"not martha" news and stories

Remember the bacon mat that swept the interwebs last summer? That intrepid food/craft/knitting blogger Megan at Not Martha has taken the basic idea of the bacon mat (it is the premise that bacon, if given the proper support, will bond to itself and hold shapes as it cooks) and turned it into bacon cups! Is there anything that bacon can't do?

She designed them as a breadless BLT, using them to hold small salads of lettuce and tomato. The commenters on her site have run with the idea, suggesting other uses for the crisp, porky vessels. How would you fill them?

Source

I am something of a sucker for a good salad. Over the years I've gotten to know which combinations of veggies, proteins and dressings work well together, but I realize that not everyone has that same intuitive understanding of the inner workings of salads. For those of you who need a little help in the salad department, Ms. Ginsu has stepped up to help. She spent nine months making salads professionally and has created a helpful chart listing eight popular varieties of salads and their individual components.

What's so great about her guide is that it not only tells you what goes into these salads, but it tries to help you start to understand what makes a good salad so that you can branch off and create new salads of your own. Because as she says, "

[via Not Martha]

Source

This last Monday night, just before I went to bed, I had an urge to start a batch of No-Knead bread. No-Knead bread has been on my mind a lot lately, mostly because somehow Lifehacker came across my post about it on my personal blog from last January and linked to it, making it the most hit-upon post in the history of that blog. So the recipe has been on my mind. I stirred up a batch that night, using yeast I had bought over the weekend, and went to bed.

The next afternoon, after about 14 hours of bubbling, my dough was nice and bubbly. I turned it out on to a board, folded it over on itself a couple of times and let it hang for another couple of hours. I preheated my pot (I used an oval cast iron pot that belonged to my grandmother. It's just a tiny bit small for the job, but creates a really nice shape) and when the two hours were up, I tossed my bread into the pot, put the lid on and slide it into the oven.

It's been about eight months since I last made this bread and I forgot how gorgeous it gets. I literally gasped when I took the lid off to brown up the top, because it was so perfect. So, I want to remind you all, once again, that you really should be making this bread. It's easy, it's tasty and it gives you a sense of satisfaction in the kitchen that is often hard-won. Oh, and if you need more convincing, Megan at Not Martha made it this week as well, incorporating tips from Cooks Illustrated into her batch.

Source

I have been subscribing to Everyday Food, Martha Stewart's squat cooking magazine, since it's inception January 2003. I still have every single issue I've received (although right now I'm using issues 1-34 to hold up the corner of a wall-mounted cabinet in my living room that is falling apart). A couple of weeks ago, Megan at Not Martha posted about her own collection of Everyday Food mags, prompted because a commenter on her site had mentioned that the original issue of the magazine had sold for $50 on eBay. The best part of Megan's post is the list she put together, complete with links, to all the recipes from EF that she likes and uses.

Her post got me thinking about my own collection of EF mags and started me flipping through some of my old issues (the ones that aren't anchoring said piece of furniture, at least). I stumbled across a recipe in the December 2006 issue that I made once last year and remembered loving. It's for Braised Chicken with Shallots and is perfect for these cooler winter days. It's also easy and makes good leftovers. The recipe is after the jump.

Source

For my birthday party this year, I made three varieties of cupcakes (vanilla bean, lemon and chocolate). For the topping, I whipped up three varieties of frosting (cream cheese, vanilla butter cream and chocolate). I laid it all out in one great, big frost-your-own, cupcake station, which was quite the hit with my friends and family. But, had I known about this giant cupcake cake mold back then, I would have been mightily torn about what direction to go with my birthday dessert (although I think that $27.95 plus shipping is a little steep for what would have probably been a single-time use). However, if I ever stumble across one of these suckers at a garage sale or thrift store, I wouldn't hesitate to snatch it up.

Via Not Martha