Chocolate Covered Ground Cherries Jens Hegg Wednesday, September 17, 2014

This blog is rapidly becoming a foodie blog. I haven't even been posting mixed drinks the way I expected, let alone anything about my graduate program. But, this is one of my fall favorites and now that it's in season I thought I would share it.

Ground cherries are a relative of the tomato and tomatillo, but they are sweet and non-acidic. They don't taste like cherries, more like a burst of sugar and warm flavors without much tartness. They have a bit of mango and pineapple in there, but the taste is much more earthy. They are a bit vegetal, which turns some people off. Every year my grandmother eats a couple while telling me, "I'm just not sure I like them very much," which I think is kindof funny in an endearing way.

Ground cherries were once a staple of the American garden and there are numerous recipes for ground cherry pie online, along with many others. They apparently grow like weeds, much like their inedible cousin the chinese lantern, which made them a good choice for people who relied on their gardens for food. I planted a few of the fruit this year so we'll see in the spring how they grow. My favorite recipe, and one I haven't seen online, is to dip them in chocolate. With the husk pulled back into a little papery shuttlecock it makes an ideal way both to dip them and to eat them as finger food, not to mention that it's a really attractive looking dish that always gets comments.

Preparation couldn't be easier. Carefully peel back the husk and pull it backwards. It will naturally fold into a little tail. They are attached to the berry pretty tightly so they won't pull off too easily. The best berries are the ones that are golden in color. The greenish ones (as long as they aren't too green) are also sweet but have more planty taste.

Melt some chocolate in a double boiler. Really dark chocolate tastes best, it adds the right bitterness to fill in the profile. Ground cherries don't have a whole lot of complex flavor, so it's nice to have that bold bitterness of dark chocolate to fill things in. I could also imagine that orange infused chocolate like Alter Eco Dark Twist would be pretty amazing. If you haven't tried Alter Eco chocolate yet you are missing out, it's just incredibly flavorful and some of the best chocolate I've had. If you want the chocolate to look shiny you need to add some paraffin to the melted chocolate, otherwise it cools to a matte brown. The pictures here are of two batches, one with a bit of paraffin and one without.

 Once the chocolate is melted start dipping the ground cherries in. Putting them on the shiny side of aluminum foil will make it easier to get them off, the chocolate tends to stick down hard on a plate. You can peel them off and put them on a plate later. Put them in the fridge to cool, or just leave them out to cool. Once the chocolate is hard it's ready to eat!

Have fun.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms: the best of summer eats Jens Hegg Friday, August 29, 2014

Squash blossoms are really underrated in the US, usually relegated to Mexican food like squash blossom soup or in quesadillas. It's too bad. They taste really good and are a great way to keep your zucchini plants reproductive efficiency from taking over your life. 

I discovered stuffed squash blossoms several years ago and look forward to the time of year when I can pick a handful of big blossoms, stuff them with chevré, and make one of my favorite appetizers. As is the norm for me, I rarely use a recipe so if you want to make them you'll need to rely on some instincts and frequent tasting rather than measurements…more after the jump.

Mazatlán to Meadow Creek: Huckleberry Margaritas Jens Hegg Wednesday, July 30, 2014

This weekend Katie and I decided to go up to the Palouse Divide, in the Meadow Creek watershed, for huckleberries. We'd been told by some friends it was a good year, and it was. There were berries everywhere once we found them. Unfortunately we got there about an hour after lunch, right in the heat of the day. We managed to pick a gallon or so before the sun had beaten us into submission and we headed to the Hoodoo in Harvard, ID for lunch. When we got home we decided we needed some salt, a drink, and some huckleberries. We figured we could get all of that in one glass with a huckleberry margarita.

© 2009 Laurel F, Wikimedia Commons

Back in March I went down to Mazatlán, Mexico for a conference of the American Fisheries Society. The conference was excellent, the scenery and people were great, and the tequila was worth bringing home. I had a bottle of Los Osuna reposada, made near Mazatlán, that I hadn't opened yet. It's not technically a tequila since it is from Sinaloa, which isn't an approved tequila region, but it is made from 100% blue agave. They don't market themselves as a Mescal either, but it's good stuff. It's won a few tasting awards and is definitely good enough to sip and enjoy. Taste Tequila has a great video with some explanation of the tequila and it's background direct from one of the family members who have been making the stuff for the last hundred years.

There's nothing particularly special about the recipe, but the huckleberries are a great addition. Mix it all up, muddle some huckleberries in the bottom and pour it over ice in a salt rimmed glass and suddenly you have an awesome drink for a Palouse summer by way of Mazatlán. Here are the ingredients for one glass:

• 2oz fresh lime juice
• 3oz decent tequila (who wants to ruin huckleberries with Cuervo Gold)
• Agave syrup (or simple syrup), sweeten to taste
• Small handful of huckleberries
• Flaked salt for the rim
• Save a lime wedge for garnish. 

Black garlic and the perfect summer salad Jens Hegg Wednesday, July 30, 2014

I love chicken salad, especially with grapes, it's one of my favorite summer meals from childhood. It reminds me of harvest, dusty and hot. It is a cool respite to pull a cold chicken salad sandwich out of the cooler, sitting on the hot vinyl seat of a grain truck with a hot wind whipping over the stubble.

Weather on the Palouse has been sweltering. Yesterday was over 100º and the first combines started cutting grain. It's chicken salad weather, neither Katie or I could stomach a hot dinner. As it turns out, adding a bit of black garlic makes chicken salad amazing! You end up with the same awesome salad with these bursts of complex, sweet-tangy, umami flavor as you eat.

Black garlic is garlic that has been slow cooked for an extremely long time while still in the head. It isn't fermented, as is often claimed, and is a pretty recent invention. Like roasting, it takes away the intense garlic flavor. Unlike roasted garlic, black garlic is sweet and a bit tangy with the 'garlic' taste coming at the tail end. It's extremely mild and almost more like dried fruit. We had a head sitting around that I bought to experiment with about a month ago. I figured it was time to get rid of it and I was making chicken salad but didn't have anything sweet or tangy to kick it up a notch. It turns out black garlic makes an incredible addition to chicken salad.

I won't be posting measurements with my recipes on here (I rarely measure anyway) but here is what I put in the chicken salad we made. Mix it up and put it on a bed of the lettuce.

• Head of black garlic
• Cucumber
• Celery
• Fresh shelled peas from our garden
• The remains of a rotisserie chicken 
• Romain lettuce from the garden
• Sir Kensingtons mayonaise (which has some mustard in it, so if you use regular mayo you might want to add a touch of mustard)