Experiments with Extracts

A friend made homemade vanilla extract, and I was suitably impressed.  It was delicious and a huge improvement over store-bought pure vanilla.  It's all gone, so I bought some McCormick's.  Disappointing!  And it's the time of year for strawberries and whipped cream - the mara des bois strawberries are yielding one or two cups a day - can't have lousy vanilla for that!  So I googled.  Turns out it's quite simple to make vanilla extract - add vanilla beans to booze and wait weeks to months to years.  I had some bourbon left over from a mint-julep craze a few years ago. . . Let's try that.

  This is five beans cut in half and split.

After I started steeping the vanilla in bourbon, a youtube video suggested using spiced rum!  Won't that be a great experiment for another day.

Well, now that I'm steeping things, what else can I use?  A friend gave me a clump of chives a year or two ago, and we have divided them and scattered them throughout the garden.

I picked some for dry flowers to lend some color for the winter.

Another friend had put chive blossoms in salad, so I knew they had a great peppery taste, but they don't last all summer, and although I had picked some for dry flowers, there still were many that would go to waste.  Again, off to google to see what to do with chive blossoms.  One suggestion was chive vinegar.

Simply steep the blossoms in vinegar.

Such a lovely pink color.  This will be great in salads - vinaigrette, German potato salad, tuna salad.  You won't see the pink color, but it's fun on the counter!

We have some interesting alliums this year, including this allium atropurpureum.

With the chive vinegar for inspiration, I decided to try using the allium atropurpureum in vinegar.

It's making a lovely purple color!

So what else could I put in vinegar????  It's too soon for cucumber pickles, but D likes pickles as a side to the evening snack.  Ahhhh - red onions!  I added black pepper, mustard seed, and star anise to the vinegar.  Very nice!



What's next?

Maybe compound butters?