This ad apparently premiered in Europe a couple of days before my birthday, and the minute I saw it, I fell in love with it.
The love falls roughly into three parts: (a) The basic conceit of the ad. (b) The nuts and bolts of the production (i.e., working out how much of the construction really […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Media 3 Comments »

I mentioned this place in passing in a post some while back, and it really needs to have something more said about it, as there’s not nearly enough information online.
There are a lot of nice estaminets and bars in Brussels, but this one’s a favorite one for both Peter and me. Other such places will […]

Posted in Cats, Europe, Food, restaurants and cooking, Travel No Comments »

“Lots and lots and lots of heart.” …Well, one anyway.
Our local craft butcher is sufficiently old-fashioned and down-country that the less commonly seen meats still make a strong showing — remarkable (in the older sense of the word) in this time when Ireland is prosperous, and many people are turning their backs on memories of […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Ireland 2 Comments »

While I’m in the food mood:

Via The Knife: at Eater, “Adventures in Shilling #101“
Food Trivia Quiz at Slashfood
Fun with the Fabulous Plantain Smoosher (aka “Tostobueno”) at Off The Broiler
Lussekatter (Lucia Cats or Saffron Buns) at A Cat in the Kitchen
Some very dodgy Photoshopping of nice looking dumplings at Eatdrinknbemerry
Erin’s first truffle at Erin’s Kitchen
Basil and […]

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Like (it seems) about half the Internet-connected bread bakers on the planet, I’ve been experimenting with the New York Times-published recipe from Sullivan Street Bakery’s Jim Lahey for no-knead bread. (The original NYT article, which talks more about the recipe’s genesis, is here. The article discussing the ensuing discussion, and suggesting possible fine-tuning, is here.)
(Also […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Media, Uncategorized 2 Comments »

And too many desserts, if you ask me.Technorati Tags: White House, Barney, dessert, menu

Posted in Current events, Food, restaurants and cooking No Comments »

…But Reese’s peanut butter cups would have nothing on this confection.
“Get your gold off of my chocolate.”
“No, you get your chocolate out from under my gold!”
(…pauses to make note of T-shirt slogan: “I’d sooner be in Valrhona than Valhalla.”)
Technorati Tags: chocolate, Delafee, gold

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking No Comments »

“You should read my LJ posting,”  he said. “OK,” I said.
Euuuuuuuuuuu.
I just had my breakfast — which was, as usual, tea and toast — but having seen the “All Day Breakfast”*, a guaranteed Pound O’ Food, I will probably skip lunch.
(More on the subject here.)
*This being how long it takes to digest it.
Technorati Tags: Swanson, […]

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I’ve been thinking about the redesign of EuropeanCuisines.com for a while now: while there’s a lot of data there, the site’s started to seem very static in terms of what other food sites have to offer. So we’re starting to make some changes.

We’ve started a new version of the site based on the open-source content […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Ireland, Online life No Comments »

A word of explanation before we go on. This is not an apple pie as such (the techniques are a lot different though the flavorings are similar). This is a home version of apfelwähe, which is a subset of the larger set of wähen or tarts in general. (I’m using the Swiss name, which is […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life 5 Comments »

It’s about to start happening — that most gloriously seasonal of desserts. The tree in the paddock is so loaded down with Bramleys, the branches are bending halfway to the ground. Gotta do something about that while other work is going on.
The tart dough comes first. The basic recipe is Swiss: they do the best […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Ireland 1 Comment »

The branch of Domino’s Pizza in Tallaght, Co. Dublin, sells more pizzas than any other Domino’s branch on Earth.
(And this in a city which contains both the Gotham Cafe and its sibling spot Independent Pizza, joint homes to the best thin-crust pizza in these two islands? Feh.)
(It’s late, and strange quotes drift up from […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Ireland No Comments »

Took them long enough. (eyeroll)
Of course, the real joke is that the fries are actually Belgian in origin. (The WWI US “doughboys” who discovered them had simply wound up in a French-speaking part of Belgium.) The best evidence of this provenance — not concrete, granted: the dish is too old for that — can be […]

Posted in Current events, Food, restaurants and cooking, History, Humor 1 Comment »

(Devised for Christmas/Solstice dinner 2001, after thinking about the famous “Black Turkey Recipe” and deciding it was too much trouble. Might as well put it up here so I can find it again this year…)
Necessary equipment:

1 hair dryer
1 large stockpot or similar, 10 liters or 10 quarts or better (and here, bigger is definitely better)
At […]

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For those of you who may be interested:
The Irish recipe pages at our European Cuisines website are constantly getting search-engine hits from people asking “What do Irish people eat?”. With that in mind, we’ve put a new page up that talks about the subject — in very broad strokes — and links to a Flickr […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Ireland 1 Comment »

It’s not that I haven’t been annoyed enough by events in the Middle East these past couple weeks. But now it turns out that, as if it all wasn’t bad enough to begin with, someone I really like (regardless of never having met him) is stuck in the middle of it.
“we are currently shooting an […]

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Stephanie Jaworski’s venerable JoyOfCakes.com has been beautifully redesigned. I wandered over there this morning and instantly started drooling.
(sigh) Duane’s Twelfth Law: You will always come across a particularly scrumptious-looking food site at the moment when you were just getting into the business of dumping a few pounds. Feh…
Technorati Tags: Food, cooking, cake, […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Note to self No Comments »

(When I did my internet order last night, I thought I ordered two rainbow trout from the folks at Tesco; however, they sent me two kilograms of them. Probably my mistake. So six of them go in the freezer, and the last one gets held out to go on the BBQ. Goodman and Pip […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Note to self 2 Comments »

It’s 23 Centigrade outside OOA HQ in beautiful County Wicklow. (That’s about 73 Fahrenheit for those of you who aren’t up to doing the conversion right this moment.) The sun is shining brilliantly. The hawthorn is in bloom. The cats are lying around on the gravel complaining (both verbally and nonverbally) about the heat. […]

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The Periodic Table of Food.

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking 1 Comment »