Forget buying that instant pancake mix. It's just as easy to make your own!

What do you think would happen if Regis and Kelly put Gordon Ramsay, Paula Deen, Nigella Lawson, Mario Batali, and Emeril Lagasse in the same room? If you guessed a flurry of BAM!s, f-bombs, butter, and Crocs, you guessed right.

For Halloween this year, Live with Regis and Kelly got cooking with a little help from Guy Fieri (the real one), and you can check it out over at eatmedaily.com. Good ol' Regis is basically Philbin in chef's outfits, not bothering to try an accent to play Ramsay, and saying nothing but "BAM!" for Lagasse. But Kelly -- she steals the show getting accented to play Deen and Lawson, and revelling in butter kebabs on one end, and sultry, chocolate-covered spoons on the other.

Seeing that mess of craziness, methinks I want to throw a chef-themed costume party pot luck. Make a dish from one of their books, and come in costume and character. Anyone in?

We've talked before about meals that require minimal cooking to go from kitchen to table. How about a couple of dishes that only require a bit of chopping and a single pot of boiling water for the pasta? The first recipe comes from Nigella Lawson. She appeared on NPR's morning edition last week, and offered up a no-cook pasta sauce that marinates sliced mushrooms in a vinaigrette of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and thyme until they wilt. Then she tosses them with just-cooked linguine, some grated parmesan cheese and chopped parsley for an easy meal. You can get the recipe on the NPR website, but I recommend listening to the segment as well, as Nigella is always so nice to listen to.

The second no-cook recipe is my take on a recipe I've seen all over this summer. It's so easy that there's hardly even an actual recipe to share at all. Chop up two big summer tomatoes (it's really gorgeous if you use a combination of red and yellow tomatoes). Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil and add a pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Stir it up and push it to the back of the counter for half an hour. In the mean time, put a large pot of water on to boil. When the water is boiling, add some salt and pasta (any kind you like, I'm a fan of cappellini). While the pasta cooks, chop some basil and pull a ball of mozzarella cheese apart into shreds. Add the cheese and basil to the tomatoes. When the pasta is done, loosely drain it and add it to the tomato bowl. Toss and eat. The heat of the pasta melts the cheese a bit and gives the sauce a creamy, blushing color. It is so delicious.

This time of year, I much prefer eating fruit-based desserts to ones involving chocolate or lots of cake. Give me a nice crisp or cobbler and I'm a happy girl. Despite those seasonal preferences, I saw this cake and immediately started salivating. There's no recipe link along with the picture, but I believe that it's the one from Nigella Lawson's gorgeous, slightly tongue-in-cheek cookbook, How to be a Domestic Goddess. It's a cake I've always intended to make, but have never gotten around to it. I think it's moving to the top of the list now, having seen this tasty reminder.

Thanks to Jonathan for adding this picture to the Slashfood Flickr pool!

Yesterday I mentioned how much I loved and devoured oranges as a kid (they just don't seem the same nowadays). And that got me thinking about clementines. Not just eating them on their own, but a dessert that featured them.

This recipe for Clementine Cake (which sounds like the name of a Bond girl) comes from Nigella Lawson, and it actually looks quite easy to make: just clementines, almonds, eggs, sugar, and baking powder.

I first discovered Nigella Lawson when her show, Nigella Bites, aired during the late night hour on Style, sometime in the early months of 2002. I instantly fell in love with her approach to food, as well as the gorgeousness with which the show was filmed. I also made a point of getting my hands on a copy of the accompanying book, also called, Nigella Bites, as soon as I could.

I have to admit that I don't cook from this book all that often, although when I have the recipes have always fairly easy and very reliable. However, I love to sit on the floor in front of my bookcase with it and flip through. Her descriptions of the dishes that come before the actual recipe are akin to reading some of the best fiction out there, and the pictures are so very drool-worthy. If you don't want to invest in this book, I recommend checking it out of the library and bringing it home, just to page through it. A warning though: it is best to read this book when your kitchen is fairly empty, otherwise you may want to leap up and start preparing whatever dish you happen to be reading about at that moment.

I first learned that there was a world of sugar beyond white, brown and confectioners when I started watching Nigella Bites in the winter of 2002. She was always suggesting that you use a thing called demerara, which, when said in her delicious British accent, sounded particularly appealing. The closest I could get in the small city market near my apartment was a bag of turbinado sugar (aka Sugar in the Raw). I loved the turbinado for sweetening tea and to sprinkle on top of baked goods (I tend to sprinkle it on unbaked scones so that I don't have to create a glaze or frosting). I try to always have it on hand these days.

A few years ago a friend introduced me to Sucanant, (it stands for Sugar Cane Natural) and it's a less processed sugar that retains much of its molasses (and a few nutrients). It's become my go-to sugar for most baking projects, mostly because I like to believe that it is in someway slightly more virtuous than refined sugar.

This little rumination on sugar was inspired by Nicole (a Slashfood alum) at Baking Bites post on demerara, turbinado and muscovado sugars earlier today. For more information and details about those sugars, go check out her post.

A while back I wrote about how I have most all Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, but that I rarely cook from them (save the one recipe I posted). I always thought that the reason I didn't use more of her recipes had something to do with laziness on my part, but apparently her recipes have been deemed more difficult to follow than some of the male chefs out there. Who knew there was something else I could blame it on!

In light of this study, England's Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts tried out several of Nigella's recipes for a dinner party recently and shared his hits and misses with his readers. It's an interesting read and a good warning to stay away from the Instant Chocolate Mousse recipe in her newest cookbook.

I have every one of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, but I hardly ever actually cook out of them. They have beautiful pictures and the narratives she writes prior to each recipe are always really fun to read, but something always prevents me from actually making the recipes. However, for every rule there is also an exception. I make "her" cold Soba Noodles with Sesame Seeds all the time (obviously Nigella didn't actually invent this dish, but she gives nice measurements for the accompanying sauce).

The recipe is in Forever Summer (on page 48 to be exact) and that page in my book is splattered and marked due to repeated use. I should probably just write down the measurements for the dressing on a notecard and leave the book on the shelf, but time after time I turn to it just to ensure that I'm using the correct proportions. This is an especially great party or potluck dish, because it's a little different from your standard pasta salad. People always think it was much more complicated than it actually was. Oh, and the leftovers are out of this world good. Because I like you guys, the recipe is after the jump.

Photo by Marisa McClellan

It is taking just about every ounce of control I possess right now not to go jump on a plane and head down to Florida. The 6th annual South Beach Wine and Food Festival is set to begin tomorrow, February 22nd and will run through Sunday, February 25th.

Most of the events have already sold out, and they are expecting approximately 18,000 people to attend throughout the weekend. The purpose of the festival is to showcase the talents of world-renowned chefs, culinary personalities, and wine & spirit producers, as well as celebrate Latin and Caribbean-inspired cuisine.

We have heard that formal dining rooms are back in vogue on the restaurant scene this year, which means that the combination restaurant dining room/kitchens, where everyone had a clear view of their food from start to finish, will gradually be phased out. Patrons are now more interested in eating the food and appreciating the subtleties of a well-prepared meal than they are in watching it be prepared. With the massive number of cooking shows on TV, can you blame them? Everywhere you turn, you can see great pictures of food and videos of how its made, but the restaurant is where you can taste every delicious looking item that you wouldn't ordinarily get at home.

The UK Guardian is saying that the "Nigella Effect" is responsible for this change, as the sultry chef's recommendation is enough to make people try anything. She sold the public on 250,000 tins of goose fat over Christmas, so the end of open-air kitchens was easy by comparison. But although she may have helped to speed up the trend, it is far more widespread than Britain already - and like it or not, it seems as though this trend could be here to stay.

Garlic used to be the go-to ingredient of both pros and of home cooks. If you ask chefs like Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver what their favorite ingredient of the moment is, they might just say chilis, instead. Chilis, as Nigella puts it "are quite exciting... [and] quite apart from the fact that chillies are so red and shiny, I feel they've been fashioned by Santa's elves." It seems unlikely that the first thought that pops into other people's minds when looking at chilis is that they are produced by elves, but their versatile and spicy flavor is just as likely to excite the imagination of a cook as a new toy is to excite a child.

In addition to being tasty, chilis have proven health benefits, which makes them fit neatly into the trend for foods that have to do with wellness and overall good health. Capsaicin, a chemical in chilis that gives them their heat, has been shown to slow the growth of and even kill cancer cells, alleviate inflammation, relieve chronic pain and even help to reduce cholesterol and the risk of heart attacks.

This is the Domestic Goddess's Watermelon and Feta Salad and if there is a more refreshing side dish on a hot summer day, I'm not sure what it would be. It is also very simple to make; the chilled salad has the crunchy sweetness of watermelon, its juiciness enhanced by mixing it with salty, creamy feta cheese. Jennifer has added chopped parsley to hers for a bit of color contrast, but I have seen recipes, like Nigella Lawson's, that call for adding chopped olives to the mix. Paula Deen's recipe asks for slivered onions to be included. The Traveler's Lunchbox tosses pinenuts and basil in with the watermelon. Whichever combination of flavors you end up using, this is a great use for watermelon and a beautiful, sweet-and-savory side to replace potato salad at your next bbq.

 

 

Some of us love the Food Network. Some of us want to hate it, but can't. I am of the latter group. I want to ban the channel from my television for some of the things they have done to my viewing pleasure (Iron Chef! Bring back Iron Chef!), but I can't. I just can't do it because there are a few things that still capture my attention:

1. I love watching Michael Chiarello throw together some seriously delicious looking Napa-terranean meals; better yet, I love watching him stroll through the vineyard in his jeans, caressing his grapes. (Oh my, did I blog that second part out loud?!?!)
2. Tyler Florence is hot. I'd like to be Tyler's Ultimate.
3. There is a rumor that the original Iron Chef is coming back (it is on the schedule at 4 am right now). Not confirmed, but a rumor is better than nothing.
4. Paula Deen's food scares my fat cells, but she is too adorable when she is cooking with her sons.
5. Alton Brown is good eats. 
6. They will have Nigella Lawson some time this year
7. By some glorious semi-homemade alignment of the stars, every time I turn the television on, Sandra Lee is not scheduled (unfortunately, Rachael Ray is, but that's a different post).
8. Even though I am not a fan of Giada de Lauentiis, I like her taste in kitchens and clothes.

This particular type of chocolate cake has many, many names: wacky cake, dump-it cake, one-pan cake, one-bowl cake, eggless cakes, easy chocolate cakes, vinegar cake. Though the ingredients vary from cake to cake, the concept is the same because all the recipes are for cakes made entirely in one bowl or even mixed directly in the pan. This means that it takes next to no time to prepare them and the cleanup is even less than it is for a cake mix - not to mention that you get a homemade chocolate cake in about an hour!

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's food section rounded up a group of bakers and put six one-bowl chocolate cake recipes to the test, including cakes from Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson. The bakers had the same complaints about Nigella's recipe that I have had in the past, namely that her instructions aren't very clear and if you don't already know what you're doing, your cake can come out terribly. Martha's cake, which did use eggs, tasted great and the panel also loved a classic "crazy cake" recipe, which calls for vinegar and no eggs. The full results and winning recipes can be found here, and are a must-read for any baker or chocolate cake lover.

[Image Post Gazette]