Showing posts with label pickles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pickles. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

I Left My Heart in Spain But Brought Home the Anchovies

Raise your hands. Who loves anchovies? If you do, you should definitely visit Spain. 
Taking a press tour across the top of Spain, visiting San Sebastian, Bilbao and Santiago de Compostella, anchovies were the culinary through line. I loved them on tapas. I loved them on pintxos (Basque open faced sandwiches). I brought jars of anchovies in the local supermarkets to bring home and when I got home, I enjoyed making versions of what I enjoyed in Spain. 
Anyone who raised their hand and loves salty anchovies, I posted a recipe for a yummy tapas on Zester Daily:http://tinyurl.com/pxxlp6j

Friday, November 16, 2012

80+Thanksgiving Recipes

For those of you who are subscribers to Men Who Like to Cook, my last post--It Takes A Village (of Bloggers) to Get Thanksgiving on the Table--has 80+ recipes from Food Bloggers, Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, the email that notified you about that new post did not carry with it the links to those recipes.

Please click on this link, which will take you to the web site where you find an amazing collection of recipes for appetizers, soups, muffins, side dishes, entrees and desserts. All perfect for Thanksgiving. All tested in the kitchens of Food Bloggers, Los Angeles.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

It Takes a Village (of Bloggers) to Get Thanksgiving on the Table

To feed a large number of people takes planning, lists and help. Lots of help.

Happily, Thanksgiving is one of those holidays when pot-luck is very much a part of the celebration.

When the door bell rings, you'll greet friends and family bearing gifts of appetizers, side dishes and desserts. Many of those recipes are the result of years and, in some cases, generations of kitchen-tested, holiday cooking.

We have a cousin who brings her signature pumpkin pie. Another cousin comes from San Francisco carrying his ice cream maker in the trunk of his car so he can prepare fresh ice cream that he tops with his home made hot fudge sauce.

I make an apple pie with crystalized ginger in the crust. Besides the roast turkey, my wife cooks her corn bread stuffing with shiitake mushrooms, dried apricots and Italian sausage.

A helping hand
A few weeks ago, the members of Food Bloggers, Los Angeles (FBLA) met in an Ocean Park member's home to share Thanksgiving recipes.

Belonging to a group of food bloggers has many advantages, not the least of which is many more experienced hands and great minds are brought to bear on the question of how to prepare seasonal vegetables (end of summer tomatoes was one meeting's topic) and holiday favorites (pumpkin for side dishes and desserts).
At the last meeting, the topic, appropriately, was Thanksgiving.  When food bloggers gather, they don't just talk about their dishes, they bring them to share.
I contributed Moroccan preserved vegetables and chermoula, perfect to accompany a roast turkey, which, unfortunately, did not make an appearance for this meal. My bad.

The dining room table filled with appetizers, side dishes, a bowl of cranberry relish, a basket of freshly baked rolls, biscuits, half a dozen cakes, nut bars and pies.
As you can see, besides learning new recipes, the fun of such gatherings is socializing and eating. But, before the biscuits are eaten and the cake is cut, every dish has to be photographed. Because to a food blogger, there can be no eating until there has been much photo-taking.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Bread and Butter Pickles

Kosher pickles are great to eat with sandwiches. Bread and Butter Pickles are great to eat on sandwiches.

Bread and Butter Pickles

Time: 60 minutes

Serves: 10

Ingredients

3 lbs small cukes, washed, ends trimmed
3 cups white sugar
3 cups yellow (Iranian) vinegar
½ cup Kosher salt
4 cups ice cubes
½ cup thinly sliced yellow onion
3 tablespoons mustard seed
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
¼ cup dill leaves

Method

Using a serrated knife, cut the cukes into ¼” pieces, put them in a colander over a bowl, add the salt, toss well, top with the ice cubes and allow to drain overnight. Rinse the cukes to get rid of the salt and toss together with the sliced onions.

Prepare 4 pint canning jars by boiling them in water for 30 minutes. Let them cool on a wire rack.

Put the sugar, vinegar, mustard seeds, and peppercorns into a sauce pan and heat until the sugar dissolves. Fill the canning jars with the cukes and sliced onions up to 1” from the top of the jar, add the dill, then fill with the vinegar-sugar liquid and seal with canning lids.

Put the jars into a pot with boiling water. Make sure the jars are completely covered by water. Cook for 10 minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

Besides cukes, the recipe works exactly the same for lots of other vegetables: string beans (trimmed and cut to a length so they fit in the jar); carrot rounds (peeled) with onions; or corn off the cob with a sprinkling of diced red pepper.

Put up in their canning jars, the pickles make beautiful presents.

Serves 20. Preparation Time: 15 minutes. Cooking Time: 10 minutes.

Kosher Pickles

A lot of people I know have at least one relative who used to make pickles. For me, my grandmother didn't make pickles but her father did and she would take me down to Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to show me where the pickle makers had their open air stores. Her dad had a store when she was a child. He had pickle barrels out front. When she took me downtown there were still pickle makers on the Lower East Side. I loved the smell of the brine in the wooden barrels.

Kosher Pickles

I like the smaller cukes. Cut off the remains of the stems and flowers. Don’t use any cukes that are soft or discolored. Clean and dry the cukes. Put them aside while you make the brine. I use Iranian yellow vinegar, a little hard to find, but it has less of a bite.

Yield: 6-8 servings

Time: 20 minutes to prepare; 2-5 days to brine

Ingredients
5 lbs, small cukes
8 cups of water
1/4 cup Kosher salt1 cup yellow vinegar
4 cloves garlic, peeled, thinly sliced
5 bay leaves
10 whole black peppercorns
10 whole mustard seeds1/4 teaspoon of pepper flakes
3 sprigs of fresh dill


Method
In a pot, add together the water, vinegar, and salt. Bring the water to a simmer. Stir, to help the salt dissolve. The brine has to be hot enough to dissolve the salt, but don't let it boil. Stick a finger into the brine. Taste and adjust the flavor. Add more salt and vinegar as you like. If the brine is too salty or too vinegary, then add more water. Get the brine to taste the way you like it, because the way the brine tastes is the way the pickles will taste.


Put the spices into the bottom of a gallon glass jar. Put the cukes into the jar. Pour in the hot brine, being careful to cover the cukes. Save about a cup of brine.


Tasting the brine will give you an idea about the flavor of the pickles, but you won’t really know what the pickles taste like until you make your first batch. The next time you make your pickles you can adjust the flavor by putting in more of less of the flavorings: the salt, vinegar, garlic, and spices.


Now that you’ve put the cucumbers into the brine, you have to wait. How long you wait depends on how you like your pickle. If you like pickles that taste like cucumbers, you can eat them after as little as 2 days. If you want more “pickle” flavor, wait 3-5 days.


While the pickles are curing, keep them on the kitchen counter out of the sun, in the jar, uncovered. If you cover them, they'll go bad. Also, the cukes have to be kept submerged in the brine. If they’re exposed to the air, they will go bad.


The trick is to put a plastic cup in the top of the jar. If you fill the cup with the extra brine, then it’s weight will keep the pickles submerged. Make sure that the size of the cup is smaller than the opening of the jar, so the pickles can “breathe”.


Put brine in the cup, so as the water evaporates, you can add brine from the cup to keep the pickles covered.


Once the pickles are how you like them, put a top on the jar. At this point you'll probably want to transfer the pickles into smaller jars; make sure the pickles are covered and that each jar has an equal amount of the pickling spices.

Refrigerate the jars. The pickles will keep for several weeks, but since there aren't any preservatives, they won’t last as long as store-bought pickles.


Preparation Time: 20 minutes. Cooking Time: 3 minutes. Waiting Time: 2-5 days.

Pickle Me Up! It's Thanksgiving!

Pickles are delicious anytime of the year. For Thanksgiving they are especially good. Their crunch and acidity counterbalances the delicious...