I'm not gonna pretend that this picture is pretty, or in the least bit appetizing, but I will note that the results are disturbingly delicious. The heart of the matter is that I went to a cookout a few weekends ago and was offered a grilled chicken heart by a friend who has yet to serve me anything that is less than madly tasty. Emboldened by this, I picked up a package of chicken hearts on a shopping jaunt this week, and started perusing my favorite recipe sites for marinades. It didn't take me long to find a 1956 James Beard recipe suggesting that these would make a dandy appetizer for a group of 25. Twenty-five of whom, I'm not entirely sure, 'cause even as staunchly carnivorous as my pals tend to be, few of 'em dig getting their offal on as much as I do, and I wouldn't subject them to it. There are exceptions, though.
Some friends came over this afternoon to serve as panel members for AOL Food's upcoming Hot Dog Taste Test. As I tended the grill between rounds, one of them began holding forth about how methods of barbecuing and grilling really were born of the necessity to bring greater flavor to cheap and previously discarded cuts of meat, and how folks were getting way too fancy-schmancy with the whole thing these days. I left my post at the flames, walked him to the fridge, pulled out the plastic container full of marinating hearts and started putting them on bamboo skewers.
He shut up and started eating.
James Beard's 1956 Grilled Chicken Hearts Recipe on Epicurious
(Note: In the above pic, I was out of sherry and subbed in brandy, which proved perfectly yummy.)
First printed in 1940, James Beard wrote his first book, Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapes, in just six short weeks. He was able to write it so quickly because he had plenty of experience to draw on. Before he became a cooking instructor and food personality, he and a friend ran a catering company that specialized in appetizers and tidbits for parties and events. He went on to write more than 30 volumes about food, cooking and eating.
According to the introduction that appeared in the original volume, Hors d'Oeuvre means food that appears "outside the meal." He states that these bites of food that are served prior to the main event should be designed to "enchant the eye, please the palate and excite the flow of the gastric juices." While this book on its own isn't particularly stimulating, as it was published in 1967 and is a musty-smelling trade paperback, the food described within its pages is enough to make my gastric juices run.
Many of the recipes aren't exact, calling for enough mayonnaise to bind or moisten the ingredients, but I find that to be appealing, as it means that he trusted his readers and believed them to have an understanding as to how their finished food should look and taste. One incredibly useful section is the one in which he offers several pages of lists of spreads and fillings for sandwiches. While they would be wonderful as appetizers, many of them offer terrific inspiration for any mealtime.
I had a great-aunt who's hobby it was to prepare appetizers and canapes. She often had several dozen tucked into her basement chest freezer. As I've flipped through this book, I've noticed recipes for several of her most famous items in its pages. We never knew that she was ripping off James Beard!
This week, the Inquirer is all about Korean food, especially in Philly's burgeoning "Koreatown" (their moniker, not mine). And in the wake of the 10-day revelry that was Beer Week, it's probably best that we load up on some home cooking to soak up all that alcohol.
Foods like kimchi, shabu shabu and bibimbap are holding gaining in popularity as the Korean food craze continues
Echoing the above article, Craig LeBan shares his favorite Korean dishes, especially the marinated beef ribs
Shira Kamm joins the growing number of Pennsylvania's women farmers
Finalists for the James Beard Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in the food industry, were announced on Monday. Awards are given in a number of categories, including Outstanding Restaurateur, Outstanding Chef, Outstanding Restaurant, Best New Restaurant, and Rising Star Chef of the Year, Cookbook of the Year, and Outstanding Service Award.
Here are a few highlights:
Nominees for Outstanding Restaurant: Boulevard and The Slanted Door in San Francisco, Campanile in Los Angeles, and Gramercy Tavern and Jean Georges in New York.
Nominees for Outstanding Chef: Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago, Jose Andres of Minibar in Washington, DC, Dan Barber of Blue Hill in New York, Suzanne Goin of Lucques in Los Angeles, and Frank Stitt of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham, Alabama.
An essay in today's New York Times Magazine muses on the cookbooks of James Beard, the pioneering American chef and food writer.
There seem to have been two Beards, writes Aleksandra Crapanzano - the sophisticated gastrophile with a taste for sea urchin mousseline, who awakened mid century Americans to the pleasures of fresh, high-quality ingredients, and the shameless crowd-pleaser and businessman, writing recipes for tomato soup cake and signing countless endorsement deals for kitchen products.
A new edition of "Beard on Food" loses the bad Sloppy Joe recipes found in Beard's seminal "American Cookery," and is instead full of the exuberant eater's musings - tales dining of pheasants in Provence, a digression on the history of fondue in Switzerland, Crapanzano writes.
Since it's the dips and appetizers day of our Super Bowl Week, I thought it would be fitting to feature a cookbook chock full of recipes for appetizers. I headed to my cookbook stash, knowing that I had at least one appetizer cookbook in my stacks. What I came up with is the little book yousee pictured here, A Book of Appetizers. Printed in 1958, this perfectly square volume was written by Helen Evans Brown (she wrote several cookbooks with James Beard).
It contains 145 recipes for appetizers and each is paired with a drink suggestion. Some of the recipes are kitschy and dated, while others are appealingly current. After the jump I've included recipe #144, Spicy Stuffed Onion Rings, which would make a great Super Bowl nibble (although they might unnecessarily tether you to the stove). She pairs these rings with a Columbian Cooler, which is a blend of Jamaican rum and Creme de Menthe. Personally, I think a good lager might be a better pairing.
Just in time for 2008, I'm reviving a Slashfood feature that went fallow sometime last spring. That's right, I'm talking about the venerable Cookbook of the Day! However, I'm adding a twist. In addition to featuring new cookbooks, I'll also be shining the spotlight on an assortment of vintage, kitschy and community cookbooks from my very eclectic collection. And let me tell you, I've got some doozies.
Today's Cookbook of the Day is James Beard's Fireside Cookbook. Written in 1949, it is billed as the "Original basic cook book by America's foremost culinary authority." I think that Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer might argue with that particular assertion, but it is does offer a comprehensive assortment of recipes. The best part of this cookbook is the narrative that is interspersed among the many recipes. Beard's voice comes through so strongly in this book that it feels as if he is speaking directly to you.
This volume is currently out of print, but there are a number of used copies available on Amazon.
Several years ago, when my Great-Aunt Flora had to be moved from her Philadelphia apartment to a nursing home closer to family in Brooklyn, I spent a lot of time helping my cousin Betsy clean out her closets and cabinets, in order to get the apartment ready for sale. In the process, I ended up taking a whole lot of stuff home with me, including a Cuisinart (oh joy of joys), several large bookshelves and a stack of Gourmet magazines from the 1960's and 70's.
I use the Cuisinart frequently. The bookshelves stand prominently in my apartment. But for the longest time, that stack of Gourmets sat, dusty and unloved, on the bottom shelf of a cabinet. I pulled them out a few days ago and started flipping through them, realizing that they be fun to write about. So, today I bring you a recipe from the August 1972 (35 years to the month!) Gourmet magazine for a "glazed tart of fresh raspberries." My heart struggles uncomfortably to think of all that glaze on perfect, fresh raspberries, but since it was James Beard's recipe, I imagine it was probably very tasty.
The James Beard Foundation, a world-renowned not-for-profit organization based in New York City, held their annual awards gala earlier this week and named their choices for the best of the best in the culinary world. Since there are simply far too many recipients to list them all here, I've just chosen a few from select categories, but you can view the list in it's entirety at their website.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Barbara Kafka
BOOK AWARDS CATEGORIES:
Cookbook of the Year: THE LEE BROS. SOUTHERN COOKBOOK by Matt Lee and Ted Lee
Baking: FROM MY HOME TO YOURS by Dorie Greenspan
Asian: CRADLE OF FLAVOR by James Oseland
Cookbook Hall of Fame: MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK by Mollie Katzen
Wine & Spirits: ROMANCING THE VINE by Alan Tardi
Read on after the jump to find out the winners in the Chef and Restaurant categories.
An email I received from Jessica's Biscuit pointed out that the nominees for the International Association of Culinary Professions Awards (IACP) and the James Beard Foundation Awards were both announced yesterday. For those unfamiliar, both awards are akin to receiving an Oscar within the food community. Both recognize outstanding cookbooks, journalism and professionals in the food world, and while there is some overlap, the list of nominees for Beard Foundation Awards is far lengthier. Beard nominees for best food-related website include Leite's Culinaria, Epicurious and Dr. Vino's Wine Blog. There are also categories for webcasts, weekly newspaper sections, magazines, and a diverse array of awards chefs and cookbooks. The IACP is presenting a Lifetime Achievement Award to Knopf VP and editor Judith Jones (who helped launch Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking) and a Humanitarian Award to Frontera Grill's Rick Bayless. Go check out both sites and see if any of your favorites have made the lists of nominees.
How much do you want to know about sauces? If you are looking for one solid tomato-based meat sauce, then Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making is probably not the book for you. If, however, you want to know just about everything there is to know about the history, evolution and techniques of sauce making across cultures, then this James Beard Award winning cookbook is the perfect choice. The encyclopedic book is over 600 pages and starts with the basics, including the equipment that is needed for proper sauce making and the fairly standard stocks and things that are the absolute foundation of most cooking. The subjects, in terms of the types of sauces covered, range from meat and fish sauces to salad dressings, vegetable-based and dessert sauces. There is even a who chapter dedicated to the somewhat out of fashion jellied sauces, although their construction is interesting even if you don't plan on serving them.
The wonderful thing about sauces is that they can transform something ordinary into something much more impressive, not to mention into something that is far tastier that it might be plain. This book is an essential reference for a home chef who wants to really take their cooking up to a new level and for a pro who wants to, similarly, learn some more techniques and just improve their basics.
Most families have one person who is responsible for baking the cakes for birthdays and other occasions. It might be a grandmother who bakes her famous coconut cake everyone loves or an enthusiastic child whose greatest love is elaborately decorating sheet cakes made with box mixes, but there is always one. When you are that one person, sometimes you run out of ideas. Even grandma must get tired of her coconut cake every once in a while.
The book is packed with stunningly beautiful cakes, recipes to go with them and stories from bakers who moved from being "the one" in their family to making a career out of something that they loved to do. Recipes come from cooks like Alice Waters, Julia Child, James Beard and Alice Medrich. They are cakes that will take birthdays and other celebrations to a new level, not just variations on the same old thing, so if you're up for the challenge of tacking something new, like a Princess Cake, you will be well rewarded when it is met with oohs and aahs at serving time.
Blogger and food writer Ed Levine was at the annual James Beard Foundation Awards dinner last night and, very luckily for all of us who couldn't attend, photoblogged the whole thing! The event is often called the culinary equivalent of the Oscars and when the nominees are announced, there is a sense of aniticipation for the ceremony. Unfortunately, just like the Oscars, not everyone can win, no matter how much it seems that each person deserves to. Thanks to Ed, we got a sneak peek at the winners last night, even though the offical press release has yet to be seen just came out. I'll mention right now that this list is not complete, but a full list is now available at the James Beard Foundation website, or by following the links after the jump.
Lifetime Achievement - Judith Jones
Best Cookbook - Sunday Suppers at Lucques, by Suaanne Goins
Best Television Food Show - How to Cook Everything (on PBS)
Best Webcast - Spatulata.com (Isabella, 10, and Olivia Gerasole, 8, prepare a dinner's worth of recipes every two weeks. They are the youngest recipients in the history of the awards)
Best New Restaurant - Modern in NY
Best Restaurant - The French Laundry
Best Restaurant Service - Gary Danko
Best Chef - Alfred Portale of Gotham Bar & Grill
Best Restaurateur - Daniel Boulud
Best Food Section, large circulation - SF Chronicle
Best Food Section, small circulation - Denver Post
Finalists for the James Beard Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in the food industry, were announced on Monday. Awards are given in a number of categories, including Outstanding Restaurateur, Outstanding Chef, Outstanding Restaurant, Best New Restaurant, and Rising Star Chef of the Year, Cookbook of the Year, and Outstanding Service Award. 
Since it's the dips and appetizers day of our Super Bowl Week, I thought it would be fitting to feature a cookbook chock full of recipes for appetizers. I headed to my cookbook stash, knowing that I had at least one appetizer cookbook in my stacks. What I came up with is the little book yousee pictured here, 
Just in time for 2008, I'm reviving a Slashfood feature that went fallow sometime last spring. That's right, I'm talking about the venerable 
The James Beard Foundation, a world-renowned not-for-profit organization based in New York City, held their annual awards gala earlier this week and named their choices for the best of the best in the culinary world. Since there are simply far too many recipients to list them all here, I've just chosen a few from select categories, but you can view the list in it's entirety 
An email I received from 
Most families have one person who is responsible for baking the cakes for birthdays and other occasions. It might be a grandmother who bakes her famous coconut cake everyone loves or an enthusiastic child whose greatest love is elaborately decorating sheet cakes made with box mixes, but there is always one. When you are that one person, sometimes you run out of ideas. Even grandma must get tired of her coconut cake every once in a while.
Blogger and food writer 
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Morbid thoughts? Have a cookie
