Anchovies get a bad rap in the U.S. They typically appear on “most hated foods” lists. That’s because many people were first introduced to cheap, oily, odoriforus, overly salty and “fishy” tasting examples on pizzas or in Caesar salads at the local diner. (One reason they’re so intense is that casual restaurants don’t take the time to rinse the anchovies, but just scoop them up from the oil.)

But in fact, these little fish can be truly delightful—still with a strong flavor, but one that’s delicious.

The 144 species of anchovies, a salt-water fish related to herring. They live in many of the world’s oceans and seas, including the Atlantic, Indian, Mediterranean and Pacific.

The good brands are things of beauty. Italians—who not only make some of the world’s best food, but as a society have among the most demanding palates—use them as a backbone in many recipes.

If you’re willing to try again—or if you’re already an anchovy fan—you can get absolutely delicious anchovies from Gustiamo.com, an importer of Italian delicacies.

Anchovies: quite lovely, actually. Photo by Kaan Tanriover | SXC.

The anchovies come from Cetara, an enchanting fishing village along the Amalfi coast, on the Gulf of Salerno. They are packaged by Nettuno, a family-run company. Production is completely by hand, using simple but precise traditions of local anchovy preserving.

The best anchovies are caught between March and July, when their flesh is at its most plump; Nettuno only fishes during this period. The fresh anchovies are immediately placed in oak barrels layered with water and sea salt and cured for about five months. The salt used by Nettuno is the exceptional sea salt that is hand-harvested in the salt panes of Trapani from, uncontaminated Sicilian waters.

The result: anchovies that are are soft, moist and plump. It takes only a few seconds to rinse them in cold water and then put them too use.

Get your Cetara anchovies here.

And if you’re a true anchovy lover, try a bottle of Colatura, a descendent of the favorite Roman condiment, garum.

RECIPE: PENNE PASTA SALAD WITH ANCHOVIES

This recipe is courtesy La Cucina Italiana and Chef Andrea Tiberi. It serves 4.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. Heat oven to 200°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Drop plum tomatoes into water and boil 30 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, remove tomatoes from pot (reserve water); drain, peel, cut in half, and seed.

3. Place tomatoes on baking sheet and sprinkle with salt. Bake until tomatoes are partially dried and flavor is concentrated, about 3 hours.

4. Return water to boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, transfer to a large bowl, and toss with a drizzle of oil and pinch of salt. Set aside to cool.

5. Remove tomatoes from oven; transfer to a cutting board and finely chop. Add to bowl with pasta. Add greens, Piennolo tomatoes, 3 tablespoons oil, anchovies, capers, chervil and marjoram; toss to combine. Arrange on plates. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt and some fresh-ground pepper.

There’s so much over-sugared barbecue sauce for sale; we wonder why people don’t make their own. It’s easy and more nutritious—and it costs less, too. You eliminate the high fructose corn syrup and can moderate the level of sweetener you do use (agave, brown sugar, honey, maple syrup).

Your homemade sauce uses other superior ingredients, as well: sautéed fresh onions and garlic instead of onion and garlic powders, and crushed tomatoes instead of ketchup.

This video shows just one basic recipe; but if you like the results, you can make hundreds of variations, incorporating your favorite flavors—mustard, vinegar, horseradish, the works.

For expert guidance, pick up a copy of Steve Raichlen’s Barbecue! Bible: Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes.

But start with the simple recipe below. You can make it today with ingredients you already have in the kitchen.

Three of scores of different styles of
mustard. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE
NIBBLE.

We get very comfortable with the brands we buy. Sometimes, we never venture farther than what our mothers bought.

But there are new discoveries waiting on every grocer’s shelf.

Take something as basic as mustard. There are scores of different type beyond the familiar American mustard (a.k.a. ballpark and yellow mustard, like French’s).

In the B’s alone, there are Bahamian, Bavarian, Beaujolais, blackcurrant, black mustard seed, Bordeaux, brown and Burgundy mustards. Varying widely in flavor, they—and many other mustard types—add panache to food.

So pick up something new, just in time for Memorial Day. You may discover a more exciting condiment for burgers, franks, potato salad and sandwiches.

You’ve never added a tablespoon of mustard to potato salad? Consider that second Tip Of The Day (and for starters, try Dijon mustard).

A standard plate of meat and veggies gets a sprinkling of glamour with pomegranate arils. Get the recipe at PomWonderful.com.

If you dine at fine restaurants, you may notice that garniture—the garnish on dish—makes a big difference in presentation.

Garnishes can improve any dish, savory or sweet, plain or fancy—a tuna sandwich, filet mignon, plate of pasta, dish of ice cream. As with fashion, the “accessories” take a look from now to wow.

Deciding in advance on the garnish is as much a part of our planning process as the basic recipe. It’s easy to choose the right garnish, as we show in this article.

The right final touch on the plate makes people take notice. In other words, it’s not just another bowl of tomato soup.

It’s easy to keep garnishes at the ready in the pantry and the freezer. Freeze extra chives, rosemary sprigs, berries and pomegranate arils and you’ll be prepared for most dishes.

Check out our article, Garnish Glamour, for an easy roadmap.

Photo by Martin Walls | SXC.

Peeling garlic can be messy business, especially if you do it in bulk.

To remove the skin more quickly, simply remove the cloves from the bulb and soak them in water for a few minutes.

Then, cut off the root end, or smash it with the flat of your knife. The skin should slide off much more easily.

Now, you’re ready to crush the cloves. Just use the flat part of a large knife.

If loud smashing is more your style, lay your soaked garlic cloves on a cutting board. Place another cutting board on top and crush away.

Feel free to use a hammer on plastic cutting boards. Like hitting a golf ball, it’s very cathartic.

Love Garlic?

Try Garlic Valley Farms’ garlic juice spray. It’s amazing: You can spray fresh garlic flavor onto anything (burgers, eggs, salads, vegetables—you name it).

The flavor is in the juice, not the clove. Each bottle contains the juice of 150 cloves (1000 sprays). It‘s gluten-free and kosher. Get some.

15 Ways To Use Leftover Cranberry Sauce

Post-Thanksgiving uses for cranberry sauce.
Photo by Sarsmis | Fotolia.

Do you have a favorite use for leftover cranberry sauce? Let us know!

We love a good pepper jelly—and not all of them are good. Many are just too sugary, throwing the sweet/heat balance way over to the sweet side.

In eight years of reviewing specialty foods, the only pepper jelly lines we’ve liked enough to review are Aloha From Oregon, Cherith Valley and Diane’s Sweet Heat.

And now, there’s Hellfire Pepper Jelly—not a line of pepper jellies, but just one variety in the Jenkins Jellies line. The website can be a bit hyperbolic (e.g. the jelly does not contain “psychotically hot peppers”) but perhaps that’s because one of the company’s owners is related to a famous Hollywood family: actors Blythe Danner and her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow; directors Bruce Paltrow (husband to Blythe) and son Jake Paltrow (among other family members in show biz).

Hillary Danner began making jams and jellies from the bounty of the fruit trees and grape arbor in her Los Angeles backyard. She began to sell her most acclaimed recipe, the hot and spicy Hellfire Pepper Jelly, at farmers markets. Demand exploded, and Danner partnered with Maria Newman and chef Jared Levy to create a line of artisan jams and jellies (we wish we had access to the rest of them!).

Tasty and hot gourmet pepper jelly,
Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Hellfire Pepper Jelly is a very fine example of the genre. The complex flavor comes from a mix of seven different chiles (sorry, we can’t bear to call them “peppers” because of a mistake* made 520 years ago by Christopher Columbus).

Buy it on the company website. A portion of sales goes to the Bruce Paltrow Oral Cancer Fund.

What Is Pepper Jelly?

Pepper jelly is a clear, sweet-and-spicy jelly that contains flecks of hot chile peppers. Different fruits and spices can be added for complexity—for example, pineapple or mango on the sweet side, and tomato or bell pepper on the savory side.

Pepper jelly is often made with jalapeños and serranos, which are medium-heat chiles. Habañero is one step up on the Scoville Scale, and Scotch bonnet is at the top of the scale, categorized as extreme. (See the different types of chiles.)

While on the hotter side, Hellfire Pepper Jelly does not cripple your taste buds. It’s exhilarating rather than searing.

Bring some Hellfire as a host/hostess gift for Halloween, or keep it in mind for teacher gifts, stocking stuffers and other small holiday gifts.

How To Use Pepper Jelly
Pepper jelly is most famously served as an hors d’oeuvre or snack with cream cheese—typically poured over a block of cream cheese on a plate and surrounded with crackers, so guests can help themselves. You can do the work yourself, garnishing individual crackers with cream cheese and jelly for passed hors d’oeuvre. Sweet and tart, hot and spicy, creamy and crunchy: it delivers a spectrum of favorite flavors.

You don’t need to have a party to serve it: We enjoy pepper jelly with peanut butter or cream cheese on whole wheat toast.

But don’t stop there: Here are dozens of uses with everything from omelets and yogurt to meatballs and cheesecake.

 
*Chiles were “discovered” in the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus, who called them “peppers” (pimientos, in Spanish) because of their fiery similarity to the black peppercorns with which he was familiar. However, there is no relationship between the two plants, or between chiles and Szechuan pepper. “Chile pepper” is a misnomer, and the term “pepper” is not used in Latin America. There, the term is chili, from chilli, the word in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. More on the history of chiles.

Tabasco has been a table staple since 1868, when the McIlhenny Company first produced it (read the story).

Over the past few years, the company has expanded its line beyond Original Red Tabasco to Green, Garlic, Habanero and Chipotle Tabasco and Sweet & Spicy Sauce.

Few people know of a seventh product that the company has produced since the early days, available only to family and close friends: Tabasco Family Reserve Pepper Sauce.

Each year, a portion of the finest peppers grown on the company’s property on Avery Island, Louisiana are hand-selected for their superior color, texture and robustness. These special peppers are mashed with premium white wine vinegar and a small amount of local salt. The mash is placed in white oak barrels and aged for up to eight years (compared to three years for regular Tabasco sauce).

This year, a small batch of Tabasco Family Reserve Pepper Sauce is available to the public. You can pick up a bottle (five ounces) for $24.95 (the regular five-ounce bottle is $9.00).

The 2011 Family Reserve Tabasco sports a
medallion. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

The company calls this special release a “collector’s item.” The expiration date on our bottle, 4/14, suggests that you have a few years to decide when to consume it. You’ll have to pry through the green wax seal to get to the sauce.

How does it taste? We can’t tell you: We’re keeping ours as a collector’s item! Is it 2.7 times as good as the $9 bottle? If you’ve tried it, please weigh in. The company >press release is mute on how Family Reserve tastes compared to Original Red. Aging produces rounder flavors, honing the rough edges. In general, the more a product ages, the more mellow it becomes and the more complex the flavors become.

The special edition is available only at the Avery Island gift store and online. Let your Tabasco-loving friends know, before it sells out.

Serve fried pickles with a beer or
a Martini. Photo courtesy ILovePickles.org.

This tip was inspired by the arrival of a gift of Vlasic Farmer’s Garden Pickles.

With little room in the fridge for a large bottle of pickles, we needed to use them up right away. The solution: an end-of-the-day celebration of fried pickles, martinis and beer.

Fried pickles—called frickles by some—are an easy and fun snack. Just batter pickle slices, fry and serve.

We headed to ILovePickles.org, the consumer website of Pickle Packers International (is Peter Piper is an honorary member?), for the recipe.

Dill pickle chips are most often used for frying, but you can also fry spears and whole pickles.

Get the recipe.

How many types of pickles can you name?
Check ‘em out in our Pickle Glossary.

As ketchup is to Americans, as soy sauce is to Chinese, the favorite condiment in ancient Rome was garum, an anchovy sauce.

While the Roman Empire is long gone, a form of garum is alive and well. Today it’s called colatura di alici, or juice of anchovies. (It’s also called anchovy sauce or anchovy syrup; the latter is inaccurate, as a syrup is a thick, viscous liquid.)

As strange as “anchovy juice” may sound, colatura is an aromatic condiment that enhances any dish, adding flavor without fuss.

Ask any great Italian chef, and you’ll probably find that colatura is their secret ingredient (it’s an umami food). Chef Lidia Bastianich told the Wall Street Journal just that. She uses a touch of colatura instead of salt.

Colatura (the word comes from the Latin colare, to strain) is made by curing anchovies with salt and extracting the free-run liquid that drains from them. It’s a laborious and painstaking process to create a truly artisan food.

The secret sauce: colatura. Photo courtesy
IASA.

The clear amber liquid is as highly prized by Italian cooks today as it was back in ancient Roman times. Back then, dinner guests would bring a bottle of colatura as a house gift, as one would bring a bottle of wine today.

In fact, prior to the 20th century, Italian families would make their own colatura for home use and for gifts.

Today, they can use this time for other pursuits thanks to Cetara, a small fishing village on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. The town produces colatura as an heirloom food.

Is colatura a great secret waiting to be discovered? We think so. Even if you’re not an anchovy fan, colatura is a wonderful blending ingredient, adding a briny, zesty flavor that isn’t fishy. Unlike anchovy paste and Southeast Asian fish sauces such as nam pla and nuoc mam,* the flavor is briny (so use less salt in the recipe).

Pick up a bottle of colatura di alici online for yourself or your favorite cook.

*Colatura is the free-run juice of salted anchovies, a richer product than most southeast Asian fish sauces. The latter is brine in which fish (or fish parts) have been pickled.

WAYS TO USE COLATURA DI ALICI