andiesenji

Earlier today, when I saw this topic, I emailed a friend who was born in Cuba but lived in Spain for quite a few years, now lives in Vista, CA and raises avocados. She is well known for collecting many odd and unusual recipes so I thought she might know about this one. She emailed me this recipe and noted that she has substituted cracked caraway seeds for the anise seeds for people who don't care for the anise. She also said she can't swear how authentic it is but she got it while she lived in Murcia from a neighbor who was originally from Portugal. Olive-oil wafers 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1/4 cup hulled sesame seeds 3 tablespoons sugar, plus more for sprinkling 1 tablespoon anise seeds 1 tsp. baking powder 1/2 t salt 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil 1/4 c plus 2 tablespoons ice water 2 large egg whites, beaten until foamy Preheat oven, 400F, place racks in upper & lower thirds. In electric mixer bowl (with paddle attachments) mix flour, sesame seeds, sugar, anise seeds, baking power & salt on low, until just combined. In small bowl combine olive oil & water, add to flour mix. Beat on low until just combined, scrape down sides of bowl. Shape a 1 1/2 tablespoon of dough into a ball. Place 2 to 6 balls at a time on a piece of parchment, at least 5" apart and cover with another piece of parchment. (Number depends on the size of your baking sheet - 6 will fit on a half-sheet pan). Roll out into very thin rounds between the parchment sheets. Transfer dough with parchment to a baking sheet. Lift off top piece of parchment. Generously brush with egg white & sprinkle with sugar. Repeat with 2 more balls of dough. Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until they are brown at edges & in spots on top. This should take about 6 - 8 minutes. Cool on wire rack. Wafers may be kept, stacked between layers of parchment, in airtight container at room temp for up to 4 days.

I always simply cut the apples into quarters and cook them with the skins, seeds etc., then put the cooked apples through a food mill to remove the skins and seeds. It may just be my imagination but I think the flavor is much better when made this way. I posted a method for Penn.Dutch/Amish apple butter in that thread and my applesauce prep is exactly the same way as the first part of the apple butter method. I learned this method as a child and have never seen any reason to change it. I do have to say that it is much easier now with food mills that do all the hard work.

Here's a previous nut butter topic, Chris. Note that I had my oar in there as usual. I love nut butters and have tried just about everything possible and certainly can't recall all the combinations I have tried. The only one that I really found to be less than optimum was a butter made with Brazil nuts. However, I think it was possible that they were not as fresh as they should have been and the result may have been because of incipient rancidity. Hazelnut butter is better if the nuts are toasted a bit and they do need a bit of salt. I like almond butter made with almonds that have been boiled briefly in heavily salted water and toasted in the oven (the way I make salt-glazed almonds) and with the skins intact. Nothing bland about this product. I always start my nut butters by putting the nuts through a meat grinder, either electric or hand-cranked. I then transfer them to a food processor. I can use my Vita-Mix but have to keep the batches quite small and it is not as easy to extract from the blender as it is from the food processor. Also, almost any nut butter can be improved by a very small amount of toasted sesame oil. Regular sesame oil works too but there is just something about the toasted oil that gives a bit more "oomph" to the flavor of the base nut without overpowering it. And the following Healthy Nut Butters topic was in a ThirdAge bulletin I received today. Very timely.

I too had a hankering for a Nilgiri tea today and just brewed a pot of Tiger Hill Nilgiri FBOP, picked in January '08. A lovely tea that brews up the color of claret and especially nice with milk or half & half, sweetened with just a teaspoon of agave syrup.

My favorite evening tea is a jasmine oolong. Ordinarily I am not a huge fan of "perfumed" teas but the jasmines are different. Jasmine Oolong from TeaVana I often serve it to guests and have found there is little problem with caffeine. For me it doesn't matter as I am one of the fortunate few who can drink loads of caffeine and go right to sleep.

Nobody does apple butter better than the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch Here is a recipe I have used for years, with great results. PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH/ AMISH APPLE BUTTER 6 quarts cider 10 lbs. apples 2 lbs. granulated sugar (See tip below) 2 pounds brown sugar 2 tablespoons ground allspice 2 tablespoons ground cloves 3 tablespoons ground cinnamon. 1 tablespoon ground mace 1/2 tablespoon ground white pepper Wash and quarter apples. DO NOT PEEL OR CORE! Boil the cider for 20 min. then put apples into kettle with cider and cook until apples are tender. Press through a sieve to remove skin and seeds. Add sugar and spices to pulp. cook until as thick as desired ( a soft paste); stirring frequently tp prevent burning. Pour into crock or glass jars. Process in water batch for 15 minutes. Tip: Because apples vary in sweetness, add only 1/2 the amount of sugar to start, add the rest as needed to adjust the sweetness. Variations: To part of the butter add ground pecans or walnuts - 1/4 cup per quart of apple butter and cook an additional 30 to 50 minutes. Also mashed chestnuts may be added. Grind fresh cranberries in a food mill, cook with sugar, (1/2 cup per cup of ground cranberries) and mix with apple butter (1/2 cup to each pint of apple butter) and cook for 30 minutes. Other fruits may be mixed with the apple butter. Dried fruits should be stewed and pressed through a sieve - prunes, pears, gooseberries, beach plums and crabapples. Those are the variations that were in the original recipe. I should add that I have added variations of my own from time to time. Some ginger after it has been candied, finely chopped and mixed into some of the apple butter - to taste - I really can't recall how much I added - it depends on how spicy the ginger. I have also added mango pulp - I too am often gifted with lots of fruits - persimmons - that was a brilliant combo. It's easy enough to try various combinations, this recipe produces a large enough batch that one can experiment. Also and very important. You do not have to jar and process this immediately. I often cook it part way then place in a large Cambro container and freeze it until I am ready to finish it. It freezes nicely and if one doesn't want to go to the bother of canning, (and the freezer space is available) it will keep in the freezer for many months.

long before the ubiquitous canned stuff made its appearance, homemakers made cranberry jelly and molded it in fancy, holiday molds made expressly for the purpose. Or they used their grandmother's jelly molds and it was considered a minor art. Women competed to see who could un-mold the most elaborate shapes. When the canned cranberry jelly first appeared, it was not always seen the way it came from the can. It could be melted in a saucepan, poured into a shaped mold and served up, pretending to be homemade. Or, it was sliced and gently cut into shapes with small cookie cutters into stars, leaves, etc. Sometime in the early 60s it apparently became too much trouble to hide the fact that this condiment came directly from a can so it was simply placed undisguised on a plate.

I just finished a pot of Golden Dragon Aged Oolong, a tea from Taiwan that is exceptional. Ordered from Teas Etc., some months ago but not brewed until today. (Stuck the container behind a huge tin that once held McVities Biscuits.) Well, it is "Aged" and is now just a bit more so. The flavor is complex, rather sweet and has a wine-like finish that in my opinion makes it a perfect afternoon cup. It is also supposed to be somewhat of a digestive aid. It does have some larger leaves and twigs that some people find objectionable, but as I brew the tea loose in a pot that has perforations between the body of the vessel and the spout, I have no problems with it. I can understand that anyone who uses a mesh infuser might not like the twigs but they don't bother me.

A lot of teapots with the integral infusers are made that way. I rarely ever use them, except on the few pots that have a large enough infuser to allow the tea to circulate freely. I grew up in a household where tea was brewed loose in one teapot and strained into a second for serving. My great-grandmother thought that straining tea into a cup was vulgar, even using a fancy silver strainer and she was the law in the family. You might find one of the Bodum "Assam" tea presses easier to use for small amounts of tea. The leaves have room to circulate and they come in several sizes and are reasonably priced and the glass is very tough. I have only managed to break one in all the years I have owned Bodums. They are especially good if you want to re-infuse the leaves multiple times.

Send an email to the Vermont maple syrup producer's organization - I don't have the link right now, but in the past I have inquired about similar questions. Last year I used a couple of jugs of maple syrup I had purchased at Costco several years earlier and it was just fine. Found the link: Vermont Maple Syrup.org

I have several, Darienne, I'll send you a couple.

I realize it may be too expensive for many but I have opted for a steam sanitizer. It works for me because I have extensive butcherblock counters and some very large cutting boards. In the past I have used a dilute bleach solution, also white vinegar, also diluted, as well as a commercial butcher shop sanitizer which I had to use with care because I found I was allergic to something in it and would develop dermatitis after use, even with gloves - my arms would break out and I did not want to buy the full length rubber gloves. The price for steamers is coming down rapidly and I am sure that within a short time a reasonably price consumer unit suitable for cleaning counters, etc., will be available.

Once the leaves have been infused, I will prepare the subsequent infusions within a few hours. Personally, I would not keep them for 24 hours, however others may be successful with that much time elapsed. The keeping quality of different teas varies greatly. "Mature" black teas may keep for a very long time if sealed in a container and kept away from moisture, light and heat - or extreme variations in temperature. They can easily keep for a year or even longer, simply brew a cup and see how it tastes. Oolongs and white teas seem to lose their strength more rapidly, however I recently brewed some Iron Goddess of Mercy oolong that I purchased in March '07 and it turned out a very nice cup with no loss of the "peachy" tones that I expect in this type of tea. Other teas may deteriorate far more rapidly and unless you are buying a "bespoke" or single source tea and know the date of the flush or when it was picked and processed, you have no way of knowing how long it was stored before your purchase. My rule has always been to try a tea, particularly before brewing it to serve to guests and if it tastes good, use it. If it has little flavor or an unpleasant or musty flavor, I toss it into the compost. Some teas are tossed soon after purchase because to me they have an "off" flavor and I decided that I made a mistake in that particular purchase and make a note not to buy that particular tea again. I like flavored teas, blended with various herbs, flours, spices and so on. I mentioned on another thread that I will set these aside for a few months (or longer) and find that they mellow with time and a blend that may be harsh and too strong originally becomes very pleasant after some of the stronger flavors have lost some of their potency. Don't be hesitant about experimenting, dumping out a cup or even an entire pot of tea is not a huge waste (unless it is one of the uber-expensive ones) and by all means order samples from the online vendors. Harney & Sons, Adagio and most of the others all send generous samples for very reasonable cost.

This could be very tricky and it would depend on what is in the cake. You really don't identify the type of cake and there are numerous variations of "Christmas Cake". If the cake has a lot of fruit in it, you must know the fruit can get very hot while the batter around it will not be fully cooked and if your temp probe happens to encounter a chunk of fruit, it will give you a false reading. I have always looked at the edges of the cakes to see if they have pulled away from the sides of the pan slightly as that usually indicates the center of the cake is fully cooked and the batter has contracted. One may even see a small crack in the center of the top because of the way cakes bake, from the outside in, the sides bake first and cause the still-liquid center to expand upward and as the center then bakes it will shrink and fall in upon itself slightly. This occurs most often with the heavier, more fruit-filled cakes where the leavening can't overcome the weight of the inclusions.

I don't vacuum seal using canning jars because they expose the tea to light, which is just as damaging as air, in my opinion. I use the regular small vac. bags and put the bags in a crock - actually an old Bauer bean pot which maintains a cool temp and blocks the light.

I have these in the 32 oz size, (as well as the 16 oz) and I took one on my trip with me and you can see it in the photo below. The 16 oz is not large enough for my purpose as I use an extra-large cup or mug. The "true" liquid measurement of the 32 oz vessel is actually 26 oz, with the addition of the tea leaves. It is 32 oz to the very top of the vessel but that is not workable. I find that with the 16 oz, I can fill a 12 oz mug with brewed tea. (My "regular" tea mug holds 15 oz of tea with room for the addition of milk.) A large cozy will cover the vessel nicely and will retain the heat long enough for it to brew. A second steeping works fine as the ingenuiTea allows the leaves to retain enough moisture to keep them "fresh." The 32 oz is identified as the "Iced tea ingenuiTea"

What do you use to vacuum seal teas, Andie? ← A regular consumer FoodSaver - I am currently on my fourth or fifth one, I keep buying up to the newer (and hopefully better) models as they come on the market. It has a tube and wand attachment for use on canning jars, but I rarely use it.

I forgot to add this recipe for honey butter scotch.

I am sure you can use the syrup in any candy recipe that calls for syrup or honey. Consider honeycomb candy how about the "comfits" popular in "olden" times or the candies made with boiled honey in which nuts, usually almonds, are dipped multiple times, drying them in between "layers" until they are encased in a clear candy shell. Comfits recipe Honeycomb candy recipes

I want to add one thing to my previous post but for some reason the edit function will not work. I regularly buy Republic of Tea's Cardamon Cinnamon "Warm the Heart Herb Tea" which contains no tea but includes: Rooibosch, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, carob, chicory, black pepper, star anise, cloves and cassia oil. I buy this loose in bulk, for use in my own blends with regular teas. However, I use very little of it when first purchased as it too is overpowering unless it is paired with a very robust black tea but after several months the strength has modified to the point that it can be used with the more delicate teas.

I have holiday teas from last year that I am drinking now. In fact, I had a cup of "Comfort and Joy" from Republic of Tea after dinner. I have a tea that is blended with lavender flowers and I have had it for well over a year and I simply could not drink it when it was fresh, the lavender was simply too strong - it actually tasted soapy. Now it is very pleasant and I can taste the tea (Earl Grey) in addition to the lavender. (Revolution Tea)

Those teapots are Chatsford teapots and like the Brown Betty, always displays a sticker with the Union Jack. The early Brown Betty teapots usually had a hang tag with the Union Jack. Like the Brown Betty, the name Chatsford has sort of become a generic name for the type of teapot even though the London company holds the patent for this vessel. The Chatsford looks just like the original Brown Betty and is offered in many colors. The following sites have various descriptions and etc. The Chatsford teapot. Chatsford teapot Chatsford 2

The fan blows INTO the dehydrator. The heated air moving over and under the materials being dried is what does the job. Excalibur info Excalibur FAQs

On the units I have, when the switch is on, the fan is on. Mine are 12, 11 and 10 years old. They may have changed the controls on the newer "3000" line but I don't know because I haven't got one. Frankly, I don't see any point of running one without the fan. However, you can contact the company and ask if there is a simple way to disconnect the fan or add an independent switch to it.

The first one I bought was the 2400 and while it worked just fine, I needed more capacity so bought the bigger one, then bought a second. I have used them on the lower setting for proofing breads but have never bothered to check the entire temperature range. As far as the dough proofing goes, I have found that the damp cloth works okay and have not had to use other means to maintain the humidity. I start jerkys at the highest setting to insure against bacterial growth and have had no problems.