…but I do wonder what they’re talking about over there. Spooky.

(full story on these beauties in a couple)

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Let me set the scene…

Imagine, you wake up in your tent, perhaps curled up next to somebody cute. You rub your bleary eyes, red and itchy from last night’s indiscretions. “Coffee… Coffee! COFFEE! NOW!” you think. The tent flap zips open. Nature in all her glory fills your nostrils. You take a moment to spread your arms and emit a contented yawn before quickly assembling your drug paraphernalia. Stove, moka pot, cup, grinder.

Wait, grinder? In the woods?

You fill the hopper, turn the handle for a while, and brew up a few spectacular cups as your campmates thank their lucky stars. Ahhhh, life is sweet, isn’t it?

Still in production today but little-used outside of coffee geek circles, quality hand-cranked coffee grinders often have grinding mechanisms to rival the most rarefied big-dollar electric grinders. A not-so-obvious plus is that, due to the sweat of your brow powering the grinder instead of a motor, the RPMs at which the burr spins are far lower. This means the beans will be heated less by friction, which means better coffee. The only downside is, you’ll get a little exercise and wait a little longer. So be it. Coffee is a ritual. Why shouldn’t grinding it be a little ritualistic?

I picked up the above, a vintage 50s model from German maker Zassenhaus, on Ebay just now, for a pittance. Not only will it probably outperform my current home grinder (a Nemox Lux, no slouch), it’ll come in handy for the oceanside coffee roasting party I’m currently drawing up. Please, lord, let UPS be gentle this time.

*UPDATE!*

The grinder arrived in great shape, with some construction surprises- the red domed top is actually beautifully milled out of wood, and swings out in two hinged halves. The whole mechanism’s definitely in need of a little lubing and a good clean, but it happily ground a shot so fine it choked my Aeropress, and the next just fine enough to create a wonderfully fragrant cup. I’m in love.

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…that was today’s question. In my quest to shore up my lacking Mexican cooking skills, I’ve been wanting to make a really good batch of Salsa Roja, but the texture’s been eluding me. A cooked salsa with a silky smooth texture and a burnished but still bright flavor, Salsa Roja seems simple enough on the surface…

I mean, come on, it’s just canned tomatoes, cumin, cilantro, lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic, and dried chilies, all cooked for an hour or so until well-integrated and then liquefied somehow. I’d tried a stick blender, a regular blender, a food processor and even a food mill, and all left me with too much fibrous, texture-wrecking junk behind, no matter how zealous I was. VRRN VRRN VRRNNNN…. :/

Well, I’ve finally cracked it. After reading about them in a hundred fancy blogs and marveling at their $50+ price tags, I’d lusted but never lunged for a tamis (pronounced “tah-mee”). When visiting Kamei restaurant supply last week, I found one for all of $6. A tamis would be mine, at last.

A tamis is nothing more than a fine mesh screen, steel or nylon, stretched tight in a circular metal frame with three-inch-ish-high sides. You place it on top of a pot or bowl, fill it with the food you’d like to liberate from the bonds of solidity, and then scrape back and forth across the screen with something flat (like the business end of a spatula). This mashes, purees and separates out the larger solids from your dish with blinding efficiency.

They’re used to great effect in Indian food, reducing lentils to subtle creaminess in Dhal. They’re MVPs in the creation of satiny soups. Surprise surprise, it did a perfect job of separating the essence of this salsa from the seeds, husks and skins that no blender could ever mitigate. I was left with the above, an absolutely luscious sauce that satisfied my blurry-eyed morning cravings handily. Topping a plate of eggs, refried beans and tortillas, it was a breakfast to be remembered.

Next to receive the tamis treatment will be some enchilada sauce. Definitely will post when that plan’s in motion.

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Hi, everybody! There’s some exciting new things afoot at this long-neglected blog. Since I last wrote, my fellow fashionistas and I have started a new record label/art collective/party crew called, appropriately enough, Dinner Party Records. The label sprang from a series of Friday-night gourmet potluck dinners that segued us into the weekend’s craziness. We had great musicians, producers, artists, web developers, marketing people and business-minded folks in the group… Why not take over the world, eh?

The first product our new label will be selling is my new solo album, The White Pinecone, the making of which is what caused a break in my writing here. The music is some really fiery electronic/rock/dance/synthpop stuff. Check it out at the link above or click here for the Myspace page. I’m really excited about it, it’s some of my best work yet.

Dinner Party Records also contains a number of high-powered foodies and cooking obsessives like myself, and you’ll start seeing some contributions from those folks pop up here at feeding//fashionistas. In the meantime, I’m going to be reposting some of my very first pieces I wrote for this blog, just to get the jus flowing, so to speak- a series of articles on lovely/essential tools and ingredients with which to outfit your kitchen in serious style, for champagne cuisine on a Pabst budget. The first is from all the way back in October 2005, and it’s all about tools.

Cheers mates, get cooking!
-GC @ ff

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This is the first installment in my short series on inexpensively outfitting your kitchen for total culinary dominance. Where would Batman be without his utility belt? Where would Elvis be without his guitar and hip pads? Where would Paris Hilton be without her purse full of nasal drugs?

Nowhere, I tells ya.

This time around, I’ll be covering the bare essentials. The BASICS. I will be naming brands, and maybe even stealing a couple of images from manufacturer’s sites- but if you find something in your local store that seems to fit the bill and doesn’t align with exactly what I’ve outlined here, go for it. This stuff is cheap enough that you can afford to make mistakes.

1.2.
3.4.

(more…)

Filed under: Random, Tools
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You. You. Over there. Yes, you. You need one of these:

Thai Granite Mortar And Pestle

Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have an innate need to pound stuff. To grind stuff. To forcefully reduce things to a pulp. Deep within your psyche, a little itch exists, maybe so small you can’t feel it. Still, it exists.

You need to beat the s*** out of some spices. You wanna cream some garlic. You need to make some ding-danged chili paste. You do! How do I know this? Well.. I’m gastronomically psychic, and I feel your vibes, (wo)man. Fa-rizzle.

Given such tasks, what would you rather do? Would you prefer to lug out some bulky, dusty hunk of plastic, plug it in, clean the bowl, load your precious goodies in, try like hell to get the right consistancy (but probably either chop too coarsely, or turn things into pudding), then have to clean the whole kit-and-kaboodle and stow it away again?

Or would you rather plop your lemongrass into a pretty stone thing that looks fabbo in your hipster kitchen, and get some aggressions out with a tool that looks like it’d find a good home lashed to a stick in prehistoric warfare? Does getting just the right grind on, then returning to your cooking triumphant and maybe a little flushed from the work after cursorially splashing a little water into the mortar for cleanup sound good to yas?

IMHO, food processors are about as sexy as their name. I wouldn’t mind having one if I was big into baking or cooking for a big family, as they rock for doughmaking and for grinding meat (which I don’t eat), shredding pounds of cheese and so on.

For smaller tasks like grinding spices, bruising herbs, and finessing the living hell out of whatever tasty stuff you can dump into it, I think the mortar and pestle is nature’s perfect food, er, tool. Uh… Well, it’s a really great tool, anyway.

For the tasks I love them for, you’ve gotta make sure to get the right type of mortar and pestle. You DO NOT WANT:

A Suribachi - Great for creaming miso and other gentle tasks. Doesn’t take overhead-swinging two-handed tiger power strikes too well. Tends to break when you release too much qi.

A little teeny wussy pharmacy-style M&P(mortar and pestle) - Probably just fine for normal dry spice-grinding tasks. Might hold about two chilis and one clove of garlic, and would probably be very polite to them. FORGET IT.

We are not here to be nice to our ingredients We’re here to crush, pulverize, mash, and bang the ever-lovin’ f*** out of them. Move along.

A Molcajete - Pig head or no pig head, this, too is the wrong tool. Generally made of porous volcanic rock, molcajetes absorb tons of flavors and are highly abrasive- very useful for making wonderful puree’d salsas and things like mole sauce.

Certainly cool to have if you’ve got space, but not, an everyday tool for my purposes. Gotta love the pig head handle, though!

(more…)

Filed under: Recipes, Tools, Meal Reports
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This is the first installment in my short series on inexpensively outfitting your kitchen for total culinary dominance. Where would Batman be without his utility belt? Where would Elvis be without his guitar and hip pads? Where would Paris Hilton be without her purse full of nasal drugs?

Nowhere, I tells ya.

This time around, I’ll be covering the bare essentials. The BASICS. I will be naming brands, and maybe even stealing a couple of images from manufacturer’s sites- but if you find something in your local store that seems to fit the bill and doesn’t align with exactly what I’ve outlined here, go for it. This stuff is cheap enough that you can afford to make mistakes.

1.2.
3.4.

(more…)

Filed under: Tools
3 Comments