I wrote about our old friends the Mangalitsa pigs in the new issue of Cooking Light, as part of the magazine’s list of ten ways to eat right in 2010. Yes, those pigs — the ones that inevitably draw the words “fatty, lardy, rich” in any word association game — in Cooking Light.

The logic is that the porkers fall under the heading of “Indulge Adventurously,” meaning that “a healthy approach to eating includes permission to satisfy that part of the soul that craves truffles, butter, chocolate, or cheese –in modest proportions.” (more)

Jane and Michael Stern are coming to Benaroya Hall Tuesday as part of the Seattle Arts & Lectures series. I wrote a bit on Al Dente about whether the Sterns and their Roadfood writings are still relevant in the age of Yelp. (The answer: Heck yes.) 

The last time the Sterns came to Seattle, I had the happy task of trying to share some of Seattle’s best Roadfood bets with them. (more)

Rebekah Denn, the Post-Intelligencer prize-winning food writer before the paper closed, has written on her Eat All About It blog about two events that may have secret foodies looking forward to January. One might even make a last-minute addition to the gifts for a food fanatic.

On Jan. 10, a new reality show will hold Seattle-area auditions in Kirkland. Details from her blog here. The show, "Master Chef," is looking only for amateurs. There are some frequently asked questions and a nationwide schedule for auditioning for the show at a Fox site here.

Now, for the last-minute gift, know someone who is dying to express their food passion through writing? Rebekah will be part of a “Foodportunity Expression” seminar, put on by Keren Brown. Rebekah will lead the food writing class at Andaluca restaurant from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.  Jan. 16. Details here. The class is $99.

Always dreamed of writing a cookbook for a major publishing house? How about… well, contributing a recipe to a group cookbook? Winners of a cookbook contest at Foodista.com will have their recipes in a Foodista cookbook published by Andrews McMeel in 2010. I wrote about it in today’s Christian Science Monitor, over here.

And check out Rebekah's Eat All About It site.

t’s a small town America we’re not accustomed to reading about. Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Melissa Sanchez vividly describes a six-block area of the unincorporated town of Outlook in rural Yakima County in central Washington, home to as many as 150 gang members and only sporadically policed.

She writes of a sheriff’s deputy shot in the leg by one gang member to impress other gang members. Of a 22-year old man charged with shooting and killing a 14-year-old runaway after she planned to report being raped at a party in town. Of the shootings of at least three teens in the past 16 months. Of a community where one in every five residents belongs to a gang, and many of the rest live terrified behind locked doors.

No community block watch groups exist here. There are few organized activities for young people. Law enforcement falls to the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office, but only four deputies are on patrol at any given moment for the entire Lower Yakima Valley, a sprawling geographic...

We’re finally seeing more Seattle chefs compete on reality TV, now some of our amateur cooks are going to get a chance too.

Master Chef, the new Fox TV reality show featuring Gordon Ramsey, is scheduling auditions in Seattle for Jan. 16. The Hollywood Reporter calls the show, based on a hit show in the U.K. and Australia,  ”a culinary American Idol” where contestents around the country will create dishes for a judging panel to consider.

Read more here

This is one of the saddest pieces of Seattle restaurant news I’ve heard since the Beeliner Diner and the Dog House closed: Jonathan Kauffman, restaurant critic for Seattle Weekly, is heading back to his old Bay Area eating grounds. Starting Jan. 1, he’ll take the critic’s job at SF Weekly.

Read more here from Rebekah Denn at Eat All About it.

From former P-I pop music critic Gene Stout's blog:

Queensryche frontman Geoff Tate is launching another wine on his “Insania” label, a collaboration with Walla Walla’s Three Rivers Winery.

Tate will roll out the new white wine — a blend of sauvignon blanc (78 percent) and semillon (22 percent) — Feb. 4 and 5 at Snoqualmie Casino (at exit 27 on Interstate 90) in conjunction with performances of “Queensryche Cabaret,” dubbed “The First Adults Only Rock Show.”

The flavors of honeydew melon, pear and apricot are featured in the new wine. It’s a labor of love for Tate, who has been intimately involved in its development.

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page and let us know where you'd like your donation to go.

Jeff Koehler is technically a native son, but Barcelona’s got him now — and, lucky us, it’s been his home base for travels around the Mediterranean to write about food. Don’t miss him in a rare Seattle appearance at The Elliott Bay Book Company at 2 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 14) to discuss his latest book, Rice Pasta Couscous.

It’s a cross-cultural look at those staple ingredients, with Koehler sharing recipes from a broad swath of kitchens, from Syria to Valencia to Sardinia.

To me, the stories in the recipe headnotes, the short descriptions above the recipes, are as vivid as the foods.

Read more

From former P-I food critic Rebekah Denn's blog, Eat All About It:

When Cindy Mushet and her daughter Bella came to town to talk about Cindy’s new book, Baking Kids Love, I couldn’t resist asking them to come by my house and do some baking with my own kid. My 7-year-old does like cooking with me, but, with a professional in the kitchen, I wondered if we could take on a more challenging project than usual. And we did. I wrote about it here on Al Dente Blog, along with the recipe for the meringue cookies the kids whipped up and piped into Halloween-style “rattling bones and fingers”. The cookies can be made into any shape you like, though — alphabet letters seem like a natural favorite. Here’s a little video showing some of the highlights of our after-school cooking lesson. It struck me that it’s always easier to learn new techniques with experienced helpers — even when one of them is only in middle school.

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations....

From former P-I food critic Rebekah Denn's blog Eat All About It:

I don’t think I’ve ever met cookbook authors work as hard to connect with their audience as Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, authors of “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day” and, now, “Healthy Bread In Five Minutes A Day.” The very focus of their new book, in fact, came from the deluge of reader questions they got about making no-knead bread with whole grains.

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page and let us know where you'd like your donation to go.

From former P-I food critic Rebekah Denn's blog, Eat All About It:

Just when we were getting comfortable bragging about Seattle’s burgeoning street food scene, a winter hiatus has hit.

Maximus/Minimus, the roaming “urban assault pig” serving up pulled pork sandwiches (not to mention vegan sandwiches), will shut down after Oct. 31, with plans to return April 1. It will be back, “100 percent,” guaranteed Kurt Dammeier, owner of parent company Sugar Mountain. 

Meanwhile, Skillet Street Food, the daddy of this resurgence, has also gone on winter hiatus, though it’s still available for box lunches and for fans who can guarantee a baseline turnout of hungry people.

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page and specify how you'd like your donation to be used.

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

I wrote in Sunday’s Seattle Times about American macaroons vs. French macarons, as different from each other as Julie was to Julia.

I am a sucker for the easy, agreeably chewy coconut macaroons, as I’ve talked about here and here and here, but fooling around with egg whites and piping bags for the fancy French version was a great deal of fun. So was the chance to run questions past one of my baking heroines, Dorie Greenspan, and to talk with Seattle’s own Neil Robertson and  Franz Gilbertson. Greenspan noted that, although macaroons and macarons don’t have much in common, “the coconut cookies that we know as macaroons do have a French cousin, congolais or rochers a la noix de coco, both made with coconut, sugar and egg whites.

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

When I was invited to a casual meal with Patricia Wells a few years back, I expected the highlight to be, well, meeting Patricia Wells. As enjoyable as that was, though, it couldn’t compare to my delight at being introduced to another woman I had only known through her words: “You’re Viv? “Seattle Bon Vivant“? That Viv?” 

Bon Vivant, a Francophile and Seattlephile, was one of the group I think of as the original food bloggers (Accidental Hedonist was another), and her honesty, her striking photos, and delight in food and beauty made her a favorite. Along with many other readers, I was sad and even worried when she stopped posting for several months. Her mother, as it turned out, had been diagnosed with cancer — and even after “Viv” returned from helping her, she decided to put her energy into living instead of chronicling.

Read more

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

The best place to find Starbucks gossip is, of course, on the Starbucks Gossip site. (I felt guilty for declining to buy VIA instant coffee after reading employee comments on the pressure they felt to sell it.) One of the site’s regular features, though, the “Juan Valdez” reviews of random Starbucks sites, is coming to a close.

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

Gourmet magazine is dead (or was murdered, depending on your perspective), but Gourmet’s “Adventures With Ruth” TV show is still going forward, and the second episode will showcase editor Ruth Reichl’s trip to Seattle. She hung out with Jon Rowley, who she called “the man who knows more about seafood than literally anyone else in the country,” and “the master of the perfect ingredient at the perfect time.” The pair set out foraging, clamming, and salmon fishing. (Heads up: There is a fish-kissing scene. Neither of our heroes are involved, though.)

Read more

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

Ivy Manning’s Farm to Table Cookbook made my top 10 list last year, but I was surprised by how little I heard of it elsewhere. It’s a combination of original dishes and recipes contributed by some of the Northwest’s top chefs (farro from John Sundstrom, sorrel-fig salad from Maria Hines, and so on). I liked its handful of primers — telling you the difference between Black Krim and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, for instance — and advice on how to select less-common ingredients, from ramps to lobster mushrooms. Some commenters on the Amazon site found the recipes too complex, but I liked the stretch (and easy counterpoints like the “Versatile Recipe For The Hearty Greens You Don’t Know What To Do With“).

More

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

The last time I was at a Foodportunity event, I hardly made it to the stage, because I kept running into people I wanted to meet and foods I wanted to taste. Keren Brown is throwing another one of her get-togethers at the Palace Ballroom on Nov. 2, where food-lovers both in and out of the industry meet up. This one will feature a panel discussion by top restaurateurs Thierry Rautureau, Ethan Stowell, and Kurt Dammeier, plenty of time to eat-and-greet your way around the room, and an optional “speed networking” session led by Julien Perry of KOMO.

More

Ivy Manning’s Farm to Table Cookbook made my top 10 list last year, but I was surprised by how little I heard of it elsewhere. It’s a combination of original dishes and recipes contributed by some of the Northwest’s top chefs (farro from John Sundstrom, sorrel-fig salad from Maria Hines, and so on). I liked its handful of primers — telling you the difference between Black Krim and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, for instance — and advice on how to select less-common ingredients, from ramps to lobster mushrooms. Some commenters on the Amazon site found the recipes too complex, but I liked the stretch (and easy counterpoints like the “Versatile Recipe For The Hearty Greens You Don’t Know What To Do With“).

More

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

Seattle Metropolitan’s “Best Restaurants” list is heavy on tradition this year, with few surprises - the only one I see is that Serious Pie made the grade, rather than a more formal Tom Douglas restaurant. It’s still an issue worth sending any out-of-towner asking “Where should I eat on my trip to Seattle?”  Canlis made the 10 Best list, though it’s had a few subpar reviews elsewhere this year. Kathryn Robinson writes that the food is “the best it’s been in years.” (Nancy Leson also tweeted earlier this year that she’d just had the best meal she’d ever been served there. It isn’t often you get such stark disagreements among critics; I’d like to get them all in a room and hash it out.)

More

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like...

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

I have a soft spot in my heart for crazy food challenges, so I was charmed by the idea of the guys from Bob’s Red Mill heading overseas to become the first American contestants in a Scottish porridge contest. As I said on Al Dente Blog, that took a lot of haggis — I mean, hubris!

Read more.

The PostGlobe relies on your donations. Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

A few years ago, I profiled a prizewinning pie-baker as she sought her 25th contest ribbon at the Puyallup Fair. Carol Lagasca was entering the contest with her sister, Barbara Dodenhoeft, and I tagged along for the excitement. I thought my heart would stop a couple times on the way:

“As the sisters approached Puyallup, a blinking road sign warned of “fair congestion.” The parking spot Dodenhoeft found just minutes from the entry line was declared off-limits by a guard. The flaggers in the $5 parking lot the next block down tried to wave her toward the far end precious minutes away.

 “Can’t we park here? We have pies to enter!” Dodenhoeft exclaimed.

Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

Rebekah Denn is the former food critic for the Seattle P-I. This is from her blog, Eat All About It.

Enjoying a dish cooked “sous vide” at one of the many Seattle restaurants that use the high-tech technique? Chances are the restaurant is unwittingly violating county health codes. The King County Health Department recently notified restaurants...

(more)

Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

I have my share of benefit cookbooks on the shelf, but I often buy them more for the cause than the recipes. That’s why “40 Seasonal Soups” made an impact when I started browsing through it: The fund-raiser for Queen Anne’s Sacred Heart Shelter is a...

(more)

Rebekah Denn was the food critic at the Seattle P-I. This, from her blog Eat All About It.

Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.

Seattle is one of three test markets in the U.S. for the SweeTango apple, a new cross between a Honeycrisp and a Zestar, hailed as the next big thing in the apple world. Like its parents, the SweeTango was developed at the University of Minnesota. Locally, it’s being grown by Wenatchee-based Stemilt, who also recently bought the rights to grow Pinata apples in the U.S.

 More

Rebekah Denn was the food critic at the Seattle P-I. This, from her blog Eat All About It.

Please support this writer's work by going to our donate page. Please note how you'd like your donation used.