Julia Child certainly could make a mean boeuf bourguignon, but did you know she could also whip up the building blocks of life?
It's kind of scary watching her describe scientific diagrams using her chef's knife as a pointer. But it's helpful for all us home cooks that she converts grams into teaspoons. Bon appetit!
In the arena of giant food, the record for the world's largest meatball doesn't last long.
It was just this September that Jimmy Kimmel and crew bested a Mexican meatball to take back the prize of world's largest meatball for America. But just five weeks later, the late-night funnyman's large lunch was bested by an Italian eatery in New Hampshire.
Nonni's Italian Eatery crafted a meatball on Sunday at a Holiday Inn in Concord, N.H., that decimated Kimmel's 198.6-pound meatball by about 25 pounds.
Emeril Lagasse is expanding his culinary empire this month with his first hamburger joint.
Burgers and More by Emeril will bring the world-famous chef's signature flair to the basic burger. It's slated to open Nov. 22 at the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pa.
"I really want to be the real thing," Emeril told Slashfood at the restaurant's unveiling at New York City's famed Carnegie Deli. "This is not going to be the dollar menu here."
Hot-headed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is finally waking up from his kitchen nightmare.
The reality show "Kitchen Nightmares" put Ramsay in failing restaurants across America for one week so the tell-it-like-it-is chef can try to turn the struggling businesses around. But the show proved too troublesome for the salty U.K. chef, who says he's through with it.
The foul-mouthed Brit admits the show's title is a little too fitting: "If the restaurants succeed, there's no praise," Ramsay told The Sun. "If they're screwed, we're blamed and get lawyers' letters."
More than two-thirds of the restaurants Ramsay "helped" ending up being sold or shut down, the paper said.
Slashfood attempted to contact the production company, Granada Entertainment, to clarify if both the American and British versions of the "Kitchen Nightmares" are canceled -- our calls were not returned.
There was nothing Yum-O about the cockroach that dropped in on Rachael Ray's lunch earlier this week.
The Food Network star was serving up some "sizzling soft tacos" to a group of sixth graders at New York City's Public School 89 when the uninvited guest crashed the party. A reporter for the New York Daily News noticed the six-legged bug scrambling across the table, and then watched as Charlie Dougiello, Ray's publicist, swatted the vermin away.
Ray, who was at the school to introduce her new healthy lunch menu, told the Daily News that she missed the whole thing. "I did not see that. It's unfortunate if there was [a bug]. I think that these schools strive to be the best across the board; I'm sure that includes cleanliness."
Soupy Sales, the comedian responsible for 20,000 pies to the face, has died at the age of 83.
Sales, who built his comedic reputation with characters like White Fang and Black Tooth on children's TV shows in Detroit and New York, took his first cream pie to the face in 1951, the Associated Press reports. He died Thursday in a hospice in the Bronx, N.Y., after battling health problems.
"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," Sales said in 1985.
Have any Soupy pie memories? Let us know in the comments below.
In a welcome respite from subpar airport fare, "Iron Chef" Masaharu Morimoto is partnering with hospitality and food service company Delaware North to provide fast-casual eateries serving Japanese bar food in airports across the country.
The bistros, appropriately titled Skewers, will serve an assortment of yakitori -- skewered grilled or deep-fried meats and vegetables -- served with rice bowls for portable consumption, as well as soups and salads. The restaurants' settings would take the form of two different models -- a take-out counter and a traditional sit-down approach -- and both would feature open kitchens.
According to Vito Buscemi, director of Concept Portfolio for Delaware North, the line has "great menu variety and great presentation -- all the meats and vegetables are grilled right in front of you. It's very quick, convenient and healthy, and we think it's going to have mass appeal."
In retrospect, it all sounds like something out of one of those strange dreams where everyone you watched on TV during the day converge into one subliminal place -- and Bret Michaels was there, and so was Rod Blagojevich! And Sinbad was taking Al Roker's drink order while Joan Rivers recommended the $100 burger. Oh Auntie Em, there's no place like home!
In reality, it was just another day in the life of a "Celebrity Apprentice."
When Slashfood received word through the grapevine that our very own "Star Chef" Curtis Stone was serving up gourmet cheeseburgers for charity at Burger Heaven on Monday, we had to go and root for the home team.
If you're a fan of Curtis Stone and happen to be in New York, it's your lucky day.
The chef is currently filming a reality TV show with a bunch of other celebs and will be at Burger Heaven at 9 E. 53rd St. from 10:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. serving gourmet hamburgers for the charity Feeding America. It's not cheap -- $100 a burger -- but it's not every day that you can buy a burger from Curtis Stone.
Todd English and Erica Wang.
Photo: David X Prutting,
PatrickMcMullan.com
Todd English is speaking out for the first time since calling off his wedding to Erica Wang.
"I couldn't go through with it," the 49-year-old chef of Olives told People. "I thought I'd met my partner, but as things progressed [it] went down hill."
English has appeared on "Iron Chef America" and PBS's "Cooking Under Fire."
In the People interview, English accused his jilted fiancee of "physical and verbal abuse" and allegedly hitting him in the eye in September. The New York Post reports Thursday that English visited a New York City police precinct to report the allegations.
But she denied the abuse allegations to the New York Post earlier this week, telling the paper that English has left her without a job (she was his personal assistant) and an apartment, and forced her to pay $12,000 for wedding expenses.
"An animal wouldn't treat another animal the way he has treated me," Wang told the Post. "He is forgetting I am human. I don't deserve this. He has caused me, my friends and family so much pain."
Slashfood reported on Oct. 5 that Wang had thrown a party despite the nuptials being called off.
Professional chefs prepare and enjoy a huge variety of different foods, some familiar to the rest of us, some beyond our usual pantry options, unless you're prone to stocking huitalacoche ( aka corn fungus), beef cheeks and tomato foam.
But even though they possess adventurous palates and have the opportunity to try ingredients and dishes from far and wide, that doesn't mean they like everything they eat. They all have one or two foods that just don't do it for them, their own personal food Kryptonite.
Slashfood asked some of the country's top chefs which edibles top their "thanks, but no thanks" list.
Rachael Ray
The ubiquitous Rachael Ray is famous for transforming all kinds of foods into 30-minute meals, but she has a serious aversion to mayonnaise. "Mayo is a four-letter word to me and I avoid using it when I can. It's all about that texture. I even make a no-mayonnaise potato salad is perfect for picnics since you don't have to worry about spoiling."
Friday night's Blue Moon Burger Bash hosted by Food Network star-turned-one woman empire, Rachael Ray, heated the festival up. Where there weren't burgers, the Food Network and food world entourage filled in.
A brief roll call included: the aforementioned Rachael Ray, Tyler Florence, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Ann Burrell, Art Smith, Jacques Torres, Rocco DiSpirito, Martha Stewart, Duff Goldman, Katie Lee (last year's Burger Bash champion), Ellie Krieger, Giada De Laurentiis...
New York's top eateries, including Minetta Tavern, Shake Shack, The Spotted Pig and Wollensky's, fired up their grills so they could claim the judges' favorite and the People's Choice Award. Check out our festival photos and more after the jump!
Paula Deen had a bit of a freak out last week on the set of the "Today Show" after an NBC staffer accidentally walked into the shot and hid behind a kitchen island.
"Oh my goodness, can you all see? What is he doing in here? Does he work here?" Deen asked Al Roker as she prepared her Nutty Orange Coffee Cake to promote the New York City Wine & Food Festival. "He doesn't have a gun does he? Should we pull out our knives?"
Roker laughed along with Deen, although it became a bit awkward after he asked her what she was making.
"Nervous. That's what we're making -- nerves, nervous," she said. "Is he from this country?"
But all became hunky-dory once more when Deen learned the man did indeed work for NBC.
"Oh so you do work here, well here," Deen said as she handed him a slice of cake.
Saturday Night Live included a faux cooking show last night featuring Food Network mainstay Guy Fieri's (played by Bobby Moynihan) death by avian evisceration. Whether that was more or less painful than his limb-from-limb shredding administered by Friday night's "I Call Bullsh*t" panelists Anthony Bourdain and Momofuku's David Chang at the New York Wine & Food Festival remains to be seen.
"Who chaps your ass?" asked Bourdain, and Chang was quick to rake Fieri over the coals, citing his "douche glasses," and "stupid f***ing armband," and went on to ask a gleefully obliging Bourdain to "catch me and kick me in the ass" should he ever find him similarly adorned. Chang went on to add, "I'm sure he's a swell fella."
We're sure that Fieri, upon hearing of this, sobbed big, hot, manly tears into a solid platinum handkerchief and drove away in his diamond-encrusted dune buggy to have his frosted tips replaced with actual 24-karat gold.
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