Tag Archives: recipe

Thyme cocktail

19 Apr

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Over the weekend we explored a new (to us) cocktail combination of gin, thyme and lemon and tonic. Is it too early to start talking cocktails? No, I think not, its Friday afterall, and its been a busy/stressful/draining week.

I’m sure there will be much improving on this cocktail as the spring progresses, because while it was good, but I have a feeling it could be really, really good with a bit more effort, and a bit less laziness. I muddled a bit of fresh thyme and poured in a few shots of gin, then forgot about it for a while accidentally. I wished I’d left it together longer to “marinate” as Intern would say. I could have even made a thyme simple syrup, as this recipe recommends. Our tonic had cane sugar in it, so we skipped the simple syrup completely. It has a nice fresh flavor, and the scent is more thyme-y than the flavor. As for a recipe… this is a vague one, with room for improvising:

Lazy Thyme cocktail

ingredients:
2 oz gin
2 tbsp lime juice
several sprigs of fresh thyme
healthy splash of tonic water

directions:
Muddle thyme, and pour gin over thyme. Leave for 20-30 minutes or longer, and try to busy yourself with some necessary task like feeding your cats, answering an inappropriately timed email from a client, or root around in your pantry for those spanish almonds you are convinced are in there (they are not, trust me). Once you’ve almost forgotten that you had previously been making a cocktail, get back in the kitchen and pour your thyme-gin mixture into a shaker over ice, add the lime juice, and give it a good shake. Pour over a strainer into a very, very chilled cocktail glass that you had the foresight to chill prior to forgetting your drink, then top with tonic a fresh sprig of thyme and enjoy.

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Rosemary Salt

23 Jan

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I’ve made lemon salt, lemon sugar and rosemary salt a few different times, a few different ways over the last few years. I can’t really claim that this is a recipe, but rather a loose guideline…infused with a promise that anyone can make it. There are two varieties or methods of rosemary salt making that I have discovered: one is a moister salt made with fresh rosemary, and one is a drier, loose salt made with dry rosemary. Both are good, though I have found that using moist, undried rosemary lends a more intense flavor to the salt. Fresh rosemary leads to a clumpier, moist salt, which is good for rubbing on meats.

Ingredients & tools
Rosemary- (fresh, not dried or from the store, please)
Sea Salt (no crappy salt here) flakes or crystals
Spice grinder OR patience, knife and cutting board to finely mince rosemary
Jars for salt

Directions
Make sure that your rosemary is clean and free of bugs and leaves, especially if you have harvested it from neighborhood bushes. If you need to rinse your rosemary under water, give it time for the water to dry. Start by stripping the rosemary leaves from the main stem, and once you have a good pile of rosemary, mince until your rosemary is finely chopped. If you are lazy, and you have a spice grinder, throw your rosemary in there. One downside to this method is that you may end up with rosemary powder, which might be fine. Just be sure to clean your spice grinder well before use, or you’ll end up with a mystery blend of spices that tastes a little bit like rosemary, and whatever else was in there previously.

Now here is the hard part: (just kidding, there is no hard part) mix the rosemary and salt together, start with slightly more salt than rosemary, or perhaps just 50/50. You really can’t mess this up. Lots of rosemary, lots of salt. Pour your mixture into a lidded jar and shake. The sat should be punctuated by lots of green. If you find that your rosemary salt starts to clump over the next few days, its ok. The salt is pulling moisture from the rosemary, and all that moisture is nice, fragrant rosemary oil. Give your rosemary salt a few days to get friendly and fragrant, before use.

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To everyone who kept on scrolling… surprise! There is another kind-of recipe here! As an added experiment, I left a few sprigs of fresh rosemary whole, and mixed them in with raw sugar to make rosemary sugar. We’ll see how this turns out, when I eventually use it in rosemary cocktails, or possibly to garnish Rosemary shortbread… or maybe something else.

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Rosemary Aperol fizz

21 Dec

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Over the last few months my cocktail tastes have turned almost exclusively towards sparkling. Prosecco, cava, dry brut and even the occasional real-deal champagne. I like a good bubble. Intern and I have been working feverishly (ha!) on a sparkling cocktail combination that we can both agree on. This recipe has slowly evolved from a Campari-gin-Rosemary thing to Aperol-Rosemary-St. Germaine, to a slightly less bitter (and less alcoholic) version that we’ve served a handful of times to friends and family as an aperitivo. We served a version of this cocktail at The Skill Exchange launch party, although that one was much boozier, and balanced with a bit of elderflower and rosemary syrup. This version, is gentle and friendly for those of you who claim not to like Campari, or have never tried it before.

Ingredients
1 250ml bottle of chilled prosecco or cava
1 cup Aperol (an Italian aperitivothat tastes slightly bitter and herbal)
Rosemary simple syrup
Rosemary sprigs for garnish

Directions
Combine 1 cup of sugar to 2 cups of water, and bring to a slow boil. Add several fresh sprigs of rosemary to the simple syrup, and stir until sugar is disolved. Simmer for a few minutes, then remove rosemary sprigs and allow syrup to thicken and cool. You may need to use a strainer to remove any bits of darkened rosemary from the syrup. Once your syrup is cool and your sparkling is chilled, combine sparkling and Aperol in a pitcher. The syrup gives a nice rosemary flavor, but if you add too much it can get too sweet and overpowering. Start by adding 1/3 a cup of syrup to the pitcher and taste before adding more. Once you have your desired sweetness, pour into champagne flutes, and top with a small sprig of rosemary. Enjoy the hell out of it.

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Sweet and Savory Pizzelle

5 Dec

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A few years ago my mom gave me a pizzelle press at Christmas, and I was obsessed with pizzelle making. Lesson guys: pizzelle is plural for pizzella, a single cookie.  Pronounced: Peet-zell-eh  plural or peet-zell-ah singular. I have made almond, chocolate, plain and lemon pizzelle, and all are delicious. The trick to making a perfectly  formed crispy, thin, round and golden pizzella is really quite tricky. A perfect cookie is an elusive beast, hard to achieve, and almost impossible to hit with frequency. The amount of dough in the press, the consistency of the dough, and awareness of the steamy pressing of delicate cookies requires full attention. Even though the steamy kitchen and the slowly cooling tray of cookies will be hard to resist, pizzelle are best when completely cool, otherwise a still-warm cookie won’t be crisp. A lot of attention  and patience will reward you with delicate, simple, cuter-than-Christmas cookies.

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But what about savory pizzelle? This question has haunting me for years. I have unsatisfactorily attempted to create the savory cookie every year during pizzelle season (which lasts from December-January if you must know) and every year I have been bitterly disappointed. My first mistake was believing I could adapt a cracker recipe for the press (wrong). I committed this mistake several years in a row, before giving up and starting again. This year, I think I am on to something.

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This year I went back to the original egg-based recipe, but omitted the sugar, added salt, a very hearty crank of pepper, minced thyme and rosemary, and about a cup of finely grated pecorino romano. I tinkered with the dough consistency before achieving a fairly-almost-perfect savory herbed cracker-cookie. Instead of trying to make perfect, large round cookies with this batch, I aimed for smaller, more manageable sized mini-cookies so they’d be better for topping with cheese or spreads. The variations for these cookie-crackers are endless, with different cheeses and herbs, maybe even some chili flakes? Everybody who owns a pizzelle press or can borrow one? Go knock yourselves out!

Savory Pizzelle -Recipe adapted from a sweet recipe, but this resource has many amazing variations.
makes about 20-25ish pizzelle

Ingredients
3 eggs
1 cup butter, melted
1 3/4 cups flour (plus or minus a few tbsp)
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tbsp minced herbs
1/2 cup finely grated cheese (pecorino romano, parmesan, gruyere perhaps?)
black pepper

Directions
While warming up your pizzelle press, melt butter and combine with eggs and whisk together until completely combined and a bit thicker, maybe 3-4 minutes. Add herbs, cheese and salt, then mix. Slowly fold in flour and baking powder until just combined, and all lumps are gone. The dough should be more of a thick batter, thicker than pancakes, but moister than a cookie dough. Depending on the size of your press, you’ll need to experiment with the amount of dough you add to the press. I add a little less than a tbsp using a spoon and small spatula, then I cook for  about 1- 2  minutes.  Your press will be different. Depending on your press you may need to add additional butter if your pizzelle start to stick. Remove pizzelle from press, and allow to cool completely before storing or eating. Pizzelle keep well for many days in a tightly sealed container.

 

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What we ate

25 Sep

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1. Dinner prep: bread crumb, garlic, parsley, rosemary, pine nut and olive stuffing for a leg of lamb (not pictured, stupidly) from Pastoral Plate
2. Dinner: Baby potatoes and tiny carrots roasted in lamb drippings
3. Happy hour: Blistered padrone peppers with sea salt (and served with cava)

New recipe we tried last week: Jamie Oliver’s stuffed leg of lamb. We had a leg of lamb from Pastoral Plate, and were waiting to cook it with friends, since neither of us wanted to eat a 6lb leg all week long. This recipe was seriously delicious, though we omitted the anchovies and pancetta in the stuffing, since we were already serving a rich appetizer. We basted the lamb with red wine, and it turned out very moist and herb-y.

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4. Happy hour: Roasted prosciutto wrapped figs stuffed with goat cheese
5. Dinner: Clams with garlic, onion, jalapeño, magic and white wine (we’re totally trying to nail down the recipe we were exposed to a few weeks back!) oh, and there is Joe in the background. HI JOE!
6. Dinner: Intern-made salad of mixed greens, marcona almonds, tomatoes, shaved pecorino romano and some secret dressing he makes

…and our fail for the week: one over-baked German Pancake with apples on the bottom. It was dry and not very buttery  and therefore, ruined.
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