"foodie-flicks" news and stories

The whole point of Red Lobster is to eat seafood without having to cook for yourself, but that hasn't stopped the restaurant's senior executive chef, Michael LaDuke, from sharing the chain's seafood grilling secrets with the Internet at large. In the video above, he heads for the grill to prepare Peppercorn-Crusted Salmon with Wasabi Soy glaze.

This is one super-easy -- and dare we say delicious-looking -- meal that's just perfect for a quick and sophisticated taste of the ocean. Grilled asparagus and red pepper are sliced and topped with the peppercorn-crusted fish, a little pickled ginger and a nice drizzle of that wasabi soy glaze.

Oh, if only dining out at Red Lobster were even half this delicious!

Remember those beginner knife skills we learned last week? That was just step one, friends.

Now it's time to get a little more crafty with that blade and morph food into edible garnishes that are artistic triumphs. The video above, courtesy of Howcast, details how to turn produce and chocolate into veritable sculptures.

In a "Wallace & Gromit"-style video, we are shown a few of the super-quick, super-easy ways to make things look snazzier -- orange-wrapped cherries skewered with a toothpick for a cocktail, tiny mushroom curls, a quick tomato skin rose and even sinfully delicious curls of chocolate perfect for a bowl of ice cream.

When food art is this easy, how can you resist?

It's easy to get lost in the plethora of kitchen tools available for the home gourmand, but as "Everyday Exotic" Chef Roger Mooking reminds us, "Your hands are your most powerful tools in the kitchen."

Yep. Not that lemon squeezer, not that electric chopper and not even that beautiful cast-iron pan. Rather than spend an arm and a leg on every latest gadget, spend some time on your knife skills -- and keep every one of those precious digits intact.

In this video, Mooking does a super-quick primer on important knife basics: Make sure your knife is sharp (using the tried-and-true fingernail test -- it works!) and then use your knuckles, with fingertips safely curled under, as a flat "guide" for the blade. With these two rules and a little practice, we'll all be handling steel like a pro -- and won't ever have to dive for the Band-Aids again.

[Via YouTube]

If any Foodie Flick could blow your mind, it's this one. British comedian George Egg recently posted a YouTube video in which he cooks dinner in his hotel room.

We're not talking about a quick salad and sandwich here. Without bringing any special tools from home, Egg sweeps aside the overpriced room-service menu and makes pasta and biscuits in his room -- from scratch. No hot plate. No microwave. If it wasn't captured in a video, we probably wouldn't believe it.

The entrée? A tortellini pasta with spinach, rocket and crème fraîche that he cooks in the room's tea kettle. This might not leave a desirable taste for the next poor sap who makes tea, but it's a rather ingenious way to boil noodles. (He adds a raw egg yolk in a nod to carbonara; emulate that at your own risk.)

Oh, but there's more: Egg ups the ante by making biscuits (kneaded, risen, the whole 9 yards), using a clothes iron. Color us a new shade of impressed.

Though Robert Irvine might be back on "Dinner Impossible," we reckon he's got some stiff competition.

Breaded shrimp, a classic bit of finger food, can be found on menus all over America ... but also Down Under, it seems. In this Aussie video, a perky chef makes a departure from the boring breaded prawns (large shrimps) so frequently found when dining out: pre-made, formerly frozen lumps of blandness, usually paired with an equally bland sauce.

This being a recession, making your own breaded shrimp at home is an easy, satisfying way to save some money. With great tips for breading (adding cream and freshly smashed garlic to the egg mixture) and a rather unique sauce you might not have tried before -- a combo of mayo, brown sugar, onion, capers, tomato paste, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Tabasco sauce and lemon juice -- we're thinking this one looks pretty tasty.

But what about you Slashfoodies? Got a great breading secret for your shrimp dishes? Spill in the comments!

[Via YouTube]