Darienne
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Posts posted by Darienne
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Made some tiramisu ice cream the other day with homemade mascarpone it was fabulous, I swirled it with a mocha fudge sauce, yummy.
That sounds good. I made a big pot of raspberry yesterday with raspberry vodka and freeze dried raspberries with milk/whipping cream 50- 50. It is great, really creamy and soft scope straight out of the freezer.
What more needs to be said?
Mascarpone, tiramisu, mocha (chocolate & coffee) fudge, raspberries, vodka, whipping cream...
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This type of steamer
is much more versatile than the bamboo steamers. I have an older one made by Farberware that I have owned for at least thirty years. The only difference is that mine has composition handles that remain cool when being used.
I have one of the electric stackable steamers
And I also have a huge couscousiere that I use on the stovetop for bigger batches.
Oh, how lovely. I think my snack bracket will not support one of these for now. The bamboo steamer is much less expensive, given the CDN$ and the S&H and the potential border parcel costs which can descend at any moment.. But one day...
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I bought a triple layer 10inch bamboo steamer almost a year ago with visions of veggies and shiapo dancing in my head, but to be honest, i've never even taken it out of the box. I keep looking at it when i cook (as it sits on top of my stove's shelf) and swear one day i'm going to use it.
OK. I googled Shiapo and the best I could get is a cross between a Shiz Tzu and a Poodle. ????
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Thanks both to David and Lisa for the information.
I had forgotten about letting the edge of the steamer overhang the pot.
And you're right...the wok does take up a great deal of room.
Thanks again, Darienne
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A friend and I were just looking at DL's book, drooling over the recipes. She has a troop of grandkids coming next weekend and would like to make ice cream with and for them...except for the cost.
'Could you not incorporate butter into the ice cream and thus cut down on the cost of the heavy cream. It would be much cheaper to use a lower % cream/milk and add butter somehow.'
Now, if RLB can add butter to lesser % cream and make it into whipping cream, why couldn't you add butter to a lesser % cream and make it into heavy cream and from there into ice cream. So I said I would ask on my forum and let her know. She loves to experiment with everything. (She'll probably try it anyway.)
I don't know. Can you?
Thanks. -
Yesterday I made andiesenji's Fruited Cocoa Cake.
One look at that cake and I know I have to make it. Good going!
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Seeing as I could find nothing in the archives on bamboo steamers and also woks were discussed in this forum:
I gave away my bamboo steamer years ago in a former life and now want to buy a new one.
I can't decide which size is the most useful: I would use it for steaming fruits and peels to be candied, Chinese food, making sponge cakes, etc. Who knows where this new life will take me?
I had a charming little bamboo steamer in Moab which I gave to a friend there. Forgot that my own was no more. Now I am using a stainless double boiler steamer, but I don't really like it. Just a personal preference.
The bamboo steamers come in 8", 10" and 12" from our local Asian market, 3 or 4 layers. Nothing seems to fit very well into the pans I currently own. Do most folks use the steamer over a wok? I don't cook with a wok: electric stove and the carbon steel wok is too heavy and too awkward for my hands. I use two stainless saute pans with encapsulated bottoms.
There are too many choices here.
What does anyone out there do? Thanks -
Thanks all for all the information. I have a feeling that sour cherries are about to go to the end of the list of 'things I have to deal with in the next few weeks'.
That's life sometimes. Thanks again.
But...I will keep the information in mind for next year......
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We have no Indian grocery store in our nearby small city, but we do have an Asian one which carries mostly Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese/etc. Whatever Indian foods we can get will be there. I am going to check on the unsalted pistachios.
It is great that the Nuts Online ships to Canada, but by the time you paid for the nuts in CDN$, and the S&H, and possible duty stuff, if they choose to nail you, you could have paved your ice cream maker in gold.
I don't suppose you could get most of the salt off/out of the pistachios? Foolish question, no doubt.
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I guess I should say thanks, but that is one depressing article!!!
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I can get fresh galangal at the local Filipino market but I don't recall ever trying to candy it.
I do use it in sambals but pound the heck out of it in a mortar (have tried processing it in food processor but get strings so the old-fashioned method works better for me).
To me it has an "earthier" flavor than ginger and while it does work in recipes, I don't like it plain.
For hot an peppery, I have candied the tiny piquin and tepin peppers - dried. As with other dried items, I steamed them first.
I used to make them when I was regularly attending Chile-Heads Hotlucks and the real "tin-throat-chile-heads" loved them but I couldn't eat them myself.
They are the original "red-hots"
Thanks Andie.
I think I have a lot to learn about Galangal. Somehow I thought it was quite like ginger, more than just belonging to the same family. I thought ginger from Thailand was called Galangal. Obviously that was not the case. I'll go back and read about it more carefully.I noticed that it has all sorts of little side 'branches' in the rhizome which make it hard to peel. And the peel is different.
So, after 2 1/2 hours of constant steaming, the slices are finally tender-ish. And the taste is less hot and less peppery, but still quite sharp and pungent. I am candying them anyway in a syrup made with orange flavored sugar (from a confused mistake). Won't hurt them I am sure.
I'll get back with the results.
I like the idea of candying tiny hot peppers. My friend Melanie would go wild for them. Did you do anything different that I should know about?
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One of my friends used to live in a suburb of Hamilton, which I think is pretty far east, and she used to buy cherries for canning in the early summer from farmstands a few miles outside of the city. The same place sold apples in the fall.
There might be a directory of farmstands, etc., in eastern Canada somewhere on the 'net.
Hamilton may be pretty far east, but I am further east yet. And north.
I have never seen sour cherries at a farm stand in our area...we are in a different zone than Hamilton. I think that barring driving south and west, a grocery store may be my only source. And we do not have any grocery stores here like Trader Joe's or Whole Earth.
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Moving sideways slightly to Galangal. We can buy it only in a frozen state.
I am currently defrosting my package in order to candy it.
I read in another thread in the Asian cooking section that frozen galangal might well defrost to mush only. Not sure what to do now: stick it back into the freezer at once or continue defrosting and see what I get.
Help!
Next day:
Galangal, purchased frozen, was thawed, sliced properly across the grain and after 40 minutes steaming, it was still as tough as old leather.
I took a small bite of the galangal yesterday and WOW! was it hot and peppery!!!
Just to make sure, I bit into the Chinese ginger also. No comparison. Perhaps it is very old and that's why it's so tough? Perhaps this is what galangal is like? Perhaps no one candies it anyway?
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The Niagara peninsula has sour cherries - so I expect you could get them in Toronto.
Thanks Kerry.
If the Niagara grows sour cherries, then I find it hard to believe that you can't get them in Peterborough. Perhaps my friend is mistaken. I'll call the produce managers of some of the local grocery stores.
Thanks as always.
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The vendors at our farmer's market tell me that they're expecting the central NY crop to come in mid-July. Is there any prohibition against importing them yourself?
MelissaH
There are all sorts of rules and regulations on both sides of the US/Canadian border. And they change. I know that it is against the law for a private car to take fruit into the USA from Canada. I don't know about the other way.
What I might do is check with some of the larger grocery chains nearer to Toronto. See if anyone brings them in. As I said you can get them canned or bottled and perhaps you can get them frozen...the trouble may be getting them fresh.
Thanks for the information.
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Moving sideways slightly to Galangal. We can buy it only in a frozen state.
I am currently defrosting my package in order to candy it.
I read in another thread in the Asian cooking section that frozen galangal might well defrost to mush only. Not sure what to do now: stick it back into the freezer at once or continue defrosting and see what I get.
Help!
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Try candying sour cherries. They turn out quite different from the sweeter varieties.
I'll give it a try although, not being a true cherry lover, I don't think I have ever noticed fresh sour cherries for sale here. I have purchased bottled sour cherries. I'll look for them this year.
Did not get around to candying rhubarb this year...but I did get my ginger planted this morning!!!
And, of course, I have another batch of candying ginger under way. A woman cannot make too much candied ginger I have discovered.
Thanks, as always, for your help.
My friend, Mel, who loves sour cherries, tells me that she has never seen them for sale in our area...east central Ontario. Are they available in Toronto does anyone know?
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Some of the recipes are definitely sweeter, and some are almost savory. I've made nearly all the recipes in the book, with notes in the margins refining many of them to my taste. And I've found a lot of variety in folks' sweet tooths -- some really like the mouth puckering super-lemon, others really like the malted milk and cheesecake.
My favorite is the black pepper ice cream, made with some bright tellicherri peppercorns. I use really good quality slow-pasteurized whole milk (4%) and heavy cream (36%) from a local dairy, and modified the basic custard to use 2c milk and 1c cream, as we found it too heavy with more cream.
How did the Fleur de Lait and the Leche Merengada turn out for you?
-jon-
Hi Jon,
Embarrassed to say that I have not made the Fleur de Lait or Leche Merengada yet. The Cheesecake Ice Cream and other things...like two varieties of ginger and a bag of Clementines to candy...got in the way. So many things to make...so little time.
I will report back when I have made them. If they are very sweet then DH will love them and I won't. I would imagine that the Black Pepper could well be an orangeless variety of the Orange-Szechwan.
As far as I have ever been able to find out, we cannot buy 36% cream or slow-pasteurized milk. Actually I have never even heard of slow-pasteurized milk. Learn something new every day.
And kudos to you for having made almost every recipe in the book. I am still using the library copy and awaiting my own copy in the mail. Can't write in the margins yet!
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They should be fine. The only issue I can see is the extremely remote chance that a microscopic amount of the supplement gets on a lollipop and finds its way to a person with an allergy to that supplement.
Good point. I am not sure if they can be washed or not. The canister ends are tiny fine mesh...really tiny...and so perhaps the water would get in. I did not use them yet anyway.
However, as noted earlier, I did dunk each pop into fruit sugar and knocked the extra off...that means the edges are coated too...and packaged them immediately. It is now several days later. The humidity is still in the 90s...as it will be all summer...and they are fine. The sugar is still visible on them and they go for sale on July 4th (Canada, not a holiday). Another learning experience.
I think I'll make a sign with the ingredients listed on it. I had a phone call from our library the other day...I had donated butterscotch lollie there for their book sale...asking me if the pops had some ingredient in them that her child was allergic to. (Our laws in Canada are so lax compared to the various US regulations)
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I have faithfully followed the directions to candy little Clementine oranges. Poked full of tiny holes with a thin pin and partly skewered from the blossom end. Now they are now in the sugar syrup in the slow cooker...floating.
Does it matter that they are floating? Should they be turned often? Be weighted down? Have I made an error of some kind?
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Was putting out the pills this morning...dogs and humans...and realized that two of the human supplements had little plastic canisters in them. 3/4" D x 1" Both contain desiccants, both say 'do not eat', but presumably both are GRAS. And, although the wording on each varies a bit, they are both manufactured in NM.
I wonder if they would be satisfactory to put in with wrapped lollies. I can't see why not if they were in with unwrapped caps which go straight into the mouth.
Any thoughts?
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something I used to make a lot: make a caramel syrup flavored with crushed cardamom ( I think cardamom and orange go really well together) and orange liqueur.
Slice your oranges (pith removed) and put them in a shallow dish, pour the warm syrup over and leave to cool. Good as it is, better with something creamy like creme fraiche or mascarpone, divine with ice cream.
Time to buy some fresh cardamom pods. I hate to tell you how old mine are and, like many ideas which do not come to pass, they were never used.
Thanks.
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Last night I made the most delicious ganache using as a basis Michael Recchuiti's 'Force Noire' from his Chocolate Obsession and with the flavorings from David Lebovitz's 'Orange-Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream' from The Perfect Scoop.
I am so pleased you have tried and liked this. As soon as I read your post about the orange szechwan ice-cream I started thinking about doing these flavours in a ganache and wondering wehther to go white chocolate or dark. I have the Recchuiti book so I will try and work with the recipe you mentioned.
How much pepper did you use in the ganache?
many thanks
Lapin
For 12 oz of dark chocolate...54%...it's all I have at this point...I used 1 tablespoon of pepper corns and then ground them. I could have used more I think. Next time...
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Ramsey has Kitchen Nightmares and the F Word on FTC.
Restaurant Makeover (which seems to be on a 24/7 loop) is a Canadian show (I think it's always Toronto, no?). FTC pays half and the restaurant owner pays half. They bring in a designer and a chef to makeover the place.
The list of shows airing now:
Thanks for all the information. Too bad the quality of the shows is not very good.
I'll eventually download all the schedules and see what I might watch. The food shows seem to be mirroring the regular TV shows. You'd be hard pressed to find much to watch anymore...unless you watch reruns. Fortunately I am a bear of very little brain and I can forget who is the bad guy every time on Law & Order and CSI.
crystallized ginger
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Report on candying galangal...to date:
After steaming the properly sliced pieces for 2 1/2 hours I decided that they were about as soft as they were going to get and began candying them. Some pieces were quite palatable...some were simply fibrous and I ended up spitting out a little mess of fibers after chewing them for a while. Galangal is definitely NOT ginger. Also the hot peppery taste was much subdued...rather like the change in radishes when you cook them.
Three days of candying the pieces and I just gave up and now they are in the dehydrator...our humidity is a constant 92-100%. Summer in Ontario. Nothing has changed and I suspect that they'll end up in the garbage.
Well, it was a valiant try... (unless I just goofed up somewhere).
My Chinese ginger is doing well in the dehydrator. And also I have two healthy sprouts up in my indoor ginger window box.