| Get the most flavor out of your herbs
Follow these rules to get the most out of herbs. Basil (best fresh): "You taste fresh basil in your nose more than you do on your palate," says Ellen Ecker Ogden, author of "From the Cook's Garden." That's why it's best added at the end of a recipe, such as pasta sauce, or used as garnish. Chopped fresh basil is excellent sprinkled on sandwiches, salad, pizza, eggs, steak or veal. Or mix it into softened butter for spreading on biscuits. In a food processor, blend leftover fresh basil with olive oil until it forms a paste. Keep in the freezer for instant fresh basil flavor for finishing soups or rice dishes. Reserve dried basil for adding at the beginning of soup and stew recipes, and in tomato sauce. Ginger (usually best fresh): Fresh ginger has a sweeter, lemony flavor than dried versions, which can be hot and spicy.
The finest fry? Cisco!
L.B.'s MR. POTATO HEAD: Long Beacher Jesse James' hand-built West Coast Choppers motorcycles sell like hot cakes, but his french fries are the fairest of them all. The horde of readers and voters in the What's Hot! Best French Fries in Long Beach feature hath decreed: James' (and his wife Sandra Bullock's) Cisco Burger french fries are the best in all the land, if we can agree that "all the land" is, basically, Long Beach. "Hell YEAH!" said James when we blindsided him with the news Friday afternoon. His much-ballyhooed burger stand at 620 W. Anaheim St., next to his chopper shop, is only in its sophomore season and here it has bested the spud offerings of your finest hot-selling fast-food joints, gourmet bistros and elegant chop houses. The fries are extraordinarily crunchy on the outside and just as extraordinarily smooth and pillowy on the inside, which is pretty much the one-two combo criteria cited by our teeming squad of voters.
Black gold enriches cookies
For something considered a byproduct, molasses has certainly made a tasty impression on foods we know and love. Gingerbread, muffins, licorice, baked beans and barbecue sauce are just a handful of the creations made richer by what I like to call the "black gold" of the culinary world. When sugar cane (and sometimes beets) are refined to make sugar, the syrupy juice extracted is placed in a machine where centrifugal force is used to remove the sugar crystals, from which sugar is made. The liquid that remains after this process is called molasses. The syrupy juice is boiled three times, and when you go to the grocery store you will find three types of molasses for sale that reflect that. .
Radio review
The BBC and the Closet (Radio 4) was a documentary within a documentary; a slice of British social and sexual history told through the story of a radio programme that was a while in the making. In 1963, Colin Thomas, a BBC trainee, began working on a programme that would consist of gay men talking anonymously about their lives. "To edit them together, just that," explained Thomas. "[Before] it was always experts rather than gay men themselves." Two years later, the programme was finally broadcast, after many a tussle behind the scenes. Internal BBC memos made up one set of voices in the documentary, and these appeared, at the very least, ludicrous in retrospect. One high-up executive worried that "marginal cases" on hearing the subject treated sympathetically might "cross the frontier" or have their interest awakened enough "disastrously to tip the scale".
Food for thought: Fans' Super Bowl party recipes
Embrace your inner lineman. The best Super Bowl parties feature crowded couches, full coolers, jerseys untucked because they won't fit any other way and plates piled high with food. We asked fans who post on ESPN.com to share of their party playbook. Their consensus: The main ingredients are football, friends and food, especially dishes made with cream cheese. From their submissions, we picked a starting lineup of recipes (click on linked names to see full recipes). Send us a note if you see something that shouldn't be left out of the Super Bowl XLII gameplan. .
Michael Pointer: Purdue Q&A
Question: When will the Purdue quarterback actually look off his primary receiver and go through his progressions? From what I saw Saturday, come-heck-or-high-water, Curtis Painter is going to throw to his primary, even if there is a crowd. And, on two of those interceptions, no Boiler receiver was in the area. I haven't seen anyone say that a receiver zigged when he should have zagged. Were those interceptions all on Painter? Quotes from coaches and Painter seem to suggest so. (Mike from Kokomo)
Answer: Mike, I have covered four quarterbacks since I've been on the Purdue beat: Brandon Hance, Kyle Orton, Brandon Kirsch and Painter. (I missed having the pleasure of covering Drew Brees.) I heard that complaint about everyone of them, including Orton, who had 31 touchdown passes and just five interceptions as a starter.
New cookbook celebrates old Brass Tavern Inn
In 1845 when the Brass Tavern and Inn first opened its doors on the corner of Old Pike and Old Highway in what is now Munster, the journey from this section of Northwest Indiana into Chicago took about a day.Because the journey was hard (travelers could be mired in mud when the dirt roads were wet or cloaked in dust in dry weather), the tavern offered a place to rest and to dine. What made stopping there even better is that Julia Watkins Brass, who owned the Brass Tavern with her husband (and ran it while he was looking for riches in California during the Gold Rush), kept a crock jar full of sugar cookies, and her menus were described by contemporaries as "attractive and delectable." Time moves on.Now the trip from Ridge Road (Old Pike) and Columbia Avenue (Old Highway) in Munster takes less than an hour instead of a day.And the tavern, which in 1864 became the Stallbohm Inn, closed its doors in the 1890s as railroads and paved roads made traveling much easier and eliminated the need for a stagecoach stop.The building burned in 1909; all that is left to mark the site is a bronze historical plaque donated in 1927 by the Julia Watkins Brass Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.But the Brass Tavern and those days still live on, in the memories of those who have heard stories of the inn and in the old recipes handed down by generations of local residents.Now these recipes and more have been collected by the Munster Historical Society and presented, along with photos and stories of early area settlers, in a delightful book titled "The Brass Tavern Cookbook: A Collection of Nostalgic Recipes Commemorating the Establishment in 1845 of The Brass Tavern & Inn, the First Permanent Settlement in Munster, Indiana," compiled by JoAnne Shafer. "The oldest recipes for a baked ham glaze and apple crisp both date back to 1855," says Shafer who, with other members of the society, worked on this project for 12 years.Besides providing a history of the region, the cookbook also tells a story of how the foods we eat have changed (partridge wrapped in vine leaves having been dropped from most menus today) -- and stayed the same.
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