I spent some time yesterday afternoon talking with Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious, about everything from her weeknight dinners to the cookbook she's releasing this fall. It was an honor to speak with Ms. Steel, who has written for Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, and appeared on numerous TV programs, including the Today Show (the list goes on). After our conversation, I can absolutely see her energy and enthusiasm in the pages of Epicurious. Talk about a foodie! I've noticed a lot of changes on Epicurious in the past year or so – new blogs and features. What's the idea behind this new content? I came to Epicurious in July 2005, and I found a site that I loved with tremendous depth, but not a lot of breadth. We needed to broaden out the site to make it the go-to site for people who love to eat and love cooking and love food. I knew that we had a fantastic recipe database, so we added restaurant coverage, a huge thing on drinks. We added video, and a blog that I started – for a while I was the only one writing. We spent some time not only broadening our coverage and trying to get notable names on the site, but we also took a look at the site, which was over 12 years old, and we realized it was time to make it look as rich and interesting as the content. We spent a good part of last year looking at the inner plumbing of the site, and we launched [the redesign] last September. I've never worked so hard, and it was incredibly rewarding to create a food site from the ground up. I thought, "What would I like? What kind of site would I like and how would I create it? We are still rolling out features throughout this year. There are going to be upgrades and additions this year and next. Any chance you can give us some hints about these upcoming features? One of the things that we are going to be doing is expanding our community section. We have always had a vibrant, passionate community of people – up to six million unique [visitors] in December. They love to talk to each other. We have ten forums, and realize this is something to increase. We made a deal with Facebook, and realize that a lot of people would love to have more social networking on our site. We are blowing out something called "My Epicurious" – people will be able to upload a photo of themselves, they can already tag interests. They will be able to upload pictures so people can see what they are cooking now. They will be able to join interest groups. For example, if they are interested in it cuisines, they will be able to see everything having to do with that interest group, like new Italian recipes and posts, anything to do with Italy.
Epicurious and Dawn Direct Foam set out to find the world's messiest dish, and they found it all over the face of 1-year-old Audrey Kaplan. The food all over Audrey's face is spaghetti and meatballs, made by her grandmother, Dorothy.
Dorothy won a flatscreen TV and a year's worth of Dawn Direct Foam for submitting the picture of her very messy granddaughter. It's kind of ironic that this photo won, since Dorothy will presumably not be using Dawn Direct Foam (a dish soap) to clean up her granddaughter (although I'm sure it will do a number on her dishes).
If you are Marilyn Manson and you decide to launch a line of absinthe, what do you call it?
Why, Mansinthe, of course.
The drink is made in Switzerland, and, despite the U.S.'s recent lift on the absinthe ban that has been in place for 80 years, is not yet legal in America.
Epicurious recently conducted a taste test of the drink, and the results were less than desirable. Several tasters described Mansinthe as "oily," one called its color "pale and green in color, like the fourth horse of the Apocalypse."
Some eloquently compared the aroma to "sewage" or "swamp mud." And the overall responses in the test's "flavor" category were so hilarious, I had to print them here, word for word:
"Main flavor is just plain." "Yuck. Sour + bitter" "If you don't smell it, the taste is good. A little woodsy, but not too much" "Holy sh*t, is this poison?"
So, there you have it, folks. Everyone thought it reeked of bathroom waste and three out of the four tasters thought it tasted like crap. Drink at your own risk...preferably while brooding and listening to "The Dope Show" at full volume.
Well, OK, maybe not you, but maybe you. Yeah, you!
Epicurious has a special Valentine's Day section (it's on two days away guys, better get crackin'), and part of it is this guide from Food Network host Jamie Oliver. He made a romantic dinner for his wife Jools, and tells you how you can do one too. For the dinner he suggests Crostini with Prosciutto, Figs and Mint, Anchovies in Tomato Sauce with Pasta, and Tiramisu. For a drink he suggest a Jum and Bender, which sounds like a vaudeville team but is actually made with passion fruit, champagne, and grenadine.
Oliver also gives tips on shopping and how to set the mood for the night. It's easy peasy.
Being that I'm known in my circle of friends as something of a food lover and able cook, I often get called upon to bring contributions to communal meals or other food events. Nearly once a month, I get tapped to make a birthday dessert and so I'm always on the hunt for a quick, tasty birthday cake that doesn't come from a box. I have a go-to cake for the chocolate lovers but I've always been stymied by from scratch white cakes. They never come out quite right for me and so the search continued.
Until Saturday morning, that is. I needed to make a cake for my boyfriend's birthday party that night, and he had specifically asked for a white cake with chocolate frosting. Simple enough, right? My theory is that when you're working with such a classic combination, you have to do a really great job of it, or it's a let down. I flipped through at least six cookbooks, looking for a recipe that didn't use a pint of cream or require you to separate half a dozen eggs and beat the whites. What I ended up using was the All-Occasion Yellow Cake recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook. It is billed as being "incredibly simple" and it lived up to that promise. It came together quickly, baked up evenly, came out of the pan easily and tasted wonderful. This one is a keeper (and the recipe is after the jump).
I stumbled across this recipe on Epicurious for these decadent Chocolate Kumquat Egg Rolls, and the idea of the sweetness and creaminess of the chocolate/kumquat mixture layered against the delicate, flaky exterior made my mouth water.
This is food porn at its finest; the ultimate aphrodisiac. It is sticky and messy and unapologetically delicious. This is what you feed to your lover in bed, not caring that the chocolate oozes out and drips onto their chin and the crumbs fall into the sheets.
Though this combination sounds scrumptious, you could easily replace the kumquats with with pecans, coconut, rum-glazed bananas or any other deliciously evil combination. Or, just eschew the chocolate altogether and instead use Nutella or honey or...(fill in your ultimate sweet indulgence here).
You're in final stages of planning out your Super Bowl buffet. You know you want the big slow cooker of chili (perhaps in a football shaped slow cooker?) as well as some Crostini (for the fancier folks). However, there are still a few holes in your plan. What about featuring a recipe from one of your favorite players? Over at Epicurious they've rounded up 22 recipes from current and past NFL-ers. It's being done in conjunction with a fundraiser, Taste of the NFL, that will take place in Phoenix the day before the big game and will benefit America's Second Harvest.
For the last few years I've been sort of smug about my latke ability. For some reason, I've always been able to turn out perfect, round, golden, crispy latkes on the first try. But after yesterday's debacle, I realize that it wasn't me, it was my recipe. You see, I decided to change my perfect recipe to include half sweet potatoes, thinking they'd incorporate just like the normal, starchy potatoes. Only they didn't. They were too hard and didn't have nearly enough starch, so my pancakes never stayed together. I instead ended up with a pan full of sweet potato/regular potato hash browns, which were delicious, but were not what I was going for.
So, if you were thinking about incorporating sweet potatoes into your latkes this weekend, make sure to follow a recipe (like this one from Epicurious, which uses are more egg and flour than I did). And, if you want the recipe that made me feel all smug about my latke abilities, that one is after the jump.
Hanukkah starts tomorrow at sundown and with it brings an assortment of yummy seasonal foods. It is traditional to eat food that are fried during Hanukkah because the cooking fat symbolizes the oil that burned for eight days instead of one in the temple. My favorite Hanukkah food is the humble latke, because really, there's very little that's better than the fried potato.
The first time I made potato latkes was my junior year of college, when I was an RA. I decided that I wanted to do a Hanukkah-themed study break and so determined to make latkes. For 75 people. Thankfully, someone in my hall had a salad spinner, so I didn't have to do all the shredding by hand. But let me tell you, it was worth the three hours of shredding, mixing, draining and frying (we kept them warm and mostly crisp on a sheet pan in the oven). They were delicious.
If you're searching for latke recipes, look no further. I've searched far and wide for an assortment of links to good recipes, from the basic to the more unique. Happy frying!
1. Last year, Deb stayed fairly traditional with a latke recipe adapted from Food and Wine. These puppies are what I think of when someone says the word latke to me. 2. If you want to start getting a little fancier, check out these Potato-Turnip Duck-Fat Latkes over at Chow. Even just thinking about them makes me start to salivate ever so slightly. 3. Epicurious offers five variations on the latke theme. I am particularly intrigued by the New England-Style Cod and Potato Cakes with Tartar Sauce latkes. 4. Over at That's Fit, one of our sister sites, they have taken the greasy latke and made it low fat. It's a good recipe, if you want to go that direction (although it does sort of defeat the purpose. I'm just sayin'). 5. For those of you who aren't fans of potato, you might be thinking about how to turn other veggies into latkes. Look no further than Elana'sButternut Squash Latkes. 6. Another variation on the theme, Eat Like a Girldoes it with beets. They look a little disconcerting, but I'm sure they taste wonderful and earthy. 7. From the archives at the Amateur Gourmet, Adam makes latkes with apples and celeriac. Yum, yum! 8. And for the visual learners, check the episode of Fork You that Scott and I filmed last year in which we made latkes. Or as Scott calls them, kosher hashbrowns.
Have you ever watched a cooking show and thought, "I think I could do that!" If that sounds like you, then there's a contest you should really check out. Epicurious is hosting a video contest this holiday season in which they are searching for terrific videos about holiday cooking and entertaining.
The winning video will receive nearly $600 in Michael Chiarello cookware and autographed copy of his book. Three runners-up will receive Epicurious editors' favorite cookbooks, and the first 25 people to submit a video will receive a TasteBook cookbook that will include recipes from Epicurious as well as some of their own. All videos must be submitted by January 2, 2008 so get out those cameras and start rolling. Because you never know, you could be the next internet food sensation.
It seems like lately the whole food world is turning out to help people prepare and plan for their Thanksgiving dinners. The latest way to get tips and tricks for your turkey day celebration? Epicurious, in addition to being an excellent all-around source for recipes, is going to be hosting a chat with cookbook author and Epi-log blogger Melissa Clark this Friday from 12 noon until 2 pm (that's Eastern Standard Time).
Melissa will be available to discuss general Thanksgiving problems and solutions. She'll also be answering questions about how to prepare the items on the Epicurious Thanksgiving menu that she compiled and tested. Isn't the internet a wonderful place!
I have a friend who always used to make an addictive, rosemary and sugar spiked nut mix for parties. She moved out of town last spring to go and be a doctor in Ohio. For the last few weeks, ever since the cooler weather really settled in, I've been craving her nut mixture like crazy. On a whim a couple of nights ago I tried to recreate it with half a jar of elderly peanuts. While they tasted good, it just wasn't quite right. I've got an email into her in the hopes that she'll share her secret.
In the meantime I went looking around on the internet to see what I could find and stumbled across this recipe on Epicurious that was printed in this month's issue of Gourmet. It looks pretty darn good. Here's hoping it will hold me until AnnElise comes through with her recipe. If any of you have a signature nut mix recipe, I'd love it if you'd send it my way!
About five years ago, two of my good friends got married within a few months of each other. I was still pretty fresh out of college back then and working hard at my first real job. As is true with most first real job, this one paid peanuts and so I wasn't able to afford much in the way of gifts for them.
Instead of splurging on items from their registries that I couldn't afford, I bought two plain, spiral-bound notebooks and decoupage the covers with pictures of food cut from magazines. I pasted in tabs about every 35 pages or so to divide up sections between Main Dishes, Sides, Soups, Salads and Desserts (there may have also been a Miscellanous section). At the beginning of each section I wrote in two or three recipes I particularly liked, leaving plenty of space for them to add in their own recipes over the years.
This gift doesn't work for more of the devoted cooks who tend to amass binders full of recipes (like me), but for the folks who like to have a stash of tried and true recipes easily available to them, this is a good way to go. I know my friend Jamie still uses hers frequently, as when I went over to her house last summer, she greeted me at the door with the words, "I made your mayo-free potato salad yesterday. It was so good!" If you're looking for ideas for holiday gifts you can make, this might be one to tuck into your bag of tricks.
If you want to create a cookbook that requires a little less work that a hand decoupaged and written one, check out the new feature at Epicurious. They've partnered with Tastebook to give you an easy way to drag and drop recipes from your Epicurious account straight into a book template. A personal cookbook with up to 100 recipes can be had for $34.95.
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?
Well, OK, maybe not you, but maybe you. Yeah, you!
About five years ago, two of my good friends got married within a few months of each other. I was still pretty fresh out of college back then and working hard at my first real job. As is true with most first real job, this one paid peanuts and so I wasn't able to afford much in the way of gifts for them. 
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
