#all-spice

Inspired by Inge This Fruit Salad is a refreshing and nutritious blend of flavors and textures, bringing together the crisp sweetness of apples and pears, the juicy bite of grapes and oranges, and the creamy smoothness of yogurt. The addition of almonds introduces a delightful crunch, while the warm spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice—infuse the dish with subtle aromatic depth. Balanced…

Versatile all-purpose blend can be used on all foods

There is an all-purpose blend for everyone. That’s right, and it’s likely right under your nose in your pantry with ingredients you use everyday. Stevia is part of a Healthy All-Purpose Blend for meats and vegetables. In the Grillax Test Kitchen, we have played around with spices and come up with a healthier all-purpose spice concoction that may be exactly what you need for your next grill…

New Post!! Our Award Winning Bourbon Molasses Cookies with Bourbon Buttercream (a.k.a the "Drunken Debbie") #takedown

Last weekend, my friend Soffia and I competed in the Brooklyn Cookie Takedown, a cookie competition held at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn.  To compete, all you have to do is bake 250 cookies, and show up to the venue and hand them out. Not too bad, right? Um…yea – easy, except that it’s 250 cookies (think 20 dozen cookies!).  These were to be made in my tiny, tiny kitchen that lacks a…

Pumpkin Pie Spice and Pumpkin Spice Latte

If you have been following the fan pageon Facebook, you would be very aware of the fact that I am obsessed with pumpkin at the moment. It is as much a fall thing as it is my personal palate thing. Although I am pretty late getting into this pumpkin everything game, I can tell you that I am fully committed. In fact, I took a pledge to get out there and try everything there is to try with pumpkin!…

Not quite enough left-overs for lunch so after Security Council level negotiations about the children’s choice of dishes, I opened the fridge and looked, saw and innovated. And let me share:

One small onion, a red one. Chop it in medium-to-small bits and massage it with sea salt, Turkish-style to release the essences and tone down its bite.

As many cherry tomatoes as I had in the fridge. Flashback:  I had almost given up eating tomatoes in Portugal. The local preference is for tomatoes firm, tart and half-way between green and red. Not my tradition. Until the Hungarian co-mother (see previous posts) had a visit from her long-term vegetarian Hungarian scientist father who commented:  the only Portuguese tomatoes worth eating are the cherry tomatoes. Voilá! I began experimenting and today I can enjoy tomatoes once again. Usually the Spanish discount market can guarantee the best quality year round. Being as its early June, however, the Portuguese, re-branded bargain-yet-with-quality grocery chain does pretty well. These were little, sweet yet tart enough that I dispensed with vinegar.

200 grams of Portuguese fresh cheese. Imagine cottage cheese solidified. This was the equivalent of 2% cheese, neither full fat nor low-fat. Chop it into half inch cubes, or as close as you can get because the cheese comes in cylindrical shapes.  (alimentacao-mais-saudavel.blogspot.com)

  This being Portugal and practically the eve Lisbon’s huge Santo António festival, add in half a roasted, red bell pepper, skinned. Mine was bought at the aforementioned grocery store. Better, of course, if you have grilled and preserved your own. I shall blame condo-living for buying mine.  (clickgratis.com.br)

The crowning touch, the most serendipitous ingredient . . . permit me to maintain some suspense.

I had spent a good part of the last four years hankering after a good pepper grinder. I had managed to ruin my mother’s years before (so I assumed; I have the neurotic habit of accruing blame for sins for which I do not always bear responsibility) by trying to grind red pepper grounds in it. You can now buy black pepper in Portugal in a bottle with its own disposable grinder (this is new fangled; when I first came I had to content myself with previously ground pepper) but it seems so anti-ecological that I had been keeping my eye out for a good, affordable grinder. Of course, as Carolyn’s beautiful crystal implement attests to, price and grinding quality have a fairly low level of correlation.

So at Christmas, I took the girls to a fairly small shopping center and turned them loose: their first independent shopping adventure. Before the release, however, I paused to lavish esthetic appreciation on a little golden pepper grinder. 

It turned up in my Christmas stocking. Thanks Kathleen!

So back to said bargain(ish)-priced slightly above quality grocery chain to search for peppercorns without the plastic disposable grinder.

Now, mind you, my Portuguese is not terribly bad. I mean I’ve spoken it longer than more than one published poet (Miguel Alain, for exampe) and my insatiable curiosity helps enrich my lexicon. But I got to the peppers and was stymied. Finally, I bought one that said “Pimenta Something or Other”. I mean it looked like Black Pepper and just ‘cause it had a fancy name after it, I figured it was just another somewhat improved form of the same.

I waved the new grinder over . . . I remember not the dish. What I do recall was  . . .  joy! What an aroma! Sweet and spicy, only slightly peppery.  Internet dictionaries provide most of our answers (will the income eked out by translations be soon stolen by Google?):  All Spice.

Wonderful! Magnificent! Few recipes have come to my awareness regarding the savory application of this cousin of the Pepper plant, but let me proffer one: 

Serendipitous Salad

8 oz Portuguese fresh cheese, neither full fat nor low-fat

I small, red onion, chopped into small bits and massaged with sea salt

Portuguese sea salt, q.b. (Portuguese for “to taste”)

150 grams cherry tomatoes (if they are too sweet, add a dash of Red Balsamic Vinegar)

½ grilled, peeled red bell pepper

Generous amounts of fresh-ground All-spice