Food, Photography and Bon Mots
A rose is a rose is a… strawberry. Strawberries, North American natives, are in the rose family. Grown in abundance by North America’s indigenous people, the pretty sweet fruits were part of the Columbian Exchange once European explorers and colonists arrived. Among other crops, Europe…
Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is for a delightful salad, Neil’s Romaine. You’ll love the garlicky salad dressing. You don’t want to miss this…
Looking for an unusual cocktail?
This Pickle Brine Margarita from The New York Times might be quirky enough to fit the bill. You can find the link to the original recipe here.
The NYT gives credit for this cocktail to a bar in Brooklyn named The Pine Box Rock Shop. Interestingly, the bar is located in a former coffin factory. (Yikes!)
From reading the Pine Box Rock Shop’s drink menu (here) it sounds like quite a place. There is the Pickle Back Margarita, of course, but you can also order a Hipster Funeral Pale Ale or a “Sam in a Sweater” ( a boozy mixture of rootbeer, vodka, triple sec, and milk.) Just WOW on that last one! I’m having one of those if I ever make it to Brooklyn and am cool enough to get into this bar.
Here is the recipe for the Pickle Brine Margarita as I prepared it in my kitchen.
This is a delightful little snacking cake. It’s got all the flavors—molasses, allspice, cinnamon, ginger. Oh. espresso. It’s got espresso flavor, too. It is just the kind of flavor bomb you need to jolt you out of your late afternoon funk…or your just-outta-bed bleariness. …
This is the “little black dress” of mushroom soups. It’s basic. It’s elegant. It never disappoints. This recipe is from Deborah Madison’s cookbook Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen. You can order the book through your local bookstore or on Amazon here. It is a great…
Hetty McKinnon’s recipes usually delight my senses. This one caught my attention with it’s fanciful name. In fact, for some reason, this reminds me of the colorful imagery in the first stanza of McCartney’s and Lennon’s Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. You remember those imaginative words.
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”
Surely, a proper broccoli forest would have fit right in among those tangerine trees and marmalade skies!
So, here we are with colorful mind pictures and a very tasty recipe.
This recipe is from Hetty McKinnon’s cookbook Tenderheart. You can order the cookbook through your local bookstore or buy on Amazon here. The recipe also appears on the Epicurious site here.
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
I grew up with the notion that pancakes needed to be sweet. You know, sweetened batters cooked on a grill, slathered with butter and drizzled with a generous glug of maple syrup. (Those were wonderful pancakes.) As my palate has matured and much to my…
Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is perfect to celebrate spring and this year’s exceptional strawberry crop. This is a recipe for Strawberry-Pistachio Cake.…
These Turkish White Beans are wonderful—delicious and with a distinct Mediterranean flavor.
This would be perfect for a plant-based main dish served with crusty bread and a green salad (maybe with feta?) or as part of a mezze assortment of dishes.
This recipe is from Yasmin Khan’s great cookbook, Ripe Figs. You can order her cookbook through your local bookstore or online through Amazon here. Khan’s cookbook features the recipes of Turkey, Greece and Cyprus.
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
This is a beauty! Having grown up in a household where a chopped iceberg lettuce salad (with Wishbone Italian dressing) was the only game in town, I have always sought out beauty and variety on the salad plate in my adulthood. This Ina Garten salad…
