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cdh

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Posts posted by cdh

    Canned sardines & other tinned seafood

    in Cooking

    Posted

    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. 

    • Like 2

    Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    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?  

    • Like 1

    Canned sardines & other tinned seafood

    in Cooking

    Posted

    7 hours ago, weinoo said:

    I look for wild alaskan salmon in cans - preferably a grade up from pink, something along the lines of sockeye or coho.  The places like Great-Alaska do a nice job.

     

    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? 

    Canned sardines & other tinned seafood

    in Cooking

    Posted · Edited by cdh (log)

    7 hours ago, weinoo said:

     

    A place like netcost has tons of canned fishes.  However, I tend not to like that product as much as the stuff from the Iberian peninsula, France, the US, etc.

     

    I look for wild alaskan salmon in cans - preferably a grade up from pink, something along the lines of sockeye or coho.  The places like Great-Alaska do a nice job.

     

    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?

    Canned sardines & other tinned seafood

    in Cooking

    Posted

    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... 

    • Like 1

    Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted · Edited by cdh (log)

    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. 

    • Like 6

    Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    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. 

    • Like 3

    Food expiration dates are sometimes arbitrary and not science-based

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    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. 

    • Like 4

    Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted · Edited by cdh (log)

    1 hour ago, curls said:

    I would like more orange flavor. Might be interesting to add some orange juice concentrate (just the frozen stuff from the grocery store). If that doesn't do it I can start using specialized pastry ingredients. Just not sure how much I'm going to play with mandarin oranges. I am thinking of lemon sorbet with a swirl of lemon curd for another experiment. 

    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. 

    • Like 1

    Why can't an immersion blender do what a Pacojet does?

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    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. 

    Protecting solid wood (walnut) from spills etc

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    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.

    • Like 1

    Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted · Edited by cdh (log)

    6 hours ago, ltjazz said:

    Hey all, I just grabbed a Creami and was looking for best practices for using the machine. What types of ice cream or gelato bases does it perform best with, and what setting seems to process ice cream/gelato the best? 

     

    I would say I'm definitely looking to do something more like a dense, flavorful gelato with less cream (which seems to be what this machine excels at.) I do have a Lello Musso with a compressor, but it seems to work better for high fat/traditional ice cream.

     

    I'd imagine, though included recipes for the creami are relatively simple, some basic ice cream science by uising invert sugar/milk powder/stabilizer might go a long way here in helping to reduce ice crystals further?

    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. 

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