Wholemeal Crank

And finishing the evening with some ginseng oolong, "blue people" from vitaltleaf.com.

Cooking is my primary creative outlet these days, because it is fun to do, fun to share, and everybody's gotta eat.

One of the better batches of jasmine I've brewed in a while, because I knew I'd be sharing it with at a long meeting, where the jasmine lovers outweigh the puerh-holics.

I gathered my dried chiles Seeded them and ran them through my spice grinder Took about 2 grams of each and added 2 tablespoons of boiling water to rehydrate them; sauteed some onions and garlic, and added a spoonful to each chile slurry, and tasted them. I used plain brown rice and some tortilla chips as the vehicles for the chiles, and tasted them from milder to hotter per the ratings on this chart. I decided not to toast or fry the chiles first because I wanted to taste them as simply as possible this time. Mildest group: The ancho was only slightly little hot, and mildly fruity. The mulato was very earthy, darker flavored, less fruity, and hotter. The pasilla was fruitier, less earthy, and not quite as hot as the mulato. In between heat: The New Mexico was fruity, lighter, and a bit tart, hotter than the first three but not by much. The guajillo was earthier than the New Mexico, but less so than the mulato, but hotter than the mulato. The chilhaucle negro was fruity, tart, less heat than New Mexico or guajillo, and seemed more like the New Mexico in the tart/fruity flavor. The cascabel was sweet and fruity, and not particularly hot. I have had these for a long time and hardly ever use them. I will use them more often now! Hottest (but still quite mild as chiles go!): The puya was a bit one dimensional with heat but not a lot of depth of flavor. The chipotle surprised me with how sweet and fruity it was under the smoky heat. All in all, a lot of fun, and although the chilhaucle negro did have a bit of a unique flavor, it wasn't so astonishingly good that I can see continuing to pay as much as I did for these. After the tasting, I took the rest of the chile tests and extra powdered chile (rehydrating in additional boiling water), added it back to the remaining onions and garlic in the pot, and cooked it a while before adding some stock, beans, etc, until it made a tasty chili.

Today I am drinking the Hairy Crab again, with 2 grams to about 2 ounces of water in the gaiwan, and it is again quite nice. That flavor element we've been trying to describe seemed more like pineapple-coconut than pineapple today, but whatever you call it, it's interesting and pleasant. I also tried to find the hairiness in the tea today. Despite my best attempts to manipulate photo conditions and the actual photo in photoshop, I could find very little hairiness in the first brewed tea (and I did not rinse the leaves first, to maximize my chance to catch the little hairs), I can only see a couple of them here, on the right side of the image: and this is a link to my flickr page, where I put a tag so you can see the specks I'm talking about. Looking again at the dry leaves, about as closeup as I can get with the macro lens, I can see a faint downiness on the Hairy Crab that is more obvious than on the Alishan High Mountain Spring 2009 Oolong : So it is a bit hairy, but those leaves hold onto the hairs quite tightly.

That might be the simplest way to go. I could prep the onions and garlic separately, divvy it up between the peppers, and use the leftover after the tasting for a nice batch of beans n' rice. A bit simpler for comparing flavors than a full salsa, but not as plain as just pureed peppers over rice or tortillas.

Some of the things that come to mind: Normandy beaten bread, with normandy butter, in normandy Jam made from nutmeg fruit Bouillabaisse in Marseille Couscous and bisteeya in Morocco Spanish acorn-fed hams A whole bunch of southeast asian street food Taste test a couple of dozen different potatoes in the Andes This past year, I ate bagels in New York, delicious; found Mangosteens in a local Thai market, which were good, but not as amazing as I'd fantasized; bought a country miche from Poilane's original bakery in Paris, which was fabulous, easily living up to my expectations; and had chocolates from Pierre Herme's, which were excellent, but not so utterly unique that I will pine for them.

2 grams, hotter water, again with about 2 ounces of water in a small gaiwan. To help identify the other flavor, I am tasting it at the same time with some of my Honey Orchid Phoenix Oolong from teahabit.com, because it's a strongly fruity oolong. There is a resemblance, something tart and fruity in both, that is not found in the Alishan or Tie Guan Yin Oolongs also from norbu, but it is a little more vegetal than the Phoenix . And it seems remarkably sweet now by comparison to the Phoenix oolong. The phoenix oolong also has a bit of camphor that is quite absent from the Hairy Crab. I'm up to four brewings now, each a bit longer than the first time around, when I started at 30 seconds, and it's holding up nicely. I think I can get at least two more infusions out of it, but doubt it will go to a 8 or 10 like the super sweet and strong spring teas have done.

My first brewing this morning was a thinner brew, about 1 gram in both a gaiwan and a small yixing pot, using about 2 ounces of water in each, so perhaps 1/3 of richard's. Even at that dilution, there is a rich body to the tea. It is a little bit sweet, but not nearly as sweet as the two spring oolongs--the Alishan or the Diamond Tie Guan Yin. And there is a rich warm hay/grass note, a bit of astringency but not bitterness when brewed at 180 degrees--it was quite chilly as I was brewing it and I had trouble hitting the 190 I was aiming for. There is something else there between the sweet and the hay notes, and I will be trying again soon but double the leaf to water ratio to see if I can give it a better name. Overall, it's a lovely tea with bright green leaves yet buttery yellow liquor yet I cannot see, in the rolled dry leaves or in the opened leaves after brewing, any real 'hairy' texture. (link to the same image larger, for a more detailed look at the leaves here)

Add some small pasta, or serve the soup over rice. This is my version of lentil soup with sausage.

I'm leery of the straight tasting, precisely because of the variable heat. I mostly want to compare some relatively mellow chiles, no intention of tasting vs habaneros, or even chipotles. I know what those are good for. I want to compare the mild and medium chiles that are often suggested as substitutes for each other, like anchos, pasillas and mulatos, and these chilhuacles; and cascabels vs california vs guajillos. It's not so much regarding heat, because that is the easiest thing to increase by adding cayenne or bits of habaneros if needed, but regarding sweet/tart/unami.

I have just obtained some dried chilhaucle chiles, and before I use them for mole, I'd like to try one in a really simple recipe that I can use to compare to some of the more easily obtained varieties. I want the flavors of the different chiles to stand out, and it to be simple enough to make several versions at a time for comparison. Would it make more sense to rehydrate a piece of each and mix with otherwise plain rice, or make a quesadilla with a bit of queso fresco, or mix with some cooked sweet corn or hominy? How would you or do you test chiles?

More Alishan High Mountain spring oolong today. Next up, the Hairy Crab for the tasting.

I make popcorn 3-5 times per week, and have switched entirely to using a microwave popper, but one without the need for the disposable "intensifier" that some have. I do get quite a few unpopped kernels in this one from NordicWare, but it works well enough and I can avoid the unpopped ones. I like to keep the topping separate from the popping, so there's no concern about burning one vs the other while it pops. I imagine the one you linked to is going to be not only more expensive, but also will be more delicate, being glass.

Looks like the general principle is just nougat with nuts. There's a description of turron history and varieties here here and I found a recipe here. I have not made this recipe but have several times played with nougat recipes from the TimeLife Candy book.

Almost forgot to mention: today I started with some gyokuro kin with fig/lemon jam on toast, a very nice combination, and now am working on an excellent brewing of the spring Alishan high mountain oolong from Norbutea.

This is why I shouldn't have one--I don't use it enough to make it worth the cost of that replacement q 60 days. I think this one is headed for the recycle bin and won't be replaced; much as I hate hate hate buying water, I think it's more environmentally responsible to buy a few pints of spring water a year for my starters than try to keep up with the filter pitchers.

Found my first notes on the purple bud puerh here, and will go back to that plan for my next brewing of it. For traveling, I like to take two different teas that are quite forgiving in the brewing--like the one of the new style green oolongs and a mellow puerh or roasted/old style oolong. [Moderator note: This topic continues here, What Tea Are You Drinking Today (Part 2)]

I only have a brita filter for working iwth sourdough starters, and it also gets used for occasional guests who prefer their water ice cold. So it sits in the refrigerator for many months between cartridge changes. There is also a fine haze at the bottom of the pitcher that could be specks of carbon from the cartridge, but the taste of the water was more consistent with mold. Icky.

This morning I started the day with some dragon well, and noticing that the tap water smelled unusually strongly of chlorine today, decided to do a taste test with filtered water from the brita pitcher in the fridge vs tap. Surprisingly, the tap was much better--at least some of the chlorine must be driven off in boiling--and the brita filter pitcher is putting out water that tastes moldy. Teas were made in twin gaiwans, same weight of tea to water, and same temperature to within 2 degrees, and infused the same time before tasting. Finished off three steepings of the tap watered leaves. Then some of the Lao Cha Tou pu-erh brick to keep me going through a long meeting, and finishing paperwork with a perfectly brewed thermos of the 3rd grade pouchong from TenRen. It's always a nice tea, but this carelessly prepared brewing--didn't pay attention to leaf quantity or water temperature--is the best I've made in a while. Just wish I knew what I did that made it so much nicer than the "just ok" batch from two nights ago.

Where I buy generic and where I buy brand name items hasn't shifted with recession. I tend to stick with a brand when I've had disappointing experience with the alternatives. Sometimes the bagged or bulk cereal is just as good or better as the name brand, sometimes not. If I find a good generic, I'll stick with it until I can't get it any more.

In this book he's applying the stretch-and-fold plus prolonged cold fermentations to produce basic types of breads he's written about before. The long cold fermentations are where he is building flavor, so less reliance on sourdoughs and bigas, although he gives directions for working with preferments with this technique as well. I was already doing a fair bit of this starting with pain l'ancienne from BBA, and playing with the Lahey no-knead bread recipe in the NYT, so it's not that new to me, but I bought it because I always learn something from his books, and usually keep learning more with rereading.

Big Red Robe to get me through a hectic clinic, then a little gyokuro to relax with afterward--after I was done sharing the Big Red Robe, it wasn't enough for the post-clinic paperwork too.

this morning, brewed a not very successful batch of the purple bud sheng puerh from norbutea that I've done much better before. I think used too high a leaf to water ratio and ended up with more smoky than fruity flavor. This evening, some more Pouchong, pleasing as always.

licorice, ginger, lemon sound delicious