What’s cooking behind the scenes

Via the inestimable Cake Wrecks comes word of the following poster, available for purchase (also as a T-shirt, beer stein, or tote bag) at One Horse Shy:

Look familiar?

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

Via my friend Matthew’s blog:

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

Allow John Legend to explain to you which spice is most crucial:

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

Yes, that is a platinum-coated pie pan. No, you can’t bake in it.

(via the NYT)

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

The following article, about the salt cod industry in Portugal, has so many spectacular pullquotes it’s hard to choose just one.

“The greatest friend of Portugal is bacalhau,” said Fernando Santos, an officer of the Friends of Bacalhau, a club that has 46 chapters around the world, hosts salt cod lunches and distributes cod-decorated neckties, pins, baseball caps, T-shirts and flags.

Any friend of bacalhau is a friend of mine, sure. But then, a little further down, you come to this:

“Look at those loins!” Mr. Guedes Vaz said. “We do this much better than you can do it at home. We have total control.”

To prove it, Mr. Guedes Vaz has set up a small corporate dining room, where Isabel Santos, a chef with no formal training but a lot of loyalty, prepares the company’s premier frozen brand, Sr. Bacalhau (Mr. Cod), in half a dozen different ways.

“I used to make bacalhau the old-fashioned way, but since I discovered Senhor Bacalhau here, I am faithful only to him,” she said.

And it honestly just keeps getting better.

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

Continuing on the food pareidolia theme, except this time it’s totally justified: for the cover of her new album, singer/model/legend Grace Jones commissioned 16 life-size versions of herself to be sculpted out of chocolate. I’m not going to lie; the eyes on the one she’s holding are sort of terrifying to me.

If you were to sculpt yourself out of any medium, what would it be? Me, I’d have to go with liverwurst.

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

My pal Nico just sent me a thoroughly-non-work-safe picture of the first course he was served at Le Bernardin last night. It was salmon tartare topped with caviar, plated in such a way that I totally can’t post it. Regardless, it led me to wonder about the phenomenon of food pareidolia — which is to say, food that looks like not-food.

For example, there’s something very charming about this eggplant’s day out, the whole bento box phenomenon is worth a post of its own, and we’re fond here of the art of Saxton Freymann.

But to what extent does cuteness/anthropomorphicness factor into deliciousness? Is this like Easter bunnies, where the post-beheading guilt detracts from the experience? Or are these like those sugar-coated Easter marshmallows, which would be totally inedible if they weren’t cute? Also, why is this only discussable in Easter terms?

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

Once a year, our Ad Sales team throws a huge cocktail party to thank their top clients.  A regular holiday party just won’t do for us, so we combine a cocktail party with a full-on holiday cookie decorating experience, where guests can decorate gingerbread or sugar cookie men and women in all kinds of colors.  In addition to the food and cookies, they always want cocktails; this year’s signature cocktail was the “Sidewalk Santa,” a truly intoxicating blend of top-shelf bourbon, Lillet, cherry liqueur, and a few other secrets.

In the end, 400 cookies were decorated, some in ways that we never could have imagined, as reported by several of our staff who were a little surprised by what was left behind on the tables at the very end of the night. Apparently several tables had abandoned cookies that were decorated — well, let’s just say scandalously!

But I still can’t figure out why no one wanted to take them home.

Kudos to the entire Cookie Party Team and all of the guests who participated in making it a fun and fresh evening for everyone, especially the cookies!

Rob Bleifer & Claudia Sidoti

I know more than one person with this problem.

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer