andiesenji

Yes, the pepper must be freshly ground. I have been adding it to several cookie recipes after reading about how it was used in medieval and Elizabethan times also during the Renaissance. It was a common ingredient in "sweetmeats" made with ground nuts and finely chopped dried fruits and honey. I tried it, liked it and went on from there. I make a batch of cookie dough, separate a small part and add pepper to just that part, bake them and see if I like the peppered version better than the "regular." A particular surprise was how well pepper combines with dates - and more than you would expect. I like dates but often they are way too sweet so I try to make up something that modifies that sweetness a bit. Combining dates with ground almonds and adding black pepper and other spices, makes a huge difference to my taste.

I have a recipe that uses all three types of ginger. Ground, fresh and candied. In addition, I add half a teaspoon of black pepper and a tablespoon of lemon zest, just because I like them this way. Triple ginger cookies

I occasionally get duck eggs from my egg man. He suggested that I add baking soda to the water in which I cooked them if hard boiling. He also said that it would be better to hold them for a week prior to boiling, either hard or soft and I should pierce BOTH ends of the egg. He has American Saxony and Orpington or "Buff" ducks for eggs and meat and some crested ducks for show. I usually do something other than boil them but when I have, and I followed his advice, the eggs peeled okay. The eggs I have a problem with are guinea fowl eggs. Apparently they don't like to be peeled and the membrane is very tough, no matter how long they have been held.

I think you are referring to the needle type vacuum sealers that were available some years ago - there was a tube that attached to the sealer to evacuate the air after a hole was punched into the lid and it was sealed with something like clear silicone. One came with a vac sealer I had at least ten years ago and I recall using it on some large plastic storage jars with lids that were at least 6 inches in diameter. The kit even included a drill bit for drilling through plastic lids. The vac worked so well that one of the jars partially collapsed. I had trouble ordering replacement sealer so stopped using it. I probably tossed it. I don't know why they are no longer available, but I haven't seen them for years.

The All Grain mills are only for grinding dry grains, beans, etc. Not for wet grinding of anything such as nuts, or other items that have a high oil/moisture content. All Grain mills

After spending two days (off & on) preparing a batch of vanilla paste, I am considering getting one of these machines to make this task a bit easier. My method is okay for a small batch but making this stuff for gifts, required six times the amount I usually prepare. I put the beans through my regular meat grinder and then through the poppy seed grinder, which is much finer and sadly, is not powered. Gah! I'm sure I will find other tasks that work better in this machine but if it only makes this task easier, it will be worth it. Of course it is all my fault, giving the stuff as gifts and teaching people how to use it. Now my friends who are recipients of the gift baskets are expecting it.

I think your oven temp is too high for pots de creme. I bake mine at 300 and I use a water bath and just place a sheet pan on top of the ramekins or the custard cups that I usually use. Bake for 30 minutes then check one to see if the center still jiggles slightly - at that point they are done because they will continue setting after removing from the oven. Foil may produce condensation and water drops onto the tops, which cause little dimples in the surface.

I love hot chocolate but have to use caution in the ingredients. Dutch process cocoa is okay but regular seems to trigger my allergy the same way as chocolate candy does. I like hot chocolate with a small amount of chile - I've tried it with chipotle "water" (a dried chipotle steeped in hot water then strained) with varying degrees of heat depending on how much I added. I like this much better than adding a dash of hot sauce, which is the way some people make it. A year ago I ordered some wattleseed from Australia. (It's now available here.) I tried steeping some, as I would tea and adding that to my cocoa and it added a note that I really liked. Almost coffee-like but quite different from when I add espresso powder. I do use some milk, about a third of the total liquid volume. In my opinion there are some flavor components that are either released or activated by the action of the casein in the milk. I could be wrong but I notice that some flavors "come forward" with the addition of milk and simply are undetectable with just water. By the way, I've tried making it in the Thermomix and it works quite well.

I have several Thermoworks thermometers, including the combination Thermapen/Infrared as well as a single Thermapen. Cook's Illustrated tested several of Thermoworks and found them all to be most accurate and best buys. Similar results with Consumers Digest. I also have the much less expensive RT301 and the RT600C, both with 6-second response and the latter is waterproof and can even go into the dishwasher, safe to 190° F. It is also shock-resistant because I have dropped it several times and it still works just fine. (It was laying in the folds of a towel that I snatched off the counter and the thermometer flew across the kitchen, hit a cabinet and bounced across the floor. Now that is what I consider a sturdy item. RT600C RT301

I have the combo thermometer timers made by Thermoworks Click here I have had the Maverick that did not function correctly, and the replacement broke. I have been using the Thermoworks timers for three or four years and have never had a problem. I have three - I use one just for the oven and the others are for timing whatever I need. As they are magnetic, you can stick them on or near whatever you are timing or set them on the counter. The price is right too.

Someone let slip that I will be receiving a Smoking Gun for Christmas. Glad I learned, as I have been considering buying one. I do have a smoker but it's difficult to justify firing the thing up for just one small item. I am also getting the Brevill Pie baker from someone who thinks I spend too much time in the kitchen. Ha! I had been warned to not buy ANY appliances after Thanksgiving. Still wondering about what anyone could possibly find that I don't already have or don't really need. I'm holding off on the pasta maker because there have also been hints it might also be in my "stocking" - - - Not too worried about gaining weight. I prepare a fair amount of pasta on a regular basis. and by the way, I have cut a bunch of dowels that just fit into my Excalibur dehydrator and can fit 6 filled with long pasta into it and dry it perfectly in about 20 minutes. Much better than having my old pasta dryer standing on the counter for a couple of hours.

The "Lowcountry" refers to parts of South Carolina and Georgia and the best way to understand it is to look at the Gullah culture. Click here to find one site. And a list of recipes Here! My grandfather's cook, when I was a child in the 1940s, was a Gullah woman from South Carolina and the foods she cooked certainly went far beyond shrimp and grits. She was an exceptional baker too, and had begun learning to cook when she was eight. There have been a couple of PBS shows about Gullah culture and Lowcountry cooking and how it differs from other regional cuisines in the south, including the gulf states.

Sarabeth's Bakery: From My Hands to Yours, Sarabeth Levine Forgotten Skills of Cooking, Darina Allen Nile Style: Egyptian Cuisine and Culture: Ancient Festivals, Significant Ceremonies, and Modern Celebrations, Amy Riolo Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes and Sweetmeats, by Miss Leslie Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes By: Janet McKenzie Hill, Maria Parloa Miss Parloa's New Cook Book Delicious Candy Recipes The Ultimate Candy Cookbook for America's Sweet Tooth, S.A. Morse The Big Book of Cookies - The Ultimate Cookie Collection, Manuel Braschi No-bake Cookies: More Than 150 Fun, Easy & Delicious Recipes for Cookies, Bars, And Other Cool Treats Made Without Baking, Camilla Saulsbury Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, David Wondrich Pumpkin Cookbook, Nicola Hill The Great Pumpkin Cookbook, Libby McNeill The Great Australian Pumpkin Recipe Book, Barbara Carr Brownie Mix Bliss, Camilla Saulsbury (came free with a new brownie pan)

So, are you making Rompope? My Mexican neighbors prepare it in big batches, put it in quart jars and can it in a pressure canner. They use an aged, very smooth tequila. Sadly, I am allergic to alcohol so can't even taste it with the liquor added but she saves some for me that has no spirits and the flavor is incredible.

I use the white ones all the time. They are not as sweet as the yellow and orange varieties and are less fibrous so don't have to be cooked as long. I use both types sliced in a sort of scalloped potato casserole with already cooked bacon and crumbled ricotta salata cheese. I use that cheese because it does not melt and doesn't become grainy. I steam the potato slices before assembling the casserole - only about five minutes, which is enough to get them started cooking - otherwise they were not all fully cooked. It's very pretty with the alternating colors.

I bought a bag full of sweet potatoes so I can make sweet potato butter and can it. I use this recipe and am going to double it. Sweet potato butter

White sweet potatoes are available in most supermarkets here but they seem to be seasonal. In the Mexican supermarkets I can find them more often and they sometimes have other interesting varieties, purple, oro (gold) with tan skin and yellow flesh, skinny ones with red skin and white flesh, one with pink skin and deep orange flesh.

I was reading this thread while chatting on the phone to a friend who is from Australia. She said her husband was addicted to the frozen "pocket pies" he would buy at Aldi and would microwave four at a time and hunch over his plate while devouring them as if someone was going to snatch the plate away. However, she also said that since moving here, he has become "addicted" to frozen burritos and eats them the same way. She has to buy them in the big restaurant service bags at Smart & Final, otherwise they are too expensive the way he consumes them.

How do you make sour cream? I use Ricki's sour cream starter culture Scroll down until you see sour cream. The instructions are simple and the product is superior to anything you can buy.

The earliest Pyrex marks had a small circle with PYREX in all caps and with dollar signs above and below the R and around the top and bottom of the circle U.S. Reg. Pat.Off. No patent number yet. Later pieces had pyrex in small case in a circle with a patent number and the logos have varied slightly over the years. The early stove top stuff always had the flame logo and "Flameware" in the backstamp name. Some history sources date the change over from borosilicate glass to soda-lime glass at Pyrex to 1988 and some to 1990 when the cooking products division was changed to World Kitchen. Pyrex still manufactures laboratory glass using the same borosilicate formula that has been used for many decades.

Sorry, I missed this question last month. I take Pyrex filled with stuff from the freezer, place it on a sheet pan and then into a pre-heated oven. I do this routinely anyway, I simply don't put any vessel that is subject to breakage, whatever is in it, directly on an oven rack. I don't do this to protect against heat shock but to prevent spill over and also because I once broke a pie plate when I stuck another pie plate in the oven a bit too forcefully. I was not a happy camper cleaning up the debris from a pecan pie on the lower racks and on the floor of the oven and because some of the stuff had run through the holes in the sides I had to take that out and clean down around the burners. As I said in my earlier post. I have glass baking dishes as well as stove top vessels that were made in the first half of the last century and they still function just fine. I have an instruction card that was in a box with a Pyrex "Flameware" double boiler and it stresses that after removing from the stove top only place the hot pot on a folded towel, a wooden trivet or a cork hot pad. It specifically warned against setting the hot pot on an enamel counter or table top (common in those days), onto a tiled surface or into the sink, with or without water. Frankly, I don't like the newer Pyrex made from soda glass. I think it scratches easier. I have one Pyrex 10 inch pie plate with the earliest Pyrex round logs on the bottom (dates it to 1919-1932) which has fewer scratches than some I purchased in the early '90s and it has been in constant use. As a matter of fact, I just published a page about glass cookware and bakeware on my blog this morning and a photo of that pie plate is the first one on the page. My blog page on this subject.

Frozen juice concentrate was not available where I grew up until well after that time period. It was probably available at markets in Paducah but I don't recall seeing it until the early '50s. I was born and raised on my grandfather's farm and even during the latter years of WWII he would order crates of citrus shipped from Florida when the fruit came into season. Nothing was wasted - that was when I first learned about candying citrus peel.

If you go to this page you will find the same recipe that was introduced to America in the November 1947 Good Housekeeping magazine under the title "Hot Russian Spiced Tea." I have the original recipe pasted on a file card from my grandmother's recipe box. I came across this online recipe a couple of years ago and have it in my links folder for "Holiday" tea recipes. My grandmother put the tea and spices in the basket of a large electric percolator/urn, plugged it in and allowed it to perk until the strength was to her liking. She then unplugged it, let it set for a few minutes and then removed the basket and stem and plugged it in again. I've prepared it with my 30 cup West Bend urn and for a bit of different flavor, have tried it using half water and half apple cider - very tasty either way. (I remember my grandmother serving this when she hosted an Eastern Star meeting - my grandfather was a Mason.) The ladies were suitably impressed and it wasn't long before this was a regular offering at any occasion.

I should have mentioned that I also purchased Dorie Greenspan's new book and have loved everything prepared from it. I also got Sarabeth's Bakery book after reading about it both on this forum and on a blog but have yet to prepare anything from it but like the sound of the recipes. Lord knows I have more than enough baking books but this one has some intriguing recipes. I ordered Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen after reading Snadra's post. As I am interested in doing things the traditional way, I think it will be interesting reading. It should arrive today.

This is the one I have now: EZ reacher I have tried several types and this one has lasted the longest and for me is the easiest to use because it locks onto the item. It's the only one I trust to lift down crystal from high shelves.