Preserved lemon is a condiment made of lemons that have been pickled in a brine of water, lemon juice, salt and sometimes, spices (they’re pickled lemons). The lemons then ferment at room temperature for weeks, or even months. The result is a concentrated and earthy lemon flavor without too much tartness. Preserved lemons are popular in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Moroccan cuisines.
Preserved lemons can be purchased in specialty food stores and on Amazon.com; or you can make your own with this preserved lemon recipe.
Bay leaves are the aromatic leaves of the bay laurel plant. Fresh or dried bay leaves are used to flavor soups, stews and braises. They are quite pungent, so one leaf is often enough to flavor an entire pot. When dried, the fragrance is herbal and slightly floral, with a flavor that is sharp and somewhat bitter.
Enliven tortellini with bay leaf and
preserved lemon. Photo courtesy McCormick.
McCormick’s Flavor Trends say that it’s time to combine the two for a new flavor sensation.
Recipe: Lemon-Bay Tortellini With Spinach & Wild Mushrooms
Bay leaves and preserved lemons combine into an aromatic mix of bitter, salty-tart and bright, slowly coaxed flavors. This sophisticated recipe for combines familiar tortellini ingredients—spinach mushrooms—with the bay leaf and preserved lemons.
What else to do with the bay leaf/preserved lemon combination? If you’ve never made a Moroccan tagine, this is the year to try one! Then, use let your palate guide you to more new recipe ideas.
Instead of generic “wine and cheese,” serve
different wines (or beers) in the same
category and turn your event into a “tasting.”
Photo courtesy Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.
Instead of making a random selection at the store, focus on selecting bottles for a beer or wine tasting.
Pick up to a dozen different kinds of a single beer (amber ale, IPA, stout, chocolate beer and ale) or wines from a particular region (New Zealand, South Africa) or a particular grape varietal (zinfandel, shiraz, semillon).
Guests not only enjoy the Academy Awards, but discover new favorite beers or wines in the process.
Looking for palate excitement this year? Like eating on the cutting edge?
McCormick’s 2010 Flavor Forecast offers 10 new ways to pair food and spices. How does a spice company decide what’s hot? The flavor experts at McCormick team up with leading chefs, food writers and other culinary authorities to identify the top flavor pairings and key trends that are poised to shape the way we eat.
This is the 10th anniversary of the McCormick Flavor Forecast, so join the celebration and try the recipes (THE NIBBLE has been publishing them since 2008). We’ll present one a day for the next 10 days.
The first pairing is almond and ale. You might enjoy nibbling on almonds as you drink an ale; now see what it’s like to put almonds into the ale.
Why does this pairing work?
You like ale, you like almonds; so how about
an Ale Almond Spritzer? Photo courtesy McCormicks.com.
Ale has a mildly sweet, full-bodied, fruity taste from the top-fermenting brewers’ yeast used to make the beer ferment quickly. (Bottom yeasts are used to ferment other beers, such as lager. See our Beer Glossary.) The types of hops used in making in ale also impart a bitter herbal flavor, which balances the sweetness of the malt.
Almonds are actually not a true nut, but rather the seed of a drupe, a fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell with a seed inside (other examples include peaches and apricots). Almonds possess a bittersweet flavor that leans toward the sweeter side.
The Recipe:
The bittersweet character of both ale and almonds makes a congenial, cozy and hearty match. Invite friends to try this recipe for an Almond-Ale Spritzer, a moderately sweet beer-based cocktail. Enjoy it with a good food-themed movie.
And come up with your own recipes: ale-steamed shrimp with toasted almonds, for example.
Make hamentaschen this weekend. Photo
courtesy Zabars.com.
You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy hamantaschen (also spelled hamentaschen), the traditional tri-corned cookie that celebrates the Jewish holiday of Purim. This year it’s celebrated from February 28th through March 1st.
The story of Purim, as told in the Bible’s Book of Esther, tells of the deliverance of the Jewish people from an annihilation plot of the Persian king Haman, who wore a tri-corner hat (hence the shape of the cookies, the name of which translates into “Haman’s pockets”).
Make this hamantaschen recipe, courtesy of New York food destination Zabar’s.
Buy hamantaschen online at The Exceptional Dessert (they’re decorated and dipped in chocolate).
The cost of party cakes is out of control: a 1/2″ thick piece of wedding cake for $10 a slice? That’s what wedding cake specialists charge in our town. To add to the pain, hotels charge a “cake slicing fee” to cut and serve the cake.
This, plus the fact that too many guests don’t like the heavy fondant that covers many wedding cakes, means that you’ve just paid a fortune to serve people something they may just pick at—or ignore completely.
But there’s a happy solution:
Cupcake “trees” have been fashionable at weddings and other parties for several years.
You can make the presentation even more exciting with cupcake wrappers—gracefully die-cut outer wrappers into which the finished cupcake is placed—are now offered in so many colors and designs, that there’s a beautiful presentation that elevates the already-charming cupcake.
A wide range of wrappers turn cupcakes
into celebration cakes. Photo courtesy KitchenKrafts.com.
Cupcake wrappers aren’t inexpensive—they run a dollar or more apiece. But combine the cost of the cupcake and the wrapper, and you can serve something less expensive, more exciting at the table and cake that people are excited to eat.
Next recommended improvement: Make the wrappers edible or collectible. It’s a crime to throw something so lovely away.
