"GordonRamsay" news and stories

A few of the best links on the Web this week:

• Food bloggers get a shout out in the new Taco Bell commercial.
• Vodka cocktails are making a comeback.
• Gordon Ramsay's Top Chef knockoff Master Chef is confirmed to debut Jul. 29 on Fox.
• A $13 cup of joe makes its entrance at the Baltimore coffee house, Spro.
• The top 20 booze trends to avoid in 2010.

Gordon Ramsay's BBC show "Kitchen Nightmares" is a classic; permanent proof that Ramsay is one of the best chef-lebrities working and cooking on television. The UK version of "Kitchen Nightmares" might be old news, but it's good news to certain hack writers bedeviled with pestilence. So, if you're ever marooned on a couch because of the flu, re-watch any of the episodes of this show on BBC America On Demand. Ramsay is combustible, passionate, and a man clearly in control of his talents. He's the rare personality on air: a guy who obviously knows what he's doing, and is not afraid of showing that fact off. Rarely do we see experts on television who literally look like they can easily walk the talk.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

Turning fresh bread into day-old bread (that's perfect for stuffing) only takes 15 minutes.

Start planning your turkey day -- from decor to dessert -- now.

Whet your appetite with 10 exciting dishes for Thanksgiving.

Will you make room for soup at the Thanksgiving table?

Does Masterchef, another televised cooking-show competition, mean too many chefs in the kitchen?

Bacon makes everything better -- even candles!

Leftovers can cure the take-out temptation -- Thai Beef with Coconut Rice.

Photo: Stephane De Sakutin, AFP/Getty Images

Hot-headed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is finally waking up from his kitchen nightmare.

The reality show "Kitchen Nightmares" put Ramsay in failing restaurants across America for one week so the tell-it-like-it-is chef can try to turn the struggling businesses around. But the show proved too troublesome for the salty U.K. chef, who says he's through with it.

The foul-mouthed Brit admits the show's title is a little too fitting: "If the restaurants succeed, there's no praise," Ramsay told The Sun. "If they're screwed, we're blamed and get lawyers' letters."

More than two-thirds of the restaurants Ramsay "helped" ending up being sold or shut down, the paper said.

Slashfood attempted to contact the production company, Granada Entertainment, to clarify if both the American and British versions of the "Kitchen Nightmares" are canceled -- our calls were not returned.

[Via The Sun]

Homemade candy corn. Photo: NoshWithMe, Flickr.

A few of the best stories spied elsewhere on the Web this week:

Why buy bags of Brach's when you can make your own gorgeous Halloween candy?

A chain of Spanish-American restaurants in Brooklyn and Queens offers seafood-loaded and tequila-spiked "Viagra" soup.

A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience is the first to show that eating and drinking act as painkillers by way of distraction.

The new "Hell's Kitchen" Nintendo game requires players to chop food and drop it into pots, but surprisingly does not involve swearing and smoking.

Move over Starbucks, Wolfgang Puck is introducing bottled Culinary Iced Coffees made with organic ingredients.

In the latest Todd English news, his former fiancée, Erica Wang, turned herself in to the police today, after he filed assault charges against her.