Have you discovered any new ingredients lately?

Another sort of ingredient that I bought last week-end is Glico Hawaii Pretz - pineapple flavor. We were in Little Tokyo on Sunday after buying a new entry door at a warehouse a few blocks from LT, and I found these at a Japanese market where I was buying some ginger. They were near the checkout, for impulse buying, and since they were only 89¢, I decided to buy a package, but I thought I was going to get dried pineapple sticks. Instead I got little pretzel sticks that I think will be great to serve with ice cream. Anyway, they will make a pretty garnish for ice cream or even for a custard. Now I have to make some ice cream to go with them, which I had planned to do anyway. I also bought a package of sembei crackers.

I just received 3-pounds of Wedo Gluten-Free Banana Flour, which is "packed full of resistant starch and potassium, with no banana flavor". It's made from green bananas. Great for diabetics, gluten-free, can be used in baked goods, as a thickener in soups/sauces/gravies. Add to smoothies/protein shakes. Use for battering foods.

"Upon entering the colon, resistant starch is fermented, which aids in a range of health benefits, from reducing diarrhea symptoms to increasing uptake of calcium and other minerals. Banana flour will help have healthier gut flora. Reduces glycemic and insulin response of foods when substituted for flour or other rapidly digested carbohydrates."

I'll start with the pancake recipe on the package, but there are a lot of recipes at the web site to try.

http://www.bananaflour.com/

They're not "new" but new to my kitchen: I recently bought galangal and epazote (dried and ground as spices). I've only used them a little and not in any traditional way. I can't remember which one it was, but one was really excellent on baby bella mushrooms.

Since I needed to restock my Vietnamese cinnamon from King Arthur I added a bottle of barley malt to my order. There is a recipe for sticky buns in the current issue of Saveur that calls for it. Hoping to make them for a holiday breakfast so wanted to have it on hand.

I've never used it. It's touted to be a secret ingredient for great bagels. I've meant to try making bagels but never have.

Banana flour?! crazy and interesting...

amck - you will find the barley malt a fine and wonderful ingredient.

I was given something from a co-workers Italy trip recently...lemon something...not opened yet but will explore it over the up-coming holiday.

I'm not at all unfamiliar with celeriac but having purchased, by mistake, one too many over the last holiday...i have had a bit of fun experimenting with this hairy monster...

amck2-

Did you get diastatic or non-diastatic malt because there is a difference between those to types of malt, as well as their use and contribution to your bread's finished characteristics?

I always made my own malted grain by sprouting it until the tail was 3/4 as long as the seed, dehydrated it at a low heat, and milled it into a fine powder. Cost: almost nothing - because you use such a small amount of grain. Start by sprouting 1/4- to 1/2-cup of grain. You can use wheat, or other cereal grains, as well as barley. Barley is used because of its high diastatic power or enzyme content.

-Grainlady

Yuzu lemon and hot pepper paste is amazing!! Nice in soups and with poached chicken.

One of my daughters introduced me to Farro, which I quite like. It has made me wonder what other "old" foods are out there that are nutritious and good tasting.

I've not had Farro, but will look for it now. Is it like Bulgar wheat?

Last night I made soup with Trahanas pasta. I think I bought it at a Lebanese/Syrian market/deli, where I often find ingredients that I have not used before. They have the best selection of bulk Feta cheese, from several different countries. I had actually made the soup the day before, but it came out too watery, and so I added this pasta to make it thicker. It was a mushroom/chicken soup that had large shell pasta already in it, and I had tried to thicken it with a whole wheat roux, but that did not work very well. The Trahanas pasta worked perfectly, however, and cooked perfectly in a soup that already had roux added to it.

I'm sure Grainlady is right about why malt is used traditionally, but I use it mostly for flavor. It's an important flavor component to bagels, and I've been known to say that a bagel without barley malt isn't worth contemplating.

Lars, farro is raw grain--the name is used for different kinds of wheat. The one we see most called "farro" is emmer. It's like an extra-large wheatberry. Bulgar is partially cooked wheat.

I really like farro. Here's my favorite recipe for using it.

Farro Salad with Grilled Eggplant, Tomatoes and Onion

Recipe courtesy of Bobby Flay

Total Time:
1 hr 35 min

Prep:
20 min

Inactive:
1 hr

Cook:
15 min

Yield:
4 servings

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups farro

3 Japanese (baby) eggplants, halved

1 small red onion, peeled, halved, and thickly sliced

Olive oil, for brushing

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 pint grape tomatoes, washed and sliced in 1/2

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish

Sherry Vinaigrette, recipe follows

Sherry Vinaigrette:

1 small shallot, finely chopped

1/4 cup sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

1/2 cup olive oil

Directions

Cook farro in a large pot of boiling salted water until just tender, about 15 minutes. Drain well and place in a large bowl.
Lpink's note: It took at least an hour for mine to cook. I used 4 cups vegetable broth instead of water.

Heat grill to high. While the farro is cooking, brush the eggplants
and onion slices with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill for 3
to 4 minutes on each side or until just cooked through. Remove from the
grill and cut into 1-inch dice. Add the eggplant and onions to the farro
along with the tomatoes and dill. Pour Sherry Vinegar over the farro
mixture and stir to combine. Garnish with additional dill. Best served
at room temperature.

Sherry Vinaigrette:

Whisk together the shallot, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and dill in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the oil until emulsified.

© 2015 Television Food Network, G.P. All Rights Reserved.

Read
more at:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/farro-salad-with-grilled-eggplant-tomatoes-and-onion-recipe.print.html?oc=linkback

Raw Coconut Vinegar

I have only used this for a month, so far I am happy with the results. I have been using RCV to replace other vinegar (except Balsamic) in dressings and marinades and I have replaced ACV in my daily cleansing routine.

I ordered some raw coconut vinegar, but am not sure how it works in a cleansing routine. Do you drink it, or do you wash your face with it?

I recently bought some vinegar from southern France, but I have not used it much, other than for vinaigrette salad dressings, and I did not find it much different from Italian vinegars that I already had.

Lars, I drink it and I wash my hair with it.

I don't go looking much for novel ingredients, but my search for molasses, ordered through a local grocery store that stocks British foods for the local Anglo-Italian population, resulted in a bottle labeled in Arabic, with the English translation reading "pomegranate molasses". Well, this was new. I still don't have molasses. The pomagranate molasses taste pretty good. I think they'd go nicely on chocolate torte or toasted homemade bread.

Lars, I could go into an Asian grocery store, close my eyes and point, and find an ingredient new to me.

A while back I found a cookbook at Half Price Books that I've been hoping to find there, called World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey. In it she has recipes using Garbanzo flour. I went to an Indian grocery store, found some, and bought it. That was several months ago, but I still haven't used it yet. I have it in my freezer, things in my freezer can go missing for years. lol.

Also in my freezer, forgotten until the other day when I found it while looking for something else (sadly, not the garbanzo flour), is an unused bag of farro. LPink's recipe looks good. I'd like to try it next summer. I want to find a recipe using winter ingredients. Maybe something with butternut squash?

Sally

Yes, I have a bag of garbanzo bean flour and have yet to use it. Got if for some kind of fried fritter thingies, but just never had the time or kitchen mojo to make them yet.

I love pomegranate molasses but am unsure how it is supposed to be used. I generally use it the way I do a thick, sweet Balsamic vinegar; i.e., I put it on fruit or dip bread in it to eat. I do not put it in pumpernickel bread to substitute for regular molasses. I grew up not far from sugar cane fields, and so molasses was always around.

I use garbanzo flour as a thickener when I want that flavor added, and I use it in my falafel, if my mixture comes out too sticky.

I haven't received my coconut vinegar yet - in fact I had forgotten that I had ordered it.

I have a few things I make with pomegranate molasses. Look at Lebanese recipes. It's basically a very concentrated pomegranate syrup.

A great thing to make with garbanzo flour is socca, which are Italian garbanzo thin pancakes.

I love socca, the recipes I have seen come from Nice, France. They are rather easy to make, gluten free, and the kids will eat it. Win-win. I have used the recipe from David Lebovitz's blog. Good stuff.

Naturally, I hit submit and remember another use for chickpea flour. I have used it for making okra fries. There are directions on-line for doing them in the microwave although I have primarily roasted them. I cut the okra into the desired shape (usually according to my whimsy) and then toss with a tiny bit of oil, seasoning, and garbanzo flour. Then I roast and dip into a yogurt sauce. Sometimes I share, sometimes I do not.

A restaurant here in San Francisco makes "French fries" from garbanzo flour. They are from Provence, but I don't know if the recipe is native to that area.

Tishtoshnm, nothing wrong with two posts (which are easy to do now), but you can also edit your post you just submitted using the "edit" button on the top right. The top post of a thread can only be edited for a short time. Maybe an hour? But I'm pretty sure body posts can be edited so long as you have the same account. I think people have said that they've fixed things in years old posts.

Funny, I just discovered pomegranate molasses. In a quest to acquire molasses, the regular kind, I ordered it from a local grocery that carries some English foods for the resident Anglo-Italian population. What they came up was the pomegranate molasses (still no sign of good ol' blackstrap). Well, it's good. Just a spoonful all by itself, or on toast. I have a notion it would be wonderful with mascarpone.

My newest discovery is chickpea flour, which I discovered on an Indian recipe food blog. Bought a little -- we'll see how it performs! (Other than rice and quinoa, I'm trying to decrease the amount of grains I consume.)

This past summer I discovered calallo, a leafy vegetable used in Jamaican cooking, not that dissimilar from spinach -- I now have seeds to plant next year.

Make socca with the chickpea flour!

I received the coconut vinegar yesterday, and the bottle was broken, and there was a strong smell of vinegar on my front porch. They did a terrible job of packing the glass bottle, and the box was too small to allow for adequate packing. Most of the vinegar is in a plastic bag that the bottle was placed in. The bottom of the bottle complete broke off:(. I won't order from then again, since they do not know how to pack glass for shipping.

artemis-

Be sure to check gluten-free recipes for using chickpea flour.

I mill chana dal (immature chickpeas - I purchase them from Bob's Red Mill) for flour instead of chickpeas because they are much lower on the glycemic index of foods than chickpeas.

You may also find this link helpful:

Beyond Socca: 5 More Ways to Use Chickpea Flour

http://www.thekitchn.com/beyond-socca-5-more-ways-to-use-chickpea-flour-ingredient-spotlight-187659

Italian Saba. Just picked up a bottle being on sale. I've been using a burnt batch of maple syrup and almost out of it. (actually really good if i want a caramel-ish dolup) in a sauce or stew...

"Saba -- also known as sapa, vin cotto or mosco cotto -- is an Italian syrup made from cooking down grape must. It looks just like balsamic, and tastes a whole lot like it too, but it's not nearly as expensive because it isn't aged. Chefs have begun incorporating saba into their menus over the past couple of years, and it's time home cooks did the same."

I'll test it tonight.