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Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.
The Kentucky Derby is this Saturday, and whether you’re watching the races from the infield or from your couch, it ought to be a delicious event. This past weekend, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine shared some Yankee-friendly Derby Day recipes, such as Hot Browns—over-the-top turkey sandwiches enhanced with butter-sautéed shallots, Worcestershire sauce, sharp cheddar, and bacon—and Kentucky burgoo, a hearty stew of assorted meats and vegetables.
The ideal dessert is a chocolate nut pie that is often referred to as Derby-Pie®, the registered trademark for the chocolate nut pie that was created by Kern’s Kitchen Inc. But if you don’t feel like ordering an official trademarked pie, you can bake one at home—but you better just call it a chocolate walnut pie to avoid trademark infringement. Seriously, Kern’s Kitchen is suing a diner in Frankfort, Kentucky, for up to $1 million because it was advertising and selling Derby-Pie that was baked in-house instead of by Kern’s.
Anyhoo, you’ll obviously wash down your sandwiches, stew, and pie with a Mint Julep, a refreshing concoction of fresh mint, sugar, and bourbon, served over ice. Some recipes call for muddled mint, while others suggest infusing the mint in simple syrup. Some New York restaurants are taking even more liberties with this classic drink: Craft has added a gin julep to its cocktail menu, and Cookshop serves a strawberry-rhubarb version.
For the purists among us, the proper way to serve this cocktail is in a silver julep cup, but if you haven’t inherited any heirloom silver cups, you can always buy new ones. Being that Macy’s charges $45 for a single cup, the 4-cups-for-72-bucks deal at PlumParty seems (almost) like a bargain.
Posted
on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
by Kara Zuaro in Food Media |
More like this: boston globe sunday magazine, cookshop, craft, derby pie, hot brown, kentucky burgoo, kentucky derby, kern's kitchen, media, melrose inn, mint julep, plumparty, silver julep cups, the grinder
Paul Gayler’s Mediterranean Cook is a favorite in my kitchen. Gayler—a British chef—organized the book into four sections: the Balkans, the central Mediterranean, the eastern Mediterranean, and Maghreb and Egypt. There are only a handful of recipes from each region, but Cook is heavy on beautiful photography and a lot of extra information on the ingredients, cooking tools, and methods that define the various cuisines.
You can opt to buy the hardcover version, but I like using the spiral-bound one because it lies open easily and has a mess-resistant plastic cover. Some of the more successful recipes I’ve tried are the artichoke torta and a salad sprinkled with fresh-made dukkah. This weekend I’m making the fried halloumi cheese and white bean salad. And I want to try the semolina almond cakes.
The book is out of print, but you can still pick it up online: Mediterranean Cook, $8.44
Posted
on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
by Roxanne Webber in New Finds |
More like this: artichoke torta, cookbook, dukka, dukkah, media, mediterranean cook, paul gayler, product, products
A16, the terrific southern Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s Marina District, is about to publish its first cookbook, called A16: Food + Wine ($35), and my advance copy looks terrific, especially for wine-lovers. There’s so much noise these days about wine pairing—Gewürztraminer with Asian food, say, or Champagne with pizza—that a core principle occasionally gets lost in the shuffle. I’m talking about the fact that wines and cuisines grow up together, and that pairing regional cuisine with its local wine isn’t just an act of cultural fidelity; it’s also a good way to get the flavors right. Drink a Provençal rosé with garlic-intensive aioli, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Buy this book, which is billed as “A cookbook and wine guide celebrating the traditions of southern Italy, from the country’s top southern Italian restaurant,” and you’ll get a few dozen ways to experience the same thing. That’s because wines from southern Italy have so completely taken over A16’s wine list as to make the place a rare kind of specialized wine bar. I’ve never been in a restaurant where I recognized so few varietals, and could order so many by the glass. The food is largely from the same part of the world, so every meal has the potential to be an adventure.
Best of all, the book—which includes delectable-looking recipes for tuna conserva four ways; octopus and ceci bean zuppa with escarole, garlic, and chiles; and roasted sardines with breadcrumbs, green garlic, and mint—appears to have been a genuine labor of love, as you can feel in these opening lines: “A glass of crisp Bombino Bianco paired with a slice of creamy mozzarella burrata. Ruby-red Nero d’Avola served with a blistered pizza margherita. Juicy Casavecchia beside a plate of roasted or grilled rabbit … we don’t just offer these wines to our guests for the sake of discovery, though; the wines simply belong with the gutsy country cooking of Campania.”
Posted
on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
by Daniel Duane in Wine and Drinks |
More like this: a16, a16 cookbook, campania, italy, pairing regional cuisine with local wine, pairing wine with food, southern italy, tasting notes, wine, Wine and Drinks
Another week, another front-yard farming story: NPR’s Day to Day reports on a Massachusetts bakery in the Pioneer Valley that’s enlisting its customers to grow wheat. No one’s grown wheat on a large scale in the Pioneer Valley for more than a half century, and the bakery’s owners, Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffei, couldn’t find any farmers willing to take a chance on the crop. So 50 local customers are digging 10-by-10 plots in their yards to test several varieties. After a few years, the bakery hopes to have enough data to convince local farmers to plant grains.
The NPR story is curiously circumspect—it never mentions the bakery’s name—but it is clearly referring to the Hungry Ghost, the revelatory artisan bread bakery in downtown Northampton. (Dear Grinder readers: Go.) An article in the local Greenfield, Massachusetts, paper gives more detail on the project, which has real promise. As Stevens says, the rising price of wheat may be the motivation that local farmers need.
Posted
on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
by Nicholas Day in Food Media |
More like this: bakery, bread, farming, food prices, Green, hungry ghost, media, northampton, the grinder, urban agriculture, wheat
Not that we needed another reason to love pizza—especially with the new generation of passionate pizza artisans on the rise—but a University of Manchester study shows remarkable health benefits from the regular consumption of tomato paste. According to an article in the UK Independent, eating cooked tomatoes may be the best way to avoid sunburn and wrinkles.
A study found that volunteers who ate helpings of ordinary tomato paste over a 12-week period developed skin that was less likely to burn in the sun.
…
The effect of eating tomatoes was equivalent to slapping on a factor 1.3 sunscreen. Changes were also seen within the skin of the volunteers that counteract the appearance of ageing.
Scientists think an antioxidant, lycopene, which gives tomatoes their colour, can neutralise harmful molecules produced in skin exposed to the sun’s ultra-violet rays.
Those who ate tomato paste—five tablespoons a day, along with some olive oil—were 33 percent more protected from sunlight.
Finally, health advice that might just be fun to follow.
Posted
on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
by Tea Austen Weaver in Food Media |
More like this: aging, health, media, reasons to eat pizza, sunburn, the grinder, tomato paste, tomato paste good for skin, uk independent, university of manchester
Cocktail aficionados are getting excited for next month’s U.S. release of Plymouth Sloe Gin, a garnet-colored gin steeped with sloe berries. The Plymouth press materials promise “sweet cherry and raspberry notes that provide a complementary mixture of figs, cloves, honey and stewed fruits.”
What’s all the fuss about? As cocktail and food blog Married …with Dinner explains:
[A]ny well-stocked suburban liquor barn probably has a dusty bottle or two on hand for frat boys looking to whip up a batch of Alabama Slammers. But these so-called sloe gins are no more than low-quality, one-note wonders packed with sugar and artificial fruitiness; many don’t even start with a gin base. Truly, they’re so far removed from the real thing that most cocktail enthusiasts have considered sloe gin a lost ingredient Stateside, going so far as to concoct their own facsimiles from sour plum infusions or importing bottles from abroad.
It seems that Plymouth’s ruby-red tipple will be available in select bars starting next month, but getting your hot little hands on a bottle may be hard. Off-the-record reports from a recent launch party whisper that it’ll be at one retail outlet per city, maybe, eventually. A report on Serious Eats last fall mentioned a total distribution of a “miserly 1,000 half cases.” Sloe gin is living up to its name.
Posted
on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
by Tea Austen Weaver in Food Media |
More like this: alabama slammer, damson plums, gin, married with dinner, media, plymouth, plymouth sloe gin, serious eats, sloe gin, the grinder
With all the worry about bisphenol A in plastics, especially when it comes to baby products, it’s no surprise that glass baby bottles are making a comeback. But as Matthew Yeomans at the blog Gastrokid notes, at one Parisian restaurant, Le Refuge des Fondus in Montmartre, glass baby bottles have been popular since 1966—for adults. The reason why the wine at Le Refuge is served in baby bottles is lost in the fog of the eatery’s infancy. Rumors are that it was to get around the Paris tax on wineglasses, or that serving the booze in baby bottles, or biberons, is a play on the word biberonner, which means “boozing it up.”
David Rich at Momondo.com does warn that Le Refuge is “anything but a bastion of haute cuisine,” and Ashley Thompson at National Geographic Traveler says the bottles contain “some of the lowest-end table wine,” but patrons seem to like the concept. “It makes cheap wine taste better, believe me,” says one, in a UK Guardian video. “Some of my first memories are of drinking wine out of baby bottles, so I really don’t have a problem with it,” another enthuses, although a third does note that, “You can’t really swirl, and you can’t really sniff.”
Posted
on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
by Traci Vogel in Food Media |
More like this: baby bottles, biberons, le refuge des fondus, les refuge des fondues, media, montmarte, the grinder, wine, Wine and Drinks
Over the weekend I spent some time at my favorite San Francisco dive bar, the 500 Club. (Confession: My friend Rachel tends bar there.) Like any true dive, it’s not the place you go to find inventive drink concoctions, 10 kinds of bitters, or the latest obscure liqueur brought over from Europe. But oddly enough, it is the place I tasted Canton—a ginger-flavored liqueur from France—for the first time.
Canton is a blend of Vietnamese baby ginger, VSOP Grand Champagne Cognac, orange-blossom honey from Provence, and vanilla. It also comes with some street cred, having won Best in Show Liqueur at the 2008 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Most important, it’s damn good, and one of the first liqueurs to pique my interest in a long time. The ginger tastes fresh and spicy without being bitter, and the honey adds a nice touch of sweetness. I had mine mixed with soda water and fresh lemon, but I could have easily enjoyed it on the rocks or as a welcome addition to a classic margarita or Mojito.
Domaine de Canton French Ginger Liqueur, $29.95
Posted
on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
by Michele Foley in New Finds |
More like this: alcohol, domaine de canton, french ginger liqueur, ginger, liqueur, product, products, san francisco world spirits competition, Wine and Drinks
If you enjoy rollicking food writing, head over to New York magazine, where erstwhile restaurant critic Adam Platt travels to Tokyo to eat fugu. The resulting 5,000-word article is gonzo food journalism at its most pleasurable.
Fugu, as Platt tells us, is the highly poisonous blowfish prized in Japan for its fresh taste. Did we mention it is highly poisonous? A pinhead-size amount of the fish’s toxin can kill a grown man.
But Platt is determined to try the deadly delight, over his wife’s objections. Once in Tokyo, he hooks up with a guide/food writer (who previously steered Anthony Bourdain through his own encounter with fugu for his TV show) and sets off for a restaurant where he can indulge in fugu omakase. But not before sharing some history and lore with his readers. He covers everything from fugu on The Simpsons to how it is prepared:
First, the fins and tail of the fish are cut off, then an incision is made down the back, so that the skin can be peeled away, like a banana’s. Next, the poisonous entrails are removed and the head is cut in half so that the fugu’s eyes can be taken out, since they’re poisonous, too.
At the dinner, he is presented with dishes that take him increasingly outside of his comfort level. The thin shreds of raw fugu are mild and flavorless. The deep-fried fugu ribs are delicious but bony. Somewhere along the line, Platt’s lips begin to go numb and he panics. He can feel the poison advancing toward his lungs. Is the numbness real, or all in his head?
Finally, he has to face the biggest challenge of all: Fugu sperm sacs—“white as snow, bouncy to the touch, and disturbingly large, about the size of a pair of healthy water balloons.”
For adventurous eaters, the thrill of a new, cult food can make you feel more alive. And the fugu, with its aura of danger and, for non-Asians, exoticness would seem to be just the tonic for a restaurant critic’s jaded palate.
Posted
on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
by Miriam Wolf in Food Media |
More like this: adam platt, blowfish, fugu, japan, media, new york magazine, the grinder, tokyo
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