Month: July 2012

” The Future of Food: Ten Cutting-Edge Restaurant Test Kitchens Around the World “

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Excerpts from EATER
Wednesday, July 11, 2012, by Gabe Ulla

In recent years, chefs around the world have founded dedicated test kitchens as venues in which to create freely — without the pressures of a normal, working kitchen — and feed their restaurants new dishes, ideas, and techniques. Some of these projects delve into scientific, technological, and academic research (Momofuku, Mugaritz, Moto), while others stick to developing menus and working on food (Relae, ThinkFoodTank). For the most part, these are small kitchens that don’t serve diners or independently produce much or any profit.

The test kitchens of today owe much to Ferran Adrià, who would close his restaurant for half of the year, head to Barcelona, and work in a small space to develop an entirely new menu for the following season. It is, as NYU professor Anne McBride describes it, about “separating the creative process from the productive one.”

And with a good number of food labs or test kitchens popping up in the last three years, is this something many more restaurants will be adopting? According to McBride, the level of resources needed for these operations is simply too high for most chefs and restaurants.” However, she believes “that even without having defined test kitchens, the idea of allowing more space (physical and mental) to the creative process, will trickle down. I think that diners and the profession can only benefit from this push in creativity.”

Here are ten, but stay tuned for a new regular Eater feature highlighting these and more test kitchens around the globe.

Read and see all HERE
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” No Frikadelle Tonight – It’s Beef Burger Time ! “

Tonight I will hopefully convince everybody that you can love
both, a good frikadelle and a good beef burger.
As usual, I will put my own twist on it.
Here we go :
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“ Cheeseburger My Way “
As you know, in order to get all the benefits of good quality ground beef, you must choose the best quality meat and handle it as little as possible. In this case I took two 14 oz striploin and grinded them at home with my cuisine art. In order to keep the meat from drying out, I made a pepper jack cheese and butter sandwich, which I then encased with the meat and shaped it loosely, avoiding to press it too much as to keep the texture of the meat loose and tender. The flavor added by the melting butter and cheese to the beef while it cooks takes the whole thing up three notches.

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Cut hoagie rolls or bun of your choice in half, spread generously with Butter and broil cut side until golden. Set aside.
Carefully spread the beef out on a cutting board in a ¾ # layer without squeezing it.
Sprinkle with kosher salt, black pepper and a dash of garlic powder.
Lightly mix without squeezing it.
Divide into four parts.
Put one part of the beef on a cutting board, top with the cheese / butter sandwich,
cover with another part of beef and form a loose patty.
Repeat with rest of ingredient’s.
Sautee in olive oil until it almost reaches the required doneness.
Discard oil, add two tablespoon of butter and sautee until butter starts to brown.
Let rest on absorbent paper for five minutes before serving.
Use garnish of your choice. For dipping I use ketchup, dijon and sriracha.

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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” Kutsher’s Tribeca Restaurant Makes Video Showing A (Too) Sexy Side Of Jewish Food “

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Via: The Village Voice Blogs

When Jewish Food Goes Sexy

By Tejal Rao Fri., Jul. 13 2012 at 11:00 AM

Check out Kutsher’s funny food porn, which doubles as tongue-in-cheek commentary on the recent trendiness of Jewish food.
It escalates until finally…oy gevalt!

WATCH VIDEO HERE
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Image by : All Unusual in Our Lives
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” Bella Went Outside……. “

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This is what Bella said 🙂
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Bella say’s : Life is Good !

” Sauteed Whiting Filets, Shrimps, Grits & Mango / Caper Butter “

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Grits and lot’s of butter.
NOT a slimming day.
But a GOOD day 🙂
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Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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” Conchiglie A La Mode Du Hans “

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Last night’s midnight snack.
I guess that was one pound straight to the rib’s 😦
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Boil pasta shell’s until al dente, drain, reserve some of the cooking water.
Sautee steak cubes in very hot oil until still rare in center. Remove from pot, reserve.
Sautee vegetables in olive oil very briefly. Remove from pot, reserve.
Deglaze pot with red wine and let it slightly reduce.
Add pasta, beef, veggies, all the accumulated juices from the beef and veggies, a good amount of soft (not melted) butter, plenty of grated parmesan cheese and some of the cooking water from the pasta. Mix all until the sauce coats the pasta lightly.
If consistency seems too thin, add more cheese. If consistency seems too thick, add more pasta water.
To serve, sprinkle with crumbled gorgonzola and scallions.
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Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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” Healthy Food: 50 Of The Best In The World “

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Originally posted by:
The Huffington Post
By The Healthy Living Editors
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Each month at HuffPost Healthy Living, we compile lists of the most in-season, fresh superfoods — this June, for instance, we celebrated figs, zucchini and apricots, among others. But these monthly articles got us thinking — what are some of the healthiest foods generally, despite the season?

And so we turned to some of our favorite medical and nutritional experts to come up with this list of 50 of the healthiest foods, presented alphabetically. Pad your grocery list with these and you’ll be on your way to a healthier, more vibrant diet. Of course, even as we editors finished the list, we started thinking of more (“How could carrots not be on the list?” “What about black pepper?”). So we plan to follow up with a second list of healthy foods. Let us know in the comments which of your favorites we skipped and they could appear soon.

Read more and see a slideshow of all 50 food’s HERE
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” Flank Steak & Gorgonzola-Gratinated Vegetables “

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Yesterday’s Dinner .
The gorgonzola elevated the whole dish 🙂
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Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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” Cook The Opossum, Spare The Bear “

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I usually don’t like to re-post other folk’s stuff, but this one deserves to be shared 🙂
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From : eatocracy, CNN

Barbecue Digest: Cook the opossum, spare the bear

Editor’s note: All summer long, the Southern Foodways Alliance will be delving deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of barbecue across the United States. Dig in.

Today’s barbecue joints tend to serve just one or two kinds of meats, with pork predominate in the Carolinas and Georgia and beef the star out in Texas and Kansas City. Not so in the old days.

Back when barbecues were large-scale community affairs, the meat served was whatever people had on hand and could donate to the cause. Lists like the following, from a description of an 1868 barbecue in Spartanburg, South Carolina, were par for the course: “beef, mutton, pork, and fowls were provided in superabundance.”

At the largest events, the menus could be eye-popping. Perhaps the most extensive is the selection served at the 1923 inauguration of Oklahoma governor Jack Walton. The event was held in January, and just before Christmas, Walton sent out a call to Oklahoma farmers to donate animals for the event.

And donate they did. The final tally, as printed in the Dallas Morning News, included thousands of cows, hogs, sheep, and chickens plus 103 turkeys, 1,363 rabbits, 26 squirrels, 134 opossums, 113 geese, 34 ducks, 15 deer, 2 buffalo, and 2 reindeer that had been “shipped in from the North.”

A man from Sayre, Oklahoma, captured a live bear and offered him to the cause, too. But the bear won the sympathy of Oklahoma school children, who pooled their pocket change, bought him for $119.66, and donated him to the Wheeler Park Zoo. The bear was a crowd favorite for more than a decade.

The rest of the animals weren’t so lucky.

Today’s installment comes courtesy of Robert Moss, a food writer and restaurant critic for the Charleston City Paper and author of “Barbecue: the History of an American Institution”. Follow him on Twitter at @mossr.

Delve into more barbecue goodness from the Southern Foodways Alliance blog

Previously – In praise of pork rinds and Give squirrel a whirl and Burgoo with a smidge of squirrel
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