That's right , a wasabi ice pop to function as both a palate-cleanser and a tart dessert. According to this week's New York magazine, Masaharu Morimoto, formerly on the Food Network's television show Iron Chef, just put this popsicle on his menu at Morimoto. It is made with fresh wasabi rather than wasabi powder which is much spicier.
It's not everyday that you find a spice being used in a dessert that is supposed to cool you down. Could this be the start of a new trend?
I haven't tried this wasabi popsicle yet. If any of you have, let me know your thoughts.
Fresh papayas are in season, and I keep finding myself in the grocery store, picking up various specimens and thinking "what are the chances I could eat all this before it went bad?"
I used to not like fresh papaya. I found them sickly sweet, tasting of cheap perfume with undertones of dirt. But that was before I learned to toss the fresh cubed fruit in copious amounts of lemon or lime juice, to cut the sweetness and bring out the intense floral notes. Cubes of coral-colored papaya make a beautiful addition to fruit salad (and they're a heck of a lot easier to cut than mango!); they're also terrific in smoothies or in sweet-tart salsa, served over salmon or Mahi-Mahi. But my favorite use is probably papaya sorbet. This Martha Stewart recipe, with lime juice and honey, is healthy enough to eat for breakfast. I bet it would be absolutely amazing in a parfait with granola and creamy, tart yogurt gelato.
This is Liz. She's an artist who works in a very delicious medium; Jell-O.
In this particular clip, she shows how she fashions San Francisco's entire Mission District out of the gelatin dessert.
The process is simple, but tedious: Liz takes pictures of the District, and then uses the photos to build molds out of balsa wood and foam core. Then, she builds silicone rubber molds around the sculptures, and when they dry, she makes the Jell-O and lets it set in the molds.
(Oh, and Liz makes Jell-O the way us normal people do, but sometimes she adds additional coloring to make the sculpture more vibrant). She also sprinkles dry Jell-O around the model to represent streets and parks).
One caveat about working with Jell-O (besides the overwhelming urge to consume your sculptures, of course) has to be the fact that eventually, it gets moldy.
But instead of letting that ruin her work, Liz uses the moldiness as a metaphor for change and adaptation within urban areas.
It's (unofficially) summer now and a lot of us are looking for dessert recipes for the season. I know a lot of people want dishes that don't require much cooking, that are simple to prepare, and that are still elegant and tasty. In an answer to that, The Kitchn has put together a list of nine simple, easy and elegant summer dessert recipes just for you.
My personal favorite recipe from the post is the berries macerated in liquor with whipped cream. The recipe for pears baked with lemon stilton also sounds delicious. All of the desserts presented promise to be quick and use (for the most part) pantry staples. They also all look amazing. Check it out for some great summer dessert ideas.
Cool off this Memorial Day with a batch of Coconut Carob Ice Pops instead of those sickly syrup-y popsicles you buy at the convenience store. Tiny Morsels has the recipe up on her blog, and it's so healthy and virtuous that you'll be begging your kids to chow down on one of these treats. They are made with tofu for a hit of protein and carob, which means that they'll be caffeine free (you can eat them for dessert without fear that you'll be up all night).
Last night's episode of Top Chef finally addressed the question that show has been toying with all season: Is it better to sidestep the rules and create an amazing dish, or to follow the rules and produce something mediocre? Until this episode, it seemed to me that the judges went with whichever answer matched up with the contestant who they wanted to send home (my mom accurately likened it to a card trick where you know the card before the trick starts, then "find" it through whatever means). But now they have finally established that a better dish is more important than one that follows the rules closely, and I hope for the sake of consistency that they stick by this for the rest of the season. Oh yeah, and the Elimination Challenge was nuts.
Last week, a reader requested a picture in this post that featured some sherbet or sorbet. I did a little Flickr digging and found this picture of Strawberry Tarragon Sorbet, which looks delicious and ready to be eaten. The picture was taken by Flickr user Habeas Brulee and you can find the recipe here.
I first encountered kuro mitsu in San Francisco not long ago, at a creperie in the Japantown mall. I ordered a crepe with green tea ice cream, red bean paste, strawberries, whipped cream (sounds totally overkill but is truly amazing), which came drizzled in a mahogany-colored syrup that tasted like a light molassas, with a hint of malt. The mystery syrup really brought the crepe together, somehow cutting through the sweetness with its odd, bright bite.
Later, through research, I discovered that this was kuro mitsu (literally, "black honey"), a Japanese brown sugar syrup not at all dissimilar to molassas. Made from unrefined Okinawan brown sugar, it is a central ingredient in many sweet Japanese dishes.
A Taste of Zen provides a recipe for making your own kuro mitsu. Drizzle it over pancakes, fresh fruit or ice cream, add it to tea or stir a spoonful into plain yogurt.
The last of the March snow is still on the ground and I was wearing my down coat all day, so The Tasty Island, a Hawaiian food blog, struck me as drool-worthy in two ways - the reviews of yummy Hawaiian food and the amazing palm tree and beach backgrounds in the pictures.
Check it out - coconut shrimp, fried mahimahi, lychee yogurt, takeout Japanese chicken katsu and way more, all rated on blogger Pomai's own Spam musubi rating system (Spam musubi, or spam on rice with seaweed, is an iconic Hawaiian snack) - five Spam musubi means superb, one means average. I'm considering trying to make the sweet, glutinous rice cakes called kakanin with coconut topping, which Pomai describes as the lovechild of a Rice Krispie treat and a mochi (Japanese glutinous rice dessert). I wonder if there are any cheap tickets to Hawaii on Travelocity?
What is it about Southerners and coconut cake? Maybe the thick drifts of ivory icing remind us of the snow we don't get. Maybe the lacy curls of coconut call to mind the frilled white gowns at the debutante balls we're (still, seriously) so fond of.
Though, in what's perhaps a sign of the changin' times in the New South, the best "classic Southern" coconut cake I've ever tasted was from a Thai restaurant near where I grew up in Durham, North Carolina.
I adore the looks of this Southern coconut cake from BigCity, Little Kitchen, adapted from Gourmet Magazine. So light and soft. I'd like to make this on a Sunday afternoon and take a fat slice out to the veranda with a good book. If I had a veranda.
Valentine's Day is this Thursday and here at Slashfood, we're using it as a reason to write about chocolate, treats and other holiday-appropriate desserts this week. I went digging around in our Flickr pool (come and join us!) to find something that went with the Valentine-theme and came up with these gorgeous Chocolate Almond Cakes created by Anita at Dessert First. The recipe comes from John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg's cookbook, Essence of Chocolate and you can find it on her blog here.
Today is our day for sweet Super Bowl treats and there's nothing like a cupcake for it's finger-friendly, eyes-elsewhere eating. I first came across The Artful Cupcake by Marcianne Miller more than two years ago, when some friends and I were preparing to make 200 cupcakes for a friend's wedding. We turned to this book for decorating tips and tricks, and managed to pull together some really gorgeous desserts for her big day.
While the Super Bowl isn't a wedding, and you don't need to get quite as fancy for desserts that are going to be eaten in front of the television, it might be fun to trick out your classic cupcake with some nice topping or unusual frosting. If that's your game, then this book is a fun resource to have on hand to that end. The images are beautiful and there are 36 inspiring projects from which to choose.
The perfect melding of sweet and salty, this pie will have your guests cheering for more, so you'd better make two, just in case.
Rocky Road Cookie Pizza From: Pillsbury Cookies, Brownies, and Bars
You will need:
1 pkg. refrigerated sugar or chocolate chip cookies in log form (it's okay to use them, just this once!) 1/2 cup chopped salted peanuts 1 cup miniature marshmallows 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 1/3 cup caramel sauce
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12-inch cookie sheet, and press the cookie dough onto the pan. Bake at 350 for 13-16 minutes until the "crust" is golden brown.
Remove the cookie from the oven and sprinkle evenly with peanuts, marshmallows, and chocolate chips. Drizzle with caramel sauce. Bake for another 5-10 minutes.
Cut into wedges and serve (if you're really daring, top your pizza with a dollop of whipped cream or caramel ice cream).
I am only mentioning these chocolate covered strawberries from Shari's Berries so that they may serve as inspiration for Super Bowl menus across the country, and not because I think you should buy them. The chocolate covered strawberries decorated as footballs, at almost $50 for a dozen, are way too ridiculously expensive to buy. I mean, really, $50?!?!
Strawberries are probably pretty expensive right now at your grocery store, but they certainly aren't anywhere near $50 for a dozen. Follow instructions for dipping them in chocolate, decorate them yourself as footballs with melted white chocolate, and use that $50 for something else.
Fresh papayas are in season, and I keep finding myself in the grocery store, picking up various specimens and thinking "what are the chances I could eat all this before it went bad?" 
Spoilers! Spoilers!
I first encountered kuro mitsu in San Francisco not long ago, at a creperie in the Japantown mall. I ordered a crepe with green tea ice cream, red bean paste, strawberries, whipped cream (sounds totally overkill but is truly amazing), which came drizzled in a mahogany-colored syrup that tasted like a light molassas, with a hint of malt. The mystery syrup really brought the crepe together, somehow cutting through the sweetness with its odd, bright bite. 
The last of the March snow is still on the ground and I was wearing my down coat all day, so The Tasty Island, a Hawaiian food blog, struck me as drool-worthy in two ways - the reviews of yummy Hawaiian food and the amazing palm tree and beach backgrounds in the pictures. 
and you can find it 
The perfect melding of sweet and salty, this pie will have your guests cheering for more, so you'd better make two, just in case.
I am only mentioning these 
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