Ham Sandwich Indicted!

Drinking vinegars, or shrubs, are all the rage these days. Shrubs are fruit infused vingegars sweetened with sugar, and they are delicious mixed with some soda water or any given liquor. Shrubs have been around on the fancy-cocktail circuit for a while (I had a shrub cocktail at Nopa in San Franciso in 2009, and they're making a splash at Andy Ricker's Thai street food mecca  Pok Pok in Portland, Oregon.  His "Pok Pok Som Drinking Vinegars" are so popular that he's producing them for sale outside of his restaurant, and they're now available at Weiland's in Clintonville.  On the local blog scene, last week the lovely Rachel Tayse chronicled her creation of a rhubarb shrub on her blog Hounds in the Kitchen .  You should check it out. Over at the Ham Sandwich HQ, I had a dozen pounds of strawberries, courtesy of a seriously focused hour of picking at Schacht Family Farms last Saturday.   My freezer is not big enough for twelve pounds of frozen str...

That's a really terrible picture, but hopefully the intoxicating deliciousness of this cake will make up for my lack of food photography skills. (I was working on a deadline, people wanted to eat it.) Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, here's a chocolaty, boozy, cake that will do you right by St. Patrick, Leprechauns, and the IRA. (Just kidding, bomb jokes are not funny. But seriously, this cake will blow you away. Ok, I'm done. Seriously.)  I made this for my friend's birthday last week...as it seems we've developed a bit of a pattern of baked goods-as-gifts. (Last year, it was these peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes .)  The cake was still warm when I applied the glaze, so it didn't quite stay on as well as I would have liked.  Thankfully, it could be ladled up off the plate. It's a riff on this cake that I wrote about last year....and I think it's an excellent improvement.  The Guinness gives it a rich depth of flavor, and the B...

A work in progress: take the ingredients of a White Russian (Kaluha, vodka, cream), combine in an iSi canister and squeeze into a cup with about 1/4 c. of liquid nitrogen. Result: frigidly cold White Russian ice cream in about 30 seconds. 

Pickled radishes with goat cheese foam Modernist cooking (or modernist cuisine, or molecular gastronomy) has gradually been moving out of the realm of high end restaurants like Ferran Adria's "elBulli" or Grant Achatz's "Alinea" and into the kitchens of passionate amateurs (check out what the guys at Jet City Gastrophysics are doing) or science-minded home cooks.  The publication of Nathan Myhrvold's epic tome, Modernist Cuisine   last March stirred up a firestorm of interest in manipulating food using scientific techniques like centrifuging, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids and emulsifiers.  These self-described modernist techniques allow us to reexamine how we prepare food, whether it is by finding a way to cook the perfect burger (you'll want 30 hours and a vacuum sealer) or by creating a platform that captures the absolute flavor and essence of an ingredient. These techniques also promote a sense of playfulness, encouraging ...

Patience is most definitely not one of my virtues. I tend to want things done yesterday, and nothing makes me happier than finding a more efficient way to do something.  Yet sometimes, as they say, good things come to those who wait...as I've discovered with homebrewing and now, infused alcohols. I stumbled across a recipe for basilchello (like lemonchello, but with basil) a few weeks ago during my schitzophrenic internet wanderings and it seemed to me a good excuse to use some of my ever-proliferating basil and buy some high proof alcohol without looking like a college kid prepping for a Hairy Buffalo party.  ("It's for a classy recipe!") The original recipe ( here ), calls for 190-proof grain alcohol, but since the copper still in my basement is on the fritz, I substituted 151.  If using a lower proof, taste as you go when you're adding the simple syrup, to make sure you don't over-sweeten it. The longer you let the basil infuse the alcohol, the more ...

Last night, yours truly and her partner-in-crime, the Bro-in-Law hit up MiddleWest Spirits for their Wednesday evening $5 tour and tasting. If you've not heard of MiddleWest and their exceptional spirits, come on out from under that rock, find a bar that serves their OYO (oh-why-oh) products, and prepare to have your idea of clear, "flavorless" vodka redefined. Started by Brady Konya and Ryan Lang, MiddleWest is the first microdistillery in the city, and dedicated to producing distinctly local spirits: ones whose tastes reflect the very nature of Ohio, while at the same time promote sustainable manufacturing processes and encourage local enterprise. What is inspiring and most notable about Brady and Ryan is how passionate they are about product: they believe profoundly in what they're making, and they believe in making it the best they possibly can. ...And if Maxim , the Beverage Tasting Institute , and glowing write-ups in out-of-state papers , are correct, then th...

The last two weeks of my Wayward Seed CSA have provided with probably about 5 pounds of cherries. And since a girl can only eat so many fresh cherries before things start getting out of control, it was time to put those cherries to other uses. Not pictured is the pie I made for a cookout on Saturday. What I am showing above are the brandied cherries I made for future cocktails (super delicious Manhattan, anyone?). Before I go any further, I just want to say that if you like cherries, invest a couple of buck in a cherry pitter. I got mine a number of years ago from Pampered Chef, and seriously, folks, it's absolutely worth the money. Not only is it more efficient than using a paperclip or chopstick, but you can also use if for pitting olives, if you're like me and put those full-of-salty-goodness-Kalamatas in everything you make. Below is the recipe I used for the brandied cherries, below that, a ridiculously sick (in a good way) chocolate cherry cookie recipe. Brandied Che...

Because I didn't make anything this Memorial Day weekend save for Black & Blue Mojitos (recipe below!) and a bowl of guacamole, I'm resorting to posting pictures of the back 40. So far, things are going swimmingly.... The cucumbers are taking off; there's probably a dozen blossoms already. Hopefully, I can train/tie them up the fence. There will be lots of pickle experiments this summer. The peas are doing ok--I've never dealt with peas, so I don't know if they look good, too thin, or are slow to fruit (or maybe, they're fine). All the March/April cooking magazines I get promote pea recipes, but those editors are crazy--here in central Ohio we most definitely do not have fresh peas in April... The radishes, however, are most definitely doing well. I pulled half of my little row of radishes last weekend, and will probably pull the rest this weekend. Broccoli. Again, I'm not really familiar with the growing of broccoli, but basically, you get a g...

My friend Dan lives in the country about an hour north of Columbus, and a few of us had dinner there this past weekend. His home is a two-story brick, Federal-style house built around the turn of the century, with a huge backyard, a garden, and a large fire pit. It's a great place to go for a mini-vacation, and escape from the city for a weekend. As evidenced by the above picture above, it's also a great oportunity to run into some nature. We grilled up some locally raised, grass fed hamburgers, made roasted potatoes grown in his wife's garden, and feasted on assorted snacks made from recent forays to the farmer's market at the North Market. Among those snacks were stuffed zucchini blossoms, filled with goat cheese and herbs, then battered and fried. Eaten hot out of the pan, these tasty morsels ooze with warm, melty goat cheese, and carry the slightest floral essence (for lack of a better word) from the blossom itself. Also on the menu were my girlfriend Betsy's (D...