Yeah. Pine needle juice. And with a little rye whisky… a pine sap-arac.
On our recent U.S. National Forest expedition, Hot Knives broke a Golden Rule of camping and broke off a piece of nature to take with us. Relax, it was to make an emerald beverage. And we only snagged a small handful of the stuff.
Infused ever so faintly into a tart lemon-lime juice that’s more Whiskey Sour mix than lemonade, this uses the bitter medicinal notes of pine to make the whisky that much sweeter. The stuff’s fine hand-mixed and room temp if you’re still out in the pines. Or if you bring the loot back home, blended is better. Convenience.

2 limes
1 lemon
5 cups water
¼ quarter cup agave nectar
a handful of pine needles (about 30-40 needles)
1. Obtain one frond, or about a handful, of fresh pine needles fresh off the tree. Clean them: Make sure any dirt or pollen is wiped or washed off, cut off the nubby base of the pine frond. Using a sharp knife, cut off the lower quarter of each pine needle, like you would asparagus.
2. Store fresh pine needles submerged in water in a container with a lid (they stay good in the fridge for at least a week.
3. Roll the limes and lemonades on the counter with assertive hands. Slice the limes and lemon in half. Now juice ’em whichever way you can: you want about 1 cup of juice.
4. Combine the water and lemon-lime juice in a blender (or a tall container that can accommodate a handheld mixer). Add agave syrup while pulsing or blending. Taste after mixing for about 30 seconds. If its still too tart to your liking (we are sour) add another couple tablespoon of agave, honey or sugar.
5. Pick out the 30-40 best looking pine needles from the bunch, ones that are pure green with no brown, and let sit on the bottom of a sealable jar. Add the blended limeade and let chill for at least 3 hours.
6. Serve blended with 2/3 cup rye whisky, or stirred with a single shot.

As we’ve said before: Living in Los Angeles, we rarely have to worry about summer’s harvest spoiling before we can can preserve the goods for winter. Farmers markets year-round. Aint’ no thing. But that doesn’t mean we don’t habitually crave the brine n’ vinegar sting of a good pickle, not to mention the new dimension pickling gives so many dishes.
For that and other reasons (like an admitted case of pantry ADD) we realized recently that fresh pickling was more our pace. It’s as simple as one, two three. Brine. Vinegar. Wait. All you need is salt, water, a vegetable and a vinegar of choice. So, for the pickle project we embarked on last month, we took three farmers market goodies and ‘fresh pickled’ them for less than a work week: daikon, cucumbers and grapes. Each veggie got a different mix of vinegar and extras, but nothing too flashy. The recipes we liked the best are below.
All of ’em turned out strong, as in fermenty breath. Ideas for how to use them once they’re funky are endless (we wrapped them around seitan, plopped ’em on vegan aioli bread, and dropped them on chevre crackers, respectively). But no matter what you do, its hard to screw up if you use a clean towel, fresh veggies and good vinegar.

Pickled Daikon Radish

1 Daikon radish
1 cup kosher salt
3 cups filtered water
2 cups golden balsamic
1 cup champagne vinegar
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 cup kosher salt
1/8 cup whole black peppercorns
1. Wash and peel the outside of the the radish. Using a vegetable peeler, skin the radish into flat, 1-inch wide strips. Set aside.
2. Now, you brine: In a 4-quart or so sealable container, dissolve kosher salt in 3 cups filtered water and stir thoroughly. Add radishes to brine and cover with a clean kitchen towel or plastic bag filled with a bit of brine (to weigh the veggies down) and seal. Let sit room temperature for 24 hours.
3. After a day of fermenting, check to see if any surface mold has formed. If so, don’t freak out; simply scoop it off the surface of the brine. If any gets mixed into the solution it will die pretty quick. After any mold removal, rinse your brined dudes in cold water. Clean out your sealable vessel and put the brined radish back inside.
4. Combine the vinegars, water, sugar, salt and spices in a pot and boil. After you reach a boil, dump the hot acid over the veggies and allow to cool. Weigh down with a towel or a brine filled bag as in Step 2 and refrigerate for a week.

Japanese Pickled Cucumbers

8 Persian cucumbers
1 cup kosher salt
2 cups rice vinegar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tbs. kosher salt
3 stalks lemongrass
1 bulb ginger
1. Wash and slice the cucumbers in approx 1/2 centimeter thick slices.
2. Repeat Steps 2 through 4 as above. When you boil the acid bath, make sure to whack your lemongrass a few times to release its oils. Cut it in larger pieces so that its easy to fish out later. Slice the ginger however you want; if you use a mandolin then some serious pickled ginger will be a by-product!
Pickled Red Grapes

1 cups red grapes
2/3 cups white balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup water
1/8 cup sugar
1 tsp. black peppercorns
1 shallot
1. Wash the grapes and slice em in half. We’ve also done this reppie where we just forked the grapes numerous times, but we found that the brine penetrates better if you just cut them. Peel and mince your shallot.
2. Combine the vinegar, water sugar and pepper and bring to a boil. Dump the hot acid bath over the grapes, weigh them down and wait for a week.
Beverage: Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weiss
Soundtrack: Pixies Palace of The Brine

The times we resort to getting our vegetables from a plastic bottle are few and far between. Driving at midnight on the I-5 North. Drinking vodka on an airplane… Yep, that’s about it.
But we can still admit there’s something wholesome about the notion that you can get all you need for the day from a fiber-fest of tomatoes, celery, onion, parsley, carrot, beets, cucumber and spinach, all in one quick slog. So, when we recently needed to conceive a mid-meal salad course to reset the palate, we decided to harness that raw power of the infamous all-eight cylinders: We transformed V-8 onto a plate. Its our sort of ‘everything and the kitchen sink salad.’
To make it work we cut the carrots, cukes and celery into ribbons. We subbed favorite new economical purchase, the daikon, for the too-grassy-tasting spinach. And we used the parsley and cayenne (Spicy kicks Original’s ass) as garnish. What about the ‘matoes? We made them into the dressing, of course.

Tomato Water Vinaigrette
(Makes 2 cups)

2 ripe red tomatoes
1 tsp. Aleppo pepper
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tsp. kosher salt
1 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs. pickle brine
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbs. fresh dill
fresh black pepper to taste
1. Toss the tomatoes into a blender, or a juicer, and puree completely. Now, strain to get just the tomato juice using cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer. Toss the seeds and flesh and place the strained juice back in the food processor.
2. Add Aleppo pepper, cayenne, salt, pickle brine and lemon. Puree thoroughly while slowly adding olive oil. When all the olive oil has been incorporated, blend for and additional 2-3 minutes. Add black pepper and finely chopped, fresh dill. Set aside.
V-8 Salad
(Makes 3-4)

2 small beets
3 mid-sized carrots
1/4 cup daikon radish ribbons
1 persian cucumber
1 celery stalk
1 green onion
1 shallot
1 tsp. sumac
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
3. Roast your beets ahead of time. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Slice away the top of each beet from whence the stems protrude. Wrap each beet in aluminum foil and place in the oven. Cook for 20-30 minutes, until fork enters beet easily. Set aside to cool.
4. Remove beet skin with a towel you don’t mind getting dirty. Place beets in the fridge for at least one hour.
5. Prepare the bulk of your salad. Wash and peel the carrots and daikon to remove outer skin. Peel both into ribbons. Peel the cucumber into thicker slices, keeping the green skin. Peel the celery into thinner strings by taking the peeler to the side of the celery.
6. Slice the green onion into thin biased cuts and the shallot into thin half-moon slices. Toss with the rest of the veggies and keep chilled until serving.
7. To plate: Slice the cold beets into thin rounds and make them the base of your plate. Toss veggie ribbons with 1/4 cup of tomato-vin dressing and rest salad on top of beets. Put the rest of the dressing in a squirt bottle and dress the plate. Sprinkle sumac around the plate for color and garnish with whole sprigs of flat leap parley and dill.
Beverage: Hair of the Dog’s Blue Dot IPA
Soundtrack:
Iggy Pop’s “Raw Power”

It is gazpacho season. Don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but very few dishes as simple as ‘buy vegetables, blend and chill’ inspire such strong, bossy preferences as this iconic cold soup. (We give props to the oil-laden, paprika-orange smoothie variety over the chunky salsa in a bowl steeze, but hey, that’s just us.)
In fact there are many ways to chill a soup. But it turns out, there was also a FIRST way. The first gazpacho on record was a white soup brought to Andalucia by the Moors, before tomatoes were cool (i.e. before the euros had any idea they existed). It was a simple recipe that made use of leftovers, the Dark Age-Mediterranean version of Satines and Trader Joe’s hummus: crusty bread stubs, grapes and almonds. We were a little skeptical at first of that combo, but wanted to do something edgy for a chilled soup course at a couple recent catering gigs, so we gave it a whirl. Besides making a batch with too much raw garlic, and learning that the stuff thickens overnight, we quickly seized on what we like and stuck to the basics, adding only cucumber.
As for garnish, a simple grape or almond with a swirl of extra olive oil keeps it vegan and does the soup justice. But for full-on indulgence, we have added a single crouton topped with Spanish sheep’s milk cheese. So many ways!

Gazpacho Blanco

(Makes 8 servings)
2 thick slices crusty french bread
2 medium-sized cucumbers
1 cup blanched almonds
1/2 cup water
1 cup green grapes
juice of 1 lemon
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1. In a shallow bowl, place your crusty bread and cover with tap water. Let sit on the counter.
2. Prepare your cukes: peel them well, removing all green so as not to color the soup, slice in half lengthwise and remove seeds by gently scraping the middle out with a downturned spoon. Chop into manageable 2-inch chunks.
3. In a blender or food processor, start combining the ingredients with the almonds first. Use blanched (with their skins removed) almonds if possible. If not, buy regular, raw almonds and blanch them yourself by bringing 2 cups water to a boil and cover the almonds for 3-4 minutes, before rinsing with cool water and popping each almonds’ skin off, its quick and easy.
4. Next drain the now-soggy bread of its leftover water and toss in the 2 slices. Add an extra 1/2 cup water. (This allows you to control water amount more evenly) plus the cucumber, green grapes and lemon juice. Add garlic. Start pureeing on a medium setting.
5. Once mixture is thoroughly moving, start adding olive oil in a slow drizzle. Keep processing for several minutes. Add salt to taste in between pulsing.
6. Pour into a large tupperware or bowl and chill for at least 2 hours. (Its better overnight). After chilling, the soup should condense a little. Simply add another 1/4 cup water and blend before serving if necessary. Garnish for a single half grape slice or crouton.
Beverage: Uncommon Brewing’s Siamese Twin
Soundtrack: Darker My Love’s “White Composition”