andiesenji

You could: Use some of your membrillo to make a fig/quince/coconut candy. 10 large dried figs or equivalent. 1/2 cup quince preserves or quince paste 3/4 cup finely grated dried coconut (macaroon coconut) Powdered sugar. Optional - finely chopped nuts Put the dried figs through a food/meat grinder using fine die (If the figs are very dry, put them through coarse die first then grind again on fine) Transfer ground figs to saucepan and add quince preserves or paste. Heat over low flame, stirring constantly, until well mixed and just beginning to bubble. Set aside to cool slightly. tape a piece of parchment (or aluminum foil "Release" work great) onto counter. pour the ground coconut onto the foil, pat into a square and pour the warm fig/quince mixture into the center. Here it helps to have some gloves, particularly if the stuff is still fairly hot. Oil hands with a little corn oil and begin kneading the coconut into the fruit paste. Continue kneading until all the coconut has been incorporated and distributed evenly. It should be just slightly tacky, if too sticky, add a little more coconut. If you wish, you may add finely chopped nuts. Shape the candy into ropes, about 1/2 inch in diameter and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Allow to dry overnight and toss in powdered sugar until lightly coated. Some people like to add a few drops of rose water or orange flower water to the candy while kneading, but this is rather like gilding the lilly, in my opinion.

You can make a quince pomander that will last a long time and won't rot. In fact, it can last for years. There is an excellent recipe here: Pomander recipe some people do not like to use the orris root powder because it is an allergen to some folks so here is an alternate recipe and the advice to use sandalwood oil (available at most health food stores). another pomander recipe More about pomanders Tied up in a square of inexpensive netting, with a little bow, these make nice decorations. A bowl of pomanders next to the front door is very welcoming and you can give one to guests as they leave.

Well-- I for one stand and applaud your brave admission. I'm going to cook 2 gallons of beans for 75 on Friday. Pintos, black eyed peas and black beans, 2 pounds of bacon trimmings and 2 pounds of ground pork or beef. Yeehaw! hvr (edited for serious dyslexia) ← Now that's a batch of beans!

The divided "Breakfast skillet" is for potatoes, eggs and bacon or a slab of ham. If you come across a square one with "Griswold" on the bottom, don't pass it up! The following was highlighted in a Cooking.com email "What's Hot" bulletin today: How will I EVER live without one of these? I am really curious about why it can't be shipped to Canada. Does it have some strategic value I am not seeing? Has anyone seen these little silicone floating "Poach Pods"? I received a couple in the mail and (naturally, being me) didn't bother to read the accompanying brochure and was wondering why someone would send me two jar openers, nice green colors that match nothing in my kitchen...... Then I read the brochure and learned they are for poaching eggs. Like I don't already have a great many egg-poaching devices. Anyway they don't take up much room and have been "guess what these are" items for visitors to at. PoachPods

I can definitely attest to the fact that one cannot "infuse" cherry tomatoes by placing them in a vacuum marinating container, with a slit cut in the stem end which is placed cut end down in a puddle of balsamic vinegar with a little salt. Oh, they do get marinated, however the poor little things look rather squished. I do believe I should have stopped the vacuuming a bit sooner - before the collapse of the outer structure.

Bread pudding, made with pumpkin yeast bread or rolls. I always make a big pan of this for our Halloween party, served with warm spiced cream.

Also, because often it is assumed by the sellers that you already know this, wash the jelly bag (or muslin) well in hot water, to remove all of the starch which stiffens the fabric, and rinse in a basin of cold water to remove any small loose fibers. When ready to use, wet the jelly bag with cold water and wring to remove as much water as possible, but leave it damp. Real cheesecloth, also known as "butter muslin" is much more tightly woven than the gauze-type cheesecloth found in grocery stores. Fine butter muslin can be used over and over again, simply wash by hand, hang to dry and roll it, instead of folding.

I like Manchego with the tuna. A nice combination is tuna with fresh figs, especially the brown turkey figs. (I just bought a basket of the latter to make burnt fig jam.)

One of my neighbors has one mounted on a cutting board that folds down at the end of a line of cabinets - when set up, it is in front of the solid part of a sliding glass door. The brackets for the drop-leaf extension are the same as those used on heavy folding tables. They wrap meats and game for freezing and only need the big roll of butcher paper from time to time but this way it is easily available and out of the way when not needed. I's like this one: butcher paper roll.

Independent butcher shops? Whereabouts in S. California are you talking about andiesnji? ← I live in Lancaster. On Avenue L, just east of 10th street West is "Ben's Corner" a produce market in which there is a separate business, a butcher shop. A few miles north, in Rosamond, is an independent butcher just off Sierra Highway in the "Big S" market. He also does butchering for local farmers. There are a couple of other "real" butcher shops in the Antelope Valley - it is still a bit country here. There is even a sausage maker in Littlerock (Valley Hungarian Sausage on Pearblossom Hiway at the east end of Littlerock (north side of the road). However, I am sure there are independent butcher shops in many other places. You can probably find them in the yellow pages. When I drive over the hill to Pasadena, or rather to Bristol Farms market in South Pasadena, I often stop at Montana Meat Market on Fair Oaks. (actually in Pasadena north of Colorado. I take Fair Oaks back up to the 210 freeway) There are also several great meat markets in Glendale - I don't recall the names but I can drive right to them. One is on Brand Blvd. another is on Glendale Blvd and a friend took me to one last spring that was on Foothill Blvd in either Verdugo City or La Crescenta.

a "boiling fowl" is an older laying hen at least a year old and quite heavy, or a guinea hen that is a similar age and has developed tough, stringy meat, the tendons are thick and the bones are thick and have large marrow cavities. The meat is going to be discarded but the broth or stock produced from birds this age will have far more flavor than one can extract from a younger bird. If you can find a supplier of "free-range" eggs in your area, you can contact them about purchasing "stewing hens" as these birds, that have more varied feed than battery chickens, will give you stock with a lot more flavor. There are two independent butcher shops in my area that will order stewing hens and I also buy guinea fowl at the Mexican supermarkets. They will also get "soup chickens" for me if they have a couple of days notice.

I've always used a long, flat red sable artist's brush, stroke the brush on a piece of silk (or on a chunk of amber, since I do have that) which creates just enough of an electrical charge so the gold leaf will cling to the brush. If using larger pieces of the leaf, one can buy a gilder's brush which is the same size as the gold sheet and again, stroking the brush on a piece of silk will allow you to lift the entire sheet and deposit it exactly where you wish. When working with the gold leaf, I used a "tent" made of lightweight muslin sewn into a large tube shape with a removable hoop overhead. Now one can buy very inexpensive photo tents which allow one to protect the work area from drafts. Someone opening a door into the room where one is working, can cause the gold leaf to flutter away in tiny bits.

Here ya go! hands-free paper towel dispenser automatic kitchen faucet I have been begging for a home irradiation appliance for years.

Ooh, good one. I would buy it. Right now my low-tech version is a Sharpie. I keep it in the kitchen drawer and write the date on things as they come in. But a scanner would be way cooler. ← I have been accused of being just a bit obcessed by organization but I simply have one of these Label Printers It lives in my pantry - it takes up little room and things can be labeled when they come out of the shopping bags. Jars that are opened and will be stored in the fridge also get a date label. Items that are purchased for a particular recipe are also identified for that purpose. Thusly I do not use something which I will be needing later for a particular application. I learned this years ago when I was preparing a special recipe and discovered I had used the only jar of a necessary ingredient, a few days earlier. It also makes it unnecessary to open opaque containers to see what they contain - not just for foodstuff, for anything that has to be stored.

I would like someone to invent a "third-hand" grabber to hold pot/pan lids up out of the way so I can use both hands, one to hold the pot or pan while stirring with the other. When handling large diameter lids, there is not always a handy place close by to set them down and juggling a hot lid can often be tricky. Before I had my kitchen remodeled, I had a steel bar on the wall behind the stovetop that was set out from the wall far enough so that I could place lids behind it. I'm sorry I didn't retain it but some of the heavier lids, chipped and scarred the tile so I omitted it. One of the reasons I bought one of the Electrolux mixers was because I was tired of having bread dough crawl up the dough hook and occasionally send what looked like a pseudopod flapping around outside the bowl, if I didn't pay attention. I also bought a steam injection oven because I did a lot of baking. (Haven't used it much during the past couple of years so it is going to go and I am getting a new, and much smaller, oven.) For proofing, I often just use a translucent plastic storage tub, turned upside down over a tray holding pans, bannetons, etc., of shaped dough, with a heat lamp suspended about 4 feet above it. I have been using the same GE Infrared heat lamp for more than ten years so the bulbs last a long, long time. I don't recall how much I paid, but new ones now cost $6.99. GE heat lamp This is the fixture that holds the bulb: clamp lamp

I believe in giving good value........ I think it runs in the family. Never ask one of us about the time of day, unless you want to know how to build a clock......

Someone has "reinvented" the wheel, yet again... Anyone for a "dial-a-peeler?" In Sur-La-Table's "New Tools You'v Got To Have" email received today.... And this masher won an award! I have several antiques that are almost identical and have been around for over 100 years! I wonder if the people handing out the awards ever look at existing designs that have been around for decades?

I agree. If you have a consistent problem with certain cookware - particularly the types that are designed for high heat convection, simply reduce the temperature. The shape of the pot is also very important. I have a collection of stoneware and other crockery beanpots, some over a hundred years old. They were designed specifically for very long, very slow cooking and do a marvelous job. I have a very large (and very old) cast iron bean pot (between 6 and seven quarts) that was made to be buried in fireplace coals or a campfire. It is NOT the classic bean pot shape but had straight sides. The lid has to be "sealed" on, with dough, which keeps the moisture inside the pot. The top opening of a classic bean pot should be no more than 2/3 the diameter of the pot itself, at its widest point. Bauer, McCoy and Watt, made the openings even smaller in their larger pots. Incidentally, all three of these companies tested their bean pots by actually cooking beans in them in the bury box or fire port of a kiln while it was being slowly heated. See this example. or this one In my opinion, none of the "modern" bean pots work as well as the ones perfected by the three companies I mentioned above.

You might also check on ebay, not for the auctions, but the "Buy-It-Now" items and eBay Express!, which has direct sales only, both of new as well as vintage merchandise, mostly new. One can register with a favorite vendor and some will email you with specials that have included, free shipping, a free companion piece or other free merchandise. I also purchase quite a bit of kitchenware at RUBY LANE. The member vendors have been unfailingly helpful and I have yet to receive an item damaged in shipping. Many of the vendors have a "Make Offer" option on their listings and when I buy multiple items, many of them offer significant discounts automatically. I have actually purchased some "As Seen On TV" items, but not from HSN or other TV sales presentations. The items I have purchased have been from online vendors and are often discounted and sold for less than the amount on the TV presentation and I only needed to buy a single item to get the discount.

The following is from one of my great-grandmother's receipt journals. Some interpretation was required because the handwriting is very small, written with a very fine steel pen and faded in spots. For "Flavouring of Vanilla recommended by Lady Bateman" grate about 2 dwt (pennyweight) of sugar into a stone mortar and work with a "broken" finger of vanilla until it appears oily. Pull the cork on a crock of sweet Rhinewine and set into a pan of crack'd ice, well salted, for half an hour then decant the liquid into a jug and add half a gill to the mortar. Muddle the mixture until it is a slurry and pour into a jelly glass and cover with a square of moistened parchment and tie it on well. Set the glass in a warm, dark cupboard until nearly the color of black treacle. Draw off the liquid with a pipe and add more of the icewein (her spelling) to the slurry. My great-grandmother wrote this in 1877 while she was staying at a hotel in Paris.

Panning only works with concentrated gold and this stuff is so light that it floats on water. Gold leaf has been recovered from disintegrating frescos, from statues, from glass, from oil and tempera paintings by simply crushing the material on which it was used and subjecting it to heat in a crucible. The materials that are destroyed by heat lower than the melting point of gold (a bit less than 2000 degrees F) simply vaporize, the other materials have higher melting points (glass a minimum of 2500 degrees but most glass closer to 3000 degrees. The molten gold will "float" on top of the still solid material and can be poured off into a mold. There was a thriving business in Europe after WWII recovering gold from bombed-out buildings that had interiors with significant amounts of gold leaf. I still have part of a "book" of 24K gold leaf that I used to use on some of my paintings. I did a series of paintings that included Egyptian designs. I have also used it on the fondant covering on petit fours, on chocolates and some fancy Christmas cookies, but a little bit goes a long way. The gold used to treat rheumatoid arthritis is "colloidal" gold which is a suspension of microscopically fine particles suspended in a liquid that is injected. Consuming gold leaf has no effect on the body. Nugget gold has been swallowed, smuggled and retrieved with no harm to either the gold or the carrier. At one time suspected smugglers were weighed, now they are x-rayed.

I haven't noticed that effect, however I never used a juicer. I simply cooked the pulp and put it through a food mill, which produced a less chunky pulp, then cooked it down over low heat for a long time until thickened. I have used both a preserving kettle and a crockpot.

I have owned several of the Chef's Choice sharpeners (having worked my way up to the newest M-130 specifications here) and have not noted any significant loss of metal from the blade. However the diamond 3-stage abrasives are not as aggressive as the silicon carbide wheels in other sharpeners (that are also less expensive). I have a lot of experience with silicon carbide cutting wheels because for many years I did engraving in glass and my cutting wheels, burrs and single-diamond points, all had to be "trued" or "dressed" on a flat, angled or V-groove wheel. The only time I ever placed a knife against one of these wheels was after breaking the tip off a boning knife - fairly inexpensive, and ground it down to a point. I do use them for sharpening my garden tools, mattock, axes, hatchets and brush hook but even for these not-so-precise-edges, I clamp the tool blades onto a holder that will maintain the correct angle because using a file by hand is very imprecise.

I really don't understand what you refer to when you say the blade should "lay flat to the board" or something to that effect. In this thread post #12, I have pictured a custom-made knife that has a small bolster but it has been ground down and sharpened because I wanted a knife which I could use for splitting small bones by using the base of the blade where the bolster mades the blade stronger and has a more wedge-shaped profile. The sharpened bolster wil dig into the bone and a tap with a mallet on the back of the blade, where it meets the handle, will split a beef (or pork) rib. Each component of a knife has a purpose and that is the reason that I don't buy "sets" of knives, I have selected particular knives from certain makers because those particular knives fit my hand (large for a woman) while others in the line are not at all comfortable. Having chipped a corner off a chef's knife without a bolster, with the chip lodged in the bone, I learned that the bolster is necessary if a knife is going to be used for certain actions, while one is not necessary if just using it to slice and chop less dense materials. I like some of Wusthof's knives but I have never been a fan of Henckels or Sabatier. I like many of Frederick's knives and Lamson Sharp and have a few favorites in their lines. As you can see I have a few Globals and also have a couple of Furi. I have some inexpensive Forschner for other people to use as I do not like having other people use my good knives and everyone knows it. To me, knives are a very personal extensions of my hand and not to be shared. I would advise anyone who has a knife with an uncomfortable bolster to a professional knife person and have them grind it down and put a proper bevel on it. Once set, it can be maintained but it should be originally worked by a pro. I have a Chef's Choice pro sharpener but I still take my knives to a pro every couple of years. When I was doing more cooking, I had them done more often.

Absolutely beautiful!