Blog Posts by Zester Daily

Homemade pickles are simple, easy and a perfect recipe to make your own.By David Latt

No doubt the first pickles were a mistake. Somebody accidentally forgot about some raw vegetables in a pot with an acid and some salt. A week later, the vegetables weren't moldy, no bugs had eaten them and, surprisingly, they had a nice crunch and tang.

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In the 1920s, my great-grandfather made pickles on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Grandmother Caroline used to tell stories about working in their little grocery store as a child. When customers would want pickles, she would hop off the counter and go out front to the pickle barrels and fish out the ones they wanted.

I never knew her parents. I never ate their pickles, but I must have brine in my veins because wherever I travel, I am always on the look out for pickles.

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For Thanksgiving I always make kosher dill pickles. Pickles are very personal. What one person loves might be too salty or vinegary to

Perfect whipped cream looks impressive, but really just requires a few tips.By Anne Mendelson

Real whipped cream doesn't get much respect anymore. It's not trendy enough to be worthy of attention from foodies and a little bit of a mystery for cooks in a hurry. But you can serve up a luscious bowl of real, rich whipped heavy cream that will dazzle your family and dinner guests alike, if you know just a few key tips for turning cream into something special.

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Whipped cream is an aerated colloid - what you get by taking an emulsion of butterfat globules dispersed in whey and agitating it until the globule membranes become halfway disrupted and begin forming fragile bubble-walls around tiny pockets of air introduced by beating.

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The hitch is knowing the right point to stop, before the process slops over into a second chemical card trick known in plain English as butter-making. But anyone can whip cream, without fancy

American lobsters work great in traditional Sicilian seafood soup.By Nancy Harmon Jenkins

Traveling in Sicily in June this year, I tried as many different versions of Sicilian zuppa di pesce, seafood soup, as I could find. And I found a lot, in a lot of great restaurants that should be on the list of anyone planning a trip to that glorious eater-friendly Italian island.

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The chefs I encountered had strong ties to Sicily's fishing traditions, and their restaurants were in towns renowned for their attachment to the sea. Those traditions go back millennia, to the earliest Greeks and Phoenicians, or maybe even to the native Siculi, about whom little is known.

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The soup itself, apart from tomatoes and chili peppers often added to the stock, probably goes back that far too. Certainly you sense links to both the glorious kakavia of the Aegean and the more famous bouillabaisse of Marseilles. But this Sicilian soup, in a dozen

Hearty soup created with seemingly mismatched ingredients will get you through the storm, even if you have eat by candlelight.By Martha Rose Shulman

Monday, Oct. 29, 2012. I woke up this morning with minestrone on my mind. "Must make hearty soup before the electricity goes out."

Since my Connecticut childhood, I've always been at least a half a continent away from East Coast hurricane activity. But this year the timing of my October New York trip is unlucky. (And when has there ever been a hurricane like this at the end of October?)

The subways shut down yesterday at 7 p.m., 24 hours before Hurricane Sandy's anticipated storm surge. Supermarkets and corner bodegas were packed all weekend, the sidewalks clogged with people carting home cases of water. My mother's nurse went to buy supplies at the Fairway on the Upper West Side on Sunday morning and she said the shelves were already stripped of bottled water and canned goods.

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I'm safe on high ground in Chelsea, in my sister's fourth floor walk-up. Yesterday she felt pretty confident about

Buttermilk blueberry layer cake is a crowd pleaser.By Liz Pearson

Now that we're heading into the holiday potluck and party season, it's time to think about developing that perfect casserole, dessert or special drink for which you're going to become known. You need a signature, go-to dish that everyone will request when you say "what can I bring?"

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My mother makes Swedish meatballs to die for, my husband always brings a vat of perfect, lime-spiked guacamole to a party, my sister is famous for her baked macaroni riddled with fresh goat cheese, and my friend Celeste keeps a bowl of unapologetically rich cookie dough in the fridge for all manner of seasonal emergencies. Each specialty inspires whispers when the cook walks through the door: "I hope she brought that (insert dish name here) this time …"

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Everyone needs at least one recipe under their belt, no matter their cooking prowess, and a trademark dish should hit these

Press them in a mold, top them with nuts, dip them in chocolate ... There's no end to the variations on classic shortbread cookies.By Kathy Hunt

Make no mistake - I love sweets. Yet, when I've had too much of rich desserts, I reach for a tin of golden shortbread. Rich, delicate and only slightly sugary, this Scottish baked good is the perfect replacement for all those cloying treats.

A rich history

Shortbread dates to the Renaissance and the baking of crumbly cakes known as shortcakes. Like shortcakes, this small, pale cookie gets its fragile texture from the generous amount of butter used to make it. Both take their names from an antiquated definition of short, which refers to brittleness.

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Although its exact birth date remains unknown, shortbread appeared in the first Scottish cookbook, which was published in 1736, "Mrs. McLintock's Recipes for Cookery and Pastry-Work." Since it was festive and easily transported, shortbread was often given as a gift, and came to be associated with the Christmas season and Scottish New Year's Eve or Hogmanay.

Don't be the one house in the neighborhood that gives away toothbrushes or stickers. Halloween is for candy!By Cybele May

Halloween is a holiday of abandon for kids: dressing up in costumes, cavorting around the neighborhood, and, of course, amassing pounds of candy.

Unlike other holidays, when kids are simply handed gifts or sugary treats, Halloween is a time when they have to work for it. And the harder a kid works, the more candy she accumulates. She starts with the costume. She might need maps, or assemble a team and strategize. But at its core, the work of the night is to approach dozens of homes to collect the booty and then tote it home. The result of this effort is a bounty to gorge, barter and hoard.

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As adults, we have one job on Oct. 31: Hand over the treats. If you're in costume, or have ornately carved pumpkins, or decorate your house with ghosts and spider webs, that's great. But if your porch light is on, your home is participating in the trick-or-treat ritual. That means you hand out candy.

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Homemade grape jelly is easier than you think.By Susan Lutz

Last year my youngest daughter fell in love with grape jelly, specifically my mother's homemade grape jelly made from Virginia Concord grapes grown on her friend's backyard vines. And this was fine with me because my mother Linda sends us several jars of the stuff each year. But as my daughter has grown, so has her appetite for grape jelly, and I knew that I would eventually need to learn how to make my daughter's favorite toast topping.

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I was not excited about this prospect for a number of reasons.

Although I make a wide variety of jams and fruit butters, I've never embraced the art of jelly-making. The idea of straining the large quantities of dark purple juice required for making grape jelly always seemed too messy and time-consuming.

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And making grape jelly usually requires the addition of pectin. I've been fairly opposed to the idea of cooking with