andiesenji
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Posts posted by andiesenji
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One of my favorites, my "go-to" grains cookbook is The Versatile Grain and the Elegant Bean: A Celebration of the World's Most Healthful Foods by Sheryl and Mel London.
My copy is dog-eared, spotted and splotched with various food stains and there are Post-It stickers on all three sides of the book with little notes.
You can find it at ABE books at a very reasonable price.
I also have The New Whole Grain Cookbook and Splendid Grain, which I thought was out of print but is now apparently available in paperback.
I got the New Whole Grain one when it was first published because I had become interested in Farro and the few recipes I could find were not all that interesting.
The Splendid Grain has been indexed on Eat Your Books so you can see the list of recipes it contains.
On Amazon you can look inside the New Whole Grain book.
Via this site you can get it for less at Amazon
I also have Bob's Red Mill cookbook whole & healthy grains on my Kindle. I haven't had it for long and have only prepared one recipe for a Quinoa/orange/pecan dish. At least that is all I recall offhand.
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Just get some double stick tape - the kind with the foam center is rated for higher heat than the plain - and use that to stick down the back edge of the parchment where closest to the fan. You may need to use a piece on each side, if the layer of fruit is very thin.
Very simple solution, and it works just fine. You can usually peel the parchment off the tape "anchors" and attach a clean sheet, unless you are going to reuse the same one.
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Would you share your preferred salt vendor list?
Sure.
I get periodic emails from Salt Traders with new items and with special offers, reduced or free shipping, etc.
and Saltworks from whom I order the wonderful Velvet De Guerande - by Le Tresor which is unlike any other salt that I have come across.
It is the only salt I use when I make butter, especially cultured butter as I have been told it is the salt used in some of the French cultured butters, such as Beurre d'Isigny.
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What about one or two flatbreads? I much prefer these for dipping in cheese fondue. I usually have a crisp type (Nordic or Swedish rye), pita, cut into strips or triangles, lavash, which is thicker than the pita or focaccia which is still thicker and crustier.
I also usually make a batch of corn sticks and they often are the first to go.
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My experience with Dualits, 1 "classic", 1 "soft-touch" = 2 lemons.
I expected the classic, because of the price, to really produce near-perfect toast. It did a fair job for a couple of years and then the toasting became uneven - mostly untoasted near the bottom. It was packed up and dispatched to a service center, after 3 months returned but the problem persisted and it was immediately sent back. This time it was 4 1/2 months before it was returned and it did work fairly well for about six months and then one slot stopped toasting at all.
I gave up and retired it.
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I also read this and it seemed a bit specious to me as it inferred that other vendors marketing specialty salts are dishonest.
I did not like that attitude. Whenever a commercial vendor takes up an altruistic flag, I become suspicious that there is an underlying motive. (I feel the same way about vendors who purport to contribute to a charity a certain amount of profit from special sales. I feel they should just contribute whatever they are spending on advertising the "charity thing".)
As some will have noted from my posts in other threads, I have a fairly extensive collection of culinary salts from around the world and I don't think I am the only person who has noted a difference in flavor between various salts. It may be that I am a "supertaster" but I don't think that is the only reason.
I have a couple of favorite vendors that carry a large selection of specialty salts and I don't recall them making any claims that some salts are "healthier" other than the fact that coarse salts, because one notices the crunch and the "condensed" surface flavor, are used in less amounts than fine-grained salts.
In any event, notices such as this tend to make me LESS likely to buy from a vendor.
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My Sunbeam arrived. Not only does it look great, but it's just about the coolest thing in the world. I'll take a video and post it here soon.
Oh and the toast? It's fantastic.
Congratulations!
I'm looking forward to seeing the video.
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I have some nick thick pork chops that I am going to smoke, along with some pineapple and thought I would put a small pan of candied ginger in to see if it will absorb some smoke.
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I add crumbled crisp bacon with a scant teaspoon of granulated maple sugar to steel-cut oats (toasted) or steel-cut barley or buckwheat or sometimes a combination of these grains with other grains and seeds.
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On my once-a-year pilgrimage to L.A. Farmers Market, I always visit Light My Fire, the shop dedicated to hot sauces.
It is an experience not to be missed for any chile-head visiting the L.A. area.
They carry over a thousand sauces, 99% hot.
For those dedicated to the ultimate burn, the hottest can be ordered from Pepperheads
and they now have Jolokia (ghost pepper) pepper products.
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There are so many and so many new ones appearing every few weeks, this could be an endless list.
My favorite recent sighting was Stairway to Hell Habanero Hot Sauce
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A really nice pop-up toaster seems by nature to be a scaled-up, ruggedized, domestic toaster, unlike, say, a "prosumer" espresso machine, which is a scaled down version of the 2, 3, or 4 group cafe machine without the requirement for special plumbing (though that is always an option for people who like plumbed-in ice machines, pot-filling spigots over the range, and blenders built into the counter).
Where is the domestic conveyor toaster? Is there no innovation out there? When is Breville or DeLonghi coming out with the home version of something like this, for people who are serious about their toast:
Neighbors down the road have one of the Avantco conveyor toasters
They have 11 children, 7 of their own and 4 adopted, plus a mother, grandmother and great aunt living with them. For them it was not a luxury but a necessity!
She is a stay-at-home mom and bakes 6 loaves of bread every day. He is a CHP officer.
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I have a banana tree in the garden - can they be used right off the tree? I know they have to be toasted/warmed up to get pliable, but are they treated any other way?
Both banana and plantain leaves can be harvested and used ass long as no pesticides have been used on them.
The inner, younger leaves are the best to use. One of my friends who lives in La Jolla, near San Diego, has a "grove" of banana trees of various types and uses the leaves in cooking, especially for the barbecue and smoker.
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Don't forget the peel. It is lovely candied. It needs to be parboiled more than orange or lemon to reduce the bitterness in the pithy inner part.
I parboil it in 5 changes of water, simmering it for 10 minutes each time, then draining it and allowing it to dry for several hours before putting it into the simple syrup.
The peel of the white grapefruit is much more aromatic than the pink or red varieties.
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Let's face it, if you were a promising young engineer, whether in the U.S. or China, would it be your goal to design toasters?
Maybe not toasters only, but household appliances in general? Sure. That's a non-ridiculous ambition. Even some of the biggest names like Michael Graves have designed toasters. Though I guess he's a designer not an engineer. Most of the engineering work on toasters was probably finalized in the 1950s.
My sentiments exactly! The interior design of toasters has varied little since the 1930s although some of the components have been improved but in some ways the "improvements" have really not worked as well as the engineers touted.
The earlier toasters had the heating wires but also had very thin sheets of isinglas or mica, which efficiently spread and reflected the heat produced by the heating wires. This is the reason these old toasters produced a more evenly toasted product and also toasted more rapidly.
They stopped using this product in toasters, hot plates and space heaters mainly because it became more expensive as demand in other industries increased. I have an old space heater that produces a lot of heat at fairly low wattage and it has the isinglas elements.
The "sensors" that are supposed to determine the degree of toasting in modern toasters are not all that accurate and frankly I think they are just there to jack up the price in the more expensive toasters.
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When you get to the city check at Asian markets. Banana leaves are available frozen and any city that has a fair number of SE Asians should carry them as they are used in so many applications.
They are even available online at Gourmet Sleuth.com
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For me it is truly a "golden age" as I am constantly spending a lot of "gold" on ingredients, goodies, gadgets and equipment that werre simply not readily available to me even a few years ago.
I still love the traditional tasks (made two pounds of butter today) but I also like the new ideas, many of which I learn here, as well as the traditional ethnic foods I stumble across almost every day.
Now being able to learn how to prepare foods that I have only read about in years gone by is wonderful.
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You might want to check out this topic Pork Cake
I posted the recipe for pork mincemeat and a fruit cake made with same.
The recipe notes "cooked" lean pork because I usually use meat left over from a pork roast but it works just as well with lean raw pork and this was used by Viva who posted some excellent photos of her procedure and the results.
This mincemeat can be canned but it is easier to vacuum pack and freeze it if you need to store it for a long time or just in a freezer container if you are going to use it within three months or so.
The pork mincemeat is extremely versatile. Besides pies, cakes, empanadas or pocket pies, it also works in stuffing for all kinds of meat and poultry.
I used it in "stuffing" for a crown roast of pork, with the addition of cubed raw apples, diced celery and onions, about 1/2 the total, mixed into the mincemeat.
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Mike, Smoked salt is a nice finishing touch for some things, and for others it's a background flavor in dishes where you don't have some other smoked item like bacon.
Still haven't figured out how to get liquid smoke, I'll add.
I know of one person who makes his own liquid smoke but he is a bit cagey about his process. His sister (my friend) tells me that he uses a steam juicer along with an electric kettle in which he "cooks" the wood so the smoke goes into the juicer and combines with the steam that is carried into the receiving bottle.
She says he uses some kind of liquor but that varies from vodka to rum to bourbon, that works as a "preservative" to keep the liquid from getting moldy.
A few years ago Alton Brown did a segment on making liquid smoke, so it is possible.
My neighbor puts a pan of tequila in the smoker and says it gets smoky enough to flavor foods.
I cheat and use lapsang souchong tea because I can't tolerate alcohol.
Several years ago someone told me to try smoking glycerin because it readily absorbs flavors and instantly dissolves in water.
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Not too many things I have not tried at least once on the smoker. But one of my favorites was ripe peaches cut side up. Holy Moley they were good, the smoke flavor worked great with the sweetness and the peach juice. Not on too long I was not attempting to make dried peaches. The peaches were still intact and soft, but just enough smoke. Just served with some vanilla ice cream.
Speaking of ice cream, smoked ice cream sounds like a great idea. But how? Would letting the dairy get some smoke come through in the taste? Would doing so effect the dairy that it would not freeze correctly? Or just put smoked fruit into the prepared mix. I may have to try that.
I have often done nuts of various kinds. I have seem people rave about smoked salt. Either I did not have the technique or I just did not appricaite it as smoked salt did not do much for me.
What you do is cook the custard, pour it into a shallow pan or dish and put it in the smoker. Stir it after half an hour and taste it. The flavor will be diluted if you add more ingredients so work accordingly to get the right balance of smoke in the custard.
This is one of the things I tried with the Smoking Gun but had a very poor result, even after prolonged smoking the custard only had surface smoke flavor.
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My white whale was strudel dough--I haven't tried puff since I don't think my results could come close, but strudel dough was my first laminated dough and it took me FOREVER to finish it. Especially since my first attempt I didn't clearly read the directions about letting the dough rest after each three-fold. That said, eating real Danish made it all worthwhile...
Keep on the choux--you'll develop a feel for what's right and once you get your panade texture/moisture down, everything else falls into place.
For the macarons--I've had better luck when I've ground my own almonds mixed with some of the sugar in the processor...I've never bothered with a cooked/syrup meringue and they usually turn out well.
I have to agree that the most difficult and frustrating thing I ever made was strudel dough for Polish poppy seed strudel _ I think I mentioned this in an earlier thread.
Stretching the dough to the exact thinness without tearing it was murder and by the time we finished I was dripping with perspiration. The result was okay but I was not really satisfied but never wanted to repeat it.
I had even less success with trying to prepare phyllo dough. Now I just buy it but twenty years ago it was not available everywhere and I thought it would be a cinch. My mistake.
Croissants are easy for me but I went to baking school when I was still a teen and working in my mom's bakery I learned all the "standard" stuff. Working with much smaller batches of dough took a bit of experimentation but I've had 50+ years to perfect it.
I had even less
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A couple of years ago, I smoked walnuts and added them to an apple pie. The pie's theme was sweet, spicy and smokey so it worked rather well (basic concept was apples sauteed in butter and pan deglazed with maple syrup mixed with smoked walnuts, smoked paprika, aleppo pepper and cinnamon).
That sounds wonderful. I've made smoked apple "chips" - apple rings strung on a cord and hung in the smoker to both dry and smoke them. Some were a bit too smoky but most were very tasty and a bit different from my regular dried apples. I meant to use them in fried pies but they were just too tasty eaten out of hand.
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There isn't much you can't smoke. As I wrote in another thread, I have neighbors who smoke all kinds of foods - sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, as well as meats and fish.
I often make a small batch of sausage, form it into patties and smoke them but I just use my stovetop smoker as they take much less time.
I also prepare a dish of smoked green beans. I quickly blanch and then tie the beans into bunches and smoke them for no more than 30 minutes and then cut them into thirds, toss with chopped onions or shallots, a can of button mushrooms, some crumbled bacon, arrange in a casserole dish, dot with butter and bake for 35 minutes at 350° F.
It's a nice side dish with ham or turkey and is much lighter than the casserole made with mushroom soup.
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I used to make my own but it is a bit more complicated than making yogurt - needs a different type of culture that is tricky to use consistently.
Now I simply prepare my regular yogurt (I use the cultures from New England Cheeesemaking supply) and use half & half instead of milk. This produces a very thick and creamy result which I then "thin" with low fat or non-fat milk to get the exact degree of pourability I want.
The yogurt will liquify more if worked with a blender but I usually just use a whisk to blend the yogurt and milk as I like it thicker.
The kefir available here is not cheaper than yogurt.
Egg storage the world over
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
I pasteurize all my eggs myself as it is simple and I don't have to worry about using them raw.
They are chilled in ice water after the pasteurization process, then dried carefully.
I mostly get very fresh eggs from a local man who raises chickens as a hobby and supplies me and a few others. If my supply runs low, I buy from a market and get the organic, free-range eggs.
I do refrigerate eggs in the summer, unless I am going to be using them within a couple of days but in the cooler months I leave them on the counter in a wire egg basket but my kitchen is always rather cool, about 60° F. I also refrigerate eggs that require chilling for a particular recipe.
I pasteurize the eggs because several years ago I had a severe bout of salmonella which required hospitalization for a couple of days and I do not want to repeat the experience. The antibiotic side effects were unpleasant.