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.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Kitchen Essentials

Excellent list of the basic tools for a well stocked kitchen by Jill Santopietro: http://www.jillsantopietro.com/kitchen.html

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Wild Food Walks Schedule

For those of you in SF, forageSF has released its schedule for wild food walks - they take you on a walk through a park and teach you to forage for wild edible plants, mushrooms, or seafood: http://foragesf.com/wild-food-walks/

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Dinner Party on the L

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/dining/04train.html

My favorite line: "...officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, reached on Monday, were not amused. “A dinner party on the L train?” said Charles F. Seaton, a spokesman for the authority. “No. Subway trains are for riding, not for holding parties.”

Friday, April 15, 2011

Reality Show

So, The Food Network is now casting for Season 2 of their reality show, hosted by Tyler Florence, about food trucks: 7 teams, 3 contestents each, coast-to-coast race, competing for $50K.


They are accepting applications here, in case any of you loyal readers happen to own/operate a food truck: http://www.foodnetwork.com/the-great-food-truck-race/index.html

So...I thought this sounded stupid, but once I watched the trailer it looked cool. I'm totally going to watch it.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

SF Street Food Finder

A useful link: http://www.sfcartproject.com/sfstreetfood

Real time map/timings of food trucks in SF & Oakland

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Google Recipes

It's about time! Actually, don't know how long this has been around but I just discovered it. Recipe View on Google!

Try it here: http://www.google.com/landing/recipes/

From Google:

Focus Your Search
When you search for a recipe or ingredient on Google, you’ll get lots of results, but not all of them will be for recipes. Now you can narrow your search results to show only recipes.

Recipe Info At Your Fingertips
Get help finding the right recipe with ratings, ingredients, and pictures displayed on the results page.

Slice and Dice Your Results
With just a few clicks, you can customize and filter search results to show recipes with your ideal ingredients, cook time and calorie count.