Burns My Bacon: Cranberry Garnish

img_1588

Cranberries are taking over the world. Not the band, I wouldn’t mind that as much. More specifically, cranberry garnish is taking over. We recently attended a wedding where cranberries were in our champagne glasses. Only weeks later, we had cranberries in another one of our drinks. Why? What does it add to the drink?

I’ve had strawberries in my champagne – sliced up and infused into the champagne. I’ve had mint in my mojitos, basil in strawberry drinks – all garnishes that I could taste. But cranberries? You can’t get flavor out of a cranberry unless it is cooked! Garnish is fine if it has some kind of use…but just to throw it on there for the hell of it? For who’s benefit?

1) FREEZE the cranberries

At least you can use them as ice cubes in the drink. I would argue that the cranberries will at least keep the drink’s original constitution rather than watering it down with ice cubes.

2) Cook the cranberries

Boil the cranberries first and muddle them in a new drink. Your hipster friends will be more impressed. Although, I can guarantee you that at least one hipster will ask where the garnish is.

3) Infuse with cranberries

You see, the key here is to COOK them first. Cook on medium heat in a sauce pan. Then let it sit in your favorite booze for a few days.

THERE. Something useful for cranberries in alcoholic drinks. At the least, you can use them as ice cubes if it’s that important that the drink look “pretty”.

Desperate for a Garnish

It’s tough goings for the garnish industry in the winter. Fresh herbs refuse to pop up until the weather warms so I’m left with spices, sauces and dried herbs to lay that finishing touch on a dish.

Earlier this year I wrote about a different type of garnish issue – I used an ingredient foreign from the dish to decorate it. I thought the beautiful black pellets of mustard seeds would contrast nicely to the orange sweet potato soup splattered with bright, white yogurt. And in fact, I think it looked lovely. I decided it didn’t matter that I hadn’t used mustard seed in the soup. I’d use it to enhance the look of the dish, without compromising the taste.

I used the opposite approach this weekend in my bean and cabbage dish. This was a simple, hearty dish combining tiger eye beans, slashed cabbage, onion and garlic, flavored with chipotle and cumin. The cabbage, onion and garlic adapted the brick color of the chipotle and adobo sauce and the tiger beans lost their stripes in the long cooking process, turning into a similar hue as the rest of the dish.

It needed some contrast. It needed some brightness. And I didn’t have a goddamn fresh herb in sight.

Read More

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– You ESers has a field day with our favorite new unitasker, the bananza. debbie koenig:

I love that it’s a “hand-held” banana slicer. Obvs so much more convenient than those bulky room-sized ones.

Britannia, however, is not making fun:

I kinda want one, don’t judge.

– And kitchen geek stands up for parsley as a garnish:

Used to be right there with you on the parsley garnish; but I’ve mellowed a bit. I’m anti curly-parsley and bad parsley but I think fresh flat leaf has its place. Garnish breaks down just like ingredients in the recipe, complementing or contrasting. Your current recipe and Rocco’s example go with the complementing camp. I often use parsley and/or cilantro in dishes that have neither to provide a fresh herb contrast to whatever dish I’m serving. Think about osso bucco and tell me gremolata is out of place as a garnish cutting the richness of the dish.

Finally, flickr user arenamontanas deserves a huge round of applause for somehow providing the perfect photo for this post.

Thanks for simmering with us — see ya next week!

The Garnish Debate: Call Me a Rebel

As a little kid I remember parsley garnishes mystifying me. Why did curly greens occupy so much space on my plate—and it’s not even Passover?

But the parsley garnish, for garnish sake, no longer visits our tables. Instead, garnishes spring from what’s in the dish, if a dish is garnished at all. Use cilantro in a sauce, use cilantro as a garnish. Use kumquat in a cupcake, use a kumquat slice as garnish.

David Rocco of Cooking Channel‘s Dolce Vita reiterated this fact in a recent episode, refusing to add a leafy green to top a pasta dish since the dish did not contain it. Instead he cracked fresh pepper on top, silently communicating his heavy usage of pepper in the dish.

Rocco’s commandment popped in my head as I decorated a sweet potato and lentil soup with black mustard seeds.

Read More