Dyed Easter eggs, courtesy of Flickr user DarkFokus

Nothing says Easter quite like the smell of vinegar and hard-boiled eggs. In my house growing up, we dyed the eggs a few days before Easter morning. We displayed them in baskets for a few days before my parents hid them around the house the night before Easter.

We were never allowed to eat our Easter eggs that morning. If we wanted eggs, my mother insisted, she would make new ones. But I have heard plenty of stories of people eating hard-boiled eggs that sat out for hours, or even days, at room temperature and never had any problems. Now obviously, anecdotal evidence is nothing to base a theory on. The FDA suggests not eating hard-boiled eggs that have sat out for more than two hours and to eat refrigerated hard-boiled eggs within one week. Good Housekeeping agrees with the two-hour rule. Looks like my mother was right.

Decorated Easter eggs are popular in many cultures and range from the simple one-colored American classic to the elaborately detailed pysanka of Ukraine. Some eggs are so meticulously crafted that they aren’t meant for eating at all. Although members of my family never ate the eggs, many Americans do. Here are a few suggestions for ingredients to naturally dye your Easter eggs this year:

• Beets: Boil the eggs with canned beets and juice for a light pink color. For a richer hue, soak cooked eggs in the beet water overnight. This same method works with carrots for a light orange color.
• Blueberries: Add a few cups of blueberry to boiling water for a light purple color. For a richer hue, let eggs sit in the blueberry-infused water after cooling for a few hours or overnight. The pigment comes from the skin of the fruit, so there’s no reason to mash the berries before adding them to the water.
• Cranberry juice: Boil eggs in full-strength cranberry juice for a light pink color.
• Onion Skins: Boil raw eggs with plenty of yellow onion skins for a golden color. Edhat magazine out of Santa Barbara has some amazing photos of eggs dyed with onion skins and decorated using flowers from a garden. All you need are eggs, flowers, boiling water and stockings. For a pinkish color, try using red onion skins.
• Paprika: Adding a few tablespoons of paprika to boiling water will result in a reddish hue.
• Purple grape juice: Dilute the grape juice by up to 50 percent and boil raw eggs in the mixture. The color will be a light blue.
• Red Cabbage: Boil cabbage and let hard-boiled eggs soak in the liquid overnight.
• Red Wine: Boil raw eggs in red wine for a deep purple color. (This same method is used to create a rich purple-hued pasta.)
• Spinach: Boil raw eggs with spinach or boil spinach in water and let already-cooked eggs soak in the liquid overnight.
• Turmeric: I wrote about turmeric a few months ago. It is a strong dye and usually turns my utensils and plates yellow. Add a few tablespoons to a pot of boiling water and eggs. This method would also work with the more expensive saffron, which adds the yellow color to Spanish rice and paella.

What natural dyes have you tried? Did they work?
(Thanks to Reader’s Digest and the Charleston Gazette)

Israeli couscous with roasted butternut squash and lemon, courtesy of Flickr user travelingmcmahans

I have a new pasta obsession: Israeli couscous. Like its smaller cousin, it is a round pasta, but its diameter is nearly twice the size of regular couscous. The little balls are much chewier than regular couscous and hold up better to sauces even in a cold salad—no mush. They remind me a little of tapioca balls and provide that same satisfying texture and bite that tapioca adds to boba, or bubble, tea.

Known in Israel as ptitim, Israeli couscous is one of the few uniquely Israeli dishes. According to the Israeli paper Haaretz, Ben Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, contacted a large food manufacturer and asked that it find a way to produce a whole wheat substitute for rice. The first ptitim were rice shaped and are commonly know by their nickname, “Ben-Gurion Rice.” The company next produced a round ptitim, which we now call Israeli couscous outside of Israel. Unlike most pasta, which is dried, Israeli couscous is baked in a oven, giving it a slight toasty flavor.

The same article also notes that ptitim is mostly a children’s food in Israel. The demand even inspired production of ptitim in the shapes of stars, rings and hearts (kind of like macaroni and cheese here).

In the United States and other countries, Israeli couscous is a new trend in restaurants, which is where I first encountered it. But the couscous is easy to make at home. Israeli couscous is quick to prepare—takes about six minutes—because of its small size. It also tends to clump together less than regular couscous. I’ve prepared what I thought would be a great batch of regular couscous only to come back five minutes later and find it all stuck together. Epicurious has a recipe for couscous with pine nuts and parsley that I’m going to try with the box I just bought from Trader Joe’s. Either that or I’ll wait until zucchini, asparagus and tomato come in season and make Bobby Flay’s couscous with grilled summer vegetables.

Salt shaker, courtesy of Flickr user Leonid_Mamchenkov

If a ban proposed by Brooklyn assemblyman Felix Ortiz passes, New York chefs will be banned from using salt in food preparation in all restaurants. The bill states: “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises.” Ortiz suggests a $1,000 fine for each violation

The New York Daily News led off their coverage with this: “If State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has his way, the only salt added to your meal will come from the chef’s tears.” The New York Times covered the story on their blog. The Baltimore Sun pointed out that not only does salt add flavor, it also affects the chemical reactions that happen during baking (as well as the texture of baked goods). Max Fischer at The Atlantic guessed that Ortiz never actually wanted the ban to pass but rather wanted to get media attention and make other restrictions seem reasonable. He definitely got the media attention.

Ortiz told the Albany Times Union that he was inspired by his father who “used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.” Under Ortiz’s salt ban, the public would still be allowed to add salt at the table. I have to admit that if I got a batch of unsalted fries, I would add just as much, if not more, salt than the cooks in the kitchen would have.

Ortiz did issue a clarification later in the week: “My intention for this legislation was to prohibit the use of salt as an additive to meals. If salt is a functional component of the recipe, by all means, it should be included. But, when we have meals prepared by restaurants that pile unnecessary amounts of salt, we have a problem.”

New York is not new to bans. New York City passed a ban on trans fat in 2006. For a column in the Chicago Tribune, Mary Schmich talked to Nicole Pederson, executive chef at C-House in Chicago, who compared the ban to the trans fat ban with one important distinction: “Trans fat is bad in every single way… But salt is not bad in every single way.”

Jars full of pickled goodies, courtesy of Flickr user Jo Peattie

Salty and crunchy cucumber pickles have been a mainstay in American refrigerators for decades. But The Daily Beast recently listed pickling as one of its top trends for 2010. And the trend isn’t just for cucumbers—you can pickle just about anything. At the restaurant where I work, we serve pickled red onion on our burgers and pickled beets in our salads.

Pickling is by no means a new technique. Vegetables, fruit and even meats can be preserved using the pickling process to keep them good for months after their peak. Different cultures have their favorite pickle fodder. Korea has kimchi, Scandinavia pickled herring and Italy giardiniera. There are two standard pickling methods: the salt-brining method, which results in a shelf-stable pickle, and the refrigerator, or quick, pickle method. The latter pickles are created using a vinegar solution and must, as the name suggests, be stored in the refrigerator.

When I began searching for recipes, I came across the great Food in Jars blog that focuses on, among other jar-based endeavors, pickles. Although I didn’t end up choosing a recipe from here, mostly because I wanted an in-season quick pickle, I learned a great deal about the basics. For instance, when pickling vegetables, it’s important to use a vinegar that has at least 5 percent acidity. In the brine, this can be diluted to one part vinegar, one part water.

When I visited the Spotted Pig in New York City on my pig-eating journey, I ate pickled pears in an appetizer and really wanted to try some at home. I remembered the pickling episode of “Good Eats” and the pickled summer fruit recipe. In this recipe, Alton Brown uses Bartlett pears and plums. Since neither of those are in season right now, I went with the sweeter Comice pear, which is in season, and cut out the plum altogether. I kept the rest of the recipe the same with lemon slices and slivered fresh ginger.

Since these were quick pickles and would be stored in the refrigerator, I didn’t have to worry about sterilizing the can. I cooked up the vinegar mixture and poured it over the pear, lemon and ginger already packed into a recycled pasta sauce jar. I let the whole thing cool on the counter for a bit and put it into the refrigerator for two days. (The recipe suggests two days to a week in the refrigerator.)

After 48 hours of marinating, I opened the jar and was surprised at how sweet the pears and brine smelled. I pulled out a pear and bit in. The pear slice still had quite a bit of crunch to it, and the vinegar had soaked into the flesh. I got notes of lemon and ginger from the rest of the ingredients. While they’re pretty good now, I want to wait and see what they taste like after a week in the brine. I already have plans to use the leftover liquid as a vinaigrette for a salad.

Coconut shrimp, courtesy of Flickr user allikazoo

The coconut has long been a staple of cuisine in tropical places. As the trend toward Eastern flavors picks up here in the States, coconut has shown up in many flavor forecast lists for 2010.

The coconut is one of the most useful plants in the world. Some cultures use almost every part of the tree from the leaves to the water inside of the coconut fruit. In fact, the water is sterile, and was used as a intravenous solution in a pinch during World War II. The flesh of the coconut fruit, the fluid inside the coconut, coconut milk (made of liquid squeezed from the coconut flesh) and even the root of the palm, known as hearts of palm, are all eaten. Here are a few ways to enjoy the different parts of the coconut:

1. Batter: Think coconut-breaded shrimp. Use flakes of coconut flesh to coat shrimp and bake or fry. You can also coat other seafood, like tilapia, or try chicken with dried coconut flakes.

2. Salad: Hearts of palm are harvested from the root of a palm tree. Doing this kills the entire tree, so a salad made with the root was once called a “millionaire’s salad.” Today, rather than using coconut palms or other varities, most heart of palm comes from the peach palm—the only palm varietal not to die after its root has been harvested. Hearts of palm have a subtle flavor similar to asparagus or artichoke. Paula Deen has a recipe for a salad with spinach, strawberry and hearts of palm that I can’t wait to try.

3. Curry: Coconut milk is the base for many Thai curries. I make a creamy red curry using red curry paste, a can of coconut milk, chicken and sweet potato. For more information, and some actual recipes, Serious Eats as a nice breakdown of curry type with recipes.

4. Substitute for dairy: While I don’t keep kosher, recipes using coconut milk instead of dairy milk to follow kosher laws are intriguing. Take this Sweet Potato Coconut Crumble from Gourmet Kosher Cooking or these coconut milk scalloped potatoes. Coconut milk can also serve as the base of non-dairy ice creams for those lactose intolerant ice cream lovers. Grist recently reviewed non-dairy ice cream options, and the coconut milk varieties won.

5. Piña Colada: Some snow from the great snow storm of 2010 is still lingering on the ground here in D.C., but it’s already March and spring will be here soon. When it starts to warm up, fix yourself a piña colada and pretend you’re on a tropical beach somewhere. This popular cocktail is made from rum, pineapple juice and cream of coconut, which is derived from coconut milk.

Courtesy Flickr user Desiree N. Williams

As Arumugam writes, the government mandates dates only on baby formula and some baby food. The rest of the dates came about voluntarily. She writes, “In the 1930s, the magazine Consumer Reports argued that Americans increasingly looked to expiration dates as an indication of freshness and quality. Supermarkets responded and in the 1970s some chains implemented their own dating systems.” One of the problem with the dates, says Arumugam, is the lack of consistency in the terms surrounding the dates. What’s the difference between “sell by,” “best if used by” and “use by”? Even though the F.D.A. doesn’t mandate the use of them, it does offer some advice to decoding the terms. None of them, not even the “use by” date are considered safety dates. The food might not be at peak quality after the date, but it can still be eaten safely. Even the “use by” dates on baby food are related to nutrient retention and texture rather than safety. I had always suspected that the printed expiration dates on food were more about protecting the companies than the consumers. But Arumugam writes that the dates don’t even have any legal bearing. Last year, a judge reversed the conviction of a man who relabeled more than a million bottles of salad dressing with a new “best when purchased date.” This extended the shelf life of the product so he could continue to sell them. In the reversal, the judge said, “The term ‘expiration date’ … on a food product … has a generally understood meaning: it is the date after which you shouldn’t eat the product. Salad dressing, however, or at least the type of salad dressing represented by Henri’s, is what is called ‘shelf stable’; it has no expiration date.” Even though the company decided to print a date on the package, a judge dismissed the date as not having any legal worth. When it comes down to it, it’s really the consumers job to determine when to toss food. And that’s the conclusion Arumugam comes to. But she also brings up an interesting point: “Better yet, we should focus our efforts on what really matters to our health—not spoilage bacteria, which are fairly docile, but their malevolent counterparts: disease-causing pathogens like salmonella and Listeria, which infect the food we eat not because it’s old but as a result of unsanitary conditions at factories or elsewhere along the supply chain.” (Soda fountains, for instance, or slaughterhouses or turkey farms.) Unfortunately, the solution to that problem isn’t as simple as a date stamped on an egg carton.

King Cake, courtesy Flickr user The Gifted Photographer

In the book “Mardi Gras, gumbo, and zydeco: readings in Louisiana culture,” Marcia Gaudet writes an essay about today’s king cake and the European Epiphany cake from which it evolved. The Feast of Epiphany is celebrated in many Western branches of the Christian faith on January 6, the proverbial “twelfth day of Christmas.” It commemorates the day when the three wise men—also called magi, or kings—arrived in Bethlehem bearing gifts for the baby Jesus. Epiphany is also the start of the traditional Mardi Gras season.

King cake is traditionally a yeast-based sweet bread baked in the shape of a crown, covered with white icing and gold, purple and green sprinkles—the official colors of the carnival. Although Mardi Gras itself can be traced back to the medieval ages, the colors weren’t chosen until 1872. Gold represents power; purple is for justice, and green represents faith.

Another key element is the inclusion of a trinket inside the cake. The trinket is often a tiny baby figurine that represents the baby Jesus, but it can also be a bean, an almond, a horseshoe or many other things. Whoever gets the token in their piece is considered the king—or queen—and becomes responsible for the next king cake. Of course, this custom varies from place to place and family to family.

Although it’s not clear when or why the cake tradition migrated from Epiphany to later in the Mardi Gras festival, Gaudet theorizes that it has to do with other Epiphany-related customs, such as gift-giving, being observed in conjunction with the Christmas holiday.

I was surprised to learn that unlike other tradition-centric holiday foods, the king cake is usually bought rather than made at home. (If you’re feeling ambitious, though, here’s a recipe.) Even Gaudet’s grandmother in New Orleans did not make her own—in an 1899 diary entry, she wrote that she and her aunt picked up a king cake at the store for King’s Day.

The cake has made the leap from New Orleans to other cities in the United States as the Mardi Gras celebration becomes more widespread. But I think Gaudet has the cake’s popularity figured out: “[King cake] also provides both Cajuns and ‘newcomers’ a means of participating in a food custom that is certainly easier to adapt to than eating boudin and crawfish.”

I can’t speak for boudin, which is a word used to describe various sausages used in Creole and Cajun cuisine, but I had a rather unfortunate experience with a crawfish during last year’s Mardi Gras and won’t be eating that again. A cake covered in frosting and sprinkles, however? No problem at all.

Red velvet cupcake, courtesy of Flickr user su-lin

Sweets are not in short supply around Valentine’s Day. But here’s an option a little more sophisticated than candy hearts or chocolate kisses: try Red Velvet cake. The rich red color always surprises people and makes it perfect for a holiday that is celebrated with a lot of crimson.

This allegedly Southern gem has been gaining some popularity, see 1989′s Steel Magnolias and Jessica Simpson’s wedding cake for her 2002 nuptials to Nick Lachey. The New York Times noticed the trend in 2007, and said that more than 20 bakeries in New York City were serving the dessert.

The cake gets it red color from copious amounts of red food coloring, though beets have been used in times of war rationing and recently as a concession to the health-food craze. (But it is cake after all–it isn’t supposed to be healthy.) My favorite versions are covered in cream cheese frosting—a sweet but tangy layer on top.

The origin of the cake, like that of so many of our favorite foods, is less than clear. One of the most popular stories is that the cake was invented at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. An urban myth held that a woman asked for the cake recipe, was charged a ridiculous amount of money for it, and then circulated the recipe in revenge. A version of this myth has been spreading for decades, most recently related to a cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus.

The first credible reference to red velvet cake comes in 1972′s American Cookery by famed chef and food writer James Beard. He notes that the reaction between the buttermilk and vinegar—both common ingredients in red velvet recipes—can enhance the reddish color of cocoa powder. In the days before Dutch-processed cocoa powder was widely used, natural cocoa powder had more of a reddish tint. The use of processed powder might have necessitated the use of food coloring.

After I discovered the cake in junior high, I brought Red Velvet cupcakes into class for every Valentine’s Day party. The cake was relatively unknown in Chicago, where I grew up, and never failed to get a smile or two.

Agave Neomexicano, courtesy of Flickr user Dey

My roommate recently asked me to pick up a few bottles of agave nectar for her at the store. She works at a restaurant and was using it for a signature cocktail. Not wanting to seem ignorant, I agreed. I had no idea what the stuff was. When I got to the store, I found it sitting innocently next to the honey. It looked pretty similar.

To start, an introduction: Agave nectar is a natural sweetener, sweeter than honey though thinner, that is derived from the agave plant. (The sweetest variety, the blue agave, is the plant from which tequila is born.) Agave is an important crop in the Mexican regions of Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato and Tamaulipas. The juice from the center of the plant is heated and processed to produce a syrup.

Agave nectar is being marketed as a healthy alternative to other sugars, and Americans are taking the bait. According to a 2009 Los Angeles Times article, sales of agave products more than tripled in number between 2003 and 2007.

Agave nectar is beloved by vegans in search of a replacement for honey. (The debate over whether or not honey is vegan has been going on for a long time.)

One selling point of agave nectar is the type of sugar molecule that gives it its sweetness. Table sugar, sucrose, breaks down into two simpler sugars, fructose and glucose. Agave nectar can be made of up to 90 percent fructose, although the percentage varies from producer to producer and can be as low as 55 percent. It’s not clear that fructose is any healthier than glucose, though, or than the related and lately maligned high fructose corn syrup.

When it comes down to it, agave nectar is still sugar. To quote Kantha Shelke, a food chemist specializing in natural foods, from the Los Angeles Times article, “A sugar is a sugar is a sugar.”

Turmeric, courtesy of Flickr user megabeth

Amanda recently wrote about cinnamon having a reputation as a good food for healthy eyes, and it got me thinking about spices. I tend to think of them merely as flavor, but cinnamon isn’t the only spice that people are investigating for its possible health benefits. I was looking for a recipe for sweet potato curry the other night and remembered another spice that some people think of as a health food: turmeric.

Turmeric is a rhizome, like ginger, that is native to South Asia and used commonly in curries. It’s famous for its yellow color, which stains almost everything it comes in contact with—even your skin.

Last year in TIME magazine, Dr. Scott Haig penned a piece about turmeric relieving pain in a patient of his who took capsules of the stuff daily. (The story was anecdotal and rightly labeled “one doctor’s opinion.”) Turmeric made Oprah’s list as a top 25 superfood for 2010.

Asian cultures have been using the spice for centuries. In India, turmeric has been used in Ayurveda medical practices as a “blood purifier.” Traditionally, it is ingested to treat indigestion, gas, liver and urinary tract diseases. It is also used as a salve for skin diseases and inhaled to alleviate the symptoms of the common cold.

Recently, curcumin, a chemical found in turmeric and other spices, has been the subject of research testing its effect on cancer, cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease among others. A cancer research center in Ireland found that curcumin began to kill cancer cells in 24 hours. Curcumin has also been tested, with some success, as an anti-inflammatory. Most of the research is still preliminary, but it might yield some interesting results.

My guess is that with the Oprah effect, jars of turmeric will be flying off the shelves this year. I’d resist the urge to pop pills of the yellow stuff until more substantial evidence comes along, however. But having an extra curry dish here and there couldn’t hurt. Turmeric isn’t just for curry either, I put it on baked chicken breasts and to add some kick to rice.

Fresh wasabi root, courtesy Flickr user dnak

Wasabi (wasabia japonica) is a cousin of horseradish; both are rhizomes (root-like stems) in the mustard family. Fresh wasabi is extremely perishable, which accounts for the popularity of imitations. (The version we bought was a mix of horseradish, mustard and food coloring.) It’s also very expensive.

Further research revealed that although wasabi is hot, it isn’t the same spiciness that results from capsaicin, the source of the heat in chili peppers. While capsaicin produces a burning sensation on the tongue and in the mouth when it’s eaten, the active ingredients in wasabi, isothiocyanates, affect the nasal passages more.

It turns out that wasabi is more than just a sushi flavoring. Its place in sushi culture is rooted in the fact that wasabi is believed to have antimicrobial properties that can reduce the risk of food poisoning—a nice perk when eating raw fish. Studies have shown that wasabi root as well as the leaves can prohibit the growth of bacteria that cause food poisoning.

Compounds in wasabi might also help scientists develop a new treatment for pain. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco studied isothiocynates in wasabi that trigger a reaction in the TRP receptors in nerve cells in our tongues and mouths. These receptors are ultimately responsible for sending a pain signal to the brain. One of the scientists, David Julius, bred mice that lacked one type of TRP receptor and found that the mice didn’t react to compounds that contained isothiocynates. Julius also has evidence that the receptor is responsible for to inflammation. A drug that blocked that receptor could conceivably be a powerful painkiller.

But wasabi’s potential usefulness doesn’t stop there. Japanese scientists harnessed its pungent smell to create a prototype of a smoke alarm for the hearing impaired. The alarm sprays a wasabi extract into the room when smoke is detected. In a preliminary study, 13 out of 14 test subjects awoke within two minutes of the alarm being triggered—one woke up in 10 seconds. Another participant said the alarm reminded him of a bad sushi experience.

Spaghetti squash, courtesy of Flickr user BreezeDebris

I love pasta as much as the next person. It’s easy, it’s cheap and it’s convenient. But it’s not exactly packed with nutrients. I think I have found a great alternative to the simple pasta dish. Don’t get me wrong, I will eat pasta, but subbing in a healthier alternative once in a while can’t hurt.

What is this mysterious vegetable that I plan on replacing spaghetti with? Spaghetti squash, of course. I’ve seen it on restaurant menus for years and have always marveled at its long strands and pasta-like texture. I had always assumed, however, that the flesh was manipulated in some way to get it to act like noodles. I was wrong. It’s as simple as running a fork through the cooked squash.

Spaghetti squash (also known as vegetable spaghetti, noodle squash, spaghetti marrow in the United Kingdom, squaghetti, gold string melon in Japan or fish fin melon in China) is a winter squash—a cousin of butternut and acorn squash. It’s a large yellow squash, averaging from 4 to 8 pounds, though I’ve seen some as small as two pounds in stores around D.C., with an intriguing flesh. After cooking, the flesh pulls away from the peel in long strands. The mild-flavored spaghetti-like strands can be mixed with a sauce or eaten as a side dish.

Spaghetti squash packs quite a healthy punch, too. Today’s most common varietal, the Orangetti, was developed in the 1990s and is darker orange in color than other versions which tend to be pale ivory to pale yellow. This variety is higher in beta carotene and is slightly sweeter than the paler versions. Spaghetti squash also has folic acid, potassium and vitamin A. A four-ounce serving of spaghetti squash has only 37 calories. (You can probably burn that off by washing dishes after the meal.)

My favorite way to eat it is with shrimp scampi and asparagus tossed in. I poked some holes in the squash—a simple, but essential step, lest the whole thing explode in the oven. I baked the squash at 350 degrees for about an hour, let it cool, cut it in half and forked out the flesh. I sauteed shrimp and asparagus with some garlic, butter, white wine and lemon juice. If that’s not your style, a quick internet search reveals dozens of interesting recipes. Fabulous foods has a recipe for spaghetti squash pancakes; they look similar to potato pancakes. Fabulous foods also has tips for buying, storing and cooking spaghetti squash.

In addition to being an easily prepped food, spaghetti squash is also an easy-to-grow food. Hearty winter squashes, like pumpkins, require a lot of space but not a lot of attention. The University of Illinois Extension has some tips for growing all types of winter squashes if you’re feeling adventurous. Someday, if I ever get out of small rental units, I’d like to think squash would be one of the residents of my backyard garden.

The results of our 3-hour sushi experiment.

On New Year’s Eve, my boyfriend and I decided to try our hands at sushi. We eat sushi out pretty frequently, but something about making it in my own kitchen seemed terrifying. It was easier than I had expected, albeit time consuming. Definitely something I recommend trying for a sushi eater. If nothing else, it’ll give you more respect for the sushi chefs at your regular haunts.

Sushi actually refers to the rice, not the raw fish, and I had read that cooking the rice properly is the hardest part. We bought sushi rice, a short-grained white rice, from a regular grocery store. Step one, according to the package, was to wash the rice until the water ran clear. Some manufacturers coat rice with a talc powder for packaging and washing removes this. Step two was to soak the rice in the cooking liquid for 30 minutes. This allows moisture to permeate the entire rice kernel so that the rice cooks more evenly. After soaking, we were to bring the water and rice to a boil, then turn down the heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. The stove in my house is on the older side, and it has all but lost its finesse. It can boil a pot of water but it lost the ability to simmer ages ago. When turned down lower than medium, the flame will extinguish within a few minutes.

What happens to sushi rice when your stove is too old to simmer.

I tried my best to maintain a simmer, but when I took off the top after the 30-minute simmer and 10-minute rest, I found a lot of fluffy white rice and a layer of burnt rice at the bottom. We were able to salvage most of it, so the sushi experiment continued. We added sushi vinegar, a mixture of rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt. The rice turned out well considering the earlier mishap, though it was a bit gummy, probably from overcooking.

As for the fish, we opted to buy sushi-grade fish from BlackSalt in D.C. We had eaten there before and gawked at all the fish in the fish market on the way to our table. We bought half a pound of salmon, a quarter-pound of yellowtail and a quarter-pound of tuna. (My apologies to Amanda, but the issue of sustainability only crossed my mind after we had made the order.) We learned a valuable lesson this time around: Buy less fish than you think you’ll need. We ended up with way too much sushi and enough leftover fish for a salad the next day.

The other integral sushi elements—soy sauce, wasabi and nori (dried seaweed)—we bought at the regular grocery. We were excited to find a wasabi imported from Japan only to find on closer inspection that it was horseradish. Imitation wasabi is very common because the real thing is so expensive and perishes quickly—the reason why chefs put the wasabi between the fish and rice. I mistakenly assumed that imitation wasabi was less potent than the real thing and globbed it heavily on our nigiri. I was wrong. Apparently it’s just the opposite.

Rolling the first sushi.

We made a few nigiri—just rice and fish—so we could taste each fish, and then a few rolls: spicy salmon, salmon with avocado and lemon, yellowtail with asparagus and tuna with cucumber. Although I had expected the first roll to end up as a misshapen mess, the result looked like a smaller version of what you would get at a real sushi restaurant. We learned here, too, that less is better. Because sushi gets rolled up, it isn’t necessary to cover every last bit of nori with rice. In fact, if you do that, your rolls will have too much rice and not enough filling. We also learned that wetting your hands with ice cold water helps when handling the super sticky rice. We tried the same trick with the knife when cutting the rolls, and it worked. It wasn’t as hard as I had though, but it certainly took more time. We started at about 7:30 PM and finished just in time to clean up and watch the New Year’s countdown.

Shad roe, pineapple foam, cucumber sauce, coriander bubbles, courtesy of Flickr user santheo

We’re jumping on the end-of-the-year-list bandwagon at Food & Think. Today we have an offering of some of the biggest food trends of the decade. This was the decade in which organic became a household name, chefs became celebrities and exotic ingredients became ordinary.

Organic: Perhaps the decade’s biggest culinary buzzword was organic. The concept is nothing new: before the introduction of chemicals into agriculture, all farming could have been considered organic. Nevertheless, organic became big business with stores like Whole Foods leading the way. In 2002, The USDA released its national standards for organic products, officially bringing the movement into the mainstream. In the first half of the decade, organic food sales grew by 17 to 20 percent a year, while conventional food sales grew by about 2 to 3 percent a year. By 2003, organic foods were available in about 20,000 natural food stores and 73 percent of conventional grocery stores in the United States.

Locavore: Another success was the locavore trend. The word itself was created by Jessica Prentice in 2005 and seen in print in the San Francisco Chronicle. Prentice came up with the word to describe those who eat food from within a 100-mile radius of where they live. The concept has taken on a more broad meaning now, but eating more food that traveled fewer miles is still a key point. The trend has traveled to the restaurant scene as well, with some menus going so far as to lists where the specific ingredient came from. In 2007, the New Oxford American Dictionary named “locavore” the word of the year.

Molecular Gastronomy: A trend that stayed mostly in restaurants, save for the occasional adventurous home chef, molecular gastronomy is an oft-used but poorly understood term. Technically the term refers to studying the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking and discovering the best way to prepare a certain food. (Think: 6 minute egg.) But the term is also applied to cooking using those techniques. (Think: Infused foam.) Ferran Adriá, famed Catalan chef at El Bulli in Barcelona, is one of the best-known chefs said to be working within this movement. The menu at his restaurant features such concoctions as tapioca of Iberian ham, spherical egg of white asparagus with false truffle and frozen gnocchi. Heston Blumenthal, a British chef at The Fat Duck in Bray in Berkshire, U.K., is another chef famous for his scientific approach to food. His menu includes snail porridge, sardine on toast sorbet and salmon poached with liquorice.

Obscure Cocktails: Remember when ordering a martini was simple and didn’t involve a menu of dozens of fruity creations? Another trend that took off this decade was the inventive cocktails. While the decade started with simple fruit flavors, cocktails with more exotic ingredients such as bacon and wasabi were featured as well.

Small Plates: While the dishes in fine dining restaurants have always been on the skimpy side, small plates made for sharing became popular in the past 10 years. The concept has been around in other cultures for centuries—tapas in Spain, dim sum in China, mezze in Greece and sakana in Japan. But the small plate idea idea has extended past the traditional Spanish and Chinese joints. This trend has been popular with diners as well as restaurateurs, who can earn a hefty profit from serving multiple smaller courses.

Offal: We saw a movement away from the New York Strip steak and pork tenderloin this decade. The less-often-used parts of the animals made a comeback. Tongue, livers, sweatbreads and headcheese made their return to the plate. While these traditional foods have been eaten for centuries, Americans diners tended to stay away from the more exotic bits of meat. This one might be with us into the new decade; it made an appearance in the food trend predictions for 2010. (I challenged my palate by eating the “Pig Plate” at New York City’s The Spotted Pig.)

The famous poem “The Night Before Christmas” makes reference to sugar plums: “The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads.” When reading this poem growing up, I always pictured some sort of fairy, most likely the influence of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker. Turns out, sugar plums are a type of Christmas sweet. (They’re also a specific type of small, sweet plum.) Use Real Butter has a recipe for sugar plums that calls for toasted almonds, dried apricots, honey and plenty of cinnamon. She concludes that the confection was named for its shape, not the specific ingredients. Miss Ginsu (who unfortunately has stopped blogging) posted a similar sugar plum recipe that called for dried figs and cocoa powder.

Another treat that lives on in song instead of practice is wassail from the Christmas Carol “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” Wassailing simply means caroling. In the Victorian era, beggars and orphans would go door to door singing and hoping to get a bite to eat or a drink. The name comes from the Middle English phrase wæs hæil, which means “be healthy.” Wassail is a drink made from ale or beer and spices, kind of like mulled wine. Other versions includes hard alcohol such as brandy or even rum. Most wassail recipes call for some kind of fruit, generally apples, which makes wassail remind me of a British version of sangria. Epicurious has a version made from sherry, brandy and plenty of spices. Chow‘s recipe includes cranberry juice, apple cider and an apple brandy.

Of course, perhaps the most famous Christmas food item that no one has ever eaten might be figgy pudding, known, of course, from “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” Unlike the sugar plum, figgy pudding actually has figs in it. But the name still manages to be misleading as figgy pudding is more of a cake than a pudding. While it was popular from the 15th to the 19th centuries, figgy pudding’s long cooking time (at least a three-hour steam) and high saturated fat (most recipes include suet, a form of fat found near an animal’s kidneys) has curtailed its popularity in modern times. Good Housekeeping has a simplified recipe that uses boxed cake mix and bakes rather than steams the pudding. Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking: From My Home to Yours, presented her more traditional, steamed recipe on NPR.

If you’re feeling adventurous and in the Christmas Spirit, try one of these recipes. If not, at least you’ll know what figgy pudding is next time you hear “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

Sugar plum courtesy of kevandem/flickr

Read more articles about the holidays with our Smithsonian Holiday Guide here