America's fat problem: "I say unto you: Fat is good! Fat is necessary. Ask any chef. Fat does not make you fat, eating too much makes you fat! We aren’t filling our bodies with sodium because of the box of kosher salt we use to season our food, we’re doing it with all the processed food that’s loaded with hidden salt. And American cooks and American diners need to understand the differences."... More

Our friends at Eater San Francisco live-blogged the Golden Clog Awards. We are sure Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman were sufficiently inebriated (even in the daytime) to make the whole affair more than a little amusing. Some of the high-lowlights: The Fergus Award for "greatest achievement in pork and guts" went to David Chang of Momfuku fame. The Rocco for "worst career move" went to Tyler Florence for "Applebee's, Applebee's, Applebee's." Ina Garten won The Alton, for "being on the Food Network and yet, somehow, managing to not suck."... More

The Onion's Third Annual Surprisingly Specific Holiday Gift Guide on Michael Ruhlman's The Elements Of Cooking: "[He] has a different conception of the average American's baseline culinary competency."... More

There's a fine Judith Jones interview well worth reading on Michael Ruhlman's blog. Ms. Jones is dismayed by the state of cookbook publishing today. Ruhlman asked her for her list of pros and cons on the subject: I’m afraid I’ll give you mostly cons. I think [publishers] are afraid to touch a book unless the author is someone you can promote. You have to be a celebrity. And I’ve seen many really lovely cookbooks die aborning. So the people who have the television programs are known quantities—I mean this is true of everything in our culture. But it makes it much harder work to put across a lovely book like Katy Sparks’s Sparks in the Kitchen. She’s a chef who... More

Veronica of the eponymous Veronica's Test Kitchen recently made the pork belly confit from Michael Rulhman and Brian Polycn's Charcuterie, and boy does it sounds like something I want in my belly RIGHT NOW: " The confit was crispy on the outside, the meat falling apart but it was the fat that held the concentration of flavors derived from all the spices -- a perfect alchemy of complex tastes that explodes with flavor with each bite."... More

Yesterday we linked to Michael Ruhlman's response to Anthony Bourdain's Food Network rant, today we point you both to the return of serve from New York Magazine's Josh Ozersky in defense of Rachael Ray: "We don’t think this mandarin hauteur has any intellectual basis. Aside from the fact that it is unbecoming for a privileged and educated man to sneer at his own countrypeople, even by the standards of practical gastronomy his complaint doesn’t hold water. Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee are culinary lightweights, as they would be the first to admit, but they’re a product of — and engine for — people’s love for food. (...) For an amateur, taking tips from Rachael Ray is no less legitimate than... More

Michael Ruhlman discusses the online fuss generated by Anthony Bourdain's thoughts on the Food Network's hosts: "And the passion itself—over shows you don’t even have to watch. You’ve got to listen to George Bush; you don’t have to listen to Rachael. My god people care about this stuff. But will the food network listen? Not likely. They work according to their own methods, whatever those are. They’ve made their decisions based on something, and that something has resulted in the peculiar offerings addressed in Tony’s post. Clearly they know that the way to America’s vast girth is through mediocrity." (Who's your most/least favorite food personality on Food Channel? is still a hot topic in Serious Eats: Talk, go add your... More