Ed Levine’s Serious Diet, Week 130: Has Hummus Become My Weakness?

Beware of levitating anthropomorphic hummus blobs chasing you! [Doodle: Robyn Lee] I knew I had a peanut butter problem. If there was a jar in the house I couldn’t stop eating it. So I stopped buying peanut butter, even though I love it so. Now I’m worried that I have the same problem with my favorite brand of hummus. It’s so creamy and smooth (kind of like a creamy, savory peanut butter) and seriously delicious (as we noted in our hummus blind taste test a while back) that I have a hard time not finishing the whole tub once I start. At my local supermarket I buy the 10-ounce tubs of my favorite hummus, which has 70 calories per 2-tablespoon serving, and a bag of pretzel crisps. The problem is, once I start dipping the pretzels in the hummus container I often can’t stop until most of the hummus and the pretzels are gone. There are ten servings in each tub. Serious eaters, I have a hummus problem. So I’ve started taking the necessary steps to deal with my problem. I’ve looked online to see if there are any hummus 12-step programs. No …

This Post was extracted from Best Food Recipes Blog
Read more from the original source: Ed Levine’s Serious Diet, Week 130: Has Hummus Become My Weakness?

Tags: blind, butter, crisps, dinner, house, ounce, peanut, plate-as-well, pretzel, pretzels, programs, serious-eats-, supermarket, taste, weight-the-week

Why Toasting Dried Chiles Matters

“Just a few seconds of toasting strongly infused even more chile flavor into a dish.” [ Flickr: Fotoosvanrobin] I often take the easy route. Case in point: not toasting my dried chiles before plopping them into a dish. Especially when there are so many other steps to a recipe, does a little toasting really make a difference in an overall dish? I was curious to find out. It was Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen that convinced me to stop being lazy and toast the dried chiles, which notes: “Toasting adds complexity, a hint of char and a bit of smokiness, all elements that balance a chile’s natural astringency.” How To Do It For smaller chiles: Bayless advices toasting them whole on griddles or sauté pans over medium heat, and turning until the chiles are fragrant with brown spots. Do not over-toast. For large chiles: such as Anaheims, stem and seed the chiles, tear into pieces and then press them against the bottom of the sauté pan with a spatula or tongs. The whole process takes sheer seconds. (Bayless also says the chiles can also be toasted by frying in oil, which I didn’t try.) The Taste-Test But I wanted to know if it’s worth the effort, so I conducted a taste…

This Post was extracted from Serious Eats
Read more from the original source: Why Toasting Dried Chiles Matters

Tags: advices, boiling, chiles, complexity, dried, elements, griddles, kitchen, made-the-dried, result, spatula, taste, toast-the-dried

Cook the Book: White Chocolate-Mezcal Ice Cream

From Recipes I’m not sure if it was last week’s dalliance with boozy baking or my new found infatuation with all spirits agave-based but there was just something about this White Chocolate-Mezcal Ice Cream from Fiesta at Rick’s by Rick Bayless that really drew me in. For me, mezcal has always been a grown-up version of tequila, with strong, smokey flavors that are reminiscent of scotch. And white chocolate? Well, diehard chocolate fans are quick to dismiss it as one-dimensional and overly sweet but I’ve always enjoyed it. Somehow I knew these two seemingly discordant ingredients would be an ideal match. The ice cream starts out with a custard base made from half-and-half, white chocolate, egg yolks, and sugar whisked together over a double boiler until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Once the custard base is chilled it is mixed with heavy cream, vanilla, and a few tablespoons of mezcal, then placed into the ice cream maker. After a drawn-out freezing process due to the exceedingly warm temperature in my kitchen, I froze the ice cream overnight and waited until morning to sample the final product. At first taste it was full of buttery white chocolate but …

This Post was extracted from Vegetarian Recipes Blog
Go here to see the original and read more: Cook the Book: White Chocolate-Mezcal Ice Cream

Tags: base, book, fiesta, fiesta-at-rick, scotch, taste, Temperature, water

This Week in America’s Test Kitchen: Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since Nestlé first began printing the recipe for Toll House cookies on the back of chocolate chip bags in 1939, bakers have been trying to improve upon this classic. America’s Test Kitchen imagined a moist and chewy chocolate chip cookie with crisp edges and deep notes of toffee and butterscotch to balance its sweetness. After baking countless batches of cookies, here’s what they found: Melting a generous amount of butter before combining it with other ingredients gave the desired chewy texture. Since they were melting butter, they browned a portion of it to add nutty flavor. Using a bit more brown sugar than white sugar enhanced chewiness, while a combination of one egg and one egg yolk yielded supremely moist cookies. For the crisp edges and deep toffee flavor, they allowed the sugar to dissolve and rest in the melted butter. That meant setting aside the cookie dough for 10 minutes, and stirring several times, until the butter-sugar mixture resembled shiny frosting. Then, they added the flour and chips and shaped the dough into balls. Get the recipe at America’s Test

This Post was extracted from Vegetarian Recipes Blog
Read more from the original source: This Week in America’s Test Kitchen: Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tags: butter, chocolate, cookies, ingredients, melting-butter, result, since-nestl, taste, taste-test

Taste Test: Ready-Made Japanese Curry

Aya Tanaka grew up eating Japanese curry in Brazil. When she’s not cooking or parenting, she teaches eighteenth-century travel literature to undergraduates and researches early modern spice trade routes. This week she introduces Serious Eaters to the joys of making and eating Japanese curry rice. [Photograph: Aya Tanaka] There are three ways you can enjoy Japanese curry rice: you can make it from scratch , you can use curry roux blocks , and the easiest—you can simply boil a retort pouch or open a can of ready-made curry. Retort pouch curry was introduced to Japanese markets in 1971 by House Foods and serves the distinct purpose of convenience. With retort pouches, enjoying curry is a matter of boiling the hermetically sealed bags in boiling water for three minutes and serving it with white rice. Retort pouch curries are especially popular with working people living alone. Making curry from scratch or with curry roux blocks usually yields more than a single person can consume in a week, unless you like to eat a whole lot of curry. There are two brands of retort pouch curry available in the US: S&B’s Golden Curry and House’s Curry Sauce with Vegetables (Kukure Curry in Japan). They are available in…

This Post was extracted from Vegetarian Recipes Online
See the original post here and read more: Taste Test: Ready-Made Japanese Curry

Tags: Curry, curry-sauce, house, japanese, kikkoman, photograph, result, routes, serious-eaters, taste, texture, trade, travel

Dine at Cocoa V and Support MFA This Week

Cocoa V is donating 15 percent of your bill to Mercy for Animals now through Thursday, June 17 if you mention MFA. Yes, it is the perfect opportunity to impress a date with your discerning taste in eateries and your immense generosity, and also to get him/her drunk in a gorgeous, candlelit Frenchy-French-style restaurant. Do. Not. Miss. You can leave a donation for MFA with Cocoa V even if you’d prefer not to buy anything. And to sweeten the deal, some mysterious supporter is matching donations made to MFA in the month of June up to $100,000. This mystery donor’s generosity is so impressive your loins are quivering, trust me. [ Comments (0) | Add Your Comment ]

This Post was extracted from SuperVegan: Vegan Blog and New York City Restaurant Guide
Check out the entire article here: Dine at Cocoa V and Support MFA This Week

Tags: cocoa, donations, drunk, eateries, generosity, immense, loins, month, now-through, recipes, restaurant, result, taste, your-immense

True Blood cupcakes at Miami’s Sweetness Bakeshop

This Sunday June 13th only, Miami’s Sweetness Bake Shop and Cafe is also selling True Blood cupcakes. Visit their website for details or call them at 305-271-7791. They’re accepting pre-orders now. Christine Borges at Miami New Times blog Short Order got a special sneak peek. Below is part of her review and her photos: In honor of the True Blood season three premiere on Sunday on HBO, the shop’s created a TruBlood — Madagascar bourbon vanilla bean cake filled with a blood orange curd, and topped with a blood orange buttercream frosting. It will only be available on Sunday (for the premiere) and in limited quantities, but they’ve already started to receive pre-orders. ​We got an exclusive taste test of the confections, and they’re good. The vanilla bean cake is just the right amount of subtlety for the overpowering blood orange filling, and the buttercream frosting is light and fluffy to make the cupcake just sweet enough. The fondant TruBlood medallion adds a little humor to the treats, and feels almost like a separate little cookie with its crunchy texture. photos by Christine

This Post was extracted from Food Recipes Online
Read more from the original source: True Blood cupcakes at Miami’s Sweetness Bakeshop

Tags: cupcake flavors, cupcakes in the news, filled cupcakes, Limited, miami, photos, quantities, result, sweetness bake shop, taste, vanilla

Pizza Hummus from Tribe

“It would be more appropriately named ‘Pizza Goldfish: The Dip.’ You may feel confused. So did I. As I was reaching for my go-to garlic hummus, the demon within that possesses me to dip French fries in vanilla soft-serve and pizza in ranch sauce persuaded me to pick this up instead. The concept itself is a bit unsettling. The response from Serious Eaters in the office to my announcement that I had obtained “pizza hummus” was unanimous: “Huh? How bizarre.” As for the taste test? Again, responses were mostly ones of confusion—among them, “Weird” and “…Why?” Good question. The label, which boasts “Kid Approved!” betrays Tribe’s likely motive: seems like health-conscious mothers have had little success convincing their kids that chickpea paste is better to eat than pizza. Accordingly, the flavor of the hummus is catered to a kid’s palate—like a watered-down marinara sauce with only phantom cheesiness, if any at all. The texture is odd; it manages to be watery and semi-grainy at the same time, perhaps the result of an unfortunate tahini: chickpea ratio (tahini is one of the last ingredients listed). While another colleague thought it seemed like Tribe put spaghetti and pasta sauce into a blender, I found it…

This Post was extracted from Serious Eats
See the original post here and read more: Pizza Hummus from Tribe

Tags: french, fries, goldfish, hummus, kindergarten, office, pizza, serious-eaters, serve, taste, traditional

Tasty 10: The Most Popular Posts from the SE Universe

According to our handy site-metering utility, the top 10 most delicious items across the Serious Eats family of sites this week were … 1. How to Deep-Fry at Home Without a Deep-Fryer

Tags: behemoth-crumb, cake, donatella, most-delicious, oven, peanut, peanut-butter, peenut-oyl, pizza, taste, whiplash

Dolly Wants to Play…

There really is nothing more terrifying than a creepy baby doll. I’m serious. They freaked me out as a kid and still manage to scare the pants off me today, what with their static staring eyes and little outstretched zombie arms and all. Thankfully, there’s a new baking trend that makes these dolls waaaaaay less creepy. (I’m lying; these are terrifying. Proceed with caution.) Don’t… make… eye contact… All tucked in, and ready to kill. “Ooh! I’ll take that corner piece…” “…and an arm. But that’s it . I’m dieting.” Note: This cake is not to scale. Usually the pacifier is much larger. Is it impolite to suck frosting off the baby’s legs? It is? Poor taste, huh? … Ok, what about its head? … No? Fine. I’ll just collect my watermelon and show myself out. Thanks, Valentina, Liz C., Carrie J., and Dana S.! Ya know, these cakes started out as creepy , but now they’re looking kinda DELICIOUS. Mmmm…. babies…. grlslgrsagagagle….. – Related Wreckage: Come On Barbie, Let’s Go Party

This Post was extracted from Cake Wrecks
See the original post here and read more: Dolly Wants to Play…

Tags: babies, cakes, doll, dolls-waaaaaay, frosting, Legs, nothing-more, pacifier, suck-frosting, taste, watermelon, wreckage