Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 48

No French Fries After 40 (A Birthday Trip to Belfast)

[My friend Dara Bratt, an award-winning filmmaker, kindly offered to write a guest post about her recent trip to Belfast. How could I say no? What follows is an epic story of treacherous bridges, overflowing pints of Guinness and a meal so extraordinary, it had to be consumed twice.]

For my husband’s 40th birthday, I surprised him with a trip to Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland. His dad, who passed away before I met him, was born there, and Kieran had never been. To execute this mega-surprise, I had the support of his mom, and in Northern Ireland, my cohorts were Kieran’s cousin Judith and his Uncle Peter.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

The Clean Plate Club, Episode #5: Noah Galuten, Billy Scafuri

Our two guests at this week’s Clean Plate Club have a lot in common, though–as required by The Clean Plate Club manifesto–one is a food professional, one is not. Our food professional is Noah Galuten, who runs the kitchen at Bludso’s BBQ and hosts a terrific web show on YouTube called “The Food Feeder” (embedded below); he’s also been a food blogger (Man Bites World) and a writer for L.A. Weekly. Our other guest is the hilarious Billy Scafuri who you’ve probably seen in the viral videos he’s made with his comedy troupe The Harvard Sailing Team (I’ll embed “Boys Will Be Girls” below; it’s been viewed over 5 million times!).

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Dim Sum at Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant

Last year, an article came out that I immediately bookmarked. It was on AsiaSociety.com and it was written by a man named David Chan who ate at over 6,000 Chinese restaurants in America to determine the best. His list of the 10 Best was notable because all of the restaurants were in California, mostly Los Angeles. As he explained, “More wealthy/professional Chinese settle in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, and they demand, and can afford, a higher quality of Chinese food.” #2 on his list was a place called Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant and last week, I made plans to lunch there with my fellow food bloggers (and former Clean Plate Club guests) Ganda Suthivarakom and Zach Brooks.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

The Best Food Bloggers of All Time

I’m pretty flattered/honored to be #11 on First We Feast’s list of the Best Food Bloggers of All Time. Their description of me made me laugh (“Roberts is that kind of annoying eager beaver who keeps knocking at your door and doing a different act, until eventually you’re just like, ‘Goddamn, this guy is talented.’”) I have some quibbles with the list–too many established food writers who happen to blog, not enough genuine food bloggers–but, still, this made my day.

Rice Salad with Olives and Pine Nuts

The smartest food bloggers rave about the recipes they post in the first paragraph so you’re positively dying to click ahead and read the rest. Me? I kind of do that, but I also can’t help being a truth-teller. So yesterday, I was honest when I said that I loved the Franny’s Toasted Almond Gelato recipe I made, but I also said it tasted–just very slightly–like snot. Now I’m here to tell you about a rice salad that I made from Staffmeals (quickly becoming one of my most-used cookbooks) that I enjoyed, but not fully, mostly because of how I cooked the rice.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Leftover Tomato Vinaigrette

Dorie Greenspan is the master of thrifty vinaigrettes. I’m a big believer in her Mustard Bottle Vinaigrette (where you pour vinegar and oil into an almost empty mustard jar and shake it up), and now I can’t wait to try her Leftover Tomato Vinaigrette (where you take leftover tomato salad and whir it up to make a dressing).

Franny’s Toasted Almond Gelato

Somewhere along the way, I lost interest in making ice cream. I didn’t lose interest in ice cream, just making it. So if I were to have a dinner party, I might make brownies and hot fudge sauce for brownie sundaes (as I did for an upcoming episode of The Clean Plate Club), but I’d buy the ice cream at the store and that was that. I was happy. I’d been there and done that with ice cream. But then a cookbook showed up from one of my favorite restaurants in all of New York (maybe in all the land), Franny’s, and there at the back was a recipe for one of the best ice cream/gelato concoctions I’ve ever tasted: their toasted almond gelato.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

The Used Cookbook Sale at The Hollywood Farmer’s Market

On Sunday, my friend Ben Mandelker of The B-Side Blog invited me to the used cookbook sale at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. As many of you know, I’m kind of a cookbook junkie (see here) so this was a no-brainer. When I got there, I found mostly generic cookbooks (many, many diet books) and old copies of Bon Appetit anthologies. But then Ben started to dig up some treasures, which I’ll share with you here….

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Don’t Wash Your Chicken

Or, to put it another way, Julia Child Was Wrong. (Though it was an episode of her show with Jacques Pepin, where he said he didn’t wash his, that inspired me not to wash mine… so, at the very least, she was right to have friends like Jacques.)

Who Drinks This Stuff?

The other day at Gelson’s, I was looking for almond grappa to make Franny’s toasted almond gelato (shockingly, I was unsuccessful) and during my search I spied the bottle you see above. Who drinks this stuff? First of all, I think it’s hilarious that it translates to “The Spirit of Paris” and the flavor is “Red Velvet Cake.” How is red velvet cake even remotely in the spirit of Paris? Second of all, as Regina Schrambling recently Tweeted, “red velvet” is not a flavor. It’s a bunch of red food coloring added to a cocoa cake. So what, exactly, do people think they’re drinking when they drink Red Velvet Cake Sparkling liqueur?

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »