Photo: Amazon.com

'Quick From Scratch Italian Cookbook'
Recipes from Food & Wine Magazine
Photographs by Melanie Acevedo
Food & Wine Books -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

Whether you're an avid subscriber to Food & Wine or you visit the website once in a while for a recipe, this is the book to add to your kitchen shelves. "Quick from Scratch Italian Cookbook" provides cooks of all levels with satisfying and healthy recipes. Classics are translated into practical weeknight meals with basic step-by-step instructions and there are recipes for every season.

And what would an Italian meal be without wine? There's a no-fuss wine-pairing recommendation for each and every recipe to take pressure off the cook.

Boasting everything from antipasti, soup and pasta, to fish, poultry and steak, recipes like linguine with cauliflower, garlic and bread crumbs and baked rigatoni with spinach, ricotta and Fontina will keep everyone at the table content. Finish the meal off with one of many tantalizing desserts such as honey-baked figs with ice cream or espresso granita with whipped cream.

See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Photo: thebittenword.com, Flickr.

As cooler temperatures brighten the appeal of a toasty kitchen, gratins become increasingly enticing. We find ourselves plotting to spend afternoons by the oven creating warming dishes in anticipation of cold-weather weeks, since there's hardly anything more comforting than coming home to a ready-made meal that needs only to be popped into the oven.

And what could be more appropriate than this Root-Vegetable Gratin adapted by the bloggers at thebittenword.com. Clay and Zach boast that "the sweetness of the squash and sweet potatoes plays perfectly off the more earthy, turnip-y taste of the rutabaga." And yet as polished as this gratin may appear, the dish involves little more than the assembly and baking of mandoline-sliced vegetables, with the addition of heavy cream, chicken broth and a light panko topping. Check out Food & Wine's original recipe here and a plethora of gratin inspirations here.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

Itching for pictures from the Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen? What's Mario wearing? Did Ilan Hall rock the Pee-Wee Herman tux again? We'll be posting red carpet and candid images throughout the festival, so bookmark, refresh and repeat as needed.

Catch up on real time Twitter coverage here and see photos from last night's red carpet event after the jump.

Couldn't swing a trip to Food & Wine Magazine's Classic in Aspen this year? S'okay -- we've got you covered. Kick back with a glass of bubbly and some schmancy nibbles, bookmark this post and keep on checking back for real-time Twitter coverage from the event. Keep up with pictures from the red carpet and around the festival here.

On-scene Tweeters include:

Food & Wine editors and staffers Dana Cowin @fwscout, Christina Grdovic @grdovic, Kate Krader @kkrader, Gail Simmons @gailsimmons, Ray Isle @islewine, Jee Park @JeeWPark, Lori LeFevre @llefevre and their main feed @fandw

Top Chef alumni Richard Blais @RichardBlais, Stephanie Izard @stephanieizard and Ilan Hall @ilanhall

After the jump, see the live feed from the Food & Wine Classic.

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.

[Saveur via Dana Cowin]
[Via TokyoMango]

Stephanie Izard and Lee Anne Wong at Best New Chefs 2009

Reminding y'all to follow @slashfood on Twitter tonight for breaking news and menu notes from tonight's Food & Wine Best New Chefs 2009 soiree. Chefs on deck for the night's grub include Former BNC winners Momofuku's David Chang, Scarpetta's Scott Conant and Anthos' Michael Psilakis as well as Top Chef champs Harold Dieterle and Stephanie Izard.

Tweets are anticipated to get a tad less carefully spell-checked as the night progresses and cocktails are, um, sampled. Forgive us.

Follow Slashfood on Twitter

UPDATE: The Winners

You do follow our Twitter @slashfood, don'tcha? The Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs festivities commence at 6:30 p.m. on April 1, and Food & Wine Editor-In-Chief Dana Cowin has been dropping devilish little hints about the winners via Twitter all day long. First person to solve the mystery wins two tickets to tomorrow night's event.

Won't you Tweet with us? If we're really lucky, we'll even post some red-hot guest chef David Chang or "Top Chef" winner Harold Dieterle cell-phone camera action.

Twit-tip: Follow all Best New Chefs posts using #BNC

Here's a clever idea: online wine videos! It's The Winery Channel, and they have everything from instructional videos that teach you what foods go with what wine to visits to various vineyards and vacation spots.

The site has a sense of humor too. Make sure you watch Rex Havoc (and his horse "Brokeback"), who shows you the best wine bottles to use for shooting practice, and Dave in Los Angeles, who rants about his neighbor Walter, a wine snob. The stuff he says...well, you know people like Walter (and not just when it comes to wine). You'll be quoting a couple of Dave's lines to your friends later this week.

There are many "shows" to watch, including "Hot Legs," "The Wine Bar Show," and "Got Wine?" (the videos can be kinda glitchy - took me a few clicks to get each video working, but it's worth it).

It's unlikely that you're going to find all the gifts that you want to give on one list in the same way that you're unlikely to find everything all at one store (with the possible exception of Amazon.com), so it's in your best interest to look at as many sources as you can for inspiration. Food & Wine's 40 Divine Gifts list definitely has some inspired choices on it. Their choices run from under $25 up to $250, so they've tried to cover every budget in addition to picking a wide variety of foods, kitchen tools and decorative items. On the low-end of their gifting spectrum, they recommend the Cool Jewels ice tray, which pops out ice shaped like giant gems and is great for making a splash at parties, the cookbook Cooking Up A Storm for culinarily inclined kids and the Life of the Snowman sugar dispenser. The higher end includes Emeril's Deep Fryer and gold-plated serving spoons.

When Food & Wine announced that they were going to be hosting a food photography contest, more than a few bloggers got excited about the prospect of having their work published on the site, not to mention the fact that the first-place prize of a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT camera kit as quite appealing. The winners have been announced and it looks like the competition was stiff. First prize went to Jessica Thompson, for the photo of Papaya-Jalapeno Sorbet in Black and White Espresso Cups on the left, above. There were four first place runners up, all of whom received copies of the books of F&W's Best of the Best, Cocktails 2006 and Star Chefs on the Road. One of the four was Nika, of Nika's Culinaria, with her photo of Spice Cake with Homemade Chocolate Sauce (right).

Other food blogging participants included Christine Cassidy, Anita of Dessert First (with this photo), Adrienne of Nosheteria and Lara from Cook & Eat. It's too bad that Food & Wine didn't publish links back to blogs, if the contestants had them, but if you are one of the runners up and I missed your blog here, feel free to leave a comment and I'll add it to the list!

We are a little late with the San Francisco Chronicle's Wine section - their changing the section from Thursday to Friday is throwing us off! But we plunge ahead with their feature article, which explains the rigorous process of becoming a Master fo Wine. The credential comes after a four day test, years of study, huge sums of money, and repeated failed attempts. For the 20 years that the test has been open to Americans, only 24 have passed!

The Wine Selection of the Week is South Central Coast Pinot Noir, just in time for the deep, spicy flavors of fall. Out of 66 wines tested, 2004 Roessler Cellars Sanford & Benedict Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir came close to a perfect rating with three-and-a-half stars (***1/2). The Chronicle serves a Roast Pork Loin with French Plum Sauce.

The Bargain Wines of Week hail from the Iberian Peninsula, particularly the northern regions of Spain and Portugal, which are known for Garnacha, Carinena, Monastrell, Tempranillo and Touriga Franca. For our Indian summer in California, there are some rosés listed.

Mario Batali makes a few Italian wine recommendations to Fortune magazine. According to the chef/restaurateur, "wine doesn't have to come out all dusty and musty from some corkdork's cellar to be good." But it might have to cost you $775! He also makes suggestions on what to pair with each wine.

Splurges

• Bruno Giacosa, Barolo Rocche del Falletto, 2000, $775 for a magnum
• Dal Forno Romano, Amarone, 1999, $575
• Cerbaiona, Brunello di Montalcino, 1990, $239

Deals

• Montevertine, Le Pergole Torte, 2001, $90 - I'm not quite sure how $90 us considered a deal, but then again, this list appears in Fortune magazine, and $90 must be quite a steal for a CEO.
• Planeta, Syrah, 2000, $40
• Morellino Di Scansano, I Perazzi, 2003, $15 - Now that's more like it.

The UK's Telegraph has begun a five part 'Wine Week'. Not sure if this is one part every day or if it is spread over five weeks... still it matters little. Online today is an intro to the world's most favoured drink with some general food and wine guidelines. Highlights include the usual roll out of advice -

the lighter the dish, the lighter the wine should be, and the heavier the dish, the heavier the wine.

you CAN serve red wine with fish - but guys it is all down to the sauce generally

And why stick to dry Champagne? A rich or demi-sec Champagne is sublime with strawberry tart or sorbet. And at weddings, it's daft that we're always served the driest of sparkling wines with the cake. Why not the delightful sweeter version?

This part concludes with a simple list of food and wine pairings and some 'dubunking myths' writing including the advice that the The Tower of London will NOT fall down if you pass the port to the right. Who the bloody hell even passes port these days?

It's almost some form of culinary masochism - but in the summer when it's really hot, I love to punish myself by eating supremely spicy foods that make me sweat even more than I already am. My friends and family think I'm psycho. Of course, there is a completely logical, physiological reason why spicy foods are eaten when it's hot, but there are also other health and preventative reasons why spicy foods are good for you. Let's just take a look at those reasons so we can use them when we go for the Korean yook-gae-jahng in 100% humidity.

• Cancer-fighting and cancer-prevention - A recent study shows that capsaicin can be used to fight pancreatic cancer. It slowed the growth of cancer cells and in some cases, even caused cancer cells to die off.
• Alleviate inflammation - Arthritis and psoriasis are cause by nerve damage and cause pain on joints. Capsaicin supposedly helps to ease that pain.
• Relieve chronic pain - In some cases, spicy foods containing capsaicin greatly reduced pain caused by headaches or osteoporosis.
• Heart-health - Cayenne and chili peppers can help to reduce cholesterol. Additionally statistics show that cultures that eat spicy foods (e.g. some Asian countries) frequently have a much lower rate of heart attack and stroke.

So break out those jalapenos! 

Seeing as Henley-on-Thames is my home town I guess I shouldn't miss the first Henley Food Festival.

Over two days (Friday 28th and Saturday 29th April) various demonstrations will be held in the town hall with plenty of hotels (such as the historic Red Lion) and local breweries (Breakspear and Loddon) will be in the covered town square. Local producers and shops (Woods Wines, chocolates from Gorvette and Stone and others) will be occupying the visitor exhibitions centre. Entry is free. Opening times: 11am - 9pm both days.

On Friday such notables as Antony Worrall Thompson (who lives locally and owns a gastro-pub in a neighbouring village) , Raymond Blanc, Henrietta Green, Mary Berry and Tom Aikens will be hosting  demonstrations and book signings. Several notable food bloggers are planning on attending; if you want to meet up drop me an email.

Henley is under an hour from London (Paddington mainline) but you need to change at Twyford for the little branch line.