Teenie Cakes

Website: Food Pairing

Came across this unique Web site called Food Pairing.   The goals of the Food Pairing site are to:

"...inspire on new food combinations (What fits well with...) and to support you on how to replace food products by a combination of other products..."

It certainly looks like an interesting and useful tool and I can see it's value now, but it will be even better when they have built their database up further to include more combinations.   The interface is a little clunky and not as intuitive as it could be.   

I look forward to using it!

Teenie Cakes aka TeenieCakes

Pepper Burn!

This last weekend I was making a large tub of fresh salsa (no jarred picante/salsa here!).  Since the serranos peppers I brought home from the market were rather large, I was concerned that it may be too hot for the salsa.   I love salsa, but if it's too hot, I can't enjoy it. My own quote:

"Food should not be painful"

What I mean by that is if it makes you cry or inflict pain - me no likey!

Back to the salsa ... I pulled the flesh out of several serranos to taper down the heat.  No gloves.  Do you know what's coming?   Pepper burn!    OMG!   Felt like I had hundreds of tiny cuts all over both hands, burning like hell.    You can't tune out the discomfort.  You look at your hands and expect to see it beet red and swollen, maybe even bleeding, but it isn't. The discomfort was unbearable.   The only temporary relief I could find was running it under very cold water or dunking my hands in a bowl of ice.   While my hands were numb, I'd quickly run to the computer and look for remedies.   I tried at least half-a-dozen to no avail.    From rubbing alcohol, vinegar, lemon juice and milk (I used heavy whipping cream) -- nothing felt like it was really working.   After a couple of hours, the discomfort subsided to a tingling sensation, until it all but disappeared.  Whew!

The pepper trauma happened last Sunday.  Wednesday, I'm thumbing through the August/September 2009 issue of Saveur magazine.   Well, I'll be doggone -- there's an excellent 7-page write-up and a smartly laid out section about peppers in this issue "A World of Peppers" written by Marciel Presilla.  Beautiful photography by James Oseland (Note the online version does not include the images that went along with this article) accompanied the four full-paged arrangements of 48 different peppers with quick details about each of them.   In this feature, there is also a section about the handling and storage of peppers!!  No remedies, but about wearing gloves.

I make fresh salsa and chile rellenos -- use many different types of peppers in my cooking and am not usually subject to pepper burn.   Guess there's a first time for everything and certainly some lessons to be learned! 

TeenieCakes aka Teenie Cakes

How to Skin and Roast Hazelnuts

How to Skin and Roast Hazelnuts (also known as filberts . . . I didn't know that!).

1. Add 3 tablespoons of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to 2 cups boiling water;
2. Add the nuts and blanch for 10 minutes. The baking soda neutralizes the acid skins, which can then be removed easily.
3. Drain the nuts in a sieve and rinse with cold water.
4. Place the nuts in a container of cold water.
5. Remove the skins under running water and place peeled nuts in the sieve over a container.
6. When all the nuts are peeled, dry them off by patting handfuls in paper towels.
7. Salt the nuts to taste while still damp (optional).
8. To roast the hazelnuts, place skinned nuts on a baking sheet in a 275ºF oven for 20 - 30 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes.

Found this from wikibooks.   I'll test this method out and report back.

UPDATE:    Works like a charm.  The skins just falls off!

Egg whites at room temperature

Beating egg whites at room temperature will give you better volume!

How To Avoid Cupcake Domes

If you are trying to avoid having domed cupcake-tops or domed muffin-tops, mix your dry and liquid ingredients until moistened -- leaving some lumps in the batter. Mixing out all the lumps can not only cause those domes, but have an adverse effect on the texture of your teenie cakes!