[Sca-cooks] Re: Cayenne, NOW Badia Spices

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Barbara Benson:
>If your store is the same as mine then Badia also puts out a pretty good
>cinnamon. Our Krogers sells sticks in a package labeled 1/2 oz for 50 cents.
>But I went ahead and weighed it anyway and most of the packages had between
>3/4 and 1 1/4 oz in it. They pack it by how many sticks fit in the package,
>not weight.

I'll bear that in mind, but I've still not even scratched the surface
of the half-kilo of ground cinnamon in the freezer, and the kilo of
sticks, brought back by Master Ateno when he was in Turkey...

>
>I can never remember which is which cassia vs cannela but it is the good
>kind that is layers of thin like paper not thick like pine bark.

Canela is, in theory, and assuming it is accurately labelled, the
good stuff, while cassia is the sharper stuff. Depending on
geographical origin, processing method, and possibly variety, cassia
can be either darker and smoother, or lighter and rougher, than
actual cinnamon. But I've also seen obvious cassia labelled as canela.

The Larousse Gastronomique mentions a difference in the way the
sticks are rolled, as a standard method of differentiating between
the two: cinnamon has a spiral cross-section, like a closed,
rolled-up scroll, and cassia is a double roll, like a half-read
scroll, or a handlebar moustache. I've never actually seen this to be
the case, though. Maybe this situation no longer applies, or maybe
it's how the stuff is exported to France, and never applied to the
rest of the world. But that is typical of Larousse.

Adamantius

>  But - if
>you buy it pre-ground then it is the not so good stuff.
>
>Glad Tidings,
>Serena da Riva
>
>
>
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