Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, cooking, food, learning stuff on July 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Today, a quick visit to Sicily to make tomato paste by hand. I had no idea it was this concentrated!
How to Make Tomato Paste in Sicily | The Kid Should See This
It’s easy. Take a ridiculously large amount of perfectly ripe Sicilian tomatoes. Cut them up. Leave them in the sun for 4 days to reduce down to about one tenth of their original volume. Put them in a jar and save it for a gloomy February day.
Here’s the video:
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, dessert, food, food science, recipes on July 2, 2025| 1 Comment »
This week I learned about a little piece of medieval magic called the posset.
What is a posset? Not, as you might think, an odd variant of the possum, but a dessert. And a dessert that shouldn’t, at least on first glance, work. At all.
But it does, and it is magic.
I titled this post “medieval magic” because I’m a sucker for a fun alliteration, but my familiarity with the posset comes from historical fiction set in the nineteenth century. (It was originally a drink of milk curdled with wine often used for medicinal purposes, but the word evolved.) I knew that it was a dessert and something like custard, but not the how or why of it.
As of yesterday, I have added this particular spell to my magical recipe book.
Why magic? Because the posset, which is a cream-based pudding-like dessert, shouldn’t work.
Look at this ingredient list:
Gently boil cream and sugar for five minutes, remove from heat and stir in juice, cool then chill.
That’s it. Unlike panna cotta, custard or pudding, there’s no gelatin, eggs or starch to bind the ingredients together. It still comes out of the fridge a thick, spoonable dessert that goes beautifully with fruit and a Biscoff cookie base. And it’s simple. The biggest commitment is chilling time.
The recipe I modified, with notes:
Creamy Key Lime Pie Bars Recipe | King Arthur Baking
Seriously, though, why does this work?
The magic is in the interaction of the acids in the juice and the cream.
How To Make A Posset – An Acid Set Cream – The Culinary Exchange
Possets are acid set creams. This makes citrus flavors perfect posset making foundations.
Yes, please.
Posset – The old school dessert we’re bringing back
It’s a 3 ingredient custard that tastes like the love child of lemon curd & pastry cream…
- Dissolving sugar into cream keeps the posset from being gritty
- Boiling the cream evaporates off a little bit of the water, concentrating the fats in the cream for an extra-luscious texture
- The acid coagulates the proteins in the cream, which causes the posset to thicken as it cool. Coagulation means that proteins are getting together and hanging out. The closer they hang, the firmer the final filling texture!
So kind of like cheese, but in the end, nothing like cheese. The posset was fruity, tangy, and delicious, exactly the sort of magic I love.
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, fictional food, food on May 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I have not tried these. I want to try these:
Ted Lasso Biscuits – Broma Bakery
Because what’s more fun than making dreams reality?
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Posted in Food and..., Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #onceinaharvestsupermooneclipse, eclipse, full-moon, ice cream, lunar eclipse, moon, science, supermoon on September 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The moon shines bright tonight, my friends.
First, the what, when, where of tonight’s eclipse.
What to know about Tuesday’s lunar eclipse and harvest supermoon – NPR
The best times to view the event will depend on your location, but the lunar eclipse will peak at 10:44 p.m. ET, according to NASA. All of North and South America will have a chance to see the partial lunar eclipse and harvest supermoon depending on the weather. Europe and Africa will also have an opportunity to see the eclipse.
As the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, this is the Harvest Moon. The first known written use of this name in the English language (per the Oxford English Dictionary) was in 1706. During the fall harvest season farmers sometimes need to work late into the night by moonlight. On average moonrise is about 50 minutes later each night. Around the Harvest Moon this time is shorter, about 25 minutes for the latitude of Washington, DC, and only 10 to 20 minutes farther north in Canada and Europe.
(Note from the future: NASA has a great Astronomy Photograph of the Day showing a time lapse of the eclipse.)
Here is some general info on eclipses and a fun video from NASA.
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And as for that more-or-less moon related bonus item? It’s a tasty one.
Mr Man and I went for a lovely if hot hike down by the river, and decided that the best way to cap it off would be with ice cream. We found ourselves at Chris’s Ice Cream Ottawa.
This fun little shop had a number of interesting and creative flavors, including blood orange, chili chocolate, strawberry crunch, and… hang on, what’s this?
Moon mist.
Interesting. Never heard of it. (That’s because we’re not Out East and I have apparently not been shopping in the right ice cream stores.)
Wait, it’s a combination of bubble gum, grape, and banana?!
Here’s a quick intro to this regional delight: Written in the stars: The legendary tale of Atlantic Canada ice cream favourite Moon Mist.
I did not think I would like it. I did not think the flavors would work. In fact, they did more than work, as all three flavors combined into a new, better flavor.
I don’t quite know how to describe this “improbable” combination except as a structural shift. Imagine three individual flavors, normally experienced as if they were sequential, or side by side. When eaten together, however, the flavors stack together to create a singular new experience.
Readers, I loved it.
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, baking, Bundt topography, cake, dessert, recipes on September 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I like lemon. And lime and yuzu and orange, but very much lemon. Which is why I want to give a shout-out to King Arthur’s 2017 Recipe of the Year and my new favorite lemon cake. The hardest thing about it is prepping the pan. (After years of fighting with the challenges of Bundt pan topography, I opted to try this spray. Success!)
Click through to the recipe for details and step-by-step instructions. I record my version here for next week when I make this again culinary posterity.
Lemon Bliss Cake Recipe | King Arthur Baking
Ingredients
Cake
Glaze
Icing (optional, the cake is good with or without it)
Bake at 350F for 60 minutes.
* I bought the specialized ingredients at King Arthur so I’ve included those links, but you can find these items elsewhere. I do appreciate the fact that King Arthur is an employee-owned company with an extensive free recipe collection and a hotline for baking emergencies!
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, brunch, Thoughts on August 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »
There’s a storm rolling in so I’ll make this brief. Also, we’re stuffed after a fun brunch with waffles, fauxmosas, BLTs and good friends. How good?
They brought chocolate croissants.
“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
― Linda Grayson
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, baking, bread, food, recipes, sourdough on August 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
My favorite sandwich bread recipe makes two loaves. That’s just enough for Mr Man to eat most of a loaf the first day, and then polish off the second loaf over the next day or two. Making this bread isn’t hard but it does take up most of a morning, and it would be nice if the results lasted a bit longer.
Given that, I’ve adapted the recipe to make three loaves and include it here so I won’t misplace the random scrap of paper I used for my calculations. (Yes, that happens a lot!)
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Even More Sourdough Sandwich Bread
Ingredients
Levain
Dough
Instructions (abbreviated*)
* I’ve memorized this recipe by now, but for more details see the original post. And apologies for not converting these measurements back into cups etc. but my bread needs to be shaped!
Enjoy!
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, meh, Thoughts on July 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Some days all you can do is make a quadruple batch of cookies. So that’s what I’m doing.
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, food, history, Thoughts on June 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I stumbled across a spice mix yesterday and ended up going down a rabbit hole of seasoning mixes, chefs and surprises. Did I collect a list of Burlap & Barrel wants that will keep my wish list going for the foreseeable future? I did. And did I learn some interesting and fun facts about cooking with spices that are new to me? Also yes.
For example: I didn’t recognize hing at first, but it’s also called perungayam or asafoetida, which I have heard of but never cooked with. It’s used in Indian and other recipes and is good for people who can’t or don’t want to use onions and garlic. (B&B’s tasting notes equate 1/8 teaspoon of the spice to one whole onion plus six cloves garlic, so yeah, it packs a punch.) I happen to be a mite sensitive to alliums so I decided to explore more. Which led me to this in-depth article:
Asafoetida’s Lingering Legacy Goes Beyond Aroma — Whetstone Magazine
Devil’s dung. Seytan tersi. Merde du diable.
In English, Turkish, French and a whole host of other languages, the monikers for asafoetida are so deeply unflattering that you’d wonder why anyone would want to consume or cook with the spice at all. Its most commonly used English name is just as unambiguous. Derived from Farsi and Latin, asafoetida simply translates to “stinking resin.”
So what is asafoetida, and why is it so divisive?
If you aren’t one of the millions who already use this particular spice, read on for more, including an interesting detour through Afghanistan and Iran with Alexander the Great. Because even kings have to eat!
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Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #thingsthatmakemegonom, cookies, food on June 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I have discovered a new cookie recipe, and liked it enough to want to share the recipe. I don’t usually like soft puffy cookies, but I really like these.
Here is the original recipe with detailed instructions over at Serious Eats: Fiori di Sicilia Cookies Recipe.
My version, slightly different and in metric.
Recipe Notes:
Reviews:
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J.R. Johnson 
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