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.
No matter where they grew up, it always seems that people have similar "ice cream man" stories. A lot of kids, my brother and I included, were convinced that their ice cream man has some sort of sinister alter ego, complete with an illegal job that no one could quite pinpoint. Ours, we decided, was a cocaine dealer, but yours might have spent his off time running numbers, dabbling in the mob, or laundering money, to name a few.
So despite this nose-numbing, toe-tingling, sniffle-inducing cold snap that most of us are experiencing right now, perhaps we can use our imaginations to conjure up some thoughts of warm days accented by the sounds of slightly off-key jingles wafting from the ice cream truck. You picturing it?
Good. Now, while you're in the mood, check out this gallery of unique ice cream trucks, and then leave us your ice cream man stories in the comments. (Speaking of which: did anyone's neighborhood have an ice cream woman?)
I first spotted Ina Garten's recipe for Outrageous Brownies on Smitten Kitchen. In the past, I haven't been much of a brownie baker, so I read Deb's post and moved on. But then I saw Ina make them on the Barefoot Contessa and they looked amazing and delicious. The recipe made an impression on me, so much so that I looked it up online and bookmarked it. I nearly made them on New Year's Eve but instead opted for a recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook. Those brownies were mediocre the first night and increasingly better each subsequent evening (and we did eat them until they were all gone).
Sunday afternoon, my friend Johnny called to say that he was putting together an impromptu dinner for that evening. When I accepted the invitation, he asked if I wouldn't be willing to bring dessert. I said of course and started plotting. I briefly considered making a fruit tart before deciding that brownies would be best. Luckily, I just happened to have all the ingredients necessary for these brownies and so started measuring, melting and mixing. They came together quickly and baked up in just under half an hour. I was a little concerned when I first cut into them, because they seemed a little greasy (they do call for a full pound of butter), but as they cooled completely, they firmed up and developed the ability to hold all that butter with aplomb.
These are excellent brownies. They are deeply fattening, but they are totally delicious. I took the leftovers to my cousin's house tonight for dinner and we ended up standing around the plastic container in which they were stored, eating them in broken pieces as a pre-dinner dessert course. If you want a really indulgent, fool-proof, amazing brownie recipe, look no further. Thanks Ina, for the fabulous recipe.
Yesterday I mentioned that my mom and I worked in tandem to create an apple crisp for dessert on Christmas. We both compromised a little on our traditional method and I think our team work was a success, as I do believe that this was one of the best apple crisps every (although my dad pointed out that the best one is typically the one right in front of you, so I could be a little biased).
You see, I like to use mostly oats in my topping and she likes to use mostly flour. We came together and used about half oat flour and half pure rolled oats. The combination gave it a sense of pastry with the crunch and seeming-virtuousness of granola. I cut the pieces of apple a little smaller than my norm under her tutelege and I convinced her to season both the apples and the crumble topping. We both agreed to use toasted pecans in top instead of walnuts. What turned out was a dish that was tender and sweet without being overwhelming. It felt like it could be a really decadent breakfast item (and would be great with plain yogurt instead of the vanilla ice cream we ate it with). Check out our recipe after the jump.
I was 18 years the first time I had a Pecan Tassie. I had just finished my freshman year of college and was spending a couple of days with my mom's cousin, Amy, and her partner, Jean, at their house in the Columbia Gorge (White Salmon, WA to be exact). While I was there Jean did some of her holiday baking and I watched with fascination as she got out a stack of miniature muffin tins and started packing pastry crusts into each cup. She topped each crust with a batter of sugar, spices and finely chopped pecans. Soon after they were out of the oven, she offered me one to try and in one bite, I fell hard.
Ten years later, my love had not diminished. The pecan tassie and I are tight, and knowing of my affection, Jean makes an entire batch just for me each season. She and Amy are now living out here in Philly and I got an email from them just recently reminding me that I can't go back to Oregon for the holidays without a tin of tassies to take along with me.
If you have never had a pecan tassie, I implore you to give them a shot. You can find them in some bakeries, but as with other holiday delicacies, they are best when you make them yourself. They are a bit labor intensive, but the results are well worth it. Check out the recipe after the jump...
One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is the leftovers. Especially the leftover desserts. When I was a kid, the morning after Thanksgiving and Christmas we'd be allowed to have a slice of pumpkin pie or a scoop of apple crisp for breakfast. My normally healthy eating mother permitted this sugary deviation from the norm by focusing on the fruit or squash used to make the dessert and not the butter and sugar.
To this day, I love to ladle out a big scoop of apple crisp into a soup bowl for breakfast after Thanksgiving. I'll nuke it for a minute, just to take the refrigerator chill away, and top it with a spoonful of plain yogurt. It's the very best version of fruit, granola and yogurt you've ever had and it makes it possible to eat leftovers for every single meal of the day.
If you're looking for a good recipe for apple crisp, check out the one I made on the last episode of Slashfood in the Kitchen.
There was a lot of really terrific food at the Philly food blogger potluck I hosted last Friday, but one of the standouts for me were the pumpkin blintzes that Alanna and Alex, the bloggers behind Two Fat Als, brought with them. Maybe it had been too long since I had last had a blintz, or maybe it was that I've always liked the filling of pumpkin pie better than the crust. For whatever reason, I couldn't stay away from these puppies and ate three of them in rapid succession.
They'd be a terrific way to change up your Thanksgiving dessert table or as a way of making your turkey day breakfast a little extra special. Your guests will definitely come back for more.
Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?
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 
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
