The Sweet & Dirty Martini

'Tis the season to attend a lot of parties. Parties with cocktails. Cocktails like this darling historical concoction. I love a man with a sense of humor.

Tall, dark, and handsome doesn't hurt either.

There's something just a little illicit about a martini, sexy. They're perfectly acceptable in mixed company, but just a couple. "One is too few, three is too many." It's the Goldilocks of well-made drinks. And they come in the prettiest of glasses. Formidable, instantly recognizable, deliciously mouthwatering. And always with gin. Tanqueray, Hendricks, Bombay Sapphire, take your pick. I like the green bottle, personally.

It's what my dad drinks. He's the one who taught me to enjoy gin.

Of course I've always liked my martinis a little different. And I've never met a bartender I could tell to make it "sweet and dirty" who knew right off the bat what I meant. It's okay. Not quite as funny as the look on their faces when you say you want a virgin martini. Who doesn't like an olive in an empty glass?

The sweet & dirty martini is my favorite. Tweak the classic gin/vermouth recipe a bit and you have my trademark cocktail. When perfectly mixed, the sweet vermouth and dirty olive brine wed perfectly with the gin, making a marvelous ménage à trois of flavors on your tongue. Like a good lover, making you want more.

This isn't your grandfather's cocktail. This is mine. You can get your own.

And of course, cocktail onions over olives.

The Sweet & Dirty Martini

6 parts gin
1 part sweet vermouth
Ice
Cocktail onions and brine

Fill a shaker with ice then add the gin and vermouth. Shake. Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with 3 onions and a dash of brine. Drink.

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Don't forget the 2011 Calendar is on sale. They make great gifts!

Wordless Wednesday: Chayote - Through the Fence at Mudtown Farms

Easy Breadcrumbs

Yes, breadcrumbs. I know, not hard. You take some dry bread and break it into little pieces. Yeah, that's about the extent of this pictorial.

Dry bread (can be dehydrated in the oven at 300 degrees for about 10 minutes)

+ food processor or spice grinder (for smaller quantities of crumbs)

= fine crumbs.

I make them in small quantities as the recipe calls for them, but you can make a large quantity. If there is no oil in the bread, the crumbs will keep on the shelf almost indefinitely. But if yours has butter or oil, store in the fridge (or even freezer).

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Don't forget the 2011 Calendar is on sale. They make great gifts!

Wordless Wednesday: G+F On the Auction Block

The Caltech Olive Harvest

Olives  have a long history. They've been around since just after the dinosaurs died en masse. They probably would have liked olives, had they stuck around. Because olives are delicious.

Caltech in Pasadena, CA is home to an urban (suburban?) olive cache and in recent years they've taken to harvesting them and making olive oil. It turns out this annual event is family friendly and earns participants t-shirts and escargot tastings, so my mom and I took my nephew Alex out for an afternoon of olive pickin' fun.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by huge ladders and cherry pickers, though most teams of students and random attendees seemed to enjoy attacking the trees with rakes and raining olives on their teammates below.

Alex gleefully jumped in to help one team collect the fallen fruits. He refused to give me a good shot of his happy, smiling face, but he did attack the olives like they were candy falling out of a piñata. Clearly the last three years of birthday parties were good training!

There were also huge trays of cured olives ready for eating. The feta cheese was delicious! Look at those huge bricks! (No, I didn't steal one, despite my addiction-level love of cheese.) Oh, and the infused oils! They were set out for a blind tasting but I have no idea

what they were infused with, only that they all tasted more like olives than anything. The one in the green ramekin was the darkest of the offerings, and it was the one I liked best. I shamelessly ate about 10 pieces of bread dipped in just that. (Yes, I risked bread poisoning for it. Totally worth it.)

But the true highlight was the escargot being cooked onsite. I know they're an acquired taste for some, but I LOVE them. I tried to convince my mom they taste like mushrooms and, like a good sport, she ate one, but she's not a fan.

I'm still wondering why I didn't bother getting a can. Duh.

As it turns out, the patience of three-year-old being dragged around a college campus is nearly nonexistent, so we only "harvested" for about an hour. I do have to give Alex credit for not complaining much. He did keep repeating his fervent desire for chocolate ice cream, but after his hard work, he earned it. He's such a good kid. Many thanks to his parents for letting me borrow him for an afternoon!

I can't wait to taste the olive oil when it goes on sale next month. And I'm looking forward to going to the harvest again next year. This time, though, I'm totally snagging one of those cans of escargot!

Like Girl + Fire on Facebook!

It's HERE! A 12-month calendar illustrating some of the lessons I've learned by cooking in my own kitchen over the last year.

Sure, the calendar will be for sale and all, but don't you want to win a FREE one? Well, between now and Friday, if you become a fan of (aka LIKE) this little food blog on Facebook, you'll be entered in the drawing to win one from the first run, which just arrived yesterday!

I'm super excited about this. It was an endeavor fueled by lots of food experiments, lots of hunching over a camera, lots of swearing at said camera when it wouldn't do what I wanted it to...in other words, my entire heart and soul are in this little calendar and I want to share it with you.

As an added bonus, most of these recipes are new! You haven't seen them here on the blog, and probably won't either. But they are all pretty easy to make and scalable to feed just one person or a whole family. Ranging from a fried hummus to a pumpkin tamale recipe that my own mom—a native Mexican—couldn't believe when she ate it (she even helped make them and still didn't believe she'd never tasted anything like it), it's all pretty simple but delicious food.

So as a thanks for supporting this blog, and being our fan, we'll give away one of these calendars on Friday. All you have to do is hit the Like button on Facebook! We'll pick the winner on Friday, November 5th at 5 pm PST.

There may be additional familial involvement and a video if we're lucky!

Are Cholesterol and Butter GOOD for You?

From SundayMercury.net

This article in the UK-based publication Daily Mail serves up a review of the forthcoming book The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It? by Zoë Harcombe.

The review details 11 myths about food and obesity, per Ms. Harcombe's "meticulous journey of research into studies that underpin dietary advice." Some of her findings are common sense, like basing a diet on carbs is going to make you fat. But assertions like:

"To pick a number — 5 (mmol/l) — and to say everyone should have cholesterol levels no higher than this is like declaring the average height should be 5ft 4in and not 5ft 9in and medicating everyone who doesn’t reach this meaningless number to reduce their height. It really is that horrific."

sound a bit scary. We've been convinced for the better part of the last generation that high cholesterol WILL kill you. Now...it won't?

Ms. Harcombe is a British nutritionist and self-described obesity researcher. I wonder what American doctors would say to this. I'm not saying she is wrong, I don't have a medical degree or studies with which to refute her. I just wonder if she's actually right, and everything we've been told all along is, in reality, a bunch of bullshit dreamt up by special interests in the food industry to make them richer and us fatter.

Your take?

Chopped-Inspired Dinner Party

Chopped is a Food Network show that pits 4 cheftestants against each other and a basket of mystery ingredients. I watch the show to take notes on the different ways the chefs prepare their various ingredients. Some of the baskets confound even the judges (one of whom is Aaron Sanchez, who we partied with on Quatro de Mayo). That's when you know it's good.

So fascinated have I been by the idea of "mystery ingredients" that I decided to host my own dinner party styled after the show. I've finally gotten comfortable enough in the kitchen that I think I can whip up something on the fly. Thankfully my guests didn't make it too hard on me.

Erik, Katie & Adrienne

The instructions to them were simple: each would bring either a protein, fruit/vegetable, and wild card item, and my only restriction would be that the wild card be gluten-free. The Chopped chefs only get 30 minutes to make an entree, but I told them I was giving myself an hour just to be safe. Adrienne arrived first with a bag of cooked baby shrimp. I had expected seafood, so I was relieved. Up next was Katie with herbed goat cheese and a polenta loaf. Finally my brother Erik arrived with oranges.

The goat cheese was camera shy.

My very first reaction to the oranges is not appropriate for young eyes. Suffice to say I panicked for a half-second.

While I loaded them up on wine, cheese, and strawberry jellies, I set to work in the kitchen. Inspiration came from the buns I had anticipated using if ground meat had come through the door (hey, even burgers can be sexy!). I grabbed my favorite kitchen tool (the mini chopper attachment on my stick blender) and set to blending the shrimp, goat cheese and orange zest together. I didn't know what it would taste like, but it sounded like a good idea. My brother wandered in at that point to shoot some video and ask if we were having shrimp shakes. He was slightly disappointed when I said no.

Appetizers

At first I thought I'd make shrimp pâté burgers with the polenta rounds as the bread. Then I thought about doing Napoleons. But something was missing. We had yellow bases topped with orangey-pink goop. It needed greenery. And bacon, because everything is good with bacon. So out of the fridge came the bacon and a bag of spinach. Bacon fried up and then the spinach sautéed nicely in its drippings.

Finally it was time to plate. A diced Roma tomato added the final touch.

I waited cautiously for everyone's reactions. My brother was the first to speak up, saying he thought the orange zest added a really good, interesting flavor. The girls agreed and we all dug in with gusto. Erik went on to eat four Napoleons. So at the very least I know he really liked them.

It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again. Maybe will become the new Saturday Night Test Kitchen! (As I was writing this, I realized that Napoleons are supposed to be stacks of repeated layers, and these weren't exactly that. But that's why artistic license exists, right?)

Polenta & Shrimp Pâté Napoleons
yields approximately 5 servings

1 pound of cooked baby shrimp (250-350 per pound)
3 ounces of fine herb goat cheese
1 tablespoon of orange zest
1 pre-made polenta tube
1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
8 pieces of bacon
1 six-ounce bag of baby spinach
1 roma tomato, diced

1. In a food processor, blend together the shrimp, goat cheese and orange zest. Pose for pictures.

2. Cut polenta into 1/4-inch rounds and sauté in the sunflower oil until a slight crust develops on both sides.

2a. Answer questions for the camera man when he wanders in asking about shrimp shakes. Give him more wine.

3. While the polenta is sautéing, cut the bacon in half cross-wise and fry in a separate pan. Remove to a dish lined with paper towels and reserve the pan drippings. Wilt the spinach in the drippings. Sauté just until the leaves wilt and turn slightly dark.

4. To serve, place the polenta in the center of the dish. Top it with the paté, spinach, a slice of bacon (or cut in half again to make the decorating process easier). Add a couple pieces of chopped tomato and serve.

5. Drink more wine.

My brother's funny little video of the night is available on our new Facebook page. Click here to Like Girl+Fire and watch a two and half minute recount of our Chopped-inspired night (Kevin Bacon may or may not make a cameo in the video...).

Poll: Bacon - Crispy vs. Chewy

How do you like your bacon?

Wordless Wednesday: Sautéed Radishes & Pasta

Corks Needed!

Remember this awesome cork bath mat we here at G+F wanted? Well here's the sad truth about where we are with the cork collection:

We need more corks! Please save your corks and send them to us. We are available for local pick up. Or if anyone has a connection to a wine store/bar, we will gladly relieve them of their cork clutter!

Pretty please?

Bacon-Infused Scotch

Bacon is all the rage, some might even say it's passé. Being a staple of morning dining across this country, I scoff at that notion. Bacon is here to stay.

I'll eat bacon in just about anything. My friend Oakley, knowing about my love for both bacon and scotch, mentioned she was making bacon bourbon after our volunteering stint at the OC Foodie Fest. I'd never heard of such a thing but it sounded fantastic. Bacon-flavored alcohol! The problem is, I don't keep bourbon in the house. I wouldn't even know what a decent bourbon tastes like (a visit to Kentucky will need to be had). But I do love its foreign cousin scotch. So much so that friends have taken it upon themselves to gift me random bottles for birthdays. These are the types of gifts you must accept graciously and politely.

But finally, I found a remedy for the glut of harsh spirits haunting my liquor cabinet: bacon! There was one particularly rough scotch that a well-meaning man brought to me on a first date many years ago. Sitting on the shelf for a few additional years had done nothing to mellow its punch. So it was the perfect test.

Oakley's recipe was simple: add bacon fat to a bottle of liquor, let sit, freeze, then fish the fat out a day later. The result was a much smoother, less harsh alcohol.

I wouldn't try this with the higher-end scotch. You don't mess with a good thing. But it's a great recipe for the more run-of-the-mill varieties.

Bacon-Infused Scotch

3-4 strips fatty bacon
1 tablespoon freshly rendered bacon fat
1 bottle of scotch

1. Fry up the bacon. Save a tablespoon of bacon fat. Eat the bacon. (If 3-4 strips doesn't give you a full tablespoon, fry some more!)

2. Pour the scotch into a clean, wide-mouth container. You don't want to put the bacon fat in the alcohol's original bottle because some might get stuck in there, which leads to floating fat globules and that's not pretty.

3. Let the mixture marinate overnight.

4. The next morning, stash the mixture in the freezer. Scotch doesn't freeze, but the fat will. After a few hours, the fat will be solid, making it very easy to fish out. Even easier if you used a wide-mouth container.

5. Strain the alcohol back into its original bottle.

Your scotch is now ready to drink. Mmm.