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 ;-)

Fun from youtube ... Puppy vs. Robot

I have just got this forwarded .... too funny not to share!!!! Go Robot!!

PS: I will now definitively google up this robot's name (Roboquad).

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)!

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.

The vegetable orchestra

After the macabre last post :-) ..... I want to share something funnier I just got in my inbox during the lunch break! Have fun!

Revolutionary !!!!!!!!

This time it is about something in French, but definitively something amazingly revolutionary that I needed to share!!! A genius who invented this product! I want one ... not 100!
What am I talking about? A product to download wine via USB !!!! Great! My only concern is .. will it have a bit of a metallic flavor added to it because of the downloading? Maybe ...

... maybe it is all a nicely constructed joke, but funny nevertheless.

A video of the product can be found here, where you can (and I suggest you to try) order one.

Grocery Store Wars

I know I know ... lately I seem not to post may recipes, but time is little and I promise next post will be a recipe hoping that my experiments on sunday will work out fine.
But before then ... I had to share this link to one of te funniest movie I have seen lately. A group advocating organic food has cerated this "Grocery Store Wars" describing the Organic Revolution for the way of the Farm. Sounds familiar ... almost like Star Wars .... of course!!
Thanks to Francis Boulard (who btw makes great champagne and has a blog) for the link and sorry (this time) for the Italians since it is all in English. Look at it is hilarious!!!

The video in various formats plus an explanation can be found here.

Pierangelini & La Pasta al Pomodoro

Yes yes this is a recipe I did and blogged before (see here) but a recipe is not the goal of this post! My apologies for who can't read italian as they won't enjoy the links, but I could not resist in this debate over what guides and TV keep indicating as the best Italian Chef ... Fulvio Pierangelini of the Gambero Rosso.

Well, if you can read italian, you can enjoy the latest debates on this obviously arrogant (but not in the way of Gordon Ramsey ... at least he is fun to watch) that can be found here and here. But what is so funny ... well, I got to find a video (again in Italian ... sorry) where he spends 5 minutes debating why he has charged the equivalent of 25 euros few years ago (so more like 50 today) for a course of pasta in tomato sauce (count on 3 euros at home with best ingredients) and how he was upset people ordered it for kids. Sorry ... but is this guy an idiot?!?! I mean watch the video (here) and, then, you will understand what I mean. Sure I won't be missing not going to his place.

So next time, feel free to charge your friends or tell them that a dish like the one above is worth more than 50 euros in a starred restaurant. Then, note how many are not laughing!

PS: Of course, many won't agree.