Fleur De Sel Caramels

Sure, it's a bit overexposed in this day and age. Carelessly cavorting around town with shallow but ultra-famous celebs like Big Mac and Dorito. Getting mixed up in embarrassing tabloid-cover scandals involving high blood pressure and making people really thirsty. But all salt really wants to do is make things taste great. Salt is an artist at heart. It's the ultimate collaborator. The trouble comes when other foods take advantage of this kindness, riding its proverbial coattails to fame, fortune, and deliciousness, without contributing much in terms of taste and personality (I'm looking at you, bad Chinese takeout). But the things salt can do when it's shown due respect are utterly astonishing. For starters, check out our recent post on salt's collaboration with vegetables and time that resulted in one of the all-time masterpieces of gastronomy: the pickle. Now, via the currently booming world of artisanal salts, this brave little rock is starting to get the respect it deserves. We're seeing black, pink, smoked, and many other distinguished prefixes proudly joining the now-common sea and kosher on America's spice racks. The only problem is finding a dish deserving of such a rarefied mineral. After all, we can't be simply tossing that expensive Sel Gris de Guérande into a pot of boiling pasta water, now, can we? Well, for those with a bit of a sweet tooth, one particularly scrumptious way to showcase that fine salt, and one which makes for excellent holiday gift-giving, is this recipe for Fleur De Sel Caramel from Epicurious.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
  
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup water
• Special equipment: parchment paper; a deep-fat thermometer

Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.

Bring cream, butter, and fleur de sel to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.

Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.

Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248°F on thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.

Congrats Firestone Discoveries Finalists!

Most of you have seen the news, but just for the official record, here is the list of winners from the first round. The finalists are being interviewed this week, so be sure to support your favorites on facebook. The battle has begun! We'll announce the Top 3 for each category very soon, so stay tuned...

DISCOVERIES PATHFINDER FINALISTS

Adam Spiegel

Christine Sterling

Joseph Roldan

Kathleen Nolte

Kim Kulchycki

Kristen Weir

Lisa Kane

Lotchana Sourivong

Thomas Andy Holt

Margie Tosch

DISCOVERIES GUEST CHEF FINALISTS

Scott Beale, Grey Gelding Bistro & Bar, Sarasota Springs, NY

James Gottwald & Rodelio Aglibot, Chicago, IL

Tim Kirker, Bistrot Zinc, Chicago, IL

Jay Norris, Ponte Vedre, FL

Aimee Salas, Valencia, CA

Dean Smith, Spring City, UT

Chef Steve, Yucatan Sunset Catering, Sonoma, CA

Joel Tate, Jackson Hole, WY

Shelley Young, The Chopping Block, Chicago, IL

Patricia Zadony, Chicago, IL

*See their YouTube videos here

Cultured Pickle Shop

"I'd like a pickle"
"A pickle? What kind of pickle? Parsnip? Turnip? Curried Carrot? What?"
"Uh. A pickle."

There's a sign outside of Cultured pickle shop in Berkeley, CA, that says Pickle Shop. Which makes sense. It seems like one of the most logical phrases to put on a sign intended for placement in front of such a shop. Sure, it might strike a more poetically minded person as a bit on the nose. Not a lot of subtext. Little intrigue. Just the facts, ma'am. And sure, there are more verbose, stylistic options. Ye Olde Dispensary of Brine Bathed Curiosities comes to mind. The Lactobacillus Enriched Vegetable Emporium, perhaps. But in terms of verbal economy, Pickle Shop has it pegged. Why then, does this paragon of linguistic efficiency induce a steady stream of slightly befuddled customers, staggering into the shop, unable to acquire the vinegar-soaked, dill-laden cucumber they envisioned, like some poor sap requesting Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Loved You" at a vintage vinyl snob-shop? As anyone who's as big a nerd about anything as Alex Hozven is about pickles can tell you, when you spend the majority of your waking hours obsessing over some silly (yet completely fascinating and wonderful) little thing, it's easy to lose perspective. For most people, a pickle is a sour cucumber. For Hozven, a pickle is an alchemical marvel of lactic-acid fermentation; a vegetable, as the Japanese put it, altered without the use of heat. Whether it be standards like kimchee and sauerkraut, or more unusual fare such as picked blood oranges, kasu carrots, which utilize the filtered-off byproduct of sake, or the flash-pickling microbial hotbed of the nuka pot, it's all pickles to her. So if all you want is a dill cucumber, you can probably get one. You just have to know what to ask for. 

June Taylor's Still Room

Do you like jam? We like jam. Especially when said jam is made by someone as as nice as June Taylor. Steeped in the culinary lore of canning and preserving, Taylor and her assistant Magali Hernandez crank out dozens of different seasonal spreads each year. As you would imagine she works directly with small family farms and seeks out heirloom and forgotten fruits. Tasting some of her marmalades, we’re reminded of why breakfast at Grandma’s was so delicious. It makes us happy to think that there’s a grow-and-preserve-your-own revival happening these days! If you are so inclined, as we hope you are, one of the best ways to spend a weekend day is with June in her production kitchen at the Still Room in Berkeley, learning how to make marmalade from a pro. And tis the season for handmade baked goods. One of June's specialties is a traditional English Christmas Cake, which takes a whole year to make. Candied citrus peels and hand dried fruits are just the beginning. Each cake is wrapped in cheesecloth and hand washed with an aged chardonnay brandy from St. George Spirits. The festive outer wrapping paper is water colored by June and letterpress printed. See the operation from June's perspective in this video:

Hot Holiday Music: The Yule Logs!

Holiday music can be divisive, to say the least. For some, a fear of those opening strains of sleigh bells preceding the first winter's many unplanned Jingle Bells encounters is enough to keep them from leaving the house the day after Thanksgiving. For others, it just isn't Christmas until Nat King Cole wishes you a merry one. Of course, there'll always be those brave and enterprising artists hoping to pen a new classic for people to dread in the late Novembers of years to come, or to just give a little spit-shine to a well-worn favorite and make it look new again.

To kick off the beginning of Hanukkah, and the two-weeks-till-Christmas countdown, we'll be digging up a couple fresh holiday jams that the carolers can add to their collections and that the bah-humbuggers can, well, maybe at least find more tolerable than Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime."

First off, we proudly present The Yule Logs: a merry little band out of Chico, CA that's made Christmas cheer a year-round commitment. The self-proclaimed "Hardest Working Band in Snow Business," these joyous young fellows deliver the goods. In addition to some tasteful re-imaginings of the classics, they boast a sleighfull of catchy original tunes that strike a perfect balance between tongue-in-cheek humor and genuine sincerity. Mixing slinky surf-guitar, doo-wop harmonies, Beatlesesque melodies, and plenty of straight up rock-n-roll, these tunes sound great anytime of the year, but definitely come in handy when trying find something everyone can agree on for that big holiday dance party you've been planning.

Featured Artist: Richard Gemmell

Illustrator Richard Gemmell, in this new series of illustrations drawn from his memories of a trip to Scotland, creates an vivid juxtaposition between the terrestrial reality of the great outdoors and the ethereal abstractions of modern art, while beautifully capturing the spirit of each.

Global Travel: 24 Hour Visual

This is pretty wild. We just ran across this video, which demonstrates just how interconnected we are during this age of travel. It's a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world (represented by the yellow dots), condensed down to about 1 minute. This particular snapshot was taken during the summer months.