Citadelle is billed as a super premium gin. It has 19 botanicals, is distilled three times, and is sold in a beautifully decorated bottle with ships at sea, and with a label strip around the bottom of the bottle showing each of the 19 botanicals used in making it. The botanicals listed are savory, nutmeg, angelica, cumin, cinnamon, almond, iris root, juniper, fennel, violet root, paradise grain, orange peel, cardamon, star anise, cubeb, coriander, lemon peel, cassia, and licorice.

A few months ago on my initial taste test I thought it was almost too smooth and light with no evidence of any of the 19 botanicals, just a strong and unusual taste. My impression of the flavors started to develop and became more solid as I drank it in several ways: straight, chilled, on the rocks, and shaken. I was so amazed by what I experienced that I had to call my friend and fellow blogger, Joe DiStefano, late one evening in my mildly buzzed state to talk about it.

Alanna tipped me off to a cute story about a cook and a cake, and what happens when you make a mistake in the kitchen:

There are some ingredients that aren't supposed to go into cakes, but accidents happen. For example, too much salt could stirred into a batter or some of the flour could be left out. When things like this happen, there are people who simply can't bring themselves to waste the cake. They eat it anyway and, once in a while, it turns out better than expected.

The woman in the story was making a chocolate cake for her garlic-loving husband as a followup to a garlic-filled meal. Since she was cooking and baking at the same time, she accidentally knocked a container of powdered garlic into the cake batter. After scooping out as much as she could, she decided to bake the cake anyway and served it, frosted, to family and friends at dinner. They raved over how "unusual" the cake was, even though there was a flavor that no one could seem to identify.

While I don't get the impression that the cook was planning to make any more garlicky cakes, her husband "ate every bite of the leftover garlic chocolate cake by himself  - with great gusto." So if you're a garlic fan, you might actually enjoy this mistake.  The cake was a "wacky" cake, rich and moist on its own, but if you want to try to get the garlic variation, you'll have to experiment yourself.

Chef Kazuki "Kaz" Yamamoto is on the cutting edge of cuisine. And by "cutting edge," what I mean is that he cooks rare, occasionally immoral, and sometimes outright illegal, foods for those who are willing to pay for them. Based out of Arizona, he travels to homes of rich and/or famous clients and plies them with previously untasted delicacies from his traveling "restaurant, known as "Le Menu". Because his client list includes government officials and gastronomes alike, Yamamoto says he has had few problems in the past obtaining locations, including restaurants, to hold his dinners. When Stephen Lemons, the Phoenix New Times food critic joined in a dinner, he sampled foods such as Saguaro cactus salad, made from the legally protected succulent; tenderloin of Bichon Frise, endangered pygmy owl, roasted and eaten whole, with entrails and bones intact; and nigiri-style seal sushi.

Other items that Yamamoto is famed for include chimpanzee stew (protected), grilled intestines of brown bear (poached from Yosemite), rhino genitals, gila monster, giraffe tongue, monkey tartare and a dozen variations on penguin meat.

Do you have a container of liquid nitrogen laying around your house and are not sure what to do with it? Probably not. Liquid nitrogen is a clear liquid that has some unique properties and many uses, though its primary property is its extreme cold. Its boiling temperature is -196C, so it will evaporate immediately if you simply place a drop on your hand. It will also evaporate when exposed to just about anything, which means that it is safe to use with food because no nitrogen will be left by the time you go to eat it. You can still suffer some serious freezer burns from liquid nitrogen if you are not careful, so make sure to handle it safely.

It is very inexpensive to purchase at medical and laboratory supply stores, but you do need a special container to store it. Fortunately, you can often rent one from the supply store. The most popular culinary use for liquid nitrogen is ice cream because it freezes the base so fast the ice crystals are very tiny, making the ice cream very smooth. Heidi, of 101 Cookbooks, recently tried an ice cream made in this way, but she isn't the first nor the last, as this is a reasonably popular (and tasty) experiment in science classrooms. If ice cream isn't enough, there are many more fun things to do with the stuff once you have it.

[Photo 101 Cookbooks]

I think the market for these is people who love odd kitchen tools and people who are, at least occasionally, too lazy to use two separate measuring cups when cooking. This really unusual set of Odd-Sized Measuring Cups measure 2/3 cup, ¾ cup and 1½ cups, conveniently eliminating the need to do any math the next time you are doing any baking. I'm sure that I would use them if I had a set, particularly because these are very common measurements, but I am not sure that I would buy them for myself. If they were a gift, though....