Cooking and Crafts
The recipe for this Carolina-style gold sauce is very simple.
Pour it all into a bowl and stir. Taste a little, then add more cayenne or honey, depending on how you like your sauce. Keep in a sealed container in the fridge. You can expand this recipe as many times as you want, if you want to have more on hand.
Gotta have a barbecue sauce for the season. Here’s a pretty good standard sauce, tomato based, with the addition of a smokey Scotch for extra flavor. (Scotch is often warmed by burning peat, giving it a smokey, peaty flavor. How strong it is varies by brand. Smoke is excellent for BBQ, though.)
Dice the garlic and onion. Melt the butter in a pan, then saute the garlic and onion until tender. Add the other ingredients, liquids first. Stir thoroughly, then cover with a lid and simmer for 20-30 minutes.
Blend with a blender (stick or upright). Store in the fridge.
Start by roasting one of the jalapeno chiles- turn on your broiler and move a rack to just under it. Put the chile in a pie tin under the broiler. Wait until the skin bubbles and browns, then turn with a pair of tongs. Repeat until all the sides are charred crisp. Set aside to cool.
Put on a pair of disposable gloves (from the first aid section). Carefully rub away the skin of the charred chile and discard, then cut in half and remove the seeds. Mince the remaining flesh. Add to a bowl.
Cut the uncooked chile in half, remove the top, the seeds, and the pith (the white bits that hold the seeds inside), and then mince the remaining flesh. Add to the bowl.
At this point you can get rid of the gloves. Switch to a new knife and cutting board, too.
Chop the tomatoes to your taste- if you like big chunks in your salsa, or little, this is your choice. Add to the bowl.
Dice the bell pepper and add. Dice the onion very finely and add. Mince the garlic and add.
Juice the lime and add only the juice. Add the remaining ingredients. Any cilantro or green onions should be chopped finely before adding.
Give it a good stir, then let it chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
Get some tortilla chips and chow down.
The hubby wanted to make a sweet sauce for a barbeque. He found this recipe and it turned out wonderful! The color is amazing- rich red, with a hint of purple.
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and saute the onions over medium heat until tender. Add the garlic, cook another minute or two, then add all the rest of the ingredients.
Cook over medium low heat for 20 minutes, or until the cherries are soft and the sauce is thick, stirring occasionally. If you prefer a smoother sauce, gently pulse with a blender (we used our stick blender) to break up the onion and cherry pieces. Makes about a quart of sauce. Let cool, then refrigerate.
This is a recipe that can be made with almost any citrus fruit! I’ve made it with lemon, key limes, and regular limes. The only downside I could see to using orange or grapefruit would be that it wouldn’t be as wonderfully sour. You could even use citrons or budda’s hand (though juicing such a thing would be difficult) if you wanted.
The one in the picture is a lime curd.
This is meant to go on things, or in things. You can spread it on cookies (would go nice on shortbread), on toast, or pancakes. You can use it between layers of a cake or to top a custard. You can dip fruit into it. You can eat it in teeny tiny spoonfuls, but it’s really strong and really tart, so go carefully!
Makes just over a cup.
You’ll need:
A double boiler- This can be easily set up by putting a cup or two of water in the bottom of a small pot. Rest a heat-safe bowl (glass or pyrex are best, but metal is okay) on top. Put the pot on an appropriately sized burner at medium-high to high heat until it just starts to boil, then turn the heat down to its lowest setting to maintain a simmer. The water should not touch the bowl at all- if it does, pour some out until the bowl is out of it. You’re just cooking with the steam. This keeps the heat nice and steady and controllable.
Combine all the ingredients EXCEPT the butter in the top of the double boiler. Stir it with a whisk. A LOT. You  don’t have to stir fast, and if you’re lucky, it’ll only take 10 minutes or so for this to cook enough. It took me over half an hour, though I suspect I was stirring too fast at the beginning. Every time I got discouraged, the liquid changed a little bit.
It’ll start out getting thinner as the sugar dissolves into the liquid and yolks. Then it’ll change colors a few times. Finally, it will begin to thicken up and will turn shiny. At that point, you’re supposed to be able to lift some up with a fork or the whisk and it will drop in “ribbons”. I found that all the zest in the recipe made that difficult to tell. But when it turns pale and thick and a little shiny, that’s a good sign you’re almost done.
At that point, remove the bowl from the double boiler. Still stirring, add a piece of butter and stir it in until it melts completely. Keep adding the pieces of butter, one at a time, until all of them are completely melted.
Now, get a fine mesh strainer and place that over a clean bowl or storage container. Press your curd through the strainer with a scraper until you can’t get any more to go through, then carefully use another scraper (or the other end if you have one that’s double-ended) to remove the bits of curd that will be stuck to the bottom of the strainer so they can be added to the rest.
You can add it to a cake at this point. Otherwise, chill for a few hours. It will form a skin (like homemade pudding) on top, so if that bothers you, put some parchment paper or plastic wrap against it to prevent that.
Go rest your arms from all that stirring.
*”Zest” is the colored part of the peel. Best zest practices- wash and dry your fruit first. Use a small grater or a zester. Peel or grate just until the color comes off, but try to avoid the white part. That’s pith, and it tastes bitter. You’ll end up grating a few strokes, stopping, checking, and turning to a new patch a LOT. It’s just part of the process.
I recommend zesting BEFORE cutting the fruit in half to juice it.
AlphaRaposa's Hearth 