Topic: Hello

[JerryM]

Where before I would portion in terms of a piece to be 1 inch square I now portion a piece to be at least half of this.

Axe,

ditto on this - i have my whole spice as 10g cinnamom to 5g casia and represents ~5% of the total.

it certainly needs to be this kind of ball park to prevent overpowering. i'm normally very keen to get depth and width of spice.

it's just pure gut feeling at this stage as i made several batches before adding in the casia. the funny thing is that i do like the individual taste of casia.

it will be interesting to do a side by side - even wet finger tasting.

it's just one of those things "minor" that's bugging me - yet clear evidence of BIR use. i may just have to reduce the amount more - on my current batch ie 5% it's the 1st taste that i get on a wet finger taste - when i'd like not to.

would put pic up but bandwidth down.

[Malc.]

When it comes to cassia though, I don't think it is minor. Too much and it can have quite a detrimental effect. In terms of taste and balance, I was very pleased with the Kushi base.

Extracting the right amount of flavour is crucial to the overall balance as you know. One thing that I have learnt recently, is to tear Asian Bay before cooking with it. This was spurred by the comments on Natterjak's recent post on it. I reserached this on the net and found reference to this. It has quite an effect, try it and then smell the leaf.

This brings me back to ways of extracting the right amount of flavour from the Cassia or even cinnamon for that matter. The IG boil the hard spices in water seperately from the base. Not only does it make it easier to extract the hard spice but makes it easier to control the amount of flavour put into the base, as you simply control how much infused water to put in.

Of course they have this down to an art and it would be far better for us to have exacting measurements. The trial and errors continue.

[artistpaul]

Welcome to the forum

paul