Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 69

Best Food Lover’s Hotels in America

A list from Bon Appetit. I totally agree about the Ace: in Portland, in Palm Springs and in New York, I’ve had great meals. Time to visit the rest.

It’s So Easy To Make Your Own Corn Tortillas

This weekend my brain burst open like a piñata when I discovered, after much hemming and hawing, how easy it is to make your own corn tortillas. At Christmas, Craig’s parents bought me a tortilla press (which I’d put on my list) and I very matter-of-factly shelved it away when I got home, telling myself that one day, some day, I’d dig it out and use it. Then, last week, I made a trip to Grand Central Market in downtown LA (more on that later this week) and bought a bag of Maseca. Turns out that’s all I needed–along with the tortilla press–to make the most incredible corn tortillas at home. Look how easy it is.

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Chocolate-Crusted Banana Blondies

Melissa Clark deserves a Nobel prize, as far as I’m concerned, for coming up with these chocolate-crusted banana blondies. Here’s the article & video and here’s the recipe. Now that I’ve shown you this, promise me you’ll send me some.

Small Updates

Hey folks, check back throughout the day today (and from now on) because in addition to my regular posts I’m going to start doing a curated selection of links throughout the week. Sort of like my Friday Round-Up but instead of all the links in one post on one day, those links will be more frequent and shared as I discover them. In other words: you should load up my blog several times a day to experience lots of interesting stuff. Ya know, like you do with most blogs. So let’s get started!

Breakfast For Company at a Moment’s Notice

We had plans to eat Sunday brunch with Rebecca Lando of Working Class Foodies last week only we were a bit under-the-weather (um, hungover). Instead of canceling, I had an idea: what if I just invite Rebecca over at 11:45? This was at 10:30. So I had an hour and fifteen minutes to cook up an impressive breakfast before she’d arrive. Could I pull it off? I most certainly could. Here’s what I did.

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Happy Eggs?

Recently I’ve been on a Hulu Plus cooking show kick, binging on Lidia and Martha and the occasional Avec Eric with Eric Ripert. In fact, it was on one of Eric Ripert’s shows, where he cooks with Dan Barber (who’s now on Twitter, by the way), that I learned about pastured eggs. While touring Chef Ripert around Blue Hill Farm, Chef Barber says, “When buying eggs, you don’t want to look for free-range, necessarily…what you want to look for is pastured eggs.” Pastured meaning the chickens get to graze on grass and good stuff. I never thought I’d find pastured eggs at my supermarket, until…

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Friday Food Links (4/12/13)

I took that picture last week from my car window while driving through Atwater Village and though Instagram amped up the color just a tiny bit, I’m still really proud of it. All of that pink from the tree and the blue from the house? Maybe I should retire and become a professional Instagrammer of people’s houses and trees.

In the meantime, I’ve blogged up a storm all week and don’t feel the worse for wear. Maybe that’s because all of these posts were really fun to write. And not only have I been blogging up a storm, I’ve also been bookmarking up a storm in anticipation of this Friday round-up. So buckle your seat belts, I’ve got lots of links and videos to share with you.

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Why Oh Why Didn’t I Buy The Mandy Patinkin Family Cookbook?

We all have regrets in life. I regret pulling out the chair from under Stacy Epstein in the 3rd grade. Can I go back and change that I did that? No I can’t. But I can go back and change one regret from a few weeks ago. I was at the used book store on my street and found, to my surprise, a copy of Mandy Patinkin’s Jewish family cookbook. Actually, it’s not his cookbook–he just wrote the Introduction–it’s Grandma Doralee Patinkin’s cookbook. That’s either his mother or grandmother, it’s hard to tell (she looks young) but the point is I didn’t buy it. And it’s still there. And I still haven’t bought it. What’s wrong with me?

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Food Art For $20

I was going to have you guess how much I paid for this piece of food art that I found at the Villainy General Store in Echo Park but that’s silly; I paid $20. Frankly, I’m very happy with it. It’s an oil painting and it hits all the marks of the kind of food art you want to have around your house: there’s alcohol, there’s fish, there’s bread…at least I think that’s bread. Or maybe it’s cheese? No matter what that is on the lower left, this is going to hang near our table where guests can gaze upon it as I serve them alcohol, fish, and cheese or bread depending on what the answer is.

The Best Way To Make Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts Is Not To Buy Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

This is an important message from your sponsor, me. You know how grocery stores sell boneless, skinless chicken breasts more than they do actual chickens? And how people bring them home and cook them in such a way that they’re dry, flavorless pieces of cardboard? And how this leads people to hate food cooked at home so much that they wind up going to Popeye’s where this woman has an orgasm as she watches you eat your chicken? And everyone gets obese as our country goes down the toilet? I’m going to tell you a secret.

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