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Posts Tagged ‘Ginger Root’

An Incredible Snack – Bettina Style

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

We discovered an unbelievable snack as we roamed the country looking for families/individuals wanting to use their houses for bed & breakfast.

It is basically popcorn, but such popcorn should be the food of the gods.

First – in a saucepan, preferably glass i.e. A Corning pot – put one cup organic turbinado sugar and one cup water with a little piece of organic ginger root. Bring this to a boil and let it summer until you have reached 240 degrees on a candy thermometer. Don’t stir this – even when you first put in the water and sugar just let it heat up and bubble, it does not need you to do anything to it, especially stirring.

Second – in a hot air popcorn popper, put the requisite amount of organic unpopped corn and plug it in. Let the popcorn popper work until almost all of the popcorn is popped. If you don’t have a hot air popcorn popper use a kettle popper or whatever you have. We use the hot air popcorn popper because it does not take any oil to pop. Hot air does the trick.

Third – let the syrup cook a bit and then carefully pour the sugar syrup over the popcorn.

Fourth – Let this cool

Fifth – melt organic chocolate and/or cacao either in a double boiler or carefully in a glass pot on top of the stove. If you use just the pot and not a double boiler, don’t leave the chocolate while it is melting. Someone else who tried this put equal amounts of chocolate and organic heavy cream letting the chocolate melt and stirring until the two were well mixed. That might be an option for you, we have not tried this way of melting and adding chocolate to the popcorn.

Sixth – This is best done with semi-sweet chocolate – we used semi-sweet organic chocolate chips and threw in about 1/3 organic peanut butter chips – just because we were getting carried away with ourselves.

Seventh – Once the chocolate is melted – let it cool a bit and very carefully sprinkle this over your popcorn – which is now covered with the sugar syrup and has cooled to become hardened. The chocolate is the second layer and once it cools and hardens again your popcorn is ready to eat.

It is best eaten lukewarm. Don’t expect to have any left. We demolished a huge amount in minutes and more had to be made.

Eighth – this is good with or without the organic peanut butter chips. The piece of ginger root which you put into the pot with the sugar and water gives a wonderful under taste, which many people will not be able to identify because we are not accustomed to the taste of real, organic ginger root. It is a powerfully hot ingredient. Not temperature hot, but spicy hot. Using just a small piece will not bring up the spicy heat, but will give a nice taste to the popcorn.

Let us know how you liked this dish.

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Tags: bed & breakfast, Bettina's Cookbook, breakfast table talk, Chocolate Chips, Ginger Root, Organic Turbinado Sugar, Peanut Butter Chips, Popcorn Snack
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Ginger/Maple Syrup/Popcorn

Friday, July 27th, 2012

We discovered a great way to make popcorn – almost by accident. And isn’t that the way all great things happen? Does that mean all of us – human beings – are accidental creations?

Organic ginger is what started us on the road to this fantastic snack. Healthy, quick to make and great tasting.

Start with a pound or two of organic ginger.

Wash the ginger in cold running water with a vegetable brush

because you don’t want to take the skin off the ginger. Many of the nutrients you want for your body are in the skin.

Somewhere in this blog – try clicking on “Health” or “Bettina Cookbook” – is a recipe for Ginger Tea. Follow that recipe or what follows from my memory.

Put the organic ginger in a large pot and fill the pot with water

Add a bit of Organic Turbinado Sugar to your taste

Put a cover on the pot and let it boil, then simmer for a couple hours.

At the end of this process pour the hot water – now Ginger Tea – into the glass containers you use to store tea in the refrigerator.

If you don’t have such glass pitchers, containers, whatever – now is a good time to get some so you can constantly keep one kind or another of your homemade tea in your refrigerator to use whenever you want a little break with a great drink. That is as close to ‘fast food’ as we come – pre-make it for the future to be able to just open the refrigerator and eat or drink.

Now you have Southern Sweet Tea and you can serve it to friends, relatives, – those you want to have good health going forward. This tea is fantastic. It stimulates the body; cools you down in summer; helps your digestion – at least that is what it does for me.

If you don’t like “Sweet Tea”, then just boil the organic ginger root by itself without adding the Organic Turbinado Sugar.

Once you have poured out and saved the water in which you boiled the organic ginger root you are ready to begin the process of making the popcorn.

Take the ginger root left in the pot.

Add one cup organic turbinado sugar, two cups water, one cup maple syrup and let that simmer covered on the stove until you get a heavy syrup (somewhere over 240 degrees on a candy thermometer)

Once you get syrup of the right consistency – pour the mixture onto a cooling plate or into a medium-sized Corning pot

If you want to make the ginger root into candied ginger, take the ginger root out of the syrup – roll it in organic turbinado sugar and put it aside.

Now comes the fun:

With your AIR POPCORN POPPER –

no, not the same one you use to roast coffee in the mornings, unless you want to add a coffee taste to your popcorn (which might not be so bad)

Pour the amount of unpopped corn you want to use into the measuring cup, which comes with the Air Popcorn Popper

plug in the Popcorn Popper

and let the smells permeate the house and your nostrils so you are ready for goodies to come.

Don’t forget to put a large bowl next to the Popcorn Popper to catch the corn as it comes out beautifully popped, hot with gorgeous smells!

While the corn is popping, melt 1/2 cup organic butter

(what do you expect, I am from New Orleans with French ancestors. Two facts which put butter into my DNA)

Mix the ginger syrup with the butter and let it simmer until the two are nicely mixed.

Carefully and very slowly drizzle this mixture over the popped corn

stopping intermittently to mix the popped corn and the syrup together.

Be very gentle with the freshly popped corn. You need to watch to make sure you don’t pour the hot syrup too fast or mix the two together too vigorously because you could turn your popped corn into a sludgy mess.

Don’t use too much syrup – just a light drizzle because

– less is more in this case. If you like thickly coated popped corn because you were raised on that heavily coated caramel corn then have a ball and use as much syrup as you want to create that affect. I was raised on that heavily coated caramel corn and stopped eating it when I became an adult.

This popped corn brings back those memories – gives a fantastic adult taste – and is especially good when you use the syrup lightly and sparingly.

If you want to go a step further and cut the now candied, ginger into really tiny pieces you can mix those tiny pieces into your Ginger/Maple Syrup/Popcorn for an additional unidentifiable, except to the most sophisticated palates, taste. Makes a nice substitute for those candied peanuts that sometimes still appears on the grocery store shelves. Nice, the ginger is quite lovely and brings this snack to new heights!

enjoy!