1. CREATE the eyeballs. Scoop small balls from a honeydew melon. Create a small space and place a blueberry in the center of each melon ball to resemble an eyeball. Skewer the melon eyeballs onto a cocktail pick and set aside.
2. RIM a Margarita glass or a rocks glass with Twang-A-Rita Black Salt. Fill the glass with ice.
3. COMBINE the tequila, melon liquor, lime juice, and agave syrup in a cocktail shaker. Shake for 10-15 seconds.
4. POUR into the glass, add the melon pick, and serve.
WHAT IS BLACK SALT?
Black salt refers to a variety of unrefined mineral salts that range from dark grey to black in color, including Hawaiian volcanic sea salt (a.k.a. black lava salt) and Cyprus black sea salt.
Hawaiian black flake salt, also called black lava salt, is a sea salt harvested from the Pacific Ocean surrounding the Hawaiian islands that is blended with activated charcoal derived from coconut shells. This gives the salt its distinct black color.
Cyprus black flake salt, harvested from the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Cyprus, is unique, with large black pyramid-shaped flakes that provide lots of crunch.
The sea sat is processed with carbon, which is obtained from naturally processed charcoal from soft woods such as birch, linden, and willow.
Kala namak, also called Himalayan black salt, is a variety that is not black but ranges from pink to dark violet in color. It has been used for hundreds of years in Asian cuisines for its distinctive flavor. In India, it is predominantly used in chaats, chutneys, raitas, and other savory dishes.
Made from crushed Indian volcanic rock salt, when mined it is actually reddish-black in color but takes on a pink hue upon being ground. It consists of primarily sodium chloride, plus trace impurities of sodium sulfate, sodium bisulfate, sodium bisulfite, sodium sulfide, iron sulfide, and hydrogen sulfide.
Sodium chloride provides a salty taste, iron sulfide provides a dark violet hue, and all the sulfur compounds give it a slightly savory taste as well as a highly distinctive aroma (like hard-boiled eggs), with hydrogen sulfide being the most prominent contributor to the latter. The acidic bisulfates/bisulfites contribute a mildly sour taste.
With National Pasta Day on October 17th, our Top Pick Of The Week is Sfoglini Pasta, a brand of fine artisan pasta that’s Italian in heritage but all-American, made in the Hudson Valley of New York State with the finest organic golden semolina* and three specialty grains from North American farms: einkorn, hemp, and rye.
Sfoglini works with local flour mills to source organic, non-GMO, whole-grain flour.
If you love pasta enough to want the best, take a look at Sfoglini† (sfo-LEE-nee), a line made in the Hudson Valley of New York State.
Like the finest artisan pastas from Italy, the flour is mixed into a dough. The dough is then extruded through bronze dies and slow-dried. Watch pasta being extruded in the video below.
Traditional bronze dies provide a beautiful, rough texture (it’s very subtle) that gives the sauce more texture to cling to.
The pasta is slow-dry at a low temperature, which preserves both flavor and nutrients.
As a comparison, mass-produced pasta uses Teflon® dies, which make a smooth-surface pasta.
The result, per Sfoglini (and we agree):
Sauceability: The sauce readily adheres to the pasta.
Forkability: The shape is easy to spear and it stays on your fork.
Toothsinkability: It is satisfying to sink your teeth into each piece.
Everything is done to enhance the overall eating experience. Sfoglini says that “it’s quality you can taste from the field to the bowl.”
We agree. Try some for yourself, and give them as gifts.
While an individual box of this exciting-looking pasta is a nice little gift, there’s a Pasta of The Month Club that gives the joy of great pasta every month.
Sfoglini specializes in short-cut pasta or short shapes, as opposed to the long form, ribbon, or strand pasta that includes everything you can twirl around your fork—from the most narrow, angel hair to the widest, pappardelle (plus lasagna sheets).
Sfoglini shapes are works of art. Not your basic elbows and butterflies.
Check up this lineup, which lets you make creative and interesting pasta dishes, and visit the website to see each shape.
Organic Wheat Pasta
Cavatelli
Cuttlefish Ink Spaccatelli
Saffron Malloreddus
Small Shells
Radiators
Reginetti
Sun-Dried Tomato Ziti
Tumeric Reginetti
Rigatoni
Trumpets
Whole Grain Organic Wheat Pasta
Whole-Grain Wheat
Whole Grain Radiators
Whole Grain Reginetti
Whole Grain Trumpets
Organic Einkorn Pasta
Macaroni
Organic Hemp Pasta
Hemp Radiators
Organic Rye Flour Pasta
Trumpets
Sfoglini pasta is a premium product and is priced higher than mass-produced supermarket brands.
However, if you appreciate fine food, the quality and taste are well worth the cost.
GET YOUR SFOGLINI PASTA
The line is carried at specialty food stores, gourmet food markets, and online.
Note #1: The video shows different shapes of pasta. While it may appear that one bronze plate makes all of the shapes, this is a composite video: Each is made with its own specially-shaped bronze die.
Note #2: The video has a lively soundtrack, so turn it down in advance if you wish.
[3] Reginetti pasta is also called mafaldine pasta. The name means “little queens” in Italian. It was named in honor of Princess Mafalda of Savoy, who met a tragic end‡ in World War II.
*Semolina is the coarsely ground and granular endosperm of durum wheat. These round golden kernels are the base of most American, and all Italian, dry pasta. Semolina is granular like sugar, not powdery like most other flours. Homemade fresh pasta is generally not made from semolina, but from general-purpose flour that is lower in gluten. Preparing semolina dough requires industrial mixers or several hours of kneading the granular mass. As a result, homemade pasta cooks much more quickly, often in half the time, and can overcook easily if the pot is not watched. In general, properly cooked, top-quality commercial artisan pasta is as good or better than what most people can make at home.
†A sfoglina (feminine form, plural sfogline) or sfoglino (masculine form, plural sfoglini) is someone who makes sfoglia, sheets of fresh pasta. A sfoglina is historically seen as a middle-aged woman who rolls and stretches out the dough with a rolling pin (mattarello) on a large wooden pastry board (taglieri). Here’s more about it. At Sfoglini, two men, the sfoglini, carry on the tradition: Sfoglini chef Steve Gonzalez and creative director Scott Ketchum.
‡Princess Mafalda of Savoy, a daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, married Prince Philipp of Hesse, a grandson of German Emperor Frederick III. Prince Philipp was a member the Nazi Party. In 1935 she was present at an informal diplomatic dinner given by Adolf Hitler in the Reich President’s House in Berlin (she sat next to Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony Eden). Hitler disliked her, and during World War II, Hitler chose to believe that was working against the war effort. She was arrested and transported to Buchenwald concentration camp where she died. Here’s more about it.
‡‡The cascatelli shape was developed by Dan Pashman, who switched the “e” at the end the word for waterfalls, cascatelle, to “i” to conform with the endings of other pasta shapes. Here’s more about it.
We received this fun Halloween milkshake from Kemps Dairy, which in turn received it from Half & Half magazine, a publication of Dairy Farmers of America), the nation’s leading milk marketing cooperative.
While the recipe uses vanilla ice cream and chocolate milk, you can adapt the flavors to your favorites: coffee, mint, strawberry, what you will.
RECIPE: HALLOWEEN CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE WITH A WITCH’S HAT
You can save time by purchasing a witch’s hat sugar cookie, but it won’t look as cool as the one you can bake.
You can also use chocolate ice cream for a deeper chocolate flavor.
Ingredients For A Large Shake
For The Chocolate Milkshake
1 pint vanilla ice cream
¼ cup chocolate milk
3 tablespoons chocolate syrup plus more in a squeeze bottle for drizzling
For The Whipped Cream
¼ cup heavy cream, cold
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
For The Witch’s Hat
3 ounces chocolate
1 ice cream sugar cone
1 round stroopwafel or thin cookie
Black sanding sugar
Purple ribbon
Preparation
1. MAKE the witch’s hat. Place the chocolate in a shallow bowl, and heat in the microwave in 20-second intervals until fully melted.
2. CUT the tip off the sugar cone and dip in the melted chocolate. Place the tip back on the cone at an angle. Freeze for a few minutes until set.
3. DIP the bottom of the sugar cone in the chocolate and place it in the center of the round stroopwafel or thin cookie. Freeze for a few minutes until set.
4. SPREAD an even layer of chocolate on the hat and immediately sprinkle the black sanding sugar all over it. Freeze again for a few minutes until set.
5. TIE a purple ribbon around the hat and set the hat aside until you’re ready to assemble the milkshake.
6. MAKE the whipped cream. In a medium bowl with an electric mixer, whisk the heavy cream and sugar until soft peaks form. Set aside momentarily.
7. MAKE the milkshake. Combine the ice cream, chocolate milk and chocolate syrup in a blender until smooth.
8. DRIZZLE the chocolate syrup on the inside of a milkshake glass, then pour the chocolate milkshake into the glass.
9. TOP with homemade whipped cream and the witch’s hat. Enjoy!
Are you looking for a new recipe for the fall season? How about a Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies recipe? We just finished baking it as our weekend baking project.
Even if there’s no room for the other desserts on your Halloween or Thanksgiving table, these freeze beautifully for snacking and dessert when the Thanksgiving leftovers are gone.
We love fusion food (here, cheesecake x brownies). A layer of pumpkin swirl cheesecake sits atop a brownie.
Thanks to Bea and Marco from El Mundo Eats for the recipe.
“Our secret is we add lots of pumpkin purée in both the brownie and cheesecake layer for the optimum delicious pumpkin flavor,” say Bea and Marco.
1. MAKE the pumpkin cheesecake layer. Beat the cream cheese, mascarpone, and sugar in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in the pumpkin, flour, vanilla, cinnamon, salt, ginger, and nutmeg. Add the egg yolks, beating just until combined. Set aside.
2. HEAT the oven to 325°F. Line a greased 9-inch square baking dish with parchment paper; grease the paper.
3. CREAM the butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating each until well combined.
4. COMBINE the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder in another bowl. Gradually add to the butter mixture, beating each addition until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5. SPREAD half of the brownie batter in the pan. Drop spoonfuls of reserved cheesecake mixture over top. Spoon the remaining brownie batter into four lines over the top of the cheesecake layer; swirl the batter with a toothpick or knife.
6. BAKE for 43-47 minutes or until the top is just set and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. (Do not overbake.) Cool completely on a wire rack.
How many dessert holidays are there? In American cuisine alone, almost 200 (112 on this page alone, January through July), not counting baklava, cannoli, and other international favorites.
The list of holidays is so long that we’ve divided it. The other half, August through December will appear tomorrow.
Note that some of these holidays may not seem like “dessert.” Our thought was, for example:
If it’s a jelly bean holiday, use them to garnish a cake or cupcakes.
If it’s a waffle holiday, serve them a la mode with dessert sauce.
1Braham, Minnesota has an annual Pie Day, held on the first Friday in August. The city’s fame for pie began in the 1930s when people from the Twin Cities would drive to their lake homes, taking the “shortcut to Duluth through Braham.” They would stop at the Park Café for pie and coffee. Braham began a celebratory pie and ice cream social in 1990, the same year that the city was named the “Homemade Pie Capital of Minnesota” by Governor Rudy Perpich [source].
2Bakewell tarts are a 20th-century variant of Bakewell pudding, which originated in Bakewell, Derbyshire, England in the 1800s. It was created following a mishap by the cook at a local inn, who misunderstood the recipe for a strawberry tart and ended up topping her creation with a soft-set almond custard. The tart’s base is made from sweet shortcrust pastry, which is then layered with seedless strawberry jam and finished with a pale, fluffy frangipane sponge filling of eggs, almonds, and sugar. The Bakewell Tart is traditionally finished with a layer of white fondant icing and half a glace cherry, but other varieties are also produced. Here’s more about it.
3Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent, the day when families traditionally gather to prepare the Christmas pudding. The tradition dates back to Victorian times when the family would gather five weeks before Christmas to stir the Christmas pudding. There is a myriad of recipes for Christmas pudding, but the traditional version would contain 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples.
4In the U.K. today, “pudding” is the name for what Americans call steamed cakes and other desserts. Pudding originally referred to encased meats similar to sausages that were steamed or boiled. By the latter half of the 18th century, traditional English puddings no longer included meat. They were still boiled, but the finished product was cake-like (like plum pudding). Our creamy, modern puddings descend from this tradition of steaming sweet ingredients. Here’s more about it.
