Category — Miscellaneous
Oven Dried Tomatoes
Here’s a good idea if you have more tomatoes than you know what to do with. Quarter the tomatoes and toss them in a splash of olive oil. Season with salt, balsamic vinegar, lemon zest, and chili flakes. Add some sliced garlic and lay the tomatoes on a baking rack. Bake at 250° F for about 1 hour, or until the edges of the tomatoes caramelize slightly. Lay the tomatoes on the rack of a dehydrator and dry overnight. If you don’t have a food dehydrator simply drop the oven temperature as low as it will go and prop the door open slightly. The heat of the oven will dry the tomatoes after a few hours.
After drying the tomatoes will have shrunken significantly. They will be slightly leathery and only retain slight moisture in the middle. These tomatoes will last 3 weeks in the refrigerator or indefinitely if packed with salt and olive oil. These oven dried tomatoes will make the summer tomato season last into the dead of winter. Come back tomorrow to find a unique recipe using these dried tomatoes.
Photo by Justin Kern
July 27, 2009 4 Comments
Wild Rice Horchata
A few weeks ago I posted a recipe for horchata. I thought about how I can modify this sweet, spiced, rice milk drink and wanted to play around with the rice component. Here I made a rice milk from both white rice and wild rice. Wild rice is actually not rice, but rather a water-dwelling grass native to Minnesota. In this horchata, wild rice adds a nice bitterness to the sweet rice milk and makes this a truly American version of the Latin drink. To make it, simply substitute 1/4 c. white rice for wild rice in the original recipe.
Photo byJustin Kern.
July 14, 2009 No Comments
The Beginnings of Vanilla Extract
The flavor of vanilla is hard to describe. It’s dark, robust, fruity, and absolutely unique. Vanilla beans owe their flavor to a very long and labor intensive fermenting process and a special flavor compound called vanillin. The “vanilla” flavor most Americans know is actually not vanilla but vanillin extracts derived from guaiacol or lignin, which are wood pulp byproducts of the paper processing industry. Doesn’t sound very tasty to me. Real vanilla beans are the fruit of the vanilla genus of orchid native to mexico. Bitter, green tasting, and nearly inedible when picked, the green vanilla beans are meticulously picked and laid carefully on woolen cloth to bake under the hot sun. At night, workers roll up the sacks and the beans begin their fermenting process. This process is repeated day by day and, once dark, the beans are dried for several months where chemical reactions finish creating the dark and robust vanilla flavor. The entire process can take up to a year. It certainly justifies the hefty price tag on whole vanilla beans and forces you to savor and admire the incredible flavor unique to whole beans.
To use a fresh vanilla bean carefully split it in half lenthwise using a sharp paring knife. This will expose the dense and dark filling of seeds. Using the back of the knife, scrape the seeds from the pod and use them to flavor your vanilla ice cream (and to add those nice black flecks).
Of course you’re then left with the question of what to do with the bean’s hull. It’s probably not very nice to chew on but you paid top dollar for that tiny bean. There are two common practices which are equally delicious. The first is to make vanilla sugar. To do this simply pour some sugar into an air tight container, a mason jar for example, and bury the bean in the sugar. Allow the bean’s flavor to permeate the sugar and add more beans as you use them. Vanilla sugar is great used to sweeten your coffee or tea or used in your favorite baked good.
The other option is to start your own vanilla extract. True vanilla extract is grain alcohol that has been steeped with vanilla bean scraps. As it turns out, the vanillin is extremely soluble in alcohol and the result is an intense vanilla liquid. For this application I used Vodka. Simple place your used vanilla beans into a bottle of vodka and allow to steep for a few weeks or up to a year. For this picture I used a whole vanilla bean but I’ve been chopping up the beans I’ve added since to extract the flavors more quickly. Instead of waiting a year, use the extract as needed and add more vanilla and vodka as the weeks pass. The vodka will turn a dark brown and smell richly of vanilla. The best part about this extract is that you can use it to flavor your cookies and you’re cocktails without feeling the unpleasant burn of grain alcohol.
Whether you make vanilla sugar or extract, please don’t throw away those beans!
Photo by Justin Kern.
June 15, 2009 4 Comments
Chocolate Covered Potato Chips
My girlfriend Jacquie made these delicious chocolate covered potato chips. Covered in dark chocolate with piped white chocolate, these treats provide a perfect balance of sweet and salty. Jacquie used a truffle fork to carefully dip ruffled potato chips in tempered dark chocolate. Once set, she melted a bit of white chocolate and transfered it to a parchment paper piping cone. She drizzled the top with a fine line of white chocolate. Take a bite and the chocolate melts. The potato chip crunches and dissolves into an orgy of sugar of salt. Please enjoy responsibly.
Photo by Justin Kern
April 8, 2009 632 Comments
Strawberry Páte de Fruit
The perfect looking strawberry is bright red and unblemished with a vibrant green top. The perfect tasting strawberry is dark and usually not so pretty to look at. Unfortunately most people think strawberries are bad when they are perfectly ripe and grocery stores discount them deeply. I found perfectly ripe strawberries for $1/pound and bought 6 pounds. I stuffed myself on strawberries then pureed the rest and made a few dishes with them, including this strawberry pate de fruit. It’s tender, sweet, beautifully red, and packed with strawberry flavor. Stay tuned in the next few days for strawberry sorbet (with a few interesting flavor combinations).
Photo by Justin Kern.
April 6, 2009 70 Comments
