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News and Views:
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Garlic Gizmos
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| It’s hard to come up with a cooking ingredient that has inspired more little tools than garlic. Devices for storing, peeling, crushing, slicing, grating, and roasting bound. Enter "garlic peeler" in our Digitalhearth.com search engine under "Where to Shop" and you will find an array of sites selling garlic gizmos and gadgets galore. Our favorite sites include www.thegarlicstore.com and www.garlicguys.com (where you can buy a ridiculous hat shaped like a garlic bulb), and www.chefcatalogue.com, which sells a nonstick garlic press (item 5835). There’s lots more about garlic on the web, of course, including a good discussion of the stinking flower at http://entertaining.about.com/style/entertaining/library/gadgets/blfavgarlictools.htm. |
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The Best-Smelling Christmas Ornaments
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| Decorate your Christmas tree or scent your linen or clothes closets with homemade cinnamon ornaments that look like thin cut-out cookies. This is a relatively unmessy project that you can do with kids, and the ornaments make great gifts for teachers. All you need is . . . |
3 cups smooth applesauce (about 1-1/2 pounds)
8 ounces cinnamon
several yards of thin satin ribbon or narrow decorative cord
About 8 hours before you want to really start the project, line a strainer with cheesecloth or paper towels and place it over a large bowl. Pour the applesauce into the strainer and let it drain for about 8 hours. (If you want to eliminate this step, you will need 4 to 6 ounces extra cinnamon to make a firm dough.)
Add about half of the cinnamon to the drained applesauce and stir until blended. Gradually add most of the remaining cinnamon until you have a stiff, fairly dry dough. Place a quarter of the dough on a sheet of plastic wrap and cover with a second sheet. Flatten with a rolling pin to about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut out shapes using your favorite cookie cutters (simple shapes work best). Transfer the ornaments to an oiled cookie sheet.
With a toothpick or plastic straw, poke a hole at the top of each ornament for threading with ribbon after baking. The hole will shrink by half during baking, so make sure it is large enough to start. Smooth the edges of the ornaments with the toothpick. Bake at 175°F for 6 to 8 hours, until firm and dry. Enjoy the way your house smells! Remove from the oven, cool, and decorate if desired with paint and/or glitter. Thread a length of ribbon through each hole.
Makes about 3 dozen ornaments, depending on size. After Christmas, store in an airtight box and use again next year.
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To Brine or Not to Brine
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Well, that was the question last month, just before Thanksgiving. We’d been reading a lot about brining meat before cooking it. Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, says it’s the best way to keep any type of poultry moist and flavorful. A New York City chef wrote that she brines pork chops in apple juice and spices before cooking them. The Williams-Sonoma catalog has a sidebar on the very subject. So we decided to try it.
A 25-pound turkey won’t fit in just any container. We scrubbed out a large trash can, lined it with two big trash bags, and lowered the turkey (minus the giblets and neck). We dissolved a pound of kosher salt in a gallon of warm water and poured it over the turkey. Then we added more cold water until the turkey was completely covered. (A small bird may need to be weighted down.)
Every source had a different idea about how long to brine the bird, anywhere from 12 hours to 48. Since we were about 18 hours away from the time to stuff the bird, we decided that 18 would be good. It was cold enough (under 35°F) to keep the bird on our porch (with extra weight on top of the cover to discourage curious dogs).
On Thanksgiving morning we fished out the bird, rinsed it off, and stuffed and roasted it as usual. The result: an unusually succulent turkey. All the guests loved it.
The problem: we did not cook an unbrined turkey for comparison. Is anyone out there willing to try cooking two birds, one brined, one not, in the interest of science? Or maybe two roasting hens? If so, please write to us at recipeexchange@digitalhearth.com.
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