Glazed Pecans

Photo credit: Once Upon a Chef Wondering how to make glazed pecans, the most important part of the Spinach Salad recipe we ran in last week’s column ? They could not be any easier, and are a really nice addition to a salad. Who am I kidding? They are good by the handful… Glazed Pecans 1 cup pecan pieces 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper Line a baking sheet with a Silpat mat or greased parchment paper. Heat the sugar and cayenne pepper over medium high heat in a heavy bottomed skillet. Cast iron works great. Watch the sugar carefully. It sits there for fricken ever and then will suddenly melt and turn golden. You can poke at any clumps with a silicone spatula so that they melt, but you don’t really have to stir it. Be careful, melted sugar is even hotter than glue gun glue. If some areas seem to be getting browner, move the skillet around on the burner. When the sugar is completely melted and not more than a light golden brown–once it melts it turns dark quickly– add the pecan pieces, give them a quick turn in the caramel and…

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Tags: additional, caramel, credit, handful, lettuce, photo, photos, Pieces, product, recipe, spinach, spinach-salad, sugar, teaspoon, watch-the-sugar

How to Make Whey Ricotta

From Recipes [ Flickr: grongar ] At first impression, whey is a hassle for the home cheesemaker. There’s so much of it, and it doesn’t appear to have much value. It tastes vaguely acidic and bland, and dwarfs your solid-cheese product by about ten to one, leaving you grumbling that you wanted to make mozzarella, not a big bowl of whey! If you’ve gone to the trouble of making any kind of cheese at home, whey ricotta is an easy second step that stretches a little more fruit out of your labors. By having made whey in the first place, about 90% of your work is already done! The process for making whey ricotta is basically the same as that for making whole-milk ricotta , except that you begin with fluid whey instead of fluid whole milk. The yield will be smaller, because most of the milk solids have already been gleaned from whey. You’ll need a pot big enough to boil your whey, a colander lined with cheesecloth or muslin, and a thermometer. If you want to retain the whey from this ricotta, you’ll also need a large bowl to place under the colander. I find that ricotta made with vinegar can have a strong, acidic flavor that’s…

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Tags: cheese, colander, curds, hassle, impression, katrina-vahedi, milk, Minutes, muslin, product, roasted, thermometer, vinegar, white, work

Lead in Children’s and Baby Foods

The Environmental Law Foundation (ELF) released a report finding lead in a variety of popular fruit and juice products, including apple and grape juices, fruit cocktails, and even some baby foods.

Tags: attention, california, carelessness, Cocktails, drinking, drinking-water, environmental, grape, hydrogenated, importance, juice, organic, organic-concord, product

Nutella at risk

Italy’s favourite breakfast spread, Nutella, is at risk of extinction if a new EU law is passed. The regulation will stipulate that only food products containing up to 10 grams of sugar, 4 grams of fat and 2 milligrams of salt per every hundred grams can be advertised. This means that Ferrero, the makers of Nutella, will not be able to advertise the product at all.

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Tags: extinction, food, makers, milligrams, nutella, only-food, product, products, products-containing, result, salt-per, the-makers, will-not

White Castle Cheeseburgers at Doc’s Water Ice in Vineland, NJ

From A Hamburger Today We recently received an email from Ron Crowell, better known on AHT as Big Woolly Mammoth , about coming across a new purveyor of White Castle burgers on his way to work in southern New Jersey. What’s so special about it? It’s not a freestanding White Castle, but a shop that sells water ice and hot dogs. …Hm. He checked out the goods to report back to the AHT community. [ Photographs: BigWoollyMammoth ] Doc’s Water Ice Vineland, NJ Cooking Method: Microwaved Want Fries with That? No fries available Price: Two burgers, $1.99 I travel four miles to and from work twice a day. It’s a one road drive and pretty much straight as an arrow. So from the monotony of it all, I tend to zone out to my music while driving and keep my eyes on the cars around me instead of looking at the same signage I have been looking at for the past 14 years. However, the other day on my way into work I was snapped out of my road coma and noticed a sign by a car wash near my job…

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Tags: burgers, business, car, Cars, hamburgers, miles, music, product, white

Gadgets: One-Touch Tea Maker by Breville

[ Photograph: Breville ] Last Week’s Gadget Sil-Pin, the Silicone Nonstick Rolling Pin by Fiesta » All Gadgets reviews » Breville ’s latest gadget, the One-Touch Tea Maker ($249.99 at Sur La Table stores), officially hits the market today, but we were able to get a sneak peak. If you love tea, this one’s for you—in fact, this tea lover had mentally designed a similar gadget months ago in hopes it would one day exist. Let’s start with the basics: Boiling water can scald loose leaves and alter their gentle flavor, and most green, black, and white teas will call for a steeping temperature that ranges between 160 and 190

Tags: fiesta, gadget, gadgets, maker, market, product, rolling, silicone, table, tea, water

Knife Skills: How to Sharpen a Knife

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Knife Skills: How to Sharpen a Knife There is nothing more frustrating in the kitchen than a dull knife. Not only does it make prep work a chore and your finished product less attractive, it’s also downright dangerous. A dull blade requires more pressure to cut into a food, and can easily slip off of a tough onion skin and into your finger. Ouch. Most home cooks should sharpen their knives at least twice a year, and much more frequently if they use their knives every day. There are three ways to go about it. Method 1: Use an Electric Sharpener . A good quality electric sharpener is an option, but I strongly discourage their use. First off, they remove a tremendous amount of material from your edge. Sharpen your knife a dozen times, and you’ve lost a good half-centimeter of width, throwing it off balance, and rendering any blade with a bolster (i.e. most high quality forged blades) useless. Secondly, even the best models provide only an adequate edge. If you don’t mind replacing your knives every few years and are happy with the…

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Tags: blade, centimeter, difference, dull, Edge, facebook, finished, kitchen, product, sharpen, skin

When April Fools Goes Wrong: An Apology for the Inapproprite Posts of "Brownbird" Rudy "Relic"

[SuperVegan's new slogan] Today, SuperVegan blogger Brownbird Rudy Relic posted an excerpt from SuperVegan’s upcoming interview in Time Out New York . In it, Rudy complains about the “animal rights BS” that pervades the vegan community. We want to assure our readers that this interview was done without SuperVegan’s knowledge or permission, and that we don’t approve of anything contained within it. (Also, we know that honey isn’t vegan. Carmine is vegan, and silk is arguable, but there’s no way honey is.) We’ve read your angry emails and comments, and we want you to know that we understand and agree. To that end, we are using this post to publicly announce that “Brownbird” Rudy “Relic” will no longer be writing for SuperVegan . We are simply fed up with his incessantly frivolous blog posts , not to mention his obscenely unhealthy artery -clogging recipes . And we’re pretty sure that whatever gunk he puts in his hair can’t be vegan. Furthermore, we recognize that Rudy isn’t the only culprit, and that this culture of frivolity has degraded SuperVegan for years. Therefore, within the coming weeks, we will be conducting training sessions with the rest of our staff, under the leadership of noted activist Bevin Cass-Campbell . Hopefully most of our bloggers can adapt, but we won’t ruleout replacing them with writers…

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Tags: activist, animal, carmine, culprit, Drinks, food, guide, leadership, product, restaurant, rights, slogan, Sodium, sustainably

Reality Check: Wendy’s Bacon & Blue

From A Hamburger Today [ Photograph: Wendy's ] Wendy’s recently added a new burger to their line up. The Bacon & Blue is billed as North American beef, real blue cheese crumble, applewood smoked bacon, sautéed onions, and steakhouse sauce. It also comes with a slice of tomato and some lettuce, but that’s not part of the sales pitch. Wendy’s, with around 6,700 outlets, is the world’s third largest burger chain—but it’s a distant third after McDonald’s 31,000+ locations and Burger King’s 12,000+ locations. To build their audience, they are continually trying new menu items and recently they seem to have hit on a winning ingredient: bacon . Robyn already Reality Checked the Baconator and the Bacon Deluxe with some mixed results. I headed over to my local Wendy’s to put there newest burger under the lens. [Photographs: Damon Gambuto] The Bacon & Blue in real life was, unsurprisingly, not much a match for its beauty shots. The bun looked pretty good, but the rest of the ingredients looked as though they’d been mashed on top to secure them in place. What was a bit of a surprise was the passable flavor…

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Tags: baconator, billed-as-north, burger, burger-king, food, Introduction, jsp, mashed-on-top, photograph, product, result, under-the-lens, wendy

(Almost) Instant Sponge Pudding

Meals don’t feel complete without at least a morsel of sweetness to round them off. Most of the time a square of dark chocolate or scoop of ice cream is enough to satisfy but sometimes the cravings require something with a bit more substance. Inevitably these desires are strongest when the cupboards and freezer are bereft of anything sugar based. Yes, one could turn to the fruit bowl but a pear or apple isn’t fun – it has no air of decadence or whiff of naughtiness and thus little ability to satisfy. It was this combination of empty shelves and niggling desire for sweetness that led to the creation of insta-pud: a hearty late winter warmer that expanded the stomach, delighted the senses and induced a state of near comatose happiness soon after finishing the last mouthful. As far as sponge puddings go, it won’t win any awards. It certainly doesn’t have the artery clogging density of a steamed suet based effort or the deft lightness of a well worked cake. But what it lacks in technique, it more …

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Tags: brevity, cupboards, finished, golden, ingredients, jam sponge, pour-the-sponge, product, puddings, sponge, then-the-beaten