Salty Dog

Memorial Day Grilling Suggestions

These delightful recipes for grilling are sure to speed up summer's arrival! A perfect twist on traditional cookout items, these recipes will be a hit at your Memorial Day cookout.

Grilled Summer Home Fries
Serves 6

This alternative to home fries combines grilled red potatoes, red onions and corn. The smoky vegetables are cut into large pieces when done and seasoned with garlic and herbs. These potatoes are particularly delicious with steak, sausages or egg dishes. Try them also with grilled meats, poultry or fish.

1 pound medium-size red potatoes of uniform size, unpeeled
Olive oil
2 medium-size red onions, cut into 1/3-inch-thick slices
4 ears sweet corn, husks and silks removed
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint or thyme or 2 teaspoons dried
White Himalayan Salt Rocks, grated
Freshly ground black pepper

Prepare by preheating the grill.

Bring the potatoes to a boil in a medium or large pot of water and cook 5 to 7 minutes, or until barely tender. Drain. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut into 1/3-inch-thick slices and brush with oil to coat. Set aside on a large plate.

Brush all the onion slices and the ears of corn with the oil. Grill the potatoes, onions and corn until browned, starting with the onion slices, since they take the longest to cook. Grill the onions for 5 to 7 minutes per side, or until just slightly resistant when pierced with the tip of a knife. Grill the potatoes for 3 to 5 minutes per side, or until soft when pierced with the tip of a knife. Grill the corn for 3 to 5 minutes, turning often.

            As the onions and potatoes finish cooking, transfer them to a cutting board and cut into large pieces. Place in a large bowl. Cut the corn from the cob and add to the bowl. Add the garlic and herb of choice and a few tablespoons oil to coat the vegetables. Sprinkle with grated White Himalayan Salt and pepper to taste and toss everything together. Serve immediately.

Chicken on the Grill with Ginger Barbecue Sauce
You may marinate the chicken in some of the cooled sauce for between six and forty-eight hours.

Ginger Barbecue Sauce
Makes about 3 Cups

2 tablespoons safflower oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 green or red pepper, chopped into 1/3-inch dice
1 large red onion, chopped into 1/3-inch dice
4 cups tomatoes, fresh or canned, peeled and seeded
¼ cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce
2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard
2 tablespoons drained prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Pink Himalayan Salt Rocks, grated
Freshly ground pepper to taste
¼ cup minced candied ginger, first scraped of excess sugar

Serves 4
1 chicken weighing between 3 and 4 pounds, cut in pieces

            To make the sauce, heat the oil and sauté the garlic, pepper, and onion until they are soft and the onion starts to lose moisture. Crush the tomatoes and add them to the pot along with the sugar, Tabasco sauce, mustard, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, and ground ginger. Bring the mixture to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer it for about an hour, stirring often. The sauce should be thick and taste powerful. Add more of the seasonings if you prefer a hotter or sweeter sauce. Add the lemon juice, grated Pink Himalayan Salt (or any other high quality sea salt), and pepper to taste. Add the candied ginger and heat through, about 10 minutes. At this point the sauce is ready to be used or stored. If you plan to marinate the bird in the sauce, use between 1 and 1½ cups cooled sauce. Discard this sauce after marinating.

             If you aren’t marinating, set aside 1½ cups sauce for basting the chicken and store the rest. Prepare the grill and place the chicken on the rack. Grill the chicken for 10 minutes on each side. Then start basting, turning the chicken every 5 minutes for another 25 minutes or until the juices run clear. To build up a nice crusty layer of sauce, baste the chicken every time it is turned. If you need more sauce for basting, pour some into the basting bowl from the stored batch to avoid contamination. Note that it would be unwise to store leftover basting sauce to be used again. Serve the chicken hot or at room temperature.

Ginger Barbecue Sauce may also be used with rabbit, lamb, goat, beef short ribs, slices of veal shank, or any cut of pork.

New York Times Article!

Salt Traders owner Didi Davis, was featured this past week in a New York Times article "Student Consultants Supply Fresh Insights to Businesses."

Springtime Shoots

Asparagus is in season – and we have brought you four delicious and easy recipes from the kitchen of Didi Davis. We are sure you will find something you love– they are quick, healthy, and most of all delectable.

Click here to see four delightful recipes for using asparagus this spring!

Enjoy – and tell us how you like them!

Exciting Salt Traders News

Spring brings many new developments to Salt Traders, a company that you know and trust for its high quality salt and pepper products. Last month, Rob Seideman and Kelly Hall introduced me as the new owner of Salt Traders. My co-owner Biz Hickey and I want to assure you that we will continue Rob and Kelly’s path of sourcing and bringing to you unique, hand-harvested salt and related products.

My personal love of salt and pepper grew into a passion, resulting in the start of my own artisanal food company, didi davis food in 2004. Among many other distinctive products, we craft handmade salt blends into inventive flavors. Since the birth of didi davis food, I have chosen Salt Traders as a key supplier because of their products’ impeccable quality and superior flavor.

Salt Traders will continue to be a leader in the world of fine salt, pepper and condiments as we source the hand-harvested, wild-crafted, natural, and the exceptional. Our web site will expand, adding recipes, uses, stories, highlighting our blog, and much more, all for the professional chef and the home cook alike. Our hope is to connect all of you to the fascinating world of hand-harvested products and encourage you to integrate them into your everyday cooking.

Contact us with your questions, orders, thoughts, and feedback. We welcome the communication.

From all of us at Salt Traders and didi davis food,

Happy Cooking!

Didi Davis and Biz Hickey

Honey let me be your salty dog...

A customer recently emailed the Salty Dog to ask if he had ever heard the Salty Dog song by Johnny Cash.  We couldn't believe there was a Salty Dog song!

Salty Dog by Johnny Cash/Unearthed boxed set [disk 3, track 11]

Standing on the corner with the lowdown blues
A great big hole in the bottom of my shoes
Honey let me be your salty dog

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won't be your little man at all
Honey let me be your salty dog

Look it here Sal, I know you
Run down stocking and a wore out shoe
Honey let me be your salty dog

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won't be your little man at all
Honey let me be your salty dog

Down in the wildwood sitting on a log
Finger on the trigger and an eye on the hog
Honey let me be your salty dog

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won't be your little man at all
Honey let me be your salty dog

Well I Pulled the trigger and the gun set go
The shot gun over in Mexico
Honey let me be your salty dog

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won't be your little man at all
Honey let me be your salty dog

Salty down now

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won't be your little man at all
Honey let me be your salty dog

Let me be your salty dog
Or I won't be your little man at all
Honey let me be your salty dog

The Rise of the Salt Tooth

During a recent surf session, the Salty Dog came across this article...enjoy!

http://www.chow.com/stories/10502

Salt Quote of the Day

"Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him." ~Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (106-43 BC) Roman Statesman

A Bit of History from Paradise

Remember the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup commercials, in which the Chocolate “met” the Peanut Butter, and the match was instantly recognized as perfectly delicious? In ancient Hawaii, on the island of what is now Kauai, red volcanic clay called Alaea “met” Sea Salt when, during heavy rains, the red clay sediment seeped into the ocean from Kauai’s rivers. When this red ocean water became trapped in tidal pools, evaporation created Hawaiian Red Alaea Sea Salt.
 
While much of the salt was used by ancient Hawaiians in sacred rituals in which security was sought for everything from canoes to homes and temples, the salt was also used to preserve food. Today, the salt is used by Hawaiians in traditional dishes like Kalua Pork, and by discerning restaurant and home chefs who appreciate this salt’s unique history, taste and appearance.

However, generally speaking, the salt will serve you well anytime you want to add dramatic, colorful impact to any dish.  Enjoy!!

Salt Quote of the Day

"Give neither advice nor salt, until you are asked for it." ~ English Proverb

Stress

Not so long ago I read that life span ultimately boils down to how well one handles stress: specifically, that 5% of extended life span can be attributed to good exercise habits, 5% to good diet, and the remaining 90% to how well one handles stress.

While shopping recently at Butchers Block, a specialty food store in Aspen, the woman in front of me was adding to her order several types of cheese. After a few moments, she changed her mind, voicing her reasoning that it would be a healthier decision not to buy any cheese.

Del Toro & Spring Restaurants, Chicago, IL

My favorite restaurant, Del Toro, in Chicago closed! Del Toro es muerto! Mierda.

The only good news is that the closing forced me to venture out and discover other talented Chicago chefs. One such chef, it turns out, is Shawn McClain, whose restaurant, Spring, is not far from Del Toro’s former location in Wicker Park.

Great dishes often have this in common: a perfect balance of sweet, sour, hot and salty elements of flavor. When I cook, when I eat, and when I consult on product development, I always take the same initial approach: how can I apply as many, if not all of these elements of flavor, to the task at hand?

In almost every case it works. Choosing my meal at Spring was no different. When deciding what to order, the server described the specials, one of which was this: Slices of sashimi-style Hamachi with an Uni Glaze, Blood Orange Segments, Pickled Daikon and a hint of Chile Sauce.

In the right hands, there was no question this combination of flavors would work: Blood Orange would supply the Sweet and Sour; Chile the Hot; Pickled Daikon the Salty.

The dish lived up to my expectations, as did the entire meal—it was fantastic. My only disappointment was that—unlike Del Toro—Spring didn’t utilize any specialty salts on its menu.

That’s okay… at least for the time being. I left the server a big tip, plus my Salt Traders business card.