"behind the scenes" news and stories

Over the last several years, the term "flash mob" has sprung up to describe a large group of people who come together to perform public pranks -- mostly harmless, quick stunts that are then forwarded around the Internet for all to ogle at the following day.

Enter Irish chef Niall Harbison, who recently launched Food Mob, an online show that takes that concept and applies it to cooking. But instead of being a confusing mess for those engaged with the "mob," Harbison, who is also a social media expert, seeks to enlighten those who might be afraid of getting in the kitchen.

To do this, he uses simplistic terms, recipes with few ingredients and a whole lot of tech interaction -- all in under 20 minutes per episode. "The experience we want to create is doing something that's user generated," Harbison tells Slashfood. "Over the years, we've had people preach at us about how things can be done. There's very little two way communication."

After the jump, an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Food Mob shot just for Slashfood.

Just in time for the Golden Globes, the Food Network aired a special on their work behind the scenes of Queen Latifah's movie, Last Holiday. The special, creatively entitled Food Network Goes to Hollywood, was a fun behind-the-scenes expose of how food is styled for the silver screen.

In Last Holiday (which, Cinematical tells us, receives raves from all the critics), Queen Latifah plays a housewares saleswoman with a heart of gold and a love for Emeril, whose dishes she cooks up for the kid next door. But the plot's not so important here: we care more about how many chickens they had to be purchased so the Queen could make Chicken Tchoupitoulas along with Emeril (on TV in her kitchen). They never actually said, but it was clearly dozens. We care that the actors usually don't get to eat the food in restaurants scenes, but in this movie? They did, and ate cassoulet and roasted quail with brioche and chorizo stuffing and spiced lamb shanks with blood orange relish. Oh my.

The funniest part of the whole show, though, was one of the chef consultants explaining that, because Queen Latifah's character ate Lean Cuisines for dinner, she was making a red wine sauce to go over the frozen entree: "so it will taste better for Queen Latifah." That's so sweet.

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