Happy 4th of July, Slashfood readers! In honor of today's holiday, I bring you a patriotic dessert from blogger/photographer Lelonopo for you to really feast your eyes on. She's created a blueberry and raspberry treat that isn't as aggressively red, white and blue as that famous flag cake, but is still appealingly thematic for the day.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful day today, filled with delicious food, awe-inspiring fireworks and safe, happy times. We look forward to seeing pictures of all the tasty things you created today, so make sure to take photos and upload them to the Slashfood Flickr pool!
We are just hours away from a national holiday, and nothing ushers in a summer celebration better than a cool, fruit-based drink. This sparkling beverage, with bits of watermelon floating throughout and a matching straw, begs to be imitated for your Independence Day festivities (there's no recipe on the photo page, but watermelon would go nicely with any number of fizzy drinks).
I've always enjoyed the energy and care that people put into packing bento box lunches. I love checking out the stuff that Biggie creates on Lunch in a Box and Jennifer McCann's Vegan Lunch Box was once one of my daily blog stops (she doesn't update as regularly as she used to). Today's bento image comes to us from Kate, a regular commenter and photo uploader around these parts. She's packed up a delicious and abundant lunch that has me wishing she'd come to my house and pack me a mid-day meal.
This picture isn't quite as delectable as some of the other images I regularly post in this space. However, it's such a great idea that when I saw it, I thought to myself, "That's just the sort of thing I have to share with the world of Slashfood readers."
From Biggie of Lunch in a Box, her image shows how she uses plastic water bottles to store frozen veggies like corn, peas and chopped onions. It makes it really easy to pour out a small amount, which is perfect for those times when you are pulling together meals for one. This not only works well for the prepacked frozen veggies that you buy, also for the veggies you freeze yourself. I imagine that the wider mouth bottles would work really well for frozen berries (great for when you make smoothies).
This month, the Daring Bakers challenge (they are a group of bakers and food bloggers who all work the same recipe once a month, in order to expand their skills and try something new) was to work with a Danish Braid. Over the weekend, the internet was flooded with delicious pastry, crafted by experienced and new bakers alike.
I look at the no-knead bread recipe, created by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery and printed by the New York Times in the fall of 2006, as one of those recipes that will be with us for all time to come. People went crazy for it when it first came out and folks all over the world continue play with it, innovating new ways to make beautiful, flavorful, bakery-quality bread in their very own ovens. In January, Cook's Illustrated devoted an entire issue to no-knead bread, doing their level best to make an already-good recipe even better.
Today's image, from Timothy Gerdes, is a loaf of nearly no-knead bread with olives, rosemary and parmesan made from the Cook's Illustrated version of the recipe. Looks delicious Timothy, thanks for adding it to the Slashfood Flickr pool.
At my office, the last Friday of the month is cupcake day, in honor of all the birthdays that people have celebrated that month. One of my co-workers is married to a local baker of some note and so she supplies an outstanding assortment of cupcakes for us each month. We all look forward to it with great anticipation when the month draws to a close.
This month, they moved cupcake day up to Thursday (since so many people are going taking vacation for the 4th of July holiday week) and so now I've got cupcakes on the brain. This picture features the very early stages of muffin making, but it is priming my hunger for a pint-sized treats baked in scalloped cups. Only seven more hours to go! If you want the recipe for Marilyn's mini-muffins, go here.
I have always been a sucker for sauteed green beans tossed with an asian sauce of some kind. Add a little tofu and a few other veggies and I'm as happy as a pig in, well, you know. So I love the food in this picture, but I also love the well-seasoned, obviously well-loved pan that this dish was served in. I aspire to having a pan that is as well broken in as that one is (my large cast iron skillet and I struggle to be friends sometimes). Check out the recipe here.
Today's Feast Your Eyes image comes from our own Stefani Pollack. In addition to her Slashfood duties, she also is the blogger behind the Cupcake Project and so is always on the hunt for new, different and delicious cupcakes. This picture is from a batch of Raspberry Lemon Chocolate Cupcakes that look and sound amazing. Would that I could reach through the computer screen and into her kitchen.
Stef has a full accounting of the creation of these cupcakes over on her blog. She explains there that she was trying to capture the flavor combination of a particular Vere chocolate bar. Sounds like I need to get my hands on some of that chocolate!
I have really been grooving on both green garlic and garlic scapes this spring. I've been cooking with them as well as tossing them raw into salads and marinades. As we head into the hotter days of summer, they are starting to disappear, but if you made still be able to find scapes at your local farmers market. Making pesto with them is a really great treatment and is super delicious.
Every summer, I make a point of buying about a dozen peaches or nectarines, slicing them up and freezing a couple big gallon-sized storage bags full of them. There's nothing better than opening up the freezer come November and being able to throw some sweet, local fruit into a smoothie or a fruit crisp. These particular peaches later became part of a peach and bourbon sauce, which sounds to me like an excellent idea.
Thanks to Maya for adding her pictures to the Slashfood Flickr pool. Check out her blog, My Feasts, for the recipe for that peach bourbon sauce.
My love of asparagus has been well documented around these parts. But I'd like to think that even if I couldn't stand the stuff, I'd still be able to see the beauty in this picture. I find that there's really very little that's more lovely that fresh fruits and vegetables and this is a wonderful example of that gorgeousness. This display of tri-colored asparagus (with a few tomatoes that are peaking in from the corner) makes me happy (and made me briefly consider painting my living room the color of those purple-ish stalks).
When cherry season arrives, I go a little crazy. I have been known to eat a pound or two and call it a meal. I just got an email last night from one of my favorite u-pick farmers in New Jersey saying that their cherries are ripe and the blueberries are coming in.
This image from Mike (who lives in my hometown of Portland, OR. Woo hoo!). It makes me hungry just looking at it and now I think I have to find some time this weekend to go get myself some cherries. Thanks Mike, for adding your picture to the Slashfood Flickr pool.
There used to be a restaurant in Philadelphia called Treetops. It was several floors up in the Rittenhouse Hotel, looked out onto the park, was pretty fancy and was one of my grandmother's favorite places to eat. She was a pretty fancy woman, so she and the restaurant went well together.
Treetops made their own, deeply ruffled potato chips that they served with every sandwich. The first time I had one of these hand cut, freshly fried chips, the top of my head nearly flew off with the amount of flavor and crunch that the single chip delivered. While the chips pictured above don't have the same ridging as the chips from Treetops, they look like they have similar heft and flavor. I'd like nothing more than to be able to reach through the computer screen and grab a few to crunch on right now. For those of you who'd like to try making these at home, you can find the recipe here.
Just about everyone I know loves baked goods with blueberries in them (my boyfriend is an exception - an unhappy encounter with some blueberry pancakes when he was a kid turned him off of them for life). These look like a fantastic example of the classic blueberry muffin (and right at the moment, I'm thinking that one of those guys would go perfectly with my coffee).
The picture comes to us from Matthew Hunt and the muffins are straight off page 68 of the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. Thanks Matthew for adding your image to the Slashfood Flickr pool!
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