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Welcome to MexItalianSpiceRack.com™ online. |
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| Welcome to MexItalianSpiceRack.com™ online. |
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| This domain and MexItalianSpiceRack.net are now for sale. Please contact me if you are interested in buying either or both domains. The sale includes all copyright materials, spice inventory, the site code (CRE Loaded 6.2) and database (MySQL), and 6 custom, proprietary spice blend recipes. | | Thank you for stopping by. | | JT | |
Cooking by the Seat of my Pants
I like to cook, and many times I have a hankering for a particular food that drives me into the kitchen to rustle up a meal. My pallet, fortunately, isn''t very particular to the degree that I''ll eat almost anything put in front me on a plate. And many times, what I end up cooking is a hodge podge of ingredients I have available. There are a number of foods I tend to use in many meals. Among those are potatoes, onions, garlic, fresh jalapenos, and cilantro. Since I don''t own a cookbook, I have to use my imagination to develop a recipe on the fly, or, I cook by the seat of my pants. One such excursion into the kitchen to cook spaghetti resulted in the unique blend of Mexican and Italian herbs and spices I'm selling on this web site.
Over the course of the 15 or so months following that initial pot of spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, I started experimenting with different combinations of these same herbs and spices for the purpose of flavoring a number of specific dishes that I personally enjoy. The end result of that period of "research and development" is a group of 5 blends I''m calling Pasta Boil, Pasta Sauce, Ground Meat Mix, Meat Rub, Mild Meat Rub, and Jalapeno Relish.
Each blend had a specific purpose at its inception, but through experimentation over time, the scope of each one broadened, so I''ve included a list of things I''ve learned about of each one and what types of foods each is particularly good with.
All of the ingredients of these blends are Certified Organic and have no artificial ingredients, preservatives, or additives. With the exception of Jalapeno Relish, none of them has any salt, so you will have to add salt to your particular taste. I wanted to produce a line of spices that are as healthy and considerate of health-conscious end users as possible.
Because there are no preservatives, some clumping will be observed. Simply shake the containers to break up any clumps that occur over time.
This is the first blend I came up with on that fateful evening from which MexItalianSpiceRack.com was born. The name implies that its purpose is to be used for boiling pasta, such as spaghetti, macaroni, and the like.
However, I''ve found that it is well-suited for cooking any food that is prepared by boiling it. This includes pasta, shrimp, crab claws, crawfish, and lobster, among others. The end result won''t only taste great, it is very visually appealing.
Pasta Sauce is a variation of Pasta Boil, but with different ratios of the herbs and spices. The original goal was to develop a blend that complements the flavor of a bottled spaghetti sauce you find on grocery store shelves. This blend produces a more robust burst of flavors from a commercially produced spaghetti sauce. Over the course of my "R&D", I learned that this blend also spices up any packaged meal, such as hamburger and tuna helpers.
Ground Meat Mix was developed for the purpose of spicing up hamburger patties cooked in the back yard on a grill or pit. Again, I was successful in developing a very appealing blend based on Pasta Sauce with an additional ingredient that is not included in any other blend on any grocery store shelf that I''ve found over the past 2 years of research.
The end result is a "pop" in the flavor of any ground meat, whether cooked in the back yard, grilled on the stove, or cooked in the oven. A number of dishes are perfect for this mix, including ground beef, turkey, pork, among others.
Meat Rub was the next logical progression to follow the Ground Meat Mix. It has the same herbs and spices, but it''s in a more powdered from.
Ground Meat Mix is more coarse and tends to burn when sprinkled on the outside of a cooked meat. This development was the result of a friend''s suggestion. His input has been invaluable during the initial development phase of these blends. This one has a more multi-purpose application than the first 3 blends. The reason is that this one is as well-suited for mixing into a particular dish as sprinkling on the outside of a dish.
The friend mentioned above in the Meat Rub description loves everything he eats to be hot and spicy, but his loving wife dislikes anything hot. Thus, he suggested coming up with a mild version of the Meat Rub. This blend is the result of that suggestion. It has all of the spicy without any of the hot, and is perfect for any dish as an even more multi-purpose spice than the Meat Rub, especially for anyone who isn''t fond of the "hot" included in all of the previous blends.
Jalapeno Relish began with a very specific purpose, and that was to overcome the vinegary taste that is so prominent in pickled jalapenos, which uses vinegar as the "juice". But what I found over time is that this blend has a very broad range of uses and is a much more general application over almost any range of dishes. Sugar and sea salt are both present in the mixture of other herbs and spices, so it is not recommended for use by people who are watching either their sugar or salt intake for health reasons. I think a name like "All Purpose Seasoning" might be a more appropriate name, and it just might end up being named that.
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