cuisine - Articles and Posts from Slashfood

Posts with tag cuisine

Does Your Digital Camera Have a 'Food' Setting?

Posted Jul 22nd 2009 1:00PM by Emily Farris
Filed under: Stores & Shopping, New Products, Food News

Tomato and Olympus camera. Photo: Emily Farris.

These days, food porn seems almost to be giving the old-fashioned kind a run for its money. Everyone with a digital camera and an appetite fancies him or herself an amateur food pornographer, which is to say there's a lot of bad food photography out there alongside the good stuff.

Camera companies are catching on to the trend and trying to make a buck, with digital point and shoot models that are manufactured with food photography settings, like this Olympus which has a "cuisine" option, and this Sony, with its "gourmet food" mode. Chances are good that if you purchased a camera recently, it has some kind of food photography option and you don't even know it. If your food photographs are less than porntastic (like the tomato shot here), it might be worth your while to consult your camera's manual or look online to find out.

If you don't have a food setting, don't rush right out to buy a new camera that does.

One pro shutterbug's opinion, after the jump.

Continue reading Does Your Digital Camera Have a 'Food' Setting?

Cookthink helps you satisfy your cravings

Posted Jul 28th 2008 2:57PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: On the Blogs, Food News

what are you craving tool from cookthink

Have you ever found yourself staring blankly at the contents of your refrigerator, knowing that you have mountains of good groceries, but no idea how to put them together into something that sounds appetizing and satisfies your current cravings? (If you haven't found yourself in this state, I am truly impressed by your culinary wisdom and creativity.) For the rest of, the fine folks at Cookthink have invented a new tool, designed to help you pull those separate ingredients and amorphous cravings together into that tasty meal we like to call dinner.

You can search by ingredient, which is handy for using half an eggplant and some elderly french bread. You can also search by cuisine, dish or even the mood you find yourself in at the moment. I have but one word of warning. Make sure you don't use this tool in the hour before lunch time, as it has the ability to stir up cravings you didn't even know you were capable of having. After a search for 'salty' and 'pasta' I am now craving Fettuccine With Guanciale, Egg And Parmesan.

Should France's cuisine be added as a UNESCO world heritage?

Posted Jul 6th 2008 1:00PM by Shayna Glick
Filed under: Lists, France

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization does a lot of things, including set international standards, disseminate new ideas, and "help build human and industrial capacities in diverse fields." One of the organization's most important functions, in my opinion, is to set and protect cultural heritages, which are determined by the World Heritage Committee.

The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO has a wide range of criteria they use to determine world heritages, and France wants to add its cuisine to that list. According to AFP, though, not many people think this bid is going to go through, especially after the committee rejected a similar bid from Mexico a few years ago.

Sure, most of the World Heritages are physical places or arts and traditions associated with them. Most of the criteria that World Heritage Committee uses have to do with monuments or geological locations, but criteria number three leaves cuisine open, at least in my mind: to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared

If national cuisine doesn't bear unique testimony to cultural tradition, I don't know what does. What do you think?

Japan wants to certify sushi and Japanese cuisine as authentic

Posted Mar 1st 2007 7:05PM by Jonathan M. Forester
Filed under: Did you know?

The Japanese government wants to set up a certifying board to regulate sushi served in restaurants abroad. Japan's Agriculture Ministry has convened a panel of food experts who will establish certification standards for Japanese restaurants outside the country. The standards should be decided upon sometime in the next month or so. They will focus on all foods that are part of the Japanese cuisine such as sushi preparation and styles, noodles, teriyaki, etc.

The thought behind this is that by certifying restaurants as authentic it will raise the level of the quality of food prepared, and educate people as to what the food should be like when prepared properly. There are around 10,000+ "authentic" Japanese restaurants in the US, double what there were a little over a decade ago. This has led to a shortage of classically trained chefs, especially sushi chefs.

Becoming a sushi chef is a big deal in Japan. It takes many years of apprenticeship. First a few years learning how to make rice before you are even allowed to touch it, then learning about fish, types, slicing, arrangement, tastes, preparation, etc. Chefs of this quality are lacking in many Japanese and sushi restaurants abroad, leading to poor quality and "inauthentic" sushi.

In The US I have seen sushi chefs who have only a few weeks experience and don't know anything besides how to throw together a few messy maki rolls. They don't know the proper ways to slice fish to present it best and have it melt tenderly in your mouth. Instead you end up eating slabs of fish filled with tough connective tissue because it was cut the wrong way.

Continue reading Japan wants to certify sushi and Japanese cuisine as authentic

Mardi Gras basics Part 2: Holy Trinity

Posted Feb 18th 2007 11:27AM by Joanne Lutynec
Filed under: Vegetables, Recipes, Southern States, Spices

Most every country or region uses a trinity, or a basic mix of flavors (generally vegetable-based, spice-based, or a combination of the two) for a majority of their signature dishes which include soups, stews, sauces, or variations thereof. Though we have touched on this a few times in the past, I think it bears repeating - especially as to why these flavor combinations are so important for regional dishes.

The Szechuan trinity is a mix of ginger, green garlic, and chili peppers. In Lebanese cuisine, it is a combination of garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. Italy has two - the first is tomato, garlic and basil, which is obviously used for anything with a tomato-based flavor, and the second trinity is olive oil, onion and garlic which is used for just about everything else. In France they use a combination of onions, carrots, and celery called Mirepoix. Admittedly, I make a fresh batch of Mirepoix twice a week and simply keep it in a Zip-lock bag in the fridge because I use it so often.

Continue reading Mardi Gras basics Part 2: Holy Trinity

Update on celebrity Iron Chef battle

Posted Mar 20th 2006 2:21PM by Nicole Weston
Filed under: Fruit, Television/Film, America

A few weeks ago, we managed to find out that an upcoming episode of Iron Chef America would feature both Rachael Ray and Giada de Laurentiis, pairing Rachael with Mario Batali and Giada with Bobby Flay. Even the wordsmith host of the show thinks that this battle will be one for the record books, saying “The only way this battle could be better for the Food Network would be for them to have Emeril Lagasse as the secret ingredient” in an article in the Ithaca Journal.

The episode was actually filmed in January, but it is scheduled to air sometime in November, which means that Rachael and Giada have already done their thing in Kitchen Stadium – and both report that it was one of their most challenging experiences. Interestingly enough, the article also gives confirmation that the chefs learn about the ingredients in advance, as before the taping the ingredient was revealed to them: cranberries. Given the ingredient, the episode will most likely air in mid-November or around Thanksgiving, but we’ll have to wait until then to see how well the celebrity chef pairings worked together and to find out whose cuisine reigned supreme.

Iron Chef America's "secret" ingredients

Posted Feb 23rd 2006 9:00AM by Nicole Weston
Filed under: Television/Film, Did you know?, America

MSNBC has officially uncovered the secrets that make Iron Chef America work - and unlike the Amateur Gourmet, they don't seem to have been required to sign a nondisclosure agreement. The "secret" ingredient is chosen from a list of five possible ingredients that are given to the chefs prior to the filming of the show. While they don't generally know the actual one that will be used, the time they are given to plan certainly does not make it a surprise. To get the effect of a surprise, some scenes - including the reveal of the ingredient - are subject to multiple takes. The actually cooking time is still strictly held to 60 minutes, even though some ingredients may be simmering or nearly ready to use when the clock starts.

Continue reading Iron Chef America's "secret" ingredients

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Does Your Digital Camera Have a 'Food' Setting?

Cookthink helps you satisfy your cravings

Should France's cuisine be added as a UNESCO world heritage?

Japan wants to certify sushi and Japanese cuisine as authentic

Mardi Gras basics Part 2: Holy Trinity

Update on celebrity Iron Chef battle

Iron Chef America's "secret" ingredients

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