Try your hand at this this particularly lovely lemon meringue tart, a deconstructed approach conceived by Khanh-Ly Huynh, a Parisian chef.

She used a “deliberately very hard shortbread crust, an acidic lemon curd and a slightly minty meringue.”

To make it, gather a:

 
Preparation

1. MAKE the crust, then pipe the lemon curd and meringue in varying sizes. In the photo, all of the lemon curd is piped with a large tip; the meringue is piped with both large and small tips.

The result: an edible work of art.

If you want to brown the meringue…

The entire tart filling is piped rounds of lemon curd and meringue (photo courtesy Khanh-Ly Huynh).

If you wish, you can follow this recipe for lemon meringue tart.
 
 
DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PIE AND A TART?

There are several differentiators. Here they are.
  

[2] Place the bread and cheese into the bag and pop it into the toaster. The package contains three reusable bags.

Grilled cheese lovers who want a sandwich without the mess should try Tostabags from Boska. They’re a fast (3 minutes), no-mess way to make melted cheese sandwiches in a toaster (photo #1). They also work in a toaster oven.

Woven fiberglass toaster bags, coated in Teflon, hold the bread and cheese together in your toaster’s wells. The result: grilled cheese that’s nice and melty on the inside, crisp and toasty on the outside.

No butter is needed—a nice savings in calories and cholesterol.

Just pop two slices of bread and a slice of cheese into the toaster, along with any other ingredients: avocado, bacon, tomato, etc.

Out comes a lovely melted cheese sandwich, warm and gooey—just as if you had used a pan.

 
The bags are 6″ x 6″. Standard slices of bread fit nicely as long as they aren’t overly thick.

 
USE THEM TO REHEAT PIZZA

A bonus for pizza lovers: Place a slice of cold pizza into the bag and use the same toaster technique.

As with the sandwiches, you’ll need to play with your toaster’s settings to find the ideal heating level (try a lower setting first).

Your slice will emerge with a crisp crust and melty cheese—unlike the rubbery cheese and limp crust of microwave re-heating.
 
ABOUT BOSKA

Boska Holland began in 1896 as a manufacturer of tools for cheesemakers. The company evolved to produce consumer products, currently: cheese boards and knives; cheese curlers, slicers and graters; fondue sets and raclette grills.

Discover more at Boska.com.

Many Americans like to shake hot sauce on their food. But what about hot spices?

In addition to black pepper and chile flakes, there’s shichimi togarashi (she-CHEE-me toe-gah-RAH-she—photo #1).

Known simply as shichimi in Japan, it’s a seven-ingredient spice blend (shichi is “seven” in Japanese, togarashi is red pepper).
The spice blend dates at least to the 17th century, when it was produced by herb dealers in Edo (modern Tokyo).

How trending is it? McCormick sells it in U.S. supermarkets, as Japanese Seven Spice (photo #3).

Blends vary by producer, but the blends aim for a combination of hot, citrus, sea and nutty flavors. Unlike hot sauces, which can deliver tongue-tingling heat, the aim of shichimi is to deliver a medium-hot, complex heat that elevates the flavor profile of a dish.

Typical ingredients include:

 
Other ingredients may be used, including rapeseed for the seeds, and shiso for the seaweed.
 
 
HOW TO USE IT

Shichimi is traditionally sprinkled on:

 
It is incorporated into products such as rice cakes, roasted rice crackers and crunchy snacks.

You can use shichimi togarashi in American fare: anywhere you’d like to add some heat. How about:

 
You can also use it in and on sweets:

 
For beverages, consider using the spice as a glass rimmer for a Bloody Mary, shaken with, or sprinkled over a cocktail as a garnish. Má Pêche restaurant in Manhattan infuses shichimi into high-alcohol saké.

As is often noted, the only limit is your imagination.

[2] American spice shops are mixing their own blends. This one is from Oaktown Spice Shop in Oakland, California.

[3] Worldwide spice giant McCormick sells Japanese Seven Spice, subtitled Shichimi Togarashi Seasoning (photo McCormick).

[4] Spicy-sweet shichimi popcorn. Here’s the recipe from Turntable Kitchen.

You can buy the spice, or make your own blend with 2 tablespoons sansho or 1 tablespoon black peppercorns, 1 tablespoon dried orange peel, 1 tablespoon ground red chile pepper, 2 teaspoons flaked nori, 2 teaspoons black sesame seeds, 2 teaspoons white poppy seeds and 2 teaspoons nori flakes.

Crack the peppercorns with a mallet, and blend all ingredients. Keep in a tightly-sealed jar.
 
 
RECIPES

We love this recipe for Tofu Fritters with shichimi.

Check out these recipes from Oaktown Spice Shop, for:

[2] Find a cartoon kilt online and print out copies for your cookies (photo courtesy Getty Images).

It’s the birthday of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). Family and friends gather for Burns Night, an evening of good food and company.

A traditional Burns’ Supper (Scottish supper) can consist of beef pie, cock-a-leekie soup, colcannon, haggis, nettles and tatties, smoked haddock and more.

But instead of the dinner, this year we’re celebrating with a Scotch tasting and these fun cookies, made with a gingerbread man cookie cutter and outfitted in paper kilts.

We’ll also read a poem or two; Burns’ most famous is Auld Lang Syne.

 
MAKE THE COOKIES

What you need:

 
Cookie Recipes

To turn gingerbread men into “Burns men,” you can use any type of rolled cookie recipe (also called cutout cookies—(the different types of cookies).

Rolled cookies are those that are made from a stiffer dough that is chilled, rolled out and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter. Gingerbread and shortbread are two examples. Some recipes:

1. FIND a cartoon kilt image (like these). Copy and paste as many as you need onto a Microsoft Word (or similar) page; then print and cut out.

2. BAKE the cookies. Cool and use icing to make the face.

3. AFFIX the kilt to the cookie with a bit of icing or decorator gel.
  

Recently we attended a tasting of Texas wines from 14 wineries, held in New York City.

If you’re not familiar with Texas wines, it’s because the residents of Texas buy up much of the production, leaving little to distribute elsewhere (check on Wine.com and other online etailers). Production from this relatively new wine area has not yet amped up to keep pace with demand.

But based on the success of the wines over the last decade—Texas wineries win more than 150 medals annually at prestigious competitions in California and the Finger Lakes—there is more planting. In a few years, this will result in more bottles to go around.

Currently, the wines—red, white and rosé—are very well priced, most at $10 to $20 a bottle. That’s half the cost of a Napa Valley wine, much owing to the large amount of land available in Texas, which keeps the cost of buying acreage down.

How popular are Texas wines? The number of visitors on the main Texas wine trail (Texas Hill Country) now make it the second most popular wine route in the U.S.

So in the not-so-distant future, the appellations of Texas Hill Country and Texas High Plains—which are AVAs, American Viticultural Areas, an official designation*—may become as familiar as California’s Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley.
 
 
TEXAS WINE HISTORY

Today, there are more than 200 wineries in Texas. It is the fourth-largest wine producing state in the nation, after California, New York and Washington.

The classic Bordeaux grapes are planted, along with Rhone grapes, some Italian varietals, and lots of tempranillo, the primary grape of the Rioja region of Spain.

Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay are the most planted wines in the state, followed by Merlot, Syrah, and Muscat Canelli.

Texan vintners also plant Zinfandel, Sangiovese and Viognier. The Texas Department of Agriculture lists 21 varietals grown in the state.

As in other wine regions around the world, different AVAs have terroirs that favor some varieties over others. As vintners evaluate the quality of wines produced from their land, varietals like Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are planted less, while Syrah and Muscat Canelli have increased.

Great success with the wines has increased plantings of grape varietals that flourish in Italy, dolcetto and vermentino; Spain’s tempranillo; and France’s Rhone Valley’s viognier, roussanne and mourvedre.

[2] There are 8 wine-growing regions (AVAs*) in Texas, but the two largest are Texas Hill Country, an hour west of Austin, and Texas High Plains, in the northwest (image courtesy WineWeb).

[3] Texas produces red whites, white wines (including sparkling and sweet wines), and rosés (photo Amazon).

The first vineyard in North America was established in Texas by Franciscan priests, around 1662 [source].

As mission outposts expanded, European settlers followed, bringing more grapevine cuttings. Vineyard plantings further developed through the 1800s.

With the burgeoning popularity of California wines in the 1970s, Texans renewed their interest in viticulture. The Bell Mountain AVA, designated in 1986, was the first established AVA in Texas.

Today, Texas has over 4,000 acres of vineyards under cultivation…and based on projections, many more to come.
 
 
WINE TOURISM IN THE TEXAS AVAs

If you’re headed near any of Texas’ American Viticultural Areas (AVAs, designated grape-growing regions), stop by the wineries and avail yourself of the pleasures of Texas Wines.

 
[source]
 
 
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT THE TEXAS WINE & GRAPE GROWERS ASSOCIATION WEBSITE.

Also check out the Texas Wine Trail programs, for which you can buy tickets.
________________

*An American Viticultural Area (AVA) is a designated wine grape-growing region in the U.S., with boundaries defined by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Here’s more about it.

These designations allow a given quality, reputation, or other characteristic to characterize wines made from grapes grown in a particular AVA. California AVAs, including Napa Valley, Sonoma County and Mendocino, among others, are well-understood for the differing characteristics of their wines.

As of 2016, there were 238 recognized AVAs in the U.S.; 8 of them in Texas.