You've seen that sliced-up green apple sitting up top aside the Slashfood logo. Perhaps you've pondered its culinary potential -- the crisp snap of that bright green skin, the half-sweet/half-tart flavor that is the special domain of the Granny Smith apple.
Voila. Slashfood sorbet!
In sorbet, a single element is distilled into an intense burst of flavor. It should be so vivid that only a bite is necessary. Perhaps you're most familiar with it as an intermezzo to cleanse the palate, in a fluted paper cone to hold while walking alongside your companion and his gelato or in scoops piled high in a frosty parfait glass almost too cold to touch.
After the jump, an original recipe for a gorgeous green apple Slashfood Sorbet. We challenge you to only eat one bite.
In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.
When I have access to fresh produce, cucumber season becomes one of my favorite times of the year. Although it runs from May to August, the wonderful green beauties won't reach their full flourish until later in the summer. Still, it's hard to resist the cool, summery flavor of the first cukes of the season. With that in mind, I decided to flip through my family cookbook in search of some great cucumber recipes.
My Aunt Renie's cucumber salad manages to halve the distance between sharp and smooth, sweet and sour, creamy and intense. In my adjusted version, I cut back on the onions, switched in Greek yogurt and tossed in some fresh dill.
The final version had the soothing coolness of a traditional cucumber salad, but also retained a nice vinegar tang that keeps me on my toes. This is great by itself, or as an accompaniment to barbecue or any other strongly seasoned dish.
In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.
Beets are funny: while they are among the hardiest of winter root vegetables, their gorgeous color brings to mind the energy and exuberance of early summer.
In our family cookbook, my Aunt Evie tipped her hat to this weird dual nature with her recipe for pickled beet dip. Filled with the earthy flavors of winter vegetables, the dip's brilliant pink color suggests the joy of Easter eggs, cotton candy and sunsets. Pairing the coarseness of winter with the energy of summer, it's the perfect spring food!
While most dips tend toward blandness, this one has a nice kick. It goes well with crackers, but really shines as the centerpiece on a tray of crudite. Although the ingredients may sound odd, they blend nicely and the finished product is one of those rare beet dishes that even avowed enemies of the dark red vegetables will love. One warning, though: be sure to let everyone know that it's beet dip. Given the color, some people will assume that it is a cherry or raspberry dish!
In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.
In my family cookbook, there is a recipe for "Mabel's Spinach Spread," a gelatin-thickened dip that was developed by one of my Aunt Evie's foodie friends. Although the original concoction contains a startling quantity of mayonnaise and a lot of added salt, the basic idea of a molded-gelatin dip was somewhat compelling. Gelatin, after all, is basically a fat-free, sugar-free protein that is, allegedly, great for hair and fingernails. Best of all, it can help a dip to stiffen up without the introduction of cream cheese or some other dense fat.
This recipe combines a basic spinach spread with some Greek flavor notes. The yogurt base is creamy, yet fat free, and the feta greatly reduces the need for added salt. Best of all, the fresh flavors of this dip make it a great, easy-to-prepare snack for long summer afternoons. The recipe after the jump.
Whoopie pies are one of those wonderful concoctions of debatable origin and undebatable deliciousness. A few months ago, a piece in the New York Times proclaimed it was having "its moment," though plenty of its champions knew full well that the perennial classic needed no such official declaration.
This photo of a mint whoopie pie from This Chick Bakes beautifully illustrates the treat's timeless appeal, and looks like it has all of the hallmarks of whoopie pie greatness, with cakey chocolate layers sandwiching just the right amount of creamy mint filling. The chocolate-mint combination points to the endless flavor possibilities that the treats present to the adventurous sweet tooth. Though originally simple snacks created by the Pennsylvania Amish, today's bakers take them in all sorts of inspired directions. And if this photo is any hint, this could taste like the best peppermint patty on the planet, unquestionably worthy of the shout of joy its name entails.
Pay no heed to those who thoughtlessly proclaim bacon-inflected desserts "so over," or "so December 2008."
Pictured is one of the reasons why. This delicacy, known as Pig Candy, is the genius of one Rhonda Kave of Roni-Sue's Chocolates. What Kave has done is create a union as holy as that of peanut butter and chocolate or vodka and tonic: fried bacon, dipped in chocolate. And that's it.
It's a marriage that is astoundingly pure yet diabolically addictive and, thanks to the beauty of online retail, has inspired slavish devotion far beyond the Roni-Sue headquarters on New York City's Lower East Side. This photo hints at the promise and madness contained in each salty-sweet nugget. While the shutterbug's ability to restrain herself long enough to take the pic is admirable, the subject likely met its demise shortly after being immortalized for the enjoyment of drooling procrastinators everywhere.
Looking at this makes us want to dive headfirst into a vat of thick, luxurious ice cream and spend the entire summer there.
The idea of ice cream on its own is refreshing enough, but the idea of ginger ice cream -- presented here by the lovely duo behind Rec(ession)ipes -- is a particularly palate-cleansing one. Ginger, a digestive aid, has been soothing stomachs and clearing sinuses for centuries. It's the perfect foil for the rich, heavy cream and eggs called for in most ice cream recipes. Texture-wise, too, it makes a happy bedfellow: biting down on a chunk of candied ginger is a curiously satisfying experience, like finding the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks. Altogether, the idea of ginger ice cream leaves us so ferklempt that we call upon poet Wallace Stevens to find the words that we cannot: "The only emperor," he once wrote, "is the emperor of ice cream."
Strawberry milkshakes and juice boxes shaped like fruit: Two things that make us grateful for April heat waves.
Food & Wine's own Dana Cowin alerted us to this luscious milkshake on the Saveur Web site, accompanied by a recipe that calls for an ingenious combination of strawberry ice cream, strawberry sorbet and strawberry jam.
The juice boxes, meanwhile, are the brilliant invention of Naoto Fukasawa, a Japanese industrial designer who designed the boxes to mimic the look and texture of the fruit they contain: pictured here are banana and strawberry, along with soy, which rather uncannily mimics a block of tofu. We can't help but feel that these boxes blow the Capri Suns of our elementary school days out of the water, or at least the sandbox.
Barbie, as you may know, turned 50 earlier this year. If this slightly belated bit of promotional whimsy is any indication, plenty of you still want a piece of her.
To celebrate the doll's 50th, Dylan's Candy Bar created "Barbie Loves Dylan's," a line of chocolate and candy outfitted in colorful graphics befitting the belle's pop-art and pop-cultural legacy. We love the way these chocolates are packaged, with through-the-years pix inspiring affectionate memories of both "The Brady Bunch" and yearbook photos of days (and unfortunate hairstyles) gone by.
It's rare to come across chocolate whose packaging wouldn't look out of place next to a Warhol, and we applaud whatever graphic design genius was behind this. But if Barbie taught us anything, it's that beauty is skin deep, and that lesson unfortunately applies to the chocolate bearing her name. It tastes as plastic as Barbie herself or, in the words of one judge, "like drugstore Easter candy." Like Barbie herself, this chocolate could last 50 years ... in the back of a pantry.
For $14, a better move might be to pop the candies into a frame on the bedroom wall. 'Cause Barbie also taught us that when substance fails, style triumphs.
Looking at this cheese is a little like meditating. It's the most serene, perfect thing we've laid eyes on in the past week -- a little cloud floating innocuously against a blue (OK, teal) sky. The knife at its side hints at its imminent demise, but really, who aside from vegans or the lactose-intolerant wouldn't want to partake of the cheese's ample charms? Former Chez Panisse pastry chef David Lebovitz, the author of numerous wonderful cookbooks and a Paris resident for the past seven years, purchased this silver dollar-sized disc of Rocamadour (a raw goat's milk fromage) for a dinner party he was throwing for friends. While much of his accompanying commentary extols the virtues of the comté he also bought, it's this diminutive beauty that has us dreaming of baguettes, a drizzle of honey and deeply discounted Air France tickets.
These gorgeous, golden-brown churros look so enticing we can practically feel their crinkly, sugar-studded skins melting on our tongues. Though their shape deviates from that of tubular churros -- traditional Mexican treats of deep-fried dough rolled in cinnamon and sugar -- we can't really say that we care. What matters is that they look sweet, crunchy goodness personified ... or like history's most gloriously demonic matzoh balls.
The Amateur Gourmet's Adam Roberts describes these beauties as "The Churros That Saved The Dinner Party." We think he's being too modest. These look like the churros that could save the world, or at least a small principality.
What would happen if one crossed the rich sweetness of northern-style corn bread with the fun shape of a pancake? We're not sure, but it would probably look a lot like an arepa. Simple and hearty, the rich Venezuelan cornmeal patties -- often sliced open and stuffed for a cool-looking sandwich -- are here topped to make an open-faced snack.
Sara of Sara's Kitchen whipped up this intriguing combo of fresh arepa, black beans, a savory avocado salsa and just a touch of queso blanco. A mix of bright flavors and fun textures, it has us intrigued -- and mulling over a few salsa notions of our own!
Is it just us, or does this look like a canapé Snow White might serve at a party for an assortment of her big-eyed woodland friends and dwarfs? Those mushrooms are practically leaping off the screen, they look so freshly plucked. I bet Disney's tough guys would have scoffed at this chi-chi wasabi-ricotta concoction and gone for burgers and beer instead, though. Not Eating Out In New York (a culinary blog for anyone anywhere) attempted a pretty bold take on a classic appetizer, so let us know if you give it a shot in your kitchen and how it turns out.
Pringles is among the here-since-the-70s foods that persistently redesign/refocus to make themselves either upscale or trendy enough to draw 21-century folks.
While Pringles has taken a shot at the gourmet market with their Pringles Select flavors, they really just want to appeal to the kids. Thus, we have the new Pringles Extreme flavors, the latest attempt to make something cool just by adding the word "extreme" to it. (Just like extreme sports drinks, extreme chewing gum and extreme ice cream.)
There's Blazin' Buffalo Wing, Kickin' Cheddar and Screamin' Dill Pickle. Only taste will tell whether it's got kick.
"I saw some students sneaking alcohol into the movie theater while they're eating their popcorn," says Pub-Corn creator Cary Silverman in this CNN Video report. Though my initial thought would be to manufacture some sort of popcorn bucket-shaped flask, or simply to stop these student and explain to them the value of a good Thermos, I guess that's why becoming an inventor isn't as easy at it looks.
In the video, the University of Missouri student explains a few of the trials and tribulations he went through to create this non-alcoholic beer-flavored popcorn snack which also comes in Irish Cream and Pina Colada. Additionally, for a 25 cent premium, you can get your Beer Flavored Pub-Corn colored green for St. Patrick's Day. All varieties of Pub-Corn, including a variety pack, are available for sale on Pub-Corn's website.
What will Cary think of next? Possibly a more aerodynamic Milk Dud that can be better thrown at the screen during Michael Bay films? We can only hope.
We can change the way we make eggs -- scrambled, poached, fried -- but what about changing the eggs themselves? Mix up your scrambling routine with quail eggs.
In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.
"I saw some students sneaking alcohol into the movie theater while they're eating their popcorn," says 
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