Filed under: Dessert , Food Porn , Grains , Dairy , Recipes , Fruit , Baking , How To , Eggs , Cooking Live with Slashfood

Filed under: Chocolate , Books , Cookbook of the Day Alice Medrich must be one of the most talented pastry chefs to have ever published a cookbook. "Pastry chef" seems like a better description than "baker" because, though she bakes, she specializes in chocolate. Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate is an exceptional work from her and won the IACP awards for Best Single Subject Cookbook and Cookbook of the Year in 2004, after the book was released. The book covers different types of chocolate, detailing levels of sweetness and types of cocoas, and provides a wealth of information on how to work with it, including troubleshooting common problems. Not only does it cover the topics, but Medrich explains the difficult nature of chocolate in an extremely eloquent way, something which not all writers who have tackled the topic can claim. While her prose is detailed, it pales in comparison to the level of specificity that Medrich applies in her recipes. While it may seem intimidating at first glance, the recipes are still very readable and can walk the cook through from start to finish of some of the most mouthwatering chocolate creations you can imagine. The book is also full of stunning illustrations, should you need any encouragement to attempt the recipes.

Filed under: Science , Cocktails , Spirits Those of you that are familiar with the Jell-O experiments of MyScienceProject.org will be glad to know that a new batch of tests was added this month. Apparently the folks at MyScienceProject got lots of responses from their previous attempts to pack as much booze into a Jell-O shot as possible. On the new page , they're testing the benefits of using unflavored gelatin (yum), blooming it first, and then cutting it with grain alcohol or Bacardi 151 instead of vodka. After producing plenty of barely palatable Jell-O shots, the only logical thing to do was set them on fire. It's a shame there wasn't a buffet nearby. As a side note, NPR recently featured a story about wine-infused gelatin . [Photo: MyScienceProject.org ] Permalink     Email this     Linking Blogs     Comments

Filed under: Dessert , Vegetarian , Dairy , Cheese , Recipes , Fruit , How To , America , Italy , Sugar

Filed under: Vegetables , Fruit Rhubarb is a stalk vegetable that is usually eaten as a fruit. In appearance, rhubarb very closely resembles celery and ranges in color from a light pinkish green to a deep, brilliant fuchsia. The plant is actually a member of the buckwheat family and only the stalks are edible, since the leaves contain a fairly high amount of oxalic acid, a compound which can be lethal (though you would have to eat quite a bit to reach that dose). In small amounts, oxalic acid inhibits calcium absorption and can detract from the nutritional value of foods.

Filed under: Food Porn , Recipes Some time ago I set up a flickr group for food pron photos. The original intent was to use the group to add any pictures to a streaming RSS feed - yeh, geeky stuff - but for one reason or another it never happened. Instead I opened the group to all with the instructions that, true to its name, it would be for food bloggers to link to their best posts.

Filed under: Books , Trends , Newspapers , Comfort Food Despite all the hype about celebrity chefs - whether they're on TV or simply known because they're good at what they do - and their cookbooks, the best selling ones are still the same type of cookbooks that have always been popular: basic, all-around cookbooks with tried-and-true recipes. But how could books from Phyllis Pellman Good's Fix it and Forget it series outsell books from the likes of Rachael Ray, whose name alone is definitely a household word?

Filed under: Lunch , Breakfast , West Coast , Vegetables , Recipes , Pork , Frying , How To , Eggs , America

Filed under: Wine , British Isles , Magazines , Australia , Lists , America , Europe , Italy , in sixty seconds

Filed under: Lunch , Dinner , Hors D'oeuvres , Snacks , Vegetarian , Vegetables , Recipes , Frying , How To , America