In.gredients - Packaging-Free Grocery Shopping Comes to Austin

Just a quick, happy update to my January 2010 post about Unpackaged, an innovative packaging-free grocery store located in London (sadly, just a wee bit too far from my home to allow me to shop there regularly.)

If you happen to live in Austin, Texas, you'll soon be able to do your own packaging-free shopping 'cause a new store called In.gredients is opening in your fair city this fall, provided that their funding goes through. So bring your bags and jars and go crazy, y'all!

Although I find it ironic that America's first packaging-free grocery store will be located in Texas, one of the country's least progressive states, Austin does make a lot of sense.

You can read more about it in GOOD magazine's article.

Homemade BBQ Sauce

A few days ago, I did a dry-run of my 4th of July feast. Barbecued ribs with homemade sauce, skillet cornbread, sweet and spicy baked beans, coleslaw and green salad fresh from the garden. And God Bless America, it was goooooooood!

I'll do my best to post the recipe for each dish/component in the next week lest any of you want to use them for your own July 4th meals. Beginning with the barbecue sauce.

I've got a wicked sweet tooth and love the sweet, smokey flavor of barbecue sauce. I've also been fantasizing about making my own for years, ever since I clipped a recipe from a Martha Stewart sometime in the past decade. I'm happy to report that not only is it pretty easy to make your own sauce, somehow making it from scratch removes any trace of white trash-iness from this fine American sauce.

Best of all, the recipe makes a bunch and you can safely keep it in a jar in the fridge for several weeks, allowing you to slather all sorts of grill-ables with its delightful spicy, sweet flavors.

If you do not already have an immersion blender (also known as a wand or hand blender), I cannot recommend this little tool highly enough! And it will make this sauce even easier to make with far less clean up.

Happy grilling, everyone!

Homemade BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

* 1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

* 1 small to medium onion, finely chopped

* 3 garlic cloves, minced

* 1 can (28-ounces) crushed tomatoes

* 1 canned chipotle chile, packed in adobo sauce, minced (or a pinch of red pepper flakes if you don't have a chipotle handy)

* 1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

* 1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar

* 1/4 cup unsulfured molasses

* Juice of 1/2 lemon

* Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook, stirring, until onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.

2. Stir in tomatoes, chile, Worcestershire, vinegar, molasses, and lemon juice. Simmer over medium-low heat until reduced by a third, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes.

3. Allow to cool slightly, then purée using an immersion blender (if you don't have one, you can purée the sauce in a blender, working with batches. Season with salt and black pepper. Refrigerate in a jar with tight-fitting lid for up to 2 weeks.

You might also like:

• Smoky-Spicy-Sweet Barbecue Baked Beans (vegetarian, no less!)
• Tomato Jam - delicious with kabobs and grilled lamb
• Chimichurri Sauce - amazing on grilled beef and fish
• Lemon Aioli - amazing on anything...

P.S. If you're in a rush and don't have time to whip up a batch of your own barbecue sauce, you might want to check out Saveur's latest roundup of their favorite bottled barbecue sauces.

Roasted New Potatoes With Fresh Rosemary & Sea Salt

I can't tell you how grateful I am that it's finally new potato season. No matter how bad my spud cravings got, I just could not bring myself to buy the soft, eye-covered, green-skinned specimens that have passing for potatoes at our local grocery store for the past couple months. I really love potatoes so you can imagine how difficult this has been for me (cue tragic violin music.)

But at last the potato famine has ended and some fresh young thangs are finally showing up on the shelves. Roasting is one of my favorite ways to prepare potatoes - it's easy and delicious and I love the way they get crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

Roasting is also a nice way to showcase some fresh herbs. And rosemary makes the perfect star. I got hooked on the stuff when we lived in Berkeley as our house had these enormous rosemary bushes growing in front of it and all along the sides. My but they were lovely! And so prolific, too. I would pick the stuff by the branchful, hanging them up and drying them to give to friends who were not as lucky as we in the edible plantings department. In a moment of Martha Stewart-like madness, I even drew one of the sprigs (see at right) and incorporated it in a label that I pasted on the packages of fragrant needles. Ah, the things I used to have time for before my son was born...

Now that we're back on the east coast, our rosemary production is on a bit smaller scale since it's got to fit into a flowerpot (albeit a pretty big one) in order to allow us to move it indoors during the winters. But our plant seems to be thriving, despite the long, dark winter it spent inside craning its finely needled branches towards the dim light at the window. I moved it outside about a month ago to let it soak up some sun.

I scrubbed the potatoes, minced some garlic, picked some of the deliciously-scented green rosemary needles, gave them a wash, chopped them coarsely, and tossed them with the potatoes, a big glug of olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper and a big pinch of salt. Then turned them out into my favorite roasting dish and popped them into the hot oven.

I recommend using a coarser-grained salt that will stand on its own better than fine-grained salts can.It's nice to have that little bit of salty crunch along with the rosemary's strong aromatic flavor.

These potatoes are very good on their own as well as with meat, fish or salad.

Roasted New Potatoes With Fresh Rosemary & Sea Salt
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

* 1 lb small new potatoes, scrubbed of all dirt and with any blemishes cut out. If the potatoes are different sizes, cut them into equal-sized pieces as you want them to roast at the same rate
* 2-3 tsps fresh rosemary, washed, dried and chopped
* 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
* 3-4 Tbsps olive oil
* 2 tsps coarse sea salt
* Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the potatoes, herbs, oil, garlic, salt and a few grinds of black pepper thoroughly. You want each potato to be coated in oil.

2. Spread them in a single jumbled layer on a thick-bottomed cookie sheet or in a glass or ceramic baking dish and roast for 35-45 minutes (this will depend on how large your 'taters are). Do not forget to check them after 15-20 minutes and turn them all to prevent burning. If your oven heats unevenly (as mine does) you may want to check and turn them earlier twice while they're roasting instead of just once.

3. Once tender, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.

More recipes you might like:

• Steamed Potatoes With Herb Butter
• Perfect Oven Fries
• Curried Potato Salad
• Potato Latkes
• Roasted New Carrots

I'm entering this recipe in this week's Weekend Herb Blogging event, hosted by Winnie from Healthy Green Kitchen.