When I first saw what were called "meatloaf cupcakes," I thought, "How cute - tiny rounds of meatloaf with a dollop of mashed potatoes on top." They were only called cupcakes, though, because they were small and topped with something.
However, Fine Furious Life has made meatloaf cupcakes that really, well, take the cake. The meatloaves really do look like cupcakes (they'd only be slightly better if they were in paper wrappers), and the most impressive part is the mashed potato frosting that really does look like frosting because 1) it's piped into swirls, and 2) there are two colors!
I am amazed.
And who knew that so many other cooks could make an everyday meatloaf look so adorably delicious?
Food styling has always been a field that I would love to go into, but I lack the skills and have no clue how I would proceed even if I did. So instead, I just read my boyfriend's digital food photography books and think about the tricks that one might use in the profession. Sometimes I consider using them for my personal blog, but I believe it constitutes cheating. Anyway, I thought I'd share some interesting ones just in case anyone needs to make their food more beautiful (though in some cases, it will result in it being inedible!):
1) To make your coffee appear bubbly and hot, add a teaspoon of soapy water. 2) For an extra cheesy-looking slice of pizza, cook the pizza halfway, then cut out one slice and add extra cheese around the edge of the cut. Finish cooking the pizza, then photograph the extra cheesy piece as you lift it out. 3) Use food-colored mashed potatoes for ice cream. I would actually never do this because my likelihood of forgetting and eating mashed potatoes with chocolate sauce is way too high.
Any others, perhaps ones that don't render the food inedible?
I love the honesty that accompanies this image of a beautifully plated piece of salmon. Yakman admits that the veggies were frozen and that the pesto came from a jar, but is also careful to state that the fish is fresh from a local market. I like the combination of time saving convenience foods with the lovely piece of salmon. Sometimes that's just what you have to do to get dinner on the table.
Join the Slashfood Flickr group and submit your images to the pool to be considered for the Photo of the Day feature. We want to see your pics of gorgeous meals, beautiful ingredients and farmers market hauls.
My family is rather traditional when it comes to holiday dinners. We usually have turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, carrots, squash, turnip, and cranberry sauce for dinner, and then a giant table filled with cookies, pies, brownies, nuts, and cheeses for later. This year we're trying to do things a little bit differently. We're still doing turkey, but we're mixing in some pasta dishes, chicken dishes, and meatballs as well, along with some different vegetables. This doesn't include what my sister is serving tonight at her annual Christmas Eve party.
What are you making for Christmas this year? Do you have a menu you follow every year? Are you doing anything differently this year?
I haven't made deviled eggs since I was 9 years old. My best friend Marla and I were helping her grandma make dinner and were given the task of making deviled eggs. We didn't really know what we were doing and went through three eggs just trying to figure out whether they were finished cooking or not. When they finally were done, we felt such a sense of accomplishment. As an added bonus, they were also quite tasty (oddly, that was also the first time I ever used paprika. I was very impressed by the color).
These days deviled eggs seem a little bit kitschy, but every time someone brings them to a party, they are invariably one of the first things to go. Over on Farm to Philly, Nicole has posted a recipe for deviled eggs that uses a cooked, mashed potato to enrich the yolk filling (because it does seem like there's never quite enough yolk mixture to fill all the egg halves). Her deviled eggs also have the added benefit of being made with local, free range eggs. However, you don't have to use such lofty eggs in order to make this yummy-sounding recipe.
It's the holiday season, and that means lots of mashed potatoes are going to made across the land. I love them. Give me a giant bowl of mashed potatoes with butter and salt and pepper and I'd be happy. I don't eat as much potatoes as I used to, along with white rice, pasta, and white bread. But the holidays are a different story.
AOL Food has a list of 11 different ways to make mashed potatoes. You can make them with sour cream, coconut milk, with cheese and corn (cowboy style), even mashed potato tacos! I also like them with garlic, though watch how much garlic you add. I've had mashed potatoes with way too much garlic and the result isn't tasty.
During the crazy holiday season, everyone could use a holiday planner, with ideas for things to cook, cookie swap recipes, customized placecards, and more.
I must admit that I could eat leftover mashed potatoes for days. An extra dribble of moisture (water, milk, gravy), a little spin in the microwave and I am good to go. However, I do realize that there are other folks out there who possess slightly more elevated palates. They want something more than mashed potatoes for days after Thanksgiving. For those folks, I suggest turning those mashed taters into cakes.
The sibling of latke, these potato pancakes are creamy on the inside and crisp on the outside. Search for mashed potato pancakes on the internet and you'll get a vast assortment of recipes. My favorite way to do it includes a couple of beaten eggs for binding, a few tablespoons of flour for extra texture and some finely diced onion or chives for a bit of extra flavor. You can also stir in some shredded cheese if you to give them added flavor (Parmesan cheese is excellent in mashed potato pancakes). After the jump you'll find my favorite recipe, which originally comes from Sara Moulton's Cooking Live show.
After preparing 32 pounds of potatoes in three days, Julia Moskin determines that when it comes to mashers, it's hard to go wrong. NYT Dining and Wine editors scour the archives and put together a collection of links to the best Thanksgiving stuff from the last 20 years.
Melissa Clark puts together three recipes designed to make the vegetarians at your Thanksgiving table feel loved, appreciated and well-fed. Looking for a perfect pie recipe? Florence Fabricant peaks at several cookbooks and offers up a collection of delicious recipes.
How did I miss this holiday all the way until September 20th?! Oh well, better late than never.
Potatoes are one of the great things on Earth, and that includes television, blue jeans, and Jessica Alba. You can do so many things with them: baked potatoes, potato chips, french fries, mashed potatoes, potato salad. The list is endless. And they're pretty healthy too.
In old movies and cartoons, it was common to see someone use a cake to smuggle a file, which they could use to break themselves out, into an inmate at the local prison. At the cartoon end, the file could be replaced with anything from dynamite to a jackhammer, as the characters didn't have to be particularly subtle to get themselves out of the slammer. Things have to be done more subtle for those who want to smuggle things into prisons in real life, but food can still play a roll. A prison guard at Leflore County jail in Mississippi was arrested after he was caught smuggling in money and marijuana in a large pile of mashed potatoes (That green stuff? Those are just chives...) in at lunch time, when an unidentified woman dropped them off for him. His undoing was a food preference issue, not being careless with the contraband itself. The thing that made investigators suspicious was that the officer said that he didn't eat potatoes and couldn't explain why he was getting such a large portion of them delivered to him at work.
So here it is, the day after, and if you're like me, you ate way too much food yesterday.
I got to my sister's house around 11am or so, and started the day with a couple of cups of tea. Then we moved onto the meal, where I had turkey, mashed potatoes, bread stuffing, carrots, cranberry sauce, and rolls. I also made a Cornbread with Apple and Sausage stuffing that seemed to go over well, though I think it was a little dry (if you make that recipe I would either cut the number of stuffing bags to 1 1/2 or up the liquid quite a bit). I had a couple of can of Diet Coke during the meal, so I think that made me feel better about the day.
Of course, I wasn't through yet. Later in the afternoon came all the desserts. I had a piece of my sister's Pumpkin and Cheese Cake Pie, then a slice of Boston Creme Pie. When I left for home around 7:30, I took a place with me that had two slices of banana bread, another slice of the Pumpkin and Cheese Cake Pie, another slice of Boston Creme Pie, and two brownies. All of which I ate when I got home, along with a turkey and stuffing sandwich from the stuff my roommate made earlier in the day. Wow. What did you have to eat yesterday?
(Oh, and I also started feeling rundown last night, and woke up this morning with a head cold, scratchy throat, tired feeling, etc. Am I being punished by the diet Gods?)
Cook's Country never fails to step up with useful information at just the right time, tacking issues that every home cook - even if that cooking is only occasional - faces. At their website, they have a quick guide to mashing methods, a test of a number of gadgets to see which would produce the perfect mashed potatoes. They were looking for soft, fluffy, lump-less spuds. The electric mixer was the first gadget ruled out, as it turned the potatoes "gluey" with overmixing. The hand masher always left lumps, regardless of how long your mashed. The ricer did a very good job, but the food mill was the most consistent, turning out "super-silky and smooth" potatoes every time.
Personally, I use a ricer when I want smooth potatoes and it works beautifully for me. I wouldn't go out and buy a food mill or ricer just for Thanksgiving if you don't already have one because it's not worth cluttering up your kitchen for a gadget that you're only going to use once a year. If you have potatoes frequently and like them to be smooth as silk, however, there is no time like the present to add one to your utensil collection.
As readers of our TV Squad blog know, I'm a huge Amy Sedaris fan. She has a new book out that is not only "good," it's fantastic. A cookbook/entertaining book that isn't just all humor. It's a book you can actually use. It has some great idea, recipes (a couple hundred, actually), great pics. A lot of thought went into it. Oh, and it's funny as hell too.
Over at Gourmet magazine, they asked her to give some tips for the perfect Halloween celebration. It includes a discount movie theater dinner party, a meal made to be eaten in the dark (meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn - you don't have to see it to eat it), her famous cupcakes, and drinks (Bloody Marys and Zombies, of course). She even likes to have her Halloween night guests carve a pumpkin.
Click here to order Amy's book, and check out her tour schedule here.
Food styling has always been a field that I would love to go into, but I lack the skills and have no clue how I would proceed even if I did. So instead, I just read my boyfriend's digital food photography books and think about the tricks that one might use in the profession. Sometimes I consider using them for my personal blog, but I believe it constitutes cheating. Anyway, I thought I'd share some interesting ones just in case anyone needs to make their food more beautiful (though in some cases, it will result in it being inedible!):
My family is rather traditional when it comes to holiday dinners. We usually have turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, carrots, squash, turnip, and cranberry sauce for dinner, and then a giant table filled with cookies, pies, brownies, nuts, and cheeses for later. This year we're trying to do things a little bit differently. We're still doing turkey, but we're mixing in some pasta dishes, chicken dishes, and meatballs as well, along with some different vegetables. This doesn't include what my sister is serving tonight at her annual Christmas Eve party.
It's the holiday season, and that means lots of mashed potatoes are going to made across the land. I love them. Give me a giant bowl of mashed potatoes with butter and salt and pepper and I'd be happy. I don't eat as much potatoes as I used to, along with white rice, pasta, and white bread. But the holidays are a different story.
During the crazy holiday season, everyone could use a 
In old movies and cartoons, it was common to see someone 
So here it is, the day after, and if you're like me, you ate way too much food yesterday.
Cook's Country never fails to step up with useful information at just the right time, tacking issues that every home cook - even if that cooking is only occasional - faces. At their website, they have a quick 
As readers of our TV Squad blog know, I'm a huge Amy Sedaris fan. She has a new book out that is not only "good," it's fantastic. A cookbook/entertaining book that isn't just all humor. It's a book you can actually use. It has some great idea, recipes (a couple hundred, actually), great pics. A lot of thought went into it. Oh, and it's funny as hell too.
DIY Foods: Making homemade sausage
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
