"Country Living"

July 14, 1999

Country Living's new food editor, Cynthia LaGrone, is here to answer all of your cooking questions and share some tasty recipes.

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HomeArts: Welcome to our chat with Country Living's new food editor, Cynthia Nicholson LaGrone. This will be an opportunity for you to get acquainted with Cynthia, to exchange ideas on cooking, to share some recipes, and perhaps pick up a tip or two to help you in the kitchen. Welcome, Cynthia!

Cynthia LaGrone: Thank you, thank you. I'm so glad to be here today and to talk with some of our readers. I'm hoping to get to know a lot of you a lot better and I'm hoping that we can share some recipes in the future.

Sweettooth: I just got an ice cream maker, and I love it. Can you suggest some interesting flavors for ice cream or, better yet, sorbet?

Cynthia LaGrone: Well, I grew up with an ice cream maker and one of our favorite flavors when I was a child was chocolate chip banana. If you are a banana lover, then you would really like this flavor. You can also put some nuts in there if you like - pecans or walnuts. With summertime being so bountiful with fruit, why not try fresh peach or watermelon sorbet? To make a more adult-type treat, for the watermelon sorbet you could add a touch of vodka. Another interesting flavor enhancer for some sorbets would be some fresh herbs, such as lemon rosemary sorbet or orange basil sorbet. Using fresh herbs in desserts is really starting to become a lot more popular. I've seen it more and more on restaurant menus here in New York.

Susana: I recently tasted home-made mayonnaise for the first time and it was incredible? How can I make it myself?

Cynthia LaGrone: Well, you need to have a blender or a food processor - this makes it a lot easier, but you can make it by hand if you have a really good whisk and a strong arm! You would start out with egg yolks or whole eggs, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and after combining that together slowly drizzle in a flavorless oil such as canola or vegetable until it starts to emulsify. If you like, you can use a flavored oil to have a more interesting mayonnaise. Depending on what you are going to use it for, you could blend in some chopped fresh herbs for an herbed mayonnaise for sandwiches, or chopped capers and pickles to make a tartar sauce for seafood, or blend in some roasted red peppers for a topping for grilled chicken.

Remy: My neighbors make sun tea by taking a large mason jar, filling it with tea bags and water and leaving it in the sun all day. Is this safe? Couldn't this be a bacterial breeding ground?

Cynthia LaGrone: No, it's not unsafe. Tea has been dried by a heating process, and this would probably kill any kind of bacteria that could possibly be living there. Having it in the sun all day is just a slower process than boiling water and pouring it over tea bags. It makes for a mellower tasting tea if it's done this way. You might want to add some fresh mint or possibly some lemon wedges to your iced tea to give it some zing.

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