Nancy in Pátzcuaro

I think "chicha" in Panama is "horchata" in Mexico. It is a big fave of mine, though making it from scratch is a bit of a drag. I am going to try rice milk next time to avoid the problem of straining out the solids. You'd think that would be easy enough, but it turns out that those teensy little bits of rice can pass through very fine mesh. You almost think you should use a camping filter, the kind that filters down to 3 microns, except it's too slow. Horchata is the absolute best thing to drink with spicy Mexican food like tacos on the street with roasted jalapenos--it takes away the heat thanks to the milk. On the beach, however, with a plate of shrimp in front of me, I prefer cerveza. I am going to try it next time with pineapple skins because I think that sounds fabulous. How do you deal with getting the pineapple flavor out of the skins--is it heated and then strained, or left to infuse for a certain amount of time? We eat a lot of pineapple, even here in Colorado, and I always have trimmings to put into the compost. How much better to make this instead. The squirrels get a lot of it--we are apparently raising a strain of squirrels that are fond of tropical fruits. Watching one of them carry off a mango pit is pretty amusing. N.

My hubby and I have always washed our dishes using the running-water system, though because we live in Colorado we turn the water off while soaping and turn it on just to rinse. It saves water and avoids that greasy lukewarm water in the sink. I think the dishes get cleaner this way. My darling spouse has always washed dishes for me, from the first time I cooked dinner for him when we were dating. Sometimes he complains about the volume of cookware, but even after 35 years he still does it, and does it well. I admit to being very uneasy when I hear water running continuously, and so would you if you grew up in a house with a 3/4 gallon-a-minute well. You couldn't do a load of laundry and take a shower at the same time--meant you had to plan ahead. As for icky kitchen moments, I was in my in-laws' kitchen several years ago, making a huge pot of vegetable soup while they were at a doctor's office. Having peeled and chopped all the vegs, I tried to use the garbage disposal. I did not realize that despite having lived in the house for 10 years they had never used it before, except to rinse out the coffee grounds. To my horror the damned thing came loose from its seal and poured a flood of vegetable trimmings, old coffee grounds, unidentifiable goo, and foul-smelling water all over the kitchen floor and my feet. I was still trying to clean it up when they came home. The soup was good, though. N.

I hesitate to post this, having only read the first 3 or 4 pages of the thread before jumping to the end... Surely someone has answered this question in the intervening 11 or 12 pages. I also asked this question elsewhere on eGullet but didn't know about this thread before tonight. I figure you guys know. My neighbor, who is from the Cognac region of France (and in fact his family was in the business for generations before they sold out to one of the larger producers) gave us a very tasty aged gouda, which we are enjoying. However, it's a huge wedge, and I'd like to know how to take care of it. Do I wrap it in foil? Put it in a tupperware-style tub and burp it once a week? Wrap it in plastic? Freeze it? (Don't yell at me--this is what he does with cheese. It definitely changes the texture, because I've eaten defrosted cheese at his house and I notice that it's more crumbly. Depending on the cheese, that could be very objectionable. Does it also change the taste?) We live in a small town in the Colorado mountains, so my local options are very limited. Online ordering is a definite possibility when we find something we like. Thanks, all--N.

Greetings, all-- I am having a bit of dispute with my spouse. He says we should wrap up cheese in plastic to keep it from drying out and/or molding. I say it should be wrapped in foil to keep from smothering it. Our neighbor says we should put the excess in the freezer (he's French and boy does he eat a lot of cheese). What's the correct answer to this question? The source of the problem is a lovely (and large) chunk of Rembrandt extra-aged gouda, given to us by the above mentioned Frenchman. Thanks for your help. N.

As a general rule, oyster mushrooms of whatever hue fruit from a central cluster or core, so you if you have a large cluster like your photo it may have fruited from one big dropping of spores. All the mushrooms have off center caps and are not individual mushrooms. They also grow on wood, though if you've bought it from someone else you won't know that unless there's a little sawdust hanging off the stem. It looks like a prize to me. Congratulations--looks yummy. N.

The flavor comes from honey, cinammon and almond. I found a recipe in Spanish for it, but when I did the automatic translation in Google it was very amusing. Here's my translation: 1 tin of milk (condensed milk is commonly used in Mexico) 1 small cinammon stick 1/4 tsp. bicarbonate (of soda, I assume, though it's an odd ingredient here) 1/2 c. almond paste 1/2 c. sugar 1/4 c. honey Boil the milk with the cinammon and bicarbonate for 15 minutes. Stir in the sugar and honey and boil another 5 minutes, stirring. Mix in the almond paste until the mixture resembles heavy cream. Let cool and freeze as usual. "Almond paste" was translated as "worn out almond," which I thought was very picturesque. The original wording was "almendra molido," with "molido" being a common word for "ground." I interpreted that as almond paste, but I suppose if one were energetic one could start with blanched almonds and grind them for the recipe. I think it's the almond flavor that is so attractive. If there weren't 3 feet of snow on the ground around my house I might consider making this tonight... N.

Next time you go to Morelia or anyplace in Michoacan, try the pasta de nieve ice cream--yummy. Somewhere I have a recipe for it... A very elusive flavor. N.

I've just started reading this thread but can't finish it--gotta cook dinner, after all--but I do want to comment about the whole idea of bad service and good food, particularly in a "destination" restaurant. My experience has been that that kind of restaurant, in a town with visitors who may never come back, or if they do it may be years later, doesn't really give a damn about whether you've had a bad experience or not. They're probably never going to see you again, so why bother? The VIPs that everyone was fawning over may be regular customers, but they don't know you and don't expect to see you again. Given your treatment, that's a good guess. Your local restaurant treats you better, I'm sure, which is a reason to become a regular in a place with both good food and good service. If you have a bad experience in your home town and don't come back--well, it gets noticed a lot more than it will in Lost Wages. I have to admit my heart skipped a beat at the tab--yikes! I don't blame you for being hacked off about such lousy service. With that kind of dough one would hope for at least a crumb of attention from the wait staff. An old friend of mine, when confronted with such treatment, always made a point of handing a penny to the waiter personally, which is a little more than I'm willing to do. I don't know if the other posters have convinced you to name the restaurant, but I would urge you to do so. Too bad--the food was good, you said... Better luck next time, I guess-- N.

Having just returned from Michoacan I want to share recipe for a regional specialty--Corundas Michoacanas. These are unfilled tamales that can be sublime when prepared by a woman cooking for her extended family. Or they can be merely adequate when prepared in a restaurant kitchen. I think the difference is the amount of time spent beating the mixture and the quality of the masa and chicken broth. Those of you with access to fresh masa are lucky. The recipe I have serves 20 to 30 people (60 pieces), so you may want to scale it back a bit. 3 kilos of fresh masa (not Maseca) 2 cups of strong chicken or pork broth 1 kilo of lard salt to taste 30 fresh corn leaves (not dried husks--the leaves from the corn stalk) Tear the central rib out of the corn leaves to make 60 long strips. Beat the masa with the chicken broth for at least 20 minutes. Whip the lard until it's spongy and mix into the masa. Beat until a little bit of masa floats in a cup of water. Add salt to taste. Put a couple of spoonfuls of masa on the thick end of the half leaf (the part closest to the stalk) and roll up into a 3-dimensional triangle (ha--just try it) and put them into a steamer. Use a piece of the central rib to poke the last bit of leaf into the bundle so it won't unwrap. Steam for at least an hour, until you can easily remove the leaves (or until they are "bien suave," nice and soft). These were served without sauce with bowls of delicious soup (pork chunks, lots of vegetables like carrots and squash, and lots of not-overly- spicy dried chiles. I think I ate 5 or 6 myself and could have eaten more if I hadn't already been full of pork carnitas. The soup was cooked over a wood fire in the back yard and I think the corundas were done on the stove. By the way, this was prepared in an open-air kitchen with a dirt floor by a sturdy Mexican woman with adult children who didn't have a mixer. I can't imagine beating this by hand, but apparently she did it. They all had a good laugh at my attempt to roll up the corundas, but I didn't take it personally--after all, they all had to learn how to do it too and just had a lot more practice. Now I have to wait until the corn comes up next summer. Dang. I wonder how these would be wrapped in plain ol' corn husks, which are easier to come by in the winter. N. By the way, I can recommend Michoacan as a very nice part of Mexico that hasn't really been discovered yet. Morelia, the state capitol, is a beautiful colonial city. We are planning to go back in a few months and spend more time there. Maybe I'll learn how to roll up corundas.

You know, I think I'll give up on that mushroom. You're not the first person to say that it was edible but not remarkable. I think if a mushroom has a name like that, it should live up to it at least a little bit. But I guess "deliciosus" depends on who's cooking the mushroom. Perhaps that original mushroom tasted better. In the spirit of the original discussion, here's my favorite recipe for chanterelles, from a lovely little book, The Mushroom Feast, by Jane Grigson. Girolles a la forestiere (serves 4) 3 pounds girolles (chanterelles) 4 oz butter 4 oz lean smoked bacon, cut into strips 6 oz new potatoes parsley, chopped salt and black pepper Wash and trim chanterelles, and cook them in a bare ounce of butter for 5 minutes, and drain off the liquid (I save it for later). Fry the bacon rapidly in the remaining butter for a few moments until it begins to brown. Add the chanterelles and leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile cook the potatoes and cut them into pieces roughly the size of the mushrooms. Add to the pan of mushrooms and and bacon, add the reserved juices, and stir everything together so that the potatoes color slightly in the juices. This should take about 5 minutes to brown the potatoes and reduce the juices. Season to taste and sprinkle with parsley. It's rare that one has 3 pounds of chanterelles, but it can be made with less. It's sublime with the full amount, though... And I don't think I've ever used the full amount of butter. N.

Well, we long ago decided that we didn't need to identify every mushroom in the woods. We concentrate on the edible ones, and only a few of those. This year we found a lot of lactarius deliciosus (a pale orange mushrooms that stains green) but by the time we got them home they were too beat up to mess with. They say that some strains are more "deliciosus" than others and I wanted to find out if our local strain had good flavor. Oh well--maybe next year. Besides, we were in full Mushroom Greed mode, finding so many boletus edulis that we had no time to look around for much of anything else. When you get home with all those mushrooms you suddenly realize you have a couple more hours to go--cleaning and slicing and laying them in the dehydrator. I don't mean to scare anybody about collecting mushrooms. There is a moment at the beginning when you think, "I hope this is what I think it is," but it's easily overcome by the wonderful flavors of wild mushrooms. Funghiphobia is common among many people, beginning with the incorrect concept that there's a difference between mushrooms (edible) and toadstools (not). We separate the stems from the caps when storing porcini. The stems have the same flavor but the texture isn't as fine, so I grind them in a spice grinder and use the powder in soups and stews and polenta and sauces--just a couple of pinches can make a huge difference in flavor. I used to buy eggs from an elderly Italian woman in our town, who told me that if you cook an onion with the mushrooms and the onion turns black, it's a poisonous mushroom. Not true--but on the other hand she was still alive... She used to concentrate on what she called "Cottonwood Mushrooms," which I took to mean oyster mushrooms, which grow on live wood. N.

Just realized I went off on a bit of a tangent instead of answering the question--what to do with giant puffballs. I recommend puffball parmesan. N.

Hello, all-- We collect mushrooms in Colorado, and have found this summer to be the best in at least a decade--lots of rain in the right places. We have finally stopped going out because we have way too much porcini. We dry them--we have 2 dehydrators for this purpose--but we sautee and freeze chanterelles. Regarding toxicity of mushrooms, there are probably only a few that will outright kill you, and others that will make you wish you had died. Most mushrooms are of unknown edibility, some just plain taste bad, some are edible but who cares, and a few are known as "edible and choice." However, even an eminently edible mushroom will cause problems for individual people. I have a very good friend who can't eat chanterelles--his throat swells up--which we would all agree is a tragedy. I can't eat shaggy manes (or the entire coprinus family) for the same reason, but in my case I don't think it's so bad since for me this mushroom falls under the "edible but who cares" category. If you have any questions at all about wild mushrooms, find a group of mycologists who will take you out with them. Mushroom patches are like fishing holes--they won't take you to their best places but they'll at least get you started. Buy a couple of guides and learn how to take spore prints, identify gill patterns and other field marks, and head for the woods. It's great exercise, for one thing, and there's nothing quite like the feeling of driving home with 10 or 20 pounds of fresh boletus edulis (porcini). And in all cases, if you've never eaten one of these mushrooms before, go slow. The mycologists say to take a bite, chew it up and spit it out. If you don't have any ill effects (numbing or tingling, for instance), next time swallow a small amount. Because people can have problems with edible mushrooms, this is common sense. It's not rocket science, just simple biology. Mushrooms are among the most amazing things in the woods, and they're not terribly complicated. And even if you get skunked and come home with nothing, you've had a nice outing. BTW, the reason you should cut into small puffballs is to check for the presence of gills, which means it's an amanita and not to be eaten. N.

Hi, MelissaH-- I'm new to this discussion, and your project has stimulated my own kitchen-renovation cravings. In my case the space is large enough but apparently it was laid out by someone who did not cook. Work space is 4 steps away from the cooktop, sink occupies what should be work space--it goes on and on. However, I've cooked in this kitchen for 23+ years, and I guess I can go on a little longer until we decide to either move or remodel. I think I have a solution for one of your dilemmas--the dreaded corner cabinet. In my kitchen the dishwasher and a base cabinet create a square space behind them, in the corner, that is wasted space. Think of a right angle, facing the kitchen, with one side of the angle being the front of the dishwasher and the other the door of a base cabinet. The space behind them, which is a sizeable square space, can't be accessed from the kitchen. (This is hard to describe--you have 3 rectangles. Two of them face the kitchen, joined at a front corner at right angles, and the third is the one we're talking about.) However, you can get to that third square from the other side of the wall behind it. After being cranky about the wasted space for several years I finally realized that I could put a door on the other side of the wall--in my case, into the dining room--and turn that wasted space into a cabinet. I now store large platters and other items that I use only occasionally, and I'm no longer cranky. Seems to me that at least one of your corner cabinets--the one backing up into the hall--could be used that way. Depends on how much storage you want in the kitchen, but this space could be very useful in other ways. Think about the kinds of things that you might want to store in that area--sports gear, boots, kid toys, holiday decorations. The other corner cabinet space exits into the bathroom, and if you have the tub or other permanent items in the way you may have to just go for the traditional wobbly turntable in the kitchen, or that cool Magic Corner thing. Just a thought. Good luck with your planning. I think your project has stimulated a lot of wistful thinking--gee, we could do our kitchen too, doncha think? N.

How about making Mexican pineapple vinegar? Pretty tasty-- 1 c. pineapple puree pinch of allspice 1 Tbs. brown sugar or Mexican piloncillo 6 c. white vinegar (ideally 6% but 5% will work) Combine in a large "non reactive" saucepan, bring to a simmer, remove from heat and let steep overnight. Strain into clean glass jar with non-metallic lid and store at room temp. Then there's pineapple jam--grind or coarsely chop pineapple, mix with sugar to your taste and let stand in the refrigerator overnight. Add some grated lime rind and cook until thick, pour into jars, etc. Pineapple chutney? N.