ummm…
easy enough to slip and break your bum in the shower, without adding…
oil?
let’s not.
7 Likes
Ha! That was my thought exactly!
Cheers!
5 Likes
I’m planning to have a cookout in a few weeks, and I’ve prepared a stoli-doley. Four pineapples and two liters of vodka. Pineapple is peeled and cored then sliced into wedges and stacked in a corbelling style. All the odd-shaped bits fill out the middle. Let it sit for a few weeks until the vodka is infused with pineapple.
One could be boring and just mix vodka and pineapple juice but you’re missing out on the visual spectacle.
12 Likes
I would drink that! 
¡Salud!
8 Likes
The Romans applied oil, scraped it off themselves with a blade, then took a nice bath…
6 Likes
That must of been quite a sight.
4 Likes
8 Likes
Baron von Krupps would be proud.
4 Likes
Oh my goodness, Yes!
5 Likes
5 Likes
Look, I love the food in Italy. There is so much great produce, so many great food processes.
But surely we’ve all realised at this stage that their obsession with the correct way, the only way, the way to cook certain dishes and ingredients is fundamentally unhelpful.
Okay I really mean wrong.
7 Likes
These are chopped red peppers drying in the sunlight (to make berbere). I believe they use the same step in the process to make Tabasco, Crystal, Louisiana Red etc. I can’t begin to express how good this smells…
10 Likes
i don’t think Tabasco uses dried peppers. they ferment pepper paste.
same with sriracha.
you can taste a difference in hot sauces that use dried peppers: Tapatio uses dried plus spices, Tabasco - fermented plus vinegar.
i am sure that batch of peppers does smell incredible! i have been drying and grinding cayennes and the smell is wonderful.
8 Likes
I just tried to scratch the photo and sniff. 
8 Likes
It kind of has a vinegary smell, though I’m not sure why - none is added.
I could’ve sworn at ToP, there was a post about one of the hot sauces, & one step in that process was like this, just on a larger scale.
I was trying to figure out a way to do that…
6 Likes
I mean, yes and no. The same kind of thing blew up several years ago when a bunch of British and American cooking influencers made pasta “carbonara” videos online that were probably tasty, but had as much to do with carbonara as raspberry jam. Italian cooks corrected them on what authentic carbonara is, and several demonstrated that there are in fact many ways to make carbonara, but the fundamental sauce is raw egg and finely-grated cheese lightly cooked only by the heat from the pasta and pasta water. After that, knock yourself out. But without that fundamental, it’s something else. I mean, Jaime Oliver’s “carbonara” didn’t even have egg, IIRC! Babish made the sauce with a roux, to accomplish something between a bechamel and a Hollandaise! Those simply aren’t carbonara.
7 Likes
My own fermented hot salsas and sauces do have a vinegar-ish smell, not quite like white vinegar but definitely tangy. I considered writing up and photographing my last batch and creating a fermentation thread, but I got lazy and did none of that. Work is fixin’ to get slow so maybe I should take some time to write.
My crock currently has what I’m thinking of as beet kraut, using golden beets, kohlrabi, onions and garlic, with mustard seeds and pickling spices. I did a small batch earlier in the summer with the beets and cabbage, but I had the dregs of a kohlrabi patch that yielded enough to pad out the beets (who are the star of the show.) The first pint jar lasted just two meals, because it made the best quesadilla filling with sharp cheddar. OMG, it was so good.
Next up is a batch of jalapeños but with the crock occupied, so I’ll do these in jars.
Are enough of us into food fermenting that it would mean its own thread? or is it just part of food and drink or we-should-have-a-food-topic?
6 Likes