"food blogs" news and stories

I've seen meatloaf baked in bread pans and meatloaf baked in free form shapes (mock lobster, anyone?). But I've never seen anyone think to bake up a meatloaf in a tube pan until I was scanning through my RSS reader last night. But if anyone was going to think of a bundt meatloaf, I'm not surprised that it came from the minds of the chefs/bloggers behind the site Ideas in Food. They are always thinking creatively about food and manage to produce a number of interesting (and I'm sure tasty) dishes. I think that this is what I'd like to eat for dinner tonight.

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Interesting piece over at Slate from Paul Levy, about the state of food writing. He says that food writing today is too "macho," and filled with too many "foodie shock jocks" who swear and write too casually (he singles out Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, and Bill Buford).

The food writing that's in vogue today consists chiefly of a bellow of bravado. It's a guy thing, sure, but (with a few honorably hungry exceptions) these scribblers mostly ignore what's on the plate. They view themselves as boy hunters and despise sissy gatherers, thrive on the undertow of violence they detect in the professional kitchen, and like to linger on the unappetizing aspects of food preparation. The gross-out factor trumps tasting good as well as good taste.

Hmmm...really? I think one of the good thing about this increased interest in food and all the food blogs is that you hear a lot of different voices. There's plenty of the stuff Levy likes still be written. Even here at Slashfood we try to mix up the voices a bit.

What do you think? Does Levy have a point?

[via The Grinder]

This week in Food at the LA Times, Russ Parsons goes to town with Heirloom apples with a Guide to Apple Varieties and answering the age-old question, To bake or not to bake?. Recipes include Baked Apple Ice Cream, Boozie's Apple Cake, and Maple Baked Apples with Dried Fruit and Nuts.

Also in the kitchen, Rosh Hashana recipes to celebrate the Jewish New Year: Kibbeh bi'kizabrath (cilantro-tomato soup with Syrian meatballs), Rubuh' (roast veal stuffed with spiced ground meat and rice), and Ejjeh b'kerrateh (leek fritters).

In restaurants, SIV visits the newly re-opened Ca'Brea and gives it a half star, LA chefs try serving cocktails with or as the amuse bouche.

The most interesting article of the day (in my opinion, of course) is from Regina Schrambling who ponders the anonymity of restaurant reviewers from professional journalists to bloggers (and if you happen to recognize a mysterious half face on the article, yes, that is yours deliciously!)

Everyday, as I work through my collection of food blog feeds, I keep a running list of the posts that I think are interesting or could become a prompt for a blog entry. I turn many of them into posts here, but I always have a few leftover at the end of the day. Towards the end of the week, I've got a whole bunch of unused links hanging around. Today I'm giving those orphaned links another chance at blog-life.

Serious Eats writes about a recent article in Dwell magazine about iconic kitchen items, ranging from the classic Peugeot Pepper Mill to the angular Bialetti stove top espresso maker (I love mine).

Still on the topic of cooking gear, Baking Bites points readers in the direction of an article over at PC Magazine that lists the 10 Weirdest Cooking Gadgets. I think that the Zero Gravity Spice Rack looks pretty darn nifty.

Yumsugar offers advice on how long things should be kept in the fridge and reminds us to label items with the date on which they were opened so to be better able to judge when things should be thrown out. I have to admit that I am often lax in the fridge purging department.

I admit that I am a novice when it comes to fried foods (making them that is, not eating them) but Elise's post on Simply Recipes for Buttermilk Fried Chicken has me seriously contemplating giving it a shot.

Last weekend my sister sent me a link to the website for Jungle Jim's, an enormous international market in Fairfield, OH. They carry more than 100 varieties of honey, have a section of the store named for Robin Hood and actually offer tours of the store for those who can't navigate the place on their own. It makes me want to plan a vacation around visiting that store (Ohio isn't that far from Philadelphia).

I am both curious and scandalized by the idea that one would use brie as the cheese in a quesadilla. Doesn't that seem somehow wrong? And yet, somehow it also seems so very right.

photo by Marisa McClellan

One of my favorite food blogs is The Wednesday Chef, written by Luisa Weiss. She mostly cooks and posts recipes from the foods sections in the New York and Los Angeles Times (although the picture of the Fennel and Olive Salad you see above is from Nigel Slater's "Kitchen Diaries"). Her pictures are gorgeous but real, she alerts her readers to any changes she made from the printed recipe and she is always honest about how she feels about the results of her cooking efforts.

Her latest post is particularly appealing to me because in it she tells of the scent memory that a recent trip into a cheese shop triggered, taking her back to childhood visits to a cheese shop in Germany with her mother.

photo by Luisa Weiss