Friday, September 21, 2007

Crystalized Ginger, Day 4

I had to get started early again today because my afternoon was booked with a corporate massage gig and Lani has to have her walk as soon after Stephen leaves for work as possible. If her leash were kept where she could get to it, she would probably try to put it on herself and drag me out the door.

I took the lid off the pot and brought it to a slow boil. Then I turned the burner down to 5 again and pretty much followed the same procedure as yesterday. I think this took about 45 to 50 minutes. I then extracted the ginger and placed it on the rack. I strained the syrup through 2 different strainers but it still looked a little cloudy. When I returned home this afternoon, a lot of sediment had settled to the bottom. I am going to strain it through a coffee filter tomorrow. I may heat it up and boil it a few more minutes. I think it could be a little bit thicker. This is actually a 5 day process anyway. Tomorrow I will put the ginger pieces in a bag with some course sugar and give it a good shake.

In the meantime, here is what it looks like.




In case you noticed that I have not been adding a sound track to these posts, there is a reason. I refer you to Harp & Sword's Friday Random Ten.

2 comments:

The Minstrel Boy said...

looks like you got this dead solid perfect. let us know how it manages the taste test. further drying toughens the texture and concentrates the flavors, but since i use them in truffle ganache and chop them i usually give them a sugar dust and into an airtight bag.

another filtering with the syrup is not a big deal. also, you can thicken easily just by putting it back into a pan and reducing the volume.

The Minstrel Boy said...

oh yeah, i forgot to add, that should you decide to do the further reduction to thicken the syrup do the filtering first. the stuff that gets filtered out will do nothing to enhance any flavors, by the time it gets that small it's mere trash.

p.s. microwaves also work pretty well for doing reductions. all you need is a container that doesn't heat up too much and a silicon mesh to put over the top.