"sage" news and stories

Know your basil from your borage? Fennel from fenugreek? Mint from marjoram? It's the zestiest quiz ever from Slashfood.

• Gearing up for Day of the Dead -- home celebrations and Gardiner Museum's Harvest of Memories: Mexican Days of the Dead exhibition.
• Corey Mintz runs through the perks of Polish heaven -- Starsky.
• Recipes: Butternut Squash Soup, Tomato and Goat Cheese Strata, and Zombie with Tiki Snack Mix
  
• Wines: Cheap, red, and ripe for Halloween.
• Annabel Karmel went from the loss of a child and having a picky eater to helper of moms everywhere. She shares recipes for: oatmeal, chicken balls, buzzy bees, and chicken drumsticks.
• Finally, hearty sage -- an herb for the winter.

A few months ago I became friends with someone from Georgia (the one in Eastern Europe). He got me interested in the cuisine of that nation and I eventually ordered myself a Georgian cookbook, which I now love. I've been amusing myself by trying new dishes and seeing how close I get to what the dish is supposed to be like.

Georgian cuisine is all about fresh everything, with lots of fruits and vegetables and wine. Did you know it's thought that wine grapes originated in Georgia, and that it is probably the birth place of viniculture? This is just one fact that Georgians are proud of, and believe me they are proud of everything Georgian.

A while ago I tried this recipe for sage and mint fritters called pyshki. My friend didn't really know what they were, so I hope it's just a dish from a different region than where he's from (rather than my cookbook being wrong). The fritters were really good. You basically just make a very batter-like yeasted dough, let it ferment for about an hour or so, then drop it by the spoonful into a fryer of some sort. The only problem with the original recipe is that it doesn't call for salt. I ended up sprinkling salt over the fritters as they came out of the oil and they tasted great. Very fresh and summery tasting, we used them almost like bread (because I made them too big)which is a required item at every Georgian meal. I didn't try it with Tkemali, which has become my favorite condiment, but I bet it would be a great combination. The recipe is after the jump.

My brother was the cook in one of the restaurants I worked in several years ago, and he made a really great chicken salad that had grapes in it. I have to remember to get the recipe from him one of these days.

In the meantime, the Kitchen Monkey has a recipe I have to try, for Grilled Chicken Salad with Sage, Almonds, and Cranberries. There are many ways to make chicken salad (and I'm sure you'll tell us how you make yours in the comments below!), and this one looks like it's worth making today. There's still a couple of hours before lunch! Full recipe after the jump.

Here it is April 13 and I'm ashamed to suddenly realize that I didn't cook chicken once during the winter. Oh, I made plenty of dishes that had chicken in it (mixed with pasta, with vegetables, with rice), but they were made with Perdue Short Cuts, chicken that was already cooked an cut up for me. But I didn't actually buy chicken from the store and make something myself. This recipe is going to change that, if for the only reason it contains breakfast cereal.