"FrenchToast" news and stories

• One blogger is eating her way through the hundreds of menu items at the Hollywood's Jitlada. Hey, it's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.
• What's the best focaccia topping? (Trick question!)
• Ready for Valentine's Day? Los Angeles restaurateurs are.
• French toast: It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Now this is something to wake up to. Linda Nguyen, the intrepid force behind the Australian blog butter sugar flour, whipped up this beautiful plate of French toast with spiced pears. The bread has that even golden-brown skin that is a hallmark of the best French toast, and the pears give it a lusty, buttery twist. The shallow pool of maple syrup is a nice, realistic flourish; you can practically taste the syrup-saturated toast, and feel it the sugary burn it leaves in the back of your throat. A very good morning, indeed.

[Via butter sugar flour]

Love her or hate her, Sandra Lee can stretch a dollar.

For her latest Food Network show, the queen of "semi-homemade" cuisine is teaching her viewers "Money Saving Meals" with tips on how to make dishes like this French toast without breaking the bank.

"This show is like Suze Orman meets Julia Child," she told Slashfood Thursday in the Food Network test kitchens.

Get her three tips on how to save at the grocery store and the French toast recipe after the jump.

Last May, I posted about the genius that is french toast made on a waffle iron. However, like so many of these things I write about here on Slashfood, I hadn't actually had an opportunity to give the technique a try, trusting instead that the Kitchen Chick wouldn't lead me astray.

Luckily though, I recently stumbled across a blog post that put the waffle iron french toast method to the test and proved that it is a winner. Lauren (creator of the pies in jars) used a two square Belgian waffle iron to cook up french toast made from bread designed for Texas toast. The bread fit the iron perfect and she and her family found it so delightful that they used the same method to make garlic bread to accompany dinner.

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I love waffles (I own four waffle irons and wouldn't hesitate to buy another if I came across an old, working one with cast iron plates). I also love French toast (all week long, I've been planning writing an ode to that breakfast dish), mostly because it makes it possible to create something delicious out of the most humble of ingredients. For these reasons, I am horrifically embarrassed that it never occurred to me to cook my french toast in my waffle iron, like the Kitchen Chick has done.

A craving for buttermilk waffles, coupled with a dearth of buttermilk and some brioche that needed to be used helped inspire this tasty creation. She proceeded to make French toast as normal, soaking the bread in an egg and milk mixture. Then instead of cooking it in a pan or on a griddle, she put the bread on the waffle iron and cooked like any other waffle. Deliciousness abounds!

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