April 15th marked 561st birthday of the original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. Pancake artist Nathan Shields marked the occasion by making this pancake. The mathematician Leonhard Euler also had a birthday (his 306th) on that date, so Mr. Shields made a pancake in his honor, as well. You can find a photo of it at the link.
Link
Welcome to issue 1 of Don't Eat That, John!--Neatorama's new series of poorly-conceived culinary adventures. Today, I combined that classic New York City sandwich, the Reuben, with the South's own marvel, the Elvis. I also added Nutella to the mix because Nutella.
Some called me reckless. Well, audentes fortuna iuvat. Also, sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.
My strategery was, in imitation of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, to divide the project in two and attack on both flanks. Like all good things in life, the first step was to cook bacon.
Then I made French toast: 2 slices of white bread for the Elvis and 2 slices of rye for the Reuben.
Thirsty? Pour yourself a glass of water. No, not like that, you rube! Bryce Chartwell of Last Parsnip explains why we've been doing it all wrong all this time.
If you ask me how does one make Tarihi Osmanli Macunu or traditional Ottoman Candy, which is made out of five flavors of thick taffy spiraled around a stick, I'd say magic. But our pal Juergen of For 91 Days sets us straight. He's captured the (I'd still say magical) process on video: Link - Thanks Juergen!
Jean Aw of Notcot spotted these donut impostors at Japanese marketplace Mitsuwa in Torrance, California, and we are intrigued. It's not every day that a confectionery managed to impersonate the toroidal granddaddy of sweet dessert, and pulled it off so magnificently, too.
Behold, the Mochidos by Mochicream. Get it? Mochi donuts. These are made of mochi, a Japanese rice cake made from glutinous rice, filled with flavored cream or sauce.
Notcot has more pics: Link
Do you remember the coffee made from coffee beans that have been, uh, organically processed by elephants? For April Fools' Day, Sankt Gallen, a brewery in Kanagawa, Japan, briefly sold a stout made from that coffee. The staff at Rocket News 24 snagged a few bottles before they sold out. Here's how it tastes:
I cracked open a bottle of Un, Kono Kuro to give it a try. I sniffed at the bottle’s neck and my nostrils were greeted with a faint bitter aroma, a little like roasted coffee just giving me a sense of what’s to come.
When I poured it into a glass the coffee-like aroma continued to build it was relaxing like an easy Sunday morning. After taking my first sip there was an initial bitterness that got washed over by a wave of sweetness. Following that, a mellow body rolled in and spread out through my mouth. [...]
Usually people talk about aftertaste when drinking beer but with Un, Kono Kuro the word afterglow is much more appropriate.
After downing the last drop, slowly rising from my throat and mouth was that afterglow. The combination of bitter and sweet stayed fresh and lingered in my head. It was a familiar aroma that accompanied me through the entire beer.
(Photo: Rocket News 24)
You can buy a brownie pan that gives you delicious extra edges. But you can also bake a lot more than just brownies with it. Stephanie Parker used hers to bake a pizza with extra extra crust. You can find the recipe for her homemade pizza sauce at the link.
How do you make a chocolate chip cookie ice cream cone? Nick of DudeFoods found that his waffle cone maker wasn't up to the task. But he pressed on with his research and tried to cook the cone around a metal cone mold. That didn't work. Finally, Nick found a solution:
For my third and final attempt I decided to just bake one giant cookie in my oven and then roll it into a cone the second it was done baking, before it could harden. Well, I guess sometimes the simplest idea is the best, because this worked like a charm. To roll mine I used the cone-form that came along with my waffle cone maker, but any cone-shaped object should work just as well. Then, once the cookie cone cooled and hardened it was all set to eat!
Would you eat a "Mexagon"? Maybe. Neatorama readers became excited about eating a Hexaflexamexagon, after all. But the Mexagon didn't fly at Taco Bell. A lot of consumer research goes into naming new products at the fast food chain.
In 2005, Taco Bell's corporate chefs tried wrapping a hard-shell taco in a big, soft tortilla to solve the age-old problem of taco spillage in cars. Seventy percent of Taco Bell's revenue comes from drive-thru windows, so the company's executives thought it could be a hit -- with the right name.
"We had to choose what aspect of the dish we wanted to emphasize," Perdue explained. "What really stood out for us was the texture, the combination of a crunchy and soft shell. But the shape was also unusual. Who's ever eaten a hexagon?"
Hence, "Mexagon." Perdue said her team also tested "Origami Tostada," "Crunchwich" and "Crunchilada," among many others, with Taco Bell fans to see which one they liked best. They ended up finding that the names that emphasized shape weren't alluring to consumers; they didn't scream "craveability," the crucial metric for most fast-food products.
"Consumers were really responding to Crunchwich," she said. "But they told us, 'You're not about sandwiches. You're Mexican!' So we changed the 'wich' to 'wrap.'" The Crunchwrap Supreme was born.
The company admits that its new products would be just as unfamiliar in Oaxaca as they are in Topeka, but no one goes to Taco Bell for authentic Mexican food; folks go there because they're open late when the munchies strike. Link -via First We Feast
Some brilliant recipes are invented out of necessity. For example, legend has it that Napoleon Bonaparte's chef invented Chicken Marengo from whatever he could find in the field after a battle. Now it's a popular dish in French cuisine.
Enter the ramen po' boy. Stuart J. Chartock, its inventor, has now guaranteed himself a place in culinary history. His recipe is simple but perfect: ramen, cheese and ham.
This British dish is spelled stargazy or stargazey. And yes, those are real fish heads:
Stargazey pie sounds rather quaint, but this Cornish dish of pilchards baked under a pastry crust won't appeal to everyone - it traditionally has fish heads poking through the crust, so they appear to be gazing up at the sky. Legend has it that the dish originates from the village of Mousehole, where a plucky fisherman called Tom Bawcock once saved his fellow villagers from starvation by braving the stormy seas to catch a record haul. The fish were baked poking out of the pies, to prove to everyone that there was fish inside.
America fought two wars to get away from this kind of food.
(Photo: goodiesfirst)
Shouchuu is a Japanese liquor similar to vodka. For medicinal reasons, some people soak the corpses of giant wasps in it. Rocket News 24 reports:
Surprisingly, the benefits of drinking this filthy brew are said to include beautiful skin, recovery from fatigue, and the prevention of “lifestyle disease,” where repetition of your daily habits leads to sickness and depression. So, it would seem that — provided you can push past the look, smell, and taste of it — this drink is really quite good for you! We’re told that it’s in extremely high demand in Taiwan, of all places.
P.S. This drink reminds me of a recent tweet by cartoonist Zach Weinersmith:
I wonder how long before you can get vodka in whiskey flavor.
— Zach O'Weinersmith (@ZachWeiner) April 8, 2013
Jennifer's sugar cookies look delicious. But how did she get the striated look and the wavy form? Click on Continue reading to see process photos.
These marshmallows are perfect for watching a game on a chilly day. And best of all, Mary Beth's recipe requires only one step: marking lines with a food coloring pen.
Link -via Tasteologie
Last week, the Jim Bean distillery sent Foodbeast a few bottles of bourbon and whiskey. You know, for testing purposes. I'm jealous because the Neatorama office never gets stuff like that.
Charisma Madarang and her colleagues put the sweet stuff to good use, inventing a float that includes black cherry ice cream, raspberry soda, chocolate syrup, Oreos and Knob Creek bourbon.
