"horseradish" news and stories

There are some people who it is just plain good to know. When you're in college, for example, the guy with a truck is incredibly helpful, and when you go in to business, the understanding accountant and the slightly unethical lawyer are almost necessities.

A few years ago, my friend John became one of these fabulously helpful people. A lifelong resident of southwest Virginia and a trained chemist, John had a skill set that was uniquely wonderful: he knew how to get hold of moonshine, and he knew how to test it for impurities. While the grain liquor (or "likker," if you prefer) that I got from John wasn't all that cheap, it was completely flavorless, and I soon discovered that it made the perfect carrier for various fruits. Within a couple of months, I had a collection of incredibly delicious infused cordials that I would mix with seltzer or tonic water to produce light, moderately alcoholic spritzers with insanely pure tastes.

Fresh ginger is notoriously difficult to grate. The root plant can be quite tough and is very fibrous, so it easily gets caught up in blades. Finely dicing ginger by hand works well in terms of getting around those fibers, but takes a very sharp knife and a steady hand. The best option is usually a microplane, the same kitchen tool used for tasks such as shredding parmesan cheese and zesting citrus, as its small and ultra-sharp grates cut the ginger down into fine fragments. If you find yourself grating a lot of ginger at home, however, a better gadget might be the triangular Horseradish and Ginger Grater. This specially designed grater has alternating teeth that prevent the ginger's fibers from getting stuck, ensuring a smoother and easier grate. The gadget also works for horseradish (as the name suggests), wasabi and can be used with other root vegetables that you want very finely grated. The triangular graters run about $20. If you want a budget model, you can find ones wit less design flare at Surfas for $2.60.

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I'll blame it on the time of the year, but the first thing that I thought when I heard about the garlic-flavored vodka from Russian distillery Vodochnaya Artel "YAT" was that it must be designed to keep vampires away. Why else would you want to drink it? As it turns out, the garlic vodka is part of a new line of strongly flavored "bitter nastoykas" from the company, which has also released a horseradish-flavored vodka.

The spirits are supposed to be served with food, enhancing the flavor of the dishes. The horseradish "fits in well with meat dishes, for instance jellied tongue or herring seasoned with spring onions" and the garlic, which actually contains natural garlic, "will warm you and keep you off cold."

If these two flavors aren't exactly appealing to you, and you don't have any vampires that you want to ward off using the garlic vodka, the company also makes honey and cornbread flavored vodkas that sound like they would be more appealing to a general audience.

[via Bottle Watch]