What type of meal do you have in mind for Valentine's Day? A) A casual but intimate dinner, B) A picnic in the park, C) Breakfast in bed, or D), A pull-out-all-the-stops roses and candlelit romantic dinner. How would you describe your culinary skills? A) I use my oven for storage, B) I'm no Thomas Keller but I know the basics, or C), Looks out, Mario Batali - I can slice, saute and flambe like a pro!
According to the quiz, I should be making a "Spicy Seafood Supper" this Valentine's Day - Lobster salad with spicy lemon dressing, red snapper with spicy soy glaze on sauteed vegetables and sweet potatoes, and warm chocolate raspberry pudding cake. I'm sure my boyfriend wouldn't turn up his nose at that.
Planning your Super Bowl party? Epicurious has a whole package of game day ideas, from recipe slideshows to a Q&A with Super Bowl chef Ron Krivosik. There are even special menus tailored team allegiances - a Southwestern-inspired buffet of margaritas, enchiladas, chile con carne, corn pudding, cactus and apple salad, and chocolate chimichangas for the Arizona Cardinals, and a hearty, Polish-flavored spread of lager, kielbasa, pierogies, creamy coleslaw, french fries, and banana split pie for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
There's also not one, but seven different chicken wing recipes - I'm keen to try the sticky sesame version. Plus, there's a tailgate recipe contest and a guide to gear (helmet snack trays or a football-shaped grill, anyone?).
What are you planning on serving for the Super Bowl this Sunday? Do you have any bowl traditions?
All summer long, members of the Epicurious editorial team have been traveling around the country, visiting farmers markets from Portland, OR to Chicago. They were in Philadelphia a few weeks back, but sadly, I wasn't able to get over to Reading Terminal Market while they were in town. They are wrapping up their tour with an appearance at New York's Union Square Green Market tomorrow, September 19th. If you happen to be in the area, make a point of stopping by and saying hi to them!
Our pals at Epicurious's Epi-Log pointed us to this lusciously awkward Today Show cooking segment wherein Sam the Cooking Guy shuts Kathie Lee's cakehole not so much with cake, as with a heaping helping of STFU. It's no doubt soured his relationship with the show, but makes for some mighty sweet TV.
Is this the most deliciously cringe-inducing in the history of food television, or can you dredge up any others? Post your thoughts and video links below.
During the first couple of days of July, I nibbled my way through three floors of New York City's Javits Center while attending the Summer Fancy Food Show. Several other folks from AOL Food and Epicurious were also there, tasting chips, cheese, chocolates and dips. We discovered that there are quite a few people making artisanal chocolate, flavoring things with lavender and pear-ginger and doing amazing things with live foods among many other, tasty things.
We've all sorted through our samples, press kits and memories, trying to bring you what we think was the very best of the show in one fun, appealing slideshow that you can find over at AOL Food. Head on over, take and look and then come back over here and let us know what you think. Did we pick anything you love? Or did we happen to hit on a product you've tried and not liked? We want to hear what you think!
A salmagundi is either an English dish that consists of chopped egg, ground meat, anchovies, onions and assorted spices or, more generally, a miscellaneous collection. So today, I bring you a salmagundi of links for the Slashfood Ate. These are links I've collected all week long, tasty bits that I've been holding on while I looked for a way to write about them.
PAgent twittered this link over to me yesterday and it has gone straight to the top of my 'must make' list. Because how can you live until you've tasted coffee jell cubes?
I'm not gonna pretend that this picture is pretty, or in the least bit appetizing, but I will note that the results are disturbingly delicious. The heart of the matter is that I went to a cookout a few weekends ago and was offered a grilled chicken heart by a friend who has yet to serve me anything that is less than madly tasty. Emboldened by this, I picked up a package of chicken hearts on a shopping jaunt this week, and started perusing my favorite recipe sites for marinades. It didn't take me long to find a 1956 James Beard recipe suggesting that these would make a dandy appetizer for a group of 25. Twenty-five of whom, I'm not entirely sure, 'cause even as staunchly carnivorous as my pals tend to be, few of 'em dig getting their offal on as much as I do, and I wouldn't subject them to it. There are exceptions, though.
Some friends came over this afternoon to serve as panel members for AOL Food's upcoming Hot Dog Taste Test. As I tended the grill between rounds, one of them began holding forth about how methods of barbecuing and grilling really were born of the necessity to bring greater flavor to cheap and previously discarded cuts of meat, and how folks were getting way too fancy-schmancy with the whole thing these days. I left my post at the flames, walked him to the fridge, pulled out the plastic container full of marinating hearts and started putting them on bamboo skewers.
He shut up and started eating.
James Beard's 1956 Grilled Chicken Hearts Recipe on Epicurious
(Note: In the above pic, I was out of sherry and subbed in brandy, which proved perfectly yummy.)
Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I have an innate understanding of when things come into season in that area of the country. I know when the U-Pick blueberries on Sauvie Island are going to be ready and my insides tell me when the wild blackberries are coming into fruit. Sadly, this knowledge does me no useful good these days, since I live in the mid-Atlantic region.
Despite nearly seven years here, I still struggle with the growing seasons. Last year I nearly missed picking my own New Jersey blueberries because I was waiting for them to get ripe on Oregon time. However, thanks to Epicurious, there's a new resource out there that can help me retrain my brain to learn when things are ripe in my area. They've launched a Seasonal Ingredient Map that allows you to click on each state in the US to see what's ripe in that area. The only flaw I've found with it is that I start clicking on states where I don't live and get myself all jealous of the produce that other states are seeing now.
On the Today show, Epicurious.com Editor Tanya Steel shows Hota Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford how to make a simple key lime pie.
Even if you can make a key lime pie in your sleep, it's a fun video (even though they say to use pre-squeezed key lime juice if you can't find limes - eek! That's like using lemon juice instead of real lemons in lemon squares!) The taste just can't compare.
Well, the video is fine until good ol' Kathie Lee ruins the moment by first commenting on the amount of calories in the condensed can of milk (Steel smartly replies "Yeah, but who's counting calories?") and then likens the ingredient to colostrum (and Kotb remarks, "Buzzkill.")
Cook much, Kathie Lee? Yeesh - don't invite her over when you're making key lime pie. She'll totally ruin your appetite.
I spent some time yesterday afternoon talking with Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious, about everything from her weeknight dinners to the cookbook she's releasing this fall. It was an honor to speak with Ms. Steel, who has written for Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, and appeared on numerous TV programs, including the Today Show (the list goes on). After our conversation, I can absolutely see her energy and enthusiasm in the pages of Epicurious. Talk about a foodie! I've noticed a lot of changes on Epicurious in the past year or so – new blogs and features. What's the idea behind this new content? I came to Epicurious in July 2005, and I found a site that I loved with tremendous depth, but not a lot of breadth. We needed to broaden out the site to make it the go-to site for people who love to eat and love cooking and love food. I knew that we had a fantastic recipe database, so we added restaurant coverage, a huge thing on drinks. We added video, and a blog that I started – for a while I was the only one writing. We spent some time not only broadening our coverage and trying to get notable names on the site, but we also took a look at the site, which was over 12 years old, and we realized it was time to make it look as rich and interesting as the content. We spent a good part of last year looking at the inner plumbing of the site, and we launched [the redesign] last September. I've never worked so hard, and it was incredibly rewarding to create a food site from the ground up. I thought, "What would I like? What kind of site would I like and how would I create it? We are still rolling out features throughout this year. There are going to be upgrades and additions this year and next. Any chance you can give us some hints about these upcoming features? One of the things that we are going to be doing is expanding our community section. We have always had a vibrant, passionate community of people – up to six million unique [visitors] in December. They love to talk to each other. We have ten forums, and realize this is something to increase. We made a deal with Facebook, and realize that a lot of people would love to have more social networking on our site. We are blowing out something called "My Epicurious" – people will be able to upload a photo of themselves, they can already tag interests. They will be able to upload pictures so people can see what they are cooking now. They will be able to join interest groups. For example, if they are interested in it cuisines, they will be able to see everything having to do with that interest group, like new Italian recipes and posts, anything to do with Italy.
Epicurious and Dawn Direct Foam set out to find the world's messiest dish, and they found it all over the face of 1-year-old Audrey Kaplan. The food all over Audrey's face is spaghetti and meatballs, made by her grandmother, Dorothy.
Dorothy won a flatscreen TV and a year's worth of Dawn Direct Foam for submitting the picture of her very messy granddaughter. It's kind of ironic that this photo won, since Dorothy will presumably not be using Dawn Direct Foam (a dish soap) to clean up her granddaughter (although I'm sure it will do a number on her dishes).
If you are Marilyn Manson and you decide to launch a line of absinthe, what do you call it?
Why, Mansinthe, of course.
The drink is made in Switzerland, and, despite the U.S.'s recent lift on the absinthe ban that has been in place for 80 years, is not yet legal in America.
Epicurious recently conducted a taste test of the drink, and the results were less than desirable. Several tasters described Mansinthe as "oily," one called its color "pale and green in color, like the fourth horse of the Apocalypse."
Some eloquently compared the aroma to "sewage" or "swamp mud." And the overall responses in the test's "flavor" category were so hilarious, I had to print them here, word for word:
"Main flavor is just plain." "Yuck. Sour + bitter" "If you don't smell it, the taste is good. A little woodsy, but not too much" "Holy sh*t, is this poison?"
So, there you have it, folks. Everyone thought it reeked of bathroom waste and three out of the four tasters thought it tasted like crap. Drink at your own risk...preferably while brooding and listening to "The Dope Show" at full volume.
Well, OK, maybe not you, but maybe you. Yeah, you!
Epicurious has a special Valentine's Day section (it's on two days away guys, better get crackin'), and part of it is this guide from Food Network host Jamie Oliver. He made a romantic dinner for his wife Jools, and tells you how you can do one too. For the dinner he suggests Crostini with Prosciutto, Figs and Mint, Anchovies in Tomato Sauce with Pasta, and Tiramisu. For a drink he suggest a Jum and Bender, which sounds like a vaudeville team but is actually made with passion fruit, champagne, and grenadine.
Oliver also gives tips on shopping and how to set the mood for the night. It's easy peasy.
Being that I'm known in my circle of friends as something of a food lover and able cook, I often get called upon to bring contributions to communal meals or other food events. Nearly once a month, I get tapped to make a birthday dessert and so I'm always on the hunt for a quick, tasty birthday cake that doesn't come from a box. I have a go-to cake for the chocolate lovers but I've always been stymied by from scratch white cakes. They never come out quite right for me and so the search continued.
Until Saturday morning, that is. I needed to make a cake for my boyfriend's birthday party that night, and he had specifically asked for a white cake with chocolate frosting. Simple enough, right? My theory is that when you're working with such a classic combination, you have to do a really great job of it, or it's a let down. I flipped through at least six cookbooks, looking for a recipe that didn't use a pint of cream or require you to separate half a dozen eggs and beat the whites. What I ended up using was the All-Occasion Yellow Cake recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook. It is billed as being "incredibly simple" and it lived up to that promise. It came together quickly, baked up evenly, came out of the pan easily and tasted wonderful. This one is a keeper (and the recipe is after the jump).
During the first couple of days of July, I nibbled my way through three floors of New York City's Javits Center while attending the Summer Fancy Food Show. Several other folks from AOL Food and Epicurious were also there, tasting chips, cheese, chocolates and dips. We discovered that there are quite a few people making artisanal chocolate, flavoring things with lavender and pear-ginger and doing amazing things with live foods among many other, tasty things. 
Well, OK, maybe not you, but maybe you. Yeah, you!
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