Eat Different

ViaFine Cooking

No matter what kind of Thanksgiving cook you are, you’ve come to the right place. Wondering where to begin? For total ease, try one of our menus, complete with shopping lists and timelines. Regardless of whether you have four hours or forty-eight, whether your guest list is small or large, we’ve got the solution for you

Food Hacking Wiki

Welcome to the Food Hacking Wiki. We invite you to check out our works in progress- recipes in development, dining projects, kitchen hack labs, research on products and techniques, and other culinary writing.

part molecular gastronomy, part geeks-at-play it’s an odd and fun read. for example

Hot chocolate Mousse
From Food Hacking

 

Recipe

 

225 g 30% cream
150 g 64% chocolate (Valrhona Manjari)
1 g xanthan gum

• Bring cream up to the boil and blitz in xantham gum.
• Whisk into chocolate.
• Pour into a heated Nitrous Oxide Siphon and add 4 charges. Dispense immediately.
  Developed and conducted by Sam and Marc for fun.

Development

• Push the cream element so there is more air in foam. Need to maintain richness and melting character
• Replace the cream element with boiling water to get a cleaner chocolate taste
• Try using foie gras, stabilized with deodorized cocoa butter.
• Leave out xantham gum.
• Flavor with mexican hot chocolate (cinnamon, vanilla).

 Or, how to bake a four-tiered chocolate cake in one small oven, fit it into an overhead bin and then drive it over a mountain range.

Via Wandering Spoon

Via SF Gate

Almost everyone agrees that a little Brett is not a bad thing. It’s generally less of a problem in white wines, and at low levels it can give some red wines cedar, tobacco or cigar-box aromas, scents frequently used to describe Cabernet Sauvignon and generally thought of as pleasant. It also mutes some of the fruitiness of youth, making the wine seem more mature and complex, at least in the short term.In other wines, or in greater concentrations, the smell becomes more leathery and animal-like, evoking adjectives such as horsey, wet horse blanket or sweaty saddle. Although some people can enjoy these smells, many find them unattractive.

At their worst, Brett aromas turn medicinal, reminding many tasters of the inside of a metal Band-Aid box. The animal scents get funkier, more barnyard-y.

via SFgate

Nothing illustrates the interweaving of simple art and complex science in cooking better than homemade mayonnaise. One of the classic sauces of French cuisine, mayonnaise is nothing more than tiny droplets of oil suspended in a matrix of egg yolk and water, with a dash of lemon and a pinch of mustard to add flavor and structural stability.

Check out the entire series on basics, from Blanching to Skinning an onion

via SFgate (San Francisco Chronical)

Craigslist has dozens of help-wanted listings from the Bay Area’s top restaurants - all vying for the dwindling numbers of experienced cooks willing to put in long, hard hours for pay that barely covers their cost of living.”They say they have all these bills and have to pay the rent, and they can’t be making $12-$13 an hour,” Lahlou said.

That crunch, plus many young cooks’ expectations of the “Top Chef” high life, are just two of the factors that may make San Francisco’s unique mix of chef-owned high-quality neighborhood restaurants a thing of the past.

via the New York Times

BEFORE Katrina, John Besh was simply a good chef with a fancy restaurant that had a habit of making top 10 lists around the country.After Katrina, he became known as the ex-Marine who rode into the flooded city with a gun, a boat and a bag of beans and fed New Orleans until it could feed itself.

from Rouxbe - The Recipe to Better Cooking

Cook an entire meal by multi-tasking like a chef. Use our step-by-step video player and refer to helpful tips to create the perfect Thanksgiving meal.

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

KQED QUEST Radio Segment

We’ve all heard the latest health advice: avoid transfats. Eat more fruits and vegetables. But for many school children, their cafeteria lunch menus haven’t caught up. This year, an effort to get healthy foods to the school lunch table is tied up in a much larger debate– national farm policy.