[CH] coconut, cheesecake, cooking mishaps, plea for help
Tee Bear (traderbear@thehitchingpost.com)
Sun, 4 Nov 2001 13:37:24 -0500
Pecos and Riley, THANKS so much for telling me how to get into that
coconut. Will probably wrestle the coconut tomorrow and see which of
us wins Today, I am tackling the serranos chile chicken enchiladas
recipe. Whew. Cooking sure takes a lot of thinking n planning! Must
be why I don't do it that much <grin>
I finally made the Habanero Lime Cheesecake. I would crank the lime up
a bit more next time. My first bite somehow must have had pure habanero
concentrated in it. I was burning and totally dismayed. I thought I was
not going to be able to eat the cheesecake at all. Then I cautiously
sampled a tiny second bite, and it was nowhere near as hot. I thought I
had mixed the batter well but there were "hot spots" without any
noticeable evidence of the chile itself. The thing is, now I have this
whole cheesecake -- hot enough that this wimp can't eat much of it.
Guess I could try freezing it and nibbling over time. Ya'll wanna come
over and have cheesecake?
This first foray into cooking with raw chiles raised questions about
what chiles would do to various cooking utensils and devices. For
example, after reading CH discussion about aftereffects when using your
coffee grinder to do chile choppin, I knew I would have to buy a
separate grinder for chiles -- don't really want chile in my coffee, esp
if I can find some of that 100% Kona. But what about food processors or
even glass dishes? I prefer glass always over plastic, but noticed
that even glass pickle jars absorb tomatoes or pickling juices --can be
hard to get tomato and pickle smell ouf of glass jars. So I really
am wondering about chile peppers effect.
I was afraid to let my food processor mix this cheesecake for me; didn't
want to chance lingering chiles. To smash the habs into paste, I wore
surgical gloves but somehow still managed to get hab fire on one
finger -- yeah, I found it! Probably a comical sight ---surgical
gloves, smashing habs in a make-do mortar --a heavy glass bowl-- with my
make-do pestle -- an empty spice jar.
Made rookie mistake in roasting the habs. Put them on a skewer to roast
'em over my gas burner. Skewer promptly caught on fire! 'course all I
was concerned about was those habs! I found myself a bigger stick, a
chopstick. It caught fire, too, but I kept blowing it out and roasting.
Guess I should have presoaked sticks in water, but at that point I only
wanted to keep going with that bloomin cheesecake!
Roasting chiles and covering them with a towel to sweat-cool off raised
another question. Does chile get on the towel? Did I need to be
concerned about chile being transferred from towel to hands, whatever?
LOL. What a bunch of questions rattling thru my mind. I am telling
you, this cooking business calls for a lot of knowledge! My poor brain
has been severely strained. Thank heaven for cheese, crackers and
bottled hot sauce. I need a rest.
CHs, would apprecate info on what chiles "do" to other things in my
kitchen besides warp perfectly good coffee bean grinders, please. Don't
wanna find out the hard way!!!!!
Tee