andiesenji

I don't eat the way I did growing up all the time, but occasionally, often at holiday time, I revert back to the foods of my youth. Of course many of the foods I was raised on, in rural western Kentucky, were not your ordinary "southern" cooking but was rather a unique experience. Of course I wasn't aware of it at the time but I came to appreciate it many years later. Our food was "fusion" food long before that description was applied to such things as food. We lived in the south but part of my family had come from England and the other half were southeners for several generations. My grandfather's cook was a Gullah woman from the Carolina lowcountry and brought that facet of the food world into the mix. Also, my grandfather had traveled in the middle east and spend some time in India and had become fond of those foods. And in addition, my great grandmother, a remarkable woman who lived a very interesting life, and a very long one, was a collector of "receipts" and also had traveled a great deal in Europe and had even been to Egypt and Palestine. Because there were so many people to be fed, it was not unusual to have several entrees, multiples of side dishes, condiments, little "sides" such as pickles, olives, radishes, and so on as well as several desserts. Being raised by Victorians did have some drawbacks. Highly spiced foods or rich foods were not considered "good" for children so we did not get curries and other of the more exotic dishes (except what we could sneak out of the kitchen) and we also did not usually have dinner with the adults, except on Sundays when dinner was in the afternoon. Holidays it was a different situation, we were allowed to stay up later and sometimes were accomodated at the tables in the dining room when we were old enough to "behave" ourselves. So I remember biscuits and cornbread, buttermilk, soup beans, greens, green beans, ham hocks in beans and green beans and greens, bacon, boiled ham, baked ham and fried ham. Beef in all its many guises, crab cakes and oyster loaves, fried chicken, roast chicken, chicken pie, chicken curry, stewed chicken and chicken and dumplings. Grandpa's cook learned to cook curries and rice and various kinds of lentils in addition to beans and black-eye peas. There were game birds, ducks and geese, giunea fowl and turkeys, the bronze ones, prepared in every way imaginable. After the war my uncles who were in the Pacific came home with food ideas from the Phillipines, from Japan and Hawaii. One uncle who had been in the China service prior to WWII had already brought home dishes from various places he visited. It was an eclectic mix of foods that is probably the reason I have always had an adventuresome spirit when it comes to food and the reason that I mix things from varioius cultures that I think go well together. (Coucous works as well with Thai food or Mexican food as it does with foods of the middle east.)

You can also dry them in your oven if you have a very low setting (140 degrees). Wash and dry them, twist them off the stems and put them on a cooling rack over a tray as they may drip a bit and put them in the oven. If they are fairly large they will take about three days to fully dehydrate. I dry the large seedless red grapes that are extra sweet and they turn out like candy.

You could probably make another batch, after all, there is "another" holiday in a month!!!

Don't fool around with butterfly bandages. Wipe the wound and quickly apply paper tape directly on the cut, first sticking down on one side then applying tension to pull the cut closed. Then apply two or three layers at different angles over the first piece in a radial pattern. THEN put on gloves. I buy the food grade latex (or if you are allergic get the non-latex) gloves that are like surgeons gloves and fit tight enough so the fingers won't catch in things. ( We used the tape in the office when my boss was still doing surgery and we would take the skin sutures or staples out a couple of days following surgery and apply the paper tape directly overe the wound. it allows air circulation but holds things together and speeds healing. As long as it is kept fairly dry it will stay on and as long as it is clean, don't disturb it for at least several hours. The incisions were less like to heal with an obvious scar.) I wear gloves almost all the time I am working in the kitchen anyway. I often have my hands in something and if the phone rings I can rip the glove off and answer the phone without getting it full of grease, dough, syrup or ?????? They will also stop any shedding of parts of you into the food. There is a reason they are advocated and in some places absolutely required for food service. They are inexpensive and save time in the long run. I began using them when I developed contact dermatitis from washing my hands constantly with antibacterial soap. I still wash my hands but with using gloves I am not doing it every 5 minutes.

The one in Visalia from which I just purchased a tree can obviously ship within California and probably to Arizona as they have reciprocity for many ag products. I will take a picture of the tree when it arrives next Tuesday. Check their website, they have a lot of interesting things. I may drive up there next spring to see the place for myself.

Here is the Grow Quest website. I just looked at the citrus tree section. There are several varieties I want which I did not know were available commercially. I may have to expand my greenhouse!! They guarantee their trees for 12 months which is an important consideration. I want a citron and a blood orange for sure.

Yesterday afternoon I called a friend in Ojai who grows several varieties of unusual citrus (but no Kaffir lime-yet) and asked him who would be the best supplier for someone wanting a citrus tree that is mature enough so that leaves (or fruit, depending on the type of citrus) can be harvested immediately. He gave me this number 559 735 0743 and told me to call. I just called, the company is growquest and they have a website which I will look up in a minute and post a link. I bought a tree for 36.95 plus 14.00 shipping. They will ship it next Monday and it will be here Tuesday. They are in Visalia, California so no problem with shipping in state. Dean says that they have first quality trees and some very unusual cultivars of citrus.

That is the hand-held type I mentioned that people often use the wrong way. The citrus has to go into it cut side down and when pressed it turns the fruit inside out and extracts the most juice. I saw someone on a Food TV show using one the wrong way, putting the cut side up, which looks like it would fit, but it doesn't work as well and the juice squirts out the sides instead of through the holes in the bottom.

I don't know where you are located. There should be some supplier in your area where you can buy cream that is not over processed. Manufacturers cream is available at many places that supply both the public and restaurants/food services. Smart & Final carries it and they are open to the public as are many other outlets. types of cream Ultrapasturized cream will not work. You can whip it as is until it solidifies but it won't have the same texture or flavor as cultured butter. I have an electric churn (actually I have 3, including a huge 5 gallon one that I no longer use) and a hand cranked one but a mixer will work. Since I live in southern California I have the Mexican markets at which to shop and I buy the Crema Mexicana, Grade A Table Cream in the quart size, which is not ultra-pasturized and makes wonderful cream cheese as well as butter. (They also make a sour cream labeled Crema Mexicana Agria) This is one company. types of cream

Has anyone had any problems with the removable bottom pans leaking? I bake a few times a year, so IF they work, it seems like a more fool-proof solution than learning how to unmold things out of a regular pan. (At least for an occasional baker like myself.) ← I have two of the removable bottom pans that have the silicone rims which work pretty well without leaking, however they are not deep enough for most of the things for which I use the springform pans. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I bought new pans earlier this year and have had good results with the leak-proof round ones. For the square and rectangular ones I discovered that with a little tweaking, I can seal them pretty well, without using foil. I buy the roasting bags that are made for use in the oven - they look like plastic but are obviously something else - cut the material into 1 inch strips and put that down in the depression in the springform pan bottom so the sides rest on it and when it is snapped closed, it presses tha part on the inside tightly against the inner rim. I test it by running water into it, sometimes have to adjust it a bit but if the pan will hold water it will hold the custard in and keep the water out. I am sure I could fool around with a regular pan to substitute for the sprinform but if one is available and makes my task easier, why not use it. In the bakery we baked cheesecakes without a water bath and they were in regular pans and were frozen prior to being removed from the pans, however we had other tasks to do. I don't want to have to freeze something to get it out of a pan. For one thing, my freezers are usually full and when I am on a roll with something I want to move things along and get it done, not have to wait for it to freeze before I can continue with preparation. Anyway, try one of the leak-proof springforms and see how it works for you. I think for the ordinary home cook they are easier to use.

I went to high school in Wisconsin in the early 50s and our home economics teacher was one of the rare teachers that had more degrees than most in that time and was also our chemistry teacher. She had worked in the dairy industry prior to becoming a teacher and was always lecturing about the subject, very important in "The Dairy State" as a lot of the kids in my small town class were children of dairy farmers. The lecture on butter went something like the following. At one time all butter was unsalted and was used immediately. After culturing, resting then churning and draining away the whey, the mass of butter 'curds' was kneaded and pressed to extract as much of the whey as possible and the butter was stored in crocks, in spring houses or the crocks were set down into water in cisterns to keep it as cool as possible but it still would spoil after several days. It did not travel well. Then, it is opined, when westward expansion began in America, and people needed a way to preserve butter on a long, slow trip, some enterprising farmwife added some salt to her batch of butter because salt is a preservative. As she kneaded the butter she probably noticed that more liquid than usual was expressed as this is another of salts effects, it will draw liquid out of a mass, be it a vegetable, or in this case, butter. The result was a more compact and firmer product that would keep better and longer than the unsalted. Butter crocks were made in a particular way, with a ridge around the crock about a third of the way from the top so they could be set into a round wooden board which would in turn float on the water in a barrel carried on a wagon. The lid was made with circular ridges on both top and bottom so it would fit into the crock without sliding and water could be ladeled into the depression on the top. The evaporation of this water would keep the butter cool. This treatment of butter caught on and dairys began producing it commercially as it allowed them to ship their product instead of just selling locally. This was still pretty much an American phenomenen. Europeans still used fresh butter, made daily or almost daily, purchased locally. Americans who travelled in Europe found the butter there tasted different. Mark Twain commented on it in one of his "letters", to him it tasted "flat." That was the standard lecture about butter. Following is from my personal observations over the past 50 years. There was a time when it was difficult to find unsalted butter in a supermarket. Often it was in one of the little tubs and priced much higher than the comparable salted product. However it had alwlays been available for commercial use in bakeries, restaurants and food processing. Then in the 1960s the gourmet home cooking movement began working its way into the general American scene (instead of just in the "sophisticated metropolitan venues) and home cooks all over the country began demanding the ingredients specified in the cookbooks that were being written for the "discerning" home cook and those wishing to duplicate dishes from France and etc. The marketing people of the dairy industry saw the light and almost overnight one began seeing unsalted butter on dairy shelves next to the salted. At first people were confused because only the lettering was different but then they began packaging it in different colors. I know because I was fooled a few times myself and picked up the wrong product. (Challenge butter was the culprit). At first it was only the "name" brands that offered both kinds of butter but now even the store labels or generics come in both types. To me it is personal preference. I like the taste of salted butter because I have been used to it all my life. I use unsalted butter in some dishes because I think it works better. I use european style butter because it has a lower moisture content and works much better in sauces, however I often make my own butter, it is not difficult and you can control what goes into it. My homemade butter is much lighter in color because there is no coloring added to it but it is very rich because I use an extra heavy cream and make it with a culture instead of just souring the cream. If you are going to sauté vegetables, use unsalted butter - salted butter, just as plain salt, will pull moisture out of vegetables and will change there cellular structure. You can test this yourself with somethng as simple as a piece of carrot. Sauté it in unsalted butter and it will be tender and still have perfect structure. Sauté it in salted butter and you will find the result will be slightly spongy and more fibrous and there will be more liquid in the pan and that liquid came out of the carrot. I once made the mistake of braising celery using salted butter. It was awful, the cells between the ribs were mush and the ribs were stringy, not at all as it should be.

They are worth it and they are full of seeds so juicing is a job. I wash them well, then put them in a shallow dish and microwave them for 30 seconds or so then cut them in half, throw several into a ricer and squeeze. Much easier this way than trying to do them one at a time. Also handy is one of the old type juicers that works like a ricer. like this one.

There is a place in Rainbow, California (south of Temecula) where a couple of Kaffir lime trees were growing. It used to be a herb farm open to the public and I was a customer and drove down there three times a year, in the spring, summer and fall for their herb festivals when prices were reduced. The place is no longer open to the public and the herb business has closed. However I asked Ken how he got the Kaffir limes and he said that he had bought some of the limes (they had the fruit as well as the leaves) from an Asian market in Santa Ana, hoping to propagate them from seed, however he was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, a couple of the fruits were split and moldy so they were tossed into the compost. A few month later when he was turning the compost he came across three little plants and pulled one out of the compost only to find it was growing from one of the Kaffir limes. That plant did not survive but he was able to pot up the other two and they survived. It is possible that the heat and moisture in the compost heap was the ideal place for the little plants to sprout and grow. I know all kinds of things have sprouted in my compost heaps, avocados, apricots, cherries, peaches and plums, grapefruit, and even a pomelo.

This is the original post: I agree with you 100% There are some "convenience" foods that are worth using because they enable you to do other things with more flair. I often have people ask me for my recipe for Mac 'n Cheese. I unabashadly tell them my "secret". First I cook the Creamettes brand elbow macaroni, if that is not available then it is Barilla. It is then cooked aldente, then drained, tossed back in the pot with butter and a can (or two, depending on the amount of macaroni) of Campbell's Condensed Cheddar Cheese Soup, undiluted. Stir, pour in a casserole, sprinkle the top with parmesan or asiago, freshly grated and run under the broiler for a couple of minutes. It is alway creamy, never gets gummy or hard and tastes good. If we want spicy it is the Nacho Soup I use. In the meantime, I have baked bread from scratch, cooked fresh mushrooms, onions, tomato and squash, grilled chops or steaks and prepared a killer dessert. The mac and cheese takes 15 minutes, tops.

There was a previous topic on this subject in which I confessed my use of rather mundale ingredients.

And here is yet another gadget for turkey stuffing. The Cage!!! Is this a "gotta-have-it" item?

More kitchen gadgetry to buy. Or rather already bought. A "friend" who knows my propensity for buying kitchen gadgetry directed me to this item: Rev N Chef which I really don't need, but it looks so neat in the video demo I just had to order it. I already have some of the one-handed pepper mills (also salt mills) which are great in some situations, as well as the one-handed can opener and the safety peeler, so am familiar with this company. They come up with the neatest gadgetry. I have a list of several others I have come across in recently perused catalogs. Anyone else have something new and interesting on their Holiday wish list??? Inquiring minds want to know....

There has been a lot of rumbling in recent years about how stuffing the bird is a prime candidate for promoting growth of bacteria in the stuffing, which might not reach the correct temp rapidly enough to prevent the bacteria growth. I have long advocated my method, and given the tip to all and sundry, to use an aluminum baster (sans rubber bulb) stuck in the center of the stuffing and this will transmit the heat into the center of the stuffing and bring it up to temp rapidly. I should have patented the thing. While leaving through one of the myriad cooking gadget catalogs I receive daily, I came across an item made specifically for this only out of stainless steel (which in my opinon will not transmit heat as well as the aluminum). Dang, missed again!

I have an earlier memory of Tater Tots from my Army days, 57 to 59. They were a staple in the enlisted mess hall at the Presido, S.F. and we often took them back to work and re-heated them in the autoclave in the lab. Hey, it was sterile..... I can also remember being hit with a frozen Tater Tot propelled by a rubber band by one of my buddies. It hurt like the very devil, left a bruise and ruined my uniform skirt as the cleaners were unable to get the spot left by the grease out of the wool.

Check with Nichols Garden Nursery. California has the strictest agricultural importation laws so citrus trees are drop shipped from sources within the state. They may be able to make similar arrangements for Texas. It doesn't hurt to inquire. Since they are in Albany, Oregon, Chef Metcalf might be able to drive down and take it through customs himself. I have a friend (with basenjis) who lives in Edmonton and drives to Nichols to get herb plants for her greenhouse at least once a year. I have ordered from them for years and they are great folks and have excellent plants. I have never had a problem.

This is an especially good point. Stainless lined heavy copper cookware is expensive, although it's not all that expensive compared to brands like All-Clad and Demeyere -- but it is expensive. However, the cost needs to be put into perspective: An 11 inch sauciere (aka curved sauteuse evasee) from Falk will run you 235 bucks. If you keep it for 20 years, thats a cost of around 12 bucks a year. For one of the very best pans made. It's like being able to drive around a Ferrari for a hundred bucks a year. What else can you get for 235 bucks? Well... you can get a good DVD player. That might last you around 5 years if you're lucky. Or, hey... it might get you one-fifth of an okay laptop. That might last you three years. Now, I happen to use my copper pans a lot more often than I use my DVD player and I'll still be using them when DVDs are as obsolete as Betamax. So, in my opinion, the money was better spent on the pans. ← And you can pass them along to your children and grandchildren. I have copper pots which my grandfather brought from England in 1919 and they were at least a generation old at that time. The oldest one is the old-fashioned type of saucepan that is wider at the bottom narrows to a "waist" about 2 inches below the top edge then flares a bit at the top. It has a cast iron strap around the narrow point and the handle is attached to this. I have it put away because it needs retinning. It was made before 1862 because my great grandmother bought it in France that year while on her wedding journey. I have collected quite a few pieces that may be even older but as I do not have the provenance of the pieces I can't be sure. I expect the stainless lined pots and pans will last even longer, after all, there are copper vessels in museums from Roman times that are still intact and usable. We don't really know how well the alloys of stainless will hold up over time because it has not been around that long. We do know that the plain aluminum will pit and degrade with just normal exposure in cooking. The aluminum alloys are better but even they will break down with long exposure to acids. It also becomes brittle after a number of years. I have had several pieces of cast aluminum break when dropped on a concrete floor. (if this ever happens to you, don't toss them in the trash, take them to a metal shop and have them cut the sides off so you have the bottom to use as a flame-tamer, or in the case of one supersized oval Magnalite roaster, a two-burner griddle for my portable stove. In this case it dropped on the handle on the end and a semicircular piece broke out of the end.) Once you get a piece of good copper and see how well it works, how quickly it heats when compared to other cookware, you will be seriously hooked on it. One of my friends is married to a Frenchman and she has told me that when they were in France they met some young people, just setting up their household, and saving to buy their first copper cookware. They had an ancient car that was falling to bits but thought it more important to buy the copper pan than fix the car. She said she shared their priorities.

There IS something about grinding things that look one way and have them look totally different when they come out of the grinder. I love making pimento cheese, alternating mild cheddar and the canned large pimentos or sweet peppers from the middle eastern store. The mincemeat mixture would be good in stuffing. It is also good in fried pies or little tarts. I also seem to remember that Meemaw made a side dish with this mincemeat and chestnuts. Since I didn't spend as much time at their house as I did with my other grandparents, my memories are not as sharp.

Many years back when the kids were still at home, I had a Garland stove with a salamander. After school the kids would come home, fire it up, throw a bunch of Tater Tots in a big square carbon steel pan with a long handle, made for the salamander, slide it into the opening and shake it back and forth until they were brown and crispy. It didn't take long and I don't think I have ever tasted better. It was their favorite snack and they added cheddar cheese powder or taco seasoning, and after H. Salt Fish and Chips appeared on the scene would sprinkle the vinegar bought at the shop on the corner. I liked them with just salt & pepper or with melted cheese. (see earlier post) I was sorry to lose that stove but when we moved I had another stove that I liked better so we sold it along with the house.

First of all let me say that I have never been able to understand what people see in Pu-Er tea. To me it tastes like leaf mold smells. I often buy the "bespoke", "estate" and limited edition teas and visit Chado in Pasadena as often as possible. Devan Shah is extremely knowledgeable about teas and with James Norwood Pratt, founded The Nilgiri Tea Society. The tearoom itself is rather plainly furnished (as is the original in Los Angeles) but this is a place for serious tea drinkers. Their food is excellent and the servings are very generous, particularly when compared to the more "frou-frou" tea places that are heavily into Victorian ambience and believe that a couple of thumb sized scones and a 2 inch sandwich constitute appropriate accompaniment to a cream tea. The world of tea is extremely complex, and there are far more varieties than there are of coffee. Whenever I hear about someone complaining about the cost of a POUND of Jamaica Blue Mountain, or similar rare coffee, I mention that an OUNCE of one of the rare teas will sell for 3 times as much. I am picky about the tea I drink in restaurants and carry my own with me and am careful about giving directions as to how I want my water for tea (near boiling and fresh, not out of an urn) and I tip accordingly. In places where I am known, they know my habits and the first thing they ask is if I am having tea today and go off to put the kettle on, then come back and take my order. I have converted several of the servers in Coco's, here in Lancaster, to drinking tea after they tasted the good stuff.

If I had to compare them to any other type of potato creations, I would say they are most like rosti. (Can't figure out how to get the two little .. over the o.) I was making rosti long before TaterTots came on the market, and always made them by using a #20 disher to portion them so there would be more crust rather than just flattening them in the pan.