Each bite brought a delicate balance between pleasure and pain—deliciously peppery flavor, bought at the price of having your mouth feel like you’d swallowed fire. But the pain was a good pain, somehow. It forced you to slow down and experience each bite, and that’s a rare experience these days. No one mindlessly gobbles Sichuan hot pot, simply because it’s physically impossible to do so without powerful anesthetic.
posted by Trurl on Apr 13, 2012 - 42 comments

You have only 128 days left to eat at Charlie Trotter's eponymous restaurant in Chicago. [more inside]
posted by Trurl on Apr 11, 2012 - 66 comments

Pasta alla carbonara (usually spaghetti, but also fettuccine, rigatoni or bucatini) is an Italian pasta dish based on eggs, cheese (pecorino or parmesan), bacon (guanciale or pancetta), and black pepper. [more inside]
posted by Trurl on Sep 20, 2011 - 105 comments

Modernist Cuisine, a 2400-page, 6-volume lavishly-illustrated and highly-anticipated $625 list price set (available for pre-order) by authors Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet, expounds a deeply scientific and avant-garde take on cooking techniques and been praised as the most important cookbook of the last 10 years. Its burger recipe. Its kitchen.
posted by shivohum on Feb 4, 2011 - 156 comments

Marcella Polini Hazan, Cavaliere della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana, has Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She's also got one of those "cooking every recipe in her book" blogs.
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 14, 2010 - 16 comments

A newspaper story about cooking testicles, featuring Chris Onstad, writer of Achewood. Also featuring an excerpt from his new Achewood cookbook, in which everyone's favorite Appalachian serial killer teaches us how to easily cook fried chicken. (Perfect fried chicken, previously on metafilter)
posted by Greg Nog on May 30, 2010 - 42 comments

Luxirare is about killer clothes and fine cuisine. Recent features include: Thanksgiving Part I, creating a thanksgiving meal that is less about an abundance of leftovers and instead maximizing the visual appeal of “thanksgiving” symbols like the pumpkin, as a dessert; and Pie Pops, for those who want to eat pie, but don’t want a whole slice—who want to try multiple flavors, but for just a bite or two, then move onto another.
posted by netbros on Nov 20, 2009 - 24 comments

Never had an Indian mom? You poor, deprived wretch! Meet Manjula.
She'll be happy to teach you to make Naan, Rotis, Pani Puri, Vegetable Pakoras, Paneer, Raita, Navattran Korma, Palak Paneer, Pulav, Malai Kofta, Aloo Gobi, Chana Masala, Hari Chutney, Ras Malai, Gajar ka Halwa and much more! I can... almost... smell her kitchen. *sigh*
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Dec 7, 2008 - 50 comments

As I sent my friends home bathed in the warm glow of hog grease, I felt sure that our generation would pass the test of lard. We might not cook with it every night—natural lard is expensive and (all right, I'll admit it) deep-fried foods are often loaded with calories, no matter which fat you use. But we won't live in fear of it, either. When we want deep-fried excellence, we'll reach for the best fat for the job: lard. [more inside]
posted by jason's_planet on Aug 30, 2008 - 30 comments

The African Cookbook is a compilation of recipes from 9 countries in Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Sudan and Tanzania & Zanzibar. As well as a handful of recipes each section has short chapters on how food is served in each country. For more recipes and information go to Try African Food.
posted by Kattullus on Jul 9, 2008 - 20 comments

The Epicurean online. Charles Ranhofer's 1893 book The Epicurean is available online from the Michigan State University Library and the Museum as part of their Feeding America digital project. Ranhofer was the head chef at Delmonico's Restaurant from 1862 to 1894; he popularized the Escoffier version of French cooking to America, modifying it to take advantage of American foods such as turkey, squash, corn, and Pacific salmon. Besides thousands of recipes, The Epicurean discusses table settings, menus, various methods of presentation, and kitchen management. The book may be downloaded as a PDF in two parts.
posted by watsondog on Sep 11, 2005 - 7 comments

It's the future. Now where's my fucking food?
posted by Tlogmer on Mar 4, 2005 - 37 comments

How To Say Yes (Or No) To British Food: Apart from the language barrier (ably demolished by Mike Etherington's magnificent online dictionary), British food has a dreadful reputation all over the world. Yet people who try it, whatever their nationality, often find they enjoy it. If it's properly made, that is. Enter Helen Watson's impeccable and ethnically correct recipes. And those who can't be bothered to cook can always plump for the many ready-made goodies (and some real stinkers) now offered by internet mail order firms. The most promising has got to be, with over 2,500 goodies, the FBC Brit Shop. Unfortunately it's based in Japan and will only start delivering in September. The best of the rest is probably yummy British Delights. My mother's English so I'm obviously biased, but aren't a lot of people missing out on the unique gastronomic charms of the good old United K? Oh yes![FBC link pilfered from the Boing Boing larder.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Aug 3, 2002 - 63 comments