Candied Ginger and Orange Peel

 Have you ever tried candied ginger?  No?  Neither had I.  Well, I have used it in turkey brine, because that's what Alton Brown says to do.  But I have no idea how 1 1/2 teaspoons of candied ginger really affects the flavor of a 14 lb turkey.  I have been trying to remember if I have ever used my stash of candied ginger for anything else.  I have a vague memory of doing so, though I can't remember what the recipe was.

Never the less, I decided that this year is going to be different.  Honestly, I have learned to love ginger root this past year.  I have decided that I love Thai food. Not so much the coconut side of things.  But the garlic, ginger, cilantro, lime, peanut, sweet, salty, sour, bitter complexity of Thai food   is interesting to attempt to cook and delicious to eat.  And at the top of the list of ingredients in the best Thai food I have ever eaten or attempted to cook, is ginger.  Oh, the ginger rice soup at Thai Palace restaurant in Holland is so worth the trip out there.  Yup.  I love the stuff.

So why, I asked myself, have I never really used the candied ginger from Penzey's that I keep in my pantry, other than in Thanksgiving brine? Ginger is a warm flavor, so it goes perfectly with the other warm spices that we use at this time of year.  In fact, most pumpkin pie recipes use powdered ginger.  And what about gingerbread?  So I kept thinking, and it seems to me that ginger would work well with cranberries and apples.  I decided to add some candied ginger to the cranberry sauce.  And maybe the apple pie.  I haven't quite decided if I am ready to mess with the Thanksgiving apple pie.

Of course, this is all experimental.  And when I am doing something experimental, I don't want to blow a load of money on it.  And candied ginger isn't exactly cheap.  Ginger root, however is quite cheap.  So is sugar.  And water is nearly free.  And guess what?  That's all you need to make your own candied ginger.

I have to tell you, this is nothing but fun.  I still don't see myself chewing on candied ginger as though it's a Sour Patch Kid (unless I had an upset stomach--ginger is supposed to be good for that).  But I do see myself tossing a few pieces into many different dishes over the next few months.  So let's get started.

First, this is ginger root.  It's quite unattractive.  But that doesn't matter.  It's fantastic.  By the way, I have read that if you can get young ginger (some Asian markets apparently sell it), it makes better candied ginger.  Ginger has these tough, long fibers in it, and apparently young ginger is less fibrous.  But I just had the regular stuff, and it worked out just fine.

 You have to get the peel off of ginger, but it's really easy.  Use the side of a regular table spoon--the kind that you stir your coffee with.  The peel scrapes right off, and the spoon seems to get into the knobs and crevasses more easily than a vegetable peeler or knife would do.  Of course, you will have some dried out ends where a piece of ginger had been broken off of the piece that you bought.  Just slice those off with a paring knife.

 And that's what is left.  The naked ginger on the left, and the pile of skin on the right.  Now you just have to decide how you want to prepare it. You can slice it thinly and just have some coin-shaped pieces.  I decided to mimic the stuff that I bought at Penzey's, so I sliced it a little more thickly, and then cut those pieces into two to four smaller pieces, ending up with chunks.

 You just have to make sure that the pieces are not so small that they will fall through your drying rack (aka cooling rack).

 I decided that, if I am candying ginger, I might as well candy something else.  I had these pretty oranges around for the cranberry sauce, so I figured I might as well get my money's worth and candy the peel.

 I think that the vegetable peeler works best for this.  I tried the thick part of the little zester that I have, but it dug deeply into the pith--the white part between the zest and the flesh.  The pith is bitter, and pretty much good for nothing, so I knew I wouldn't want it, and I didn't want to deal with trimming it by hand.  The peeler just shaved the strips of zest off, with only a trace of the pith left.  I wasn't worried about that little bit.

 I was picturing thin, maybe even curly little strips of candied orange peel, so I sliced some of the strips in half, lengthwise.  I wouldn't do that again.  They don't curl up, they don't look particularly more interesting, and they are harder to work with.  You can always cut the finished product up any way you want, but the original strips are easier to work with.

 Once the ginger and orange peel are prepped, it's time to make a simple syrup.  Simple syrup is just sugar and water.  The ratio will depend on what you are using it for.  If you want a syrup to flavor coffee, tea or lemonade, probably equal parts water and sugar.  If you want the syrup to be thicker, use more sugar.  Here, I used equal parts.  For three oranges, I used a cup each of sugar and water.  For the ginger, I used two cups of each.  Just pour the sugar in, then pour the water over it.  No need to stir at this point.  Place it on the stove and turn it on medium heat.  After it looks like it is getting warm, just use a stainless or silicone utensil to gently stir the sugar.  Don't use a rubber spatula! This stuff gets hot, and rubber will melt.  Silicone spatulas, however, are heat-resistant and work great.

Don't walk away from this!  It doesn't take long for the sugar to melt, and the syrup will begin to simmer.  It's a big mess if this boils over (not that I have any personal experience, mind you), and it can happen quickly.  So stay close to the stove.

Once the syrup is at a simmer, it's time to add the ginger and orange peel.  I almost dropped the ginger in, straight from my hands.  But then I remembered how hot that syrup is, and how I really didn't want that sticky liquid to splatter up on my hands.  So I grabbed my trusty spider, filled it up, and gently slid the ginger into the syrup.  Accident averted.

 If you don't have a spider, I would highly recommend that you get one.  It is cheap and very useful.  I use it when making pasta dishes that have blanched vegetables in them.  I can blanch the veggies, fish them out with the spider, and reuse the water for the pasta.  I often use the spider to scoop larger pieces of pasta out of water and into sauce, without having to get a colander dirty.  And on the rare occasion that I deep fry anything, the spider is perfect for lifting the finished product out, draining over the pot, and keeping the mess to a minimum.

The ginger will need to cook longer than the orange peel.  My peel cooked on medium heat, at a vigorous simmer, for about 40 minutes before it looked translucent.  So I worked on draining it while the ginger finished cooking.

I used a fork to grab each piece of peel from the syrup and lay it out on a rack set over a sheet pan.  It's not super fussy, but you will want to keep them as separate as possible.  By the time that I had all of the pieces on the rack, it was cool enough to toss in sugar.

Just put a little sugar on a dinner plate, and lay several pieces of peel on top of it.  Press down lightly, and then turn them over and press again.  Then just toss them around a bit to adhere the sugar all over.

Then move the pieces back to the rack, and sugar another batch.  Leave them to dry until the ginger is ready.


 Finally, once the ginger is done cooking (because there's no need to dirty a second rack!), the orange peel will be cool and dry enough to place in a ziploc bag and refrigerate.

I did try a piece, and it tasted good.  But I can't help but think that it would taste even better with some melted bittersweet chocolate drizzled over it all willy-nilly. And I will probably throw some into almond scented muffins and cookies with some Craisins.  I might try mincing some up and tossing it into a salad, too.  Hmmm...possibilities.

I cooked the ginger for probably an hour and 15 minutes, or until it was tender. Just drain the ginger the same way that you drained the peel.  Again, try to keep each piece separate.  It is coated with sticky syrup, and you don't want the pieces to glue themselves together.  Let the ginger dry and cool a little longer than the orange peel.  About 15 minutes should do it.  Then coat the ginger with sugar just like you did with the peel.

 And that's it!  You now have candied ginger.  Lots and lots cheaper than buying it, ready made at the store.

Except.....that's not quite it.  You see, there is a beautiful side benefit of candying ginger and orange peel.  Remember that simple syrup?  You just infused it with orange zest and ginger.  That could be really good in hot or iced tea, or brushed over a piece of angel food cake.  So don't waste it!

 This is the orange simple syrup.  I was thinking about how nice that would be in a hot cup of tea or apple cider, and then thought about the ginger syrup, and eventually, I thought of the words "orange" and "ginger" close enough together to have a revelation of sorts.

I love orange and ginger together!  At least, they smell amazing.  Best shampoo in the world.  It makes me happy every morning.  So I decided to add some of the ginger syrup to the orange syrup and have a nice mix.  It will still be good in tea, and if Bath & Body Works is to be believed, drinking it should give me a boost of energy every morning.  Yeah, I know....wishful thinking.  But it still tastes and smells amazing!  Enjoy!

Garlic

This is a head of garlic.

This is a clove of garlic.  I just pulled it off the head.

This is a whole head of garlic, separated into cloves.

Well, that was helpful, wasn't it?

Seriously, this is pretty obvious to a lot of people.  Others, not so much.  I have been surprised at the number of people who don't use garlic, only use it from a jar they found in the refrigerated case of the produce section, or think of it as somehow exotic.

I use garlic all the time.  It's one of my favorite ingredients.  It is prominent in so many different cuisines.  Italian (the obvious), French, middle eastern, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican.....I am sure the list would go on and on.  Off the top of my head, I can't think of any cuisine that doesn't use garlic.  And I am not sure I want to know.

Oh, garlic is so good.  I know the reputation it has.  They say not to eat anything garlicky on a date, because you wouldn't want to smell like garlic.  I have two problems with that advice.  So single ladies, listen up.  First, the notion that garlic smells bad is one of the most confusing bits of conventional wisdom that I have heard.  Okay, so if you chew on a raw garlic clove, your breath is going to smell kind of acrid.  But I haven't seen too many menu offerings with raw garlic as a listed ingredient.  Once you saute or roast garlic, the aroma is absolutely amazing.  In fact, my number one, all-time favorite culinary aroma is garlic and olive oil warming together in a pan.  If you are worried about breath, well, chew on a mint after dinner.  There is no long-lasting effect on your breath after eating garlic.  And it will not seep from your pores.
But more importantly, if you are dating a guy who minds the smell of garlic, you don't want to continue down that path, anyway.  

There is nothing better than fresh garlic.  I do use garlic powder when seasoning beef, but that is always in addition to fresh garlic, not in place of it.  I haven't ever used garlic in a jar.  It's just too expensive, and I have a feeling that it would get much too harsh and bitter, sitting in its juices all that time.  Besides, I use garlic in many ways, not just minced.  Sometimes I just smash the cloves of garlic and put them in a cup or so of olive oil, and warm it all over low heat for quite a while, so that the flavor of the garlic is infused into the oil.  Makes a great pizza crust flavoring, or a quick dressing for pasta or salad.  It works for garlic bread, too.  Plus, your house will smell amazing.  And the cloves don't go to waste.  After all that time in the oil, they are soft and mild, and perfect for smooshing into mashed potatoes or spreading over bread. Or cook until it's just past the spreadable stage and chop it up to sprinkle over pizza or add to sauces.  

If you are using garlic to flavor a sauce, you can make it a little milder by simply slicing the garlic, or stronger by mincing it.  The smaller the pieces, the more it tends to impart its flavor.  Of course, that's only one factor.  If you are cooking the sauce a long time, it won't make much difference.  But for a quick pan sauce with a little garlic flavor, go ahead and use slices.

So for those to whom garlic remains a mystery, let me show you how simple it really is.  

Once again, this is a head of garlic.  And a pretty good one, at that.  When you pick out garlic, look for large heads (they are usually priced by the unit, not by weight, so get the biggest ones you can for the money), firm, filled-out skins, and cloves that seem to be on the large side.  There is nothing wrong with smaller cloves--you can just use 2 or 3 small ones and count them as one for a recipe.  The only problem I have is that each clove has to be peeled, so if you want less work, look for large cloves.  Sometimes the little buggers can be tricky, though.  What looks like one clove bump will turn out to be two or three cloves.  Nothing you can do.  Sigh and start peeling.

The other thing to avoid is any sort of sprouting.  I'm not talking about the dry, hard stem that sometimes sticks straight out of the top.  Usually, that is cut off, but sometimes you will see it still present.  It's not a problem.  You want to avoid the green sprouts.  It means that the garlic is old, and will most likely be dried out a bit, and less pungent.  However, I have often heard that, if your garlic cloves start to sprout after purchase, you should throw them away because they will have become bitter.  Not true.  Simply cut the peeled clove in half, root to tip, and pull the sprout away.  The sprout itself is bitter, so you don't want to just mince it up with the garlic.  But the surrounding garlic won't be affected.  The worst that will happen to it is that it might lose some of it pungency.  No big deal.

So how do you get the little nuggets of goodness out of all that papery skin?  Here you go:

Lay the garlic clove on your cutting board, on its flattest side.

You need to smash the garlic.  You can use a heavy can, the bottom of a glass, or anything else heavy.  Just smash away.  I use the side of my knife, since it's already out and ready to use for slicing or mincing, anyway.  If you use your chef's knife, just remember the most important safety tip:  angle the blade downward!  To start out, lay the blade over the clove so that the dull side faces you and the sharp side is touching the board.  Eventually, you will get a feel for it, and you won't need to touch the board anymore, but always, always, make sure the sharp side is angled toward the board and away from you.

Now, hold the handle of the knife to keep it steady, and use the heel of your other palm to whack the flat of the knife down onto the garlic.  Is that a common term?  Heel of your palm?  Hmmm....I'm suddenly a little unsure.  If not, I'm talking about the part that is just above your wrist.  For one thing, it's the strongest part of your hand--it's really the strength of your arm at work.  But more importantly, you can still hold your fingers and the rest of your palm up and away from the knife.  Okay, maybe I'm making this sound scarier than it is.  I have never had a single problem using my knife to smash garlic.  But perhaps that is precisely because I am pretty careful about it.  So....use the knife, but be careful.

There it is.  One smashed clove of garlic.  Why smash it?  Well, because it somehow releases the tightly wrapped skin from the clove.  If you have ever tried to peel garlic like you do an onion (guilty), you know that it is a maddening activity.  However, once the clove has been smashed, the skin slips right off, often in one piece, like a jacket.  It's SO much easier.

                                      

See?

Here's a tip:  If you are using lots of cloves of garlic, you might want to get all of them smashed, then peeled, before moving on to the next step.  Garlic is sticky stuff.  If you smash, peel and mince each clove of garlic before moving on to the next, you will find that the papery skin will stick to your knife, your fingers, the board.....it's a mess.  So just smash them all and rinse off the knife, then peel them all, and rinse off your fingers.  Then the peels are out of the way and you can move on to slicing or mincing.

Now you can slice it and use it......

or pile up the slices and run the knife through them a few times, until you have as coarse or fine of a mince as you like.

See?  It's easy.  And once you try it, you'll see how much tastier your food is with fresh garlic.  Plus, it's supposed to be good for you.  Heart health, immunity.....well, okay.....that's not really my thing.  But I hear good things, and it can't hurt, right?

Now what other ingredient can be so versatile, so tasty, and so healthy, all while remaining one of the cheapest items in the grocery store?  Try fresh garlic!

How to Clean Fresh Herbs

Cooking with fresh herbs makes a huge difference in the flavor of the final dish.  Dried herbs are great for mid-winter stews and braises.  They have plenty of time to rehydrate and distribute their flavor.  But when finishing a dish with a hit of freshness, or when using herbs in an uncooked dish, you can't beat fresh herbs (one exception, in my opinion: oregano).

There are so many fresh herbs available in the grocery store now.  The ones in the little plastic clamshell packages are generally ready to use with only a quick rinse.  However, anything that has a rubber band around it and that you need to put in a produce bag will need a thorough wash.  Most of the time, you will find that it is pretty clean, whether parsley, cilantro, mint, dill or any other grocery store bunch.  However, I have run across enough dirt clumps, sand particles and tiny bugs to make me a devoted herb washer.  The cilantro that I bought the other night is a prime example, as you will see.

This is also effective for cleaning lettuces and herbs from your garden.

So here is the simple, thorough method for making sure that you are putting herbs, and nothing else into your cooking.

First, fill a large bowl or bin with cold tap water.  Take the rubber band or twist tie off of the bundle of herbs that you wish to wash.  Plunge the herbs into the water.

Now swish the herbs around with your hand a little bit.  Then walk away for a few minutes.  When you come back, the herbs will be floating on the top of the water, and any sediment will have settled at the bottom of the bin.  Carefully lift the herbs out from the top of the water, so as to avoid stirring up the sediment.  Then shake them in a towel covered strainer or run them through a salad spinner to get the excess water off.  Sometimes, there will be more than just a bit of sediment, and this is one of those times.  The water actually looked grey.  So I lifted the herbs out, and look how much dirt was in the bin!

    

In this case, I just emptied the dirty water, rinsed out the bin, and repeated the process.

Nothing can ruin a meal faster than crunching on a piece of sand because you figured that a quick rinse was all the cilantro needed.  Don't skip this simple step.  It only takes a couple of minutes!

Onion dicing tutorial

Does chopping an onion make you crazy?  Are you tired of chasing the pieces around the cutting board, individually chopping each slice, or crying your eyes out when the fumes hit?

Well, I can't help you with the fumes.  I wear contacts most of the time, and that makes me nearly immune to the evil vapor.  But when I happen to be wearing my glasses, I cry so much I have to walk away and splash my eyes with water.  To some degree, keeping your mouth closed entirely while chopping onions can help, but only for a short time, and good luck with that if you have kids.

However, I can help you learn to dice an onion exactly to the size that you like, without frustration or gnashing of the teeth (again, I can't help much with the weeping).

Okay, so everyone has seen the way that the t.v. chefs chop an onion, right?  Cut off the tip, peel it, and slice it in half , through the intact root.

 

I do that, too.  After that, though, I differ.  Most of them make vertical slices from side to side, across each half of the onion.  Then they make vertical slices from the tip to the root end of the onion, basically making a checkerboard pattern if you look at it from the tip end.  The problem with this is twofold.  First, the onion is round, not square, so a checkerboard will result in a wedge around the curve of the onion on each side, which, when sliced, gives you larger pieces than the rest.  This bugs me.  Also, slicing into the onion horizontally from the cut tip end basically pushes the onion petals back toward the root, making it difficult, if not dangerous to make those cuts with any but the sharpest knife.  Because it is more difficult, it becomes almost impossible to achieve a fine dice.  I learned my technique from Alton Brown, though it was many years ago, so I might have changed a few things over the years.

First, make one vertical slice down the center of the onion half, from the tip, almost to the root, though you want to leave the root intact until the very end.

Then make several angled cuts, starting on the far side.  Start at the base of the knife, and gently pull the knife as it slices inward, aiming for the base of that first center cut, just missing the root with the tip of your knife.

 

And continue until you have many wedges, of any thickness that you desire, still attached by the root.  The onion in this picture will produce a fine dice.  Cut thicker wedges for a medium dice, and wide wedges for a large dice.  See?  It's so adaptable!

And finally, slice across those wedges, again, as thickly as you like.  Or, if you want to make strips of onion for fajitas or onion soup, you can just cut the root off and leave the wedges long.  Did you know that wedges cut like this will hold their shape much better when you caramelize onions, than if you cut half rings, which tend to turn into onion jam?  It has something to do with the structure of the onion, but I'm not Alton Brown.  I only learn from him.

Because the onion consists of petals, the individual pieces fall apart and you have easy minced onion.  This may sound complicated, but it really isn't.  It takes a few minutes of practice, and you have it.  As silly as it sounds, this may have been the one skill that made me really enjoy cooking.  I use onion in practically everything, and I always found it to be so difficult to dice.  Having a good knife and knowing how to make the onion behave has turned a pain in the neck step into one that I barely need to think about.