Keep the Halloween spirit going throughout the weekend with five savory orange-and-black treats that don’t involve food coloring or frosting.

1. Pumpkin and blackened onion salad is the perfect meal to stave off a candy binge.

2. Slightly spooky squid ink fettucine looks right for Halloween.

3. Dress your salad with orange, ginger and black pepper dressing.

4. Delicata squash soup sprinkled with cream and black pepper will fill you up.

5. Recover from trick-or-treating with a wholesome dish of sweet potatoes, black beans and quinoa.

Recipes: More Halloween recipes at Cookthink.com

Since so many dishes start with an aromatic paste as a building block to adding deep flavor, we like to keep a batch on hand to give us a head start on dinner.

Just finely chop any combination of aromatics — like shallot, onion, green onion, carrot, celery, ginger, garlic, lemongrass or chiles — in a food processor, and stash the mixture in an airtight container in the fridge so it’s ready to go anytime a dish needs a flavor boost. (more…)

Made from pressed apples (like Baldwin and McIntosh), cider is just juice that hasn’t been filtered. Autumn days make us crave cider’s tart, tangy, thirst-quenching quality.

Apple Cider brought the Root Source Challenge recipes streaming in. Roasted vegetables and cider bread were truly tempting, but our favorite gem was a recipe for apple cider jelly. Congratulations to Culinaria Eugenius!

If you missed Root Source: Apple Cider, don’t forget to sign up so you get the next one! You can also become a Facebook fan and get Root Source Challenge updates there. And be sure to send us your entries for next week’s Root Source Challenge #38: Pumpkin. Submissions are due by noon on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.

(Thanks to The Lisa Ekus Group for providing us with books for the Root Source Challenge.)

This week, Cookthink is featuring a conversation about the Cocktail Renaissance. The participants are Greg Boehm, the publisher of CocktailKingdom.com and Mud Puddle Books; Rob Chirico, author of The Field Guide to Cocktails and Cookthink’s Hair of the Dog columnist; and AJ Rathbun, senior editor at Amazon.com/kitchen and the author of several books, including Good Spirits and Luscious Liqueurs.

Are you just joining the conversation? Start by reading Rob’s introduction and then follow the whole thread here.

Hi A.J. and Rob,

I would love to warm to the term “mixologist,” but it just does not work for me. It’s not an appalling term, but it doesn’t represent the respect and admiration that I have for bartenders. In 1895, C.F. Lawlor tried to become know as the “mixicologist” but the term never stuck. I think the problem that I have with the scientific nature of these words is that they don’t paint the whole portrait of a bartender.

Last night, I was at Dale DeGroff’s launch party for his new book The Essential Cocktail. Sure, Dale can mix drinks and thus is a great mixologist. However, he is also a great host and, when called for, a great story teller (he can even sing). A bartender is part shrink, part friend, part entertainer and, yes, part drink mixer. In other words, “mixologist” represents only one part of what a great bartender is.

On a separate note, I have to agree with A.J. that David Wondrich’s Imbibe! is a must-own book for anybody interested in booze and cocktail history.

-Greg

Previously: “The Negroni is the Wonder Woman of drinks.”

It’s Halloween.

Related: Halloween: Celebrating The Great Turnip
Related: Five Halloween Treats To Make This Weekend
Recipes: More Halloween recipes at Cookthink.com

Congratulations to Cookthinktanker Jess Thomson, of hogwash, whose Waiterly Conduct been featured in the Best Food Writing of 2008!.

The collection also includes pieces by Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Mark Bittman and one of our favorite food writers, the Washington Post’s Jane Black.

This week, Cookthink is featuring a conversation about the Cocktail Renaissance. The participants are Greg Boehm, the publisher of CocktailKingdom.com and Mud Puddle Books; Rob Chirico, author of The Field Guide to Cocktails and Cookthink’s Hair of the Dog columnist; and AJ Rathbun, senior editor at Amazon.com/kitchen and the author of several books, including Good Spirits and Luscious Liqueurs.

Just joining the conversation? Start by reading Rob’s introduction.

Good afternoon, Rob and Greg:

The New Fashioned sounds ideal for my cloudy Seattle Thursday, as does an Americano with Carpano Antica (and I tend to like Americano’s anyway, though usually in spring, but perhaps having one now would remind me that spring is, actually, not all that far away? Or remind me of lovely spring days in the past? God, I love how cocktails drive memories).

Rob, you, made me feel a bit sad for leaving the Negroni off of my own list, as it’s one of my current and all-time favorites (though, admittedly, one I worry about ordering because it seems easy to get the balance un-balanced). I like it so much that I tracked down and went to the bar in Florence where it was supposedly invented.

I once posited that the Negroni was the Wonder Woman of drinks (with the Martini being Superman and the Manhattan being Batman). I could go deeper into the whys and wherefores, but I’m sure neither of you wants to hear about my attempt to bridge my love of comics with my love of drinks.

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Stew is one of those versatile dishes that works with an infinite variety of meats, vegetables, herbs, spices and liquids. For this week’s Root Source on apple cider, we decided to try a lamb stew with cider and root vegetables. (We chose lamb shanks because we were in the mood for the unctuousness and body richer cuts give the sauce. But you could choose a leaner cut like lamb or pork leg or shoulder, which would be lighter and cook more quickly.)

Here’s a step-by-step guide to making just about any stew taste good (with a link to the full recipe at the end), plus a few suggestions for variations along the way:

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This week, Cookthink is featuring a conversation about the Cocktail Renaissance. The participants are Greg Boehm, the publisher of CocktailKingdom.com and Mud Puddle Books; Rob Chirico, author of The Field Guide to Cocktails and Cookthink’s Hair of the Dog columnist; and AJ Rathbun, senior editor at Amazon.com/kitchen and the author of several books, including Good Spirits and Luscious Liqueurs.

Just joining the conversation? Start by reading Rob’s introduction.

Hello again, Rob and A.J.,

With the arrival of Fall, I have switched my base spirits. My Daiquiris (more specifically Embury’s Daiquiri De Luxe) has been replaced by aged rum and applejack based Sours. My latest obsession is taking all of my favorite cocktails that use sweet vermouth and trying them with Carpano Antica. Who knew an Americano could have so much depth (especially when using the old formula Campari)?

With more than 1,300 cocktail books in my office, it is not easy to pick favorites. (Also, I do not want to be accused of unfairly promoting my own publishing program.) Anyway, here it goes… For beginner’s “how to” books, I agree that Dale DeGroff’s Craft of the Cocktail is a great choice together with Gary Regan’s Joy of Mixology. Rob and A.J. are being shy, so I will mention that you should take a look at their books, The Field Guide to Cocktails (by Rob) and Good Spirits (by A.J.).

In order to gain a true respect for the great bartenders of the 1800s, take a look at Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual. For Art Deco visual appeal and interesting recipes that mention the source of the formula, look for a copy of Ted Saucier’s Bottom’s Up. For cocktail theory and mental stimulation, read David Embury’s Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. For a glimpse of the glamorous side of the cocktail the Stork Club Bar Book and the Old Waldorf Bar Days should not be missed. After these books, I only have another 20 or 30 favorites.

By the way, Rob, your Fall line up of cocktails sounds fantastically enjoyable.

Greg

Previously: “The first Campari I tasted was on the day Elvis died.”
Next: “The Negroni is the Wonder Woman of drinks.”

This week, Cookthink is featuring a conversation about the Cocktail Renaissance. The participants are Greg Boehm, the publisher of CocktailKingdom.com and Mud Puddle Books; Rob Chirico, author of The Field Guide to Cocktails and Cookthink’s Hair of the Dog columnist; and AJ Rathbun, senior editor at Amazon.com/kitchen and the author of several books, including Good Spirits and Luscious Liqueurs.

Just joining the conversation? Start by reading Rob’s introduction.

Greetings A.J. and Greg:

As I readied for my evening stint at the bar last night, I contemplated A.J.’s question about what sort of late October cocktail people might be craving.

One popular drink I have created for one of our owners, Deborah Snow, is a revision of the Old Fashioned, appropriately named Deborah’s New Fashioned. You follow the traditional recipe of muddling a cherry and orange with a dash of simple syrup and bitters, and then stir that over ice with Basil Hayden (note that there is no added water). Finally, strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry and orange. It’s a drink for those who are not quite ready to give up a straight up cocktail just yet.

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