Dinner reviews from our Casa SaltShaker evenings
Now that we have a full-on kitchen again, we’re back to offering food on the weekends for delivery or pickup. Current plan is to offer an appetizer of some sort, plus two main courses, and at times, a dessert. We’ve got two weekends under our belt so far, and I thought I’d present one of… Read More Steak ‘n Onions
I have a fascination with various Asian cooking shows. And, more recently, some of the anime ones, which tend towards competitions, but generally just feel less antagonist than live shows because… well… cartoons. I started watching a fairly well known one, Food Wars: Shokugeki No Soma, a Japanese one, set in the nation’s most prestigious… Read More Peculiar Pastas #10
At the beginning of each year, I do a writeup of the past one – usually a look at four areas – Casa SaltShaker, Eating Out, Vacations, and Cooking at Home. I take a look at the high points and low points. It often takes me days of figuring it all out. 2020 didn’t take… Read More Should I Even…
Fermenting things has always been a fascination of mine, be it wine, beer, pickles, or anything else. My last delivery from our vegetable supplier included a bag of slightly older bell peppers that were getting to that wrinkly stage, just with the message, “rather than throw these out, figured you might want them for something”.… Read More Saved by the Bell
I have mention Sichuan pickles a few times over the years. The original recipe is a “quick pickle”, i.e., not fermented, made with thin wedges of spiced, seedless cucumbers that are flash pickled with boiling hot oil and vinegar. They’re one of my favorite accompaniments to Chinese food, and I’ve included them in classes we’ve offered… Read More Pickles of the Four Plains
Continuing our exploration of the different types of chipas, we move on today, to the chipa guazú, or “big bread” in the indigenous Guarani language. This one feels less like a bread to me, simply because there’s no actual flour of any sort in it. On the other hand, as I talked about in my first post… Read More Qasa SaltShaker – The Big Chipa
As I promised a couple of weeks ago, I’ll gradually start posting some of the other Chipa version recipes. This one is the original one I learned. I don’t know that this type has any special name of a particular type of chipa, it’s just sort of what seems to be the “classic”, albeit it’s probably a… Read More Qasa SaltShaker – Chipa “Classic”
The chipa. I’ve mentioned it before, it’s a cheese and cassava (tapioca) flour based bread. The word, in fact, is the Guarani word for bread, or cake. In its most historical form, it consisted of nothing more than pounded cassava (yuca/manioc) root and water, the dough wrapped around a stick and cooked over an open flame. That… Read More Qasa SaltShaker – Chipa Avati