150,000 Fruit Salsas

Years ago, when I was at Food & Wine magazine, I worked with a brilliant recipe developer named Anne Disrude. She had the same intellectual curiosity about food and recipes as I did, and we were constantly toying with ideas (like the time she decided to make her own onion powder. . . an idea that turned out to be better in theory than in practice).

One day Anne came up with an idea for a magazine article on soups. She created a basic recipe template and then made a mix & match chart of all the possible ingredients, inviting the readers to choose their own combinations.

I have carried this idea around with me ever since, wishing I could figure out a way to get the concept across to other people. I've tried once or twice to sell this as a book idea, but I mostly get polite, slightly puzzled, nods.

So here I am on my blog, and no one can stop me from trying my experiment. What I have created is a template for Fruit Salsa. If you go to the fruit salsa template page, you'll be able to choose your own ingredients and create your own recipe. It's really hard to explain. Just give it a try: Fruit Salsa Template.

And by the way, here's the math that goes with this recipe: The number of unique combinations you could put together with this template is 150,000. (Well, that's not completely accurate. The real number is 158,760. Seriously.)

Presto Reverso

Cauliflower Hummus with Chickpea Crackers
(No cracker toppings here--a remark that
will make more sense once you read the recipe.)

Here's the usual scenario: hummus made from chickpeas with cauliflower florets for dipping.

And then . . . presto reverso . . . hummus made from cauliflower with chickpea crackers for dipping.

My son, Julien, and I are probably the only ones amused by this role-swapping idea, and we expended quite a few brain cells and person hours trying to come up with other such ideas. However, this is the idea that sparked it all, and it came about by happenstance.

It started with me cruising through Food52's book called Genius Recipes. I found the title intriguing, largely because I was skeptical of this word "genius." (In my professional life I probably edit about 3,000 recipes a year and I've been doing this for 3+ decades, so do the math.) Skepticism aside, two ideas stuck out, so I adopted them: Yotam Ottolenghi's hummus and Dan Barber's whole-grain crackers.

Much experimentation (no, really, MUCH experimentation) later and I ended up with the following crackers. And Yotam's hummus also took a left turn in my test kitchen and ended up being made with cauliflower (though the chickpea version is decidedly yummy).

Chickpea Crackers

100 g chickpea flour (aka besan, garbanzo flour, farina di ceci)
11/4 teaspoons Tajín seasoning, Trader Joe's chile-lime salt, or kosher salt
Generous 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
160 g* garlic broth** or water
2 tablespoons oil (any type; sometimes I do a mix of olive oil and sesame oil)
Topping (e.g., black sesame seeds, cracked sunflower seeds)
Smoked sea salt (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F. Spray a 9 x 13-inch baking pan with oil. 
2. In a bowl, stir together the flour, Tajín, and pepper. Make a well in the center. Add the garlic broth and oil. Stir to get a pancake batter, whisking to get rid of most of the lumps.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. It does not need to go into the corners. Sort of let it find its own level. Sprinkle with the topping and sea salt (if using).
4. Bake for 11/2 hours. Carefully flip and bake another 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes it will look done, but it will be just shy of crisp. So let it go as long as possible without burning.
5. Break it into pieces and store airtight.

*160 grams of broth/water is the same as 160 milliliters. But easier to measure with a scale than eyeballing in a measuring cup.
**Just cut up some garlic, put in a glass measuring cup with some water and a little salt, and heat in the microwave like you're making tea. Strain out the garlic. Boom.


Cauliflower Hummus

About 300 g (10 oz) cauliflower florets (to get 250 g/9 oz cooked)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 strip lemon zest
80 g tahini, peanut butter, or sunbutter (~ 5 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
2 tablespoons lemon juice, or more to taste 

1. In a medium saucepan of boiling salted water, cook the cauliflower, garlic, and lemon zest. Drain well. (At this point I weigh out about 250 grams...you could probably just use all the cauliflower.) Set aside to cool.
2. When the cauliflower/garlic/lemon zest mixture is cool, place it in a food processor and add the tahini and salt. Process to a puree (it's OK if it's still a little coarse; it just shouldn't have any visible chunks).
3. With the machine running, drizzle in the lemon juice and keep processing for a minute or so. Scrape down the sides a couple of times. Taste and see if you want more salt and/or lemon juice. Process until it's ultra smooth.

Stalks, stems, ribs, and cores . . .

. . . all those "tough" things you usually trim away and discard: fennel stalks (and core), the ends of asparagus, broccoli stems, collard or kale ribs, cauliflower cores (and leaves). I just have two words for you: food processor. All of those things can be rendered edible by whacking them around in a food processor to make veggie "rice." Boom.


Disclaimers:
1. Dried out things (onion skins) can't be rescued
2. I haven't tried butternut squash skin, but I'm thinking that even if it got turned into rice it would be nasty.
3. Bean pods: I've made broth from them, but I've never tried to rice-ize them. Next on my list.

Two problems + one solution = ginger snow

Problem #1 You bought more ginger than you needed (or the market made it difficult for you to tailor your purchase) and now it's lurking in your vege-lator all dried and shriveled . . . and/or moldy. 

Problem #2 You love ginger tea and a) you just ran out of your favorite teabags or b) you thought you had fresh ginger, but refer to Problem #1.

The solution:

Put the surplus ginger in the freezer while it's still plump and tight-skinned (ah, reminds me of sixth grade). You can peel or not. It's just a matter of aesthetics, not flavor.

When the ginger tea mood strikes, just grate the ginger on a Microplane into a mug. Add just-boiled water (and honey and lemon, perchance). Ginger tea. You can just drink the snowy ginger; no need to strain it out. 

And of course the finely grated ginger works in any recipe where you want ginger (though not if you're looking for the ginger to provide some kind of texture). Give the ginger snow about 2 seconds at room temperature and it melts into an absolutely superb, fiber-free ginger paste.

Cake, Kuchen, Koek, Kake, Kolač, Cacen, Keke, Kage, Kuko*, Keyk

When my niece Emily was little, she couldn't manage my name (Kate) and instead called me Cake. In spite of the fact that I don't like actual cake (I wish I had been Aunt Pie or Aunt Lemon Square), I liked the moniker.

So, what's in the name? Where does the word cake come from. It has a connection to the Old Norse word kaka (phew, dodged a bullet with that linguistic evolution...unless you live in modernday Sweden). But I can't help but feel that somewhere, far up in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) branches there is a connection to the verb cook.**



I'm picturing early man, pre-fire, making a "batter" of ground up roots and water and eating it two-finger style (like poi).

Then, fire. Same mixture + hot stone = a cooked thing. Let's call it a cook....or koek or kaka.

Then, iron. Same mixture + hot pan = cook/koek/cake in a pan. Let's call it a pan cake.

Then, leaveners. Same mixture + leavener + hot pan = pan cake but taller

Now we've got the hang of it. Let's make a small version. Let's call it a cookie.

And now, let's bake that cookie not once but twice (because now we have an oven, yo). Let's call it a biscuit, biscotto, or zwieback.

Actually, near as I can tell (or near as the brains behind the OED can tell), the process went the other way around. The original cake was a hard little twice-cooked hockey puck suitable for nomads and other journeyers. (Oh, P.S., johnnycakes, journeycakes.) But I like my story better.

____________________________________________________

*Esperanto. As in "Shut your kuko-hole."
**For you linguistic pedants out there, I am aware that the original connection to the Latin verb coquere has been discredited. But that brings me to one of the Latin words for cake, which is placenta.

The Mystery of the Exploding Eggs

Young Master Julien Slate-Aussoleil
holds the explode-o egg so Mom
can take an out-of-focus photo.

A couple of whiles ago, I was working on a book called Scratch (written by Maria Rodale, of the Rodales), in which I learned that to get really consistently peelable eggs, you steam them. Genius! And I've been doing that ever since.

But every so often I would get what I call a "crater egg." It appeared that for some reason the air inside the egg couldn't get out (eggshells are porous, n'est-ce pas?) and pushed the egg white up against the shell at the opposite end, leaving an egg-white crater behind. Net result = the most unpeelable egg you'll ever meet, times a million.

Then, even weirder, some eggs would simply explode in the steamer, with loud (relatively speaking) egg bangs. Of course these were beyond peeling: They needed to be scooped out of the shell.

Why, why? My perfect system! What was wrong with it?

Research on the Google Interwebs Machine.

Fake Egg Bloom. Read on

As an egg emerges from the hen, it gets coated with a thin layer of something called the cuticle or "egg bloom," which seals the pores of the egg, protecting it from anything getting to it while it waits to be hatched. However, unless you raise your own chickens, any egg you've ever purchased has had this bloom washed off.

Some egg producers replace the natural cuticle with a coating of mineral oil or wax* to increase the shelf life. In addition to keeping the bad things out, the coating prevents the egg from "respiring"—a process that over time introduces more air into the egg and eventually makes it go bad. (This is why you can test the age of an egg by seeing if it floats in water.) When you cook an egg in boiling water, the minute you immerse the egg, the hot water melts the wax off (though this is just my guess). But with steam, apparently, not so much.

However, the American Egg Board claims that only 10% of producers actually coat their eggs, so I guess it's just the luck of the draw.

*Anyone who has ever stocked a sailboat's pantry in preparation for a long cruise also knows this trick. With limited fridge space on a small boat, eggs are one thing you can keep at room temp, as long as you dip the eggs in paraffin.

Cauliflower crumbs. Am I right?

The 3 most annoying food particles are:

1. Cauliflower crumbs
2. Eggshell shards
3. Honey

They seem to have the following prime directives: Spread. Spread to weird places. Hide. Multiply. Spread again.

The imperfection of the "bunch"

(I'm in the middle of reading The Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope, and I feel that he would have titled this post thus.)

I edit a lot of recipes...and it's a little like detective work (I knew my Nancy Drew training would eventually come into play) trying to suss out what a recipe creator means when they* call for "a large handful" or "a generous glug" or [wait for it] "a bunch."

Let's consult the dictionary for a definition of bunch:

"a group of things of the same kind that are held or tied together or that grow together"

There is nothing in the definition that implies a quantity (even for things that "grow together," like grapes or bananas). In fact, the size of a bunch is controlled by custom. And since customs change pretty much constantly, calling for a bunch of something in a recipe is extraordinarily imperfect.

Here, peeps of the jury, is a "bunch of basil" from a farmers' market:

And here's a "bunch" from the supermarket:

I rest my case.

*On a separate note, I've finally given in to the use of "they" to indicate an individual of unknown gender......but I am not happy about it.

Quinoa rant

Why does everyone keep saying quinoa is packed with protein? It's making me crazy.

Here's how some vegetable-based foods stack up protein-wise, and then maybe we can figure out what qualifies as packed with protein. I decided to base the following info* on 100 calories' worth of the food (cooked), since serving sizes can be sort of meaningless (though I've included them to show what you get for 100 calories). The items are ranked from the most to the least protein per 100 calories:

Tofu, firm (2.5 ounces, 1/3 cup) = 12g protein, 2g carbs (1.6g fiber)
Lentils (scant 1/2 cup) = 8g protein, 18g carbs (8g fiber)
Black beans (scant 1/2 cup) = 6.9g protein, 18g carbs (7g fiber)
Chickpeas (scant 1/2 cup) = 5.8g protein, 18g carbs (5g fiber)
Quinoa (scant 1/2 cup) = 3.7g protein, 18g carbs (2.3g fiber)
Brown rice (scant 1/2 cup) = 2.2g protein, 21g carbs (1.3g fiber)
Barley (1/2 cup) = 1.9g protein, 23g carbs (3g fiber)

Now, these numbers of course do not reflect how "complete" the protein is—as in which of the essential amino acids they contain. That's a whole other can of wax, or ball of worms. But I just want cookbook authors and other food writers to stop saying that quinoa is reeeelly high in protein. It's definitely higher than other grains for which it is often substituted, but packed it ain't.

For my money, it's LENTILS FOR THE WIN! (I would have said tofu, but honestly there are a lot of people who avoid tofu for one health reason or the other.)

And of course if you're into eating animals and animal products (it sounds so wrong when you say it like that), you're made in the shade. One hundred calories of most lean meat—so we're not talking about sausages here, 'kay?—will give you in the neighborhood of 25g protein and no carbs to speak of.

For the record: I'm very fond of quinoa. I eat it every single day for breakfast. So there.

* data is [are, for you linguistic pedants] from the USDA's nutrition database, so if you have a quarrel, take it up with the gov.

Snips & Snaps

Things that have interested me recently, but that I'm entirely too lazy to write about (at any length), are:

1. Foraging for wild bamboo shoots. Complicated, but interesting. Even Jean-Georges Vongerichten thinks so. I was just playing around with the bamboo shoot in the photo (don't you ever accuse me of being a food stylist!): The white filling is goat cheese and the little topper-jobs are chive blossoms (from my garden) that I pickled.


2. Steaming eggs to hard-boil them . . . it makes them incredibly easy to peel. You can also really nicely control the "doneness" of the yolk. Thanks to Maria Rodale whose book, Scratch (Rodale, October 2016) turned me on to this. (Though to be fair, she learned it from a chef in Pennsylvania named Allan Schanbacher. You'll have to ask him where he learned it. And then let me know what he says.)

3. Making an easy-peasy ratatouille by roasting whole (untrimmed) eggplant, zucchini, and plum tomatoes (and sometimes some sliced onions) and then slicing everything up after. Just add olive oil, herbs, S&P, and maybe a dash of balsamic. Done.

4. Black limes. They are an ingredient in Persian (OK, Iranian) cooking and are called—among other transliterated words—loomi. I've never seen a whole lime, but I bought a bottle of powdered limes. The powder has a nice sort of citrusy tang and a very faint underflavor of something else....almost like fenugreek, or some other sort of haunting spice. I mix black lime powder with sea salt for sprinkling on things. I thought that I had stumbled on a fantastic salt substitute until I found out that "black limes" are first cooked in a salt solution (sheesh) before being dried in the sun until they turn black. The bottle I bought is labeled Black Lemon Powder, even though the ingredient list says black limes (oh, those wacky Middle Easterners).

5. Dried mango powder. Called amchoor/amchur (more transliteration here). Liking this too, for the same reason as the black limes. Faintly tart and sort of like putting salt on food, but not.

6. And then, in a complete 180°, I've been obsessed with making flavored salt. (It was weird last Xmas, 2015. I gave people flavored salt and they gave me flavored salt. Everybody gave everybody flavored salt. What up?) Anyway, I just experimented with mixing kosher salt with various liquids: some simple (lemon juice) and some more complex (red wine and balsamic with herbs steeped in it). I spread the resulting paste out on a baking sheet to dry and then I crumbled it back into sprinkle-able salt. It's fun. You can get cool colors. Don't bother with the lemon juice, it just tastes like salt on steroids.

The mystery teapot

In the late 18th, early 19th century, a certain style of teapot came into fashion in England. It was modeled after a pot brought back from India by a Lady Cadogan and was made popular because George IV admired one. Thenceforth everyone absolutely had to have one.

I want one too, not because I am a follower of George IV, but because the teapot is just plain cool. This teapot has no lid. There is no apparent way to fill it.

The way it works is this: If you invert the teapot you see that running up into the pot from the bottom is a tube. You fill the pot through the tube, turn the pot rightside up and the water.....aaaah, too hard to explain. Look at this glass version of the pot and you can see how it works.

You can look for antique Cadogan pots (like the top photo) manufactured by the Rockingham works in England or you can buy the modern glass version shown here (called the Mystery Pyramid Teapot) for $30 from a site that also sells Klein bottles.

Just in case you don't know what a Klein bottle is, it's a bottle that, like a Moebius strip, has a continuous surface. Enough said. You can check out the Klein bottle site to learn more.

Ramen spork

If you have a kid either in college or recently graduated (which probably also means unemployed), then it's very probable that ramen figures heavily into his/her food budget. So check out this very fine ramen-eating implement.

This stainless steel spork was designed by Masami Takahashi for a chain of ramen restaurants in Japan. It costs $14 from Uncommon Goods.

Stabilizing a cutting board

There's nothing more annoying (or potentially dangerous) than a cutting board that slides all over the counter when you're wielding a sharp knife. Some cutting boards come with nonskid feet, but what if you have a perfectly fine collection of other random cutting boards--as I do--with no nonskid bottoms?

Well, if you do a Google search on the topic, you'll get tips on using a wet towel underneath the board. Or if you've ever been to a professional food shoot, you'll have seen food stylists use stacks of wet paper towels under their boards.

Both of these ideas work just fine, but not as well as my personal favorite: nonslip shelf and drawer liner. You can find rolls of this webby material in any hardware store. It costs from $3-6 for a roll 12 inches wide by 5 feet long. You can cut out pieces that match any one of your cutting boards, and it works like a charm.

If you can't find it locally, you can do a search on Contact brand drawer liners.

Salt cellars

I was reading a post on a random blog in which the author referred to salt cellars as being a "hip new trend." I find this at once hilarious and extremely nostalgic. My grandmother always had salt cellars on the table. Her family had emigrated to this country from Ireland in the 1890s and I think there was always a need to prove gentility. Cut-crystal salt cellars on the table were clearly a part of that effort.

What I liked best about her salt cellars (and they were scattered about the table so that no one had to ask to "pass the salt") was that they came with the cutest little pressed glass spoons for ladling out the salt. This obviously appealed to my miniature-tea-set, dollhouse mentality.

So, what's out there now, in this hip new trend? Well, mostly larger containers, often with lids, intended to be in the kitchen, not on the dining room table. Not a salt cellar as I understand it. (In a skim-search on the InterWebs, I discovered that what I'm calling salt cellars, collectors call "open salts.") But I pressed on and found a few things my grandmother might have deigned to have on her table.

This nesting hen salt cellar has been around forever. I found it a couple of years ago in the Walter Drake tchotchke catalog (only $9), but it's more likely these days to be found on Etsy or eBay.

 

 

 

 

Or, how about this little guy? $22 from Uncommon Goods.

And when you think about it, a salt cellar (OK, open salt) is no more than a little bowl. So create your own by looking for little sauce bowls in Asian markets. How about a set of fish bowls for $2 apiece from Pearl River Trading?

Then just look around for little spoons to go with. Maybe some old unused demitasse spoons (remember demitasse? very '50s) or look for wooden salt spoons. Just search on Amazon; a number of choices, though I'm kind of partial to these spoons made of palm wood.







*The salt cellar to beat all salt cellars was designed by 16th-century Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini in the 1540s. La Saliera (as it is called) was commissioned by Francis I of Austria and is made of gold, enamel, and ivory. It was stolen from Vienna's art history museum in 2003 by a thief who, in classic Hollywood-plot style, was an alarms system engineer. He kept the piece under his bed for several years, then eventually demanded a $10 million ransom (the piece itself is valued at $50-60 million). He was finally undone by a text message he sent to the police.
So . . . . he was smart enough to dodge the alarm system in a museum, but not smart enough to know that cellphones can be traced. Ah well.

4 good reasons to own a potato ricer

A potato ricer works like a giant garlic press. In go the cooked potatoes, out come long strands of "riced" potatoes. This particular model comes from OXO.









Mashed potatoes: There is nothing like the light, fluffy texture you get from mashed potatoes made with a ricer. Riced potatoes are also the foundation for gnocchi and a Norwegian bread called lefse.





 



Spätzle: These are tiny little German egg noodles made by pressing dough through the small holes of a specialized tool directly into boiling water. A potato ricer can also be used for this purpose although it makes thinner noodles than those made with a real spätzle maker.



 



Mont Blanc: This is a grand French dessert. It's a sweetened chestnut puree that gets extruded through a ricer into a mound that is meant to represent a mountain. The top of the mountain is covered with something white—crème fraîche, whipped cream or confectioners' sugar—to resemble the snow on top of Mont Blanc.



 


 Spaghettieis: I love this German dessert. It's vanilla ice cream pushed through a ricer to look like spaghetti, topped with a red berry puree for the tomato sauce and dusted with something white (coconut, white chocolate, ground almonds) to be the Parmesan.

Early Bird Granola

Just happened to be discussing with my son, Julien, the number of good-for-you foods that were invented in the 19th century. (OK, I know it sounds phony that we were doing that, but honest, we were.)

Sylvester Graham—a diet reformer who advocated a vegetarian diet and whole foods—invented Graham bread in 1829. It was made with unsifted, coarsely ground, whole wheat flour, and no additives. (And you're probably familiar with his other invention, Graham crackers.)

Dr. Caleb Jackson, who ran a sanitarium in upstate New York, invented a cereal called Granula in 1863. It was made with Graham flour (see Sylvester Graham, above) and resembled giant Grape-Nuts.

Then there was John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor who ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, who advocated a vegetarian diet (and enemas). In 1894 he patented, with his brother, a cereal called Granose, later to become Corn Flakes.

Flash forward through the 1960s, where a cereal called Granola became the calling card of the hippies, to today where granola (no longer a tradename) has become an art form.

Early Bird Foods, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a good example of how good granola artistry can be. We'll start with the packaging. It makes you want to buy the granola just so you can have the cleverly designed bags the cereal comes in. It's a resealable plastic bag that looks like rice paper and the label is a wonderful interpretation of an old fruit crate label with a bird flying above a city skyline (I'm guessing it's meant to represent Brooklyn).

Moving on to the contents: There are six recipes, Farmhand's Choice, Jubilee, Aloha, Choc-a-Doodle-Doo, Gets the Worm, and Kiss My Oats. The base recipe includes organic rolled oats, pumpkin seeds, toasted organic coconut, Vermont maple syrup, extra-virgin olive oil, and salt. Where the recipes differ is in the kind of fruit and/or nuts that go into them, including pecans, mango, dried apples, chocolate, macadamia nuts, cherries and pistachios. The balance of sweet to salty is seductive. These are really wonderful granolas (and I've eaten my share of granolas over the years).

The granolas are sold in 38 states or you can order it directly from Early Bird.

This brings me to a small sticking point, which is the price. The granolas are made by hand in small batches, which is why they are so good and why they are pricey. They cost $10 for a 12-ounce bag, but you won't be disappointed, and you'll be a patron of the granola arts if you buy it.

Gurgle Pot

There are very few folks from the British Isles who wouldn't recognize a glug jug when they saw one. Many households have one (Queen Elizabeth has at least two), and it's not uncommon to give it as a housewarming or wedding gift.

A glug jug, which had its origins in Devonshire, England, is designed to make a glug-glug noise when you pour from it. Here's how it works: When you tip the pitcher to pour liquid out, air gets trapped in the fish's tail. Then when you turn the pitcher upright again, the air escapes out of the tail and comes up through the liquid in the pitcher, causing a loud gurgle, or glug-glug noise.

I actually owned one back in the day, although I knew it as a Gurgling Cod pitcher. The Gurgling Cod was designed by (and is still sold by) a famous jewelry and china store in Boston called Shreve, Crump & Low.

Sadly, somewhere along the line I lost track of the gurgling cod. This is why I was happy to run across the Gurgle Pot. The Gurgle Pot comes in 12 colors and has a nice sleek design. The pot itself is extremely sturdy. It holds a little over a quart of liquid and would make a great lemonade or iced tea pitcher. It's $40 from Gurgle Pot.

Bee all that you can bee

Napoleon liked bees. Do you know why? When Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor, he and his inner circle needed to choose appropriate emblems of his sovereignty. There was much discussion. Some wanted a lion, some an elephant, some an eagle, some an oak tree, some the honey bee. There were two winners: the eagle and the bee.

The eagle because of its association with military victory (and the days of Roman emperors). The bee because it had been the symbol* of France's earliest rulers, the Merovingians (credited with founding France in 457). The Napoleonic advisers thought it wise to ally the Corsican upstart with France's true origins.

Both the Napoleonic and Merovingian connections are why you find lots of stuff from France with the bee as a design motif.

For example, there's the bee glassware from a glassworks in Passavant-la-Rochère, Haute-Saône, in eastern France. The glassworks has been in almost continuous operation since its founding in 1475. The pink La Rochère Bee Tumbler at left holds 8 ounces, is 5-1/2 inches high, and is $10 from A French Addiction. The La Rochère Bee Bowl (photo way above) is 5-1/2 inches in diameter, and is $16 from Terrain. (La Rochère makes tons of other Napoleonic bee glasses and serving pieces. I just picked two of my favorites.)





More bees: There is a town in the South of France called Laguiole. It is known for beautiful hand-forged knives, and a cheese. Unlike the cheese, which can only be called Laguiole if it really comes from that region, any knife can be called Laguiole if it has been made in the general style of Laguiole. The classic Laguiole knife has a bee emblem at the joint where the handle meets the blade.
P.S. There are those who insist that it's a housefly and not a bee, but I'm going with bee.






Laguiole knives (and forks and spoons) can be quite costly, especially if they're made with exotic woods or horn. Just in case you have some extra bucks you don't know what to do with, check out the Laguiole website. The set of 6 ebony-handled forks at left is $364.



 




*The assumption that the bee was the symbol of France's earliest rulers is based on the discovery of 300 gold-and-garnet bees (see below) in the tomb of Childéric I, the first of the Merovingian kings. Though commonly accepted as bees, they are more likely golden effigies of the cicada, which was a symbol of resurrection--perhaps because the cicada nymph lives underground for years (up to 17 years, depending on the species) before emerging as an adult. It would certainly look as though they were rising from the dead, if you ask me.

Spicy Cherry Vinegar

It's so ridiculously easy to make flavored vinegar that it makes me wonder why people pay big bucks to buy it. Anyway, got me some cherries the other day, since it's just the very beginning of cherry season, and decided to donate some of them to the cause by using them to make cherry vinegar.

The cherries colored the vinegar in only a couple of hours, but I left them there for a full day to let the cherry juices exchange with the vinegar. I took the cheap way out and used distilled white vinegar, but I imagine the vinegar would taste even better if you started with a good white wine vinegar. In fact this would be perfectly tasty made with red wine vinegar, but you won't get the dramatic effect of the vinegar changing color.

Spicy Cherry Vinegar

2 cups quartered sweet (Bing) cherries
2 tablespoons sugar
3 cups distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

In a large nonmetal container, combine all of the ingredients. Let stand 24 hours. Strain and put the vinegar in a clean bottle.

Makes 3 cups

Mega-Recipe: Ricotta Torte

May is Bone Health Month. (Who decides these things, anyway?) So in honor of that, and in honor of mothers—who as a class definitely need strong bones—this week's recipe is for a calcium-rich cheese torte.

The torte is what I call a Mega-Recipe. What this means is that, in order to get a meaningful amount of a certain nutrient in a serving, I load the recipe up on ingredients high in that nutrient.

In the case of the torte, I went for the obvious sources of calcium: dairy products. But by choosing lower-fat versions of them I could get more calcium (too hard and boring to explain, but true). Then I also added nondairy sources of calcium, including almonds and broccoli. Broccoli has the distinction of being high in calcium and relatively low in vitamin K, which inhibits the body's ability to use the calcium in the vegetable.

Too much nutrition blah-blah, here's the recipe:

Ricotta Torte with Broccoli & Basil
My plan was to come up with a single serving that had significant calcium in it. I used skim milk to cook the rice and chose part-skim ricotta over full-fat. I used 1% cottage cheese, but since cottage cheese is not as good a source of calcium as other dairy products, I chose one of the brands that has added calcium. The other good sources in this torte are the broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes (?!), eggs, almonds, scallions and basil. When it all gets added up, a single serving has just about 500mg of calcium, which is 50% of the DV.

2 cups skim milk
3/4 cup brown-wild rice blend
1 teaspoon plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted and very finely chopped
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, slivered (2.5 ounces)
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 scallions, chopped
2 cups (packed) finely chopped broccoli (6 ounces)
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 container (15 ounces) part-skim ricotta cheese (1-3/4 cups)
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese (with calcium)
3 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves

1. In a medium saucepan (preferably nonstick), combine the milk, rice blend and 1 teaspoon of the oil. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat. Cover tightly, reduce to a simmer and cook until tender, 45 to 50 minutes. (Make sure it doesn't foam over.) Transfer to a large bowl and set aside to cool slightly.
2. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly oil a 9- to 10-inch springform pan. Sprinkle the almonds and Parmesan evenly over the bottom of the springform. In a small heatproof bowl, cover the sun-dried tomatoes with boiling water and let sit to soften while the rice cooks. Drain and coarsely chop.
3. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and scallions, and cook for 30 seconds, until the garlic is fragrant. Add the broccoli, water, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and the pepper. Cover and cook until crisp-tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Uncover and set aside.
4. In a food processor, combine the ricotta, cottage cheese, whole eggs, egg whites, basil and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt. Process until smooth. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and pulse just to combine. Stir into the cooled rice mixture.
5. Spoon one-third of the cheese-rice mixture into the springform. Top with the broccoli mixture and spoon the remaining cheese-rice mixture on top, making sure the broccoli is completely covered. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and a knife comes out clean. Cool completely to room temperature before serving.

Makes 6 servings