It’s National Iced Tea Month, so we‘re repeating one of our favorite tips for iced tea lovers:

Make your ice cubes from the same tea.

This way, you can keep your iced tea ice-cold without diluting it. It’s a more elegant solution than brewing the tea extra-strong, anticipating that it will be diluted by regular ice cubes.

You can also use the tea ice cubes in lemonade, creating an “Arnold Palmer” effect; or use them to add a different flavor nuance to any cold drink, including cocktails.

And it’s a great use for leftover tea.

HOW TO MAKE ICED TEA ICE CUBES

While it sounds like a no-brainer, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

1. BOIL the water and pour over tea in a heat-resistant pitcher. Allow to infuse for the variety’s recommended steeping time.

2. REMOVE tea bags or loose tea; allow tea to cool to room temperature. Pour tea into ice cube trays and place in freezer.

3. KEEP ice cubes in the tray or remove to a freezer bag or other container so you can freeze more ice cubes. Make black, green and herbal tea ice cubes, depending on what you typically drink.
 
YOU CAN ALSO MAKE ICE CUBES FROM COFFEE, LEMONADE, JUICE & WINE.

June 7th is National Donut Day. The holiday was created in 1938 by the Salvation Army, to honor the women who served donuts to servicemen in World War I (at that time, it was called the Great War).

From its first appearance in 17th-century English, the word evolved from dough-nut to doughnut to donut (see the doughnut history below).

But the latest evolution in the doughnut category is very recent:

Dominique Ansel, an innovative French pastry chef with a bakery in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, has invented the Cronut.

As things do in the digital age, it quickly became a craze, with long lines waiting to buy the 250 Cronuts made daily, and scalpers selling the $5 Cronuts for $40.

The original Cronut, invented by pastry chef Dominique Ansel of New York City. Photo courtesy Dominique Ansel Bakery.

A hybrid of a croissant and a doughnut, the secret recipe includes the puff pastry layers of a croissant but with a hole in the middle. The dough is injected with the filling of a doughnut, then fried and glazed like a doughnut. The result: a crunchy outside and a soft inside.

Ansel has registered the name Cronut. (Registration, which entitles the name to a “tm” mark, is the step before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approves the mark, at which time the tm becomes an ®.)
 
 
WHO IS DOMINIQUE ANSEL?

Dominique Ansel is a French pastry chef who spent seven years at the legendary Parisian bakery, Fauchon, ultimately arriving in New York City for a six-year stint as executive pastry chef at Daniel.

In November 2011, he opened Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City. His excellent skills, coupled with a vivid imagination, have produced innovative delights, of which the Cronut is just one.

Pillsbury got on top of the trend and created its own version of the Cronut—one that everyday folks can create at home. The recipe uses the dough of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, prepared vanilla pudding instead of custard, jelly or pastry cream; and a drizzle of salted caramel.

It doesn’t have the complexity of the Cronut, but it’s close enough. More importantly, it’s easy to make. For some people, that beats lining up on the street at 6 a.m., waiting for the Dominique Ansel Bakery to open at 8 a.m.
  
 
SALTED CARAMEL CRESCENT DOUGHNUTS

Ingredients

1. HEAT oil in deep fryer or 2-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat. to 325°F.

2. SEPARATE crescent dough into 4 rectangles. Firmly press perforations to seal. Stack 2 rectangles on top of one another. Fold in half widthwise to make tall stack. Repeat with remaining 2 rectangles.

3. Use a 3-inch biscuit cutter to cut 1 round from each stack; use 1/2-inch biscuit cutter to cut small hole in center of each round. Reroll remaining dough to cut a third doughnut.

4. FRY the doughnuts in hot oil 2-1/2 minutes on each side, or until they are a deep golden brown and cooked through. Drain on paper towels. Cool 5 minutes.

5. CAREFULLY SPLIT doughnuts in half. Place pudding in decorating bag fitted with a tip, and pipe half of the pudding onto bottom half of each doughnut. Top each with some of the caramel sauce; sprinkle with salt. Cover each with top of doughnut.

6. MIX powdered sugar in small bowl with enough milk to create a spreading consistency. Spread on tops of doughnuts. Drizzle with additional caramel sauce.

 
DOUGHNUT HISTORY

Although dough was fried in oil as far back as ancient Rome, food historians generally credit the invention of deep-fried yeast doughnuts to Northern Europeans in Medieval times.

The word doughnut refers to the small, round, nutlike shape of the original doughnuts—the hole came later. “Donut” is an American phonetic rendering from the 20th century.

Doughnuts were introduced to America in the 17th century by Dutch immigrants, who called them oliekoecken, oil cakes (i.e., fried cakes). In the New World, the doughnut makers replaced their frying oil with lard, which was plentiful and produced a tender and greaseless crust.

Other immigrants brought their own doughnut variations: the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Moravians brought fastnachts to Lancaster, Pennsylavnia and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, respectively; the French brought beignets to New Orleans.

By 1845, recipes for “dough-nuts” appeared in American cookbooks; chemical leavening (baking powder) was substituted for yeast to produce a more cakelike, less breadlike texture; and inexpensive tin doughnut cutters with holes came onto the market.

In Sweden, Midsummer marks the start of summer holidays. Midsummer Eve is always the Friday in the middle of the month. People head to the country to be close to nature, enjoy a delicious smorgasbord with beer and aquavit (no wine!), and be with family and friends.

If you’ve seen Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, or Woody Allen’s parody of it, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, you get the drift.

Celebrants pick wildflowers to weave into wreaths, set up the maypole and outdoor dance floors. Midsummer is supposed to be a magical time for love. But we’d like to focus on that big table laden with food, the smörgåsbord.

Swedish retailer IKEA has an annual Midsummer Smörgåsbord; you can purchase tickets for the 6/14 event at the store. They sell out, so do it in advance—$12.99, for adults, $4.99 for kids. Details at IKEA-USA.com.

Pickled herring canapés on pumpernickel bread with gherkins. Photo by Marta Sobo | SXC.

MAINS

 
SIDES

While you may not have an inventory of Swedish music, ABBA always works for us!
  

Today’s tip comes from McCormick, and it illustrates how easy it is to make gourmet condiments in your kitchen. Just open the bottle of mayonnaise, mustard or ketchup and add herbs and spices.

Use the recipes below on burgers, grilled chicken, hot dogs and brats, sandwiches/wraps and anything requiring some condiment verve.

Just combine the ingredients and whisk thoroughly to blend. Letting them sit in the fridge for a half hour or longer allows the flavors to meld.

How do you define a condiment? See below.

> National Condiment Month is September.

> National Ketchup Day is June 5th. The history of ketchup.

> National Mayonnaise Day is May 5th. The history of mayonnaise.

> National Mustard Day is the first Saturday in August. The history of mustard.
 
 
GOURMET KETCHUP RECIPES

 
 
GOURMET MAYONNAISE RECIPES

 
 
GOURMET MUSTARD RECIPES

 
 
FOOD 101: CONDIMENTS

A condiment is a food product used add flavor to another food. Hot sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, salad dressing, relish, syrups and vinegar, among many others, are condiments.

The word is first found in print in late Middle English, in the period of 1400–1450, derived from Middle French. The French took it from the Latin condimentum, meaning spice, seasoning or salt, and the verb condire, to preserve, pickle or season.

There is disagreement as to what constitutes a condiment. Some say that salt and spices are condiments; others say that a condiment must be more complicated and moist—i.e, with some liquid in its make-up.

Formal sauces belong in the sauce category; they are not condiments. Thus, while a mayonnaise dip for asparagus is a condiment, hollandaise sauce on the asparagus is not.

Relish is a condiment; pickles are not (they’re vegetables, which happen to be preserved). If you‘re not sure if something is a condiment or belongs in another category, bring the debate to the dinner table. You’ll have fun working it out.

[1] We mixed ketchup with salsa: What a great idea! (photo © Potato Goodness)!

[2] For sandwiches, burgers, deviled eggs, whatever, it’s great to have a choice of flavored mayonnaise (photo © Chef Eric LeVine).

[3] Fries with three different flavors of mayonnaise dips (photo © Le District | NYC).

[4] We mixed mustard with sauerkraut to create a tangy, textured mustard for pork chop (photo © National Pork Board).

So we searched for other ways to use the rice, and found five more ways to employ uncooked rice in the kitchen.

1. BAKING

You can buy pie weights to blind bake your crusts, or you can use the rice or beans you have on hand. In this case, reserve the “pie rice” for this exclusive purpose; you don’t want to cook with it after it’s been dried by oven heat.

2. COFFEE GRINDER

Clean your coffee and spice grinders—every month, if you use them daily. Beyond brushing out leftover particles, clean the undersides of the blades and absorb other buildup with a “rice treatment.”

Too much rice? Beyond cooking it, we’ve got five ways to use it in the kitchen. Photo courtesy United Rice Mills.

How do you check if your cooking oil is hot enough? If you don’t have a deep fryer with a temperature dial, you could use a thermometer. Or, just drop a grain of rice into the oil.

If the rice rises to the surface of the oil and begins to cook, the oil is ready for frying.

4. RIPEN FRUIT

Want to ripen fruit faster? If you don’t have an apple*, store the fruit in a container of rice.

Check on the fruit twice a day so it doesn’t over-ripen. The rice is still good for cooking.

*A favorite trick is to place the unripe fruit in a paper bag with an apple. The ethylene released by the apple ripens the fruit overnight.

If you live in a humid climate, your salt make clump. Rice comes to the rescue: Add a few grains of rice to your the salt shaker to prevent clumping.

For open boxes of salt, put the rice in a tea ball or tie it in a piece of gauze or cheesecloth like a bouquet garni.

BONUS

You can also make rice milk from scratch (other than rice, of course!) is water and salt. Here’s the recipe.

Here are more ways to use rice, for non-kitchen tasks in your home.