Nancy in Pátzcuaro
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Posts posted by Nancy in Pátzcuaro
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Crosby Stills Nash and Young on the Pandora station. Sometimes Creedence. Or Lila Downs for an education in the great Mexican women singers. Chavela Vargas, anyone?
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Our local chile, chile peron, is reliably hot but probably not available in your area. It's yellow, sometimes bright red, with black seeds. Those of us in the know make sure to exclude the central veins, which is the hottest part. Another name is chile manzana, apple chile, because that's kinda what it looks like--round and squat. It's popular among thrill seekers to drink mezcal from a hollowed chile peron (seeds and central vein removed) for a real kick. Often it's something that one does only once, unwilling to repeat the experience.
For the most part we use serranos because they're reliably hot, but we use chiles peron for guacamole. I've never found poblanos to be mild and/or tasteless. I use them routinely for chiles rellenos or other applications like a poblano-cheese-egg breakfast dish I often make.
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Eat shaggy mane mushrooms quickly--they "autodigest" which means they almost immediately begin to turn black and drippy. Hence the name "inky cap." The ones Luizhou posted look very fresh indeed. But I still don't care for them because they make my throat itch and close up, plus they're not the tastiest mushroom in the forest. IMO.
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I forgot to mention that otherwise perfectly edible wild mushrooms may cause allergic reactions. A good friend (and excellent cook) can't eat chanterelles because his throat closes up, which is undesirable for a number of reasons. I can't eat any of the the inky caps for the same reason. Fortunately I don't really care for them, but it would be a real downer if I couldn't eat chanterelles. By the way, alcohol and the entire inky cap familly (coprinus, I believe, but I haven't looked it up) do not play well together. So no wine with dinner if you're eating any of them.
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I've always heard (from mycologists) that no mushroom gathered in the wild should be eaten raw. Even the most benign wild mushroom like boletus edulis (porcini) must be cooked. I once sent a very critical note to a cooking magazine (many years ago) about a recipe that left the porcinis raw in a recipe. I didn't expect a response, but was surprised to receive one, acknowledging the error. So putting raw or barely cooked morels in the sushi was a big mistake, one that caused serious consequences.
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Interestingly (at least to me), in Spanish the word for "nail" and "clove" are the same--clavo. In this case context is everything.
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Could the streaks be the result of a virus - like this?
No, because the brown streaks in my potatoes were long and thin, about thread-sized. In the center the flesh is slightly discolored but there aren't any large blobs like in your photo.
By the way, it's really hard to photograph this problem because the streaks are so thin and the center is only slightly darker than the rest of the flesh. FWIW, I'm leaning toward either poor growing conditions (too much water, as was suggested) or improper storage treatment. I do know that keeping potatoes in the fridge will change the starch/sugar balance.
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The only potatoes we can easily buy are white potatoes. A few vendors in the mercado sell what seem to be a variant of russets. The white potatoes make mashed potatoes gummy and gluey (but they are good for boiling), so we search out the russets. . My problem is that when I buy white potatoes I sometimes discover that the entire potato has small brown streaks just under the skin into the middle of the potato. I suppose these are edible but I find them creepy and unattractive, so I'm not willing to try to cook them. Other potatoes bought at the same time do not have this problem. So the question is--what causes this? Is it improper handling at some point in the supply chain, or do they come out of the ground like that? And how can I tell good from bad in the store?
All you gardeners out there, do you have a similar problem? I've never seen this in any other variety.
Thanks--
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And by the way, if I never read the words "ooey-gooey cheese" again it would be just fine by me. Perhaps I'm reading the wrong food websites.
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"This is also good with Oriental-flavor ramen."
No.
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Oh, good grief! I've forwarded this ridiculous story to our friends who have a ranch in New Mexico where they raise organic grass-fed beef. I don't eat a lot of beef but when I do I eat theirs, which reminds me what really good beef tastes like. Do cattle actually like to eat macadamia nuts? And who shells all those nuts? We have a tree, and getting that hard shell off the inner nut isn't trivial. First you have to take off the green outer shell (like a small coconut), then crack that very hard brown shell without smashing the nut itself. That's why macadamias are so expensive.
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I'm a big fan of the AeroPress. Makes a very good cup for one. Easy to clean up, unlike the french press. You just pop out the pressed puck of grounds--very tidy, no loose grounds to deal with. Also very portable and pretty much unbreakable, being that there's no glass involved. Decent coffee helps, of course.
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Here in Patzcuaro there's always a huge parade on the 5th, the night before Dia del Reyes. Each king has his own float, which is elaborately decorated. The parade begins at the Basilica, processes around Plaza Grande, returns to the Basilica, and then there are elaborate fireworks. (It's not a real celebration without fireworks in Mexico.) The parade is always well attended, and the crowds "vote" for their favorite King based on the float's decorations.
The Rosca del Reyes cake usually has more than one baby Jesus, and because no one wants to host a tamales party on Feb. 2 most people learn to conceal the little plastic figure in their cheeks. The figure originally was ceramic, of course. The stores have been full of boxes of the cakes. I don't expect our neighbors to take down their Christmas lights any time soon. It's a pretty big deal in Mexico because families come south to celebrate with their families and bring mountains of presents. One family next door came from California, because their grandmother, Dona Prisi, is now 101 and becoming increasingly frail. We went to her 100th birthday party for the entire block last year on January 1. She was in a wheelchair then and I hear she's bedridden now. We expect to see the black ribbon over the door one of these days (people hang a black bow over the door to indicate a death). I used to see her outside her little house, pulling weeds or sitting in the sun.
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I also wouldn't top a determinate variety, even if it gets leggy. These set a limited number of flowers in order to ripen more or less all at once, and if you cut off a portion of the plant you will have less fruit as a consequence. But I wouldn't hesitate to prune an indeterminate plant if it gets too tall.
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You can also cut off a sucker--6 inches or so--and root it in water. This creates a new plant, basically a clone of the original, that will produce fruit once it matures. It's a way to reinvigorate a leggy plant if you have the time and weather to do so. Once the sucker has a good root system, plant it in a pot with good soil and put it in a shady space to harden off as usual.
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2 hours ago, Shelby said:
Ronnie's greenhouse tomatoes are really going to town. Picked our first red one a few days ago.
Do you have trouble with white fly? I had horrible infestations when I had a greenhouse. I recommend those yellow sticky traps, but they only hold down the bugs rather than totally eliminating them. Which works well enough, I guess.
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Looks a little like what we see here as "Argentine chorizo," which is pale and without red color and spicy seasonings. A little like German wurst, which I guess makes sense given the number of Germans in Argentina. One of our best friends and his immediate family fled Nazi German and ended up in Argentina. He spoke fluent Argentinian Spanish, which is unlike most other forms of the language.
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Anybody ever had white pineapple? We had it some years ago in Ecuador and thought they were extra delicious. Never saw them again (we haven't been back to Ecuador).
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I learned a good trick recently: instead of planting scallions one at a time, plant 4-6 seeds in one spot. When the seeds sprout you will have a clump of scallions, which you can harvest one at a time as needed. I tried this last summer and it works a treat. Some of them now are getting a little hefty but still give me a true scallion when I need it. Admittedly, I'm gardening in central Mexico so my seasons are different than most of yours. For instance, I'm about to start my tomato seeds to plant out in February. In the meantime I have snow peas, lettuce and chard and will start my pole beans in February as well. I grow my garden in large plastic horse troughs and big fiber pots because I don't have a dedicated space for a garden. Most of the yard is ornamental plantings that I inherited from the previous owner, but having grown a vegetable garden since I was a teenager I just had to have something other than bougainvilleas. No flies on bougainvilleas, but I want green beans and tomatoes too.
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16 hours ago, Smithy said:
This morning I set to work on them. This collage shows the before, intermediate and after pictures. I managed to get one or two poblanos peeled and seeded enough that they might have made decent chiles rellenos in their own right, but I think I now understand instructions I've read elsewhere to remove the stem and core before roasting.
A trick I learned from my Spanish teacher is to lightly rub the chiles with oil--olive, canola, whatever--before you start to roast them. The skins pop as they roast and they're easier to peel. The problem is when the roasting process takes too long and the chiles "cook" before the skin is ready to peel. You want them almost raw. And I always choose poblanos that are relatively flat or triangular, with nice long stems to use as handles when turning them. Chiles that are twisted or have deep recesses are very hard to roast. I roast them on the burners of my gas stove so I can keep track of them. So leave the stems on and cut out the seed core with a knife or scissors. Pop 'em into a plastic bag and let them steam.
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I'm late to this rodeo, but when I think of panetone I remember that when I was in college I tried to make it one year for Xmas. The operative word is "tried," because the result resembled building materials. It was my first effort with yeast baking, and shall we say it wasn't a success. If I tried it again I'm confident it would turn out well, but buying it seems to be the most common way to experience it.
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9 hours ago, liuzhou said:
Having visited fish sauce manufacturing places in both Vietnam and Thailand I can say the process is just as disgusting, but someone else's problem. I'll sticking with my bottles.
P.S. Red Boat is Vietnamese. Not Thai.
Ah, you're right. Thanks for the correction.
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I'm reading a very illuminating book--The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past, by Taras Grescoe. I have it on my phone (Kindle app) as a library book via the Boulder (Colorado) Library, a wonderful option for me given that I have no access otherwise to good books. The premise is that industrialized food production has caused a significant loss of quality and flavor, along with producing an alarming degradation of the environment. We're poisoning the world, and the result is tasteless food loaded with pesticide residue. The loss of more flavorful, older varieties of food--vegetables, cheese, pigs--in the name of "feeding the world" has brought about a situation that seems untenable. It also tends to drive out small producers who are trying to maintain those older, more tasty, varieties. The chapter on garum, the fermented fish sauce that the Romans and Phoenicians made, is particularly amusing. The author attempts to make the stuff and finds that the process is absolutely disgusting. The conclusion is that Thai fish sauce (especially Red Boat 45) is not only easier and more available but also an equivalent taste without the nastiness of buckets of fermenting fish.
This is why I buy heirloom varieties as often as possible, and order seeds of those varieties from Seed Savers Exchange and similar organizations that try to maintain the good tasting foods that we may remember from our youth. I'm not the only one who's noticed that those grocery story tomatoes taste like cardboard. Sure, they look good but the taste is disappointing at best. Talk about empty calories! I'll never be able to grow my own food in sufficient quantities, but I do what I can.
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It's been my experience that using mashed anchovies or paste isn't noticeable in most dishes if the eaters don't know it's there, especially when there are tomatoes involved. Just sayin'.
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Camping, Princess Style
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
I was just about to start a topic called "Where's Smithy?" I'm sorry your spouse ended up in the hospital but I'm happy he's on the mend. Having just had a couple of nights in a hospital, and will have another one coming up, I can vouch for the quality (or lack of same) of hospital food. Calling it boring and tasteless is generous. I don't know how they expect people to get better when they are confronted with such terrible food. (Many years ago my mom was in a Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Boulder, CO, and complained that there was no meat on the menu. I've subsequently heard that their food was highly regarded as being delicious. Vegetarian, of course.)
Will you have to delay your usual time of return? Hope it's not too long and that the weather in your neck of the woods is pleasant, and warm enough! It sure has been a weird winter, weather-wise. In any case, safe travels whenever you pack up and head north.