How many times have you come across a certain ingredient in your pantry and wondered if was still safe to eat?
Ingredient Spotlight: Piment d'Espelette
Piment d'Espelette grown in just a handful of villages in the Basque country of southern France, is as beloved in their region as paprika is in Hungary. The small red peppers can be used fresh, or hung up in bouquets to dry then ground into powder similar to hot paprika. First introduced to France by returning New World missionaries in the 1500s, the Espelette is now an essential feature of Basque cuisine. The village of Espelette holds a Celebration of Peppers each October, with Espelette-infused dishes, banners made from hundreds of red and green peppers, and street performers painted red to resemble the pepper itself. Espelette goes especially well with seafood, mild cheeses, and hearty vegetable dishes. In Paris, I ate monkfish over white beans in an Espelette cream sauce. It was divine, silky and smoky with just a teeny-tiny kick. You could substitute hot paprika, but it wouldn't be quite the same. You can find ground Espelette in some gourmet markets or online at Amazon.com. There's a trove of Espelette recipes at Epicurien, which is in French but can be translated by Google to decidedly mixed results. I'm especially keen to try the sauteed shrimp with Espelette and Bayonne ham.
Heinz Ketchup chooses tv ad weiners
Sorry, I really couldn't resist the pun. The video above was one of five finalists for the Heinz Ketchup television ad contest. Alas, it did not win - although it should have, IMHO - you can see the winning video here, along with the runners-up.
The grand prize winner received $57,000 and his video will run on national television. The runners-up each received $5,700, and will also get their spots on tv.
The other videos employed some tactics that are fairly typical in food commercials, like the two-cute-kids-discussing-product tactic, a la Mikey of Life Cereal fame, and the tugging-at-your-heartstrings tactic. Either way, congrats to the winners. (But really: who do you think should have received the grand prize?)
The grand prize winner received $57,000 and his video will run on national television. The runners-up each received $5,700, and will also get their spots on tv.
The other videos employed some tactics that are fairly typical in food commercials, like the two-cute-kids-discussing-product tactic, a la Mikey of Life Cereal fame, and the tugging-at-your-heartstrings tactic. Either way, congrats to the winners. (But really: who do you think should have received the grand prize?)
Tip of the Day: make your whites whiter, keep your colors vibrant with vinegar
Did you know that vinegar can keep cauliflower snow white and broccoli as green as grass?
Continue reading Tip of the Day: make your whites whiter, keep your colors vibrant with vinegar
Pantry essentials for life on a desert island
Here's an improbably mental puzzle for you. If you were stranded on a desert island (with stove, oven and good bug screens), what items in your pantry would you really want to bring along? It's a question that Lynda has asked and answered on The Perfect Pantry. She lists 23 items she'd like to have and her top five are: two types of salt (kosher and sea), black peppercorns, soy sauce and honey. I think that my top five would be kosher salt, black peppercorns, olive oil, garlic powder (the California style kind, with the parsley flakes) and a hardy rosemary plant that was impossible to kill (I have yet to find one of these in real life).
Lynda is having a whole week of Things We Can't Live Without over on The Perfect Pantry, so you'll also find a list of 13 invaluable baking ingredients as well as her readers' top choices for the things that must be in their pantries at all times.
What's in your essential pantry?
When to trash your peanut butter
Some foods practically tell you when to throw them out - they stink, they are covered in mold, or they change colors. This is not the case with peanut butter.
Peanut butter seldom molds because despite feeling wet and greasy, it is actually extremely dry. Peanut butter separates, but that just means it's time to shake it up.
Your peanut butter can, however, become rancid after 9-12 months of sitting around. Among many other facts, Live Science tells us that rancid peanut butter actually won't hurt you if you eat it. It just tastes bad.
In short, if your peanut butter tastes bad, dump it. Otherwise, you can worry about your strange taste buds but you don't need to worry about getting sick.
We once had a jar of peanut butter for over 5 years. We didn't eat from it, but we coated our dog's medicine with it so that he would eat it. Scruffles didn't have any problem with the taste.
What's the longest you've had a jar of peanut butter?
Ingredient Spotlight: Sorghum syrup
One of the great treats I had while driving through Kentucky last spring were the biscuits with sorghum-butter spread at a Louisville diner. The sweet, whipped spread melted on the hot fluffy biscuits, tasting lightly of honey. I'd heard of sorghum before, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was.
Sorghum syrup is made from the juice of the sweet sorghum cane, which grows all over the southeastern United States. African slaves introduced sorghum cane to the country in the early 17th century, and it rapidly became popular across the Midwest and, later, the South. A drought-resistant, heat-tolerant crop, it was hoped that sorghum could be used as a substitute for sugar cane, but extracting dry sugar from the syrup proved too difficult.
Sorghum syrup, which tends to be a medium brown in color, can often be used as a substitute for honey or corn syrup. Check out this site for a variety of sorghum recipes, including baked beans, shoo-fly pie, and old-fashioned sorghum cake.
Ingredient Spotlight: Sumac
No, not the poison kind. Sumac, the powdered berry of the Rhus Coriaria bush, is a tart spice used in many Middle Eastern dishes. The brick-red powder is perhaps best-known as a major player in za'atar, a mix of sesame seeds, salt, marjoram, thyme, oregano, and other spices used as a meat or fish rub or mixed with olive oil for a bread dip. You can find it in some gourmet markets or Middle Eastern specialty stores.
Tangy sumac makes a nice substitute for lemon juice when sprinkled over fish, vegetables, or hummus. Stir some into thick Greek yogurt with a pinch of salt for a simple veggie or pita dip. I've served a cold salad of sweet potato wedges and diced red onion tossed with chopped mint and sumac alongside Middle Eastern-influenced main dishes like chicken tagine with prunes or lamb kebabs.
Egg Salt & Pepper Shakers, because we're not sick of eggs yet
I know. Could we get over the eggs already? You already know I can't because I love hard boiled eggs, plus, I have this "thing" for salt and pepper shakers.The egg-shaped salt and pepper shakers are by Primal Design. Together, the egg measures W3.7 xD2.6 xH1.7" and is made of ceramic. It's available from MollaSpace for $12.
More salt and pepper shakers:
Flashy Mini Lanterns
Weeble Wobble
Ice cream cones
Sleek and magnetic
Pretty little pigs
Self-shaking shakers for the lazy
Peugeot's electric pepper mill
The oldies station of food sites
Remember the good old days? You'd lounge out on the porch in the summer, licking away at your Slo-Poke Sucker, Jr.? Sadly, I'm too young (my summers days were spent at sleep-away camp, divided into organized activities like volleyball and instructional swim) -- but if you do have nostalgia for foods or sweets that are no longer easily available, check out Hometown Favorites, a site dedicated to selling food items that are currently difficult to find.
The site features a grocer, a gift center, and a candy store that lets you search by decade (though admittedly, there's a lot of overlap). Some of the items are pretty recent and others I don't think really qualify as hard to find, but it was still fun to scroll through and see what the store has to offer.
My favorite "oh yeahhhh..." moment was when I spotted Maypo oatmeal -- my dad loves the stuff and used to make it all the time when I was little. What do you think, any old favorites? Other sites offering similar products?
Cut down salty snacks to keep kids from drinking soda
We've already heard all the reasons why soda is bad for kids, so we won't go into them. Again.However, we will say that just as bad as soda is the thing that makes kids thirsty for soda in the first place: salt. According to a British study published in an American Heart Association journal, kids who eat salty snacks and meals get thirsty and often turn to sodas to quench their thirst. Researchers go on to say that the salt isn't coming from the salt shaker, but from manufactured food.
The solution? Cut back on salty, processed snacks.
As if we needed to say that.
The worst food in America comes from Outback Steakhouse
It's official. The Worst Food in America is not the Pizza-Crepe-Taco-Pancake-Chili Bag that was famous for about 30 seconds a couple of years ago. First of all, the PCTPCB doesn't actually exist, and second of all, the Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing from Outback Steakhouse, which does exist, has made its way to the top -- er bottom, as it were -- of Men's Health's list of the 20 Worst Foods in America.
The foods were chosen based on sheer caloric impact alone, because in the end, it all comes down to the number of calories we consume and burn. However, some "allowances" were made for excessive carbohydrates and fat, added sugars, trans fats, and sodium. After all their calculations, the Aussie Cheese Fries weigh in at 2,900 calories, 182 g fat, and 240 g carbs. Even if you do the polite thing and share the order with three other people, your starter alone will already put you over a dinner's worth of calories before the server even brings your entree to the table.
So I guess that means, order the Aussie Fries and a glass of water for dinner, right?
Global: The Los Angeles Times Food section in 60 seconds
This week, the Los Angeles Times Food section touches on every corner of the world:
- Zakuski is the Russian version of tapas, made just for vodka. The recipes are Spinach Pkhali, a dip, Salad Olivier, Quick Khachapuri (Georgian cheese pie), Eggs stuffed with caviar, and Smoked salmon and shiitakes on toast.
- From Japanese cuisine, there is shiso, with recipes for Broiled citrus with shiso, Italian tuna and shiso sandwich, and Angel hair pasta with fresh shiso-herb mix.
- On the restaurant scene, SIV goes Italian and gives Melograno two stars (**), while Linda Burum adds Ecuadorean at El Caserio in Silver Lake.
"Exotic" is the key ingredient in upcoming flavor trends
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Exotic is the word of the day, or year I guess, when it comes to flavor trends. That's according to Bell Flavors and Fragrances. People in the flavor industry will be choosing to go with the exotic and the unusual. Bell compiled a list of the top ten sweet and savory flavors of the upcoming year. For sweet flavors, mango was at the top, along with acai, lychee, pomegranate, mint, blueberry, verbena, goji, noni and guarana. For the savory category, we can look forward to these flavors being dominant: achiote, sofrito, ras-al-hanout, tandoori, tea smoked, chermoula, cumac, kaffir lime, pandan and tamarind.
Flavor creators are going for exotic and unusual flavors both to capitalize on the health aspect and to recapture consumer interest. Apparently, consumers get bored easily, or something. I just can't imagine that, growing up in the MTV generation, and all. So, to get our attention back on their products, flavor industry persons are going to throw us a bunch of super fruits which will be the answer to all our health problems. I say, every little bit helps, so bring it on.
Esquire picks the best sandwiches in America
The men over at Esquire ate their way from coast to coast and picked out their favorite sandwiches, everything from the Vietnamese Banh Mi at Saigon Sandwich Shop in San Francisco to the Sweet Coppa with Hot Peppers and Rucola at New York City's 'Ino.
Normally, I wouldn't get all that excited about this list because I am not a huge fan of sandwiches, but I do have an interest since LA is represented twice with the Torta Milanesa from Las Nuevas and the Monte Cristo at Canter's Deli.
However, the real reason this list stands out to me is that both the McRib and Chick-Fil-A make an appearance.
Uh, ooo-kay.
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
