Chai tea concentrate

Chai tea concentrate: an aromatic blend of herbs, spices, fruit and tea ready to mix with your favorite kind of milk for a hot or cold chai tea latte.

I realized recently that I almost never give you drink recipes, unless they're boozy. Which may make some of you think that I never drink anything unless it has booze in it. (Jeez -- I'm beginning to give myself a reputation!)

Au contraire. 

I have become a tea drinker over the past few years. It started on a vacation to the British Virgin Islands a few years ago. On said vacation, I was actually getting a ridiculous amount of sleep and feeling very well rested (this is pretty much the goal of any of my vacations). Which meant that I was not craving wake-me-the-hell-up coffee every morning. And, since it was the British Virgin Islands, I decided to be queenly and have a pot of tea with breakfast instead of coffee.

And it stuck. I'm now a morning tea drinker.

Not so much of an afternoon tea drinker, though. Not even herbal teas. Until last month.

What happened last month, you ask? I went to a local food swap and scored a jar of spiced chai, courtesy of fellow food swapper Lisa Barnes of Fiddleheads Cuisine (you've got to love a food swap with a professional chef!). It was just the right blend of spiciness, sweetness and floral notes -- perfect for an afternoon pick-me-up that doesn't pick-me-up quite as much as a cup of coffee, which would wind up preventing me from sleeping at night.

Hard cider: how to make your own

Making hard cider is one of The Ninj's favorite fall activities. Now is the perfect time to get some fresh-pressed juice and get started. The process takes some time but the payoff is delicious! If you'd like to learn how to make your own hard cider, check out my three-part tutorial.

Be sure to read through all three installments before you begin. There are many helpful links throughout to the cider-making supplies that you will need.

• MAKING HARD CIDER, PART 1 (procuring juice, beginning the fermentation process)
• MAKING HARD CIDER, PART 2 (racking for clarity)
• MAKING HARD CIDER, PART 3 (bottling)

Watermelon soda (for the blog's anniversary)

It almost passed me by without my realizing it but today marks the third anniversary of The Ninj. Well, not exactly. I personally am way older than three. WAY older. But I've been publishing the blog, in all its glory, for exactly three years.

Certainly a lot has changed in three years. Most noticeably, my photographs (thank god). I think my goal for the next year needs to be to remake all the recipes from Year 1 and rephotograph them. There's some good stuff back there but the photos do nothing to make you want to make or eat it. Really: NOTHING.

Also, I no longer refer to myself as between careers. I'm happy to have settled into the content producer role and am even happier that I've taken on some gigs that involve more in-depth writing about food but also about other topics as well (you'll hear more about that soon).

But, of course, other things haven't really changed at all. My dogs are still nuts, I'm still doing battle with the deer (there are TWO MORE THIS YEAR, for cripes' sake!) and I am still loving trying out new recipes to share with you, best-girlfriend style.

Which brings us to the watermelon soda. Holy crap, this stuff is awesome!

I'm not exaggerating. I have never tasted such a refreshing, fizzy drink. And, mind you, I am not a soda fan. I gave the stuff up many, many years ago and don't miss it one bit. Sure, I'll have the occasional natural soda every once in a while, but I wouldn't miss it if I never had another one.

However.

I could seriously become addicted to this watermelon soda. It's fascinating to me because the combination of watermelon with a little mint and some lime juice actually makes it taste a wee bit like grapefruit (I know, right?). It's almost like getting two flavors, watermelon and grapefruit, for the price of one.

Smoky bacon cheddar maple bacon beer bread

Smoky bacon cheddar maple bacon beer bread: booya.

Beer bread ... with maple ... and bacon ... and cheese ... cheese that also has smoky bacon in it.

Really, I thought that I likely wouldn't even need to write a post to go along with the photo and the recipe.

But it's a good story...

On a drive home to Vermont from Boston a few weeks ago, we stopped for dinner at the Seven Barrel Brewery in West Lebanon, NH. Our waiter, Fred, who was a complete hoot, gave us a taste of their new Maple Ale, brewed on site with local New Hampshire maple syrup.

You know how you go to these microbreweries and they're serving their special, seasonal Cherry Prune Tangerine Yeasty Goodness or whatever and it tastes nothing like cherries, prunes or tangerines, only yeast?

This was not one of those. Honestly, I could taste the maple.

Cherries in wine: a recipe

Cherries in wine

It's challenge time again!

For those of you who have been playing along at home (or at least watching me do so), you know that I'm referring to Grow It Cook It Can It's Cook It! 2012 challenge. We've made and shared so many awesome staples and recipes so far: pasta, bread, butter, cheese, lactofermented veg (pickles), jam and now fruit canned in light syrup.

I can hear you laughing now: only for the Ninj would wine constitute "light syrup."

But I swear, Caroline gave us permission to booze up our fruit, so it counts!

This has been a crazy busy month for me so, although I had visions of jar after jar of peaches and apricots lining my basement shelves, I wound up only having time to do a small batch of cherries before I missed not only the posting deadline but also all the good summer fruit entirely.

But this recipe, from Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved, looked very versatile -- how many other preserved foods can you use on both beef tenderloin and ice cream in the same meal?

Making hard cider: part 3

Bottled cider, ready to drink (almost)

I did tell you you would have to be patient...

But it's ready! Two months of settling and our cider is beautiful, clear and golden, which means it's ready to bottle.

First, you're going to need some bottles. You can use beer bottles or wine bottles but I prefer the Grolsch-style, swing-top bottles with rubber-seal caps.

Yes, the bottles will require an initial investment, but the whole dealy is reusable each year (make sure you ask for the bottles to be returned if you give any of your cider away as gifts).

And hey, remember the bucket that you started fermentation with way back in October? And the siphoning equipment? You're going to need them again, because part of the bottling process is racking the clarified cider back into the buckets to separate it from the last bit of sediment sludge (i.e., what you've waited two months to be rid of). But you are a racking expert now, so no worries.

Making hard cider: part 2

Racking the cider from bucket to carboy

After about ten days, our airlocks stopped bubbling, which means only one thing: time to rack!

"Um, WHAT?" you may be asking. Let me explain.

The lack of bubbling indicates that the fermentation process -- which we helped along in Step 1 by adding yeast and sugar -- has stopped. The cider has stopped being a "soft" sweet cider and is on its way to becoming hard cider. If you were to taste it at this point (I usually do), it's incredibly tart but also a bit boozy. Success!
 
Now the cider is ready to sit and clarify, so it will end up looking more like a clear hard cider than a cloudy soft apple cider. To start this process, the cider should be siphoned (racked) out of the existing bucket into a new, sanitized container, where it will sit for the next several weeks.

Making hard cider: part 1

The result of last year's hard cider-making adventure

One of the things I really wanted to try my hand at as soon as I returned to New England last year was hard cider.

I love cider: the drier, the better (if you ever see a bottle of Farnham Hill Extra Dry, buy it immediately!). If it's on the menu in a pub or restaurant, it's my drink of choice.

I've been happy to observe that I'm not alone. Artisanal cider-making is growing in popularity, at least as evidenced by the number of articles about it that keeping popping up in the foodie publications.

So, armed with a love of cider but almost no knowledge, Mr. Ninj and I made cider last year.

And you know what? It was awesome. Wicked awesome, in fact.

I relied almost exclusively on a how-to article from the Mother Earth News and the advice of Vermont Homebrew Supply, the owners of which very patiently answered all my newbie questions as I took copious notes.

Given how successful and delicious our experiment was last year with five gallons of cider, we decided to double it this year, and I'm going to chronicle our efforts here so you might try to make some, too.

Welcome to Ninja Cider-Making, part 1.

Beer-and-cheddar soup: a recipe

Beer-and-cheddar soup

One of the things I love about fall and the weather turning cooler is that soup is back in the recipe rotation.

Not that I don't enjoy summer soups, such as gazapacho or fresh tomato bisque, but the hot-and-hearty soups of fall and winter are pure comfort food.

And speaking of pure comfort, howzabout a beer-and-cheddar soup?

Beer-and-cheese soup recipes probably fall into the same category as homemade pasta sauce: every family has one and each thinks its is the best. So I'm not claiming this is the best-ever, ultimate, cheesiest or what have you: it's just the one that came across my path via the November issue of Food and Wine magazine.

But I had to modify it a bit, just to be able to live with myself.

I admit, I love cheese. And bacon. And cream. And beer. But when a recipe calls for all of those, in large quantities, together in one dish, I get a little scared. It's the Cooking Light devotee in me, I guess; I'd rather not be responsible for serving a stroke-on-a-plate (or in this case, in a bowl) to my family.

Cranberry cordial, three ways: 3 recipes

Cranberry cordial with Kitchen Ninja label

Boozy leftovers: what's not to like?

Let me explain. A few weeks ago I decided to try making a batch of cranberry cordial that I saw featured in an article in Yankee magazine on all things cranberry for the holidays. As long as it didn't suck, I planned to give bottles of it to a group of my husband's co-workers as holiday gifts.

So I simmered up some Shiraz, sugar and cranberries, steeped it for a few days, added brandy and voila! (Recipe #1)

Verdict? It didn't suck. In fact, it was quite yummy, especially when combined with Prosecco to make what I'm calling a "Cranberry Royale." (Recipe #2)

But here's the fun part.

As a hard-core recycler, it was paining me to think that I had to just throw away all those lovely, booze-soaked cranberries. They tasted tart and sweet and were a such a beautiful scarlet. What could I make with these?

Hard cider adventure: racking day!

After three weeks, fermentation finally appeared this weekend to be finished in my 5-gallon cider bucket, which meant it was time for the next step: racking.

Racking is the term for transferring the cider from one vessel to another, via siphon, to allow the fermented juice to clarify, away from all the gunky sediment that settled out during the fermentation process.

Racking day was our first chance to get a good look at and a taste of the cider in progress. Right now, it's very, very dry (read: tart) but we'll be adding some sugar to it to sweeten it up a bit just before bottling. But BOY HOWDY -- it's strong!

I'm just relieved that it didn't spoil and turn into vinegar. So far, so good.

Now we wait ... again.

Hard cider: an adventure in the making

I have dipped my toe into the homebrewing pool -- sort of.

Because I love to drink it, I decided to try making my own hard cider this year. This past weekend, we drove to Chapin Orchard in Essex to procure 5 gallons of freshly pressed apple juice.

After adding some yeast and turbinado sugar, I'm happy to report that the airlock is bubbling ... we have achieved fermentation!

Now we wait.

And wait.

And hope it doesn't turn into vinegar.