Sambal chicken skewers, with a spicy, sticky glaze made of brown sugar and Sriracha 
bonappetit.com | Recipe here

Nothing says summer eating like grilling on skewers. Shish Kebab has ancient roots in the Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and South Asia in the days of Homer and the Mongol Empire. Traditional lamb skewers have since been supplemented with unlimited options from all food groups.

This article is full of delicious kebab ideas. Select your favorite, place some seasoned or marinated meat, vegetables, fruits or a combination on skewers, then once grilled to perfection, bring them inside and serve over a bed of salad, rice or noodles for a delicious meal that's filling and keeps well as leftovers. 

Thai-Style Grilled Pork (Moo Ping) | coolcathotfood.com | Recipe here

Believe it or not, this is a cake. The Tattooine background may throw you off, but there’s chocolate inside. Gilles Leblanc of Les Gâteaux de Gilles made this cake in the form of an X-34 Landspeeder from the Star Wars films for a Star Wars Day collaboration with other bakers. It’s chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream, and can go from zero to 250 km/h in one Standard Time Part. Or something like that. Anyway, you can see more pictures of the cake at Leblanc’s Facebook page.  -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: Les Gâteaux de Gilles)

You want a burger and fries? The Vulgar Chef can make you own. They’re not separate but together in this ingenious combination (warning: foul language). It’s a simple but innovating concept that all major burger chains should follow. Place a hamburger patty between two slices of cheese, then wrap the whole thing in cooked French fries. Place the assembly in a deep fryer. The result is this divine concoction that needs only pickles and onions to be ready to eat.

-via That’s Nerdalicious!

Fair season is almost upon us and if you're dying to see what's in store to fill your heart with cholesterol and your veins with sugar, then you'll be excited to hear that some of the new food selections at one of our favorite fairs, The San Diego County Fair, have been announced. Among this year's more interesting selections are:

• Chocolate-Covered Pork Rinds
• Pig Trough -three pounds of pig skins topped with pulled pork and cheese
• Wasabi Bacon Bombs –spicy pork with wasabi wrapped in dough and bacon and deep fried
• 10 feet of Bacon-on-a-Stick
• Deep-Fried Starbucks -whole Starbucks coffee beans and chocolate chips in sweet pastry dough, wrapped in bacon, deep fried, rolled in sugar and served with whipped cream
• Deep-Fried Slimfast Bar (presumably for the dieters)
• Deep-Fried Peanut Butter Pickle – a hollowed out pickle filled with peanut butter and then deep fried.

Personally, I'm looking forward to some chocolate-coverd pork rinds this year. If you live in San Diego, you can stop by and enjoy these treats for yourself between June 5 and July 5, but if you aren't in the area, you can be sure a local fair will be swinging your way sometime this summer carry some of these strangely wonderful treats.

Instagram member @dad_beets seems persuaded that any food can and therefore should be cooked in a waffle iron. And why not? It's a perfectly suitable griddle that leaves handy indentations to catch chocolate syrup.

Among his unusual uses for the waffle iron is preparing sushi, which does not, strictly speaking, have to be raw. These are spicy tuna avocado rolls that he purchased at a Whole Food store. @dad_beets froze the rolls for 20 minutes and heated the waffle iron as high as possible. Then he cooked them for under a minute, leaving each roll crispy. Here's what they look like:

(Photo: Sarah Anderson/Thrillist)

In the name of science, the staff of the food blog Thrillist gallantly ate all 27 varieties of Pop-Tarts commonly available on the open market. By doing so, they spared you the trouble of doing the same. They then reviewed and ranked all of those flavors, carefully noting the variable tastiness of each. As a result, all of us now have available a complete buyers’ guide.

The Thrillist writers gave the #27 slot to Unfrosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon and the #1 position to Blue Raspberry. I had not heard of most of the flavors, including #19, which is Whole Grain Brown Sugar Cinnamon. And I’m at a loss to understand why there is a whole grain Pop-Tart at all, as anyone who is eating Pop-Tarts is completely unconcerned with nutrition.

-via Nag on the Lake

On Facebook, Josh Bush of LaPorte, Texas (because, of course, Texas) shared photos of a hollowed-out pineapple stuffed with two pounds of boneless country style ribs, wrapped in bacon.

It's really quite a meat feat, all of it cooked slow over mesquite. 

The Internet has dubbed it the "swineapple" and several people have attempted to make their own version of it.  

Here's a look at it before it was assembled: 

Mmmm....delicious, delicious swineapple...It's kind of like the Aloha version of "Turducken" (a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey).

UPDATE: We received the recipe from the man who created it, Josh Bush:

Shave the pineapple but leave the top and bottom, lay on its side and about an inch in on both sides cut halfway down then with a long blade slice from point to point. Hollow out the desired amount of pineapple. Season your meat with any of your favorite seasonings. A more course rub is better. Put the cut piece back on. To look like a complete pineapple again. Light dust the pineapple with seasoning. Fully wrap it with thick cut bacon. Not just lay it on top. I set it on the smoker @ 240 and sprayed it with apple juice about every 20-30 minutes to keep the bacon moist and colorful. You can change the meat to boneless chicken thighs and get the same results. Alot of people have said the pineapple over tenderized the meat when they tried it. I did not personally have that issue but I would check internal temp about 2 hours into smoking. Once you hit 160 it is up to you of when to pull it.

Thanks, Elliotte! photos by Josh Bush

Except for the straw, this entire milkshake is edible. Perry Santanachote of Thrillist made it at the decree of an editor of that magazine. It’s an amazing piece of candy bar engineering. Judging from the instructions that she provides, it was also very difficult—especially the glass. That container is made of a homemade Snickers bar shaped like a rectangle, then wrapped around a glass and sealed watertight (or milkshake-tight). If my editor commanded me to make such a milkshake, the results would certainly be different.

Businessman Man Kwong is launching a Hello Kitty restaurant in Hong Kong on June 1, 2015. According to Kwong, Hello Kitty is even more popular in Hong Kong than in Japan. Kwong had been negotiating with Sanrio since 2013 in order to get approval to use the Hello Kitty name and likeness. Eventually he won them over after years of experimentation with dim sum dishes. Kwong's menu consists of 37 items, including stir-fried beef, noodles and shrimp buns. The colors used to create the Hello Kitty likenesses on foods are all natural; for example, her bow is colored with beetroot juice and her eyes are dotted with squid ink.

Learn more and see additional pictures at the restaurant’s Facebook page. 

Via Design Taxi | Images: Hello Kitty Chinese Cuisine


 

Image: Olive Garden

Fans of Olive Garden's breadsticks will be happy to know that beginning June 1, 2015, the restaurant will start serving sandwiches made with the same garlic-buttery bread as their breadsticks. According to the Associated Press, the sandwich buns will be the exact recipe as the popular chain's breadsticks, except shorter and wider. 

As with all of the Olive Garden's dishes, sandwiches will come with unlimited breadsticks. Never fear, your neverending bread supply won't disappear. Read more, including the variety and price of the new sandwiches, here.

YouTube Link

This video made by the American Chemical Society illustrates the best method to peel an avocado in order to maximize its health benefits. The method is explained with a tutorial on the chemistry of avocados. Also featured in the video are methods to minimize browning in guacamole. -Via Design Taxi

No joke, in June, Cadbury Australia is coming out with a milk chocolate bar infused with delicious, creamy caramel...and, Vegemite. While not popular in the United States in any way, the dark, concentrated yeast spread is a food staple in Australia. 

However, in my opinion, it has no business being anywhere near chocolate. Am I right?

And, if you're wondering if this is a real product. It is, it really is. Cadbury has confirmed it. 

.@Cadbury + Vegemite. The most talked about flavour combination yet… is real! #ChocPlusWhat pic.twitter.com/rU7S7CgYQi

— Cadbury Australia (@CadburyAU) May 7, 2015

Would you try Vegemite chocolate? Get ready, it hits the market on June 1st.

via BuzzFeed

(Photos: Ameshin)

Spoon & Tamago tells us that amezaiku--the Japanese art of lollipop making--has thrived since the Eighth Century. Shrinri Tezuka is a master of the craft. He owns Ameshin, a studio and workshop in Tokyo. There, he produces wondrously realistic and completely edible lollipops that look like animals. He combines sugar, starch, and food coloring into the forms of fish, frogs, and snakes.

(Photo: Dan the Chemist)

The only thing better than a chocolate bar is a chocolate bar that’s been chilled. Why? Dan, a doctoral student in chemistry, explains that the cocoa butter in chocolate exists in six different forms depending on the temperature. When chocolate is about 34-36⁰C, the structure of it begins to break down. This is called “fat bloom.” You can see it when chocolate appears to turn somewhat dusty and splotchy, such as the example above. Dan writes:

You then might ask how you can tell this has happened? The change in crystal structure is usually accompanied by something called ‘fat bloom,’ which is where the chocolate begins to look dusty, and pale spots appear on the surface as shown in the attached image. We’ve all been there (you’re incredibly lucky if you haven’t). It’s off putting, but still safe to eat. It happens because of partial melting in the solid which cases the fats within it to rise to the surface. It’s this strange occurrence that leads me to believe that keeping my chocolate in the fridge is in fact the correct way to keep it, and also why all the chocolate I bought on my exchange year in Australia just didn’t taste as good as the stuff at home in the UK due to their hotter climate!

-via TYWKIWDBI

The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader.

There are scores of delicious variations of cooked fillings and pastry out there— both sweet and savory. (Warning: This might make you hungry.)

PIE: A baking dish is lined with a pastry crust that bakes up crispy or flaky. On top of that goes a sweetened fruit filling, a savory meat filling, or, once it’s cooled, a cream or custard filling. Sometimes it’s topped with another layer of crust, and sometimes it isn’t.

COBBLER: A pie without a bottom crust. Instead, sweetened (and often spiced) fruit is placed in a deep dish and topped with large lumps of sweetened biscuit dough. The bottom of the dough sinks into the fruit and absorbs the juices. When baked, the lumps of biscuit dough puff up and can resemble a cobblestone street, which may be how the dish got its name. (Another theory: The pies were originally made in wooden bowls called cobelers.)

(Pandowdy image credit: Flickr user Emily Carlin)

PANDOWDY: Similar to a cobbler, except the lumps of biscuit dough are flattened before they’re placed on top of the fruit. Pandowdys are generally baked in a skillet.

GRUNT: The grunt is assembled like a cobbler but cooked on the stove. Dollops of dumpling batter are placed over the fruit as it simmers in a pot. Then the pot is covered and allowed to cook until the dumplings have steamed to perfection. The dish is said to get its name from the noise the dumplings make when they’re cooking. (They’re called “grunts” in Massachusetts, but in other parts of New England, they’re called “slumps.”)

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