November 10, 2009
Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 10, 2009 at 4:30 PM
Note: Last weekend I went to Montreal. Check out more nibbles from my Snapshots from Montreal.
A macaron glacé with strawberry gelato. [Photographs: Erin Zimmer]
In the ice cream sandwich world, the macaron glacé might be the queen of them all. Instead of the long chocolate, tiny hole-filled cookies smashing generic vanilla ice cream, these are made with delicate French macarons as bookends and really good gelato inside.
It's hard to find them outside of France. This one was from Point G in Montreal, probably the best ice cream source in the city. Some people blab about Le Bilboquet but my Montreal food blogger pal Katerine insists that Point G is where it's at. "Le Bilboquet is fine—like Häagen-Dazs fine. Sure, it totally hits the spot, but why have Häagen-Dazs when you can have this?" And more importantly, why have just that when you can have it multiplied by macarons?
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From Recipes
Posted by Robin Bellinger, November 10, 2009 at 3:45 PM
[Photograph: Robin Bellinger]
This is about as fast as dinner gets at my house. That isn't saying much, but an hour from start to finish for meat-starch-veg is nothing to sniff at, especially when the cook can put her feet up (or fold laundry—or amuse the baby) for a good chunk of that time.
I usually make this with thighs only but this time bought the whole legs to save money. In the past I have tried this rub-and-roast with skinless pieces, and it seemed to work just as well.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, November 10, 2009 at 3:15 PM
Because turkey isn't the only protein on people's Thanksgiving tables, this year Jones Soda is offering the vegetarian-friendly Tofurky and Gravy Soda as part of their limited edition gift pack ($11.99). The pack comes with three bottles of the special Tofurky soda along with three bottles of more palatable flavors (black cherry, pomegranate, and vanilla bean), and a Tofurky lunch box. For each case sold, Jones Soda will donate $1 to the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). [via BevNET]
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Dungeons and Dragons-Themed Jones Soda
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From Recipes
Posted by glutenfreegirl, November 10, 2009 at 2:30 PM
"Millet was first grown in China, where it was revered for thousands of years as one of their five most sacred grains."
[Photograph: Shauna James Ahern]
Millet is the tofu of the grain world.
OK, I know that might not make some of you hungry. Tofu has a bad reputation, just like millet. Some of us associate tofu with that watery block of white goo, sealed in plastic. Unappetizing. Truly good tofu, however, is made fresh that day, still warm, silky on the spoon, and something else entirely than what you have in your head.
The same is true for millet. Where have you seen millet before? For most of you, that's probably in a bag of birdseed. Yep, millet is the small round grain fed to the birds in the park by crazy old ladies. Does that make you want to eat it? Probably not.
How about this? That salad you see up there? That's a chilled millet salad with red peppers and golden raisins, honeycomb tangerines, goat cheese, red leaf lettuce, and prosciutto. Plus, a little apple gastrique.
Millet does not have to be boring.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, November 10, 2009 at 2:00 PM
If you've been following along with Food 52's Tournament of Cookbooks (aka "The Piglet"), you'll be pleased to know that the grand champion has been chosen. Final-round judge Nora Ephron calls it for Francis Mallman and Peter Kaminsky's Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way. Sure the book has some problems:
Many of the fires in Seven Fires can be set in the wilds of Argentina or, presumably, on a finca, but they cannot be set on driveways, patios or the back lawn. So where is one to set them? I have no idea. And many of the recipes that are meant to be cooked over fire don't contain alternative cooking suggestions. There's a wildly exciting lamb recipe that's cooked in a wheelbarrow. In a wheelbarrow.
But Ephron loves it anyway:
... Seven Fires has got all sorts of things wrong with it, but it sings. It's full of wonderful recipes and wonderful ideas. And perhaps, in the next printing, the authors will tell us what to do about the wheelbarrow.
Get to Know 'Seven Fires'
We featured Seven Fires as the Cook the Book series for the week of June 15, 2009. Here are the recipes we excerpted:
Empanadas Mendocinas
Braided Beef with Anchovies and Olives
Omelet Gramajo
Burnt Ricotta Salata, Tomatoes, and Olives
Peached Pork
Beef and Potato Pie
From Recipes
Posted by Caroline Russock, November 10, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Middle Eastern flavors have been bouncing around the Mediterranean for centuries and worked their way into Greek cuisine long ago. Cinnamon found its way into Greek cooking through the Turks, who brought it with them during their occupancy. Greece declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, but the country held onto its fondness for cinnamon.
Cinnamon shows up in some pretty unlikely places in Greek cooking, and this recipe for Sweet and Sour Eggplant and Onion Stew from Michael Psilakis's How to Roast a Lamb is a prime example.
Eggplant and cinnamon might seem like an improbable pair, but, as it turns out, the Greeks (and the Turks, for that matter) were really onto something.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, November 10, 2009 at 12:30 PM
In honor of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, Ella Morton of Rocketboom chats with Cookie Monster to talk about his diet, the origin of om nom nom nom nom, and his cookie-eating method. Video, after the jump.
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From Serious Eats: New York
Posted by Chichi Wang, November 10, 2009 at 12:00 PM
[Photos: Chichi Wang]
Marrying honest food with a great cause, Slow Food NYC hosted a lamb butchering class this past Sunday at The Institute of Culinary Education in downtown Manhattan. Proceeds from the class benefited the Slow Food NYC Harvest Time program, which supports student gardens and food education programs at schools in East Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg. Led by Master Butcher Rudi Weid, the class used lamb sourced from the pastures of Three Corner Field Farm in Shushan, New York.
Last month at the ICE, I had watched as Weid butchered an entire half side of beef. This time around, seeing Weid take break down a lamb was significantly less daunting. Only eight months old when slaughtered, the lamb weighed a mere forty-five pounds. It's easy to get mired in the numerous parts of a steer, whereas the diminutive size of the lamb carcass made clearer the distinctions between the shoulder, rack, loin, leg, and foreshank.
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From Recipes
Posted by Tara Mataraza Desmond, November 10, 2009 at 11:30 AM
[Photograph: Tara Mataraza Desmond]
A few weeks ago I gave a friend a verbal whupping for calling a concoction he'd made of vegetables and melted cheese atop a piece of naan a pizza. On any given day, this guy is Mr. Italian American, gushing about Sunday "gravy" and salty meat and cheese sandwiches, so I was flabbergasted by his irreverent pizza misnomer.
"Pizza," though, has already been stretched thin by recipe adaptations. There are saag paneer pizzas, ramen pizzas, Pizzaritos, and French pizzas, to name a few. The intent isn't to oust authentic Italian originals (or Italian-American iterations) but to underscore the infallibility that the culinary basics of a pizza--breadlike bottom and toppings, fired in a hot oven--are genius and almost ubiquitously appreciated. My friend's naan creation is another case and point.
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Serious Beer columnist Maggie Hoffman tosses some arugula with roasted pears, blue cheese, and a homemade walnut-vinaigrette (she says bacon wouldn't hurt either) for a tasty salad on her blog, Pithy and Cleaver.
From Serious Eats: New York
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 10, 2009 at 10:45 AM
Filmmaker Liza De Guia of Food Curated just dropped another one of her short documentaries, this one about Sarah Lohman, an amateur "historic gastronomist":
Sarah is a rare breed of hobbyist. A "historic gastronomist". She rediscovers and recreates American recipes that went out of style hundreds of years ago. For her, it is the closest thing to time travel...reawakening her senses and opening doors to old flavors and ideas that had once been pop culture.
And it's a hobby not without purpose. She uses these discoveries to introduce new ingredients and techniques into her cooking today. A trend, she says, that is catching on with chefs all over New York City.
Follow along as Lohman makes hoe cakes on an outdoor hearth at Park Slope, Brooklyn's Old Stone House historic site. Video, after the jump.
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From A Hamburger Today
Posted by Nick Solares, November 10, 2009 at 10:30 AM
[Photographs: Nick Solares]
Father & Son Chili Dogs and Burgers
902 W Saint Georges Avenue, Linden, NJ 07036; map); 908-486-9596
Cooking Method: Grilled
Short Order: While the famous Texas Weiners are the principle draw here the burger should not be over looked. Fresh grilled beef evocative of backyard grill outs, Try it with the chili sauce for an extra kick.
Price: Hamburger, $3; Cheeseburger, $3.40; Chili Cheeseburger
When Bobby Flay was interviewed at Serious Eats: New York last year, he was asked if he knew of any restaurants that qualified as "undiscovered gems." He retorted, "Nothing is undiscovered, the Internet has ruined that."
I can sympathize with the notion. It certainly seems that with the narrow casting afforded by the internet, sites can leave no stone unturned in the exploration of the subject matter that they cover. At least that's what we try to do here at AHT. But if I have learned one thing about hamburgers it is that they can be found in unexpected places, and maybe discovering gems is an incidental pursuit.
Speaking of gems, I was recently on my way to check out the state of White Diamond in Linden, New Jersey, when I noticed a sign on the side of a building on West St. Georges Street promising chili dogs and burgers. I had driven up and down this particular stretch of road in pursuit of sliders many times, but somehow Father & Son Chili Dogs and Burgers had thus far eluded me. It turns out that the place dates back to 1941 (although at a different location) and remains family-owned. In fact the business passed from father to son and then to granddaughter. I guess "Father, Son & Granddaughter" doesn't have quite the same ring as "Father & Son."
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From Serious Eats: New York
Posted by Allison Hemler, November 10, 2009 at 10:00 AM
"We're like a bunch of surfers on a sunny summer day here. Having fun, riding the waves, leisurely expanding our coffee palates. "
[Photographs: Allison Hemler, unless otherwise noted]
Last week, I discussed my painful aversion toward the old school, wine-tasting mentality of coffee cupping. What a truck-load of expectations: industry lingo, papers and pens, OCD-like attention to technique, and the dreaded slurp and spit. I believe these requirements are a thing of the past—and so I am attempting to pave the way towards a new kind of coffee cupping, no paper required.
What's needed? Bare bones tools: some ground coffee, some hot water, and good conversation. Think of it as a cocktail party with a purpose, no fancy attire required.
Coffees are cupped—that is, tasted with careful attention, side-by-side—for the sole purpose of palate expansion and bean origin exploration. We're not buyers searching for imperfections in beans and cup consistency. We won't create a morning brew in our cupping methods, but we will eventually be able to tell a Latin American from an African coffee, and ultimately figure out how our taste buds respond.
Coffee consultant Erin Hulbert and I sat down on a Sunday evening to cup and indulge in girl talk, free from the shackles of the male-dominated coffee world. Neither of us had ever cupped coffee at home but have done the deed with a variety of groups too many times to count.
It took us five tries to get past spitting out coffee from disgust at the inaccurate amount of coffee we used and an imperfect grind. But that fifth try was a charm. We cupped an Indian Mysore and a Guatemalan from Great Barrington Coffee Company, a specialty coffee roaster in the Berkshires who has been in the biz since 1993.
Here's what ultimately led to our success, and with a few tries, hopefully a few Serious Eats readers will get a little experimental and start throwing their own coffee cupping parties. How to do it, after the jump.
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From Recipes
Posted by Chichi Wang, November 10, 2009 at 9:00 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
Pig's stomach and beef tripe are fairly common finds in ethnic markets, but it's not everyday that I come across lamb tripe. Sitting next to an assortment of livers, the packages of lamb tripe were neatly stacked and as usual, dirt-cheap. Without knowing exactly what I'd make of it, I claimed a pack of the tripe and rushed home in anticipation. Unfurled on my cutting board, the organ was a sight to behold.
Though we often refer to ruminants as possessing four stomachs, each stomach is actually a section of the larger whole. Beef tripe is sold as such: honeycomb and omasum, for instance, are packaged separately. Since lamb is much smaller in size, all the discrete sections of its stomach—the tender, succulent honeycomb tripe, the spongy, furry rumen, and the flatter omasum—appear in one continuous swath.
To celebrate an innard I'd never eaten before, I embarked on a recipe I've never tried. For months now, I've been obsessed with the idea of sealing my pots with dough, an age-old method for low and slow cooking. Molded just to fit the shape of the cooking vessel, a rope of dough provides a formidable seal to preserve the moisture of a stew.
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From Recipes
Posted by Carolyn Cope, November 10, 2009 at 8:00 AM
Note: You may know Carolyn Cope as Umami Girl. She stops by on Tuesdays with ideas on preparing fruits and vegetables.
[Photograph: Carolyn Cope]
Although Asian pears (also called Chinese pears, apple pears or sand pears) are now fairly widely available, they were new to me a few years ago when they showed up in our CSA haul. People, this is one delightful fruit. (Well, okay, it's more like many, many varieties of delightful fruit that all share a name and a few key qualities.) I hardly know how I lived so long without them.
Asian pears have a lemony, floral flavor and a light, juicy crispness that puts them somewhere between pears and apples, but on a higher plane. They work so well on their own that they hardly require any adornment to make a special dessert. Still, a quick bath in a light brown sugar syrup perfumed with lemon, ginger and vanilla never hurt anyone, and very few foods are made worse by a dollop of freshly whipped cream. Are you with me here?
This elegant dessert takes mere minutes to prepare. It does most of the work itself while you eat dinner. If you can get your hands on a few Asian pears, I hope you'll give it a try.
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