andiesenji

I found Leilah's phone number and called and asked about the vessel I mentioned in my last post. It is an ibrik and it was ordered from this site which is also where he orders the green coffee berries he uses in his spiced coffee. He prefers one from Yemen. Check out the coffee roasters they have on this site. Who knew??

Duxelles, which may not be a sauce in the true meaning of the word but I use it as such, is my runaway favorite. Green peppercorn sauce and Hunter sauce are my next favorites in the classic lines. and of course the Thai sweet chile sauce of which I have waxed rhapsodic on other threads.

I have visited a couple (along with a friend who knows them quite well) who are from Morocco but he lived for many years in Madagasgar where his father was a spice merchant. He prepares a spiced coffee which is a "secret" even his wife says she does not know. He has a rather odd vessel in which he roasts the coffee beans, and I suppose the spices too. It is brass and shaped sort of like an hourglass but the bottom is slightly rounded and sets into a ring over a small charcoal brazier. The "waist" of the thing has a cork collar around it so it can be grasped without burning the hands and the top is open. Actually it looks sort of like one of the old Chemex coffee makers except for the rounded bottom. He swirls the thing around and around as the beans and spices are roasting and then dumps everything into a brass mortar when it smells right. I know it includes pepper becaue I can taste it and cinnamon as I think those two are traditional in Moroccan spiced coffee. However I believe I could taste a hint of cloves and possibly mace but I am not sure what else. There is a faint lemony note that might be from sumac, but he really was not at all forthcoming about his recipe. He puts the pounded coffee/spice mixture in a tin-lined copper vessel, sort of like an ibrik but different than any others I have seen, pours in hot water and continues to heat it over the brazier until it boils. Unlike Turkish coffee, he doesn't wait for the grounds to settle, he simply strains the coffee into another of the ibrik-styled vessels and serves it immediately in what I would call tea glasses, with silver holders. Neat little things that hold about 4 ounces. It is delicious as is but is even better with a bit of sugar. His wife offered it and says she can't drink the coffee without some sweetener. If it had been available, I would probably have added a tiny bit of cream. I am not a purist and I love the taste of cream in coffee.

That is my problem. I can't decide on a "favorite" because I have different favorites depending on the day of the week, my mood, the weather, what food is in the house, who is visiting, how much my feet hurt and whether or not there is a full moon......

One could simply pick some vine leaves, steam them and taste. That is what I did when I first began using mine. I also get some from a neighbor (who has huge old vines (planted more than 30 years ago) that cover a very large arbor. One is a red grape that is full of seeds but very sweet, one is a white grape, also full of seeds and one is the tiny grapes often sold in the stores as "champagne" grapes. A younger vine that he planted to replace one that died about 10 years ago is a very large black grape that has only a couple of seeds in each grape. Carmine makes what he calls vino tavolo from a combination of these grapes. I don't drink anything with alcohol so can't say how it tastes but I have used it in cooking and have made vinegar from it. The black grape has huge leaves, some are 8 or 9 inches across. The mature leaves have three large ribs in each leaf that have to be trimmed out because they do not soften in steaming. They taste good though.

When I bought the Oxiria, the Gelato Chef was not yet available, or I didn't see it and I looked at just about every vendor that carried these appliances. They do look exactly alike except for the color. The only other one I considered was the Lussino 4080 but the 45 pound weight put me off. I wanted something I could take with me when I went to visit (and cook) at the homes of my friends, or to the office when we have a party. Both the little Gelato II and the Oxiria are transportable. (On the other hand, my old Simac weighed almost 80 pounds and it was NEVER moved except when a service man had to pick it up to take it in to be recharged.) These new units are wonderful.

This is a better machine, for less money. Makes 1 1/2 quarts see it here And this is a 1 quart machine for even less money and it works very nicely. I have one as it is easier to carry around than the bigger machines.

How can I decide. I love salsa and I certainly am extroverted. . . However I also love mustard and haven't been considered shy since grade school. Also love barbecue sauce and we are back to extroverted again.. Horseradish, ditto... What about another favorite, in fact maybe most favorite of all, the Thai or SE Asian sweet chile sauce (which I buy by the case 'cause I don't want to run out). Where does it fit, I wonder. Steak sauce is not mentioned but there are so many restaurants where it has a place of honor on every table - right next to the Tabasco. Commercial mayonnaise is probably my least favorite. I do like some salad dressings, but they are not the regular commercial variety. We have a local company that makes and bottles, in small production runs, a limited selection of interesting and very flavorful salad dressing/marinades. All natural ingredients, no preservatives or unknown chemicals. Vidalia onion, poppy seed, papaya and lime with a hint of chile is my favorite, makes a great dip for vegetables as well as a salad dressing and a marinade for chicken. Honey, roasted sesame, garlic and lemon is another. Mostly, I appreciate the link to The Association for Dressings and Sauces web site. This is one I had not come across prior to reading this article. It is great! Thanks so much for posting it, GG.

Ketchup tied for FAVORITE with salsa!

The main problem with these ice cream/sorbet makers with the jacket that has to be kept in the freezer is that it can't get any colder than the temperature of your freezer and that is not cold enough to make really good ice cream. The old-fashioned ice cream makers, in which you had a metal cylinder that turned insize a bigger container that held ice and salt, worked so well because once the rock salt is mixed with the ice it will drop the temperature to minus-5 degrees and it will maintain that temperature steadily with no fluxation up or down for at least an hour. The jackets may be close to zero when they come out of the freezer but within a few minutes that temperature will have risen (you can check it yourself by putting cold water in the thing and using an instant-read thermometer) and while you can achieve a soft-serve consistancy, you will never get the consistancy that you would have gotten in one of the White Mountain-type freezers. By the time you have been running the machine for the 25 or 30 minutes it takes to reach a semi-frozen states, it will have become too warm to maintain it. You can, of course, transfer it to another jacket, newly removed from the freezer, but that is assuming you have a second one. Otherwise you have to put the mixture in the freezer to let it firm up and really should take it out and mix it before it gets completely hard to make sure it is the right consistency.

I have one of these however I paid full price. Now it is on sale so I am going to buy another. I have a 70 mile trip to work (140 mi round trip) and this is the only thing that keeps my tea hot for the entire trip. I ration my sips so as to not have to make any "relief" stops. The 16 oz size is just perfect for the distance.

Actually I like it better than Starbucks and it is a heck of a lot cheaper. I took it in to the office yesterday and between the two doctors and their 5 employees who drink coffee, they went through 3 bags (18 each, a total of 54) of the pods, two dark, one medium. They would have used more but I only took three bags with me. One of the docs was going to stop at Target on the way home and buy one for the office. At least one of the "girls" is also buying one. She wants something that is foolproof and turns itself off automatically so this fills the bill. She said she was tired of brewing a pot of coffee, drinking half a cup and throwing out the rest. She said that for what she has been spending at Starbucks, she will have the unit paid for in three or four weeks! It doesn't pretend to be espresso, in the brochures that come in the box it states it is coffee, just an easier way to prepare it almost instantly and have a fresh-brewed cup every time. Actually it is faster than instant coffee unless you already have hot water prepared.

This is way OT but since you asked - - I will try to be a brief as possible. I work for an orthopedic surgeon but only work two or three days a week, we do med-legal evaluations on work comp injuries. He hasn't done surgery for several years. I manage the office of which we sublease most of to three other doctors. (It takes up most of one floor in a 6-story medical building). I help manage their staff and handle their computer problems. I do all the transcription for my boss but since I type well over 100 wpm it doesn't take me long. I also do all the bookkeeping, for both the business and his personal stuff, much of which I can do from home. I live 70 miles from work so he doesn't care if I work from home as long as I get all the work done. I live on slightly less than two acres in a semi-rural area in Lancaster, Ca. This is the "high" desert, over 2000 ft altitude so we do not get as hot as down around Palm Springs in the summer and get a lot colder in winter, well below freezing. I was born and raised on a farm (65 years ago) and love to do all the traditional cooking, canning, drying, preserving, bread-baking, cheesemaking and so on. I like to experiment with doing things in a non-traditional way to make it easier and faster, i.e., preserves in the microwave, candied peel in the microwave, etc. I have a very large garden and a smaller kitchen garden next to the house in addition to a fairly large greenhouse. I can no longer handle all the gardening myself but have a great gardener who works three days a week and several very kind neighbors who are more than happy to help out in return for produce and various things I make. In my immediate area people have horses, cows, goats, sheep, llamas, ostrich, emu, gineau fowl, chickens and wildfowl. The only animals not allowed are pigs (except for pets). I "rent" sheep to keep the front lawn "mowed" and gineau fowl to "work" the big garden for bugs. New acquaintances are always surprised that I cook so much when I live alone but after they have experienced one of our neighborhood gatherings, they understand. I have a vast array of friends with whom I exchange various items I produce and I test recipes for friends who are chefs, bakers, etc. It saves them time and it is fun for me. (I worked as a personal chef in my "free" time for many years.) I started a thread on making condiments in the home. I grow my own mustard and prepare a basic one that can have all kinds of additions to suit just about every taste. I grow a lot of different kinds of hot peppers and make all kinds of salsas and sauces in addition to collecting commercial ones.

I have a lot of friends who are amateur cooks and I aim the gift at what they like to cook. If they have no need for the things I make myself, (canned fruits, preserves, dried fruits, and so on) I usually take them a slab of very good chocolate and package it with some recipes I have printed on heavy paper and laminated along with one or more tools for working with chocolate. The point of giving a very fine chocolate such as this, is that they can either use it for cooking or it can be broken up and eaten as-is. A few months back I took a 5 kilo block of Callebaut semi-sweet and a chocolate breaker as a hostess gift to a cocktail / dinner party since I knew that my friends had recently become interested in working with chocolate. They immediately unwrapped the slab, put in on a tray and used the breaker to carve off chunks from one end. They set it out for their guests to try if they wanted a sweet instead of canapés with their drinks. There are smaller "Home Chef" chocolate bars offered by Scharffen Berger, Guittard, Valrhona, Schokinag, etc., so you could take a selection of different types.

Lordy, lordy, lordy, GG. You have yet again come up with a great topic. That being said, I have no idea where I fit in the scheme of things, being a universal condiment fancier. You know of course that I make my own mustards, ketchups, salsas, chutneys, sambals and hot sauces. I also "collect" a great many odd and interesting condiments, including all of the above. Also people send me things. Sometimes very odd things. A chef friend sent me a sort of mustard/pepper/curry and something else sauce from South Africa called "Mother-In-Law's Tongue" Isn't that a great name? (I had sent him a bunch of Chile Tepin and Chile Pequin I had picked and dried.) I have no idea how many hot sauces I have but let us just say that when I visit a shop that specializes in these I stock up........ usually buying duplicates just in case they decide to discontinue one and I will have a backup if I use the first one up. For a time I had a neat cabinet in the hall next to kitchen that had narrow shelves, just one bottle deep, for display purposes. That has long since been filled and the excess racked in old plastic milk crates in the pantry. I love shops where they let you taste the samples. At one shop they offered me a little wicker basket about 8 inches square in which to put my selections. Instead I went out to my van and brought in MY shopping basket which would hold several of those little ones. At one of the Firey Foods shows I attended a few years ago, I took my folding wheeled shopping basket. By the third day of the show some of the vendors were coming out to meet me when they saw me coming down the aisles. If I were forced to flee the house and was told I could only take one condiment with me, I would probably have to be dragged out by force because it would be impossible for me to make a decision about something that important in the little time allowed. I love them all, sometimes in combination. Talk about your fusion cuisine............. An Indonesian sambal mixed with a grainy mustard and then evened out with home made mayonnaise makes for a unique and delicious condiment to use in a sandwich with meat, cheese, etc.

I don't brown the roast first. The salt crust gets very hot. Try it with a very small roast first. I buy the coarse kosher salt in 3 pound boxes at Smart & Final.

I haven't noticed any off flavors in the leaves. My varieties are a Muscat and a Crimson seedless grafted onto the same rootstock. The muscat leaves are lighter in color and a little smaller than the seedless but I use both with good results.

Maybe that is also the reason the Ford "Pinto" did not sell well in Brazil, or other Portugese-speaking countries???

The salt doesn't exactly season the meat, its purpose is to form a shell in which the meat cooks and it slows down the loss of moisture from the roast. It is very juicy. I really don't season the meat much before cooking, I occasionally insert slivers of garlic just under the surface if I know the people for whom I am preparing it like garlic. Otherwise I make an au jus but not from these pan drippings, which are too salty, and this is seasoned, it is generally enough. If someone wants to add more salt and pepper, that is an individual preference. I don't advise inexperienced cooks to do the entire rack of ribs but I often do but I have a very large oven and roast it on a full-sized sheet pan. Then when I am ready to serve, I cut the roast in half and stand one half on end with the center up for those who like rare and the other half with the end up for those who like well done roast beef (and a fair number do and the end cuts are always very popular). Several years ago I bought 6 of the ham or roast stands which are great for positioning large cuts of meat for carving. It also makes a great presentation, carving off a serving horizontally then sliding it straight onto a plate. I have a beautiful custom made knife with a 14-inch blade that I use for slicing.

I bring water from home in to my office. I have a very deep well (1500 ft) which taps the Mojave aquifer and the water is very "sweet" in fact it is better than any bottled water I have ever tasted. My well has to be inspected and certified every two years (there has never been any industrial or farming activity right in this area and my well is not what is considered a "surface" well which have to be inspected every six months to a year). As far as I know, mine is the only deep well in my immediate area. In the Agua Dulce area most of the wells produce very good water (Agua Dulce means sweet water) but a few miles further west and the well water is very poor and since there has been a fair amount of mining and industrial activity some of the wells are not potable. Certain parts of Los Angeles have pretty good water and in other parts it is ghastly. For a while the water at the office had a smell like mildew and we had the water district out to test it. They said they only had to make sure there were no pathogens or dangerous chemicals, they didn't have to make it taste or smell good. Blech! I try and keep up with the news on the water quality competitions. I remember when New York City water won the best in the USA competition. I also think Evian is vastly over rated. Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead are good and I got Arrowhead in big tanks when the well casing had to be repaired after the earthquake in '94. Fortunately it was in January and my garden did not need watering at the time. I simply will not buy water in restaurants. If they won't give me tap water, I decide I no not need to eat there and if I am with a group I simply order coffee (they never have good tea). I am perfectly willing to sit there with my coffee while the rest of my party eats. It is funny how quickly they find that yes, they do indeed have tap water and will even put ice in it - - - no charge!

For many years I had a Simac ice cream freezer that finally died, the coolant kept leaking out and it got to be very expensive to recharge it. I now have two, one of the small Lello Gelato makers $199.00 and one that is a little bit bigger, this one. It is slightly larger and makes a slightly large batch but is still small enough to move around. I use them all the time because they are right there, ready to go any time. I make up several batches of a basic recipe and store in a large container in the fridge and just pour enough into the freezer for one batch, adding the particular flavor I want (such as blackcurrant syrup, peach or preserves, or fresh strawberries macerated in sugar. Tomato/basil sorbet is on the menu for this evening. This weekend I am going to make a fresh coconut gelato to top individual pineapple upside-down cakes I am making for a birthday party. It gives it a sort of piña colado taste.

If the leaves are large enough, I would use them. I have a vine that doesn't produce a lot of grapes but does produce lovely large leaves that are great for dolmas, etc. I also use some to wrap some of the cheeses I make. I use this recipe. with excellent results.

I can't answer the question as to whether other pods will fit the Senseo. I believe there is a caveat that the guarantee is void if non-branded pods are used in the unit. Jerry Able, the friend who sent me the Senseo, told me last night that he has been told that the company will probably expand the line of coffees offered if sales of the Senseo and its current offerings become popular enough and there are requests for different varieties. If the demand is there, eventually it will be met. After all, it wasn't that many years ago when ground coffee in the tins were just about all people knew about and only one person in one hundred thousand had any idea that coffee was grown anywhere except in South America! (And a pound was actually a pound.....) As I stated in the beginning, I am generally a tea person, hot tea mostly, only rarely iced. However I have really taken to this stuff, it tastes better to me than regular brewed coffee and doesn't have the bitter base note that is an integral part of regular espresso. I have a lot of friends who are real connoisseurs of espresso and can determine the degree of roast, the type and grade of the coffee bean and so on, from just a taste. I doubt that they would consider this an acceptable substitute for the real thing but knowing how much they like cofee per se, they would probably drink it happily if nothing else were available. I think for people with less money, not a lot of room (my monster machine takes up a lot more room, probably close to 18 inches square, and also weighs close to 40 pounds), this little machine, smaller than some coffeemakers, and brews a cup very rapidly, this is an excellent compromise. I can see it becoming very popular among college kids, singles with limited income, people in offices with not a lot of time for lunch breaks. There is a similar machine (Black & Decker Home Café) being heavily advertised but it has a larger mug and appears to make regular coffee, however I haven't actually looked at one. In any event, I think this is a rather novel idea and should do well. Often things appear when the time is ready for them. I have a coffee maker that I bought in 1969 called an Expressolator, made by Corning. It is very similar to a French press but has an electric element at the bottom that heated the glass carafe and also has a cloth filter that was supposed to go over the press plate and filter the coffee. It was discontinued within a few months of its introduction and not many were sold. That was the era of the stovetop and electric percolator or the Silex, etc., vacuum coffee makers and people were comfortable with those. Something too different was not accepted. It was not until many years later that French press pots became the thing to have and they sold well. Their era had arrived. Now there are as many ways of preparing coffee as there are types of coffee, even the electric percolate is making a limited comeback. I collect "vintage" and antique electric appliances. I don't know how many coffee makers I actually have but probably over 100, the earliest a 1903 Edison-Mazda with art nouveau embelisshments. It still works.

I use the Bourbon beans from the Vanilla Company for making extract. I use Everclear, 95% grain alcohol which extracts much more flavor than even 100 proof vodka. It is not legal to sell in all states but one can buy it and transport it without penalty. The extract made with this product is far superior to other home made products I have tried and to many commercial products. There is no residual flavor from other sources and more of the complex flavors of the vanilla can be both scented and tasted in the product. I have been making my own flavorings for many years and have had good success. If you can't find a source for Everclear near where you live, it is available on the 'net. Otherwise use the strongest vodka you can get. It makes a world of difference in extracting the flavor. The only other way to get the full benefit of the extract is to use a distillation process which requires an investment in some relatively inexpensive laboratory glassware.

I use celeriac as one of the vegetables in my slow-roasted vegetable medley which I always prepare when I do a large pork roast for parties. The vegetables can be roasted ahead of time and actually taste better the next day. It consists of potatoes, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, onions, celery, kohlrabi, poblano or other mild chile and garlic. Drizzled and tossed with enough olive oil to coat, sprinkled with kosher salt and coarsely ground pepper and a little chopped rosemary, then roasted for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 275 degrees, stirring occasionally. I seldom have any leftovers. Too bad, because this is great heated in a skillet in which bacon or sausage has been cooked, to accompany a nice breakfast of eggs and etc.