[jQuery] How to manipulate an object containaing HTML

Hello,

i'm trying to find out how to edit (manipulate DOM) of an HTML ajax
result.

What i have is the following :

$('a').live('click',function(e){
var link = this;
$.ajax({
url: "testAjax.html",
cache: false,
data: 'href='+this.href,
success: function(html){

html.appendTo("#myTable");

}
});
e.preventDefault();
})

Which returns rows of a table :

<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>

What i would like to do is before appending to the table something
like that :

$(html).$("td").css('padding-left','80px');

I can't find how to do that. I tried using the find function but it
only return the td in the example.

It's probably very simple but i can't find it anywhere...

Any help much appreciated!