Text 683, 83 rader
Skriven 2010-08-28 15:51:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: chili sauce 496
=======================
-=> Quoting Michael Loo to Jim Weller <=-

 JW> Old fashioned chile sauce as made by country farm women fifty years
 JW> ago was much spicier and much more vinegary sharp

 ML> I'll believe the vinegary sharp part, but the spicier I'm not
 ML> so sure about. I think that the heat tolerance of the public
 ML> has increased exponentially in the last hundred years.

I wasn't thinking about chile heat so much as the generous use of
onions, celery and mustard seed and allspice.

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     Title: Homemade Pineapple Vinegar
Categories: mexican, condiments, info
  Servings: 1 gallon

           Peels from 1 pineapple
      6 oz brown sugar
      1 ga distilled water

Mexicans love acidity in their cooking, and that's what makes it so
appealing to eat. When you have something rich and heavy in your
taco like, say, hunks of pork shoulder that have been slow-cooked
in lard to become authentic carnitas, it is always accompanied by a
bright, refreshing salsa to counterbalance it. That's something
that's unfortunately lost in translation with so much Americanized
Mexican food: the acidity.

A well-made guacamole really sings with a proper squeeze of lime
juice. I've written before about the importance of acidity in
seasoning, as important as salt itself, and Mexican cuisine
intuitively understands this.

One of the things our chef teacher continues to refer to is the
frugality of Mexican cooking. The frank reality is that most of
Mexican cooking was developed by people who didn't have a lot of
money. They made use of everything, including the seeds from dried
chiles (they can be charred until black and crumbled into salsas to
add a complex smokey flavor). And one of the biggest surprises was
that the acidity in their cooking doesn't always come from limes.

Limes and Mexican food seem inseparable, but the reality is that a
lime tree can be a luxury, and most families didn't traditionally
have more than one. Yet every dish needed that crucial acidity. So
what did they do? They made fruit vinegar.

At the start of our class chef brought in a huge plastic bucket full
of homemade pineapple vinegar, and we have used it for many of the
dishes as a seasoning. The process of making it is simple: you
simply combine the peels of a pineapple with water and brown sugar
or piloncillo and allow it to become vinegar over the course of a
couple weeks. Once you have the "mother," which is the good culture
that has hence developed, it can be used to transform more
water/sugar into yet more vinegar. It becomes an ever-replenishable
well of acidity to be used without much worry of cost.

In a 1 gallon food-safe container, combine the peels, sugar, and
water.  Cover with plastic wrap or a lid and set in a cool, dark
place.  Allow to ferment for 2-4 weeks.  The vinegar will get murky
and brown, then slowly begin to clarify.  Once you can see a white
"skin" at the bottom, known as the "mother," the vinegar is ready.
The "mother" can be used to create more vinegar as desired.

by Blake Royer


  From: The Paupered Chef               
 
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Cheers

YK Jim


... Jumbo shrimp?  Let us examine this concept more closely

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