rancho_gordo

I have always had gas and for one or two chiles, I might do direct flame on the stove top. For four or five, I roast them on comal, on the advice of Esperanza (Mexico Cooks). If I have a bunch, nothing beats the grill, propane or charcoal. The skins just slide off without a care! Most recipes will tell you to use a plastic bag but if the idea of hot soft plastic isn't appealing, you can always put them in a mixing bowl with a dinner plate for a lid. Or even a paper bag.

I was horrified to see Alton Brown cleaning roasted peppers. After removing most of the skin and seeds, he "washed" it for good measure, sending a good amount of flavor down the sink, as far as I'm concerned. I know there are a few cooks in Mexico who do this but Brown has such a superior attitude about things that it's off putting. \ A few seeds won't hurt you and the brown bits clinging to the pepper are delicious.

Shauna's website

I just checked with Shauna Aherne, the Gluten Free Girl and the trace amounts of gluten would be gone when the beans are rinsed. I am calm now! But bookmarking this page for future reference!

The other problem is this didn't happen to her but to a poster on a closed gluten free forum. She refused to tell me the name of the forum.

Great points and great advice. She caught us all off guard but I kept insisting I didn't want to continue the conversation until I found out what bean and batch she was talking about. But don't you think the rinsing would take care of this, making it all a huge waste of time?

She called back and did the whole scenario all over with our GM. She was pretty serious and we were pretty frustrated.

I just got off the phone with a very strident gluten free consumer. She was asking how we process our beans and as the conversation went on, she claimed that on a gluten free forum, someone had tested out beans and they came back positive for gluten. I said I'd need to know the name of the bean, where it was tested and where it was purchased to continue but she kept saying that I was unreasonable. We have no gluten products so where this was coming from was troubling and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Then it turns out it was a home test and the result was .01%! She refused to name the bean, the test or when the beans were purchased so from my point of view, it was a worthless conversation. She also refused to name the forum. The caller felt we should be doing more but being that we don't have any gluten products, it has to be happening organically in the fields or it's "in the air" and I don't know what more we could do. But being that beans are beans, wouldn't the .01% of magic gluten be rinsed off when you were rinsing the beans? Does gluten stick to the beans after rinsing, boiling and then hours of simmering? The caller was somewhat unpleasant and indulgent and I hate to tar all gluten free people with her brush, but it's very hard to sympathetic when dealing with people like this. I am very willing to be corrected but what do you think?

I've only had it from vendors in Mexico and on its own it is about my favorite thing in the world. It's sweet but not cloying and you get the slightest buzz. I just love the stuff. the thought of mixing it makes me a little sad but i'll try and keep an open mind.

We have the same literary agent (how pretentious does that sound! You are welcome!) and his book is due Fall 2012. I think it's pretty typical- you get a year to write if you're lucky.

It was a weekend of complete indulgence and yet the best thing was this garbanzo consume!

Yes, cut razor thin, in a salad with tomatoes and onions.

A few weeks ago I was in Hidlago and my friends, who live on an ex-hacienda, had a big party for friends from the Yucatan and visiting chefs from Mexico City. It was pretty amazing. The pits had been dug when the hacienda was built and they're still used. The bottom was coals, followed by a large steel bucket full of garbanzos and aromatics, then a grate, then a cow's head and some ribs, all wrapped in maguey leaves and topped with dirt. It's a cliche to say it was delicious. Maybe delicious and amazing? I loved it all but the consume from the cow's head dripping into the garbanzos was about my favorite thing on earth. More photos and details at my blog.

I think it's pretty basic. Tons of garlic and oil. I used to like it over boiled yucca at El Zocolo in San Francisco *Salvadorean food).

To follow up briefly, it was a hoot. And a half. DK was in a great mood. The party started at 2p and it was packed until the end, at 5pm. What a I loved most was it was such a great mix of people from the local Napa foodie scene to our regular customers to the parents of the kids who danced and even the mayor who came by to declare it Diana Kennedy day in Napa. There were some very sweet older ladies who were from Oaxaca and drove all the way from Sacramento! Ceja Wineries poured their excellent wines and the food included 2 bean dishes and the beef sausage from the book, all made by Fatted Calf. We made a jamaica aqua fresca and a friend made some chili peanuts like you eat on the square in Oaxaca. The local tamales were excellent and now I plan to get them every Saturday. 6 jugs of Encantado mezcal were drunk! We think we had nearly 250 people! The sweetest thing was seeing DK address the Oaxacans who came. "You should be very proud of your cuisine!" and they'd just melt. I was on the verge of "happy" tears the whole day. We ran out of our 50 books withing an hour and a half. A friend had 19 more copies and those were gone withing minutes. It was a roaring success!

Just a heads up for my fellow Diana freaks in the bay area, we're hosting a party for her here at Rancho Gordo in Napa. It's free and you are welcome to come enjoy Ms Kennedy's company, some great food from us, Fatted Calf and others, wine from Ceja Winery and mezcal from Encantado. We'll also have some adorable ballet folklorico by grade schoolers at the Napa Language Academy and the Mayor is coming by to declare DK day here in Napa! It's going to be hoot and I'd love to see you here! No need to R.s.v.p. HOST'S NOTE: Click here for the terms under which this is listed on the eG Forums.

From my experience, the small ones are called Milperos, but they're tomate verde, not another plant. The milperos are often slightly purple and sweet and always small. They can naturalize in a cornfield and that's why they're known as milperos. But they're tomate verde or tomate de cascara. I've never seen anything called a tomatillo in Mexico. But I'm not the last word. This is just from my experience.

I think she mentions subs for some of these things. She's here in Napa at on 10/30 (and you are all invited) and we can ask her.

This should help!

Any initial reactions? I'd never given the Spanish an intense going over but they do seem to very similar, with the English version a bit tighter in the design department. I was laughing thinking about the new Bayless and how his book is all about getting you into the kitchen with easy ingredients and recipes and even music and Kennedy's is basically "Here is what I saw. And here's how they make it" with no compromise. I often say there was an era when strong women wrote great books for the ages: Julia Child with Mastering, Kennedy with Cuisines, Wolfert with COuscous and Hazan with Classic. There was no compromising and their books can be used today, which you can't always say about their contemporaries and certainly not about many books today, which seem like extended magazine articles. (I think the Bayless book is fun and inspiring and worthwhile, by the way.) I think there's room for everyone and I'm thankful for most of them but I do want to raise a special little shotglass full of mezcal in Kennedy's direction for this amazing book.

Mine just arrived! Tee hee!

Wish me luck. Tomorrow at the farmers market we're introducing our tortillas made with fresh masa made from heirloom corn. It's been a long journey and I think it's going to have a happy ending! Once we get a little more stable, we'll offer the corn online so you can make your own masa, should you choose!

Jaymes, I'm sure they were Large Limas. They're pretty big and we grow them. The Giants were obscenely big and would burst easily because the skins couldn't hold the bean inside. They were also sweet and a little potatoey, unlike the large limas which are really clearly a lima. They are wonderful! We had imported the giants (I think they needed more daylight hours than we can provide) and we grow the large limas here in California. Re Rattlesnakes, we've never had enough seed to grow them and they are lovely, but very similar to pintos and it seemed other people were growing them, so there just didn't seem a need. Now it seems that whoever was growing them hopefully just had a bad year, but possibly they lost distributorship. Which brings me to another point: I'm not saying it's better or worse but we grow all of our beans in California except for the beans in the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project, which are grown in Mexico by small, indigenous farmers*. Some places are buying and distributing beans. This doesn't mean they aren't serious, it's just a different business. But it might explain why all of a sudden everyone has rattlesnakes and then all at once everyone is out of them. (* We've been playing around with Peru imports, as the Giant Lima, but nothing serious yet)

We haven't had the Giant white limas for years, so they might have been a little old. We have large white limas, which are not as sweet and really taste more what you expect from a lima. They have a more vegetable flavor, for better or worse. I love them with parma cheese. I'm so glad the Reboseros are getting such a nice reception! A woman in her 60s was growing them single-handedly for us in Hidalgo but because they were so popular, her grandson, who was on his way to the states illegally, has decided to stay and work with his grandmother instead. I never dreamed that my selfish need to consume could make a real difference, but it did!

Here's a blog with instructions for making ice cream with the chocolate.