Ah Chicago, how I miss thee. But then I spent 6 hours of the last four days in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton… The week off was capped by my sister-in-law’s wedding on Saturday, which was a splendid affair. Little Josephine failed to make it down the aisle […]
READ ONI’m sorry, but I just couldn’t stay away, especially with the New York Times swiping all my best ideas again. I only just finish a long series on home ice cream making when they come out with their own article on the subject! Lucky for them there’s unique news here: a new wave of home […]
READ ONI hate to end on such a macabre note, but events got away from me today. I had some fun stuff on watermelons that’ll have to wait. I’m headed off on vacation this coming week, but I’ll be back in action on Monday the 21st. In the meatime, if you feel like taking me up […]
READ ONThat last post reminds me of a funny turn of phrase that you can still hear every so often in Britain: “Tap the Admiral”. It means to sneak a drink. During part of my stint in Britain I lived in a chapel house, populated almost entirely by monks and theological students. One fellow (the abbot […]
READ ONHow well does pickling work for meat, a reader has been wondering. The answer is: pretty well. There are all types of pickled fish in the world (herring and the like), and then or course the famous Irish (or at least American-Irish) corned beef. The word “corned” actually refers to the pickling process here, not […]
READ ONOh my yes you can, as every teenager who’s pinched a forgotten bottle of their parents’ pear brandy knows. I have a recipe for pickled peppers in brandy given to me by an old German chef I knew in Chicago, the products of which can actually be used for physical combat. For obvious reasons, alcohol-based […]
READ ONThe alternative to the killing zone is the velvet rope approach, whereby you let certain microbes into the party with the understanding that they won’t go bustin’ up the place. This is the world of fermented pickles which includes things like gherkins, sauerkraut and kimchi. The principle behind it is rather elegant. It is, simply, […]
READ ONLike canning, pickling is all about controlling the forces of spoilage, living things like microbes especially, but also non-living things like enzymes. Both can be inhibited or destroyed in a variety of ways. Salt in high enough concentrations is hell on fungi, molds and bacteria, though not quite so good on enzymes. Likewise high doses […]
READ ONI’ve got a pretty flimsy sense of culinary modesty, and nothing brings it crashing down quicker than a compliment on my own home-made pickles. I don’t know why I’m so uncontrollably proud of them. Maybe because I still have a hard time believing something so good can be so easy to make. Here in the […]
READ ONWhat could possibly go better with a pregnant houshold than pickles and ice cream? Last week was the first half of the combo, this week is the second. But before you run screaming for your pull-down menus, check this recipe out. Sweet, sour and aromatic, it’s a pickle that really does go perfectly with ice […]
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