The Honey Issue, A Peak Inside

An ancient ingredient, honey is valued across cultures and continents. In Tanzania, honey gatherers risk their lives crawling up sky-high trees to reach buzzing hives. Beekeepers hold sacred their supplies, and grades of honey range in price from reasonable to expensive.

In The Honey Issue, we explore all aspects of the golden liquid, from recipes, to history, to tutorials on things like making mead.

This recipe for Goat Cheese and Blackberry Tartlets uses honey in one of its most enjoyable and classic applications, drizzled over top of a crunchy, sweet/savory bite-size treat. Others, such as “Bee-Stung Cake” and “Za’tar-Baked Cauliflower with Pine Nuts” teach sweet and savory uses.

Articles explore the variations in honey. From the layers of a hive, to different types of bees, to varieties of honey across the globe.

Commonly used as a sweetener to replace sugar, the thick viscosity of honey changes the dough/batter it is added to. In these cookies, the floral notes of honey are complemented and brought forward by the floral notes of the orange blossom.

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It’s an interesting ingredient with a long history and list of applications explored in the 100 pages that make up the issue. There is a deep well of exploration out there and we’ve just scratched the surface. But we hope, with these articles, tutorials and recipes, that your interest in the “nectar of the gods” is sparked, and your taste buds tantalized.

Pick up a copy of The Honey Issue here.

A Recipe for Lemony Whipped Feta from the Alliums Issue

You may not be familiar with the term “alliums,” but you certainly are with alliums themselves. Alliums are the family of plants containing onions, shallots, garlic, ramps, scapes, chives, scallions, and leeks. All have a bulb base with an umbel flower and both are edible. One allium or another forms the base of almost every dish worldwide, making it a perfect ingredient to dive deep into.

In the issue there are mentions of ancient Egypt, Greece, Sweet Onions in Maui, Growing, Curing and Drying your own, among many other things. Below is a recipe from the issue for a Lemony-Whipped Feta Dip with Charred Scallions. It’s a modern take on the Calçotada, an annual event in Valls, Catalonia, Spain. A calçot is a milder onion more suited to roasting and charring. In this tradition celebrating the calçot harvest, the onions are grilled, wrapped in newspaper and served on terra cotta tiles where they are peeled and eaten with your hands. Romesco sauce is used for dipping and accompanied by plenty of red wine and bread. Following the calçots, a feast of roasted lamb and sausage with white beans and dessert of oranges with cava conclude the event. This version uses common scallions found at any market, charring them under the broiler to dip in a bright, lemony buttermilk and black-pepper dip. Read on for the recipe.

Charred scallions, tart lemon, and salty feta go together swimmingly. Alliums grow mellower as they cook. The chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide stimulates the eyes’ lachrymal glands so they release tears and breaks down the pungency of the onion. Broiling or blackening takes an allium to the most extreme opposite, meeting a mellow, oniony flavor with a charred one.

Lemony-Whipped Feta with Charred Scallions

black pepper, lemon, olive oil

1 1/2 lemons

1 bunch scallions

1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

14 ounces feta cheese, broken into large pieces

2 ounces cream cheese

1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black 

pepper, plus more for garnish

1 tablespoon hot water

1. Heat a broiler. Line a sheet pan with foil. Juice 1 lemon and set aside. Cut the remaining 1/2 lemon into 3 or 4 thin slices. 

2. In a medium bowl combine the lemon slices, scallions and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place on a sheet pan with the scallions and broil until blackened, about 7-9 minutes for the scallions and an additional 5 minutes for the lemon slices. Transfer to a cutting board and let cool slightly. 

3. In a food processor, add the feta, cream cheese, remaining olive oil, reserved lemon juice, pepper, and hot water. Puree until very smooth. 

4. Chop the scallions into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces. Stir into the whipped feta. Transfer to a bowl. 

5. Chop the charred lemon slices in half. Garnish the whipped feta with the lemon slices and a crack of black pepper.

How To Tell When It's Spring

As I write this I'm sitting in a quaint cafe, gazing into soft, muted wallpaper while a marble counter shines with macarons and perfect buckwheat madeleines, snacking on an almond croissant and sipping floral tea. The feeling of spring is all around me. 

To me, spring is many things. It's light, air, a freshness after a season that keeps the windows closed and the doors shut. It's new life and rejuvenation- ballsy buds busting through the impenetrable ground, demanding a spot in the sunshine. Tea parties and garden parties and getting things in the garden. Spring is about new life and, more than anything, it's about flowers. 

This season used to get me down. It rains here heavily in the spring, more in the mountainous area where I live than in most of the rest of the Pacific Northwest- an already rainy part of the world- but with that rains comes an all-encompassing lushness. The fertile nook we live in turns into Fern Gully (or, as some of our friends like to say, The Shire), and every drop, every soaking-wet run, every sopping wet pair of shoes and muddy day spent in the garden is worth it.

So a few thoughts, a few signs & a few things to notice, to let you know spring is here.  

Ten Signs of Spring

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