Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 105

Is Anything Ever Really New In The Food World?

It's that time of year again. First comes the "What To Do With Leftover Candy?" and the blood-tinted Halloween punch; then we're in turkey month—just look at those glossies at your supermarket checkout—and, faster than you can say "hot buttered rum," there'll be the Bûche de Noëls, the potato latkes, and glasses of champagne to ring in the New Year.

Most mainstream food outlets—from blogs to magazines to cooking shows on T.V.—will follow the formula with precision. They've been plotting this since summer, when holiday strategy meetings took place: "What can we do this year that we didn't do 50 times already?"

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Hummingbird Cake

Sometimes it's nice to choose a theme for a dinner party. It makes it easier to pick an appetizer, a side dish, an entree and a dessert. At last week's dinner party, the theme was The South (we had three Southerners in attendance) and I served up Rachel Wharton's Pimento Cheese as an appetizer, the fried chicken from yesterday's post, a homemade coleslaw on the side and then, for dessert, this here Hummingbird Cake.

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How To Fry Chicken For A Crowd

When scheming of ways to dazzle your guests at a dinner party, fried chicken is often tossed aside as too difficult to pull off. And for good reason: if you fry chicken the traditional way, where you start it and finish it in a thick layer of hot oil, you can only fry a few pieces at a time and there's a no way you can time it so that all of your guests get hot chicken at the same time. So you stick to more traditional dinner party fare–roast beef, leg of lamb–things you can throw in the oven and carve easily for your guests. But what if you COULD make fried chicken for a dinner party and have all the pieces–20 pieces in all–finish at the same time? Prepare yourself, then, gentle reader. I'm about to rock your world.

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Melissa Clark's Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread

You may be wondering about a post that was on my blog on Friday wherein I made Melissa Clark's Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread live on webcam (using LiveStream) and then interviewed Melissa Clark on my cellphone afterwards. Many of you attended, though you missed the ending when the cake came out of the oven because LiveStream cut out. Not only that, but LiveStream didn't archive the video (even though I hit "record") so I had to take the post down because there was nothing left to see. Luckily, though, there's this picture of the finished product and my profound ability to capture its essence in words.

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Cooking Live with Special Telephone Guest, Melissa Clark

Watch live streaming video from theamateurgourmet at livestream.com

Hey folks. Today's the big day! In two hours, I'll be making Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread from Melissa Clark's new cookbook "Cook This Now" live, on the air, with Melissa Clark answering your questions over the phone. So tune in here at 11:30 PST (2:30 EST) and submit your questions either by posting them in the comments or joining us in the chatroom, here. Now I'm off to buy the ingredients.

10 Ways To Fix A Mistake in the Kitchen

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[Image via RoboPencil]

Everyone makes mistakes in the kitchen. Kim Kardashian got engaged in the kitchen and Justin Bieber fathered a baby in the kitchen. Look: it happens.

Some people freak out when a mistake happens: "Oh my God! This is a disaster! I'll never cook again!" Other people employ a series of tactics to recover from their mistake. That's what this post is about; here are 10 Ways To Fix A Mistake in the Kitchen.

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Cooking Live Tomorrow w/Special Telephone Guest, Melissa Clark

Hey folks, swing by the blog tomorrow at 11:30 AM P.S.T. (2:30 PM E.S.T.) for a live cooking show featuring our special telephone guest, New York Times food writer and author of the terrific new cookbook "Cook This Now," Melissa Clark. I'll be making her Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread and fielding questions from you as we go. Should be fun! (You can submit questions for her in the comments here too.)

The Best Doughnuts in L.A. (A Comic Odyssey)

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Lasagne alla Bolognese al Forno (Or: The Ultimate Lasagna)

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Growing up, if I visited a friend and that friend's mother was cooking dinner, one word would make me run away screaming. That word was "lasagna."

Theories for why this was the case: (1) I grew up in a non-lasagna household; (2) it was a non-lasagna household because (a) my dad hates cheese and (b) he grew up in a semi-kosher home where meat and cheese were never mixed. Therefore, not only was lasagna exotic to me, it was scary. If I did have to stay at a friend's for dinner and lasagna was served, I'd do my best to peel it apart and to eat some of the noodles, some of the filling, but to mostly mush it around on my plate.

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A Thanksgiving Banner, Fewer Ads

Load up the site today and things'll be looking a bit different. First of all, there's the terrific new banner from Lindy Groening which came to me on a whim while we were brainstorming potential Thanksgiving Day banners for November. So thanks, Lindy, for that. And then you'll notice there's no more giant ad over the banner or, for that matter, pesky ads all down the right hand side. It's just one big ad from my new ad company, SAY Media. Looks much better, right? Here's to new beginnings.