'Putting Up: A Seasonal Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition' by Stephen Palmer Dowdney Gibbs Smith -- 2008 Buy it on Amazon
You know how your friend's cousin's boyfriend's grandma, like, totally killed a neighbor by innocently giving her a batch of her home-canned beans that oops, turned out to have a touch of the botulism? That's never going to happen to you. Not on Steve Dowdney's watch.
This can-vangelist has culled years of his own know-how, as well as the collective wisdom of generations of Southern cooks, into a rigorous, nigh-on religious canning primer. The recipes are solid -- almost a shade clinical -- but the opening chapter, packed with equipment tips, altitude and pH charts, preparation terms and step-by-step best practices, could be a stand-alone manual, not to mention the only one you'd ever need to buy.
See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
There are seasoned restaurateurs and there are talented cookbook auteurs. The twain aren't always possessed of the same skill set -- no one was expecting James Beard to jump on the line when the saucier called in sick at Chart House, nor was Julia going to be summoned to expedite at her favored Santa Barbara haunt, La Super Rica Taqueria -- but food fetishists can dare to dream. Think of it as culinary fantasy football, mulling over the cookbooks we'd like to see writ real and sit-down-in-able.
I posed the notion of a pop-up restaurant to Matt Lee and Ted Lee., co-authors of my all-time most beloved (and stained) cookbook, the James Beard Award winning "The Lee Bros. Southern Cooking," and the upcoming "Simple Fresh Southern" and they shared their menu wish list and locale in the video above. (By the way, the first guy is Ted. People get that mixed up all the time.)
Which non-restaurant chef's cookbook would you like to see turned into an eatery, even for just a single meal? Let us know in the comments below.
'Preserved' by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton Kyle Books -- 2009 Buy it on Amazon
As much as the recent glut of home-canning articles, blogs, hardware and bookstore kiosks would have us believe it, man cannot actually live on darling little jams and preciously put-up pickles alone. S'OK -- Messrs Sandler and Acton are here to help you halt the march of time under blankets of aspic, tubs of salt, lashings of booze, heady wood smoke and plain old air.
But if you're like me, you go straight for the pressure-canned tongue.
See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
Frank Bruni (left) and interviewer John Berman. Photo: ABC News "Nightline."
Restaurant devotees tuning into Wednesday night's edition of ABC News "Nightline," slavering for juicy tidbits from the upcoming tell-all penned by departing New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni were treated to an intimate portrait of ... uh, the poignant tale of ... OK, the dude wants to sell some books. This was his infomercial.
It's hard to blame the guy. For the past five years, the admitted former bulimic who once sported a 42-inch waistband was the most fear-inducing eater in all of New York's five boroughs, his deft, often hilarious and scathing reviews packing the power to loft or condemn restaurants' fates -- around 270 of them during his tenure at the Times -- despite his intensely conflicted relationship with food and the constant pressure to maintain anonymity by means of unflattering wigs, stick-on facial hair and fake reservation names he'd sometimes forget upon arrival at the host's stand.
In his first network interview since taking on this trencherman's task in 2004, Bruni -- publicly revealing his face on video for the first time to a national audience -- talked about his lifelong battle with overeating and the extreme, often unsuccessful measures he took to combat his epic binges.
"First let me introduce myself. I'm Craig Claiborne, and this is Julia Child." Photo: Scanned from A Feast Made for Laughter
"And to tell the truth, I was bored with restaurant criticism. At times I didn't give a damn if all the restaurants in Manhattan were shoved into the East River and perished. Had they all served nightingale tongues on toast and heavenly manna and mead, there is just so much that the tongue can savor, so much that the human body (and spirit) can accept, and then it resists. Toward the end of my days as restaurant critic, I found myself increasingly indulging in drink, the better to endure another evening of dining out. I had become a desperate man with a frustrating job to perform." -- from 'A Feast Made for Laughter' by Craig Claiborne, New York Times Dining editor and restaurant critic, 1982
While there have thus far been no reports of departing New York Times restaurant critic and newly-minted memoirist Frank Bruni tipsily pressing ham against the windows of the Second Avenue Deli, rolling members of the Cipriani family for spare change and Bellini drippings, or skulking through the catacombs at Ninja New York, randomly alarming the goofily hooded servers, it's not as if he's going silently into that last bite.
While you're waiting for Michael Thomas Hastings' "Top Chef Masters" recap, snack on this mini interview with former contender John Besh. The New Orleans chef and author stopped by Slashfood HQ earlier this week to chat about his Top Chef Masters predictions, being judged by bloggers and why he won't be strapping an arm behind his back again anytime soon.
'Julia's Kitchen Wisdom - Essential Techniques and Recipes From a Lifetime of Cooking' by Julia Child Knopf -- 2009 (original pub. date 2000) Buy it on Amazon
In the thick of the media blitz surrounding the release of the Julia Child/Julie Powell biographic mash-up movie, it would be easy to mistake this volume -- ours came bestickered with "Now a Major Motion Picture" -- for a quickie cash-in. It's anything but.
Rather, this is a previously published compendium of Julia Child's kitchen notes from her years of writing cookbooks and filming "The French Chef" and we're warning you now -- your copy will get messy. Julia wouldn't mind.
Takeaway tips: In Child's words, "It doesn't pretend to take the place of a big, detailed, all-purpose cookbook like 'Way to Cook' or 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II'. It is, rather, a mini aide-mémoire for general home cookery, and is aimed at those who are tolerably familiar with culinary language; whose kitchens are normally well equipped with such staples as jelly-roll pans, a food processor, a decent rolling pins; and who know their way around the stove reasonably well."
"Kitchen Wisdom" is packed with time and temperature charts, foolproof, building block recipes for mother sauces, breads, desserts and soups, as well as her rigorously tested methods for everything from soaking beans and boiling eggs to the ins and outs of flour dredging and sourcing omelet pans. If it's got a soupçon of French technique, it's in the book.
See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
Cow head in banana leaves at Hill Country. Photo: Kat Kinsman
There comes a time in every girl's life -- when she's ripping open the long-braised skull of a short-lived calf in order to better wobble out its beer-marinated brain -- that she smiles contentedly and realizes she loves her life an awful lot. Then she goes for the eyes.
Well OK, not every girl's life -- but at least those of a troika of squeam-free dames including Hill Country's executive chef and cookbook author Elizabeth Karmel, Homesick Texan writer Lisa Fain and lucky, lucky me. And it all happened because of Twitter.
See a step-by-step barbacoa making slideshow and read a description after the jump. Warning -- it's not for vegetarians or the faint of stomach.
There's a canning revolution going on and Kim O'Donnel -- former food writer for the James Beard Award-winning Washington Post -- has brought it to a boil.
Upon tremendous response to her re-Tweet of an Ethicurean post about a canning party in San Francisco and subsequent suggestion that Seattle and other cities follow suit, O'Donnel asked interested home canners to contact her. Thus Cans Across America was born. On the weekend of August 29-30, cities across the nation will host classes, can-a-thons, canning meet-ups and raise awareness of this retro-haute preservation method. More about the nation's can-do attitude after the jump.
So you think you're out playing hooky from work on the promise of a lovely Southern lunch stewed up by your favorite cookbook authors and then all of a sudden, in strides Bobby Flay.
Matt Lee and Ted Lee and the rest of the assembled had been lured to a barge on the Hudson River -- Matt's preferred canoeing channel -- on the premise that the brothers would be filming a segment for a Food Network special called "Lowcountry Lowdown." They'd filmed the first half in Charleston, S.C., and reportedly, the duel would have gone down on their home turf, had Chef Flay not fallen prey to the vagaries of air travel.
Read more about throwing down with the Country Captain after the jump.
'Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking' Craig Claiborne with foreword by John T. Edge and Georgeanna Milam University of Georgia Press -- 2007 (originally published in 1987 by Clamshell Productions, Ltd.) Buy it on Amazon
"It is not a question of chauvinism, but I have always averred that Southern cooking is by far the vastest and most varied of all traditional regional cooking in this country," wrote Craig Claiborne in the foreword to this pan-Southern paean to the cuisine of his childhood.
While Claiborne fled the physical South -- and his legendarily smothering mother, Miss Kathleen -- in favor of a stint in the Navy, hotel school in Switzerland and a multi-decade tenure as food editor of the New York Times, his palate remained staunchly attuned to the servant-cooked colloquial fare he'd enjoyed at his mother's boardinghouse.
What we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
Not in a "don't bogart that can, man" way. Just that if I'm going to go to all the trouble of stoking a hardwood lump charcoal fire, obsessively monitoring its low-'n-slow-ness for a goodly chunk of the day, feeding its greedy gut with beer-soaked mesquite and hickory chunks at half-hour intervals all for the sake of an albeit fabulous brisket or pork shoulder, I'm gonna want a bit more return on the investment.
Here's where foil pans of salt, cherries and lemons come in.
Apologies to anyone dining in a marquee New York restaurant on Wednesday night -- we were hogging all your chefs and a restaurateur or 10 over at the Roseland Ballroom. And no, we won't apologize; it was all for a great cause.
Since 1988, the Share Our Strength organization has drawn together chefs, mixologists, volunteers and food fans in cities around the United States for Taste of the Nation events benefiting local food assistance organizations via funds generated by ticket sales, sponsorships and silent auctions. New York City's 2009 installment featured small-plate fare from more than 50 eateries and chefs, including newly minted James Beard Award winner Dan Barber's Blue Hill, Danny Meyer's entire armada of restaurants and the revitalized Oak Room as well as generously poured tipples from the likes of Audrey Saunders, Tony Abou-Ganim, Jim Meehan and many (many ... so, so, many ... ) more.
After the jump, read more about celeb spotting, volunteer opportunities and the best bite we had all night.
Perhaps at some point in the distant past, it was possible for a person under the age of 50 to whip up a mock apple pie, hold the irony. Now in an age wherein slowstainable locaheirganic produce is de rigueur in many circles (not mine, but then again, I pour cherry soda all over unsuspecting hams and eat brains from a can) it seems almost viciously retrograde to dump lemony simple syrup on top of a pile of mushed-up crackers and pass it off as fruit.
So don't do that. Just enjoy it for its bizarrely satisfying damp cracker heft. Use, I dunno, heirloom leaf lard in the crust or send a tithe to Michael Pollan if you feel you need to, but really, this pie is in no need of apology. Get the Ritz Mock Apple Pie recipe after the jump.
We're laying 2:1 odds that some pal of yours has been champing at the bit to trot out that chestnut ever since Big Brown galloped toward destiny last Derby Day. And sure, you hooted, hollered, maybe even donned a big, fancy hat and welled up a little but honestly, did you watch even one other horse race in '08? Chances are, you were there for the mint juleps.
If you are there -- as in Churchill Downs -- for the juleps, you'll be in the hands of of the track's Executive Chef Joseph "Jo-Jo" Doyle, and that ain't a bad place to be at all. The 34-year-old chef isn't a Kentuckian by birth, but tells Slashfood that the cuisine of his Mobile, AL and New Orleans upbringing prepped him for making traditional Bluegrass fare.
Hear more from Chef Doyle and get traditional Kentucky Benedictine and Bourbon Slush recipes after the jump.
10 More Dirty Restaurant Tricks
5 Things You Didn't Know About Turducken
10 Catchiest Food Jingles We Love to Hate
