But there’s a step up from this, and that’s when you go to a party filled with hundreds of people who LOVE and make GREAT food and there’s GREAT food and drink, to boot. That, my friends, is a FOOD LOVE FEST!
That was the scene at Santos Party House last Monday for the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Launch Party for “The Fashion of Food” Program. In March 2012, the IACP annual conference is coming to New York City for the first time in thirty years. The theme of the conference is the The Fashion of Food: an exploration of where food, fashion and media connect.
]]>I had the absolute DELIGHT! of hosting NYC COOKIE Swap yesterday with Maggy Keets, Gail Dosik and Ken Leung. What a fun event! The local and not so local food community came out in droves with their A-GAME cookies and it was STUPENDOUS!
I made: Cranberry Pepita Rugelach with Apple Honey Jelly | Stained Glass Ginger Cookies | Peppermint Chocolate Bark Stars
Let my video tell the tale of tasty treats…
]]>Then I said, “Use coconut milk if you want them to be vegan.” That, was a moment of GENIUS! And that’s how I made them for Thanksgiving and they were FANTABULOUS!
]]>I lightened the original recipe which had six tablespoons of butter in it, by leaving that out and added a lot more feta and a little more sour cream. I decided to roast the garlic so I added a lot more of it since the flavor of roasted garlic is softer. Oh, and I increased the scallions, too. You can substitute chives. Maybe with all that butter you could mold it and serve it like a terrine. I thought it was unnecessary. Now it’s got balls—Just the way I like it!
I used this as one of the layers in the Roasted Garlic & Feta, Butternut Squash, Beet & Cranberry Parfait on my Thanksgiving 2011 Menu
]]>If I could have Thanksgiving every day my world would be a better place. I really think it should be a mandatory once-a-month occurrence for every family and families of friends. Cooking food with people you love and sharing it is a visceral bonding experience. It’s like a testimony to LOVE. Plan to get in the kitchen, cook meals together and share them more often. If more people did this our worlds would be a better places and the world would surely improve. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
Here’s my 2011 menu:
]]>Unless they already don’t eat gluten, they usually get really antsy and whiny and say, “Please don’t make me choose!.”
Me, I’d kick pasta and bread to the curb and live on rice and potatoes! Although my least favorite way of eating potatoes is mashed—people find this CRAZY—but I love them every other way: baked; steamed; scalloped; fried; roesti; boiled; roasted; pancakes; stewed; curried, etc… And of course, home fries! If I was told I could not make this recipe any more, I would get antsy and whiny and my world would shrink measurably.
]]>When Ken and I decided to host Pie Party Potluck LIVE!! I kept imagining what it would be like? How many people/pies would actually show up? How many people can we fit at Rodeo Bar? Have we invited too many people? Too few? Can we fit more? Weeks and weeks of questions that would only be answered when the day actually came.
]]>I felt a little like I cheated because I wanted to make a gluten free flour based crust using chick pea flour, but my test crust went from OK to awful. I decided to stick to making something that was delicious and gluten free without having to reinvent the wheel.
]]>One year, I wound up with a several pounds of dried apricots after the Chocolate Show. They sat for months and got drier and drier. I kept moving the bag around thinking, “I have to do something with these!.” But they continued to sit around and mock me.
]]>This dough is easy to make and requires no resting so it’s FAST—another thing I love in a recipe! I love working with this dough because it’s oily and doesn’t stick to your hands and is well behaved when you roll it. When baked, the texture is a little flaky, yet it’s strong enough to hold a heavy filling.
]]>I’ve made what seems like a zillions of pies since then, but the first one was the catalyst. Wherever Edie is, I know she’s thrilled to bits that those first lessons have led to Pie Party Potluck LIVE!
Join food bloggers, food writers, food entrepreneurs, chefs, bakers, restaurateurs, other food biz peeps and pie enthusiasts on October 15th at the Rodeo Bar eating pie!!!
Ken and I are so excited to get to hang out with old friends (and eat pie!) and to meet a whole bunch of friends from Twitter in real life (and eat pie) and to meet a bunch of new people (and eat pie!). Come share the PIE LOVE!
]]>On Saturday, October 15th, 2011, pie enthusiasts (who live or can get to New York City) and I will be able to get some pie in-mouth satisfaction.
]]>A little over two weeks ago, the unthinkable happened to a food blogger friend of mine, Jennifer Perillo.
]]>More than sixty food bloggers and people who love them gathered in Pennsylvania to be together as a community. It was live. It was between people and it was exhilarating.
]]>You say, “pie.” I answer, “Black Bottom Banana Cream Pie.”
In my show, The Fried Chicken Theory According to Jackie Gordon, I introduce the dessert platter featuring this pie, by calling myself, “The Pimp of Pie”. If I were the pimp of pie this would be one of the finest “ladies” in my stable. It’s layers of espresso chocolate ganache in a graham cracker crust, topped with freshly sliced bananas, a pile of vanilla bean pastry cream, then whipped cream and chocolate shavings equals a mouthful of YUM!
]]>You can download a copy of the hand-out I created for the attendees and well as two other MUST HAVE pieces from other presenters.
]]>In New York, you can certainly pay someone to take you on a food tour, but doing it yourself gives you much more freedom, flexibility and since you’re not paying for the tour you get to spend more money on FOOD.
Here’s some tips to help you put together an enjoyable food tour in the Big Apple or whatever city you’re in.
]]>Then I thought that there was no reason to take the easy way out since I was not making anything else. So I offered to make real blintzes and she did not roll her eyes, so it was all good.
]]>For Sunday’s brunch swap I made Salted Cinnamon Browned Butter Caramels.
There’s also a pot luck, for which I believe I invented a new dish: the Deviled Egg Egg
]]>It ain’t likely… So why even try? Fat Buddhas are considered to be very good luck! So let’s get lucky!
]]>I decided that the sugar in the plantains and smoky goodness of the bacon would be DELISH with a spicy dipping sauce. I love the salty, garlic in oil condiment that is served in Latino restaurants would be a good place to start, but maybe too over-the-top for my guests. The lime and chilies and cilantro temper the garlic.
My guests flipped for these! YUM! YUM! YUM!
]]>I put “10 hard unripe kiwifruit” on the shopping list when I sent my boyfriend to the store. Mistake! What I got was 10 very ripe kiwi-fruit and the excuse, “That was all they had.” You can only make pickles with unripe fruit so I went back to another store and got them and made the pickles.
What to do with the very ripe kiwifruit?
]]>This post is out of order chronologically due to editing issues and holiday mayhem. Also, it was the first time I used my new Kodak zi8 camera so some of the photos reflect that.
]]>I made these for a friend’s birthday party after the caramel layer I was planning broke and started burning and spitting clarified butter all over the stove — very unattractive. After chucking that mess, I rushed to whip these up and ran to the party leaving them behind! There is a lesson in there. I believe it is: If you forget to bring the dessert with you, you get to keep it all for yourself. YIPPEE!!!
]]>Somehow I got the job anyway and at that time Dan Budd was the extremely talented and very hard working pastry chef. I think he left to be a pastry instructor at CIA right around the time I quit before I got fired (long story). I could barely look at CIA in the distant views yesterday during my harrowing (vertigo induced) stroll across the Hudson, but after we were back on terra firma and I calmed down, we zipped up route 9G to Dan’s cafe, Taste Budd’s Chocolate and Coffee Cafe, in Red Hook, New York for some medicinal pastries.
]]>Divalicious Chocolate! is setting up a chocolate farmers’-market stand on the set of J-Lo’s upcoming movie, The Back Up Plan, tomorrow. Very glam!
]]>My favorite works of eat were from Homespun Foods on Main Street in Beacon.
]]>The next morning I was toast. Is there such thing as a food hangover? Or was it wine flu from the foodparty.com event the night before? Duty called so I dragged myself back for the love of cheese and smoked, fried, cured, marinated pork products that was my day three and it seemed to “cure” whatever was ailing me. Last night, I had a huge salad to ward off the scurvy and today I bring you my fancy food finds (if not necessarily faves).
]]>This post is inspired by last Sunday’s brunch at Melt, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Service: BAD. Bad service is usually blamed on the waiter, but my experience is that it always trickles down from the top and usually stems from poor hiring practices, little or no training… yes, poor management.
]]>Rant aside, Janea was unfazed by lack o’ ducky balloon since she loves to eat and as a gourmet-in-training knows what is truly important at a partaaaaaaaay!!!!
Here is the menu followed by the recipe for the pepita cranberry popcorn balls I made as a culinary homage to her First American roots.
]]>“I decided if people wanted a ‘dinner show,’ I would give them one. And the critical difference between my show, and the dinner shows and dinner theater I’d been to in the past was the food. It was not going to be the churned out, mediocre slop masquerading as food that you get more often than not at this type of show.”
]]>“Australia is inundated with American fast-food chains. Their concept of American food is totally corrupted. But they love great food, so I decided to do what I could to teach them about our cuisine.”
]]>“I was frightened a bit in the early days. I originally arrived in Far North Queensland. Rain forests. The Great Barrier Reef. Visually stunning, but the ‘sticks’ food-wise.”
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