Darienne

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?

EmilyR, your cake looks inviting and delicious. This afternoon I made David Lebovitz's Chocolate Idiot Cake...the name appealed to me. Well, it is supposed to be idiot-proof. They figured without me. I was very careful. Read the recipe out loud to myself. Then put the oven on to the wrong temperature. I don't know why. Had to bake the cake an extra half hour for that stupid mistake, but the cake still turned out beautifully. So rich and delicious. My GourdPatch group tomorrow will enjoy it. Give 'em chocolate to keep 'em happy and this cake has 10 oz of bittersweet chocolate in it. What's not to be happy about?

Now those are the star fruit, the lovely shape. I've had only one and found it basically tasteless. That was in Moab UT. Do they taste really good in their native homes?

Hijack away. It's all grist to the mill. And I have eaten said wizened and squishy Tamarillos this past winter, bought from Peterpatch's Super Store (aka Loblaws). Anything you can add to the mix is most welcome. Thanks PanCan (sorry about that one ).

The all-in-one-piece Trudeau spatula9", 4 of the regular yellow ones and one of the teal spoon ones. Love them!

That would be lovely. I haven't seen seeds here...which is not to say that they don't exist. Richter's sells only the plants and right now (today) the staff person said the place was a mess from shipping and she didn't know if they had any. Plus the Mexican Oregano will not be ready for two weeks at least. And I have this lovely south-facing window in my studio in which I have grown many things before (in my own inept fashion...I am NOT a gardener...but I do have a growing Calamansi tree now). I don't know about mailing seeds...the legality of it all. ??? But thanks.

Made some Tomatillo and Lime Jamfrom Pati's Mexican Table. Very delicious. I did not have any fresh tomatillos so used the same weight from the freezer where I had simply bagged the whole fresh tomatillos from a couple of months ago. (We cannot buy tomatillos where I live and it is only very recently that we have been able to buy poblanos [with fear that they will suddenly disappear.)

DH was buying coffee filters the other day and noticed that there is now a Melitta brand made of bamboo paper which purports to allow more the the "real coffee flavor" to come through. I am not knowledgeable about coffee in the least except I know what I life which is dark and strong. Very strong. However, my esophagus and stomach doesn't like dark and strong which is why I now use paper filters...to filter out the best part of the coffee, the oils. Push-me/pull-you but it's the best I can do. So what is it that these new bamboo filters do? Allow more coffee oils through? What other way could they allow more taste to come through? Anyone try them? Thanks.

I see stretching out before me a long life of making ice creams and frozen desserts...

Busy, busy. Made Fany Gerson's Helado de Aguacate. Different for sure. Ed ate his topped with salted peanuts and maple syrup. I did like it. And then the Helado de Queso. And I did swirl some Dulce de Leche (shame! shame! Condensed milk in glass pan covered with foil in a bain marie baked in the oven for two hours.) Gerson says: "The light granular texture of this tasty ice cream is what makes me love it so much". Hmmm. Well, Ed liked it very much, but I found the granular taste off-putting. Not going to be one of my favorites. Interesting tho... Next in line: Helado de Elote, Raspado de Margarita and Paletas de Mango Enchilada. Wot larks!

Googled Arequipe. Learn something new every day. Found some recipes which don't take 10 hours. and I LOVE the idea of using Panela. I didn't even know about it when I made mine from scratch, but once I tasted it, I was hooked for life.

Well, I've been busy making ice cream as usual, making up for a long life bereft of ice cream. Besides making the usual DL The Perfect Scoop recipes, I also made his Butterscotch Pecan Ice Cream, using as many Mexican ingredients as I could including Panela for sugar and Tequila for Whiskey. I've made several ice creams from Fany Gerson, My Sweet Mexico, and loved each one: Helado de Aguacate (Avocado), Helado de Pasitas con Tequila (Raisins and Tequila..3/4 c Tequila!!), Helado de Queso (Queso Fresco with Dulce de Leche swirled in at the last moment). Still to make: Helado de Elote (corn) and Raspado de Margarita (sherbet) and Paletas de Mango Enchilado (Spice Mango Pops) for the weekend. Made a Blackberry Coconut from Thai Cooking with Jam. Lovely. A woman cannot make too many different ice creams.

I have two recipes for Dulce de Leche from scratch. One calls for 1 cup of sugar to 2 cups of goat's milk and 2 cups of cow's milk. The other calls for 1 2/3 cups of sugar to 2 cups of each goat and cow's milk. Hard to get much of a clear direction from that. The first recipe came from Jaymes and the second, I think, from Andie. I made it once but probably won't do it again. Ten hours? Perhaps not. Actually yesterday I made the poor and lazy man's Dulce de Leche using the recipe in DL's Perfect Scoop. Open can of condensed milk. Pour into glass pan. Foil lid. Put into a bain marie. Bake in oven. A no brainer. Swirled it into some Queso Fresco ice cream. Yumm. Good luck.