If you’re participating in October Unprocessed this month or are just looking to cut some processed foods out of your diet, you might be wondering how to replace some of your favorite store-bought condiments.  One condiment that I had never made myself was ketchup, so I decided to give it a try with a little help from a fellow food blogger.

For me, ketchup has always meant Heinz.  I grew up dipping my french fries in it and have always had a bottle stored in the door of my refrigerator.  I don’t use ketchup that often, but I do like it on burgers, fries, and in homemade barbecue sauces.  I’ve also been known to dip grilled cheese sandwiches in it, but that habit is reserved for diners where I occasionally break down and order a grilled cheese on white bread with American cheese. Don’t knock it ’til you try it!

For the last several months, I haven’t been eating ketchup at all due to the sugar content (actually high fructose corn syrup, in the case of original Heinz).  But now that I’m adding small amounts of certain sweeteners back in, I decided it would be fun to make my own ketchup that includes ingredients I’m comfortable with.

I searched through several different recipes before deciding on this Spicy Ketchup from What’s Gaby Cooking.  I had the pleasure of hanging out with Gaby in Portland recently, so I thought it would be fun to try one of her recipes and pass it on to the rest of you.

This ketchup couldn’t be simpler to make since it starts with canned tomato puree.  For October Unprocessed, I’m allowing good-quality canned tomato products, but it would be easy enough to cook down some whole tomatoes to make your own puree if you have the time and inclination.  One change I did make for October Unprocessed was to use Muscovado sugar in place of standard brown sugar.  Muscovado is much less processed than brown sugar and has a deep molasses flavor that I thought would work well in the ketchup.  It worked perfectly.  Other than that one small change, I followed Gaby’s recipe to the letter and I loved it.

True to the name of the recipe, this is a very spicy ketchup.  If you’re making this for kids or you want something that’s a bit more all-purpose, I would stick with this recipe, but leave out the cayenne pepper and reduce the amount of crushed red pepper.  It’s much easier to add heat at the end than it is to take it away.  The same goes for the sugar – this is definitely a sweet ketchup (which, if you’re a Heinz lover like me, you’ll appreciate).  If you want something less sweet, just start with less sugar.  This is what’s great about making things from scratch – you can and should adjust for your own taste.  Make it your own!

What we’ve been doing at Bottega this week is smoking our ice. I have a smoking gun (available at www.cusisinetechnology.com) and we’ve been experimenting on our cocktails. We’ve smoked tequila, bourbon, and water with good results. Most of us think smoke belongs to grilled foods so sipping an ice-cold margarita with an undernote of smoke makes you sit up and reconsider smoke’s flavor.

We’ve also been spicing our cubes. Heating up water with roasted peppercorns, cooling and then freezing creates an ice cube with some force. Plus the peppercorns look modern frozen in the cube. As the spice cube melts the drink gets more peppery.

I also like the ice cube trays I’ve seen that let you make six big round cylinders of ice, the shape of a hockey puck and just a little smaller. A cocktail requires just one of these super cubes. Not only does it keep the drink cooler, it melts a little slower so your drink stays undiluted a little longer. Plus I like the idea of “Maker’s Mark on the Rock.”

How about you? Any ice shows going on in your freezer? Share your ideas for spicing the cube and staying cool on hot days.

Michael Chiarello

This is a repost that i wanted to share with you .

I love chocolate!, its complexity, Sweetness and savoriness. If you havent had the pleasure of trying any of the Vosges brand chocolates you are really missing out. With ingredients like Bacon, Salt, Curry and Star Anise Vosges creator Katrina Markoff inspires through her exotic blend of spices that accompany most of her chocolates.

Her chocolate bars can be bought locally and Fairway Market and Balduccis. Try one today.

Eat, Share, Inspire.

Just a few years ago, bone marrow was one of those items Pittsburgh chefs said they loved, but couldn’t sell. But trends change quickly and so has the Pittsburgh restaurant scene.

Now, bone marrow is on menus all over town, and it’s flying out of kitchens faster than most of us ever expected.

Preparations range from traditional to unexpected: At Salt of the Earth, chef Kevin Sousa uses bone marrow to bind beef tartar. Restaurant Echo in Cranberry serves traditionally roasted, cross-cut bones with a parsley salad and also uses marrow to enrich their bordelaise sauce.

This past winter, marrow bones were on the menu at Toast! Kitchen and Wine Bar in Shadyside, accompanied by a surprising black bean puree. Sam DiBattista, chef-owner of Vivo Kitchen in Sewickley, serves cross-cut, baked marrow bones with a distinctly untraditional tamarind sauce.

“It has a tartness and a sweetness to it that I really like,” he said.

To the uninitiated, bone marrow can seem foreign, even a little disgusting. But the soft, fatty tissue found in the hollow center of animal leg bones has been eaten and enjoyed for millions of years.

When raw, the marrow looks almost like part of the bone. It’s off-white and hard with a slightly spongy texture. Once it’s cooked, it becomes soft and rich, melts easily and tastes almost like butter, with a sweet, nutty flavor and a lighter, more delicate texture.

Jennifer McLagan, a noted cookbook author, likes bone marrow so much, she’s featured it in three cookbooks, most recently, “Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal” (Ten Speed Press, 2011, $35). She’s noticed a general growth in the ingredient’s popularity.

“It’s been around for a while, but bone marrow seems to be going mainstream,” she said.

And why not? Marrow is cheap, nourishing and tastes fantastic.

“Bone marrow is a bit like the poor man’s foie gras. It has that wonderful smooth texture and fabulous taste and it’s generally not that expensive,” Ms. McLagan explained.

And while it’s rich, it’s arguably quite healthful, because it contains a lot of monounsaturated fats. In her cookbook, “Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes,” she argues that fat is an essential, healthy ingredient and that many animal fats, like bone marrow, are wrongly maligned as unhealthful and artery clogging, when in fact they have a lot in common with olive oil. According to her book, the fat in calf bone marrow is typically 31 percent saturated, 63 percent monounsaturated and 6 percent polyunsaturated.

Healthy or not, most people who eat bone marrow do so for the wonderful taste and texture, not to mention the visceral pleasure of eating out of the bone. “It appeals to something really basic in our genetic code,” Ms. McLagan said.

Many of the most popular bone marrow dishes involve eating straight from the bone, often with a small, specialized spoon. Osso buco, the well-known Italian specialty of braised veal shanks, is loosely translated as “bone with a hole,” referring to the fact that the veal shanks are cross-cut, allowing the eater to enjoy the marrow, as well as the tender, braised meat.

This dish is less common than it once was but still has quite a passionate following. Girasole in Shadyside offers it on the last full weekend of each month. It’s also frequently on the menu at Brix Wood-Fired Wine Bar, which recently opened on the North Side.

As more restaurants serve bone marrow, chefs are coming up with new twists to distinguish themselves. Chef Keith Fuller had served cross-cut, roasted bones in his previous position at Six Penn Kitchen, Downtown. At his new restaurant, Root 174 in Regent Square, he had wanted to serve them cut lengthwise, or canoe-style, topped with an apple gremolata and parmesan cheese and served with toasts. But then he heard about the gargantuan servings of canoe-cut bone marrow that chef Richard DeShantz was serving at Meat & Potatoes in the Cultural District. He decided to find a different way to prepare them.

“My sous chef was making creme brulee,” said Mr. Fuller, and he then thought, “What if we make an unsweetened creme brulee, whip in the bone marrow and brulee it with parmesan?” After a little trial and error, the bone marrow creme brulee was born. At first he offered it as a special, but the response was so enthusiastic, it was added to the regular menu.

The bone marrow creme brulee — refined, whimsical and delicious — is a striking example of what happens when trends drive creativity rather than imitation. And when chefs are comfortable taking risks and offering something different, diners have more reasons than ever to take a seat and enjoy.

“The increase in menu incidence we have tracked shows that these items are not just being added to Mediterranean concepts, but to the menus of national chains within virtually all segments and categories,” said Mary Chapman, director of Chicago-based Technomic.

“We expect this to continue as awareness of the cuisine increases and as the trends feeding the growth continue to develop,” she said.

The report found that:

• Six in 10 consumers surveyed said they would likely order a menu offering that featured Mediterranean ingredients and flavors.

• Mediterranean chain sales at restaurants that feature Greek, Spanish and Middle Eastern foods increased 1.7 percent to $362 million in 2010 from 2009. Twenty leading Mediterranean chains considered in the report finished 2010 with 430 total units, up from 423 in 2009.

• Restaurants are using more Mediterranean food items, such as falafel, hummus, chickpeas and Greek yogurt. Pita sandwiches and Greek entrée salads are appearing more frequently on menus.

• Mediterranean dishes include fish, herbs, vegetables and olive oil — ingredients consumers consider healthful. “Consumers seeking better-for-you fare also appreciate the cuisine’s simple preparations, use of fresh ingredients and cooking methods that instill flavor without adding fats,” Technomic said in a release.

Nick Vojnovic, a partner in the quick-service Greek concept Little Greek said he thinks Mediterranean cuisine “is getting ready to explode.”

“People get burned out on the burrito, burger, pizza deal,” he said. “We have high-quality food that is both healthy and delicious.”

Vojnovic, who just opened a fifth Little Greek restaurant, is building three others and has five franchise agreements, he said.

Chapman of Technomic said consumers are seeking “better-for-you items that don’t scream it’s better for you.”

Mediterranean cuisine includes “vegetables, olive oils and highly seasoned rather than fat-laden flavoring. It’s a better-for-you dish without fat-free low-calorie,” Chapman said. “It’s about what it is and not what it’s not.”

Contact Alan Snel at alan.snel@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @AlanSnelNRN

Read more: http://www.nrn.com/article/mediterranean-cuisine-gaining-favor?ad=news#ixzz1YupnLFQx

This was an interesting article i found  - Hope you enjoy it.

You love those little squeeze-top plastic bears, golden with honey, lined up stoically on supermarket shelves and at farmers markets across America. Too bad your relationship with them begins at your teacup and ends with a dollop stirred into Greek yogurt.

Sure, many bears may look as if they hold nothing more than a one-note sweetener. But chat with beekeepers and take a closer look at labels and you’ll find honey flavors as different as the nectars savored by particular bees.

In the know chefs even team with local beekeepers to incorporate honey’s range of flavors in their cooking, from buttery avocado notes to mild tupelos and dark buckwheat.

Scotty Schwartz, a sustainably-focused chef, had his honey epiphany when Naked Bee Honey Farm beekeepers arrived at 29 South, his restaurant in Fernandina Beach, Fla., with blackberry, cherry blossom and chestnut honeys.

“Instead of a condiment, this honey is now as important an ingredient as the protein on the plate,” says Schwartz, who often finishes slow-roasted pork shanks with blackberry or chestnut honey before setting it atop polenta.

“It’s like wine. You are going to get terroir,” he says. “If you’ve set up hives next to chestnuts, you’re going to get that. If you’re set up next to cherry blossoms, the flavor is going to be totally different.”

Which is why tasting and inhaling the aroma of different types is important in deciding how to use a honey in the kitchen.

“I think all honeys are unique. Some are not going to have strong floral qualities, others will,” says Polly Lappetito, executive chef at The Culinary Institute of America in Napa, Calif., which held its first educational honey summit for chefs this summer. It included a varietal tasting of alfalfa, buckwheat, avocado, clover, sage, star thistle, eucalyptus, wildflower and orange blossom honeys.

Lappetito has used honey in vinaigrettes, with roasted vegetables and in semifreddos, among other dishes. She urges cooks to taste and experiment: “I always think honey adds a softer sweetness to dishes.”

Or a little kick: “Take peppercorns and heat it up with the honey,” she says. “Let it infuse the honey. It adds a certain spice and heat.”

Dallas chef and beekeeper Graham Dodds, who spent childhood summers in Scotland tending hives with his grandfather, drizzles honey on the popular bruschetta tastings at his restaurant Bolsa. “I’ll drizzle raw honey over the top to tie it all together,” he says. Tastings can include salmon, prosciutto, tomato and goat cheese bruschetta.

Chefs aren’t the only ones intrigued by honey, of course. We each ate about 1.3 pounds of honey last year. And the National Honey Board’s Bruce Boynton says beekeeping groups around the country report increased interest in beekeeping classes.

Considering that bees in this country have lots of floral sources to check out — the Honey Board says more than 300 — cooks have a variety of honey types to sample and a wide range of flavors they can incorporate into their cooking.

“When the consumer really starts eating and getting all these different flavors of floral or citrus or nut or forest,” says Schwartz, “they’ll see how Mother Nature pretty much dictates not only what we’re going to cook with but a honey’s flavor profiles.”

Honey-caramelized peaches with grouper

Prep: 25 minutes
Cook: 15 minutes
Servings: 4

Note: Chef Scotty Schwartz of 29 South suggests using a dark extracted honey in this recipe. He serves the peaches with cubes of slow-roasted pork belly; grilled pork cutlets or chops would work well too, as would such fish as snapper or grouper, which we use here. Or serve with shortbread or cake for dessert.

Ingredients:
4 fresh freestone peaches, halved, pitted
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cracked black pepper
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
4 halibut or grouper fillets
4 cups arugula

1. Season peach halves with 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over high heat. When oil is shimmering hot, put peaches flesh side down in oil. Saute until dark and almost charred. Add honey; toss peaches gently. Honey and oil will form a caramel glaze. Remove from heat. Sprinkle with rosemary. Drizzle peaches with a little of the glaze.

2. Meanwhile, season the fish fillets with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt; heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook fillets, turning once, until opaque and flaky, 5 minutes per side.

3 .Toss arugula with a remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil; divide arugula among 4 plates. Set a fish fillet and caramelized peaches atop each. Drizzle with any remaining glaze.

I think, since Dijon mustard is a French invention, that it’s only appropriate to use it in a French preparation. Steak with butter. Genius. Tender, but firm, meat, dripping in rivulets of melting cream-sweet, soft butter, that contrasts but complements the meat in flavor and texture.

French steaks are often seared in butter, and one way to serve them is with Beurre Maître d’Hôtel: coins of cold butter, flavored with garlic, parsley, and lemon, left to melt on top of hot seared steaks. I tried flavoring the butter with mustard, instead of herbs and garlic, and the result is a steak that is flavored not only with the sweet cream of butter, but also with the tangy bite of white wine, and the acidic, spicy whip of both Dijon and whole grain mustards. Maybe even better than the prototype. I like to serve two little round medallions of tenderloin per person, with simple steamed new potatoes to soak up the butter and the juices that escape from the meat. Carnally satisfying.

A little about me,
My name is Robert Forti and I have been a foodie ever since I can remember. My passion for food started in the early 80′s, I would say it was a tie between two culinary shows, The Frugal Gourmet with host John Smith and Then a few years later Great Chefs Great Cities. I remember watching in awe as these culinary great would “whip-up” the most amazing and creative dishes.

My first job was at a restaurant and ever since I have been hooked, it’s a major passion in my life and I have been in some way, shape, or form been involved in the food and beverage industry since.

My goal for this blog is for me to recearch and learn new things and share them with you.

Please comment on my posts, the more feedback the better, if you have a product, service, receipe, restaurant, bar or any other food related business you would like me to talk about in my blog please email me at info@rbnconsulting.com, I’ll be happy to review your product or service on our blog,

Thank you
Robert Forti

“Good food and wine is never as good without good friends and family”