Jacques Torres chocolates at Chocolate Show New York. Photo: Sara Bonisteel.
You'd think that with the nation's focus on turkey, cranberry sauce and the subsequent holiday season, November food festivals would be few and far from interesting. Not so -- from warm-ups to warm climes, check out our roundup of remarkable November fȇtes.
Chocolate Show New York, New York, Oct. 30-Nov. 1: A brief event straddling two months, these three decadent days include book signings, cooking demos and tastings, from chocolate experts such as Jacques Torres' -- he's pairing Puerto Rican rum and chocolate -- as well as party ideas.
Chocolate Festival of Texas and Texas Wines, Houston, Tex., Nov. 6-7: Not to be out-gunned by the Yanks, the Lone Star State is holding its own celebration for chocoholics, and this one includes oenophiles, who get a souvenir wine glass.
Port Barre Cracklin Festival, Port Barre, La., Nov. 12-15: You read right -- fat back is on offer! The perfect way to pad up for winter hibernation. There will be a fair pageant, rides, live entertainment and the obligatory cook-off.
Anyone who says the bacon craze is over clearly doesn't love bacon as much as we do or is, at the very least, unaware of all the ways bacon enhances our culinary world. And it's impossible to imagine any omnivore in his or her right mind hating on bacon when staring down at this bowl of cheddar corn chowder topped off with what blogger Ezra Pound Cake calls "God's confetti."
While the "hearty, creamy, comforting soup brimming with potatoes, corn, onions and sharp white-cheddar cheese" is enough to make anyone's mouth water, it's really the bacon on top that makes this Ina Garten recipe even more enticing.
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What you're looking at may very well be the platonic ideal of crab and corn chowder. Note the massive chunks of crab, the bounty of fat yellow kernels of corn and a creamy broth whose surface is speckled with little pools of chili oil. Made and photographed by Susan Filson of the appealingly named Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy, it looks like the perfect antidote to summer's swelter: If the dog days are getting you down, fight them off with a bit of crab.
When it comes to soul-satisfying food, people just can't get enough of the creamy textures of comfort food dishes. Mac and cheese, fettuccini, chowders and cream soups top many people's list of favorite indulgences, along with ice cream and milkshakes. But do things have to be loaded with fat to be creamy and taste good?
My short answer is an emphatic "No!" I've developed a few easy ways to keep the creaminess in and the fat out, starting with my method for making savory, velvety corn chowder. This is the perfect soup for this time of year, when you're yearning for something that reminds you of warm weather, like chowder at the beach side -- but which will still warm you up on chilly March evenings.
Here are three skinny secrets that you can use in any of your favorite recipes or even add to store-bought items to ramp up the creaminess and lower the fat.
The recipe, which was cut out of some random magazine and stored in my recipe box for years, said: "Creamy Chicken and Corn Chowder." But really, it is much more Thai and less of a classic chowder, so I've dubbed it Thai Chicken and Corn Chowder.
This recipe will give you rich, creamy flavor that seems like it took hours to prepare, but actually took no time at all. Better yet -- most of the ingredients can come from your cupboard, which makes it ideal for last-minute meals, and a lot cheaper than take-out. This is the sort of dish that you can whip up on a whim and be glad that taste doesn't always come from hours at a hot stove.
Grocery store bins are still overflowing with fresh sweet corn, its silky hair littering the tile floors like pine needles, so you might as well get as much as you can, while you can. The New York Times has a good story on stretching late summer corn, with an especially awesome-looking recipe for corn, basil and tomato chowder. This thick soup packs in the trifecta of summer flavors, made hearty with potatoes and a dollop of crème fraîche. And, best of all, soup's great for freezing, which means you can thaw a container-full any time during the winter for a burst of early September's golden goodness.
The other day, I was itching for a great meal -- as gourmet as possible without breaking the bank. So my friend and I walked around the corner to this small fusion bistro, and while the over-done steak left something to be desired, I almost melted over the seafood chowder. There's nothing quite like the texture of seafood so soft that it melts in your mouth, exploding with flavor. Still dreaming about that great bowl of sea goodness, I have to share a similarly awesome-looking recipe from Leite's Culinaria -- Rhode Island Clear-Broth Quahog Chowder.
Doesn't the above look absolutely amazing? It's also accompanied by a great story -- one that taps into my day dreams about living near the ocean and having a sea full of great food as my back yard. I don't have quahogs readily available, so I'm hoping one of you Slashfood readers can take on this recipe for me and tell me if it tastes as good as it looks. I have a feeling that it does...
After many years abiding to the rule that I would never eat what I couldn't look at in its real form, I succumbed to temptation and had a delicious bowl of Conch Chowder at the Nicola Seafood Restaurant at the Hyatt in Key West (a dish that is, sadly, no longer on the menu). While the conch might look all gooey out of the shell, it's ridiculously delicious and a must-eat when heading south.
And if you're lucky enough to live down south, or find yourself in a kitchen somewhere that conch is available, you've got to check out the quick video above. Bahama Breeze Chef Vern Thomas whips up a really easy Conch Chowder recipe. It's got all the basics -- onions, carrots, potatoes, plus a great tip about putting whole Scotch bonnet peppers into the mix -- to give the chowder flavor without the tear-inducing heat. If you want to learn more about conch as well, they've got a how-to here.
For Christmas, I received a super-cool vegan cookbook (thanks, Mom!) that's become my new favorite. I find that some veggie/vegan cookbooks, while gorgeous and filled with fantastic recipes, have an air of pretension about them that irks me as I struggle to, say, wrap my increasingly-crumbly tempeh in endive.
But Angeline Linardis, author of V Cuisine: The Art of New Vegan Cooking, isn't like that at all. Her voice throughout the book is light and non-threatening, and the recipes aren't nearly as intimidating as some I've come across. (For instance, my favorite chapter name is "Terrifying Tofu.")
So far I've tried a few of the recipes, including the corn chowder (Linardis recommended that you blend half of it with an immersion blender, but I left it chunky, and I'm glad I did - I retained the individual flavors of the veggies and it felt more hearty, like a chowder should) and the tofu "fries," which weren't nearly as crispy as I'd hoped, but plenty tasty and filling.
And while the teaspoon of turmeric the soup called for turned my favorite spatula a permanent shade of shocking yellow, it's a small price to pay for such a fun collection of recipes.
Up and coming chef Ben Sargent had just been given his very own half hour Food Network TV show--all about him and chowder, his specialty. With the sun barely up one morning in May, cameras followed him around the Fulton Fish Market. He stocked up on monkfish, live eels, and giant clams that looked like tubular aliens. The work was scrutinizing, but the last day on camera promised to be easy: a Brooklyn waterfront party where he cooked and his friends gnoshed. Like the cameras weren't even there.
The day arrived. Sargent happily and somewhat drunkenly prepared his chowder. He looked up, and Bobby Flay stood in the audience--the fiery haired Iron Chef, no less. Suddenly, Flay was on him, shaking his hand and challenging him to a chowder cook-off, right then and there.
This wasn't Sargent's show at all. This was Food Network's Throwdown with Bobby Flay and he'd just been had.
Perusing the latest issue of Cook's Country, a
publication I quite enjoy, I was astounded when I came to the "When Things Go Wrong in the Kitchen" section at
the back of the magazine. It is intended to be funny, but what it really shows is that people need to learn when to
throw things away. No matter how thrifty you are or how closely you need to watch your wallet, sometimes it is simply
best to throw away your mistake and start over from scratch. A good time to consider this action is when food is
burnt, bad or if you have been eating leftovers for more than a couple of days.
Witness the following incidents, all harvested from the kitchen disaster stories in Cook's Country:
A woman wanted to make homemade noodles the way her grandmother did. The recipe looked like it would not
make enough, so she added to it until it was several times the original size. She and her husband ate noodles for more
than two weeks and it was years before they wanted to eat them again.
Grocery store bins are still overflowing with fresh sweet corn, its silky hair littering the tile floors like pine needles, so you might as well get as much as you can, while you can. The New York Times has a good story on stretching late summer corn, with an especially awesome-looking recipe for 
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For Christmas, I received a super-cool vegan cookbook (thanks, Mom!) that's become my new favorite. I find that some veggie/vegan cookbooks, while gorgeous and filled with fantastic recipes, have an air of pretension about them that irks me as I struggle to, say, wrap my increasingly-crumbly tempeh in endive. 
Up and coming chef 
Perusing the latest issue of 
10 More Dirty Restaurant Tricks
5 Things You Didn't Know About Turducken
10 Catchiest Food Jingles We Love to Hate
