Julia Child certainly could make a mean boeuf bourguignon, but did you know she could also whip up the building blocks of life?
It's kind of scary watching her describe scientific diagrams using her chef's knife as a pointer. But it's helpful for all us home cooks that she converts grams into teaspoons. Bon appetit!
Gourmet may have closed, but Ruth Reichl still hit Kansas City to promote her new book, "Gourmet Today," at a special dinner.
A chat with local cook Carol LaBruzzo and a recipe for Italian Wedding Soup.
The PBS show "The Winemakers" includes a KC contestant: Ryan Sciara of Cellar Rat.
After "Julie & Julia," what should you read next? The Star says "My Life in France," "Alice Waters and Chez Panisse" and "Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School."
Westside Local offers everything from a classic roast-beef sandwich to a soup made of watermelon, cucumber and beets.
Restaurants: The meatpacking district's Standard Grill suffers some dining hiccups but is still a solid food experience, the Village's Joseph Leonard has "flashes of daylight" in otherwise so-so fare and Brooklyn's Bark Hot Dogs rests between chic eats and fast food.
Syvlia Schur -- a recipe developer for Betty Crocker, cookbook writer for companies like Campbell's and creator of products like Clamato, Cran-Apple juice and the pre-Slim-Fast diet drink Metrecal -- has died at the age of 92.
The cause of death was respiratory failure, her daughter, Jane S. Smith, told the New York Times.
Clamato, a cocktail juice made with tomato juice, onions, celery, spices and a dash of clam juice, is known for being a key ingredient in the Michelada. It is made and distributed by Mott's.
Along with independently helping food corporations develop new products, Schur was the founder of her own restaurant and food company consulting business, Creative Food Services.
"She was a pioneer of modern food usage," her Creative Food Services coworker Heidi Kost-Gross told the Times. "Her company was at the cutting edge of how food should look and taste, and above all, how it should be used."
Hugh Jackman in 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine.' Photo: 20th Century Fox
A New York deli known for its gargantuan sandwiches has gone the way of the summer blockbuster.
The "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" sandwich is now a fixture on the menu at the Carnegie Deli, a New York landmark on the corner of 55th Street and Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan.
The sandwich is the carnivorous wolf's dream -- and the vegetarian's worst nightmare: corned beef, pastrami, turkey, salami, tongue, American cheese and brisket on rye.
Julia Child. Photo: John Dominis, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Somewhere Julia's chuckling.
The Boston Globe reports Tuesday that the doyenne of French cuisine's Cambridge home is now occupied by a vegetarian animal-rights activist, who -- since the release of "Julie and Julia" -- has been besieged by tourists snapping photos of her home and leaving butter, yes butter, on the fence post.
"It's a bit ironic," Lisa Landsverk said of her place at Julia's kitchen.
In case you were wondering to what extent the mania for "Julie and Julia'" had gripped the nation, Sunday's New York Times delivered the answer.
This August 30, nearly half a century after the book was published in America, Child's classic tome"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" will be listed in the number one spot on the gray lady's bestseller list in the how-to category. The paper reports booksellers selling seven times as many copies in a month as they are accustomed to selling in a year.
This is not a small deal, particularly for the struggling publishing industry. Blogger Julie Powell is of course largely responsible for the surge of interest in the French Chef, and we wonder whether top Knopf execs have been bombarding her with flowers and thank-you notes.
More importantly, we are curious about how many of our own readers have invested in the book because of the blog or the movie. So spill it in our poll: Have you bought Child's cookbook? When? Tell us why in the comments.
'A Great American Cook: Recipes from the Home Kitchen of One of Our Most Influential Cooks' Jonathan Waxman with Tom Steele Photographs by John Kernick Houghton Mifflin -- 2007 Buy it on Amazon
It's rather hilarious when a chef's cookbook matches his real-life persona.
It shouldn't have been a surprise that the man who trained Bobby Flay in the kitchen some 20 years ago is a pretty darn good teacher, and we were happily producing pretty decent artichoke specimens within minutes.
That same confident, coaxing voice is present throughout Waxman's cookbook, a hodgepodge of his culinary experiences. From the red-pepper pancakes with corn and caviar he introduced at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse to a potato gratin he picked up while training in France, this is a fine compilation from a man who has trained many of the American greats -- and who used to hobnob with the likes of James Beard and Julia Child.
What we tested and whether the book's worth buying, after the jump.
BoingBoing finds a great Snopes article about Van Halen trashing a concert venue after finding forbidden brown M&M's in the backstage area. Apparently David Lee Roth used the candies as a litmus test of a venue.
'Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1' by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck Illustrations by Sidonie Coryn Knopf -- First published 1961 Buy it on Amazon
Julia would not have been our "French Chef," had she not collaborated with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle to transform their draft of a French cookbook into an essential guidebook to French food for American cooks.
Long before she showed television audiences that it was OK to screw up in the kitchen, Julia Child and the two other "Trois Gourmands" (Child, Beck and Bertholle ran a cooking school of sorts -- Ecole des Gourmands -- in Paris) were teaching the American cook the wonders that are beurre blanc, boeuf bourguignon and omelettes through "Mastering the Art."
"This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children's meals, the parent-chauffeur-den-mother syndrome or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat." With those words, Child inspired bloggers and chefs and turned French cuisine into something our nation's home cooks could do ... and well. Bon appetit! See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
'Julia's Kitchen Wisdom - Essential Techniques and Recipes From a Lifetime of Cooking' by Julia Child Knopf -- 2009 (original pub. date 2000) Buy it on Amazon
In the thick of the media blitz surrounding the release of the Julia Child/Julie Powell biographic mash-up movie, it would be easy to mistake this volume -- ours came bestickered with "Now a Major Motion Picture" -- for a quickie cash-in. It's anything but.
Rather, this is a previously published compendium of Julia Child's kitchen notes from her years of writing cookbooks and filming "The French Chef" and we're warning you now -- your copy will get messy. Julia wouldn't mind.
Takeaway tips: In Child's words, "It doesn't pretend to take the place of a big, detailed, all-purpose cookbook like 'Way to Cook' or 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II'. It is, rather, a mini aide-mémoire for general home cookery, and is aimed at those who are tolerably familiar with culinary language; whose kitchens are normally well equipped with such staples as jelly-roll pans, a food processor, a decent rolling pins; and who know their way around the stove reasonably well."
"Kitchen Wisdom" is packed with time and temperature charts, foolproof, building block recipes for mother sauces, breads, desserts and soups, as well as her rigorously tested methods for everything from soaking beans and boiling eggs to the ins and outs of flour dredging and sourcing omelet pans. If it's got a soupçon of French technique, it's in the book.
See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
Slashfood caught up with stars Amy Adams and Meryl Streep at the after-party. Find out what Julia recipes they cooked to prepare for their roles and view some more photos from the premiere after the jump.
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