On June 13, Marisa posted here with the title "RIP Tastespotting." The reason TasteSpotting was gone was unclear, but she noted, "Regardless of the reason, it's a sad day for the online food community."
If that was a sad day, June 27 was a day to celebrate! TasteSpotting, the hugely popular food porn site, went live again last Friday. If you haven't checked it out yet, definitely do so. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that our old friend is back!
I interviewed Sarah J. Gim, the Slashfood blogger who runs TasteSpotting, on Food Interviews. Sarah says that we can expect some site improvements to come to TasteSpotting soon. What about some of the TasteSpotting-like sites that cropped up in its absence? Sarah says that the food blog world is big enough for everyone: "The more food porn the better!"
For more information on TasteSpotting, including how Sarah picks all those amazing photos, check out Sarah J. Gim's complete interview.
My kitchen has officially reported me for neglect. I've been too busy to cook much of anything lately, and dinner has consisted of whatever I could whip up in a few short minutes or (more likely) whatever I happened to pick up on the way home. My pots and pans are sulking in the corner, my wisks and spatulas are officially on strike. Even my two fridges, once filled to the brim with every conceivable form of produce, protein, and condiment are looking pretty stark these days. It is a sad state of culinary affairs in my house, let there be no doubt.
That said, I've been aching to make a return to the kitchen, so I was thrilled to see that Homesick Texan had written about her homemade Puffy Tacos, one of my favorite Tex-Mex meals. There is just enough work in making and rolling out the taco shells to satisfy my need to make something homemade, and the rest of the recipe is very simple to put together - perfect for those of us without a lot of time on our hands.
Since I prefer not to buy the pre-made taco shells from the grocery store (these taste so much better, really) I was wondering if you could make these ahead of time and freeze them before frying. Has anyone ever tried that before? If so, let us know how they worked out. I'd love to keep a batch of these ready to go in the freezer.
Alright Slashfoodies, we have a challenge for you. As posted on our sister site The Cancer Blog, one of our favorite food bloggers, Béa at La Tartine Gourmande, the creator of many exquisite dishes we have featured here before, has prepared this perfectly-pink dish of Quinoa Beet Verrine (as shown above) to help raise awareness for Breast Cancer. We'd like to continue what she has started and see what our readers can come up with. There are no rules, other than it should be an original creation and contain the color pink. As I said before, it can be dinner or dessert, anything from pink cream cheese on a bagel to an entire fuchsia dinner is fine - use your imagination. Drink submissions are fine, too.
Please send us the link to your blog/website once you have posted the picture, and we will spotlight the entries in a future post. Is there a prize? Yes - knowing that you are helping to raise awareness for Breast Cancer, is that not enough? Tell you what, we will let you judge, and then we will do a spotlight/interview with the creator of our favorite submission.
When we talk about food porn, it is usually referring to completed dishes that look simply outstanding. Sometimes though, it is the fresh, natural food that really looks best. A reader sent in this link to his Flickr photo pool which contains some beautiful shots of fresh produce from his local Community Supported Agriculture in Oxford, CT. Whether you eat them raw or use them in recipes, the vegetables pictured here can inspire hundreds of meal ideas.
Have you seen any other shots of beautiful, fresh fruits and vegetables? Send them in to us.
Jennifer Hess writes food blog Last Night's Dinner, and while her creations in the kitchen certainly sound (read?) like they're absolutely delicious, her photos are one more step toward proof. Jennifer's Lamb Chops with Pea Puree is beautiful. Not only does the thick-cut pork chop just glisten, but it rests so peacefully on the pea puree. The colors are, however, what really do it for me - deep red roasted tomatoes and bright white feta cheese on top, the fresh, spring green of the pea puree, and darker green from the mint garnish.
Since it's Friday, I was thinking that a double-dose of food porn may be just the thing to get us in the mood for the weekend. In my recent quest of searching for fresh, Spring-worthy dishes, I came across this delicious-looking recipe by Haalo at Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once.
The zucchini, salmon, and parsley alone are enough to inspire an array of appetizers, but with the addition of whatever pasta you happen to have on hand, the dish is hearty enough to serve as a main course. Fresh, simple, delicious - perfect for Spring.
I've been searching for side dishes to go along with my Easter ham, and since Brussel sprouts have always been one of my favorites I was pretty excited to see this picture on Tastespotting. At first I thought it was simply Brussel sprouts tossed with bacon, but that is actually dried sole that you see crisped up to perfection.
Rasa Malaysia put together this stir-fry which is simple to prepare, yet has layers of flavor throughout, including the use of thinly sliced garlic, oyster sauce, and sesame oil. Though we usually buy our sole fresh or frozen, it is also available in dried form - check with your local Asian supermarket if you have trouble finding it. You can view the entire recipe at her website.
I have a love/hate relationship with Red Velvet Cake. Basically, I love it because for Pete's sake, it's cake, and not only is it cake, but it's usually drowning in layers of cream cheese frosting. However, I just don't get it -- "red velvet" that is -- and why this cake, above all others, seems to get so much attention. What I don't get is what "red velvet" tastes like. It's neither chocolate (though I know there is a bit of cocoa in there) nor vanilla, and it certainly doesn't taste like anything red, like berries.
It must be the novelty of the gorgeously shocking red color, because based on the cake that Desert Candy baked, love is all about the aesthetics. Mercedes used the recipe that was published in the New York Times a few weeks ago, which she reprinted in the post. And though the frosting is made of mascarpone instead of cream cheese, I'm not complaining!
Few and far between are the people who don't love the tops of muffins, especially the tops that rise ski-high above the rim of the muffin pan. It's difficult to explain why, but the tops seem to just be better than the rest. Unfortunately, sky-high tops are also a bit tricky to achieve and most homemade muffins seem to come out flatter than commercial ones. Not to worry, however, because Riana from For The Love of Baking compiled a great "to-do" list of tips for achieving the perfect, high-rising muffin top. Her Rocky Mountain Muffins, pictured above, would certainly tower over most homemade muffins.
The recipe she used can be found here, along a long list of all the combinations of ingredients that can be mixed into the muffins to customize them.
A hot cup of coffee and a rich, buttery, cinnamon-sugar pastry is a wonderful way to start off a Sunday morning - especially when, because of Daylight Savings Time, we had to "leap forward" a hour last night and are all a touch sleep-deprived. For once, I'm not talking about a cinnamon bun with this sweet pastry, although it is not too far off the mark. Cinnamon Butterflies, also called Cinnamon Ears, are similar to cinnamon buns in that they begin with a buttery dough that is rolled out and wrapped into a cinnamon-sugar-filled spiral. The difference is that the Butterflies are set on their side and pressed in the center so that the ends of the roll are pushed out into "wings" (or ears). The pastry is Scandinavian, and as is traditional with so many recipes from the region, each one is topped with sprinkles of a very large-grain sugar, or lightly crushed sugar cubes, for additional sweetness and crunch. Gattina, from Kitchen Unplugged, made this batch, as you can read the full post for the recipe.
We've been a bit remiss in keeping up with all the blogging events of late. We completely forgot to mention the roundup of the latest Sugar High Friday entries, from the Sweet Seduction-themed round hosted at Confessions of a Cardamom Addict! Fortunately, we are getting back on track now and are pleased to point out that the latest results from the Does My Blog Look Good in This? contest have been announced. The international food blogging/food porn competition asks bloggers to submit their best photos from the previous month of posts. Once submitted, a panel of bloggers votes to determine the winners. Fancy Toast hosted this month's round, where the overall winner was the above photo of a chocolate mousse trio from French food blog Blanc d'Oeuf.
Note that if you don't speak French, there is an English approximation of the recipe ("white in snow" = egg whites, FYI), but take care to read it well before starting to avoid getting hung up in translation error.
Gratins and scallops are usually made with potatoes, the difference between the two being the fact that gratins are made with cheese, while scallops tend to be made with cream, or a cream sauce, alone, although both are baked until the potatoes are tender and the top of the dish is crisp. Bored with the standard potato-only dish, you can include onions, artichokes or other root vegetables, but if you want to move further away from tradition, anything that will hold up to baking will work. Alanna, from A Veggie Venture made her most recent scallop-type dish with apples, as well as potatoes. Her Scalloped Apples and Potatoes only takes a few minutes to prepare and comes out of the oven as a creamy, crowd-pleasing side dish - especially if that crowd doesn't mind a hint of sweetness in with their savory dishes.
Popcorn itself is a relatively healthy snack. Without butter or copious amounts of salt, the high-fiber, low-calorie snack is both filling and satisfying. Additional, it can keep you from reaching for other, less-healthy snacks because it can be munched over an extended period of time. Throw in more than a tablespoon or so of butter, however, and your healthy snack starts to look distinctly less good-for-you. Throw in some bacon and "healthy" is out the window.
Nosheteria cooked up this batch of Bacon Popcorn by first frying up some bacon until it was nice and crispy, then using the leftover grease to pop the corn, ensuring a bacony taste in every bite of popcorn. Imagine having that at the movies!
There is no need for salt, thanks to the salty taste of bacon, but if you want to add a little something else, you could follow the advice of one of the commenters on the original post. She suggested that adding some parmesan cheese into the mix would take the popcorn to yet another level
Cinnamon and raisins, with the occasional additions of pecans, walnuts or cream cheese frosting, are the standards for sticky buns just about anywhere you go. My Husband Cooks (actually, her husband) decided to put a little twist onto the standard with a batch of Pistachio-date sticky buns. The inspiration came from the flavors often found in Middle Eastern pastries and sweets, where the unique and sweet flavor of pistachios is very popular, as are dates. Exotic inspiration or not, these could not be mistaken for anything other than sticky buns, though. The dough is light and tender, made with both butter and buttermilk, and is topped with a buttery brown sugar caramel that serves as the glaze and gives the sticky buns their signature stickiness.
The recipe is not for those in a rush, as it takes several hours (or overnight) to let the dough rise properly. The advantage to this is that you can do approximately half the work for the buns the night before you want to eat them, meaning that you won't have to wait nearly as long in the morning before you can pull one apart, still warm from the oven, and enjoy.
I imagine that this cream filled donut - a prime example of food porn that was posted by Robyn, the Girl Who Ate Everything - has stopped a lot of people dead in their tracks, both those who came across it in person and those who are viewing it online. It is truly an impressive sight, with a cream:donut ratio of at least 3:1. It is a more impressive sight if you actually like cream-filled donuts. Judging by the offerings at the average donut shop, it appears as though filled donuts are substantially less popular than their cream, custard or jelly-filled counterparts and that, even when people enjoy the filled donuts, they seem to opt for the unfilled as more of a daily donut, saving the filled version for a special treat.
That said, if you're chowing down on a donut for breakfast on a regular basis, you're probably not all that worried about the difference between a special indulgence and a regular one. And either way, you'd definitely think twice before passing this one by!
DIY Foods: Making homemade sausage
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
