confusedcuisine

Eight bacon "hacks" : http://lifehacker.com/5837068/8-essential-bacon-hacks (best hack: bacon cups).  OK, one more bacon hack: homemade bacon salt: http://lifehacker.com/5838933/make-your-own-bacon-salt .  OK, last bacon hack, a Cooks Illustrated method for using bacon paste (their term, not mine) to help chicken kabobs: http://www.101cookingfortwo.com/2011/04/bacon-coated-chicken-kabobs.html 

Another fun hack (or a disaster) - sous-vide cooking salmon in your sink: http://lifehacker.com/5830856/cook-salmon-sous+vide-in-your-kitchen-sink-for-...

A nice roundup of the uses of sorghum in modern cuisine and drink: http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2011/09/southern_spell_sorghum_syrup_a...

Does liking quality microbrew mean you're an anti-union, neoliberal? http://crookedtimber.org/2011/08/19/small-beer/  (quick answer: almost certainly not).

Math, eggs, and getting your boil on: http://lifehacker.com/5833410/the-egg-cooking-calculator-uses-math-to-help-yo...  . Source in Norwegian.  Really.  "Initial temperature of the egg" is "Eggets starttemperatur."

On a more serious note, Nestle's chairman is "skeptical" of organic food.  Of course, it might be partially because Nestle is making money hand over fist on high-impact chemically-based agriculture.  No word on whether these farming techniques that we're supposedly dependent on are themselves even remotely sustainable themselves.  FC effectively rips in to the failures of the anti-organic arguments here.  http://www.fastcompany.com/1779059/nestle-chairmans-attacks-on-organic-food-a... 

Finally, here's a grilled cheese martini, offered without comment:

 http://boingboing.net/2011/08/19/grilled-cheese-martinis.html

Tamarind = new school
Rita-Hayworth-looking pin-up = old school

Don’t cross the streams!

(Tamarindo Mexicano in Lugano, Switzerland; originally posted at http://wp.me/pRWfZ-cZ)

In DC, we are at the peak weeks for stone fruit. Peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums. If it's a drupe, it's in season. For those of us with generally laughable growing seasons, this is pretty exciting. So, well, we might have gone a bit overboard in buying the past few weeks. We bought Marvin out of apricots the first week he had them to make jam for the winter, and keep ending up with, well, more peaches and nectarines than most sane people would try to tackle in a week.

That being said, these things lend themselves well to jamming, baking, and... drinking. So, I present to you a Manhattan with peach-infused brandy. While "Fredricksburgian" didn't quite work as a name, Georgian was workable.

Using the nitrogen cavitation method, Infuse 4 oz Brandy with half a peach, sliced.

Mix with 2 oz sweet vermouth, a dash of maraschino liqueur (or cherry brandy syrup left over from making maraschino cherries)

Add the sliced peaches and a maraschino cherry.

Serve over ice in a lowball or shake the liquid ingredients with crushed ice and serve in a cocktail glass.

For future consideration: adding a dash of cinnamon or vanilla during the infusion.

Ackee and Saltfish can only remotely be considered a confused cuisine.  I mean, it's the national fruit of Jamaica made into the national dish of Jamaica.  Wikipedia even posits that it "spread to other countries with the Jamaican diaspora."

Of course, the Ackee fruit itself came to Jamaica from Africa, and owes its scientific name (blighia sapida) to Captain Bligh (he also brought breadfruit to the Caribbean, but didn't get to name that one).  Improperly prepared, ackee can make you deathly ill.  The saltfish is generally salted cod.

Confused enough?  I swore I'd never ever let the stuff cross my kitchen after being ... well, overwhelmed by salty, fishy fish served as breakfast a teensy bit too often while I was a Peace Corps trainee in Kingston, Jamaica.  My position towards the meal softened once I started living in a house with three very productive ackee trees in the yard, and I have grown to love it as that quirky, hard-to-love meal that I only get to make when I'm home alone (boiling saltfish makes a stench that is hard to find acceptable).

If all this has made your mouth water, here's my recipe: http://www.audreyandjon.com/recipes/ackee-and-saltfish .  If not, well, you simply don't know what you're missing.

Served here with a fried dumpling and a seabean salad

We came to the realization that if we want to preserve treats from this summer for the winter, then we need space to do that.  We've done pretty well on our house-canned goods, but lacking a Freezer of Unusual Size (I don't think they exist), this meant we had to find uses for some items stored away in there currently.

Among those items were some cornmeal tamales we'd gotten from truth-in-advertising champ, Mega Latin Market.

Note that these were all corn.  Sweet corn masa wrapped in husks.  Steamed, they're amazing.  But for breakfast?  We've got to up the ante a bit.

Tools at hand:

• Tamales
• Fresh berries
• Crema
• Flour tortillas
• Usual kitchen staples
• Unusually pleasant summer morning for eating outside
• Coffee-fueled imagination

Results:

Tasty steamed then pan-fried tamale with a great fried "crust" and gooey interior with a crema/agave nectar drizzle, fresh berries, dried banana chips, and a melon wedge, with flour tortilla "churros"

This is too good not to share  -- Cooking Issues' Dave Arnold lost a bet, and ate "raw" vegan food -- nothing warmed over 118F -- for a week.

To put it mildly, he was unimpressed by the options: http://www.cookingissues.com/2011/06/17/raw-deal/

He goes so far as to mull how to make distilled liquor without boiling:

"The rotovap: The rotary evaporator lets me do distillations well below 118 F.  I can take a raw vegan wine (wine was my savior on the week long raw stint), and turn it into a raw brandy to make honest-to-god raw cocktails.  I had a small amount of raw brandy lying around from an old experiment, so I took a swig, but because my rotovap is packed up right now, I couldn’t make any more. Drat. "

...to using nitrogen cavitation to brew dried tea for a caffiene fix (coffee beans tend to be, well,  roasted).

In sum: 

"Unless you are
-rich and can buy many prepared foods and go to nice raw restaurants all the time, or

-have enough time to go through the raw-food time-consuming recipe rigamarole, or

-someone for whom food is merely fuel

you are in for a shock when you go raw vegan.  Most mornings I  pounded all sorts of fresh fruit, which gave me a sugar high but sent me crashing hard mid-day.  I ate a lot of avocados.  A lot.  Avocados are the Jesus-fruit for raw foodists –they taste great and are high in fat.  "

Roasted peeps!

J-P had the idea. I insisted on the follow-through. Liza bought.

Roasted peeps are much better than you would imagine. The outside gets brown and crackly while the inside gets gooey--kind of like a marshmallow creme brulee. On a stick. Around a campfire.

The way their eyes melted first was very <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark.</i>

It was amazing the way we all suddenly got much more skillful with the peeps than with the regular marshmallows, once we figured out how good they were.

Everyone except Liza, that is. She melted her first one, then dropped her second one in the ashes. She enjoyed them anyway. (We convinced her to roast the debris off the dropped one and eat it.)

Also, the Golden Gate Bridge is gorgeous from Kirby Cove on a clear night.

I like to think that the bridge is painted that color because it's so dramatic and high contrast against any kind of blue sky. Not far off. They (in the person of architect Irving Morrow) did in fact chose that color because it goes well with the natural surroundings.

1. A pound of gulf shrimp marinating in the juice of two limes, about a tablespoon of chile oil and a tablespoon of olive oil, four minced cloves of garlic, and some salt. 2. Another pound of gulf shrimp, each wrapped around some asparagus, then wrapped in parcooked jalapeño-flavored bacon. (I grabbed the first package that stood out. My choice-paralysis is fierce when faced with twenty shelf-feet of bacon.)

It was the first time I'd ever had to clean my own shrimp (that's what parents are for). I hoped Mike would do it, but it turns out his hand swell up when he touches raw shrimp. So it was just me, the shrimp, and the paring knife.

3. The rest of the asparagus in a foil packet. 4. Planks of pineapple rubbed with Indian red chile powder. 5. Three or four poblano peppers. I also made a green salad with roasted beets, chevre, candied pecans, grapefruit sections, and a lime-and-grapefruit dressing.

Alex made pitchers of margaritas. J.T. was the star BYO, making jalapeños stuffed with strawberry jam and cream cheese (really good!) and almond cookies with chocolate chips. Victor and Sabrina brought chicken sausage (tasty, I must add, as I'm a skeptic) and the chips for Mike's Tamale House salsa.

Haven't tried this, but it could really add some fun topping for a gazillion different recipes.  Savory pop rocks?  The sky's the limit!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Pop-Rocks/