SpiceLines

Great ideas all, and I plan to try each one since I too have an aging jar of bay leaves to use up. Go here to see all readers’ suggestions, including the one about making “elven armor” by riveting bay leaves to a leather jerkin.

How to Cook Ribs Inside

In “The Secret to Ribs Is Already In the Kitchen: The Oven” (The New York Times, June 30, 2010, p. D2), food scientist Harold Magee explains how he imbues spareribs with grill-worthy smoky flavor—in the oven. The bonus: tender, juicy meat, unlike the tough, dried up stuff that you might get from a grill’s uneven heat.

First Magee rubs the ribs with spices, then wraps them in foil and cooks them slowly for 4 hours at 200 degrees, followed by 2 hours at 175 degrees “until the connective tissue has softened.” To get that smoky flavor, he brings the accumulated juices to a simmer and, off heat, stirs in 2 teaspoons of mild or hot pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika), along with vinegar and vanilla extract.

Pimenton is one of my favorite spices—it adds smoky heat to Butternut Squash Soup with Cinnamon and Orange Zest—and since there are two rib-crazed adult males in our house at the moment, Magee’s recipe will make its debut this weekend.

The New Staples: Nutmeg and Mace, Entwined

Serendipity distracted me from the lotus position with “Oat Groats! Hisbiscus Flowers! Nutmeg and Mace!” (The New York Times T Magazine blog, June 28, 2010) from The New Staples online column by Merrill Stubs of Food52.

I was most intrigued by the mention of nutmeg and mace, which can be ordered as a single product from Bklyn Larder. Although the two grow together naturally—“the chestnut-brown pod of nutmeg with spidery tentacles of mace draped over it like a pink veil” (actually it's scarlet when fresh)—the two spices are usually detached and sold separately.

However, Don Soloway, a former options trader, imports intact, hand-harvested nutmeg and mace from Grenada that is “carefully dried using a variety of age-old techniques (one involves laying them out in special drawers to rid them of mold-inducing moisture)…” Said to be fresh and highly aromatic, the spices must be nonetheless be separated to use in recipes calling for one or the other.

In an earlier post, Stubs cites other “new staples” including fresh turmeric and urfa biber, the smoky, fruity-tasting Turkish pepper that adds heat to Tabbouleh with Fresh Coriander, Toasted Walnuts and Preserved Lemon.

Pushing the Envelope: Jefferson’s Experimental Garden

My infatuation with our third President continues. In “A Revolutionary with Seeds, Too” (which ran in The New York Times, July 1, 2010, p. D1 and D7) Anne Raver gets an envy-inducing tour of Jefferson’s restored two-acre kitchen garden at Monticello.

As our prized kaffir lime tree has just died, it is comforting to know that Jefferson failed as often as he succeeded with his own planting experiments. “Jefferson would kill the thing at Monticello and go back to George Divers and say, ‘What happened to those black-eyed peas I brought back from France in 1789?’” writes Raver, quoting Peter Hatch, director of grounds and gardens. (Divers was Jefferson’s neighbor, “a much better gardener who usually won their pea-growing contest.”)

Next year I’ll try planting my own beds in the same “ancient Roman quincunx pattern” that Jefferson adapted for better use of space. And maybe order rare seeds for the Purple Calabash, a pre-Columbian tomato, and Egyptian onions, “whose tall green stalks bore quirky hats of tiny seeds and wavy green sprouts”—survivors, it seems, again flourishing in Jefferson’s garden.

And I’ll be looking for Peter Hatch's book, Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden, which will be published by Yale University Press at a future, unspecified date.

Sigh. So much to read, and cook, and plant. My eyelids are getting very, very heavy....