Hilarious recipe videos in the style of famous directors

Kottke shows Hilarious recipe videos in the style of famous directors. I agree that this Tarantino one is the best. See the rest at his site.

KFC recipe revealed?

I evidently missed this story from a couple of weeks ago. KFC recipe revealed? Tribune shown family scrapbook with 11 herbs and spices - Chicago Tribune

Ledington continues to leaf through the family scrapbook, pausing here and there to share a memory or an anecdote about his uncle. At the back of the album is an official-looking document, its pages stapled together: the last will and testament of his Aunt Claudia, he tells me. She died on New Year's Eve 1996 at age 94.

'I can show you what every family member got,' he says, poring over the papers. 'This was my dad, Robert Ledington. He was the first one. He got $209,888.'

But what I'm really interested in is the handwritten note on the back of the document. At the top of the page, in blue ink, it reads, '11 Spices — Mix With 2 Cups White Fl.' That's followed by an enumerated list of herbs and spices. Eleven herbs and spices. And the measurements for each."

Jiro Ono and René Redzepi Have a Cup of Tea on Vimeo

"Jiro Ono (who Dreams of Sushi) and René Redzepi (who is probably the current Best Chef in the World™) sit down for a cup of tea and a chat." (via kottke)

Jiro Ono and René Redzepi Have a Cup of Tea from madfeed.co on Vimeo.

How To Shuck Corn

NickHolroyd's how to corn is sorcery.

The Hidden Meaning of 2001

io9 pointed me at this short 2007 essay, The Hidden Meaning of 2001 "The Monolith is an intergalactic food activist/critic, if not god of food. It is aghast when it finds the Earth apes eating twigs and bushes, being eaten by leopards and having turf wars over drinking water. The Monolith changes this: the apes are no longer meat, but begin to eat meat. Thus starts a revolution of eating."

It's worth reading to the end, the payoff is pretty funny.

In all seriousness there's probably something to this. I'd say that Kubrick is emphasizing the fact that we're just animals and eating is (now and for our entire history) one of the basic things we need to do to survive.

Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious

The Washington Post reports Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious "The researchers did this for each of the several thousand recipes, which used a total of 200 ingredients.  They examined how much the underlying flavor compounds overlapped in single dishes and discovered something very different from Western cuisines. Indian cuisine tended to mix ingredients whose flavors don't overlap at all."

Amazing sushi-roll art

Amazing sushi-roll art "Takayo 'Tama-cha' Kiyota is a Japanese chef who specializes in makizushi art: artistic sushi-rolls that use cunningly arranged food to create illustrations in the rolls' cross-sections. Her work is improbably amazing."

The Race to Save the World's Chocolate

The Atlantic reports on The Race to Save the World's Chocolate

"The world is running out of chocolate. In 2013, the world consumed about 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. And now, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut—two of the world's biggest manufacturers of chocolate goods—are warning that by 2020, that consumption-over-production number could increase to 1 million metric tons (a fourteen-fold bump)."

"So why can't the world's chocolate supply keep up with its chocolate demand? Part of the problem—besides the combination of drought and disease mentioned above—involves the cacao plants themselves. Chocolate trees take an exceptionally long time to yield fruit. That doesn't just make for slow production; it also means that genetically selecting for high-performance plants can be a challenge. 'A corn breeder,' Bloomberg points out, 'can raise three new generations of corn in a single year—three opportunities to select for desirable traits. A new cacao seedling, by comparison, won’t produce fruit for two years at the earliest, and it takes 10 years to reveal traits worth perpetuating.'"

The Coffee Genome Has Been Sequenced. Here's What That Means For You.

io9 writes The Coffee Genome Has Been Sequenced. Here's What That Means For You. "It's safe to wager, then, that coffee would not be so popular were it not for its caffeine content. And that's what makes the publication of the C. canephora genome so exciting. The researchers, it turns out, have done more than identified over 25,000 protein-making genes in the robusta coffee genome. By examining which families of genes expanded in the course of coffee's evolution, and comparing its genome to those of other plant species, researchers co-led by University of Buffalo genome scientist Victor Albert, were able to, in his words, 'learn about coffee's independent pathway in evolution, including — excitingly — the story of caffeine.'"

There is a secret ingredient in your burgers: wood pulp

Devin Cohen writes in Quartz There is a secret ingredient in your burgers: wood pulp

"The emulsion-stabilizing, cling-improving, anti-caking substance operates under multiple aliases, ranging from powdered cellulose to cellulose powder to methylcellulose to cellulose gum. The entrance of this non-absorbable fiber into fast food ingredients has been stealthy, yet widespread: The compound can now be found in buns, cheeses, sauces, cakes, shakes, rolls, fries, onion rings, smoothies, meats—basically everything.

The cost effectiveness of this filler has pushed many chains to use progressively less chicken in their ‘chicken’ and cream in their ‘ice cream.’ McDonald’s ranks highest on the list with cellulose integrated into 14 of their menu items including their renowned fish fillets, chicken strips and biscuits, with Burger King ranking second on the list with 13 menu items  containing cellulose. Moreover, many cellulose-laden ingredients (such as honey mustard, bbq sauce, and cheese blends) can be found in multiple items throughout the menu making the filler difficult to avoid.

All of these cellulose-based ingredients are non-digestible wood pulp possessing no nutritional value. Though some studies suggest that microcrystalline cellulose may have adverse effects on cholesterol, the FDA has approved powdered cellulose for human consumption in moderate doses."

Nathan Myhrvold's Recipe for a Better Oven

Nathan Myhrvold's Recipe for a Better Oven is everything you ever wanted to know about ovens.

The FDA almost thought about banning wood-aged cheese

Vox wrote The FDA is banning wood-aged cheese — and it's a terrible idea. They've already updated the article with a response from the FDA saying that no ban is in place. Whew.

Culinary Canvas

I'm really not sure what to make of Culinary Canvas. It's very inventive, but it's more art than food presentation. Who wants an Eiffel Tower of carrot stems? Then again, there's this...

Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner Is Real Food

Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner Is Real Food "Katz and Yale colleague Stephanie Meller published their findings in the current issue of the journal in a paper titled, 'Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?' In it, they compare the major diets of the day: Low carb, low fat, low glycemic, Mediterranean, mixed/balanced (DASH), Paleolithic, vegan, and elements of other diets. Despite the pervasiveness of these diets in culture and media, Katz and Meller write, 'There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding. For many reasons, such studies are unlikely.' They conclude that no diet is clearly best, but there are common elements across eating patterns that are proven to be beneficial to health. 'A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.'"

Shocker.

Also, What the heck are we supposed to be eating?

Spencer Trappist Ale launches in MA

Spencer Trappist Ale launches in Mass. "The first Trappist brewery outside of Europe has started production of beer that is expected to hit retail stores early next week. The monks at Saint Joseph's Abby in Spencer are rolling out bottles of Spencer Trappist Ale brewed in a 36,000 square foot facility on the monastery grounds. The brewery will be the 9th Trappist brewery in the world, joining Chimay, Orval, and other well-known brands."

What A Week Of Groceries Looks Like Around The World

Interesting slideshow: What A Week Of Groceries Looks Like Around The World.

Gobble, Gobble

Daily chart: Gobble, gobble "How the Thanksgiving Day plate varies across America"

Americans – why do you keep refrigerating your eggs?

Americans – why do you keep refrigerating your eggs? I found this completely bizarre on several levels.

Observations From A Tipless Restaurant

The New York Times Magazine wrote five years ago, Why Tip?.

Recently the subject of that article, restauranteur Jay Porter, wrote Observations From A Tipless Restaurant "This is the first of a multi-part series detailing what I learned from operating our farm-to-table flagship restaurant, the Linkery, as a ‘no-tipping’ restaurant that instead charged a fixed percentage for service, from 2006 to 2013. We also operated a sister restaurant, El Take It Easy, that followed the traditional tipping model, allowing for a fairly direct comparison."

He also followed up some postscripts that respond to some feedback.

Americans Are 110 Times More Likely to Die from Contaminated Food Than Terrorism

Alternet writes Americans Are 110 Times More Likely to Die from Contaminated Food Than Terrorism

In 2011, the year of Osama bin Laden's death, the  State Department reported that 17 Americans were killed in all terrorist incidents worldwide. The same year, a single outbreak of listeriosis from  tainted cantaloupe killed 33 people in the United States. Foodborne pathogens also sickened 48.7 million, hospitalized 127,839 and caused a total of  3,037 deaths. This is a typical year, not an aberration.

We have more to fear from contaminated cantaloupe than from al-Qaeda, yet the United States spends $75 billion per year spread across  15 intelligence agencies in a scattershot attempt to prevent terrorism, illegally spying on its own citizens in the process. By comparison, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is  struggling to secure $1.1 billion in the 2014 federal budget for its food inspection program, while tougher food processing and inspection regulations passed in 2011  are held up by agribusiness lobbying in Congress. The situation is so dire that Jensen Farms, the company that produced the toxic cantaloupe that killed 33 people in 2011,  had never been inspected by the FDA.

This isn't arguing that we shouldn't try to stop terrorism, it's arguing that we should pay more attention to food safety.