Funny Food, by Bill & Claire Wurtzel. © 2012
Welcome Enterprises, Inc.,
www.funnyfood.us.

In 1001 Arabian Nights, the cuckolded King Shahryar executes his faithless wife and proceeds to marry a new virgin every day, executing her the next morning before she has a chance to dishonor him.

Eventually his vizier (minister), whose task it is to provide the brides, cannot find any more virgins. His daughter Scheherazade (shuh-HAIR-uh-ZOD) volunteers and is wed to the king.

That night, the clever girl tells the king a fascinating tale, but does not finish the story. King Shahryar can’t execute her the next morning, since he wants to hear the end of it. The next evening, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins a new story…and so it goes for 1,001 nights.

Three years and three children later, Queen Scheherazade has convinced her husband that she is his faithful wife. She keeps her head (and her three children—obviously more than storytelling went on). Hopefully they lived happily ever after.

Funny Food: Another Daily Fascination

Now it’s time to introduce another fascinating book, one which has very few words. But who needs words when the photographs tell the whole story?

Funny Food: 365 Fun, Healthy, Silly, Creative Breakfasts, will fascinate a spouse or family as much as Scheherazade’s tales—and they get to eat the “story.”

What fun to be married to an art director who plies his trade in the kitchen. For more than 50 years, Bill Wurtzel has taken everyday breakfast foods—bagels and other breads, cereal, cottage cheese, eggs, fruit, ham, pancakes, waffles and yogurt—and turned them into edible art for wife Claire and their daughters. There are animals, birds, cars, flowers, people, musical instruments, trees and more. Everything is nutritious and the designs turn old standbys into exciting food.

And you can do it, too.

It’s Really Easy

There’s a two-page tip list of how to make your own creations, and two spreads that show the four simple steps to make a head and a train. Otherwise, there are no on-the-page instructions. The majority of the designs are easy to recreate—most are so easy that anyone old enough to do an art project can assemble this food art.

In fact, the Wurtzels now give workshops for school children to promote healthy eating and fun. There’s a downloadable guide on the book’s website.

 
This is a wonderful book to inspire younger people to cook and a boost of creativity for experienced cooks who can see how to use fruits, vegetables and nuts to make everyday dishes shine.

Get your copy.

We can only hope that the Wurtzels are working on Funny Lunch.

It’s hard to find a mascarpone cheese that isn’t delicious, but Crave Brothers Mascarpone has achieved the title of “most delicious,” winning first place awards in the American Cheese Society Competition, The World Dairy Expo and the Wisconsin State Fair Cheese and Butter Contest.

Mascarpone is perhaps best known in the U.S. as the base of tiramisu. Yesterday, we used it to whip up some Lemon Mascarpone Tarts.

The Crave family’s recipe makes it easy, by using refrigerated sugar cookie dough instead of mixing up and rolling out pastry dough. It’s a great time-saving tip.

Lemon is one of those flavors that’s delicious in any season—a godsend in the winter during the drought of seasonal fruit, and refreshing on the hottest summer day.

In addition to the cookie dough, all you need are three ingredients: mascarpone, a jar of lemon curd and a garnish of fresh raspberries or blueberries.

Tempting Lemon Mascarpone Tarts are easy to make. Photo courtesy Crave Brothers.

You can fill the tart shells with anything. Pudding or berries glazed with melted currant jelly are two more easy options.

This recipe yields 36 mini tarts. For more recipes, visit the CraveCheese.com.

LEMON MASCARPONE TARTS

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Slice cookie dough into discs 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Slice each disc in half. In a greased mini muffin tin, press pieces of cookie dough into each muffin space. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden in color. Set aside to cool completely.

2. Meanwhile, place lemon curd in a microwaveable dish and heat until spreadable. Whisk curd with mascarpone until light and airy.

3. To assemble tarts, use a small cookie scoop to fill each sugar cookie tart with lemon mascarpone filling. Top with a fresh raspberry.

ABOUT CRAVE BROTHERS

Not only do the Crave Brothers produce a family of award-winning artisan cheeses, they do it using 100% green power and practicing water conservation and recycling. In fact, as a carbon-negative company, they produce more power with their bio digester than they use for their dairy and cheese plant.

The Crave family farms 2,000 acres of rich land in south-central Wisconsin, growing soybeans, corn and alfalfa to use as nutritious feed for their Holstein cows. From the manure digester to water recovery, sustainability is top-of-mind on the farm. Every pound of cheese made by George Crave, a licensed cheese maker, is made with milk from the family’s herd. Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese produces Mascarpone, Fresh Mozzarella, Les Frères® and Petit Frère® French-style cheeses, Farmer’s Rope® Part-Skim Mozzarella String Cheese and Oaxaca.

MORE MASCARPONE

Santé Pecans. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE
NIBBLE.

Santé Nuts sent us packages of snack nuts in nine varieties:

 
Even the savory flavors have a touch of sweetness. The nuts are gluten-free and certified kosher by Star-K.

The line was developed by necessity: Sara Tidhar was a single mom in need of an income. Her son urged her to sell the roasted, seasoned nuts she made for the family and she soon found herself with thousands of orders.

Santé, the French word for health, denotes a better-for-you snack. We really like the one-ounce, grab-and-go packages of nutritious nuts as a substitute for candy and cookie snacks. They’re all-natural, very crunchy and fresh-tasting, with just enough cane sugar to satisfy a sweet tooth.

Hand-roasted in small batches, the nuts are made with less oil (canola oil, a monounsaturated, healthy fat), as well. Try them with a fruity wine or beer.

Santé Nuts can be purchased on Amazon.com and on the company website, SanteNuts.com. One-ounce packages are $1.99, four-ounce packages are $5.99.

Toss Into Recipes

The nuts add interest to a salad—green salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, spinach-and-blue-cheese salad—sweet potato casserole, stuffing, whatever. Here are two lively salad recipes to try:

Become a sauce master: Here’s Part 3 of chef Johnny Gnall’s tutorial on the secondary sauces. Start at the beginning with:

 
If you have questions or suggestions for other tips, email Chef Johnny.

ESPAGNOLE SAUCE BECOMES DEMI-GLACE

Demi-glace (pronounced DEH-me GLAHS) is a rich brown sauce that is often served with beef, lamb and pork. The term comes from the French word glace, which means icing or glaze (among other things, including ice and ice cream); demi means half. Demi-glace is thicker and contains more gelatin than espagnole alone, so it has more body.

A Berkshire pork chop atop a demi-glace sauce. Photo courtesy AllenBrothers.com.

Marchand De Vin Sauce

A variation of demi-glace is sauce marchand de vin (marchand de vin is French for wine merchant), which, not surprisingly, includes wine.

 
You now have a sauce that is perfect for pretty much any meat you can cook up!

Beyond the myriad classic sauces that stem from espagnole sauce, I am always up for some boundary crossing between cuisines—otherwise known as fusion food. I am a big fan of taking this classic French sauce and bringing it down to Mexico.

Mole Sauce

By adding a little cocoa powder and very little chile powder to a quart of espagnole sauce, you turn it into variety of mole sauce.

 
This variation of mole is not precisely the traditional Mexican procedure, but nobody will be complaining.

My mom, who grew up in Mexico, serves her mole sauce with lamb chops and mashed potatoes.

The gourmet version of Raisinets, from Lake
Champlain Chocolates (certified kosher).

Today is National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day. In the form of Raisinets, the dried-fruit-in-a-candy-shell is a movie theater staple and the third-largest selling candy in U.S. history.

To make the candy, raisins are coated with oil and spun in a hot drum with milk or dark chocolate. They’re then polished to a shine.

Raisinets are the earliest brand on record, introduced by the Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company of Philadelphia in 1927 (the brand was acquired by Nestlé in 1984).

We don’t know that the Blumenthals originated the concept. Hard chocolate was invented in 1847, enabling confectioners to develop all types of chocolate candies (the history of chocolate). No doubt, chocolate-dipped fruit was in the repertoire.

See all the food holidays.

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Become a sauce master: Here’s Part 2 of chef Johnny Gnall’s tutorial on the secondary sauces. Start at the beginning with:

 
If you have questions or suggestions for other tips, email email Chef Johnny.

BÉCHAMEL SAUCE BECOMES CHEDDAR CHEESE SAUCE

It’s easy to make a robust Cheddar cheese sauce from a base of creamy, delicate béchamel (BAY-sha-mell) sauce. Just stir the following ingredients into one quart of béchamel:

Rich, creamy Cheddar cheese sauce. Photo courtesy AztecaFoods-Europe.com.

In addition to saucing proteins, starches and vegetables—and making a superior macaroni and cheese—it’s phenomenal for dipping hot pretzel nuggets at parties: A crowd tends to form around the bowl.

Bacon Béchamel. If you believe, as I do, that bacon makes everything better, you can go big and cook some bacon to add to the béchamel (finely chopped). Or you can whisk in bacon fat that you’ve previously reserved (I always save the drippings when I cook bacon and store them in a small plastic container that I keep on the shelf of my fridge).

Roast chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and
fiddlehead ferns on a bed of sauce suprême.
Photo by JohnHerschell | Wikimedia.jpg

VELOUTÉ SAUCE BECOMES SAUCE SUPRÊME
(SUPREME SAUCE)

Sauce suprême is a very rich sauce that adds cream to chicken velouté. It’s the perfect “luxury” sauce for roast chicken or pork. One chef we know calls it “the most upscale gravy.”

Variations

Pacific Beach Peanut Butter Spreads, made in sunny San Diego, tempt the palate with “mix-ins” in three popular flavor profiles:

 
The sweet ingredients are ground along with the peanuts, creating a whipped texture that melts in the mouth.

As a sandwich spread, cookie topping or straight from the jar, the spreads are delights.

Read the full review.

Don’t Like/Can’t Have Peanuts? Check out these alternative nut butters (almond, cashew, macadamia, pecan, walnut and more) from Artisana, another Top Pick Of The Week.

Take Our Peanut Butter Trivia Quiz.

Toffee-accented peanut butter is just one of the sweetly enhanced flavors of Pacific Beach Peanut Butter. Photo by Leah Hansen | THE NIBBLE.

Turn plain tomato sauce into Creole sauce.
Photo by Andrew Bossi | Wikimedia.

Earlier this week we introduced the five mother sauces, noting that each was the base for many other secondary sauces.

Today, chef Johnny Gnall explains how the secondary sauces are made. Email Chef Johnny with questions or suggestions for other cooking topics.

At some point in your mastery of Escoffier’s five mother sauces, they need to be taken to the next level. Yes, tomato sauce is versatile, and a luscious, creamy béchamel is quite heavenly. But at some point you’ll yearn for variety. In the words of Emeril, it’s time to “kick things up a notch.”

Each mother sauce has a “menu” of secondary sauces, many of which can be created by adding only a few additional ingredients.

The results include recent additions as well as classics that date back as far as the mother sauces themselves. Purists may follow a set of rules for what you can and can’t add to certain sauces for fear of “corrupting their integrity,” but let’s be frank: In your kitchen, you’re the boss.

For the next three days, we’ll focus on two “secondary sauces” for each mother sauce, starting with a quart of mother sauce as your base. The first will be a classic secondary sauce, straight from Escoffier; the second will be my own creation or suggestion. Hopefully these suggestions will act as a jumping-off point for you to create your own sauces and dishes based on whatever it is that you like.

TOMATO SAUCE BECOMES CREOLE SAUCE

Creole sauce is an easy variation made with tomato sauce. You’ll be surprised at how some bell pepper can change the flavor profile of the original mother sauce. Creole sauce is delicious with chicken, fish/seafood, rice and pasta.

1. Dice half an onion, a stalk of celery and a bell pepper. Sauté them in oil along with a teaspoon of minced garlic.

2. Once the vegetables are soft, add a quart of tomato sauce, a bay leaf, a pinch of dried thyme and a teaspoon of lemon zest.

3. Simmer for 15 minutes, then season with salt, pepper and cayenne.

Variation #2: Tomato Vegetable Sauce

I like to build on tomato sauce simply by adding whatever seasonal vegetables I have on hand. Pretty much anything, from artichoke hearts to eggplant to zucchini, can be cleaned, diced and dropped in to simmer in the sauce. Frozen vegetables work just as well.

Freezing separate portions of the plain sauce gives you many opportunities to put a new spin on it. You can make a gallon or more of tomato sauce at once, then freeze portions in quart or even pint containers. At dinnertime, just pull one out, toss it into a pot with a little water, get it simmering and add the vegetables.

Serve with pasta, chicken or fish as a sauce; or even with a crusty chunk of bread—the sauce acts as a soup.

HOLLANDAISE SAUCE BECOMES BÉARNAISE
SAUCE

Béarnaise is a more complex form of hollandaise. The key difference is in the flavoring: Hollandaise is seasoned with lemon juice while béarnaise includes shallot and tarragon with vinegar instead of lemon juice. It is named after the province of Béarn, on the southwest border of France. Unlike tomato sauce and other sauces, hollandaise/béarnaise is delicate and can’t be frozen.

While hollandaise is popular with Eggs Benedict, asparagus, brussels sprouts and other green vegetables, béarnaise is typically served with steak and seafood. However, they are interchangeable, depending upon the flavors you’re looking for.

1. Combine 1 minced shallot, 1 cup of white vinegar, 1 cup of white wine, 2 teaspoons of dried tarragon and a pinch of salt and pepper in a saucepan. Reduce the mixture by three fourths.

Tarragon distinguishes béarnaise from hollandaise sauce. Photo courtesy Wizard Recipes.

2. Remove the pan from heat and let it cool for a minute, then add 12 egg yolks to the mixture and beat well. (Use the whites for omelets, Baked Alaska, lemon meringue pie or meringue cookies.) Continue beating over a bain-marie in the same way as you did with hollandaise.

3. Finish by stirring in a couple of tablespoons of finely chopped parsley and a teaspoon of dried tarragon. Then, as long as you’re not cutting back on cholesterol, go all out and serve your béarnaise slathered over a nice big cut of filet mignon.

Variation #2: Spicy Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise is a great vehicle for spice, due to its richness; the texture and buttery flavor helps to soften serious heat and creates a pleasing warmth all over your palate. However, fat also conducts flavor, so a little spice goes a long way.

You can keep it simple and kick up the amount of Tabasco-type hot sauce you use to season, or you can branch out: Sriracha, sambal and other hot sauces and chile pastes all work beautifully. Just whisk them into your finished sauce, adding a teaspoon or so at a time until you reach the desired heat level and consistency.

Remember that hollandaise can be delicate, so too much of any one ingredient can cause it to break. To maintain the consistency of the sauce, you can substitute finely minced chiles, such as jalapeño and serrano. For the most heat, include the seeds and membrane, which contain the most capsaicin (the chemical that provides the heat).

TOMORROW: Secondary sauces for béchamel and velouté sauces.

This recipe converts America’s favorite cookie, the chocolate chip cookie, into a gluten-free version.

More and more Americans are discovering they have a sensitivity to gluten, a protein in wheat and other popular grains such as barley and rye. A more serious manifestation is celiac disease.

Some of the best brands of gluten-free cookies we’ve tried are the result of a family member seeking to make the tastiest treats for a relative with gluten sensitivity. If you have a loved one who needs to avoid gluten, bake a batch of these as a gift.

There are more than 20 gluten-free or low-gluten alternatives to wheat flour, from familiar ingredients such as cornmeal and potato flour to amaranth and teff flours. They’re more expensive than wheat flour, which is why gluten-free baked goods, pasta, etc. are costlier than conventional products.

The substitutes vary widely in their flavor and texture contribution. People working on gluten-free recipes do a lot of experimenting to find the ingredients and proportions they like best.

TRIVIA: “Gluten” is the Latin word for glue. The protein acts as a binder to give elasticity to dough and a chewy texture to the final product.

Find more of our favorite gluten-free products.

On Sunday, March 25th at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. Central Time), millions of Americans will tune in to the 1960s, with the new season of “Mad Men.”

The show has inspired (and licensed) a Mad Men clothing line from Banana Republic and a Mad Men cosmetics line from Estée Lauder.

But what about Mad Men spirits? Those ad agency folk seemed to spend more time drinking than shopping for clothes and makeup.

Our recommendation: Settle down with a good bottle of Bourbon, like Maker’s Mark, and enjoy a couple of cocktails that surely would have been enjoyed by the staff of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

You’ll Need Maraschino Cherries

Both the Manhattan and the Old Fashioned use maraschino cherries. Back in the day, before the advent of high fructose corn syrup, they probably tasted a lot better.

But there’s one premium brand of maraschino cherries to please picky palates, made by specialty food producer Tillen Farms. You can buy it online. The maraschinos are delicious, and a perfect gift for your favorite cocktail hound.

A premium Bourbon, Maker’s Mark is hand-dipped in red wax to signify its artisan origins. Photo courtesy Maker’s Mark.

MANHATTAN COCKTAIL RECIPE

One reference claims that the Manhattan was invented in the 1860s by the bartender of an establishment on Broadway near Houston Street in Manhattan. A number of printed references date to that time. The drink is made with whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters, and served straight up. The whiskey choice varies across the board: blended whiskey, Bourbon, Canadian whisky (spelled without the “e”), rye (the traditional choice) and Tennessee whiskey have all been used.

Ingredients Per Cocktail

 
Preparation

1. Shake first four ingredients together with ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled Manhattan glass (Martini glass).

2. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

The Old Fashioned is one of six classic
cocktails, along with the Gin and Tonic,
Manhattan, Martini, Mint Julep and Whiskey
Sour.

OLD FASHIONED COCKTAIL RECIPE

One of the original classic cocktails (see photo caption) the Old Fashioned was purportedly invented in the 1880s at a gentlemen’s club in Louisville, Kentucky. A member and Bourbon distiller brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City. It is both strong and sweet. The original recipe had neither club soda nor a cherry, but both ingredients became popular over the years.

Ingredients Per Cocktail

Preparation

1. Muddle 1 orange slice, 1 maraschino cherry, bitters and the sugar in an Old Fashioned (rocks) glass. Fill glass 3/4 full of ice.

2. Add Bourbon and splash of club soda. Garnish with additional orange slice and maraschino cherry. For a more impressive garnish, you can fix the cherry to the top of the orange slice with a toothpick.

If bitters and maraschino cherries are not your thing, you can find many Bourbon cocktail recipes at MakersMark.com.

Find more of our favorite cocktail recipes.