Just a few weeks ago I wrote about Ice Wine, nicknamed Canada's Liquid Gold, that luscious and intense dessert wine produced from grapes that freeze on their vines. It was much to my horror to hear that it is possible that there will be no Ice Wine from Canada this year!
Canada produces some of the best Ice Wines in the world. Normally the grapes are harvested during a freeze some time between mid-November and the end of December. Due to the mild winter this year. as of early January there have been no freezes cold enough for harvesting in any of the vineyards in Canada or neighboring US this winter. I was amazed to hear this because of all the news about blizzards and avalanches in Colorado, but then I thought about my local NY City weather where we are having the warmest winter, with no snow fall, since the late 1800's. Call it global warming, long term weather cycles, what you will, but No Ice Wine?
At the end of the year, restaurant critics usually put together lists of the top restaurants - or the top dishes in Frank Bruni's case - creating a new "hit list" of restaurants for their city for the next year. San Francisco's list includes Dosa, Nopa, Coi, Kaygetsu and Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. Seattle has cheap eats on their list, as well as pricier places, as doesNew York. All are surely fine eateries, but these lists are not the be-all and end-all of dining in their respective cities. Are your favorite restaurants included?
Restaurants are left off because they aren't trendy, aren't new or are just plain overlooked and I know that some places that I like to eat don't always make the cut. I'm not saying that this makes them the best restaurants in any given city, but that doesn't mean that they don't deserve some recognition. Is anyone up for making our own list of reader favorites from around the country/world? List some of your favorite restaurants in the comments (along with a city and/or website, if applicable) and we'll see if we can't come up with something even better than the standard newspaper top tens.
Want to look back on some of the top news, trends and other food related goings-on of the last year? After a jam-packed year of posting, there are some topics that keep coming up again and again. From A to Z, here are our top picks from 2006:
The politics of food was at the forefront, making people aware of issues like obesity and food safety, as well as introducing (or reintroducing) consumers to the idea that their food comes from farmers and fields, not faceless factories. Organics exploded in popularity and so did animal activism issues, like the ban on foie gras in Chicago. Speaking of bans, the trans fat ban in NYC has sparked nation-wide interest and prompted many politicians to suggestsimilarlegislation.
Home cooking was also hugely popular this year, as evidenced by the growing popularity of food blogs, the fact that most of the popular food programs on TV use words like "home-style," "country" and "everyday," and that the top ten bestselling cookbooks "have a decidedly nonprofessional focus" designed to appeal to home cooks, not would-be chefs.
Frank Bruni's dream dinner takes place at a number of restaurants because he "didn't have the perfect meal in 2006," so he has imagined a restaurant crawl to take him around the city fro course to course.
Eric Asimov names key wine trends, like the growth of Spanish wineries, the popularity of Pinot Noir and the fact that you'll always remember the good, not the bad, in the long run.
Mark Bittman, the minimalist, recommends his rich and cheesy Welsh Rarebit as a perfect late-night snack on a night of overindulgence (in drinks, not food).
It is difficult, if not impossible, to recount all the great food moments of an entire year, but Chow set out to do just that with their Year in Food feature. Divided up into nine individual themes, their picks cover the top trends. Cookbooks and books about cooks were big. Huge, in fact. The Omnivore's Dilemma got people thinking and the 75th-anniversary edition Joy of Cooking got them back in the kitchen. Food went high tech with the continuing popularity of molecular gastronomy and the ever-expanding realm of food blogs. And everyone was drinking, whether his or her beverage of choice was an energy drink, wine (possibly in a box) or a luxe new liqueur. Breeze through the rest of Chow's year-end picks for a cheat sheet on the last 12 months of food, but if you happen to have a lot of time on your hands, you can always browse through our own archives for news, recipes and lots and lots of food porn.
Looking for a fat free, zero calorie, no caffeine, vegetarian option for Thanksgiving? Continuing a three-year tradition, Jones Soda has just unveiled its new 2006 Holiday Pack, which is a complete holiday meal packaged neatly into five little bottles. The flavors include Turkey and Gravy soda, Sweet Potato Soda, Dinner Roll Soda and Pea Soda, as well as an Antacid Flavored Soda, a popular pre-dessert choice of many holiday diners. Jones Soda prides itself on producing accurate profiles of the flavors that it features on its drinks, so you can feel confident that your Turkey and Gravy soda will taste quite real -- as I learned last year, when I sampled a previous pack.
Like all of the prior releases of the holiday packs, sales of this particular limited edition item will go to benefit Toys for Tots. The company also has a dessert pack (possibly a nod to consumers who don't want turkey and gravy soda) on sale at Target that benefits St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.
It looks like Hershey's has just rolled out a new limited edition chocolate for the upcoming Christmas season. Before I took a good look at the package, I momentarily thought that the Candy Cane Mint Kisses might be tiny mints that were shaped like Kisses, but it turns out that they are a white chocolate-based treat. The white kisses are flavored with mint and have red stripes on the outside. Embedded in the chocolate are tiny red nonpareils, which add a tiny crunch to the candy and look vaguely like bits of candy cane, though they actually have no discernible flavor of their own. The chocolate is very smooth and the mint is not so overwhelming that it would stop you from reaching for a second, but the Kisses seem to be slightly richer than average. Overall, these seem like a good holiday candy option to put out in a candy dish for occasional treat, but they're not so good that I would want to have a bowl all to myself. If they ever decide to put bits of candy cane in them, however, I might have to reconsider.
In Naples, the annual Pizzafest was just concluded and the title of the world's best pizzaiolo (pizza-maker) was bestowed upon Makoto Onishi, a veritable pizza prodigy from Japan who bested 24 other pizza-makers, many of whom are Naples natives. This is the second time he has won the title; the first was back in 2003. The judges declared that his pie was the "perfect incarnation of 'real Neapolitan pizza.'"
Onishi came to Naples from Japan in 2002, looking for a job in a pizza restaurant and claimed his first title after only a year working in the Ischia pizzeria. After the victory, he was hired by a popular Tokyo pizzeria and enjoyed some media attention from his surprising win.
The secret of the perfect Neapolitan pizza, according to the judges of the Naples Pizzafest, is using traditional, local ingredients. Onishi adds that a "chef must be free of stress" to produce the perfect pizza.
The 2006 Miami Book Fair is coming up in just a few short weeks and it is a great place to get up close and personal of hundreds of celebrated authors from around the world. Of course, we have a particular interest in the food writers and cookbook authors who will be there and after seeing the list of attendees, we were not disappointed. Food lovers will see:
Slashfood readers can expect to see the works of these authors, as well as several others, featured here leading up to the Fair. Others in attendance will be authors of the non-food persuasion and include Isabel Allende, Nora Ephron and Thomas Cahill.
On top of the opportunity to interact with the authors and attend wonderful seminars, there is also a huge street fair that goes along with the event, where visitors will find everything from books and art to food and drinks from around the world. Since it's Miami, expect to see lots of Cuban and Caribbean offerings.
The Book Fair will be Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus from November 12 – 19, 2006.
Want to help "stamp out hunger"? You can start by making an effort not to waste food, but perhaps a more direct route to take is to leave a can or three of non-perishable food items in your mailbox this Saturday. If you live in the US, Saturday May 13th is the National Letter Carrier's Food Drive (a.k.a. the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive), which means that postal workers will be collecting the cans of food from mailboxes and delivering them to local food banks and soup kitchens.
Actually, you're not limited to canned goods. Anything that is non-perishiable, not expired and not packed in glass is readily accepted, so browse the aisles of the grovery store for packaged soups, pastas, juices and similar products. If whatever you choose to donate is a bit bulky, you can leave it in a bag next to your mailbox or drive it down to the post office and drop it off there.
Last Friday, the winners of the 2006 Brewers Association World
Beer Cup (aka "the most prestigious beer competition in the world") were announced in Seattle. This year's
event was the largest on record, with over 2,000 entries coming in from almost 60 different countries. Beers were judged
in 85 different categories, from "non-alcoholic malt tonic" to "fruit and vegetable beer" to
"barley wine-style ale." A complete list of winners is available here.
The wonderful food that Turin, Italy is famous for is not making its way onto the plates of the Olympic athletes. In
fact, there have been numerous complaints about the food, including accusations of food
poisoning from the Canadian curling team. Athletes from all over the world, including America and Lithuania,
are saying that they "expected more from an Italian kitchen" and wonder "how can you
screw up pasta?" Because the Olympic Village is not in a central location, with athletes spread over many
villages, the food is not all being prepared by the same kitchen staff. Some athletes are fortunate enough to have a
personal or team nutritionist who will prepare all their meals, while others can only look forward to the time that
they can spend in Turin itself, sampling the city's non-Olympic offerings.
Cybele, at Candyblog.net, was lucky enough to get her hands on some official
Olympic candy, straight from Torino, Italy, courtesy of a friend. The candy is gianduia chocolate, which means that it
is a combination of chocolate and ground hazelnuts. It has a slightly chewy, sticky texture that lingers on the tongue.
Check out her site for a full review, but I
definitely wouldn't mind if these bite-sized chocolates made their way over to the US. I'm willing to have a piece of
chocolate (or two) to support the athletes!
Saveur
magazine just released its "100 list" for 2006. 100 what? Since any explicit label would be too restricting,
the annual list is simply described as Saveur's "favorite restaurants, food, drink, people, places and
things", which certainly covers a lot of ground.
Making the eighth list this year are restaurants from India to Mexico City, as well as a variety of restaurants and
chefs from Las Vegas, including Daniel Bouloud, Bouchon, Alex and Joel Robuchon. Favorite foods included Costco birthday
cakes, Crispy Buffalo Wontons from Ruby Tuesdays (a US chain) and Rich Man's Purses at Gundel Restaurant,
Budapest, in addition to duck eggs, spicy Thai kettle chips and Japanese freshwater crabs, while
favorite drinks included California dessert wines, Hendrick's Gin from Scotland and cointreau.
The
Seattle Times has a listing of the
major changes we'll be seeing in the food industry during the coming year. The biggest changes will be in food
labeling. Stricter regulations will require clear and understandable labels and ingredient lists. This means that we'll
no longer see ambiguous phrases like "artificial flavors." Also, labels will be more clear as to which food
groups and allergens it contains. I, for one, see these changes as a step in the right direction. As consumers, it's
very important that we know what is going into our mouths. If there's casein in my "non-dairy" Cool Whip, I would like to know that
casein is actually a milk product (it's derived from milk using rennin).
Just a few weeks ago I wrote about Ice Wine, nicknamed Canada's Liquid Gold, that luscious and intense dessert wine produced from grapes that freeze on their vines. It was much to my horror to hear that it is possible that there will be no Ice Wine from Canada this year! 
At the end of the year, restaurant critics usually put together 
It is difficult, if not impossible, to recount all the great food moments of an entire year, but Chow set out to do just that with their 
Looking for a fat free, zero calorie, no caffeine, vegetarian option for Thanksgiving? Continuing a three-year tradition, Jones Soda has just unveiled 
It looks like 
In Naples, the annual Pizzafest was just concluded and the title of the 
The 
Last Friday, the winners of the 2006 Brewers Association 
The wonderful food that Turin, Italy is famous for is not making its way 
Saveur
The
Seattle Times has a 
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