"Fear of both fried food and the act of frying means that doughnuts are strictly outsourced," writes Kelly Alexander in the New York Times Magazine. But it wasn't always so. For centuries doughnuts (and crullers, and fritters, and beignets) were staples of home cooks, who weren't afraid of a little hot lard. And there's no reason you should be either, says Alexander - doughnuts, a combination of flour, eggs and milk with baking powder or baking soda, are easy to make.
The article includes recipes for churros (Mexican stick doughnuts) with bourbon-spiked chocolate sauce, basic powdered cake donuts, and Earl Gray tea flavored donuts.
I have a secret pleasure to confess. I love checking out the contents of other peoples' refrigerators. I like seeing what condiments they keep on the door, whether they keep half & half around for coffee and if they have a stash of chocolate hiding out in the cheese drawer. It's also a great way to get to know someone new, because you'll be able to see in a glance how they keep things, whether they like spicy foods (presence of Sriracha is a dead giveaway) and generally what their food style is.
Edible Manhattan has a great interview in their latest edition with fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, that is essentially a tour of his refrigerator. He comments on the fresh figs and creamline milk that he keeps, side by side, with Weight Watchers 2-point chocolate bars. In the process, he shares a lot about his style of cooking, his attitude towards cooking and the things that influenced his food aesthetic as he grew up.
It appears that another Food Network star is getting her own magazine. That's right, the very intimidating (tablescapes? really?) Sandra Lee will be joining the ranks of Rachael Ray and Paula Deen by extending her media empire to include a bi-monthly glossy.
It will be called Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade (just like her show and books) and a subscription will cost $19.98 for six issues (cover price will be $4.99). The magazine will include entertaining advice, decorating tips and recipes, all with Lee's signature charm.
Will this magazine become a must-read or a must-skip for you?
When I cook for friends and family, I like to try out new things. I regularly put together strange recipes, attempt bizarre cooking methods, and generally have a lot of fun stretching my friends' (and my) horizons. Of course, sometimes these attempts fail, and the tale of my Polish lemon soup is notorious, as is the story of a Mexican lime/chicken dish that was borderline inedible.
Still, even in my worst culinary moments, I can proudly state that I have never, ever deliberately sabotaged a meal. Then again, this piece convinced me that there might be a lot to be said for using a meal to attack one's nearest and dearest. I especially liked the recipe for faux tofu:
Another one for the vegetarians. If they think they like tofu, wait until they sample your delicious mock tofu -- all you need is chicken fat, pureed pork loin, and five cups of piping-hot tallow. Cheryl will never know the difference.
I'm going to stick with cooking as means of showing love, affection, and concern. Still, I can't question the effectiveness of using it to destroy your friendships and alienate yourself!
It's time to welcome a new food blog/community to the internet fray. Yesterday, Hearst Digital Media and MSN launched their new joint venture, Delish (and with a name like that, how could it be bad). It's a food hub, along similar lines as Serious Eats (without all the cool brand-name bloggers) and Epicurious (minus the connection to Gourmet).
Right now they're focusing on fall, with rotating billboards tempting readers with features about autumn apples, school lunches and tips on how to avoid cooking disasters (okay, not so fall-ish). Their recipe archive is terrific, chock full of dishes from the Hearst Magazine stable of publications. This means that if you're looking for a recipe that was printed in Good Housekeeping, you've got an excellent new resource.
I use canning jars for everything*. I use a pint-sized one to hold my morning coffee and another for my oatmeal. I store grains, beans and pastas in the quart and half-gallon ones. I use wide-mouth ones for leftovers and for those days when I decide to take apart an entire melon for easy eating. When my water bottle goes missing, I don't worry, I just fill up a jar and tuck it into my bag. I have new jars, bought by the dozen in the grocery store and old ones, picked up at thrift stores and rummage sales.
There have been others who have been jumping on the non-traditional food storage in jars bandwagon lately and it thrills me down to the bottom of my jar-loving heart. Vanessa at What Geeks Eat recently tucked four colorfully layered "Dinner in a Jar" into her deep freeze. She stacked chopped green beans, cubed zucchini, quartered Roma tomatoes and a bunch of chopped chard in a wide-mouth quart jar, for use in future soups and curries. What an ingenious way to use the summer abundance to make dinner easier in the midst of winter!
Back at the end of July, Gourmet did something similar, suggesting that instead of making sandwiches to take along on a picnic, that instead you pack your meal in a jar. Make a layered salad that with colorful veggies for a feast for the palate and the eyes!
*Including canning. I've done more than at least two dozen jars of jams and fruit butters so far this summer.
Check out this week's New York Times magazine, which features several recipes from Chez Panisse chef David Tanis's new cookbook. The book, "A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes," embodies the Chez Panisse philosophy: "simple cooking meant to illuminate nature's perfect simplicity."
Think strawberries elevated with just a splash rose-petal syrup; braised carrots with a whiff of saffron, simple avocado salad of avocados, scallions, salt and limes. There are three featured recipes in the magazine: no-casing fennel sausage with nothing more than pork, salt, crushed red pepper, fennel seed and garlic; the aforementioned saffron carrots, and a moist, deeply mahogany duck breast with baked figs.
It makes sense that NYC would follow LA's desire to ban fast-food. Just this past March, a report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene revealed that in just two years obesity and diagnosed diabetes increased by 17 percent while the rest of the nation experienced just a six percent increase. An article from New York magazine reports that, according to the Sun, NYC Councilman Eric Gioia wants to impose a one-year ban on new fast-food restaurants. Considering the gravity of this health crisis, this desired measure hardly seems as puritanical as New York magazine describes.
The BBC explains that local policians in LA want to implement laws that would ban fast-food businesses from opening up in South LA where 32 percent of adults are overweight. In cities with high rates of obesity, these measures seem crucial. Personally, I think these bans would encourage businesses to offer affordable healthy food. At the same time, it would bring back the traditional ways of enjoying and cooking food.
Last night I went to a party at James, a lovely little restaurant in the Italian Market section of Philadelphia. It was in celebration of the fact that the chef and co-owner James Burke had been named one of Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs for 2008. It was a far swankier event than I am accustomed to attending, but ended up being lots of fun (even though I forgot to change out of my flip flops before I left the house and so spent some time feeling embarrassed about my flat, plastic shoes).
One of the hits of the evening was a signature drink (essentially a fancified gin and tonic) that they whipped up for the evening, called Hendrick's and Honeydew. Made with fresh honeydew and garnished with a sprig of thyme and a bit of the melon, it was refreshing and lovely, perfect for a swampy summer evening. Check out the recipe after the jump.
I'm always a fan of booze-based kitchen pyrotechnics, and a sucker for a good technique demo. The twain are meeting in this video from Gourmet.com's The Test Kitchen video series. In this particular installment, Gourmet's test kitchen director Ruth Cousineau talks her way through a flambé of sirloin pan juices, olive oil, and a goodly lashing of whiskey, outlining her strategies for forestalling danger along the way. Fire pretty. Video handy. Me hungry.
Other useful video tutorials include methods for measuring honey and flour correctly, coring apples, cleaning herbs, and general behind the toque tips and techniques from their staff's seasoned kitchen pros.
Gourmet's Barry Estabrook investigated the hows and whys of salmonella's introduction to the produce we eat. The following is an excerpt of his findings published on Gourmet.com.
How in the hell does salmonella get inside a tomato?
Excuse the bluntness, but that question has been much on my mind this week in the wake of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) warnings against eating raw red tomatoes. The agency took action after 145 diners in 16 states were sickened by tomatoes tainted with salmonella, a bacteria carried in the intestines of animals and humans.
After making several calls and receiving no satisfactory answer to my simple question, I finally reached David Gombas, senior vice president of food safety and technology at the United Fresh Produce Association, a trade organization. He frankly admitted that while there are a number of potential ways for salmonella bacteria to get from some animal's intestines into your fresh salsa, the exact mechanism remains a food-safety mystery that the industry would dearly love to solve. This explains why outbreaks of the disease are so common. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) says that more than 3,000 Americans have been sickened by tomatoes in 24 different outbreaks since 1990, a number that looks even more sobering when you realize that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 1 in 30 salmonella cases ever gets reported.
Writing in Slate, urban farmer L.E. Leone describes her emotions when killing one of her own chickens: "I kneel in the dirt, holding the body still while it flutters, and hyperventilate... I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death."
Which got me thinking: how would I feel if presented with a live bird and a sharp ax?
I'm pretty darn sure I could do it. I certainly eat enough meat that I should be able to deal with where it comes from. While, like many people, I've got issues with the meat industry as it exists in America today, I'm pretty comfortable with the concept of the food chain. I don't get grossed out by blood. I used to drive an ambulance. I grind my own sausage. But I've never directly killed anything bigger than a trout. Would it be weird? Would I cry, as Leone claims she does each and every time? If I didn't get teary, would I feel guilty for being an insensitive killer?
Women's Health is great, but they obviously made a typo when writing about the top food blogs - they listed Chow.com instead of Slashfood!
It's okay, though...we all make mistakes. I'm sure the copyeditors will fix that soon.
In the meantime, here are what WH thinks are the best food and drink websites, followed by my suggestions for others you may enjoy.
What's for Dinner is a rudimentary site with a great concept: it provides a week's worth of new recipes at the beginning of each week, so you don't have to rely on your own creativity when you come home exhausted from work. The recipes are certainly easy and not too time-consuming, but don't expect huge nutrition benefits: several of the dishes are fried, and only one is vegetarian-friendly. All Recipes has a "Recipe of the Day" feature, as well.
The Eat Well Guide is a decent search engine for finding local, organic foods nearest to you. There are other sites that offer this service, too - check out Local Harvest for co-ops and farmers markets near you, and visit Organic Highways for organic restaurants in your area.
With Cork'd, you can read and share wine reviews with other vino lovers, so you know exactly what to bring to your next BYOB. But Snooth and Wine-Searcher are just as good.
This Sunday's New York Times magazine is entirely dedicated to food. Here's the rundown:
I have a secret pleasure to confess. I love checking out the contents of other peoples' refrigerators. I like seeing what condiments they keep on the door, whether they keep half & half around for coffee and if they have a stash of chocolate hiding out in the cheese drawer. It's also a great way to get to know someone new, because you'll be able to see in a glance how they keep things, whether they like spicy foods (presence of Sriracha is a dead giveaway) and generally what their food style is. 
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When I cook for friends and family, I like to try out new things. I regularly put together strange recipes, attempt bizarre cooking methods, and generally have a lot of fun stretching my friends' (and my) horizons. Of course, sometimes these attempts fail, and the tale of my Polish lemon soup is notorious, as is the story of a Mexican lime/chicken dish that was borderline inedible. 
It's time to welcome a new food blog/community to the internet fray. Yesterday, Hearst Digital Media and MSN launched their new joint venture, 
Writing in 
New York Times Magazine's food issue
Chicken McNuggets frolic at New York City pet store
Eat your broccoli orbs! 
