andiesenji

A profound statement. Utterly true. Pepper has an effect on the tastebuds that makes them "wake up" and the flavors of the food are enhanced. Try an experiment. Take a slice of ripe honeydew melon. Cut it in half. lightly salt and pepper one half. Take alternate bites and see which piece has more flavor. Any melon will do, but the effect is more pronounced with the honeydew.

This should read as follows: To get the peel from citrus, cut off the top and bottom. Then, using a spoon with a rounded tip, such as a soup spoon, work the spoon down between

Sounds interesting. Could you give us a few more details? Do you just dump everything in the crockpot or do you start on the stove first? High or low setting? And any other tips you may have would be much appreciated. I remove the peel from citrus, simmer for 10 minutes in three changes of water (total of 30 minutes) then set aside until cool. I then cut it into fine strips. I press the pulp through a food mill to remove the membrane and seeds. For each pound of peel I use 1 1/2 pounds of sugar and add enough water to the juice/pulp mixture to make up 2 cups. I put everything into the crockpot and turn it to high and let it cook for about 2 1/2 hours, until the peel is very tender and appears translucent. Thicker peel, such as grapefruit may take an additional 1/2 hour. I test it by putting a spoonful in a saucer and letting it cool, If it sets up so it doesn't run off the saucer when tipped, it is done. There are numerous recipes for marmalades on various web sites. I rarely follow recipes exactly. I generally use them for ideas. I have been making these for so long that I generally just eyeball it. Check the archives on homecooking.about.com or nikibone.com. They even have carrot marmalade. To get the peel from citrus, cut off the top and bottom, using a spoon with a rounded tip, such as a soup spoon, work the spoon down between the rind and the flesh first from one end and then from the other. When completely free, make a single cut down one side and you can flatten the entire peel in one long strip. Makes it every easy to cut. I use this method to cut peel for candying. Once you get the knack of this you can go through a dozen in short ov

Absolutely true. But I have lived places where one simply cannot get shallots....like in the middle of Alaska in the dead of winter.

I agree that onions can be a reasonable substitute for shallots in many applications. However the subtle flavor that has just a hint of garlic really can't be developed by combining onion and garlic. There is also a difference in texture when the sauces are not strained and in a reduction the flavor becomes more intense but never overpowers the other flavors as onion can. A good taste test is to simply blend finely minced shallot with butter, spread it on a slice of bread and toast briefly under the broiler. Try the same exercise with onion and you will notice the difference. Incidentally, shallots are very easy to grow even in a window box. One bulb will morph into 2, 3 or more in about 65 to 100 days. Dry conditions encourages them to divide and multiply. The green tops can be used also. Tasting raw shallots simply can't give one the full range of flavor that develops with heat and exposure to fat.

I have to second the motion for Rose's Lime Marmalade. It is my favorite commercial marmalade. On an English muffin with real butter - Heaven. I make a lot of marmalade because I use it in cooking and making condiments. Home grown ginger marmalade or a combination of ginger/lemon, ginger/lime or ginger/orange are probably my favorite homemades. Since Seville oranges are seldom seen in California markets, I get the canned Seville oranges at Cost Plus World Market and combine it with fresh quince, about 1/4 quince to 3/4 orange. The middle eastern market in town carries quince when they are no longer available in the regular markets. The quince tempers the bitterness of the orange just enough. If I have the time and the inclination I will make a trip to Ojai, Calif. where one grower sells the little sour oranges which are the rootstock onto which most oranges are grafted. They make an interesting marmalade. I make marmalade wih the ruby red grapefruit sold by the box at Costco. I have made my own lime marmalade but it is not as good as Rose's. I did make a lemon/lime marmalade that was pretty good. I tried making marmalade using blood oranges and Meyer lemons but it was a bit too sweet. ditto the kumquat marmalade I used to make when I had a tree that bore heavily every other year. I never did get the taste exactly right. I generally use a crockpot for cooking the marmalade. I have seen a lot of recipes for marmalades made with non-citrus fruits, peach, pear, pineapple, and at one Farmer's Market a vendor had a sign advertising 15 types of marmalade, 10 flavors of fruit curds, 10 fruit butters, etc. Most of the marmalades I would consider jam but that is just my opinion.

You can also check out http://www.exit109.com/~mstevens/chileheads.html Where you can find a list of links to all things chile. Mary Going, AKA Firegirl has the Inner Beauty sauce listed. At the very bottom of the page click on Hot-Links for lists of restaurants and resources for hot and spicy foods.

It is like a cross between a blender and a food processor. The chamber is shallow enough that everything keeps moving instead of some being thrown up onto the sides away from the blades. Also, the interlock system is safe in that it cannot operate without the cover in place.

Chad, For more detailed information about which chiles are from a particular area, and their attributes, you can check at Susan Byers' (AKA The Chile Woman) site. http://www.thechilewoman.com/searchchiles.html by geographical area. Or http://www.thechilewoman.com/chilesbyalph.html by alphabetical name. This list also indicates the ones that are suitable for containers. Also those that are super hot. I have ordered the African Piri Piri for the first time this year among some other old favorites. If you want to grow your own, she has an extensive selection of plants, all organically grown. I have never been disappointed, all of my orders arrived in good condition, no plant loss. I make various sambals - these require very hot chiles and often these are simply not available in stores. Most of these plants are relatively pest-free and just a few plants can provide you with a year's supply. Quite a few can be maintained over the winter indoors in containers.

I use ricotta salata on fruit pizza. Combined with peaches the contrasting flavors are wonderful. I order it from Ideal Chees Shop in NYC. http://www.idealcheese.com/ as there is no local source in California. I also use it in savory cheesecakes as a substitute for farmer's cheese. and in strata, layered with tomatoes, onions and peppers. Crumbled it goes into salads, both vegetable and fruit, and as a topping for other savory dishes where one would use feta.

The Girmi is available at several online vendors. This one has it for $74.95 http://www.harvestessentials.com/girchopgrinm.html

I had one of the early Sumeet models but it did not perform as well as I had anticipated. I was using it to make sambals and with small amounts some of the ingredients clumped and were not mixed well. The clear dome quickly became opaque due to abrasion from hard materials. I bought one of the Girmi mincer/chopper/grinders which has an 8-oz capacity and is 550 watts. It has worked quite well and grinds everything from dry seeds and beans to fresh ginger, herbs, dried fruits, etc. It is also less expensive than the Sumeet. I rarely buy specialized appliances if a multipurpose one is available I use the Vita-Mix for many things but it does stall when working thick pastes (A safety feature) but this little appliance is perfect for making sambals and mustards (also grinding horseradish but I take it outside for that) For large amounts of flour I have a grain mill - I do a lot of baking and prefer to grind my own whole grains as the flours often become rancid rapidly but these are unsuitable for anything with more than 17% moisture.

TRUE MARZIPAN 4 cup blanched almonds ground very fine 6 bitter almonds ground very fine set aside. In a sauce pan mix: 1 cup Sugar 1/2 cup Water Boil to softball stage; cool till it can be touched without burning your finger. add: 1/4 cup Orange juice 1 tb Rose water * 1/2 oz Pure almond extract Mix almonds, syrup and rest of ingredients in a bowl. Turn out on a board dusted with powdered sugar. Knead until smooth, store well covered in refrigerator for about a week. Roll small balls to be dipped in chocolate Roll out into a slab about 3/8 inch thick and cut into shapes with small cuters. Paint with colors or dip in chocolate. or use in any way desired. *Rose water is available at any middle eastern market or at a pharmacy. Marchpane and Marzipan Marchpane was the medieval precursor of Marzipan. A wonderful amalgam of sugar and pulverized almonds, it was pounded in a mortar and rolled out into a sheet, then crisped and given a toasty flavor by being baked in the oven. A food processor or blender speeds things up tremendously. I find that a blender does a better job of compacting the processed almonds into the firm mass that you would expect from a pestle and mortar. Sometimes it was iced, using a mixture of ordinary sugar and rose water (not confectioners' sugar). The icing was baked onto the marchpane, forming a crispy, crunchy coating. At other times cookie cutters were used to cut out shapes of animals. The problem with it was that it could only be used in flat sheets and crumbled away very easily. By the Victorian era, marzipan was made by the addition of an egg and sometimes brandy or sherry, resulting in a much more malleable sweetmeat that would hold its shape. Three-dimensional animals could be made, marzipan fruits and cake decorations. Marzipan was often used to stuff sugarplums and other candied fruits, filling the hole vacated by the pit. Sometimes in the larger fruits like peaches, an almond was wrapped in marzipan first, and then tucked inside. Homemade marzipan is as different from the dry, sawdust-like, boxed commercial "marzipan fruits" as you can imagine. It is soft, succulent, and intensely flavorful - especially when improved with a good dash of brandy. To Make a Marchpane "Take two pounds of Almondes beeing blanched and dryed in a seive over the fire. Beate them in a stone mortar, and when they be small, mix with them two pound of sugar being finely beaten, adding two or three spoonfuls of Rosewater, and that will keep your almondes from oiling. When your paste is beaten fine, drive it thin with a rowling pin, and so laye it on a bottome of wafers. Then raise up a little edge on the side, and so bake it. Then ice it with a little Rosewater and sugar, and put it in the oven againe. When you see your ice is risen up and drie, then take it out of the oven and garnish it with pretty conceits, as birds and beasties, being caste out of standing moulds. Sticke long comfits upright in it, cast bisket and carrowaies in it, and so serve it. Gild it before you serve it. You may also print off this marchpane paste in your moulds for banquetting dishes." Recipe taken from: Delights for Ladies, to Adorne their Persons, Tables,Closets, and Distillatories, With Bewties, Banquets, Perfumes and Waters. By Sir Hugh Plat. 1600

I can assure you, you don't want to do this. I successfully grew some of these a few summers ago, and well, lets just say, they aren't really usable in food. I ended up putting mine in the food drier and grinding it into chile powder... and mixing it with WEAKER chiles. Stuff is way, way, way too hot. There are a lot of things to do with habaneros or red savinas or any of the super hot peppers. I grow the tiny chile tepin and chile pequin in addition to habaneros, Scotch bonnets and rocotos. The latter are very hot but have a wonderful apple flavor. If you ever want answers about chiles, post a question on the Chile-Heads list and you will get plenty of answers. There are chile growers, commercial vendors and afficianados from all over the world and all are enthusiastic. http://www.exit109.com/~mstevens/chileheads.html Habanero brownies, chipotle brownies, have been recent topics. I have been a member for several years. I have attended several "Hot-Lucks" where everyone brings something made with chiles. I have candied chile pequin (the original Red-Hots) and mixed them into a dense moist chocolate cake. Not for wimps, but very popular with the gang at the hotluck. Served with milk, which acts as an antidote to the capsaicin - the casein in the milk locks onto the capsaicin and carries it away.

I have a Vita-Mix blender that I used for dried chiles, grains, etc. http://www.vita-mix.com/ It has a separate container that is used for dry grinding, wheat, oats, rye, beans, etc. I have my current one for 9 years and prior to that had one for 17 years, it suffered an accident or would probably still be working. It may seem like it is expensive but when you figure how many years it will last, it works out to be cheaper than buying several less expensive machines. 2+ peak horsepower drives the unit.

A lot of cheese is made in California and much of it is good. However, when I want an ethnic or specialty cheese I order it from Ideal Cheese Shop in NYC. http://www.idealcheese.com/tour.htm They are great to deal with, their cheeses are outstanding and they have been voted the best cheese shop for a reason. Their regular buffalo mozz is excellent and I order it on a regular basis. They also carry, when available, the Buratta mozz, which is incredible. Check the site http://www.idealcheese.com/catalog/italy.htm or give them at call at:800-382-0109 or Fax 212-223-1245 and ask when it will be available. Try the ricotta salata it is a very interesting cheese with which to cook. Similar to a farmer's cheese but with more tang.

Actually I dock the pastry after rolling it to the desired thickness, cut the circles then turn a jumbo muffin tin upside-down and form the pastry around the bottoms of the tins, pleating and smoothing it to fit. I add a sheet of baking parchment over the entire bottom of the tin , then place a sheet pan on the top to keep the paper in place. (Otherwise the convection fan will blow it off.) The weight of the sheet pan keeps the bottoms from blistering and gravity keeps the sides in place. If you have the individual fluted tart tins you can turn them upside down, form the pastry over and around them and place them on a sheet pan to bake them off. Again, cover the bottoms with a sheet of parchment and weight it down with another sheet pan until they are partially baked. After 7 or 8 minutes you can remove the sheet pan and the parchment to check on the color of the crust. I bake it until it just begins to show color. I place the baked shells in the mini disposable aluminum pie tins - they just fit - to maintain their integrity after they are filled.

I like the yogurt cultures from this vendor: http://www.healthgoods.com/Shopping/Applia...gurt_Makers.asp I use my Excalibur dehydrator for making yogurt because it holds a large container. We have a yogurt maker at the office that holds a carton of milk, as mentioned in an earlier post. It was ordered from this vendor by one of the employees: http://www.juiceandgrain.com/item179.html I have purchased other items from them, a fermenting crock for sauerkraut, a grain mill, one of my dehydrators and a pressure cooker. The prices are excellent and they are very nice to deal with. Customer service is excellent. I have a friend who lives in Glendale and it was she that first recommended this vendor when I was trying to find the fermenting crock.

To my taste, the Vidalia is perfect for the gurkensalat I have been making for 50-some years. Originally it was Bermuda onions but in California markets those seem to have gone the way of the Dodo. I just bought a bag of Vidalias at CostCo and they are lovely. I saw the segment on Vidalias on TV and like the young woman who bit into one, I can eat them raw. My first tomato from the garden is ripe enough to eat, so, I have sliced it and am applying it and slices of a Vidalia to a slice of sourdough just now cool enough to cut and spread with a thin layer of sour cream.

My kitchen is certified because at one time I was doing some contract work for a caterer. Much of my equipment is commercial, most bought at auctions when a business was closing. My Blodgett oven came from a tv studio where food shows were taped. When they moved to a new building they sold off all their equipment and installed new. Preparing the walls and floor and putting in a high powered exhaust system cost more than I paid for the oven.

I made some burlap "tents" actually these are cylinder of burlap which I put around the bays when the weather begins to get very cold at night (late November) but leave it bunched around the base of the little tree. I have a large bag of leaves next to each tree so that when the news says we are going to have very low overnight temps I can pull the burlap up, stuff leaves into it and staple it together over the top of the tree. That is just enough insulation to keep it from freezing and still allow me access to the leaves when I need them. One is in a more exposed area and that one has its own little string of holiday lights which gets plugged in and a large plastic bag (actually a lawn furniture cover) goes over the top when the temps are going to be in single digits. The small amount of heat from the lights is enough to protect the tree from temps that have been as low as 2. I also have these lights in some of my large pepper plants which are now several years old. These are the chile tepin and pequin which are wild plants and not strictly annual plants. I kept a tomato plant going through the winter year before last with these lights and a plastic tent. I had brandywine tomatoes off the vine for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Gardening has always been one of my favorite activities. I have an extensive herb and vegetable garden. Because of arthritis much of it is now in large containers or raised beds and I need help with the heavy stuff but I still enjoy it. I have some answers for various questions. Re: horse manure for composting. To kill the seeds in it all you need to do is spread it in an even layer, no more than about 10 inches deep. Cover it with clear plastic sheeting (drop "cloths" from your local paint shop works well. Stake it down all around or weight edges with bricks or rocks. Two weeks of sunlight will pretty much "cook" any weed seeds that are in the manure. Remove the plastic, let the manure dry out for a few days then add it to your compost. I have a regular compost tumbler, also two large worm composting bins outside and one inside for kitchen scraps. The worm castings are super for container gardening. I am located in the "high" desert in southern California. It gets cold in the winter and summer temps can be well over 100. There are a lot of adjustments one has to make for gardening in these conditions. One advantage is that many of the most popular herb plants evolved around the Mediterranean area and the climate here is much like that. Rosemary grows like a weed. Dwarf plants grow to the size of regular plants and the regular ones are enormous. Sweet bay, Laurel nobilis, is not supposed to grow here because winter temps can get to single digits but mine have done well outside with minimal protection. I have no problem with drainage - sitting on 600 feet of sand over the Mojave aquifer in this ancient seabed. If I want to grow something that likes a semi-moist setting I have to construct a separate mini-climate. I am able to grow marshmallow and similar plants. The nearly constant wind is a problem. Combined with high temperatures it can suck the moisture out of plants in very short order. Shade cloth works as a wind screen as well as providing shade, just have to mount it on a trellis vertically. Containers can bake in the sun and cook the roots of plants. However it is simple to set a plant pot inside a larger one and fill the space between with a barrier that can be as simple as sand and shredded paper (I take all the shredded paper home from the office) or vermiculite, then soak this with water when the temps exceed 100, evaporation keeps the inner pot cool. For things that I want to leave in the ground over the winter (such as ginger) I simply buy several bales of straw, break them apart and cover the bed with several inches of the straw. In the spring the straw is raked up and goes into the compost. Garlic is treated the same. I plant garlic in the early spring for a late autumn harvest and in September for the following early summer harvest. "Spring" garlic has the same flavor, it is just in a single bulb instead of divided.

Slugs love borage, it attracts them like beer. I grow my borage in pots with diatomaceous earth surrounding the base of the pot. They are only active at night so you might go out with a flashlight two or three hours after dark and check. If you find slugs kill them. If you see their trails put out some slug traps. I carry a large salt shaker with me and sprinkle them with salt which is an instant killer.

I miss abalone. It was available at every fish restaurant along the California coast but my favorite was the restaurant at Marineland of the Pacific... Many restaurants in "touristy" places are just so-so but that place was a white tablecloth/real silver flatware, restaurant and their abalone steak dinner with the potatoes Anna and asparagus was superb.

One end of my kitchen is at the front of the house on the driveway side and there is a lot of foot traffic in my area. I often have neighbors wander over and ask about my baking. The aroma draws a lot of attention, espcially during the pre-holiday baking marathons in the fall. I enlist some of my neighbors to help in packaging things to be shipped. I bake plenty of extras for them to take home. Whenever I have need of any minor handyman work I can depend on one of the neighbor's husbands, sons or in one case, brother, to do the little tasks. My gardener and his crew always time their appearance for late enough in the day that the baking is finished and I send them off with various goodies. I also bake for the local center for battered women and children at least a couple of times a month. The senior citizen's center already has several seniors who themselves bake for the center but occasionally I help out with a fund raiser.