This sounds so wrong

Yet I will probably end up eating it at some point over the next year.

Serious Eats: Kimchi Quesadilla

Engineering Fluff

It turns out that Marshmellow Fluff, what you'd probably think of as one of the more delicious but unnatural products of the food industry, needs quite a bit of babying.



Belm Blog: What the Fluff?

From stews to soccer moms

I've only experienced T.G.I. Friday's as the scene of many suburban going-away/post-game/birthday dinners that never seemed to include less than 10 people, one of whom always got their meal 20 minutes before everyone else. Far cry from its original incarnation:

"'Alan had the idea that a great way to meet stewardesses would be to open up a saloon where all the stewardesses lived. All those fancy apartment buildings on Sutton Place in the '60s were 'stew zoos' -- like 10 girls in an apartment..."It was the first kind of bar where it was acceptable for women to go out by themselves -- it sort of turned the mores around' explains restaurateur Ben Benson, who partnered with Stillman on a slew of Friday's spinoffs."

NYP: Cheeky Friday's via Diner's Journal

Virtual Spitball

I debated whether to comment on this because I didn't want to be negative, but this is so absurd I think it qualifies as self-parody. Maybe I should add a tag for "Aren't I marvelous".

Also on the stove was a huge pot of water that I was bringing to a boil as I prepared to can two quarts and four pints of local apricots. In a couple of hours, when my husband came home, I'd make our simple dinner -- a broiled veal steak (a good value at less than $5.00 for the steak that we'd share) and a salad of baby arugula, mushrooms, red onions and lemon vinaigrette. I'd bought the red onions at the Saturday Greenmarket but the other ingredients were from my neighborhood supermarket's very good produce department....But I was distracted. My mind was back reading the newspaper, specifically Michael Pollan's article, "No One Cooks Here Anymore." ....So no one cooks anymore? "How can this be?" I think to myself as I stir my tomato paste, slice my apricots, and take the steak out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature.

The City Cook: Off the Couch. Back to the Kitchen.

Add a few bottles of Two Buck Chuck and they might talk back

All Things Considered recently joined every other media outlet in the universe with a "budget challenge" piece by asking a bunch of chefs to create a dinner costing $10 or less for a family of four. Since I only have a few weeks left until the official end of my early twenties I found it helpful preparation for the day when celery sticks and Triscuits covered with melted cheddar cheese don't cut it for me anymore. Jose Andres, the lovable celeb chef at the helm of some of my favorite places in DC, contributed this spinach and chickpea stew that sounds so good, I only worry that it will be less frugal since I may eat it all in one sitting. I'm glad I listened to the spot in addition to reading the recipe- I might have missed his Mediterranean schtick about talking to the chickpeas. Food TV hosts the Neelys prepared mac and cheese that sounded like a delicious artery clogger, and the Navy chef's skate and gnocchi takes the prize for seeming way more expensive than it is.

Catholic food

One of the things I miss about living around a lot of my fellow Papists is all the saint-specific foods, like the cream-filled cherry studded puffs that would appear in bakeries on St. Joseph's day and then vanish for another year. This blog has all kinds of material about the intersection between food and Catholicism- and that happens a lot, no one ever accused us of not taking food seriously- but the feast day recipes are definitely the main attraction.

Catholic Cuisine via Blogs with Bite via Bitten

Let them drink Pepsi?

Ethiopia is running out of Coca-Cola! Actually they can't switch to Pepsi- it's not the drink they're low on, it's the imported bottle tops.

BBC: Ethiopia hit by Coca-Cola drought

Peter Lugar Steak House Vault

The New York Times periodically posts 360° photos of rooms around the city. This week's entry probably isn't the prettiest, or sweetest-smelling, or most comfortable room they've featured, but it's full of the promise of wonderful things to come.

NYT: Where the Porterhouse Ages Gracefully

Skoda Fabia Commercial

If I was on the market for a tiny British car it'd be hard for me to pass up the Skoda Fabia, solely on the merits of this commercial in which a full-size model of the car is built from cake. They really did it! The short video about the construction is also worth watching, if constructing large objects with cake is your thing.



Cake Wrecks: Sunday Sweets: You "Auto" Watch
YouTube: Baking of the "Skoda Fabia - Car Cake" advert

Heaven costs $2.75

"Mark Isreal, whose wild imagination drives the Doughnut Plant on the Lower East Side, has come up with an irresistible new delicacy, a crème brûlée doughnut. It’s bursting with rich custard and topped with shiny, crackling toasted sugar."

NYT Diner's Journal: Doughnuts of the Gods

G20 Menu

Here is the White House menu for today's G20 meeting to discuss a response to the financial crisis. It's a pretty hefty spread, but still quite a contrast from the menu at the G8 meeting. Of course the latter meeting was much more formal than today's session; but I'd imagine the White House chef is also mindful of the uproar over the lavish AIG retreat.

Stealth McDonald's

As a former McDonald's employee I could happily live the rest of my life without ever setting foot in one again. But while they've lost this customer, McDonald's has been trying some interesting techniques to expand the consumer base of one of the most widely-recognized brands in the world. But what if the brand itself is the deterrent? In Tokyo, the company has converted two stores that will serve only single and double Quarter Pounders to promote the sandwiches. The stripped-down menu, redecorated interior, and new packaging is a huge departure from its other stores- it's a lot more dramatic than the McDonald's in New York that every suburban class on a field trip goes nuts over because there's a piano player- but the outside is what's really noteworthy: the McDonald's name and logo don't appear! Stateside, McDonald's is already pushing hard to bring in the yuppies with their plan to offer cappuccino drinks nationwide in 2009; it'll be interesting of they're willing to go this far here.

PSFK: McDonalds goes unbranded in Japan

Heat

Bill Buford, an editor at the New Yorker, became so enthralled with Mario Batali that he left his job to work for free in the kitchen at Babbo. After working his way up from the prep kitchen to the pasta station he feels he has to look further afield to discover its secrets; and shuttles between New York and Italy to learn the foundations of Italian cooking in the tiny rural kitchens where Batali honed his art. It takes a heaping pile of tenacity topped with considerable masochism to temporarily put aside a successful career to perform such physically punishing, financially unrewarding work; and it's sometimes unclear why exactly he put himself (and his wife) through the ordeal. But Buford wisely avoids the cooking - as-vehicle-of-self-discovery theme; and focuses on the economics and mechanics of running a great restaurant, and the fundamental elements of great Italian food. Even Batali, while the subject of a few slightly man-crushy chapters in the beginning, turns out to be just one of the many complicated, passionate characters who get the food from farm to table. I forgot all about him when I got to the section about Buford's apprenticeship with Dario, the Tuscan butcher who indignantly empties bottles of nonlocal balsamic vinegar on restaurant floors. Reading "Heat" will make you hungry- no big deal, any food-porn type book can do that. But more than any book in the genre I'd ever read, it will make you profoundly grateful for the people who cook for you.

Breaking down a pig

Do you think brining your own bacon sounds like no big deal? This woman took it a step further. I can't believe they fed the pig's ears to the dog! I had crispy pig ears here in a salad with heirloom tomatoes a few weeks ago and they were like what a porkrind wants to be when it grows up.

Not Eating Out in New York: 4 Things Everyone Can Learn from a little Pig Butchering

Berkeley Bowl

It's a shame that caring about what you eat is often equated with being a pompous ass, but this L.A. Times article about a legendary Berkeley grocery store proves that the two are by no means always mutually exclusive.

The Big Money: Big Shop of Horrors

Brining in Brooklyn

This article about the author's experience curing her own bacon in a New York apartment not only pays homage to a favorite preserved meat of mine, it also gives a shoutout to the source of my lifelong devotion to food porn- Little House on the Prairie. I'm looking forward to a day when a story like this doesn't have to include the compulsory isn't-it-a-shame-this-is- only - accessible -to -yuppies paragraph.


Salon: Belly of the beast

Chicken emergency

I glanced at the comments for a recipe posted on Bitten, a NY Times food blog, and noticed this exchange. Assuming the comments were posted in real time, help came too late for poor Freya.

September 17th, 2008 8:16 pm Link

No salt or soy sauce in this recipe ~ HELP the chicken is in the pot.

— Freya Ellinwood

3. September 17th, 2008 10:04 pm Link

The large pinch of salt is mentioned in the section of the recipe article on making the sauce of oil, ginger, garlic and scallions. No soy sauce should be present in this dish.

Bitten: A Chicken Dish That’s a Global Affair

Thanksgiving for 12 in a 400 sqare foot apartment

It'll be a couple of years before I'm up for this particular challenge, but when that fateful day comes I'm sure I'll revisit this video guide. The short film, part of the New York Times Style Magazine's 2007 holiday series, documents the strategy, planning, and execution undertaken by the cook/director, backed up by some hand-made, extremely detailed charts.

NYT: The Man With the Pig Over His Shoulder

I recently had an amazing dinner at Blackbird in Chicago where it is possible- a possibility of which I had to avail myself- to have pork in every course, including dessert. So is it any wonder that I kind of want to be this guy when I grow up?