Monthly Archives June 2007

One More Coffee Addiction: Espresso

So after all the coffee entries have not finished yet, have they? This is however special. It is posted the day I got my first espresso machine. And espresso is a different and unique type of coffee in many aspects. The type of beans that are used, the grind, and the methiod of brewing. We will talk about those later but as usual let ‘s just focus our attention on the actual machine and its development through time.

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A Simple Summer Dish: Zucchini Casserole

Zucchini (Courgettes) is a small, thin skinned, summer squash. Its Scientific name is Cucurbita pepo (a species which also includes other squash). It can either be yellow or green or light green, and generally has a similar shape to a ridged cucumber, though a few cultivars are available that produce round or bottle-shaped fruit. Unlike the cucumber it is usually served cooked, often steamed, boiled, grilled, stuffed and baked, barbecued, fried, or incorporated in other recipes such as soufflés.

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Peppers: Capseicin Containers

Peppers sweet, spice, small, big all are part of the Capsicum family, which is a genus of plants from the nightshade family (Solanaceae), native to Mexico, and now cultivated worldwide. Some of the members of Capsicum are used as spices, vegetables, and medicines. The fruit of Capsicum plants have a variety of names depending on place and type. They are commonly called chili pepper, red or green pepper, or just pepper in Britain and the US; the large mild form is called bell pepper in the US, capsicum in Australian English and Indian English, and paprika in some other countries (although paprika can also refer to the powdered spice made from various capsicum fruit). The original Mexican term, chilli (now chile in Spanish) came from Nahuatl word chilli or xilli, referring to a huge Capsicum variety cultivated at least since 3000 BC, according to remains found in pottery from Puebla and Oaxaca.

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Baklava: A Desert with History

One of the most recognizable greek deserts is baklava. It is a layered desert with lot's of nuts and a thick sweet delicious syrup. It a staple to almost every greek restaurant and pastry shop. The history of the desert is long and it is lost in past centuries, somewhere in the middle east. The first record of a desert like such was in ancient Syria where the Assyrians at around 8th century B.C. were the first people who put together a few layers of thin bread dough, with chopped nuts in between those layers, added some honey and baked it in their primitive wood burning ovens.

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Capsaicin… Can You Feel the Heat

Most likely if you see 8-Methyl-N-vanillyl-trans-6-nonenamide written on a product you will assume it is not good for you... Oh chemicals... not good. Well no this is one of the substances that give to the chili peppers the heat. It is a molecule that is very closely related to the molecule of vanillin. It is an amide (the blue atom shown in the structure is nitrogen) and is the basic element of the Capsaicinoids the ingredients found on most of the hot chili peppers.

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