Sunday, January 31, 2010

Fergus Henderson


Since the article in Men's Journal and his inclusion in Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, I've done a bit of reading on Fergus Henderson. Here's a brief compendium:

Fergus Henderson on Wikipedia


Video from the Guardian:

Fergus Henderson cooks a pig's head

Tim Hayward takes a trip to Smithfield market, meets Fergus Henderson, shaves a pig's head and cooks it alligator style








Saturday, January 30, 2010

Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News

Friday, January 29, 2010

Chill in Texas - Hot Drinks & CrockPot Recipes

The chill hits North Texas once again - settle in with some toasty Hot Cocktails and easy CrockPot Recipes for the weekend.





With the continued craze for cocktailian scholarship and the painstaking revival of potables past, hot drinks are having a heyday. Some follow time-tested recipes to a T; others embark on modern-mixology tangents. A few are off-the-menu seasonal specials, available by request when the temperature drops. All are deeply, stress-meltingly comforting.

97 Slow Cooker Recipes from The Food Network



Thursday, January 28, 2010

Growlers & Techie Talk

Ok, I've got my TRELLIX authentication handshake figured out and we're logged into the BBS featuring my stable of resources both obscene and divine - one Food & Beverage article from the NYTimes, ChatRoulette ( mentioned 1/9/10) makes media, and IPad howls (what, no FLASH - no CAM?!?)


NYTimes.com:
Growlers
— 64-ounce glass vessels that look like a moonshine jug — have become the beer accessory of the moment. And the jugs, filled at taps in bars and stores, are not just the toys of the bearded, flannel-shirt, beer-geek set.



Welcome to Chat Roulette. It's simple: The site pairs you with a random videochat partner. You can click "next" any time, or stay with your current pairing.

Then things start tripping into psychedelic performance-art territory. As a friend says, "It's the Internet. UNFILTERED." The big lure is basically seeing something strange--or doing something so strange that you blow your partner's mind.

You might see people in horrifying masks dancing around. Chinese users seem to love virtual high fives. One person's shtick is a puppet who makes like a caring psychotherapist and will sit with you for hours. A friend reports a man holding up a sign that said, "Assroll?"--and promptly rolling over backwards, naked. (Nudity is hard to avoid.)


PCMag.com:

Do We Need a Third Device? Seven Tests for the iPad





MacUser:

The iPad's five worst surprises

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

MensJournal.com: The World's Most Influential Chef


MensJournal.com: The World's Most Influential Chef

Anthony Bourdain has called Henderson the “most influential chef in the world.” While most chefs make their name by fusing unlikely ingredients into new combinations, Henderson has done it by looking backward in time. He finds recipes for forgotten fish, birds, and animals, and the rejected organs and limbs of all of the above, and then presents them in the plainest, most direct manner: half a pig’s face, for example, staring up at you from a white dinner plate, daring you to cut a piece from its cheek and discover the other, more succulent bacon.

Henderson himself claims to have no interest in culinary adventure, insisting that he simply follows a personal ethos opposed to waste. Long haunted by visions of discarded animal “middles” — unwanted parts left lying in fields after the harvesting of the carcasses — Henderson says he’s come to feel that “it’s only polite, once you’ve knocked the animal on the head, to eat it all.” Beyond that, he’ll just say that his food draws inspiration from England’s rural past, and that he lets nature set the menu — oysters in January, game birds when the hunting begins. Henderson also sources most meat from sustainable, humanely operated family farms, but there, too, he disavows any revolutionary tendencies: “I just have this sort of hippie-dippie happy theory,” he tells me. “It starts with the animal, when it’s happy, and it skips into the slaughterhouse and knock! It goes, ‘Oh! I was happy,’ boof. And then we cook it happily and respectfully, and it comes to you, the diner, and you’re happy.”

—-

Roast Bone Marrow & Parsley Salad

This is the one dish that does not change on
the menu at St. John. The marrowbone comes from a calf’s leg; ask
your butcher to keep some for you.

IngredIents:

12 three-inch pieces of veal marrowbone

A healthy bunch of flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked from the stems

2 shallots, peeled and very thinly sliced

1 modest handful of capers
(extra-fine if possible)

DressIng:

Juice of 1 lemon

Extra-virgin olive oil

A pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

A good supply of toast

Coarse sea salt

Put the marrowbone pieces in an ovenproof frying pan and place in a hot 450-degree oven. The roasting process should take about 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the bone. You are looking for the marrow to be loose and giving, but not melted away, which it will do if left too long.

Meanwhile, lightly chop your parsley, just enough to discipline it; mix it with the shallots and capers; and at the last moment, dress the salad.

Here is a dish that should not be completely seasoned before leaving the kitchen, rendering a last-minute seasoning unnecessary by the actual eater; this gives texture and uplift at the moment of eating. scrape the marrow from the bone onto the toast and season with coarse sea salt. then a pinch of parsley salad on top of this and eat. Of course, once you have your pile of bones, salad, toast, an salt, it is diner’s choice.

Serves: 4

From The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, by Fergus Henderson

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Hot Sauce Recipes from HuffPost

Want to make your winter a little warmer from the inside out? I present to you:
From The Huffington Post - Hot Sauce Recipes

1947 Tabasco Sauce Recipe



· 36 Tabasco peppers -- or other long hot red peppers
· 1 clove garlic
· 1 tablespoon sugar
· ½ teaspoon salt
· 1 teaspoon horseradish
· 1 cup hot vinegar
· 1 cup water

Add water to the peppers and garlic. Cook in a medium pan until tender, then press through fine sieve. Add all other ingredients and simmer until blended. Pour into hot ball jars; seal at once. The sauce may be thinned - as used - with either vinegar or salad oil.

Courtesy of The Ball Blue Book Vol. X, 1947 from mexican-barbecue-recipes.com

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Online Recipe MASSIVE FAIL

So I've been playing with the online recipe tool devised by BING (see previous post). Both BING and GOOGLE return relevant responses and function adequately as kitchen tools, but I encountered another resource (allbeit in BETA): GroupRecipes.com






Well, a grain of salt is always supposed when a project is affixed with BETA, but this thing did not seem to work at all. Let's hope this works out better in its finished version.

Searches for chicken leg quarter recipes:

GroupRecipes.com

Bing

Google

Looks like I'll stick with Google for the time being!

Saturday, January 23, 2010

NEW Online Recipe TOOLS

Bing.com's new online Recipe Tool has been rolled out, to mixed acclaim. I'm giving it the greasy squint - I'll keep you appraised:

Bing Adds Impressive, Advanced Recipe Search Results





Friday, January 22, 2010

Intelligentsia Coffee

Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.



Thursday, January 21, 2010

Tech News











Wednesday, January 20, 2010

FWPL Pulls Through For Foodies

Great New Books & Videos FOR FREE at the Fort Worth Public Library




Diary of a foodie. Season oneby Reichl, Ruth, WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), WGBH Video (Firm), Zero Point Zero Production, Inc., Public Broadcasting Service (U.S.)


This disc whets the appetite for world travel and exotic eats. From a glimpse into the slow-food movement to salt and pepper, these 30-minute segments allow just enough time to begin a voyage, sample the topic, and return to Gourmet's kitchen for an "at-home" replication. The episode featuring chef Jose Andres is particularly exciting as he deconstructs a meal and creates amazingly delicious variations inside his kitchen-lab. A show on water takes the audience into the art and science of oyster farming, a fascinating and little-known industry. The most important element of the season is its focus on the local, slow, and organic food movements. Diary is an intelligent program on the most complex and also the simplest items that we put into our mouths. Highly recommended for foodists and ecologically minded chefs. Fans can also download full episodes and recipes at www.gourmet.com/diaryofafoodie/season1/season1.-Claire A. Moitra, Providence Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.






More diners, drive-ins, dives : a drop-top culinary cruise through America's finest and funkiest joints /by Fieri, Guy., Volkwein, Ann, Diners, drive-ins and dives (Television program)

Join New York Times bestselling author and Food Network star Guy Fieria for a second helping of the best diners, drive-ins, and dives across America! Guy Fieri strikes again with More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, giving you a road map to road food that's earned its culinary citizenship in "Flavortown." Join Guy on a cross-country noshing parade, mapping out the best places you've never heard of-more than fifty establishments off the beaten path. Compete in a (no hands) apple-pie-eating contest at Bobo Drive-In in Topeka, Kansas, dip your taste buds in Sweet Spicy Love sauce at Uncle Lou's Fried Chicken in Memphis, Tennessee, and get a load of the killer four-cheese mac-and-cheese at Gorilla Barbeque in Pacifica, California. Filled with Guy's hilarious voice and rampant enthusiasm for these hidden culinary gems, More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is the perfect book for lovers of the American food scene and fans of Triple D.


Great New Books & Videos FOR FREE at the Fort Worth Public Library

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

40 Gut-Busting Restaurant Challenges for Free Food





Saturday, January 16, 2010

Sunday - Music Videos

Barney + Beyonce = Beautiful! My fav part - when Barney gives the gun back.


New Ideas for Sunday - Listen to a rant instead of reading one:



It seemed like a great idea at the time...

The Museum of the American Cocktail Riverwalk Mall, New Orleans


Friday, January 15, 2010

Jumk Food as Addictive as Heroin


Grist.org

Scientists claim junk food is as addictive as heroin



Grist.org sums up the assertions in former FDA Commissioner David Kessler’s new book The End of Overeating, it seems reasonable to check in on the science behind an “addiction model” for salty, sweet, and fatty processed food (an assertion at the core of the book). As it happens, a group of researchers from the independent, not-for-profit Scripps Research Institute has just released a new peer-reviewed study on the subject. The conclusion: the brain responds to junk food the same way it does to heroin:

Junk food elicits addictive behavior in rats similar to the behaviors of rats addicted to heroin, a new study finds. Pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive as the binging wore on, making the rats consume more and more food. The results, presented October 20 at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting, may help explain the changes in the brain that lead people to overeat.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Good News in the Daily Grind


This month alone, an analysis in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who drink three to four cups of java a day are 25% less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who drink fewer than two cups. And a study presented at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting found that men who drink at least six cups a day have a 60% lower risk of developing advanced prostate cancer than those who didn't drink any.


WSJ:

Good News in the Daily Grind

Your Coffee May Have Some Health Perks, but Can Brew Trouble in People With Certain Conditions



Wednesday, January 13, 2010

We Celebrate Feasts Around Here

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Scary F&B News

It's enough to make you want to stay at home...

Restaurant Chefs Boiling Over NYC Mayor's Salt Crackdown

Soda fountains contained fecal bacteria, study found



Sunday, January 10, 2010

Black Bean Soup Recipe

Nuthin' warms from the belly like Black Bean Soup. Here's a great recipe from SimplyRecipes.com





Black Bean Soup Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 pound dried black beans (about 2 cups), rinsed, soaked in 4 quarts of water overnight or 6 hours, drained
  • 1 lb smoked ham hock or shank
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 5 cups water
  • 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large yellow onion, chopped fine
  • 1 medium sweet potato, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces (can substitute 2 large carrots)
  • 1/2 carrot, chopped fine
  • 1 celery rib, chopped fine
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 medium garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 Tbsp ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon chile powder
  • 2 cups chicken stock
  • 1 Tbsp molasses
  • 1 red bell pepper, roughly chopped
  • 3 to 4 Tbsp lime juice (can substitute lemon juice)
  • Salt
  • Chopped fresh cilantro
  • Sour cream
  • Avocado, peeled and chopped

Method

1 Place beans and ham hock in a 4-quart, thick-bottomed pot. Add 5 cups water, bay leaves, salt and baking soda. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a low simmer. Cover and let cook 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, until beans are tender. Remove bay leaves. Remove ham hock from the pot. Cut ham meat away from the bone and cut into small, bite-sized pieces, set aside.

2 Heat olive oil in a large 8-quart thick-bottomed pot on medium high until the oil is hot, but not smoking. Add the onions, celery, sweet potato and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned and softened, about 10-15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, add the cumin, chili powder, and garlic, cook for an additional 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

3 Add the beans, their cooking liquid, chicken stock, molasses, and bell pepper. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 to 30 minutes.

4 Remove 4 cups of the soup (about half of it) to a blender. Purée until smooth and return to the pot of soup. (You may need to purée the soup in smaller portions, depending on the size of your blender. Don't fill the blender more than half way at a time and hold the lid while blending.) Add back the ham pieces to the soup. Add 3 Tbsp of lime juice. Adjust seasonings. If on the sweet side, add a bit more lime juice. Salt to taste.

Serve with garnishes. Makes 8 cups. Serves 6.

Note that the soup may continue to thicken. If you would like it thinner, just add some water to desired consistency.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

The Grim Norther Stays Another Night

So far this cold spell, I've made a Chicken Soup, a Black Bean Soup (delish recipe forthcoming), and yesterday's Corn and Shrimp Chowder. The fridge brimming, time to settle in for some Random WebCam Chat.

Chatroulette is a brand new service for one-on-one text-, webcam- and microphone-based chat with people around the world.

You can use this service to find new friends or to have interesting conversations at any time.


http://www.chatroulette.com/

Friday, January 8, 2010

18 °F - Ya Gotta Be Kidding Me


I cannot believe it's 18 degrees in Fort Worth. Salvation can only be achieved through hearty soups & stews!



Corn and Shrimp Chowder

From Good Housekeeping

This rich and tasty soup makes a delightfully satisfying meal on a cold night. We save time by boiling the potatoes while the bacon-and-onion mixture cooks. Buying cleaned shrimp is a time-saver too.


Ingredients

U.S. Metric Conversion chart
  • 1 pound(s) (3 medium) red potatoes , cut into 1/2-inch chunks
  • 1 can(s) (14 1/2-ounce) chicken broth, (1 3/4 cups)
  • 1 teaspoon(s) salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon(s) ground black pepper
  • 2 package(s) (10 ounces each) frozen whole-kernel corn
  • 2 slice(s) bacon
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 pound(s) large shrimp, shelled and deveined
  • 1 cup(s) half-and-half or light cream
  • Fresh chives for garnish

Directions

  1. In 4-quart saucepan, heat potatoes, broth, salt, pepper, and 1 cup water to boiling over high heat. Reduce heat to medium; cover and cook 10 minutes. Add 1 package frozen corn and cook 5 minutes longer or just until potatoes are fork-tender.
  2. Meanwhile, in 12-inch skillet, cook bacon over medium heat 5 minutes. Add onion and cook 10 minutes longer or until onion is golden and tender. When bacon is browned, transfer to paper towels to drain; break into pieces when cool.
  3. Add 1 cup water and remaining package frozen corn to skillet with onion; heat to boiling over high heat. Add shrimp and cook 4 to 5 minutes or until shrimp turn opaque.
  4. When potatoes are tender, remove 2 cups potato mixture to blender. At low speed, with center part of cover removed to allow steam to escape, blend mixture until pureed. Return pureed mixture to saucepan. Add shrimp mixture and half-and-half; heat through (do not boil or soup may curdle). Top with bacon, and garnish with chives.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Teens in Texas - Winterize on the Cheap



Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Mayo Clinic: Chicken Soup is a Good Remedy for Cold


Mayo Clinic: Chicken Soup is a Good Remedy for the Common Cold


  • Chicken soup. Generations of parents have spooned chicken soup into their sick children. Now scientists have put chicken soup to the test, discovering that it does have effects that might help relieve cold and flu symptoms in two ways. First, it acts as an anti-inflammatory by inhibiting the movement of neutrophils — immune system cells that participate in the body's inflammatory response. Second, it temporarily speeds up the movement of mucus through the nose, helping relieve congestion and limiting the amount of time viruses are in contact with the nose lining. So which is better, homemade or canned? Researchers at the University of Nebraska compared homemade chicken soup with canned versions and found that many, though not all, canned chicken soups worked just as well as soups made from scratch.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Mom's Voodoo Pie

Mom's Voodoo Pie

My Mom kicks out this perennial favorite during the Holidays. Delicious and easy, it's a chilled pie that can be assembled hours before serving. What's not to like about that?

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup frozen whipped topping, thawed
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
  • 1 cup confectioners' sugar
  • 1 (5.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 2 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed

Directions

  1. Mix together pecans, melted butter, and flour. Pat into the bottom and up the sides of a 9 inch pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) until lightly browned. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool.
  2. In a mixing bowl, blend 1 cup whipped topping, cream cheese, and confectioners sugar until creamy. Spread into cooled crust.
  3. Whisk together pudding mix and milk. Spread evenly over cheese layer, and the spread remaining whipped topping on top. Chill 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Fred's Texas Cafe on Home and Lifestyle TV

Fred's Texas Cafe on Home and Lifestyle TV

Saturday, January 2, 2010

NYE 2009 - SUPER SECRET NYE SPEAKEASY



Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy New Year!!!

What's It Going To Be This Year?






Now that the gifts are all put away or returned at their discounted price, is it safe to show all the