Not What I Expected

As long as we're not following trends...

There seems to be a backlash against the movie "Sideways", and a bunch of the food writers and pundits are now drinking and talking about Cabernet Francs and Merlots.

Me, I've skipped straight ahead to old-growth Zinfandels. Take that, trendy ones!

It's New! It's Now! It's, um lard....

Have to love this--the Tenderflake people in Canada send out a PR notice that lets you know that their lard is completely non-hydrogenated!

Well, yeah, because lard comes with its fats already saturated--you don't *need* to hydrogenate it! But true, the amount of trans-fat in lard is small compared to the veggie shortenings out there.

(Sidenote--whatever happened to Spry shortening? It was a competitor of Crisco in the 60's, and it's no longer out there at all. My mother used to swear by that stuff for deep frying.)

That aside, and besides the usual arguments against lard, it does make a heck of a pastry crust. The trick is that since lard stays solid at room temperature, it's a lot easier to have the flour coat the really, really small flakes of lard that it would be if you were using something like room temperature butter (which is why we chill the butter before incorporating it into the pastry dough). Which is why lard crusts tend to have that lovely shatter when they are cut into by a fork.

And as long as you aren't buying it by the 5 gallon bucket, it's not going to go nasty-bad on you quickly. Keep it cool, away from light and air (which you should be doing with the shortening, for that matter), and it lasts.

But, hey--nice marketing! If the Tenderflake people can get the "but it's *lard*" mentality out of the way, they may be able to take some business away from the vegetable shortening industry.

A very nice grilling sauce

I was up early Saturday morning, watching KOMO news, and caught this recipe for peach bbq sauce. It sounded like a great idea, but since Chuq is allergic to mustard, I knew I was going to have to tinker with the recipe a bit.

That said, there was the question as to what the mustard did for the recipe. if mustard is the major flavouring, I'll just find something else to make. If the mustard is adding a specific quality or qualities to the sauce of glaze, I can reproduce that with other ingredients. It won't taste exactly the same.

Basically, though, if you're going with the dijon mustard as your mustard of choice, it's providing two things--heat and tart. Chinese mustard is porviding more heat, and the German mustards have sweet elements in them.

So, I started out by sweating down the onions, and then kicking the heat up a bit so I could get the sugar out of them, While the onions were cooking, I took a peach, peeled it, and chopped it in the mini-processor. That and the smaller jar of no-sugar added peach preserves were going to be mixed in later. I then chopped up a couple of cloves of garlic, and added them at the last minute to the onion mixture--the trick is to get the sugars to release, but not to brown the garlic.

Then to the rest of the ingedients. I had the apple cider vinegar, but to make up for some of the mustard, I added in a bit more of tarragon vingear. It sounds odd, but the tarragon vinegar, when added to a sauce, ends up having a lot of the same qualities as mustard. A couple of grinds of white pepper added a bit mroe heat, and a couple of tablespoons of Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce (this is a Thai sweet chili sauce, not to be confused with Heinz Chili sauce, or even chili garlic paste--those are both enitrely different beasts). In went the peaches, peach preserves, and a cup and a half of ketchup. I use the Trader Joes ketchup, because it uses sugar instead of corn syrup, and yes, you *can* taste the difference.

That lead to the other major substitution--I didn't have any bourbon. I did have Calvados (nope, too sweet, and I can only get it in Canada, so it's not going into a sauce by the glug, thanks), Irish Whiskey (no thanks), a couple of bottles of Scotch (blech!), and an okay, but not apocryphal bottle of Cognac. In went the Cognac.

This was all mixed and then cooked down over low-medium heat for an hour, or when it had lost half of its volume. I let it cool a bit, and then it was painted on to some game hens I had put on the grill earlier.

The sauce wasn't apocryphal, but it was darned good, and it made a bunch. It looks like a good base for some agrodolce, so with some golden raisins, some capers, and a couple of chopped up olives, it will make a reappearance at tonight's grilling.

Expensive Australian sporks

As seen in an ad in the back of Delicious magazine--Splayds! You too can spend $34.95 for eight of these 18/8 stainless, high-end sporks. Darned if I can figure out the use for these--buffet-ware? Picnics? They're too expensive and heavy to haul out for camping, and they aren't the right size for a children's party.

Twinings Tea--note to the unwary

The loose "English Breakfast" tea is just nasty. Somehow, it's worse than the bagged stuff, even though it looks like it's the bagged stuff, sans bag. I bought a small can to see if there was something that was drinkable that wasn't in the $40/lb range (why the heck is loose tea so expensive down here in Silicon Valley?).

Blech--I'll drink the Red Rose (Canadian, not US--the Canadian stuff uses a better blend) bagged stuff if I need a cheap hit, thanks.