Author: Jenni Fleetwood

Hardcover:
512 pages

Company: Lorenz Books

(2008-02-25)

ISBN: 0754817555

List Price: $29.99
Amazon Price: $19.79

Click Here : Click here to buy from Amazon.com

10 cups of cleaned, sliced pickling cucumbers

1 cup sliced/diced onions (These should be the green type onions rather than the kind you buy in a bag.)

1 cup sliced/diced green peppers

Place them all in a stainless steel, glass, or crock type container. Mix one cup canning salt (real salt without additives, basically) in with the above ingredients.

Cover with ice and let it sit no less than 4 hours. Make sure that it stays ice cold while brining!

By morning - I usually do this right before heading to bed so it brines pretty thoroughly - you should still have ice cold water. Drain the water without rinsing the pickle mixture.

The next step is to put together the liquid and spice to cook the pickles in:

3 cups of apple cider vinegar

2 cups sugar

2 tbsp mustard seeds

1 tsp celery seeds

1 tsp ground turmeric

Put all of this together in a big pot over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Let the mixture come to a boil.

Then stir in the pickles and let them come to a boil over medium heat. Stir the mixture from time to times so nothing sticks to the bottom of your pan. The mixture looks something like this:

While you are waiting you should prep your canning jars. (I have a sanitize cycle on my dishwasher, so I put my jars in the dishwasher before starting the liquid mixture.) They should be washed and sanitized. Sanitization means boiling them thoroughly if your dishwasher does not offer this setting. Since pickles need to be hot packed, you can do this while prepping the mixture. Also prep your canning lids by boiling them for a very short time.

Remember: The jars need to be hot for packing in the pickle mixture!

Once your pickles have come to a boil once again, start packing your hot canning jars with the mixture. This can be messy if you can’t find your canning funnel. (Ask me how I know!) If, like me, you forget where your canning funnel is, using a very clean cloth wipe off the rim and outside sides of the jar. Place the lid - being careful to only touch the rim of the lid - on the jar and screw it on tightly. Wipe off the can.

Now, you should have a hot water canner with a nice rolling boil on your stove. (This sentence is why you should always read the whole recipe first.) Place the jars into the boiling water and wait for the water to come to a boil. Let the water boil for no less than 15 minutes. (This is because I am paranoid and always increase the canning time when doing hot water canning.) Once your 15 minutes is up, carefully remove the jars from the water and place on a clean towel, cover with another towel and wait for a day. You should hear a popping sound from time to time as your jars are sealing.

Now, you can do the math of how much of the various ingredients I used for 64 plus pints of pickles!

Enjoy!

Recipe based on: Traditional Bread and Butter Pickles,
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving: 400 Delicious and Creative Recipes for Today/ edited by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine. Robert Rose, Inc. : Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 2006. p. 303

“In 1968 a Chinese-American physician wrote a rather lighthearted letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. He had experienced numbness, palpitations and weakness after eating in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and wondered whether the monosodium glutamate used by cooks here (and then rarely used by cooks in China) might be to blame.

The consequences for the restaurant business, the food industry and American consumers were immediate and enormous. MSG, a common flavor enhancer and preservative used since the 1950s, was tagged as a toxin, removed from commercial baby food and generally driven underground by a new movement toward natural, whole foods.

“It was a nightmare for my family,” said Jennifer Hsu, a graphic designer whose parents owned several Chinese restaurants in New York City in the 1970s. “Not because we used that much MSG - although of course we used some - but because it meant that Americans came into the restaurant with these suspicious, hostile feelings.”

Even now, after “Chinese restaurant syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people), the ingredient has a stigma that will not go away.

But then, neither will MSG.

Cooks around the world have remained dedicated to MSG, even though they may not know it by that name. As hydrolyzed soy protein or autolyzed yeast, it adds flavor to the canned chicken broth and to the packs of onion soup mix used by American home cooks, and to the cheese Goldfish crackers and the low-fat yogurts in many lunchboxes.

It is the taste of Marmite in the United Kingdom, of Golden Mountain sauce in Thailand, of Goya Sazón on the Latin islands of the Caribbean, of Salsa Lizano in Costa Rica and of Kewpie mayonnaise in Japan.

“It’s all the same thing: glutamate,” said Dr. Nuripa Chaudhari of the University of Miami, who was part of the first research team to identify human glutamate receptors.

In September Dr. Chaudhari will take part in the University of Tokyo’s centenary celebrations honoring Prof. Kikunae Ikeda’s 1908 discovery of glutamate flavor. The Japanese company Ajinomoto turned that discovery into crystalline powder form, MSG, and patented it in 1909.

“Just like salt and sugar, it exists in nature, it tastes good at normal levels, but large amounts at high concentrations taste strange and aren’t that good for you,” Dr. Chaudhari said.

If you live in the United States and like spicy tuna rolls, Puerto Rican roast pork or Thai noodles, there is a good chance you are eating, and enjoying, MSG. And if you are the kind of cook who likes to keep a globe-trotting kitchen, well, then, some of these MSG-laden ingredients may deserve a place in your cupboard.

“I don’t cook with MSG because that’s not my training, but it definitely has its place,” said Zak Pelaccio, a New York chef whose ride to fame has been greased with Kewpie mayonnaise. One of the dishes that put him on the map was a sandwich of roasted salmon on pumpernickel bread slathered with wasabi aioli: wasabi from a tube and the mayonnaise.

In regions where meat and meaty flavors have been out of reach for most cooks, MSG has long filled the gap.

“My father called Maggi sauce la segunda venida, the second coming, because he was not a very good cook and it saved him,” said Irma Cecilia Sanchez, a home health aide from Puebla, Mexico, who was waiting in line at a taco truck on the Upper West Side. Maggi sauce is a 19th-century Swiss creation, a general flavor enhancer now made with MSG, sweeteners and extracts.

Her mother died when …”

Continue

As promised in my last post we’ll start to share with you exactly what this project and website will offer aspiring cooks and lovers of authentic cuisine.

We’re going to start with four coobooks. The first ones will be Argentine recipes, Costa Rican cuisine, Moroccan dishes, and Dominican food. After more than six hours of meetings on the subject of authentic Moroccan food it is clear that we’ll have a series of at least five books featuring Moroccan food.

We’ve already been in the kitchen cooking and have almost completed the cookbook for Argentine cuisine.As I wrote about we’ve got hundreds of Moroccan recipes for you and are working on formatting them and taking the pictures of the prepartions so you can see how each dish looks as we prepare them.

Each month we’ll add at least two new cookbooks to our “How to cook like you’re from _________, when you aren’t” series. After much discussion we’ve also decided to do cookbooks featuring authentic recipes but centering those cookbooks around either a main ingredient or a meal course.

We’re planning a cookbook with authentic chicken soup recipes from countries around the world, as an example. We’ll be creating a sister site of comfort food from around the world in a few months also.

Each contributor will have a biography page and links to the cookbooks where their recipes are featured. This will help you to find other cookbooks they’ve contributed to, sort of a “favorite cook” option for you. We’re all about connecting people so we’ll do our best to make connecting with your favorite cook as easy as possible.

We’ll slowly be adding short videos of specific parts of the preparation process for certain recipes. As an example there is a special technique for finishing the empanades our Argentine contributor has for you in her cookbook. So we’ll show you a short video of how to fold those edges to give them the authentic look you’d see on a table in Argentina.

Those short video clips are the first step to building a video cooking series for you. Recipes and pictures are great but watching someone cook a dish will always be the best way to learn how to duplicate it exacly.

We’ll be doing video podcasts also, and will have audio versions of the cookbooks which will have a copy of the digital version bundled with it. We’re doing this so you can have a cooking coach with you in the kitchen as you try each new recipe. Everyone learns differently so we’ll do our best to present you with as many formats as possible so you can choose the one which works best for your personal learning style.

One of my favorite sites for audio and video ebooks is Learn Out Loud http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video . If you aren’t familiar with the site, it’s definitely worth a visit to see the wide range of topics and experts they offer.

A few months into the project we’ll be offering a new sister site where you can either purchase all the videos from a particular cookbook, single videos only for the specific recipes you want from the entire list of recipes in all the cookbooks, or the final option on the new site will be to purchase a monthly or annual membership where you can have access to all the videos.

Once we have all the videos ready we’ll also be offering you the option to purchase them as downloads, or to buy a DVD of the recipes.

Another thing that has come up during our brainstorming sessions is that some things you’ll need to create these recipes may be a little difficult to find.
For instance finding a Tagine for a Moroccan Tagine recipe may not be as simple as s drive to the mall for everyone. With that in mind we’ll be creating an online grocery store where you can purchase special cookware, spices, and herbs directly from us. who knows we may even decide to offer a little home decor to match your favorite cuisine.

I know it may be a little hard to visualize the evolution of this project, but we’ve got it all drawn out in mindmaps and laid out on spreadsheets so leave the visions to us, and you just enjoy watching the project unfold.

Stay tuned for our official site launch which is scheduled for April 15, 2008.
If all goes well we may have more than four cookbooks ready for our site launch so please don’t think that’s carved in stone. The only thing we carve is meat and poultry.

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One of the reasons I love to travel is that I want to be surprised. When I walked into the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, I was stunned to find Salvador Dali’s massive masterpiece, Santiago El Grande. The gallery was founded in 1959 by the Canadian media baron Max Aitken, who had received the title of Lord Beaverbrook in 1917. Fortunately, Beaverbrook didn’t forget his roots, endowing his home province with this gallery and many other treasures. The collection at the Beaverbrook is astounding for a gallery of its size. In addition to the Dali, the collection includes J.M.W. Turner’s The Fountain of Indolence, Botticelli’s The Resurrection, Lucien Freud’s Hotel Bedroom, and Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Lucretia. (There is an ongoing legal dispute between the gallery and a UK-based foundation also established by Beaverbrook about the ownership of many of the most famous works; the gallery won a 2007 decision, but that decision is currently under appeal.)

Another surprise for me in Fredericton was a downtown restaurant called the The Blue Door. I was lured by its reputation for fusion-style cooking; its kitchen is well-known for blending Asian spices with Atlantic Canadian seafood. It wasn’t until I arrived there that I discovered the menu is annotated with celiacs in mind. Every appetizer and entrée that is gluten-free is highlighted with a crossed-out wheat sheaf (similar to the symbol that so many celiac societies in Europe use). Vegetarian offerings are also clearly highlighted. There is plenty of choice: the gluten-free appetizers include a house-smoked duck breast with arugula laced with a ginger-pomegranate-watermelon dressing (yum), and Prince Edward Island mussels dressed with sake and mango (which I almost ordered). The main-course choices range from a black-pepper-seared tuna steak with local potatoes and a mango salsa, to a plate of coconut-, pistachio-, and chipotle-pepper-flavored scallops.

The Blue Door is both a restaurant and a cocktail lounge, so it’s no surprise that the drinks are excellent. (I can recommend the Red Velvet, a mix of raspberry, cranberry, and lime with vodka.)

The Blue Door [address] 100 Regent Street, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada [tel] 506-455-2583 [fax] 506-455-2589 [web] www.thebluedoor.ca

Basic bread is simple to make and easily adaptable to a variety of ingredients. While breadmaking requires a bit of practice to learn the “feel” of good dough, this technique (I’m not a fan of recipes :)) is easy, dependable and good for beginners.

The ingredients in good bread are simple:

• Flour is the backbone. Bread flour is best, but all purpose works fine. Whole grain flours are a little trickier, so I recommend starting with white, preferably unbleached.

• Liquid: Any number of liquids can be used - water, potato water, milk, even whey. We like to use the whey leftover from making goat’s milk cheese. Eggs can form part of the liquid portion as can sour cream or yogurt.

• Yeast is the living organism makes the bread rise and is most commonly available in granulated form. We like to buy it in bulk for economy and keep it in the freezer. (Since this was originally written we’ve come to use quite a bit of everlasting yeast, where a portion of the dough is set back for leavening the next batch. The technique is somewhat different and Lord willing I’ll make up those instructions for you all sometime in the future.)

• Sugar provides food for the yeast. You can use white or brown sugar, honey, sorghum, whatever suits you.

• Salt enhances taste and keeps the yeast under control.

• Fat: A bit of fat helps make the bread tender. Too much makes it soggy. Almost any fat or oil will work. I’ve made bread successfully with vegetable oil, shortening, lard, olive oil and butter.

Ingredient quantities are based on 1 cup of liquid and can be multiplied as needed. 1 cup of liquid will make 1 small loaf. For each cup of liquid I use:

• 1 teaspoonful of yeast, but no more than 2 and 1/2 teaspoonfuls for multiple batches. (1 cup liquid - 1 teaspoonful yeast, 2 cups liquid - 2 teaspoonfuls yeast, more than 2 cups liquid - 2 and 1/2 teaspoonfuls yeast)

• 1 tablespoonful sweetening

• ½ to 1 teaspoonful salt (you can cut this back to taste)

• 1 tablespoonful fat

• approximately 2 to 2 1/2 cups flour

This is how it’s done:

Till next time, Blessings.

Judy

Today, September 1st , and the summer sun is still shining with temeperatures in the 90’s. If you are anywhere in the world where the summer sun is lingering, here are some of my favorite aperitifs-cool and refreshing. Perfect for any picnic or meal served ‘al fresco’.

When thinking of enjoying a picnic or meal outside in warm weather I’m reminded of refreshing beverages and frozen desserts like piña colada, Shirley Temple, Bellini, or iced cappuccino, where the quenching thought is enough to keep tongues wagging and taste buds tantalizingly thirsty. Shaken, blended, or stirred, many liquid courage concoctions evoke a tropical momentum with every sip. Alongside Crodino– a renowned non-alcoholic aperitif in Italy– or Gelato in the park, the mingling of frozen drinks and fruity punch is an important rule to collective merriment. Launching well-advertised ‘wet your whistle’ refreshment tables. As the summer season is ending and the hottest days of the year are cooling off. Keep in mind, however, alcohol is not a drink of choice for everyone, which is why virgin cocktail recipes can be a celebration’s best friend. Ideal for children and even designated drivers… anyone can enjoy a treat from the non-alcoholic drink section. With luscious alternatives ranging from spumoni, Italian ice, sparkling sodas (Italian Cremosa, a classic combination of carbonated soda water, Bianchi flavored syrup, and cream) to sorbet smoothies, there’s little something for everyone to enjoy.

No matter the social event, keeping your body well hydrated during the rising temperatures of the season is of the essence. But the flipside of overindulging in such refreshing thirst-quenchers can come with a price, as they are notorious for being calorie-laden diet-breakers. Without compromising or derailing efforts of both fitness and nutrition, watching sugar consumption is always wise. Some would even argue that the non-alcoholic beverage of choice is simply… water.

Venetian Sunrise (yields one serving)

3 oz pineapple juice (not from concentrate)

3 oz sparkling white grape juice

3 oz Blood Orange Soda

1 tbsp grenadine

2 stemmed maraschino cherries

Fill 10 oz glass half-full with ice, pour over ingredients, and garnish with cherries.

Raspberry Wonderland (yields 12-15 serving)

1 2-liter bottle ginger ale

1 qt raspberry sorbet

4-6 oz fresh raspberries

1 lime, thinly sliced

12-15 fresh mint leaves (optional)

Mash raspberries, and in a large punch bowl combine ingredients. Let stand for 10 minutes, allowing sorbet to melt. Ladle into punch glasses, and garnish each serving with fresh mint leaves and sliced lime.

Blue-Vanilla Drifter (yields one serving)

1 scoop Vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt (can modify ingredients by using reduced fat ice cream versions)

6-8 oz sparkling blueberry juice

1 fresh mint leaf

In a 10 oz glass, add one scoop of vanilla ice cream and then slowly pour over blueberry juice. Garnish with fresh blueberry and mint leaf

http://torani.com

http://www.crodino.it

Want a touch of cocktail finesse… try Maria Liberati’s Tintoretto at, http://marialiberati.com/blog2/?p=163.

Follow me around Italy on ‘twitter’ go to http://twitter.com/marialiberati and find out where I am and what I am doing.

Be sure to visit http://www.marialiberati.com for great recipes, and get your copy of the best selling book, The Basic Art of Italian Cooking, by Maria Liberati.

Weight Watchers Cranberry Orange Muffins recipe
Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 cup fresh cranberries, chopped
2 teaspoons orange zest
1/2 cup orange juice
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup nuts, chopped

Preparation
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan.
3. In a bowl, stir together the cranberries, orange peel and 1/4 cup of the sugar.
4. In a larger bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and the rest of the sugar.
5. Add the orange juice, vegetable oil and eggs all at once to the flour mixture and stir until moistened.
6. Fold in the sugared cranberries and chopped nuts.
7. Pour the batter into the muffin pan, evenly dividing it between the cups.
8. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes (or until golden brown).

WW POINTS for one muffin: 6
Nutritional information for one muffin: 259 calories, 13.1g fat, 1.5g fiber

Photo credit: Sue L

Tags: recipe, cooking, diet, Weight Watchers, WeightWatchers, WW, points, bread, breakfast, fruit, cranberry, orange, muffins