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February 28, 2007
It's not what you think
A coat of armor for your banana
Do you have the same problem with your bananas as we do? You pack a banana for lunch, but the time you get to the office, it's banged up and bruised from the bumpy ride in your bag or briefcase. Well now you can protect your banana with the Banana Bunker!
Oh, and according to this Guardian report, in 10 years we may have no bananas. So buying this banana armor may extend their existence for a few years.
[via Buzzfeed]
Posted by Cakehead at 11:11 PM | Comments (2)
February 27, 2007
Duck, Duck, Goose: Taking the Taboo of Fois Gras to the Next Level
How would you like to be force-fed Hardee's Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit?
Occasionally, too much good food and drink with friends can lead to the most inappropriate of conversations. When it comes to food what can be any more offensive than talk of cannibalism?
At Kasadela, our favorite little restaurant serving izakaya deliciousness, conversation turned to the imminent outlawing of fois gras. With cities like Chicago and Los Angeles passing ordinances to ban fois gras by the year 2012, restaurateurs are holding Outlaw Dinners in protest. We debated the ethics of the practice and discussed what it means for artisanal farmers and restaurants when the ban is in place.
But given our overstuffed state, the discussion took a disturbing, yet empathetic turn. What would it be like to be force-fed? If we were in that compromising situation we all agreed, we'd at least like a say in what we were force-fed.
If your liver were going to be served as fois gras, what one food would you want to be force-fed? These are our friends answers:
Olive Oil Coppetta from Otto Pizzeria
Kasadela's Tebaya (EV classy izakaya with the stickiest, gooey-est and most delicious chicken wings)
Hardee's Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit
Duck Fois Gras (think a pate-like Turducken)
If you were going to eat human pate, what food would you want your victim to be force-fed? These are our friends answers:
Roasted Chestnuts
Rosemary
Blueberries
Oranges
Posted by Cakehead at 12:56 PM | Comments (1)
February 26, 2007
Will there be pizza in purgatory?
Hell is a pizza delivery service in New Zealand. They're responsible for the billboard reminder that Bush's saintly qualities will keep him out of hell. But that doesn't mean Bush hasn't created pockets of hell on earth.
If you're in New Zealand, choose from pizzas with references to the seven deadly sins and the afterlife like the Limbo, Pandemonium and Greed. Ironically, the pizza names also sound like references to the situations that the Bush administration has created around the globe.
[from National Business Review via Wonkette]
Posted by Cakehead at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2007
What? Red Lobster Doesn't Buy Local Ingredients?
Sysco and the chef. Isn't it romantic?
Several years ago during a family vacation, we were sitting at the bar of our hotel eavesdropping on the conversations of the suited men that surrounded us. Turns out they were in town for a conference. Not a conference on food but on food products. The men discussed packing, distribution and sales techniques as they ate the turtle soup that was the hotel's specialty. There was no mention of taste, texture or the source of the food "products" they were hocking. Why would there be? This was hardly a conference for local organic farmers who hand wash their cheese rinds or pick leaves of baby lettuce each day. Fascinated by the massiveness of the food distribution network, we hoped to gain a little insight into how the business works.
So we tried to crash the conference as a spy. But without a badge, proper attire or that upbeat sales attitude, we couldn't convince the guard that were supposed to be in attendance.
Now, Slate has confirmed what we suspected in an article about "How Sysco Came to Monopolize Most of What You Eat." It's not just the major restaurant chains who are getting pre-prepared food for the kitchens.
It comes as little surprise that institutions like hospitals, universities, and military bases flock to Sysco's pre-cooked foods. But well-regarded bistros and pubs have also begun to offer such items to save time and money. Recently, New York magazine reported that Thomas Keller uses frozen Sysco fries at his Bouchon bistros. (While a company spokeswoman wouldn't confirm the brand, she confirmed the use of frozen fries.) Mickey Mantle's Restaurant, an upscale sports bar, serves Sysco's pre-made soups, like Manhattan clam chowder and vegetarian black bean. And then there's Edgar's restaurant at Belhurst Castle, which has won numerous awards of excellence from Wine Spectator magazine. There, the kitchen takes Sysco's Imperial Towering Chocolate Cake out of the box, lets it defrost, and then sprinkles it with fresh raspberries before serving it to diners. "We've had a lot of success with that cake," executive chef Casey Belile says. The Edgar's menu, of course, does not list the dessert as a Sysco pre-made cake, but it does charge $8.95 for the experience.
Posted by Cakehead at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2007
An Unlikely Pairing: The discovery of the dumpling donut
Sometimes all it takes is a company-sponsored happy hour for a food pairing epiphany to occur. That's what happened to Ryan last Thursday at a bar in the East Village.
He took a sip of his free beer then glanced outside at the thin coat of snow that was attempting to accumulate on the New York sidewalks and streets. Maybe it was the sparkle of the snow that illuminatated the two store fronts across the street. Or maybe it was just a moment of sheer brilliance. Across the street, two stores sat side by side. To the left the sign announced: Vanessa's Dumplings, and next door, Dunkin' Donuts. In his moment of inspiration, Ryan morphed the two stores into one, creating the idea for a new kind of eatery: Dumpling Donuts.
Cakehead arrived on the scene in time to witness the ephiphany and to unpack this idea. The Dumpling Donut would not attempt to turn dumplings into donuts or donuts into dumplings. Rather, this would be a one stop shop to first eat a doughy envelope filled with spice or savory fillings. Then, you chase it down with a sweet puff filled with chocolate cream or jelly.
Posted by Cakehead at 03:23 AM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2007
Condos that look like Candy
These apartments look good enough to eat
The $750,000 Reversible Destiny Lofts in Tokyo aren't edible, but they look like they should be. This housing project for the elderly aims to keep residents sharp by throwing them off balance. And since the elderly are known for having a sweet tooth, the aesthetic of the buildings seem particularly apt.
Shusaku Arakawa, a Japanese artist based in New York and his creative partner, poet Madeline Gins, recently unveiled a small apartment complex in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka that is anything but comfortable and calming. "People, particularly old people, shouldn't relax and sit back to help them decline," he insists. "They should be in an environment that stimulates their senses and invigorates their lives."With that in mind, Arakawa and Gins designed a building of nine apartments known as Reversible Destiny Lofts. Painted in eye-catching blue, pink, red, yellow and other bright colors, the building resembles the indoor playgrounds that attract toddlers at fast-food restaurants. Inside, each apartment features a dining room with a grainy, surfaced floor that slopes erratically, a sunken kitchen and a study with a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places on the walls so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly lose balance and gather yourself up, grab onto a column and occasionally trip and fall.
Sounds like our behavior after eating candy that looks like this apartment complex.
[from boingboing via Sushi & Sensibility]
Posted by Cakehead at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
Celebrate the Golden Pig: Dine your way through the Chinese New Year
suckling pig roasted like a crispy duck
The year of the pig occurs every 12 years. But when the Chinese Lunar New Year begins on February 18th it will not just be the year of any pig. It's the year of the Golden pig, something that only occurs every 60 years. Because it's such an auspicious year, hospitals across China are expecting a baby boom. But for us here in the States it is simply reason to rinse off the dumpling steamer and prepare the feast.
If you don't feel like cooking, here's where you should go for parades and celebratory Asian snacks. But be prepared for crowds and chaos. And if you plan to eat adventurously bring a friend who speaks and reads Mandarin or Cantonese so you can actually read the secret menu.
To properly celebrate the Chinese New Year this year, skip Chinatown, Manhattan and head to Flushing, Queens or Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
Flushing Chinese New Years Parade, 2006
Flushing, Queens
Event: Lunar New Year Parade
When: Saturday, February 17, 11 am - 1 pm
Viewing Stands: At Flushing Library (Main and Kissena) and at the parade's end (Main and 37th Ave). Most people watch on Main St.
Route: Begins, Union St at 37th Ave >> south on Union >> right on Sanford >> right on Kissena >> right on Main >> ends at Main and 37th Ave. For more celebrations, the Chinese performers then head to the Flushing Mall, and the Korean contingent goes to Korea Village.
Food in Flushing:
Flushing Mall Food Court for that "this feels like Asia" experience. The Xinjiang stand and Ramen King are both authentic, good and cheap.
133-31 39th Ave, two blocks west of Main Street, a couple of blocks north of the 7 train
Imperial Palace (Chinese name is East Lake) for the best dim sum in Queens
136-13 37 Av (near the 7 train)
Flushing, Queens
718-939-3501
Waterfront It'l Enterprises
40-09 Prince St. at 40th Rd.
Flushing, Queens
718-321-1363
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
We know. Everyone's talking about how Sunset Park is Brooklyn's Chinatown. But we have scoured the neighborhood in search of good Chinese for our readers and came up short. Save Sunset Park for Karaoke at the Rainbow Cafe at 5th Avenue and 39th Street. Head to Bensonhurst and Bayridge for a breakfast of Dim Sum this Chinese New Year.
Ocean Port Seafood Restaurant
6202 18th Avenue (62nd Street)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
(718) 236-8118
World Tong
18th Avenue & 62nd Street
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
Ming Gee's Seafood Palace
618 62nd Street (corner of Sixth Ave.)
Bayridge, Brooklyn
Subway: R train to 59th St. and Fourth Ave.
Buses: B63 on Fifth Ave., B70 on Eighth Ave, B9 on 59th St.
If you don't feel like leaving the island, here's where you should go to dine in Manhattan:
Amazing 66 Restaurant
66 Mott St near Canal
(212) 334-0099
New Yeah Shanghai Deluxe
65 Bayard St., at Mott St.
212-566-4884
The name of this restaurant is especially appropriate for the holiday. You’ll be guided by your waiter to the soup dumplings, the de rigueur Shanghai-joint appetizer, but they’re only one example of the kitchen’s dexterity with dough—fried or steamed, stuffed with pork or springy snow-pea greens, the dumplings alone are worth a visit.
To learn more about traditional dishes eaten for the fifteen days of the Lunar New Year click here.
Posted by Cakehead at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2007
The Bourdain bitch slap
As a guest blogger for Ruhlman.com, Anthony Bourdain unabashedly roasts the cheery Food Network cooks with a cockiness that we love. There may be nothing more refreshing than when a chef abandons restraint for honesty when discussing other chefs.
Bourdain on the easiest target of all: Rachel Ray:
Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, "Hell...I could do that. I ain't gonna...but I could--if I wanted! Now where's my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?" Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. "You're doing just fine. You don't even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing...Just sit there. Have another Triscuit...Sleep...sleep..."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
[thanks for the link, Kevin]
Bourdain's new concept for the Iron Chef battles is also hilarious. Are there any Food Network producers out there who could make these Iron Chef match ups happen?
* Mario Batali (with one arm tied behind his back--and drunk) vs. Regina Schrambling
* Michael Ruhlman, swacked on Ripple, vs. John Mariani-- in a Charcuterie Challenge
* Grant Achatz vs. That Guy In Australia Who Ripped off his recipes as his own
* Marco Pierre White vs. Gordon Ramsay
* Charlie Trotter vs. Martin Picard (Chicken Livers vs. Foie Gras)
* Chris Cosentino, Fergus Henderson, Martin Picard vs. Alain Passard, Roxanne Klein and Charlie Trotter (Cooked vs. Raw Challenge)
* Martha Stewart vs. Rachael Ray (bare knuckle cage match)
* Ducasse vs. Robuchon
* “Mikey” from Top Chef vs. Sandra Lee
Posted by Cakehead at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2007
How to Become a Prisoner of Love
Valentine's Day Dessert: Marble Cheesecake with Frederick's of Hollywood Edible Red Sauce. Ew.
Still looking for a date to take you to dinner this Valentine's Day? We are here to advise you against this move. Restaurants offering a "special" Valentine's Day menu always make us a little nervous. The dishes usually have a high proportion of gooey sauces that are more apt to be from Frederick's of Hollywood than made from edible ingredients.
We say stay home this Valentine's Day and write a love letter. Need a love letter recipient? We have the answer for you. On HotPrisonPals.com you can correspond with your very own prisoner. The site's tag line is "We bring you pen pals looking for love -- that just happen to be incarcerated."
The idea for www.hotprisonpals.com came from New York pop artist Sam Wagner, who began writing to a friend in jail several years ago. The prisoner then asked Wagner to write to his cellmate who had stopped receiving letters from his family.[via Reuters]
Maybe when your prisoner is released you can prepare that special Valentine's Day feast, sans red sauce.
Posted by Cakehead at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2007
CAKEHEAD OF THE WEEK AWARD
Cakehead of the Week Award Committee examining the North Korea cake
The Cakehead of the Week Award committee has been on hiatus for several months now. 2006 was a difficult year for this team of Cakehead experts. Statistics show that the number of Cakeheads around the world has soared to new levels last year. By the time the year was over the committee had processed and reviewed over 2 million nominations. The team was long overdue for several months of recuperation and recovery. But now they're back and ready to award the first Cakehead of the Week Award for 2007.
He's so dreamy
The award this week goes to Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher Hill. Not for his successful superstar negotiations with North Korea. (His clever offer to lift cake sanctions so that North Korea will end its nuclear program was a skillful move. But there are already plenty awards given for that.) We're awarding Hill with a cake for being so damn sexy. Chinese women were the ones who first turned us on to this fact. According to CNN, this "Boyish U.S. Envoy [has] Become a Heartthrob in China."
"He's so charming and attractive," said Li Kenna, a desk clerk at the five-star hotel Hill stays at in Beijing. "He sometimes asks me how I am in the mornings," she said. "He's one of our nicest guests."...Concerns about Hill's health -- he has been sick several times in the cold Beijing winter and looked ill several days ago -- have elicited almost motherly concern from some female reporters.
"Ambassador, are you feeling OK? You don't look too well," a South Korean reporter, Koo Hee-jin, asked at one news conference during the latest round of talks that started on Thursday.
Our favorite part of the article is the list of important facts highlighted as bullet points at the top of the page. The third bullet point seems especially relevant and important to emphasize:
- Hill gets mobbed at Beijing airport, one of his security officials says
- Hill has won over media in China, Japan
- Hill is married with three children
Sorry ladies of China. He's taken.
Posted by Cakehead at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2007
Violating Food: Melon Balls & Salted Snails
Making Melon Eyes
We've seen a lot of food violations this week.
First there were the liver and melons. When the Parent's Television Council awarded Two and a Half Men with the Worst TV Show of the Week Award we weren't going to protest despite never having seen the show. We assumed it was for obvious reasons, like it's just a bad show. But then we did a little research and discovered it was because the episode which aired on January 22, 2007 "contained dialog about bestiality and having sex with vegetables."
We were intrigued. Here's a sample of the dialogue in question:
Charlie: "Huh, more awkward then when you were a kid and had to explain to Mom why you were hiding a slab of raw liver in your sock drawer?"
Alan: "Okay the second most awkward."
Charlie: "What about when she found the warm cantaloupe with the face drawn on it."
Somehow liver translates to bestiality and melons are now considered a vegetable?
We're always amazed with the ingenuity of boys. But turns out this isn't a culture limited to teenage boys. Advertisers for Nike now engage in melon violation to promote their golf ball sales:
Read more about melon shagging here.
[via WFMU]
And if you've stumbled to this site just looking for good clean fun with melons, click here.
Then there were the snails. In Cripsin Glover's current film project, What Is It? audiences watch a protagonist whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home. When the salt is poured on the snails and they shrivel into their shells we felt our hearts shrivel dry watching the torture. We even came close to ending our hunt for perfect escargot. But in his live presentation that lasted over an hour, Crispin talked about his desire as a filmmaker to create a film that doesn't provide commentary on what is good and evil. We had to forgive him for the snail killings. We're so tired of the studios stuffing good versus evil down our throats without allowing any room for ambiguity or motivations for committing evil. Then he said his only regret in making the film was that the snails were harmed. We had to love him even more.
Watch the salting of the snails in the What Is It? trailer.
Posted by Cakehead at 02:08 AM | Comments (0)
