Two key ingredients are all that’s needed to tame the bracingly sour flavor of unripened green mango: fresh lime juice, and alguashte, a ground condiment made from roasted pumpkin seeds.
Fresh lime juice meets green mango’s intensity with its own tart bite.
Rich and nutty alguashte (ground roasted pumpkin seed seasoning) adds earthy depth.
Mango verde, or mango tierno as it’s known throughout El Salvador and Central America, is green mango that’s been cut from its branches before it ever gets the chance to ripen. In contrast to its more mature orange counterpart, this pale green mango is crunchy—somewhere between a carrot and a cucumber in firmness—and packs a sharp, sour punch.

Salvadorans and Central Americans know the tingling feeling that mango verde provokes. The sight of it starts us involuntarily salivating. On its own, green mango’s flavor is perhaps too intense, so Salvadorans reach for two key ingredients to help balance it out. The first is, counterintuitively, fresh lime juice, which somehow manages to quell some of that sour intensity. On top of that goes a generous sprinkling of nutty and toasty alguashte, a ground seasoning made of roasted pumpkin seeds and salt.

The resulting dish is eaten practically everywhere: as a street food, a festival snack, an after-school snack, or at a bar alongside a cold beer.

Green mango can sometimes be hard to find, but don’t let that put you off from trying alguashte: it’s also popular on other fresh-cut fruits, including ripe mangoes, jicama, oranges, and other tropical fruits and seeds, as well as stirred into savory dishes.

4 green (6-ounce; 170g) mangoes (see note), peeled, halved, and pitted
Fresh juice from 1 lime
Alguashte, for sprinkling
Kosher salt

Directions
Arrange the peeled mango halves on a plate. Squeeze lime juice all over, then generously top with alguashte. Season with salt and serve.

Mixto
A good fraction of the tequila brands you’ll find at your local are mixto, or mixed, tequilas. Mixto is a blend of 51% agave tequila with the remaining 49% from other sugars, normally cane sugar. The shots you did in college were mixto.

Joven tequila is also sometimes known as gold tequila. Cuervo Gold and Sauza Gold are jovens. With only a couple of exceptions, gold tequilas are mixtos with a little caramel coloring thrown in. Jovens are unaged; don’t let the coloring fool you.

The exceptions to this rule mix blanco (unaged) tequila with a bit of reposado tequila. You’ll know them; they’ll say “100% Agave” on the label.

Mixto
A good fraction of the tequila brands you’ll find at your local are mixto, or mixed, tequilas. Mixto is a blend of 51% agave tequila with the remaining 49% from other sugars, normally cane sugar. The shots you did in college were mixto.

Joven tequila is also sometimes known as gold tequila. Cuervo Gold and Sauza Gold are jovens. With only a couple of exceptions, gold tequilas are mixtos with a little caramel coloring thrown in. Jovens are unaged; don’t let the coloring fool you.

The exceptions to this rule mix blanco (unaged) tequila with a bit of reposado tequila. You’ll know them; they’ll say “100% Agave” on the label.

Snobbery?
Is it snobbery to prefer 100% agave to mixto? Perhaps. Keep in mind, if you order a margarita in most bars, you’ll be getting mixto, unless you order a specific tequila or a brand is named on the menu. And if you order a round of shots, you’re probably getting mixto—unless you have more money than sense, of course, and you’re getting rounds of top-shelf brands to shoot. (If that’s the case, invite me along next time.)

For cocktail use, you enter a land of diminishing returns if you go too far upmarket with your tequila choices. For most cocktails, blanco or reposado will be just fine. If you prefer blender margaritas, mixto is probably fine, honestly, because the icy-coldness of the drink will obliterate any subtleties from more upmarket tequilas.

Furthermore, raicilla is made almost entirely within Jalisco, the cradle of tequila. This legislation would prevent raicilla and other agave spirits from even being produced in Jalisco, which could cause raicilla to entirely vanish from production.

The Diner’s Journal blog at the New York Times covered this controversy in more depth. Proponents of the legislation say they’re preventing confusion and fraud. Opponents think the regulation is a tool by which large distilleries are trying to crack down on small companies.

Tequila may be aged in used American oak barrels; Jack Daniels casks are common. It may also be aged in French or Spanish barrels, previously used for cognac or sherry, for example. Tequila may also be aged in brand new barrels. Some distillers use new barrels for a portion of the aging process, before transferring the tequila into older casks.

Most distillers barrel their tequilas at about 110 proof (55% abv), and then dilute with water to about 80 proof just prior to bottling.

Just as Scotches, bourbons, and rums are blended prior to bottling, so too with tequila. Distillers will take barrels of similar age and blend them to create a consistent product from batch to batch.

When shopping for tequila, you’ll see certain terms that refer to its age. Here’s what those words mean:

Reposado: Also referred to as rested, reposado is aged from two months to just shy of a year.
Añejo: Aged one to three years, añejos are smooth and rich, with more flavor contributions from the barrel.
Extra añejo: Aged at least three years. Extra añejos are dark like brandy and old Scotches, and very rich tasting.

Once the agave juice is fermented, distillation can begin. Most tequila is made in pot, or alembic, stills. The first distillation produces something called ordinario, which is about 20–25% alcohol by volume. The ordinario is distilled again in a pot still, to about 55% abv.

The second distillate is tequila. All tequila at this point is clear. Color is added later, either during the aging process or by the addition of caramel coloring (this is allowed only in mixto tequila, not in 100% agave tequila.)

At this point, the tequila can be diluted to bottling proof (usually 80 proof; 40% ABV) or pumped into barrels for aging. If it’s diluted and bottled, it becomes blanco tequila, also known as white, silver, or plata. (I’ll talk more about types of tequila later.)

Aging
Blanco tequila is generally unaged, as is joven (young) tequila. Blanco can be immediately bottled after distillation, or it can go into storage for up to two months. Blanco, when it’s “aged,” is usually stored in stainless-steel vats; this, at most, allows the tequila to mellow out a bit, but obviously it doesn’t add the flavors, aromas, and color that wood-aging provides. A small few blanco tequilas are aged in wood, but those are the exception.

Reposado, añejo, and extra añejo are aged in oak casks. Whereas whiskeys such as Scotch and bourbon have specific legal regulations that dictate the type of barrel that must be used, tequila has no such restrictions.

The juice (and sometimes some of the pulp as well) is placed into large vats, mixed with water and yeast, and allowed to ferment. Depending on the distillery, the yeasts can be commercial brewer’s yeast or cultivated forms of the wild yeasts that grow on and around agave plants. In some cases, the vats are left open to the air, to attract wild yeasts that develop complex flavors in the ferment. In other cases, the vats are closed off, to promote a more efficient fermentation. Closed vats, however, seal out wild yeasts, and many tequila lovers prefer the complex flavors that develop in open vats.

If sugar is added during fermentation, the tequila is a mixto, or a mixture of agave and sugar. I’ll talk more about mixto in a bit.

Over a century ago, piñas were cooked in pits, dug into the ground, over wood fires. The deforestation of Jalisco, however, forced a change, first to coal- or gas-fired ovens, and then to the steam-powered ovens used today. Some distilleries use traditional ovens made of stone or clay; others use stainless-steel ovens.

Piñas are slow-baked at around 140 to 185o F for about 50 to 72 hours. Slow-baking ensures that the starch molecules break down into sugars, but doesn’t allow the sugars to caramelize, which can introduce off notes into the agave flavor. (Some larger distilleries pressure-cook the piñas, at higher temperatures for a shorter period, but aficionados decry this practice, saying it makes for a less flavorful tequila.)

Agave is harvested by field workers known as jimadors. (The tequila brand El Jimador is named for these workers.) Traditionally, jimadors would harvest the agave according to an intuition bred from centuries of experience, handed down from one generation to another. Today, though, harvesting is more scientific. The jimadors test the piña to achieve a sugar content of at least 24%. The higher the level of fermentable sugar, the more alcohol a harvest will yield.

When a piña is ready for harvest, a jimador separates it from its stalk using a long handled tool called a coa, and then removes the leaves. The piñas are loaded onto a truck and taken to a factory to be baked. Unlike grapes and many other crops, which are harvested in the fall, agave harvesting is a year-round endeavor.

Cooking the Agave
20120416Jose_Cuervo_ovens.jpg
Workers load agave hearts into ovens at the José Cuervo Distillery in Tequila, Mexico. Wikimedia Commons
When I discussed Scotch production, I mentioned that barley needs some initial processing to unlock the starches inside it, to make them fermentable. In Scotch production, that process is called malting. Likewise, tequila production needs a first step, one that unlocks the starches. Here, that means cooking the agave piña to transform the carbohydrates into simple sugars that can then be fermented.

Growers are not looking for the heart to reach a certain size, specifically; instead, they’re looking for a sugar content of at least 24%. The longer the piña matures, though, the riper and more flavorful its sugars become, and yet there’s a short window before the agave becomes overripe, so they have to choose just the right time to harvest.

Agave for tequila is usually harvested after 8 to 10 years. Reportedly, some larger distillers are now harvesting immature agave plants, which results in tequilas that lack the flavor and character that arise from mature plants.

Agave cultivation traditionally is highly labor intensive because the plants must be tended and harvested by hand.

Once the piñas have been cooked and softened, they’re mashed to separate the juices from the pulp. Traditionally, they were crushed with large wooden mallets, and then, later, large stone grinding wheels. Some distilleries still use the grinding wheels, but most now use mechanical crushers.

Notes
Green mangoes are different from merely underripe mangoes: They’re picked from the tree while still crisp and fully sour. They are often sold at markets that specialize in Central American ingredients, though depending on where you live and shop, they may be hard to find. If you can’t locate true green mangoes, try to find the most underripe mangoes you can. Also note: Green mangoes are typically a smaller, palm-sized variety, not the huge one-pound Tommy Atkins mangoes that predominate at most American markets. If you do use a Tommy Atkins, just one or two fruits should suffice.

Tequila Production
By Mexican law, tequila can be made only in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas. Most of it, however, is from Jalisco, near the towns of Tequila and Arandas.

Just as cognac is a brandy from the French region of Cognac, tequila is a mezcal from in and around the Mexican town of Tequila.

Agave Cultivation
Agave is grown in cultivated orchards called potreros. The shoots on commercial plants are removed when the plant is young, so that its heart (piña) will grow larger. The shoots are replanted to grow new agave plants, but this practice has led to the creation of a monoculture. The lack of genetic diversity in blue agave has caused certain problems, including diseases and parasites.

Each plant can be used only once, which means agave, unlike grapes and many other crops, needs to be planted anew every year.

Plants are pruned while they grow, to encourage growth of the piña. The goal is to encourage the agave to concentrate its starches in the heart, rather than using those starches to reproduce.

Tapioca starch breaks down at relatively low temperatures, eliminating the starchy aftertaste associated with traditional cornstarch-based recipes.
Powdered sugar dissolves more readily in a low-moisture dough, leaving no trace of grit.
Egg yolks bind the dough while keeping the overall water content to a minimum, so the cookies are easy to roll yet tender after baking.
Vanilla bean keeps the dough flavorful but dry, so it’s easy to handle.
A food processor minimizes aeration of the dough while keeping it nice and cold, so the dough doesn’t need to be chilled and the cookies won’t puff or warp with pockets of air.
Flecked with vanilla seeds throughout the dough, alfajores are the perfect excuse to whip up a batch of vanilla bean cajeta—a goat’s-milk variation on dulce de leche. The combination of gooey toffee sauce and buttery shortbread can’t be beat, but it can be improved upon. My recipe replaces traditional cornstarch with tapioca starch, keeping the alfajores tender and light, with a clean finish that truly melts away. Pair them with a mug of strong black coffee, or a nip of Rainwater Madeira.

Tender, Melting, Gooey Alfajores Are My Cookie Obsession
Recipe Facts
Active:25 mins
Total:45 mins
Makes:25 sandwich cookies

Ingredients
Save Recipe
1 vanilla bean, preferably Mexican
4 ounces all-purpose flour (3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon; 115g)
3 ounces tapioca starch (3/4 cup; 85g)
2 ounces powdered sugar (1/2 cup; 55g), plus more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon (1g) Diamond Crystal kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon (1g) baking powder
4 ounces cold unsalted butter (1 stick; 115g), cut into 1/4-inch pieces
2 large egg yolks, cold
1 recipe Cajeta Casera (see note)

Directions
Split vanilla bean lengthwise with a paring knife and scrape out seeds with the flat of the blade; reserve empty pod for cajeta or another use. Combine vanilla seeds with flour, tapioca starch, powdered sugar, salt, baking powder, and butter in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to form a fine and sandy meal, then add egg yolks and continue processing until the dough balls up around the blade. Divide in half and proceed to step 2, or wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate up to 1 week.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 350°F (180°C). Turn a portion of dough onto a powdered sugar–dusted surface and dust more powdered sugar on top. Roll dough until roughly 6 inches across, then dust with powdered sugar, flip upside down, and dust again. Continue rolling until dough is just shy of 1/4 inch thick. Slide a thin offset spatula under dough to loosen any places that might have stuck and cut dough into 2-inch rounds. Arrange cutouts on a parchment-lined aluminum half-sheet pan, leaving about 1/2 inch between cookies. Gather the scraps, briefly knead, and re-roll and cut as before. Repeat with remaining dough, for a total of 50 pieces. Bake until just beginning to brown around the edges, about 15 minutes, and cool to room temperature directly on sheet pan.

Transfer cajeta to a pastry bag fitted with a plain 1/4-inch tip. Flip half the cookies bottom side up and pipe a generous dollop of cajeta into the very center, up to 1/2 ounce (4 teaspoons; 14g), or less if you prefer. Alternatively, this can be done with a spoon. Top with remaining wafers and press gently to secure. Dust with powdered sugar and serve. In an airtight container, alfajores will keep 24 hours at room temperature or up to 1 week in the fridge.

Tequila’s next U.S. invasion came during the Second World War. U.S. distilleries had converted to wartime production, making military supplies, leading to a dearth of American spirits. Further, imports from Europe dropped, thanks to production problems in Europe and restrictions on European imports. By 1948, however, the liquor industries in Europe and the U.S. had recovered, leading to another slump in tequila’s fortunes.

Tequila finally conquered the U.S. market in the 1980s, during an era of economic growth in the United States that encouraged a surge of American tourists to visit Mexico, bringing back a love for Mexico’s native spirit. Premium and ultra-premium brands began to hit the U.S. market, and the tequila category has been healthy ever since.

“I think people are really committed to making hudutu a household name,” says López Oro, referring to the dish and the urgency many Garinagu feel about preserving their history, in part, through their

Tequila, as most know, arises from agave, specifically the blue Weber agave, botanically known as Agave tequiliana. Agave is a perennial, flowering plant, primarily found in Mexico, but some species grow in the southwestern US and parts of South America, and even as far north as Alberta, Canada. Agave is a succulent—a water-retaining plant that stores water in leaves, stems, and roots. Cacti are also succulents, but the agave is not a cactus. The agave is more closely related to the lily family.

The plant used in tequila, the blue Weber agave, is a species native to Jalisco, Mexico. It’s also known as blue agave (agave azul), tequila agave, mezcal, or maguey. The blue Weber can reach over two meters in height. The word piña is used to describe the heart of the agave plant, refers to the idea that the heart resembles a pinecone or pineapple.

Regional Differences
Highland agave plants are large and sweet, with piñas of 90 to 125 kilograms. Lowland agaves are more herbaceous and smaller, with piñas of 60 to 80 kilograms. These flavor differences continue on into the tequilas made from the different agaves; a fun way to run a tequila tasting might be to compare lowland tequilas to highland versions—for example, compare Partida (a lowlander) to 7 Leguas (a highlands tequila).

When she was growing up in San Juan Tela, Honduras, Isha Gutierrez-Sumner, a Garifuna actress and dancer, recalls feeling embarrassed about her daily diet, which differed from what the local mestizos were eating regularly. “Eating Garifuna food in the village, it wasn’t a glamorous time,” she says. “It wasn’t a source of pride.”

Nostalgia for her homeland and a desire to see Garifuna cuisine elevated and celebrated led Gutierrez-Sumner to launch a Garifuna food platform and catering company. She’s spent the last five years traveling to and from Honduras, consulting with elders and documenting their recipes for a forthcoming cookbook titled Weiga, Let’s Eat! Photographers Milton and Wes Güity joined her to capture dishes and step-by-step techniques in stunning images. (Now that the book is complete, she’s weighing her options between traditional publishing and self-publishing.) Recipes cover a lot of ground and include Garifuna fried fish, a variety of coconut-based breads, and sweets like peteta, a sweet potato pudding, and dabledu, a candied cookie flavored with coconut and ginger. Coconut is used in many Garifuna dishes, enriching everything from broths to rice and beans to desserts.

Tequila: A Brief History
The roots of tequila stretch far into history, back before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Agave has been cultivated for centuries, used as both a flavoring and a sweetener, as well as being fermented into mildly alcoholic drinks such as pulque, which dates back at least 2,000 years.

When the Spanish arrived, they brought along the knowledge of distillation; and lucky for them, they found a plant (agave) whose juices they could readily distill. Tequila’s ancestor was born. The first mezcals appeared in the 1500s, and the beverage spread throughout Mexico over the following centuries, eventually being exported back into Spain. The first tequila factory was established in 1600, in Jalisco, but no one knows exactly where; no historical records of the location survive. By 1800, tequila makers had taken a cue from aged Spanish brandy and began aging tequila in wood.

Tequila made three significant inroads into the U.S. market before it became the hot item it is today. The first was during Prohibition, when supplies were smuggled into Southwestern states, to help meet the demand for hooch. This first surge in tequila’s popularity waned during the Great Depression.

“Nothing ever goes to waste,” notes Gutierrez-Sumner, of the community’s ingenuity and agricultural knowledge. She recalls how her great-great-grandmother taught generations of her family how to be efficient with ingredients. “She was savvy. She knew that if she grated the coconut and she squeezed the first milk out of the coconut without adding water, that was going to be her butter,” shares Gutierrez-Sumner. “She knew that once she added water, the water that she added at first was literally the water that came out of the coconut, so she squeezed that into another pot… that’s going to be the second milk that she uses for baking. And then the third [pressing] is where she adds warm water to make sure that all the oils from the coconut are coming out. Then she’d have three buckets of milk”—all of which would end up in meals and sweets.

These days, some Garinagu use canned coconut milk in their home recipes, because for a cuisine to survive, the diaspora must adapt. Though hudutu is traditionally a very labor-intensive process, involving the use of a large mortar and pestle to pound the plantains into a textured mass, Castillo uses a food processor to speed things up. The more hudutu she’s able to make, the more she’s able to sell—increasing the likelihood of introducing the cuisine to a wider, ever-hungry audience.

López Oro, whose work focuses on later generations of Garifuna immigrants, has vivid memories of his grandmother’s pan de coco (coconut bread). When he’d wake up on weekends to his mother frying fish and preparing stew, he knew that meant family members were on their way over for hudutu and good conversation. “Garifuna food is incredibly valuable to my memories, even my own identity as a third-generation, born-and-raised-in-Brooklyn, Garifuna person. Food connected us back to Honduras in a way that was really special.”

At 15, Gutierrez-Sumner migrated to Houston, and later moved to New York for a career in dance and acting. When she ventured out to neighborhood restaurants to try new cuisines, her interest in her personal history piqued when she noticed similarities between Garifuna cuisine and dishes from other coastal communities.

Our trek through the world of spirits takes us today to Western Mexico, more specifically to the state of Jalisco and the mid-sized town of Tequila. Perhaps for some of you, the very sound of the word tequila makes your stomach churn and your cheeks flush with shame, but there’s far more to this beverage than shot after shot at a college bar.

“My husband would always say, ‘One of these days, I’m going to open a restaurant for her,’” Castillo says, with a laugh. A few years later, Rhodel Castillo made good on his promise.

In 2008, the couple’s restaurant, Garifuna Flava, opened its doors on Chicago’s southwest side. In addition to Garifuna cuisine, Garifuna Flava serves up Belizean staples like rice and beans, stewed chicken, garnaches—a deep-fried corn tortilla topped with refried beans, onions, cabbage, grated cheese, and other toppings—and panades, a deep-fried, cornflour patty filled with fish or refried beans, and served with a condiment made from cabbage, peppers, and onions. In 2011, Guy Fieri pulled up with his Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives crew to invite Garifuna Flava to Flavortown. The exposure attracted many new fans, some of them coming from outside the US.

“I have a map on the wall in the restaurant. It’s amazing to see how many people from around the world have been here to taste our Garifuna food,” she says. There are markings for visitors from South America, Canada, and across Europe.

“Garifuna food, in particular, tells us a Caribbean story and a Central American story,” says Pablo Joseph López Oro, a doctoral candidate in the Department of African and African Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. “It gives us an opportunity to really think about the generational history of Garifuna migration.”

The Garifuna origin story is a complex one that involves attempts to enslave, imprison, exile, and displace the Afro-Indigenous community. Though the exact year has been debated, historians believe West Africans escaped slave ships that wrecked off the coast of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the 1600s. While residing in St. Vincent, these West Africans and their descendants mixed with the Caribbean island’s Arawak and Carib populations, forming the community now known as Black Carib, or Garifuna in the Arawakan language. After a treaty passed control of St. Vincent from France to Britain in 1763, the already active Black Carib resistance to colonial powers intensified. Fighting continued for years. Ultimately, 5,000 Garinagu were exiled to Roatán, the largest of the Honduras’ Bay Islands, on April 12, 1797. The roughly 2,000 that survived the journey eventually migrated to mainland Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

Forced migration influenced Garifuna culture in many ways. In hudutu, you see the influence from West African fufu, a ball of mashed cassava and green plantain. Though Africans knew cassava (or yuca), they learned how to grate and dry it from Indigenous communities in the Caribbean. The Garinagu eventually adapted that process to make a crisp, cracker-thin bread called ereba or casabe. (Similar recipes can be found in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica, among other locales.)

What sauerkraut is to a hotdog and kimchi is to a Korean pancake, curtido is to a variety of Latin American dishes. This funky, vinegary cabbage, onion, and carrot slaw brings crunch and a hit of acid to a host of rich, long-cooked dishes that call out for brightness and texture. Traditional curtido is prepared days in advance, allowing it to develop a fermented tang, but this shortcut version—ready in only an hour—is a nice fallback when you don’t have time to think ahead. Try it spooned atop braises such as beef barbocoa or sandwiched into Mexican gorditas.

Note: Curtido is ready within one hour, but improves with time. It can be stored in airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to one month.

How to Make Gorditas With Masa
Recipe Facts

Active:10 mins
Total:70 mins
Makes:5 cups

Ingredients

1/2 small (2-pound) green cabbage, cored and very thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
1/2 medium white onion, peeled and very thinly sliced (about 1/2 cup)
2 carrots, peeled and shredded (about 1/2 cup)
1 small jalapeño, ribs and seeds removed, minced (optional)
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions
In a large bowl, toss together cabbage, onion, carrot, and jalapeño, if using. In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, salt, and sugar a cook over medium heat, stirring, until salt and sugar are just dissolved. Pour brine over vegetables and toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate for one hour before serving.

The key to making this dish work is to season the pasta water well with salt and then use some of that water at the end when you are tossing all the ingredients together. (I like to use about a tablespoon of kosher salt per quart of water.)

Pasta water is basically starchy water, so when you add it to a hot skillet with other ingredients, it’ll cling to those ingredients and form a light sauce over everything. If you leave this step out, you will notice it in the final dish. Dry pasta is the worst.

STORING AND REHEATING LEFTOVER PASTA
This pasta dish keeps really well for 5-6 days in an airtight container in the fridge. Reheat it either on the stovetop or in the microwave. Either way, add a splash of water to it to bring it back to life while it reheats.
This is one of my go-to pasta toppers. Mix breadcrumbs and parmesan together in a small bowl, then add them to a skillet with some butter to form little crispy bits. So delicious!

elicious Polite Leafs
You can freeze relatively resistant herbs such as rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, as they are. Remove the more delicate leaves such as mint and basil from their stems, place them in ice cube trays and cover with water. After freezing, you can store fresh herb ice in a container.
There are several ways to save summer fruits for winter. Drying is the most common method. But freezing is also extremely simple. While mountain fruits can be frozen as they are, it is necessary to remove the seeds from some fruits and place them on a baking tray on which you lay non-stick baking paper and freeze them.
Make sure that the fruits do not overlap in the tray. It may take 4-6 hours or even overnight to freeze, but do not forget to take it in a container immediately, as it should not be snowed after it is frozen. You can also freeze fruits such as peaches and figs in water or sugar syrup. The fruit can last at least 3 months in the freezer.
There are a few points to be aware of when freezing vegetables and fruits. First of all, the material should be as fresh as possible, it should not be kept waiting after taking it. Freezing changes the texture of fruits and vegetables, not as fresh as fresh, but suitable for use in cooking. After washing, it is essential to strain thoroughly and dry thoroughly in a salad dryer or towel, because if any water remains on them, ice crystals will form.

In addition to all these, it is necessary to keep the water consumption at a high level. In order not to dehydrate the body, you can drink 2 liters of water a day, if you have difficulty drinking water, you can drink cucumber, ginger, mint or cinnamon soaked water, you can make tea from fresh or dry herbs such as thyme, mint, rosemary or lemon balm and consume it hot or cold.

Stress and inactivity are the main factors that damage immunity. It is recommended that we sleep well, act sufficiently without forcing ourselves, and keep away from stressful matters.
When it comes to food, sugar and starch are among the things that should be avoided. Dr. Mark Hyman recommends that we put these two together and keep them to a minimum. In short, sugar, which also contains sugar in starch, directly suppresses immunity and increases the risk of viral infection.
This winter, we can take strength from what we eat to keep our immune system intact. Consuming seasonal and local food allows us to get the polyphenols contained in seasonal vegetables and fruits and keeps our carbon footprint under control. It is time to introduce healthy food into our lives, paying attention to the seasonality of the food and how it is produced.

Do not wash the cork unless absolutely necessary. It is best to clean it with a special brush and a slightly damp cloth or paper towel. If you want to wash, just hold it under water, but let them not take a bath, take a light shower. Do not throw away the mushroom stalks; You can use it in soups and sauces.
If you’re going to cook on the stove, remember that most mushrooms consist of water. Natural mushrooms contain less water than cultivated mushrooms, but still need to be careful if you want them to be browned and caramelized while cooking. For this reason, when cooking mushrooms, high heat is required, not low heat. Make sure that the pan you are using is very hot first. Heat the oil well, and the mushrooms will sizzle when they touch the pan. While sauté, the places should be wide in the pan, do not squeeze it too much. The water released by the mushroom cooked in this way evaporates faster, so you do not cause the mushroom to become watery and lose its texture.

12 ounces broccoli
1 large egg
1/4 cup sliced green onions
2/3 cups shredded cheddar
1/2 cup panko
salt and freshly ground pepper
shichimi togarashi, if desired
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Blanch the broccoli in boiling water for 1 minute then immediately shock with cold tap water or an ice bath. Drain very, very well.

Chop finely and mix throughly with the egg, green onions, cheddar, and panko. Season generously with salt and pepper. Scoop about 1.5 tablespoons of mix into your hands and shape into a tater-tot shape. It helps if you keep your hands wet while you’re shaping. Place on your prepared baking sheet. Repeat until all the tots are made. Sprinkle on shichimi togarashi, if using.

Bake until golden brown and crispy, 18-20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the halfway mark. Remove from the oven and enjoy hot with extra shichimi togarashi, ketchup or sriracha!

Note: Shichimi togarashi is a Japanese seven spice mixture. I like the little bit of heat it gives these guys, but it’s entirely optional. You can find it here.

I used a mini ice cream scoop to keep the sizes consistent. If you like, you can just scoop out the tots and bake without shaping into a log.