"dan barber" news and stories

Question: What do you get when you put nine of the most famous chefs from around the world in the same kitchen? Answer: A kind of culinary United Nations -- and they're cooking up more than just food.

The Basque Culinary Center, which is based in San Sebastián, Spain, and will open to students next year, is a cooking school with a lofty goal: to better the world, one meal at a time.The council members behind the center are "much more interested in shaping chefs into socially aware activists than in honing their knife skills," the Time article says. "We're talking about the role of the chef in the future," Dan Barber, the chef at New York's Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, told Time magazine. "And in that sense, it's not the revolution inside the kitchen that matters the most."

The Center (which its director, Joxe Mari Aizega, describes as "interdisciplinary," going beyond just cooking) intends to become the "world standard for higher education in cooking," according an article from GlobalPost, and will encourage students to look at food's big picture. Every meal, after all, has a back story, and the more socially, politically, and environmentally aware one is, the more one can appreciate it -- at least, that's how the school's advisory council is looking at it. Consider, for example, where you stand on genetically modified crops, or the hiring practices of cocoa and coffee growers, or even what climate change is doing to growing seasons. As Peruvian chef and advisory council member Gastón Arcurio told Time, "When chefs recognize that we can change the world, we convert cooking into a tool for justice."

Some of the most notable "Gourmet" recipes never made it to the magazine. Through its 69-year run, the magazine's food editors and test kitchen staff developed hundreds of adventurous, experimental, personal and just plain luscious recipes that for one reason or another escaped the print edition. With Gourmet.com's 2008 launch, multimedia supplements to magazine features, test kitchen video throw-downs, staffers' favorites and perusals of family archives afforded the opportunity to showcase Web-exclusive content, and a chance to serve up these recipes to their more cyber-savvy readers.

Though an Oct. 13 Tweet by the magazine's Executive Editor John Willoughby advised followers to "Go to gourmet.com, copy Web-exclusive recipes that will disappear: strawberry dumpling, banana upside down cake, curried pork noodles, etc.", Slashfood has been told by other Condé Nast insiders that after the magazine's recent, sudden shuttering, the future of Gourmet.com content remains uncertain, save for mag-published recipes that will be migrated to sister site Epicurious.com.

We're not taking any chances. We've clicked our way through 300-plus Web-exclusive recipes from October 2005 to September 2009 to find the 25 you simply must copy, paste and collect before they're (possibly) lost to the ages.

1. Frozen Peanut Butter Pie with Candied Bacon
Recipe by Andrea Albin

2. Potted Stuffed Squab
Recipe by Edna Lewis

3. Confit Gizzard with Honey Mustard
Recipe by Ian Knauer

4. Savory Duck Fat Doughnuts
Recipe by Ian Knauer

Get more recipes -- including Dijon ice cream and zucchini whoopie pies -- after the jump.

Not sure which new cookbooks are worth investing in this year? Take the guesswork out of your decision and follow along with food52's Tournament of Cookbooks. The competition -- run by this new home-cooking Web site's founders (former New York Times food editor Amanda Hesser and food writer Merrill Stubbs) -- pits 16 of this year's best books against each other, to be cooked from and judged by 17 venerable chefs and food writers.

Tournament rounds will play out over the course of 4 weeks, with a decision announced every weekday beginning Wednesday. For the first challenge in the bracket, "My New Orleans," by John Besh was bested by "Real Cajun," by Donald Link, as judged by Daniel Patteron. The winning book will take home the first Piglet trophy and be feted at the Astor Center in New York City on Nov. 9, 2009.

After the jump, see list of the cookbooks and judges in play. ...

On one of the first gorgeous Saturdays of the spring, did Brooklyn foodies run to the park for picnic lunches or line the bars for springy cocktails?

Sure, some of 'em did. But 3,000 others, according to organizers, crammed the multicolored '70s-esque hallways of John Jay High School, aka P.S. 321, for a day of workshops, eats, panels and vendors called the Brooklyn Food Conference, promoting what a bright-yellow pamphlet trumpeted as "Local Action for Global Change."

Food world celebs roaming the halls included chef Dan Barber, speaker and TV host Anna Lappé and author-activist Raj Patel (whose classroom was so stuffed a volunteer had to turn fans away). Some attendees, all of whom attended for free, were a bit starry-eyed over certain sustainably-minded speakers. About Patel, local CSA organizer Meredith Modzelewski sighed, "I'm in love with him now."

Find out more and see photos after the jump.

Spoilers!

It's been a long 14 episodes, and last night we finally learned who has been crowned the new Top Chef. Lisa, Richard and Stephanie duked it out for the title in Puerto Rico, creating what was supposed to be the "the most important meal of their lives." I don't know what caused me to salivate more -- the food or the drama. Read on!