Patti Costello, manager of the initiative, explains that her goal was to make popular foods healthier. “There are approximately 500 members of the Cayuga Nation across the United States,” she notes, “and quite a few of them have problems with weight, diabetes and other heath issues.”

Plus, members of the Nation “also love getting products that have been grown on their ancestral lands!”

While they’re not reduced-calorie products per se, the ingredients are excellent. We tasted the samples that Patty sent, and particularly love the conserves, jams and jellies. Be sure to try the “sweet heat”—jams and jellies made with jalapeños.

We’ve already laid in a supply for Mother’s Day party favors.

The products include:

Fruit and jalapeños combine to make exciting jams and jellies. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Everything we tried was delicious; the Green Tomato Raspberry Jam, an old-fashioned standard that is hard to find these days, is a knockout. We were so sad when the last drop was gone; but we can say the same about the Blueberry Rhubarb Jam, Strawberry Jalapeño Jam, and everything else we tried in the jam-jelly group.

You can see the full line at GakwiyoProvisions.com.

It’s delicious on everything from bread to ice
cream. Here, Habanero Gold Jelly. Photo by
Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

If you need guidance on how to use “hot” jams and jellies, here’s how we enjoy them:

1. Breads & Crackers. Use them on anything and everything: from toast and bagels to biscuits and muffins to flatbreads and crackers. Hot pairs well with dairy; the jams are terrific with cream cheese.

2. Breakfast Foods. Dab some on pancakes, waffles and French toast; use as a condiment with eggs or in an omelet; mix into a spicy fruit yogurt.

3. Sandwiches. Replace your regular jam—including on peanut butter sandwiches.

4. Hors D’Oeuvres. Top a block of cream cheese or a log of goat cheese and serve with crackers or sliced baguette; top a baked Brie (optional: sprinkle with sliced or chopped toasted almonds).

5. Savory Sauce Or Marinade. Add to marinade or basting sauce for meats or fish; deglaze the pan by adding jam plus water, stock or wine to make a sweet-and-sizzling sauce.

6. Meat Or Fish Condiments. The jams are a delicious accent to pretty much any grilled or roast meat, poultry or fish. The first night we tasted them, we enjoyed them with a Certified Angus Beef strip steak, grilled outdoors over coals. Delicious!

7. Dessert Sauce. Serve over ice cream, sorbet, frozen yogurt, cheesecake, or pound cake (with whipped cream).
 

Gakwiyo makes some 35 different products, and have recently started to sell them online and at farmers markets and festivals, to a great response.

Try some and you’ll see why!

We’re cooking up some food fun for tomorrow, April Fool’s Day. This year, it’s trompe-l’oeil food.

Trompe-l’oeil (pronounced trump LOY), French for “deceive the eye”, is an art technique that creates the optical illusion that a piece of two-dimensional art exists in three dimensions.

You may have seen some amazing sidewalk art that fools you into thinking you’re about to step into a hole, a pool, etc.

Here’s one of our favorite trompe l’oeil paintings, of a boy “climbing out of” the picture frame.

We’re adapting the “deceive the eye” reference to “food trompe-l’oeil”—food that looks like one thing but is actually another. Serve this “grilled cheese and tomato soup” dish, which is actually orange pound cake and strawberry soup.

Thanks to Zulka Morena sugar for the recipes and fun idea. If you’ve got a great palate or simply prefer less processed sugar, try it. The top-quality sugar is minimally processed and never refined. You can taste the difference!
 
 
RECIPE #1: ORANGE POUND CAKE

Ingredients

For The Pound Cake

 
For the Frosting

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT oven to 325°F. Butter and flour a standard loaf pan.

2. CREAM together in a medium bowl the butter, sugar, and orange zest until fluffy. Add the eggs in 3 parts, combining well after each addition. In a separate small bowl…

3. COMBINE the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to butter mixture until just combined. Add the sour cream and orange juice and mix well.

4. POUR into the prepared loaf pan, smoothing the top, and bake for 1 hour or longer, until a toothpick placed in the center comes out clean. If the top starts to brown too much before the cake is done, tent it with a piece of foil.

5. REMOVE from oven; cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool completely.

6. MIX the frosting ingredients together until well combined. Add more food color as needed to reach the desired color.

7. ASSEMBLE: Slice the pound cake into 1/2 inch slices. Spread a small amount of butter on one side and grill on a griddle or skillet until toasted looking, being careful not to burn. Let cool completely. Repeat with remaining slices. Once all are cool…

8. CUT them each in half to make the two halves of each “sandwich.” Spread about a tablespoon of frosting on a non-toasted side of the cake, spreading some to the edges to make it look like melted cheese, and then top with the other half. Repeat with the emaining slices.
 
 
RECIPE #2: CHILLED STRAWBERRY SOUP

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. DICE the strawberries, sprinkle the sugar over the top, and let sit for 15 minutes. Combine all the ingredients in a blender and purée until smooth. Let chill completely. If you want the color to be more orange, like tomato soup, add a few drops of yellow food color.

2. DIVIDE among 6 bowls. Drizzle a little heavy cream over the top and garnish with basil leaves.

[1] April Fool’s food: Standing in for tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich are strawberry soup and pound cake (photo © Zulka Sugar).

[2] Orange zest and juice create a delicious orange pound cake (photo © Eva Elijas | Pexels).

[3] Sour cream adds richness (photo © Yelena Yemchuk | Panther Media).

[4] Zulka makes less processed, better tasting sugar. (photo © Zulka Sugar).

[5] Turn fresh strawberries into delicious strawberry soup (photo © Good Eggs).

The origin of April Fools’ Day, sometimes called All Fools’ Day, is obscure. The most accepted explanation traces it to 16th century France.

Until 1564, the Julian calendar, which observed the beginning of the New Year in April, was in use. According to The Oxford Companion to the Year, King Charles IX then declared that France would begin using the Gregorian calendar, which shifted New Year’s Day to January 1st.

Some people continued to use the Julian Calendar, and were mocked as fools. They were invited to bogus parties, sent on a fool’s errand (looking for things that don’t exist), and other pranks.

The French call April 1st Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish. French children sometimes tape a picture of a fish on the back of their schoolmates, crying “Poisson d’Avril” when the prank is discovered.

What a fish has to do with April Fool’s Day is not clear. But in the name of a kinder, gentler world, we propose eliminating this holiday. (Source: Wikipedia)
 
 

One of our favorite salad greens, not served often enough in the U.S., is frisée (free-ZAY), curly endive that’s a member of the chicory family. In France, it is formally known as chicorée frisée. (See the different types of endive.)

There are many ways to serve a salade frisée, but a universal favorite is frisée aux lardons, Lyonnaise-style frisée salad.

This salad tops the frisée with a poached egg and lardons—crisp, browned chunks of pork belly—and a sherry vinaigrette. When you cut into it, the runny egg yolk gives the salad a wonderful, silky coat.

Another favorite variation includes crumbled Roquefort cheese or goat cheese with a fan-sliced pear and a few toasted walnut halves. It’s a great flavor layering of bitter from the frisée, salty and smoky from the lardons, sweet from the fruit and tangy vinaigrette.

You can serve salade frisée as a light lunch with crusty rustic bread, as a first course, or with soup for a light dinner.

An Italian touch: burrata cheese. Photo
courtesy Il Mulino Restaurant | NYC.

You can create your own signature frisée salad by adding some of these mix-and-match ingredients:

Fruits, Nuts, Vegetables

Chef Michael Mina varies the frisée salad by
substituting a Scotch egg for the traditional
poached egg. Photo courtesy Michael Mina.

Proteins

 
You can also add a touch of the sea with this side of white anchovy bruschetta.
 
Dressings

You can use a classic vinaigrette or a Dijon vinaigrette, but consider these special variations:

WHAT IS FRISÉE

Frisée is a salad green with distinctive pale, very narrow, curly leaves that grow in a bush-like cluster and are feathery in appearance. The name means “curly.”

Frisée is often included in mesclun and other salad mixes. It is extremely labor-intensive to grow, and therefore one of the costliest salad ingredients.

For that reason, it isn’t a conventional supermarket item, but can be found at upscale markets and purveyors of fine produce.

Frisée has a distinctive flavor and a delightful bitterness—less bitter than its cousins endive and radicchio. Its exotic feathery appearance has great eye appeal. Tips for using it:

 
The chicory genus is rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals, especially folate and vitamins A and K.
  

Both are cultured beverages—meaning that probiotic bacteria cultures are added to ferment fresh milk. But the “recipes” differ significantly. For starters, kefir may contain a dozen or more different bacterial strains and yeast cultures; buttermilk typically contains only one probiotic strain: lactic acid bacteria.

Kefir (kuh-FEAR, not KEE-fur) is fermented from whole milk using special kefir grains (more about them in a minute). Buttermilk, more formally called cultured buttermilk, is made by fermenting skim milk with lactic acid bacteria, Streptococcus lactis.

The probiotics enable both beverages to be digested more easily than milk. Both beverages have a yogurt-like tang.

Modern kefir is made in the original (plain) plus fruit flavors, to capitalize on the popularity of yogurt, and some people think that kefir is “drinkable yogurt.” But the kefir grains and a different fermentation process make it a different recipe from yogurt.

Both can be drunk straight and used instead of milk or buttermilk in cooking and baking. Some popular uses:

[1] Buttermilk, a staple in great-grandma’s kitchen. If you need just a cup, see the footnote below for how to make it from whole milk (photo © Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board).

MAKING KEFIR & BUTTERMILK

Cultured buttermilk. Before universal pasteurization, butter was made by letting whole milk stand to allow the cream to separate, rising to the surface; the cream would be skimmed off, leaving “skim milk” below. Natural fermentation would occur, souring the milk slightly.

Today, nonfat (skim) milk is acidified with lactic acid bacteria, which add tartness and cause the formation of more protein. This is why buttermilk is thicker than ordinary milk, and why modern buttermilk, made with added cultures, is called cultured buttermilk.

Kefir. Kefir is made with kefir grains—colonies of bacteria, yeast, proteins and sugars that resemble tiny buds of cauliflower—that ferment the milk. These granules of active cultures are strained from the fermented milk before it is bottled. Here’s more on how kefir is made, and a photo of the grains.

Homemade kefir continues to ferment as it ages. It’s a bit effervescent (bubbly) from the fermentation, where the cultures consume the sugars in the milk and release carbon dioxide. Commercial kefir cuts back on the effervescence.

You can make both kefir and buttermilk at home; but as with many foods, it’s much more convenient to simply buy a bottle or carton. If you want to try your hand at it, here’s a resource.

Drinking buttermilk and kefir can be beneficial to one’s health. The bacteria aid in the digestion of food, and consistent consumption can help to resolve certain intestinal conditions.

Some sources claim that the regular intake of either drink can reduce the risk of colon cancer.

But if you like yogurt in general, and haven’t enjoyed a glass of buttermilk or kefir, pick up one of each and taste them side by side.

And if you’re not going to drink all of it or whip up some smoothies, definitely bake or cook with it.

________________

*How to make buttermilk. You don’t have to buy a quart of buttermilk when you need a cup or less. You can make 1 cup of buttermilk by adding 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice or vinegar to a one-cup measure, plus enough milk to make 1 cup. Stir and let sit. For 1/2 cup, halve the recipe.

Credit for the spread of boiled pasta in the West is given to Arabs traders who packed dried spaghetti-type pasta on long journeys over the famed “Silk Road” to China. It was easy to reconstitute into a hot meal along desolate trails. They brought it to Sicily during the Arab invasions of the 8th century and planted the seeds of an Italian culinary breakthrough.

There are records of pasta in Italy before Marco Polo returned from the Far East (he set out in 1271 and returned in 1295). In 1279, in his last will and testament, a Genoan soldier named Ponzio Baestone bequeathed “bariscella peina de macarone,” a small basket of macaroni.

So what part did Marco Polo play? The record is so scant, we’ll never know; but it is conjectured that he brought back “pillow pasta”—boiled dumplings that evolved into agnolotti and ravioli.

Here’s a brief history of pasta.

TYPES OF PILLOW PASTA

Pillow pasta is stuffed pasta, but not all stuffed pasta is pillow pasta. The other sub-category includes the large tubes that are stuffed and baked, like manicotti. (Other tube pasta, such as penne, rigatoni and ziti, are too small to be stuffed but are covered with heavier sauces, which are meant to catch in the hollows of the tubes.)

Pillow pasta comprises fresh pasta sheets stuffed with a filling. The filling is placed on the flat sheet of pasta, another sheet is placed on top, the shapes are cut and the edges are sealed.

 
How many of these pillow pastas have you had?

Agnolotti: Small stuffed pasta in the shape of a half moon, similar to mezzalune and pierogi. The term is Italian for “priests’ caps.” Photo.

Cannelloni: Rectangular sheets of pasta dough that are filled and rolled into tube shapes. The name is Italian for “large reeds.” They can easily be confused with manicotti, which are pre-formed tubes that are stuffed (the word comes from the Italian word manica, sleeve).

Gnocchi: These oval bites are technically dumplings, and do not have a noodle wrap. But because they’re pillowy bites we want to include them on this list. Gnocchi can be made of semolina or potatoes with cheese or eggs added to the dough. They can be flavored with basil, saffron, spinach or tomato, then boiled, baked or even fried.

Mezzalune: Literally “half moons,” a crescent-shaped stuffed pasta.

Ravioli: The original “pillow pasta” can be oval, rectangular, round, square, sunflower-shaped (called girasole) and triangular (called pansotti). There are also specialty shapes, from fish to hearts. The name is a diminutive of rava, little turnip, which may or may not have been an early stuffing.

Raviolini: Miniature ravioli. They can be served as a pasta dish, hors d’oeuvres or put into soup, like won tons.

Ravioloni: Very large ravioli. They can be as large as three-inch circles and four inch squares or rectangles. In this photo, you can see that the piece at the right is almost as long as the fork.

Tortellini: Thin strips of raw filled pasta pinched to form a navel-like shape. A popular dish with sauce, it is also served in soups, as in the classic dish, tortellini in brodo. We serve them as cocktail party appetizers with a dip. More.
 
GIOVANNI RANA PASTA

We recently celebrated March 20th, National Ravioli Day by pigging out on a huge supply of Giovanni Rana pasta, along with another fresh pasta brand.

Hands down, Giovanni Rana was the winner. The venerable Italian artisan producer—who now makes most of the products for the U.S. market here—uses ingredients that are top-knotch; you can taste the difference. We were sent four of the seven varieties ravioli: Artichoke, Cheese “Delicato,” Cheese “Forte” and Spinaci e Ricotta, plus four sauces.

The other flavors including Caprese (basil and mozzarella), Chicken Rosemary and Mushroom. We’ll be seeking them out. (The company also makes tortellini, long cut pasta and gnocchi.)

The ravioli, sold fresh in bags, cook up in two minutes—it takes longer to heat the sauce! The sauces are very dense; a little goes a long way.

Ravioli Vs. Tortellini: A Revelation

After tasting the prosciutto tortellini at the same time as the ravioli, we’ll probably never buy tortellini again.

With all due respect to this popular dish and the quality of Giovanni Rana’s product, we had a revelation: It’s too much pasta and not enough filling. Since one eats pillow pasta for the filling, there’s too little of it in tortellini to deliver on expectations.

Check out all of the delicious pastas at GiovanniRana.com.

If you’re in New York City, head to Chelsea Market, where Giovanni Rana has a restaurant (cucina) and fresh pasta shop (pastificio).