Delicious descriptions of food from literature.
You know what I like on my grilled cheese? A bit of cayenne pepper over the cheese, or a layer of mustard under it.
Play your cards right, and your starter could outlive you. In San Francisco, the world capital of sourdough, there are starters that are more than 150 years old.
Erica Gruen, the cable executive often credited with putting the Food Network on the map in the late ’90s [...] shifted the network’s target audience from people who love to cook to people who love to eat, a considerably larger universe
[...]
The historical drift of cooking programs — from a genuine interest in producing food yourself to the spectacle of merely consuming it — surely owes a lot to the decline of cooking in our culture, but it also has something to do with the gravitational field that eventually overtakes anything in television’s orbit. [He means advertising]
[...]
After World War II, the food industry labored mightily to sell American women on all the processed-food wonders it had invented to feed the troops: canned meals, freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant everything. [...] It took years of clever, dedicated marketing to break down this resistance and persuade Americans that opening a can or cooking from a mix really was cooking.
This wouldn't work for every soup in the book, but there are certain ones that could be easily thickened up and recycled, in a way, as a dip.
These are simple yet delicious breakfast scones made from mashed potatoes and are popular /staple breakfast dish in Scotland.These can be panfried unlike the other scones which are always baked. [...] The recipe is very simple and involves mixing of flour,butter and boiled,mashed potatoes with salt ,pepper and optional herbs and forming a dough,rolling it out and panfrying it.
They are arranged seasonally, beginning with spring greens season. [...] To help with seasonal eating, we also include some of our season-specific meal plans, listed at the end of the recipes.
EGGS IN A NEST ... SPINACH LASAGNA ... ASPARAGUS AND MOREL BREAD PUDDING ... CHICKEN RECUERDOS DE TUCSON ... ASIAN VEGETABLE ROLLS ... STRAWBERRY RHUBARB CRISP ... 30-MINUTE MOZZARELLA ... SUMMERTIME SALAD ... EGGPLANT PAPOUTZAKIA ... FRIDAY NIGHT PIZZA ... BASIL-BLACKBERRY CRUMBLE ... MELON SALSA ... CUCUMBER YOGURT SOUP ...
These little potato dumplings are fairly easy to make, but take a little patience.
Basic Recipe for Potato Gnocchi
And you can bake them in regular oven too, though it would be great to own a Mini-Tandoor; nevertheless, the experiment was absolutely successful
The food writing that I enjoy the most transports the reader from the humdrum to somewhere altogether more exciting – it also enhances my experience if I'm lucky enough to go there for real. The books I read if I do actually visit fall into two broad categories – those which have already whetted my appetite, and those I seek out while I'm there.
I found some lamb shanks in the freezer and was thinking it wasn’t a season for casserole, but I found a few recipes where they could be cooked in white wine. This long slow cook resulted in melt in the mouth meat and beans dissolving ...
One of the many things that boggles my mind is that as food bloggers become more proficient in their cooking skills–and technology get better, faster, and easier–the images of their dishes become shockingly good. I mean, perversely good.
Dr. Kessler isn’t convinced that food makers fully understand the neuroscience of the forces they have unleashed, but food companies certainly understand human behavior, taste preferences and desire. In fact, he offers descriptions of how restaurants and food makers manipulate ingredients to reach the aptly named “bliss point.” [...] Food companies “design food for irresistibility,” Dr. Kessler noted. “It’s been part of their business plans.”
... today we're talking about the physical order in which the ingredients are layered. By stacking your burger in a certain manner, you can actually help tame the rogue condiments and escaping vegetables (we're looking at you tomato) and enhance the flavor of your burger
I became an Italian food goddess when I realized the following:
Fresh vegetables of the season + pasta = a fabulous bowl of Italy.
Pasta by the [northern hemisphere] month
May: Asparagus Broth with Seashell Pasta, Lime & Pecorino ... June: Zucchini, Fava & Arugula Soup ... June: Watercress & Wonton Soup ... July: Yellow & Green Bean Soup with Ditalini ... July: Fennel & Tomato Soup, with Tiny Pasta ... August: Basil-Scented Zucchini, Yellow Peppers & Red Tomatoes .. August: Corn, Zucchini & Tomato Broth with Cheese Ravioli
A compilation of medieval recipes from authentic sources adapted for the 21st century kitchen, along with diverse facts on food & feasting in the Middle Ages & Renaissance and other historical culinary items.
To make a Herring-pye.
Put great store of sliced Onions, with Currans and Raisins of the Sun, both above and under the Herrings, and store of Butter; put them into your Pye, and bake them.
And may be made out of the entrails of the mackarel, the liquor that runs from the herrings which may dissolve anchovies, and with a mixture of oysters and limpets and the testaceous fishes, whereof every one makes his own pickle, and varieth the taste of sea water.
This list comprises 50 of our favourite food blogs but is by no means exhaustive. Times Online invites users to submit their favourites for a follow-up article using the comment box below.
Sometimes we’re in the mood to buy every expensive gadget we see; other times we want to whisk everything off the counter and keep only the necessities. In the spirit of early spring cleaning, we’ve put together a list of the 10 kitchen tools you need to whip up (almost) anything.
... the trick with stock is to roast the bones first to get some caramelized flavor going, then to slowly heat them in water until a bare simmer, and then let them cook that way, gently, for a good long time. With beef stock, it helps to include some beef scraps or stew meat, as well as aromatic vegetables and herbs. Also a few veal bones will help provide gelatin to the stock.
According to Anne Sage, author of a popular design blog The City Sage, a good food blog is like a trusty friend. “It should illuminate the blogger's personality, whether he or she is writing about a recipe for scones or their latest kitchen gadget. It’s like getting a recipe tip from a good friend, and who doesn't love to get kitchen advice from someone whose taste you trust and admire?”
Although the recipes in one book are often similar to those in another, their presentation varies wildly. There are Lutheran cookbooks, Wiccan cookbooks, feminist vegetarian cookbooks (“The Political Palate”) and satirical cookbooks. There are instructions on cooking the food that Jane Austen, Sherlock Holmes and Thomas Jefferson might have eaten. Cookbooks have been written by French prisoners, the pop singer Tom Jones, the astrologer Nostradamus and the winners of the Miss America competition.
The reason for this profusion is that cookbooks promise to effect a kind of domestic alchemy. Although seemingly straightforward, they hold out the hope of liberation from a routine of leftover chicken and from children who refuse to eat food of any colour except white. To follow their instructions—or, as Mr [Nigel] Slater would prefer, to be inspired by them—is to turn a mundane task into an engaging, romantic process. Cookbooks also provide an opportunity to delve into distant cultures without having to turn up early at the airport or read subtitles.
The first Western cookbook appeared a little more than 1,600 years ago. “De re coquinara” (concerning cookery) is attributed to a Roman gourmet named Apicius who, legend has it, poisoned himself upon learning that he could no longer afford to eat fancy food.
Published this month, John Reader's The Untold History of the Potato charts the tuber's 15,000-year story from the US to China to Peru, Mrs Beeton to Charles Darwin to McDonald's. Here, he chooses his top 10 books on the not-so-humble spud.
...
7. The Potato: Evolution, Biodiversity and Genetic Resources by JG Hawkes
Hawkes was a leading figure in 20th-century potato research whose memoir of the British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition to South America 1938-1939 ...
I
I am a saucy rolling blade,
I fear not wet nor dry,
I keep a jack ass for my trade,
And thro’ the streets do cry
Chorus. And they all rare potatoes be!
And they’re, etc.
II
A moll I keep that sells fine fruit,
There’s no one brings more cly;
She has all things the seasons suit,
While I my potatoes cry.
Chorus. And they all, etc.
Sprouts are harvested younger than micro greens and can be grown without soil in closed surroundings like bags or jars under sprays of lukewarm water. They should be harvested before their secondary leaves emerge. Alfalfa, sunflower, cress, lentil and buckwheat seeds grow quickly into sprouts and can be served up roots and all.
Micro greens are the adolescent versions of the leafy greens, edible flowers and herbs that are popular salad fixings. They are at their nutritional and flavorful best when they begin to display adult-size leaves. Seeds can be planted in potting soils, sprinkled onto sponges or fine-textured fabrics, and then misted, sprayed or watered as necessary. Among the most popular micro greens are cauliflower, peas, cabbage, arugula, radishes, beets, clover, mustard and alfalfa.
The smell of garlic, the horror of raw egg, the joy of a perfect Bolognese, the memory of a madeleine... four leading American writers on unforgettable dishes
Even Gordon Ramsay is heading Down Under, opening a branch of Maze in Melbourne's Crown Casino complex in 2010.
Ramsay knows that while spectacular rainforests and outback deserts are all well and good, the best food hugs the urban coastal fringes of this sunburnt country. By modelling itself on Las Vegas, Crown Casino has already snared the cream of Australian cheffery, including Rockpool's Neil Perry, Paul Bocuse-trained Philippe Mouchel, and the Sydney Opera House's Guillaume Brahimi, as well as being home to Nobu's first Antipodean outpost. I'm currently on walkabout here myself, camping out at its most intriguing new opening, Giuseppe Arnaldo & Sons.
To bury a slender chicken, to raise an old feather, to surround a garland and to bake a pole splinter, to suggest a repose and to settle simply, to surrender one another, to succeed saving simpler, to satisfy a singularity and not to be blinder, to sugar nothing darker and to read redder, to have the color better, to sort out dinner, to remain together, to surprise no sinner, to curve nothing sweeter, to continue thinner, to increase in resting recreation to design string not dimmer.
