Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Gojee

OMG you guys. This site is amazing. Just sign up: http://www.gojee.com/

It basically goes through hand selected food blogs and finds awesome recipes. This is what my now defunct food startup was supposed to do. Here is why it's better than any recipe site I've come accross so far:

- Unlike the lame boring recipes on Epicurious or Food Network, these recipes are actually exciting. Instead of endless salad/bbq ideas the ingredients and dishes are much more varied. This website is for foodies, not midwestern housewives.

- Good food photography - makes me actually want to cook (I have been lazy lately).

- Easier website interface and excellent search functionality. You can filter out dishes with ingredients you don't like. As someone who doesn't eat pork, for example, I'm always frustrated to have to filter out everything with prosciutto myself. This does it for me, and saves my preferences. I can also type in an ingredient I currently have in my fridge, and it brings up a list of recipes with that ingredient. Since I only have one thing in my fridge right now, brussel sprouts, I typed that in and these were my top 3 results:

1. Brussel Sprout Potato Hash - pretty interesting; a very hearty, comfort food-type dish based on brussel sprouts. something i haven't really seen before.
2. Crispy Marinated Brussel Sprouts - links to Mark Bittman's blog for the recipe, where we learn how to bring out the flavor of the brussel sprouts without relying on bacon or cheese for flavor or texture. See, we are becoming better cooks already.
3. Shaved Brussel Sprout Salad with Red Onion, Pecorino, and Lemon - links to a thoughtful recipe at Food52 complete with wine pairing.

Here is what I got on Epicurious:

1. Brussel sprouts with shallots and wild mushrooms (this involves saute-ing the brussel sprouts with shallots and mushrooms - how exciting. I totally had not thought of doing this myself before looking for something more interesting online).
2. Baby brussel sprouts with buttered pecans. (this involves saute-ing the brussel sprouts with baked nuts).
3. Brussel sprouts with marjorum and pine nuts. (once again, saute brussel sprouts with some random ingredients. I don't even like pine nuts).

Even those of us who like cooking get sick of it sometimes, but this website makes it really easy to get back into it. For people who just need to make something impressive quickly, this website is easy to use and accessible - none of the recipes I found were too complex.