Darienne
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Posts posted by Darienne
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Add three more: two from a friend and one from a library book sale.
No, there is no end.
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Just to round up my part of this thread.
Because I could not find any recipes about candying Calamansi oranges, I decided that there were none because none really exist. The oranges were the juiciest little beasts, too juicy for candying. Well...I thought...
So, I set out to make marmalade out of both the just-picked oranges and the two years in the freezer ones. Threw at least half of the frozen ones out. They were not appealing at all. Two years in a freezer was not useful. I probably should have just tossed them all and made up the difference with navel oranges and lemon.
Used only sugar and the oranges. Oh, threw about a couple of TBSPs of just zested off a navel orange zest in also. Very, very delicious results.
(This is my very first ever made by myself jam/jelly of any kind. Yay team!
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To carry on the thread of thickness: my creme fraiche made by the Damerow method of one TBSP of buttermilk to one cup of whipping cream, no heating involved, aged 24 - 48 hours in the oven with just the light on to achieve a temperature of 80-85 degrees F...was incredibly thick. The whipping cream came from a small Utah dairy which although not organic by regulation, was about as organic as you could get.
But thick? O my yes. It was almost as thick as cream cheese. I wonder why????
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Thanks for all the replies.
This is one I am going to get at immediately.PS. Just reread the posts and downloaded the recipes. I really like the notion of adding a bit of lemon juice. Thanks.
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I do love a good dollop of whipped cream on my desserts, but recently I have found that I am beginning to prefer sour cream...if you can get it. Decent sour cream, that is. Most of it is quite bland. Boring. Not much going for it. Not like the sour cream of my long lost youth.
A recipe in Ice Cream: The Whole Scoop, Gail Damerow, contains a recipe for sour cream. The result was delicious, thicker than sour cream, not really tart enough for sour cream, but still very nice. Then I discovered that it was actually a recipe for creme fraiche. It was basically one tablespoon of buttermilk to one cup of heavy cream.
Can you make sour cream at home? Is there a recipe? If there is, please send it this way.
(BTW, the best sour cream we could find in Utah was organic and made by Horizon.) Now we are back in Ontario, and haven't started to look in earnest yet. Is there is a good regional sour cream?
Thanks.
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I used coconut oil/butter for years when I made 'I can't believe it's not chocolate', a recipe from Dr. Mercola from his cookbook. That was then...this is now. Believe me, it was not chocolate. Only chocolate is chocolate!
Coconut oils have quite a range in taste and some we did not like at all. So do give it a second chance if you don't like the taste of what you have made
. Try a different brand. -
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Boiron has recipes on their web site for using kalamansi to make mousse, sorbet, a filling for chocolates, pate de fruits, ice cream and probably other things that I have forgotten. I just learned recently that kalamansi and calamondin oranges are the same thing. I have had a calamondin orange tree as a house plant for years and get dozens and dozens of oranges every year. Unfortunately, all of the oranges went into the trash in the past. I thought that they were just ornamental! I haven't tried out any of the Boiron recipes yet, but I will.
Thanks. That's a big help. Now think of what you have to look forward to. The marmalade we made was just so good!!!
Chocolate fillings. Good. Curd. Mousse. All sound so good.
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I'm not sure how kalamansi would turn out candied because its rind tends to be much tougher and the flavor more sour than kumquats. It should be worth a try.
Thanks for writing.
As for the tough rind...I wouldn't say it was exactly tougher, but different. The rind is more like that of the mandarin, but thinner. ...and the more sour flavor...true too. Like biting straight into a lemon.
Not to mention that they are incredibly juicy little fellows. Still if it stands still long enough, I will candy it.
The candied kumquats from last winter ended up being put in Alton Brown's wonderful Seriously Vanilla Ice Cream and served as dessert at the minor Chinese feast in Moab. I can see these ending up in ice cream too. If they will candy properly. I'll ask the resident candying expert, Andie.
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Gelatin is very prone to syneresis, especially after freezing. It holds up well enough in higher concentrations (in the 1% or higher range) to not usually be a problem unless it needs to have a longer shelf life (which is not an issue for what I do) or it needs to spend more than a short time out of it's cold environment (which is sometimes an issue for what I do and the main reason behind my question). Agar can help with temp stability but I was hoping to find some less gelatinous options.
Thank you Tri2Cook. Learn something new every day. Learn, learn, learn...
I searched earlier for a thread on a new product which purported to do something for stability, but couldn't find it. I wrote to the manufacturer, who was giving out free samples???, and received neither sample or reply.
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Imagine my surprise when I agreed to help a friend harvest her oranges and make marmalade and it turned out to be the fruit of two calamondin (she calls it)/calamansi oranges. We took photos and I'll post one upon receiving them from her. Until two days ago I had never even heard of them.
So we followed a recipe for Seville marmalade and made the most wonderful marmalade this morning.
When I left, I left with a bag of freshly-picked calamansi and a bag of frozen from last year's crop. Yumm
What on earth will I do with the frozen fruit?
And can I candy the fresh fruit, like kumquats?
All answers gratefully received.
(I should add that we live in Ontario, in Zone 3/4 and that these are indoor grown)
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If I wanted to formulate a mousse base mainly for encasing and filling cakes that will have a firmer texture than traditional mousse (yeah, gelatin... I know) that has increased stability once out of the cooler (for situations where the cake may have to sit out for a bit) with reduced risk of syneresis due to the freeze/thaw cycle during production (the last two being the reasons the obvious, gelatin, isn't the perfect solution) but still maintains good mouthfeel, what would be a good hydrocolloid/stabilizer/etc. to look into?
I've ordered a sample of Stabilizer CT-D100 (a blend of carrageenan and tara gum) from GumTech because it sounds like it might be perfect for the job but I'm always on the lookout for backup plans and interesting solutions to problems (and I don't have a good track record of getting responses from U.S. based companies despite being an industry customer).
I don't need this for my normal day-to-day work but I get the occasional situation where I need the qualities stated above. I had a glazed mousse-encased cake slip part of the glaze due to syneresis in the mousse underneath with a cake that had to spend some time at room temp, fortunately not for a paying customer but I was still very unhappy about it.
A couple of questions please for the newbie folk:
from Wiki sources: Syneresis (also spelled 'synæresis' or 'synaeresis'), in chemistry, is the extraction or expulsion of a liquid from a gel, as when lymph drains from a contracting clot of blood. Another example of syneresis is the collection of whey on the surface of yogurt.
So this would mean that the liquid part of the mousse drains out and makes things slip?
Also why is gelatin not an answer to the problem? It doesn't do the job? It is also subject to syneresis?
Thanks.
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Nobody here has home air conditioning.
Wow! I said, imagine being so virtuous as to never use A/C. Then, I had to smile
when I read that you live in Halifax. No one in Halifax EVER needs A/C. We shall drop into your non-air conditioned house sometime in the next couple of months when we go to Halifax to see our youngest and his wife. I LOVE Halifax!
We do have a few room air conditioners on the farm for the bad days and for visitors, but mostly use the ceiling fans which are amazing in their ability to cool a room. In Moab we used a swamp cooler. Now there is a very green and wonderful solution to heat.
I don't know how 'green' this is, but we also have a doggy composter. Not really a cooking concept. Oh, but we do make all our own dogs' food...they eat raw. No waste there...they eat the bones and all. And the veggies are pulped in the Champion.
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A few more things: as mentioned by others, we compost; bring our own bags to the farmers market and supermarket; buy milk from a local dairy in reusable glass containers; use natural, compostable charcoal.
What is natural compostable charcoal and what do you use it for, please.
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Thanks to Chris and the others for all the useful answers. Shotts is not generous with his directions on 'how to'.
As for the spatula, I will look for one today. The difficulty may be finding a stainless steel one. That's my only addition to all the advice. If you are using stuff from the hardware/building supply store, make certain that you buy either plastic...which does not stand up to use all that well...or stainless which won't rust.
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One small thing which we have done is to use two compost pails. One pail is saved for our neighbors who raise sheep. Sheep will eat almost anything. The second pail is for the few things sheep don't eat: coffee grains and seeds and pits of all kinds.
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My invert sugar recipe just calls for sugar, water and citric acid or lemon juice. I've made it and used it with good results.
What is the purpose of the baking soda and where does this recipe come from, please?
Thanks
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Lucid Lime Bonbons (pp. 111)
In the future there are a few changes I will make to these: first, the ganache is too firm for a molded bonbon. I prefer it to be softer than this recipe gives, so I'm going to play around with it a bit. Second, I wanted even more lime flavor: I don't think the chocolate I used played very well with the lime, so that needs some work as well. Finally, of course, the shells need to be thicker and the chocolate needs to be properly tempered. I'm not sure what went wrong there: I tested it before molding and it was perfect. Oh well. Practice, practice, practice.
Your chocolates may not have been 'perfect', but they still looked pretty darned good to me and I was blown away by your pictorial tutorial. Thanks for all the photos and the step-by-step.
I started out making chocolates from Shotts. His was the first chocolate book I purchased and I read the entire book out loud to my DH on a trip home from Moab a couple of years ago.
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(While scarcely in the same category as an antique marmalade cutter), Imagine my surprise in trying to find out just what I had bought in a second hand store in Moab to discover that this item was a bona fide Collectible. Almost $20 for a two-stacker...and I have a FOUR-stacker. Tupperware Collectibles on eBay, Divide-a-Rack. I had never seen one before and thought it looked usual for ferrying short stuff, like pies and bonbons, from here to there.
I must be in Tupperware Heaven.
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I use a 14" aluminum restraurant fry pan from time to time (though I have 6 woks of various kinds). It does the job quite well, but doesn't have the flavor of a typical wok. And aluminum cookware is still in debate in terms of its safty. I don't use it when cooking anything acid. I might pick Perdano over others, I remember seeing Perdano cookware has 5mm sandwiched bottom somewhere (I might be wrong). I think it's a concensus here on the forum that for a saute pan, go with the heavy bottom ones. Whatever you pick, stay away from nonstick for 'woking' purpose.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my question.
Paderno has sales every now and then and with luck a large saute pan will be on sale this year. I'll ask the local rep.
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Three cheers for a great beginning!
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Back to the wok question. OK. Electric is out for Chinese cooking.
We are home now and my stove is 2" higher than I would like at least, but cannot be cut down as the last one was. I am not very tall.
I cannot handle a wok. It's just too large and unwieldy, besides we have only electric heat normally. Have a burner on the B-B-Q, but this is Canada and we have a lot of winter.
I cannot handle a cast iron frying pan. They are too heavy. Well, I CAN do it, but it's not comfortable.
I have been making my Chinese dishes using a very old Korean-made, copper bottom sandwich stainless steel frying pan, 10' / 26 cm.
DH is pushing me to buy a slightly large fry pan, but I don't know what to go for. The Cuisinart 30 cm pan is half price this weekend at a local hardware store...but is it the best buy? I recall reading somewhere that Cuisinart pans are not all that good. We have a Canadian company, Paderno, made in Prince Edward Island, of all places, which is available locally, but is pretty pricey and I have no criteria on which to go.
Thanks for any help.
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This may be too late but I thought I'd add this one I found on the internet. I haven't tried it yet but it sounds pretty easy.
http://www.allsands.com/food/recipes/choco...alls_rmw_gn.htm
It's never too late.
I don't think we can use anything with chocolate in it at all at the outdoors event, but there are other venues.
Our local library is having a book sale at the end of the month and I said I would make something for it. These might be just the thing. The youngsters would love them. I think I'll try them with bittersweet also...might cut down on the sweetness a bit.
Thanks for thinking of us.
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What about the technique of cooking the eggs in baking soda? It is supposed to work wonders...the same as boiling hazelnuts in baking soda makes the skins just slip off?
We feed our two big pups eggs every third breakfast and my DH insists on hardboiling them. And then mutters and curses while peeling the eggs. But he won't even try the baking soda trick. It's a guy thing, I think.
No way I'm going to do it. I make them scrambled eggs. BTW, they are supposed to eat them raw but neither of us can stomach it.
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I liked the efficiency of it [the rubbermaid container] but I don't really like the seal of the rubbermaid containers for storage.
Short question of clarification: you mean that the rubbermaid containers are not airtight?
Thanks
Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Wikipedia defines mojito: A mojito is traditionally made of five ingredients: spearmint, rum, sugar (traditionally sugar cane juice ), lime, and club soda.
Can someone please give me a better sense of what a mojito macaron, or a mojito anything else might mean?
Thanks