"food52" news and stories

What should I do with leftover pie dough scraps?

Which kind of soy sauce -- Japanese or Chinese? Low sodium? -- would be best for a Pan-Asian dinner party?

These are just a few of the questions people are asking each other on Food Pickle, a real-time food Q&A at food52, the cooking website of food writers and cooks Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. Users can ask and answer questions either through Twitter -- @foodpickle -- or directly on the food52 web site.

"We're calling it the first real 911 for food and cooking online," Stubbs told Slashfood.

In the age of culinary smackdowns, this one might not be quite up there with the drama of a Batali-Flay Iron Chef food fight, but in terms of Web chatter, it takes the cake. Or should we say the pork shoulder and sugar cookies.

Those are the two dishes on the hotplate as the venerable Cook's Illustrated magazine (a.k.a. America's Test Kitchen), the geeky arbiter of perfect kitchen technique, and the upstart Food52.com, the people-powered website started about a year ago by N.Y. Times food columnist Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs.

Last October, Cook's founder Christopher Kimball on his blog challenged Hesser (though the direct reference to her was later removed) to see which would produce the best recipes: Cook's with its strictly controlled testing and development procedures, or Food52's egalitarian method in which the public submits recipes to a weekly contest, Hesser and Stubbs cull the entries and the public determines the winner.

"We think ours produces a kind of richer recipe and it's more directly connected to people and our culture," Hesser said. "Ours is equal quality, just a different style."

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. ...