The apartment reeks of hot vinegar and the cat is twitching from the fumes, but the results are gorgeous, if we do say so ourselves. Of the lemons, golden raisins, beets, and pearl onions that we put up, the latter made us most proud.

Pickled Pink Onions

4 lbs pearl onions

3/4 cup coarse sea salt

2 quarts red wine vinegar

1/2 fresh mint leaves

In a large saucepan of boiling water, blanche the onions for a minute, then let them cool. Cut off off the root ends and peel the skins back from the top. [Advice: get into meditation mode while you do this...]

Dump the salt on the naked onions in a large bowl and let them sit for three hours or overnight to extract excess water out of the little alliums. When done, rinse off the salt quickly and pat the onions dry.

Meanwhile, put jelly jars and lids in a giant stock pot, cover them with water, and boil for fifteen minutes or so. Remove them with tongs, and, preferably, fill them with their goods while they’re still hot.

In a stainless steel or enamel saucepan (non-reactive, thank you), boil the vinegar until it reduces volume by half. Let cool. Dump the onions, mint leaves, and vinegar into jelly jars and seal. Store in a cool, dark lace for at least six weeks before enjoying them in gibsons and more.

Scheduled for this afternoon: starting a pineapple vinegar mother.

P.S. If you use your own homemade vinegar for pickling, test the level of acidity with litmus paper before using it; it needs to be between 4 and 6 percent to sufficiently eradicate microorganisms from food.

Watch Patrick on NPR’s Science Friday making carbonated fruit. Also listen to Andrea Seabrook interview the two of us on Weekend All Things Considered.

Also on hand were little chips of sweets made with citric acid and sodium bicarbonate, which, when placed on the tongue and activated by spit, created an exciting fizz of carbon dioxide. We thought these were a more artisanal form of Pop Rocks and were excited to make them ourselves. Upon researching the matter, we found that Rocks are actually made by forcefully carbonating then quickly crystalizing heavy sugar syrup. The old-fashioned kind of fizz candy turns out to be a little easier to make at home: just sprinkle baking powder in super-reduced, low-moisture sugar syrup. (Baking powder is made of an acid and sodium bicarbonate [baking soda], which is why it is a complete leavening/carbonating agent.)�

Backwoods cooking is always fun and we have had an interest in it since learning the knack from beloved Keewaydin Camp days. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Cookbook has also been a bible for us for the religion of foraging and hunting.

Foraging produced fine results: High-bush cranberries with nothing else but a bit of brown sugar made for a delicious wild cranberry sauce. Simple and tasty. We’ll spare you the details on the efforts in hunting. 

Covering bacon with chocolate is easy — cf Instructables. Included below is a slightly more involved bacon-chocolate situation, trolled from A Good Appetite, And for good measure, here’s an archive of bacon grease recipes. It really is an extraordinary ingredient.

Dark Chocolate & Bacon Cupcakes

8 slices good thick-cut bacon
1 c unsalted butter
1/2 c Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa
3/4 c water
2 c granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 c well-shaken buttermilk
2 T vanilla
2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare 24 muffin tins. Chop bacon into about 1/2-inch pieces. Cook over med-high heat in a skillet until bacon is brown & crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain. Pat any remaining oil off the bacon. Set aside.

Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, then whisk in cocoa. Add water and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat. Whisk in separately sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the cocoa mixture and whisk until just combined (it will be a little bit lumpy). Stir in bacon.

Fill muffin tins to about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer or toothpick comes out clean. It’s a moist cake, so don’t worry if a few crumbs stick to your tester.
Allow cupcakes to cool.

Makes 24 cupcakes.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

1/2 c unsalted butter
2/3 c Hershey’s Special Dark
3 c powdered sugar
1/3 c milk
1 t vanilla extract

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla.
Makes about 2 cups frosting.
Frost the cupcakes & sprinkle with a little Fleur de Sel right before serving.

When the Times reported came to cover the book, we thought we’d fancify our recipe in an effort to woo our lovely guest. In pursuit of a Halloween ‘tini, a bottle of Crème de Violette came down from the top shelf; a bit of dust was blown off its sides; and half an ounce of the purple potion joined a half ounce of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, 2 ounces of dry gin, and 3 pellets of dry ice to create a lovely libation.

She ran the recipe (it really was the only one the Dining Section could handle) and asked for a spooky name. These are the options we hastily came up with: Shrinking Violet, Purple Rain, Jealous Ghoulfriend, Ultraviolet Cryotini, Violet Riot, Purple Posie or Poison, Smoky Violet, and Purple Haze. Can we keep the list going?

P.S.: The drink is really delicious—delicate, fragrant, but not perfumey. Highly recommended for Halloween harlequinade.�

We stayed up till 4am the night before making a giant blue cake with our high school friend/mistress of cake-i-tude Alpana Choudhury, lacing it with licorice wrapped in edible silver foil (see post below), and studding it with LEDs. Julia was gracious and tolerant of our playfulness, though when we served her a slice of the blue bomb she ate the devil’s food and then put down the plate, saying, “I’m not a frosting person.” We’re delighted she covered our heros, Windell Oskay and Lenore Oskay, creators of www.evilmadscientist.com, and ran their recipe for edible googely eyes.

After our session winded down, Ms. Moskin commented, “Someday I hope to have the kind of time to do these things with my kid,” then walked out the door. We heartily welcome her and the legions of serious eaters/Dining Section readers to join us “amateur lab rats” in our own delicious revolution.

P.S. We don’t just blow stuff up! We do actually care a lot about the way food tastes.

Mutt and Jeff appeared Tuesday morning on the CBS Early Show. 

Watch us make fools of ourselves as our gracious host Harry asked us about The Hungry Scientist Handbook. And share our amusement over the comment we elicited from a citizen seemingly equally paranoid about kitchen safety and politics. 

We spent last weekend at the Maker Faire in Austin and made, as our pal Alex Polvi who helped us out a LOT said, a crap-load—as in, five HUNDRED—servings of ice cream with liquid nitrogen. 

And here is Alex’s snazzy time-lapse documentation of the phenomenon. Watch it.

One of the very first projects that we developed for our book was an electric candle cake. We tried several different materials and methods for creating edible circuitry: gold leaf (from Goldschlager), electrolyte-saturated sports-drink-powder, even nontoxic electrode pad gel (YUCK), then finally, edible silver foil. This atomically thin silver leaf is traditionally used as a decorative garnish on Indian sweets. We wrapped it around string licorice. We planted LEDs on top and they lit up! (It was a little more complicated than that—buy our book to find out just how much!) 

Excitement of the day came when we stumbled across this beautiful step-by-step documenting how edible silver foil is made. Enjoy.

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