If you like bits floating around in your tea, you can certainly skip straining the liquid before drinking. I strained it because I didn't want the spices to steep longer than they should. I would caution that you shouldn't drink this at night or before going to bed. These spices, while warming, are also stimulants. First time making this and after tasting, the recipe still needs some tweaking. Recipe can be doubled, as necessary.
Makes 1 cup.
Ingredients
1 cup organic milk (whole cow milk, coconut milk, almond milk, etc.)
1 tbsp organic pumpkin puree
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1 tsp loose leaf black tea or green tea (instant coffee, instant espresso, or 2 tbsp freshly ground coffee)
sweetener to taste (I used 2 tsp organic sugar)
ground cinnamon for garnish (optional)
organic whipped cream for garnish (optional, only 8 calories per tbsp!)
Directions
Heat milk, pumpkin, and pumpkin pie spice in a small saucepan. Don't let it scald or boil, a gentle simmer until the milk starts to foam. Remove from heat and pour through a mesh strainer into a mug. Stir in vanilla extract and sugar. Enjoy.
Showing posts with label spices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spices. Show all posts
Pumpkin Pie Spice
This autumn, Portland is strangely sunny and dry. Not that I'm complaining mind you. The mornings are a bit chilly now (in the 40s) but for the most part very pleasant. I'd imagine you'd be using this in a pumpkin or sweet squash pie; but for today, I am using this in a chai tea latte.
The basic ratio goes like this:
4 tbsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp ground nutmeg
4 tbsp ground ginger
3 tbsp ground allspice
Mix all spices together in a half pint mason jar. Stir until combined. Cap and label the jar. Use as directed by another recipe.
The basic ratio goes like this:
4 tbsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp ground nutmeg
4 tbsp ground ginger
3 tbsp ground allspice
Mix all spices together in a half pint mason jar. Stir until combined. Cap and label the jar. Use as directed by another recipe.
Ras-el-Hanout Dry Spice Rub
For the pork butt recipe, I used a Moroccan spice blend called Ras-el-Hanout; which, according to the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen means "head of the shop" in Arabic, or a shop's best house blend. It can also be used as a spice marinade for lamb or chicken.
Ingredients
1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds (can substitute ground coriander)
Ingredients
1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds (can substitute ground coriander)
3/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
Directions
If using all ground spices, simply combine them together in a small bowl. If using whole spices, lightly toast the seeds before grinding into a powder in a spice grinder.
If using all ground spices, simply combine them together in a small bowl. If using whole spices, lightly toast the seeds before grinding into a powder in a spice grinder.
Braised Boneless Pork Butt
Despite the name of the cut, pork butt does not come from the rear of the pig; instead it is the upper part of the shoulder. The companion cut, called a pork picnic, is the lower part of the shoulder. Either cut can be used as BBQ meat. Tonight's dish will be braised, meaning the meat gets seared on med-high heat on the stove, then slow cooked in broth in a Dutch oven (an oven-proof heavy-bottomed pot with a lid).
This recipe has a long prep and cook time, so it is best planned for in advance.
1. Wash and pat dry the pork butt. Set onto a plate. Using a sharp knife, make slits into the meat and insert a garlic slice. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of kosher salt on all sides of the pork butt, followed by some freshly ground black pepper. With your fingers, apply the spices to the pork on all sides. Gently slip the pork butt into a sealable plastic bag and let it sit in the refrigerator for 4-6 hours.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (or 300 degrees F if using a convection oven)
2. In a Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add pork butt (fatty side up) and sear for five minutes. Flip the meat over and sear for five minutes. Add the onions to the sides of the meat. Then, add the carrots, celery and bay leaf.
3. Fill the pot with water or broth until two-thirds of the meat is submersed. Cover the pot with its lid and place in the oven for 1.5 hours.
Internal temperature should read 165 degrees F using a meat thermometer. There may be thicker parts of the roast that measure 160 degrees F. This is okay. The pork should rest for 30 minutes before slicing or shredding.
Ingredients
3.25 lbs boneless pork butt
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tbsp of a spice rub (this recipe uses ras el hanout)
some dry white wine (optional)
chicken or vegetable broth or water
kosher salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 bay leaf
2 organic carrots, sliced
2 organic celery ribs, sliced
1/2 medium onion, sliced
Directions
This recipe has a long prep and cook time, so it is best planned for in advance.
1. Wash and pat dry the pork butt. Set onto a plate. Using a sharp knife, make slits into the meat and insert a garlic slice. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of kosher salt on all sides of the pork butt, followed by some freshly ground black pepper. With your fingers, apply the spices to the pork on all sides. Gently slip the pork butt into a sealable plastic bag and let it sit in the refrigerator for 4-6 hours.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (or 300 degrees F if using a convection oven)
2. In a Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add pork butt (fatty side up) and sear for five minutes. Flip the meat over and sear for five minutes. Add the onions to the sides of the meat. Then, add the carrots, celery and bay leaf.
3. Fill the pot with water or broth until two-thirds of the meat is submersed. Cover the pot with its lid and place in the oven for 1.5 hours.
Internal temperature should read 165 degrees F using a meat thermometer. There may be thicker parts of the roast that measure 160 degrees F. This is okay. The pork should rest for 30 minutes before slicing or shredding.
Ingredient Sourcing: Fat Tuesday
This was not as challenging as I thought it would be. Most of the recipes of the dishes we had planned to make for Mardi Gras were readily available. The only two ingredients that were somewhat harder to acquire, but not really, were frozen okra and andouille sausage. Both of these ingredients I found at Fred Meyer, though the latter was more of a fluke and I managed to snag the last package of Aidell's Andouille Style Sausage.
Because we were also cooking for toddlers (in addition to the adults), really spicy foods are frowned upon because young digestive systems simply cannot handle it. Gives 'em diaper rash. Anyhow. I substituted a smoked turkey sausage I found at Trader Joe's for the andouille. By breaking out the missing ingredients by recipe, it was easy to create a shopping list.
For example:
New Orleans rice & beans:
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
1 lb red kidney beans (2-3 cans)
celery ribs
1/2 lb Andouille sausage / smoked sausage
bread pudding:
1/2 gallon organic milk (4 c for the bread pudding)
1 qt heavy cream (2 c for the bread pudding, 2 c for the whiskey sauce)
day old French or white bread
langostino etouffe:
1-2 lb langostino
4 c chopped onions (if using Emeril's recipe), so roughly 2-3 onions
I did have to look up a conversion for the beans, from dried to cooked. Because we simply lacked the time, I opted for canned red beans instead of the slow cooker method.
Also, all the recipes called for Creole seasoning, which excluding the salt, I had just taken out all the traditional Creole seasoning spices and set them on the kitchen counter. Then we could just flavor by approximation.
Besides salt, black pepper, and onions, the Creole seasonings used for Fat Tuesday's dinner were: cayenne powder, garlic powder, oregano, paprika, and thyme.
Because we were also cooking for toddlers (in addition to the adults), really spicy foods are frowned upon because young digestive systems simply cannot handle it. Gives 'em diaper rash. Anyhow. I substituted a smoked turkey sausage I found at Trader Joe's for the andouille. By breaking out the missing ingredients by recipe, it was easy to create a shopping list.
For example:
New Orleans rice & beans:
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
1 lb red kidney beans (2-3 cans)
celery ribs
1/2 lb Andouille sausage / smoked sausage
bread pudding:
1/2 gallon organic milk (4 c for the bread pudding)
1 qt heavy cream (2 c for the bread pudding, 2 c for the whiskey sauce)
day old French or white bread
langostino etouffe:
1-2 lb langostino
4 c chopped onions (if using Emeril's recipe), so roughly 2-3 onions
I did have to look up a conversion for the beans, from dried to cooked. Because we simply lacked the time, I opted for canned red beans instead of the slow cooker method.
Also, all the recipes called for Creole seasoning, which excluding the salt, I had just taken out all the traditional Creole seasoning spices and set them on the kitchen counter. Then we could just flavor by approximation.
Besides salt, black pepper, and onions, the Creole seasonings used for Fat Tuesday's dinner were: cayenne powder, garlic powder, oregano, paprika, and thyme.
Homemade Seasoning Mix
This spice ratio was found to not work so well in a beef stew environment (for me it was a wee bit too spicy), but this tastes great when used as a spice rub for rotisseried chicken. I suppose you could swap out the flour component of it for another starch that has less gluten in it, if you were trying to stay away from wheat. I keep this in a glass jar; mostly because a plastic container would absorb the odor of many of the spices in this mixture and it's easier to see what's in the jar.
Ingredients
1 c. all-purpose unbleached flour
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp ground thyme
1 tbsp dried basil, crushed
1 tbsp celery seed
2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
Directions
In a clean glass jar, add all the ingredients, stir together with a fork/knife/spoon/chopstick/etc, cover the jar with its lid, then shake to combine. It's only dried spices, so as long as you don't allow moisture into the jar it should keep for a few months.
For beef stew, use 2-3 tablespoons per pound of meat. Add to stew and stir in to incorporate. If you're making this in a slow cooker or Crockpot and you have vegetables in it, crack the lid open a little to simmer off the excess liquid or the stew won't thicken up.
For BBQ or rotisserie chicken parts, use 2-3 teaspoons per pound of meat. Put mix into a small bowl and use your fingers to coat each chicken part with the seasoning mix. The addition of flour (versus other types of food starch) creates a crisp savory layer as the chicken cooks, assuming you haven't taken the skin (the best part!) off the chicken.
Ingredients
1 c. all-purpose unbleached flour
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp ground thyme
1 tbsp dried basil, crushed
1 tbsp celery seed
2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
Directions
In a clean glass jar, add all the ingredients, stir together with a fork/knife/spoon/chopstick/etc, cover the jar with its lid, then shake to combine. It's only dried spices, so as long as you don't allow moisture into the jar it should keep for a few months.
For beef stew, use 2-3 tablespoons per pound of meat. Add to stew and stir in to incorporate. If you're making this in a slow cooker or Crockpot and you have vegetables in it, crack the lid open a little to simmer off the excess liquid or the stew won't thicken up.
For BBQ or rotisserie chicken parts, use 2-3 teaspoons per pound of meat. Put mix into a small bowl and use your fingers to coat each chicken part with the seasoning mix. The addition of flour (versus other types of food starch) creates a crisp savory layer as the chicken cooks, assuming you haven't taken the skin (the best part!) off the chicken.
The spice pantry
Because I'm culinarily bored with my own cooking, I've recently acquired the following spices:
garam masala
allspice
a random curry
chipotle chili powder
ground cardamom
I will do something with these soon, maybe torment some hacked apart chicken body parts and appendages.
Spices are pretty cheap if you don't buy them from a national or regional supermarket chain. Depending on where you live, you're much better off buying spices from a local ethnic market. They'll be fresher and less expensive. Ralphs grocery store, for example, sells cardamom powder for $16/spice bottle. It's not really a high traffic spice like cinnamon or allspice. So it's priced so that it never makes it off the shelf, or whatever. At an ethnic market you can find ground cardamom for about $3-4, and the quantity will be more than enough.
If you don't live near a dense ethnic (non-white) area, the next best places to shop for spice are Whole Foods market and Cost Plus World market.
A good chai latte
You'd think it would be easy to find loose leaf decaf black tea (or green tea) in any non-asian grocery store, but it's much harder than one would think. I have yet to find a local supply of good quality decaf loose leaf black tea. I may just have to order it or make a special trip to that hole-in-a-wall tea shop on Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park, the one that's across the street from T.S. Emporium. Although, to ask for decaf black tea would be really insulting most tea connoiseurs, so I'll probably just get what I need from the emporium.
I started from this recipe, and have since then been trying to replicate the chai spice blend of an instant chai latte mix (of Middle Eastern origins) to something that isn't overly pungent (too much cloves) and has an overall warming effect (from the spices used, e.g., ground ginger, ground cinnamon, etc). I used 2 cups of filtered water and 2 cups of organic whole milk for the tea base. The original recipe was fair and mildly spicy, but it didn't really encourage me to brew the concoction again. It lacked depth.
The current blend I'm using is about right, but not quite. There is something still missing but I can't quite figure out what. I'm inclined to say that it's the lack of allspice, an ingredient missing from my spice rack. I've seen allspice used in chai recipes and haven't used it in mine yet.
The spice ratio:
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 cinnamon stick
6 cloves
1 teabag (per person) worth of black tea or green tea
Any sweetners (sugar, honey, stevia, etc.) used should be placed in the cup.
In my experiments, I can recommend that you not use whole cloves and ground cloves together in the same chai recipe. There is a pungent aftertaste and it doesn't taste very good at all.
Since I lack plain black tea, I used a Bigelow teabag called "Constant Comment" which imparts an orange citrus flavor to the tea. I suspect the "sweet spices" noted on the bag's ingredients are probably nutmeg, cardamom, mace, and perhaps allspice.
I really have no memory map as to what allspice distinctly tastes like, only that it is a key spice in the pumpkin pie spice blend.
(Update: 2/27/2008) I have found the "depth" I was seeking in the taste of the chai tea. It's from a combination of honey and the ratio of milk to water. More milk than water and certainly not a half-and-half ratio like noted above. Also, evaporated milk really brought out a little bit of the creaminess I was seeking but it didn't overpower the taste of the tea. Powdered milk (organic and regular) seemed to have little impact on the depth. The next ratio experiment would be to replicate the milk content of evaporated milk with powdered milk seeing how I don't quite have any fresh milk on hand at the moment.
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