Just a quick note on our nations holiday about homemade ice cream.

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Still out of Turbinado but I still have plenty of ginger.  Let’s go nuts here.

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Ok, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

The first recipe was good, but not enough ginger flavor.  Let’s try and kick it up a not…err..add some more flavor here. Continue reading →

Every now and then I succumb to the temptation of something that goes on sale, like chicken for $1.99/lb.  I then buy up as much as my cart can hold and take it home.  Then there’s the times I make Vat O’ Chili and have more than any of us will use.  What do I do in those situations?  Bust out the vacuum sealer and get busy. Continue reading →

What electrical gadgets do you need in your kitchen?

I’m a gadget hound, so I get thing after thing.  Probably don’t need all of them, but I have a basement full of things I bring up and use every now and then.  I’ll keep most of those out of the list in the interest of saving you time and money.

• Stand mixer (I sprung for a Kitchen Aid mixer which rocks on toast)
• Food processor
• Blender
• Blade coffee grinder (for coffee or grinding spices, be sure to clean by grinding rice and then wiping out)
• Microwave/toaster/stove
• Slow cooker

“But wait”, you cry.  “Where’s the coffee maker?  The hand mixer?”  Don’t need them.  Well, you can get them if you want.  My coffee maker is just a drip filter I put on top of my mug.  Heat water in the microwave and pour through.  Hand mixer?  Had one, nearly lost a finger to it, don’t use it.

This brings us to the “optional, but cool to have” section:

• Bread maker (I make a enough pizza dough that this paid for itself)
• Ice cream maker (lots of use in the summer)
• Rice cooker (a good one, not the $40 the has only one button)
• Burr coffee grinder (makes better ground coffee, but not so good for spices)

I’ll start a series of posts here to get you to think about what you can or should have on hand.  If you have a large kitchen it’s easier to keep more stuff around.  Also, if you can buy any of these things in quantity and keep a smaller portion directly on hand you’ll make fewer trips to the store and save a bit of money.  I generally avoid canned foods since there’s a metric boatload of sodium in them.  Dried or frozen is the way to go for veggies or beans.

Anyway, on to the list.  If you could have anything on hand all the time, I’d recommend:

• Dried kidney beans
• Dried black beans
• Low-sodium cream of celery (fine, or mushroom)
• Rice
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Tomato paste
• Tomato puree (not sauce)
• Breadcrumbs (look in your bread box and I’m sure there’s a few heels.  Dry them out and crush them)
• Elbow pasta
• Farfalle
• Angel Hair or Spaghetti

A trick I learned from Good Eats a number of years ago involves brines.  Any time I’m going to cook pork –  be it chops, tenderloin, or even the base of a pulled pork – I brine it for a few hours ahead of time.  I don’t get too fancy and a lot of this is eyeball.  It’s hard to mess this up, so use this recipe as a base and adjust as you like.  The salt and brown sugar are the two required ingredients.  You can add aromatics like lemon peel or onion if you want.  I don’t.

Here be dragons: Make sure the liquid is chilled before you put the pork in.  Add more ice if you need to, but there should be a few cubes left floating before you put the pork in.  Warm water + uncooked pork may equal sick you.

I’ve been working on this version of the margarita for a number of years.  It started with looking at what I had in my liquor cabinet and mixing, meaning it was the Tequila, Triple Sec, and Schnapps.  I still like my recipes simple, especially when mixing drinks.  You want something you can make easily, make a lot of, and make so long as you can still read the labels on the bottles.  I started making them again with the warmer weather and realized that there was something still off about it.  The taste was okay, but it didn’t taste like the kick in the head you expect from a drink that’s made with all alcohol.

Then I found the wee bottle of Grand Marnier in my cabinet.  Adding that made a world of difference.  I’ve recently learned that Grand Marnier is a form of Triple Sec, but made with cognac as a base, which is where the extra kick in the head came from.  I also have a large bottle of Southern Comfort that’s gathering dust (I swore off the stuff in college and haven’t touched it since).  Using that instead of Grand Marnier got acceptable results from taste testers.

I’ve also since learned that Margaritas are supposed to have lime juice in them.  For one thing, I don’t like following your rules.  For another, shut up!  I mean..you can add an ounce of lime juice if you like.

You can crank this up or down easily since everything uses the same measure.  Want a single drink?  Use 1/2 ounce of everything.  Want to make a party punch?  Use bottles.  I’ve never tried this, but go for it and tell me how it works for you.

I’ve got two weaknesses when it comes to non-alcoholic drinks.  The first is just plain ‘ol soda water (flavored or unflavored).  The other is a nice sharp ginger ale.  The past few months found me working for days to try and make a good yeast-carbonated ginger ale.  While I’ve brewed for many years, doing soda is different in a number of ways.  The pressures are higher, the chances of contamination by wild yeast is a lot higher, and you usually have to work with batches of a gallon or more.  Then there’s the yeast that sits in the bottom of the bottle waiting to be poured into your glass.  I’ve given up with that, at least for now.

I recently picked up a Soda Stream mostly to make carbonated water, but the design allows you to add flavorings after the water is carbonated.  You only work with a 1L bottle at a time, so it’s easy to make a small batch and you can also get results in a few hours rather than days.

When I make food I want it to be simple.  Or at least start simple and complicate from there as I learn more about the recipe I’m working on.

First impressions of this recipe:

Started with 1oz but there wasn’t enough flavor.  I made the mistake of just dumping the second ounce in and got the counter, floor, and myself rather wet.  The concentrate looks really dark due to the Turbinado sugar but will create a nice caramel color after it’s added to the water.

Possible changes:

• More ginger
• Grate or puree ginger
• Fruit juices for sugar rather than Turbinado (apple concentrate?)

 

First post and all that.  Going to try and use this as a way of distributing recipes to friends and family.  Don’t expect a lot of updates unless I get an idea in my head to try something out.

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