andiesenji

You can boil the vinegar/water on the stove and pour it in the jar - just be sure to run hot tap water into it first, then pour it out, so that the temp will be equalized and the glass won't break.

Let me tell you about something I discovered about 20 years ago. If you buy one of the cheap "loss-leader" hams in any supermarket, you can improve it exponentially by this method. You will prepare the ham a day (or more) before you are going to serve it. Buy a jug of the cheapest real maple syrup you can find (I use the stuff sold at Costco or Sam's Club). Use a deep, narrow pot, just big enough for the ham, without a lot of space around it. Start early in the morning of the prep day. With an ice pick or a long-tined chef's fork stab the ham all over, all the way down to the bone. (this will work with a boneless ham but I have found the bone in, butt half is better). The holes should be no more than an inch apart. Think of something frustrating and take it out on the ham. Remove the tough skin and score the fat down to the meat. Now rub the ham all over with dry mustard, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. If you want to stab a few whole cloves into the ham, go for it. At the end of the hour of chilling, remove the plastic wrap, wipe off some of the mustard powder and put the ham cut side (the big end) down in the pot and pour in the maple syrup. It should come up at least 1/2 to 2/3 depth on the ham, more is better. Place the pot in the oven and turn the temp to 300 degrees F. and set your timer for 30 minutes. When the timer sounds, reduce the oven heat to 250 degrees and set the timer for 45 minutes. When the timer sounds, turn the ham over, put it back in the oven and set your timer for an hour. Turn it over again, set your timer for one hour. Turn it over again, set your timer for an hour. If you have a 12-pound or less ham, it is now done. lift it out of the syrup and let it drain -DON'T DISCARD THE SYRUP! (If the ham is larger, add 30 minutes for each 2 pounds of ham. If it is a boneless ham you also need to cook it longer because without the bone to conduct the heat into the center it just takes longer for the heat to penetrate. Continue to turn it over every hour.) As soon as the ham has cooled down, wrap it tightly in foil then slip into a jumbo plastic bag and refrigerate. Strain the syrup through a muslin jelly bag or a coffee filter. Reserve one cup and pour the remainder into a freezer container and freeze it. you can use it two more times. The day you are going to serve the ham, take it out of the plastic bag and place it, still wrapped in foil, on a sheet pan and heat in the oven until warmed through - you can punch right through the foil with an instant read thermometer - you only need to get it to 110 degrees for serving. Meanwhile, reduce the cup of syrup by 1/2 over low heat, cooking it with a couple of cloves or whole allspice in the syrup. A bit of grated orange or lemon peel is also nice. Slice the ham, arrange the slices on a platter, pour the syrup/glaze down the center of the row of slices, or along one side and serve.

I am bumping this topic up again because I need some ideas. Has anyone come across any interesting, odd, nutsy or just plain ridiculous kitchen gadgets in the past few months. I do come across a fair number but am sure I don't see them all and I need to buy or order some for a kitchen-themed party. Anything and everything is acceptable.

Put 1/4 cup of white vinegar mixed half and half with water into the jar, microwave for 30 sec to 1 minute or until it is very hot, doesn't have to boil. Remove from microwave place lid and tighten - it should ping as it cools leave over night, dump the vinegar water, rinse, dry and add a couple of tablespoons of dry baking soda, place lid, tighten and leave it alone for two or three days. This should remove the odor permanently. I have used this method for removing odors of garlic, onions and smoked fish - the only odor that ever defeated me was middle eastern black salt. I think the sulphur ate into the glass.

I can't have chocolate myself, because of allergy, but I do bake and cook with it for others. I was recently given a box of Valrhona "Le Noir Extra Amer" Dark Bitter Chocolate 85% cocoa. It is much too dark, strong or bitter for most people but I have been mixing it with heavy cream (Manufacturer's Cream) and Torani sugar-free vanilla syrup (for diabetic friends). 2 oz syrup and 4 oz cream for each 3.5 oz bar. My taster likes these proportions as having the most chocolate flavor without being too strong and bitter. I have also used the raspberry, black cherry, caramel, pepperment, coconut, almond and orange sugar-free syrups with this and similar high cocoa percentage chocolate. It means that diabetics can enjoy previously forbidden desserts.

I have several pieces of All-Clad both stainless and Cop-R-Core. In the latter I have an 8 inch frypan and a 12 inch frypan and a 4-quart saucepan. In the stainless I have the 10 inch frypan a 14 inch frypan that I don't think I have ever used, also 1, 2 and 3 quart sauce pans. In addition I have a 3 quart covered cassoulet and the small roasting pan. All except the roasting pan were gifts received over many years. None are the non-stick type, all are stainless inside and out. I also have one Cop-R-Chef sauce pan that has never been out of its box. I like the stainless because it cleans up easily and it has gone through the dishwasher many times. It rarely is left inside the dishwasher so I haven't had any problem with water spots. How is the discount on Le Cruset?

Once the hardened surface on a cast aluminum pot is broken, by acid etching, or other break, the undersurface is actually more reactive - just sitting in normal atmosphere you will see a powdery build up in and around the pitted area which indicates that a reaction is appearing. Cooking anything in it that has any acid content at all will cause leaching of the metallic salts into whatever is being cooked.

Don't use it as a pressure cooker. Deep acid etching is permanent and weakens the structure. If you ever have to use an aluminum vessel again, use one of the super heavy Zip-Log storage bags. They are food safe.

You will not be able to store the cake at room temp. It will have to be refrigerated and consumed within a few days or you will need to freeze it. The fresh peaches, even baked in a cake, will be subject to spoilage, even with the alcohol. If you cook them first, so they are essentially peach preserves, you can add them to a cake, allowing for the fact that they will count as part of the liquid. Quite a few years ago I tried a recipe that included chunks of fresh apples added to the batter, along with raisins and nuts - I can't recall the rest of the mix, it was a heavy spiced cake. I baked them in small loaf pans and all but one were consumed during the weekend. One remained under a cake dome and perhaps a week later I cut into it and found the chunks of apple, which had been intact when the cake was fresh, had broken down into slimy goop, leaving holes in the cake. I tossed it.

I have been so busy I haven't gotten around to it. My housekeeper went to Las Vegas with a bunch of her girlfriends and won't be back until Wednesday. I have been lending a bit of a hand to my neighbors who have had a huge crowd visiting - that are just now beginning to hit the road. There was no need for me to cook anything Friday or yesterday or today, they have kept bringing me left-overs - often dishes that were not even brought out for T-day because they had so much. I am trying to limit my intake, but everything is so good. I have stored the meal in the freezer to keep it fresh. Next weekend looks like the best time.

I should note that the result is not as coarse as I like. The next batch I will adjust the mill so the meal is not quite as fine.

Here is a photo of the blue posole and the "blue" corn, which is different from blue corn I have purchased in the past - it is almost purple. I will grind some of each tomorrow and take photos. They both seem to be a much lighter color than I expected.

I am so stuffed full of food that I can barely move. It is a good thing we have a gate in the wall between our properties because there is no way I would have been able to walk the long way around. I went over at 12:30 and returned at 4:30. They had over 100 people there for dinner and most are still there. There are 4 motorhomes parked in my north driveway with another three outside my front wall next to the road. There are at least that many on their property and in front of their place. It's a good thing were are in a rural area, this would never work in an urban neighborhood.

My flan looks a bit homely next to those works of art. I prepared six as my contribution to my neighbor's huge assembly of foods. There were at least 100 people there for dinner. 2 extra large turkeys, 2 hams (huge), 1 barbecued goat, 1 barbecued javelina, 400 tamales (assorted) and every kind of snack, condiment, side dish and dessert - I lost count - one could imagine.

I forgot to take a photo of the masa before I used it (for tamale pie). However my neighbors are having a huge gathering today and made a huge batch of tamales. They did have some masa left so I "inherited" it since I have plenty of room in my fridge. I made six flans and also baked several sheet pans full of pan dulce that Leila, one of the daughters, prepared. The celebration is going to continue for the entire weekend. The homemade masa - she used a yellow corn grown on their ranch in Durango. They brought back two 100 pound bags week before last. She gave me enough to fill this 2-quart container. She started out with a 5-gallon pail full. And the flan:

I have started a batch in one of my bread machines to mix and proof it -no heat- I have it in the pantry against the outside wall where it stays very cool, highest temp yesterday was 58 F. but right now it is 48, almost as cold as my cheese/produce fridge. I opened the door and it was almost like a walk-in. Tomorrow I wil try baking it off in a round-bottomed cast iron pot in the barbecue, in the grill/firebox section because the barbecue is going to be used to roast a javelina for my neighbors. We finally have temps suitable for November and tonight the low is supposed to be 28 F. I wil have to cover the little citrus trees and a cherry tomato plant that is still going strong as they have yet to be moved into the greenhouse.

The beans have been cooking for 1 1/2 hours: The raw beans: Soaking: Cooking for 1 1/2 hours: The aroma is just lovely.

Our weather has finally cooled down to what one expects in November (90 in the Valley a couple of days ago and in the high 70s up here). So, I pulled a canister with the last of my cranberry beans out of the pantry and have them soaking. I have some smoked pork neck bones to flavor them, along with some winter savory I just picked this morning. I am also going to toss in a fresh bay leaf.

At any health food store you can find a spray bottle of stuff that is made specifically to remove the wax from fruit. It works. It isn't cheap. However, I use baking soda, dry - I buy it in the large industrial size at Smart & Final - you can find it at other places. I put a couple of cups of the soda in a bowl - dry - and scrub the fruit with the stuff. It is just abrasive enough to remove all the wax and it works on apples, pears, citrus of any kind, etc. You can test the surface of the fruit by scraping it with an inverted teaspoon. The local health food market puts the entire fruit through the juicer, peel and all. Perhaps yours is different. However it is more time consuming to peel the fruit which is why most of these places use whole fruit. I get most of the citrus I use for candied peel from a grower in Ojai. His brother is a neighbor and brings me 5-gallon plastic buckets full of beautiful, untreated citrus. They know I like the kind with the thicker skin for candying so that is what I get. Most people prefer the fruit with finer pores, smoother, indicating thinner skin.

I have better luck with putting the almonds through a grinder first, then using the food processor to incorporate the sugar - I also add rose water because that is the way I learned close to 60 years ago. Back then the almonds were put through a hand-cranked meat grinder - then were worked by hand with a large mortar and pestle to incorporate the sugar - (regular granulated sugar was "powdered" in a Waring blender my grandpa bought in 1937 after hearing Fred Waring promote it on his radio show.) The sugar actually was super-superfine, not like powdered sugar that has other stuff added to it. Sometimes sugar syrup was added if the almonds were very dry. The marzipan was then turned out onto a marble slab and kneaded and worked by hand until it was very smooth. Sometimes small batches were worked with a muller to incorporate the colors which were either powder or paste. (my memory isn't perfect but I do know they were not the regular liquid food colors and had to be ordered by mail.) It wasn't till years later that I learned a muller was actually used to grind artist's pigments into oil and I have no idea where my grandmother got the idea to use it in the kitchen, and none of my aunts recall that either, just that it was "always there" at least from the 1920s. My grandmother had a ceramic cornucopia on its own tray, that she would fill with marzipan shapes of little fruits and vegetables and was a centerpiece on a sideboard in the dining room. I can buy fresh raw almonds that are grown locally so I have had no problems with the almonds being dry.

I have a Nutrimill. It featured prominently in the old thread on ways to eat grits (Page 3 post #65) and also in my Cornbread from Scratch topic. I just grind the stuff, coarse for grits alone, but I grind some finer for cornbread.

I haven't read through this entire topic today, but I have been following it and I don't recall anyone posting a link to this thread Ways to eat grits. That was very active in the summer of 2005. And this thread, earlier in '05 that discussed where one can find heirloom grits with listing for several vendors. And soon after I joint eG there was this thread on "Cheese Grits". I now have some dried blue corn and some dried blue corn posole that was given to me by a friend who has been visiting in New Mexico for two months (she also brought me a huge ristra of Hatch chiles). I don't recall ever preparing grits with blue corn meal - I have made cornbread with varying success - sometimes found the blue corn to be a bit bitter. However I plan to grind some of each and see how it works. I am particularly interested in seeing (and tasting) the differences between the plain corn and the posole.

This is the type that is most common clamp type meat mincer You have to take it apart and wash the parts in soapy water and make sure they are dry before storing them - don't put it back together to store - put it and all the parts in a plastic bag along with the instructions. If you can find one of the little packets of stuff that keeps things dry, often packaged with vitamin capsules and with electronic stuff, put one of those in the bag. This electric meat mincer is very similar to one recently introduced in the states that has received good reviews.

I also love beans of any variety. I didn't plant any this year but had a few volunteer vines that grew on the fence out back. One was a scarlet runner bean and another was a "mystery" bean that works nicely as "shelly" beans, some mature in the pods while new beans are coming along and are really good when shelled and cooked together with the green snap beans. The beans are a yellow-brown solid color but I don't recall ever planting any like this so don't really know where they came from. The blossoms are white. I had left them on the vine to dry and managed to get some harvested but most were harvested by animals or birds. I saw some rats out by the new wall and these are probably the culprits. (These are not the brown Norwegian rats but are the desert kangaroo rats native to this area - they are really cute.)