September is National Honey Month. Celebrate by replacing table sugar with honey in your tea, in baking and other recipes.

But don’t do it because you think honey is better for you. Truth to tell, honey and sugar are so close in calories, nutrition (both have none or marginal nutrients) and glycemic index* that it really makes no difference.

Some websites maintained by honey enthusiasts or vendors—as opposed to nutritionists or healthcare professionals—tout the vitamins and minerals. But these are only trace amounts. Here’s more information.

So why use honey? For the flavor, of course! Start with this Raspberry Honey Mojito:

This recipe is from Bee Raw Honey, which used its delicious Wild Raspberry Honey in the recipe. You can substitute the honey you have on hand.
 
 
RECIPE: RASPBERRY HONEY MOJITO

Ingredients Per Drink

Celebrate National Honey Month in every way you can. Photo courtesy Bee Raw Honey.

1. MUDDLE the raspberries, mint leaves, lime juice and honey in a cocktail shaker.

2. ADD the rum, cranberry juice and ice. Shake well and serve in a Collins glass with fresh ice.

3. GARNISH with a sprig of mint and a few whole raspberries.

 
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*The glycemic index of agave is 32 GI and 60 calories per tablespoon (but it’s twice as sweet as sugar, maple syrup is 54 GI and 52 calories per tablespoon, honey is 58 GI and 64 calories per tablespoon and sugar is 60-65 and 48 calories per tablespoon. Calorie data source: NutritionData.Self.com.

Raspberry Honey Mojito. Photo courtesy Bee Raw Honey.

Honey In Cooked Food & Drinks

In baking, honey typically makes the product more moist and flavorful. Because baking is science, and the chemistry must work, it’s better to look for a tested recipe rather than doing your own replacements. Reduce the oven temperature by 25°F when using honey in place of sugar.
 
 
MOJITO HISTORY

The Mojito (mo-HEE-toe) hails from Cuba; the name comes from the African word mojo, which means to cast a small spell. One story says that slaves working in Cuban sugar cane fields in the late 19th century invented the drink.

However, historians at Bacardi Rum trace the cocktail’s roots to 1586, the year that Sir Francis Drake and his pirate crew made an unsuccessful attempt to sack Havana.

Drake’s colleague, Richard Drake (a distant relative), was said to have invented a Mojito-like drink known as El Draque (The Drake, Sir Francis’ pirate name).

The recipe included aguardiente (a spirit similar to cachaça), sugar, lime and mint. As with most drinks of the time, it was initially consumed for medicinal purposes.

Sometime in the mid-1800s, with the refinement of rum, rum was substituted and El Draque became known as El Mojito.
 
 
MORE MOJITO RECIPES

Custard is one of our favorite dishes: a symphony of cream, eggs and flavorings.

Most people consider custard to be sweet—a dessert that ranges from good old American chocolate pudding to crème brûlée, crème caramel, flan and others (see all the types of custard in our delectable Custard Glossary).

The same mixture of cream and eggs that forms the base of sweet custard replaces the sugar with savory inclusions to become a delicious savory custard that can be eaten at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

From a lunch dish with a salad, to a first course or side at a fine dinner, savory custards deliver a lot of bang—especially since most people haven’t yet had them.

Well, not exactly: Many people have had savory custard in the form of quiche, a variation that’s baked in a pie shell.

But today’s focus is on savory custard made in individual ramekins.

Since we’re getting to the end of corn season, here’s your opportunity to start your adventures in savory custard with corn custard. If you didn’t see it a few weeks ago, here’s a rerun of our corn custard recipe. If your Labor Day fare is more elegant than hot dogs and hamburgers, you can make it.

SAVORY CUSTARD RECIPES

 
 
HOW IS BREAD PUDDING RELATED TO CUSTARD?

Bread pudding is a sweet or savory dish bound with custard. Put this recipe on your “to be tried” calendar: a mushroom bread pudding. You can serve it as the dressing with turkey.

The shishito pepper is a relative newcomer to American cuisine. Finger-shaped, slender and sweet (not hot), it is growing in popularity as a snack, blistered on the stove top or grill.

The shishito is named after its shape: The tip of the chili pepper was seen to resemble the head of a lion (shishi) and the word for chile is togarashi. Combine the words into shishitogarashi, which is often shortened to shishito (pronounced she-SHE-toe).

Bred in Japan, this East Asian variety of the New World Capsicum annuum, like many chiles, is harvested when green. It would turn red if left to ripen on the vine (that’s the difference between green and red jalapeños).

While shishitos are mild, every so often a hot one will surprise you. We found one estimate that heat can occur in one out of every ten chiles, the anomaly attributed by one botanist to “stress on the vine.” Think of eating shishitos as a fun game, “Shishito Roulette.” The winners gets an extra beer!

The shishito is very similar to the Spanish padrón chile, in both looks and flavor. So if you can find the latter but not the former, use the information below and cook away.

HOW TO SERVE SHISHITO PEPPERS

If you can make roasted or charred vegetables of any kind, you can cook shishito peppers.

Chiles were “discovered” in the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus, who called them “peppers” (pimientos, in Spanish) because of their fiery similarity to the black peppercorns with which he was familiar.

However, there is no relationship between the two plants (or between chiles and Szechuan pepper, for that matter).

“Pepper” is wrong, but in the U.S., it seems to have taken over. Some people use “chile pepper,” a bit of a correction.

The term “pepper” is not used in Latin America. There, the word is chili, from chilli, the word in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.

But, we’d rather hear the partially incorrect “chile pepper” than the totally incorrect wrong “pepper.”

Here’s more on the history of chiles.

Is It Chile, Chili or Chilli?

The original Nahuatl (Aztec) word is chilli. The conquering Spanish spelled it chile.

In the U.K., chilli is the popular spelling. In the U.S., many people use chili, a seeming middle ground between chilli and chile.

The choice is yours. We choose “chile” because it’s the spelling by which Europeans were introduced to the chilli.

How many types of chiles have you had? Check them out in our Chile Glossary.

There are so many ways to approach an entrée salad. This suggestion, from our favorite artisan grocer, Good Eggs of San Francisco, combines grilled proteins with grilled fruit. (They can be oven-roasted instead.)

Good Eggs also suggests that instead of an all-green salad, you add whole grains for fiber, texture and flavor.

Grilled or roasted, the season’s peaches add a wallop of sweet juiciness to a salad. If the peaches in your store aren’t great, you can substitute apricots, mangoes, pluots or nectarines (all are stone fruits like peaches; see details below).

We happened to have some beautiful red rice from Lundberg on hand, and used it in our first version of this recipe (a hit!).

RECIPE: GRILLED CHICKEN SALAD WITH PEACHES &
WHOLE GRAINS

Ingredients For 4 Servings

For The Dressing

 
For Serving

 
*Use infused olive oil (basil, garlic, rosemary, etc.) or season your own with dried herbs and spices.

Preparation

1. MAKE the yogurt dressing. Blend the ingredients and refrigerate to let the flavors meld. You can make this a day in advance. If the dressing is too thick at room temperature, thin it a tablespoon at a time with milk or plain kefir.

2. GRILL the chicken breasts and sliced peaches, or roast them at 400°F, for 20 minutes. You can grill the bread at the same time. When cool enough to work with, shred or julienne the chicken.

3. COOK the grains to al dente; you don’t want mushy grains with your crisp greens. While the grains are cooking, wash and pat dry the greens.

4. TOSS and plate the chicken, cooked grains, salad greens and herbs. Garnish with the peaches. Pass the yogurt dressing.
 
LIST OF WHOLE GRAINS

Whole grains that are common in the U.S. include barley, buckwheat, bulghur, corn, oats, quinoa, rice (only colored rice, e.g. black, brown, red), rye, wild rice and whole wheat.

Learn more about these grains at WholeGrainsCouncil.org.
 
 
WHAT ARE STONE FRUITS?
Stone fruits exist in two different botanical families. The temperate climate-based Rosales order, Rosaceae family, includes what we think of as European stone fruits plus almonds, pecans and walnuts. The tropical/subtropical-based order Sapindales, family Sapindaceae, includes familiar fruits, nuts and spices such as cashew, lychee, mango, mastic, pistachio and sumac.

Stone fruits from the Rosaceae family are members of the Prunus genus, and include apricots, cherries, nectarines, olives, peaches, plums, and cherries and cross-breeds such as apriums, plumcots and pluots.

A stone fruit, also called a drupe, is a fruit with a large, hard stone (pit) inside a fleshy fruit. The stone is often thought of as the the seed, but the seed is actually inside the stone.

In fact, almonds, cashews, pecans and walnuts are examples of the seeds inside the stones. They’re also drupes, but a type in which we eat the seed inside the pit instead of the surrounding fruit.

Not all drupes are stone fruits. The coconut is also a drupe, as are bramble fruits such as blackberries and raspberries. June through September is prime stone fruit season in the U.S.

Enough botany for you?
  

For many years of our youth, one of our favorite restaurant lunches was Mexican-style chicken salad in a tortilla bowl. As our palate evolved, we realized that a lot of those tortilla bowls (a.k.a. tostada bowls) didn’t taste that great. The best restaurants made their own, but others used pre-made commercial bowls, greasy and bland. So we moved on to Cobb Salad.

Later, we discovered that you can make tortilla bowls at home, and that baking rather than frying cut out the grease. Mexican Chicken Salad was reborn!

Here’s Mexican chef Ingrid Hoffmann’s recipe. You can customize it as you like: with corn kernels or Inca corn, with raw onion, with spicy salad (arugula, watercress, radishes), with pickled jalapeños or pepperoncini, with your favorite cheese, olives, whatever!

First: Save four empty 15-ounce cans. You’ll use them to shape the tortilla bowls. This recipe will give you one empty can, from the pinto beans.

RECIPE: CHICKEN SALAD IN TORTILLA BASKET

Ingredients For 4 Servings

If you already have a commercial adobo seasoning, use it. If not, Chef Ingrid’s recipe is so much fresher; and you can use up the remainder on other meats and poultry, eggs, rice, soups, etc.

 
*If you don’t want to purchase achiote powder, substitute equal amounts of turmeric and sweet paprika. It won’t have the same tartness of achiote powder, but it’s a decent hack.

For The Salad

 
†Remove the seeds to cut down on the heat, if desired.

Tortilla chips were originally made as a way to use broken or misshapen tortillas. Here’s the history of tortilla chips. Photo of artisan tortillas courtesy Hot Bread Kitchen.

1. MAKE the adobo seasoning. Combine the ingredients in a small glass jar with an airtight lid and shake to blend. Store in a cool, dry place for up to 2 weeks.

2. SEASON the chicken breasts with adobo seasoning. Coat a ribbed grill pan with the oil spray (or vegetable oil) and heat over medium heat. Cook the chicken breasts for 3-6 minutes on each side, until slightly golden (test for doneness—170° on a meat thermometer). Set aside to cool, then slice into strips ½ inch wide.

3. MAKE the tortilla baskets. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place a small dish of water on your work surface. Place 4 empty (15-ounce) cans, open side down, on a baking pan. Using a pastry brush, soften the tortillas by brushing both sides with a little water, and then brush with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Drape the tortillas over the cans and bake until firm, about 5 to 7 minutes. Using tongs, turn the tortilla bowls right side up, discard the cans, and continue to bake until golden and crisp, another 4 minutes.

4. PREPARE the beans. Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, about 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes, chipotles with adobo sauce, and 1/2 cup water, cooking until slightly thick, (about 5 minutes), stirring occasionally. Mix in the beans and cook until heated through. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat.

5. PLACE the tortilla bowls right side up on plates and fill each with a handful of greens. Divide the bean mixture among the tortilla bowls and top with a sprinkle of queso blanco or cotija. Fan the sliced chicken on top and garnish with chopped cilantro. Drizzle with a little olive oil and serve with lime wedges.