Fast pickles using whipping siphon
Using a whipping siphon may not be intuitive, but the same process that infuses cream with air also can be used to force brine into cucumbers or other vegetables to make real pickles in 20 minutes. This recipe is adapted from http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/quick-bread-and-butter-pickles.
| Servings | Prep Time |
| 4 | 30 minutes |
| Cook Time | Passive Time |
| 10 minutes | 20 minutes |
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Using a whipping siphon may not be intuitive, but the same process that infuses cream with air also can be used to force brine into cucumbers or other vegetables to make real pickles in 20 minutes. This recipe is adapted from http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/quick-bread-and-butter-pickles.
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Ingredients
- 0.5 pounds cucumber English (hothouse,) Asian or pickling cucumbers best
- 0.5 small onion Sliced thin
- 3 tbsp kosher salt
- 0.5 cups cider vinegar
- 0.25 cups sugar
- 0.5 jalapeno or other small pepper finely chopped
- 2 tsp Korean hot pepper flakes "gochugaru" or kim chi pepper
Servings:
Instructions
- Slice cucumbers evenly (a mandoline works great for this,) then place in colander and sprinkle salt over them. Set aside. Combine remaining ingredients, then heat in saucepan while stirring. Remove from heat when sugar dissolves. Allow the brine to cool. (Place the saucepan in a larger pan with ice water to accelerate this.) Add the cucumber and onion to the brine, mix completely.
- Place the cucumber mixture into the chamber of a clean whipping siphon. Do not fill more than 2/3rds full. Close whipping siphon. Use one cartridge of nitrous oxide, following instructions that come with the whipping siphon. Shake the siphon and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, cover the nozzle of the siphon with a measuring cup or other container to prevent brine from being squirted on yourself or your kitchen. Depress handle to release the gas, then unscrew siphon top. The pickles are ready to serve.
Recipe Notes
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These recipes might make matzoh delicious
https://medium.com/@sfdoug/these-recipes-might-make-matzoh-delicious-552a46a9af00#.5vs25fa0k
Quick summer vegetable pasta saute
Here's a super-easy way to cook a healthy, flavorful meal using fresh vegetables and almost any kind of pasta. Great for weeknights, and leftovers are perfect for the lunch bag.
| Servings | Prep Time |
| 2 | 15 minutes |
| Cook Time | Passive Time |
| 10 minutes | 5 minutes |
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Here's a super-easy way to cook a healthy, flavorful meal using fresh vegetables and almost any kind of pasta. Great for weeknights, and leftovers are perfect for the lunch bag.
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Ingredients
- 4 ounces pasta any kind will do; ziti or rigatoni work well
- 4 ounces summer squash zucchini or yellow squash, diced
- 4 ounces green beans cut into 1/2-inch pieces
- 1/2 onion diced
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- salt
- pepper
- 1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped fresh herbs are best; if dried, use 1 tsp instead
- 2 ounces Italian cheese, shredded Mozzarella, Parmesan, Fontina or a blend works well
Servings:
Instructions
- Place the pasta in a 10" or larger skillet. Add cold water to cover. Add salt generously. Bring to boil, then reduce heat. Continue cooking until pasta is al dente, about 8 minutes. Add additional cold water if necessary.
- While pasta is cooking, dice the squash and onion. Cut the green beans (or snap peas) into 1/2-inch pieces.
- Add olive oil to sauté pan over medium heat, then add vegetables. Add salt and pepper and toss. Cook for about 5 minutes.
- When the pasta is nearly ready, drain any remaining water. Add the vegetables to the pasta in the large skillet, toss.
- Add cheese and basil right before serving.
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Harlem Eat Up makes a Big League debut among NYC food festivals
Chefs had fun, too.
Marcus Samuelsson, Scott Conant, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Aaron Sanchez pictured.
Charles' Country Fried Chicken
Charles' Country Fried Chicken served a traditional soul food sampler, with Charles' signature chicken.
Co-Founder and host Marcus Samuelsson
Chef Marcus Samuelsson greeted guests arriving for the Harlem Stroll.
Sylvia's
Chicken and waffle, appetizer style, from Sylvia's.
Spring pea soup
Sweet spring pea soup by the Sylvia Center was one of the most memorable bites.
Co-host Bill Clinton
President Clinton poses with workers on his way out from the Harlem Stroll.
The Stroll
Part of Morningside Park was converted into the Harlem Stroll for two days.
Jerk Chicken, British Virgin Islands Style
Jerk chicken with sweet potato puree, promoting Caribbean travel.
Shaved asparagus salad
The Grange served an asparagus and prosciutto salad.
Texas beer Shiner Bock
Apparently Shiner Bock is popular in Harlem.
Crowds around chefs
The stars were out, and accessible at the Harlem Stroll.
Chefs had fun, too.
Marcus Samuelsson, Scott Conant, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Aaron Sanchez pictured.
Charles' Country Fried Chicken
Charles' Country Fried Chicken served a traditional soul food sampler, with Charles' signature chicken.
Co-Founder and host Marcus Samuelsson
Chef Marcus Samuelsson greeted guests arriving for the Harlem Stroll.
Sylvia's
Chicken and waffle, appetizer style, from Sylvia's.
Spring pea soup
Sweet spring pea soup by the Sylvia Center was one of the most memorable bites.
Co-host Bill Clinton
President Clinton poses with workers on his way out from the Harlem Stroll.
The Stroll
Part of Morningside Park was converted into the Harlem Stroll for two days.
Jerk Chicken, British Virgin Islands Style
Jerk chicken with sweet potato puree, promoting Caribbean travel.
Shaved asparagus salad
The Grange served an asparagus and prosciutto salad.
Texas beer Shiner Bock
Apparently Shiner Bock is popular in Harlem.
Crowds around chefs
The stars were out, and accessible at the Harlem Stroll.
First attempts to produce major festivals rarely go this well. The inaugural Harlem Eat Up proved what is possible when committed chefs and the community come together and invest professional resources — and lots of their own time to make a big event happen.
Harlem Eat Up is a four-day series of special meals, workshops, chef talks, and tastings celebrating the renaissance of culinary arts in Harlem. In the years since Marcus Samuelsson opened Red Rooster on Malcolm X Boulevard near 125th Street, a long list of restaurants have followed.
The centerpiece, called the Harlem Stroll, consisted of tasting events on both weekend afternoons. Some of Harlem’s top-rated restaurants offered samples, along with dozens of beer and wine samples.
On the demonstration stage, chef Aaron Sanchez joked that he learned about herbs in Morningside Park when he was a teenager in the neighborhood. A lot has changed In those 20 or so years, including that Sanchez is a Food Network star, co-owner with John Besh of Johnny Sanchez in New Orleans and Baltimore, and chef/partner of Paloma, in Stamford, Ct.
Fans of television food shows had plenty to satisfy their cravings. Throughout the afternoon, some of the most familiar faces from television kitchens were visible and accessible. Daniel Bouloud walked around, while Scott Conant and Alex Guarnaschelli were part of the peanut gallery as Sanchez performed a cooking demonstration emceed by Samuelsson.
“Why does it always have to be white beans,” declared Samuelsson as Sanchez pureed beans with fish to make a version of brandade. The two bantered back and forth with good-natured jokes about each other’s ethnic and culinary background, but they saved their biggest barbs for chefs who weren’t there. Clearly, it was all in good fun.
Next year likely will be even better, but this was a fabulous start.
Fun frying techniques shown by street vendor in Jordan
This Middle Eastern street food vendor demonstrates one of the most impressive frying techniques I have seen. Watch him in this video to see him craft perfect little balls of fried dough (which a Jordanian friend of my calls “floats”) and flips them into the fryer from a distance. Fun to watch, and probably fun to eat.
بالفيديو: أسرع وأمهر صانع “عوامة” في الأردن
Posted by Alghad Newspaper on Monday, March 2, 2015
Thanks to my friend Primo for help translating and understanding the original post.
On a mission to save the city’s Art Deco mailboxes | Crain’s New York Business
Karen Greene has a passion for preserving these receptacles, according to an article in Crain’s New York Business about her photography of Art Deco mailbox masterpieces.
So glad to see my neighbor Karen Greene doing good work like this — and getting recognized for it.
A clinical psychologist, she is also an amateur photographer with a passion for documenting the city’s Art Deco mailboxes. Last year, Art Deco Mailboxes, the book she co-wrote featuring her pictures, was published by W.W. Norton, and she’s now speaking to New York art aficionados about the cultural importance of century-old letter receptacles.
‘Karen has done a marvelous thing by focusing attention on something we see all the time but don’t really think about anymore,’ said Roberta Nusim, president of the Art Deco Society of New York.
Source: She’s got mail: On a mission to save the city’s Art Deco mailboxes | Crain’s New York Business
Also check out the book that includes Karen’s photographs:
Sometimes it’s fun to play with food
One of my friends posted a picture to Facebook over the weekend showing cleverly arranged waffles, bacon and fruit on plates for his kids. I don’t have kids, but I can have fun, too. Here’s my take on David Honig’s porpoiseful breakfast plate.
Duck, duck bacon? (VIDEO)
How does duck bacon – made from chopped, pressed and cured duck breast meat – compare to traditional pork bacon? Doug gives it a try.
Video: Duck, duck, bacon?
Sample product provided by Maple Leaf Farms as part of a promotion for the Boston Wine Expo.
Spatchcock: It’s not just for chickens anymore
Half the fun of cooking poultry using the “spatchcock” method is being able to say that funny word. But it’s also a truly awesome method to cook chickens, and, as Mark Bittman has advocated since 2002, can be used to cut turkey roasting time from several hours to less than one. That can transform Thanksgiving as we know it.
Spatchcocking is simply a technique in which a chicken or turkey is butterflied by removing the back bone, so it can lay flat on a grill or roasting pan. Eliminating the bird’s cavity eliminates the biggest challenge when roasting a turkey or chicken, because it enables the heat to be more carefully controlled and not wasted on the vacant space. (Stuffing a turkey reduces the variability, too, but extends cooking time and also creates some food safety issues if the temperature isn’t monitored carefully.)
Here are a couple of resources to learn about spatchcocking turkey and how to do it:
- How to Cook a Spatchcocked Turkey on Serious Eats, includes a good video demonstration.
- Mark Bittman’s original 2002 recipe or his 2008 video, that makes it super clear how to do and how easy it is.
- An excellent article on Quartz.com: The story of spatchcocking and how Mark Bittman changed Thanksgiving forever.
From the Quartz.com article comes this interesting graph from Google, showing the frequency of searches for the term “spatchcock” over time: