November 2009


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Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

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– Thanks everyone for all the great pumpkin recipes. I’m especially intrigued by Breda‘s:

Someone brought a baked pumpkin to a potluck dinner I hosted. Basically carve off the top but keep it as a lid and I’m not too sure on quantities/timings but cinnamon, brown sugar and almonds were thrown into the pumpkin and pop the pumpkin into the oven with the lid on for a “long” time and then scoop out the pumpkin and serve as a sweet side…….it was really good!

Woah! Keep the pumpkin ideas coming, please!

– Meanwhile, Summer catches the important details in Michelle Obama’s Iron Chef debut:

Clearly Michelle favors Mario — she picked her dress to match his trademark orange clogs. Can’t say I blame her. I love him too.

– Finally, Joel has the last say on the Top 10 food finds at the Iowa State Fair:

What’s wrong with canned chicken? It’s the tuna of the land.

Well said.

(Photo: NYT)

in Celebs / Politics 0 comments
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Friday Fuck Up: Soup and Salad Combination From Hell

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It’s been a long time. In fact, so long that I thought we’ve moved past the horrors of inedible food. But just as we neared Halloween, I got the shit scared out of me. I made something so foul, so ugly, so smelly, all I could do was photograph it and make something else for dinner.

Because I refuse to let go of summer, I bought about 6 tomatoes at the farmers market. I could have embraced the new cold weather and its bounty of orange hued goodness, but if there’s tomatoes out—I’m buying. MISTAKE.

After a week on my dining room table I finally got around to putting them to use. Cutting away the rotten parts, I chopped the tomatoes and dropped them in a pan with a shallot and 5 minced cloves of garlic. I had already made a quick, and quite delicious, Ten Minute Tomato Soup, so with the last tomatoes until June 2010, I wanted to create something different.

Conveniently decomposing in my fridge was a 3/4 eaten salad from Chop’t. Usually salads can not be saved, with the dressing making its components soggy. But I thought, maybe if I buzz this spinach salad around in a food processor I can stir it into some baked egg dish. Yea. That’s it.

Except that would be way too normal. Well, normal for me. While the tomatoes were simmering, I blended my salad. It wasn’t until after I added it into the soup that I realized this was a remarably terrible idea. Let me tell you what was in that salad.

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in Veggie 7 comments
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ES Local: Six LES Food Stops, Old and New

View LES Food Stops, Old and New in a larger map

You know we usually like to think of ES as a huge, important international operation. Actually, scrap the ‘usually’ — I’ll stand by that. But sometimes we also like to obey the whole “all Internets is local” mantra. So over the next few months we’re going to be teaming up with the folks at new travel website Oyster to bring you some local NYC food content. Twice a week, we’ll be posting mini-guidebook style posts about our favorite New York food stops. You can read the posts both here on ES, and over at the new Oyster Locals blog.

First up, we’re looking at the Lower East Side, a neighborhood that serves as NYC’s ultimate dichotomy. With shiny new hotels and condos rising next door to rundown tenement buildings, it’s the new Manhattan plopped down right on top of the old Manhattan. Actually, it’s a really effing weird place right now. But for food lovers, that means a wondrously schizophrenic smorgasbord. Here are three of the best classic LES food stops still standing, along with three newcomers that are worth the hype.

Old LES: Katz’s Famous Delicatessen. Sure, New York’s oldest deli has become a bit of a tourist trap ever since Meg Ryan had “what she’s having” here, but the circa-1888 salami shop deserves credit for keeping their sandwich prices relatively reasonable, unlike some other brand-name NY delis. 205 East Houston St.

New LES: WD-50. The immigrant Russian family who founded Katz’s would likely roll over in their graves if they saw the passion fruit-filled foie gras and scrambled egg ravioli that mad scientist chef Wylie DuFresne whips up here. But if you’ve got $100 to throw around, NYC’s most playful 10-course tasting menu is a worthy diversion. 50 Clinton St.

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in Desserts / Restaurants 6 comments
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What the FroYo?

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Newsflash from ES: America is still eating shit.

I jumped on the froyo bandwagon several years too late. I don’t know why it was a bandwagon to begin with. The  trend is just now hitting Philadelphia, I’d think mostly because everyone likes water (wuder) ice better, and we actually like things that taste good. If you type “frozen yogurt, Philadelphia” into Google, the first thing that comes up is “Philly Steak & Gyro.”

Enough said.

My first try was last year in Chicago at Yogenfruz, a lesser known Canadian chain. I was immediately in love. They only have chocolate and vanilla, in low-fat and non-fat varieties. I always go for the vanilla, low-fat (The BF always has non-fat, both are delicious). The bonus at Yogenfruz is that you can have your froyo blended with frozen fruit. Real fruit flavoring? Nom nom.  The texture is perfect — ridiculously thick and creamy, and it doesn’t melt quickly.

Tasti-D-lite was my second try, this time because a friend in South Florida loves it. To be honest, it tasted kind of like…Dairy Queen? Fake ice cream? It was creamy, tasted milky, but melted very quickly. I kept hoping to taste flavors that just weren’t there. I ate it feeling empty and unsatisfied. Boo, not-so-Tasti-D-Lite.

Another review, after the jump.

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in Desserts / Trends 9 comments
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Cheflebrity Smörgåsbord: Joe Bastianich Works Hard, Plays Hard

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The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up buffet style.

– Joe Bastianich celebrates the completion of a marathon the same way I do: with plenty of booze.  Of course, he actually ran in the marathon where as I just read about it in the news.  Also, after losing 45 lbs, Joe apparently turned into a completely different person.  (Compare the photo above to this one.)

-ZOMFG liberal foodies’ heads are exploding everywhere today with the news that MICHELLE OBAMA will actually appear on Iron Chef. This was in the New York Times today, so apparently it’s not a joke.

– Click through to find out about Emeril’s new burger bistro.  Also to find out where Joe Bastianich’s 45 pounds went.

After the jump…an Olympian goes another round, Fox prepares to ruin another English import and a former Top Cheftestant goes whole hog.

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in Bacon / Celebs / Politics / TV 2 comments
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Forward This Message Or You Will Have Bad Luck in the Kitchen for 13 Years

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I remember in 3rd grade when I got my first chain letter. I was crazy excited to get mail and have something to do besides homework and soccer practice. Like the letter told me, I immediately wrote it out 7 times and duly sent it across the world, for fear of thirteen years of bad luck. I can’t remember if I got a letter back, or my freckled face was the evil punishment.

It wasn’t until high school that the chain letters went ’round again. Email was new to me and I happily forwarded on crazed messages for fear of bad sex for life. But soon that grew tired too.

Now, I get much tamer, even domesticated chain letters.

Hi everyone!

I don’t normally participate in these things, but I’m trying to cook more so I thought what the heck!  It doesn’t take long and if it works you should get a lot of great new recipes.  Instructions are below 🙂

Hi!

You have been invited to be a part of a recipe exchange, and I hope you will participate.

Please send a recipe to the person whose name is in position 1 (even if you don’t know them), and it should be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. Actually, the best one is the one you know in your head and can type right now. Don’t agonize over it; it is the one you make when you are short of time.

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in Trends 5 comments
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Bachelorhood is the Mother of Invention

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Having been married for almost three years now, I forgot how much of a mess my cooking was when I was flying solo.

More than anything, it was a matter of laziness.  Laziness when it came to picking out and shopping for ingredients, and laziness when dinner time rolled around and I balked at the notion of busting my hump on a meal for one.  So there were plenty of simple pasta dishes and takeout, accompanied by by an occasional flash of inspiration that foreshadowed the foodie I would become once I was cooking for an audience.

One such bit of creativity was the  “Hot Dog Sandwich.”  Typically, I’d stop at the Wawa on the ride home from work, pick up an eight inch Italian roll and fill it with a couple of boiled hot dogs and the usual condiments.  If this doesn’t strike you as particularly creative, then you understand how dire the whole situation really was.

This all came back to me last month as Mrs. TVFF headed off for a press junket in New Orleans and I quickly regressed to my old self, relying on leftovers from earlier in the week and whatever mismatched ingredients happened to be sitting around the house.  Arriving home after work and not having a plan, I noticed a couple of hot dogs in the freezer — Trader Joe’s Uncured Hot Dogs…good stuff.  I quickly began scouring the kitchen for an appropriate delivery device.

As you can tell from the photo, the only available option was a couple  of orphaned hamburger buns.  Although aesthetics aren’t everything to me, I realized I needed to do something to overcome the problem posed by the round bun and the long sausage.  This is where a little flash of improvisation came in.

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in Sandwich 6 comments
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