cdh

Was making a trip to Aldi the other day and they had tins of herring in various sauces. So far, the mango pepper herring was surprisingly delicious. The tomato sauce was sort of dull. There's a third can on the shelf that I forget the sauce... I'll eat it some other day and report back. For $1.75 a tin, they are a fantastic deal.

I've been poking around the FB Creami groups and I observe that most of the people there are obsessed with dumping "SFP" into every batch and have figured out that that means sugar free pudding mix... has anybody here played with pudding mixes in the Creami in general, or is that a hack for people with specific dietary needs that general consumers have no need to worry about? What does a tablespoon of pudding mix do the protein drinks that are its usual companion over there?

Hmmmm...new one seems to add drinkable processing options and size.... neither is a selling point for me, I don't think...

Is there a hierarchy of grades for canned salmon? "Pink" is anything that is that color, no further questions asked? Species specific is better because they don't have the option to throw the scraps from whatever into the "pink" can?

That's useful. I imagine the processing tradition in the eastern Bloc was less sophisticated and picky than the Iberian/Mediterranean just as a result of the fact that only canning the good bits might have been a luxury they couldn't afford. How about other geographies and the standards of their tinned fish? I feel for no rational reason like something from Korea/Japan would be beyond reproach just based on reputation for national persnickitiness and affluence, whereas China might cut corners since tinned fish are not a traditional part of the cuisine that take pride in... But how about stuff from Thailand, or the Philippines? What about mid-Atlantic stuff from the Azores or Canaries? Any tinned fish from the southern hemisphere that is worth tracking down?

I think I need to explore these things more deeply. I've enjoyed the Trader Joe's tinned smoked trout and sardines, and have found the Aldi and Lidl tinned herring in various sauces pretty tasty too... I have unpleasant memories of canned salmon, so have steered away from that stuff... In my closest grocery store I see a pretty minimal selection... Bumblebee branded stuff in bags and in cans, and Chicken of the Sea in bags and in cans, and the occasional tin of King Oscar. I think I'm going to need to expand out in the search to H-Mart and the eastern European supermarkets an hour away... I recall picking up a tinned eel at the Korean market a few years back and found it not worth repeating... I guess next time I'm out in the direction of Netcost or Assi or H-mart I'll grab some cans and report back...

Further update on my rhubarb experiments. Have had further success in making excellent textured ice cream/sorbet using rhubarb and no other texture modifiers/stabilisers. I made a pint of rhubarb base by bringing a pound of rhubarb, a cup of sugar and enough water to cover it to a boil, then turning off the heat. Once that was cooled it was split evenly between 2 Creami pints. Pint 1 was topped up with canned peaches and a little bit of the syrup they came packed in. This was frozen as is with chunks and peach slices. Pint 2 was topped up with strawberry kefir that had some heavy cream poured into it a few days prior, so fermented half and half, in essence. This got buzzed with the stick blender to mash everything up. Both frozen for about 36 hours, then processed. The creamy one on the ice cream setting and the all fruit one on the sorbet setting. Both had excellent texture. I'm glad that my local Wegmans stocks rhubarb year round.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T4KWNJD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The Rose Berenbaum Ice Cream Bliss ebook is on sale for $1.99 on US amazon... not sure how long it will remain so.

Amazon has the ebook version of Rose's Ice Cream Bliss on sale for $1.99... might be of interest to those playing with ice cream recipes.. Rose's Ice Cream Bliss (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

Sorry to all the salt haters but things not seasoned _at the right time_ are much less fun to eat. Try adding popcorn salt to a bag of unseasoned potato chips.

Thanks for the pointer! All 4 acquired. Wonder if her recipe for the awesome walnut bread that James Beard credits her for is in here, or if Beard on Bread is the only place that resides.

The strawberry rhubarb version with a pinch of xanthan also came out great. I think the textural help the rhubarb gives the final product might make it worth exploring using some fraction of rhubarb in a lot of different sorbet recipes... The ratio with the strawberries was about 1:1, maybe a little heavier on the rhubarb. I wonder if 2:1 something else to rhubarb would benefit from the effect. May have to go get some more rhubarb and see how peach rhubarb sorbet comes out.

Rhubarb sorbet report- this is just as great as the last time. Wonderfully creamy texture from just rhubarb, sugar and water. Makes rhubarb nicer to eat as all the stringy fibers that get caught in the teeth have been pulverized.

Me too. This is a rerun of my rhubarb strawberry elderflower thing I did when the elderflowers were in bloom.

I just did some rhubarb today as well... cup of sugar, 1.25 lb of rhubarb water to cover, brought to the boil then cooled. Squeeze of lemon. Pinch of xanthan. Produced about 1.5 pints, so I topped up the second with frozen strawberries. Will post results tomorrow evening.

w/r/t the date on the salt- My bet is it is there to head off complaints when it cakes or melts back into a single huge lump of salt. I bet some lab exposed the cardboard tube the salt is sold in to "high average" household humidity conditions and came up with an amount of time that it would protect the salt inside from absorbing enough water to be a problem. Regarding expiry on other stuff, I've never paid attention to it. Milk especially... some milk last a week past date and is fine. Some milk goes funky 4 or 5 days before the date. Just have to be attentive to your dairy... Smell tests and coffee curdling test beat a date stamp any day.

Is your grapefruit/shiso going to be electric magenta? My shiso shrub stuff is a wild color straight out of the bottle. What are you using for the grapefruit base, hand processed fresh grapefruits, or canned stuff, or juice?

A very fine source of orange oil that lots of people have handy! I wonder how candied orange peel would work as a mix-in?

Try orange oil. Dissolve some in some vodka and add it by the drop. I've got a bunch of citrus oils about 1% oil in 99% everclear stored in atomizer bottles. A mist or two of that makes citrus flavor pop. Big fan of the bitter orange oil, and the blood orange oil. The tangerine I've tried has been a bit disappointing. Be careful about keeping the dilution to about 99:1... too concentrated it can become irritating.

I'm having great success with sorbets from frozen supermarket fruit. Put a quarter cup of sugar in the blender, add frozen mango chunks, squeeze a little lemon on top, a pinch of xanthan and enough water to make it go... once reduced to puree freeze in the creami pint.

Safety regs, lack of interchangeable parts and lack of sufficient power. To commandeer a hand blender into pacojet service you'd need a new snap on pacojet blade with no guard around it, which would be a liability nightmare so nobody would manufacture one. If you hack together a DIY pacoblade to snap on to your hand blender, the gearing in the pacojet would indicate it is putting out a lot more torque than a vanilla hand blender could muster, so it might not go anywhere even if you do muscle it straight downward into your brick of slippery frozen stuff.

Think about a clear epoxy coating like they use in the river tables... that stuff is near indestructible and can showcase the wood... I'd imagine the woodworker you're getting it from would be familiar with the idea and could show you how that looks and give you a tour of its properties... You probably don't want to leave the wood unfinished.

I've been using bottled kefir as the base for fruity treats, and augmenting it with lactose free half and half. My recipe goes like this- put 100g of sugar plus a random hunk off of the cream cheese brick plus about 25g of some booze or other into the creami pint, then nuke it for 15 seconds. Add kefir and any chopped up fruit up to about half way and blitz it with the hand blender until blended to your preferences... top up with half and half and stir a bit to combine everything. Freeze for 24 hours, spin. Works very nicely. I've been playing with adding a pinch of xanthan, though I don't know what it difference actually makes.

" A few weeks after publishing the report, the WHO issued a clarification insisting it was not telling consumers to stop eating processed meat." Hmmmm.... an order of both bacon both ways? You can't have it both ways.

The Gelato button is supposed to be the go-to for custard bases... Give that a shot and see if it helps.