Leftovers!
Posted by Gordon Mark, November 9, 2009 at 6:00 PM
With all the channels on broadcast TV and cable—and the inevitable episode repeats—it's hard to sort out what's new or worthwhile. Let us sort it out for you so you don't miss anything worth watching. Times may vary with region; check your local listings for exact hour and channels.
Monday (November 9)
Good Eats: "Pantry Raid XII: Turning Japanese." Alton highlights various Japanese ingredients. 8 p.m. ET, Food Network
Cake Boss: "A Battleship, Ballet & Burning!" Buddy and his team create a huge cake for the US Air Force and a dance-themed cake. 10 p.m. ET, TLC
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (warning, a video plays automatically on site): "Diners Times Three." Guy goes to three unique diners across the country: a diner in Santa Cruz, California, that combines Vietnamese cooking with diner food; a local favorite in Boston; and a diner in Norman, Oklahoma, that serves chili on everything. 10 p.m. ET, Food Network
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Do you fancy yourself a charming, camera-happy, good cook? Well then Bravo wants to meet you. To apply for Top Chef's seventh season, click here [pdf]. The application deadline is December 4. Send in your forms and video or bring them to one of the open casting calls coming up. You still have time to make it to Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Portland.
Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 9, 2009 at 5:15 PM
Note: Over the weekend I visited Montreal and thanks to Katerine of the Epicurean Life, forgot what it felt like to be hungry. Stay tuned this week for my snapshots from Montreal.
[Photographs: Erin Zimmer]
Calling a pastry "buttery" seems a little redundant, but the Kouign Amann, is like a croissant multiplied by a stick of butter. Originally from the French region of Bretagne (where it actually translates as "butter cake"), it has that delicate layer thing happening inside kind of like babka, topped with a golden crackly sugar shell.
At Patisserie Kouign Amann in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal, they make warm batches of the namesake pastry all day long. The recipe sounds simple enough: a round of dough with gobs of buttery sugar water on top. But the lady at the register insisted that "people always seem to mess it up at home, which is why they come here."
I don't know what it was about this pastry—the ingredients aren't crazy complex—but I had to take another bite. And another. The pastry sheets inside stay moist while the outside crunch is like the tappable top part of creme brulee. After the jump, take a look at how it's made.
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From Serious Eats: New York
Posted by Carey Jones, November 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM
[Photo: Carey Jones]
Chef Ana Sortun is no stranger to spice. Chef and owner of Boston's Oleana and the James Beard 2005 Best Chef: Northeast, she has won numerous accolades for her daring Mediterranean-inspired cooking, drawing in spices and flavors both traditional and experimental.
And in a dinner of pairings, there may be no better pair than Chef Sortun and Lior Lev Sercarz, himself a seasoned chef and owner of La Boîte à Epice. Sercarz provides custom spice blends for numerous chefs, sourcing from across the globe and crafting his own flavors to complement their work. Armed with a selection of Sercarz's spices, Sortun along with Oleana's chef de cuisine Cassie Kyriakides Piuma and pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick created a truly memorable seven course meal at New York's James Beard House.
Our photo gallery, after the jump.
Interested in more James Beard dinners? Become a JBF friend for $29, and a fellow, gaining discounted access to dinners and events, for $250. Check the website for more information.
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Cook the Book: New Classic Family Dinners: quack, rebeccadiamond, Ron Manley, Monelle, and lucylucy. Winners have been notified by email and also appear on our Contest Winners page. Thanks to all who entered.
From Recipes
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 9, 2009 at 4:05 PM
"Somehow, the eggplant comes off with a distinct smoky aroma that you'll swear must have been cooked over charcoal."
[Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger]
Eggplants always amaze me. They're my favorite vegetable to cook with since they can be manipulated in such exciting ways. This recipe from Chow grills them until they're tender and soft, then mixes them with an astonishing number of herbs including basil, mint, scallion, and parsley. Thinly sliced red onions, which quickly marinate in some red wine vinegar, provide a nice balance. The resulting salad is acidic, fresh-tasting, but still full of depth.
Chow has its own method for grilling eggplants, but I'm quite fond of a technique I learned a few years ago from KCRW's Good Food podcast. All you'll need is a heavy iron skillet. Lay the eggplant on a hot iron skillet and turn them every five minutes or so until they're blackened and very soft.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 9, 2009 at 3:00 PM
"Everyone likes Mexican food and everyone likes Chinese food, so why not combine forces?"
[Flickr: R. E. ~]
Name: Don Chow Tacos
Vendors: Dominic Lau and Lawrence Lie.
What do you sell? Chinese-Mexican fusion
Twitter: @donchowtacos
Location and hours: For now, Thursday through Saturday from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., but we are looking to expand.
Tacos. [Flickr: R. E. ~]
How long have you been street fooding? About eight months.
How has Twitter affected business? Twitter is definitely a great communication tool that's changed the way people communicate—but the food is still the most important part. It's safe to say that Twitter has helped us attract a tech-savvy audience who can know exactly when and where we are at a moment's notice.
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From Recipes
Posted by cakespy, November 9, 2009 at 2:15 PM
Note: Jessie Oleson (aka Cakespy) drops by every Monday to share a delicious dessert recipe.
[Original artwork and photographs: Jessie Oleson]
Cliché as it may sound coming from a Seattleite, I must confess to feeling a small thrill around this time of year when Starbucks rolls out their holiday spread. Those cute red holiday cups are a harbinger of festive sugar bombs, including gingerbread and eggnog lattes, decorated cookies—but for me, the fondest memories are associated with the cranberry bliss bar.
In general I'm not a huge fan of mass-produced baked goods, but there is just something about this bar. And I'm not the only one: some online sleuthing revealed several odes of undying affection for the treat—as well as a bevy of copycat recipes.
I adapted this from one found on Mr. Breakfast. While they don't taste exactly like the ones at Starbucks, they are pretty excellent in their own right, with an extremely dense, moist cake studded with tart cranberries, spicy ginger and sweet white chocolate, all crowned with a winter wonderland of rich cream cheese frosting and white chocolate drizzle.
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Posted by Maggie Hoffman, November 9, 2009 at 1:30 PM
"The West Coast has hoppy IPAs, the Midwest has a strong tradition of pilsners and lagers, but the South has no real (craft) beer tradition."
Sean Wilson has a vision for the beer scene in the American South. Using heirloom grains and other ingredients from North Carolina farms, he and his collaborator, Chris Davis, hope to create a distinctly Southern style of beer.
They will open Fullsteam Brewery in Durham late this winter or early next spring. I chatted with Sean about the challenges he's faced and his plans for the brewery.
Name: Sean Wilson
Location: Durham, North Carolina
Occupation: President of Fullsteam Brewery
Tell us a little about Fullsteam and what you envision for your beers and your brewery. Fullsteam's mission is to be known as a distinctly Southern brewery. We accomplish this by brewing delicious beer using locally farmed ingredients, heirloom grains, and seasonal botanicals.
I'll admit it: upon first glance, we seem sort of out there—particularly for the American South. But our early test batches are producing some truly unique, well-balanced beers that go well with Southern food: Scuppernong Sparkling Ale, Sweet Potato, and a smoked brown porter called Hogwash! that's perfect with barbecue. We don't consider our beers "extreme." Quite the opposite. I often say that we make "beer for people who think they don't like beer."
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From Serious Eats: New York
Posted by Carey Jones, November 9, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Who is the tastiest cookie of them all? [Photo: Robyn Lee]
Let's be honest: it's hard to make a bad chocolate chip cookie. Anytime you've got something sweet, warm, and chocolatey emerging from the oven, odds are, it's going to taste great.
And yet there's that perfect cookie we all dream about. A precise balance of buttery, sweet, and salty. Fine chocolate that plays a big part but doesn't overwhelm. And perhaps most importantly, it's crisp around the edges, but soft and melty in the middle.
At Serious Eats, we're on a constant quest for that Platonic ideal of a cookie. So we decided to formalize our efforts to find New York's best. Much as we'd love to pit forty or fifty cookies against each other in a blind tasting, we didn't think even our professional sweet teeth could take it. Thus we've broken it into rounds, playoff-style. The result? The Serious Eats New York Chocolate Chip Cookie Championships.
Our methodology and the first installation, after the jump.
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From Recipes
Posted by Caroline Russock, November 9, 2009 at 12:45 PM
This is actually the Greek Cobb Salad from Michael Psilakis' restaurant Kefi. [Photograph: Robyn Lee]
When I deiced to tackle How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis I made the mistake of thinking I had to make a special trip to a Greek neighborhood to procure hard-to-find ingredients. Several hours and a trip to Astoria later, I returned home to find that Greek ingredients can be found in almost any supermarket.
Fresh vegetables, decent olives and feta, and a great vinaigrette are pretty much all it takes to make a great Greek Salad. Forget tired romaine, acrid olives, and past-their-prime slices of green peppers. This version of Greek Salad is a chopped salad, all of the components are cut into bite-sized pieces and dressed with a salty and tangy dressing that highlights them.
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of How to Roast a Lamb to give away this week. Enter to win here »
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 9, 2009 at 12:30 PM
Sometimes it seems like no cuisine is as underappreciated as Greek cuisine. It's a food culture with a long and glorious history of fresh Mediterranean ingredients, but why has it been relegated to the ranks of soggy spanakopita and wilted Greek salads, heavy with greying black olives and stinky feta?
Psilakis started in the front of the house, waiting tables in a T.G.I. Friday's.
This cuisine is crying out for a champion and Michael Psilakis is just the man for the job. Raised in a food-focused first generation Greek-American family in Long Island, New York, Psilakis was a late bloomer in the restaurant world. Unlike most chefs, Psilakis started in the front of the house, waiting tables in a T.G.I. Friday's. What started as a quick way to save for law school turned into a career in hospitality.
Over the next few years, he went from waiting tables to managing and owning restaurants. One day Psilakis found himself at the helm of an Italian restaurant with his head chef nowhere to be found. He traded in his front-of-the-house suit for chef's whites and, recalling the Greek recipes he grew up with, he transitioned from manager to chef-owner.
How to Roast a Lamb is Psilakis' culinary scrapbook, complete with photos of family and food alike. These are the plates that Psilakis' mom threw together for weeknight dinners, the meals that fed the entire Psilakis clan on special occasions, and the dishes that helped make Kefi and Anthos the restaurants they are today.
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