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What I find to be the most powerful, and delicious, cure against a brutal winter chill and/or cold symptoms is the Hot Toddy. This is a drink that is so warming, so soothing, and so cheerful that it radiates heat throughout the body and makes you sink deeper into your seat than ever before. I think Pfizer would make a fortune marketing a Hot Toddy line of drugs, maybe called Thermatoddica, or Hottoddilax. Ask your doctor if Hottoddilax is right for you.
The Hot Toddy is essentially a hot mixed drink that is made up of only 4 simple ingredients. The ingredients are as follows:
Base – can be hot water, tea or cider
Alcohol – a “dark” spirit, such as brandy, whiskey, bourbon, scotch, rye, or dark rum
Sweetener – sugar and honey are the most traditional sweeteners
Flavoring – typically lemon, but can also add cookie or mulling spices (add too many flavorings and you will get an Odd Hotty, not a Hot Toddy)
Some of our readers may be saying to themselves, “I heard of this wonderful salt bacon, where ever did it go,” or, more likely, “Did it just turn out so awful that you tearfully flung it into the sea and vowed never to speak of it again?” Luckily for all this was not the case.
After a week of careful draining, patting and the addition of more salt cure as needed, the bacon was pronounced ready for consumption. We were initially worried that, for lack of potassium nitrate, the meat would take on a unappetizing grey color. This did not really turn out to be the case, while the exterior had lost some of the pink verve it had when we first purchased it it still looked rather healthy, and the thick slices fried up with a very satisfying panoply of crimson strips.
Honesty time. There is always one side at Thanksgiving that lets each and every dinner guest down…homemade cranberry sauce. Homemade cranberry sauce is always so disappointing. It doesn’t even come close to stacking up to the wiggly deliciousness of the canned stuff. I always have a deep appreciation for from-scratch cooking and not opting for pre-made dishes, but canned cranberry sauce makes the homemade version seem unfit for the dog. I’m serious here. I bet if a guest brought a big casserole of “creamed miscellaneous,” it would have a bigger dent in it at the end of the night than the vat of homemade cranberry sauce. So, this Thanksgiving, I’ve given myself a lofty mission. I plan on making a delicious cranberry sauce that can take on the cylindrical bounty that comes from the can.
A. Maki:
Mark Bittman’s NYTimes article of Nov. 18th on homemade hot sauce (read here) made me reminisce about our own Hay Market sriracha. Different from his recipe, I recall that we used cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar, and that we tossed in a healthy amount of garlic. Owen, if you’ve got this recipe on paper somewhere, post it here for a useful side-by-side comparison.
Also, have you ever been to THE ‘hot sauce blog’?
O. Maloy:
We made two versions of the sriracha. The first was simply a combination of habaneros, jalapenos, fresh cayenne peppers, tons of garlic and a few glugs of cider vinegar. I don’t have the exact recipe, but I would guesstimate that we added…
- 1 part habanero,
- 2 parts jalapeno,
- 3 parts cayenne, and
- 2 parts garlic,
…all rough chopped, to a saucepan and poured in enough vinegar to just cover them, and a pinch of salt. We then allowed the chili mixture to simmered for about 20 minutes. After removing the pot from the heat and allowing the chili mixture to cool, we poured everything into a food processor and pureed it into a sauce.
This was my favorite recipe. It was delicious, had a great red color, was firey hot, and did not spoil since it contained so much vinegar. The other version was made with all green chiles and had some cilantro in it.
Sriracha: Put it in your SALAD DRESSING
I found out the secret to great salad dressing: sriracha. I added just a tiny bit of sriracha to my last batch of salad dressing, which was made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, pepper and a scant half teaspoon of sriracha.
The sriracha added a little something to the background that took the dressing above and beyond your typical homemade dressing. Also, I was afraid that it would add a southeast Asian flare to the salad that I didn’t quite want at the time, but it did no such thing. The sriracha helped to emulsify the salad dressing, too.
I recently ate dinner at an amazing restaurant on Tremont St. in the South End of Boston called The Butcher Shop. I mentioned The Butcher Shop in a previous post I wrote about the Copley Square Farmers Market, recommending it to residents of the Greater Boston Area as the place to buy top quality meats in Boston. The Butcher Shop is both a fantastic restaurant and an amazing retail butcher, so it is definitely the place to go whether you want to eat out or cook in.
The portion of my dinner that inspired me to write this post was actually the bread that preceded the meal. The Butcher Shop does not just give out the ordinary crusty bread that most good restaurants bore their guests with. Instead, they place slices of house-made, whole wheat Irish soda bread on each table, with a ramekin of butter topped with fleur de sel and a shallow dish filled with a cloudy, canary-colored honey. Butter and soda bread are already good friends, but then also having the fleur de sel and honey playing off of each other makes the combination of ingredients truly great.
Just a couple of weeks ago Mark Bittman posted a video of himself on the NY Times website preparing a fish dish with one arm tied behind his back. The level of difficulty, or lack thereof, was drilled into the viewers’ brains, but the dish itself did not look like it was worth cooking…even if it was easy enough to do with just one hand. The ho-humness of the final dish outweighed the entertainment value of the preparation, so the memory of the video was moved immediately to the old trash bin of my brain. However, due to an incident on the basketball court this past Wednesday evening, I found it all too necessary to upstage Mr. Bittman at his own game.
Early on in the weekly post-work game of basketball I play in each and every Wednesday, I attempted to steal a bullet of a pass from the other team and ended up dislocating my left pinkie and chipping a bone on the first joint away from the palm. Immediately after being hit by the ball, I looked down at my crooked pinkie and had two thoughts. The first was to yank on it and hopefully reset the joint, which I thankfully did successfully. The second was ‘Oh crap! I was planning on writing a post about various chestnut-based dishes.” Since chestnuts were now out of the question, it became clear that it was my turn to take a stab at a one-handed dish, but one geared towards comfort since I needed some serious TLC due to the giant black and blue protrusion that now resides on my left hand. The obvious choice was pudding.
In honor of Veteran’s Day, I thought that my inaugural post might explore the gritty favorite cocktail of one of America’s most accomplished Generals, George S. Patton. Known for his pair of ivory handled Colt .45 and his desire to “make the other poor bastard die for his country”, he also seems to have invented a wartime tipple of some unique power.
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potatoes, smoked sausage, farmstead goat cheese, Nikšićko beer
<<10/11 CORRECTION: I was informed by Alex (pictured above) that the real name of this meal is “Loso krtola sa domacom kobasicom.” Kačamak refers to the pre-prepared version that i describe below (with several additional alterations). Stay tuned for an authentic kačamak recipe in the near future.>>
Forget what the guidebooks tell you about elaborate traditional Montenegrin fare, this recipe comes from a Montenegrin mom, and is unapologetic (and delicious) in its simplicity. Thanks go out to A. S. Zekovic’s sister for preparing this meal.
Andrew Maki
Alex Welles
Owen Maloy
