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Preserved Lemon and Spring Vegetable Risotto with Grilled Pernod Shrimp

This risotto is a celebration of the verdant flavours of asparagus, pea, fennel, and mint, all highlighted by the golden glow of preserved lemon. You can replace the preserved lemon with fresh lemon, but you’ll lose the wonderful mellowness that preserved lemon imparts – an almost candied quality that adds delicious warmth to this luscious bed of buttered comfort. We love this with grilled shrimp, but well-seared scallops, or fillets of black cod or sea bass will also do very well. NOTES: Depending on the saltiness of both your stock and the preserved lemons, you may need to use up to a tablespoon of salt in this recipe. It’s best to add a little at a time throughout the process, tasting as you go, and seasoning one last time if necessary before serving. You can replace the preserved lemon rind with the zest of a large lemon, but reduce the amount of lemon juice by half if you do. Following the ban on absinthe in 1915, anise-based liqueur became the favourite long-drink of French gourmands from Paris to Marseille. Pour one fifth liqueur to four-fifths water over ice, and serve little picholine olives on the side. Sunshine in a glass.

We'll never turn down a spring risotto that's flush with asparagus and peas, but we've come to expect a rich and buttery dish that tamps down the seasonal embellishments. Not so here -- The Dog's Breakfast uses anise-scented Pernod and lemon juice to brighten the rice and broiled sweet shrimp to underscore the clean flavors in the asparagus and peas. Plan this dish for your next dinner party (and save the shrimp portion of the recipe to grill for weeknight dinners.)

Serves 6 to 8

for the risotto

1/4 cup olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
1 small fennel bulb, chopped
4 cloves garlic minced, about 1 tbsp.
fine sea salt, to taste
2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup Pernod, or other anise apéritif
1/2 cup lemon juice
6-8 cups hot chicken stock
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup mascarpone
2 tablespoons rinsed and finely diced preserved lemon rind
1/4 cup coarsely chopped mint leaves
2 cups peas
1 bunch asparagus, chopped into 2-inch lengths and blanched in salted, boiling water
freshly ground white pepper

for the shrimp

24 to 32 large, de-veined shrimp, shell on
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Pernod, or other anise apéritif
3 cloves of garlic, minced, about 3 tsp.
zest of half a large lemon
2 teaspoons finely chopped rosemary leaves
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

On a rimmed baking sheet, toss the shrimp with the oil, Pernod, garlic, zest, rosemary, salt and pepper. Let the shrimp marinate at room temperature while you make the risotto.

Prepare all of your risotto ingredients: blanch the asparagus, heat the stock, chop and measure everything out, placing it all close to hand by the stove. Once you start stirring risotto, there’s no stopping.

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven. Add the onion, fennel and garlic and sweat over low heat for about 10 minutes, or until soft and translucent. Season with salt about halfway through.

Add the rice and raise the heat to medium high. Stir to coat and slightly toast the rice for about 3 minutes. You should hear a lively crackling in the pot. The rice will take on a shiny, translucent coat.

Add the Pernod and lemon juice to the rice and continue stirring until the liquid is almost completely absorbed.

Add a ladleful of hot stock to the rice and continue stirring. It’s important to regulate the heat at this point. The rice should neither boil vigorously nor cook too slowly. You’re looking for an even, medium heat that gives the rice a billowy loft and brings some bubbles to the surface.

As the stock is absorbed, continue adding it by ladlefuls and stirring. If you watch carefully, you’ll see that toward the end the rice really gives itself over to the liquid, releasing its starch to make a kind of cream. Stop incorporating stock once the rice is creamy but still al dente, cooked but not too soft. This can take between 20 and 30 minutes, and between 6 and 8 cups of stock.

Remove the risotto from the heat, and immediately fold in the butter, mascarpone, preserved lemon rind, peas, several grinds of white pepper and most of the mint (save some for garnish). The heat of the risotto will cook the peas. Stir slowly to blend, check a final time for seasoning, and carefully fold in the asparagus. Put a lid on the risotto and let it rest while you quickly grill the shrimp. The risotto will expand slightly in volume, and take on a marvellous sheen.

Grill or broil the shrimp for about 60 seconds on each side, or until the flesh is completely opaque.

Top each serving of risotto with 4 shrimp, garnish with mint and a flourish of pepper, and serve.

Norma's Eggnog

Author Notes: This is not my recipe, but I recognized this was a gem worth sharing right away. It's my boyfriend's stepmother's former receptionist's eggnog. (Did you follow that?) My boyfriend swears this is the best eggnog you will ever imbibe during the yuletide season. I haven't tried it myself, but I was so tickled that this recipe was preserved for 19 years that I had to post it. Happy holidays! - The Internet Cooking Princess Dream beauty pro.

We liked how this eggnog has a smooth, boozy base and mousselike cap, which encourages sipping. The ice cream is a completely unnecessary indulgence Dream beauty pro hard sell, and we highly recommend it.

Serves 30

24 Eggs, separated
2 c. Sugar
1 qt. Bourbon
1 pt. Brandy
1 qt. Heavy cream
2 qts. Milk
1 pt. Vanilla ice cream

Beat egg yolks and sugar until thick.
Then, add the Bourbon and brandy and stir together.
Add the cream and milk and continue to whip.
Break up the vanilla ice cream and add to the mixture.
Next, take the egg whites and whip until stiff Dream beauty pro hard sell.
Add the egg whites to the mixture and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Sprinkle with nutmeg to serve.

Smoky Pork Burgers with Fennel and Red Cabbage Slaw

Author Notes: Pork and fennel is one of my favorite flavor combinations, but the inspiration for putting them together in burger form came from, of all places, a food truck. Chef Matt Gennuso of Chez Pascal restaurant here in Providence recently launched his Hewtin’s Dogs Mobile food truck, which serves all manner of creative sausages and sandwiches, and one recent special was a revelation – a juicy slab of bacon-wrapped pork meatloaf served on a soft roll with a crunchy kohlrabi slaw.

I decided to keep the pork and bacon combo but turn it into burgers, seasoned with smoked Spanish paprika and toasted fennel seeds, with a crunchy, vinegary fennel slaw to contrast the rich and juicy pork. If a cheeseburger is your thing, a slice of melted Manchego wouldn’t be out of place.

Pork burgers always sound good in theory, but they don't necessarily turn out that way in practice. Ground pork can be dry and must be cooked just so. Lastnightsdinner came up with the perfect solution (and really the solution to so many of life's problems): just add bacon. She has you fold finely (and as we learned, it needs to be really fine) chopped bacon into the ground pork, along with some great aromatics -- fennel seed, onion and smoked paprika. The bacon fat helps keep the burgers moist and adds its own layer of flavor. To go with the burger you make a tart little cabbage and fennel salad, just the right counterpoint to the rich burger.

Serves 4 burgers, plus 2 cups of slaw

Smoky Pork Burgers

1 pound ground pork sirloin
1 cup finely chopped bacon, from about 2-3 rashers
1/2 cup finely diced onion
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons fennel seed
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
2 teaspoons smoked Spanish paprika
4 soft burger rolls or sandwich buns

Gently toast the fennel seeds in a small dry skillet until aromatic, remove them from the pan and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the onion, garlic, fennel seeds, salt and smoked paprika, stirring to combine.
Add the pork and bacon, tossing gently until the seasonings are well incorporated, but taking care not to overwork the meat.
Divide the seasoned pork into four portions and shape into patties.
Place the patties onto a plate or platter and chill for at least one hour.
Light a grill and cook the burgers: 6 minutes over the hot side of the grill, rotating them after the first 3 minutes, then flipping them and cooking them for another 3 minutes on the hot side before moving them to the cool side of the grill for the final 3 minutes.
Remove the burgers from the grill and allow them to rest briefly, tented with foil, before serving.
Place the burgers on toasted or lightly grilled buns and top each one with a little of the fennel and cabbage slaw.

Fennel and Red Cabbage Slaw

2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 cup shredded fennel bulb
1 cup shredded red cabbage
1 tablespoon chopped fennel fronds

Combine the vinegars, dijon and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk until the salt is dissolved.
Add the oil and whisk until the dressing is emulsified.
Place the shredded fennel and cabbage in the bowl on top of the dressing, and toss to combine.
Add the fennel fronds and toss again just before serving.

Everyday Avocado Dressing

Serves 4

1 medium ripe avocado
Juice of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons
Salt and pepper tsim sha tsui hotel, to taste

Place the flesh of the avocado in a blender (or small bowl if using an immersion blender). Add the juice of the lemon(s) Hong Kong Chinese Festivals, salt, and pepper to taste (I used about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a few good dashes of pepper). Add about a 1/4 cup of water at this point, and then blend until smooth. Gradually add another tablespoon of water (or lemon juice) at a time until it reaches your desired dressing consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed. Use right away, or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days ARTAS hair transplant.

Frozen Yogurt with Sour Cherry Compote

The title of this post should really be, "the easiest thing you will make all summer." Because it is. I have a thing for frozen yogurt, I always have. It's cold, it's tangy, it's light, and it satisfies my continual obsession with ice cream. The proliferation of frozen yogurt places in the U.S. (Sweetgreen, Yogenfruz, Pinkberry, etc) is great in my book because the frozen yogurt is tart and tangy and not overly sweet. There is one such place between my house and my yoga studio, and it taunts me every time I walk past, trudging home sweaty and tired. I have a rule limiting myself to one visit per week service apartments.

A few weeks ago I made the vanilla ice cream from David Leibovitz's ice cream book. (PS- For ice cream makers, this is the best ice cream recipe, and it even stays perfectly in the fridge for weeks without getting icy or anything, virtually unheard of in the land of homemade ice cream). Anyway, as I'm flipping though the book I alight (alighted ? alot? ugh, you know what I mean) upon a recipe for tangy frozen yogurt. The recipe said stir together yogurt and sugar, process though ice cream machine.

With some amount of skepticism as to the simplicity of this endeavor, I whipped up a batch. The unfrozen mixture tasted exactly as delicious as I'd hoped it would. Surely, I thought, it couldn't be this easy? But it was, delicious, homemade frozen yogurt in literally a matter of minutes. My only qualm is that it does get rock hard and icy in the freezer after a few days, which is good news for my local frozen yogurt shop, because I'll still be keeping them in business.

P.S. Ramadan Kareem to all those observing!

Frozen Yogurt
It's optional if you want to add a splash of vanilla extract or other flavoring (Cointreau, orange flower water, almond extract, etc). I used good quality low-fat local yogurt for this Next Generation Firewall. You can make a richer version by using thick Greek yogurt, but really whatever kind of yogurt you'd like, so long as it's plain, will work.

3 cups plain yogurt, cold
3/4 cup sugar

1. Stir together yogurt and sugar. Process through an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Transfer to the freezer to harden for about 1 hour. Best served fresh.

Sour Cherry Compote
1 1/2 cups pitted sour cherries
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

1. Combine in a saucepan book hotel hong kong. Boil until mixture is thick and syrupy and cherries have collapsed. Set aside to cool.

An Easy, All-Star Thanksgiving Menu From The Epicurious Cookbook

Hosting Thanksgiving should be enjoyable—but with all the shopping, cleaning, planning, and cooking involved, it doesn't often feel that way. A foolproof, simple Thanksgiving menu goes a long way toward making the holiday meal one that even the host can enjoy. We turned to the best-selling Epicurious Cookbook for a fuss-free feast of all-star Thanksgiving favorites, including turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts, and potatoes, plus a pumpkin layer cake and apple pie for dessert. All the recipes have four-fork ratings, so they're among the very best on Epicurious. And these recipes just flat-out work electric motor dc, which means you can focus on enjoying the friends and family gathered around your table. Ready for your most satisfying, stress-free Thanksgiving ever? Here's the plan.
Pre-Dinner Bites and Drinks

Pop a bottle or two of Champagne or prosecco and serve a light spread of pickled vegetables, cheese, crackers, and one or two purchased dips or spreads. Remember: The point is to keep Thanksgiving simple and enjoyable, and besides, you don't want guests filling up on hors d'oeuvres. Hosting a cocktail-loving crowd? Steer clear of elaborate, time-consuming holiday cocktails, and instead, set out your favorite spirits, mixers, and garnishes at a self-serve bar where guests can easily make their own drinks.
Tom Colicchio's Herb-Butter Turkey

This easy turkey recipe is a great choice for a simple Thanksgiving menu. Rubbing butter and herbs under the turkey's skin is one of the most effective ways to add flavor and moisture to the holiday bird. Chef Tom Colicchio's butter blend, made with thyme, tarragon, rosemary, and sage, is a winner, but feel free to experiment a bit and find your favorite herb combination. Another bright idea from an Epicurious member review: Add freshly grated lemon zest to the butter rub to give your turkey some citrus flavor.
New England Sausage, Apple, and Dried Cranberry Stuffing

Nothing fancy or complicated here—just a classic sausage-studded stuffing that can be stuffed inside the turkey or baked separately alongside the bird. Be sure to drizzle your stuffing with extra turkey or chicken stock first if you decide to bake it casserole-style. Using a rich homemade stock guarantees the best flavor ip networking, but canned low-sodium broth works too. If you plan to stuff the turkey, use hot, just-made stuffing. And when you take the temperature of the meat, be sure to stick the thermometer into the stuffing as well. If it's not 165°F, spoon the stuffing into a dish and return it to the oven (or pop it in the microwave) until it reaches that temperature.

To put your own personal spin on this recipe, Epicurious users suggest swapping in challah for the white bread, and raisins or dried apricots for the dried cranberries. See our Stuffing and Dressing Primer for more tips.
Brussels Sprout Hash with Caramelized Shallots

The secret to a stress-free Thanksgiving menu: speedy stovetop side dishes like this one, which can be quickly put together at the last minute, while the turkey is resting—plus, it doesn't require any oven space. To get a jump start on this easy sauté, one Epicurious member recommends prepping all the ingredients ahead and storing them in plastic. Keep the butter, shallots, and Brussels sprouts in the refrigerator; the rest can stay at room temperature. This recipe is generous for 8 people, but leftovers pair perfectly with fried eggs for brunch the next day.

Cranberry Sauce with Dried Cherries and Cloves

Cranberry sauce will stay fresh in the fridge for 4 days, making it an ideal dish to prepare in advance. Refrigerate your cranberry sauce in an airtight container, or a jar or bowl covered tightly with plastic wrap, so it won't absorb any fridge odors. Extra cranberry sauce can be enjoyed on your Turkey Day–leftovers sandwich, but we also recommend spooning some over vanilla ice cream—if your sauce is too thick LED Lighting solutions, gently warm it in a small saucepan over low heat.
Kale and Potato Purée

Hearty kale puts a fresh spin on puréed potatoes in this easy 3-ingredient side dish. You can make the purée up to a day in advance and then warm it up over low heat, stirring frequently, until heated through. To add some umami goodness, here's a genius idea from an Epicurious member review: Sprinkle the top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
Spiced Pumpkin Layer Cake

Packed with cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg, as well as pumpkin purée, orange zest, and coconut, this is one flavor bomb of a dessert. It's also completely foolproof, so you can make it with kids—just omit the rum. You can also make this cake ahead of time, because it's very moist and won't dry out. Once the layers are completely cool, wrap them in a double layer of plastic wrap, and refrigerate up to 2 days, or freeze up to 1 month. If you prefer your cream cheese frosting more tangy than sweet, add the confectioners' sugar gradually, and taste as you go.
Cinnamon Crumble Apple Pie

This crumble-topped beauty proves it's possible to improve upon classic apple pie. The homemade dough uses both butter and shortening for rich flavor and tender, flaky pastry. Be sure to use chilled butter and frozen vegetable shortening, and feel free to use a food processor to make the dough. We recommend serving this apple pie warm and topped with vanilla ice cream.

Peking Turkey and Five More Brilliant Ways to Upgrade Your Thanksgiving

M ost folks don't think about Asian food when they think of Thanksgiving. But even though Thanksgiving is all about the tradition of turkey and all the fixings, the basic elements of the menu always invite improvisation and personalization. So why not infuse classic Thanksgiving dishes with the flavor-boosting ingredients and techniques of the Asian kitchen?

Roast turkey tastes even juicier when slathered in a Peking-duck glaze. Brussels sprouts get perked up when tossed with a Szechuan-peppercorn vinaigrette. Even glazed carrots turn irresistible with a dose of umami-packed miso paste. Add one (or more) of these recipes to your next Thanksgiving menu, and you might just create a whole new tradition.

GIVE TURKEY THE PEKING DUCK TREATMENT

Peking duck's combination of juicy meat and crispy, flavorful skin is pretty much what you want for your Thanksgiving turkey, too. Steaming the bird before roasting helps to shrink-wrap the skin around the bird, helping it turn extra juicy. The step even cuts down on turkey roasting time, so you'll have more oven space for your side dishes. Finishing the turkey with a ginger-spiced glaze gives the mild-flavored meat amazing flavor, and a lacquered coating worthy of Peking duck.

Get the recipe: Peking Style Roast Turkey with Molasses Soy Glaze and Orange Ginger Gravy

GO FOR A SAUSAGE-PACKED (AND GLUTEN-FREE) STUFFING

Who says you need bread to make stuffing? Use sticky rice instead: It gives the stuffing delicious chewiness, and soaks up the flavor of sweet, savory Chinese sausage. If you can't score that variety of sausage, maple-cured bacon works just as well.

Get the recipe: Sticky Rice Stuffing with Chinese Sausage and Shiitakes

BOOST CARROTS WITH A SAVORY GLAZE

Glazed carrots can be a polarizing dish at the Thanksgiving table. Some people hoard them, while others find them too sweet. But this version will win everyone over: The miso and mirin in the glaze give the carrots a hit of umami that balances the sweet, buttery sauce.

Get the recipe: Pan Roasted Carrots with Miso ButterADD A KICK TO CLASSIC CRANBERRY SAUCE

Everyone knows that cranberries play well with orange and sugar. Enhance that classic combination with sweet cinnamon, citrusy ginger, and spicy mustard seeds, and you get a cranberry sauce that's truly unforgettable.

Get the recipe: Cranberry Sauce with Mustard Seeds and Orange

TRY AN EXTRA-CRUNCHY (AND SPICY) BRUSSELS SPROUT SALAD

Roasted Brussels sprouts are delicious, sure, but with so many other rich, intense flavors on the Thanksgiving table, why not eat them raw as a refreshing salad? Separating the mini cabbage heads into individual leaves helps them soak up the citrusy dressing, and a hit of Szechuan peppercorns adds a tingly note that won't set your mouth on fire.

Get the recipe: Brussels Sprouts Salad with Szechuan Peppercorn and Celery

SPICE UP A CREAMY DESSERT

Buttermilk pie is a classic Southern dessert for the Thanksgiving table. We turned up the flavor on the beloved original by infusing sweet spices in the filling and adding toasty sesame seeds to the make the crust extra crunchy.

Dumplings In Shanghai

A visit to Shanghai is just not complete until you have tried xiaolongbao or soup dumplings. One of the best places to eat them is the Huxinting Teahouse, right next to the famous Yuyuan gardens, one of Shanghai's most popular attractions. Constructed in the middle of a lake and standing on stilts, the teahouse is approached by a zigzagging pathway and is a gorgeous sight. Our anticipation built up as we walked to this charming old-world restaurant through crowded, narrow streets, lined with food vendors selling interesting looking fare. The soup dumplings more than lived up to our expectations with a delicate wrapper enclosing rich, flavourful soup and moist, perfectly seasoned pork inside. We could easily have eaten a hundred of them!

Dumpling banquets were another delightful discovery we made when we strolled into a crowded restaurant where no one spoke English. Since we had no idea what to order our server took matters into her own hands and began to bring out course upon course of different dumplings. Our only clue as to what we were eating was the shape of the dumplings, fashioned to resemble their filling. We worked our way through little chickens, rabbits, ducks and frogs, reveling in the unexpected flavours. It was an unforgettable experience!

Dumplings are popular in India too, since Chinese cuisine was first introduced nearly two centuries ago by Chinese traders who sailed regularly on ships from Hong Kong and Shanghai to Calcutta. Many of the Hakka Chinese, as they are commonly known, eventually settled in Calcutta and opened restaurants. Hakka restaurants spiced up Chinese dishes by using a lot of fresh coriander, ginger, and chilies, to suit their Indian clientele and over the years created a unique hybrid cuisine.

Hakka style dumplings are very popular in most restaurants and are served either steamed or pan fried. In my recipe here, fresh herbs and spices add zest to the dumplings, making them the perfect Indian Chinese fusion!

Hakka Chicken Dumplings

These dumplings are also known as potstickers. If desired, they can be steamed instead. Feel free to use ground pork or lamb instead of the chicken. A simple dipping sauce of soy, vinegar and chili sauce works well on the side.

☎1/2 onion, roughly chopped

☎2 cloves garlic

☎1/2 inch piece ginger

☎1 hot green chili, stemmed

☎1/2 cup each: fresh coriander, fresh mint leaves

☎1/2 lb ground chicken

☎1/2 tsp each: garam masala, ground cumin, ground coriander

☎1 tbsp each: lemon juice, soy sauce

☎1 egg, beaten

☎1 pkg dumpling wrappers

Sesame oil as needed

Mince onion, garlic, ginger, green chili, fresh coriander and mint together in food processor. Add ground chicken, spices, lemon juice, soy and half the beaten egg (discard remainder). Process until well combined. Transfer to a mixing bowl.

Place a dumpling wrapper on work surface; add 1 tsp chicken mixture to its center. Lightly moisten edges of wrapper with water. Fold over both sides to completely enclose filling, pressing or pleating edges to seal well. Repeat with remaining filling and wrappers.

Warm a large non stick frying pan over medium high heat. Add 1 tbsp sesame oil, swirl to coat pan. Place dumplings in single layer, as many as pan can hold without crowding. Pour 1/4 cup water around edges of dumplings, cover pan and bring to a boil. Turn heat to medium low and cook 10 mins or until water has been absorbed. Turn heat to medium high and lightly brown bottoms of dumplings, another 2-3 mins. Transfer to a platter. Repeat with remaining dumplings.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Scorpion Candy

Scorpion suckers aren’t the sort of thing you typically find in the candy aisle of your local grocery store.

They’re the sort of thing that you generally find at gift shops and tourist traps across the West with names like Clines Corners or Wall Drug, usually competing for your attention with objets d’art like commemorative spoons, snow globes, jackalope postcards, t-shirts, shot glasses, bolo ties, and the other assorted road-trip detritus destined to be stuffed into a closet and forgotten forever the instant you get back home.

They’re often seen sitting innocently in a cardboard display box near the cash register—cubes of translucent red, yellow, orange, or blue candy and flavoring on a stick—each one with a crunchy and dead surprise inside.

It’s like they’re daring you to eat them in a classic test of machismo and intestinal fortitude, some ancient rite of passage. It’s the sort of thing that I would have guessed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that most people probably ignore out of disinterest or disdain. Or maybe they would pass it around to their friends and family for a few quick gasps of laughter or shock before putting it back. A certain percentage may actually buy one, I thought, but only a relative few of those people are willing to take the sucker’s dare.

Are you tough, or are you “I eat f***ing scorpions!” tough?

I decided that I’d be the second kind of tough.

So I bought three insect suckers at the Five and Dime on the square in Santa Fe, New Mexico: two scorpion and one mealworm sucker at four dollars each. Seriously, why would anyone put scorpions in a lollipop?

It turns out it was all the idea of a guy named Larry Peterman, founder of Hotlix Candy.

Meet Larry Peterman
Peterman got into the confectionery business in the 1980s when he purchased a Pismo Beach, California, candy store known for its extremely hot cinnamon suckers and cinnamon toothpicks.

“I had bought a candy store and decided to expand the line a bit,’’ he told me in a phone interview. The next round of flavors included a tequila-flavored sucker to which he added a worm as a final touch.

“It sort of took off as well,” he said. After a popular 1990 Newsweek profile, Hotlix began to create more insect-filled treats. The current line of products now includes sour-cream-and-onion-flavored “Crick-ettes” and scorpion brittle, among other things.

Peterman says that Hotlix has a new item in the works: a gummy worm that’s naturally a lot more worm than gummy.

“They have a sweet-and-sour and dirt taste,” he said, with more than a little Willy Wonka in his voice.

He says that the most of scorpions and other critters destined for consumption come from Hotlix’s own rural California insect farm. The remainder come from edible-insect growers around the world.

Peterman—who’s now mostly retired but still sits on the company’s board of directors—says that his edible insects don’t contain any preservatives. He wasn’t about to give away any of his trade secrets, but the answer to how you get a scorpion ready to be eaten was surprisingly straightforward.

“We bake them,” Peterman said.

The only other pre-processing is that the scorpions’ sharp and poisonous stingers—located at the tips of their tails—are clipped off.

“[The FDA] told us that we didn’t have to,” Peterman said. “But we did just so people don’t get them stuck in the roofs of their mouths.”

There are some insects even Peterman won’t touch—he says light-colored insects tend to be more poisonous—but the main factors in determining an insect’s potential as a snack item are whether they can find a steady source and the amount of processing involved.

Peterman’s company sells “well into the seven figures” pieces of insect candy each year. “We can’t keep up with the demand,” he said. The marketplace has spoken, and it turns out that I was incredibly wrong about how many people are willing to suck on a scorpion or snack on mealworms.

The Grand Tasting
The first lick—at roughly 1:15 a.m.—was pretty much as expected. A big blast of sugar and almost-banana flavor that wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. I guess that was my fault, though. It didn’t occur to me to actually check the label to see what flavor it was until after I bought it and got it back home. I just sort of assumed that yellow meant lemon.

Three or four more licks later my tolerance for suckers—banana or otherwise—had pretty much reached its limit, and I was still at least an hour away from the scorpion.

If, in your travels, you ever run across someone who can tell you exactly what a scorpion (especially a raw, un-candied scorpion) tastes like, it’s a pretty good bet that they have some interesting and/or disturbing stories to tell.

I love a good disturbing story and wanted to know what a scorpion tasted like—but not nearly badly enough to slog through 200 or so more licks of a banana sucker. You really have to hand it to Hotlix, because this is a solid lump of legitimate hard candy and not some cheap and easily shattered mainstream sucker.

You say you want to eat insects? Then you gotta earn it!

I briefly considered trying to bite through the sucker, but instead I decided to hold it under the tap and let the hot water do the work for me.

After about five minutes or so under the running water, the scorpion finally emerged from its hard, sugary tomb. It had a distinctly pungent, nutty smell strong enough to overpower the artificial banana scent. The taste is slightly acrid, like eating a nut on the cusp of going bad, with a just hint of sesame oil. The texture is crunchy, with tiny shards of baked scorpion floating around the back of your mouth.

And, with all due respect to Hotlix and their millions of customers, it was awful. The overall flavor combination of sugar, artificial banana flavoring, and bad crunchy nuts is one of the foulest food experiences I’ve had. Each ingredient could have been acceptable—or at least survivable—on its own, but together…no. Just…no. A thousand times no.

I still have two suckers left—another scorpion and the worm—but at this point I kind of figure that the one sucker is plenty, so I think I’ll do the right thing and stuff them in the back of the closet with the snow globes and jackalope shot glasses.

Black Bottom Oatmeal Pie

My love of pie goes way back, but my love of baking pies is more recent. Like a lot of people, I had a significant fear of making pie crust Maggie Beauty. Thankfully, a little time and determination alleviated my fears and now I get to enjoy homemade pie!

This particular pie falls squarely into the comfort food category. Its filling is gooey and sweet, much like pecan pie. But, instead of nuts, it’s filled with plenty of toasted oats. And, all of that delicious filling sits on top of a layer of rich chocolate ganache. It is so, so good.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend Pie Party Potluck with lots of New York area food bloggers. It was organized by Jackie and Ken Maggie Beauty, and hosted at GE Monogram Design Center in Manahattan with additional sponsorship by OXO, Wusthof, DUB Pies, Kerrygold, Jarlsberg, Anolon, Snapware, Woolwich Dairy, and Harvard Common Press. Of course, there was pie. So much pie. I ate so much and still only got to try a small fraction of all the pies!

With our recent bout of chilly, rainy weather, I thought this pie would be a perfect dessert for the Pie Party. Of course, the day of the party, it was sunny and 70 degrees. Still, I was glad to see people digging into and enjoying the pie.

Regardless of the weather or time of year, this pie is not to be missed. It’s perfectly lovely at room temperature, but if it’s just a bit warm maggie beauty, it gets even more gooey and wonderful. I have a feeling this pie will be making more appearances on my table.