Trends - - Page 29

by gansie

I’m Comin’ Out Cake Batter

“I shot my load,” I replied to my friend Jon after he insulted my abundant pour of frozen yogurt, leaving little room for toppings. I thought the sentiment was particularly clever, as I simultaneously winked at the clerk.

At a *fat free* frozen yogurt shop in West Hollywood/BoysTown the flavors are homo-suggestively named, but more, are insanely delicious. This is anti-Pinkberry, the shop noted for starting the tangy froyo craze. Yogurt Stop is an X-rated yet A+ tasting TCBY, the bland frozen yogurt chain dominating suburban strip malls.

Cake batter won my taste buds over with its searingly sweet and familiar flavor. I have a thing for batter, as you may remember from my sous vide brainstorm of slow and low water bath cookie dough.

Jon, and his girlfriend Elizabeth—who made my trip by spotting JC from ‘N Sync during dinner at Dominick’s—swear by the 3 : 1 ratio of toppings to yogurt. And real quick, this is what my friend Thresher had to say about this sighting:

Those nsync boys, I swear. They’re like the Hill staffers of LA–you run into them at every corner. On any given night in West Hollywood, you’re pretty much guaranteed to cross paths with Lance Bass and his fierce cadre of well-groomed muscle lads.

Anyway, here is what a Yogurt Stop snack is supposed to look like:

Also in SoCal
A Pocket of Sweetness
Top 9 Foods Found Only at SoCal Farmers’ Markets
Artsy Guess the Photo of the Day
ISO: Avocado Orchard
Artsy SoCal Photo of the Day

by gansie

A+ in Handwriting for Adolfo

I remember reading a study a while ago (reminiscent of this) about the difference in tip size when a server handwrites something on the check.

Drawing a smiley face on the check increases a waitress’s tips by 18 percent but decreases a waiter’s tips by 9 percent.

But that doesn’t happen very often in DC. Not to put on city snobbery, but this sort of cutesy crap occurs at a TGI Fridays in the suburbs. And honestly, I can’t remember the last time I saw this–anywhere–in the last few years. Until last night.

Have You Eaten Meat Today?

ES fav Kim O’Donnel, aka The Notorious KOD, refuses meat on Mondays. And she’s a goddamn meat lover. Meatless Mondays, in my opinion, might just help save the planet. Or at least extend humans’ time on it.

O’Donnel’s ode to Meatless Mondays, The Meat Lovers Meatless Cookbook, will be published in September. Above is her rant on why we should give cows and pigs and shrimp a day off.

in Trends / Veggie 3 comments

by BS

Top 10 Finds at the 2010 Food Fete

The younger, hipper cousin to the Fancy Food Show, the annual Food Fete is a gathering place for foodie types; a showcase of the newest products across the world of cooking, dining and drinking; and an all-around schwagfest. Obviously, we bit. Here are the coolest new products we spotted at this year’s fete.

10. Sous Vide Supreme

Remember last year when I got high on Top Chef and bought that Thomas Keller sous vide cookbook but then realized you need a couple grand worth of equipment to sous vide food at home? Well some clever market researcher must have realized there are a lot of d-bags like me out there, because SousVide Supreme now has an at-home sous vide machine designed for the average joe. OK, at $450 maybe it’s for the slightly above-average joe, but still, getting closer! Everyone must sous vide! UPDATE: Endless Simmer tries out and reviews the SousVide Supreme.

9. Glace de Veau

Ya’ll know we don’t usually hype pre-packaged sauces and such here at ES, but when the supermarket starts carrying roasted veal stock reduction, I have to digress from the norm. Yes, yes, I can hear Anthony Bourdain carping on about how every cook should have their own homemade veal stock in the freezer and how it only takes 172 hours to prepare so what’s your goddamn problem? Well you know what? I’ve had your book on my shelf for two years and still never made any damn homemade demi-glace, so I’m going with this. In stores this fall.

8. Box ‘o EVOO

I think Lucini was actually there to show off the taste of their olive oil, but I was more impressed by the packaging. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve always found those tiny 6-oz. jars of oil woefully inept at keeping up with my usage, and the large bottles too heavy to lug home from the grocery store. Solution: an ungodly amount of extra-virgin olive oil, packed into a plastic bag in a cardboard box. It even comes with a spiggot, just like boxed wine! All I need now is the self-control not to drink directly from the spout.

7. Green Garlic

This is a tasty green product that I’ve never seen in stores before. California-based Christopher Ranch is expanding their garlic repertoire by harvesting the stuff while it’s still young and green, and selling it with the leafy, scallion-like stalks attached. The green part of the garlic offers a less intense garlick-y bite, and you can still use the bulb, or even fry up those little strands at the root and sprinkle them on top of a dish. Coming soon to a Fairway or Whole Foods near you. Downside: shipped across the country in plastic packaging — I’d rather see them at the far mar.

Get In My Cheese!

I’ll admit I don’t know nearly enough about the history of cheese to call this a trend (aside – I should know more about the history of cheese!), but has anyone else been noticing way more things getting all up in your cheese lately?

I’m a huge fan of that havarti-dill stuff that makes every bite of cheese taste just a little bit like a pickle, and of course jalapeno cheddar is no big news, but now it seems you can get just about any kind of herb or spice pre-placed into your cheese: basil, pepper, celery salt — hell, apparently even bacon cheese in some places. It’s totally eliminating the need to independently spice your sandwich (aside #2 — am I the only one who spices my sandwich?)

And now it seems they’re bypassing herbs and just putting whole seeds inside the cheese, as in Beemster’s mustard seed cheese. Instead of infusing a little mustard flavor, they just pack the thing with mustard seeds. It’s super tasty, and yet somehow surprises me every bite — I just can’t get myself used to this pop-up, crunchy consistency hidden in my cheese.

So as I pick stray mustard seeds off my keyboard, I have to say I’m still undecided. Do we endorse all cheese-y creativity, or if we support this are we dooming ourselves to live in a world where cheese comes pre-made with pepperoni, sausage and anchovies inside? What do you think?

in Cheese / Trends 3 comments

by gansie

You Shouldn’t Be the Chef

I wasn’t sure if it was a dream or a nightmare. I was in New Jersey (no jokes) with my family (really, no jokes) and I scanned the American-Italian menu. The usual suspects appeared: chicken parm, eggplant manicotti, veal marsella. And then I saw what should be the biggest kitchen disaster: customers allowed to create their own meal. There were no guidelines. No suggestions. No boundaries. Just boxed-in text suggesting the customer be the chef.

Maybe without a price range this option could be lucrative. But all I imagine are bitchy, bossy, hungry South Jerseyans ordering outrageous requests. Triple lobster. No butter. No Salt. Extra crab. No fat. No sugar.

This can’t be a step in the right direction in restaurant-patron relations, can it?

in Restaurants / Trends 6 comments

by Russell Warnick

The World Cup of Food

Image Courtesy of Nestor Cerami

We couldn’t let soccer’s 2010 FIFA World Cup go by without throwing in our two cents — which as you might expect, has less to do with our feet than with our mouths. So while serious sports fans spend this week debating which squads got the crap draw and which teams are most likely to make the second round, foodies can put all that aside and take a look at our 2010 World Cup Food and Drink Rankings, in which we’ve ranked the 32 participating nations from worst to best, based not on soccer skills but on the appeal of each country’s most iconic dish.

For the record, I offer no apologies for the dishes or the order in which they are ranked—I had many discussions with my international friends when researching these and they have disagreed with me on many—for that, you can leave your opinions in the comments.

#32. Australia – Vegemite on Toast

Usually when there is a petition on Facebook in support of something, you know it’s a desperate plea, and Vegemite on Toast is no exception. This isn’t one of those love-it-or-hate-it kind of foods, this is simply a hate it kind of food. Yes, there are nearly 111,000 facebook users on the record as supporting it, but I’m pretty sure that’s roughly the population of Australia, right? Let’s hope for their sake that the Aussie lads find something better to chow on before their matches in South Africa.

#31. Ivory Coast – Kedjenou

Factoid: the current coach of the Ivory Coast team is former England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson. I’m sure old Sven has some tricks up his sleeves planned for the field, but you’ve got to admire the Ivory Coast’s cooking tricks, too. Kedjenou, like many other West African dishes, starts with some tough old chickens and basically cooks the shit out of them ’til they’re edible. It may not be the quickest way to make a meal taste good, but it sure as hell beats Vegemite.

#30. Slovenia – Buckwheat

I task you with something — Google “Slovenia” and “food.” Whatever the result is it’ll surely include buckwheat. Buckwheat, buckwheat and more buckwheat. Could you be any more boring, Slovenian cooks? If you must have a Slovenian soccer dish, I sifted through the ES archives and stumbled upon this tasty dish, vegetarian too — Wilted Greens with Buckwheat Noodles (and an egg).