Be A Weiner Winner — Serious Eats has generously offered to give away two tickets to Amateur Gourmet readers for its Hot Dog Hootenanny this Sunday at 3 PM at Astor Center. Tickets are $25 but if you want yours free, write a hot dog limerick in the comments (please keep it clean!) and the funniest one will be published here tomorrow, May 1st, at 5 PM and its author and a guest will nosh for free.
In Defense of HFCS — Slate has a compelling article by Daniel Engber which argues that "there's no reason to believe [High Fructose Corn Syrup] is any worse for you than cane or beet sugar."
April 30, 2009 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments
Remember a long time ago, after I finished The FN Dish, I told you I had a top secret project I was working on, something I couldn’t tell you about yet? Well, at last, the project is here and I’m incredibly excited to share it with you: it’s my brand new web show The Amateur Gourmet on Scripps’s brand new site, Food2.
This show–which I co-created with my friend, co-writer and director, Joshua Hume–takes you, the viewer, along with me as I learn how to make classic staples from incredibly talented chefs. In our first episode, for example, we tackle the omelet; Josh Grinker from The Stone Park Cafe demonstrates the right way to do it and then you watch me fumble and flail until I, too, get it right. (Now, almost every weekend, I make an omelet based on the techniques I learned in this episode.)
In our pasta episode, Marc Forgione of Marc Forgione restaurant (formerly Forge) gives us his grandmother’s recipe for homemade pasta dough (a ratio even Michael Ruhlman might like) so I can appease the evil pasta puppets who attack me vis-a-vis A&E’s “Intervention.”
Yes, it’s pretty silly, but that’s part of the fun. And in upcoming episodes we learn how to make steak from Chris Lim of BLT Steak, fish from Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar and chocolate souffle from Michael Laiskonis of Le Bernardin. So please, by all means, click over, watch the shows, send them to your friends, rate them, leave comments, embed them on your websites and hopefully we’ll be able to make more!
Deb’s Black Bread — 
Tina Fey coined a catchphrase on "30 Rock" based on something her daughter said that applied the moment I saw Smitten Kitchen's recipe and pictures for Russian Black Bread: "I want to go to there."
Julie/Julia Trailer — The "Julie and Julia" trailer is now online and I have to say I just watched it with relief: sure, it looks really slick and Hollywood, but how nice that there's going to be a movie that'll turn a whole new audience on to Julia Child, "Mastering The Art of French Cooking," and finer food in general.
April 29, 2009 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments
Broccoli rabe is usually the first thing I buy at the farmer’s market when the weather gets warmer. It’s a transitional vegetable: something that bridges us from the dark and murky vegetables of winter to the bright and sprightly vegetables of summer. Raw, it tastes rather fresh and green, but cooked, it takes on all these wonderful qualities–it becomes bitter and complex and, as Lydia Bastianich says when she cooks with it on this old episode of Julia Child: “almondy.”
Continue Reading »
Rap Chop — For those who feel the Slap Chop needs more of a beat. [thanks Rachelle on Facebook]
A Year in Burgers — 
Nick Solares celebrates one year of reviewing burgers for "A Hamburger Today" with an impressive burger round-up. "I ate some of the best burgers of my life in the last year, such as the classic cheeseburger from JG Melon, the aforementioned Minetta Tavern Black Label burger and its predecessor (now called the City Black Blend) at City Burger, and the ever popular Shake Shack." For the record, my favorite New York burgers are the ones at Prune (lunch only) and The Burger Joint.
Continue Reading »
