THE NIBBLE BLOG: Products, Recipes & Trends In Specialty Foods
Also visit our main website, TheNibble.com.
|
October 27, 2011 at 8:03 am
· Filed under Tip Of The Day
|
|
It’s easy to make your dinners look
this good. Photo courtesy SeaBear.com. |
|
We’ve suggested this before, but are returning to this tip because food plating is an effortless way to make your meals look more exciting.
Instead of placing food in three separate piles on a plate, do what some fine restaurants do: create a “skyscraper” of food, topping each item with another.
The process is easy:
Plate the base. Start with rice, beans, mashed potatoes or mashed squash, vegetables or a chunky vegetable purée.
Top it with the protein.
Crown it with a third component: a complementary garnish that can be anything from sautéed mushrooms, spiced apple slices, crisped leeks, asparagus, pickled vegetables—whatever.
|
|
Add an optional sauce. The dish above features “maître d’hôtel” sauce made of butter, lemon juice or vinegar, chopped parsley and seasonings. In France, it’s a popular accompaniment to fish, poultry and meat.
Snip fresh herbs over the dish: basil, chives, parsley, etc. (not shown in photo). We use kitchen scissors to snip them finely. They’ll add color, flavor and visual appeal.
Let us know your favorite combinations.
|
|
|
Permalink
|
|
October 27, 2011 at 7:31 am
· Filed under Candy & Confections, Chocolate, Halloween & Fall, Recipes
|
|
Show of hands: Are these Halloween strawberries cuter than yesterday’s meringue ghost cookies? Not as cute? A tie?
You can send them as a gift, via SharisBerries.com.
Or you can make your own.
You can even plan a strawberry-decorating get-together this weekend. Ask a friend or two if they want to bring their own ingredients and join you. (They’ll also need to bring a baking pan to carry home the decorated berries.)
Ingredients
1 quart of fresh strawberries (1-1/2 pounds—you may wish to go for large or jumbo berries)
8 ounces white chocolate (chocolate chips work fine), plus dark chocolate morsels if you want to make dark strawberries as well
Red and yellow food coloring (to create orange)
|
|
Who said boo? Photo of chocolate-covered berries courtesy SharisBerries.com. |
|
Halloween-colored sprinkles, confetti or other embellishments (check the cake-decorating aisle of your grocery store)
Parchment paper
Chocolate tempering machine or substitute (if you find that you enjoy making chocolate-covered berries and want to do it regularly, you can pick up an inexpensive electric melting pot)
Preparation
1. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Wash and completely dry the strawberries so the chocolate will adhere properly. You may wish to do this a couple of hours in advance.
2. If you own one or can borrow a chocolate tempering machine, great! If not, simply melt the chocolate in a microwave oven or double boiler. For the microwave, melt at half power for 1 minute in a microwave-safe bowl; stir, then heat at 30-second intervals until completely melted.
4. For orange chocolate, whisk two drops of yellow and one drop of red food coloring into melted white chocolate; stir and continue to add color until you get the right shade of orange.
5. Holding each strawberry by the stem, dip about half of it in chocolate. Give it a quick twist, shake off the excess and point it at the ceiling for a second, bottom side up, to be sure the chocolate adheres.
Decorating The Berries
Confetti Design: Before chocolate dries, roll the berries in sprinkles or confetti. Place on parchment paper to set. You can also set the chocolate by putting the tray in the fridge for 5 minutes.
Jack O’ Lantern Design: Melt dark chocolate morsels or a plain chocolate candy bar. Pipe on the face using a pastry bag and a fine tip.
Swirl Design: Use the tines of a fork dipped into melted chocolate of contrasting color(s). Your swirls won’t be as thin and perfectly circular as in the photo, but a thicker swirl is just as good.
Ghost Design (not shown): Dip berries in white chocolate. With the tip of the strawberry as the top of the ghost’s head, pipe eyes in dark chocolate.
|
|
|
Permalink
|
|
October 26, 2011 at 10:15 am
· Filed under Fish-Seafood-Caviar, Kids, Kitchenware-Tabletop, Rice-Beans-Grains-Seeds, Snacks, Top Pick Of The Week
|
|
From hors d’oeuvre to sushi to snacks,
Rice Cube turns out dazzling food in minutes. |
|
Faster than most recipes. More powerful than many kitchen utensils. Able to turn out dazzling foods in a single bound.
It’s our latest super gadget find, the Rice Cube.
This handy gadget will help you turn out impressive foods for just about any purpose—from hors d’oeuvre and sides to snacks and desserts.
And it’s so easy, even the kids can help out, or create their own kid-flavored snacks: carrots and peas rice cubes, peanut butter and raisin rice cubes…the combinations are infinite, and include everything from BBQ pork to smoked salmon to a “rice pudding” cube.
Rice Cube also helps you make sushi at home without having to master the rolling mat.
Check out this amazing little gadget.
Good things come in small packages. Consider the Rice Cube for holiday gifts for friends who love to cook and entertain.
Perhaps your first social event of the new year can be a cube-off competition.
|
Rice Cube can “cube” other foods, as well. Read the full review.
RICE 101
There’s more to rice than “white” and “brown.” Take a look at our glamorous Rice Glossary for gourmet rices that are begging to be cubed.
|
|
|
Permalink
|
© Copyright 2005-2026 Lifestyle Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. All images are copyrighted to their respective owners.
