September 15th is National Crème de Menthe Day. Crème de menthe, French for “mint cream,” is a mint liqueur made with dried peppermint or spearmint, steeped in grain alcohol for several weeks. The mint is then filtered out and the infused alcohol is mixed with sugar. The liqueur is aged for a month before bottling.

It’s typically 25% alcohol by volume (A.B.V.), which translates to 50 proof.

There is no crème (cream) in crème de menthe. “Crème” refers to the higher amount of sugar used to make it.

Note that crème de menthe is not the same as peppermint schnapps. Peppermint schnapps has a higher alcohol content and a more intense, less sweet flavor.

A good brand of crème de menthe is absolutely delicious. Mint lovers will, well, love it.

There are two varieties of crème de menthe. Both taste pretty much the same, with a fresh mint flavor.

 
Want to make your own crème de menthe? See the footnote* below.
 
 
CRÈME DE MENTHE USES BEYOND COCKTAILS

We love mint flavor, so we use crème de menthe:

 
Before we get to the crème de menthe brownie recipe, here’s a bit of…
 

CRÈME DE MÈNTHE HISTORY

As with many other liquers, crème de menthe was developed as a digestif, sipped from a small glass after a big meal.

It was created in France in 1885 by in France, by Émile Giffard, a pharmacist in Angers, in the Val de Loire.

He researched the digestive and refreshment qualities of mint, then crafted the liqueur into the colorless (white) variety.

In those days, liqueurs were commonly drunk after dinner to help with digestion. Giffard made his mint liqueur available to the Grand Hotel in Angers. It was a great hit with the guests [source].
 
 
RECIPE: CRÈME DE MÈNTHE CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

Thanks to Taste Of Home for this yummy recipe.

There is no alcohol in it. The alcohol would evaporate in the oven heat, leaving only the flavor of mint. The mint extract serves that purpose here.

However, you can certainly sip a glass of crème de menthe as you enjoy a brownie.

Ingredients For The Brownies

 
For The Filling

 
For The Topping

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 5-7 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the syrup and vanilla. Add the flour and salt; mix well.

2. POUR into a greased 13×9-inch baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes (top of brownies will still appear wet). Cool on a wire rack.

[1] A mint lover’s delight: chocolate crème de menthe brownies (photo © Taste Of Home)

[2] Bols, a leading brand of crème de menthe (photo © Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority).

[3] This recipe uses regular and mint chocolate chips (photo © Bella Baker [now closed].

[4] Mint chips. These are from Beaulah’s Candyland on Amazon. If you can’t find mint chips, see the footnote† below (photo © Beaulah’s Candyland).

[5] Want to make your own chocolate syrup? Here’s a recipe (photo © I Am A Baker).

4. MAKE the topping. Melt the chocolate chips and butter. Cool for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Spread over the filling. Chill. Cut into 72 bars. Store in the fridge.
 
________________

*Homemade Crème De Menthe Recipe. Ingredients: 1-1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, 1-1/2 cups vodka, 1-1/2 cups sugar, 1 cup water. Preparation: (1) Measure out 1 cup of the mint leaves, tear them into quarters, and add them to a 750 ml glass jar with a tight cap (for the jar, note that a 750 ml bottle of vodka is 25 ounces). Pour the vodka on top. Shake and let steep for 12 hours; then strain the mint leaves and return the infused vodka to the jar. Note that because the leaves have not been commercially macerated, the color will be more yellowish than green. You can adjust it with food color later. (2) Bring the water and sugar to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, cool, and add to the vodka. Tear the remaining 1/2 cup of mint leaves and add them to the jar. Shake and let steep for 10 hours. Strain twice to remove all pieces of mint leaves. You’re ready to enjoy your crème de menthe.

†If you can’t find mint chocolate chips, place 2 cups (12 ounces) of semisweet chocolate chips and 1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract in a plastic bag. Seal and toss to coat. Allow the chips to stand for 24-48 hours.

[1] Black and white cookies, so craveable (photo © American Heritage Chocolate).

[2] Some bakers get creative. Dana’s Bakery makes black and white cookies with a surprise inside: rainbow cake (photos #3 and #4 © Dana’s Bakery)

[3] Dana’s Bakery also makes chocolate chip black-and-whites, gluten-free black-and-whites, s’mores black-and-whites and vegan black-and-white cookies.

[4] For pink parties, Valentine’s Day and other pink-themed events, many bakers offer pink-and-whites (photo © City Sweet Tooth [now closed]).

[5] For harvest season and Halloween (photos #5 and #6 © William Greenberg Desserts).

[6] Pick your colors!

Oh, what a great reason to eat black and white cookies: September 14th is National Black And White Cookie Day. One of our favorite cookies since childhood, these large cake-like cookies are iced, half in vanilla fondant or boiled icing, half in chocolate icing. Today, most bakers use boiled icing; it’s easier and less expensive than fondant.

Because some of the cookie’s fans preferred one side of icing more than the other, some bakers make all-chocolate or all-vanilla-iced cookies in addition to the black-and-white. We call them “full moon cookies” (you heard it here first).

A good black-and-white cookie is fresh, so that the yellow cake is not hard* (it dries out easily). A tip: If you’re buying them in a store where you help yourself, to place a finger on the underside and press. It should be springy.

The cake is made with vanilla extract and ideally, a teeny hint of almond extract in it. The icing has just enough sugar, not too much.

Pursuant to the ideal of soft cake, black-and-whites are actually neither cookie nor cake, but a hybrid. They are a drop cake†, which adds extra flour to cupcake batter so the batter can be dropped on a baking sheet without running.

Like cookies, they are finger food. Unlike cookies, which are hard and can be stored at room temperature two to three weeks (2 months in the fridge, 8-12 months in the freezer), they need to be consumed within a day.

Black-and-whites are also called half moon cookies, a term you’ll see more of in the cookie’s history below.
 
 
NAME YOUR COLOR!

A black-and-white isn’t always iced with chocolate and vanilla. Sometimes colored icing is substituted for the chocolate; for example, pink and white icing for Valentine’s Day (photo #4), green and white icing for St. Patrick’s Day, blue and white icing for Chanukah.

For Halloween, bakers often do white and orange, or chocolate and orange (photo #5); and similarly, with red and green for Christmas.

Sometimes the colors are replaced entirely, e.g. with team colors or wedding colors (photo #6).
 
 
BLACK & WHITE COOKIE HISTORY

The black-and-white cookie, a New York City favorite for generations, has an uncertain origin.

The earliest printed reference we’ve found is a testimony from a third-generation baker at Glaser’s Bakery on the Upper East Side, who noted that the bakery had made black-and-white cookies since it opened in 1902 (source).

Glaser’s black-and-whites were the dry cake variety, with thick layers of fluffy frosting instead of the fondant-like icing.

Is it possible that the bakery founder, a Bavarian immigrant named John Herbert Glaser, brought the idea with him from Germany? Well…in Germany, black-and-white cookies are called Amerikaner (American) cookies [source].

So how did Amerikaners get to Germany? According to one source:

 
As with many things, even in the not-too-distant past, the facts have not yet been discovered.

(Alas, Glaser’s Bakery, long an institution on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, closed its doors after 116 years (on July 1, 2018). The third generation baker, Herb Glaser, was ready to retire.)
 
 
Now for the half moon cookies.

The half moons look just like black-and-white. In our youth, black-and-whites were also called half moon cookies.

The first print reference we found to a half moon cookiecites Hemstrought’s Bakery in Utica, New York, which started baking half-moons around 1925.

Did someone see thee black-and-white in New York City and bring the idea to Utica, some 240 miles away? Possibly? Probably?
 
 
Adding to the confusion are:

 
Some day, more data may emerge. Until then, enjoy National Black-And-White Cookie Day.
 
 
> THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF COOKIES
 
 
________________

*You may see the cake referred to as dry-style. This means a tight crumb, with extra flour added—not hard cake.

†A drop cake is an old term for a small cake made by dropping thick batter from a spoon into hot, deep fat; or baked in the oven on a well-buttered pan. Here’s a recipe for a deep fat fried drop cake.

Plan ahead for weekend cocktails: It’s Negroni Week, celebrated the second week of September.

The cocktail, made with gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, was invented at the Bar Cassoni (now the Caffè Cavalli) in Florence, Italy, in 1919. Count Negroni asked for a stronger version of the Americano, a cocktail, dating to the 1860s, also created in Italy, by Gaspare Campari.

If the name sounds familiar, Campari invented the eponymous apéritif wine that year (photo #2).

Here’s more history of the Negroni.

Negroni Week was established in 2013 by Imbibe Magazine and Campari, as a celebration of one of the world’s great cocktails and a charitable money-raiser.

According to a poll of bartenders worldwide to determine the world’s most popular cocktails, Drinks International, founder of the International Spirits Challenge, named the Negroni as #2 among the world’s top 10 cocktails.

Ready? Call some friends and plan for a cocktail hour. Food pairings are below.

Food Trivia: Campari is a bitter Italian liqueur made from the infusion of herbs and fruit in alcohol and water. Drinks with bitters began as medicine for stomach problems. An apéritif with bitters was considered a preventative measure against any digestive issues.

The use of bitters goes back to ancient Egypt and was further developed during the Middle Ages. Here’s more about it.

Negroni food pairings are below.
 
 
RECIPE: NEGRONI COCKTAIL

The Negroni is made in 1:1:1 proportions of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. There are many variations of the cocktail today. Check out these in L.A. Magazine, and our own Pomegranate Balsamic Negroni (photo #3).

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE ingredients in a shaker with ice.

2. STRAIN into chilled coupe or serve over ice in a chilled rocks glass.

3. GARNISH and serve.
 
 
NEGRONI FOOD PAIRINGS

Because the Campari gives the cocktail a distinct bitterness, it needs to be paired with strongly-flavored foods.

If you only want to have one dish, make it charcuterie platter along with strong cheeses, such as:

 
More choices:

 
Easy to buy and serve:

 
For something sweet:

 
 
> MORE GIN COCKTAIL RECIPES
 
> THE HISTORY OF COCKTAILS
 
> HOME COCKTAIL TIPS FROM PROFESSIONAL BARTENDERS

[1] The Negroni is usually garnished with an orange twist (photo © Vlady Nykulak | Unsplash).

[2] Campari is a bitter liqueur that’s key to a Negroni—and also a Boulevardier, Campari Spritz and numerous other cocktails (photo © Tim Sackton | CC BY SA 2.0-License).

[3] A Pomegranate Balsamic Negroni. Made with pomegranate balsamic vinegar, this Negroni will have guests wondering what the “special ingredient” is. Here’s the recipe (photo © Sid Wainer & Sons).

[4] From the early 1900s, Campari worked with some of the most celebrated poster artists. Here’s an exhibition of them (photo © Luiz Fernando Reis MMF | CC BY SA 2.0 License).

[1] It’s not just cucumbers: many fruits and veggies can be pickled, like these pickled radishes. Add them to salads, sandwiches, cheese plates, as garnishes and in a mixed pickle plate (photo © Simply Delicious Food).

[2] Pickled apples, a delicious condiment. You can pickle them in an hour—see below (photo © Best Apples).

[3] If you like a fruit or vegetable, quick-pickle it. Here, pickled fennel becomes a delicacy. We serve it with smoked salmon, chicken and pork (photo © Quinciple).

[4] The most frequently-found Korean kimchi in the U.S. is baechu kimchi, pickled napa cabbage (photo © Portuguese Gravity | Unsplash).

[5] Japanese pickled cucumber (photo by Katharine Pollak | © The Nibble).

Snack A Pickle Time, September 13th, is one of the more unusually-named food holidays. Pickle vegetables are an ancient food. Earthen pits were lined with leaves and filled with the items to be pickled. The earth maintained a low, steady temperature and may have contributed some microbes to speed the fermentation process. Naturally-present lactobacilli would begin fermentation within a matter of days; enough lactic acid would eventually be produced to preserve the food, sometimes for years.

At some point, vinegar made from fermented grapes was “discovered,” and vinegar in pots created pickling.

Here’s more on the history of pickles.

Your next step: Pick some pickles to celebrate the day. The celebration continues on November 14th, National Pickle Day. July is National Pickle Month.
 
 
PICKLED VEGETABLES WORLDWIDE

In the cuisines of the world, there are thousands of different pickle types. China makes an estimated makes 130 different kinds of pickles; there are some 200 types of Korean kimchi.

Pickled vegetables are used as condiments or eaten as side dishes.

What Americans call “pickles” are typically pickled cucumbers; but pickled apples, asparagus, beets, bell peppers (remember Peter Piper), cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, fennel, jalapeño, mushrooms, okra, onions, peaches, radishes, tomatoes, watermelon and many more foods are pickled—including sauerkraut, pickled cabbage—and hence, are also pickles.

Italian immigrants in the 19th century brought giardiniera, a delightful blend of pickled bell peppers, carrots, cauliflower, onions and zucchini.

Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, immigrants from countries beyond Europe brought their own wonderful pickle traditions. A small sample:

 
It’s not just fruits and vegetables: cheese, eggs, fish, meats, even tea, are pickled.

> Here’s a list of pickled foods worldwide.

Our own Pickle Glossary features mostly European-style pickles, with some global varieties added (we’ll be adding more).

It’s good reading (do you know the difference between a genuine dill pickle and a German dill pickle), and the pickles look delicious.

By the way, olives, which have been pickled in the Middle East since pre-history, are pickled—not pickled vegetables, but pickled fruits—the fruits of the olive tree.

Cucumbers are also botanical fruits, as are tomatoes (the difference between fruits and vegetables).
 
 
PICKLED FRUITS

What about pickled fruits? Long before the invention of canning, fruits were preserved by pickling.

In the U.S. alone, anything that could be pickled was pickled: apples, apricots, apricots (blackberries, blueberries, cranberries), cherries, crab apples, currants, grapes, mango, melon, peaches, pears, plums, raisins, tomatoes (including cherry and green tomatoes)…just about any fruit can be pickled.
 
 
QUICK PICKLING AT HOME

You don’t need to preserve fruits and vegetables to enjoy them pickled. You can pickle them in an hour without any equipment (meant to be consumed in a week or two, not for long-term storage).

Here’s how to do it.

Why not start with pickled apples, which are delicious:

 
 
PICKLING VS. FERMENTING

Pickling and fermenting are different ways to the same end, i.e., preserving the vegetable. The difference:

Who wouldn’t want to dig in to this plate of chicken and roasted potato wedges? You don’t need to know that September is National Potato Month; August 19th is National Potato Day. This is comfort food for every day of the year.

The recipe comes to us from the Chicago restaurant La Scarola (Italian for escarole), specializing in southern Italian food with lots of white wine and fresh tomato sauce.

The restaurant cites illustrious clientele such as Robert De Niro, Johnny Depp, Bill Murray and the Sinatra family. But true connoisseurs are just as illustrious.

Thanks to proprietor Joe Mondelli and chef Armando Vasquez for this Chicken Vesuvio recipe.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF CHICKEN VESUVIO

Chicken Vesuvio, a specialty of Chicago, is an Italian-American dish made from chicken on the bone and wedges of potato, sautéed with garlic, oregano, white wine and olive oil. It’s then baked until the chicken’s skin becomes crisp.

The casserole is often garnished with a few green peas for color; although baby arugula is a lovely touch (instead or with the peas).

In Chicago, one also often finds the technique applied to other foods: Steak Vesuvio, Pork Chops Vesuvio, even Vesuvio potatoes.

While the origins of the dish are not known, it might have been popularized by the Vesuvio Restaurant, which operated at 15 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, in the 1930s. Some food historians have suggested that variants of Chicken Vesuvio can be found among the chicken dishes of the traditional cuisines of southern Italy [source].
 
 
RECIPE: CHICKEN VESUVIO

This recipe is straight from La Scarola restaurant, and is restaurant-sized: three whole chickens! It’s easy to divide the ingredients by three to make dinner for four.
 
Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 400°F. Arrange the potatoes in single layer on one or two sheet pans. Add water to barely cover bottom of the pan. Cover the pan with foil; bake 15 minutes until potatoes are partially cooked. Remove from the oven.

2. SEASON the chicken with salt, pepper and oregano. Add equal amounts of vegetable oil and olive oil to coat a deep, wide skillet. Heat over medium-high heat. Add the chicken skin side down, leaving space in the pan to add potatoes. Use multiple pans if needed. Brown the chicken on one side, about 10 minutes.

3. TURN the chicken over; add enough potatoes proportionately to the number of chicken servings in the pan. Cook until the second side of chicken is brown.

4. ADD the garlic and place the pan(s) in the oven. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through (165°F in the center).

5. RETURN the pan to the stove. Add the stock, wine and peas proportionately to the number of servings in the pan. Bring to a simmer, stirring to scrape up any browned bits. Cook 5 minutes. Gradually add the butter and stir until the sauce is slightly reduced and creamy. Stir in the parsley.
 
 
> THE HISTORY OF CHICKEN
 
 
> THE HISTORY OF POTATOES
 
 
> THE DIFFERENT CUTS OF CHICKEN
 
 
> THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF POTATOES

[1] Chicken Vesuvio, crispy chicken and potato wedges (photo © Idaho Potato Commission).

[2] Buy the chicken whole or pre-cut (photo © Good Eggs).

[3] Russet potatoes (photo © Williams Sonoma).

[4] Green peas were originally added for a touch of color. You can use fresh or frozen (photo © The Chef’s Garden).

[5] Baby arugula (photo © Baldor | Facebook).