Archive for October, 2009
You could ask 10 different baristas for their secret to making a rich, delicious shot of espresso and you’d probably get 10 different answers. In truth, brewing a memorable espresso shot is more of an art than a science. Just as the gourmet chef imparts her own personality and idiosyncrasies on a signature dish, so too does the barista on his espresso shot. No two pulls will ever be quite the same.
Espresso is the foundation for most specialty coffee drinks, so it should come as no surprise that hot-beverage enthusiasts place a lot of stock in getting the formula and procedure just right. There are at least a few well-established rules that increase the likelihood of success. Before you begin making the shot, clean the holder of your espresso coffee maker completely, wiping away leftover grounds.
You’ll want to release approximately 7 grams of coffee from the hopper into the holder, and even them out with a hand tamper. Then lock the shot holder in place, warm an espresso cup and set it just under the spout. Your machine should do the rest of the real work, although you’ll want to monitor the brew for consistency and color. It should take no more than 25 seconds for the water to pass through the coffee grounds.
Salt is the only mineral that’s fit for human consumption; unlike other food flavor additives, it is mined from deep in the ground and not grown on farms. Still, most people treat the substance like just another spice. Like pepper, it’s a mainstay on dining room tables and kitchen counters across the Western world. When salt is tasted on its own, it seems overpowering and frankly a bit too “salty.” What makes it such a great complement to most savory dishes?
The human propensity for salt most likely derives from two sources. First, our bodies require a certain amount of sodium to carry out essential functions. Second, salt operates as a natural preservative by forestalling the growth of mold and bacteria on food. Over the course of our evolution, we undoubtedly recognized the mineral’s critical benefits and developed a taste for it.
Most cooks – both amateur and professional – would agree that salt adds a whole new element of flavor to foods that would otherwise seem bland and incomplete. Imagine a broth or sauce lacking in saltiness; there’s not much chance it would be a memorable one. Some rebels even turn a salt mill over their ice cream to create a sweet-and-salty contrast that shocks and delights the palate.
Fettuccine Recipe for the Chilly Autumn Months
Now that the weather has cooled down appropriately for the remainder of autumn, many thoughts and stomachs turn to heavier, more substantial dinner dishes. We work just as hard in the chilly months between summer and spring, but for whatever reason we tend to crave a hearty, filling entrée from time to time. Whenever I feel like indulging in some comfort food, I sift through my recipe box for this family favorite: fettuccine alfredo.
Ingredients:
1 pound
½ cup margarine
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 ½ cups half and half
1 ½ cups shredded Parmesan cheese
pepper, to taste
pinch of salt
Directions:
1. Bring water to boil in large pot. Add pinch of salt to water. Add fettuccine and cook uncovered for 12 minutes. Drain, cover and set aside for later use.
2. Melt butter and sauté garlic over medium heat in large skillet. Stir in 1 ½ cups half and half.
3. Cook over medium heat for 4 minutes, stirring all the time. Stir in fettuccine, add remainder of half and half, cheese and salt. Grind some fresh black pepper from your pepper mills over the top and stir.
4. Serve after 1 or 2 minutes.
When you take a few bites of salty food, you probably feel a natural urge to wash it down with some water or a similarly quenching beverage. You might not realize that while salt makes us thirsty it also plays a huge role in preventing dehydration. Sports drinks such as Gatorade, Powerade and All Sport often make bold claims on their packaging. They boast about all the electrolytes contained within each bottle.
In fact, the most effective electrolyte drinks contain potassium and sodium salts – an ingredient that’s not so different from what you might grind out of a Cilio salt mill. These salts work to restore the body’s hydration and electrolyte levels following extraneous exercise or physical exertion. In physiology, seven primary ions constitute electrolytes. The positive ions sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium are joined by the negative ions chloride, hydrogen carbonate and hydrogen phosphate.
Various of the body’s muscular and neurological functions require a steady supply of electrolytes. For instance, muscle sodium, calcium and potassium all play a crucial role in allowing for muscle contraction. It’s easy to see why athletes rely on electrolyte-rich drinks following a trying workout. Medical professionals measure the presence of electrolytes in patients via blood tests or urinalysis.
One of the most versatile pieces of equipment in the kitchen is a spice or pepper mill. Although these products are normally marketed for a specific purpose, you can you your imagination to come up with other uses. I keep two mills in my house; one for spices and another for coffee.
You can use your mill to create a variety of fresh, custom spice blends for a fraction of what you pay at the store. Mills are also a great way to grind your own coffee at home. Grinding your own coffee lets you ensure the freshness of your beans and leads to a better tasting cup of Joe.
As coffee aficionados and caffeine junkies well know, waking up without a fresh cup of joe is almost an unthinkable task. Some coffee lovers swear by their upscale Saeco automatic espresso machines to do all the work for them, and others like to have a more active hand in creating their coveted morning beverage. We’ve talked at length about decalcifying coffee makers and espresso machines with a descaler in recent weeks, and now it’s time to focus on one of the true delights of coffee culture: grinding the beans.
If you don’t want to rely on an all-in-one, maker-grinder combo, there are two distinct types of grinders to consider. The blade grinder is the least expensive of the lot, and, as its name suggests, it uses a spinning blade to make short work of whole beans. The fineness of the grind is wholly dependent on how long you keep the blade spinning. Critics of the blade grinder point out that all the friction it generates has an impact on the coffee’s eventual flavor, and there’s no denying that the consistency is something of a crap shoot. Burr grinders resemble blenders in that the beans are fed in from the top and pulverized by cutting mechanisms at the bottom. You’ll find that burr grinders produce a more uniform consistency of finished product.
When I wake up early in the morning to get ready for work, I’m not exactly the most observant person. Still, I’ve had so many cups of coffee over the years that I can detect even the slightest change in taste and timing. Last week I noticed that my coffee maker was taking an especially long time just to brew a pot; upon tasting it, I knew right away that it was time to clean out the gunk and debris that had built up over time.
While an espresso machine should be cleaned with Durgol or some other high-quality decalcifying agent, you can probably get away with using a water and vinegar solution to unclog a basic coffee machine. About once a month, take a close look at the machine and whether grease and coffee grounds have collected in its parts. The following cleaning method does the trick for me every time.
Take the filter off the basket and fill the reservoir with your water and vinegar combo. Run the coffee maker as normal, but turn it off about halfway through. Allow the machine to rest for about 15 minutes as the vinegar does its work. Switch the machine back on and allow it to complete its process. Then run a rinse cycle with just water in the reservoir. Repeat the entire process once a few minutes later.
Sea Salt: Mining for the Nutritional Truth
If you’ve ever purchased sea salt at the supermarket, you may have noticed claims on the packaging referring to its nutritional superiority. But could sea salt really be any healthier than table salt? After all, both substances consist of precisely the same ingredients – sodium and chloride minerals. According to Katherine Zeratsky, a nutritionist at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, any nutritional differences between the two are negligible at best. Those differences could only owe to impurities found in one of the two types.
The real reason chefs and amateur cooks fill their salt mills with sea salt involves its bold taste and texture. The coarseness of sea salt makes it feel more substantial when chewed and savored on a freshly cooked dish. Since it’s the product of evaporated sea water, a few trace elements are left behind in sea salt – adding some color and flavor to the proceedings. Those with hypertension or other disorders where too much sodium can cause an imbalance should be forewarned is potentially just as harmful.
It’s worth noting that most table salts are iodized, meaning that a small amount of iodine has been added to help prevent iodine deficiency. This problem leads to serious medical complications such as goiter, cretinism and other developmental disorders. If you plan to stick with sea salt that hasn’t been iodized, you’ll want to get trace amounts of the element from other sources such as seafood.
What Would We Do without the Pepper Mill?
You might recognize the following comedic trope that’s been featured in multiple movies. A man and a woman are sitting down to a romantic dinner at a fancy, up-scale restaurant. They’re having a great time and eventually the food arrives. One character – usually the man – picks up a pepper grinder and starts spicing up his steak with liberal abandon. Suddenly the conversation takes on a serious tone and the two characters are completely wrapped up in what the other one has to say.
The camera pans out about a minute later and we see that the man hasn’t stopped cranking the pepper grinder. A mound of pepper several inches high sits piled up atop his steak. There’s inherent comedy in a setup like this – it’s absurd that someone would go on applying pepper to his food without noticing. In reality, the problem with most manual pepper grinders is that the user is unable to control the precise coarseness and consistency of the pepper.
With a Cilio pepper mill, that problem is circumvented entirely. Although it’s just as flavorful as salt, pepper is healthy in large quantities. Starting with raw pepper corns, these mills grind them into a powdery substance with two metal wheels. Originally, the idea for pepper mills came from coffee grinders. People who had been grinding coffee beans into a fine powder saw the opportunity to do the same with pepper right at the dinner table.
Have you ever taken a shower in a house with hard water? No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to work up a satisfactory lather – shampoo just sits in your hair and rinses out. You end up exiting the bath with the creeping suspicion that you never really got clean. Hard water is the product of calcium deposits and other minerals blocking the pipes and changing the chemical properties of the water.
You might be less familiar with the effects of hard water in a beverage context. When consumed by itself, hard water can be difficult to detect. When used in making coffee or espresso, on the other hand, the difference is like night and day. Just as in the shower head and water pipes, calcium can build up inside coffee machine boilers – dramatically impacting the taste and consistency of the final product.
An espresso decalcifier takes care of the problem with ease. The substance simply needs to be run through the machine and – combined with a few rinses – it knocks the calcium right out. It’s worth noting that an espresso machine with heat exchanger style boilers is not intended to be decalcified. Consult the instructions on your machine, as automatic and superautomatic espresso makers have different requirements for decalcification.