Guilty Pleasures

'Cake Wrecks,' 'This Is Why You're Fat' - New Food Humor Books

by Sara Bonisteel, Posted Oct 14th 2009 @ 4:00PM

cake wrecks and this is why you're fat books Photo: Sara Bonisteel

We've long been fans of Jen Yates' fantastically funny food blog, Cake Wrecks, so we were mighty pleased to find the she's finally assembled enough disastrous misspellings, ill-conceived concept cakes and just downright nasty icing snafus to fill a whole book, "Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong."

Also on bookshelves this month, Jessica Amason and Richard Blakeley's "This Is Why You're Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks."

See our favorites from both tomes after the jump.

Filed under: Food Oddities, Guilty Pleasures, Books

How to Cook a Cow Head in New York City

COMMENTS 3

by Kat Kinsman, Posted Jul 27th 2009 @ 11:00AM

Cow head in banana leaves at Hill Country. Photo: Kat Kinsman

There comes a time in every girl's life -- when she's ripping open the long-braised skull of a short-lived calf in order to better wobble out its beer-marinated brain -- that she smiles contentedly and realizes she loves her life an awful lot. Then she goes for the eyes.

Well OK, not every girl's life -- but at least those of a troika of squeam-free dames including Hill Country's executive chef and cookbook author Elizabeth Karmel, Homesick Texan writer Lisa Fain and lucky, lucky me. And it all happened because of Twitter.

See a step-by-step barbacoa making slideshow and read a description after the jump. Warning -- it's not for vegetarians or the faint of stomach.

Filed under: Guilty Pleasures, Head to Tail, Ingredients, How To, Offal

Cans Across America

COMMENTS 0

by Kat Kinsman, Posted Jul 20th 2009 @ 5:00PM

Pickles. Photo: Kat Kinsman

There's a canning revolution going on and Kim O'Donnel -- former food writer for the James Beard Award-winning Washington Post -- has brought it to a boil.

Upon tremendous response to her re-Tweet of an Ethicurean post about a canning party in San Francisco and subsequent suggestion that Seattle and other cities follow suit, O'Donnel asked interested home canners to contact her. Thus Cans Across America was born. On the weekend of August 29-30, cities across the nation will host classes, can-a-thons, canning meet-ups and raise awareness of this retro-haute preservation method.

More about the nation's can-do attitude after the jump.

Filed under: Trends, On the Blogs, Retro cookery, Guilty Pleasures

Smoked Lemonade and Other Summertime Libations

COMMENTS 4

by Kat Kinsman, Posted Jun 9th 2009 @ 3:00PM

I'm stingy with my smoke.

Not in a "don't bogart that can, man" way. Just that if I'm going to go to all the trouble of stoking a hardwood lump charcoal fire, obsessively monitoring its low-'n-slow-ness for a goodly chunk of the day, feeding its greedy gut with beer-soaked mesquite and hickory chunks at half-hour intervals all for the sake of an albeit fabulous brisket or pork shoulder, I'm gonna want a bit more return on the investment.

Here's where foil pans of salt, cherries and lemons come in.

Filed under: Guilty Pleasures, Drink Recipes, How To

Ritz Mock Apple Pie

COMMENTS 11

by Kat Kinsman, Posted May 8th 2009 @ 6:00PM

No apples were harmed in the baking of this pie.

Perhaps at some point in the distant past, it was possible for a person under the age of 50 to whip up a mock apple pie, hold the irony. Now in an age wherein slowstainable locaheirganic produce is de rigueur in many circles (not mine, but then again, I pour cherry soda all over unsuspecting hams and eat brains from a can) it seems almost viciously retrograde to dump lemony simple syrup on top of a pile of mushed-up crackers and pass it off as fruit.

So don't do that. Just enjoy it for its bizarrely satisfying damp cracker heft. Use, I dunno, heirloom leaf lard in the crust or send a tithe to Michael Pollan if you feel you need to, but really, this pie is in no need of apology.

Get the Ritz Mock Apple Pie recipe after the jump.

Filed under: Retro cookery, Guilty Pleasures

20 Questions with a Slashfoodie - Rebecca Flint Marx

COMMENTS 0

by Rebecca Flint Marx, Posted May 7th 2009 @ 11:00AM

Do you have a personal blog?

Sort of. It's in the works. Ask me later.

What is your day job, or rather, what do you do when you're not food blogging?

I write about food for other publications like Time Out New York, Gourmet and Metromix. I've also written for places including The New York Times, Interior Design, ELLE, New York Magazine and Salon. And I was a baker in a past life before attending the French Culinary Institute for formal training.

How long have you been blogging with Slashfood and what is your favorite post?

Less than a month. If we're talking about a favorite post that I've written, I'm partial to my post about cooking an ostrich egg.

Filed under: Our Bloggers, Guilty Pleasures

20 Questions with a Slashfoodie - Alex Van Buren

COMMENTS 0

by Alex Van Buren, Posted May 5th 2009 @ 11:00AM

When new bloggers join the Slashfood team, we like to make sure they get a proper introduction to our readers. Meet the latest addition to our team, blog editor Alex Van Buren.

Do you have a personal blog?

Yes. It's where I post recent articles and scribble about various New York City food discoveries.

What is your day job, or rather, what do you do when you're not food blogging?

I am a full-time food nerd. I'm the new editor of Slashfood, have written for Gourmet, Martha Stewart Living, In Style and Time Out New York and am the co-author of "Clean Plates NYC: The Healthiest, Tastiest Restaurants in Manhattan," which published last week.

How long have you been blogging with Slashfood and what's your favorite post?
Here are my faves from each of our great writers during the month I've been editing here: Cheese. Beer. Julia. Egg creams. Cheap wine. Chickens. Croque monsieur. Ostrich eggs. Greek cuisine. Starter cookbooks. Bread pudding ice cream. And let's not forget the flaming bacon lance of death.

As for me, I loved eating dinner in bubble almost as much I enjoyed seeing more than 700 of our readers defend their favorite "bad" beers.

Filed under: Our Bloggers, Guilty Pleasures

How Key Is Planning Ahead?

COMMENTS 1

by Kat Kinsman, Posted Apr 16th 2009 @ 2:00PM

Last night on a subway halfway under the East River a quick purse excavation confirmed what we suddenly feared -- a distinct lack of house keys on our person. The day's lunch of leftover Easter ham and homemade challah bread satisfied our epicurean side but was woefully inadequate when it came to blood sugar maintenance -- hence the walking away, the leaving the keys behind and the "aw, crap!"

We panic a tad in moments like this and scramble right to our happy comfort place -- mentally cataloging the contents of our fridge, flipping the pieces this way and that until they interlocked and a picture formed.

The ham, gotta get through the ham. Well it could go with the red cabbage ... no, no ... the scallions. And eggs, oh right! We remembered to buy eggs. Tortilla espanola? Oh wait, got it -- still have that puff pastry left over from the Eccles cakes and that makes ... sacre damn bleu! We've got the makings for a serious quiche -- if we can actually get into the house.

By some strange miracle (we like to think it's The Secret, of course) our beloved husband materialized on the same train car two stops before ours, and in lieu of a civilized "Hi honey, how was your day?" we collapsed into him sighing "We'regonnahavequichetonightpleasedon'targue." Once in the house, we made a beeline for the Julia Child to verify proportions, and got to rolling, chopping, whisking -- grateful not to have to think, just to act. Half an hour later, there was a ridiculously delicious quiche in front of us, without single extra cent or second spent at the grocery store.

Perhaps y'all are more forward-thinking than some of us, but when do you actually decide what's going to be for dinner that night? Do you cook it all up on Sunday, and apportion throughout the week? Do you daydream about what's on hand and pick up any extra ingredients on the way home? Or do you stand in front of the fridge, staring, and make do with what's in front of you?

Dinner planning - when does it happen?
Days ahead of time	92 (28.3%)
Earlier that day	137 (42.2%)
Right at dinner time	85 (26.2%)
I don't cook.	11 (3.4%)

Get the Ham and Gruyere Quiche recipe after the jump.

Filed under: Guilty Pleasures, Ingredients

Slashfood vs. the Volcano

COMMENTS 5

by Kat Kinsman, Posted Apr 8th 2009 @ 10:30AM

We can't swear to it, but we suspect that this Momofuku Milk Bar Volcano was sent here from Planet Chang either to teach us or to enslave us. We can't be certain of its purpose, but what we do know is that all the breakfast food bravado we've flaunted up to this point -- Brooklyn deli egg and cheese bombs, full-on Irish black and white pudding spreads, Meatnormous® BK sammies and half-sow Bellagio Buffet crepes laid waste to in short order -- meant diddly squat as we stood at the Volcano's lip and by God, were afraid.

Chef David Chang's co-conspiritor Christina Tosi works the sweet end of the Momofuku Ssam Bar's East Village space at Milk Bar, turning out scrumdiddilyumtious sun-dense cornflake-chocolate chip cookies, dentist-scoffing Crack Pie and soft-serve cereal milk ice creams by the bucketload. We thought we had her all figured out, and there she had to go tossing out double-dog-dare words like "savory" and "volcano." Dang.

Turns out the steaming, softball-sized item is essentially a knish stuffed to rumbling with potato gratin, Gruyere, Benton's bacon, caramelized onions and a good 20 or so minutes off the average human's lifespan. No worries -- contrary to today's New York Times' $25 and Under assessment, we found its hefty, tangy slather of Mornay sauce to be more than adequate compensation for the latter.

We're not ashamed to admit that we were bested and could not conquer the Volcano in one sitting, or even without assistance from concerned colleagues, but we learned and we grew as people (or perhaps that last part was just our thighs.)

No matter. What we'd like to know is this -- how much can you manage to chow down in the morning? Are you after daybreak fare that sticks to your ribs or does coffee alone keep you fueled until lunchtime? Take the poll, and as always, comment away.

How much do you eat for breakfast?
Like a lumberjack	69 (13.2%)
Couple of eggs or cereal, maybe	205 (39.2%)
Toast or a bar	93 (17.8%)
Just coffee or juice, thanks	81 (15.5%)
Nothing at all until lunch	75 (14.3%)

Filed under: Food Oddities, Guilty Pleasures, Chefs & Restaurants

Stained Cookbooks

COMMENTS 15

by Kat Kinsman, Posted Mar 30th 2009 @ 5:00PM

I'm not gonna lie -- I'm rough on my books. There's a school of thought treating the physical manifestation of the written word as a sacred object, and I fully respect that. However I, for one, shove an old copy of "How to Cook a Wolf" into the bottom of my bag with the notion that at some point it'll sustain me on an overextended subway ride. I read "The Devil in the Kitchen" in the bathtub, A.J. Liebling over a lunchtime reuben, and good gosh a-mighty are my cookbooks covered in schmutz.

But hey, it's thematic goo; "Molto Italiano" is spattered in tomato sauce, "Pie" -- seen above -- is all a-smear in lard, "Charleston Receipts" in Otranto Club Punch and "Staff Meals from Chanterelle" slicked with a fine mist of rendered rind bacon. To my mind, these books are being honored, used, proven. Should these books at some point have a subsequent owner, they'll know what's been tested, made and made again.

Still, am I dishonoring the object or the authors when I'm getting the books all mucky? I posed the question to Matthew Lee (whose book "The Lee Bros. Southern Cooking" I've doused in all manner of pickling brine), and he noted that he and his co-author, his brother Ted have debated pre-mucking-up copies of their book to nix the blank canvas factor. The recipes therein are warm of heart and humble of origin, so it's not out of character, but would, say, a gellan-gumming of Grant Achatz's "Alinea" be a crime against the rather expensive and exceptionally lovely object?

Do you keep your cookbooks in pristine condition, or do you just accept page stains as collateral damage?

Filed under: Guilty Pleasures, Books