Blog Posts by Zester Daily

Learn how to determine how hot high the flame should be.By Clifford A. Wright

It's time to fire up the grill for the season, but before you slap dinner over those hot coals, check out our Top 10 tips for grilling everything from veggies to steak.

1. Best results are attained when food is at room temperature before being grilled. Let larger pieces of grilled or spit-roasted meats rest 10 minutes before serving so juices can settle (usually this will happen without planning for it). Lean meats, such as rabbit and chicken breasts, should be grilled close to the flame over very hot coals to sear the meat quickly and trap juices.

Related: Grilled asparagus goes great in a summer salad.

2. Chicken and duck with skin should be grilled farther from the flame or in the cool spot of the grill, covering, uncovering and moving the pieces as needed to avoid flare-ups. Place an aluminum drip pan filled with some water underneath the chicken or duck, letting the fat drip into them, with the coals on either side of the pan. When cooking

Tempting and simple apple cake made from leftover apples.By Laura Holmes Haddad

Patience is not one of my virtues (anyone who knows me will confirm this). But cooking with a toddler requires nothing but. Just when I'd resisted the temptation to open the oven and peek at a cake or incorporate the egg whites too quickly, my daughter dragged her stepstool into the kitchen.

To my 3-year-old daughter, Penelope, cooking and eating should -- and do -- happen simultaneously. She loves nothing more than dumping the flour in while the butter and eggs are still in the early stages of mixing, dipping her finger into a half-prepared cake batter, tasting the raspberries before they become jam and munching on carrots that were intended for the spaghetti sauce.

The real test of my patience begins when I've asked what she would like for dinner. A choice is made, but when she sits down to eat she declares that she asked for spaghetti -- thin spaghetti, in fact. And no, she doesn't like tomato sauce (which she adored only yesterday). I've

Fresh tomatoes from the garden are easy and perfect for summer sauces.By Clifford A. Wright

The best tomato sauce is the one you make from scratch. You start with seedlings. And it's relatively easy to do this, from seedling to sauce, with even minimal experience because tomatoes are great for beginners. You don't have to be a master gardener to produce enough fresh tomatoes to make your own tomato sauce.

Related: Make the perfect quick tomato sauce with an olive oil emulsion.

Tip 1 -- Pick a sunny spot for the tomato garden: Your first task is to pick a spot in your garden or a container that gets at least six hours of sunlight, and preferably more than that. Next you will have to prepare a tomato patch.

If you are living in the Northern Hemisphere, try to choose a southern exposure on land that drains away. For success, you only really need soil, sun and water. You can grow tomatoes in a pot with just a little extra care.

Related: How to turn a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes into a great pasta sauce.

Tip 2 -- Use

Shad is fresh in markets on the East Coast for a limited time.By Kathy Hunt

Forget the nesting songbirds, flowering trees and sunny days. For seafood fans on the East Coast, springtime means the return of the rare seafood delight known as shad.

Each spring, this member of the herring family migrates up the Atlantic coastline to spawn in the rivers from which it originated. Leaving Florida in February, it ends its journey in May in Vermont. During this period, the rich, omega-3-laden fish is at its plumpest and tastiest. Unquestionably, it's also at its best for catching and cooking.

Related: Explore seafood chowder, Norwegian style.

Healthy and full of delicious caviar-like roe

If you've never experienced shad, you may wonder how this bony creature ended up being fished to near-extinction because of overfishing. Among shad enthusiasts, however, there is no question. Possessing firm, oily meat and a mildly sweet yet distinctly savory flavor, it has long rivaled salmon, char and sablefish in taste. High in omega-3 fatty

Soothing Japanese chicken soupBy Mackie Jimbo

There's nothing like a big holiday to inspire moms to break out their most treasured family recipes.

Ozoni, a chicken soup made with mochi rice cakes, is a perfect example. It is the centerpiece of major events, such as Japanese New Year, or oshogatsu, when my entire family gathers together. Oshogatsu typically includes traditions such as mochitsuki (preparing and pounding mochi rice cakes), osoji (cleaning one's house) and lots and lots of cooking. But ozoni is the main event.

Related: How a soup recipe printed on a package of chicken becomes a family's favorite.

My mom's side of the family is from Kyushu province, and our ozoni is very hearty and filled with lots of Japanese vegetables. Big chunks of daikon, Japanese radishes and sato imo, small starchy Japanese potatoes, add rusticity to the soup. Gobo, a long, twig-like root vegetable, gives a pleasantly earthy and nutty flavor, despite its unappetizing appearance.

Related: Spicy chicken soup

Homemade lunch can be healthy and balanced - and include a treat.By Lauren Chattman

Every morning when I was a kid, my mom put together a feast for me to carry to school: a sandwich, a piece of fruit, a box of pretzels and a snack cake. Every day, for years, I ate the snack cake and tossed the rest right into the garbage. No one was looking. Why not skip right to the Devil Dog?

Maybe this was an early sign that I would become a pastry chef. But it also foreshadows the resistance I now feel to the pressure from our school's wellness committee (which has debated canceling the longstanding tradition of a weekly ice cream day), certain vocal yoga moms (who have lobbied to allow only whole wheat vegan pizza at school functions) and various other members of our community's food police to pack nutritionally superior lunches day after day.

Related: What would it take to fix America's broken idea of a good school lunch?

Parents are bombarded with books and newspaper articles on packing the perfect lunch. While there's some helpful advice

You can find free wild food anywhere, from rural to urban areas.By Wendy Petty

Wild foods are gaining a foothold, both in people's imaginations and their refrigerators. Foraging was named among the hottest trends of the year by several food buzz lists. This is, in part, thanks to foraging advocate Chef René Redzepi, who is so enthralled with wild foods that he picks wild herbs on his morning runs. But there is also an upsurge of interest from hobbyists and wild food enthusiasts, all of whom are delighted to embrace the diverse flavors of deeply local wild foods.

Related: A guide to finding wild greens.

In light of the recession, highly nutritious foraged foods can help ease the strain on pocketbooks. So many of the plants that are considered weeds are edible. At best, they are disregarded. At worst, they are considered pests. Foraging is the plant version of up-cycling, utilizing something that most would consider garbage to fill hungry bellies.

Aside from the economic advantages, foraging is also old-fashioned fun, and it can

Salmon cakes from mom were baked, rather than fried.By Barbara Haber

One of the treasures I inherited from my mother is "The Settlement Cook Book," a recipe collection that originated in Milwaukee where my mother had lived most of her life. The book was a standard for Midwestern home cooks just as the "Boston Cooking-School Cook Book," better known as the Fannie Farmer cookbook, gave New Englanders basic instructions for what most people were eating a couple of generations ago. In my mother's time, people generally owned only a few cookbooks, a basic all-purpose one, and several community cookbooks purchased as fundraisers for their local schools, churches or synagogues.

Related: From mother to daughter, a suggestion for the best birthday cake recipe.

My mother's "The Settlement Cookbook" was pretty tattered by the time I got it, held together by a rubber band because of a missing spine and some loose pages. But the book's infirmities have only made it dearer to me, for it reflects its years of use in the hands of a