. This was the first time I'd tried a known and trusted recipe to the new box. I very nearly overproofed because it's so efficient; I also overshot 190°F on both batches (not a huge problem, but more evidence that wet-bulb temp is a powerful force). Top browning wasn't quite what I hoped, but the searzall took care of that. Thanks to the steaming, the bottoms of the rolls were frankly a little... moist... even hours later, when we pulled them from the pan. Still, this recipe is a bulletproof crowd-pleaser and everyone got a roll to take home for sandwiches as well.
I originally intended cranberry pâte de fruits, but I tried store brand pectin and cream of tartar, which has an extra potassium ion and doesn't dissolve, so that failed. Fortunately I had impulse-bought some frozen margarita mix for the red-green combo. I added Morton's table salt to the sugar coating, and found that 5% (1 part salt to 20 parts sugar) was about right to get a zatz of "margarita" salt. You could probably get away with 6% or 7%, but not 4%. I'm usually a Kosher salter, but wanted the grains to be same-size.
The CS pâte de fruits recipe isn't clear on how long to soak the finished jellies in everclear before rolling in sugar, so I kept them in for a few hours until I had to go to bed. A few experimental cubes stayed in for 24h and I'll report on those later. The drying-out from the everclear makes less sugar stick to the jellies, so I had to smash the sugar onto the jellies a bit.
