Entries Tagged 'food - misc' ↓

Jeff Wampler of Eclecdish.com offers a series of classes from knife skills to how to create babyfood on top of at home catering and some really interesting recipes, but mostly he’s a stay at home dad.

The extraordinary article on Ketchup finally up on gladwell dot com

After breaking the ketchup down into its component parts, the testers assessed the critical dimension of “amplitude,” the word sensory experts use to describe flavors that are well blended and balanced, that “bloom” in the mouth. “The difference between high and low amplitude is the difference between my son and a great pianist playing ‘Ode to Joy’ on the piano,” Chambers says. “They are playing the same notes, but they blend better with the great pianist.” Pepperidge Farm shortbread cookies are considered to have high amplitude. So are Hellman’s mayonnaise and Sara Lee poundcake. When something is high in amplitude, all its constituent elements converge into a single gestalt.

I remember in the old days of working in offices, some of the women and maybe a couple of men would put together favorite recipes to share, photocopy, bind and give to each other.  Some fundraisers even revolved around collecting recipes and selling it in a cookbook format.  Well just found out about a new venture in beta that allows you to cull recipes from various cooking sites and get it printed and bound.   It looks like this would also make a great bridal shower gift or high school/college graduation gift.

 Tastebook.com

• Design beautiful, personal cookbooks
• Organize all your recipes in one place
• Search over 25,000 recipes from Epicurious.com, Gourmet and Bon Appétit
• Share recipes with friends
• Discover new dishes in our Featured TasteBooks

Home cooks share their secrets. Janet Fletcher, Chronicle Staff Writer

The article reminded me of my early days of cooking at home.  At first I stuck to things my mom showed me, basically filipino dishes.  Then into college I slaved away following all the details of cookbooks, even freaking out over how long to bake a lasagna by calling my brother to check my cookbook while I was at my boyfriend’s(now husband) apartment.  These days I’m pretty much just into farmer’s markets and seasonal produce and when I cook I use recipes as a guide having long ago chucked the precision for meals.  There are some good looking recipes at the end of the article and lots of advice from the home cooks.

With a baby on the way,  I embarked on a whole new world of prepared meals.  A couple of weekends ago I ventured into Deeelish. Basically you select several meals, which usually feeds about 6, I decided to split with a friend since we’re both two adult households.  For about $5 a serving you get a pretty delicious meal.  You go to this really nice prep kitchen where all the meal plans are layed out with all the ingredients, seasonings, and recipe.  After you assemble, you bring the bags to get vaccumed sealed at one station which then gets stored in a fridge as you continue assemblying meals.  You move around to the various stations based on your meal selections.  You can take breaks for coffee, tea, or drinks with snacks.  I have enjoyed all the meals we’ve had so far.  The food reflects the season and span a variety of cuisines.  For some meals side dishes are even included.

 I really like the fact that they buy their produce and meats locally.  The instructions for storing and cooking are straightforward too.  They can pre-assemble everything for an extra $4 a meal.  Also another service I thought was great is you can have meals shipped Fedex to a vacation home.  So you have the luxury of really good food without the inconvenience of grocery shopping, preparation and its clean up while on vacation.

http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/food/la-fo-dish15aug15,1,4816608.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

 Hugo Liu says he hates recipes; the whole concept seems hopelessly antiquated to a guy who starts cooking by sniffing spices and thinking. Yet he has invented a revolutionary way of developing them

Pancakes of the World, Dressed for Dinner  (free NY Times reg required)

Funny enough I’ve been craving pancakes/crepes recently so it was quite fun to watch the accompanying video.  Mark Bittman making a batch of Korean pan jun.   I think I’m going to have to hunt down a Korean restaurant for some pan jun.

Should we buy Michael Pollan’s nutritional Darwinism? - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/dining/28whole.html?ref=dining

Here’s a recipe that calls for marinating the short ribs, which seems a little odd if you’re going to cook them for 3 hours, but I guess it is for flavor rather than tenderness. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/dining/211prex.html?pagewanted=print