In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.
When my mother, who had been raised on kosher half-sour pickles, first tried bread-and-butters, she was immediately overwhelmed. For someone who was used to the tart flavor of Northeastern dills and half-sours, the Southern sweetness of the bread-and-butters were an absolute delight.
Through a combination of compliments and guile, she managed to get hold of our friend Millie's recipe. From that year on, we had a huge picklefest every summer, when we'd spend two or three days putting up bread-and-butter pickles.
While these are extremely sweet pickles, I have kept the recipe almost exactly the way my mom made it. This is partly due to the necessities of pickling, and partially due to a sense of tradition. Mostly, though, it's due to the fact that I regularly swap these pickles out for gherkins or sweet pickle relish.
Get the recipe for bread-and-butter pickles after the jump.
As summer kicks into high gear, roadside stands and greenmarkets are bustling with fresh produce.
Fresh herbs, cut just that morning, perfume the air: sultry thyme, sprightly parsley and rosemary for remembrance. Sweet onions tumble out of bushel baskets and into burlap bags. Piles of peppers fight for your attention in red, green, orange, yellow and even black. And who can resist fresh ears of satiny corn?
As you lug all of your fresh produce home, don't worry -- as always, we've got your back. Beyond the jump is an original recipe to use that corn, those peppers and those onions to make a quick, fresh corn relish.
This relish has a Southwestern twang, but it can accompany virtually anything coming off of your grill for Fourth of July barbecues, from juicy burgers and seared steaks to perfectly smoked chicken. And if the summer corn is too irresistible to resist buying a bushel, you can double the recipe and send some home with your guests.
Purple peas and those who love to shell them. Photo: Bill Dailey
Don't bother entering the World Cup Purple Hull Pea Shelling Competition this year.
That's because organizers say Doeleta Weaver, who's outshelled her competitors three years running, is planning to defend her crown at the Emerson, Ark., event this Saturday. Weaver is essentially unbeatable, having displaced the informal brigade of older women who for years took turns finishing first.
"She is absolutely phenomenal," says Bill Dailey, spokesperson for the Purple Hull Pea Festival. "She's got a natural knack for it."
More than a dozen ambitious shellers are expected to challenge Weaver this year, but Dailey predicted few of the younger aspirants would have much of a shot: "Adults always, almost inevitably, do the best," he says.
Zucchini and corn quesadillas. Otherwise known as summer tucked into a couple of tortillas.
Created and snapped by Flickr's Ezra Pound Cake, they're a buoyant and appetizing reminder that making the most of seasonable vegetables need not be a fancy, expensive or time-consuming affair. Though its components are jewel-hued, the only lavishness to be found here is in the flavors -- where it belongs.
File under Common Sense: A new study finds that carrots cooked whole have 25 percent more cancer-fighting power than carrots that are chopped up before they're cooked.
Why? More cutting means more surface area. And more surface area means more exposure to cooking water, which leaches out the carrot's nutrients. Among those nutrients is falcarinol, an anti-cancer compound.
That discovery should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever eaten carrots that have been boiled within an inch of their life: the more they're cooked, the less flavor they retain. So it follows that if flavor can be lost, so can nutrients.
The scientists who conducted the study at England's Newcastle University also made the connection between lost nutrients and flavor, noting that the whole-cooked carrots also tasted better because they retained more of their natural sugars.
Better health and better flavor: a win-win situation, cloaked in a flattering shade of orange.
Shredded carrots are subjected to all sorts of injustices, usually involving large quantities of mayonnaise, sour cream or cream cheese. So it's refreshing to see a photo and recipe that capture their simple, sweet beauty.
Jenn of The Leftover Queen snapped this Caribbean carrot salad, which is oh-so-barely dressed with a few splashes of apple cider vinegar and grape seed oil and a spoonful of brown sugar. It looks crisp, cool and infinitely satisfying, an excellent way to enjoy the the iridescent goodness of carrots -- without having to dig for them.
In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.
When I was a kid, pea season was a mixed blessing. On the bright side, it meant that we would get fresh sweet peas on the table. Whether from our family garden or from a local farmers' market, the just-harvested peas were invariably sweet, crunchy and delicious. On the other hand, our regular servings of fresh peas translated into hours spent on the porch shelling the bright green pods. Even under the best circumstances, it was dull, tedious work.
My mother's pea salad recipe, which combines the sweetness of peas with the light flavor of dill, tended to overshadow the peas with a heavy helping of sour cream, mayonnaise and scallions. My modified version, included below, lets the flavor of the peas shine through, but retains the original's cool summer flavors.
Get the recipe for dilled pea salad after the jump.
Alabama-born LeNell Smothers defines herself first and foremost as a bartender, but she's been called many things, most recently the owner of LeNell's liquor store. She's owned her own whiskey label called Red Hook Rye and been recognized by her home state as an honorary Colonel. Other interests include gin, sin and men.
I've been in the mood for tequila of late. Perhaps it's Cinco de Mayo still lingering in the air -- or more likely that week-long vacation in Baja -- but I've got tequila on the brain and on my lips. I love the stuff in my fizzy drinks, and especially in my Dré Fizz Affair.
Ever heard of the Dreyfus Affair? It's a bit of French history involving the wrongful conviction of an officer. The whole ordeal inspired Emile Zola to write "J'Accuse!", a letter addressed to the French President printed on the front page of the newspaper L'Aurore that caused a stir worldwide. And I've got a friend named Dré whom the ladies love almost as much as Dré loves tequila. He is a Numero Uno Tequila Fanatic.
Thus, after the jump, the Dré Fizz Affair, aka Dreyfus, aka what you'll be drinking all summer. You're welcome.
An unmistakable perfume is in the air: the intoxicating vapors of resiny cedar, sweet applewood, sexy mesquite and reliable ol' hick'ry, arising from grills and escaping from smokers on every block and in every park. Brats are sizzling, hot dogs plumping, chicken breasts marinating, hamburgers being seasoned. And he-men and she-women can barely wait to tuck into perfectly seared T-bones, dry-aged Porterhouses, smoky brisket, even refined filets mignons.
In steakhouses, spinach, typically creamed, is a traditional accompaniment for steak. This is because steak demands to be in the company of strong flavors, and spinach -- among the most assertive of greens in both texture and taste -- delivers. So, as grilling season commences, Slashfood reminds you to eat your spinach. Beyond the jump is an original recipe for a spinach salad that's nothing like the oily, eggy cafeteria staple; gilded with lemon and oregano and with a smoky bacon crunch that resonates with food from the grill. C'mon, give it a try -- it'll please both your mother and Popeye!
Oh, rhubarb. While a stalk of asparagus or bunch of ramps may inspire foodies to rhapsodize about the promise and bounty of spring, it's rhubarb that so neatly captures the caprice and delicacy of the new season. Treat the green and fuchsia stalks right and they'll reward you with bright, sweet-tart benevolence. Do them wrong and risk the slings and arrows of sour mush. The line between edible and execrable is a precarious and fine one, and should be approached with caution.
Watercress might just seem like a staple for ladies who lunch on tea sandwiches, but it has a fascinating reputation in the health world. Legend touts its powers as an aphrodisiac, a cure for baldness and even a cure for hangovers.
I'm not so sure about its powers to grow your libido or hair, but I'm guessing that its reputation as a hangover cure comes from its high potassium content. Since potassium is a mineral, which can become depleted due to dehydration from overindulging on alcohol, it could very well be that watercress might just help to soothe that morning-after headache.
I see watercress more as a delicious, energizing ingredient in fast and fresh modern cuisine. When the weather warms up, cool drinks and chilled soups not only refresh -- they also provide great ways add nutrition, giving you more energy to enjoy long summer nights.
Get Jennifer's Watercress Soup with Strawberry Salsa recipe after the jump.
This potato fritter looks, in our humble opinion, exactly as a potato fritter should.
It's crispy around the edges with little shreds of potato and sweet potato trailing seductively from a perfectly golden brown, tender center. It sort of reminds us of the sun, or, less abstractly, of what we'd like to be eating right now. The fact that this fritter's creator, Molly Watson of The Dinner Files, originally intended for this to be a potato latke makes us love it even more.
We know the pain and sorrow of potato latkes -- indeed, our mother's first and only attempt to make the starchy little devils resulted in an unscheduled visit from the fire department -- so we can sympathize with the myriad frustrations Ms. Watson describes on her blog. And we can also relate to the unexpected joys of happy kitchen accidents that yield gorgeous fritters like this one, particularly if they're accompanied by a few spoonfuls of applesauce or tangy Greek yogurt. So please, go fritter some time away -- yes, we went there -- with Molly.
Few things drive foodies to heights of hyberbolic ecstasy like asparagus. Its appearance each spring is greeted with a fervor that lends the farmers' market more than a passing similarity to a house of worship. It's such a widely and wildly celebrated vegetable that its name is shorthand for all that is good and hopeful and tasty about the new season.
But far fewer people recognize asparagus by its other name, Hadley grass. The relatively obscure moniker recalls the time, from the 1930s to the 1970s, when the area around Hadley, Mass., was known as one of the country's most bountiful asparagus regions thanks to its incredibly fertile, loamy soil. That era came to an end in the mid-'70s when a soil-borne fungus all but wiped out the crop and spurred farmers to plant other veggies. While there are still asparagus growers in and around Hadley, the town's name is no longer synonymous with the tender stalks that were once its grassy glory.
If calling asparagus "Hadley grass" seems slightly archaic, like calling the radio the wireless or a hearing aid an ear trumpet, then consider that it's an updated version of asparagus' even more old-fashioned nickname, "sparrow grass," which was an 18th-century corruption of the name. Whatever you want to call it, most everyone would agree that its most relevant names at this time of year are "breakfast," "lunch" and "dinner."
Carrots in their natural state are pretty gorgeous, with their weird bumps and silly trailing roots and vibrant green fronds. So we love how Cathy at Not Eating Out in New York immortalized the homely beauty of these carrots, contrasting their striking colors with a bright blue plate. These carrots are the antidote to those bags of shiny, vaguely embarrassed looking nubs that go by the misnomer "baby carrots," making those look like Kraft singles alongside a wedge of Lincolnshire Poacher.
Cook Cathy marinated and grilled them, and paired them with pea shoots for what was undoubtedly an excellent and beta carotene-packed meal. We like to imagine them blended into a simple, silky carrot soup, grated into a vinegary cole slaw or just peeled and dunked whole into hummus.
Slicing onions makes us cry hot burning tears of pain (which is why we now cut them while wearing goggles), but this photo reminded us yet again that, where onions are concerned, "no pain, no gain." This is particularly true when the results are these gorgeous white onion and pecorino tarts.
Baked by Madalene, the mastermind behind The British Larder, the tarts contrast the lush sweetness of caramelized onions with the sharp bite of pecorino, providing delectable proof that opposites do indeed attract. They are stunning in their simplicity: Rather than (ahem) tart them up, Madalene opts to showcase the onion's whorled, earthy beauty. These look less like tarts than some sort of exotic blossoms, and right now we're plotting ways to make them bloom in our own kitchen.
We can change the way we make eggs -- scrambled, poached, fried -- but what about changing the eggs themselves? Mix up your scrambling routine with quail eggs.
Second Helping of Slashfood - June 19
Competitive-Eating Contest to Pit Humans Against Elephants
The Backyard Boom - The Hungry Bride
