Versatile pistachio relish can be paired with
everything from crab cakes to dessert. Photo
courtesy Island Creek Oyster Bar.

Want to bring a special gift to your Thanksgiving hosts, or make something tasty to give to friends for the holidays?

Try this Pistachio Relish from Jeremy Sewall, executive chef of Boston’s Island Creek Oyster Bar. Chef Sewall follows the New England tradition of canning and preserves with house-made relishes and chutneys. They add a touch of vibrant fall flavor to savory dishes—and sweet ones, too.

He particularly enjoys this pistachio relish atop a crab cake:

PISTACHIO RELISH RECIPE

Yield: 1-2 quarts

Ingredients

*We don’t like sweet condiments on savory foods, so we reduced this to 1 teaspoon of sugar. You can eliminate it entirely.

Preparation

1. SWEAT garlic and onion in canola oil until translucent.

2. COMBINE the sugar and salt with the zest and juices from oranges and lemons. Simmer until the mixture has cooked down to a loose syrup. Remove from heat.

3. FOLD in the chopped pistachios.

4. COOL the mixture over an ice bath. Store in the refrigerator.

For gifting, pick up pretty jars and create a gift label with a use by date. Tell them to use the relish within 10 days, so you’ll get a thank-you call saying how delicious it is.

If you like the idea of food gifts, pick up a book of food gift recipes and ideas.

Other Uses For Pistachio Relish

This versatile pistachio relish can be used:

 
How would you use pistachio relish?
 
Find more of our favorite condiments and recipes.

Here’s a fall-winter spin on the popular appetizer, melon and prosciutto, that also allows you to substitute pancetta.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PANCETTA AND
PROSCIUTTO

Both pancetta (pan-CHEH-tuh) and prosciutto (pro-SHOO-toh) are Italian pork products.

Stuffed apricots can be served as an hors d’oeuvre or a first course. Photo courtesy Landana Cheese.

Prosciutto is often served as part of an antipasto platter and as an appetizer with asparagus, fresh figs or melon, either on the side or wrapped in a bundle.

While fresh apricots are a summer food, you can use dried apricots to make this a fall appetizer. This recipe makes eight two-piece servings
 
APRICOTS & PROSCIUTTO

Ingredients

 
Supplies

 
Preparation

1. DICE the cheese into rectangles. If using a round log, slice circles in half.

2. SLICE fresh apricots open to the center and fill them with a piece of goat cheese. If using dried apricots, sandwich a piece of cheese between two halves.

3. WRAP a slice of prosciutto around each apricot and spear it with a toothpick.

4. HEAT the grill pan and fry the apricots for 5 minutes until crispy.

5. SERVE with a white Italian wine, such as Verdicchio. You can serve these on a tray with cocktails, or plate them with a baby arugula salad with vinaigrette as a first course.

Check put all the different types of pork in our Pork Glossary.

Use frosted grapes to garnish. Photo of
vanilla bean cupcake with a center of
champagne whipped cream, frosted with
champagne butter cream and garnished with
a half a sugared grape, courtesy Yummy Cupcakes.

As the days grow cold, berries can be scarce—or costly.

Substitute a sugared grape. It‘s even more festive than a berry, and is easy to make (recipe below).

Sugared grapes can top any frosting or pudding, sorbet, ice cream or fruit salad. Or use them as a plate garnish with fish and poultry.

You can frost entire clusters of grapes and use them to garnish holiday platters and cheese plates.

HOW TO MAKE FROSTED SUGARED GRAPES

This easy recipe is adapted from Gale Gand’s Just A Bite, by Gale Gand and Julia Moskin.

You can use a half or whole grape for garnish.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. FREEZE. At least 3 hours and up to 7 days before serving, remove the grapes from their stems and place in the freezer. To frost an entire cluster, leave the grapes intact on the stems.

2. WHISK. When ready to serve, whisk the egg whites with the lemon juice in a large bowl until frothy. Put the sugar in another bowl.

3. COAT 1. Drop the grapes into the bowl of egg whites, then pour the contents of the bowl through a strainer to drain the liquid. Place the grapes on a paper towel and roll them around until most of the excess egg white has been absorbed.

4. COAT 2. Working in batches, add the grapes to the sugar and shake them around to coat. Shake off any excess. Use as garnish and serve.

COOKING WITH RAW EGGS

Raw eggs carry a slight risk of food-borne illness, including Salmonella. To reduce the risk, use only fresh, grade A or AA eggs. The eggs should be clean and properly refrigerated. Discard any eggs with cracked shells.

Cream of chestnut soup is just one delicious way to enjoy roasted chestnuts. Photo © Evegny B | Fotolia.

When the air becomes crisp and the autumn leaves rustle, the aroma of roasting chestnuts fills the air. Served up by street vendors in our town, this is old-time comfort food.

In addition to snacking on roasted chestnuts, we have a passion for chestnut soup and for the classic French dessert, Mont Blanc, which uses sweetened chestnut purée. (More about that below.)

Much of our canned chestnut supply is cultivated in, and imported from, southern-central France. Canned chestnuts are peeled and pre-cooked, so they can be enjoyed without “roasting on an open fire.”

Look for the Roland brand at your grocer’s or specialty food store. They’re available whole, peeled and pre-cooked, in water, or as a cream or purée. (If you’re new to cooking, please note: Chestnuts in water are NOT the same as water chestnuts. You want the former.)

Chestnuts are chock full of antioxidants, and studies show that they may reduce the risks of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Chestnuts also deliver one’s daily dose of vitamins B6 and C, and are a good source of fiber and potassium.

Chestnut soup is an easy-to-make comfort food and a classic to ward off the fall-winter chill. A recipe from chef and beekeeper Laurey Masterton follows. It’s from her forthcoming “The Fresh Honey Cookbook” (September 2013 / Storey Publishing).

“From-scratch advocates may want to roast and peel their own chestnuts,” says Laurey, “which is easy enough to do although time-consuming. Or you can purchase whole, peeled chestnuts.”

Don’t pair chestnut honey with the chestnuts. “Chestnut honey has too strong a flavor for this recipe,” she advises. “Instead, I suggest eucalyptus, a dark honey that doesn’t have an overly assertive taste, so the chestnut flavor can shine.” (See the different varieties of honey.)

The recipe serves 6–8.

We don’t like a lot of sweetness in soup, so we use only a teaspoon of honey.

CREAM OF CHESTNUT SOUP RECIPE

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE. Melt the butter in a large soup pot over low heat. Add the onion and sauté until transparent, about 5 minutes. Add the chestnuts, carrots and stock. Simmer over low heat until the chestnuts are very tender (until you can poke a fork through one), about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.

2. BLEND. Blend the soup with an immersion blender until completely smooth, or drain the vegetables in a colander and pulse them in a food processor until smooth; return to the pot and blend with the broth.

3. ADD. Add the cream, honey and sherry. Add the salt and a few grinds of pepper. Taste and adjust the seasonings. If the soup is too thick, add additional stock or cream. Warm over medium-low heat but do not boil, as the cream will curdle.

4. GARNISH. Garnish as desired and serve. We like the combined garnishes of chestnut pieces and fresh herbs, but you can serve the soup plain, with just a bit of fresh pepper and/or a simple crouton.

Find more of our favorite soup recipes.
 
MORE WAYS TO ENJOY CHESTNUTS

While chestnuts can be eaten raw, cooking them allows for a sweeter, more delicate flavor. Other delicious uses include:

October 20th is National Brandied Fruit Day. Brandied fruit—fruit salad flavored with brandy or cognac—is a dish that has fallen out of fashion in the era of modern cuisine. But it is easy to make, delicious to eat and very healthful.

Brandied fruit can be enjoyed on its own; or with a topping of sour cream or yogurt (plain or vanilla), blended with a bit of brown sugar. Add a plate of small cookies and you’ve got a fine dessert.

You can also use brandied fruit as a topping for angel, pound or sponge cakes; and under or over a scoop of sorbet.

START WITH THE FRUIT SALAD

The best fruit salad is an appealing mix of colors, flavors an textures.

Mix brandy with fresh fruit salad for a sophisticated and healthful dessert. Photo © M. Studio | Fotolia.

Cut larger fruits into even pieces; seed the grapes and pit the cherries. If you’re using fruits that brown, sprinkle the cut fruit with lemon juice. Slice bananas just before serving, as they discolor most quickly.

SIMPLE BRANDIED FRUIT

The easiest version is simply to sprinkle brandy over a fruit salad; cover and refrigerate for an hour or more. We actually mix a tablespoon with the fruit juices from the salad; then toss to ensure that all pieces are coated.

You can also add some mint leaves to the marinade. Before serving, remove them and replace with fresh mint leaves.

COOKED BRANDIED FRUIT

You can also brandy a fruit compote, which is mixed stewed fruit. These should be the best seasonal fruits, full of natural sweetness and flavor.

Here’s the recipe for compote.

BRANDY OR COGNAC

As the saying goes, all cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is cognac.

Cognac is grape brandy, a distillate of wine. It is specifically produced in the region surrounding the town of Cognac, in central France. It is double distilled using pot stills and then aged for at least two years. It must be made from a specific group of white grape varieties, as well.

Grape brandy can be made anywhere, from any grapes (brandy is also made from fruit and pomace), does not require double distillation or long aging.

Cognac is a better product. The double distilling and aging rounds out the spirit and produces more mellow flavors.

A beekeeper in the Catskills harvests honey twice a year. She bottles most of it for sale, and blends some of it into achingly good honey truffles.

Made with the finest 70% Belgian chocolate and sweetened only with Catskill Provisions’ wildflower honey, these truffles are gems for indulgent chocolate enjoyment, or a special trick-or-treat gift for Halloween. (Keep them on the list for holiday gifts, too.)

Any chocophile will appreciate some. The beautiful gift boxes are embossed with a honeycomb pattern. One might say that they’re the bee’s knees.*

Send for a box or two and let them melt in your mouth.

Read the full review.
 
*“The bee’s knees” is a Jazz Age idiom meaning something or someone considered extremely special. According to Mark Israel of the University of Ottowa, 1920s U.S. slang had a slew of similar phrases with the same meaning, including, but not limited to, “the cat’s pajamas” and the less familiar “the eel’s ankle,” “the clam’s garter,” “the kipper’s knickers” and “the sardine’s whiskers.” How about “THE NIBBLE’s quibble?”

You can purchase 4, 9 or 18 truffles. Go for 18! Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TRUFFLES?

 
Find more of our favorite chocolates in our Chocolate Section.

With all the lovely apples piled high in markets, it’s time to make homemade applesauce. Homemade applesauce is so head and shoulders above store-bought, that you’ve got to try it at least once.

In the video below, the cook doesn’t core the apples. Instead, the apple cores, seeds and all, go into the pot.

 
WHAT TYPE OF APPLE SHOULD YOU USE?

It’s a matter of taste, and you can try different varieties. We prefer a tart apple for more complex flavor. But we like red skin to add color and flavor to the sauce, so we bypass the popular (and easy-to-find) Granny Smiths.

Instead, we look for Braeburn, Jonagold, McIntosh, Northern Spy, Paula Red and Stayman varieties.

You may like your homemade applesauce so much that you’ll consider giving it as holiday gifts. Applesauce freezes nicely.

Grilled fish with grape relish. Photo courtesy
California Table Grape Commission.

Grapes are an easily portable snack and energy food, high in fiber, potassium and vitamin C. Composed 80% of water, they’re also a help with hydration.

Yet beyond snacking, versatile, popular grapes demand to be incorporated into recipes.

What kind of grapes? Many different subspecies are grown: Popular varieties include Thompson seedless. an early, green grape; red seedless. an early, red grape; Tokay and Cardinal, early, bright-red, seeded grapes; and Emperor, late, deep-red, seeded grapes.

But the grocery store typically doesn’t provide the details. It boils down to black, green and red grapes. You can do a taste test among them; we enjoy mixing up the colors in our recipes.

Seeded versus seedless grapes? Again, do a taste test. Seedless grapes are certainly more convenient, but you may prefer the flavor of the seeded varieties.

BUYING & STORING GRAPES

10 EASY WAYS TO ADD GRAPES TO YOUR RECIPES

Make grape jelly can be a challenge, but here are 10 easy ways to enjoy grapes.

1. Freeze the grapes as snacks. Just pull them off the stems and place them on a cookie sheet in a single layer to freeze; then store them in a plastic bag. You get a grape sorbet effect without added sugar.

2. Freeze the grapes as snacks. Make grape sorbet.

3. Use frozen grapes as ice cubes. Add them to soft drinks or sweet cocktails.

4. Make grape Margaritas. This frozen grape Margarita recipe is delish.

Serve with cocktails: Blue Cheese & Walnut Dusted Grapes. Photo courtesy Whole Foods Market. Get the recipe.

5. Make grape hors d’oeuvre. Skewer them with cubes of cheese or mozzarella balls, wrap them in prosciutto, or make this divine recipe (photo above) for Blue Cheese & Walnut Dusted Grapes appetizer pops.

6. Add grapes to a salad. Take a look at this recipe for Curried Chicken Salad With Grapes, Pecans & Pomegranate Vinaigrette or this recipe. Or add them to a radicchio salad.

7. Make a Waldorf Salad. This retro dish, created for ladies who lunched at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, consists of chopped apples, grapes and walnuts dressed with mayonnaise, on a bed of lettuce.

8. Add grapes to fish and seafood. We love this recipe for Grilled Whole Fish With Minted Grape Relish.

9. Serve grapes with cheese. We love grapes with blue cheese. Or, serve them with a slice of this savory blue cheese cheesecake.

10. Use grapes to garnish. You can garnish just about any dish with grapes. For desserts, roll them in confectioners sugar for “frosted” grapes.

11. Pickle them. Serve pickled grapes with sandwiches, seafood and poultry. Here’s an easy pickling recipe.

12. Make a dessert soup. Purée the grapes with some grape juice (we prefer Knudsen’s) and mint; sweeten to taste. Garnish with frozen grapes!

Find more recipe inspiration from the California Table Grape Commission.

It’s National Macadamia Nut Day, so today’s tip is to add some to your meals.

Believed to have originated in Australia, the nuts grow on a genus of evergreen trees. They were named after named after John Macadam, a botanist who first described the genus.

While macadamia nuts contain even more heart-healthy monounsaturated fats than the nuts included on the FDA’s recommended list of heart-healthy nuts, they did not make the list because of their caloric density. (The FDA recommends that an ounce of nuts a day can be part of a heart-healthy diet.)

A one-ounce serving of dry roasted macadamia nuts, about 10 nuts, has 200 calories.* But that doesn’t mean that you can’t include them in your meals—just don’t eat them by the bowl full. According to a 2008 study in the Journal of Nutrition, a diet rich in macadamia nuts may lower LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol (it’s the monounsaturated “good” fats lower blood pressure and cholesterol).

Macadamia nuts. Photo by Fotostreet | IST.

(Dog owners note: Like chocolate, macadamias are toxic to canines.)

WAYS TO ENJOY MACADAMIA NUTS

Some of our favorite uses:

 
Macadamia Butter

Pick up a jar of macadamia butter at a natural foods store (Artisana macadamia nut butter was a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week).

Use it as you would peanut butter—as a spread, in ice cream, in baking, in sauces. We like it as a sauce with this easy fish recipe, which serves 6:

FISH FILETS WITH MACADAMIA BUTTER

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. COOK THE FISH. Lightly rub fish fillets with oil and sprinkle with salt. Sauté or steam, as you prefer (you can also fry them). Move to a warm serving platter.

2. MAKE THE SAUCE. Melt the butter in a large skillet. Add the macadamia butter and cook over low heat for 1 minute.

3. PLATE & SERVE. Plate the fish, pour the macadamia butter sauce over the fillets. Garnish the fillets with chopped parsley and chopped macadamia nuts. Serve with a lemon wedge, your favorite green vegetable, steamed, and brown rice, quinoa or other whole grain.

More recipes.

Find more of our favorite nuts and nut butters.

 
*It also contains 2 g of fiber, 2 g of protein and 20 g of fat (including 4 g of saturated fat); 15% of the daily value (DV) for thiamine, 8% DV for magnesium, 6% DV for vitamin B6 and phosphorus, 4% DV for niacin and iron and 2% DV for zinc and calcium.
  

What’s your favorite way to use lemon juice? Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

August 29th was National Lemon Juice Day. We had a basket full of lemons on the kitchen counter, so we turned on the electric juicer and set out to see how many different things—edible things—we could do with lemon juice.

There are many uses for lemon juice in the home. A partial list includes: household cleaner, copper cleaner, stain remover, room deodorizer, laundry brightener, hair shiner, nail treatment, sore throat gargle and digestive aid.

Our focus was on food. But first:

HOW TO GET THE MOST JUICE FROM A LEMON

Before you begin, here are juicing tips to get more juice from your lemons (and other citrus):

Yield: 1 medium lemon yields 2-3 tablespoons of juice; 5-6 lemons will yield 1 cup of juice.

Zest: Don’t forget to save the zest. Here’s what to do with lemon zest or other citrus zest.
  
FOOD USES FOR LEMON JUICE

Beyond use in recipes, here are ways that lemon juice will make your life easier:

Anti-Browning Agent. Keep cut fruit and vegetables such as apples, avocados/guacamole, fruit salad, pears and potatoes from turning brown by sprinkling, tossing or brushing with a little bit of lemon juice (you can mix it into the guacamole).

Clean The Grater. Cheese is always stuck in our grater. Grab a lemon half and rub both sides of the grater with the pulp side. You can slice off the top of the lemon and use it for food.

Lemon Water. Perk up your daily glasses of water for flavor, the antioxidant vitamin C and other health benefits.

Marmalade. If you make jams and jellies, try lemon marmalade. We like it as a garnish with grilled fish/seafood and roast poultry.

Marinade. Add lemon juice to marinades for fish or meat. It’s a flavorizer as well as a tenderizer.

Pancakes. Lemon juice, along with baking powder, makes lighter and fluffier pancakes. Here’s a recipe.

Soft Drinks. We grew up in an era of Lemon Cokes. Add lemon juice to cola and fruit sodas. See how it perks up cherry, lemon-lime, orange and raspberry pop.

Veggie Saver. Perk up wilted lettuce and other greens by soaking them for an hour in a bowl of cold water and the juice of one lemon.

  
How do you use lemon juice? Let us know!