Some people are wine snobs. Excuse me … connoisseurs. Others are chocolate snobs, or coffee snobs, or beer snobs. (I’ve heard some of them won’t even say they like beer — they like micro-brews.)

But did you know that you can be a salt snob? I’ve heard stories of people who bring their own salt to restaurants. I know that fleur de sel is the salt that chefs prefer. I’ve heard of pink Hawaiian salt and a few others. But boy, that’s just scratching the surface.

The fine folks at The Meadow — the same people who sent me the Himalayan salt block — sent me their finishing salt starter pack. Now think about that name, “finishing salt starter pack”. That means that there’s more than one kind of salt. And that in the “finishing salt” category, there are enough of them that they sell a starter pack.

Or instead of working it out for yourself, you can just take a look at the twelve different categories of salt they carry.

The starter set is one of their more popular items, including:

• The Meadow Sel Gris
• Fleur de Sel de Guerande
• Maldon Flake Sea Salt
• Kauai Guava Smoked Salt
• Black Diamond Pyramid Salt
• Molokai Red Sea Salt

The first three — the white salts — are great general-purpose finishing salts. They have different crystal size and shape so you not only get mildly different flavors from each, you can get a whole different texture. I went with the Maldon for my first sample. It’s got a very large flaky structure.

You can just sprinkle it on, but the users guide that came with the set suggested grinding it between your fingers as you apply it to finished foods.

You can see the large flakes as they slowly dissolve into the London broil I used it on.

I cooked this with no salt, which violates one of my (usually) firm rules: Always salt before cooking. This brings out the flavor of the food you’re cooking. If you want until after, you get bland food that tastes salty.

This was a surprise. You could definitely taste the saltiness, but it also brought out the flavor of the meat more than I’ve experienced with ordinary kosher salt. I’m really looking forward to trying the others.

Well, most of the others. Salt usually doesn’t have any smell. But the Kauai Guava Smoked Salt has a  — what’s the connoisseur term for it? — an adventurous aroma. Pungent. Bold. Assertive. I think this one will be best in small doses. I’ll keep you updated as I try the rest of them.

Soft drinks are mostly corn syrup. Most “juice” drinks aren’t much better. Even things that claim to be water are soft drinks with different marketing. (Are we not supposed to notice that the second ingredient — “crystalline fructose” — is  sugar?)

Lucky for me, back in college I dated a girl who drank Diet Coke. That’s what she always had in her apartment, so whenever I was there, that’s what I drank. After a while, “regular” colas started tasting sticky-sweet, and I couldn’t drink them any more. Of course, diet sodas have some stuff in them I probably shouldn’t be drinking for other reasons.

So what am I supposed to do, drink water? Oh … right.

In the U.S. we’ve got access to public water systems that are a civil engineering miracle. Hundreds of millions of people who can turn a faucet and clean, drinkable water comes out, all day, every day. (Except if you live near a natural gas well. Sorry.)

But we don’t drink it. Some people like bottled water for the convenience, but that’s not my thing. So why don’t I drink it? I just figured it out. You ready? Because it’s boring.

No, nothing wrong with it, it just isn’t as  interesting as the other things in the fridge. Wait, the fridge, could that be it?

It turns out that yes, all I had to do was start keeping water in the fridge along with all my other drinks. As soon as I had cold water handy, and didn’t need to bend over and get the ice cubes out of the freezer — and gosh, what a hassle that is — I started drinking water.

How about you? Do you drink tap water? If not … why?

What would you think is in a product called Vitaminwater? You’d probably guess water, and vitamins. Right? Not so fast:

“For too long, Coca-Cola has been exploiting Americans’ desire to eat and drink more healthfully by deceiving them into thinking that vitaminwater can actually prevent disease,” said CSPI litigation director Steve Gardner. “In fact, vitaminwater is no more than non-carbonated soda, providing unnecessary added sugar and contributing to weight gain, obesity, diabetes, and other diseases.”

First off, let me say that CSPI [Center for Science in the Public Interest] is not one of my favorite references. They are a special-interest group that routinely pushes a vegan and vegetarian agenda, distorting or ignoring evidence in favor of the health benefits of eating animal products. (Oh boy, going to get some hate mail for saying that.)

But in this case they’re right. Like they say, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. And the nut here is that vitaminwater isn’t any better for you than a can of Coke:

It’s important to keep in mind that Glacéau has listed one bottle of Vitaminwater as 2.5 servings. That means you would have to drink less than half a bottle to get what the numbers on the back say. If you drink the whole bottle, though — which will probably be the case, since the bottles are fairly small — you have to multiply each number by 2.5. Right away the packaging appears to be misleading.

Here are the nutrition facts and ingredients from a bottle of “charge” Vitaminwater:

Nutrition Facts:

• Calories: 50
• Total fat: 0g
• Sodium: 0mg
• Potassium: 60mg
• Total carbohydrates: 13g
• Sugar: 13g
• Protein: 0g
• Vitamin C: 40%, Vitamin B3: 20%, Vitamin B6: 20%, Vitamin B12: 20%, Vitamin B5: 20%
• Potassium: 150mg per bottle

Ingredients: vapor distilled/deionized water, crystalline fructose, citric acid, vegetable juice (color), natural flavor, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), vitamin E acetate, magnesium lactate (elecrolyte), calcium lactate (electrolyte), zinc picolinate, monopotassium phosphate (electrolyte), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyridoxine hydrochloride (B6), cyanocobalamine (B12)

The big red flag here is the amount of sugar. There are 13 grams of sugar in one serving, so an entire bottle contains about 32.5 grams of sugar. For the sake of comparison, a can of Coca-Cola Classic contains about 39 grams of sugar.

But they added vitamins, didn’t they? Well … sort of:

Now, let’s take a good look at the “vitamins” that are in this “nutrient enhanced beverage” of kiwi-strawberry vitamin water. According to the label, each serving contains 10% of your daily requirements for Vitamins A, B3, B6, B12, and B5 and a hefty 40% of your daily allowance of Vitamin C. The problem is that these “vitamins” are not attached to any whole food like strawberries or kiwis.

Remember, those whole foods were missing from the ingredients. Therefore, the live enzymes needed to help your body absorb the vitamins into your cells are not there. It is a nutrition fact that whole foods like fruits and vegetables contain live enzymes, which act as catalysts for vitamins and minerals to work in your cells. Without those whole food properties, isolated vitamins are not easily absorbed by the body and are more than likely eliminated in the toilet. So, how many of those vitamins in the vitamin water are actually being put into use by the body? Probably about as many as you could get from eating cotton candy.

Now here’s the kicker. This story was just in the news because a judge ruled that the lawsuit can go forward. The reasoning was that:

Reasonable consumers should [not] be expected to look beyond misleading representations on the front of the box to discover the truth from the ingredient list in small print on the side of the box.

I think that’s a great point. But it’s government policy, driven by lawsuits, that makes manufacturers put those nutrition labels on to begin with. If you want to say that they can’t make misleading claims on the front of the bottle, that’s great. But if even the courts are saying nobody reads the labels on the back … what are they there for?

Some people have various fruits and berries growing all over their property. They just need to go outside and pick some. (I’m looking at you, Kristin.) Some of use have to drive over an hour each way to go to pick-your-own blueberry farms. We tell the kids it’s a fun outing, but really we’re just bringing them along for the child labor.

And you know what? Kids have no stamina when it comes to walking around an orchard picking berries from above your head. You’d think they could have told me that in advance.

So this past weekend we headed out to Pennline Farm in Pierpoint. There we met Carol, who was helping her mother Barbara run things. Carol brought us a bunch of milk jugs with the tops cut off, and some lengths of rope to tie them to our waists.

Then she told us what we’d find, including: several varieties, some of which had a slight cinnamon flavor; a loudspeaker playing bird calls to keep other birds out of the field (this scared the crap out of Jenn when it went off just above her head); and — if we looked really carefully — some blackberry vines mixed in with a couple of the blueberry bushes.

And the berries were looking good.

I was reaching in to grab a berry when I noticed a couple of Japanese beetles … umm … occupied on the stem right where I was about to grab.

Jenn found the blackberries. Check out the thorns on those things.

I tried one of the red ones. Holy cow, were they tart.

About an hour-and-a-half in, I was a bit past a half-gallon.

And the girls were tired of playing migrant laborer for the day. So we went and said “Hi” to Carol’s dog, Ginger I think was her name.

Carol tried to get Ginger in the picture, but she kept laying down. Tough life she’s got.

See that spec in the distance there? That’s Heather, who brought us out to the farm. Thanks, Heather!

On the way out we saw the wild turkeys.

Just after I got this shot of Mama and a chick, Papa and the other five siblings ran across before I could get the camera back up.

So what was our total haul? A bit more than a gallon.

Washed, and dried overnight …

… and into some zip-top bags in the fridge.

We’ll be doing some smoothies, some ice cream, then freezing the rest. There’s no way we can go through this much before they go bad.

If you want to do any picking, look up Pennline Farm and call ahead. They had a late frost this year, so the harvest is way down. You don’t want to get all the way out there and everything was just picked over.

You don’t have to be a complete idiot to need help making cheese. But it helps. (Ba-dump-tish … thank you, I’ll be here all week.)

Seriously though, cheese making isn’t something most of us learned growing up. Frankly, I wonder if this was ever a common skill, or if there were always people who specialized in it. How about it, any food anthropologists out there got some insight?

What I do know is that when I was growing up cheese meant one of four things: white American slices we got at the deli for our sandwiches — including our grilled cheese; Velveeta, which was a special treat — especially when you used it for grilled cheese; Parmesan in the green can for spaghetti; or port wine cheese in a plastic tub that we’d get around the Christmas holidays each year and spread on Ritz crackers.

It never occurred to me to try making my own cheese. In fairness, it never occurred to me to try making my own bread, or ice cream, or barbecue sauce either.

Now, though — now that I know more about the junk that goes into so much processed food — the idea of making my own cheese is pretty cool. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cheese Making is the perfect starter.

I know some people can’t get past the name of the books in this series, but it’s catchier than the more accurate “The Cheese Making Guide for People Who Can Follow Clear Directions but Don’t Know Anything About the Subject and Need Very Explicit Directions”.

Basic … no, I mean basic

It was really interesting to read something written the way I try to do my recipes: Not assuming any special knowledge and spelling it all out. There were times while reading it that I thought, “Come on guys, isn’t that a bit simplistic?” But for every time I caught myself thinking that, there were pages and pages of answers to basic questions I didn’t even know to ask.

How basic? Things like the different kinds of milk: skim, whole, cream, raw, pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized, goat or buffalo milk. Categories and classifications of cheese: specialty, artisan, farmstead, fresh, semi-soft, soft-ripened, hard, blue, pasta filata, natural and washed rind, processed.

You’re four chapters in before you see the first recipe. And there’s a warning in the introduction to not try to skip the early chapters and jump right in. Take it seriously. By the time you get to the recipes, the writing assumes you’ve already read and understood everything that leads up to it.

Not for everyone

There’s a pretty good chance this book isn’t for you. If you’re anywhere near a good-sized city you can find cheese shops with plenty of good cheeses to choose from. They may be more expensive than what’s at the deli counter in the grocery store, but you’ll save a bunch of time and (possibly) frustration.

But if you do want to try making your own cheese — for health reasons, or as a hobby, or because you’ve got a good supply of raw milk and can’t drink it all* — then The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cheese Making will show you everything you need to get started.

* If you’ve got more raw milk than you can drink, and you live anywhere near Cleveland, OH, let me know. I can take some of it off your hands.

“Himalayan salt block? Excuse me?”

Yes, I know, that’s what I was thinking. So let me start by telling you what it is: A solid block of salt carved out of a mine in Pakistan. And you can cook on it.

I’ll give you the negatives right off the bat: It takes at least a half-hour to warm the brick up enough to cook on it. Then once it’s hot you can’t just keep it on the burner and use it again and again.

Second, it’s really heavy, and really smooth, without any handles or knobs or bumps to grab on to with tongs to try to move it while it’s hot.

But for the little bit that you can cook on it in one go, the performance is really nice. It adds a bit of saltiness and is completely non-stick. Well … the food does stick to it, but if there’s any moisture at all in it, it will dissolve a layer of salt and release.

The block I was sent was the 4 x 8 x 2-inch premium cookware grade, and was more than 6 pounds.

This currently sells for $22, which sounds like a lot for a very limited-use cooking tool, but this is about presentation, too. And considering how much people spend on nice platters, that’s not too bad.

If you want to cook on it, you need a wok ring or something similar that will hold the block at least a half-inch above the burner.

This ring was actually much higher than I needed, but it’s all I had. A lower ring — or a gas burner — would probably have heated the brick up much faster.

Once it was up to temperature, I put the shrimp scampi on it.

It started sizzling right away, just like it’s supposed to. But when I brushed more melted butter on top, it started running down the side and dripping on the burner. And ignited.

Maybe on a gas cooktop I wouldn’t have even noticed the flames, or if I had noticed I wouldn’t have cared. But electric cooktops aren’t supposed to generate open flames.

So I pulled the ring forward, off the hot burner. I had started on the back burner, just in case anything went wrong. Score one for paranoia. This is when I realized I had no way to pick the block up and move it from the ring. I had nothing that I could grip it with.

So I crossed my fingers and hoped it would retain enough heat to do three sets of shrimp. The first one was perfect after a couple of minutes on each side.

The next two sets I started on the salt, but had to finish in a pan. So now I know: The brick holds enough heat to do one batch of whatever fits on top of it.  And you don’t want anything really thick. And definitely let it come to room temperature before placing it on the salt. (Though you should be letting your meat come to room temperature before cooking no matter what you’re cooking them on.)

Next time I use this, I’ll have to plan ahead a little better. I need something that I can grab it with while it’s still hot, and something I can place it on to bring it to the table. A wooden cutting board should work just fine.

One unexpected bonus: After cooking the shrimp, the salty, herb-ey, melted butter on top of the salt was still bubbling. I dipped some bread in it and had instant garlic bread. Instant really, really good garlic bread. Some night I’m going to do pasta, and for the bread I’ll take some crusty Italian, butter it, and lay it face-down on the hot brick and bring it to the table like that.

The guide I got with my shipment also included directions for several cold preparations, like sashimi and Gravlax. Or you can put it in your grill, which means you can do thicker cuts, like a ribeye … hmm, do we have dinner plans yet for tonight?
 
 
 
Mmmm … grilled ribeye on a salt block …
 
 
 
Oops, sorry. I was having “a moment”. Where was I? Oh, right, where can you get one? That would be in my store.

Sale on OpenSky products this week in the Store

All the products in the store with the blue “Buy Now” buttons are from Open Sky, a company I’ve started working with recently to find unusual stuff.

For the rest of July, buy any of those products and you can either get free shipping, or 20% off any product. (One discount or the other, not both.) For free shipping, use the discount code “JulyFreeShip” when checking out. For the 20% discount use “July20pct”.

I cook from scratch because the food is better that way. But when someone comes up with a product that’s as good as I would make, but more convenient? Sounds like a winner. So when the fine folks at Rinaldo’s Organic asked if I wanted to try their Garlic Gold nuggets, I couldn’t wait to give them a try.

The Garlic Gold nuggets all start as the same thing: toasted garlic bits. Then they get mixed with Parmesan cheese, sea salt, an Italian herb blend, or left plain. And they’re all 100% organic, too, so they’re using better ingredients than I would usually buy. (Okay, I grow my own herbs, but no garlic … yet.)

There’s also the garlic-infused extra-virgin olive oil, the lemon vinaigrette (made with the garlic olive oil, of course), and the original product, the garlic nuggets packed in extra-virgin olive oil.

When the package arrived, I just happened to have some of the fixins left from making some pizza, so I decided on calzones and garlic bread sticks. Big mistake.

Calzones

Let’s start with the usual ingredient picture. There’s the dough, sauce, sausage, cheese shaved prosciutto, and a bunch of garlic nuggets to top it with.

Sounds good, right? Well … let’s skip through this quickly.

First calzone

First I divided the dough into three pieces. The first one rolled out pretty well.

Sauce, prosciutto, cheese and fold it over.

Poke some vent holes and brush it with butter, so the garlic nuggets will stick.

I’ve already made my first two mistakes. Can you guess what they are?

Garlic bread sticks

The second piece of dough didn’t roll out too well. I had to over-work it to reshape it into the rectangle I wanted, so it was too thin. (See? There was the first mistake.)

I forged on, topping one side with garlic and sea salt and the other side with garlic and Parmesan. (Foreshadowing: This is the second mistake.)

The calzone and bread sticks went in the oven and …

… promptly burned.

First lesson

Dough can only be worked and reshaped a little bit after it’s already risen. Try to reshape it drastically and you need to let it rise again. The garlic bread sticks didn’t rise at all in the oven, and where it was super thin it just turned to charcoal.

Second lesson — and start of the Garlic Gold Nuggets review

Don’t try to cook Garlic Gold Nuggets. Add them after the food is cooked. They’re already toasted, so if you cook them again they’ll burn.

When I made the second calzone, I gave the dough time to rise again after reshaping it. But I had already topped it with the garlic before the first batch came out of the oven, or I would have waited.

The prosciutto calzone still looks pretty good though, doesn’t it?

How you should use Golden Garlic Nuggets

Forget cooking with them. Sprinkle them on after the food is cooked. Like this pan-fried chicken in butter.

Good lord this was good. Every time I reached for the shaker to get some more it was gone — one of the kids had taken it again. They were shaking little piles of the garlic and Parmesan nuggets out on their plates and dipping everything in it.

Then there was the salad.

We used the Meyer lemon vinaigrette, and the plain garlic nuggets. Jenn’s father wasn’t thrilled with the dressing; it was a bit too lemony for him. Jenn and I both loved it. But I can easily see how some people would prefer to add in a little sugar or honey. It is very tart.

Which is exactly why I think it’s going to make a grate marinade. I haven’t decided what I’m going to use it out yet, but probably a pork loin, which will go on the rotisserie.

The nuggets, true to the claim on the label, make a great substitute for bacon bits — or rather “bacon-flavored bits” — if you want a little crunch but not the artificial junk they put in them.

Rinaldo’s included several recipes — including quesadillas, stuffed mushrooms, and pan-seared scallops — that show off the nuggets. I’m just hoping I can try some of them before the kids wipe out my supply.

You can buy the Garlic Gold Nuggets 4-pack Sampler or the Garlic Gold, Garlic Gold Oil and Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette Bundle in my store.

Last week was crazy with all the comments on the World’s Easiest Ice Cream Recipe. One of the emails I got had a really interesting idea in it:

People love nutty novel cooking ideas … (recipes) that are easy. I am thinking back over the years … the impossible pie craze … the dump cake craze … that recipe where chopped broccoli was combined with cracker crumbs and you got this weird casserole … the sau-sea shrimp cocktail dumped on the brick of cream cheese … you get my drift. How about an email or 2 on these culinary wonders that have danced through our kitchens in the last 40 years?

What a great idea. I know you’ve got one of these gems written down somewhere. Maybe it’s your go-to recipe whenever you go to a potluck. Whatever it is, I want to hear it.

If you remember where you got the idea, include that. If not, then whatever you can remember.

I’ll start

Chicken Divan. My wife says she had this at least once a week all through high school. And in her family it’s “Chicken Divine”. You can tell them they’ve got it wrong. It’s not my recipe.

Shrimp scampi is a really popular dish, which means it has more variations than you can shake a bamboo skewer at. About the only thing that’s in pretty much all the recipes I’ve checked out is butter and garlic. And really, how can you go wrong when you start there?

Interesting note: “Scampi” is actually a type of lobster. The preparation I’m showing here was a popular way of making it, so in the U.S. we now use the word “scampi” to refer to the style more often than the ingredient.

Ingredients

1 pound uncooked shrimp (about 15-18)
1 stick butter (¼ pound)
2-6 cloves garlic
fresh herbs and spices
extra virgin olive oil
see below for amounts

Directions

The herbs

This recipe started in the garden. I’ve got herbs coming in like crazy, so I’m looking for all kinds of ways to use them. (Suggestions welcome down in the comments.)

For the scampi, I did chives, basil, oregano and sage.

I didn’t show the oregano and sage when I did the first harvest. They hadn’t started producing much yet.

For the oregano, remove the leaves from the stems. Don’t worry too much about the stems, they’re very thin.

The sage, though, has thick stems. Fold each leaf in half and pull the stem off. You should be able to remove most of the stem from the leaf.

Same trick with the basil, which has an even thicker stem.

One basil leaf was enough. Any more and that’s all we’d have tasted. Fresh basil is pungent stuff.

Set all the herbs aside, then toss your garlic and some black pepper in the food processor.

How much garlic to use is a very personal decision. I used two normal sized cloves and one freakishly large mutant clove. The trick with garlic is to make sure your date eats the same thing as you do.

Two quick pulses on the Ninja and it’s done.

Add the herbs and another quick pulse.

A little olive oil just to hold everything together, and set it aside.

I might make another batch of this and keep it in the fridge, ready to add to other recipes. It came out really excellent.

The shrimp

Peel and de-vein the shrimp.

Sorry, no pictures of that process. It’s a bit messy, and I didn’t want to get raw shrimp all over the camera. Next time I do shrimp, I’ll have Jenn take the pictures.

Arrange the shrimp into groups of five or six, and connect them with two bamboo skewers for each set.

Assembly and cooking

Melt the butter (microwave is fine) and mix in the herbs. Mince the chives and add them last so they keep their shape.

Scoop the mixture liberally over the shrimp.

Place herbed side down on a hot skillet.

Yes, that’s a strange looking skillet. Or rather, it’s a Himalayan salt block.

While the first side is cooking, spoon more of the herb / butter mixture on top. When the edges of the shrimp start to turn pink, flip them over.

Go another couple of minutes until there is no more gray in the middle.

Serve with the remaining butter for dipping.

And that’s it.

People in my parents’ generation — and frankly most of the people in my generation — can’t understand the idea that people can meet online and collaborate on projects without ever meeting. But that’s how I made my second book, Starting From Scratch. I hadn’t met any of my co-authors in real life before we worked together.

Now, it’s 1-for-6. We went to meet Kristin at Blackrock, her husband’s family home for eight generations.

I could easily write several posts about the visit: going out on the lake in the boat her husband made by hand; the “short walk” a mile back into the woods, along the ravine, back to where the first waterfall runs during the spring melt; the neighboring town that has been turned into a quaint tourist destination by the local college.

But who am I kidding, this is going to be about the food.

I don’t know if it was just good timing, but we got off a lot easier than Kristin’s sister, who always seems to show up just in time to help fertilize the garden:

Just in case you ever had the thought that perhaps you would like to drop in to Blackrock for a visit, eat some good food, relax on the front porch with the dogs . . . let my sister’s experience be a warning to you.

We, on the other hand, did relax on the front porch with the dogs and eat some good food. Like these grass-fed steaks, supplied by an uncle.

Oh, it wasn’t all sweetness and light. There was a ghost sighting in The Pit of Despair.

Or maybe it was just the girls, and I forgot to use the flash. Whatever … back to the meat.

Kristin’s husband grilled the steaks on this high-end clay pot system he invented.

Yes, that’s a bottle of glass cleaner he used to control flare-ups. It may not have still had glass cleaner in it, I didn’t ask.

And there they are, all done.

Watching to make sure he did it right was the ever-alert Pitty Pet.

Also keeping an eye out were Otty and Mia.

Leda was still up in the woods somewhere, waiting for a woodchuck to come out of its hole. (She got it, eventually. Or we assume she did, since the blood on her muzzle wasn’t hers.)

Finally it was all ready. Along with the steak was rice with butter (my favorite way), greens from the garden, and beats also from the garden.

For dessert, Kristin whipped up some whipped cream to go on the strawberries (from the garden, but frozen since strawberry season was a couple of weeks ago) and shortcake biscuits.

In that area shortcake is apparently a traditional soda biscuit with extra sugar. Try to do it some other way and people will think you’re being pretentious.

And by the way, I’d have shown you pictures of how to make them, but Kristin was so fast that by the time I realized what she was doing she was done. No measuring cups, just throw everything in the bowl, mix, roll and cut in about the time it took me to write this paragraph. I think she’s made them a few times before.

At least it sat still in my bowl long enough to see what it looked like when it was done.

If I can ever convince Kristin to bring the family out here for a visit, we’ll show them all of our cool stuff. Like air conditioning. And … did I mention air conditioning?