Science! Starring Mycology and High-Proof Alcohol

by Tea on May 4th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Posted In: Articles

So my pals at Industry City Distillery are making some awesome crazy beet sugar vodka:

It’s now on the shelves in NYC, and as of last night, I got to take home some samples which I am very excited to play with next week.

With stills they’ve built from the ground up, the distillery is like some kind of adult Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory; they’ve taken fractional distillation to a level that I’ve never seen before, where they can isolate each unique flavor note in the final product before blending them together. It’s really fascinating and awesome to watch these guys work– and a little like being on an episode of LOST, with a buzzer that rings and demands someone’s attention every twenty-two minutes on the button. Dave, the chief-mad-scientist of the operation, showed me pieces of the new still they’re building and a bunch of other exciting bubbly mysterious stuff.

I headed over there with a sampling of my flavored marshmallows (the Fernet ones seem to be the favorite) and a mission: to make a cocktail using a chanterelle-infused vodka the ICD guys had put up for an event.

I’d played with chanterelles before, in a sugar syrup, but the night before, I played around with several simple vodka cocktails, not having actually tasted the chanterelle infusion. When I got over to the distillery, I was presented with a bottle of high-proof liquor that had been steeped with mushrooms.

Dave & I diluted the chanterelle-infused vodka in tiny proportions to get the flavor and texture we liked best– the flavor was so mild, but the mushrooms imparted a meaty texture to the vodka that was nice– and once we’d settled on a solution for the vodka-to-water ratio, I got to mix drinks…

WITH PIPETTES.

Getting into the mad scientist spirit of the thing, this is the first time I have mixed a drink with pipettes. In fact, up until the moment I did it, I had NEVER CONSIDERED SUCH A THING.

It makes sense; it’s how people add bitters to alcohol. But this was a first. Using the pipettes created such amazing precision that I was able to add very specific and delicate notes to the drink; which was good because the flavors in the mushroom vodka were so subtle. After various experiments, with Dave and Peter being my tasting guinea pigs, we settled on a drink that involved vodka, the chanterelle-infused vodka, Dolin’s blanco vermouth, Cocchi Americano, black pepper syrup, and champagne vinegar. I was working in such tiny proportions that some ingredients found their way in in amounts that could be recorded in drops.

It was pretty awesome, because normally when I make drinks, I’m working in proportions that are first off, not nearly as precise– I mean, how many cocktail recipes call for a “dash” of something? But also, I usually think in 1/4 oz increments. Breaking things down even more was super fascinating and changed the way I was thinking about what I was mixing…in a way that was utterly appropriate, given the product and the locale.

I got sent home with samples that I got to pick from specific, unique cuts of the vodka– that is, bottles of undiluted individual isolated flavor notes, which means there will definitely be some playing going on.

If you are in New York, you should check out Industry City’s vodka. Here’s a map of locations where you can buy the real thing. These guys are awesome and I can’t wait to have more to tell you all.

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Boozey Marshmallows

by Tea on May 2nd, 2012 at 1:31 am
Posted In: Recipes, Food, Desserts, Recipes, Food, Recipes, Food, Gluten-Free, Recipes, Recipes, Food, Snacks

Lately, I’ve developed a fondness for homemade marshmallows. I’ve been making marshmallows on and off for a few years now, but never really started experimenting with them, although I Had Ideas.

Let me start with a secret: making marshmallows is easy. It is so ridiculously easy, and fairly reasonably-priced, and the results are so good, that if you have forty minutes to make them and don’t mind waiting overnight to have marshmallows, you might never buy store-bought marshmallows again.

I’m serious.

Basically, marshmallows are simple: you boil a mixture of 1 cup sugar, 1 cup corn syrup, 1/2 cup water, until it reaches about 250 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer. You pour the sugar solution into a blender where you have .75 oz of gelatin in another 1/2 cup water. The solution will foam up; you will turn the mixer on to its highest speed and mix for ten to fifteen minutes, at which point you will feel like Bartholomew Cubbins fighting off the Oobleck. You will coat a rubber spatula in margarine, which will make the Oobleck miraculously slide off the spatula, as you scrape it into a greased baking sheet lined with a mixture of 1/2 cornstarch, 1/2 confectioners’ sugar. You will let it sit overnight. In the morning, there are marshmallows. You can cut them apart with scissors, and then toss them in more sugar-cornstarch.

The basic trick to marshmallows is just to have a really good mixer. I destroyed two hand mixers making marshmallows, which had a lot to do with why I didn’t make them very often– but then, for Christmas this year, my parents gave me a standing mixer. And it makes a huge difference in the marshmallow-making process.

The thing with marshmallows is that they required heavy whipping for an extended period of time. So if you have a hand mixer, you had better have a book in the other hand or a television in the same room as your mixer. Or something. This is why having the standing mixer makes such a difference.

So once I got the mixer, I really started spending a lot of time playing with flavors. I started logically– infusing herbs in the sugar syrup, peppermint once, and lavender and tarragon another time. Then I moved on, realizing I could substitute some of the unflavored gelatin for Jell-o, and get day-glo marshmallows with delicious artificial candy flavors. Lately, I’ve been playing with boozemallows, and I’ve done three flavors that are all quite good: Angostura, Fernet-Branca, and Sazerac.

The Sazerac marshmallows were the first ones I made that actually approximate a cocktail instead of just having a bit of a specific ingredient flavoring the marshmallow. They’re very mild, but if you eat them alone, you can taste all the subtle flavors you expect from a Sazerac: whiskey, absinthe, and Peychaud’s, and they even have the tiniest tinge of pink to them (though it doesn’t come across much in the photo).

To the recipe I related above, I added about 1/4 cup Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye, about 1/8 cup Tenneyson Absinthe, and about ten dashes of Peychaud’s bitters– I added these right at the beginning of the whipping process, into the mixer. Use a splash guard for your mixer if you have one. You can taste the marshmallow to see if you want more or less of any ingredient, and it’s easy to add a little bit more later on– as long as it’s not too much, it mixes in well.

Of course, once the marshmallows are done, I recommend popping a couple of them into a glass of whiskey.

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I heard it through the grapevine

by Tea on February 26th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
Posted In: Gardening, How-To, Visuals, Photos

It’s getting to be the time of year when, for people who like to create food from the ground up, we need to be preparing for making food.

A lot of people ask me why, when I live in New York City, arguably one of the most always-on places in the world, I spend so many of my weekends in Connecticut at my parents’ house– especially in the winter, when the garden is not producing, and the bees are hibernating their little hearts out.

Here are one of the things we do in the winter. This year, I did it singlehandedly, because both of my parents were busy with other work.

This is what a grape arbor looks like in the winter.

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It’s basically a whole lot of bare vines, in a great big tangle.  Grape vines are a lot like roses.  Every year, you want to cut back most of the new growth from the year before, leaving only the “main vines to sprout new growth for the coming season.  This needs to be done in the winter, before the vines begin growing again.

We also put up an arbor mid-season last year, because this was the first year our grapes had enough growth to really need something apart from the fence.  So, as you can see, the vines were sort of selective about whether they wanted to grow on the arbor or not.  Some grew on the arbor.  Some grew on the fence. Some grew on the arbor and then turned around and grew on the fence.  Some just decided to be stubborn little brats and grow on the rhubarb.

So, today, I went in with my clippers and pruned the heck out of the arbor.  Basically, you want to prune off pretty much everything but the main vine, and you want to do it as close to the wine as possible:

20120226-160614.jpg

It took about an hour to trim everything back to where we wanted it.  I had a little difficulty because the snow had frozen shut the gate to the garden, so I had to do most of the work from outside the garden, reaching my hands through the wire fence.  The chickens were very, very curious about what the heck I was doing.  After everything was trimmed, I trained all of the remaining vines onto the arbor, with one exception– there was one vine that was very thick and heavy and mostly growing on the garden side of the fence, so it was difficult to move.  I also got all the grapevines untangled from the hops vines, which was very exciting.    This is what it looked like when I was finished:

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By early autumn, believe it or not, this will be back to looking like the “before” picture– only with lots of leaves and fruit on it!!

 

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Happy National Margarita Day!!!

by Tea on February 22nd, 2012 at 9:43 pm
Posted In: Recipes, Drinks, Alcoholic, Recipes, Drinks, Cocktails, Recipes, Drinks

Margarita (And Ginger Margarita)
Print
Recipe Type: Cocktail
Author: Tea
This is how I make a traditional Margarita, plus a little twist on it!
Ingredients
  • 2 oz white/silver tequila
  • 1/2 oz Cointreau
  • Juice from 1 lime
  • 1/2 oz Domaine de Canton (optional)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp evaporated cane juice (or sugar)
Instructions
  1. Mix first four ingredients
  2. Mix sugar and salt together on a plate. Shake the plate until it is even.
  3. Take a chilled margarita or martini glass and wipe the used lime over the edge. (see picture)
  4. Turn the glass upside down on the plate and girve the glass a spin until the salt mixture sticks to the rim.
  5. Right the glass and pour in the cocktail! Yum!
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A Holiday Memory: Pecan Butterballs

by Tea on December 11th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Posted In: Recipes, Food, Desserts, Recipes, Food, Recipes

When I was a little girl, my mother was one of those Kitchen Goddess moms, the ones who made ten or twelve kinds of cookies for Christmas, as well as fudge and sometimes some other candies. Christmastime, or the time leading up to Christmas, was an absolutely magical time for me, and I would arrive home from school every day to discover new delicacies stored neatly in containers and tins, new smells wafting from every corner. But the best part was that once school was over for the day and homework was done, it was time to help. There was something even more magical about practicing the alchemy that created the treats we would serve and give away to friends and family.

Now, we’ve cut back quite a lot. We don’t have big parties or huge family get-togethers anymore, and for the most part, we don’t really miss them. But there are a few kinds of cookies that we make every year, no matter what, although maybe in smaller quantities than we made when I was a child. (There is a note on one recipe, hand-written by my mother, from the year I graduated high school: 1996, 6 recipes= 375 cookies.) These are the cookies that make Christmas Christmas for me. They don’t really make an appearance the rest of the year, but at Christmastime, they are on every tray. They might not be the shiniest or prettiest or most colorful cookies, but they’re the ones that taste the best, or remind me the most of happy family times.

The cookbook shows above is the 1966 Woman’s Day Cookie Cookbook. It’s torn apart (missing the back cover), dogeared, yellowed, and covered in ballpoint-pen-notes. We don’t use it for much, apart from one very special recipe.

Pecan Butterballs, adapted from Women’s Day Cookie Cookbook, 1966
Print
Recipe Type: Cookie
Author: Tea
Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 25 mins
Total time: 45 mins
These are one of my favorite cookies to make at holiday times. Light, buttery and not too sweet.
Ingredients
  • 2 cups sifted flour
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup butter
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups finely chopped pecans
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
  1. Let butter soften– do not melt.
  2. Mix flour, sugar, salt, and vanilla in a mixer at lowest speed until well-blended.
  3. Cut soft butter into tablespoon-sized rectangles. Add pieces to dry mixture a few at a time and mix well.
  4. Once all butter is in mixture, set mixer to medium speed and mix until everything is well-blended.
  5. Add pecans, a cup at a time, to mixture and blend in well.
  6. Roll dough into 1″ spheres and put on ungreased cookie sheets.
  7. Cook for 25 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
  8. Take off tray immediately– cookies will be very soft, so work carefully or they will crumble in your hands.
  9. Leave to cool several hours, preferably overnight.
  10. Put about 2 dozen cookies at a time in a large bowl.
  11. Sift powdered sugar over cookies, then stir cookies around with hands until well-coated.
  12. Store in cookie tins with layers of wax paper between.
Notes

This recipe makes about 50 cookies. I tend to make two recipes or more.

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