Darienne

Good luck Peter and do post a photo and also tell us how much and what kind of coffee powder you used. Should be an interesting taste. Are you putting anything else into the bark or on top of it?

Thanks for the link, kalypso. Found it. Today's production was something simple, but still delicious. Right in tune with my current discovery of the taste of piloncillo. So amazingly complex. Makes brown sugar look like a mere piker. Nogada de Nuez / Piloncillo Candied Pecans from Fany Gerson's My Sweet Mexico. Out they go tomorrow.

Sometimes things just have to percolate for a while. Tried the ice cream for supper tonight and it's truly delicious. I know I will make it again.

On Amazon.ca (Canada), I can get the book for about $34 with S&H. But that doesn't help our daughter at all. This is supposed to be a surprise through my DH and he can tell her that I'd be thrilled with any book by Rick Bayless (except the one I own already). No muss, no fuss. I don't want her having to spend a lot of time and energy on this. And I will be thrilled anyhow. Thanks for the great information!

Oops. Looked up the cookbook on Amazon.com. I will not be asking my daughter for this wonderful book. $$$$$ That leaves me only about 79 other Mexican cookbooks to choose from...

Worth noting for Canadian readers: American Comet and other cleansers do not have the same formula as Canadian products. In Canada, we still have abrasives in our cleansers. I can't speak for ALL American cleansers and ALL Canadian cleansers, do check the label on your cleanser if you are going to use it on enamelware.

Looks delicious, C.Sapidus. Thanks for the heads up on the cookbook. My daughter intends to buy me a cookbook for my birthday and now I have to pick one...

Some might think the Philadelphia style lacking in mouth feel. You don't need anything except cream (heavy, half & half) for that. I have yet to use xanthan or any of the other thickeners/ stabilizers/ etc so can't comment. I'd try EmilyR's idea just to see what happens.

I do have kosher salt...I just didn't see the point of using it in this recipe. And as I review the recipe this morning, I don't think it's one I'll make again. As for the "Chili pepper (from Nahuatl chilli, chilli pepper, chilli, chillie, chili, and chile)" issue: the jury will always be out.

I would be interested in reading those reviews. I do like the book immensely and your point about the work of the editor is well taken.

Right. But we are talking 1/4 of a teaspoon in something which is opaque and pink. And has hot chile powder in it...

Today I made a new ice cream that I found on the Homesick Texan blog. It's called Strawberry ice cream with guajillo chile & lime, but I changed it so much as I made it, that I don't know what to say. It's strawberries and Guajillo chile and Lime but the quantities are altered, and I added Ancho and Chipotle to the mix, upped the lime juice, changed the brown sugar to Panela, and mixed half of the macerated strawberries straight into the base mixture. I also used regular salt...what could be the purpose of using 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt rather than just regular salt? and also cooked it although it is supposed to be a non-cooked ice cream. I guess that otherwise, it's the same recipe. Oops. Forgot to add that the strawberries were so poor that I added some homemade strawberry jam just to beef up the strawberry flavor. The end result is pretty good.

I do have a couple of quarrels with the book...although I am willing to live with them. Maybe not all books, but MY book is not well constructed and the back is beginning to break. It has that crinkly sort of noise when I open it that makes me think the glue is not holding. Secondly, the instructions are not what you would call excellent for beginners. I still can't figure out how to fill and fold the Huachibolas and am going to ask one of my Mexican mentors for more detailed directions...but then maybe that's just me. Otherwise, I am having a wonderful time with this book and am quite determined to make as many of the recipes as I possibly can.

Quick answer: yes, I did use her dough. Longer answer: I added one more tablespoon of sugar to the dough because the jam was quite tart and it made a nice contrast. I have very little experience baking much of anything and I found the dough excellent for a beginner to work with. Also I don't have a 4 - 5" cutter...my biggest is 3 1/2" so my empanadas are a bit smaller than they might be. But that's OK. You can have more. I froze most of the first batch I made...the Jitomate filled ones...and we ate them slowly. The freezing part was fine. And so I'll freeze these also.

I had never heard of such an ice cream until you mentioned it. The recipes I found online called for discarding the cereal completely after soaking it in the milk, and it called for only 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of cream. What were the amounts of various ingredients you used? Normally my ice cream recipes call for 3 to 3 1/2 cups of liquid. And the inclusions are not necessarily discarded. Could it be that your recipe is not very big to begin with??? Just some thoughts.

Now last week's Tomatillo-Lime Jam is filling for the latest crop of Empanadas for this morning's human (and dog) play date. Turned out very nicely for that purpose. I can guarantee that today's company will never have eaten Empanadas nor Tomatillo-Lime Jam.

From Wikipedia, the font of much knowledge: "The dish [discada] includes a mixture of grilled meats cooked on an agricultural plow disk harrow, hence its name. Who knew? I like Zeemanb's idea better actually.

I seem to recall a huge pecan farm (do they call them farms?) at Hatch and we took home bags and bags of vacuum sealed pecans. My love of pecans knows no bounds and we don't get very good ones here.

Thanks for your kind words, Jaymes. And thanks to you and all the other regulars in the Mexican forum for being such great mentors to me. It has been great fun.

Wow! And do you cook it on a plow disc harrow? Do you eat this often? How many meats do you use? No need to answer any of these questions until the day comes when you make it. I'd never even heard of it! But then my knowledge of Mexican dishes is rudimentary at best. I await the dish...

I remember going through Hobbs each time on our way home to Ontario. But again, it was in the 80s. Love to read about your BBQ place in Carlsbad. Do you like to cook Mexican foods? I assume you can buy pretty much anything in that line.

Glad to read your blog, pastameshugana. The words 'Southeast NM' bring back memories of Christmas and March vacations spent in Carlsbad, NM where it was warm enough to satisfy even if not very exciting and cheap enough that we could afford it and not as far as AZ. In fact, it was so long ago that the canal was still an ugly ditch and the city was in disrepair before the push to beautify the canal area and the downtown came. Loved hiking in the Guadalupes. I remember one Mexican restaurant, Lucy's on the main drag, where I had my first and delicious Chile Relleno. What a discovery. And the next year it was gone. The area must be quite different now if you have all those Mexican restaurants in your region.

Oh dear, this is so humiliating. I have only two not very good balloon whisks and one of them has a broken handle. I'm just not a whisk kind of person.

The idiot cake contains 4 ingredients: butter, eggs, sugar and chocolate...10 oz of either bittersweet or semi-sweet. I use only bittersweet...semi is just too sweet for my tastes...and in this case 5 oz 70% and 5 oz 54%, mu usual combo. It is very chocolatey and very rich. And would probably have worked out without a hitch is I had dialed the correct temperature on the oven. It still worked fine.

Because a certain DH was earlier impatiently waiting for me to get of the computer, I never said why I loved my Trudeau spatulas in post #7. They are sturdy little critters and come in various sizes which means that 9" is just perfect for my hand. Plus being all of one piece, the heads can never come off. They come in all different shapes. The price is right. What more can you ask for?