I don’t have a specific recipe for the marmalade, since I’m partial to the “throw it in a pot and see” school of canning. But here’s what I did:

Wash your limes well and halve them lengthwise. Juice the limes and slice the rind very thinly. Put it all into a big measuring cup until you have a volume that is about half as much as you’d like to end up with. (So, to make about four 8-ounce jars, juice and slice about 2 cups of limes. This is woefully approximate.) Peel and grate a tidy pile of fresh ginger.

Pour the limes and ginger into a sturdy stainless steel or enameled pot along with a roughly equal amount of sugar (maybe a tad bit less) and just a splash of water. Bring the mixture to a boil then turn off the heat and let it sit for several hours or overnight.

When you are ready to can, bring the mixture back to a boil and then let it simmer until it “gels.” This should take at least 15-20 minutes, depending on the volume. Keep stirring, and keep it from boiling, or you will end up with burned marmalade. To test for gel, chill a teaspoon in the freezer, scoop out a little from the pot and stick it in the fridge. If it sets up into a nice jamlike consistency within a few minutes, it’s ready.

While the marmalade is cooking, sterilize your jars and get your hot-water-bath canner ready as per these instructions. Essentially, you want your jars to be clean and hot, and your lids simmering so they will weld with the jars. Fill the hot jars with hot marmalade, leaving 1/2 inch “headspace” at the top. Seal tightly and process them in your boiling water bath for at least 10 minutes, but no more than 15. Remove the jars and let cool. The lids should pop when the seal is complete, and your marmalade is shelf-stable.

“Excuse me, what are you doing?”

The man jumps up, alarmed, and I see that he’s holding a big bouquet of purple and green sourgrass, both flowering wood sorrels that grow (as weeds) all over our neighborhood.

“What do you have there?” I ask.

“Just these. They’re for my restaurant!”

I look at him skeptically, “What, for the tables?”

“No,” he says, “for the plates.”

This guy knows his edible weeds.

“What’s your restaurant?” I ask.

“Mélisse!” he answers, gesturing to the celebrated, two-Michelin-starred palace of haute cuisine two doors down (and yet a world away…) Yes, indeed, this man in my flowerbed, in his Persols and cashmere scarf, was celebu-chef Josiah Citrin!

I start to chuckle, imagining our humble sourgrass adorning the oversized white plates of one of Los Angeles’s poshest restaurants. “Ok,” I say. “Just ring the doorbell next time, or you’ll freak us out.”

“I don’t want to freak anyone out!” says Citrin, scurrying quickly away, still a bit alarmed. “Thank you!”

For some reason, I didn’t demand free food in exchange for our coveted weeds. But I definitely have a new respect for the chef, for his daring, his knowledge of edible plants (though I’m 99% sure he thinks he’s picking the very edible Oxalis stricta rather than our sort-of-edible Oxalis pes-caprae) and his obvious devotion to locally sourced ingredients!

Ekobrew Reusable Filter for Keurig Single Cup Brewers.

Industry publication Restaurant News offers 20 menu trends for 2012, as predicted by chefs. With the emphasis on local sourcing and healthy options, it all seems like good news for diners…but…one thing: What on earth is a “non-traditional fish”?

Chefs predict top menu trends for 2012 | Nation’s Restaurant News.

My own Culinary Goals for 2012 include:
1) Eat at as many of Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants as I can. I only have 86 to go! I’m hatching a plan, inspired by this brilliant epicurean. Apparently all I need is a Match.com account, a minidress and a manicure…Melisse, table for two!

2) Finally attend the Donut Summit, held annually in Elysian Park. (Although Babycakes was crowned the 2011 “Donut King,”  which makes me highly skeptical of their judgement.) Related: Drive to Glendora to taste the vaunted Donut Man peach donut and temptingly named Tiger Tail.

3) Learn to enjoy anchovies and sardines. Related: Completely stop eating shrimp unless they are spot prawns from California or Canada. This may require me to start a Kickstarter campaign…

4) Explore chrono-nutrition. I’m not trying to lose weight, but when I read a story in the New York Times about the latest French diet fad, which involves dark chocolate, wine, cheese and spice rubs (for your haunches, not a cow’s), it sounded like a trend I could get behind! Turns out a stay at the  the Beau-Rivage for proper “nutritional counseling” would require me to sell my car, or my (surely weak from lack of chocolate) plasma, so I’m just winging it. The idea is to eat a huge, delicious, fat-laden breakfast and then gradually taper off over the day until you are forced to dine on nothing but rabbit loin and a vegetable side…Hélas! Also, no sugar, no white wine, and no soup. Obviously, I’m ignoring those parts. Great diet!

5) Come summer, can everything in sight. I ran out of elephant heart plum jam in December and now have to somehow make it through the next seven months without it. In 2012, I will can like it’s the zombie apocalypse!

As you may have noted, 3/5 of my culinary goals involve spending large amounts of money that I don’t have. So maybe I should really just have the one resolution: Get a job.

What are your culinary goals for 2012? Share them below!

Bourbon gives us an interesting window into GMO grain, because the spirit must by definition be made with at least 51 percent corn. Consider the fact that 85 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is now genetically engineered, and you can guess why organic bourbon won’t be appearing in a liquor store near you any time soon.

Keep reading…Bourbon of proof: Is Kentucky’s heritage spirit compromised by GMO corn? | Grist.

That first bite of lime was scrumptious–like wedges of limeade–and I was popping raw cranberries and just wishing they  tasted like that “in real life.” Laura reported a concoction of sour cream on lemon wedges as “lemon meringue pie,” Guinness was “a chocolate milkshake, goat cheese tasted like cheesecake, and green olives tasted like chocolate fudge!” Other friends reported dark stout as “chocolate soda,” and people simply devoured cherry tomatoes.

Alas, after that initial rush with the lime and the cranberries, I thought my flavor trip had come to an end. I munched two more miracle berries, but nothing–the snacks just tasted like themselves. (I ate them anyway.) Toward the end of the event, I was telling folks about my “immunity” to the miracle, when someone handed me a little wrinkled fruit. I ate it without asking what it was, and was kind of in shock–it was the single sweetest thing I had ever eaten. Like cotton candy concentrate crossed with dates or treacle. Turns out, I had just munched a whole umeboshi–a Japanese sour plum, that is extremely tart and salty. It was absolutely bizarre, to have your mind and eyes telling you one thing, and your mouth telling quite a contrary tale! A trip indeed…

It looks like the Norwegians need a buttery Hanukkah miracle of their own.

(via Gawker)

Norwegian Butter Crisis Escalates as Swedes Arrested in Smuggling Scheme.

Makes 1 loaf

3/4 cup canned cranberry sauce
1 cup persimmon puree
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon (or more!) cinnamon
2 Tbs canola oil
1  egg
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar (depending on the sweetness of your cranberry sauce)
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Grease a 9″x5″x3″ loaf pan with vegetable oil and lightly flour it.  Heat oven to 350F.

2. Stir the cranberry sauce, persimmon and walnuts together and set the mixture aside.

3. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder and soda, salt and cinnamon.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, egg, sugar and vanilla until well combined. Pour it into the dry ingredients and stir gently. Add the cranberry mixture and stir well until  there are no dry bits left.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Run a knife lengthwise down the loaf, through the batter.

6. Bake about 50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Serve it with cranberry sauce, if you have even more left!

Where: Downtown L.A.
Traction Ave. between Hewitt & 3rd

When: Sunday, November 20, 2011
12pm – 4pm

The event is FREE.