Seeding hot peppers can be time consuming. Make the process less complicated by using a small melon baller scoop. And alleviate the stinging pain of particularly hot chilies by wearing gloves.
Posts with tag pepper
Slashfood Ate (8): Recipes that call for Maras pepper
I have been hooked on Maras pepper ever since my first encounter with it a few years ago in lamb meatballs. It's a unique mildly hot red pepper from the Kahramanmara? region of Turkey, just north of Syria. After a lengthy process of drying the peppers and then grinding them, the pepper is sent to markets all over Turkey.
Maras is delicious with vegetables, seafood, and steak. Unlike many peppers, this one has a subtlety; a heat that seems to creep up on one's palate in the most gentle and delicate way. I find that many hot peppers offer a heat that overwhelms the flavor of the pepper. Maras pepper is unique in its well balanced complex taste and level of heat.
Below are 8 recipes that call for Maras pepper:
- Turkish lamb kebabs
- Pistachio-crusted halibut with spicy yogurt
- Valerie's lamb kofte with garlic yogurt sauce
- Vinaigrette - add a dash of Maras pepper to transform your common salad dressing.
- Spiced lamb with eggplant yogurt sauce - substitute their suggested pepper for Maras. This is an excellent recipe from Develï restaurant in Istanbul
- Poached sea bass with almond sauce (Badem Taratorlu Levrek) - drop the black peppercorns, and add maras pepper.
- Mercimek Çorbas? (Red lentil soup) - Use Maras pepper where it calls for red pepper.
- Grilled eggplant with lebneh - simple, yet probably one of my favorites on this list. Add Maras pepper at the end.
When did salt and pepper become a pair?
What would a dinner table be without its salt and pepper? They've become so ubiquitous in everyone's kitchen. However, we rarely wonder why. Both were heavily used in cuisine for hundreds of years, but so were several other spices. What made people focus on salt and pepper?
The story begins with salt. In Ancient Rome, it gained popularity as a condiment. Italians during the Renaissance served salted dishes at the same time as sugared dishes. It was not until the 17th century that the French created a salt-sweet divide. Salted foods were eaten throughout the meal because they stimulate the appetite. Sweet plates were served at the end; they satiate the appetite and shutdown our desire to eat.
It was in France that salt met its inevitable spicy partner, pepper. 17th-century Classic French cuisine, which developed at the court of Louis XIV, considered pepper and parsley as superior to the various spices imported from the Middle East. In fact, it viewed all spices as vulgar ingredients masking the true flavor of a dish. Pepper was the only spice acceptable. And, it eventually attained the same status as fine herbs which were thought to be more wholesome and exquisite. The French heightened the importance of pepper giving it the status it has today.
Exploring the wonders of infused vodka!
There are some people who it is just plain good to know. When you're in college, for example, the guy with a truck is incredibly helpful, and when you go in to business, the understanding accountant and the slightly unethical lawyer are almost necessities. A few years ago, my friend John became one of these fabulously helpful people. A lifelong resident of southwest Virginia and a trained chemist, John had a skill set that was uniquely wonderful: he knew how to get hold of moonshine, and he knew how to test it for impurities. While the grain liquor (or "likker," if you prefer) that I got from John wasn't all that cheap, it was completely flavorless, and I soon discovered that it made the perfect carrier for various fruits. Within a couple of months, I had a collection of incredibly delicious infused cordials that I would mix with seltzer or tonic water to produce light, moderately alcoholic spritzers with insanely pure tastes.
Ingredient Spotlight: Harissa
What Tabasco is to Avery Island, harissa is to Tunisia. This brick red tomato, garlic and spice paste is stirred into stews, served as a condiment for elaborate couscous dishes, and used as a rub for meat. Though originally Tunisian, it's ubiquitous in Moroccan and Algerian cooking as well, and tends to show up wherever North African food is served, whether at a Parisian kebab joint or a Manhattan merguez sandwich stand. I like to use it to spice up bean dishes, mix it with a little mayo for a sandwich spread, and stir it into yogurt as a dressing for cold lamb.
You can find harissa in cans or bottles at many North African and Middle Eastern markets, or you can make your own. Mediterranean food expert Clifford A. Wright has a good recipe on his website, using guajillo chiles easily found in Hispanic markets.
Ingredient Spotlight: Piment d'Espelette
Piment d'Espelette grown in just a handful of villages in the Basque country of southern France, is as beloved in their region as paprika is in Hungary. The small red peppers can be used fresh, or hung up in bouquets to dry then ground into powder similar to hot paprika. First introduced to France by returning New World missionaries in the 1500s, the Espelette is now an essential feature of Basque cuisine. The village of Espelette holds a Celebration of Peppers each October, with Espelette-infused dishes, banners made from hundreds of red and green peppers, and street performers painted red to resemble the pepper itself. Espelette goes especially well with seafood, mild cheeses, and hearty vegetable dishes. In Paris, I ate monkfish over white beans in an Espelette cream sauce. It was divine, silky and smoky with just a teeny-tiny kick. You could substitute hot paprika, but it wouldn't be quite the same. You can find ground Espelette in some gourmet markets or online at Amazon.com. There's a trove of Espelette recipes at Epicurien, which is in French but can be translated by Google to decidedly mixed results. I'm especially keen to try the sauteed shrimp with Espelette and Bayonne ham.
Egg Salt & Pepper Shakers, because we're not sick of eggs yet
I know. Could we get over the eggs already? You already know I can't because I love hard boiled eggs, plus, I have this "thing" for salt and pepper shakers.The egg-shaped salt and pepper shakers are by Primal Design. Together, the egg measures W3.7 xD2.6 xH1.7" and is made of ceramic. It's available from MollaSpace for $12.
More salt and pepper shakers:
Flashy Mini Lanterns
Weeble Wobble
Ice cream cones
Sleek and magnetic
Pretty little pigs
Self-shaking shakers for the lazy
Peugeot's electric pepper mill
Flashy salt and pepper shakers
It's been a while since I've cooed over a set of salt and pepper shakers, so it's about time.The Mini Lantern Salt and Pepper Shakers don't actually effect an "Ohmigod, how cute!" but they do get points for being totally functional, doing double duty as shakers as well as lights for the table. Each shaker has three white LED bulbs with built-in reflectors for even more brightness.
Because you always want to be prepared for a power outage just as you're about to reach for that salt shaker.
The set of shakers is available from HomeWetBar for $24.99
Slow Cooker Chili - Spices and seasonings
I will be frank with you. If I am making chili during the week when I am busy with life, then I resort to store-bought chili powder along with an extra hit of ground cumin. I realize that there could be all kinds of strange and unusual ingredients that have been ground into that bottle of chili powder, but I don't mind being ignorant to them for the sake of convenience. If I'm making chili on a lazy weekend afternoon, then I add dried spices individually. If you're ambitious, you can grind the spices yourself and make your own chili powder to use in the future. Chili powders include, but are not limited to: ground chili, oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper, paprika, and garlic powder.
Seasoning the Chili:
Add ½ c chili powder to the beef, vegetables (and beans if you added them) in the crock pot. I like heat in my chili, so I throw in some additional cayenne pepper (about 2-3 additional Tbsp) as well as cumin (additional 1 tsp) for a smokier flavor. Add salt and pepper to taste, though salt is something you can always add when you serve it.
Designboom's "Dining in 2015" contest winners revealed
Designboom, a mod blog devoted to the latest and greatest in product design, recently came out with the winners of its 2006 Dining in 2015 contest. The challenge was exactly as it sounds: to design a food-related product that would be useful in 2015 at work, in travel, or at home. Chefs and designers from Italy and Japan judged the entires and came up with the top three and an honorable mention.
Let's start from the bottom and work up. The honorable mention [ed. note: shown in photo] was an eco-friendly solution to dinner prep: silicone and nylon triangle-shaped buckets that allow the cook to boil three different foods all in one pot, thereby saving energy, time, and water. I totally expect it to be selling out on QVC in no time.
Third place? A creative ceramic salt and pepper shaker that forces you to physically break open the canister to access the spices inside. The goal of the project? There isn't any, really, but we bet it's really, really fun to break open. Save it for a day when you're really pissed off at someone, and then smash away. (But don't get carried away - - then you'll just have a mess of salt, pepper, and white ceramic shards to clean up).
Continue reading Designboom's "Dining in 2015" contest winners revealed
How much do you know about salt?
I haven't added salt to food in 15 years. I have high blood pressure and don't want to risk any possible increase. Besides, a lot of food we eat already has enough salt in it and I haven't missed it. If I add anything at all, it's pepper or one of the many flavors that Mrs. Dash gives us.
The Salt Institute has a large FAQ page about salt. You can find out what salt exactly is, how much is produced in the U.S., effects it has on the human body, how animals react to salt, how much salt an athlete needs. There's even a huge list of recipes that contain salt. Recipes that contain salt? Wouldn't that be too big a list to have even on the web? Actually, they're recipes for food where salt is a vital ingredient.
Lift n Shake Salt and Pepper Shakers
It's been a while since I've posted about my favorite things on the table (other than food, of course): salt and pepper shakers.
The Lift n Shake is a cute reminder that after putting down all those calories, you need to hit the gym. The happy little weightlifter is made from cream plastic; the barbell is plastic as well. Salt and pepper is on either side of the barbell. Just lift it up and tilt to shake. You won't build muscle, but that's okay.
Available from Chiasso for $22.
More salt and pepper:
Heart-shaped
Talk to taste
Silvery sleek
Ice cream cones
Sleek and magnetic
Pretty little pigs
Self-shaking shakers for the lazy
Peugeot's electric pepper mill
Weeble wobble
Cha Cha Cha
Teardrops
Loops
Woman attempts to break Guinness record by eating ghost chilis
An Indian woman has set her sights and taste buds on breaking the Guinness record for eating the most hot peppers. And not just any hot peppers. Anandita Dutta Tamuly plans to eat as many Bhut Jolokia, or ghost chilis, as she can.Tamuly hails from the state of Assam, where the pepper occurs as a natural hybrid. She seems pretty confident that she can scarf a record-smashing amount of what Guinness recently named the world's hottest chili pepper. On Indian television she recently chowed down on 60 of the fiery peppers in two minutes. Tamuly became a fan of the ghost chili when her mother smeared some chili paste on her tongue to cure a childhood infection.
The current record is held by Anita Crafford who consumed eight peppers in a minute. They weren't ghost peppers though, far from it. They were jalapeños, which are about one one-hundreth as hot as the dreaded Bhut Jolokia. Sheesh, what a wimp!
In search of the world chili-eating record
A Mexican man, Manuel Quiroz, loves chilies with a passion. Perhaps disturbingly so. Not only can he "down dozens of Mexico's spiciest chilies," but he can "rub them on his skin and even squeeze their juice into his eyes without so much as blinking." Why on earth anyone would want to do that on a regular basis - or how they came up with such a bizarre idea in the first place - remains to be seen, but Manuel to showcase his unusual... talents. He believes that he can eat more chilies than any person on the planet and wants to prove his claim with a title. Unfortunately, there are no contests to crown the "World Chili-eating Champion" just yet, so Manuel will have to wait. With the popularity of eating contests, however, he many not have to wait long. The International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFCoE) seems like they are always keen to add new events and if they can get any of their current champs to agree to participate, you can bet that they'd be willing to sponsor such a contest.
Kobayashi vs. Quiroz, anyone?
Heart-shaped salt and pepper shakers
Get ready, y'all. Valentine's Day is just over two weeks away, and though the holiday is probably my least favorite "holiday" of the year, I can't help but pay it much attention because 1) hearts are my favorite shape, and 2) pink is my favorite color. Trust me, if I had my say with the Universal Holiday Design Council, I'd make Thanksgiving pink and serve everything from heart-shaped casserole dishes.But I will take great advantage of Valentine's Day until the rest of the world changes and swoon over things like these heart-shaped salt and pepper shakers. Yes, they are being marketed as wedding favors, but I can ignore that for now. The shakers stand 3¾" tall, are shiny chrome, and are $4.99 from Bliss Wedding Markets. If you are planning a romantic dinner in, these would be darling on the table, but I'd plan to use them every day.
More salt and pepper:
Talk to taste
Silvery sleek
Ice cream cones
Sleek and magnetic
Pretty little pigs
Self-shaking shakers for the lazy
Peugeot's electric pepper mill
Weeble wobble
Cha Cha Cha
Teardrops
Loops
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
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