Posted by Erin Zimmer, April 23, 2008 at 3:00 PM
It's tough to explain my mayo hatred. I like eggs, lemon juice, salt and vinegar individually. I even love dijon, another key player in the pale-yellow creamy amalgam. But all together as one happy family? Ick.
I'm a "hold the mayo" kinda girl, but Nicole's photos over at Pinch My Salt make a pretty good case for the homemade version. She and Orangette, who wrote her Bon Appétit column this month on the ever-baffling condiment, have been all about whisking eggs to create their own Best Foods alternative. (Still skeptical on this end.)
Erin Zimmer is a new media analyst who frequently writes for Washingtonian, DCist, and other D.C. publications.
Posted by Robyn Lee, April 11, 2008 at 2:00 PM
As I tend to like fresh cheese in spherical form, I was instantly drawn to Marianna's homemade labneh, a creamy, fresh, Middle Eastern cheese made from strained yogurt and preserved in olive oil. Follow Marianna's directions to make it at home; it's part of a typical Middle Eastern breakfast!
Previously
Photo of the Day: Mshalalé Cheese
Hard Labor: A Look At Cheesemaking
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 31, 2008 at 2:15 PM
Even though I don't live in Seattle, I'm hooked on MSG150, a blog that aims to review every restaurant in Seattle's International District (Chinatown) with freakishly precise data (such as quality of chopsticks, length of waiting time for food, and fortunes received from post-meal fortune cookies), excessive photos, and humorous commentary. If all this information is too much for you, you can skim reviews just by looking at the number of chopsticks awarded to each restaurant from a scale of 1 ("dog food") to 5 ("great!"). The world needs more obsessively comprehensive food blogs like this one.
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 28, 2008 at 3:15 PM
I wouldn't put cheesecake on my list of "Most Favorite Desserts," but when I saw Fanny's very vanilla cheesecake (cheesecake très vanille) on her blog Foodbeam, I got a craving. It doesn't help that Fanny's beautiful photos make me look at my own food and want to cry. After reading her description of the cake, I wanted to cry some more: "rich and thick yet feathery," "fragrant with vanilla," atop a milk chocolate crust with a "pleasing buttery aftertaste." Recreate the deliciousness in your home by following her recipe. I'll just continue to oogle her photos.
Previously
Step into the Sweetest Kitchen in Paris
Cook the Book: Honey-Vanilla Cheesecake
Cheesecakes Gone Wild
Junior's Apple Caramel Cheesecake
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 27, 2008 at 5:45 PM
Tina Wong (aka The Wandering Eater) documents her meal at Momofuku Ko, chef David Chang's newest restaurant in New York City, with a liberal helping of food porn and mouthwatering descriptions. Her final verdict: "YOU MUST TRY IT!" Just grab one of those notoriously difficult online reservations and you're in!
Previously
Ed Levine's first impressions of Momofuku Ko
Photo of the Day: Cheddar and Bacon Chive Scone
Photo of the Day: WD-50
Unique Desserts at the Dessert Studio in New York City
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 19, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Why had I not heard about the glorious marriage of muffin and goo-filled chocolate treat before reading Nicole Weston's recipe for Cadbury Creme Egg Muffins? Weston say that while you probably wouldn't want to serve these at any regular brunch (but...but maybe I do!), they're good for Easter and may prevent you from eating a bag of Cadbury Mini Creme Eggs all at once, "since you’ll have to eat through each muffin to get to them first." I like that idea; stagger your intake of eggs by wrapping each one in a muffin.
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 13, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Last month on a visit to Butuan City in the Philippines, writer Robyn Eckhardt and photographer David Hagerman of Eating Asia witnessed the traditional processing of the sago palm, a plant mostly used for its tapioca-like sago flour. They thoroughly document the breakdown of the "Tree of Life" in three parts: extracting starch from the hack-out trunk shreds, using the flour in sweet coconut-flavored sago flatcakes, and frying up the fat-rich sago worms that hatch in the sago palm's trunk.
Never before have I wanted to try something made of sago so badly. But I think I'll save the fried worms for later, even if they tasted "crispy, salty, and greasy, with a lick of smoke."
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 7, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Today marks the first day of Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rat. Although the holiday marks the time for people to clean up their homes, reorganize their lives, pay respect to their ancestors, appease the Kitchen God, and conjure up enough luck to last them through the rest of the year, everyone knows that the central element to celebrating the new year is to stuff yourself with lots of food.
Foods chosen for Chinese New year tend to carry auspicious meanings. Wealth may be symbolized by whole fish, dried tofu, oranges, egg rolls, and dumplings. Long life may be represented by "long foods," such as noodles and string beans. All of the above and more relate to luck in addition to dried oysters, tangerines and turnips. As long as you eat...you know, something, you're probably going to be in good shape for the new year, whether that means adding an extra 10 years to your life, getting a raise, or giving birth to a baby boy.
Since Chinese New Year lasts from the first to the 15th day of the lunar month (new moon to full moon), that gives you two weeks to whip up some Chinese New Year-related recipes. After the jump are some recipes I've picked from the food blogosphere.
Continue reading »
Posted by Robyn Lee, January 17, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Rice Krispies isn't the only cereal that tastes good smothered in melted marshmallows and formed into chunky blocks of sugary carb-laden goodness. Check out Cakespy's comparison of six different cereals in treat-form—Corn Pops, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran, Shredded Mini Wheats, and Special K. She concludes that while Rice Krispies may be the best suited for a marshmallow bath, Corn Pops and Frosted Flakes are also strong contenders. [via tastespotting]
Dave Cook of Eating In Translation was tired of drinking the standard coffee, tea, and hot chocolate over and over again, so he searched the New York City area for other hot drinks to get him through the winter. His list of 18 wintertime drinks hailing from a wide variety of cuisines should keep your taste buds toasty without tiring them out.
Posted by Robyn Lee, January 11, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Sara Rosso, also known as Ms. Adventures in Italy, recently came back from her trip to India with beautiful photos and commentary about Indian street food and Indian Chinese cuisine. Sliced ice cream, atomically spicy vegetables, mini potato burgers, fried potato balls—I crave them all. Time to get my butt to India.
Just Bento is a new weblog by Maki Itoh with her bento recipes and tips. Each recipe requires no more than 30 minutes to prepare and is illustrated with a handy timeline. [via rp]
Posted by Robyn Lee, June 13, 2007 at 9:00 AM
This bowl of homemade ice cream from My Husband Cooks may look innocent, but deep within its sweet, milky, aerated folds lurk chopped salted and roasted cashews, toffee chunks and marshmallow fluff. The flavor, dubbed Uneven Pavement Ice Cream, was born from a desire to create something reminiscent of Rocky Road Ice Cream but with more marshmallow intensity:
I wanted veins of precious white marshmallow fluff running through the heart of my ice cream. I wanted the taster to discover strands of marshmallow sticking to the roof of her mouth. And I wouldn’t settle for the jarred fluff. No, sir. I looked up the recipe for making my own.
Check out the recipe to churn out a batch of the tooth-achingly sweet, diabetic unfriendly ice cream at home. I'm tempted, so very tempted.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 10, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Unable to get a reservation at Thomas Keller's French Laundry, Carol decided to make her way through his French Laundry Cookbook instead, one recipe at a time. She's blogging it, of course—complete with photos of the process from mise en place to finished product—so you can follow her escapades at French Laundry at Home.
The project is a lovely idea, but the thing that really makes it work is that Carol is a fantastic writer with a great sense of humor and is unafraid of sharing her frustrations when things go awry. Last week she made the candied apple dessert from the book, which turned out to be a success taste-wise, but found the experience of making it so tedious that she warns, "Do NOT try this dish if you are busy. Or not busy. Or have a life. Oh yes, you may look at the recipe, scrutinize the three pages it takes up in the book, and think, "Well of course I can do this over three days, with just doing a little bit here and there like the book suggests." Yeah, I dare you. Call me if you can do it and not be annoyed." [via The Grinder]
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 27, 2007 at 11:15 AM
My favorite beverage review site of all time, Kevin Fanning and Josh Allen's The Knowledge For Thirst, has finally started up again after a painfully long hiatus. I guarantee you've never in your entire life read a beverage face-off quite like the one they just put up of Mexican Coke Vs. Passover Coke. Accept no substitutes.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 13, 2007 at 9:00 AM
Rhizome.org's ArtBase on Tea Blog, an ongoing project by British artist Ellie Harrison: "Every time Ellie has a cup of tea (or a different type of hot drink) she notes down the thought which is most on her mind during the first few sips. These thoughts are then uploaded to the Tea Blog at regular intervals. Tea Blog aims to expand indefinitely over the next few years, developing over-time into a vast database of thoughts – a diary of day-to-day life via the ritual of tea-drinking."
It sounds banal, to be sure, but I was surprised to find myself getting really interested after clicking through a few cups worth of entries—Harrison gives you just a snippet of her life, but it's just enough that your imagination starts piecing together what the whole might be like. (Also: the British really do drink a lot of tea, don't they?)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 12, 2007 at 8:42 AM
I'm not sure what cheers me up more this incredibly dreary, incredibly wet East Coast morning: that Louisiana's 2007 State Easter Egg has a tiny Emeril inside of it, or that there is a guy named Jacob out there somewhere who loves the Food Network so much that he's been running a blog called Food Network Addict since last June.
(And yes, he has the photos from Iron Chef Cat Cora's FHM shoot.)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 5, 2007 at 7:59 AM
The Chicago Tribune has just launched its new food blog, The Stew: "We’ll cover food, wine, beer and spirits as well as food shops, cooking, and restaurants. You’ll meet chefs, farmers, and foodies who fuel the eating excitement in this town. The Tribune’s Good Eating and At Play reporters will keep you posted on what’s cooking in kitchens, what’s hot in the markets, and what people are talking about at restaurants."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 27, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Jon Cockle's love of things edible, previously manifested as reviews of weird Japanese foods, is now being channeled into his latest project Open Source Food. He says, "On OSF you can upload recipes with pics, rate other people’s recipes according to originality, presentation and overall yumminess, use drag & drop to create original menus from any combination of recipes on OSF, get a blog widget for your blog that shows your last 10 recipes in a beautiful slideshow, and other tantalising features. It’s a social celebration of food for the new web." It's like Flickr for cooking!
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 22, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Did you pay attention in biology when the teacher covered taxonomy? I hope at least as much attention as Ms. Chicken in Every Granny Cart. It comes in handy.
Case in point? Escolar, aka Snake Mackerel , aka Lepidocybium flavobrunneum, which is sometimes passed off as Chilean Sea Bass (another misnomer as they aren’t even bass), aka Patagonian Tooth Fish, aka Dissostichus eleginoides and I believe also Butterfish of which there are three kinds, Alaskan (Anoplopoma fimbria), American (Peprilus triacanthus) and Pacific (Peprilus simillimus), but may actually be a kind of Oil Fish (Ruvettus pretiosus).
Savory, with a Side of Sunshine [A Chicken In Every Granny Cart]
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 22, 2007 at 3:51 PM
You may think you love cookies, but chances are Anna Ginsberg's passion for them far outstrips yours. I mean, her blog is called Cookie Madness. She bakes something every day and her combination of talent and persistence have paid off, big time: she won last year's Pillsbury Bake-Off!
Posted by Alaina Browne, March 21, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Ever thought about opening your own restaurant? Brett is, and he's blogging about it on In Praise of Sardines. His most recent post on his reaction to his architect's open kitchen design is a fantastic insight into the process and Brett's food and cooking philosophy: "This is exactly what I want Olallie to represent. Honesty. Truth. Openness. The restaurant exposed, transparent. Letting everyone know 'we're not hiding anything.' "
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 15, 2007 at 5:26 PM
"We are intrepid cake tourists, travelling the globe in search of amazing cake. Aghast at the lack of cake information in tour guides we will tell you the reader where to go for the best cake, wherever you are in the world. Obviously this may take some time but we're willing to do what it takes: eating lots of cake." The Cake Tourism blog, where the cake lovers of the world unite!
[via justhungry del.icio.us]
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 5, 2007 at 5:42 PM
Georges Rouzeau of Via Michelin magazine, on French food blogs: "95% of these new forums of expression are run, with passion and creativity, by women. A former rally driver, a bookseller, student, housewife, a former computer engineer, a student in Germany, they live in French Guyana, Canada, Portugal, Germany, Grenoble, Paris or Bordeaux. Many of them have travelled extensively. Some of them dream of making a living from cooking. All of them experience great joy in sharing and making exciting new contacts in the four corners of the world. Some have become friends in real life. The blogs with the greatest number of hits receive up to 100 e-mails a day, from requests for clarification about recipes to letters of congratulation. Véronique Chapacou, who ran Saveurs sucrées salées (which has closed down), or Mercotte, for example, are going to write their own cookery books for traditional publication."
Rouzeau links the following eight French blogs at the end of the article, but you'll have to parlez français to really read them: Café créole, C'est moi qui l'ai fait, Clea cuisine, Frais!, La cuisine de Mercotte, Papilles et pupilles, Papilles et pupilles for allergy sufferers, and Tasca da Elvira.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 5, 2007 at 1:45 PM
"Taste T.O. is a group blog dedicated to covering Toronto’s food and restaurant scene. From burgers to Berkshire pork, greasy spoons to gourmet hot-spots, cheese shops to Chinese take-aways - if you can eat it or drink it, we’ll write about it."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 2, 2007 at 2:36 PM
Chicagoist has a really fantastic interview with Grant Achatz of Chicago's highly-acclaimed Alinea, talking about all sorts of things like his philosophy as a chef and restauranteur, and how his creative process works in his kitchen and with his colleagues. This was my favorite thing to read:
C: What food-related websites or media do you keep an eye on, for ideas and feedback?
GA: I do it a lot less now, but I used to be really into all the blogs, like eGullet, LTHForum, all of those. I don’t read them so much anymore, I don’t know why. I feel that some of it is that they’re losing some credibility. There’s a lot of good, honest material there, then there’s a lot of … bullshit. You know, where, at the beginning (of these sites), there was a lot of useful information, honest information. Now, somehow, I feel that maybe it’s a lot of people using it as a microphone to hear themselves. Then it becomes less credible. But what I’ve always enjoyed about it is it's the voice of the guest. If people come here and have a lousy time for a particular reason, are they ever going to come back to the kitchen and tell me? No, it’ll never happen. You might get a phone call the next day, or the occasional letter. But, if they immediately go online and list their complaints, I’ll know and then I can fix it. So it was always about the instant understanding of how people perceive the experience. That’s why I read them.
Every once in a while I read interviews with chefs or owners talking about how much they hate that people can so easily write negative things about their food or their service on the internet, and every single time I've immediately put their names and establishments on my "never give them a dime of my money" list. Don't they realize they're badmouthing customers? And, in my case, turning off potential customers? Heaven forbid I eat at one of their restaurants and the food is bad or my waiter rude—what's to make me think I'm going to be treated any better if I complain about it there? My list of places that I know for sure will do right by me is pretty long, and life is too short for me to spend any of my time or money somewhere that might treat me like dirt.
Getting poor reviews for what you've basically put your entire life into is hard and hurtful, no matter what industry you're in. If someone's just talking smack, life is too short to spend time worrying on what crazy people think—let it slide right off your back. If the criticism is valid, then it does you a service to learn from what's been said and move forward.
Related: Danny Meyer on fixing mistakes, Danny Meyer and hospitality
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 19, 2007 at 2:55 PM
"Spices of Life is an innovative project that engages lovers of food, good health, and life’s pleasures through public radio, an on-line vlog and blog, and downloadable podcasts." It's put together by award-winning cookbook author Nina Simonds, veteran radio producer Sue Schardt and pioneering videoblogger Steve Garfield, so you know even though it's new it's already pretty good.
(Also as a nerd I have to say it's amazing that the videos on the site are shot with a cellphone—a Nokia N93, to be precise. The video quality would never make you think it if they didn't mention it upfront.)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 13, 2007 at 2:28 PM
If you're in Chicago, count yourself extra lucky this month despite the frigid temperatures—the people behind Gapers Block have just launched an excellent new food blog called Drive-Thru to edify both your belly and brain.
(Already I've learned about Evelyn Thompson, who does ethnic grocery tours of the city for locals and tourists alike, which sounds like an invaluable service no matter what city you happen to be in.)
Posted by Alaina Browne, January 18, 2007 at 4:19 PM
At the Carnivore Project, meaty thugs battle it out, tournament style: "The tournament will be a series of one-on-one (meato-y-meato) match-ups. Each dish has a champion, who will talk about their meat and explain why it deserves to be the Ultimate Meat. The viewing public will then decide which dish is worthier, by means of a vote."
Round 1 has begun. Serious Eats site A Hamburger Today takes up the gauntlet (against lamb) for what else?
Posted by Alaina Browne, December 5, 2006 at 1:03 PM
Gastrokid is a great blog about feeding kids good food. Two dads write it and share recipes and tales of success in getting their children to eat vegetables (like broccoli rabe) and fruit. A great source of inspiration for anyone trying to feed healthy, whole foods to their children. [via Typepad Featured Blog]
