Ktepi

I've made really good habanero ice cream, but the spiciness was incidental -- last year's peppers just had such great fruity smoky flavor that I was trying to find something sweet to do with them that would dim the heat as much as possible without losing the flavor. Ice cream and panna cotta came closest -- the heat hit you after the fact, so at least you got the flavor first. I don't see that working out here, though -- I'd rather have the butter pecan.

Oh excellent, thank you. The last two places I lived had Mediterranean markets -- I made a lot of pomegranate margaritas -- but I don't know of one here yet. There is a small Russian market I should check, though. New Hampshire doesn't seem to have discovered sour cherries, and I'm down to my last two Montmorencies in bourbon and sugar, left from last summer (perfect for old-fashioneds, which is where all the rest went). I've been disappointed by playing with black currant in the past, though the other day I was thinking that Auburn vanilla liqueur in cassis lambic would probably be great -- I know it is with the framboise, one of those things that's so stupidly easy you don't feel like you've earned it. But blueberry ... that would be cool.

Lemon verbena and rum sounds like a good combination! My Mile High Club: about 1 oz Tanqueray gin about 1/2 oz Luxardo maraschino (I'm running out! and I didn't see it at the NH state liquor store) about 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice the pulp of 1/2 passion fruit (this was a very full passion fruit -- I was anticipating having to use a whole passion fruit, because the ones I used to get here were always very scant; but now that everyone carries Melissa's, they seem, well, fuller) some rich lemon-infused syrup some club soda The syrup is the by-product of candying some Meyer lemon slices; I wind up using those syrups as bar ingredients a lot. Sometimes -- like with the lemon, or the pineapple-saffron -- the flavor is pretty pronounced, as much as you'd want from "lemon syrup." Sometimes, like with the strawberry, it's mild enough that the base spirit overwhelms it. I fiddled with this until it was the right balance of sweet and tart without the gin being too overwhelming, and I'd guess the club soda is probably an ounce or two. The syrup was just a trickle, just enough to take the edge off the lemon and the gin.

Oh wow, I wish I knew where to get sour cherry syrup here -- sour cherry anything, but that's another grumble. The Half and Half is really nice. I'm not sure how wide Polar's distribution area is, but here it's very cheap, just a step above supermarket-brand. The Half and Half has become a staple for me, especially for "it's not really a drink" drinks like Half and Half with 1/4 ounce or so of maraschino ... something I can drink for lunch without feeling like I'm, you know, drinking for lunch. Right now I'm waiting for the gin to get cold to make something that I'm hoping will be amazingly good so it'll justify the name -- the Mile High Club: an Aviation with passion fruit juice.

Right now I'm waiting for my mother's garden to start producing things, since she always has such a surplus that she cans things in such quantity she'll never go through the backlog. It's New Hampshire, so she hasn't even planted everything yet, much less started to pick. Unlike a lot of people, I guess, I find that my vegetables are cooked just as often in the summer as the winter -- if I'm having something raw, it's more likely to be melon, cucumber, strawberries, things I don't usually cook anyway. So right now, with supermarket produce, I'm making a lot of collard greens (they're in the pot right now) and roasted okra. As soon as it's available, corn on the cob will feature heavily, probably enough so that I'll do what I used to do and just have three ears of corn for lunch. I'm not a huge fan of fresh tomatoes, but a few slices will find their way onto pimento cheese sandwiches, grilled or plain. The cucumber I slice unpeeled, dress with vinegar, sliced chiles, and sometimes garlic, and let sit in the fridge for a few hours or overnight; I usually salt it at serving instead of ahead of time, but I don't remember if someone told me to do this or if it's a habit from forgetting the salt one time. Melon gets cut into chunks and tossed with a little bit of sugar, lime juice, and fresh mint -- as do strawberries, with Vic Cherikoff's fruit spice instead of the mint. Sometimes one or the other -- post-maceration -- gets tossed with some vinegar and salad greens, especially Boston lettuce and chicory. Broccoli raab, kale, or dandelion greens I'll saute in olive oil or bacon fat and use with a pasta -- often just chiles and garlic, sometimes a spoonful of cream. Beets are roasted and served hot, cold, or in hash. Tonight I'm having the collard greens with roasted chicken -- tomorrow I'll have leftover chicken with chicory and some kind of dressing, probably a spicy and tart one.

Oh, an excellent link, thank you. I didn't even think of toxicity. Well, barring a problem there, I may try some hickory nut bitters with a small amount out of curiosity -- they're cracked, so the alcohol will at least get to the nutmeats -- and do something similar to the hazelnut recipe with just the meats from the rest.

I did a few searches for this because I could have sworn it was brought up before, but I didn't find anything, nor did I see it come up on the infused vodkas thread. Anyway, I've been curious for a while about infusing alcohol with nuts, and at the moment I have a bag of cracked but unshelled shagbark hickory nuts which have been a real pain to shell -- which made me wonder if I could use them for an infusion, without taking the shells off. Are there broad guidelines for nut infusions? I know duration is going to vary as it does with fruits, herbs, and spices, so I suppose the main thing I'm curious about is the shells. I have no idea if they have any relevant flavor or if they need to be ditched, in which case I'll probably use pecans instead.

Snyder's sourdough pretzels dipped in sriracha. Zapp's Crawtators. Blair's Cheddar potato chips. Chile Today Hot Tamale pretzel nuggets, especially Habanero or Chipotle (I had to google to see who made these, I haven't seen them in a few years).

Penzey's is my default source for spices now, not just things I can't find locally but all my standards. In almost every case it's both better and cheaper, even with shipping factored in (I buy about $30 worth of spices at a time -- an order big enough that the cost of shipping isn't ridiculous relative to the cost of product, but far from huge). Several of those spices -- the cinnamon, the marjoram, some of the curry blends -- are so good that I wind up cooking with them more often than I would their supermarket counterparts. I also second the endorsement of Germandeli.com, which I've ordered from many times -- my best friend grew up on an Air Force base in Germany, so I often order ketchup and Haribo gummis and whatnot for her. (And gummi cola bottles and orange soda for me.) Oh, and Poche's, a Cajun meat market. I recommend everything. Especially the chaurice and the boudin ... and everything. Two of everything. Does anyone have a good source for harder to find cuts of meat? Beef cheeks, pork snouts, lamb belly, things like that? I know Niman Ranch carries some things, but I'm looking for something cheaper -- supermarket quality meat is just fine, since it's not that my local beef cheeks aren't good enough, it's that there are no local beef cheeks, you know?

Every year is "that time of year"! Sketch of the saffron-cherry fruitcake currently in the oven: Basic white fruitcake batter, minus any flavorings like vanilla. Melt half of the butter with a hefty pinch of saffron -- I probably used a quarter of a gram for a small fruitcake -- and let cool before creaming with the rest of the butter and continuing. For the fruit, I used dried sweetened cherries soaked for a few days in bourbon until they were reconstituted. I'd prefer home-candied tart cherries, but can't get tart cherries here; dried tart cherries would be a second choice, but they don't have those in the store here either, and I didn't feel like waiting for mail order. The batter has a strong "cherry vanilla" flavor to it -- I don't know how many people have played with saffron in sweet dishes, but to my palate it's like a complicated, brooding vanilla. I was hoping it would go well with the cherries, and if the final product is anything like the batter, it's exactly what I wanted.

Usually I use bacon fat to toss with asparagus for roasting, but with that much, I'd pan-fry some chicken thighs to go with those potatoes.

My pies just arrived! Safe and sound. I was curious how they'd be packed -- I've never ordered any food this fragile that wasn't also perishable and shipped in a cooler with dry ice -- and they're in a toaster-sized box with little partitions (you know, like you'd pack Mason jars) in which the pies are standing upright. I've only had one but it's in perfect condition. It's been two and a half years for me -- last time I was in Louisiana, I was in Lafayette and no one had Hubig's there (I made up for it with boudin). I forgot just how much I love the crust.

Do you think there would be a problem with halving (or thirding) either of these recipes? I'd love to try it, but I live alone and just moved. The ingredients are cheap enough that it's not a big deal, but waste not want not. I have some leftover roast beef for sandwiches, and a pork picnic currently slow-cooking in the oven. I'd make deviled eggs, but I just made some Tuesday to use up the last of the pimento cheese.

Exactly! I remember watching them stock it, wondering where in the chain of command someone decided this was a good idea. You could always resolidify them by dropping them into a frozen daiquiri from up the street, though. $4.95 to NH, too, maybe that's their flat domestic rate during the discounted shipping special. Between Hubig's, Zapp's, and Poche's, I think my Christmas and New Year's dinners have just been planned out. If only someone here carried Dixie.

The vending machines outside the liberal arts building at UNO has (used to have?) them too -- and in the summer, they were some of the only offerings that didn't suffer from the fact that these machines were outside in 100 degree weather with glass fronts. (Ever had a pouch of melted chocolate surrounding the toffee innards of a Heath bar? Well, I did!)

Just placed my order. Thanks, Kevin! This makes my month. I can practically taste the coconut.

We made Krispy Kreme burgers one time on a visit to Cincinnati when we happened to notice a 24-hour Rally's and a 24-hour Krispy Kreme sharing a parking lot and I decided it was a sign. It wasn't bad -- even the people who didn't like it agreed it "tasted less weird" than the egg and cheese McGriddle (which I like, a little). I've seen a few mentions of them in other places online. If they really want to make it the world's unhealthiest burger (and how does it compare calorically to those foie gras/short rib numbers?), they need to make it a Krispy Kreme butterburger.

Not sure they'll be set in time to actually eat them tonight, but I made three flavors of panna cotta tonight: Pepsi Blue (with syrup I'd reduced down from bottles of Pepsi Blue I'd saved but which had long since gone flat). Bright sky blue and smells like cotton candy. Meyer lemon with Gary Regan's orange bitters. I've been playing around with lemons and had actually blended a couple whole lemons and sugar syrup together and strained it (like roasted lemonade without the roasting), and thought that'd be a good way to get lemony flavor here without the acidity that would curdle the cream. If it works, I'll make lemon ice cream later in the summer. The bitters aren't so pronounced that they distract from the lemon, which I thought might be a problem with Peychaud's or Angostura. I nearly made "Aviation" panna cotta with a hit of maraschino, but I think the name implies more tartness than would really work here. Vanilla with habanero. One of my favorite flavor combinations for panna cotta or ice cream -- I glaceed some habaneros last summer, and use the resulting syrup in things like this. You get the heat in two hits -- once right away, and then a major hit of spice after the ice cream/panna has melted, which is always a little bit of a shock. The vanilla flavor in this case comes from Auburn vanilla liqueur.

I ordered from Gianni's Pizza tonight, which my brother says is his favorite pizza that delivers here -- "it's because of the sauce," he said, not knowing that's been exactly my explanation when anyone asks me what I like about pizza in this part of the country. Small meatball pizza and a small steak and cheese sub with hot peppers. The steak was a little bland -- not like there was a problem with the meat, but like it needed a little salt or something. I was going to get up and grab something to put on it -- Heinz 57, hot sauce, something -- but ... I finished the sub before I got around to it So it's hardly a major complaint. The hot peppers didn't overwhelm the sub, either, which happens sometimes, as though a joint's afraid you'll feel they skimped you by not loading the thing up with handfuls of whatever it is you asked for. The pizza is very good, though I don't know if it's the best I've had around here. The sauce is indeed good, but it's a little thin -- not as deeply tomatoey as I might like. To use the chains as touchstones, it's closer to Domino's in that respect than Pizza Hut, you know? Better than either, of course. Between that and the thinnish (but not cracker-thin) crust, it reminds me of Christopher's, which at one time was the only pizza available in Hollis and so featured prominently in my teen years. Definitely a place I'll order from again.

I haven't had Cricket Cola or the hot version of Blenheim's ginger ale, but I've had the others ... mostly they're in that "I won't fault you for loving this, but there are things I like more" zone. I like Dr Brown's orange soda a lot more than the black cherry, for instance (and the Cel-Ray more than either, but again, I'm not surprised when others don't agree with that). And though most of my friends would pick Stewart's orange and cream, the grape soda is the pinnacle of that line for me -- it tastes exactly like a grape soda should and like so few do. Abita, though, would definitely be on my list. It's a very different taste from Virgil's -- which would also be in my top 5 -- and doesn't have the deep, complicated, maybe Moxie-like taste that I like about other favorite root beers. It's crisp and clean in a way that makes even people who don't pay a lot of attention to soda comment on it, and ice cold it's one of the best non-alcoholic options at a crawfish boil. This would be in my top 5 of any kinds of soda, gourmet, import, domestic, whatever. Other things I'd add? I don't know where to draw the line between "gourmet" and "hard to find" (Moxie, Sun Drop, Ale 8 One, Buffalo Rock) or "expensive because it's an import" (Thums Up, Vimto, Orangina Rouge). Whole Foods' house brand (365, iirc) cola is one of the few "gourmet colas" I really like -- too many of them try too hard with vanilla and root-beer-like flavorings, and wind up with something that tastes like fancy Pepsi, but this one works. Sioux City Sarsaparilla has been a favorite since I was a kid, and I like their birch beer too. The Izze drinks are pretty good, though I don't know if I have a favorite that I'd top5. Oh oh, and my personal new favorite is the Mocha soda from Green Mountain Roasters -- though it's weird for a "gourmet" soda to be a cheaper alternative to a Coca-Cola product (I like Blak better, but it costs more for less soda).

Sort of a TGIFriday's version of an Aviation: 1 1/2 oz Tanqueray gin 1/2 oz Luxardo maraschino juice of 1/2 Meyer lemon, with rind rubbed thoroughly around the rim of the glass Topped off with Polar Half and Half soda (a grapefruit soda from their "Mixers" line, which I used to drink as a kid not knowing it was meant to be drunk with alcohol). Really tasty. I'm going to have to try maraschino with fresh grapefruit juice next time I have some -- maybe in a Greyhound or Salty Dog.

I'm here! I'm getting settled in and unpacked this week, although I actually moved in and did my grocery shopping last week -- that's a long story. I figure I should follow up with my thoughts on what I'm finding. Butcher-wise, I haven't made it to Blood Farm yet, but Bare Bonz is ... weird. It seemed more like a meat-based convenience store than a butcher: I love that I was able to get rabbit (albeit from the same ubiquitous rabbit wholesaler everyone's rabbit comes from) and buffalo back ribs, but the meat counter had pork chops, ground beef, and hardly anything else -- except for meat sitting in their ten or eleven in-house marinades. I was a little stunned. I mean, if that's their niche, it's sensible enough, but it's the opposite of what I think of when I think "butcher shop." I forgot about steak tips. I don't know if it's a New England thing, a northeast thing, an east coast thing, or ... well, it's not an Indiana or Louisiana thing. I'll have to play with those. There's a Russian market -- Siberia -- on the corner of Main and Kinsley in Nashua, if I remember right. It's small, but I really need to get back there and take my time looking around -- they had some Russian cheeses, Russian salamis, in addition to the grocery section. Definitely caters to people who know what they're buying, more than food tourists like me. I'll underscore the Country Kitchen recommendation at Four Corners in Hollis. I'd had breakfast and knew I loved that -- I always get the hash, pancakes are something I have to be in the mood for -- but I had lunch too last week, and it was great. Service was a little slow, and everything's a little more expensive than I expect it to be going in -- though this has been true across the board in moving to Nashua, he said in a grumpy aside -- but nothing has disappointed. Also in Hollis, my disappointment that Monument Square Market no longer carries coffee milk was assuaged by the fact that it's now a very nice pizza and sub joint. My mother and brother both swear it's the best pizza in the area -- I grew up with C&S in Pepperell as the standard against which all other pizza has been compared, and I'm skeptical (and got an excellent Italian sub rather than test their theory), but then again, this is my family saying it, they grew up with the same pizza I did. More to come, I'm sure. Is anyone else doing the Taste of Nashua thing?

A bunch of ramps on the wilt, lots of green garlic, and fresh chorizo bought on a whim collided into lily chili: a bit of every allium I have available (ramp, two kinds of garlic, onion, shallot, scallion; no leeks or chives), green bell pepper, fresh cayenne pepper, chorizo, 80% ground beef, pinto beans. It smells really, really good, but I think that's because of the chorizo. I have a few more ramps in case, as I suspect, the ramp flavor isn't as pronounced because of the cooking.

I just added a ramp -- just one -- to the filling for six deviled ducks' eggs (that is, three eggs, six halves), and it's a very nice combination. The flavor is still very pronounced, but without being overwhelming despite the fact that the ramp is raw. With two ramps, I think it'd be right at that edge of "deviled egg as a vehicle for ramps," like when you drown a piece of toast in jam -- so I may do that tomorrow.

I've made a caldo verde variant with sorrel instead of kale -- it's only a "variant" in the sense that it has the other ingredients in common, the switch to sorrel makes for a much different soup. But I liked the way it paired with the chorizo, and if I could find sorrel, I'd make it again.