4/29/13

Homemade Traditional Pastries

One of the best parts of traveling any where should be the food.  Especially pastries!  A typical (seasonal) pastry in this area of the country are tasty little cracker/cookies named "roquillas" (pronounced "roskeeyuz") which are made during Semana Santa, the week before Easter. 

Each year, my mother-in-law ("Dona A") makes about 1000 of these little yummy pastries along with other corn flour morsels, packages them up, sells them to neighbors and gifts them as long anticipated munchies to her kids and grandkids. 


Talk about homemade.

The whole process starts in her nearby corn field where the corn is grown, picked and de-cobbed.  The kernels are put into a hand grinder and ground over and over to create organic corn flour, the main ingredient in rosquillas.

A portion of this is separated and put aside for sweet pastries, and the remaining flour is for the rosquillas.  The flour is again put through the grinder with water, salt and a dry cheese from a neighbor's cow to form a dough.







Usually Dona A has a friend helping and the two women sit across from each other, sharing a huge tray of this mixture.  For hours, they sit there kneading, gossiping and talking with people that stop by to see how things are going.

They knead the dough over and over and form little rings around their finger, pinching the ends together.  It sounds easy, but it takes a lot of practice to get the right amount of dough and the right form.  I guess a 1000 or more of these a year for the past 50 or so years is enough practice.  Being unpracticed, I wasn't so great.



The flour that was set aside is mixed with sugar to create a sweet dough.

From half of this dough, Dona A makes amaaaazing homemade papaya jam stuffed empanas.  The papayas, which are grown outside in her yard, are cut and cooked with a little sugar to make a delicious, sweet pulp.

The other portion is mixed with a milk similar to buttermilk and put into a pan, making a sort of semi-sweet cornbread

Using all of the flour takes them from about 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.  The raw creations are stacked up all over the kitchen table and counters.  Let's cook these babies!!



It's time to turn on the oven.

But, not as in "Hey honey, can you put the oven on 450 for me?"   This is an outdoor wood burning oven normally used for cooking pottery.   Filled with just enough wood to heat up to about 450, about an hour later the trays are put into the oven and the cooking begins.

People continue to stop by and chit chat.  Someone goes to get some beers and everyone sits around the yard watching the trays loaded in and out of the oven.



Dona A starts to get worried because she's always so afraid that a tray will get dropped or that the oven is not the right temperature.  I suggest she come and sit down with me on the stoop and finish her beer.  She complies and keeps putting her head on my shoulder saying "I can't look" when a tray is lifted into the oven.  (In her opinion, the guys aren't using the right spatula to pick them up and they are going to tumble!)


In the end, it all works out and everything makes it safely from the oven.

My favorites are the papaya filled empanas and an afternoon cup of coffee.  Yes please!!

4/17/13

Creating Patinas for Copper

I'm definitely not a chemist and on top of that, I'm very clumsy.  Thus, I'm always a bit reluctant to work with chemical solutions of any kind.  Who knows what kind of toxic smoke cloud I could accidentally create!?!?  But when came across a pin on Pinterest about colorizing copper using a solution of ammonia and salt, I thought "Sheez, even I can do that!"

I've played around with the solution and few times now.  There is no way to control the colors or patterns that develop, however, I'm loving the randomness of the results. 

I made this copper cuff and decided to see what sort of magic potion I could create for it.



I placed the bracelet in a plastic, airtight container, layering the bottom with paper towels, a small amount of ammonia to moisten the towels and a layer of salt.

 
Then, I put the bracelet on top of the towels/salt/ammonia and again, layered it with salt and a layer of towels -- moistening it with the ammonia.  Not so much ammonia that the salt would get rinsed away - just enough to moisten it.


I covered the container and let it do it's thing for a short while. 



TICK TOCK TICK TOCK

There isn't a specific time that the magic happens, I just had to keep checking back until the piece looked "done".  After about and hour I checked it to see how things were developing.





I wanted there to be a bit more coloration on the front so I relayered and resalted it and put it back for about another 45 minutes. After that, I felt it looked pretty good so I rinsed it with water and applied a coat of Renaissance Wax to help deter oxidization and seal the patina.

This was the end result.




I love the turquoise!

Here are a few other pieces I've experimented with.




Supposedly the solution works on brass as well.  That'll be my next adventure.