Fun from YouTube ... Lost 3 & 4

Following up on an old post ... see the 3rd installement of the WebLost above and the 4th below ...

As the original got me bored, I find this one much more amusing !!!

Again from youtube ... this I can't believe

A quick .... sure this is a CNN parody, but it seems so real!!!

Fun from youtube .... Lost

This is for all you Lost fanatics (english only) ... maybe a new Lost Series to follow??

Ecco la Focaccia - Here it is, the focaccia!!!

While working on migrating everything to my new mac, or should I say playing with my new mac, I decided to give a try at making focaccia. I have followed the recipe of Reinhart, who is (in my opinion) the master baker! He wrote a book on pizza that is both funny to read and perfect in the recipes.

I won't be posting the recipe, since my mac is not ready yet for it and because you can find a very similar approach here (in italian) and here (in english). It is credited to another baker, well ... as we say, things tend to circulate under various names!

When you look closely, you will notice that ... mine has toppings! And how does it work with toppings? Very easy. Put things that can sustain long cooking times (e.g. tomatoes) from the beginning an things which cook fast (e.g. mozzarella and grated pamesan cheese) 10 minutes from the end.

A note on the linked recipes, you can easily skip one folding when you feel that dough is elastic and you can reduce the cooking time to 20 minutes (instead of 30) when using the convection (ventilated) option of the oven. Ah! And I always suggest to use instant yeast.

Gosh this one was really nice, I hope it will be still good today (one day after) at lunch. It will make my working day more bearable ;-)

Technical interruption

Yes yes ... I am being lazy with the blog these days, but actually not. I am forced to a technical pause since I am switching mac. A couple of days ago my new amazing Mac Pro arrived and I am still moving files around an playing with the new machine!

So, bear with me for a few days .... I guess in few days I will be less focused on my new toy, a new real post will appear here ;-) Which also means I will have found files and installed Photoshop again.

The 20 worst foods in US

Since I am on lunch break and I saw this on an Italian web-paper ... well, I re-propose it here but limited to only the photos for the top 5. Maybe it will stop you form eating all your lunch!!!
If you want to read more go to the Men's Health article here.

Now from worst (2900 calories, 182g fats) to 5th worst (2310 calories, 162gfats).

Yet another meme .... no thinking taste matching!

And it happened again! Fate seems to try to tell me that maybe I am not supposed to post my recipe of a risotto with dutch shrimps, whisky and curry ... but I will not desist!

What happened this time ... again a meme .... and again passed to me by Elena (gosh, wouldn't it be better to start using real names in blogs?!?!). Luckily this one (started by Mara) is rather easy:

- Mention 10 combination on top of your mind
- Pass it to other 5 bloggers

The idea is to see if there are new inspirations coming out of this exercise ... so here I am, my turn to take a meme and (again) pass it from Italian to English!
So, my top of mind combinations:

1. Gray shrimps, orange and whisky
2. Lobster and vermouth
3. Raw scallops and balsamic vinegar
4. Chocolate and deer
5. Coffee and ceps
6.Raw tuna, balsamic vinegar and wasabi
7. Salmon and spek
8. Lemon and ricotta
9. Scallops, frozen foie gras and truffels
10. Oyster and gold

And I have eaten each one of these combinations of flavors either at home or in a restaurant!

Now who do I pass this one to? Let's see: Silvia of Savoirs & Saveurs, Kate of Applemint, Valentina di Le Maghe delle spezie, Jen of Milk and Cookies and Linda di L'osso e la lisca.

Ciaoo .. and tomorrow I will definitively post the risotto no matter what!

DMBLGIT January .... Results Day!!!

And here they are the results from the first edition of the year of "Does My Blog Looks Good in This". I would like to thank everybody who has sent in one of the almost 100 contributions and the judges for their very fast feedback!
Lot of lovely dishes ... some of which have inspired me to try something new. And definitively a showcase of a variety of photography styles! Just ... a dominance of Canon Cameras, mmm ... well, I like to be in a minority so I won't change to improve my winning chances next time!

And now without further ado, I give you the results:

Overall Winner: 1st Place



Jen of Milk and Cookies with Grapefruit Souffle
(Canon EOS 300D)

Overall Winner: 2nd Place



Bea of La tartine gourmande with Vegetable Soup & Prosciutto St Maure and Pear Tartines
(Canon 30 D)

Overall Winner: 3rd Place



Archana of Spicyana with Let It Snow
(Canon Digital Rebel XTi)

Edibility category winners



Jen of Milk and Cookies with Grapefruit Souffle
(Canon EOS 300D)



Jennifer of Bake or Break with Toasted Pecan Roullade
(Nikon D200)



Tartelette of Tartelette with White Chocolate Pudding
(Canon PowerShot A610)

Aesthetics category winner



Archana of Spicyana with Let It Snow
(Canon Digital Rebel XTi)

Originality category winner



Sylvia of La vida en Buenos Aires with Glass Sauceboat
(Lumix DMC LZ5)

And ... the host picks, which really attracted me and, to be honest, they almost won one of the awards!

Bee of Jugalbandi with Marzipan with nuts
(Canon 300D)



Halo of Cook Almost Anything with Tuna steak
(n/a)

Congratulations to all winners!
The ball ... ops, the mike ... I mean the flag to (if I am not wrong) to Bake or Break for the February edition.

Ciaoooo!

You make my day award

Well, I was going to share with your the recipe of a really interesting risotto I made yesterday ... but such is life, I got nominated for a meme. Thus, I got to continue! This one is an easy meme as it consists of naming the 10 blogs that I visit daily or so ... and I am going to bend the rules. Yes, I never stick to them anyhow :-) I will list the 10 blogs which I like the most ... but they do not get updated daily and, unfortunately, one if even on hold!

But first things first! As far as I know I was named by Adina ... who said I am an engineering in th kitchen (that is my wife I think!!!) ... and Comida de Mama ... and I hope she manages to make the souffle in my previous post or she will regret naming me!!!

As for my top10, well here it is .... if you see your name down here please follow the meme ... I will post a comment on your blog anyway or send you an email (except when I deem it inappropriate ... another broken rule!).

1. There is a blog I discovered about two months ago and that has influenced my recipes in the last two months considerably. I have already mentioned it recently, but I do it again: Mercante di Spezie. Lory has taken a break from blogging, but I still go back there to check her recipe ... and hoping she will re-start.

2. Even more recently I discovered another blog ... and it is really a lot of fun! To the point that I visit it more than once a day sometimes. It is almost a community more than a blog ... what is it? Kelablu! Massimo ... do not worry I also do not expect you will follow this meme!!!

3. Now back in time, there were two blogs which actually forced me to rethink how to take photos and cook. Only one is now still being really followed by me, but more because the blogger is the perfect opposite of me: a Flemish in Italy, while I am an Italian in Flanders! That is surely Il Cavoletto di Brussels.

4 & 5. You might think ... this guy only looks at italian blogs. Neeeeee! (this is dutch). My favourite resources for cake recipes (or better baking envy): Peabody (Culinary concoctions) and Jennifer (Use of Real Butter). I wish they were my neighbors ... I love their cakes. So rich and luxurious! I envy their skills!

6.On a very different tone, I follow the updates also on Ele. She (Elena) used to be my colleague at Philips and, then, she dropped everything to go on humanitarian missions in Africa. A brave choice from an amazing woman, who is enduring a difficult life to help others in need. Always emotional to read her rare posts.

7. Keeping the list far from food ... here is the Strobist (and I am not going to ask him to follow the meme). The best blog and resource for flash photography. I have been lurking this blog will last Xmas when Elke gave me a flash .... so now I can try to learn from reading it all over again!!!

8 & 9. Back to food .... I love to pass by Colica d'acqua (i.e. kind of translates to "water diarrea colic") and Applemint. One in italian and oen in english .... both a joy to read and always nice photos!

10. Last but not least .... one of my nominee .... Adina. Yes, I also have the feeling you are a "precisina", but as we say in italian "con il pepe dentro"!! And in the kitchen ... I think we are kind of similar.

This is all ... but before leaving to more navigation in the web-sphere a suggestion ... let's all use the Google Translator widget (or similar). If not for making our blogs easy to understand on various languages, at least to have a laugh at its translation (as my parents noticed lately)!

A cool (but useless to me) gadget

I was about to share another recipe, but the service I use for storing my photos on the web is temporarily down for maintenance. I wish they would sync these not only to the US night, but such is life.

And it is funny, though, to see how services like this (or even internet) gets so much into our everyday life that once gone ... we get frustrated and lost in a "what do we do now?" mood. I still remember last time I had a very long Internet outage, the first weeks I could not survive! I needed to navigate! Gosh, it is almost like a drug.

Anyway, this photo outage at least give me the time to translate a couple of recipes today and will not last very long. No incontinence issues here :-) I leave you in the meantime with the official Ad of one of the most discussed gadget of the week. The sleek, fantastically designed ... overpriced and useless (to me at least) laptops ever: the MacBook Air. If we would use the food pricing system its $/Kg or €/Kg would be more like for truffles!

PS: The DMBLKIT gallery will also not be accessible until the service does not come back online.

Does My Blog Look Good In This? 01/08

New year, new resolutions, fresh ideas .... but above all there should a recent memory of nice photos and dishes coming from the Christmas festivities. And this shall make an excellent opportunity for ....

Does My Blog Look Good in This? January 2008 Edition

Well well. I am very proud to host this event except that for once I did have some decent photo to submit but I can't! Still, come and join .... or at least visit as the entries are always a source of photographic or culinary ideas.
For the January edition, I have been lucky to be able to put together a bit of a multinational all-women jury. Why only women? Well, I am one of the (not many) non-chef male food blogger and ... well, honestly it just happened. The jury is composed by:

• A very critical person .... my wife Elke.
• Our friend Minouche, food lover, importer and owner of La Tomaterie
• A long-time Italian blogger Francesca from FrancescaV, who maintains a wonderful magazine-style blog.
• Peabody from Culinary Concoctions. She does not really need a presentation on my blog, but sure I need to say I drool every time she posts a cake!!!
• Linda from L'Osso e La Lisca .... she posted some of the best recipes I saw last year!!!

Now, for the standard event description and rule.

What is DMBLGIT?
The idea behind the event is to give everyone a chance to enjoy some of the best pictures of the month posted on food blogs. There are so many great blogs now and new posts are constantly updated, it’s very easy to miss some great posts and pictures. This event takes us back through the best food photos of the previous month.

The rules & how to participate:

• One food photograph mat be entered per person
• The photograph must have been posted on your blog in December of 2008
• The photograph must have been taken by you
• The deadline to submit your entry is January 28 ,2008

The judges will assess the quality of all of your great entries, which will fall under the following categories:

• Aesthetics: meaning composition, food styling, lighting, focus, etc.
• Edibility: meaning “Does the photo make us want to dive in and eat the food?”
• Originality: the photograph that catches our attention and makes us want to say “Wow!”, displaying something we might not have seen before.
• Overall Winner: the photograph encompasses all of the three previous categories: the best in Aesthetics, Edibility and Originality.

So if you have a food blog with a picture you’re proud of from December, just send it to contact(at)thefoodtraveller.com

Include the following:

• Your name
• Your blog URL
• The URL of the post where the photo first appeared
• The camera you used
• and don’t forget to attach your picture, that should be 350 pixels wide (links are also accepted when I can download the photo)
  

Last day of submission is January 28, 2008.

I will post the pictures as they come. Please, make sure yours is there, but be warned there could be some delay due to work or other real-life stuff ...
All entries will be available in this gallery here.

Buona Fortuna! Good luck!

Once again a warm thank to Andrew of Spitton for overall event management and to Dyana for hosting the December edition (see the round-up here).

PS: Will I judge??? No, but I can try to help my wife ... not that she will listen anyhow.