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 Chez Pim
Pim Techamuanvivit
  
What is Menu for Hope 4?
Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising event in support of the UN World Food Programme. Each year, food bloggers from all over the world join forces to host the Menu for Hope online raffle, offering an array of delectable culinary prizes. For every US$10, the donor receive a virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of their choice. All you need is $10 and a bit of luck. We may never eradicate hunger from the face of the earth, but why should that stop us from trying?
Washington Post
Food & Dining
Not Your Aunt Prudence's Punch
Is there a sadder, more pathetic mixed drink than punch? I doubt it. Punch is what gets spiked at the prom. Punch is what gets mixed in a trash can with Kool-Aid and Everclear and God-knows- what-else at a basement college party. Punch is that weak old mixture your aunt makes at holiday time, the one with the lumps of sherbet slowly melting into a soup of canned fruit juices and flattening ginger ale. The punch bowl can be a scary, ugly place. And yet it doesn't have to be.
La Tartine Gourmande
Béatrice Peltre
The Snow, Friends, and the Būche de Noėl
At this time of year, walk in the streets of any French city, town or village, and you will be able to admire beautiful būches displayed in the windows of pastry stores. Every bakery makes their own. Traditional būches use a génoise, a thin sponge cake that is rolled tight, so that it takes the shape, and looks like a wooden roll. They are filled with a flavored butter cream, like vanilla, chocolate, or chestnut, to only name of few common choices, and garnished with a thick coat of ganache or cream icingor powdered sugar. Some būches will use a lighter flavored mousse instead of the butter cream; lemon or rhubarb remain my favorites.
Vinography
Alder Yarrow
What's In a Name?
The AVA Creation Process 2.0
I can't help feeling like the whole problem with this issue is that the government is involved in the first place. Why can't we set up a body of independent, non-partisan, tee-totaling scientists who can spend all their time figuring out which regions of the world really are distinct from a climate and geologic perspective and draw the lines according to empirical data? I guess that's like hoping we could agree on whether or not to teach evolution in our schools.
Simply Recipes
Elise Bauer
Liverwurst Sandwich
"Eww! Liverwurst!" Thus went a familiar refrain when we were kids and instead of peanut butter and jelly we opened up our lunch box to a liverwurst sandwich. No one, and I mean no one, would trade their sandwich for ours. Even now, just say the word "liverwurst" to an unsuspecting friend and watch their reaction. Sigh. I suspect that if it were called "saucisse de foie de porc" (sausage of pork liver) we wouldn't have had such a problem with it. But with the combo of "liver" (not every kid's favorite meal) and "wurst" (sounds a lot like "worst", as in the worst sandwich ever), we were not predisposed to like it.
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Splendid Table
American Public Media
Padma Lakshmi
Our guest this week is Padma Lakshmi, host of TV's reality show, "Top Chef." Her famous line is "please pack your knives and go." Padma packed her knives, cooked her way around the world, then came home to write her new book Tangy Tart Hot Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day. Her food, including Two Hens Laughing, is some of the most alluring to come along in some time.
Cooks Illustrated
Current Issue
In This Issue
Cooking with Amy
Amy Sherman
Holiday Gift Guide - Books I Love
There are plenty of books out there that fall into the "gift" category, they are big, bulky, written by important authors, but I'm only recommending the ones I have used again and again and really love. It's up to you to decide if they are gift-worthy. Personally I don't need any more coffee table books, no matter how excellent they are. I also don't necessarily need any "how to cook" books, I have plenty already. But if you want recommendations for those...
Traveler's Lunchbox
Melissa Kronenthal
Pure Dessert: Q&A with Alice Medrich
She's known in many circles as the "First Lady of Chocolate", and if you have even a passing interest in the stuff you probably know the name well. Alice Medrich is, of course, the founder of the legendary Berkeley, California patisserie Cocolat, and the best-selling author of cookbooks such as Cocolat, Chocolate and the Art of Lowfat Desserts, and Bittersweet. It's her most recent release, however, that seems to be taking the world by storm. Pure Dessert is Medrich's first book not centered on the theme of chocolate, and it features none of the dramatic, complex creations that made her famous. Instead, it's about dessert in its most basic, fundamental form, and specifically, how we can use ingredients like different flours, sugars, dairy products and aromatics to create things that are as elegant as they are simple.
The Pour
Eric Asimov - New York Times
Vintage Ike Turner
Personally speaking, I find many of the buzzwords of today, all the business about physiological ripeness and the so-called ripening of tannins, to be rationalizations for the fashionable stylistic choice to let grapes ripen far longer than was common 15 years ago, as a way of making softer, more approachable, sometimes sweeter wines. I'm not trying to tell growers what to do. I'm just saying that there's no such thing as perfect ripeness, there's simply a moment at which a grower decides is the right time to pick, and many considerations go into that decision. One of those considerations is the fact that it is easier today to sell wines that are soft and require less aging than similar wines once did. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this. I am saying that, like Ike and Tina, I prefer things a little rough. I love wine with a rasp of tannin and acidity. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's to be embraced, especially with food.
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Smitten Kitchen
Deb Smitten
Apple Cranberry Crisp
This apple-cranberry crisp with polenta streusel is aggressively, inedibly and teeth-achingly sweet. When I saw the amount of sugar required, my eyebrow arched, but I remembered how much sugar is needed to make even a tart cranberry sauce and forged ahead with Chiarello's instructions. Oh, how I wish I could hit the "do over" button now, because the flavor of this crisp is stupendous lemon, orange, cinnamon and the slightest edge of pepper nestle against apples and cranberries in a dish that would be welcome at any winter dinner party. But I'd use a heck of a lot less sugar next time.
Orangette
Molly Wizenberg
Thursday, Thursday, Thursday.
I had the best intentions. Really, I did. I was going to tell you about another cookie today, and a really good one too. But a visitor of sorts has been staying with us lately, and he won't let me into the kitchen. He's bossy and demanding, and he makes me sit at my desk for hours and hours and hours. But the good news is that, at long last, he's leaving on Thursday. I can hardly believe it. I don't know whether to open a bottle of champagne, or cry, or curl up on the couch and sleep. Maybe all three? We'll see on Thursday.
The Minimalist
Mark Bittman - New York Times
At the Heart of Truffles, Adaptable Ganache
If the word "ganache" intimidates you, you are not alone. Maybe if the stuff were called "basic, simple and entirely superior chocolate sauce," more people would make it. But although that is what this mixture of chocolate and cream is, it's not what the word means. (Actually, ganache is French for idiot. The story is that a chef called an assistant a ganache when he dumped hot cream into a bowl of chocolate.) Ganache is not just chocolate sauce, though; it is also the basis for the easiest chocolate truffles. (This word is easier to understand because chocolate truffles do, in fact, closely resemble black truffles.)
Tea & Cookies
Tea Austin
Soba for When You're Sick
Eat slowly, enjoying the way the soft noodles slip down your throat, soothing it after all that coughing. The bok choy gives a fresh and sweet crunch to the dish, and you know it's good for you. The ginger, the red pepper, seem to be doing their job. You realize that you can breathe through your nose just a little bit. But the egg, the egg is glorious. The yolk slicks the noodles, mixes with the sauce, makes everything come together in a way that is as close to perfect as you can think of right now. In fact, you might want to poach another egg once you're finished with the first (see - your appetite is coming back, that's good).
101 Cookbooks
Heidi Swanson
Minty Chocolate Christmas Cookies Recipe
I suspect many of you are on the prowl for Christmas cookie recipes. I have to admit, I've been quite excited about attempting to put my own personal twist on a few cookie classics this year. After quite a bit of tinkering in my kitchen, I have a few different cookie recipes to share with you over the next two weeks - you'll have to let me know what you think. I was imagining something along the lines of a homemade, peppermint, Oreo-type sandwich cookie. I stamped them into cute, tiny, bite-sized shapes - so they wouldn't be too overwhelming.
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