In a refreshing alternative to the tired go-to chicken soup, tortilla soup is just as simple a concoction thanks to the addition of a few lively ingredients, namely jalapeno, lime, cilantro and tomatillos. Here, Flickr user umamigirl prepared Serious Eat's "kitchen sink style" Quick Tortilla Soup recipe, which we can only hope to be as gloriously colorful in flavor as it is in appearance.
Though this tortilla soup makes use of a plethora of ingredients, the beauty of the brothy soup is its flexibility, both in terms of taste as well as the clever cook's "what-do-I-have-on-hand-that-may-go-bad" approach. Have an affinity to garlic? Throw in as many cloves as your heart desires. Are there bell peppers going soft? Toss them in at liberty. Distaste for cilantro? Substitute some parsley in its place. Either way, with a base as simple as a can of diced tomatoes, broth and cooked chicken, tossing in whatever additional ingredients you crave guarantees to lead to a delicious bowl of soup.
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We're not the only ones itching to get out the door and toast our friends in the Old Country (or the wonderful eats and drinks they've sent our way). For those who will celebrating the occasion at home, Chow has recipes for three lovely terrines; Serious Eats discovers the tapenades of Provence; and one of Slashfood's own beer columnists breaks down Saison style beer at Gourmet while his colleague tackles eight great aperitifs, several of which are French.
Perhaps the triumph of the online articles, however, is France Magazine's enormous feature on aperitifs. From Lillet to Suze to Noilly Prat, it's all there, and we'll be printing it out and tucking it into our bag. (They've just unlocked the online files especially for Slashfood.) Happy celebrating!
Long lines at the Great American Food and Music Fest. (c) Pamela Palma
With everyone yakking about sustainability, organics and local ingredients nowadays, especially in the San Francisco area, the sight of Bay Area residents (who notoriously champion these ideals) noshing on bagels flown in from New York City and BBQ trucked from Texas was an odd one.
At the Great American Food and Music Fest on Saturday more than 10,000 people turned out to a massive ampitheater overlooking the Santa Cruz mountains to tuck into food and music. Though the stage at the Shoreline will host Coldplay, No Doubt and Phish later this summer, on Saturday the fans that turned out in droves were mostly the hungry kind (hungrier than they expected, due to a technological meltdown involving electronic wristbands, very long lines and occasionally soldout food -- for which co-curator Ed Levine has profusely apologized).
But the day had its bright spots, among them glimpses of celebrity chefs and TV stars like Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri and Aida Mollenkamp demonstrating recipes for modern American cuisine. For price tags ranging from $35 to more than $500, festival-goers were able to see their heroes live and -- when the crowds didn't prove too daunting -- eat some serious food.
By Pervaiz Shallwani We're big proponents of buying local when possible and just spied some curious data about 5,500 iPhone users buying a $3 Locavore app (created by a Slashfood friend) in a mere month. It tells iPhone addicts what's in season, what's en route and where nearby farmers' markets are located.
Whoa. We wondered what other yummy things we could do if we got with the times and finally embraced an iPhone for our foodie needs. Boy, were we shocked. There are hundreds of free and paid downloads including one for beer, one for soda and a fast-food meal calorie counter.
Not only are food nerd darlings Serious Eats, Food Network and Yelp at our fingertips, so is the FDA with food recall news (though their freebie Twitter also works), a guide to finding cheap or free kids' meals at nearby eateries and Twecipe, which matches the dregs of those fridge contents to a recipe.
All this edible ammo available at the touch of a button makes us wonder whether Googling our munching needs is becoming just so 2008 and whether we should cave to the iFeed – er, iPhone -- trend. Have you?
Chefs say that canned or boxed chicken stock is an abomination and that you're better off just substituting plain old water instead. However, what's a home cook to do on those occasions when you want something more than water (even if it's fresh, nicely filtered H2O) and you used up the last of your frozen stock when you made risotto a week ago?
Over at Serious Eats, Michele Humes has done the research, tasting and testing every canned or boxed stock in her local market, trying to determine which are a doable substitute for the real thing and which are better left on the shelf. She found that the all-around winner was Kitchen Basics Natural Chicken Stock. To see all her winners and losers, check out the full post.
Last October, we learned that Mother's Cookies, the iconic west coast cookie maker who baked up those cute little pink and white frosted animal cookies, was going out of business. People who knew and loved their cookies were heart-broken, so many of us grew up eating those be-sprinkled cookies and couldn't imagine a world without them in it.
Happily, we no longer have to mourn the passing of those cheerful cookies, as the Kellogg Company announced on Wednesday that they will buying the Mother's brand and will be bringing back their most popular flavors, incorporating them into their snacks business unit. Oh happy day!
As a documentary lover, I am so excited about two food documentaries coming out this fall. Both Flow and Food, Inc. deal with the way two basic necessities, water and food, are handled by big industry.
Food, Inc. sets out to expose the truth about the food industry. Most of it will probably be familiar to anyone who's read anything by Michael Pollan, who is featured in the film. The film delves into who makes food, how it's made, and what the consequences are to various groups of people. Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), Gary Hirschberg (the head of Stonyfield Farms), and Joe Salatin (the head of Polyface Farms) are also featured.
Flow looks into similar issues with water. I heard about this the other day on Bob Edwards' Weekend on NPR, and saw that it is opening in a few weeks at my local art cinema. It is about issues surrounding water and whether it should be a public asset or privately controlled. Flow also delves into what is in our water, what is in the bottled water, and what local communities are doing to take back their water supply.
While we strive to cover the food scene on national and worldwide level here at Slashfood, occasionally our regional biases come out. If you've been reading for awhile, you'll know that I live in Philadelphia and that I'm a bit partial to the food scene coming out of my city. However, I'm not the only one who's a fan of the local edibles, there've been a couple of interesting "Food in Philly" stories lately and I thought I'd take a few minutes to point them out.
Last Thursday, Serious Eats posted the second installment in their series of city guides and this one was dedicated to Philadelphia. Written by Joy Manning, Philadelphia Magazine restaurant critic, it compiles a number of city 'Bests,' including Best Bargain Lunch and Best Pork Sandwich (I second her suggestion of DiNic's roasted pork and greens, it's amazing). I feel like she missed a few great places like Plaza Garibaldi (queso fundido con chorizo!), Lee How Fook and the Nanzhou Handdrawn Noodle House. However, if you're planning a trip to Philly or you're local and in need of some new restaurant suggestions, her piece is chock full of solid suggestions.
In the September 30th issue of Wine Spectator, Philadelphia got not one, but two nods for our fabulous cheese shops. They called out Di Bruno Brothers (a must-visit for cheese loving tourists) and The Chestnut Hill Cheese Shop (where my great-aunt Doris used to buy all her cheese and gourmet tidbits in the 1980s). My only complaint is that they left Claudio's, my favorite South Philly cheese vendor, off the list. [via Phoodie]
Many of you have, by now, heard of Twitter, the social networking tool used to post short messages to your friends about what you're doing at the moment. Loads of people use the service, and you can even follow Slashfood. But can you share a recipe in 140 characters or less (140 being the maximum amount of characters Twitter allows)?
Well, Cookbook sure thinks so. If you're on Twitter, you can follow Cookbook for regular recipe updates. For the most part, the recipes seem fine. In order to share a recipe in that number of characters, though, you've got to use as many shortcuts as possible, and that does make some of the recipes hard to follow, in my opinion.
Overall, though, it's a pretty neat concept. It's kind of like the Cartoon Kitchen on Serious Eats, only it's delivered right to you. What a way to bring cooking into the 21st century.
This weekend's New York Times reported that as of last Tuesday dairy farmers in Germany are striking. It's a classic case of supply and demand. The EU decided to raise milk quotas, leading to more supply and lower prices. Meanwhile feed and fuel prices have gone way up, which has put the pinch on German dairy farmers. In response, they're attempting to create demand by striking.
However, as the NYT points out, this situation is a little different than the Italian pig farmers, because these dairy farmers must continue to milk the cows. Because their goal is to keep the milk out of the market, they end up pouring it out, literally dumping food down the drain. It's an unfortunate situation, especially since worldwide there are so many people who are struggling with food shortages and hunger.
It was several years ago that I started thinking more carefully about the butter I was using in my cooking and baking. I switched to unsalted for baking and tried to get my hands on locally produced, organic butter for toast topping and sauce-finishing. These days I am positively addicted to the cultured butter from Vermont Butter and Cheese (not particularly local, but the best I've found around Philly).
Miss Ginsu has taken butter-tasting to a level far above my own measly explorations. Last week, she headed out on her bike and bought nine varieties of premium and imported butters, all unsalted (at least that was her intent, she did end up with salted Kerrygold butter unintentionally). Working methodically through all of them, she rated them on a graded scale. The winner of her test was Elle & Vire, an imported French butter.
During the years when I was going to school in Walla Walla, there wasn't much in the way of good food in town. Our options were the standard fast food fare, some greasy diners and a few taco trucks scattered around town (it was before the food and wine revolution that they've had over the last few years). However, the taco trucks offered some really fantastic fare, making me forever a fan of fresh tortillas wrapped around spicy beef, chicken or pork.
What got me thinking about taco trucks was this post on Serious Eats by Matthew Amster-Burton, in which he takes his four-year-old daughter to Tacos El Asadero, Seattle's best known taco truck that actually serves their grub on a bus instead of from a truck window. He got her a lengua taco, which impressed me, because I don't know any other kids who would willingly eat tongue. Apparently it made an impression on the little Amster-Burton, because when it was all over, she asked for a taco truck to be parked in front of their house. Don't we all wish for that?
Okay kids, it's time to dish. I know that there have got to be bunches of you who have taco truck stories. Let's hear them!
I once had a boyfriend who could not tolerate the taste or smell of hard boiled eggs. I remember learning this the hard way, after I had made a really terrific, labor-intensive salmon salad (with freshly poached salmon, not canned). We sat down to eat, and as he put the fork into his mouth, a terrible looked passed across his face and he looked like he was about to retch. The fork beat a hasty retreat back to the plate, and he looked at me with a very serious expression on his face and asked, "Does this have hard boiled eggs in it?"
These days I try to ferret out whether someone is a picky eater before I get too attached, but I've discovered that just about everyone has that one thing that they just can't stand to eat. For some folks, it has to do with a texture and for others it's the association that makes it objectionable. My mom doesn't care for pepper and my dad hates the combination of crunchy and creamy (think ice cream with candy bits in it). My list is fairly short, consisting only of shrimp (as I have a highly inconvenient allergy).
What's your objectionable ingredient? Has your list gotten short as you've gotten older? How do you handle it if you are served something that contains this item?
After I posted about the Pickle Sickle, I came across the above at superlocal's flickr page. It's a picture of a truly great popsicle from Korea. It's watermelon-flavored, and the "seeds" are actually chocolate chips.
We need something like this in the U.S. Regular popsicles and fudgsicles and those things that look like red, white and blue rocket ships are fine, but this is really a work of art. And doesn't it just look refreshing?
Actually, I'm having a flashback to my childhood. I think I had something like this when I was a kid. I'm not sure if it was on a stick or maybe a treat that was watermelon-slice shaped that came in a box. Anyone else remember something like this or am I thinking of something else?
Have you seen the new food website Serious Eats? It was just started by a bunch of well-known food bloggers - including Ed, Meg, Adam, Alaina and Adam- who felt that the internet didn't quite have the kind of food-loving online community that they wanted to be a part of just yet.
You can't even attempt to define a site when it's in its infancy, but it sounds like they have a lot of interesting content planned. In addition to providing original food writing and blogging to their audience, one of their primary features will be video-based and will star well-know figures such as Susie Essman, Jeffrey Steingarten, Daniel Boulud, and - of course - Ed Levine himself. In shades of the old Chowhound boards, there is also a "talk" section, where registered users can pose questions, respond to requests for recipe/restaurant help or just bring up food issues that they feel warrant discussion.
Chefs say that canned or boxed chicken stock is an abomination and that you're better off just substituting plain old water instead. However, what's a home cook to do on those occasions when you want something more than water (even if it's fresh, nicely filtered H2O) and you used up the last of your frozen stock when you made risotto a week ago? 
Last October, we learned that Mother's Cookies, the iconic west coast cookie maker who baked up those cute little pink and white frosted animal cookies, 
As a documentary lover, I am so excited about two food documentaries coming out this fall. Both Flow and Food, Inc. deal with the way two basic necessities, water and food, are handled by big industry.
Last week we wrote about the news that 
Have you seen the new food website 
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