Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm in the process of working my way through my family's cookbook. One of the contributors was my neighbor and babysitter, Edie. In addition to teaching me how to make a mean gin and tonic, as well as the basics of ceramic sculpture, Edie also took it upon herself to ensure that I had a strong education in the essentials of gourmet cookery. Among other things, this meant keeping a jar full of dried mushrooms in the kitchen, as she felt that it signaled to all visitors "that one was a true gourmet."
This title of this recipe might lead one to believe that it's some sort of meat and cheese mix; in reality, it lands somewhere between a quiche and a quick bread. The original recipe used mild chiles and cream cheese, but I found that increasing the heat and reducing the fat made it even tastier. I've seen other versions of this dish on the internet, but none of them are as light and delicate as this one. It's a snap to make, and keeps beautifully in the refrigerator.
For the chiles, I used La Morena escabeche-style jalapenos, but almost any kind will work.
What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than with a selection of artisanal Irish cheeses? My knowledge on Irish cheese was limited to cheddar until a trip last fall to Slow Food's cheese festival where I met Jeffa Gill, one of the early pioneers of Irish farmhouse cheese production. At the festival, she tasted out remarkable cheeses with an aroma of the Irish shore.
Durrus is a creamy milky Irish Tomme de Savoie produced with raw Freisian cow's milk. This soft-ripened washed-rind cheese was first made by Jeffa Gill in 1979. You can find Durrus at the Bedford Cheese Shop. Once you've got Durrus, pick out a succulent creamy Irish blue cheese - Cashel Blue or Crozier. Crozier is handmade by Jane and Louis Grubb from the milk of sheep raised locally in Tipperary, Ireland where they graze on rich limestone pastures. Check it out at Murray's Cheese.
After selecting your St. Patrick's Day curds, think about pairings. Murray's Cheese makes this process simple. On their website, you'll find a delicious array of Irish cheese and beer pairings put together by fellow cheese expert Chris Munsey.
For those of you not in the know, an Irish Carbomb is a drink that combines Guinness, Irish cream (typically Bailey's) and Irish whiskey (often Jameson). Food blogger Sassy Radish has transformed that bar special into a boozy, chocolate-y cupcake and has made them look deliciously cute with a frenzy of frosting flowers. She doesn't have a blog post up yet to match up with these 'cakes, but I'm certain that when she does, the corresponding recipe will be a winner.
You might remember me gushing over Becks & Posh's perfectly posh cookbook note-taking last October. The image had sent me into a flurry of thoughts about how much more I should be writing in my cookbooks, and made me wish that my writing looked nicer when I did get out the pen. But all of that was about comments, substitutions, and all-around good cookbook tidings.
But what do you do when the recipe, to put it bluntly, sucks? Once again, we have note-taking gold via Becks & Posh. It seems that once, poor Sam made a Castagnaccio, which went down in infamy as "really bad food Sam has made." It was so bad, in fact, that she wrote the above note in the margin. if you can't read it: "This is the shittiest crapest most disgusting tasting cake I ever made in my WHOLE LIFE."
So it got me thinking: What do you do when a recipe turns out terribly? Do you rant in the margins? Cross it out with a big, thick X? Doodle a little skull and crossbones near the title?* Clip it out and give it to a friend to try, so they can unknowingly share your tastebud misery?
*Now that is what every cook needs: small skull and crossbones stickers to plunk down on offensive recipes!
"I have a quote for you," said Green Flash Brewing Co.'s Brewmaster, Chuck Silva. And when the man who hand-crafted one of your favorite beers in the world tells you he has a quote, you listen. "The harder you work, the luckier you are," said Chuck in response to my query of how Green Flash has managed to have such great success in such a short amount of time. "It's not that we've been lucky, it's just that we work hard and we've had good fortune."
Chuck Silva has been Brewmaster with Green Flash for approximately four and a half years now. In that time, Green Flash has grown from a small San Diego brewery to one of national prominence and availability. It's hard to believe, but Mr. Silva wasn't even Green Flash's first Brewmaster (they existed for two years without him), which just shows how instrumental he has been to their success. I was lucky enough to be able to accost Chuck during a Philly Beer Week event at the P.O.P.E. (fully known as the Pub on Passyunk East, which, as a bar, is post worthy in it's own right, but I'm going to stay on task for the time being), and he was polite enough to answer a number of questions regarding his brews.
Hot on the heels of their Torpedo Extra IPA -- Sierra Nevada's first new year-round offering in over a decade -- the California brewery is doing it again, announcing the release of a second, new, year-round release launching in 2009 (which, in case you're counting, will bring the grand total of year-round releases to six).
A "polar opposite on the flavor spectrum" from the Torpedo IPA, this new selection has been branded Kellerweis Hefewizen -- "a traditional Bavarian Hefeweizen that we have been working on for a number of years." According to their press release, the product was originally developed after Sierra Nevada obtained a rare and unique yeast strain from a very small Bavarian brewery. However, it wasn't until a trip to Germany inspired the brewers to use open fermentation that the beer finally obtained the flavors they were seeking (and also inspired the name -- "keller" is German for cellar, the name breweries give to their fermentation systems).
Sierra Nevada states: "The flavor is rich with bready wheat notes and massive banana and clove... The finish is clean and crisp and the beer has a low enough ABV to be scarily session-able." Sounds like a winner to me. I am a huge wheat/white beer fan, especially those in the more drinkable spectrum. My only question would be that, as many may know, Sierra Nevada already has a wheat beer: The aptly named Sierra Nevada Wheat. Obviously wheat beers come in many different styles, and the Kellerweis Hefeweizen sounds distinctly different, but it'll be interesting to see how these co-exist. Just as the Torpedo IPA set itself apart from Sierra's long-standing Pale Ale, the Kellerweis will be tasked to do a similar job.
I have found that the more storage space I have for the food, the more food I'll keep socked away. For example, we got a new refrigerator last summer. I was giddy with excitement when we bought it, thrilled that I would finally have a fridge that wasn't stuff to the gills. However, in very short order, it was just as packed with food as the previous fridge had been despite being a full 1/3 bigger.
Recently, I've been trying to be more diligent about using up the things we have instead of purchasing food on a whim, and this week, there are a number of home cooks and food bloggers specifically endeavoring to do the same thing. A Mighty Appetite's Kim O'Donnell is keeping things organized and she has more than 100 households across five countries participating in the Eat Down the Fridge Challenge (there's even a honor roll and a Facebook group devoted to the effort).
If you've got a number of things tucked away in your fridge, freezer and pantry, consider playing along this week and see how many meals you can make from the food that you already have.
Spring is almost here. (Hallelujah!) And while it may seem like there's all the time in the world, that time flies and before you know it, gardening season will be in full swing. To get us prepared for a whole slew of excellent self-grown herbs and vegetables -- the epitome of local food -- I thought I'd alert you to the Garden Girl, Patti. She's pretty much a gardening guru, and can help get you all set for your new crops.
The above video is the first in a series on Indoor Gardening, but there are also videos on composting, harvesting, hydroponics, insect control, and all of those important gardening particulars. Plan now, and be happy with lots and lots of food in the summer months. Happy gardening!
There's a DIY project (from Tasarim) making the rounds that's perfect for sharing your bread with your feathered friends. As you can see above, a simple wood shelf has large holes for the crumbs to fall in, which get collected, and directed down a tube that sails straight to a bird feeder.
I'm not entirely convinced that there are birds out there would you patiently wait below and not just fly up a little bit and peruse the board themselves, but this idea could still be handy in the kitchen, and for those who don't have hungry birds. Just make it into a larger crumb catcher. Cut slats into a simple board like that, and make a box base for it. Then you can easily and quickly collect all your scraps, and really make the use out of your bread. When you've got a bunch, just grind it into uniform breadcrumbs.
Recently, Scott and I have been trying to eat a bit more healthfully and shed a few of those winter pounds that crept on over the last few months. We've found that doing Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet helps us both get our eating habits in check and forces us to think a bit more carefully about the food we eat. While I'm looking forward to switching back to oatmeal and other whole grains for my morning meal once this very limited carb phase is over, I've also been enjoying making egg cups for our breakfasts.
These muffin-sized egg bakes (even when not following South Beach, I've made similar recipes in a larger baking dish for brunch potlucks and holiday morning buffets) are essentially portable omelettes that, once cooked, make breakfast prep a snap in the morning. Just grab one and reheat it for a morning meal that contains lots of protein and one healthy serving of vegetables.
The recipe I'm following this week is after the jump.
My Culinary Degradation post, which ran in February, inspired a fair bit of competition among my readers. While I managed to come up with a few moderately-disturbing food choices, my readers really ran with the idea, suggesting outrageous beer and ice cream combinations and fried foods that bordered on blasphemy. Last, but not least, they also suggested some monster burgers that strained the imagination, not to mention the digestive system.
I'm no stranger to big burgers, having worked my way through Red Robin's entire menu, but the Heart Attack Grill's Quadruple Bypass Burger is far, far out of my league. With four 1/2-pound patties, four slices of bacon, three slices of cheese, lettuce, and tomato, it is estimated to contain 8,000 calories. While I can't think of a lot of reasons to visit Chandler Arizona, I may still have to make a visit.
One reader, Astin, recommended Dangerous Dan's, a restaurant in Toronto. Their "Colossal Colon Clogger Combo" contains 24 ounces of beef, a quarter pound of bacon, a quarter pound of cheese, and two fried eggs. For $23.95, it comes with a large shake and a side of gravy and cheese curd-laden fries.
It's Beer Week here in Philadelphia, and while I'm not a huge beer drinker, the city-wide brew celebration has got me thinking about ways to incorporate beer into my cooking (we've also got a surfeit of beer around the apartment, leftover from a recent birthday/engagement party, that needs to be used). One of the tastiest applications for beer I've found recently is in beer braised cabbage.
Before I made beer braised cabbage for the first time, I searched the internet a bit, looking for some inspiration as well as confirmation that the recipe I was forming in my head was on the right track. I found a post by Shauna, the Gluten-Free Girl, in which she braises cabbage with gluten-free beer, and determined that my internal recipe was just about on. A few tweaks and I started cooking. The resultant cabbage was delicious and was an excellent foil for some beer braised brisket (I'm on something of a beer braising kick at the moment). This cabbage would be great St. Patrick's Day side dish, served up with corned beef and boiled potatoes (as well as a nice bottle of Guinness).
Well hello, you gorgeous strawberry bundt cake! After a long, bone-chilling winter, I am more than ready to see confections such as this, made with wonderful springtime fruit, popping up in the Slashfood Flickr pool. This treat was baked up by Kate of the food blog A Dash of Sass. She adapted Paula Deen's recipe for Hummingbird Cake (replacing the bananas and pineapple with homemade strawberry puree) and, once she figured out the difference between cake flour and self-rising flour, turned out a beautiful, rosy-hued cake. Paired with a cream cheese frosting, it must have been quite tasty.
We talk about Zinfandel being the ultimate American wine, but as I've mentioned on here before, Zin is actually a cousin to grapes from Croatia and Italy, and it probably came from Croatia. Today's Wine of the Week showcases a truly American grape varietal: Norton.
Unlike most wine grapes, which are from the Vitis vinifera species, Norton (also called Cynthiana) is part of the Vitis aestivalis family. Many winemakers think it's the best indigenous American grape for making wine that's rich, full-bodied, and flavorful. Because it's a hardy grape, Norton thrives in growing regions all over the U.S., most notably Missouri but also Illinois, Virginia, and other states. And since it's so dark, Norton has more of those magic compounds in the skin, resveratrol, than other red grapes, according to researchers.
Still, I admit I was skeptical, at least a little bit, before actually trying the wine. I mean, don't all wine snobs have just a bit of an attitude about American wine that doesn't come from the West Coast? And now I'm here to officially eat my words, because Norton blew me away.
Tasting notes for Norton - Wine of the Week after the jump.
In line at the movie theater last night, I was a little disturbed to see a man in a white mask with a fedora pulled over his black-smudged eyes standing by the popcorn. Of course, as I quickly realized, he was just dressed up to see Watchmen, the much-awaited film version of the comic books. Watchmen fans will love these cupcakes - the comics' signature blood-smeared yellow smiley face. What's more, they can probably recreate the simple icing lines at home. They're from Sweet Lizzie's Cupcakes in San Antonio, via Cupcakes Take the Cake.
Burnt foods leave stubborn spots in pots and pans that could take hours to remove. Luckily, a few essentials in your pantry can help restore your pans to practically new.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm in the process of working my way through my family's cookbook. One of the contributors was my neighbor and babysitter, Edie. In addition to teaching me how to make a mean gin and tonic, as well as the basics of ceramic sculpture, Edie also took it upon herself to ensure that I had a strong education in the essentials of gourmet cookery. Among other things, this meant keeping a jar full of dried mushrooms in the kitchen, as she felt that it signaled to all visitors "that one was a true gourmet."
"I have a quote for you," said 
It's 
There's a Lobster in My Pants, and He Does a Little Dance...
Save Energy, Install Shag Carpet in Your Fridge 
Fried Bologna - The West Virginia State Sandwich
